Thursday, June 28, 2007

Random Paragraphs

Each of these paragraphs is random, and a stand alone. Feel free to read into them all you want. I wrote them about seven months ago.


Lies that deceive me from the truth that I hide from behind the plinth of obscurity. A vagueness surrounds me, forming like the whisper of a cloud, a thought that hasn't formed fully. The synaptic reaction courses through my brain, weaving into being the intricacy of this deranged feeling that the untruth I speak to myself daily is nothing more than a hopeful prayer -- the bread I partake of to fill my stomach and hide my fear.

The stillness of breath crept down her throat in a shudder, like she were puking in reverse. It was painful, this swallowing, as the gush of oxygen flowed in and ate at her lungs, a poisonous cancer she required to live. A disease that she couldn't live without. Coughing ensued, blankets showering over her hunched frame and shivering with a thrill of nervousness. Possessed as she was of her initial mentality, she dragged on her cigarette, blowing the smoke, hazy and insubstantial, away to be batted at by the undercurrent of a breeze. She breathed.

Almost. His grip wasn't quite, his hand slipping, his mind faltering. His will broke, shattering like a blade untempered. He felt himself falling, the ground rising up, a maw full of teeth waiting to swallow him whole, the gurgling laughter of something strange and terrible nearby and far off at once. His eyes slide open, a slash in the skin of their covering, the near perfect orbs crying intensely. Blurred, his vision sprinkled with moisture, he choked on something that sounded like laughter, the wracking sobs writhing down his body as the throes of death grasped and crushed his body. He sat up with a start.

Manicured nails clack like a train, hypnotic rhythm sending distress signals across the desk. Nervous and anxious, a playful hand bats aside hair. Tucked behind an ear and trembling for release, she looks on with crystal eyes, fearful and waiting. Papers shuffled, the man across the way smiles, white teeth portrayed as giant cliffs set in the basilica of pleasant resentment. "I'm sorry, you aren't what we're looking for."

Eyes waver as the picture dies. Blackness crawls up the room, long fingers spreading its inky grasp over the crowd, swelling up and swallowing and chocking and regurgitating the masticated mass of men and woman. The light quivers at first, dim and purposeful, drawing strength as the flux of popcorn pellets dabble along the feet of the passersby.

Something's in the way. Immovable and impassible, blocking the shot. A page is turned, shivering in the fingers, small prints marring a pristine, lacquered surface. The images float along as if by want, colorful and cheerful. Bright smiles plastered into virile facades with gumdrop eyes and plastic lips. Buy me and feel loved, it says.

Hands bumble about in the cold. Frozen, elongated, twisting through the serpentine depths of ill-made gloves, gripping handles and rounds and fumbling. The chill bites, shallow fangs cresting the surface. Streaks of red crest the exposed flesh. A boom resounds, a pale thump prior. He smiles behind the snow-caked scarf, white teeth chattering like a wind-up toy.

Petulant and remorseful, it hangs heavy and grey against the backdrop of the sallow and dulled. Wavering tenderly, shook by the disturbance of a sudden breeze, it glows amid the orange flickering from within.

The insanity that quells my being shutters for an instant, a still frame of momentum. My train of thought caught on the brink of the brick wall in black and white tatters. The image shatters, a mirror reflecting disjointed ideas, jagged and piercing like the shafts of sunlight penetrating through the blinds of my midmorning blunder through wakefulness. A blur, a flash, a blink and momentum is restored, and I am again watching the scenery. No longer from some distant vantage point. The trees fly by, and then the car collides with the oncoming traffic as my horror becomes realized. A stillframe of thought caught in the intrepid waking moment of my own demise. And then the scene ends, brought to a close with the billowing shutter of metal clashing along my frame and the sharp impact and screech and then silence.

A specter flung sideways. Twisted in a parallel fashion, the colors sloughed at 45 degree angles obtrusively in neon-Technicolor. Puke rushed up and backwards over a shoulder as indigo flashes pulsed seizure-like and furious. The world was dizzy. It didn't know which direction it was going, a flat-land set on a top and spinning with all the power it could get. And then falling. Falling with legs turned to mush and bleeding pink rivulets of pepto-bismal. Laughing hysterically as the skateboard flew overhead. Gravity was falling upward. The rush of concrete was happening in real time while everything else moved in a shutter-frame. Off to a side, head squished onto pavement and a clashing, cranking sound as wood spattered grotesquely against a wall off someplace other than here. Splinters rained downward while pebbles flew upward in a dyslexic world that couldn't read the rules of nature.

