Three Beasts

I dig this little story I wrote a while back - not sure I can ever publish it because of copyright questions on the characters, but I'm putting it here as "fan fiction."








Three Beasts





Cthulhu slapped down its cards with a wet tentacle. “Three queens,” it said in a voice that would have literally melted the brains of any mortal human within a hundred miles.

“Four aces,” rumbled Godzilla from across the table, cracking a toothy, reptilian smile. He really needed this win – he’d been watching the recent movie adaptations of his life, and he wasn’t happy about them. Not at all. Especially not the Roland Emmerich version. That was just trash. Now those old Japanese movies…those he loved. The Americans just couldn’t figure out what to do with him.

“Well shit I’m out,” growled King Kong, throwing his cards down and getting up to pour himself another drink. The huge gorilla wasn’t having much luck tonight. And after the day he’d been having, he really wished he was doing better. He’d woken up in his jungle hideout nursing a serious hangover from eating too many fermented coconuts, and then those natives had chased him around, and he hadn’t really been in the mood for any of it. He’d killed the natives, of course, but that hadn’t really improved his mood.

A doorbell rang, a strange distorted sound that echoed wrongly around the impossible room in which the three of them played.

“Pizza’s here,” said Kong. He shot back his tankard of whiskey and sauntered through the dimensional rift between this room and the human world. The other two heard the door open, then a scream. A minute later, Kong returned through the rift. The pizza box that he’d been cradling in the center of his huge, hairy palm folded outward to fit the non-Euclidian dimensions of the beasts’ poker room, becoming large enough for the three of them to share.

“Pineapple? I hate pineapple. Did they not have anchovies?” asked Cthulhu.

“I hate anchovies,” said Godzilla. “Now if they’d had crickets…”

“They never have crickets,” retorted King Kong. “They’re human. They don’t eat crickets.”

“Although,” said Cthulhu, “Because I’m such a good friend, I have been giving some humans horrific nightmares about killer cows, and trying to incept the idea of eating insects into the human mind. I’ve had limited success.”

“You mean you’ve killed a lot of people in their sleep?” asked Godzilla.

“Hey, it’s a work in progress, ok? Deal the cards.”

Kong chomped down on a slice of slimy, pineapple-infested pizza, gagging at the incongruous flavors.

“The game is five card draw,” said Kong, setting down his pizza and dealing the cards with a hairy paw. “Aces and jokers wild.”

Cthulhu looked at its cards: a queen, two eights, a five, and an ace. Three of a kind. Not bad, but it definitely could be better.

“I bet twelve,” Cthulhu said. It reached its mind into the human world and gave a bus driver nightmare visions of hellish madness. A translucent specter appeared in front of the bus, a gossamer ghost whose face was nothing but swirling, screaming teeth. The driver screamed and swerved the bus, crashing through a guardrail and plunging the bus off a high bridge, killing his eleven passengers. Godzilla and Kong, having watched this happen through a vision that Cthulhu had implanted in both of the other monsters’ heads, nodded.

“Good one,” said Godzilla. “I especially like the teeth.”

Cthulhu nodded at Godzilla. “I give the people what they want.”

Kong squinted at his cards. A five, a four, a three, a two, and a nine. Possible risky straight, but not enough of the same suit for a flush.

“I see your twelve.” Kong took twelve human legs – which used to be attached to the natives that had attacked him while he was hungover this morning – out of his pile, and added them to the pot.

Godzilla’s hand wasn’t great. A two, a five, a jack, a queen, and a king. Still, Godzilla was here to play. It also helped that he had the best poker face in all of the universes. After all, when you always look like you’re about to burn a city to cinders, it’s impossible to tell when you actually mean it.

“Call,” said Godzilla, a puff of smoke wafting out of his reptilian jaw as he said it. He placed the charred heads of twelve Japanese businessmen into the center of the pile. His own pile looked very small, and he’d need a big win soon if he didn’t want to have to go barbeque Osaka again.

Of course he always wanted to barbeque Osaka, so…win-win?

He grabbed a slice of pizza. It was a little underdone. He breathed hot air on it, watching the cheese bubble and brown. Much better. He chomped it down.

“Give me two,” said Cthulhu, giving up the queen and the five. Kong dealt the cards. An ace and a jack. Four of a kind. Excellent.

