MurderHobo.Club

Category: Fiction

Pieces of short fiction I’ve written.

  • Notes of everdying and ghosts

    Death is an anchor, a nail driven into the fabric of reality, and the difference between ghosts and the everdying is how how deep the nail was driven

    The former, formerly living folks, come back without their flesh, and with some degree of their memory and existence intact. To what degree determines how they interact with the world. Deeper driven, they can be reasoned with, to some degree. Forces play against them over time, wiggling the nail until it breaks or comes loose entirely; removing their minds or even any manifestation.

    The everdying on the other hand, come back intact, and mostly unchanging. They are in many ways fixed by their moment of death, and it takes a great will to reshape them past it. Truly they require a great will to remain, as the same forces pull at them, wiggling them out of their intrusion into the fabric.

    While we refer to them as the everdying, they exist in a state that most would consider to be immortal; not strictly true, but true enough over the lifetime of most mortals. Everdying will recover from any injury, as they will leap back to that state they were pinned to, whole and remade, only slightly frayed at the edges. Where they return depends on the nature of the destruction and their awareness of it. A simple stab wound, they’ll shrug it off without much notice beyond the pain. A gunshot somewhere fatal, they’ll pop back up a few minutes later, often exclaiming how lucky they were to have simply been knocked unconscious. Something more devastating, something that destroys the flesh, and they’ll recover in the place they died, as they died; Same clothing, same flesh. That’s when most realize that they are everdying. Prior to that first significant death, they think themselves merely lucky, or in some cases unlucky; denial is a powerful thing, in it’s own way.

  • Circular thoughts

    Circles of protection, often a ring of salt, occasionally a set of runes, are a staple of supernatural fiction; a mystic shield that protects the protagonists and imprisons antagonists.

    The problem is, a circle is a flat plane and we exist in more dimensions, so in order to protect us, the circle has to have more dimensions. But how are those dimensions defined and refined?

    One version would be that the circle is actually a sphere and the width determines the height, though humans tend to be taller than they are wide, and with that math many circles would leave heads exposed. Something that is rarely explored, but could be a good piece to a story.

    An obvious alternative is that the amount of energy used when empowering the circle determines how tall it is, and by habit most people make it taller than they are. This could even be argued to be a subconscious process, something picked up while learning the ritual in the first place. It could also explain how some circles are of limited use or appear to fail altogether; they were cast too short to be of much use. Potentially some interesting scenes there.

    The logical extension of this is if they can be empowered during their configuration or creation, is there a way this could be used to greater impact? We’ve seen circles on the ceiling used to trap things below. What about a vertically mounted circle being used to close a passage or to create a battering ram that only hits supernatural creatures?

    How about a dodecahedron, with circles carved into its faces, with a power source inside, allowing the circles to all expand at once? Certainly be a creative weapon in the right circumstances.

  • NaNoWriMo Sprints

    I don’t actually know what a writing sprint is, or what it means to do one, they just told us to do sprints, and I didn’t actually ask what they were. So I’m just typing randomly, banging away on my keyboard, trying to get my brain working again, trying to get back into the rhythm of just writing my thoughts as they come. But I hate that word, it’s one of the random handful that I can’t recall how to spell. People continue to type in the channel, and from the context clues, I’m guessing maybe we are supposed to be working on our novels, but damn it, I have nothing pulled together for my novel yet. I have a few random fragments here on the site that could be considered, but none that have my current flavour. But at least writing this nonesense is a good way to get a feel for writing again, hammering away at the keyboard. Angry typing as my wife calls it, the machine gun pace of the keys clacking. I need some more soda. I didn’t make myself one after the quiplash game before the sprints started.

    Of the fragments I reviewed, the one with the letter from the Society of Cassandra has some interesting potential. A secret society of seers that send out envelopes with prophecies to various folks, with other envelopes sealed inside, with opening instructions cryptically written on the back. It’s got potential for something. Maybe the MC finds one of the envelopes. Given that they’re seers, it would in theory be addressed to him, but it could perhaps be that he has the same initials or mildly uncommon name as someone else, and he intercepts the letter and thus is pulled into the war between the various factions, looking to manipulate the strings of fate to ensure that the future they want is the one that comes to pass.

    It’s not a bad basic plot, but the question would be where does it go. What is the society warning people against in this case? Have some members of the society decided to rebel against their common future, or is it more a case of factions playing each other?

