skonen_blades

A person doesn't know what they don't know
and they can't feel what they don't feel.
Imagination and empathy bridge the gap
but what if a person doesn't have those?

That person closes a fist around their certainty,
resolute that they are feeling to the limit
and that their knowledge is enough

Most of us are like this

It’s not just ego or arrogance
It’s a dangerous lack of capability
Invisible in the mirror
What’s the shape of that absence?
If we think it never went missing?

It results mostly in a benign ignorance
But sometimes

It surfaces in conspiracy
Bias beneath the mask
Easily tipped to participation
In a thousand small ways
As others hold the rope
Or sign the bill
Or pull the trigger
It's not a slide into darkness
It's a climb with very small
and easy
steps.

Try to explore what isn’t
Try to feel what you haven’t
Try to know what you don’t
Above all, don’t trust certainty

If there's one thing history teaches us,
it’s that a monster hides inside us all.
Justifications at the ready.
Camouflaged in confidence.
Waiting for the eclipse.
For the sun to go dark.
So it can climb those small and easy steps

I implore you.
Learn.
Feel.
Don't let it win.




tags

(a short story from the point of view of a criminal con man)

I’d seen her across the spaceport and targeted her immediately. I knew her type. She stood out from the crowd in her colorful peasant clothes. Possibly a runaway, definitely in a hurry to get off world. Young. Not as dust-ridden and dull as the rest of the people that lived and worked here. It wasn’t immediately obvious to passersby minding their own business but she was like a beacon to me. I’d done this before and I had an instinct for it.

She looked around for pilots or captains in a way that she probably thought was sneaky. It was clumsy and obvious to me. She had no gift for slyness.

Luckily, I myself was a captain and a pilot.

The suns were going down. The blue and red of them melting into the horizon threw purple light up into the clouds. That’s when I approached her.

I bumped into her roughly and caused her to drop her backpack which opened and spilled some of her belongings into the dust. I apologized profusely and helped her pick them up while the foot traffic begrudgingly made its way around us. I asked her what her name was. Mino, she said. I told her mine was Pryet and that I’d love to make it up to her.

At first, she wasn’t agreeable, until I offered to take her back to the foyer airlock of my ship for some tea. At the word ‘ship,’ she perked right up.

I don’t consider myself an artist but sometimes I think I almost deserve that title. I gave one of the best performances I’d given to date. Non-threatening, mannerly, dropping hints about my wealth, complimentary, kind, generous, and soft. I took the long way back to my ship so that we’d have more time to talk. In some ways it was like lockpicking a safe. I could sense her moving her small hand further and further away from the knife she had hidden in her belt. I could see her smile moving from polite to genuine. Her gait loosened just a little.

I hadn’t completely won her trust but it was a start.

I’m a pretty big guy but I know how to shift it. If I’m in a tavern brawl, I know how to make it all seem like brawn by sucking in my gut and standing straight-backed, letting my height help the illusion. But here I let myself seem out of shape. I needed to seem weak. I let it all hang out. I pretended to be clumsy. I seemed foolish and awkward. I fumbled my keys into the dust. A type of clowning. I laughed at her small jokes but not enough to make her suspicious.

The rest of the evening was like a dream. I was inhabiting the role. In my airlock entry, I served her tea and got her whole story. She had domineering parents plotting to marry her off to a land baron she’d never met for a generous dowry and land annexation rights. She worked hard on the farm with the cattle and the crops. She taught herself to read. All she wanted to do was get away from here and see the stars.

I’d had a dozen just like her.

It was me who brought up the idea. Like it had just occurred to me. Why, I had a ship. And I had the space to take her! I was going on a short jaunt two systems over for supplies before a long haul to the core. I told her that I knew I didn’t have beautiful quarters for her but I did have an extra berth and I was ahead enough in my savings that it would be no trouble to take her with me on my supply run and drop her off before the big trip.

Get this. She cried. She cried with gratitude at finding such a generous stranger. It was destiny, she said. It was fate, she said. She just knew she had a good feeling about me, she said.

For just a moment I felt guilty but it passed.

That’s probably when I should have realized what was happening. But I was too lost in self-congratulations on a job well done. Too proud. You know what they say about pride and falls.

We strapped in together in the cockpit. I wanted to give her a view through the front windows during takeoff. To people that had never been offworld before, this was usually what sealed the deal. Clearance was given by launch control and vectors were defined. The green light winked brilliantly on the dash and we were off. I pushed forward on the thrusters and gripped the stick. This could all be automated but I wanted her to see me pilot it. I wanted her to think of me as a valiant space captain. In a way, I thought I was entertaining her and giving her what she wanted. Pumping up the fantasy before I closed the trap.

