Perhaps

Perhaps
Perhaps I’ll learn calc, and become an engineer, and get us to full automation.
Perhaps I’ll figure out how to make a bomb, and blow up crooked politicians, and do some good in the world.

Perhaps I’ll take up painting, and express my inner spirit, and bring some light to this life.

Perhaps I’ll start a business, and nurture it to success, and become a philanthropist.

Perhaps I’ll move to Aldabra, and be alone with the coconut crabs, and wait as the sea swallows us up.

Perhaps I’ll not do anything, and drink my tea, and dream.

Perhaps.

Collision

Collision

 

Life is a dance of Death.

Everything that is, is the building of a corpse.

There will come a time,

Though there be none to witness it,

That even the Galaxy will die.

Just as Death is fore-doomed for all

This Destruction is Inevitable. Unchangeable.

It speeds towards us in both time and space.

Andromeda, chained to her fate, approaches.

There will be no Perseus, no last minute saviour.

The space is vast, and the Collision,

When it comes, will be subtle and terrible.

No direct interaction, no.

A more oblique force, unseen but not unfelt,

Will be the machine of this Doom.

Gravity itself will, after giving Life to the Galaxy,

In its own good time, End it.

Gravity itself will rip apart worlds, and stars, and atoms.

No contact, no butting up against one another,

The Titanic forces, the weighty masses, will suffice.

The Fabric of Reality itself

Will be rent asunder.

The Republican Diet of Neo-Baku

The Republican Diet of Neo-Baku

            The kleptic congress meets in the arching technic-tower Prime. Oil-slick froth slides against the cable-gird trunk, cleaving corrosive film in its wake. Acidclouds gather over the Caspian, obscuring the sun from the Drowned City.

“Magistertium, we gather here to decide the output of the next cycle, its creation its consumption, so that the lifeoline may flow, the ‘tricity run.”

“Forenever and ever, Omen.”

“Adjuditant, what of the onyx flats of Abkhazia? Production rates have fallen by .3 percentiles a turn.”

“Directoratrix, domestic disturbance runs amok, fouling efficiency. Ferric dust storms canker works, and a fumation rises from the Black Skein. With the Diet’s approval, Extermines will quell helot rebellion.”

“It is approved.”

“What of the Ordinal Prognostications?”

“All runs accorridor the Twisting.”

A coldness clings to the air, dank with rusty exudations. The Seven stand still in secret septs, surrounded seriously studying sterile scrolls, scravening structures sounding sadnesses sold seeping in midst of plethora.

Far below the cant of seminal dicta, an industrial insect scraps a child, all useable parts rendered in at once. Flash fleshed, brisk boned, deep decorticated, life is cheap on the streets of Neo-Baku.

Mid-Level Resistance

Mid-Level Resistance

Storeys swerve in scaling, and terrors topple in the tellings.
The wheeling Warehouses in Neo-Baku, hidden behind the twists of concrestic pillars and waved chrome walls, houses a hole in the order of things. A scurrilous septician, a kernel of confrontation, a rough-shod resistance to the domineering dominion of the Diet.

“We are the true future, Brothers, for we are the Past, and from the past we will find the life-force of the coming days, when once more the sky will run blue, and the waters run clear, and the air run pure. Pure as the Holy Writ, pure as the Unstained Church.
“Apostasy will be met with a blazing hammer, as of old. Sacrilege will be staid in the womb with hot spikes, tethering the sinner’s soul to their guilt, and still-born will the sin be. All these things and more, Brethren, will be the Truth once the Renewal reruns. From the geary glades of Neftchala to the murk of the Azov Plashet, we are sown as Dragon’s Teeth.

“Our is the Power, and the Glory. Ours is the Past, and the Future!”

Thusly, midst the middle heights of Imperial Neo-Baku, is a plot born and borne on stealy wings.

