A roleplaying game is a medium. Like oil colour, poetry, sculpture or prose. What is interesting is the results. Focusing on the method is at best an interesting side note and then only to a few.
Look at painting and wonder what brand the painter used, what size brush, which hand they held it in. What pen did the writer use? How many breaks did the sculptor take? Feel the tiredness wash over you, feel it fill up any space interesting thought could take
Theatre feels like a good comparison but it isnt. The rpg is the script, and no one cares how you make the script. The performance is the table and that's out of our hands
The performance is different
Confusion happens between them. A roleplaying game is not the table. I'm not interested in the table, you can have it.
Don't belabour the comparison, it's not perfect.
A game book is manipulative, it is psychology, it is magic. It can be a text book but then its a perfunctory item. A text book is the sum of its parts
the table is in conversation with the source text. the book should have the decency of being a generous partner.
The game book is one of two heads
The book is never neutral and can stand up to interrogation. It never just is. It is a statement. These are all obvious points and i forget them
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Complements Do Not Help
Weird is easy. Art is easy. Horror and comedy are easy. All the same.
When a thing stops being alive it falls prey to ridicule.
The mechanical encrusted upon the living.
He falls over, laugh.
He kills, fear him.
He is rendered, nod.
He hides the gills with high collars, how odd.
Repetition:
Iterate.
Oscillating humour. It comes and goes with time.
Kill once and you're a murderer, kill many and you're exciting.
Paint him again, capture him.
Erode the security of knowledge.
And if it fails, if you cannot manage that, dazzle them with finely wrought chaff.
When a thing stops being alive it falls prey to ridicule.
The mechanical encrusted upon the living.
He falls over, laugh.
He kills, fear him.
He is rendered, nod.
He hides the gills with high collars, how odd.
Repetition:
Iterate.
Oscillating humour. It comes and goes with time.
Kill once and you're a murderer, kill many and you're exciting.
Paint him again, capture him.
Erode the security of knowledge.
And if it fails, if you cannot manage that, dazzle them with finely wrought chaff.
Entirely and objectively right advice for all occasions
Invented names are worse than real names
Cynicism is not interesting
Write lots, cut back
System doesn't matter
Neither does what other people think (it does)
Get paid
Settle for less
Take what you can get and
don't be humble (nothing is as annoying as humility in victory)
Sometimes the bad days are more common than good
Use every part of the animal
Rape is an appropriate topic for games
Politics is not an appropriate topic for conversation
Real religion is stranger and more interesting than D&D religion
And more horrible, and more real
Be brave
And sometimes the bad days are more common than the good
Do too much
Lay the track as you go
Nothing drives as well as a crash
Don't whine
Say thank you
Thank people
Thank them in private
Argue in private
Be generous
Save your spite
Save vs. Death
Kill one to make an example for the rest
Read everything
Game everything
FATAL wasn't wrong, it was just bad
Don't please the crowd
Please yourself
(sometimes the bad days are more common than the good)
You don't have to be loud
Or outgoing
Or inclusive
Be kind (everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle)
Steal everything
Copyright laws are for wimps and Americans
Imitate what you like
Pretend you know what you're doing
Don't talk about projects until they're worth showing
Don't talk, do things
Don't worship people
Don't be a lackey, don't have lackeys
Have some restraint
and the bad days are more common than the good
Cynicism is not interesting
Write lots, cut back
System doesn't matter
Neither does what other people think (it does)
Get paid
Settle for less
Take what you can get and
don't be humble (nothing is as annoying as humility in victory)
Sometimes the bad days are more common than good
Use every part of the animal
Rape is an appropriate topic for games
Politics is not an appropriate topic for conversation
Real religion is stranger and more interesting than D&D religion
And more horrible, and more real
Be brave
And sometimes the bad days are more common than the good
Do too much
Lay the track as you go
Nothing drives as well as a crash
Don't whine
Say thank you
Thank people
Thank them in private
Argue in private
Be generous
Save your spite
Save vs. Death
Kill one to make an example for the rest
Read everything
Game everything
FATAL wasn't wrong, it was just bad
Don't please the crowd
Please yourself
(sometimes the bad days are more common than the good)
You don't have to be loud
Or outgoing
Or inclusive
Be kind (everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle)
Steal everything
Copyright laws are for wimps and Americans
Imitate what you like
Pretend you know what you're doing
Don't talk about projects until they're worth showing
Don't talk, do things
Don't worship people
Don't be a lackey, don't have lackeys
Have some restraint
and the bad days are more common than the good
Books as remembered (poorly) by me, Part 1
I like talking about books, so I'm going to do that for a while. You could call what I'm about to do an Appendix N, but let's not. That term holds no meaning to me, I never saw the Appendix N when it came out and only learnt about it from other people whispering about it in corners. Spurred on by their hushed tones I found a digital copy of it and was shocked at how tiny and narrow it was. It's called a bibliography.