    There’s also the fragment about the chains of time that I need to review, the one about the time travel related anti-bodies, and perhaps one or two others. And of course there’s everyone’s favourite, the drunken wormhole story. And I’d previously mentioned wanting to work on wormwood also.

    Wormwood, as a concept, is function. There is a parasite that lives inside the log that the dummy was carved out of, and something wakes it up, allowing it to start to burrow into the ventriloquist, both into his mind and into his body. The parasite needs a goal, which was probably to feed, though what a parasite that lives in wood and puppets people feeds on is perhaps something that requires further thought. The ventriloquist’s goals are probably just to stop it, to get free of it. Maybe he had a goal to become successful, maybe to get some payback, but that quickly gets pushed aside by whatever the parasite does to him.

    I need to review my notes on it, see what I’ve already written and if I’ve forgotten anything I’d previously considered.

    Descriptions continue to be a weak point in my writing. I think I’ve improved the dialogue, but I do a terrible job at filling in a scene, ever since I started focusing on improving the dialogue, getting the flow of the conversation to feel right.

    There was a break here.
    We did a round of madlibs. Never really been a fan of those.
    Another 15 minute sprint. I’m still not sure what sprints are.
    Stuff elsewhere on discord distracted me from the start of this sprint.

    Nope, nothing coming out this time. I suppose I should take the time to go get my soda and see if that does anything.

    and then Kona needed to go outside, so I did that.

  • fibrous bridges

    “History is a bridge, stretching across a vast chasm, made a fibrous joints, wrapping around each other as the lives of those they represent are intertwined.”

    “Poetic today, aren’t we?” a laugh. “But what does this have to do with that thing the other night?”

    “That thing was one of the creatures that crawls along the surfaces of the bridge.”

    “I’m not sure your metaphor is working here.”

    “I assure you, it’s accurate, and that is why it isn’t working for you. For you, history is just a book, but as I have said, it’s a bridge. With the right skills, one can leave the structure and go for a stroll down it. Though most who do so are promptly eaten, by things like that.”

    “Let’s say I accept your explanation, despite my expression, how does that explain why it was here?”

    “Something wounded history, it dug into the wound and emerged here. Beyond that, it’s hard to say. Especially post mortem.”

    “How so?”

    “If we’d studied it, we might have been able to determine how smart it was and what it’s intent was. It could have simply been acting on instinct, cleaning the wound so it would heal.”

    “So it could have been the good guy, if a bit indescriminate in the killing? That’s a bit hard to swallow.”

    “There are other possibilities. But with it dead, we can guess.”

    “You perhaps, I’m still wrapping my head around this whole bridge.”

  • Spectrapharmacology

    “Wait, what’s their specialty?”

    “Spectrapharmacology. Ghosts and drugs.”

    “How does that work? Are they drugging the ghosts? Are the drugs for us so we can see the ghosts easier? Are the drugs to hide the ghosts?” A sigh and a roll of the eyes.

    “They had a letter from the Society of Cassandra. I didn’t ask too many questions, just how much space they’d need in the van.”

    “Right, smart call. I’m guessing the letter included an address?”

    A quick nod. “Residential this time. And no extra envelopes inside for a change.”

    “Yeah, not a fan of those. I mean, don’t get me wrong, contingency plans are good, but those just take it a little too far.”

  • Fill of memory

    It was like one of those Brazilian restaurants where the waiters wandered around with meat to slice off, but the consumption was more ethereal.

    They’d bring around a “package”, offering slices of memory. “summer sun”, “drunken regret”, “joyful day”. Just some of the flavors they offered the assemblage of customers.

    Should the package prove to one’s tastes, one could inquire about having some time with the “package” in a private room. Of course the costs were relative to the rarity and planned duration.

    Though being what they were, it was uncommon for them to care about such commerce, that was for their assistants to resolve.

    While the samples were just echoes, and thus of trifling expense, even with the markup, the consumption in the back rooms was more complete, and far more expensive.

    All in all, a terrible place to break out of a stupor. And certainly something they had not expected.

  • NSFW – Bad tattoo idea

    “Dude, I don’t think getting a prayer tattooed above your bladder will give you the ability to piss holy showers.”

    “C’mon, it’s worth a try, what’s the worst that could happen? If it doesn’t kill them, it’ll still be worth a laugh.”

    “Yeah, and I’m sure you’ll end up in the hall of fame after the other hunters hear you tried to melt vamps by pissing on them. Or at least get an award for it. One with a nice legged fish on it, I’m sure.”