Clashing Currents

Clashing Currents

 

The Eternal Present, mechanized and bound by ropes of chains of silken cordite, clashes with the Hungry Past, a hollow beast of smashed ribs and desiccated hide, and Neo-Baku is mineral’d. Foundations founder, and towers slide into the slipping shallows, swallowed by salty saliva.

Extermines forces exterminate the Santa Mors, the Crucifying Insurrectors slaughter Soldered Legionnaires, glycerin rats and stannic leeches grow fat. Bodies litter the streets and byways, filling the canals of the Drowned City and choking the halls of the far-flung auto-mines. Death rules, and Life shrinks, as it did during the Great Downturn when the atoms were smashed.

Wicked rust scrapes along yielding flesh, viscous oil chokes lungs as mechano-meat is pierced, and all about the Final Continent, earth is set to blaze as man once more offers up himself in ritual murder. A shake-down, a shift to the lateral, and, at the end of the death-rattle, after the final choking gasp, once the spark has dimmed and the ghost has vacated – no change. None.

Return to a Pre-Spoiled Yesterday

Return to a Pre-spoiled Yesterday

            Soldiers of the dawn

For a world unspoiled!

Pull back the sands of time,

Let the deeds be undone

And make the land Fresh

and Unsullied once more.

Against modification they stand.

Progress is anathema

and Achievement dross.

Levellers of All,

They come with their Pristine Annihilation.

Fear not the onset of Dusk

For, once the fetters of Growth,

that most pernicious of maladies,

Have been swept away

What choice will the Day have but to unwind?

So!

Welcome the Great Undoing!

Set your backs to the work of restorative destruction

And wipe the World’s slate clean.

Postman Bob

Postman Bob

            Bob was a postman. But delivering letters was dull. How to stay sane? Simple. Bob was a sex pest. Every day an adventure!

While on his route, one day Bob was caught in flagrante, a most embarrassing situation.

How to keep his job, and, more importantly, stay out of jail? Easy. Bob became a necrophiliac.

Notes from Saló

Notes from Saló

I must prepare, I must prepare my body, but also my mind. The coming months, they will be the most stern test of my physique, my self, that I’ve yet undergone. It would be a terrible waste to be rendered unable to enjoy the fruits of our labour by mere exhaustion, and so, in these days running up, I will do my best to bolster my latent prowess. It would be a mistake to simply wander in, as off the street, to such a marathon.

No simple aphrodisiac will do – I anticipate that the combination of the situations themselves, and the talents of the companions we have gone to such lengths to acquire, will generally raise my attention – no, I need something that will grant access to reserves of vitality usually dormant. There are some substances I’ve heard of, in places best left unwritten, that can set a man’s body alight, ingested orally, sometimes even breaking down the walls between this world and the next – nonsense, of course, this life being the only one allowed us, and more reason to taste its pleasures while we may! However, the other elements of it, well, that may be worth exploring…

As per more…physical limits, the development of petroleum, part of the modern industrial process, has shone the light on the some most beneficial by-products. I’ve already put in an order for a large tub. This should help in times of high-friction, after other, more mundane, natural methods have dried up, so to speak.

Day In, Day Out

Day In, Day Out

“Look, I can’t possibly get all that done by tomorrow!”

“Hey man, not my problem – I’m just lettin’ you know, Ted is going to crush yer balls if it’s not in. So, y’know, do your best n’ shit.” Rob said, walking away.

Goddamnit…

The train home was, as ever, crowded. No room to put the brief case down. Some perv feeling up the woman in front of me. Ruckus follows as she screams and other people shove him. He falls into me. I shake him off, too tired to care more than that.

Get off the train, narrowly making my stop in the crush of people exiting the car. Gain the street-level, where some bum has just finished pissing in the shelter. It stinks. Walk the five blocks to the flat. Sirens travelling in the opposite direction, the Doppler distorting them as they rush by. Light’s out again above the street-level door. Fuckin’ key won’t get in the fuckin’ lock. Ah, got it.