Monday, June 25, 2007

Dominion - Tangmarpok

Tangmarpok had three seasons: cold with snow, cold with rain and cold with sun. It was currently cold with rain, and it sloshed down the rock faces of the canyon city Tangmarpok with a vengeance, slathering the decks of the bridges that spanned the crevice in the mountains. A parade of figures marched stolidly through the downpour without umbrellas--just overcoats. A crowd of hunched people moving in an unhurried pace as though their business would get done rain, sleet, shine or snow.

It was a city set deep in the Rauwok mountain range, North of the equator on this world known by a strange name--Gre'kuquen. The sky itself above this city was streaked with small meteorites twice a year, always during the 'cold with rain' season. They were burning up now, long red and orange streaks that illuminated the thick layers of cloud with a ghastly, off-kilter glow before expiring in the atmosphere; rarely did they touch ground. Few if any in Tangmarpok paid any attention to the bombardment except for young children, and even they paid scant attention after seeing it a dozen or so times.

The military base North-East of the city, however, monitored those earthbound rocks in case some kind of entry vehicle were planted in their midst. The Vadasian people weren't like to be caught with their pants down, so to say.

A figure marched forward through the rain past the populous of animals and beasts, furred creations dressed as men, or was it men coiled in the furs of animals? He didn't know, he was one of them. Another beast clad in mans skin, or was it a man with an inner demon? Didn't matter, as he walked hunched, passing "men" and "women," some openly showing that they were giant, hulking and deathly creatures, furred with claws and fangs both.

Drenard didn't.

He could, though; no one would think less of him for being in either form, this shapeshifter. A race of shapeshifters that learnt the trait only to infiltrate and kill and debase their sole foe, a foe they now called friend and ally against the numerous other foes of the universe. Didn't matter. He pushed through a door, under the neon lights that flashed past through the air, holograms depicting items to be bought, to be sold, to be collected and numerous other things of some intricate value.

His eyes adjusted to the light.

"Sergent Romyal," a voice said from behind some kind of display, "what can I do for you?"

He looked at the man, information flashing in the backs of his eyes. A name was called up along with a photo ID, two images transposed of the man and the beast both--one person.

"Need to find something for my mother on her anibvik, Dausth," Drenard replied.

"I think I got exactly what she would like," the Vadasian said.

Sunday, June 17, 2007

WPCA - Hung

The track twisted through the darkness, turning back on itself again and again in a strange switchback pattern. A full moon, partly obscured by picturesque clouds lit the way. Leaves skittered and branches cackled in the hot, humid breeze. It had been storming only hours before, thunder and lightning both unleashing their pent fury before absconding. But the night wasn't young and full of vigor anymore. She was aging fast, and with her anger spent, the air palpitated with her one-thirty-in-the-morning stroke. The face of the night buzzed with flies that consumed the flesh. The trunks of trees looked like spun-dried bones, pinnacles rising into the sky, clawing away at the trail that cut a swath through its skin. Blackness oozed at the edges. A series of creaking noises escaped now and again, drowned by a whisper.

Framed in silhouette against a star-filled backdrop was a figure, bent, kneeling, uttering prayers and sobbing gently. Prayers to a deity of unnamed origin and nameless itself. Just a continuous repetition. She was saying please again and again, croaking out "no" and "stop" again and again. Cool and clammy her skin was to the touch, as the braided rope began to twist its way around her neck.

"Don't do this," she breathed for a moment, a last breath.

The cord tightened, her frame rising as if by magic off the ground. Her feet dangled, the flies buzzed, her eyes bulged and her face turned a grim shade of blue-white. A ghastly glow illuminated by an impartial moon above that lay witness to this. Shaking, her hands clawed at her face, drawing deep gashes, but the mutilation she made to herself didn't work against the rope snug against her adams apple. She swung, and as she stilled, a quietness came over the clearing. Looking closely, there were three others beside her, all drifting in the breeze and the flutter of flies. Three women, sisters, all taken from a nearby town--all hung.

