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Brotherhood of the Hand: Chapter 3

July 6, 2010 / posted in Brotherhood of the Hand / No Comments
Brotherhood of the Hand: Chapter 3

Brotherhood of the Hand: Chapter 3

Chapter 3

To tell you the truth, that’s how I spent most nights, especially since my last job was 3rd shift.  The nice thing about the Kettle, the one across from A&M, was that the students spent a lot of time sitting there studying all damn night.  I fit the age bracket and was usually there with stuff from the library and a notebook, so I blended in.  I used to tell the waitresses that we didn’t so much tip as pay rent.

I was there almost every night.

Needless to say, I was not particularly thrilled when Carl showed up at my place at 9 in the morning a couple of days later.  The sadistic fucker dragged me out of bed and made me go for a bike ride down to Bee Creek.

“Fuck. I’m out of shape,” I said, sitting on a picnic table, Camel Wide hanging from my mouth.

“I wonder why?”

I blew smoke at him.  “Dude, I’m one of the lucky people in life who knows how they are gonna die.”

Carl just grunted, so I continued on, undeterred. »Read More

Brotherhood of the Hand: Chapters 1 & 2

July 1, 2010 / posted in Brotherhood of the Hand / No Comments
Brotherhood of the Hand - Chapter 1 & 2

Brotherhood of the Hand - Chapter 1 & 2

Chapter 1

When it comes to story telling, there is this philosophy wherein you need to get to the action first thing. Problem is, sometimes there just isn’t a good place to start, so the beginning can be way out of context.

So when I sat down to tell the my story and the story of the Brotherhood, I wasn’t sure where to start. Do I start with the heist? The rescue? My family? My job as a hired thug?

Or maybe I should start at the lowest point, that point where I actually broke, where my soul died.

The problem is, there is so much more before that, so much more that tells the why, not just the who, what, and when.

See, to truly break a person you need time. You can’t just do it over an hour, or a day simply because of the fact that the human animal has millions of years of evolution and instinct to stop it. »Read More

110 Wonderful Years

May 17, 2010 / posted in Fiction / 1 Comment

Via Wikipedia

May 17th 2010 marks the 110th anniversary of the publishing L. Frank Baum’s classic The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Yes, this epic story, commonly associated with the great depression, was published in 1900.

The intrepid tale of Dorothy’s journey through Oz has been told many time in different media. The most popular being MGM’s 1939 movie version The Wizard of Oz.  There has also been a resurgence of popularity with Gregory Maguire’s novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West and it’s Broadway adaptation, Wicked. None of these would have been possible without the original story.

In the introduction of the book, Baum says:

Folklore, legends, myths and fairy tales have followed childhood through the ages, for every healthy youngster has a wholesome and instinctive love for stories fantastic, marvelous and manifestly unreal. The winged fairies of Grimm and Andersen have brought more happiness to childish hearts than all other human creations.

Yet the old time fairy tale, having served for generations, may now be classed as “historical” in the children’s library; for the time has come for a series of newer “wonder tales” in which the stereotyped genie, dwarf and fairy are eliminated, together with all the horrible and blood-curdling incidents devised by their authors to point a fearsome moral to each tale. Modern education includes morality; therefore the modern child seeks only entertainment in its wonder tales and gladly dispenses with all disagreeable incident.

Having this thought in mind, the story of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” was written solely to please children of today. It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heartaches and nightmares are left out.1 »Read More

  1. Public domain via Project Gutenberg [↩]

Original Fiction: A Night At The Sign Of The Green Skull By P.A. “Pat” Humphreys

April 16, 2010 / posted in Fiction / No Comments

There is a lot of story behind this story, and I actually wanted to get another re-write in for some setting stuff before letting it into the wild.  However, with other projects, real life, and the lack of submissions (just send them to slushpile@badkarmaink.com), I’m sorta forced into premature release, which I hear is a problem for men in my age bracket.  Anyways, this is what you are getting for Weekend Fiction.

Now sit back, have a swig of mead, and try not to bite off more than you can chew.

»Read More

Podcasts we Love: Varient Frequencies

April 16, 2010 / posted in Fiction, Podcasts / No Comments

Award winning fiction podcast Variant Frequencies has announced that they will be recording their final episode at this year’s Balticon.

About 3 years ago, I picked up a refurbished mp3 player to listen to during work and my commute. Believe it or not, I got tired of listening to my tunes and started loading up podcasts. I think VF was the third one I subscribed to and I’ve been listening ever since.  The thing that appealed to me was the production quality. Good music and voice work go a long, long way and always complimented the story.

Variant Frequencies is a podcast we love and it will be missed.

Flash Fiction: A God in Mendota Park by Pat Humphreys

April 12, 2010 / posted in Fiction / No Comments

I saw Thor today, sitting in the park by the lake looking out over the water. He was wearing sunglasses, graying blond hair pulled back tight into a pony tail.

