Rated R
It’s near dusk when VanDrake Tage Rannheim trudges into the city to meet a friend. He sticks to the lee of buildings, smog and shadow wrapping his coat. Don’t like a lot of attention. Can’t help it, mostly, but he keeps his greatcoat pulled closed to conceal weapons. Ain’t wiped the mud off the back sigil, either.
Rated R
Pharah Dupree always wore her hair up tight.
“You ever hear of Muscle Shoals, Manny?” she said one afternoon. We sat on the back porch steps of Rock Bottom Studios, her with a cigarette, me with a longneck Bud, thinking about how good it’d feel if she smiled my way. “Some of the best music in the world came out of Muscle Shoals, all the big names. Aretha, Rolling Stones, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Wilson Pickett, Bob Dylan, Percy Sledge.”
The sun beat the sweat out of me and cut dusty shadows through the trees around the edge of the gravel parking lot. “Yeah. They say the Tennessee River’s what makes the Muscle Shoals sound.”
Rated R
I fell in love with a dragon boy when I was seventeen. The dragon train—five creatures long—camped near Grimpiper in the days before it crossed the Great Divide. Beyond the stones lay the Dead Red Heart. Our ’stead nestled in amongst the shadow dunes. Close enough to the Sand Road, not too close to its bandits and its warlords.
We’d been pushing our water wheels across miles of stone when the kite went up. Blue tail flags might mean many things but this time blue meant dragons. We dropped the wheels and ran up Puckers Ridge. Right to the top and there they were, five dragons chewing through wild melon fields below. Thick-set creatures, bellies low to the ground.
Rated R for adult content
No shit, there I was, knee-deep in necromantic weasels in the lair of the mad wizard-king, when Korgar and Elutriel both decided it was time to win my affections once and for all.
Elutriel had summoned an aura of resistance, an iridescent bubble free of weasels. He struggled forwards, heaving against the weight of their wasted furry bodies.
“Push them into the flames!” I shouted, pointing with Hrrnngnngrrrndr, the Sword of a Hundred Thousand Agonies, at the fire-trap Korgar had triggered as we entered the room.
But Elutriel ignored me and waded toward Korgar instead. He used the aura to shove a wave of writhing, stinking flesh before him until it piled up and over the granite-slab shoulders of the Vhunken warrior.
Korgar burst out with a mountainous effort and grabbed a gnashing undead weasel with a hand like a boulder. His huge arms straining, he forced it through the aura and toward Elutriel. The weasel’s rotted body twisted and deformed under the pressure, but its teeth still gnashed as Korgar bent it toward the healer’s neck.
Typical.
Rated R for disturbing themes and imagery
I had eyes once.
Before the Lift-man came.
Now I have knobs, smooth and black and round as pegs. I touch them with my fingertips and try to remember what it felt like, having eyes.
If I push one knob in, the other one pops out like the elevator buttons used to do.
There used to be a brass plate mounted on the wall next to the elevator’s cage with two smooth black pegs. I pushed in the top peg to go up. The bottom peg popped out. Gears ground, cables groaned, and the elevator clanked down to the lobby.
When Hana Samsa woke from a fevered nap one afternoon, she found that she had been transformed into an enormous mosquito. At the foot of her bed, her tiny legs thumped against an empty bottle of Becherovka; she’d pushed it there that morning after licking the last particles of bittersweet liquor from the cap. Her head pounded in the faint light of the gas lantern by the bedside, but when she raised her new insect arms to massage her temples, they wouldn’t bend. She felt quite sure that, when she had escaped Anastázie’s embrace that morning in order to retrieve the Becherovka from beneath the bed, she had been human, had used her human tongue to lap the inside of the cap, had nudged her human head back under Anastázie’s arm and rested it on her chest, had breathed with human nostrils the sunshine smell of Anastázie’s skin. Now Anastázie was gone, likely off to work at the school, and Hana had gained four extra legs and a mouth like a needle.
They file out into the predawn chill before the rest of the settlement is awake. Cloaked by a thick fog and the still darkness of a waning night, they carry shovels and picks. Despite the high collars and low hats that conceal their faces, their attempts at anonymity are wasted. I recognize them instantly through the frost of the kitchen window, their layers of clothing stitched by my own hand or those of my brethren.
I see you Reverend John Able, Matthias Smith, Thomas Gore, William Roe and Matthew Surgeon. And God sees you too.
They are silent in their duties, barely even looking at one another. Their breath visible in heavy puffs that quickly condense into white frost, as they pound the hard, frozen earth. They dig deeper, until the ground cracks, and still farther until they hit bone. It is hard work and it takes an hour before the first body is pulled up.
Rated R.
He stole her skin. Yes, that’s the one. He stole her skin, so he had her heart. Or her soul. The part of her that would have fought him otherwise.
For more links and information on butoh see here:
Sankai Juku – Clips from Umusuna.
Interview with Ushio Amagatsu (Artistic Director of Sankai Juku) and Theater Critic Tamotsu Watanabe
The closer I get to the island, the more of a dream Tokyo becomes. The obelisks of high glass, the polished people, their nails and shoes so clean. The neon canopies, the subtle dishes, the cab drivers with white gloves on their hands. I leave it behind on the train ride down. Down to the fishing town with its immaculate streets and kindly grandmother, who hosted me in her ryokan and made me a breakfast of rice and fish. Now the fish scatter before my boat, clean waves break against the hull, and the green island looms ahead, rising from the horizon like an old god.
Sunny abandoned her house the day after she buried Anna and struck out for the western metropolis of Palotl. She gathered up all her practical effects in no time at all: a sharp knife, matches, a map, and a pair of good blankets—one from her childhood, one from Anna’s.
Anna’s blanket was a mess of Evenki winter scenes: the Old Witch’s Comb, a strutting rooster and the gaping grey jaws of wolves.
Sunny sniffed. It still smelled like her.
Her own blanket was decorated with Quetzal mosaics in bright reds and greens: the Flower Goddess bringing life to the desert, Mixcoatl the Hunter casting his net through the stars, headless Night Axe terrorizing travelers.
Sunny rolled up the blankets along with a bedroll and stuffed them into her backpack.
She packed a sensible amount of food (turkey and dog sausages, tortillas, a few ears of corn and as much water as she could fit), strapped on her boots, and stomped to her front door for the last time.