---

The morning mists coughed up the three women strung like blackened pearls. They floated in space, looking like reeds waving above a rippling lake surface in a breeze. The crows had already come, a murder and more, stripping flesh and turning the once lovely faces to ashen ruin. Eyes were missing and the skin had turned grey and pallid and the scent was overpowering. The smallest of the three was no longer holding together, either. Entrails spewed onto the ground in a ragged trail, falling into the mist like a fishing like that was being tugged at by unseen forces.

"My God!" a woman cried, turned with teary eyes and beginning to fight back her gag-reflex. She lost, puking and dry heaving away even after a man had hauled her to her feet and bound her within arms in an attempt at comfort.

"Who coo'dove done this?"

Nobody had an answer. The mist began to retreat slowly with quiet animosity as a woman wept for her dead children and men looked into each others eyes with grim determination. Someone would die for this atrocity, they seemed to say to one another.

Saturday, June 16, 2007

Dominion - Origins (Cont)

More Origin's await. Re-did the second part and just tacked it onto the end of the current post as is. I think it's better thanks to the change, and works better with what I have planned.

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

In the Shadow of Giants -- Duel Intro

The road twisted between the mountains, hard-pack trodden underfoot by thousands of people before, perhaps millions, or even more. There were no toll booths to keep track, but the steady roar of the old-age wheeled vehicles and the much more modern hover-craft blitzing along the highway wafted up the craggy heights of the age old monoliths that stood watch. Great boughs of jutting granite lay crawling and bulbous hands along the valley floor, making for a convoluted pass, and many smaller valley's hidden in the waiting arms of the larger mountains.

It was up a trail that switchbacked several times. A steep trail set near forty-five degrees with large trees canvasing the overcast sky, clawing away with thick branches and a just-after-rain stench. It was about five kilometers, that a lake stood. It was small, with reeds dotting one edge, the other framed by a towering face of granite and sparse pine and hemlocks. A thin mist blanketed a corner of the lake. The only indication that there was a waterfall was the sound, but beyond the roar and gurgle, there were more trees and rocks. The trail circled the small lake, scrambling up the large building-block-like rocks even higher into the ridge-line.

The weather was in a foul mood, overcast in a belligerent frown and blustering out an even fouler wind. The day had started with a light drizzle, but with a kind of cold that infiltrated bones and set about an inner freeze that made everything especially lethargic, like time slowing. It began to sleet. The rain and snow mingling in a perverse near coitus act, sloshing into the ground in a rough-and-tumble play as they moved in and around one another. Mud began to bubble up as the cold ground rejected the skies urination. A curse and a ruffle of clothing followed as a hood canvased a head and arms pulled in tighter around a body. He danced a short jig, blood flow warming extremities that began to chill. He reminds himself why he's here, and why he feels cold instead of warmth.

"Stupid, bloody, cold. Just had to pick the worst spot, didn't you."

Nobody answered; he didn't expect anyone to answer, not now.

Amarouk turned dead eyes at the sky, then turned them on the waterfall percolating at the far edge. It seemed to always have a renewed sense of vigor, like crystal-clear coffee--nothing but a warmth and a feeling of wired purpose. A jazz that tingled the nerves. He barked out a curse at the cold again, which normally never affected him, and at the waterfall, and at his opponent, who had yet to show his, or her, face. What a rout.

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

im in ur intarnetz, writn mah blogz

So, in the past couple days I've done a fair amount of writing. Random paragraphs, stories, duel intros, you name it. So, here's some random crap I've written in the past couple days.

---

It coiled like a snake, slipping upwards. Tightening as it did, he puked up the anxious butterflies that had been fluttering in his stomach. A caress of techno-colored slosh sprang up and spilled from his slack jaws. The other kids cried out in disgust as the dead butterflies with their multi-culturally colored wings turned to wax and a janitor came up with a sponge, a mop and a bucket. He placed his sign, covered in graffiti, and began the arduous task of both cleaning and scolding, no easy thing by any means.

---

Filled with delicious filling, it waits to be eaten. A cake standing tall, proud, before the knife. It denies the knife for a moment, just a moment, and then succumbs. A city overtaken by the forces that slash through, breaking wall and door and tower all at once. The people fall as the city falls. The cinder blocks ring with the screams of the slain, a cry that echoes. And then there was nothing.

