Morrowick

This is a slightly horrific, slightly odd story beginning that came to me, much like The Hobbit came to Professor Tolkien: with a single sentence. The opening sentence is a mere bit of nonsense the entire bit evolved from. If you really want a bit more clarification, you're practically out of luck, as I have only a foggy notion of where this might go.

There was a man that lived with a morrowick.

It wasn’t a particularly impressive one, and he wasn’t a particularly impressive man; clerkly, prone to wearing grey and having stubbly facial hair, quiet and withdrawn.

The morrowick didn’t mind.

It was a sort of automaton, but not a usual one; not made of brass, or steel, or wire, or onyx. It didn’t have a job, particularly, like the rest of the automatons that ticked around the city. It appeared to have been made of a hundred little household items, and at the same time, hundreds of weird artifacts, and at the same time, hundreds of antique watchworks, and at the same time, appeared to have not been made at all.

He had bought it at a rummage-sale; from an old woman who claimed it did dishes. He had purchased it to find it did nothing of the sort but sit and quietly read his magazines; a fact that irritated him more than disturbed him.

Everyone knew automatons couldn’t read.

If he had known what it was, he might have been more careful around it. He might have treated it with more respect. He might have taken the time to give it Gloveclock oil and cleaned its crystal lens, on occasion.

Instead, he would awake in the morning and totter downstairs in his sleepily efficient manner, punt the doddering bit of clockwork from his path, and brew coffee that tasted as much of alkaline as it did caffeine. The morrowick would hum and chitter to itself in mild annoyance as it saw him sit there at his floral chair, turning his cup idly on the table as he read the London Gazette. The morrowick never said anything to him.

Everyone knew automatons couldn’t talk.

After dressing, it was his habit to halfheartedly order the morrowick (though he knew not that’s what it was) to do some domestic chores; a request it sturdily denied was as possible for it to accomplish as it was a broom to attempt masonry. The man would be frustrated, comb his fingers two or three times through his stubble and storm out the glass door, into the lorry, and off to work at the bank. While he was away, the morrowick would creep to his room and quietly step into the window-seat, where it would observe the alley below and, with a hand as quick as a whip, make thousands of tiny marks on a pad of paper stamped with the Bank of England’s watermark until the paper was fairly grey with them.

Everyone knew automatons couldn’t write.

It wasn’t until he had owned the little thing for nearly two months that Jonathan Lint returned home from a day of processing the various transactions he handled at the “Various Transactions” window to find that the morrowick had done something odd.

It had painted a picture.

If he had known it was a morrowick, and not an automaton, he would have known several things. One, he must not sell the painting. Two, he must not tell anyone about the painting. And three, he must decode the clues in the painting to find the little key in the tiny apartment in the morrowick’s left leg and disarm it, or life would be as black as a nightmare.

Of course, being a clerk and not an Alchemist, he didn’t do any of these things.

The next time Jonathan Lint left his apartment, it was with a sheet over his face, the white linen stained with the blood of his ruined body. The coroner noted that he had been in a state of extreme panic when he died, marking down the cause of death to the hundreds of bulletholes that perforated his heart and head like a pepper shaker’s top. The bullets were nowhere to be found, and the holes were like he had been stabbed with crochet needles.

If someone had been careful, they would have noted that the apartment was quiet orderly, but a small trinket was missing. If they had known Jonathan well, they would have known that the trinket missing was a small good luck charm a gypsy woman had given him before her death, claiming that the the stone in it was a bit of the sky. If someone had cared to inventory his life, which no one cares to inventory the life of a lowly clerk at the Bank of England, they would have found that he had never, not once, considered purchasing an automaton. And if someone had been sitting in the room, and had remained quite still, and watched the dusty corner of his bedroom, they would have seen a plank in the floor pop its nails like a fat man’s buttons. They would have seen an odd automaton, slightly larger than the rest, emerge from the floor clutching a trinket set in pewter: a stone as blue as the sky. And if the person had been there to hear, they would have heard the click of the window latch, and a moment later, the scrabbling of metal on ceramic tiles, and then there would have been silence in the home of the former apartments of Jonathan Lint, clerk.

