Christopher Helton

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Brotherhood of the Hand: Chapter 16

November 23, 2010 / Pat Humphreys posted in Brotherhood of the Hand / No Comments

After I got up off the floor, I asked Kat to go get us some beer and I went back to work with guys, taking the back seat so that I didn’t have to hear anyone else bitch about it. We were more or less done when Carl came back with Lisette in tow.

As much as I didn’t want to, I felt the need to apologize. I had every right not to though. After all, I seem to have been doing all the hard fucking work with this job, while Carl got to stand around and bitch and try boss us around.

And we still didn’t know about Lisette. All of my fucking intel about her could be written with a thick magic marker on the back of a fucking playing card (I’ll leave it up to you which card I was thinking of).
»Read More

Brotherhood of the Hand: Chapter 15

November 10, 2010 / Pat Humphreys posted in Brotherhood of the Hand / No Comments

That night found Kat and I driving around in her Dad’s old pickup, wandering about looking for the perfect car. Kat seemed more excited about it than I was. That anarchistic streak of hers runs fucking deep.

Anyways, we cruised around town, looking for likely candidates, of which there were plenty. The problem was finding one where we felt the surroundings where safe enough to get away with it.

We eventually settled on one on a street near my place. It was a cul-de-sac, so there wasn’t any through traffic and there wasn’t much in the name of street lights. Perfect conditions if you ask me.

The car was a 78 or 79 Malibu. While scoping it out, I “lost” my pack of smokes out the window and “had to go back for them”. Thankfully they actually bounced under the front of the car, so when I retrieved them I could check out the engine.

“How’s it look?” Kat asked when I got back in the truck.

“Pretty good. It’s got a 350 in it, a little greasy around the oil pan but not too bad. It looks like it’s in decent shape.”

“What about an alarm?”

“I didn’t see one of those blinking lights. Sides, who’d put an alarm on that?”

“Good point. When do you want to hit it?”

“Round two or three. There shouldn’t be a lot of folks up at that point.”

“Well, it’s eleven now.” She switched to southern belle. “Whatever shall we do till then?”

“My place is about three blocks from here.”

She looked dubious.

“I have air conditioning.”

“I knew I kept you around for a reason.”
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Brotherhood of the Hand: Chapters 13 & 14

August 12, 2010 / uhwhat posted in Brotherhood of the Hand / No Comments

So, yeah, I kinda, sorta neglected to drop a chapter this Tuesday, but here’s 2 chapters to make up for it. Who love you, baby?

Evans and I have a different ideas about food. Not that I don’t like Taco Cabana, but it’s not really a place that I’m comfortable hanging out in. Too many high-schoolers.

In this case it worked for us. For one, neither Gus nor Carl were going to make a scene or get in a fight over acquiring unregistered firearms for use in armed robberies whilst in public.

And second, Kat wasn’t likely to find me here. I really, really didn’t want to deal with her on top of dealing with children who were supposed to be my co-conspirators. Hell, I didn’t even want to deal with any of the shit that was going on.

All I wanted to do was go home and drink myself into oblivion. But no, I had to help out with a fucking armed robbery to keep my best friend from getting himself shot. And what did I get as thanks? Him and another one of my best friends getting in each others faces.

And to make everything worse, something had changed in Carl. Whatever had gotten into his head, whatever was planted by that little fucking thief girlfriend of his, had turned him into an angry asshole that thinks that we’re a bunch of fuck-ups.

What’s a guy to do in that situation? Over the years, through all of the friends that I’ve had and lost, all of the similar situations that have popped up, and in spite of everything that I’ve learned about human psychology, I still don’t have a good answer.

So I did the best I could. »Read More

Brotherhood of the Hand: Chapters 10, 11, & 12

August 5, 2010 / uhwhat posted in Brotherhood of the Hand / No Comments

Oh shit! Didn’t I say I was going to post 4 chapters this week? Well, here are 10-12, enjoy

The next day found us back at Casa del Gustavo, partially to help clean up, but mostly to get back to planning. Naturally my nocturnal ass was the last to arrive. Fortunately for everyone I was in a good mood for once.

Most of the actual pickup was done by the time I got there, but I’m more of the mule type anyways. Heavy lifting is more my game, and there was plenty to do: two kegs, one still half full, bags of trash to haul away, furniture to move, all kinds of stuff.

One of the nice things about marijuana is that you don’t get a hangover, and I didn’t drink enough beer to actually get more than a buzz, so I was in better shape than most of the gang.

You’d think that Carl, being Irish, was genetically prepared for drinking, but no, the man gets hangovers worse than most. Lisette was by far the worst off. I’ll take the blame for that one. Perhaps it wasn’t nice to make her keep yup with me whilst drinking something about 5 times stronger, but hey, what’s done is done.

