Will Madden's Blog

I’ve decided to post some of my sketches for an upcoming fiction project. Read it here, or hit play and let me read it for you!

Listen.

My city is the city of Dodoville in the country of Sporqia. What a strange name, people say, but they do not say it right, Dodoville. It is pronounced like the French town of Doudeauville but without a French accent. It stands on the River Dodos, for which the city is named, as Cambridge is named for the River Cam, and Oxford for the River Ox. Throughout the world, Dodoville is celebrated for its tapestries and the instruction manuals for its household appliances, which were made during a period called the Age of Botanics.

That was the time the city was ruled by botanists, who exterminated their enemies with poisons called botanicals. It was also a time of artistic exploration, or excavation as the art was mostly unde rground. These artists were known as Botanicists, because they were not botanists, they were just around at that time.

Botanists, botanicals, and Botanicists. Today in Dodoville, many people are still queasy from poisons, others s imply hate the arts, and of course nobody has ever trusted plants. But nothing was called Botanics. That name keeps the peace, so that is the name of the Age.

When a tourist comes to Dodoville, they might say, I have heard of the famous tapestries of Ingrid Gale, and also how your schoolchildren still study from manuals for household appliances, but tell me something I do not know about the Age of Botanics. Well, we say, for all its tapestries and manuals, it was first an age of painters. Oh, I did not know that, please take me to the galleries. So we take them. They see the work of Hugo Darvish, they see Onju’s willow trees and Wayne Escoba’s countless deaths of Astyanax. After we sell them some prints, we say, okay, now would you like to see the painting. The tourist says what.

The story of Botanics is a war story. Listen.

In nineteen hundred eighty two, the Zahzians, armed by their friends the americans, attacked their neighbors the Chalish. We Dodovilleans, of the Sporqish nation, armed by our friends the soviets, came to the defense of the Chalish, also our neighbors, on the plains of Chalia. Sporqia, Zahzia, and Chalia are the names of our nations, although you have never heard of them. But we are the four nations of the Kolkhek region, named for the Kolkhek mountains. The fourth nation is called Enderna. No one remembers on what side Enderna fought because their army was a joke. They lost more people than anyone, mostly to disease and malnutrition. I guess the joke was on them.

Anyway, this was the Zahzian War. In Zahzia, they call it The War To Liberate The Cheddards. Also, it’s called it a proxy war, since it was fought by proxy. Really it was fought by tanks. Proxy means part of the Cold War, which means no fighting. So how did so many people die in tanks? Who knows.

Anyways, in nineteen hundred eighty four, the Zahzians finally defeated us Sporqish on the plains of Chalia. Though to us it looked like they had turned around and went home.

What is this? we cried. Foul! Winning the war at home, this is not what that means.

But the americans confirmed the Zahzians as victor in the war, so by elimination, we were losers. Listen, we said, if only we had known. Nobody turns around like us Sporqish. As for going home, listen. If somebody had just told us that is all we had to do.had only known that’s all we had had to do.

The americans stood by their statement about the Zahzians winning, though we Sporqish did not believe they believed it. They told us we now had to sue for peace with the Zahzians, who had won and not just given up.

Oh america, we said, everything we knew about militaristics must be wrong. Ah, Napoleon, how he won in Russia when he turned around and went home. Alexander the Great, greatest in Asia where he decided to pack it up back to Macedonia. The Fourth Crusade, they hadn’t even got there before they went home. Who ever won like them?

Are you finished, said the americans.

Finished? In Sporqia, bah! Never. Maybe that is why we never win. Perhaps if we give up, we win this argument, yes?

Um, said the americans.

But listen, we said. After the Zahzians turned back in Chalia, so did we Sporqish, we too went home. We did not win of course, but perhaps we won also?

Hm, said the americans.

We Sporqish had said it just to say it. Sometimes if you say it, they do not know what to say against it, especially if it’s said like english is not your first language. (It is.) So we said it to say it, and the americans seemed to think about it.

Shall we give you a prize? they asked. For your also winning?

We did not like the sound of this. In Sporqia, we have what is called an american-giver. That is someone who gives you like a T-shirt, and while you try it on, they take your whole house.

But now we cannot say no, so we say yes, as a matter of fact. Please, americans, prize us with more capitals. Sporqia only has one, Creston, and it is a crap capital. Many of us have not traveled, but even those know it’s no Kathmandu. Ugh, if you do not believe us, visit. Creston is the worst capital on earth.

The Dodovilleans explained how without capitals, we were very susceptible to the tenants of Communalism. Listen. In Dodoville, workers work long hard years in factories, but there is only one capital where to sell the products, Creston, and it is full of cheapskates. They never buy Dodoville’s products, no matter how cheap. Also, now the factories have been bombed in air raids. So please, we said, help Sporqia have more capitals. Oh, america. You have such richness of capitals, your schoolchildren cannot learn to name them all, and that is why america is the envy of the world! But here in Sporqia, we work for little wage more than the pleasure of working, so to our children, Communalism seems the most natural thing in the world.

What is this nonsense, said america.

Listen. Each child gets one brick to play with. If they play together, they can build together, you see? Communally. But at the end of the day, each child takes back her brick. To use as a pillow. And, of course, in the morning she boils it to make her soup. So you see how it is in Sporqia, very communal. Therefore, only if our nation becomes practically sick with capitals can we see the merits of capitalism.

In the end, america did not give us capitals but helped repair the buildings damaged in the Zahzian air raids. No bricks, though, just prefab housing and a shit tone of red white and blue paint. The prefabs looked like styrofoam but the paint was good quality.

We made a mistake, though. In Dodoville we did not know to use the three paints together. Our urban planner said let’s make one neighborhood in each of the colors. We started with red and painted all the houses and we set them out around a nice plaza and called it Red Square. We were just about to take a bronze statue we found and put it atop a column in the square when the americans said what are you doing.

Very embarrassed, us. We have no culture in Dodoville. We are too poor to import it and too boorish to make it ourselves, we did not know you are supposed to use the three colors together till everything looks like confetti clown diarrhea. So entirely out of embarrassment we lied and said we lost the white and the blue.

Oh no, said the americans.

That is when the americans went to the city council and asked about the red menace in our city.

Oh, said the council, this menace is deeply troubling. No doubt the greatest danger we face. Day to day, we see nothing but we hear it grumbling below ground, and we fear no force in heaven or on earth can stop it, this red menace, from overwhelming us completely.

Oh no, said the americans again.

Afterward, the council had a good laugh. You see, Dodoville is built at the foot of an active volcano. It is very menacing, and although the magma inside is usually orange or yellow, by habit we have always called it red. So the council was not talking about Communalism, only how the volcano will soon kill us all! It was very funny.

Communalism, listen. We Sporqish got tanks from the soviets but we did not get Communalism. We did not get it at all. That’s because it is for university students, not factory workers like us. But although it’s for students, the americans were afraid Communalism was something stupid people believed in, and to lose all that paint, wow that was stupid.

The american government was mad at us, stupid or Communalist or both, but we did not want them to think we were lazy too. So we kept painting, and of course we painted everything red.

God damn, stop it, said the americans.

What if we replace the lost blue and white paint, they said.

How generous, we said, only.

Only what?

Only the Zahzians have blown up all our Sporqish banks and our Sporqish mints, so there is literally no money to pay painters with. People are making their own money at home, but it is never enough to pay for everything. Or anything, if we are honest.

The american government will pay your painters, said the americans.
But our workers get paid so little. To travel to where the painting is, they cannot do it. Work for nothing? Yes, of course, our workers will do it as they have always done. But pay to work, they simply cannot afford to do it, the work will never get done.

