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Brotherhood of the Hand: Chapter 4

July 8, 2010 / posted in Brotherhood of the Hand / No Comments
Brotherhood of the Hand: Chapter 4

Brotherhood of the Hand: Chapter 4

In which many cigarettes are smoked at the Kettle, CT is an ass, and we are introduced to the love interest.

4

“You guys need a life.”

Evans showed up earlier than I figured.  Actually he was there when I got to the Kettle.  Appearantly there is only so much he can take of his mom and sister.

And Carl…

I could have fucking killed Carl.  Instead of just a casual talk to get to know each other, he jumps straight in to telling Evans about his plan.  So I decided to take it out on everyone.

“Look, we need to figure out what we need for this thing, you half spic bastard.”

“Is he always this rude?”  That was Lisette.  She was about 5’6, with light brown hair and eyes with a pale, slightly olive complexion.  Hell, she looked like she could have been Mexican, or Italian, or Jewish, or any number of things.

The only thing that made her seem really Mexican was the fact that she had a bit of an accent.  Even then, that was a little off.  It was less her pronunciation than her lack of of contractions that gave her the air of the foreign.  It was like she was striving for grammatical perfection.

“Yeah, usually,” said Carl.

“Bite me you Mic fuck,” I turned to Lisette. “Sweetheart, I try to offend every race, sect, creed, color, religion and sexual preference.  That way, nobody can say I’m a racist or sexist or whatever.  I’m and equal opportunity offender.”

“Actually that makes you and asshole.”
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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 [↩]

Free Comic Book Day This Saturday

April 29, 2010 / posted in Comics and Graphic Novels / No Comments
Free Comic Book Day
Image by michaelkpate via Flickr

Just in case you needed one more reason to have fun on May 1st, this Saturday is also Free Comic Book Day. Started in 2002 as a way to bring more folks into Independent Comic Shops, Free Comic Book Day is a great excuse to get out, meet some folks, check out some titles, and have some fun.

Oh, and just because it’s Free Comic Book Day doesn’t mean you shouldn’t buy anything. Independent Comic Shops are a treasure, the modern long house of the comic book reading tribe, so please support your local one.

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.

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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.

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Original Poetry: Surrender Awaits by C.A. Helton

February 25, 2010 / posted in Poetry / No Comments

Surrender Awaits

by C.A. Helton

When you kiss the rain

It melts the dewdrops in my eyes

On a night when the moonlight burns

A cracked and hardened soul

In a race through a maze of memories

Against unforgiving time

Surrender awaits…

Waiting for answers

To unending questions

Muted by decisions

That have already been made

Regret is unkind

Chaos is on a collision course with destiny

Surrender awaits…

Crippled by conformity

Cushioned by the cool comfort of ignorance

Blinded by the emptiness

That hides in the shadows of the heart

Unswayed by the call for nature’s wrath

At last at peace

I cease my quest for truth

Surrender awaits…

January 2009

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