“Give me three,” said Godzilla, giving up his low cards. Kong dealt Godzilla a joker, a three, and a seven. A pair of kings. Could he bluff his way to a win here? Godzilla looked at the other two. Kong stared back at him, inscrutable, looking a lot like a huge monkey, and not a lot like someone who might be bluffing.

Kong got rid of the nine and dealt himself…a joker. He had his straight. Time to go in for the kill.

“I bet fifty,” began Cthulhu. It reached its mind into a dark nightclub in Portland, Oregon, where a death metal band called Color Out of Your Face happened to be singing about the dread elder gods. Cthulhu twisted the minds of the patrons into a frenzy, initiating a deadly and gruesome brawl. Undead shadows with eyes that glowed an impossible shade of black flew circles around the club, swirling and boiling hatred and fear into the minds of everyone present. Fists and teeth flew in the mosh pit, which became a whirling maelstrom of deadly violence. The guitarist climbed over the drum kit and attacked the drummer, slamming his guitar down on the other’s skull with a crunch. The drummer kicked upward and connected with the guitarist’s crotch. The guitarist howled and gouged out the drummer’s eyes. The lead singer, his eyes wide and unfocused, wrapped a mic cord around a rafter and hanged himself, his legs doing a macabre jig. At the end of the massacre, fifty metalheads, including the band, lay dead and bleeding on the floor, some missing limbs, many missing eyes, several impaled by pool cues or other blunt weapons.

“That was…unusually horrific,” said Godzilla, after watching the carnage unfold.

“You have met me, right?” said Cthulhu.

“Yes. And every day I wonder…”

“What?” Cthulhu’s voice radiated unfathomable danger. This was a creature that could eradicate one’s very existence throughout all of the universes forever, or drive one into an infinite well of eternal madness. Godzilla backed the hell off.

“I wonder how you manage it, cooped up down here in R’lyeh,” he finished.

“I’m dead but dreaming, haven’t you read the stories?”

“Are we one of your dreams?” asked Kong.

“You tell me,” said Cthulhu. “The bet is fifty, gentlemen.”

“Shit, I’ll be right back,” said Godzilla. He was short thirty-five. He warped himself through the portal and deposited himself into the depths of Osaka Bay. These things had to be done properly, of course. He climbed slowly out of the bay, roaring and spitting blue fire, his scaly body towering over the city like a deadly, well, like him. There was no need for metaphor here. Godzilla was the metaphor.

The good citizens of Osaka ran screaming from him in huge and unruly crowds, as they always did, running and crashing cars and shitting themselves in terror. He blew a great gout of sapphire flame through the crowd, aiming it more precisely than he usually did, trying to get the precise number he needed. When he’d cooked thirty-five more Japanese businessmen to a fine char, he stopped. He scooped up his victims, twisted off their heads, discarded the rest, and warped himself back through the portal. He deposited the heads on the card table, where they sat, smoking.

“Call,” said Kong. He counted his bones. He was short ten. “Hang on.” Kong warped himself through the portal and landed in New York City. He ran down the busy streets roaring and beating his chest as traffic crashed around him.

A human woman fell down on the sidewalk in front of him. She screamed and shielded herself, trying to avoid getting trampled by everyone else who was fleeing Kong’s wrath.

She’s so beautiful, thought Kong. He picked her up, cradling her carefully in his hairy paw. Her blond hair cascaded in tangles, and her blouse was askew, revealing the curve of ample bosom. She screamed. He shushed her and stroked her hair with one fingernail.

Something pinged against his fur, stinging him. He looked down and saw human military personnel shooting at him. He roared at them in anger and climbed the nearest skyscraper. Why does this always happen?

Then he remembered. He looked at the woman in his palm. She was so small, so vulnerable, so…she was his weakness. She was always his weakness. The beauty that killed the beast.

He didn’t have time for all of that right now. He had a poker game to win.

He snapped her neck and removed her left leg, then dropped her. Reaching a big hairy paw through a window on the fortieth floor of the skyscraper, he grabbed nine businessmen cowering in a conference room. He dropped them, watching them smash against the sidewalk below in a beautiful abstract expressionist tableau of gore. He climbed down after them and collected their legs, then warped himself back through the portal, depositing his prize on the card table.

“Call,” Kong wheezed. He sat.