Her fingers tightened on the armrest as the ship shuddered with acceleration. The violet clouds came closer and then smeared across the glass until parting and revealing the maroon night sky. The stars revealed themselves as the atmosphere thinned until the points of light glittered alone across the black universe.
I had to admit, even I never got tired of that transition.

I put it in autopilot, offered dinner, and prepared to get down to business.

I showed her to the cargo space and mattress where she’d be staying and the meager bathroom next to it. She said it was much bigger than back home and I shook my head. All too easy. We both freshened up before I came back to her to her room and showed her to the galley.

She’d put on a different shirt for dinner. The same style as her other shirt but a darker colour and a little lower in the front. Perhaps this would be easier than I thought. I served up the stew and we sat down.

Occasionally they were grateful enough that my proposition wasn’t met with outright hostility. Not that it mattered either way to me.

It was after dessert when I let the mask fall.

I told her that space was a lonely place driven solely by power. I told her that laws were for planets. That here in space, all that mattered was strength and weakness. The strength of hulls, the power of vacuum. That people bartered what they had and that there was no shame in it. Defense and offense, supply and demand, strategy and execution. It was the eternal law of the universe. Predator and prey, if you wanted to look at it like that. I preferred, I said, to look at it as the economics of force.

And no one rides for free.

I reached across the table and rested my large hand on her small one.

At this point, the penny drops and they realize that they only have one thing to offer me. They also realize they’re alone. This is where the second act begins. Do they scream? Is there a chase? Would there be tears? Demure submission? Perhaps an attempt at bartering? An offered reward, maybe? Or maybe there would be scratching and a true test of athleticism. A purer, physical flexing of the universal law I attempted to educate her about earlier.

I’d yet to have a passenger be happily surprised. I wonder if it’s me that causes this. I wonder if that’ll ever happen. I don’t even know if I’d like it at this point. I’m too used to the other way.
But while I was thinking all this. I realized that she hadn’t said anything yet.
I looked at her face to try to read it.

And I couldn’t.

In fact, I couldn’t do much of anything. Nothing was coming off of her and I suddenly felt very content to just sit and watch her shoulder.

I felt my mind split into two. One of those moments of being in shock where you watch things happen with a detachment that tells you just how bad things have gotten without allowing you to feel true alarm.
I understood that my plan was a bad one. I understood that she was off limits. I understood that this ship was now her ship.

I knew with the sickening clarity of hindsight that I’d fallen into her trap, not the other way around. I’d gobbled down a lure. Like a greedy riverfish, I’d arrowed toward the bait without a second thought.
In space you hear rumours. Myths in the black. A lot like sailors of old. Reality bends when you’re in a small craft at the mercy of enormous, uncaring nature. There can be madness in long transit. Superstitions arise that seem silly on land but become iron-hard rules on a long journey. Travelers come up with things to explain the unexplainable; mermaids, krakens, harpies, gods…

…and sirens.

She spoke to me then. In a different voice. A beautiful voice. I could almost see the notes of it. The crystalline shining elegance of them. I felt the pull of addiction and dove in. Like I was doing a smiling, languid backstroke down the sides a massive whirlpool. Not a care in the universe as my mental being disappeared.

I was allowed to keep a kernel of myself in a small corner of my mind. Otherwise, I became a tool of hers as much as any hammer or wrench on this ship.

I knew that I would never tell another soul about her. I knew that I would never attempt this kind of plan again. I felt the tendrils of her song reprogramming me as we traveled through the dark and I was grateful for it. I knew that if I broke any of her rules, I would happily gouge out my own eyes and cut myself in the smallest, most painful ways for days until I died.

She left me that small pocket of myself so that after she left, I would have a role to adhere to. A personality to keep me from drooling in a corner for the rest of my life. It wouldn’t be truly me so much as a costume I’d never be able to take off. A different mask that she’d let me have. She didn’t do that to be kind. She did it to avoid suspicion. So did it so that I could still speak to tower controls during takeoff and landing.

She did it to avoid leaving a trail of victims that would lead back to her.

Maybe the worst part of it all was that I was content about it all. The horror I should have felt was missing. No panic. Just passive witnessing. Watching myself disappear. Looking at my own disassembly and reformation in an image she preferred. I even helped her here and there when I felt she’d missed a spot.
I wasn’t privy to her long-terms plans. Would she leave me at the next outpost and find a new captain to prey on? Or would she let me resupply and take me up on that long-haul journey I’d told her I was going on? Would I be food for her journey? Would she lay eggs in me? Was I a short-term or long-term investment? But puppets don’t ask questions unless they’re told to.

I wasn’t wrong about about the economics of force and strategy. Clearly. It was all that mattered out here. I suppose in a lot of ways that the old maps had it right. The space between lands is deep, mysterious, unknowable, and dark.