And this, dearest readers, is where our story begins.

Edit

The knock at the door startled me from my Saturday morning stupor, but not enough to keep the sight of three television cameras, an attractive woman, and an older man in jeans and a t-shirt from stupefying me. I stared at them for a moment without saying anything as the older guy broke into a smile.

“Blaine Silverhouse?” He asked, his voice too loud, too projected to be coming from a normal human being.

“Who are you?” I mumbled.

“I am Salman Rix,” he said, turning to the cameras. “And this is Total Transformation!”

“Wha-?”

“We need to come in to explain everything.” Without asking, he pushed past me into the apartment, as did the rest of his little entourage.

“So, is your mother here?”

“No.” She worked as a corporate consultant, which meant a lot of traveling, but surprisingly little pay. The apartment was dingy, but I mostly had it to myself except for the rare week or two she was actually home.

“Well, I have some very. Exciting. News.”

I don’t gamble, so it couldn’t be that. I racked my brain. The only thing I had entered recently was an internet sweepstakes for a lifetime supply of old spice, but I doubted they’d send a camera crew to tell me how much deodorant I’d won.

“What is it?” I asked, after a moment of everyone looking at me, all rather awkwardly.

“You have been nominated by your classmates as the ‘Biggest Zero in America!’”

“That sounds delightful.” The pricks. I knew who it must have been. John Forsythe was the biggest douche in Blackton High, but had the unique opportunity of being a jock with a tech-whiz father. This meant he could bully in both cyberspace, and meatspace, and remain incredibly popular at the same time. Versatile fellow, that.

“So,” I asked. “Besides broadcasted humiliation, what does this mean?”

“Well, we needed complete honesty when doing this, so your friends…” he turned to wink obligingly at the camera, “…or enemies didn’t know what they were getting you into. But you, my lucky friend, just won a five million dollar makeover!”

“Makeover?” I asked, still sleep-stupid. “Like makeup?”

“WE FOUND OUR MAN!” The attractive blond boomed suddenly.

“This means, Blaine,” Rix said, “That we’re going to makeover your entire life!”

“Oh god.”

My life was never the same.

Chapter One

Welcome to the Set

Things are a bit blurry after that memory. I remember sitting heavily on the couch, my hand shaking as I raised it to push the black hair out of my face. They all stared at me, making :D faces, even though my face was more of a O.o kind of look.

“Wait, what? Am I being punked?”

“You’re completely not!” His made-for-tv voice was making my head hurt. The camera lights were burning into my retinas and my head felt like someone had pumped it full of helium. The chick was grinning like the mad hatter, and even the camera guys looked amused. I groaned and…I admit it…passed out.

Have you ever felt like you were in a bizarre dream, but didn’t know for sure? And you keep wondering if it’s going to take a turn for the better or worse, but it could go drastically in either direction? It’s not a fun feeling.

I woke up in a limousine.

Try that for a WTF moment.

The cameras were nowhere to be seen, and I sat up, suddenly feeling crazy insecure. I was still in my flannel pj bottoms and star wars shirt. Yeah, make your television debut like that.

“So what’s going on?” I asked. Rix had turned off his TV persona and gave me an almost awkward half smile.

“Hey. Want a drink?”

“Whaddya have?”

“Just coke products. You’re a minor.”

“Really?” I said. “I hadn’t noticed.”

He didn’t answer, just tossed me a Dr. Pepper from the console refrigerator. I broke the seal and drank half of it, setting it down in the mahogany cupholder. He was giving me an odd look, and I stared back.

“Your classmates uploaded a five minute video to our website, nominate the zero dot com.” He said. “They gave reasons why you were the biggest zero in America, expecting you’d be publicly humiliated.”

“Too late for that.” I muttered. “That happened on film.”

He dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “We’ll more than compensate for that. We’re going to turn you into the biggest teen idol America has ever seen.” He leaned forward, suddenly intense. His eyes were an odd shade of green, I noticed. “And I’ll finally move up from being a sitcom voice actor to being on the same level of Seacrest. I’ll get my own show…” The man was drooling, I swear.

