skonen_blades

By the pricking of my thumbs
Something wicked this way comes
By the pricking of my toes
Something wasted that way goes
By the pricking of my eyes
Something lovely this way flies
By the pricking of my hands
Something poisoned that way lands
By the pricking of my nose
Something shadowed this way flows
By the pricking of my knees
Something hooded that way flees
By the pricking of my lips
Something gently that way dips
By the pricking of my brows
Something heavy this way ploughs
By the pricking of my cheeks
Something wetly that way leaks
By the pricking of my jowls
Something hollow this way howls
By the pricking of my bones
Something hurtful that way moans
By the pricking of my nuts
Something turgid this way juts



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And the fireworks turn out to be blood
And the limping isn’t faked
And the river that comes out of you is fatal
The surprise rescue doesn’t come
The third-act triumph doesn’t happen
But you are still a strong person
But you are still a good person
But you still did the right thing
Rewards are for children
Hardship is for adults
Merely surviving is the most we can hope for
Anything else is a bonus
Because every day is a challenge
You can do it
But it’s hard
You can do it
But it’s not easy
You can do it
And only you can do it
Even though community helps
Even though friends have your back
Even though fuel comes in many forms
You are the one that has to do it
And that is so hard
And if you can’t go forward, go sideways
Rivers go around rocks
And life is full of rocks
Metaphors can’t do life justice
But your struggle is noticed
And vital
No one wants you to fail




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The dragon’s mouth is my home. It’s formed its dry tongue into a chair. When it peels back its lips, I can look out through the teeth. At night, it straightens its tongue into a bed. It’s warm in here. I’m protected. The fumes smell weird but I’ve gotten used to that. I smell like burning peat wherever I go. It’s in my pores.

It marks me as dragonborn. There are scents on the market to try to emulate it but the real smell cannot be duplicated. Once you’ve smelled it, you recognize all pretenders. Some tough guys try to use the scent to intimidate, to extort. It works as long as no dragonborn actually find them or catch them.

We feed all impostors to our dragons. It’s risky to pretend to be dragonborn.

I’d say it’s my pet but it’s more symbiotic than that. I’m not its pet, either. We’re like extensions of each other. I go places his enormous frame can’t. We see through each other’s eyes, we put our brains together to solve problems. My dragon is quite intelligent but its brain is animal and ancient, more akin to a cat’s than a human. His solutions lack sympathy and tend not to take collateral damage into account.

But his solutions are solutions. They work when they’re called for. I’m the diplomat. And with the dragon to back up my words, I’m a very effective diplomat.

On this island, there are seventy-six of us with close to a million pairs worldwide. We’ve ruled the lands for two dragon generations now. That’s nearly three hundred years in human time. We’re effective. We are judge, jury, and executioner unless the situation is more complex and requires a trial. In that case, a court is convened in whatever hall or town square can handle three dragons to render a decision.

We are fair but we are feared. It’s hard not to feel like a tyrant.

My name is Bledmear. My dragon’s name is Blood. I’ve had other names in different areas. Nicknames. The Ghast, Holy Justice, Underkiller, Flametooth, Bloodknuck, Tortenfist. All exaggerations of my power. My dragon’s had names too. His names were not exaggerations.

I’ve very pale.

My armour is black, mostly because any colour at all just gets sooty and ends up looking untidy. There are riders that try to ride with white or blue armour but in my opinion it’s more effort than it’s worth to keep it clean.

My hair is bright red when it gets long enough to be seen but the fires keep it singed back to a flamecut and I like it that way. It hasn’t been long since back in the the peace time when I was a teen.

My dragon is a dark ruby, humming with heat and power at all times. A living reactor.

I’ve just perched on the southern turret of Forktown, unfortunately and uncreatively named after the fork in the river that forms a moat around half of it. The locals accent make the name sound much more rude to my foreign ears.

I’m here to investigate a murder. Again. Why can’t people just get along.

The moon is out. No one’s here to greet me but that’s okay. Nothing will start until until morning.

