Work-Related Birthdays

From time to time, my students have birthdays. I know, I know - it shocked me too. But when this does happen, the studio asks me to sign their cards. Instead of just saying something predictably nice and throwing my signature down, I figure I'll do something a wee bit more memorable.

Two cards this time around.

The second:

X,

So, I was handling a few political situations in Ukraine when I was contacted by the highly official Mr. Dan Card Signing Agency for Mr. Dan, Inc. letting me know that your card was ready to sign.

Even though it is somewhat dangerous to leave a Ukrainian political situation before it is resolved, I hopped on the jet provided by the Mr. Dan Card Signing Agency for Mr. Dan, Inc. so that I could get home and sign your card. We only barely managed to make it back...

Between the Ukrainian Cow Missiles, the Ukrainian Intercontinental Vertices of Doom, and the Ukrainian Land-lockedness Monster, we had quite a rough time.

But I made it!

Happy Birthday, X.

Dan

Introductions All Around

Ladies and Gentlemen, I'd like to introduce you to a labor of love. For the past ten years or so, my dear friend Nathan and I have been working on a fantasy novel of outrageous proportion. Parts have been scrapped, others rewritten, still others require massive changes. A few portions, however, I feel I can share with the world at large.

This is what will begin our story. It's called A Blade Like Destruction.

WARNING: There is some violence in these scenes

~~~

“A world is such a small thing.”

Ten thousand men and women lay prostrate in ordered rows within the stony courtyard. Not one lifted their face. Not one so much as breathed.

“To bring war to an entire planet, one must have the purest of motives.”

The sun peeked around the great flowing banners of the Empire. Soldiers stood at attention, surrounding the blood-stained enclosure. Eril, Emperor of a hundred worlds, reflected on the obeisance before him.

“Remember, the Empire is a symbol of hope, of peace, of unity.”

Three warlords listened behind him, and beyond them, at a respectful distance, knelt ten generals. A great blackened castle overlooked the retinue. Its towers toppled. Its walls scarred and cracked while gaping holes dotted the still formidable expanse as it stretched hundreds of feet in either direction.

The Emperor’s cape rippled behind him as a breeze stirred the moist scent of blood. He breathed in deeply and sighed.

“The cost for our dream is high.”

A vulture screamed its triumph, a short migration from the battlefield revealing the field of bodies to its hunger. In moments, the thunder of wings and the gnawing rip of flesh nearly overwhelmed the quiet voice of Eril.

“Yet we should never hesitate to pay that cost.”

His eyes closed and the air hissed indolently between his teeth. He seemed almost in a trance.

“Not because we are righteous.”

He turned his back on the field and fixed his eyes on his warlords.

“Because we are gods.”

*

A small boy about eight years old held a knife too large for his hands. His instructor loomed above him, snarling at his inexperience. “Hold the hilt tightly. Don’t dangle it in your hands like your grandmother’s garlic.”

A sharp slap jarred the child, but he held tightly to the knife. The instructor grunted a mocking approval. “Kill her.”

A smaller girl was bound and shaking on the ground at the boy’s feet. He looked at her, then at his instructor. The man turned to the other students, “Today’s lesson is mercy. You gain nothing by sparing the enemies of the Empire. The highest virtue as a soldier is to pursue their death with single-minded dedication.” He looked down at the boy, his eyes hard, “Her end has been named, boy. You are the blade chosen. Failure will only mean your end as well, and pointless torment for the girl.”

The girl whimpered and tears blinked from her eyes. The boy knelt and put a gentle hand on her forehead.

Leaning close so that his face was only inches from her, he whispered, “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” she replied.

The instructor nodded, “In time, death will become the defining expression of your identity, and you will comprehend that the truth of today’s lesson overshadows the measures of guilt and thrill you’ll gain from its exercise.”

The knife flashed, and the boy’s hand strayed to hold hers while her life’s blood pooled beneath her body.

The boy’s name was Rail.

Because Everyone Likes Spring Better

We've had a very odd spring this year. Unseasonably warm in the late winter months, only to get unseasonably cold in our early spring. Pretty much all my friends are desperate for the warmer weather, and have been quite vocal about it. No doubt the weather patterns of the Midwest are abashed to find out, but there has been no small amount of disapproval among certain circles.

That said, I was driving to work right after one of our last ice storms, and it looked like every tree I passed on the road was melting. It was a brilliantly sunny day, and its reflection off the ice as it melted was spectacular. And I realized that the changing of seasons could very easily be seen as a violent event. A war of sorts, between parties of fathomless power. This story is my attempt to express this idea.

~~~

Winter Spring

A rotting green and brown hunched beneath a sky and wind that promised death and joy in protracted breaths. A chill mud stretched its fingers upward, giving the weary winter blades a brief chance to burrow.

He moved his sole, and the earth heaved a sigh, oozing water into his footprint like pus into an open wound, only to buckle beneath the giant’s mass of synthesized rubber crushing onto its saturated shell.

The boy picked up a rock with gloved fingers while branches sheathed in crystal witnessed the theft and wept. Slowly falling showers of a heaven’s wealth and a forest’s greed fell on the child, seeping into his coat and jeans. His eyes squinted against the refractions of each dead brown arm stretched over him, a paradise of morbid splendor.

