There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.

-

Raymond Chandler

Carver,

Can you believe that Nielson actually did off himself ? Pathetic. I will take his wardrobe though. Helped myself to his guns, too. Hope you don’t mind.

Anyway, see you this Saturday. I’ll be the one in the retailored silk :)

That is not dead which can eternal lie
And in strange eons even death may die

-

Abdul Al Hazred

I can’t remember where I came from exactly. My only childhood memory is of a dusty attic with lots of old board games in it. I can’t remember my parents, either. Or my brothers or sisters, if I had any.

But I do remember my friends. Chess. Risk. Mah Jong. Stratego. And I remember how cold it was while I sat there playing these games against myself, sometimes for days. I wouldn’t say I was happy, because happy doesn’t quite fit. I was absorbed though, and even better I didn’t have to think about . . . about other things.

After I was taken it was clear that I’d developed a wonderful set of transferable skills in that cold attic. Instead of dice and cardboard abstractions I started playing for real, using contracts and the warriors of my Lord’s goblin hosts. And what happy days they were !

I found that I had a natural appreciation for the elegant economy of the severed artery. The straight path of the sliced tendon. The sweet snap of the separated vertebrae. Magnify that by the thousands my Lord’s minions dispatched at my instruction and you might understand how fulfilled I was, how content in the calm eye of an eternal storm of war.

To this day I don’t know what went wrong. Although, no. No that’s not quite true. I do know what went wrong, at least in a general sense.

What went wrong is that we lost.

When I realised it was all up I joined the exodus of my fallen Lord’s followers. We were a pitiable bunch, although it wasn’t pity that saved me from the vengeful glee of my pursuers. It was just that I chose to escape through the hedge rather than try to hide within it.

So here I am, looking for enough pieces to start a new game.

Interested ?

What a piece of work is a man.

How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty.

In form and moulding how express and admirable.

In action, how like an angel, in apprehension, how like a God.

The beauty of the world, the parragon of animals.

And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

Man delights not me; no, nor woman neither.

-

Shakespeare

I’m sick and tired of never feeling warm.

And that husk feeling. Even when I’m as full as a tick I feel empty, and you know what I mean by that. Don’t pretend you don’t. It’s like you’re a broken vessel that can’t be filled, so that all that’s left of you is an endless, aching hunger that does nothing but grow when you feed it.

I used to think that there might be a way, but there isn’t. The elders, I used to think, the elders have a way. Look at how they glow. But they don’t glow, those powerful, pitiable things. They throb like a wound.

Although we don’t have wounds do we ? No, not us. We have holes which melt back together as easily as plastic, and bodies which are just as worthless. Souls which are worth even less than that.

So that’s it. That’s it for me. I won’t accept this lie any more. The dregs of a life. The scuttling misery of a cockroach existence. And I can’t stop thinking about what I did to my sister.

Carver can have my wardrobe and Freeman can have my guns. The rest you can fight for.

Tis not too late to seek a newer world.

-

Alfred Lord Tennyson