Blood curls up, glinting dark under the moon, and opens his mouth for me to leave. I walk forward and lean against his bottom fangs, looking out.

Looks cold.

I think to Blood that maybe I’ll just sleep in the mouth tonight until morning.

Blood lifts his tongue and playfully pushes me over the ridge of his teeth and tumbling out onto the parapet. It’s been a long flight and he wants me to go have a bath and get the lay of the land to be more prepared in the morning. He tells me that he’s not a cave of procrastination.

I laugh in my mind with him. My eyes crinkle in twin with his.

The door to the castle opens.

“Surrah Flamewarden Bledmear of the Justice Division, Second of His Name, Protector of the Realm, Fairness Incarnate, Killer of the Dread Shackles, Leader of the Northwest Acres?” asked a reedy voice with tired precision?

A Keeper, then. A secretary of the house. Slightly insulting to be greeted by an underling but his use of titles is correct and at this time of the night, the leaders might be indisposed.

“Yes, tis I. The documents of my office are with me and if you wish, you can just call me Bled. I appreciate your attention to detail but that’s a lot for a person to say every time they want me to pass the salt.” I said with a smile.

Blood puffed a sulfur cloud of laughter up through his skyward nostrils.

“As you wish…Bled.” He was clearly uncomfortable with the protocol-destroying use of my first name but was accommodating me. “I am Aowyn. I am to show you to your quarters. Will your dragon stable here? Or shall he retire to the stables? Or the forest?”

“Blood will retire where he wishes. I assume outdoors. But he will return in the morning to this parapet to commence the trial. Now, where can I wash up?” I asked.

“Right this way,” rasped Aowyn, turning back to the door and into the darkness within, beckoning me to follow.

Blood and I bade goodnight to each other and I walked into the door.



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There were two of us in the room. There was a lot of blood cooling on the metal floor. The alarms made it hard to hear but we held hands and stayed silent.

She breathed out, did not breathe back in, and then there was just one of us in the room.

I needed to find a way to get out of the prison before the riot burned the entire building down. I have to say that I didn’t much care if I survived the process anymore. Relissa was the reason I’d had the strength to make it this far.

I could feel the bonecutters in my bloodstream waiting for an excuse to activate. The prisoners had jammed any incoming signals but as soon as I left the building I’d jerk and go limp as my insides unzipped and my body would fall to the pavement, the tensile strength of my skin the only thing keeping me from splashing.

The irony was that I was a lawyer. Madvic Tujon from the PoliSansSogo sector. A registered courtmouse paid to keep balance as my employers saw fit. I’d passed the bar but I’d become a bagman, shunting credits to bent judges and juries to keep some clients out and some marks in. I didn’t ask questions.

Until Relissa. It was an old story. I’d fallen in love with her. She was an enforcer for the Blue Cards, a small time unit near the courthouse steps. When I finished a case, we’d celebrate sometimes. We were growing closer. Not so smart but we had such confidence.

My people wanted to claim the space near the courts for better client protection. The Blue Cards were taken out. The ones that weren’t killed were arrested. Relissa was one of the ones that didn’t go down easy.

I told my bosses that I wasn’t going to send her to prison. I gave them all my savings. I argued my case to my representative in the hopes that it would be relayed to the boss.

They didn’t care. I don’t what I expected. Compassion? Loyalty? A break because of years of service?

The cops got me the next morning and that afternoon I was found guilty of murdering some guy I didn't recognize and that night I slept in a cell. The charge would land me in penal for decades but all of my enemies on the inside would make sure my life expectancy was in the negative numbers.

And there was Relissa. Both of us awaiting shipouts, both of us in our orange jumpsuits, both of us with bonecutters in our blood. The riot started a half hour later. I don’t know what it was about. Rights, maybe.

The smoke reached our noses around midnight. Someone must have made it to the control room because the doors of our entire cellblock opened. Relissa killed a guard and was shot during the struggle. We ran into solitary and hid there.

Now she’s dead and the flames outside are only growing.

I leave Relissa behind and charge out into the fire to join the fighting.