The Force and the Falcon

There is something indefinitely ironic, ignominiously refined, about a man wearing formal clothing in a sloppy, casual way. The man I was watching was wandering through the parking lot, under the velour texture of the sodium lights that guarded the perimeter of the asphalt spit. His white, French cuffed shirt was open from throat to navel, revealing the undershirt below. His jacket displayed a massive tear that ran from one shoulder to the mother of pearl buttons that hung from the hem, cutting a mouth in the black fabric. His partially untucked shirt cloaked half of his scuffed belt. He was smiling, Terence saw: a wide, guileless smile. I had seen that kind of smile before; emanating from the faces of bloodied skateboarders after failing “epically” to land a particular trick, radiating from a teenager after getting dropped in a contest of strength, or from a snowboarder that had given it his all and still failed. The knowledge that one had tried—tried and failed maybe, but tried all the same—would be uncontainable. If anyone had a right to wear this smile, this man did. He alone was responsible for the destruction of two hotels and a mob-owned casino, sinking a million dollar yacht and the pursuing coast guard ship, exploding a nationally owned museum, hijacking a truck belonging to a Mexican drug cartel carrying fifty kilos of cocaine and forty million dollars in cash, stowing away on a Russian submarine and running a bulldozer through the CIA’s front office. This man had caused more destruction in his wake as a refugee than any I had ever tracked, and he was still uncatchable. Here I lay in the bushes of the Las Vegas Hilton, burned, shaking from the shock of the evening, without my bulletproof vest, my walkie-talkie, my sidearm, my backup, my squad. I watched as he pulled an Uzi from an invisible holster beneath his left arm and smilingly checked the magazine before replacing it. He wandered, partially silhouetted by the sky that faded from the black of the sky above to the reddish orange of the burning casinos, serenaded by the sirens of emergency vehicles. I watched as the man that had done everything every man in the world wanted to do, wanted by every police station and woman in the world, opened the scissor door on a glossy black Lamborghini Diablo and stepped in. He didn’t start it immediately, another of the traits that had made this man so hard to catch. Here I lay powerless to collect him, unable to move from my bed among the shrubs and mulch. Truth be told, I almost didn’t want to catch him, to end the free life of a fugitive, the storybook sheen that surrounded this. I didn’t want to tell the world that the big guy always won, that in the end the free spirit was punished and the rest of the world applauded, that betting against the odds was a losing proposition. I didn’t want to end the purpose of my fifteen year career and move on to another case, another fugitive. I didn’t want to catch my best friend, my worst enemy, my antichrist. And instead, I watched him drive away, the fat tires on his car, or maybe someone else’s car, gripping the asphalt with a heavy efficiency, before pulling out into the night, the glare of the red taillights and a waft of faintly expensive cologne all that’s left to me.

The Misunderstanding

The waiting room smelled of Iodine and diaper plastic. I really don’t know what I was doing there.

In the corner, a battered mini playset wavered, faded colors as tired as the mothers watching their toddlers attempt to re-enact the cold war. In one corner, the three year old equivalent of Stalin rained destruction down from his wobbly Olympus, hurling block after wooden block at a rather confused looking two year old. Beside me, what I took for his mother murmured excuses for him, not glancing at the dog-eared Good Housekeeping magazine in her lap.

“Tired.” She murmurs. “He’s had allergies, too. Poor thing.” The poor thing in question ricochets a plastic spatula off a girl’s ear. She cries.

I look down at my magazine, and then up again. How are these rooms so oppressive? I feel so out of place, a twenty-something male in a predominantly young female domain. Even the children know I don’t belong.

A mother is called, gathers her child and leaves. I fiddle with my phone, check my inbox (empty), start up angry birds (Beaten), open facebook (nothing new). Baby Stalin appears to have another child in a headlock. The mother’s excuses are growing more farfetched.

“The economy.” She murmurs. “Hurricanes. Global warming. Microsoft.”

“Matthias Ransom.” The nurse looks at me. I rise, straighten my jacket, and follow her down the hall.

