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Twins in Death: Chapter Four – Part Three

Twins in Death

A Tale of The Weirdo

By Brett N. Lashuay

 

 

Chapter Four: The Red Twin

 

 

October 23^rd, 2002

6:06 p.m.

 

            The Weirdo was looking at the potato chip selection before him and sighing to himself. Once upon a time the potato chip was a single item, and it came with salt on it. Then you could have it cut into ridges, to give better hold as you set your chip into the dip. After a while someone came up with the idea that you didn’t need the dip at all, they would simply put the dip into the chip. This idea really took off and soon many chips had the flavor of sour cream and onions and cheese. Then they began to flavor the chips with whatever flavors they could come up with. In the last ten years or so, the market for potato chips had exploded. A person could get chips with flavors mysteriously called cool ranch, or just hot n’ spicy. There were chips that boasted three different cheese flavors and some that just offered garlic and herbs. There were high-end chips that gave simple flavors like salt and pepper or exotic New York Cheddar flavors. There were very high-end chips that didn’t use the flavored salts and powders of other companies but actually used bits of dried tomatoes and garlic stuck to their thick chips. You could even get chips that claimed to use balsamic vinegar and the finest sun dried roma tomatoes.

 

            He had been standing for nearly ten minuets, looking at the huge isle of chips, trying to decide which chip was right for him. He hadn’t actually been out of the house since early August, and thus he was facing an overload of input. He had wanted to make a special dish though, he had said, so he had to go shopping. He had to leave the house, venture to Manhattan and enter a grocery store to get the ingredients himself. As Max, Jack and Tommy all said they needed things too, he was in good company.

 

            It hadn’t been so much that each of them needed something as they wanted to watch him. His leaving the house had become such a rare event that they felt a need to keep an eye on him. It was a bit like Archie Goodwin keeping an eye on Nero Wolfe. Half in the disbelief of his leaving the house and half to make sure he befell no evil.

 

            The potato chips had started off as a vague idea and had now turned into a sticking point bordering on obsession. He scratched the back of his head as he looked at the rows of chips, trying to decide on a flavor. He finally took a deep breath, and reached out. They were in a yellow bag and had the distinction of being New York Cheddar flavored. He thought about it and snagged a bag from the same company that claimed they were lightly salted. He tossed them into the basket he was carrying, and looked around for the other three.

 

            Max was the first to come into the aisle, carrying a box of raisin cookies and grape jelly. For reasons, which will remain a mystery forever, he liked to spread the jelly on the cookies. This is a disgusting habit and is in no way endorsed by the narrator, the chronicler, the editors or publishers of this tome. It’s inclusion in this particular history is only to show what long and careful research went into this tome, and that this is indeed a complete and true history of the events. The narrator has been told that small details like this are what really count when you’re making a complete history without falsehood or omission.

 

            Tommy came down the isle with a cart, which he had filled with a few loafs of bread and a box of berries. The Weirdo tossed the two bags of potato chips into the basket and set it down into the cart. Tommy looked and nodded approvingly. He then looked at Max who came with his two items.

 

            “Oh isn’t that cute, he’s got cookies.” Tommy smiled. “They never really grow up do they?”

 

            “Precious.” The Weirdo muttered.

 

            “Oh do shut up, the both of you.” Max said as he deposited his load into the cart.

 

            “You’re going to desecrate those cookies with the jam again aren’t you?” Tommy asked.

 

            “I happen to like it.” Max said.

 

            “I suppose if you like it.” The Weirdo said.

 

            “Thank you.” Max said.

 

            They turned to see Jack walking down the aisle, carrying several small boxes of cookies and two boxes of fruit snacks that had been pressed into the shapes of popular cartoon characters. He set them down into the cart and got not even a second glance from the other two.

 

            “Okay, so why does Jack get off?”

 

            “Hasn’t The Weirdo explained that to you?” Tommy asked. “Or at least sent you to a pornography shop or something?”

 

            Max looked at him, for a very long time, without actually saying anything.

 

            “Why does he get to buy this stuff and you don’t say anything?” he asked finally

 

            “Jack has children.” The Weirdo said, tilting his head towards Jack.

 

            “Jack can kick my ass.” Tommy said.

 

            “When you're old enough, you'll understand.” Jack said.

 

            Max lifted his hands and looked at the ceiling. He raised his hands and shook his head in a stance of submission. He was more or less taking his posture from that of Job in a painting he had seen earlier that week in a museum The Weirdo had taken him to. Max had been fascinated by the look of sad tired implorement that the artist had rendered on the old man's face. He had marveled at how much work had gone into the expression of pain and agony while so little had been done to the background. While The Weirdo had given it only a cursory glance and moved on to the mediaeval paintings.

 

            “Why me?”

 

            “Cause.” The Weirdo said. “If not you, then who else?”

 

            “Jack can kick my ass.” Tommy said.

 

            “Shut up.” Max suggested.

 

 

October 23^rd, 2002

6:09 p.m.

 

            It was beginning to grow dark out, and depending on what part of the street you were on, it might already be dark. On streets running north and south, like this one, it was already dark and had been for some time. You could still see the faint slashes of light from the streets that ran east and west, but many of them has already begun to grow dark as well.