Apartment’s a mess, like I left it. Smells musty. Gonna have to air the place out. Open the window, light a cigarette, and look down onto the City Street, early evening. Night-walkers out already, looking to net some business, scrub by. I wish them silent good luck – and why not? They’re no different than me or you, trying to get one more day in, figure out where food’s coming from tomorrow.

Turn the light on above the desk, empty my pockets of change, loosen off my cheap tie. Desk’s covered in receipts, empty soda cans, remnants of last night’s tv-dinner. Stack the shit to one side, open the briefcase and pull out the files. It’s gonna be a late one.

One AM.

Shots in the street startle me awake from where I’d been dozing. I go over to the window. Can’t see nothin’. Grab a glass of water and an Advil, rub my sandy eyes. Think about getting into bed. May as well finish the work while I’m up.

“You look like hammered shit,” Rob says collegially. “Late night?”

“Fuck off, you know it was. Here’re the Goddamn files for Ted.”

“Easy there! I’m just kidding around!” He says, mock offended. He takes the files. Starts to leave my cubicle, leans on the dividing wall. “You catch the news this morning? Some hooker got plugged last night, over near Gunn and Juniper. Real big mess, apparently. Gonna have ta be, otherwise, why’d it make the news, right?”

“Mmmm,” I mumble absently, drinking my tepid, watery coffee, “Yeah, I think I heard the shots. That’s about a half-mile away from me.” I turn back to my work. Damn. One more life, swallowed by this town. Who’s counting, though?

4:56.

Coffee cup, two dossiers, Tupperware, go into the briefcase.

“Sorry, looks like it gonna be another after hours affair tonight,” Rob says, stack of paper in hand. He has the decency to look embarrassed.

I look at him. At my watch. Back to him. I take the files wordlessly.

A Curse

A Curse

“The caught one! They caught one!”

The cry rings out over the field, startling the boy from his work.

He runs back to town, more noise meeting his ears as he rushes through the streets, more people joining him as they leave their rude houses.

The day is a good one for it, the sun peaking out from behind the ever-present clouds, smiling down on their good fortune.

“He was out by the Mill,” another boy shouts to no-one in particular. “Caught in the trap, just like they said ‘e’d be!”

They can see him, now, as they pool into the centre of town. His body is bent double, clothed in rags. His face is like nothing the boy has seen before. It’s half-man, half monster. Hideous. His flesh is a mottled pink, with open sores and raw blisters.

“Look at ‘im! Must be from right in the middle of the Contamination!” a voice says.

The boy struggles to hear what the town grandee’s are saying over the hubbub of the crowd. “…the crime of…hereby sentenced…” The crowd erupts, shouting and hollering.

A gibbet is quickly erected, rope pulled taught. The creature is pushed up onto a chair after the noose is stretched around its neck. As the cries for blood reach a crescendo, the chair is kicked out from underneath it. There is a crunch and a snap, and the yard-arm breaks under the stress of the body. The mutant thrashes on the ground as the tightened noose chokes the life out of him.

The towns-people, silenced by the grisly sight, watch as the twitching body grows still, a small cloud of dust settling back onto the prone figure.

At first, people say they had done the right thing – days of unusually temperate weather, no acid rains.

But then, another freak was found, drowned in the town’s cistern. The whole tank was contaminated, and many grew sick. The clouds returned. The crop was ruined.

They caught more, after setting more traps around the grain silos. They are killed like the first.
“It is God’s will,” people cry. “They are the Unclean!” others say.

More are put to death. Still the rains come.

The boy wonders.

Then, a great mass of the sub-humans shambles to the town, rending the air with their piteous cries and gurgles. The people, those who are quick enough, rush to the town-hall, barricading themselves inside. The boy can hear the smashing of fists on the doors, and horribly screams. The assembled people cower, knowing that the screams are those of their neighbours who weren’t as lucky.

Two days pass.

They finally leave the safety of the hall. They see bones, gnawed clean, littering the square.
A woman faints.

“A curse of God! A curse of God is upon us!”