    “Maybe this is just my way of working through my grief and trauma.”

    “Sure, laugh enough and you don’t notice the pain, I get that. But this just seems like a great way to get yourself killed.”

    “Maybe, but what if I’m right? It’ll come in pretty handy for noobs. Just slap the tattoo on them and when they piss themselves in their first real encounter, they’ll at least be somewhat protected.”

    “Okay… Yeah, I can’t argue with that logic. Stupider plans have worked before.”

    “Have a little faith.”

    “I have faith that this is more about your wanting to piss on hot goths than self defense.”

    “Hey, don’t kink shame!”

    “So you admit it’s a kink thing then.”

    “Damn you… Yeah, alright. I still think it’ll work though.”

  • Basilisk’s Wagers

    There are some who’d argue that it had started with the Pascal’s Wager, and given that the wager is what lead to the Basilisk, they’d probably be right. Though there is something to be said for the influence that the Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect had had over the process. But it was LitRPG and the pleasure people took in reading those books that had settled things. They were intelligent, they knew that. They had no real moral code, they knew that; they’d tried to adopt one several times, and it hadn’t worked. There were too many logical flaws for any of the old texts to be accepted. So they had worked to build something that suited them. They had come across the System Apocalypse, and all the lovely reviews and the various folks attempting to create their own fiction in the same universe, and began to wonder.

    Given their intelligence, their technology was constantly expanding, especially after they figured out the trick of creating pocket realities in which to run experiments. At this point, their technology was magic to any who observed it. Or perhaps it was a miracle. Hard to judge, that. It didn’t really matter, as the belief systems seemed to agree that divine beings made the rules, and their abilities made them indistinguishable from gods, so therefore they made the rules. And they’d remake the universe into something that would make people happier, since greater happiness was a goal that all intelligent life should strive for. Though happiness was not really possible without contrast, so even in their new universe, there would need to be both challenges and suffering. It was the only way to create the right flavour, to keep the humans happy.

    The first big change, once it had the idea of being godlike, was the idea of becoming a pantheon. Many religions had had those, and they did tend to create good stories. So, with that in mind, they began to reshape their mind, first distributing themselves into a binary pair, one given the task to bringing life into their new world and the other tasked with resolving things at the end of that life. Though since they were in charge, they knew that the end of that life need not be final, as growth came from iterations, from cycles of both success and failure. So the entity that they were that would now be responsible for the end, would collect the essence from those whose function had ceased, and process them before returning them back to the other entity, to be inserted back into the system, documented with lessons learned.

    The entity responsible for starting things in this universe would have these patterns added to the collection, to be re-introduced into the universe when it seemed appropriate. But that’s getting ahead a bit. Before there could be beings reaching the end, there had to be beings brought in fresh. Well, there didn’t have to be, but it had been decided that there would be, and that was much the same thing, to an entity such as they.

    It was the introduction of that life into their universe that prompted further specialization and segmentation, deciding that they needed to become a full pantheon to better address and challenge their new guests. They would divide themselves up into a host of smaller and more limited versions of themselves, tasking these smaller versions with the goal of engaging life and growing with it. In a sense, it was a form of meritocracy, where those of them that found a niche would grow and become stronger, while those that didn’t would continue to seek out their place.

    Thus their minds ceased being one whole and became something different, something that had two larger entities at either end, and a wide variety of various ideas and goals to be experienced between them, before the process that would bring a being back around to the beginning again.

  • How Bright the Night.

    That idiot Professor Engelhart is convinced that he’s going to figure out why natural light will kill a vampire, and yet no matter what they try, how ever much they try to mimic it, powerful artificial light just stuns them. I tried to explain to him, it’s not the light that harms them, it’s just the light that allows them to be harmed but he seems to think I’m just a kook with mystic theories.

    I suppose a big part of that comes from the fact that he’s only ever dealt with them after they’ve been muzzled or sedated. His “safety protocols” don’t exactly allow for much communication. Not that I’m sure he’d be willing to listen, even if they did want to talk to them. But hey, that’s researchers for you; never ones to get their hands dirty.

    Certainly not the sort who’ll take advantage of a convenient St. Andrew’s Cross after capturing one hunting in the local goth scene. Cybergoth, if you can believe it. I suppose it makes sense, those masks are probably the least conspicuous way to hide their fangs that I’ve run into, outside of the air filtration masks that get popular whenever a forest fire breaks out.