 

            Our villain, our main villain for this story that is, was skipping down the street merrily singing a thirteenth-century tune about the horrors of the pox. It wasn’t really a jaunty number, but he had found that the words would scan to the tune of Zip a Dee do dah, and was singing the lyrics to that tune. He skipped merrily towards his destination, singing his song, and drawing a bit of attention.

 

            Now there is nothing particularly wrong about a man skipping. One might even allow a man to skip while wearing red leather pants and a sequined shirt, though it would garner some attention. However, to skip, while wearing red leather pants and a sequined shirt and singing a song whose lyrics involve the removal of body parts and cutting open the sores… Let’s just say it’s generally frowned upon, particularly as close to Park Avenue as he was.

 

            He was in one of the better neighborhoods, one where the police cruised by on a more than regular basis. He was undaunted though, and looked at the notebook he kept. His little minions, little demons he called them, had compiled information about the people in this house. They had watched, they had spied, and they had done what he had asked of them.

 

            He looked at the address in his notebook and smiled as he matched it to the one in his book. He closed the book and slipped it back into the right rear pocket, where his wallet would go if he had one, and marched up the stairs. His foot landed heavily on the door and it gave under the tremendous strength in that limb.  He raised his voice in song as burst in on them. They looked over towards the commotion from the dinner table as he moved into the apartment.

 

 

October 23^rd, 2002

6:10 p.m.

 

            The Weirdo was leaning up against a wall, watching Tommy and Max standing in the grocery line. He didn’t like grocery lines, hated being trapped in that space, so he stood aside. It was while waiting that his eye happened to fall upon trouble. It wasn’t like he went out of the house looking for trouble, really he would have liked to avoid it. Trouble however follows some people like crows followed the carts that carried the dead in other days.

 

            Tommy didn’t notice The Weirdo as the young woman who earned a criminally low wage passed items over the super market scanner. Tammy is what her name badge read. Her hair had been dyed and unnatural shade of purple, there was a small ring with a green plastic ball though her left eyebrow but at least she didn’t slouch. She moved with the efficiency of someone trying to do their job under tough circumstances. She was bored, but looked up and managed a smile for Tommy. She wanted more out of life than this, much more. For the time being though, until she was done with high school this was it. She had heard about people who were already working careers at her age, but no one ever told her how to get to it. They only ever offered the advice from shoe commercials to just do it.

 

            There were aspirations in her life, beyond the confines of this small neighborhood in this massive metropolis. She wanted more than this corner grocery could offer her, but she couldn’t tell these men that. They might understand, but what could they do to help? Of course had she only known what was about to happen she might have thought differently. She would soon enough be famous, and be able to shake dust away. She noticed the old man as he nodded to her and began to walk out of the store, and then those punks again.

 

            Mr. Soun was nearly eighty, and still worked nine hours a day in the grocery that he and his wife had started so very long ago. He was bent from the sixty years of work he had put in to making his corner grocery one of the finest in Manhattan. He had worked and strived and managed to now own a small chain consisting of three stores. His eyesight was bad or he would have noticed the four young men who had tried to cause trouble earlier. Bruno had been here earlier, but he’d gone home at four, and they had come back.

 

            The Weirdo saw them, and growled low and soft in recognition. It was a throaty purr that came with an annoyed face. The only part of him that moved was his right arm, which propelled him to a standing position without looking like any part of him had moved. He straightened and began to move towards the front door of the store. A responsible person might have asked someone to also call the police, but he didn’t want some cop interrupting him.

 

 

 

 

© 2012 Autumn Knight Productions

Cat

Portraits of Syd

While taking these pics, some guy asked if I'd take a pic of him and his GF with his cell phone. I kind of looked at my camera, then his phone and said I would. What I wanted to do, was pull out a card and tell him I would take a photo 10 times better than his shitty little phone could produce. I didn't though, I just took his pic and let him go.

Anyway, these are the pictures I got of her.

More pics

Twins in Death: Chapter Four – Part Two

Twins in Death

A Tale of The Weirdo

By Brett N. Lashuay

 

 

Chapter Four: The Red Twin

 

 

October 23^rd, 2002

6:03 p.m.

 

            The cockroach is truly one of nature's greatest triumphs, a great thing without a doubt. It is a rather small creature to be such a massive success story, the largest of its kind maxes out at about five inches. They have been on this earth since before the time of the dinosaurs, scientists say that they have adapted to every change this world has thrown at them. They have managed to live, greatly unchanged, for millions upon millions of years. Many agree that the cockroach will be one of the few species left unaffected by the event of a nuclear holocaust. It has survived much, and can survive more.

 

            What is not fully understood though is the hierarchy of cockroach society. The regimented lives of cockroaches are often not considered when spraying them with Raid or some other brand of insect killer. The city of New York has a massive multilingual culture of cockroaches, unknown to human kind. It will never be known of course… but that tale would get us ahead of ourselves. We wish to tell this story in some kind of order, and that would defiantly get us ahead of ourselves. Besides the event, which keeps mankind from ever discovering New York’s cockroach, society doesn’t happen for sometime now. It would be wrong of us to get too far ahead and thus I must draw us back to the tale at hand.