The americans sighed. We will pay the painters, much better than what workers are paid to do anything in Dodoville, so long as they paint it blue and white but not red, and so long as they use our high quality american paint.

Today a visitor to Dodoville will see everything, absolutely everything from concert halls to patissieres to even sewer tunnels, is painted with good blue and white paint. When we tell them why, they laugh until the tears come. You dumbos, those americans were not the american government but the american paint company. They were using you to sell their expensive paint to the american government and getting rich! And all you got was those cans of paint and all those good-paying government paint jobs!

So we did it wrong, ah well. For five years, absolutely anyone who could pick up a brush could paint a building blue for a good w age, and if they hadn’t found a better job by then, they’d have to paint it white again.
Very sad for us. Once again we did not understand how we were losing. Ah well.

But this is what it means to say it was an age of painters. While we were painting, that’s when the botanists appeared and the botanicals and Botanicists. That is why we thought, ah, all this botany has made us rich, or richer than we had been. We were rich and everyone was painting. Wayne Escoba and Onju and Hugo Darvish were our painters, but also everyone. Priests and lawyers, journalists and ophthalmologists, they could not afford not to paint. During this golden age, a white city shone on the River Dodos. Then a blue one, then a white one again.

Under all that, a red city. City of passions, city of fire and blood.

My name is Mickey Ventrino, I was sixteen when the war ended. Afterward, I lived in the Loomhouse where Ingrid Gale made the tapestries for which Dodoville is famous. This is the autobiography of Ingrid Gale, in the manner she would have written it, if she were me.

The post The Age of Painters appeared first on The Silver Strigil.

Hi folks! I’ve started work on a new series. It takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where the sky has been destroyed and the human population has been forced to move down into the landfills. This story is from the point of view of a small child with an extraordinary family.

The first chapter is below. I’ve even included an audio file if you’d prefer to listen to it. Here, check it out!

 

http://silverstrigil.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Ride-The-Sky-Sample.mp3

Listen.

People come, people go. You see them for the first time or you stop seeing them. But they are very rarely new. It’s strange to have a truly new person.

After the Sick, nobody was ever new. Even if you did not know them, you knew they were an old person. When you do not meet new people, you start to worry. In those days, everybody worried. “Get somebody new in here soon,” they said. “Or if they can’t come here, say I’ll go to them.”

It was a joke to say this. But that is what happened. Everyone came to me.
When they heard I was coming, they started to come to Fourmi Hill. From miles and miles. Through the tunnels between communities. Just to meet me, a new person.

It was a big decision to come.

You have been there. You were thinking about coming into the world, whether or not to do it. A lot of reasons are for against it. It is not warm there, or people will try to take things from you. So why do it? Lots of reasons are for coming, but many are not good ones. For a long time many people did come, anybody could do it and many people did. That was reason enough. You did it because everyone else was doing it.

Me though, for a long time, it did not seem like a good idea to come, and for a long time I didn’t do it, even though everyone else was.

Then nobody did it. This was after the Sick. A ha, I thought, everyone is seeing that I was right all along. For seven years, nobody came. But I was first, I remember thinking, I was the first not to come.

In the end. I should say in the beginning, but in the end, I came. When you think of the main characters in all the stories, what do they have in common, they all decided to be born. Nobody who decided not to be born was a main character ever, and that’s all there is. So of course I would do it, but how did I decide it? Listen.

A lot of people were there, out where I might come to, and they were making a big fuss. Stomping and milleting and mewling. The future was here, they were saying. I was the future, I heard them say, and I was coming. I had not yet decided to come, but having heard them, I decided to hear them. The future died a long time ago, they said, but now it would be reborn. It was past time for my coming, they said, time for the future. Won’t it be nice to see the future, they said to each other. Yes, they said, and how far we have come to see it!

Some had come far, while some had come very far. Through darkness and through danger they had come. Now they were waiting. For me and for the future.

This is when I decided not to come. I had decided before, but now I decided again. I heard everyone expecting me, and I did not want to do what I was expected.

Nobody likes stories where it happens as you are expecting. Only, some do, and they are the worst listeners. They are not my listeners. You are not them. I did not come, because I did not want to disappoint my listeners (who are you). Also, I wanted to disappoint my not-my-listeners.

So I did not come, and very much remained not coming. Those who had come to see me began to say I was not coming.

This made the people sad, but I did not care about that. I cared about the story. I cared about the sadness, but in a good way. I thought sadness was good. I thought a better story was if I did not come, and the sadness of my not coming made the story better. I will not come, I decided, and that was final.

I was not coming. This is what people started to see.

Everyone was sad. The future had not come.

“We did not deserve a future anyway,” people started to say. “We had so many chances to have a future and to deserve it, but in the end (that is, from the beginning), we did not do it.”

“And even if we could not deserve it,” other people said, “at least we could have not deserved to not have it. That was another thing we could have done, to deserve not to be called undeserving. This was the very least we could do.”

“But even that,” people said sadly, with sadness in their voice, “but even that we never did. Not in the end, let alone from the beginning. We never made ourselves deserving of a future, or at least not undeserving of it, and now we aren’t getting it. Now the future will not come. This is what we deserve.”

All these people had come far to see me, the first comer in seven years, but I had not come and was not coming. Everyone was sad. They blamed themselves, they blamed each other, and again they blamed themselves. The blame was sadness. What a good story, I thought! I was right not to come.

But then the story changed.

The people started to say I had not come because I could not come. Coming was something I could not do.

Before the Sick, people had always come, whether anybody wanted them to or not, but then the Sick said no more. Then nobody came. The Sick made a rule, and this rule was now the boss of everybody, even the future. That meant the baby who was coming, the tiny baby who was me, even that baby could not break the rule and come. It simply could not.

Listen.

I like a good story. But also, I do not like rules, and I do not like being told what I cannot do. The Sick, who had never known me or had to do with me, had a rule about me not coming. The Sick was the boss now, not me. The Sick would decide, not me. I did not like it.

The people continued their sadness. Because the people did not deserve it, I was not coming. Because they could not be undeserving, I could not come. This is what people said.

They did not know they were getting a future whether they deserved it or wanted it or not.

I had decided to come. I had chosen to be a miracle, to be the future, but most of all a baby. The one the Sick could not tell what to do.

Still, the people did not know it. They did not know they were getting a future.

“I am glad I came to see this,” someone said. “I am glad I got to see this baby not come. Everyone wants to be there at the beginning, or else to be there at the end. At least I got to see the end,” this person said.

If they liked endings, they would not be disappointed, because soon they would see the end of the Sick. Because I was coming. I was coming as a baby. I had decided it.

Even then, coming was not easy to do. I had never done it before. The first time you do something, you do not expect it to be easy. Coming is not easy for anyone. But everyone was helping me how to do it.

“Push,” they said. Although I had not come and would not come, they had begun to see I was coming. “Push,” everyone was saying. “That is how you do it. That is how a baby comes.”

So I pushed. I pushed very hard. Still, I did not come.

This is the way with main characters. First they do not want to do it, then they see they must do it. Once they decide to do it, they find that it is not easy to do. They must try harder. So I pushed.

The first time, I pushed but did not come. The second time, I did not come when I pushed. Even though I was the main character, the one who would overcome all obstacles, here was an obstacle and I would not overcome it. That is how it looked.

“Push!” everyone said again. “Make yourself ready, then push very hard. Then you will have done it.”