The doctor is a weary looking man in his early sixties, sad grey eyes staring from behind a slender pair of spectacles.

“What can I do for you?”

“I need to know if a young woman by the name of Selena Blaire came in here a few days ago.”

“People come in all the time, Mr. Ransom. I can’t be expected to remember all of them.”

“About six feet tall? Stunningly beautiful? Early twenties, bright red hair?”

“Oh, her.”

“She had a child with her.” I said. “A little boy. I need to know how he was.”

“He was healthy. There was something about him…” the doctor tapped his stubbled chin with his computer stylus.

“His eyes were mismatched. One was green and the other was yellowish. A golden color.”

“That’s impossible, the boy I’m talking about has dark eyes.”

“Believe what you want. This kid had two differently colored eyes. And he was big, for five.”

I thought for a moment. Had Selena already started on him? Was I too late?

“Thank you, Doctor.”

“Mr. Ransom. Is the child in question kidnapped?”

“No sir.” I said quickly. “Just a small misunderstanding.”

Catalaunia: Fugitives Quest

This is the beginning of my possible sequel.

It was a day for change.

Sunbird sat alone in the tavern, a half filled tankard of hard ale warming slowly on the table, the cool lacquered pebbles at the bottom doing it little good. A brass gauntlet lay next to the tankard, the dark, calloused hand wrapped around the pewter vessel.

He was dressed in his signature brass armor, the slitted helmet laying next to the gauntlet on the table, his weapons dropped on the floor, but just in reach. He was given a wide berth by the other patrons, the heavily wrapped tensung and humans around him recognizing, if not the armor, then at least his sigil, engraved on the front of the breastplate. A phoenix, wrapped in its own flame, hatching its clutch by its own death.

“Are you Quasan Jev?” A female voice asked him.

“Rates are subject to change, dependant on the difficulty of the job. Transportation must be provided, but not food. Also, I am not to be adressed by my former name. Sunbird will suffice.” His eyes focused on a slender, pretty face, attached to a similarly describable body.

“Oh no, sir, I don’t wish to hire you.”

“Well, I don’t want to hire you either.”

“I am not here to seduce you. I have a message for Quasan Jev.” She was looking at him earnestly, with a serious, frank gaze. Human, height between five two and five five. Considered pretty, between eighty eight and one hundred pounds, not more. Skin suggestive of northern upbringing.

“Spit it out.” Sunbird slurred, and then took a drink.

“In private.” She said firmly.

“No matter how pretty you think you are, you can’t kill me.” Sunbird snapped, suddenly alert. She wouldn’t be the first female to try to avenge her husband.

“I don’t wish to kill you, I only need to speak with you.” Sunbird stared at her a moment, his grey eyes searching her blue ones.

“Fine.” He said, rather loudly. He slammed the tankard on the polished wooden table, dropped two pecks on the table, the coins ringing, and gathered his things. As he walked out the door he replaced his helmet. She followed him as he ignored the icy blast of air that struck his fire-warmed armor, steaming as snow hit it. He gathered his ice-white cloak about him, and strode into an alley. The wind was blocked, and the cold lessened, but Sunbird watched as the blonde messenger trotted into the alley after him.

Areo awoke from a stream of consciousness, of icy blue pain and crippling orange ache, of fiery red anger and violet rivers of sorrow, green fogs of relief. He was in a kaleidoscope of senses, and when he opened his eyes he was nearly blinded by the assault. Light, thoughts and energy pulsed around him. His head instantly began to ache, and he closed his eyes again.

“Careful now,” He heard a voice say. “Being dead is something to be taken with care.” Areo’s pain strangled thoughts filed this under “suspicious” before he opened his eyes again. The world seemed to stagger, and then rotated around him in a sickening whirl.

Confessions from Surreality

Confessions from Surreality

I am the greatest writer the world has ever known.