 

            This particular black shiny cockroach was moving across the dirt-laden floor looking for a morsel to eat. It was a low ranking member of its hive, which they actually call a clan from the word for family. Humans use the word hive, they called themselves a clan, and they have a lot of words for themselves that we humans don’t use. If you ever meet and have time to talk to a cockroach you might ask it about the hierarchy, the matriarchy, the ritual fighting. You may learn many interesting and informative things and if you grow to be a friend of theirs, you could get them to spy for you, and you could grow to be a powerful lord of the word since no one ever notices the cockroaches. You could build quite an army of these little soldiers and cause the world to fall at your feet. As it is, this was all the information I could get from the last one before I got disgusted and squashed it, because they’re filthy little beasts.

 

            This little cockroach was on the search for food, which was not a hard thing for the clan to find these days. The clan had grown accustomed to the easy living that had come about from this particular human's lifestyle. The human left food on the floor, it threw clothes and papers everywhere. It was messy and grimy and never used any sort of chemical murder devices attempting to rid itself of the clan. Not that it would have been a useful effort, at any rate; cockroaches easily adapt to such simple things as Raid. As it has already been mentioned, the cockroach are the ultimate adaptors, adapting to just about anything. They will mutate and grow stronger and the poison that kills one generation will just annoy the next. This clan didn’t have to worry about mass death by Raid or any other thing. They had been blessed with an easy life. Give this by a lazy human who simply tossed bits of food on the ground and never cleaned his surroundings. The clan had grown from this place, and had time to think and become greater.  They had taken the time to adapt to their surroundings by developing economics, warfare, religion and other detriments to their race.

 

            They believed in the human, and he was a god to them. He was a provider and a destroyer on occasion. Death came easily though, never a tiresome series of boils or slow poisoning. It was just the occasional clan member who would be crushed under the sole of the shoe or perhaps a newspaper. Their god was one of little mercy but much bounty, and thus they had built shrines to him in their cities on the other side of the wall, and worshiped his image. The priests pretended that their dreams and visions were inspired by him and killed other members of the Clan if they didn’t agree with each and every one of their little quibbles about sex and violence.

 

            This particular small cockroach was name Miguel and he was a seeker for the clan. It was his job to tell them when and where new food items where deposited by the God. Miguel had murdered his brother to get this position and was currently cheating on his spouse. He figured that these things would, in time become like other adaptations. He was thinking about the betterment of roach kind and how killing one’s brother should be a good adaptation. A steel blade zipped suddenly through the air and split the poor beast's thorax in half and sent its head spiraling away from it. The thoughts of adaptation rattled through Miguel’s mind as shock took him. He couldn’t feel his legs any more and wondered what sort of adaptation this was. Would it help him be a better seeker to not feel his legs? Was this an adaptation at all?

 

            “Adapt to that,” the man said.

 

            Other seekers saw this and reported back to the great priests that God had struck down Miguel who everyone knew was a murdering, adultering bastard. The God had struck down Miguel, and only Miguel out of all the seekers in the group. This was proof of to the clan that God punished evildoers, even though all it really proves is that people will give divine intellect to a random bit of meaningless violence.

 

            The roach was nothing to him, just something else to kill. Something to pass the time with, admittedly not a lot of time but there wasn’t a lot of roach either. It was a very simple thing to bring down the blade and cut the bug to bits, but to the clan, it was an act of god.  This particular god was sick, sadistic and random, but that fit his view of all deities. In his eyes they were all random, and mean.  He watched as the remaining legs tried to move around, the wings fluttering back and forth. The antenna on the head spun madly around, trying to find the rest of the body. He watched fascinated, and then brought his heel down and crushed Miguel’s skull, scrambling his brains. He saw himself as a great god, one who killed for no other reason than to prove he was a god. He was a god of cockroaches, yes, but surely even Cthulu had to start somewhere.

 

            Cockroaches today, who knows where tomorrow…

 

            He had a thin build, which spoke of high metabolism and little actual bodywork. He was thin, but soft. His arms had a certain amount of muscle to them, but it was clear no actually work had gone into the physique. There was something in the body though, something that broke the regular laws of physics as we know them. He had a way of walking which noted more strength than the body should be able to hold. There was a sense of speed that was more than muscle would allow, a feeling that there was more here than the physique could hold. It was in the subtle movements, the way he held himself, but it was there.

 

            He stood naked in his apartment, not because he had just washed, but because he liked his own nudity. He looked at the blade, with its small smudge of yellowish blood on it. He walked towards the kitchen and picked up a tissue. He wiped the straight razor carefully, dripping a bit of oil onto the cloth to clean it properly. He looked down the blade and noticed the slightest bending of the blade. It was an off centering that had to be measured in micrometers, but he noticed it. He pulled the leather strap he kept tied to one end of the kitchen counter and turned the bottle of oil until five drops had landed on the leather. He then began to slide the blade across the leather, back and forth. He did this with the slow deliberation that one would have found odd looking at his surroundings. He would simply throw things down when done with them and continue on his way.