He looked forlorn, gazing out over the lake, as if remembering his younger days. You could still see the God of Thunder in him. His shoulders were still broad and you could see the muscles still under the wrinkled skin of his arms.

Is that what it’s like in the twilight of your years? Sitting alone, pining away for the good old days? I could see that he had resigned himself to his lot, though I suspect it took him longer than most of his fellow deities.

Yet even then, he still had the dignity of a God. He sat upright, back straight, as he gazed out from his rocky pearch, beard blowing in the breeze. Like an old biker that never hides his gang tats, confident that he could still take any man in the room but perfectly happy to let his aura be the only warning that this being was not one with whom to fuck with.

Thor shook his head, as if say “Well, that’s enough of this shit,” and stood, hitching his jeans up over his gut. I look away in difference to this god while he adjusted himself, for every being needs dignity, but as I returned my gaze he had disappeared, a faint peal of thunder in the distance the only remeberance that there had ever been a god in Mendota Park at all.

Original Fiction: Mother to Horde Beasts by Pat Humphreys

February 26, 2010 / posted in Fiction / No Comments

I’m not sure where in my podcast history I discovered This American Life, but I almost immediately fell in love with it. Not only was the style of storytelling so entertaining, but the stories are, with few exceptions, very human stories about ordinary people and their lives.  No matter the subject, no matter the theme, Ira Glass and crew manage to elevate storytelling to such an art that they can take story suggestions from their own family and make an entertaining show.  That’s some talent right there.

This story is my little homage to them.

So sit back, relax, and read a little human interest piece from another universe.

»Read More

Original Fiction: The Song by P.A. “Pat” Humphreys

February 12, 2010 / posted in Fiction / No Comments
Bull Frog

Image by One Tree Hill Studios via Flickr

Once upon a time, the GF (at the time) and I had a pet frog. She was valiantly rescued from the pool at the apartment complex and was given a home in a small tank in our apartment.

Cosette, which is French for “little pet” (insert rim-shot), subsided on crickets that we’d buy a dozen at a time and just dump in to her tank.

Cosette ate when she was hungry. When she was not, the uneaten crickets would be granted a temporary reprieve.

This is their story.

»Read More

Better than Twilight, Part 5: Bram Stoker’s Dracula

January 31, 2010 / posted in Fiction / 4 Comments
The UK edition of the 2007 Collector's Edition...

Image via WikipediaDoh

DOH! Stupid WordPress. Oh well, you get this a day early.

In the day of reboots, re-imaginings, relaunches, and remakes, sometimes somebody makes something that is closer to the original source material than the other canonized images perverted and derived from it.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula is one of those.

Now, don’t get me wrong, there were several things about this adaptation that sucked (Keanu Reeves anyone?), but, all in all, Francis Ford Coppala did an excellent adaptation of Dracula.

Following the book better than most of the other adaptations, Coppala simultaneously pays homage to the vampire movies that came before while still showing them how it’s done. From Gary Oldman uttering the Bella Lugosi‘s best line, to vampiric shadow powers a la Nosferatu, Coppala showed everyone how it’s done.

The casting could have been better though. I mean, Keanu can’t act his way out of a paper bag and, well, Winona Rider makes a rather bland Mina Harker. Then again, Anthony Hopkins as Van Helsing was perfect, along with, well, EVERYONE else.  Every other character was played perfectly. I could totally believe that Quincy P. Morris (played by Bill Campbell) was a Texan, and Lucy was played to the hilt (and I do love me some redheaded slut). Hell, even Cary Elwes, who can’t play anything other than the Man in Black was surprisingly good.

I could go into more, but I’ve talked about Dracula so often I’m frankly tired of it. Therefore I’ll just skip to the end:

Why is it better than Twilight? Why wouldn’t it be? Pretty faithful to the source material, directed by a living legend, and Dracula is’t a fucking glittering pansy. In fact, he’s such a badass in this that it takes the Texan with a Bowie Knife to kill him. (Side Note: I suspect Edward Cullen could be killed  by a 15 year-old from Oklahoma with a pocket knife.)

Next time the best vampire movie ever that has 2 Cory’s in it.

Weekend Fiction: RIP JD

January 29, 2010 / posted in Fiction / No Comments
The cover of the 1985 Bantam edition.

Image via Wikipedia

The New Yorker has put most to JD Salinger’s short stories that they published online. It’s in their scanned format, but hey, I’m not gonna complain, at least not too much.

And that’s it.

No really, that’s it.

No, I’m not putting up more than that.

Fine, I’ll explain.

JD Salinger has had an effect on 20th century literature and deserves to be read. It’s really that simple. His stories are part of the Commons of Man, part of the collected art of humanity, and is part of the foundation that 21st century literature will be built on.

So, in memorial, JD Salinger is going to be our only suggested reading.

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