A thin moat dwindled his forward motion, and separated him from a vast shelf of white and grey balanced uncomfortably over the fury of water pushing it upward. He threw the stone, and it landed with the others. A cairn. Cracks had been steadily spreading all day, and the boy was optimistic. The shelf strained beneath the weight, sweating its life’s blood into the water; the sun and wind indifferent as they taunted and tortured.

The boy sat down, his jeans soaked through and the skin beneath exchanging its color for a pale shaded blue.

When Inspiration Fails - Seek Pastors

This next story is something I wrote on a whim. I decided to ask people to come up with ideas for something random to write a short about, and the first person I happened across was my pastor. "Mr. Pastor," I said to my instructor of all things supernatural, "Say something random and spontaneous, and I'll write a story about it."

He paused, thought a while, and replied, "Liquid Ivory Soap."

I admit I wasn't actually expecting that kind of response. But the more I thought about it, the more ideas I came up with. This story is the result - a fable of sorts. Enjoy.

~~~

Clean

Only a few measures of eternity after the world was made, only a few days after the Fall of Man, Satan commanded the demon Tartaegus to find a substitute for forgiveness.

Tartaegus first suggested revenge, a worthy subversion of mercy and love. Unfortunately, to nurture a hatred strong enough for revenge required arduous temptation and tedious lies, and the demon workforce found the typical result unrewarding. Anger and spite was often the only result, and while a victory in its own way, it did not preclude forgiveness.

Tartaegus studied longer, isolating himself to prevent outside influence. Coffee was imbibed, donuts ingested, and time was spent the way demons typically invest their maniacal binges of creativity. Some of the other demons didn’t understand the importance of his work. Why not just prevent forgiveness from happening? Aren’t grudges just as good? But Satan knew, and Tartaegus knew, that very few would hold a grudge forever. After a certain time, a man’s guilt compelled a change of heart, but if they could find something to replace it – something that could be an alternative – then they could keep them deceived even longer.

After many long years, Tartaegus invented pride, a way for mankind to excuse the faults of others by considering themselves superior. Satan was very pleased. Pity came soon after, the twin sister of pride, where thinking poorly of others supplanted thinking highly of oneself.

But in all this, God worked as God does, seeing every brilliant creation of Tartaegus and still providing a way of escape for those who sought it. Tartaegus needed something new. Something God wouldn’t – couldn’t see coming. So he roamed the earth, watching and thinking for five thousand years, until one day he met an alchemist named Louis. Louis was a well-meaning young man, but though remarkably intelligent, he wasn’t too bright. Tartaegus waited until the right moment of weakness and then gave Louis a different sort of formula.

“Two breaths of innocence and one cry of despair – a dash of the tears of salvation. Mix them well,” the demon said to the man, “Or they will suspect our deception. A sprinkle or two of mindless content, and baste it well in the sunshine. Forget not to soak in a sweet day of rest or they’ll tire our efforts to sway them. When that has been done, pour into the cauldron the darling clear white of their dreams. And when everything’s fixed, when everything’s mixed, add two drops of blood to the tincture. The world will see it, and they’ll take it from it you. They’ll use it to wash themselves clean. They’ll feel reborn, like they’ve never done wrong. They’ll look in the mirror and smile.

“Because the world lies, they’ll buy it to use. They’ll say it’s so good, it makes your skin smooth. They’ll make it in gallons, they’ll buy it in bulk, and they’ll buy it again when they’re through.

“And fiend though I am, they’ll outdo even me. They’ll give it a name, and they’ll call it a need.

“Because the world’s cruel, they’ll just call it soap.

Liquid

Ivory

Soap.”

Entry the First: The Quineresk

Hello.

My name is Dan. This blog is the world of my words. I hope you find it worthwhile.

For my first submission, I'd like to introduce a story that is the union of my most vivid childhood memory and a fairy tale creature a friend invented. My friend and I collaborate quite a bit, and the more I thought about the creature, the more I needed to connect it to a human experience. I hope you like it.

~~~

The Quineresk

The drapes hung listlessly behind him, the light falling thick and repugnant like some noxious vapor seeping through the dirty panorama of the living room window. His eyes searched the street with a happy blind expectancy, their faith and excitement shining sad reflections off the glass.

The carpet sculpted rococo into the skin of his knees, and the dust that floated glinting in the faded evening splendor swirled their testament to his lack of movement. And as his mother screamed at his father through a telephone, her voice drifting from the kitchen, down the hallway, and through the drapes, he didn’t hear her words concerning lies and broken promises. He was safe between the cloth and glass, secure against the damnable bitterness of life.

He would wait a bit longer. His father had said he would come.

So he would.

His mother tucked him in that night, while his eyes were open and dry. She whispered an apology when she bent over him, and hissed her hate on her way out the door. The boy confused the two until his numb mind made them the same. The fan on his bedroom ceiling swung its oscillating lullaby. His eyes stayed open for a long time, and though they were still dry when he fell asleep, he woke with them wet.

His skin became a glorious transparency. His heart evaporated under the heat of an earthly hell, adjuring a plain white desire towards a returned disregard.

And of all God’s creatures. Of all that crept on the earth and under the earth, he was by far the most terrible.

He was the Unloved.

He was the Quineresk.