 

            He finished the two dozen strokes that his mind demanded he make and looked at the blade. It had gone back into its perfectly honed state. He closed the blade gently and set it down on the counter. He was then able to breath properly again. He felt free of the obsessive need to make sure the blade was kept clean and sharp. He felt his body slip out of the constraint, demanding he perform a task, relaxation filling in. He took in a breath and released it, feeling the shudder deep within.

 

            He looked at his clothes, and thought about the fact that he had to put clothes on to go outside. He didn’t like the idea, but there was nothing for it, he would have to. He picked the red leather pants up and slipped his legs inside them. He buttoned the fly of the pants and looked around at him. The pants weren’t actually made for a man, but he could fit into them. The shirt wasn’t made for a man either. With the red stretch material and red sequins one couldn’t argue that it had been made for a man. Even the most flamboyantly gay man couldn’t really claim that the red sequined spandex shirt had been made for him.

 

            He picked up the socks, which were still in their plastic package and tore the pack open. They were white socks, but no one would ever see them. He slid the socks on, obsessed with the sensation of the fabric as it slid over his skin. He reached without looking and grabbing at the combat boots, which had been painted red. He didn’t know why red, and probably wouldn’t have cared if he did know. He didn’t know why he felt compelled towards the color red or the honed razor. It wasn’t like razors were hard to get a hold of, or even sharp knives for that matter.

 

            He picked up the coat, which was also not made for a man. His shoulders were narrow enough to fit into the woman’s leather over coat. He looked at the red cowhide, which had been tanned and dyed and sold for twice the price it should have been. He looked into the window, at his hair which he had first bleached and then added the bright red color to it as well.          He picked up his dark red sunglasses and slid them over his eyes. The world became a world of red, of splashing blood and red fire. Pain, agony, he would cause all those delicious things.

 

            Some say that viewing things through rose-colored glasses makes them seem better. It’s an expression that means a person is looking at things with perhaps an idealized viewpoint. It would be difficult to say that this boy had an idealist view point, but then the glasses were red, not rose colored.

 

 

 

 

© 2012 Autumn Knight Productions

Don't waste your money on The New Annotated Dracula by Leslie Klinger

Just threw the New Annotated Dracula across the room. As an annotated book, it is utterly and completely worthless. The first two paragraphs of the actual novel result in 7 full pages of annotated text, which is double columns in case you’re wondering. Almost none of it is in any way germane to the book and really feels like the idiot who annotated was just shouting (get your best Caboose voice ready) “I AM ANNOTATING! I WILL ADD LOTS OF NOTES TO SHOW THAT I AM ANNOTATING!” I don’t need the whole wikipedia article on Wallachia reprinted for me. The text dumps are exhausting, and we’re not into page two of the actual novel yet.

Worse yet, I’ve discovered that I already don’t trust anything this guy has to say about anything he’s said in his notes. I don’t know if any of the books he’s quoting exist, and I suspect that some probably don’t. He’s utterly destroyed his credibility with the bullshit fiction he’s woven into his annotation.

The central joke of the annotation, that the whole thing really happened and it’s all true, is so very frustrating and stupid that it really makes the book nearly impossible to read. I don’t need bullshit theories as to why there are inconstancies in the book. A bad writer didn’t write or research very well. Mina didn’t polish Harker’s diary up. Stoker wasn’t influenced by the hand of Dracula himself in a bid to tell the world he was dead so they wouldn’t come looking for him. Van Helsing was inspired by three people, and no amount of pretending he was one of those three will make it so. Quincy Morris wasn’t at the Battle of Shiloh and Steward never rapped on stage with Professor Elemental BECAUSE NONE OF THOSE PEOPLE EXIST BECAUSE THIS IS A WORK OF FUCKING FICTION!

The idiot probably giggled himself silly while doing this, but it’s an impossible read. It’s got to value or weight, just a lot of noise. Even when I see something that might have some bearing on the book, that is suspect because I don’t know if it’s just part of the bullshit or not. I can’t separate the wheat from the chaff, and I don’t feel inclined to try. I know now why the book looked like it hadn’t been read past page 17, which is exactly the page I got to before deciding to quit.

A beach

They have to put up the US flag, or they'll forget what country they're in.

So do we want more pictures? Yeah, of course we do...

Zoooooooo

More photos of things

Twins in Death: Chapter Four - Part One

Twins in Death

A Tale of The Weirdo

By Brett N. Lashuay

 

 

Chapter Four: The Red Twin

 

  

June 22^nd, 2002

4:44 p.m.

 

            While the Death of Omega has obviously been covered in great detail, and has very little do with The Weirdo, it would do us well to at least recap this event. This is in no way a complete record of the events, which are possibly best recounted in Martin K. Lambert’s “Omega: The Death of a God,” but they do show where The Weirdo’s connection comes in.