“You’re bleeding a little,” said Godzilla.

“Yeah, thanks for noticing,” said Kong, wincing at the stinging pain of a dozen pinpricks from bullets and artillery.

“Straight,” said Kong, confident that this win would be worth the pain.

“Shit,” said Godzilla, “That’s me out.” He threw down his cards and sulked a little. The sight of the sulking dragon monster set the other two giggling a little, which…had to be the most unsettling noise in history. Cthulhu’s laugh, in particular, reverberated horribly through unseen dimensions, stoking the nightmares of the humans that it touched.

Cthulhu looked at Kong. Well, at least, Kong thought Cthulhu was looking at him. It was never easy to tell – Cthulhu’s visage was seriously hard to look at, even for a giant gorilla monster, without suffering severe psychological damage. Kong felt his mind being sucked into a dark and horrifying void populated by mad creatures from beyond the realms of sanity. He shook himself out of it.

“Four eights,” Cthulhu said, slapping its cards down.

“Damn and blast,” said Kong. He grabbed and ate a slice of pizza, chewing unhappily.

“You two out then?” asked Cthulhu.

“Yeah,” said Kong. “I can’t take another beating like that.”

“I mean I’ll happily barbeque Japanese people all day, but it is getting late,” said Godzilla. The giant lizard stood from the table and stretched his long limbs, letting out a dragon’s roar of a yawn and shaking his head to clear it.

“Right, well, same time next week?” asked Cthulhu.

“You bet,” said Kong. He prodded one of his pinprick wounds, wincing. It wasn’t all that serious, but damn if it wasn’t annoying.

The lizard and the gorilla warped themselves through the portal and out of Cthulhu’s realm.

Cthulhu stood from the table and cleaned up the cards, placing the leftover pizza in a mini fridge it had down here for the purpose.

The trappings of the humans who trapped me here, it thought. One day.

Cthulhu opened a hole in spacetime and stared at the swirling stars of the galaxy, willing them to be right.

But they weren’t, not yet.

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn. And thus would it ever be.

Until that day, Cthulhu waited. And dreamed.

Inspiring words from a legend

Last night, Neil Gaiman himself took a few milliseconds out of his day to respond to a tweet I sent him.  His response - three simple words, "Just keep going."

No kidding, no snark, dead serious - this meant something to me. 

What You Most Dread

My 10 year old nephew asked me to write him a story based on the prompt, "What you most dread." This is what I came up with for him.

What You Most Dread

            When Mark was a small child, he was terrified of spiders and clowns.  He never really knew why he was terrified of these things; they just always sent a chill down his spine and a lump down his throat. 

            Mark’s parents, who still didn’t get that his fear of clowns was real and smart because clowns were just weird, hired a clown for his tenth birthday party.  Mark spent the party hiding in the locked bathroom with his mother banging on the door telling him there was nothing to be afraid of. 

The bathroom wasn’t much better, because there was a big spider crouched in a corner of the ceiling, and Mark stared at it, willing his eyes to shoot lasers at the spindly monster and kill it.   They didn’t, of course, because superpowers aren’t real. 

Mark and the spider stared each other down. 

“Mark, get your tuchas out here right now!”  His mother’s voice again from the other side of the bathroom door.

“Get rid of the clown!” Mark shouted back. 

“Oh Mark, come on now.  The clown’s great!” 

The spider didn’t move. 

“Alright, spider, you stay there, and don’t bother me, and –” He cut his next word short, because the spider twitched.  Mark’s heart jumped into his throat. 

“Oh Marky Marky,” a crazy, guttural, growl of a voice called from the other side of the door, “Why don’t you come out here and we can have some FUN?”  Mark figured that had to be the clown. 

“Go away!” Mark called back. 

“Aww Marky, you don’t want a balloon animal?  A nice doggie?”

“No!” 

Mark kept one eye on the spider and another trained on the door, in case the clown turned out to be truly evil and melted through the door to eat his head.  He’d heard clowns could do that. 

“Now Mark, stop being silly,” his mother’s voice called to him again.  “You’re a big boy now—”

“If I’m a big boy, why’d you get me a clown?” he shot back.

“Because everyone loves clowns!” 

“Not everybody!”

Mark realized he’d taken his eyes off the spider.  He looked back…and the spider was gone.

