Posts published in “Writing”

With a faint hum and static crack like the breaking of a mechanical bone, the alien death ray shot a blue colored beam across the field, narrowly missing his brother Ellis and setting a tree alight.  Phil didn’t intend to miss the next shot.  

“Phil, what’re you doin’?!  Y’damn near hit me!” Ellis yelled.  

“Yup,” Phil said.

“You put that thing down now, you hear!  It ain’t safe!”

“No, I guess it ain’t,” he replied and lined his brother up in the sights along the barrel of the strange weapon they’d found in the crater up on the mountain while checking their grouse traps.  Ellis hadn’t wanted to touch it, but Phil knew better.  He recognized it immediately from the pulp novels he read in secret when mama was in town.  She didn’t like him reading them, said they were the Devil’s work, so he had to be pretty sneaky about it.

Finally.  Her head felt so much better now she could hardly believe it.  Standing there, amidst the corpses of fifty or so slaughtered bandits, mages, and rogues, she felt the curtain of discomfort lift from behind her eyes and the world come in to sharp focus.  Perhaps it was just her berserker rage dissipating, but she really felt clear headed.  Of course, who wouldn’t feel clear headed drenched in blood, axe still humming from cleaving through the spines of her enemies?  No one she knew, that’s for certain.  None of the witch’s poultices or concoctions or potions had the same affect.  She didn’t know a single thing in all the multiverse that she found more relaxing than the wholesale murder of bad guys.  And, sometimes, good guys.  Depends on who’s paying.  Mostly bad guys though.  She didn’t always feel good about storming into a monastery and killing a bunch of priests or monks or whatever, unless they were those monks that could fight.  She had to admit that she did enjoy that.  Taking the head off a man who is trying to fight you with his bare hands and crazy dancing with an axe was just too wonderful.

Sigh.  Sheryl had stared at the back of Bobby Eriksson’s head during second period math every day for the whole semester.  Basically forever.  Throughout the seemingly unending trials of sophomore year—geometry, driver’s ed, fighting with her parents over curfew, the looming SATs—the back of his head had been her one shining point of light in the darkness.  His golden locks were the north star as she ventured through the wild, wooly lands of high school beset on all sides by rogues and bandits and beasts of the wood.  Bobby was the perfect boy for her too, she just knew it.  He was kind and handsome and very fit, but he was also sensitive and loved drama and dancing.  He dressed impeccably and never hung out with all those stupid football meatheads at lunch.  And he was such a lady’s man!  Always surrounded by girls after school, singing and discussing fashion.  Cultured, genteel, sensitive, charming, magnificent, Bobby’s name filled her dreams and the inside of her trapper keeper.

“So…uh, what is Morris dancing again?” Layla asked the man sitting in front of her second hand, obsolete, VHS camcorder.  

“It’s a traditional English dance.  My group does it at Renaissance Faires across the country and sometimes as far as Canada.”

“Yeah…cool.  Could you say that again, like, ‘Morris dancing is…’  We’ll edit this video later to get my questions out, so if you could answer my questions by restating them, that would be super helpful, ok?”

“Oh yeah, of course.  That’s good.  It’s like a documentary or something, right?”

“Yeah, sure, something like that,” she said and waited for the pony-tailed man to start again, but he just sat there looking at her like an expectant puppy—well-meaning and confused, but obviously too stupid to survive without help.  “So, what is Morris dancing?” she asked, this time with what she hoped was not too much of an edge in her voice.

“Oh jeez, right, sorry,” he said and cleared his throat, “Morris dancing is a traditional form of English dance.  My troupe dances a border-style morris.  We’ve travelled all over the United States and Canada, performing mostly at Renaissance Faires, but we occasionally will perform at schools or various other heritage festivals.  The real dream of ours is to get over to England to perform with some of the troupes over there.  It would be a real honor since none of us are natives.”

“This instant coffee tastes like total fucking shit.  I’m serious,” I told my mom.  “Really.  Why do you buy this crap?”

“It’s cheaper, honey.”

“But, like, coffee is one of those things that it’s, like, good to spend money on.”

“Times are tough, sweetheart.  Everybody’s made sacrifices.”  That was always the line she used to justify her terrible taste and inability to stock the house with a decent cup of coffee, but I knew she was full of shit.  A decent pound at the grocery store—and I’m not even talking about like gourmet coffee or whatever—is what, like 2 dollars more expensive than this instant abortion she forces on me every time I come home?  Fucking A, mom, what the hell.  It’s like, I travel so fucking far from college to come home and see her over Christmas when I could be in Cancun with my boyfriend and this is the welcome I get?  Unfuckingbelievable.  Is she just trying to push me away?  Am I invisible?  Do my needs not count?  

Oh dark Mistress!  Destroyer of men!  Drinker of still living blood! they called to her.  We beseech thee to vanquish our enemies with your sword!  Reave their skulls!  Crush their bones!  Dance in their viscera!  That last one she liked quite a bit.  But she needed time to decide if she would hear their pleas.  Would she be a virtuous benefactor and avail them of their problems, bringing peace and tranquility to their miserable peasant lives?  Or would she turn her whip on them and grind them beneath her blood-stained boot?  Shall she save them or shall she be the instrument of their demise?  Choices choices!  She turned to Puce, her unfortunately named Elven companion, and then thought better of asking him for advice.  Elves were always so dreary.  For once, she’d like to meet an Elf who wasn’t all, “The forest is dying” this, “Nature is screaming” that.  How about a flagon of mead once in a while, guys?  Like, relax, man.  The trees are going to be there.  Lighten up.  She looked past Puce to Skinflint, the rogue who came and went pretty much whenever he wanted.  He was picking something from his teeth with a dagger which just grossed her out to no end.  Where else had that dagger been?  She had no problem wading knee deep through the blood of her enemies, but, jeez, keep that filthy thing out of your mouth.  Even she had limits.  She turned to the other side to ask Grisham, the not-all-together mage.  He made eye contact with her, and then tore his eyes away.