 

            Armageedun had come out of nowhere, and started to attack. No one ever found out where it came from, or what it wanted. The thing was simply a super-powered plot contrivance, sent for no other reason than to destroy. The Justice Avengers had been the first to fall, and then the Robo-Squad had fallen under its boot, finally it had to contend with Omega. The tall man in the Blue suit with the large golden Greek Letter on his chest had arrived just as the Scarlet Torch completely drained his magic bracelet of power and the beast’s fist smashed his head into an unrecognizable smudge in the concrete.

 

            The Blue Weasel had been the next to go, but then he’d only been armed with a small laser cannon that hadn’t worked before. The monster seemed to grow stronger  from the ray before it tore Blue Weasel’s head off. It then smashed its head through his chest and bit his heart out of his body. As the beast lifted its blood stained maw, Omega’s own blood began to pump faster and he flew into the monster with all his strength.

 

            It had been years since a superhero had been killed. Costumed adventures like Weasel had died, but not a genuine Superhero. Scarlet Torch had been killed, members of The Justice Avengers had been killed, this was not to be borne. It was one thing in his mind to kill a costumed avenger, but to kill a superhero was another thing.

 

            The fight that ensued continued over three states, ending in the place where all battles would seem to end, Central Park in New York City. Both combatants had gained and lost ground during the fight, but Omega seemed determined that Armageedun’s path of destruction would end in the city he loved so. It’s not that it was sensible, but it was good for a narrative.

 

            Omega’s fist struck against Armageedun’s jaw, and something shattered. At first, he thought it was his own mighty arm, but then seeing the beast scream, its mouth hung open he realized what it must have been. He’d managed to hurt the damn thing, finally. Now all he had to do was do it again. He looked at his wrist, the golden crystals imbedded in his arms were almost all broken and turned to dust. He wasn’t going to be able to keep this fight up much longer. He felt his muscles scream as he threw himself towards the beast smashing his shoulder into its midsection.

 

            Something gave, and it wasn’t in the beast’s belly. He knew that his right shoulder was broken, and then the boney spiked knee of the thing rose up and pierced his side. Omega didn’t scream, though he would have liked to. He could tell that his lung had been punctured, and he felt the other lung go as the spikes on the monster’s fists drove in through his back and crushed his lungs. The world started to go black, and he used all the power he had left to grab the monster by the legs and lift. He threw it up and punched it, determined that this fight would go no further.

 

            He tried to stand up, but it wasn’t going well, and that damn thing was charging towards him again. His fist curled back and slung forward with all the strength he had left, but he collapsed before it could connect. The beast drove its fist down towards the hero’s head, determined to crush his skull and eat the goo inside.

 

            It is still, to this very day, unclear as to where The Weirdo had actually come from, but suddenly he was there. Not only was he suddenly there, but he had drawn the nearly mythical black gun and had it cocked and aimed. Amrageedun was about four inches from the barrel when the gun when off, and its head vanished in an explosion the impact of which was recorded as far away as New Brunswick.

 

            The body of Armageedun fell over, dead, and The Weirdo picked up Omega in his arms. As suddenly as the man in the gray trench coat had appeared, he disappeared, taking Omega with him. Two minutes later, Omega’s body appeared in the place where it had fallen. Someone had clearly made a serious but failed attempt to save his life. He had been cleaned up, the tears in his costume had been stiched together as well as could be done.

 

            What was odd, is that The Weirdo denyed any involvement in this, and was backed up by his compatriots. He was, to put it bluntly, drunk at the time. When he came out of his house to see reporters he was stumbling and clearly too far gone to have had any involvement. All they would tell the press at the time was that he was distraught over a personal matter, and since there was more pressing news than that about the media left off for the scent of blood.

 

 

March 27^th, 1935

10:41 p.m.

 

            To say that things were not going well was to make a grand understatement. To say that a full-blown shit storm had been unleashed might come closer to the mark. The simple raid had turned into nearly a full-scale war. They hadn’t been expecting the Vestugi’s and the Marreneli’s to be making a pact against them. They hadn’t been expecting that The Vole and his teenage sexpot sidekick Fox Girl were going to show up and get themselves killed.

 

            What had started as another night of shooting bad guys was turning quickly into a night of everyone getting killed. Tommy had caught a bullet in the leg and James had been shot to pieces trying to save Fox Girl. Machine gun bullets had torn through him and ripped into her.  He fell to the ground, and she landed on top of him.

 

            The Weirdo had then gone completely and totally batshit. He took Tommy’s machine gun and with one in each hand began to spray the entire group. He then announced that he was going to get them all. They got out of the warehouse before the explosives they had planted detonated the entire building.

 

            The fire lanced the sky, smoke and sound shot around them. The Weirdo drove away until they were clear and then slammed on the brakes. He turned in the driver’s chair and looked at his two remaining compadres.

 

            “Get out.” He said.

 

            “What?” Tommy asked.

 

            “Get a cab.” The Weirdo yelled, and then his face grew sorrowful. “James is dead Tommy. This has got to end, and it’s got to end tonight. I’m going to take care of them.”

 

            “You sound like your going to get yourself killed.” Jack admonished.

 

            “No.” The Weirdo said shaking his head. “But I am going to end this, tonight. Get Tommy’s leg looked at, and we’ll meet up in the morning for breakfast as Sardi’s.”