The way that each one said it, you would think the others were not saying it correctly. “Push!” everyone said, correcting the saying of the others.
I was pushing but not coming. None of them were saying it right at all.
Then I thought, What did these people know? And where had they gotten with knowing it?

Actually, that was a good question. Where had these people gotten to? This future that was coming, from where was it leading, and how had they gotten there? It seemed like a good thing to know.

The only way to know was to get there.

Just give me a moment and I’ll find out, I thought. In a moment, I would come and see where it had gotten them.

Only I wouldn’t because all this pushing was getting me nowhere.
Forget pushing, I thought. I’ll pull. I reached out with my arms and I grabbed with my fingers. Then I pulled. Even though my body was small and not yet strong, I pulled very hard. This is an obstacle, I thought, and I am the main character. I am coming. Coming over the obstacle.

“Keep pushing!” the people continued to say. “Now you are doing it. Now it is happening!”

Stupid. They thought they were helping. Yes, but not the way they thought. What everyone was saying, never mind it. I was doing it my way. This was the future, and I was coming.

I kept at my pulling. Before I knew it, I had come.

I had done it. They looked at me and I looked at them looking. I was here. Everyone was looking. They looked at each other and at me.

Everyone had said it could not be done and I could not do it, but once I had done it, everyone had always known I could do it, and of course I did. I had come. It was a miracle.

That is what a miracle is, the doing of what must be done for the story.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments!

The post The World of the Dumpster Divers appeared first on The Silver Strigil.

The Exclamation Point is a feature where I look at the moment a piece of culture made me go [!]. Today’s subject is Blade Runner 2049, a film directed by Denis Villeneuve.

Literally the most disappointed man in this or any galaxy looking right at you.

(Spoilers, or whatever.)

The Blade Runner sequel offers a vision of the future full of modern isolation:

For replicant K., the only respectable employment is destructive and mercenary; the sexual and spiritual companionship he’s encouraged to chase is empty and illusory; he inhabits a sprawling urban dystopia where he is paradoxically alone; what he thinks of as his “childhood” is a series of images manufactured for him somewhere else.

But K. has come to accept all this as the price of existence. The breaking point comes in the form of a very particular trauma.

Shit Gets A Little Too Real

For a certain age demographic, this is the most relatable part of the film. You trudge through life as a parentless android, until a strange and particular hope is cast to you as a life preserver: that Harrison Ford is your dad.

. . . Then that hope is shattered.

And not Rick Deckard. Ford. This is a reprisal of his 1982 role, but for me this film doesn’t make any sense if Deckard isn’t played by the actor who performed as Han Solo and Indiana Jones.

The Deadbeat Moviestar

The two franchises have certain similarities: they begin with a sort of How I Met Your Mother, and then churn through a bunch of daddy issues.

First Indiana Jones: He’s not Short Round’s dad, then all that Henry Junior drama, and finally he is Shia Labeouf’s dad, but also fuck you Shia. (Because who’s not going to disown that guy?)

When the Force finally reawakens, Kylo Ren spears Han Solo with a lightsaber and throws him into an abyss. Why? The movie doesn’t really give a reason. But the setting mirrors the dramatic reveal between Luke and Vader in Cloud City, and intuitively you know how to read it: this is the “I am not your father” scene.

Because let’s face it: over the last forty years, actor Harrison Ford has made it abundantly clear he doesn’t want to be your dad. He is not your role model. He doesn’t give a shit what you are up to or what becomes of you. And he’s not going to loan you any money. Kylo Ren is an entire generation of brats raised by screens who are angry at decades of neglect from their cinematic paternal figure, Harrison Fuckin’ Ford.

Ryan Gosling Can Only Be That Handsome If He Grew Up In A Movie

Replicant K. can deal with the putrid rot of today’s spiritual necropolis, but then he goes to Vegas and finds Harrison Ford doesn’t want to be his dad, in fact never was his dad, and to top it off, keeps punching him in the fucking face while in the background plays some cheesy-as-shit medley of oldies which Ford keeps in a vinyl stack next to his porn stash. “Fuck you, Shia,” says Ford, face-punchingly.

This is where K. kind of loses it.

The film’s climax comes with K. attempting to rescue Ford from drowning ingloriously. No clear reason is given why keeping Deckard alive is important at this point. In fact, the struggle seems driven by K.’s psychological inability to let go after getting rebuffed (reBeoufed) like fifty times. Because father/son/neither relationships are fucking crazy that way.

Seriously Though, Fuck Shia LaBeouf

Blade Runner 2049 concludes with K. dying (or not dying) outside some building in the snow, while inside Ford meets his real replicant daughter. K. feels a drop of vindication because at least Harrison Ford is somebody’s dad.

But also, K. is not at the meeting because a) nobody wants him and b) how fucking unbearable to watch someone else receive the acceptance not even getting shot for the bastard will earn you.

What can I say? 2049 is now.

The post Blade Runner 2049 And Its Very Specific Nostalgia appeared first on The Silver Strigil.

Check out the first scene from my upcoming play, Rhadamanthus.

In a corrupt city, a theater impresario concocts a scheme to make its criminals reenact their misdeeds night after night on stage. But it is only part of a ploy to expand his dominance beyond the walls of his theater.

The play is written in the style of an Elizabethan revenge tragedy, with many hallmarks of the Shakespearean stage, including vengeful ghosts, bastard brothers, twins, cross-dressing, and quite a few more. No obsolete English or rhyming couplets though. (Well, maybe one!)

ACT I

SCENE I—Dodoville, Sporqia, 1987. RANDALL FLYNN’s office at the Mountebank Theater. The garish lighting of the outer facade is visible through the window. Mt Myrtle’s volcanic dome fulminates further off in the night. Inside, the furnishings and light fixtures suggest a bank lobby. In the center of the far wall hangs an oversized human skull, jeweled and agape in apparent laughter.

AT RISE: SERGIO PACK and RANDALL FLYNN play at billiards with PHILIP HUMPHREY in attendance. SERGIO, 30, is in costume as Hamlet from a performance earlier in the evening. FLYNN, mid-50s, wears a crisp charcoal gray shirt with a crimson handkerchief in the breast pocket: a conscious affectation for the man dubbed Rhadamanthus. Of smallish stature, he possesses wiry strength and an assured posture. His circlet of white hair remains in the disarray of one who has just risen from bed. HUMPHREY, late 40s, stands with a slightly feminine slouch. He wears servant’s attire with horn-rimmed glasses hanging from his breast pocket.

FLYNN chalks the tip of his pool cue with three deft strokes. As his leathery right hand crushes the red felt of the bumper, the cue indicates his call with sharp precision: snap, this ball, snap, this pocket, the tip precisely over the center of each. SERGIO imagines he hears the stick whoosh. As FLYNN addresses the ball, a grandfather clock chimes twice. When the toll dies away, FLYNN shoots. His touch on the cue is soft. The thirteen ball hangs on the lip of the pocket, as if FLYNN has left it up to the target whether or not it should fall. It falls. FLYNN almost sneers at its weakness. SERGIO, noticing HUMPHREY watching him with more than casual interest, gestures for permission to smoke a cigarette. HUMPHREY shakes his head discreetly but emphatically no. FLYNN now misses an easy shot, clearing a ball practically already in pocket. SERGIO mutters as he finds himself all snookered up. While he addresses the difficult shot, FLYNN hovers too-close behind him.

FLYNN [voice raspy throughout]. Retribution, Pack, served cold. You are now an actor in a revenge play. Essentially, it’s a simple part, based upon an elegant principle: for every action, an equal and opposite reaction.

SERGIO [scratching his shot]. I’m told it’s bad science to apply nature’s laws to the social sphere.