Oh no.  He felt spiders crawling all over him, in his hair, in his pants, in his shoes…he shivered and whimpered and pressed his back against the bathroom door, looking around wildly for the spider he knew was about to eat his face. 

            So he had a choice.  The spider or the clown. 

            Spiders or clowns.  Clowns or spiders.  Well, spiders eat faces.  Clowns eat souls.  Um…

            Movement out of the corner of his eye.  The spider dangled from a web near his face.  He screamed and swatted at it, and it swung wildly on its tether. 

            Clowns it is.  He grabbed the doorknob, yanked, and sprung into the hallway, then whipped around to find the spider.  It hung there, swinging, on its web, wiggling its little legs. 

            “Well hi there, Marky,” said a gravelly voice behind him.  He turned.

            A white face, smeared with red lipstick, bright red circles under both cheeks, bright blue eyes, wearing the silliest polka dotted hat.  Mark froze, unable to move, unable to think, unable to breathe. 

            “What’s wrong, Marky, aren’t you having fun at your party?”  The voice seared into him, like a fire, eating his soul, the clown was eating his soul!!  He whimpered and backed away, tears welling in his eyes.

            “Mark, come on, it’s Mister Funny Pants! You know! From the mall!  He’s not scary!”  It was his mother’s voice, coming from behind him.

            “He’ll…he’ll eat my soul…” Mark whimpered.

            “What? I don’t eat souls…I just make balloon animals and I like to have fun!”  The clown’s voice bore into Mark again, and Mark felt dizzy. 

            The clown pulled out a flat balloon and started to blow it up until it resembled a long hot dog.  He started tying it up, the screeching of the rubber like the sound of a squeaky door opening in a house when you’re alone and you know nobody else is there to open it.  It was an unholy, terrifying sound.  Mark closed his eyes and scrunched up his face, trying to get away from the sound. 

            “Tadah!”

Mark opened his eyes, carefully, because despite himself, he was curious what the clown had made. 

It was the most perfect little balloon doggie Mark had ever seen.  He took it and examined it.  All the little folds and knots the clown had made were just right.  Mark started to see the clown’s smile not as a menacing grimace, but as more of a silly thing.  Not as threatening. 

            “Thanks?” Mark said after a minute.  His breathing had started to calm a little.  Maybe, just maybe, this one clown wasn’t about to eat Mark’s soul. 

            “Now watch this!” The clown pulled three colorful balls out and started juggling them.  Despite himself, Mark smiled a little, because honestly, the clown wasn’t too bad.  The clown dropped a ball and stumbled around the hall trying to pick it up again while juggling the other two balls in his other hand.  Mark giggled. 

            Behind him, the spider crawled back up its web and found a comfortable spot to watch the action in a corner of the ceiling. 

            Maybe clowns are ok, Mark thought, giggling at the clown’s antics.  Maybe they’re not what I most dread. 

            Maybe what I most dread is growing up.

Aaron Sorkin writes James Bond

(abbreviated version)

Q and Bond are walking down a surprisingly long hallway.

Q: James, did you get the wristwatch?

Bond: What wristwatch?

Q: The wristwatch I sent you.

Bond: You sent me a wristwatch?

Q: Yeah, I sent you a wristwatch. It explodes when you hurl it at people.

Bond: It explodes?

Q: Yeah, it explodes.

Bond: You’re telling me it explodes when you hurl it at people?

Q: Yeah. It explodes when you hurl it at people.

M comes out of a doorway and joins them. They continue walking.

Bond: Hey, M, did you know that Q gave me a wristwatch that explodes when you hurl it at people?

M: It explodes when you hurl it at people?

Q: Yeah. And Bond lost it.

Bond: I didn’t lose it. It’s right here. *shows the watch*

Q: Then why did you...never mind.

They reach an office with a big sturdy desk. Bond leans back against it and crosses his legs.

Bond: You know, Oliver Cromwell used to say this about wristwatches.

*this speech goes on for ten minutes*

In the vein of "weird fiction," I just found this thing

Secure, Contain, Protect

It appears to be a repository of technical documents relating to anomalous and very strange phenomena, entities, creatures, and other weird stuff observed, cataloged, and dealt with by this foundation.  Examples include: An infinite Ikea in which people get trapped, and a housefly that grants wishes to a victim and then after a set time infests said victim with millions of fly eggs, leading to that victim's horrifying death.