So here's part 1 of my annotated bibliography. I'll spare the waffle and just serve the meat.
Gene Wolfe looms large in my lizard brain. Where there should be fight or flight responses and the urge to feed and fuck, I have the need to be Gene Wolfe.
Latro in the Mist
Wizard Knight
All of these books are written as artefacts, two diaries and one long letter. All have unreliable narrators. Severian in Book of the New Sun is moving through a world that is as weird as anything on Dying Earth, yet we aren't given a proper look at it because that's just how it is for Severian. Everything is filtered through someone to whom this is normal or only slightly odd, leaving us wondering what's really happening. On top of this we also have the "translation" performed by Gene Wolfe, who claims the book is a found text which has to be very generously translated because of a lack of better words for such alien things. Many of these approximations are very weighted classical Greek references that reward knowledge of them.
These are all interesting things.
Both Latro and Wizard Knight are probably better written works, tighter and more disciplined. Each experiments with form in interesting ways, Latro is writing the diary because he forgets everything each morning. He is the opposite of Severian, being pure eyes for us to see through. The reader is more informed of what is happening than that poor fellow is, we having the ability to contextualise what he is writing.
Wizard Knight has the least experimental form: a letter written to his family back in the mundane world explaining why he isn't coming home. A portal fantasy, which is rare nowadays in adult fiction. This book is subtle and doesn't lean so heavily on classical references, instead creating an internal folk lore that requires extreme attention to unravel.
Of the three, Book of the New Sun is the undoubted king of influence. I read it at a formative time, way back when I started writing properly, and it has embedded itself. Every bit of literature, poetry or RPG thing that I do is held up against this book and judged. There are other books (as we might see later) that have had a more profound impact on a fundamental creative level, none have come close to the consciously chosen influence this has.
So here's part 1 of my annotated bibliography. I'll spare the waffle and just serve the meat.
Gene Wolfe
Recommended reading:
Book of the New SunLatro in the Mist
Wizard Knight
All of these books are written as artefacts, two diaries and one long letter. All have unreliable narrators. Severian in Book of the New Sun is moving through a world that is as weird as anything on Dying Earth, yet we aren't given a proper look at it because that's just how it is for Severian. Everything is filtered through someone to whom this is normal or only slightly odd, leaving us wondering what's really happening. On top of this we also have the "translation" performed by Gene Wolfe, who claims the book is a found text which has to be very generously translated because of a lack of better words for such alien things. Many of these approximations are very weighted classical Greek references that reward knowledge of them.
These are all interesting things.
Both Latro and Wizard Knight are probably better written works, tighter and more disciplined. Each experiments with form in interesting ways, Latro is writing the diary because he forgets everything each morning. He is the opposite of Severian, being pure eyes for us to see through. The reader is more informed of what is happening than that poor fellow is, we having the ability to contextualise what he is writing.
Wizard Knight has the least experimental form: a letter written to his family back in the mundane world explaining why he isn't coming home. A portal fantasy, which is rare nowadays in adult fiction. This book is subtle and doesn't lean so heavily on classical references, instead creating an internal folk lore that requires extreme attention to unravel.
Of the three, Book of the New Sun is the undoubted king of influence. I read it at a formative time, way back when I started writing properly, and it has embedded itself. Every bit of literature, poetry or RPG thing that I do is held up against this book and judged. There are other books (as we might see later) that have had a more profound impact on a fundamental creative level, none have come close to the consciously chosen influence this has.
What did I learn?
- It is okay to not make sense, to be obscure and referential. You don't need to lead the reader by the nose or particularly help them in any way.
- Experimental forms can work if you throw everything in to them. We are not just making lists of facts to be absorbed, we can make things that tickle at an obtuse angle.
- Narrators matter. Even in RPG books, a narrator is a choice that we make.
- Create the weird as though it is part of the furniture. Do not point.
- It is okay to have a full three act play in the middle of your work.
- Be weird, but have a logic to it. Even if only you know how it connects, it should connect.