Monday, June 04, 2007

Dominion - Origins

Dominion - Origins
-> Birth of MAN

1.48.4E1246 / Palace of the 'al Torro
Lyzrantii System, Lyzrant

They stormed the last bastion of Nel Ent 'al Torro in the deep of the night. Silence, determination and the clatter of assault rifles followed them. Across blurred marble floors and past hanging paintings and tapestries they dashed. Firefights exploded and died as quickly as a trigger was pulled. In the end, only death and victory waited for them. The moon hung in the sky while a smattering of cloud cover rained down tears as the bulge of the celestial body wove a strange dance as it watched on. Two hundred years ago, it was; the night of 'al Torro Despada, or "The Great Unification." Nel Ent 'al Torro died, and as his body fell limp to the flecked marble flooring on that night, a gun in his hand and a bullet through his head, the United Lyzrantii States rose up to take his place.

General El Antigo vel Maro's quest to unify the world was at long last completed with the last Warlord painting abstract macabre art on the floor in the form of a twisted corpse before him. He chose his senate wisely, suppressed any rebellion before it could form, and created an empire that he headed. A single ruler. Such a thing had never before been, and all the years of fighting and cajoling and pleading had paid off. But in the end, El Antigo vel Maro would die of a heart attack on the senate floor giving a speech to rally the people to his cause. But instead of something to inspire them with, the speech was punctuated with him collapsing to the floor as he coughed, quite literally, pieces of his own lungs and blood onto the floor. His dying words were "My friends!"

His good friend, or the only person who could even be called a friend, superseded him -- Nathanial Jacobs-Elsandro. He assumed El Antigo vel Maro's title, and would later be crowned the First Emperor of the Unified Lyzrantii States. El Antigo vel Maro and all he had stood for would soon be forgotten. Nathanial Jacobs-Elsandro led for many years and later sired a son, who would be crowned Second Emperor of the Unified Lyzrantii States upon his fathers death when he was aged 42. But with the beginning of Lennard Jacobs-Elsandro's reign came an unexpected turn. His father, known for his zealous ravings, had said that their enemies were not the people of Lyzrant, but the threats that came from the stars themselves. It was said that Nathanial Jacobs-Elsandro had seen in a vision their enemy from the beyond. Lennard Jacobs-Elsandro believed his father.

Many believe Nathanial Jacobs-Elsandro was mad, especially in his later years, and the fact that his son, Lennard, believed him and began a space program, only furthered the rumors. Slipspace travel through the stars was something newly discovered, and Lennard Jacobs-Elsandro sent many scouts into the uncharted regions, hoping to search out and find the threat and extinguish it before it could ever come back and hurt his people. But his drive and motivation became his downfall.

A religious figure, rather zealous at the least, Matthew Alexander Nault, would murder his way to and usurp the thrown. Elsandro Entiga, "The Elsandro Eradication", began with gusto, and Lennard Jacobs-Elsandro would soon find himself starring wide-eyed at a ceiling, gasping for air and a goblet of poisoned win splashed along a carpet. His death created two factions, those for him and his programs, and those against. The following in-fighting caused many return calls by scoutships to go unheard and be forgotten altogether. After ten years of continued fighting, Matthew Alexander Nault ascended the great Imperial Thrown to become the First Emperor of the Lyzrantii Dominion Empire, the First Empire of MAN.

---

-> Encounters

1420 Hours (Galactic Standard) 2.15.4E1453 / LDE Scoutship Starflung
Unknown system

The system was quiet. The seven planets moved in their preexisting tracks, slowly racing around a yellow primary like children on a merry-go-round. Distant stars dotted the blackness and added color and depth to the nothingness. A small star seemed to brighten, flashing closer for a moment. It twisted and oscillated, the space around it scintillating until an object burst into view and the corona of light snapped shut as the ship exited the event horizon, dying in the instantaneous transition from slipspace to real space. An LDE scoutship, the Starflung, pushed at the bounds of space for a moment before settling. A small craft, an oblong sphere with four distinct bulges in the rear with glowing efflux and smaller cancerous bulges along the craft.