Gus, having just got out of the Army was in great shape and had a lot of experience with binge drinking, so between cleanup and planning, we decided to help those less fortunate than us.

Evans, naturally, was perfectly fine and had no problem reminding everyone of that fact.

And Kat, well, I left Kat at the garage. I did, however leave a note telling her that I would be at Gus’s and to turn on the oven. Being the observant guy that I am, I had made up those nachos that we didn’t get to the night before and put them in the oven all prepped and ready to go as soon as she woke up.

Yeah, not the normal CT thing to do, but, hey, I think love suits me. »Read More

Original Poetry: Surrender Awaits by C.A. Helton

February 25, 2010 / uhwhat 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

State of the kARmA

January 27, 2010 / uhwhat posted in News / No Comments

Folks, we’re making some minor changes to get things flowing better and to prep for some big fun. As such, there are a couple of things we need to communicate.

Ben Kenneally’s Broadcast Domain is moving to Tuesdays
As such, we’ll also move Tuesday’s theme of Movies to Monday, replacing it with Tech Tuesdays
The site will be up and down for some maintenance and changes in the next couple of weeks. Expected down time is minimal, so if you ever see us in maintenance mode, check back in 5 minutes and we should be back up.
Part of these changes are to prepare for the upcoming serialization and electronic publication of The Brotherhood of the Hand by Pat Humphreys and Chris Helton. We’re also putting together a companion anthology set in the same Texas Noir world as Brotherhood.
We are still looking for more contributors, specifically:
1. Short Fiction for Fiction Fridays
2. Artists of all types that would like some exposure. If we like you, we’ll totally do a piece on you, help publicize and publish your work, and just be in your corner.
3. Regular Writers: Got a specialty? Comics, music, film, whatever you want to talk about.
4. Guest Writers: Got something to say? Lacking a forum? Want to push some more eyes to your own work? We’ll happily give you a forum.

And, as always, comments and suggestions are always appreciated.

Original Fiction: One String at a Time by Christopher A. Helton

January 22, 2010 / uhwhat posted in Fiction / No Comments

This week we present another story by Christopher A. Helton entitled “One String at a Time”, a sequel to his other story “No Strings Attached”.

Chris grew up in Bryan, TX and now resides in Houston, coaches high school soccer, and teaches social studies. He attended Texas A&M university and is married with a 4 year old son. He has been writing since the age of 11 and has written 2 feature length screenplays, 1 novel, and numerous short stories.

Now, sit down and welcome back an old “friend”. »Read More

2010: The Year We Make Trouble

January 4, 2010 / uhwhat posted in News / No Comments

Woot! It’s our month-aversery, and I think we’re doing pretty well for ourselves. We have regular readers, a small but growing Twitter and Facebook following, and thirty some-odd posts, so we are averaging on a day. When you consider we normally don’t post on the weekends and had 2 weeks in holidays, I’d say that’s a good job.

This beg’s the question: What’s next?

Well, here is the plan:

Columns

Mondays: Benjamin Kenneally’s Broadcast Domain – a techie’s take on storytelling.

Tuesdays: Pat’s Rants – There is always something pissing him off, and he’s going to tell you why.

Wednesdays: Tony Smith’s Harmonic Vicissitude – Band nerds get revenge with Tony in charge of our music column.

Daily Themes

Mondays: Tech – Good tech, crap tech, useful tech, story tech.

Tuesdays: Film and TV – bkI is taking on Hollywood, baby!!!

Wednesdays: Music – Get your soundtrack on.

Thursday: Wildcard – We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.

Fridays: Fiction – Original fiction and where to find the best free fiction on the net.

Coming Soon…

More Original Fiction – More fiction from our group of irregulars and some folks you haven’t heard from, yet.

More Reviews – Movies, music, books, you name it, we’ll review it.

Serials – Continuing stories, some written specially for bkI, not to mention the fact that we are unleashing Texas Noir on the world with the serialization of The Brotherhood of the Hand by Pat Humphreys and Chris Helton.

2010 is going to be a good year, boy’s and girls. Be sure to stick around.

Doh! Repost: “No Strings Attached” by Christopher A. Helton

December 11, 2009 / uhwhat posted in Fiction / No Comments

So…

Chris has sent me copies of this story so often for so long that I forget which version is which. So, last week when I posted “No Strings Attached” I kinda, sorta, used the wrong version.

Oops.

To make up for it, here is the correct version of the story.

Side note: This affords you the opportunity to compare and contrast the two versions of this story. I expect at least 3 pages on my desk by Monday.

»Read More

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