 

            “We better.” Tommy said.

 

            The door closed and the car sped off, and that was the last they saw of him. Tommy and Jack only heard about the events that happened later, as police and reporters came to ask them questions. What happened that night took weeks of rumor and false stories to sort out.

 

            There followed a night of explosions, of people flying out of windows and of gunshots. By morning there were six hundred and forty two people dead. The Weirdo, and the car were both missing, swallowed up by the night. Most had accepted that he got too close to one of the places he had blown up, that some of the dynamite in the back of the car had finally exploded, something like that. That The Weirdo was dead did not seem to be contested in any great way.

           

            Jack and Tommy spent the next month waiting for him to come through the door, but it didn’t happen. The story that eventually made the rounds was that the car had exploded with him in it. The fact that pieces of the car were never found made them wonder about this. It wouldn’t be hard for the few that he left alive to have disposed of the car though, just out of spite. However, there was never a reliable story about the car’s destruction. Each time the story came around several details were different. No one ever found a bit of him or the car, and no one ever found anyone who knew what had become of the remains.

 

            Tommy never believed it, because Tommy had read comic books. In the comic books, which were beginning to spring up around most the costumed heroes, you could never tell about death. A person might fall into the river, but unless you saw their dead body, you knew they’d swam to the shore and would be back in a later issue. The days of Dr. Pinopscotch and The Shade had long since gone. Now there was White Eagle and The Blue Weasel, who almost always left people alive.

 

            Had he known how much later it would be, they wouldn’t have kept the house open as long as they did. It was expensive to keep all the servants around, particularly for a house that wasn’t theirs. Jack stayed around and he and Tommy did what they could for the next few years, but then the German thing began and Jack went to England. It wasn’t until Tommy came back from The War that they closed the house up for good.

 

            The money hadn’t been a problem, but it wasn’t theirs. The Weirdo had made sure that Tommy knew how to get to the money he had, but Tommy didn’t like the idea of using The Weirdo’s money. Even if they could keep living off the interest until the day they died. Ten years after he had vanished, Tommy finally admitted he wasn’t coming back, and closed the house up.

 

            He and Amy then lived the life they had planed to live. He went to work for the FBI and the CIA as a private consultant, moved into private eye work, and retired in nineteen seventy five, at nearly sixty five years of age.  He had made quite a bit of money, and he and Amy moved to a house in the hills, his youth with The Weirdo all but forgotten. Amy died in nineteen eighty, a year before their granddaughter was even born. He had started his family late, and so had his only son.

 

 

July 3^rd, 2002

1:18 p.m.

 

            To say that The Weirdo didn’t attend Omega’s funeral wouldn’t be entirely true. In a sense he was there, in spirit, but in a very real and physical sense he wasn’t there. In fact it would be more accurate to say that while Jack, Max and Tommy attended, The Weirdo slept. They hadn’t had the heart to wake him, as it was a recordable fact that he hadn’t slept in at least two days now. Not being able to sleep and then sleeping for half the day had once again become his new favorite hobby. The rest of the time he had become self-contained to the point of avoidance. He wouldn’t have come to the funeral anyway, he was against the idea of ceremonies.

 

            It must also be pointed out that in fact it wasn’t just the funeral for Omega, but a memorial for all that fell during Armageedun’s short reign of terror. It was just that Omega was the star of the funeral, as he had been in life as well. His presence, even dead, dominated the proceedings. His body was also the most intact of the fallen heroes, which meant that he alone could have an open casket.

 

            In many ways, a good deal of the people who were there would have liked to share his feelings on ceremony. The funeral for Omega wasn’t a celebration of a life, but the reminder of a death. He had no family to console, at least not that anyone knew, and many wondered who would save the day now that the man who had done it so many times had gone. It was a clear reminder that there was no such thing as an invincible hero, that even Omega could die.

 

            It shook people the way nine-eleven had shaken them just a few months before. It seemed now that the end of the world might come soon, that there was no hope. Despair had become the order of the day. In fact the feeling that the end of the world was coming would hover over people for some time after that.

 

            In deed, one might wonder how the events of the next few years might have gone had Omega not been killed, if The Weirdo had shown up just a minute earlier. Of course one could also wonder what would have happened had George Washington not died in the battle of Kip’s Bay leaving the way open for Horatio Gates to take over as General the Revolutionary Army. The British likely would have won with Washington in charge. History has many twists and turns, and no one can say how a thing will turn out until they’ve seen it come to its fruition.

 

            Omega’s casket was placed in a tomb specially made for him in Central Park, on the spot where he finally fell dead. The public watched as the great door was closed and sealed, and then they drifted away, waiting for a day when they could think of the man of titanium without bursting into tears. They were also waiting for the day when someone might be able to save them again. The world looked very dark.

 

 

© 2012 Autumn Knight Productions

More Detroit Zoo Pictures

Photos from the Detroit Zoo

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Twins in Death: Chapter Three – Part Five

Twins in Death

A Tale of The Weirdo

By Brett N. Lashuay

 

 

Chapter Three: The End of Captain Scourge

 

 

February 12^th, 1935

11:15 p.m.