Now that I am old, I no longer care about what other people think, or what may seem to be correct behavior. I ignore protocol. I find it useless and demeaning for a writer of my stature and a man of my age to bother with the please and thank you and how-do-you-do. I have grown tired of the social lies and cultural pleasantries that blind and numb us from the truth, so I discarded them. So in this memoir, I will dispense with the little modesties and small lies, and just tell it to you unvarnished: the good and the bad, the white and the black, the diamond and the coal.

I am the greatest writer the world has ever known.

I found one of my novels the other day, hidden away in a secondhand shop, the cover ruined with water and the pages mottled with age. It was one of my smash hits from antiquity, a slim novel I titled La Forza e il Falco. Don’t be fooled by the title, it was in English. A novel on two Italian Renaissance assassins working for separate factions, it was quite popular, even was optioned for a motion picture release. Nothing happened, but it was only fifteen years ago. Times change.

I took the book up to the desk and set it onto the counter. The clerk was an emo-girl, pretty enough, but into her pinks and blacks and chrome enough that she had turned herself into a freak. She glanced and the book, snapped her gum and said “A dollar twenty-nine.”

“Wow!” I exclaimed, the perfect delusional old man, “Only that! This book is one of the greatest works of fiction ever written, and here I find it, only a dollar twenty-nine.”

She took a second, closer look at the book.

“Oh, yeah. That book.” She sounded dismissive. “I started it.”

“How was it?”

“Booor-ing.” She said. “I thought it was kind of stupid how the girl dies in the very beginning, and then that guy Panda-rot or something acts like an idiot over his niece.”

“Pavarotti was a patrician, and they were allowed to marry close relatives.”

“Whatever. It was dumb.”

I paid for the book, and then let my hand with the change hover over the mason jar labeled, “Tip’s”. Then, with a sigh, I dumped the change in my pocket.

The little philistine.

I don’t know why I bought the book. I have a shelf full of the leather-bound, gold embossed copies of my works, in my library. I think that I bought it because it was a symbol. That I used to be the best. That I wasn’t anymore. I laid it on my nightstand, the warped landscape of the pages creating a little network of miniscule caverns between it and the mahogany tabletop.

I remember when I was once the greatest writer in America, no, the English speaking world. I had critics that would do anything I asked. I could have had my cat walk across the keyboard for thirty hours and have them praise it as genius.

Those days have gone.

Never grow old. There’s nothing to look forward to.

I take it back. You are freely allowed to be senile. Forget things, insult personages, be a grouch. Not that people are required to like you.

I don’t know why I did it.

I went back to the secondhand store, gathered all of the copies of my books together that I could find, plopped them down at a table and picked up a fountain pen.

It was almost a joke, a masquerade; a comedy so obscure that even I only half got it. The emo-girl was working again. She glanced at me when I first came in the door, but she was too wrapped up in her phone to pay attention to some idiot customer.

I signed four books. My looping, beautiful signature, one that I had practiced for so long, scrolling across the yellowed pulp paper. Two were to older ladies who had heard of me (they thought) and so bought my books. The money didn’t go to me, I just signed it, but still, it was satisfying. The third went to a young college student who was taking a modern literature course, intrigued that he found me signing books. The fourth, surprisingly, went to the clerk. She looked slightly sheepish when she asked me to sign it, and I almost felt bad that I had baited her yesterday.

Serenity Amber

Apollo looked up as the gate to his cell crashed open. A hard faced man wearing the traditional maroon and grey of a guard gestured. Apollo rose and followed as the guard silently led him through the guts of Aenkarres.

Aenkarres was the largest prison in the Northern Creed, the massive country formed by North and South America after the Forest Wars. Housing the most violent offenders, each of the eleven blocks was filled with the worst of the worst, over fifteen thousand prisoners in all. Apollo really didn’t know what he was doing there, to be honest.

“Apollo Brendan?” The orderly asked.

“If you weren’t sure it was me,” Apollo asked, “Why did you get me?” The orderly ignored his comment.

“Go in.”

The guard had left, so Apollo pushed the slab-like door open, stepping into the office.

“Sit.” The man behind the desk ordered. The chairs were hard, cold and metal. “I know you haven’t a clue why I called you in here.” Apollo looked at the desk. Sloppy, stained papers were strewn about, a holo of a smiling family floated lazily above a wash of cigarette ash. The name burned into the front of the desk said “Callen Morento, sector supervisor”.