I'm just digging into this now, but it's very intriguing.  Thanks to the geeky people at boingboing.net for putting this on my radar.

NYC Midnight short story competition

Somehow, against all conceivable odds, I have made it into the finals of the NYC Midnight short story competition.  Therefore, instead of working on my podcast this weekend, I'll have 24 hours to write a 1,500 word short story on a subject I will have no idea about until it's time to start writing.

I'm blown away that I made it through the first two rounds.  That means I have two short stories that I think are good enough to send out for publication.  Just need to figure out where to send them.

Podcast is on track still - should be able to record the first few and release them before the end of May.  Those of you who have submitted stories - expect to hear from me soon.

Cheers!

Cyberpunk fantasy - or how I learned to stop worrying and combine magic and technology

The short story collection I'm working on takes place in a world I've been working on creating for quite a while. It's not Earth, but it's not a defined "alien" world colonized by humans. It's just another place, like Discworld or Narnia or Westeros. So that makes it fantasy rather than sci fi, right? Also, there's magic in it.

But the world also contains modern/futuristic technology - flying cars, computers, gadgets and gizmos, digital teeth, all of which are powered and operated by a combination of straight up technology and a little bit of magic. Examples:

-Buildings are hexed to be "bigger on the inside" (yes, like Doctor Who but with magic) 

-One of my main characters practices "datamancy," the act of using magic to hack computer systems - she summons "daemons" to infiltrate data systems, crack code, and the like. I'm still figuring out how all that works.

-My main PI character can take an image he has in his mind of someone and use magic to transfer it onto photo paper, then upload that photo to the 'net and do a search on that person.

So here's my question, my desire to brainstorm some of this with you.

The main complaint/critique/question/blank staring face thing I get from people is this: If there's magic, why bother with technology - why combine the two? 

Well, my answer is this: Why would the existence of magic as a known quantity within society cause that society to stop development in a Medieval fantasy setting, as is so often the case with fantasy? What does Middle Earth look like in a thousand years? Is everyone there really content with fantasy feudalism forever, or would an industrial revolution happen eventually? I mean yeah we can get into arguments about the Orcs being a symbol of the pitfalls of industrialization, especially during the battle with the Ents, but that's beside the point, isn't it? What does an industrial revolution and the development of modern tech look like in a world where everyone knows about and incorporates magic into their daily lives? 

Substitute Middle Earth with Discworld and I have the same question. And Sir Terry addressed my question a little bit with books like Raising Steam, where we see the development of a railroad. He did take Discworld out of a Medieval/Renaissance setting a little bit, but not by much. Brandon Sanderson ...I really don't want to talk about Mistborn, but it is my understanding that the later books after the first trilogy take place in a similar modern tech/magic setting. China Mieville has New Crobuzon, a sort of steampunk surrealist masterpiece that shatters genre boundaries and does in fact take place in an industrialized world with a little bit of magic in it. Dune can be argued to be science fantasy, because there's a little bit of magic inherent in Spice vision, but it also takes place in a society that has shunned technology and gone back to a kind of spacefaring feudalism. 

But then the second question comes, and I don't really have a good answer for it: What are the rules of magic in my world? When someone picks up a hand terminal (data tablet, handheld computer thing...) that is powered by a combination of actual technological hardware and magic, where does the one end and the other begin? 

My answer so far has been thus: Technomancy, the science of combining technology and magic, requires that each gadget begin with a totally magic-free foundation. The motherboards, chips, memory cards, all the hard wired stuff, has to be entirely technological. Magic only comes in when the item is imbued with power - maybe it has a magical everlasting battery. Maybe it uses a magical networking protocol that accesses the 'net through means other than traditional radio waves. Maybe it's hexed in some other way.

Same thing with vehicles. The car itself, the physical hardware of the car - wheels, engine, sheet metal, whatever, has to be physical, material, non-magical. But then it can be imbued with magic to operate - endless fuel, flying capabilities, things like that. 

So this post has gotten a lot longer than I intended.

Anyway. You folks interested in cross-genre stuff. What do you think? What tips can you give me to create a coherent tech-fantasy cyberpunk-ish magic-having kickass world that you can wrap your head around and totally believe?