FLYNN [gravely]. But it is pleasurable. We like to believe truths are symmetrical in this way. Thirteen years ago Rico Daggett killed his wife, Mara Carpenter. Tomorrow night he will die. Not merely just, but beautiful: he took a life, now his is taken away.

SERGIO [sardonic]. That’s your idea of beauty? Blood for blood?

FLYNN. Yes. An economy of action. Men commit crimes, then they pay for them. One of the many cycles which nature perpetuates: light and darkness, growth and decay. Crime and punishment, murder and retribution. Everyone has a role in it, we are all players. [lining up his next shot.] And tomorrow your part will take center stage.

SERGIO. I’m only an actor, Mr Flynn.

FLYNN. Then this is the opportunity you’ve been waiting for [striking the cue hard, sinking his shot.] to prove you can act decisively, as need requires.

SERGIO. A stage actor.

FLYNN [smiling, as if this is his favorite subject]. Rico Daggett: a man of appetites, of addictions and violent passions. While his wife lived, the tabloids were rank with stories of their marital altercations. And then, suddenly, while sailing off Majorca in their yacht, Mara died at sea. When accounting for his wife’s mishap, Daggett attributed the loss to–attack by giant jellyfish! A claim so bizarre, only a fool would forgo further scrutiny. Yet the state ruled Mara’s death an accident and closed the investigation. As public demand grew louder to learn how the beloved actress met her end, Rico Daggett fled the country. Like a fugitive of justice. [lining up a long shot] Then, after ten years, he returns! And because he claims to have spent the intervening time starving and groveling like a monk, he is welcomed back to our city with open arms, and thrown back atop the pinnacle of fame. He comports himself like a guilty man, but once again the machine of law does not move. [he shoots; this ball also lingers upon the lip of the pocket before it too falls.] In an age when the legal path to justice is barred, it must fall to private citizens to pick up the sword the courts have laid down.

SERGIO [anxious]. The boating incident was such a long time ago. Perhaps he really is reformed. The famous temper, at least, seems to have abated.

FLYNN. I am not a hard man. Let salvation be yet the wage of repentance; but for hypocrisy the sword of justice must not be removed. Just as Daggett betrayed their marriage in life, he now disgraces her memory in death. Upon the same stage where you performed tonight, three nights a week Daggett exploits her tragedy in a manner which not only reveals his guilt, but would condemn him even if he were innocent.

SERGIO. To be fair, Mr Flynn, you put him on that stage.

FLYNN [nodding]. Since the state prosecutor would not lay the case before the people, I have done it for him. I have stood Daggett before the whole world and given him opportunity to lament the loss of his wife at sea–what was it?–“under unascertainable circumstances” thirteen years ago. Three nights a week on this stage, he trembles and weeps for Mara’s return. Seven nights a week at the Norway Hotel, he debauches himself with booze and women to make the devil blush! He mocks her memory, Pack, in a way so unconscionably cruel, for this alone he should die.

SERGIO [wincing]. Memory-mocking is not actually a crime.

FLYNN [his nostrils flaring]. Is it justice then, that after the crescendo of obscenity scheduled for his farewell performance tomorrow, he should retire to peace and comfort? [glances at HUMPHREY, who stiffens.]

SERGIO [timidly]. No.

FLYNN. Mara Carpenter’s death was ruled an accident. So be it. Once his engagement at the Mountebank Theater concludes tomorrow night, Daggett will return to his room at the Norway Hotel. You will make sure he takes the sleeping pill that is his custom–perhaps the only thing which permits his filthy conscience to rest!–then you will burn the room down around him. Humphrey will show you how to make it look careless, as if he dozed off with a lit cigarette and ignited the curtains of his preposterous fourposter. As he killed with water, so it will be by flame that he passes to the everlasting bonfire. It is symmetrical, Pack.

SERGIO. Symmetry doesn’t make anything right.

FLYNN. But it will earn us attention! We are about to embark upon a whole purge of accidents, you and I. The death of Rico Daggett will be but the first among our city’s malefactors: those whose backroom dealings destroyed our city’s industries, who ground down peace and prosperity into mob rule and street horror. In time, I will bring down the profiteers who gave us over to defeat and humiliation in war at the hands of the Zahz. Tomorrow night will put Dodoville on notice: that Justice is not dead, that her sword will flash, if needs be, in unsanctioned hands.

SERGIO. I don’t see how killing Daggett will restore prosperity in the city.

FLYNN. Leave it to me. Over the years I have gathered up Dodoville’s most corrupt, baiting my palm as you would a mousetrap. The time has finally come to crush them all. I will have the satisfaction of hearing the bones crack and feeling the flesh squish, of allowing the hot blood to cool and congeal upon my skin.

SERGIO [aside]. Jesus.

FLYNN. Rico Daggett will be the first. Thirteen years. Like Faust, he has exhausted the liberty of his contracted term, and the devil now comes to claim him. And you will be the messenger, Pack. You will carry forth the sword from hellfire.

SERGIO [trembling]. I understand.

FLYNN. And you will do this on account of another symmetry–in exchange for the great favor I have already accomplished for you. For you, I have hand-designed the stage production which has made your name overnight. I have plucked you from obscurity and placed you as a headliner on the same stage as greatest entertainment talents of our age. In me you have found the chariot which draws your star to the pinnacle of heaven.

SERGIO [aside]. Ah me, I’ve beseeched hell, and now Rhadamanthus demands his due!

FLYNN. And so it now falls to your hand to slay a befouled man, a man who throughout his life has paid no tithe to Fortune for the gifts she has bestowed upon him. Because of his honeyed voice, doors open to him without lifting a hand to knock. Without toiling, he is invited to every table. The ten years which Rico Daggett lived in exile, the public has accepted as the debt he’s paid to society–as if he spent it in prison and not some tropical paradise! Is this justice: for murder to suffer temporary severance from Dodoville’s blind adoration? No. Let a man sing for his dinner, but not his salvation. The soul granted him by heaven demands something more to make heaven its just desert.

SERGIO [aside]. As mine, it seems, is to eat humble pie. How can I deny him and keep the stage? Or my head?

FLYNN. You must do this, Pack. The state will not prosecute him. The state is the crime!

SERGIO [aside]. My heart’s conflicted, but my mouth can make only one answer. [to FLYNN] I’ll do as you say.

FLYNN. Good. Humphrey will instruct you. Know your part in this perfectly by tomorrow night.

[Exit SERGIO. HUMPHREY exchanges a glance with FLYNN before putting on his glasses and following.]

[BLACKOUT]

If you are interested in beta reading the rest of the play, contact me here!

The post Rhadamanthus, the Gangster Impresario of Dodoville appeared first on The Silver Strigil.

The Exclamation Point is a feature where I look at the moment a piece of culture made me go [!]. Today’s subject is A Fairly Good Time, a novel by Canadian writer, Mavis Gallant.

“The canals and rivers froze and there were no fresh vegetables in Paris. I saw a picture of a market stall in the morning paper and under the paper was written, “The dreaded rutabaga has again made its appearance . . .” When people talk to me about the Occupation of Paris they mention the dreaded rutabaga . . .”

–Mavis Gallant, A Fairly Good Time

The Boundary and the Price of Immortality

While I was working as a produce clerk, nothing we shelved puzzled me more than the rutabaga. (To me, the word sounded like an incantation that doesn’t quite cure warts or polyps.) Unlike green peppers, which wither if you look at them wrong, no amount of time ever affected the appearance of the rutabaga. Over the eight months I worked at the grocery, I’m not sure anybody ever restocked a rutabaga. Once or twice out of sheer anxiety, I asked a manager if these rutabagas were still good. If I interpreted the answer correctly, nobody on earth knew or cared.