“Why, sir?” Apollo asked, wearily. Morento looked at him for a moment.

“You’ve heard of Serenity Amber?”

“I live in pit six, sir.” Apollo bit out. “The last thing I heard were the gates closing.”

“Good point.” Morento seemed nervous. Apollo didn’t know why, there were plasma autoturrets tracking him from the corners of the room. Apollo would have boiling holes in his body before he could get over the desk.

“Serenity Amber, the sixth planet in the Avian Nebula has been found to have earth like qualities. This is good, bad, and ugly. The Northern Creed wants the planet for us, you see, because it was our scientists that discovered it. Our allies, Fenwick Tundrans are the only Creed to have the technology to reach the Nebula, but last week it was discovered that Creed Orient has the same technology, salvaged from a crashed Tundran vessel.”

“How does this pertain to my life in this hellhole?” Apollo sighed. “You creeds have been on about this kind of stuff for ages.”

“Ah, that’s the trick, isn’t it? Well, the Northern Creed needs soldiers, badly. Starliners have already shipped hundreds of thousands of NC soldiers over to Serenity Amber, but we need more. And since the draft was abolished in back in ’fifty six…”

“The prettyboys won’t fight, so you are going to send the slime of society to fight the other Creeds for an unpolluted planet. Sounds fine, but why are you telling me personally? Make a blasted announcement. You gonna do this for every prisoner in here?”

“Can I discuss your case, Apollo?”

“Do so.” Apollo said. He crossed his arms.

“Why are you here?”

“I killed two peace officers, eleven soldiers and three jerks.”

“Yes. But what is remarkable is that you did it with so little. They had accelerators and armor, you had a six foot titanium pole and a boxcutter. You kicked one of them through a wall. A brick wall.”

Just like that, the glass wall in Apollo’s head crashed open, and the memories came flooding back. Memories that he had done his best to suppress, crush, forget.

It had been an icy November day. He was only nineteen. Leah was seventeen, pretty as the dawn; long, dark lashes setting off her creamy skin and sparkling green eyes, radiant when she laughed. He had been nervously fumbling with the velvet box in his overcoat pocket, cold fingers opening and closing the cream colored lid with a tiny click. They were walking from the coffee shop when he remembered his satchel, left on their table. He told her to wait at the construction site next door while he went and retrieved it.

He remembered the moment crisply, sharply, painfully. As the door tinkled shut behind him, one of the young bravos had Leah by the waist and was dragging at her white leather coat. The other had torn her hat off, and the third was laughing as he pulled rope from his pocket.

It was a sudden and quiet insanity that exploded in Apollo as he dropped his satchel. The pole leaning against the wall was in his hand a moment later, whipping through the air with incredible speed. Dark red blood spurted along its length as he wrecked the first youth’s head, the butt end destroying the second’s throat with a wet crunch. They fell, one screaming silently, one ragdolled, as the third wrapped the rope about Leah’s perfect throat, pulling tight.

“Any closer, man, and she’s dead.” Apollo had leaped forward, tearing the rope from the thug’s grasp with a furious jerk. He dropped the pole as Leah fell, catching her, before kicking the thug in the knees. The bone split with a snap, and the kid fell, shrieking. The pole wrecked his face a moment later.

The two peace officers on the corner didn’t care who attacked first: Apollo was a coratti, a second class citizen due to birth. The three boys were the children of the rich, and because of those two facts, when they saw a coratti attacking the three, they opened fire on both Leah and Apollo. Apollo was shot through the side, but Leah was hit six times. Before the two officers could reload, the pole had ruined their bodies and stolen their souls.

Apollo held Leah as she died, her blood staining the coat and his arms, his tears dropping onto her face and freezing.

And with that, Apollo’s soul died too.

Out of the nineteen soldiers that blocked the ends of the street moments later, only eight survived.

Leah went to heaven, the dead went to Hell, and Apollo went to Aenkarres.