- Be unapologetically literate.
- Anti-intellectualism and pop-cultural absorption is a choice, so make it or don't. Don't allow yourself to be washed along because that's how it's done.
- Foreshadowing and slow realisation is the greatest thing. When weeks later a player goes "Oh my shit..." and links everything together in a montage of paranoia, then you have Gene Wolfed them.
Shake it off
Priests who took vows of pacifism. They are all issued apostate bodyguards to inflict and deflect harm on their behalf.
The princess in the tower was the worst monster of all and contained all life, the only way to stop her was a physical and metaphorical rape, sullying the universe forming inside her. Even the king of the dead refused to do this.
Humans from the end of time who seed the past with immense fighting machines, intended to be recovered by enclaves of their people and used to prevent the future they have. Their technology is not accurate so they form communities and pass on the locations as prophecy.
A group of nomads who run from their past. Their past chases them and all their stories are true. Towns they camp near have children stolen by changelings and trolls move in under their bridges.
Magicians travel between worlds regularly, understand actual science, every wizard tower you plunder is a monumental loss to humanity.
The undead siege an unsiegable sea wall. Months and months, bodies on bodies. Eventually they will walk over.
The Friendly Sea leads directly into the Deamon Sea, this is where all drowned sailors go, where all the treasure ships have sunk and also explains why it is so dangerous. The waters pour down a daemonic drain. The shores of the primary sub-realm are littered with these treasures.
The world is infinite, as is each sub-realm and realm above. The daemons worship us as gods but we do not understand their ways. Do we kill our gods as we worship them?
The world is shaped like a trampoline with a bowling ball in the middle. At these points the worlds touch, but they are very steep.
At any one time there are 4 or 5 things that might end the world.
Vornheim is a spaceship, buried face down in the side of a mountain.
Rats have a secret world with overlays our own. They have kings and countries and wars.
Magic-Users aren't real wizards until level 20, whereupon they retreat from the banal and petty world to pursue things we can't appreciate. Up until then they can barely claim to be apprentices or dabblers.
You get yourself pulled in so many directions, sometimes you have to shake it off.
WWCD
It's easy to forget why I called this thing What Would Conan Do? Other than making me giggle it was what got me into and through university and everything since. What would Conan do? We're not talking 1970s beefcake in a nappy Conan, we're talking R. E. Howard Conan.
Conan would win. He'd defeat it regardless of cost or moral ambiguity, express his will in the most direct manner. Conan wasn't a nice guy. He was a powerful part of Mr. Howard, who said he felt his hand upon the pen when it came time to write. Conan was exerting his will again.
You could build a convincing argument for Conan being Howard. Their relationship was powerful and peculiar, their lives mirrored in unusual ways. Maybe it was the reverse? Howard became Conan as time went on, the relationship turned. He fought imagined enemies and stalked his town in a black poncho and matching hat. When you start asking what Conan would do it leads to odd places.
And then the doctors told him that his mother was about to die. Without a second thought he left his father at her side, walked back to the car, and shot himself in the head. I'm not sure what this says.
Conan would win. He'd defeat it regardless of cost or moral ambiguity, express his will in the most direct manner. Conan wasn't a nice guy. He was a powerful part of Mr. Howard, who said he felt his hand upon the pen when it came time to write. Conan was exerting his will again.
You could build a convincing argument for Conan being Howard. Their relationship was powerful and peculiar, their lives mirrored in unusual ways. Maybe it was the reverse? Howard became Conan as time went on, the relationship turned. He fought imagined enemies and stalked his town in a black poncho and matching hat. When you start asking what Conan would do it leads to odd places.
And then the doctors told him that his mother was about to die. Without a second thought he left his father at her side, walked back to the car, and shot himself in the head. I'm not sure what this says.
Morning Letters
"That particular confusion is remedied", Garu nudged the man with his foot. "He was alive."
The corpse twitched and blood pumped from the hole in its chest as though bailed out by tiny hands. Kahn let the shard slip back to the white sand, slick with blood.
Garu was already headed up the dune, feet crunching through the glass, "I wouldn't throw yourself into the sand because of it. We have important work to pursue and he was undeniably slowing us down. In quieter times we would have cleared the shards days ago. It is fitting they be used to test his mortality."
Not sadness, not guilt, more an irritation and disappointment. He was wrong and wasteful. This man was not of the city.