 

            The Weirdo leaned back in the chair, and looked at Jack and James. The dance was still going on around them, but they felt detached. Tommy and Amy danced on the floor, looking like the perfect couple. Had they been five inches high, they could have been the cake toppers. He had worn the tuxedo she liked and she had found the perfect dress. They were still cavorting around the dance floor, along with the other hundred or so people that were called friends of the household.

 

            The large round room echoed as people threw confetti from the second floor, which ringed the dance floor giving the feeing of a stadium or the old roman coliseum. The second floor was really only a small ring around the ballroom of course, not a seating system. It gave one the ability to look either out on the city, or into the second floor through the glass doors. The floor of the ballroom was made of marble and it was three stories high, as high as the rest of the house in fact. The entire north wall was made of glass, and looked out on to the grounds. The east wall had a staircase made of crystal. The long pieces of clear stone seemed to grow up from the floor and become progressively longer as they reached up to the second floor. It was on the second floor that the trio sat, watching the happy couple.

 

            “She looks beautiful.” The Weirdo said, watching the both of them.

 

            “He looks happy.” Jack muttered.

 

            “Of course he does.” James Death’s voice was the long drawl of a cowboy whose day had passed. “He’s got a woman who can dance.”

 

            “Dancing skill is important.” The Weirdo said. “I think they might be together for more than just that though.”

 

            “But if she couldn’t dance, they’d never get to the other stuff.” James said. “He’s got priorities. Dancing first, talking second.”

 

            “Maybe.” The Weirdo conceded and took a pull at the root beer he had been drinking.

 

            “They say where they’re going yet?” Jack asked.

 

            “Acapulco.” The Weirdo said. “Two weeks, and then back here.”

 

            “They gonna live here?” Jack wondered

 

            “Why wouldn’t they?” The Weirdo asked. “The place is big enough for ten families to get going.”

 

            “She might think that we’re a bad influence.” Jack said.

 

            “Well we are.” James drawled. “Always have been.”

 

            “She might not want to raise kids in such an environment.”

 

            “Nah.” The Weirdo said. “It’ll be fine.”

 

            He had a feeling it probably wouldn’t be though; she wouldn’t have time to get angry about the late nights. He could feel the ticking time bomb just under his heart. He knew that the time was coming when he and James Death were both going to be gone. The time was coming very close in fact; he figured they had six weeks, tops.

 

            “Don’t they dance?” Amy asked Tommy as he spun her around the dance floor.

 

            “I don’t know.” He said. “Jack does, but maybe he’s just keeping the other two company.”

 

            “The Weirdo looks like he’d make a good dancer.” She said. “Should I ask him?”

 

            “You could I suppose.” He said. “He’s not always as friendly as he could be though and might just do it for forms sake.”

 

            “I could ask.” She said. “If we’re all going to live together, I’ll have to get to know him.”

 

            “Go try, sure. I’ll get him actually.”

 

            Amanda Grace Jones had become Amanda Grace Gunner earlier that day, and when her new husband had sent his best friend down to dance, she watched as he sat down with the other two men. The Weirdo came down the stairs, looking relaxed and quite good looking in his gray suit. She asked him to dance as he came closer enough to hear her.

 

            She had been right that he was a good dancer. Though she sensed the stiffness of formality between them. She kept watching Tommy as they danced through another three numbers, feeling her partner loosen a little as they did. He smiled and kissed her on the cheek when the last song played. She wondered if he was worried about her new place, if he might resent her.

 

            When he kissed her cheek though, she realized that what he was doing was saying goodbye. She suddenly knew that they were going to come back and he was going to run his end game. She looked up at Tommy as he stood and began to walk back towards the stairway. She knew that Tommy and Jack would be okay, but James and The Weirdo were going to have to go. Something was going to happen and the two of them would be gone. She could only think that they were going to be killed.

 

            Then Tommy took her in his arms, and everything was all right again.

 

 

April 25^th, 2002

11:49 p.m.

 

            The Weirdo stood out in the back yard, looking at the sky. There were only a hundred thousand stars visible in the sky, more or less. Most of them had been burning and churning away since before the rise of human race. The light of one had left the star on the night that King Babars died and it had just gotten to the earth. There were stars out there, billions and trillions of them. They were gathered in clusters and galaxies, clinging together by the loose threads of gravity. Holding onto each other in the night. It suddenly occurred to The Weirdo that there was a place called Jantal out there, orbiting around one of those stars. That idea made no sense, but he knew it to be true.

 

            Judy came out and stood with him for a moment. They both looked at the sky, and marveled. It was as if The Weirdo’s home was exempt from the problems of noise and light pollution. The stars were visible in the night sky here. It was very odd, because Manhattan was close enough to be connected by a bridge, yet you could see all the stars here.

 

            “I keep waiting for it to go back to normal.” Judy said.

 

            “Hmm?”

 

            “Well I mean go back to the way it was, before ah.”

 

            “Before Shannon died?”

 

            “Yeah.” Judy blushed at making him say it. “It’s not going to though, is it? We won’t have that feeling in the house again, will we?”