And here be monsters.




tags

The studded club swung down and cratered the ground with a sound like a collapsing house. The Brinotaur’s muscles shuddered with the impact as it’s weapon hit the ground. To call it a club wasn’t entirely correct. It was more like a building with a handle. The creature was the biggest mass of flesh I’d seen down here in the under.

I had rolled to the side, pushed even further by the shockwave of the club’s impact. A wall of air like a giant hand swept me across the ground. I wouldn’t have survived a glancing blow and I’d be disintegrated by a direct hit. I needed to think of a way out of here fast.

It felt like I was in an arena but there didn’t appear to be an audience. The Brinotaur and I were in a circular room with a dirt floor about as big as an empty warehouse except the walls climbed up into darkness. A few support pillars lanced up into the blackness from the ground but I couldn’t see the ceiling. The Brinotaur seemed to know not to destroy them but I didn’t see how it could avoid it, being so large and clumsy.

I’d woken up here. I couldn’t tell if I’d been randomly selected from the other kidnapped humans or if this was punishment. The creatures here had an opaque system of governing that I couldn’t parse.

The Brinotaur, for instance. I’d heard of it but I hadn’t seen it yet. A mythical creature used as a boogeyman to our slave work force if we didn’t pull our quotas. My quotas were up and my quotas were fine. I’m not sure how I got here.

The Brinotaur tugged his weapon up and back onto his shoulder. It was an amphibious creature. A head like a bull but green and slimy with no hair. Gills fluttered under its ears. Mottled skin glistened, wrapped around his enormous muscles. It looked too big for the gravity here. Like merely breathing and rolling over would be a herculean feat but here it was, walking around disturbingly quick even if imprecise and hampered by its immense inertia. It must need a water source but there was none here in the room.

That’s when the ceiling exploded into light and the ocean came down from the sky.



tags

Check it out! Every Thursday, Friday and Saturday until the end of August, Spectral Theater is running two short science-fiction plays and I'm in one of them. One called Nimbus and one called The Hunted. Check it out here and here.

Doors at 9:30, show at ten. It's a 28-seat theater so it sells out quick. Tickets are $8. Thursday, Friday and Saturday.
350 Powell Street.

Wait for iiiit.....

Come check it out!


tags

The lie came out of the darkness and attacked me. It had long secrets for arms and a smeared photograph for a face. Its body was one giant repressed memory, supported by twin pillars of denial. It was hiding in the closet.

It stopped in front of me with a shouting silence frozen on its blurred, vibrating lips.

It offered me a ham sandwich.

I accepted the ham sandwich. I gave The Lie half of the sandwich back.

The two of us, amorphous dark skeleton-beast and young man, sat on the edge of my bed tasting the mustard and chewing in the midnight darkness.

You’d think it would have been an awkward silence but it wasn’t. It was actually quite comforting. In the small-town distance, I could hear a car go by. Other than that, there was only the occasional squeak of the bed and the click of my jaw as I ate.

I finished my half of the sandwich. I turned to The Lie.

“Are you thirsty?” I asked.

“No.” it said.

I replied, “Do you mean yes? It’s hard to tell, you know, I mean, you’re The Lie.”

The Lie gave me a big gorilla shrug and turned its hazy black and white face back to the closet. It wanted to go home. I had no idea what it was doing outside but it was the sixth time this month that it had charged out like a B-movie monster brought to life and then turned benign.

“Well, anyway. I should probably get to sleep.” I said, with an exaggerated yawn.

The Lie stood up and dusted imaginary dust off of his furry, massive legs. The Lie went back to the closet and closed the door behind it.

I went back to sleep.

As I drifted off, it occurred to me that I was almost starting to look forward to the visits.



tags

I wake up begging for my life.

My hands are clasped together and drawing blood from each other. My blankets are on the floor at the foot of the bed. I’m curled up and my eyes are shut tight. I can hear my own scream fading out of my wide open dry mouth like a train whistle fading into the distance. My heart is nearly bruising itself in a mad panic to escape and my body is slick and shivering with cooling sweat. Every muscle is pulled tight. I stay like that for a few minutes and feel my pulse and breathing rates slow down. I move slowly at first. I can feel the muscles creak. I unfold like a butterfly coming out of a chrysalis and I feel just as fragile.

My life is coming back into focus now. I have a nearly tidy sparse one bedroom apartment. I am single and I work with computers. I have no pets or girlfriend. My name is Jack. I just had a birthday a few weeks ago. 28th? No, my 29th. Yes, my 29th. I can feel my ragged breathing approaching something that isn’t panic. I climb gingerly out of bed and grab for the robe on the back of the bedroom door.

I look at myself in the mirror that was being covered by the robe. I look awful. I only sleep now when I’m so fatigued that I need to. My hair is wild and my eyes are haunted. If wasn’t for the evidence of the apartment around me, I’d think I was looking at a crazy homeless person.