Sticking It Where It Doesn’t Belong: Your Mouth

Whenever I look at a rutabaga, I think of Pu Songling, author of the eighteenth-century collection, Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio. He wrote about a man who brought home a leather dildo, which was found by his wife. Not sure what to make of it, she boiled it for hours and served it at dinner. It proved more or less edible.

Last Christmas, my brother-in-law cooked us a rutabaga. I like vegetables a great deal, and if prepared properly I am hard pressed to name one I don’t like. I would classify the rutabaga as “more or less edible.”

Je ne Les Aime Pas, Sam-C’est Moi

Since you can eat a rutabaga and it cannot be bothered to rot, you can appreciate its utility in times of war and famine. However, now I think of once-gay Parisians under the boot of the Nazis staring at a cartload of rutabagas and wondering if it might not be better to starve to death.

Please do this too.

The post A Fairly Good Time With A Rutabaga appeared first on The Silver Strigil.

The Exclamation Point is a feature where I look at the moment a piece of culture made me go [!]. Today’s subject is The Shape of Water, a film from Guillermo del Toro.

(Spoilers, or whatever)

About two thirds through the film, the monster eats Giles’ cat. Despite half the film taking place in that apartment, you did not know that Giles has a cat, let alone about five cats–that Giles is an eccentric cat hoarder!

As a writer, Guillermo del Toro is strangely indifferent to establishing stuff. He simply doesn’t care. This is a thing I’ve noticed.

So I also noticed when he spent a lot of time establishing two things:

A) Thanks to her friend Zelda, Eliza always clocks in and out of work on time, whether or not she is late. Which is always, because

B) She masturbates every day before work. We see her jill off in the bath while boiling eggs for lunch. She gets in the tub and finishes lady-fapping before the egg-shaped egg-timer goes “ding.” Essentially, this is a high-end B-movie creature-feature, so you might expect some gratuitous T&A, but the scene repeats, so this is an *establishing* self-gratification scene. Every day she brings freshly boiled and masturbated over eggs to work.

So?

She Feeds These To The Monster

She feeds these to the monster! She shells the egg for him—sensually, with her teeth!—before she offers it. Yum! He gobbles the next one down shell and all. We see Eliza laying the eggs out deliciously in a row for him. “I rubbed it out over all of these,” she seems to say, as if playing a particularly daring hand of poker, “which sounds kinda weird, but unfortunately I’m mute and you can’t talk, so I’ll just assume we understand each other.”

. . . Let’s call this her kink.

“Only the monster sees me complete,” Eliza says. But what does this mean exactly? Eliza has two close friends in this movie. No one else seems to have any! She has snippy coworkers, but by cutting in line, she makes them clock in late for work every day, so the abuse seems pretty mild. Maybe that she can’t get a date? All the men go out of the way to do her special favors or explicitly state they want to fuck her. Some guys are charming, some are dicks, but no one is indifferent. Well then?

“Complete” means “egg kink and all.”

The Monster Is Totally Aroused By Her Egg Thing

It’s like fucking heroin to him. He spends a week in a teaspoon-sized bathtub just to get his fix. Later, we see him dropping dead at the breakfast table, raining down scales down on the kitchen tiles. Does he look at his wrist and say, “Look babe, tricks have been great, but if I don’t get back to the ocean soon, I’ll dissolve like the Little Mermaid”? No. He says, “Got any more eggs?”

Actually It’s Not A Happy Ending

Here’s why. The monster thinks Eliza lays those eggs. She’s the only female he interacts with. She’s the only one with eggs. Coincidence? He assumes not. Fish lay eggs.

Also, all the music and dancing. Ever see fish dance? It’s an egg-laying ritual. He must think if you hoof a big show-stopping number, her ovipositor gets to work.

But here’s what. Eliza will never lay an egg under the sea. Not one. The monster will feel confused and betrayed. The romance will be gone. I don’t know where they’ll end up, but will it be more soul-crushing than Baltimore in the late 50s?

Hard to imagine. But possibly!

At the time of this publication, The Shape of the Water is up for every Academy Award imaginable.

The post The Shape of Water “Cracked” appeared first on The Silver Strigil.

The Exclamation Point is a feature where I look at the moment a piece of culture made me go [!]. Today’s subject is The Shape of Water, a film from Guillermo del Toro.

(Spoilers, or whatever)

About two thirds through the film, the monster eats Giles’ cat. Despite half the film taking place in that apartment, you did not know that Giles has a cat, let alone about five cats–that Giles is an eccentric cat hoarder!

As a writer, Guillermo del Toro is strangely indifferent to establishing stuff. He simply doesn’t care. This is a thing I’ve noticed.

So I also noticed when he spent a lot of time establishing two things:

A) Thanks to her friend Zelda, Eliza always clocks in and out of work on time, whether or not she is late. Which is always, because

B) She masturbates every day before work. We see her jill off in the bath while boiling eggs for lunch. She gets in the tub and finishes lady-fapping before the egg-shaped egg-timer goes “ding.” Essentially, this is a high-end B-movie creature-feature, so you might expect some gratuitous T&A, but the scene repeats, so this is an *establishing* self-gratification scene. Every day she brings freshly boiled and masturbated over eggs to work.

So?

She Feeds These To The Monster

She feeds these to the monster! She shells the egg for him—sensually, with her teeth!—before she offers it. Yum! He gobbles the next one down shell and all. We see Eliza laying the eggs out deliciously in a row for him. “I rubbed it out over all of these,” she seems to say, as if playing a particularly daring hand of poker, “which sounds kinda weird, but unfortunately I’m mute and you can’t talk, so I’ll just assume we understand each other.”

. . . Let’s call this her kink.

“Only the monster sees me complete,” Eliza says. But what does this mean exactly? Eliza has two close friends in this movie. No one else seems to have any! She has snippy coworkers, but by cutting in line, she makes them clock in late for work every day, so the abuse seems pretty mild. Maybe that she can’t get a date? All the men go out of the way to do her special favors or explicitly state they want to fuck her. Some guys are charming, some are dicks, but no one is indifferent. Well then?

“Complete” means “egg kink and all.”

The Monster Is Totally Aroused By Her Egg Thing

It’s like fucking heroin to him. He spends a week in a teaspoon-sized bathtub just to get his fix. Later, we see him dropping dead at the breakfast table, raining down scales down on the kitchen tiles. Does he look at his wrist and say, “Look babe, tricks have been great, but if I don’t get back to the ocean soon, I’ll dissolve like the Little Mermaid”? No. He says, “Got any more eggs?”

Actually It’s Not A Happy Ending

Here’s why. The monster thinks Eliza lays those eggs. She’s the only female he interacts with. She’s the only one with eggs. Coincidence? He assumes not. Fish lay eggs.

Also, all the music and dancing. Ever see fish dance? It’s an egg-laying ritual. He must think if you hoof a big show-stopping number, her ovipositor gets to work.

But here’s what. Eliza will never lay an egg under the sea. Not one. The monster will feel confused and betrayed. The romance will be gone. I don’t know where they’ll end up, but will it be more soul-crushing than Baltimore in the late 50s?

Hard to imagine. But possibly!

At the time of this publication, The Shape of the Water is up for every Academy Award imaginable.

The post The Shape of the Water “Cracked” appeared first on The Silver Strigil.

The Exclamation Point is a feature where I look at the moment a piece of culture made me go [!]. Today’s subject is Cave of Forgotten Dreams, a film by Werner Herzog.

