Yes, this is a blog

Ten. Eleven... Twelve..... Thirteen. Thirteen of them. In the room next to the fire escape and adjacent to the main hall. Six are at a table emptying stolen purses. Most can't be older than twenty-five. A waste. Knives and pistols are on the table. Eight are visibly armed. Three have shotguns, 12-gauge. A few with sub-machine guns. This may be trickier than I thought. I put the binoculars back on the belt and thumb across each compartment. I take the grapple gun. Compact as it is heavy. Wind's blowing from the east tonight. Random and hard. It's half-past 2:00 AM. A good hour and I couldn't have asked for a quieter building. A destitute part of town. Seven stories of water damage and rat excrement with the men, ahem, boys boarded up on top. But their arsenal tells me they're in with someone loaded. Maybe Cobblepot. Will have to investigate further. I stand and assume the position on the ledge, aim, and fire a line up sixty degrees and strap the piece to my waist. I ...

I ride in my dad's black car to my grandparents house. I am seven or eight years old, too young to know who they really are beyond their namesake. It is a Sunday afternoon. I watch the summer sun rays disappear and reappear between passing trees and houses. A lot of the houses in the neighborhood are unkempt and smaller than the house I live in. Glitter like stars beckon on her stucco ceiling. I call it her house still but it belongs to her husband, the old man hunching over the kitchen table awash in cigarette smoke. He is huge but not strong or able-bodied. As I grow older he remains the same. Obese and stony and unclean. Perpetually confined within that chasm of a home, echoing at times with so much love and grief in equal parts. We are not surprised when he dies. The consensus is that he had it coming with his stubborn negligence and myriad of health troubles, unknown and untreated. At the funeral the preacher speaks on the mercy of God. My father weeps. I don't fully ...

A dozen or so tents were sprawled down in a valley. A single cook fire lay among them with men assorted around it eating bowl-fulls of stew and giving some to their horses. There was a horse for every man and they looked underfed and drawn under saddles adorned with diverse cutlery. The bronze tassels in their manes were frayed and loosened, jutting from them uneven quills of hair. And all of them, man and animal, wore some manner of red cloth on them, be it a scarf around their neck or a sash tied around their waist or foreleg. There were no women or children. "Can they hear us?" The boy asked. "Not if we're quiet." Cale said. They spied on their stomachs on a high hillside overlooking the camp. Far enough for them to feel a modicum of calm even in appropriate wariness and suspicion. "Who are they?" "I'm not too sure. Nomads probably."  "Maybe they could help us." "No. Not them." "How can you...

He wears a baseball cap with a Redsox insignia on it though he doesn't like baseball and has no special affinity for Boston. He keeps it tucked in his back pocket in class because most of the teachers don't let him wear it. A few do. He spends most of his time in school sitting in the back corner writing profanities on the desks and cracking abhorrent jokes with his friends. Those closest to him know that he lives only with his father and that his mother either died or abandoned him years prior. But he doesn't talk about that, nor does he talk about his old man who works as an auto-mechanic and always smells like motor oil and comes home every night to drink a six pack and fall asleep on his recliner. Mostly he talks about how much he hates school and its rigidity and the illicit substances he procures. His favorite topic, however, are the girls he sees every day. Each and every one of them do not escape his judgment, silent or otherwise, and to the ones he deems wor...

They stopped by a dwindling stream to get their bearings. Ahead of them was the way out of the canyon. The boy waited around for his companion to lead the way. He looked back to see the opening they came out of but saw only the uniform, stalwart rock. Disturbed, he went to inspect it. It was smoothed over and bald without any evidence of a breach, let alone a home to a sentient artifact within. Cale got up and started upon the exit, not giving a glance or a word of notification. The boy ran his fingers along the grooves in the stone and said nothing as he left it inexplicable and followed Cale uphill. Rocks encumbered the harsh path they drudged. At times it inclined nearly vertically with stone shelves like discordant steps leading out from the canyon walls. Cale made the climb with grace but the boy struggled behind him. He never turned to help even as the child fell to reclaim his breath and dampen the pain in his legs, keeping on until eventually disappearing onto the ch...

With his hand upraised and his arm cascading down the hills he led the multitude swaddled in majesty with the fleeting orange blush rising from the other end of time behind him to the blank fields where anguish lived and there he brought the victory that he carried with and inside him. ***** He arose to the glare of the morning light and the sound of birds. Doves twitched and bounced and crowded above him. With his blanket still wrapped around him he wandered out of the broken sanctuary, passed the charred remnants of the bonfire, and toward the familiar voice of his new friend. Cale stood with his back against him, addressing a curious assembly. He looked a bit taller than the rest of them, who all brought their gaze on the boy as he came closer. Some appeared as children with rounded faces and a brightness in their look while others as old men, bearded and jacketed in tweed. The boy tried waving at them but they would not respond. "Up so early?", Cale said as he turned...

Author's note: This crap gets dark. So jus-um... just watch out for that. He put his hand in the bathroom sink and let the water heat and redden it. Water scalding as his blood. Their faces and words ran around track fields in his head. His hand begun to shake. Without warning the mirror filled with a depraved alien visage. Its fists knotted and shaking. Temples pulsating in lunatic aggression. Hate in its core like a beating lump of obsidian. Suddenly, the memories faded and the creature disappeared. His muscles slacked and he breathed in deeply and cooled the water to splash his face and push the anger away. He spared a moment to dry himself before stepping out of the fluorescent refuge and into the pitch blackness. With outstretched hands and shuffling feet he made his way blind to his bed and collapsed on it. He was tired. It was late and already the weighted sunshine of tomorrow had begun to press on him. He wanted peace there in the quiet, but coveted rest...