Long- and short-range sensors slid out of their jump recesses with smooth animosity, metallic silver inset with circular gold mirror lenses. They began to scour the space all around the craft, hungry for specific shapes before focusing on the farther celestial objects. Every molecule was searched and prodded for an instance, and then, when it was deemed safe, the craft began its slow, arduous journey inwards.

For the first ten hours, the Starflung and its crew of five remained diligent and extremely bored. The system looked like the hundreds they had already seen over the past seven years. Continuous readings and bets were taken on the probability of them finding life on any of the planets based on the fact they hadn't in the past seven years. The man in charge, lieutenant Kim Wong Tei, was sitting in his seat and yawning ferociously and attempting to distract himself from his boredom by flipping a coin and watching it tumble in the three-quarters standard gravity.

"What's the count, Kimmy boy?" Gregory Fitzpatrick, his lead sensor specialist asked.

"Twenty one heads, fifteen tails."

"So, what, heads no life found, tails life found?"

"I always say heads for life, tails for no life, because no life sucks tails."

They lapsed back into silence. Janis Del Garcia noted two objects moving in the asteroid belt that didn't look right, referred it to Kim, but it was shrugged off. More hours later, return readings suggested that two of the inner-most planets were habitable, but there was no way to tell from their current distance. It would be another week before they reached the third planet in system, and were just now passing the seventh, an enormous gas giant tinged brazen orange and yellow with a dozen or more moons and dotted by a giant swirl of a storm that took up a quarter-hemisphere. Kim left the bridge to go get some sleep, leaving everything to those awake.

"That's odd," Mandy Anderson said. She and Lisa O'Reilly were the only two people awake.

"What's odd?"

"There's something moving just beyond the convex of the gas giant. It's too small to be a moon."

"Maybe a meteorite trapped in a degrading orbit?"

"No, no. It just seems, wrong."

Lisa moved in behind Mandy, looking down at the screen. It was already at full zoom. The image was grainy, fuzzed and heavily distorted from the range they were viewing the object at. It had a fairly distinct shape, though. A long shape that tapered back from the front into a set of massive blocky features that were glowing.

"Those are engines!"

"Jna'eehn! Wake the others. This is big, way, way too big."

Moments later, Kim strode in, stumbling and fumbling and attempting wakefulness while rubbing sleepsand away from the corners of his eyes. He asked what was the problem, why the excitement. Mandy told him. Whatever sleepiness that was in him drained away with the color in his face as a surge of adrenaline took hold.

"A-, a ship?"

"Not just one," Mandy said, "two. A second one is just starting to come around. Both look like they're heading our way."

Kim somehow went whiter than he already was.

"Can you figure out how big those ships are?"

"Not at this distance, but they're closing fast enough. Will probably be on us in another couple hours."

Kim made a command decision, the first and last in his career.

"Core dump into a slipspace probe and send it back to Lyzrant."

"What? That's crazy, we'll lose all our astrological data, everything!"

"Do it!"

Five minutes later, it was done. They were now sitting blind, all records on their ship transfered to a missile-like probe. Kim hovered his hand over the launch button a moment, seeming as if to have second thoughts. He breathed out and his hand fell hitting the switch. He watched as the slim shape of the slipspace probe slid out from under the cockpit and into view. Watched it trace a long curving arc away and stared at the blue efflux trail. It was an hour and a half later that he got a good look at the enemy ships, kilometer long beasts. He had Janis hail them, but the calls went unanswered. Moments later, Kim didn't feel anything anymore, and never would.

The probe was still rocketing away, but wouldn't enter slipspace for another hour, not until it was outside the systems gravity field. The probe would watch with unfeeling, inhuman eyes as the Starflung was touched by light before turning into a cloud of ever-expanding incandescent gas and debris. The two alien cruisers had fired when in range. The Starflung was gone, her crew with her. Moments later, the probe launched itself into slipspace.

Sunday, June 03, 2007

A Good Day

So, this weekend was awesome. It was the best weekend I have ever experienced in my entire life. Friday night I got drunk, which isn't usual, nor unusual. But that's not what made this weekend so awesome. I saw Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End today, but that also isn't what made this weekend so great.

It was yesterday, and I got a once in a lifetime thing: I fired a Browning 30 caliber machine gun circa WWII mounted on a jeep of the same era. I also got to fire over 1600 rounds in three hours. That's a pretty awesome weekend.