The paintings in Chauvet Cave, executed thirty-to-forty thousand years ago, are the oldest by human hand on record. Pristinely preserved, they feature some of the most sensitive animal representations you’ll ever see. When you look at the video images, it’s hard not to feel the sensation of “holy fucking Christ!” modern humans must have experienced when the cave was rediscovered in 1994.

Chauvet is French for Ghost: I’m Making That Up

Filmmaker Werner Herzog has built a reputation of stating his every observation with a nineteenth-century Romantic terror that the whole world has forgotten it needed. I once heard him describe baseball as “One man stands alone with a bat; the whole field is against him.”

I went into this documentary expecting (and hoping for) a savory mix of spiritual horror and nuttery.

In many ways, the story of Chauvet Cave is a ghost story: you have, on the one hand, individuals with a powerful emotional component expressing themselves to us over vast stretches of time. On the other hand, we have little idea who they were or what they were hoping to communicate. That is why, Herzog says, even people who aren’t total nutjobs feel the spiritual presence of the artists working when they are inside the cave.

People didn’t live in Chauvet Cave. Bears did. Giant fucking bears. Because I guess even in the Paleolithic, artists had trouble producing without a deadline.

If You Lose Your Hammer, Drive Nails with Your Soul

Toward the end of the film, Herzog asks a French archaeologist, who had earlier given us a pretty unconvincing demonstration of the atlatl, what he considers the human soul to be. Having once spent a semester translating Plato’s Phaedo from the Ancient Greek, I consider myself prepared for some pretty free-form definitions of “soul.” The archaeologist replies that soul consists of impressing an idea upon something hard.

English is not the archaeologist’s first language, but it is clear that he is equating soul with artistic expression. Yet this “hard” definition gives even Herzog pause. He asks if he would also include more transient mediums like music.

Yes, music too, says the archaeologist, but he does not back away from his fixation on hardness. Because for him soul is an artifact for the future.

Bear Claws Are Not Only A Pastry

Well, then what about bears? Are they also soulful? As the film observes, incisions from bear claws have left their mark over some of the paintings in Chauvet Cave. Caves are pretty hard!

In Ghost Dog, Forest Whitaker’s character informs a poacher that in ancient cultures, bears were considered equal with men.

“This ain’t no ancient culture, mister!” says the poacher, just before Ghost Dog ghosts him.

“Sometimes it is,” comes the reply.

At the time of publication, Cave of Forgotten Dreams was available on Netflix and Youtube.

The post Cave of Forgotten Dreams and The Hardness of the Soul appeared first on The Silver Strigil.

Fantasy fiction is full of all kinds of stock creatures—dragons, vampires, and mermaids to name a few. For a long time I’ve always wanted to put skiapods in a novel. A skiapod is a one-legged humanoid with a foot so large, they are said to hold it above their heads to shade themselves on a sunny day. Here’s an illustration.

By Michel Wolgemut, Wilhelm Pleydenwurff (Text: Hartmann Schedel) – http://www.beloit.edu/~nurember/book/images/Miscellaneous/, Public Domain, Link

Skiapods and Me

My upcoming urban fantasy novel, my hero, the Purple Onion, is aided in his adventures by a skiapod named Mori. The story takes place in the city of Dodoville, which although set in the modern world, is enriched with flavors from medieval Europe. I believe the book makes it clear enough what a skiapod is, but some test readers haven’t heard of them, so I thought I’d say a few words here about their history and why I chose to include them in this project.

I first encountered skiapods in high school or junior high alongside other fabulous creatures which Europeans of the Middle Ages imagined living in the far corners of the globe. (Next best known after skiapods are the men who wore their faces on their midsections, called Blemmyes.) I must have seen them either in a social studies book, or more likely, as a gloss in those Folger Library editions of Shakespeare plays.

(Woodcuts are my favorite.)

I re-encountered skiapods circa. 2004 in Umberto Eco’s Baudolino, where each type of monstrous men is associated with one of the Christological heresies, such as Arianism, Docetism, and other words I never learned the meanings of. The skiapod featured most prominently in the story is cheerful and accomodating, so I adopted those characteristics for Mori.

I read (somewhere) that the European idea of the skiapod came from a god in India said to be one-footed and to shade themselves. This god was almost certainly a leafy plant, but in the west it was understood as humanoid, hence the preoccupation with holding the foot over the head. I’ve always been fascinated by ideas with no real author, but rather are invented by the “telephone game” of culture.

Because of this alleged Indian origin, I assumed they were introduced to Europe by the conquests of Alexander the Great, which is why in my book Mori is mentioned in connection with Alexander several times. However, in the century before Alexander’s campaign, Aristophanes mentions these creatures in his play, The Birds. Later in the Christian era, St. Augustine addresses the questions of whether men such as skiapods and Blemmyes are descended from the sons of Adam. I’m sure his answer has all sorts of interesting implications for the history of Western racism.

Dodoville and the Skiapod

I designed the city of Dodoville as a place where all the misfits of our world collect. Dodoville walks a strange line, because it is a fictional country nebulously located in the modern world. I created it to be a place all the imperial powers—Britain, the U.S., Russia—took an interest in, yet obscure enough that many people have never heard of it. For this reason, it is a natural collection point for many of the world’s misfits.

While some stories in Dodoville will stay closer to realism, the Purple Onion lends itself to more fantastical elements. This superhero’s city felt like a good home for a skiapod, a species whom history has forgotten in a location geography has forgotten. I created Mori, a character whose name has ironically forgotten the “memento” (i.e. “remember”).

Despite having only one leg, skiapods are remarked upon for their surprising agility. I kept that quality because it allows Mori to appear to be handicapped while having an advantage, a paradox the human mind had no difficulty accepting. I also gave him technological savvy far beyond human power. Because I like ambiguous characters, I made him outwardly cheerful and subservient, but I made it clear that he also has his own agenda and is playing a long game no else knows about.

Oh, and I gave him a sharp tongue, because someone has got to keep Dodoville’s most elite hand-to-hand fighter in line.

The post The Skiapod and the Purple Onion appeared first on The Silver Strigil.

The following is a sample from my next novel, Sky Joust: The Purple Onion vs. The Pestilence. It is about a masked vigilante who instead of tying up bad guys for the police, beats them up until they cry and puts the video on YouTube. This is the opening section.

 

Three horses stood around the circular altar. Their riders carried torches, waiting patiently in moonlight that broke through the roof of the abandoned church. The dome of obsidian glass that had once been the pride of the prayerful lay in shattered pieces around them, destroyed in the nineteenth century by the wrath of cannon.

Although no service was being held tonight, the horses wore their best barding, the hock-length ceremonial silk armor that served as equestrian church dress.

The riders wore leather pants but were stripped to the waist, their faces and chests covered in war paint. Heraldic tattoos adorned the breadth of their backs and shoulders.

It was a chilly evening. Clouds of breath appeared from the nostrils of man and beast alike.

“Why can’t we just meet at the pub?” said one of the riders.

“Favor your tongue, Sir Abhoc,” someone said. As in give it a rest. Shut up.

“But we’re missing the damn game. The Pharaohs play the Knockjocks in Creston tonight. Mark Savory is pitching.”

Hackley had TiVoed it, but he wasn’t telling Abhoc. “Lord Brum wants to show us something,” he said instead.

“I don’t know why he can’t show us in town.”

“Horses are banned in town, idiot.”

“Or why there can’t be hot wings. Has anyone told Lord Brum what a pain in the ass it is to dress a horse?”