 

            “I don’t think so.” The Weirdo said.

 

            “I’m really sorry about it.” She wrung her hands together. “I don’t know if I mentioned it before, but I am.”

 

            “Thanks.” He said.

 

            “You really loved her, didn’t you?”

 

            “Still do.” He said.

 

            “Oh.”

 

            “You love Tommy?”

 

            “Yeah.” She said. “I wonder what kind of good thing I ever did to deserve him.”

 

            “And Sheila?”

 

            “I love her too.” Judy said. “Is that wrong do you think? To love two people at the same time?”

 

            “Love is love.” The Weirdo said. “Whether it’s with one or a hundred. I don’t think there is such a thing as wrong love. I mean really, in a world so filled with hate, love, any love, can’t be the wrong choice. Anyone who says otherwise doesn’t know what love is.”

 

            “So you’re okay with us?”

 

            “If I weren’t, you would have found out by now.”

 

            “Okay.” She said. “I just always wondered if anyone would accept us.”

 

            “Don’t worry about it.” The Weirdo said. “You three are in love, that’s all that matters. Any one gives you guys any trouble and the rest of us will be there to back you up.”

 

            “Thanks.” She said as she went inside.

 

 

April 26^th, 2002

1:45 a.m.

 

            The Weirdo was watching the water lap in and out onto the shore of the island. There was a lot of water between them and he looked south at the ocean beyond. He could just see it around between the two points of land. There was a lot of water between his little island and Europe as well. He knew there were giants out there, massive creatures. The biggest animals that had ever yet lived were out there in the deep waters. The whales were the biggest mammals and the biggest animals ever known, and yet they lived on the smallest.

 

            The Weirdo knew that the tiny crustaceans known as krill lived in the oceans and made massive great clouds of red, which were then eaten by blue whales, a million lives could end at one moment. He looked out at the ocean and wondered if maybe the krill thought of blue whales as a god of some kind. Did they think that they were being accepted by their God by being taken in to become part of that god? He didn’t know.

 

            He looked over at the city, and felt nothing towards it at the moment. He had always hated and loved it, and he felt odd at his sudden ambivalence towards it. He couldn’t define this feeling. He wondered if there would be ever again be a feeling for the city. He almost felt that now it was his enemy. There had been something to keep him grounded before, but now she was gone.

 

            All there was left was the city; it wasn’t a prospect he welcomed.

 

            “Certainly I must persevere though.” He said.

 

© 2012 Autumn Knight Productions

 

IMGP6912

IMGP6912, a photo by greyweirdo on Flickr.

Kinky Tales

BDSM Fairy Tale

Have you ever read about the psychology of BDSM, and then tried to read a fairy tale? Yeah, you can’t unsee that shit. Most the fairytales can be seen as BDSM allegories of one kind or another.

The most obvious example is Beauty and the Beast, in which a subbie who wants to be a collared slave. The Dom in the situation is kind of a dick, but the sub is going to turn him into a better master through being a loving slave. Through her love, she becomes the possession of the kind of master she wants. All the beast’s behavior is just bad dom behavior. Red Riding Hood’s story has role play, crossdressing, age play… and a guy who comes in at the end to beat on one of the participants at the end. Cinderella has humiliation, cosplay, foot fetish. Snow White has just about everything when you think about it. And in Prudent Hans, he litterally ties a rope around a girl's next and forces her to sit crouched on the floor of the stable and eat hay. You change the last two paragraphs of that story, and you have the start of a BDSM epic on your hands.

Actually the thing is, where I really want to go with this is not the action beats. The SM part doesn’t interest me here nearly as much as the BD part does. What you have in most fairy tales, particularly those of the Grimm’s stories, is a series of agreements and fulfillments. The very basics of BDSM is one person agrees to do what the other person says, and agrees that if they don’t do what they said they would, then there will be a punishment. You can argue that it’s more complicated than that, and indeed it is, but I used the word ‘basic’ a little while ago. While there are layers and further layers, at the core this is what you have.

Once you have that in your head, Hans My Hedgehog is a very different tale indeed. Not the version Wikipedia has, which is a sanitized version some Victorian masturbator came up with. Much closer to the original is the Jim Henson made for The Storyteller. Watch all three parts of that and tell me that the only thing missing isn’t leather and collars. Granted, Hans My Hedgehog is one of the stories Beauty and The Beast is based on, so that might be a bad example.

The point is that throughout the fairytale world is a series of agreements and fulfillments, or punishments for failure to fulfill. There are regional differences here and there, of course. Russian fairytales then to rush right to the punishment of bad behavior, where as German stories reward good behavior. Of course, that’s because the Russians are more into beatings than the Germans are. The French are more into perversity on every level, and the Irish are just about enduring the events until eventual reward.

Not every story works on this level of course, but if you think about it too long, I bet you could make the 3 Little Pigs kinky. Hell The Billy Goats Gruff is about a troll looking for a harsh master that can take him in hand and make him behave. This shit is easy, once you start looking for it.

Mind you, you can also see penises in the clouds if someone throws a couple of boxes of dildos out of a plane.

Another pack of pictures