6/20/23

go to my substack to listen to my first audiobook with original music

before you visit my substack to listen, or read the chapter below, i want to mention something first…

my friend Captain Blowfish’s new superhero rpg book from Melsonia Art’s Council is live on Kickstarter right now. you should totally check it out here!

it’s called longshot city and i played in the setting with Captain Blowfish for probably almost a year.

we did a lot of cool shit in that campaign. like fly across the atlantic ocean and fight a giant robot at stonehenge.

here is the trailer for the kickstarter.

who doesn’t love boxsets. i backed at the level to get a boxset. i’m pretty sure the only kickstarters i backed in a year (maybe longer?) have only been from Melsonia Arts Council. that says a lot maybe.

i’ve just been writing a lot. drawing some. i decided one night to record myself reading one of my short stories. i thought if i did that my friends would be more likely to listen to the story than read it. i think it worked. i wrote the background music too and they liked that a lot.


oh, last thing.


there is a Cairn game jam going on. Spooky Jaguar is releasing a zine for the Cairn game jam. it’s called THE WEEPS and Tony Jaguar wrote it. here is a rough draft of some art i did for it.


and now the short story...

"I can only do like 6 pushups," said the Necromancer, "I feel embarrassed."

"You were very skinny before," the Temple Knight of Telak the Swordbringer said. 

They were exorcising in a shitty little tomb inside of a residential area in a buffer world severed from the other spheres by the [redacted] Pillar.

A spider watched and shook their head.

"Let's go to the bar," the Necromancer said.

The spider crawled over to where the other siders were sharing a 40.

The Necromancer felt anxious and sick.

They no longer fit into their favorite ragged, blood-stained, pants.

"Fuck this motherfucking shit. This is some bullshit," the Necromancer said, with snot coming out their nose and into their mouth.

The Temple Knight of Telak the Swordbringer ate a small yellow apple they got from the health food store.

The Temple Knight of Telak the Swordbringer ate an organic pear they got from the health food store.

The spiders started to tell stories about their mother with their high pitched voices.

The Necromancer stared ahead in the plank position for about ten seconds and then collapsed.

"That's enough for today," said the Temple Knight of Telak the Swordbringer.

They went through a hallway to a room with two desks and many boxes of papers.

The Temple Knight of Telak the Swordbringer sat on a chair.

The Necromancer sat on the Temple Knight of Telak the Swordbringer.

They looked at photos of the Necromancer's family they had.

Including one of the Necromancer in a pink ballerina suit.

The Temple Knight of Telak the Swordbringer thought about a room in the house he grew up in that also had boxes of papers, two desks, and two windows with shut blinds.

He thought that how he felt about that room was maybe similar to how the Necromancer felt about this room.

They had spent the last three months here, slowly figuring out their next move.

"Let me walk on the outside," said the Necromancer, tugging up their stockings, "I'd like to find a corpse."

"It's sleepy time," said the Temple Knight of Telak the Swordbringer.

They slept, without setting an alarm.

They woke up around 1:10 p.m. and went to the bus stop.

They got organic coffee smoothies with soymilk, hempseed powder, and frozen strawberries.

"Thank you," said the Necromancer, "Do you want to spend time together before I exercise and do work?"

"Okay," said the Temple Knight of Telak the Swordbringer.

The Temple Knight of Telak the Swordbringer thought about the next three to eight years of his life.

It seemed calm he thought.

They walked together on the sidewalk and passed piles of dirt.

It was beginning to get dark.

The darkness here is scary–like the world was breaking, or expired, or bruised, or something worse.

The moonlit clouds looked rippled, like a ribcage of some giant thing digesting them both.

They went into the Necromancer's shitty little tomb.

The Necromancer began doing leg stretches. 

The Temple Knight of Telak the Swordbringer wrapped himself in a blanket and sat in front of the computer.

"Toasty momcave," he thought.

The spiders talked about going somewhere tonight. 

"We should go to the Lunar Bar and just walk around," the spiders said.

"We should get a dog," the Necromancer said to the Temple Knight of Telak the Swordbringer, "A guard dog or a lap dog, you decide."

"Hell yeah, man," the spiders said.

The Temple Knight of Telak the Swordbringer smiled really hard and said, "Both."

"Alright," the Temple Knight of Telak the Swordbringer said, "I want you to make a list of the things you want to change and haven't."

The Temple Knight of Telak the Swordbringer made soybean pasta as the Necromancer finished his daily workout routine. 

After dinner, the Temple Knight of Telak the Swordbringer highlighted items on the list the Necromancer had made. 

The Temple Knight of Telak of Swordbringer highlighted and circled the words, "Binge eating" and "throwing up."

On the bottom of the paper, the Necromancer had drawn a New Zealand penguin.

The next morning they are vegan burgers for breakfast.

They went on a walk and took pictures.

When they got back to their shitty little tomb the spiders were crawling on the television.

They were watching the news.

"That's some fucked up shit man," the spiders said, "They finally caught they ass."

A Poorly Made Dwarf had put a unicorn in a headlock, torn its head off, and gone on a killing spree with it.

The bed shouted from down the hallway, saying it was ready to snuggle up.

It said it had fresh white sheets and bumped up against the back of the knees of the Necromancer and the Temple Knight of Telak the Swordbringer, knocking them onto the mattress.

The bed then crawled back down the hallway and into the bedroom.

The spiders followed.

They all watched a movie about nothing and went to sleep.


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