“We’re Horsefolk.”

“Well, is he? Does he know I can’t just throw all this barding in the washing machine when I get home?”

“You just need a bigger appliance,” said Heckley.

Torchlight crackled. Leather creaked in the saddle.

“That’s not what your wife told me.”

“Aw now. She always did do too much charity work.”

Heckley looked over at their third, a smaller pimply-faced man whose saddle seemed to swallow him. He was fidgeting, glancing nervously about. “Isn’t that right, Sir Bubo?”

Bubo startled, surprised to hear his name. “Yes, of course. Sir Abhoc, I can procure an industrial-sized washer/dryer for church use. It’ll have space-aged deep-cleaning technology, and we can remote access it from the Cloud!”

Abhoc blinked. “We’re talking about Sir Heckley’s wife, Sir Bubo.” False-bragging about diddling each other’s women was a sacred rite of chivalry, he believed.

“Well. . .” Bubo shifted in his seat. “She can use it, too, of course.”

“Listen here, you little punk.” He reached for his sword.

Heckley guffawed. “Our quartermaster here got digitech on the brain. Don’t care about no box except they built it in a lab somewhere. Or no joke unless it got bleep blorp in it.”

Abhoc reconsidered killing Bubo. “Blorpity bleep,” he said, testing him.

“Ha ha,” said Bubo, trying to smile.

“See? He thinks it’s funny.”

“Bloop, choo-weet!” said Bubo, flailing his arms about like a robot, laughing for sheer terror.

Abhoc nodded respectfully. “Aw, that’s all right now. No harm done,” he said. “But listen, I’m still going to kill you.” In the moonlight, steel flashed from his scabbard.

A loud whinny startled them. At the far end of the nave, a fourth rider appeared in the collapsed doorway of the church. Guided by a steady hand, the animal sidestepped the fallen lintel. Hoofbeats echoed hollowly on wooden boards strewn with stale hay and decades of mountain dirt windblown through broken windows.

The newcomer played a mournful fiddle on approach, a melody that a century ago had ridden hard and dauntless into the maw of British artillery, which the prickers and primers are said to have heard over the crack of their own ordnance. At every hitching post along the way, where the prayerful’s steeds once stood for mass, the rider paused to play to the ghosts of the congregation, who fleeting forms appeared teasingly in moonlit dust swirls. The music had been written for horns and meant to be performed over the thundering of hooves. The deliberate pace of the midnight charger made the advance almost unbearable.

With each clop forward, the three knights watched the mount grow in size until it hardly seemed it would fit under the collapsed dome. A monstrous destrier, almost twenty hands high, and a rider sized to match.

At last, he reached the circle of torchlight in the chancel. Long hair fell in curls past Brum’s shoulders, and under his chin the fiddle was set. This was an authentic Sudsy & Sons cigar box fiddle, masterfully crafted by one of Dodoville’s original artisans. The elongated double S’s of the brand logo were carved out to make the F holes upon the body.

After letting the final note of the ancient warsong attenuate into silence, Brum leaned from his horse and hawked phlegm upon the floor.

He began to play in earnest.

The famous Tartini sonata for violin.

The knights glanced askew amongst themselves. Horace Brumfield, only an eighth Horsefolk by birth. But few could still trace a pure line from before the Occupation. He had drunk the mare’s blood mixed with his mother’s milk, that was what mattered. But Brum had also been educated by the Septic monks, who filled his head with papistries such as the Lord Jesus rode an ass and had no squire. Although the newly-dubbed Knight Commander had renounced all that heresy long ago, it was still the Septics who had recognized Brum’s talent for music, who had put into his hands the violin, that devil’s instrument. He had not rejected that.

The sonata required dazzling speed and dexterity. The cigar box fiddle was not a Horsefolk tradition, but Dodoville’s. Although from the city’s margin, the Horsefolk faithful were Dodovillean enough to see that music lived in his fingers, tormented his dreams, scalded streaks across the arching heaven of his mind like fiery comets on a clear night sky.

He finished. Licks of torch flame snapped in response.

“How I long to play that piece among the shattered bodies of our enemies.”

“May you get that chance, Commander Brum,” said Heckley.

“Sooner than you think, I shall. In one month’s time, we ride on Dodoville. After nearly a century, she is ripe for plunder again.”

“She is, Brum, but—”

“A millennium ago, our chivalrous ancestors rode in attendance on our Lord and King, Jesus Harthur the Christ. They witnessed him break the strength of our enemies with his powerful right arm; they saw him dispense justice with his immortal sword Signo; they wandered with him for forty days and nights through the deserts of Camelot; they helped him recapture the Sacred City from the Saxon infidel and tore from their profane hands the holy pail from which our Chosen Steeds are branned and oated. They were there too, alas, when his side was opened and he bled freely into that pail. We are the direct descendants of those who drank of that blood with their own lips, heirs to the covenant that makes us rightful masters of Dodoville and all the Kolkhek mountains.”

Abhoc saw no reason this should make him miss the Pharaohs game.

“We know all this for fact,” he said, “as we know our own names, but—”

“You have prepared your whole lives to reclaim our rights. Your skills as horsemen are unequaled. The least of you can thread a needle with your lances at a gallop. The terrible hoof-fall of your mounts at full charge make the earth itself cry out for mercy. ”

“Excepting none but you, my lord,” said Heckley, “I’d brave any man alive at the joust. But centuries have passed since the Horsefolk inspired dread in this region. Alas, what use are horses against the armored cars of the Dodoville Police?”

Brum’s face, inscrutable under his mustaches, picked Heckley apart.

“Well asked,” he said. “This is no longer merely the abandoned place of worship of our foreriders. Welcome to the fully mechanized war stable of the New Order of Horselords. Officially open for business.”

Outside in the trees, the night song of frogs and crickets.

“Brum, have you—?”

“Gone mad? No. I just haven’t pushed the button yet.”

Brum reached into his saddlebag and fished out a small remote. He compressed it, the hollow plastic clack of a device you know will never fucking work.

Bubo’s mount, sensing her rider’s apprehension, began to fret. He pet her neck, whispering in her ear as his wide eyes surveyed the ceiling.

“Maybe put it under your chin,” suggested Abhoc.

The remote disappeared under Brum’s mustaches. Somewhere, a low-decibel, high-frequency ping.

Heckley steadied his charger as the walls began to tremble, the floorboards began to move.

“Sir Abhoc,” shouted the Knight Commander over the rumble, “you may throw out your mount’s barding if its upkeep has become a chore. Today, I have something you are going to like a lot better.”

#

On the other side of Dodoville, snug in the rocky embrace of Mount Myrtle, the Cumin family estate enjoyed a natural shelter from the volcano’s ashen breath. The British had built Davy Castle here in the nineteenth century, a fortress of basalt designed as a sanctuary for imperial administrators from the local horrors—geothermal, zoological, but chiefly anthropomorphic—that plagued her majesty’s holdings in the Kohlkhek region, far away at the end of the earth.

After the First World War, Dodoville got swept into the independent nation of Sporqia. Yet the castle remained Dodoville’s greatest repository of worldly learning and cultural sophistication. Whatever marvels and delights could be channeled from across the globe—fashion, technology, the trendiest new exercise videos—you might say they hoarded it all in there.

Atop the west spire stood the orbiting dome of the Cumin Observatory, centerpiece of the Sporqish lunar light conservation project (of which Dodovilleans, accustomed to gross government misappropriation, said only, “It’s very serious”). Mount Myrtle, one the world’s largest active volcanoes, threw ash into the atmosphere on an erratic schedule, making for an unreliable view of the cosmos. But the acoustic telescope peeking from its dome, an engineering feat named Ladybird, was pointed not skyward but down the mountain into Dodoville.

