Yes, this is a blog

Shuffling, one by one. Men of disease and conviction and histories. First the clean ones, without the kindled ember of lunacy behind their eyes, that thirst for decay and relief. They travel their way back from the wilderness but aren't yet there. The line and walls are a way station, narrow as they are. Some have remained there, making a home that's not meant to be and aborting half-willed escapes and running through the laps one after the other; tripping, falling, and starting over again. But theirs are the footsteps of God. The chairs come next and the crutches, given special designation and a forefront to the feast of modesty. They say nothing other than barely audible monosyllables like primitive grunting. They're missing feet and they live what pity is felt when they're seen. Before long the barricades are opened and the brunt file in and await their meals. They're handed a tray and sustenance assembled through machinery that's scattered but swift and accu...

By boundless piles of clutter and trash there, scrounging about neighboring rats, was a man. His name was Chester but he, understandably, went by Chet. It was stitched in yellow cursive on his jumpsuit, spangled against gray darkened from well-worn grime and innumerable oil stains. Oil seemed to cover most of him, embedded permanent even into the pores of his skin. His rotund frame plunged deep into the hill, with only his loosening boots jutting out. When he emerged he had in his gloved mitts a muffler just the fit for a pickup truck waiting for him in his abode and he stashed it with other disparate gems in an accompanying motorbike, itself fashioned from the very chaff surrounding it. As he began saddling his vehicle he noticed a near-imperceptible green incandescence in the packed base of a facing heap. He'd have given no inordinate thought had it not flickered twice in quick succession, a scant beckoning of some cryptic value lurking within reach. He started the vehicle and ...

Preceded by legend and hearsay. Given no name but the ancient title spoken in languages unspeakable to man. It stalks untamed lands. Appealing to its nature. Rarely seen but often heard. Those who see dread it and understandably so, for it appears unlike them and unlike in every way. Its form is as a man but exaggerated, magnified as if to mock and envy it in unison. Silver hair and grayed, unwrinkled skin. Unclothed because it belongs not to those fallen things. It stands above; seven, eight feet high, and only walks in grace in accordance with commandments unfathomable to all others. The eyes. The lidless, unblinking gaze that has seen the vastness of existence. The greatest evil and the greatest good, each in their awe and horror. It has looked upon the face of the infinite. It has touched it and it has lived. It lives even now. Watching, waiting. To it millennia is like breath dissolving in the winter air. It has seen man rise and die and rise again. It has offered mercy to him a...

Gavin drank from his canteen and ate pinches of bread as Cale crouched in a bush and fished for berries. The ones he knew to be edible were grouped in a wide leaf upheld on his palm and handed to the boy. They were a dark purple and almost bitterly sour but they'd be ample and rare sustenance for the labyrinth they found themselves in. "Eat some of these." he said. "Something different than wet bread at least." "What about you?" the boy asked. "I'll be fine. There should be food where we're going." "Should be?" "Will be." "Good." He looked to the rear boundary and the grasslands therein. "We go until the trees are like towers. Then they will show themselves to us." " They will?" "... They should." There were eleven berries in total and the boy forced four of them down while puckering his face. Cale took a stem from the plant and with it tied those remaini...

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...