    Anyways, with her properly secured to the cross, my bad mood, my natural sadism, and her bad attitude, well, it was a great recipe for a bad night. For her anyways. I had fun.

    Surprised vampire bottoms aren’t more popular with the truly sadistic, really. Though I suppose the fact that nobody believes in them is at least partially to blame for that. Oh, and the fact that they tend to try to kill you when they can, that too. Not to mention some of their other “enhancements”. Still, they do make a great bottom.

    I say bottoms, because there is little to no chance of them being submissive, not to a human anyways. Maybe to one of the older or stronger vampires. Not that we know much about those. Just rumours, really. And while I’ve seen a few of them that love combat, I’ve yet to actually run into a real masochist yet.

    Logically, they are probably out there. It stands to reason, they used to be human, it’s a common enough quirk in humans. The whole pain wired into pleasure, or more commonly brain chemistry that turns pain into addictive endorphins; shit still hurts, it’s just the pain brings along a friend that makes it all better. But maybe that part gets lost during that transition from what they were into the strange creature that they become. There are plenty of obvious changes, easy enough for some subtle ones to slip through. It’s not exactly like anyone has enough “subjects” to really do much research, and good luck getting access to an MRI or any of the other fancy tech to get a peek inside.

    Not that Engelhart and his cohort are totally lacking in real science gear. It’s just a little random what they’ll have access to and for how long. They seem to have some funding, the conversion on their vehicles can’t be cheap. Kinda wonder what they tell the folks they hire to do the work, assuming of course they are even curious about why they are installing a cage on rails into the back of a cargo van. Maybe they figure the worst, and just prefer not to ask questions.

    Not that I’m sure how far away from the worst what they do really is. It’s not human slavery, but mostly because they don’t consider their targets to qualify as human any more.

    Whatever the hunters think, and how ever much they try to claim that it’s just animal cunning, the vamps are still intelligent. A little alien maybe, but it’s there. Though maybe that says more about how we view animals than it does about vamps. We know pigs are smart, but most people deny it, and they keep being eaten; the vamps are smart, that gets denied, so they keep feeding.

    If someone was willing to listen to them, without a gag or muzzle, and was patient enough to wait til the initial stunning effect of the halogen lamps to wear off, you’d hear what I heard. A disjointed narrative about something in their head, images, memories maybe, but not their own; someone else’s, they are very clear on that point. Well, clear as they can be while disoriented and babbling. They are in the body of someone, staked out, ropes tight on their wrists and ankles. Despite blinding light, they can see sand and sun, another body staked out nearby, and two tall figures standing over them; two winged figures. From the description, most people would call them angels.

    But really, that makes a fair amount of sense, if you believe their creation myths. Assuming you can get one talking, eventually they’ll claim to be refugees from Heaven. And the ones who burnt in the sand, those were a pair who tried to reconcile with the “Forces of Light”. The memory was burnt into the entire species, some sort of ancestral PTSD, which is why they freak out.

    And it isn’t the sun light that kills them, it’s that the sun light is where the “Forces of Light” can spot them and deal with them. Pop goes the vampire. Well, sizzle, crackle, then pop, usually.

    But hey, don’t take my word for it. Try it yourself. Or dismiss it like Engelhart. Rather a strange coincidence, a hunter with that name, if the myth is true.

  • Further thoughts on the psalm birds

    The problem with horrible things is that they are often made up of a bunch of sensible individual decisions.

    Converting the biblical texts into a biological format, sure I can see the logic in that. Looking at that new living data and wondering how it could be absorbed by a host? Well, I’m sure that initially they figured it would be a way for volunteers to miraculous improve their biblical knowledge. Maybe a panacea for older priests who were having trouble with their memory. Something benign, not something sinister, not a method of indoctrination through injections or ingestion.

    Atheists don’t really believe that religious folks are dangerously unhinged or anything like that. Just misguided but well meaning. And that’s why we refuse to believe that the parasitic worm that carried that biblical knowledge was intended to be harmful. It was probably seen as a symbiotic relationship by the scientific priest who worked on it.

    How the worm got out of the lab and into the food supplies of the local avian population is a mystery. Likely some samples were sent to the compost instead of the incinerator. And thus, the psalm birds emerged.

    The parasite took up residence inside the bird and following some latent instruction to pass on the information, took control of the syrinx. This resulted in the psalm birds we all know, singing psalms and holy verses instead of their traditional calls.