At the chief observation desk, Victor Cumin attended the dozens of monitors supplying access to closed-circuit television feeds from all over the city. He was on a mat in a pair of running shorts and trainers, doing burpees.

The screens showed him views from inside the police stations, the trade rooms of the Tchotchke Consortium, even the conference rooms at his own newspaper companies under the Cumin Media umbrella. Cutting-edge kinetophonic algorithms rapidly converted subtle motion in the video into audio reconstructions, which he could patch into by calling out the monitor’s ID. Thanks to the network set in place by the Consortium’s Cultural Archive Initiative, a pioneer in the field of invasive surveillance, you could now make yourself digitally present practically anywhere in Dodoville, so long as you had the resources and technological wherewithal.

For everything else, there was Ladybird here, whose audio point-and-snoop capabilities could penetrate most walls.

Squat, kick out, push up, jump! Squat, kick out, push up, jump!

Maintaining razor-sharp awareness and cognitive function during intense physical exertion wasn’t just a nice trick: for Dodoville’s premier masked vigilante, it was his only chance for survival.

Plus, keeping his body in peak condition and monitoring the criminal activity in the city put such constraints on his time, it really behooved him to do both at once. Afterward, he still had his ailing father’s media empire to run!

Where the hell was Mori? He could at least come up here at throw swords at him or something.

“To keep your strength up, sir,” said a voice.

Victor glanced back mid-squat as Mori approached with long smooth bounds, landing lightly on his bare toes. The butler wore a tuxedo, its single tail rippling like a gymnast’s ribbon behind his single leg, and in his hand he carried a covered silver tray.

Mori stopped before him, and with a little bob at the knee, removed the lid. Vegetable soup. Not a single drop had spilled.

“Leave it on the desk there,” said Victor, tucking his knees on level with Mori’s eyes at the apex of his jump.

Mori moved with more speed and agility on one leg than most men could with two. And yes, Mori’s profession asked that he not be seen unless necessary. More importantly, humans had hunted skiapods like Mori across the millennia, so naturally they had developed a skill for remaining unnoticed. But Victor didn’t like being snuck up on in his own castle. Perception was as vital for him as stealth was for the skiapod!

“Do you require my assistance, sir?” Mori smiled, his large eyes beaming beneath a broad forehead. According to Mori, skiapods had evolved childlike countenances to make it more difficult for less stone-hearted homines sapientes to slay them. But whatever the survival advantage, mostly it just creeped Victor out.

Squat, kick out, push up, jump! How many was that? Also, what was he watching on the monitors?

Oh right.

“Mori, did you know spider silk is stronger than steel? Triple the blast protection of kevlar.”

The butler’s single eyebrow rose in surprise. “I have only a hobbyist’s interest in organic chemistry, Master Victor. But yes, I did know. It’s flexible too. That’s why its the primary material in the Violet Storm’s body armor.”

“Ugh. I wear that against my skin. What’s the secondary material?”

“Sir, if you enjoy not getting fatally shot, stabbed, burned, bludgeoned, electrocuted, or irradiated, may I whole-heartedly suggest not insisting upon an answer to that question.”

“What’s grosser than spider webbing?”

Victor glared at him in silence.

“Skin, sir.” A tilt of the head for I-told-you-so.

“Blech. At least it’s not human skin.”

The smile on Mori’s face didn’t change.

“Did you ever consider applying the silk like a shrink wrap?”

“I confess the thought occurred to me, sir, but I decided you were still capable of dressing yourself.”

Mori had read somewhere that butlers should have a dry sense of humor, but the innocent expression made the jokes seem off-kilter.

“Okay then. Ever think of using the spider silk on animals?” asked Victor.

“You weren’t planning on riding one of the hunting terriers into combat were you?”

“How about a horse?”

“That’s a lot of spider silk.”

“Where do we get ours? Do we import it?”

Mori closed his eyes for an instant. “All our silk, sir, is local. From Ariadne’s Arachnophilia Euphorium.”

“Emporium, you mean?”

“They are very enthusiastic about spiders there, sir.”

“I wonder how an operation like that turns a profit.”

“It’s not vigilantism in a vegetable mask, sir, but they do make a living.”

Mid-burpee, Victor stopped burpeeing.

“Did you fashion my breathing apparatus out of a turnip or something?”

“No, sir. But following the specifications you gave me, well . . . Some of the writers at your newspaper have observed it looks sort of like . . .”

“What?”

“Some . . . vegetable. One of the more fear-striking ones, I presume.”

Victor reached for a towel and walked over to the desk where he opened the file on the Church of the Knight Errant.

“Horace Brumfield,” he said. “Named Knight Commander of the CKE three years ago. Ramped up their training programs in dressage and medieval weaponry, especially lancing.”

“The Brumfields, I recall, were one of the losing families in the gangwar that overthrew the Botanists from political supremacy back in the ‘90s.”

“That’s right. All their power and prestige vanished overnight. Perhaps Horace wants revenge on the city that betrayed his benefactors.”

Mori shrugged. “If it makes sense in a human mind, sir. Skiapods believe that dramatic reversals of fortune are simply a part of life. The rich among us cheerfully joke about the day when they will be penniless.”

“Well, of course it’ll come if they make jokes about it!”

“I don’t understand, sir,” Mori said smiling.

“The Horsefolk have waged war in this territory since before Dodoville’s founding. They are our oldest enemy.”

Mori tilted his head cheerfully. “Since the obsolescence of the war horse, the population has mostly assimilated into Dodoville society. Law-abiding, tax-paying citizens. Veterans of the Zahzian War. Nice people, if you trust reputation.”

“Except the Church of the Knight Errant believes they will be restored to their former glory, when in dust-scuttling hordes they ranged the Kohlkek mountains, plundering and terrorizing the local population.”

“You fear that now with indestructibly-armored horses, it may actually be possible.”

“Thanks to Ladybird, I know it is. I’ve been watching them for weeks. Weapons upgrades, elite horsemanship, a state-of-the-art saddle-mounted stereo sound system.”

“Stereo, sir?”

“The telescope hears the audio quality!”

“Of course.”

On his desk stood a framed photo of Victor as a boy with his mother Rochelle. He picked it up now and held it, gazing off into the distance.

“The Brumfields weren’t the only family hurt in that gang war. But you don’t see me taking it out on the whole city.”

“From a certain point of view, sir, that’s exactly what—”

“I have to stop him, Mori.”

“Obviously sir. He’ll buy out all the silk. The way you go through bodysuits.”

Victor eyed the pair of fuzzy purple slippers on his desk and thought about his unconventional vocation.

“If there is any blessing in the rule of the Tchotchke Consortium, it’s that Dodoville hasn’t endured a full-blown gang war in twenty years. But if with these new weapons they can offer a legitimate threat to the Consortium’s power . . .”

“I don’t know the Knights Errant qualify as a gang, sir. They aren’t political. They just want to burn things and watch people suffer.”

“Sounds like politics to me.”

“What do I know, I’m only a skiapod. We like to make people happy! That’s all politics means to us.”

“And your kind is nearly extinct.”

“Exactly, sir! Eradicating our foolishness from the face of the earth is the least we can do for others’ comfort.”

For thirty years, Mori had served in the Cumin household, saying things like that with the same smile on his face. Never once had he murdered everyone in their sleep. Someday Victor would have to figure out why that was.

But someday would have to wait until a horde of barbarians wasn’t breaking down the gate.

 

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