The corpse twitched and blood pumped from the hole in its chest as though bailed out by tiny hands. Kahn let the shard slip back to the white sand, slick with blood.
Garu was already headed up the dune, feet crunching through the glass, "I wouldn't throw yourself into the sand because of it. We have important work to pursue and he was undeniably slowing us down. In quieter times we would have cleared the shards days ago. It is fitting they be used to test his mortality."
Not sadness, not guilt, more an irritation and disappointment. He was wrong and wasteful. This man was not of the city.
Storytime
So:
- Prose
- 300-1000 words
- Weird fantasy
- No modern day settings
- Can be as graphic and unpleasant as you like as long as you have the writing chops to pull it off
- I can only take ONE.
- It'll be covered by the rates & terms found here.
I'll be open for submissions until early September. If there's a great response to this I'll find something cool to do with the rest.
Note that there is still a little space for other submissions. Don't hesitate to get in touch if you have an idea for an article.
For further details go check out the submissions page.
Ruminating on dead places
We're in a city full of towering blocks of buildings, massive tombstones on the grave of the Dead God. The streets are narrow and hold a heavy silence lifted only by the shuffling of dessicated feet. Everything looms. Before you your breath freezes in the air, the only sign of life this place has seen in centuries. A valuable commodity for the factions still skulking about.
The king, who hasn't moved in centuries, contemplating his next move while his court waits and plots.
The priests, who undermine the city with the raised dead of the cities past. They will find a way out.
The general, freshly returned from confinement in the Death Frost mountain. In his memories this city never died.
The dwindling population of ghouls packing out the slum. Never truly dying yet possessed by a fierce hunger. The strongest force the weakest to breed, feeding off their young.
Why would the players wander through this progression of awful things? What do they have to gain by entering each and every building in this city? Why, to kill death of course. But we don't have to turn over every stone for that. Broad strokes will serve, they'll fill in the gaps and let us know when something awful needs our attention. Here we find a trap, an encounter, an interesting thing. We know how they link together, we track a rough trajectory and ignore the nuts and bolts. A city isn't packed to the rafters with pertinent content, a city is a series of events, a flowchart or pain that can be created on the fly and run from a huge list of interesting things, small vignettes of soul-rending horror.
It may not be a priority to make deeply simulated structures for every inch. It might just be enough for us to know that the Duven'Ku live in towering stone buildings, one on top of the other in warren-like apartments, life imitating death. Packed in tight.
All we need to build are the choke points, be they physical or plot related. The gates, the monuments and landmarks, ruined buildings that block the way (there was a war!). The building that holds the skeleton whose hand has been carved just so and opens the gate to the sewer, the ghoul king, the Sleeping Queen's wig, the emerald studded maguffin! The players progress through them getting closer to the core of this place. Or dead.
Curated hubs with meandering random encounters connecting them.
As for Duven'Ku himself, the players don't know what will happen by killing him. Or even if they can. To make it even more fun, neither should the GM. Generate that bad-boy. Reach for a table full of interesting possible results of finding Duven'Ku. Maybe he really is dead. It would make sense after all. Maybe he's withered and weak, maybe he's a mindless ball of energy, maybe he turns you inside out, maybe he's not even here?
All this for a little necklace!
It has BEGUN! Again.
 |
| Leftovers from the manic printing run |
The first batch of hard copies have gone out. It's too late to burn it and pretend it never happened, and besides, all the contributors (well... singular) have been paid.
On that topic, the second issue is already under way. The idea of doing a quarterly seemed like a very leisurely pace before I made a schedule. Damn those schedules and their "facts". So, it's time to put the feelers out to contributors and artists who want to make a humiliatingly small amount of money for their work. But, by golly, it's paid writing work. Who can say they get that with any regularity? Not me for sure.
Anyone interested in getting involved is welcome to email me or contact me on Google+. We're looking primarily for anything cruel and unusual based off of the Lamentations of the Flame Princess ruleset or entirely system neutral. Also happy to look at stuff of a more theoretical nature or maps/artwork.
Send a rough outline of what it is you want to do and a link to an appropriate example of your work and we'll go from there.
We shall resume the normal activities of this blog starting... now!
In Media Res
While its citizens chat nearby, your party is strapped in the judiciary rig by neck, arm, and leg. The bailiff steps on stage while the executioner waits nearby with a saw.