It’s understood, I think, that whatever is torturing me at night doesn’t let me remember the dreams.

I wonder if it’s a survival tactic. Like kids that have been abused shutting it out and just having a blank space where the abuse happened.

But deep in my heart, I know it’s because of one thing:

The thing that’s torturing me in my dreams likes me fresh. It likes me coming to it not knowing what’s about to happen. Every time I scream under its touch is fresh and new. It can ravage me the same way over and over again or exercise its imagination when it wants to. I get the feeling that it picks people at random and does this to them until they stop showing up. Until they die here in the real world from exhaustion. I don’t get the feeling this thing is human. I get the feeling it’s like a five year old that never gets tired of playing the same game over and over again. It doesn’t get bored and it loves doing this.

I hope I’m wrong but I don’t think I am. I won’t be able to tell anyone about it because they’ll think I’m crazy.


tags

I notice these are getting longer. I guess that's good.

There's a book out where this artist takes kids drawings and does them up proper style with the ability of his craft. He has this cool foreword:

It started simply at the Jersey shore in 1998. While I played in the water, my six year old niece, Jessica, an avid drawer herself, snatched my sketchbook from my towel and filled it with strange creatures. As she went off to play, I marveled at how each creature stood without the benefit of a skeleton, and how the shoulder of a beautiful woman could be attached to her jawbone. Kids just don't worry about proportions or judgmental criticism - they just draw - and that's the reason they surpass adults in creativity.

The problem is was that few of my students respected abstract expressionism. Basically, if they were going to draw comic books, they'd need to make up figures, buildings, vehicles, and landscapes - but also elements like mystical dimensions, explosions, mutations and things unseen, all of which require abstract design. When drawing the insides of a demon's belly or the outer reaches of the subatomic microverse, there aren't any reference photos.

Awesome.

Check the book here.

It’s all about the transformation.
I remember entering the room. I was eighteen, cold, naked except for the paper underwear, bred for this and still nervous. I suppose terrified is more like it. Even after the rigorous physical training I was still very skinny. My breathing came in quick gasps as I struggled not to cross my arms or shiver. I came to a stop and stood at attention in the middle of the circular metal trapdoor grill under the light. I was barefoot. My head was shaved. My identification tattoos and punishment wires were out there for all to see. Gooseflesh ran over me and I could see the little puffs of my breath. Primed and ready. They drugs they had given me this morning to ease the transition were working. I felt more alert and attentive than ever. I felt curious about the future, eager to take part and slightly dreamy. I also felt a little itchy.
A blue light scanned up, over and through me.
I saw some indicators come up on some panels in the darkness. Just like in the instructional videos.
I’d been confirmed and we were a go.
I wish I could say I felt the moist eyes of my family and friends staring out hopefully from the observation enclosure. This was a proud day for most people. Most families gave one kid up to the SAPCorps. If you gave a child to the SAPCorps, it meant more birthing privileges.
SAPCorps was also the country’s orphanage. In some cases, it was also the juvenile detention center. I could still remember the day when I found out that this wasn’t a hospital and that my parents and sister were gone. That was ten years before. The doctor who had told me also remembered, I think, going by the scar on his face that he didn’t bother to get removed and the fact that he had requested to pull the lever for me on this occasion.
He looked down at me. Doctor Fines. My stepfather, for lack of a better word.
He twitched a smile at me. We were being monitored but other than that, it was just the two of us. I stood in the middle of the trapdoor. Our relationship had always been antagonistic but defined and limited. I don’t think anyone on the outside world would have referred to him as paternal but he was the closest I had.
“David.” He said. He nodded at me.
“Sir.” I replied. I stared straight ahead, willing him to get this underway.
“You ready?” he asked.
“Absolutely sir. Let’s do it.” I replied. I trembled a little.
“Here we go. I hope that…well. Here we go.” He said and flexed his hand on the handle.
He yanked back.
The trapdoor opened and I fell down the well into the liquid.
It’s all about the transformation.

I look down at my skin and see the moonlight reflect off its purple brick like surface. I see the little octagons that my pores have become breathing in the night air. It’s good that they do seeing as I don’t have a mouth anymore. I was a lucky one. My transformation turned out to be beneficial to the military. I’m dwarfstar dense with my human intelligence retained. Nothing manmade can really stand in my way and most conventional projectile weapons can't harm me. I don’t seem to have internal organs. My arms are huge and my legs are thick and short. I still have eyes but they’re hyper sensitive and covered up with military visiongogs. It’s been this way for years now.

I’m standing in the rain in the night time graveyard beside the grave of Dr. Fines. He died two days ago. I can’t define what I’m feeling. We’d talked every now and then but his death was sudden and I didn’t find out immediately. He was my last tie to my humanity. The last person who could remember who I was ‘before’.

I turn and walk away into the night and back to base.



tags