“The good great lord Kamin, Rod-Master of Kine Gather, conveys herewith his judgement to [party name]. This is the judgement of Lord Kamin: That you are all egregious felons, remorseless reprobates and sneaking thieves; that you have entered the city of Kine Gather, and move through the bailiwicks thereof, in pursuit of criminal aims; that you were taken in possession of a tool of criminal thaumaturgey; that you have merited death. You are permitted final remarks. Do you wish to say something?”
What do you do?
The wizard blinks at the party, the party blinks back. The lot of you have been rudely and, one would presume, mistakenly summoned to the defence of this ragged sorcerer. The angry mob, quickly recovering from the shock of this latest affront to nature, edges closer screaming "Kill the witch! Kill the witch!".
What do you do?
You wake up in the middle of the night to see the party member supposed to be on watch carrying an exact double of himself away into the darkness. They soon return to their post like nothing happened and to anyone else they would seem entirely themselves.
On rising you notice tracks indicating similar dragged loads leading from the camp, though it's hard to tell how many.
What do you do?
I enjoy starting games in media res occasionally. It cuts out the pesky preamble and jumps to the meaty bits. Stuff just happened, go go go!
If anyone has any I'd appreciate sharing them. You can never have too many.
“The good great lord Kamin, Rod-Master of Kine Gather, conveys herewith his judgement to [party name]. This is the judgement of Lord Kamin: That you are all egregious felons, remorseless reprobates and sneaking thieves; that you have entered the city of Kine Gather, and move through the bailiwicks thereof, in pursuit of criminal aims; that you were taken in possession of a tool of criminal thaumaturgey; that you have merited death. You are permitted final remarks. Do you wish to say something?”
What do you do?
The wizard blinks at the party, the party blinks back. The lot of you have been rudely and, one would presume, mistakenly summoned to the defence of this ragged sorcerer. The angry mob, quickly recovering from the shock of this latest affront to nature, edges closer screaming "Kill the witch! Kill the witch!".
What do you do?
You wake up in the middle of the night to see the party member supposed to be on watch carrying an exact double of himself away into the darkness. They soon return to their post like nothing happened and to anyone else they would seem entirely themselves.
On rising you notice tracks indicating similar dragged loads leading from the camp, though it's hard to tell how many.
What do you do?
I enjoy starting games in media res occasionally. It cuts out the pesky preamble and jumps to the meaty bits. Stuff just happened, go go go!
If anyone has any I'd appreciate sharing them. You can never have too many.
Ormond
My tower was old but she made it look like the mortar was still setting. By the time she’d perched on the chair opposite mine I had looked up from my work and put aside my pins, she had the look of business and that business wore a guild pendant as big as a baby’s head. I could hear the coin.
“Short, aren’t you?” she said.
“I prefer to think I’m closer to the ground.”
She squinted. She was thinking. I could tell, even on this short acquaintance, that lives were weighed and measured when she thought, and usually came up light.
“But handsome,” she said. “And I bet you know it.” I didn’t commit.
“What’s your name?”
“Ormond.” I said.
“I meant your real name.” She leant in and creaked her chair like she’d been sitting in it for years and knew how best to get a performance out of it. I thought how easy it would be to mistake the sound of coin for a bag full of teeth.
“Are you still hunting?” She knew the answers but she liked the game, I’d forgotten the rules.
“Yes.” I pushed the pinned beetle I’d been working on a short inch closer to her. She didn’t look at it, just ordered one of her wrinkles into a smile. I was trapped, there was no room in my world for a coleopterist.
Don't use the zed word
He walked passed the wall every day on his way to the club. This time of year the reanimate were reflecting the sunrise in dew, their black helmets spotted like frost with track marks where the water had run down from their occasional twitching. He wondered if they got stiff, they were certainly more peaceful in the morning after a cold night. Sometimes they wouldn’t even follow you with their eyes, just look at the pavement a few metres ahead of them, maybe flexing their jaw like they were practising a speech. That was the worst. In the past few years EvaCor had started removing the vocal cords from the domestic models to stop them alarming people and make them more popular with civilian security forces. Instead they panted like dogs, an altogether more sinister sound to hear from the security alcove in your apartment tower. The guards he had passed every day were newer, fancier. Their uniforms were smart and sharp, they didn’t slouch and they didn’t pant. Instead they had black plastic pads over their faces, riveted into the bone. All they could manage through them was a slight whistle when you walked too close, no more than the sound of whistling through teeth.
Today there was something new at the wall. In the night the M-techs had set up what looked like lampposts with multiple heads, but where bulbs should be were pipes dangling down and splitting into smaller wires. Each attached to the mouth of one of the reanimate and they all swayed unevenly from side to side. Together they watched him like babies looking up from a teat.
Today there was something new at the wall. In the night the M-techs had set up what looked like lampposts with multiple heads, but where bulbs should be were pipes dangling down and splitting into smaller wires. Each attached to the mouth of one of the reanimate and they all swayed unevenly from side to side. Together they watched him like babies looking up from a teat.
On The Move
“Did you hear? Jublient is rising.”
Kevin had heard it on the lips of every walker and sop-seller trying to build a quick, profitable rapport with the village. “He’s bringing back the fun times, the gravy train will return.” Now would we like a tamlic neck bead to help complete our set? How about a bottle of claymore, guaranteed to get the native girls a-buzzing round your head like botflys? Mo always told him to steer past these oil traders and snake merchants with their split tongues and big hats, steer past and keep on walking to the well and back. Fetch the water, pop the seems and bring us back some time. Mo always used the old words, older than she had much right to use; she wasn't grey and she wasn't crooked and she didn't sit by the fire with the children because she was kept out of the smoke house. Some of the children didn’t even know that she was Kevin’s mo, she belonged to them all and gave them stories and stories. Stories about the Mountain Carnival and the fat-dark-thick winds, stories about the Uncles and what they did when they went to the lakes after the freeze. She knew stories, and she knew a hokey story when she heard one, which is what she claimed the sleeveless travellers sold us, “they can cut their sleeves until all that’s have left is a bra, but they’ll still have something up it.”
-
To sustain my blithering withering mind during a large-ish project I'll be returning to making these tiny cries for help every day or so. It's hard when the times between being able to say "screw it, that's good enough" are long, and this has been months. My brain is falling away like wet bread under the constraints of having to return to the same stubborn piece of work, where the troubles of the day before are also the troubles of today and more than likely tomorrow.
It's so nice to abandon things again.
Watcher
“The centaurs are coming!”
Gamon could see the water pouring down the hillside, washing away farms and farmers in its muddy surf, the survivors quickly swallowed by a black column of smoke that followed lazily after the torrent in heavy sheets. It would be a tranquil scene if it wasn't for their apprentice.
“ They've burst the aqueduct. What do we do? Fort Ernest should have stopped them. What do we do?” The boy was new, hadn't developed the stillness of a Watcher. He twisted from one man to another, pleading with his eyes, “what do we do?”
“We do what we are supposed to do. We watch, we record and we leave.”
“But the centaurs, they will carry us off and make us tend to their stable, hold our women for them to…”
“Tosh, until I see it I don’t believe it. They would be the first creature I've witnessed procreating solely with another species. Quite unsustainable. Besides, they have trouble with stairs at the best of times and the Duke has installed the most obnoxious spiral ascent I've ever put the trouble into climbing when not under the influence of mortal peril. We are quite safe up here.”
“Relatively speaking. They will burn us out eventually.” Gamon had to turn to hide the grin from the boy’s increasingly desperate whimpers, Mord always raised his spirits at the most inappropriate times. It was unfortunate that the centaur front had moved so quickly, their obligations were over and they were set to return to the priory comfortably ahead of the advance, held back by the thick headed men of the marches. Plainly, their walls and moors weren't as thick and deep as they claimed. The propaganda that had kept the southern kingdoms to their own squabbles for so long had passed by the centaurs, never known for their social awareness or acceptance of anyone’s opinion but their own. The centaurs, as a people of single bloody mind, had decided to cross the swamps and and plains to reaffirm their right to the horizon, the pack master only needed to point the way, and it was currently pointed at Marigold. A city unprepared for war, softened by amiable neighbours, its people didn't even know how to panic. Below the Watchers they gathered in groups in the muddy streets and asked each other What to do? Where was the Duke? How is your harvest coming? Has your boy sent money back from the front? The islands of awkward conversation drifted and waned as more and more soldiers ran to the walls to watch the smoke on the water.
Old Frank
Visit the man in his suburban home, sat at the top of a shallow hill. I knocked, but the door was open and saw no harm in looking for him in such a demure place. The house smelt of nutmeg and human, old hair and linen. The sound of creaking furniture could be heard from the front room and I followed. Two paramedics dressed in green with their emergency bags’ contents spread out over tables and the arms of thick floral chairs. Both young women, both sitting at ease discussing what he had taught them today, my presence didn’t disturb them until they stopped and politely indicated that he had gone to get something from the shed before continuing their discussion. I continued my search through the tiny kitchen and into his garden. It was flanked with plum trees heavy in fruit and it concerned me, there was nothing more obnoxious than a gardener recently in fruit, maybe this wasn’t the time to see him, maybe I should wait for winter when his garden was dead. I had the decision wrenched from me with the creak and clatter of an opening and closing shed door, a portly old man was walking quickly through a vegetable patch and towards the side of the house. I hurried behind, grabbing his elbow as he got to an old side door. Unperturbed he turned on me and leaned against the door frame, scratching his great gut and tobacco yellow beard.
“How can I help you son?”
I explained and he listened, nodding and scratching at the woolly jumper that seemed to be falling apart as I went on. He didn’t mention his garden, not once, even when he leaned in, stopping me.
“Go to the end of the road and find two of the cheapest slags you can, tell them you want Old Frank, they’ll know what to do and where to go. They have to be cheap, no one else will Old Frank,” his breath was cucumbers and limes and I nodded.
“Good lad. Now if you’ll excuse me I have something on,” and he closed the door behind him, leaving me standing on the thin gravel line before his little urban orchard.
Harold
The drain grate rattled as he put his weight on it.
“Oh Harold, Harold, Harold. What have we done?”, Harold knelt and dabbed at the bars with a handkerchief.
“Just so, just so,” the cloth came back with dabs of dark red, “just so.”
He heaved himself up and brushed his hands on his jacket, leaving dark stains.
“A new suit when I find you son, least you owe…” it was dark, but the street lights caught the glitter of something piled in a shop doorway. It had the appearance of a sleeping tramp covered in the morning dew. The cane probed gently and with no resistance, instead sinking into the foamy mass of hair and skin. “It seems you already have.”
Carp
“Jacob, your repetitive perambulations ache the eyes and offend my roguish spirit.”
Jacob ignored him and knocked on boxes, kicking at barrels and unravelling ropes, throwing off tarpaulins and lids. The wharf had any number of hiding places.
“Nothing is ever found that is looked for in such a desperate manner. One looks, one encounters, and then…” he waved his finger around in the air vaguely, it had been a long night and his performance was somewhat forced. The word never game to him as his thoughts were interrupted by a deep flomp of something heavy hitting the water.
“There’s our man, off like a rock no less. Here we have our encounter, Jacob. Be a good lad and fetch him, the carp won’t leave much for us if you aren’t sharp-sharp about it. Indeed, I can hear the slap on fins all a bother. Don’t you hear me, boysir?”
He extended an arm for Jacob’s jacket, who prepared to rope the floundering escapee.
“Don’t take offence if we leave a toe or hand behind. They take what they can fit in their mouth and no more. They can control their appetites unlike some little street muffins.”
He nodded to Jacob as the the rope went taught, and he started to pull.
Tiny music
The tiny cymbal twings and everyone gasped quietly in between slow sips from their bowls.
“What…” before Anca could get his finger to his mouth a squeal burst from the closest table and spread through the room, each one more distressed than the last, bouncing off the wall like a wave it went back and forth until the clientele were holding their heads and moaning. Anca had closed his eyes. The band had picked up its instruments and were backing away from the writhing crowd who where slowly calming down as the waiters threw blankets over them in silence. One of them stood over me with a raised eyebrow and a look that said he didn’t a street boy’s custom.
“We leave. Take you coat boy before waiter politely ask to maybe consider leaving.”
Crow Milk didn’t effect Anca like the others, the only noticeable change being the raise of a hand and close of eyes when I went to help him up from the floor.
“You don’t touch or talk, you listen to their tiny music.”
Cant
“So.”
“Quite.”
“The pigs are loose?”
“And greased.”
“I see,” he released the blue smoke, letting it flow out of him with all his frustrations, as the good leech had told him.
“You’re hitting it hard today.”
He made a point of never answering indirect questions, especially not from a rising puke such as the man across from him was. Instead he dragged at the pipe and chewed the smoke to help him think. He couldn’t see the walls anymore for the thick blue miasma he had created for himself, he could barely see his conversation partner.
“Tell them…” he would work on that, until he was just a bust sticking out of the rolling blue sea, “tell them that the handle has come off and the screw are sheared. We’ll need a cotton wad.”
“Can’t we just kill him?”
The cant had changed in his time, nothing came easy like it used to.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)