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I squeeze blood sugar from the prefab four and count the draconian petals on my spine. Each helmet-sized affirmation made of reptile skin and seven-eleven countertops turns my life into a Turkish dice game. Let’s tickle the cheese. Let’s elevate our rim shots. Let’s make baskets just so that we can keep them empty. This clean-shaven hard drive is balding early and trying too hard. Let’s whisper the answer and let the motherboard relax.

It’s a complicated song played in the key of skeleton in dragon scales. It’s a universe in the shape of a balloon animal. A mental rat hunt. Shaving cream on the face of Jesus. I wouldn’t be here selling tickets to the ride if I could take myself up on it. I can’t see the forest for the tease. Crocodile clips in machine-gun brainstorms whip through the wires to the light-bulb idea factory and just like that, it becomes a demolition.

The support structure shudders and you can sense the revolution through the soles of your feet. Capes and counts invade the ballroom to lie to the mirrors. It’s just dessert, you say, but I can’t agree. It’s so much more. It’s February in the oven and this bakery needs an excuse to become a lingerie store. I can’t rid myself of the caretaker’s key ring anymore than I can pilot paper airplanes.

But all the same, get comfortable. Perambulate the plank. Let’s get to gnaw each other. Each bitter peach-pit future can go fuck itself while we settle into the flux of ley-line predictions. Quantum possibilities will flicker and fluctuate around us as the future calcifies, no, coalesces, no, coagulates into a timeline. Clarity is for the weak. Let’s meet the coming storm with a smile and our lucky, lucky teeth.




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The milk from Mother Nature’s boob is also known as blood
It rushes through our bodies in a never-ending flood

Each one of us connected by the vibrant colour red
A rhythm beats within us till the day that we are dead

The breath and pump that grants our crimson blood the air it needs
A red accordion that wraps around a drum that bleeds

And so our blood is music and we’re music through and through.
And so is he. And her and me. And you. And you. And you.

If Earth’s a rocky island and our blood is all marooned
Our blood is in a common key, we all carry a tune

And every single one of us is filled up with a sea
A cherry-coloured, scarlet-shaded, sanguine melody

An ocean based on iron. A briny, salty tide
It is the thing that makes us all the very same inside

The differences outside outweigh the sameness that’s within
Capillaries capitulate with one prick of a pin

Or one swipe of a sword, they say, or one gun’s loaded shout
A piece of metal used correctly lets it all run out.

We need to keep the song inside our fragile human frame.
Because of that, while we’re alive, I think we’re all the same.


So let’s acknowledge music with a hearty, heady rush.
Acknowledge that our lives are but a rhythmic, pressured gush
And while our lives may finish with a drumroll and a hush
Our lives begin when music that’s within us makes us blush.





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It’s the deepest cuts that take the longest time to start bleeding. Seconds pass as the body figures out that it’s really serious this time before crying blood from a new mouth.

It’s the same with broken hearts. Cupids are claim jumpers. They’re deaf kids that like to set things on fire.

Love is a leg sweep from a judo master. It’s a diving board for a pool that may or may not be empty. It’s cigarette burns on church pews. It’s that empty place at the dining table. It’s 2d6 against Godzilla.

There’s a rhythm to love. A purring idle of spoon to mouth. A cobalt ravager of dreams playing the vibraphone through two tin cans and a string into your ear. Your best friend’s window is open and it’s summer vacation. Love floods over the banks, committing open-heart perjury on the witless stand, dooming us to be held in contempt bred from familiarity.

Love is the raft. Love is the river.

Whiles foxes trot and bugs jitter, I know that as sure as a pair of mismatched socks is a sign of a person with more important things on his or her mind, spring’s a comin’. Turn those turtle shells into bongos and let’s pick up the pace. Ninjas, fly your kites. Hunters, dry your linen. And all you scoreboard announcers out there, spray your throats with kerosene and kool-aid.

Spring’s doing the watusi down school hallways with a big fat smile on his face.

This time around, love’s picking up hitch hikers. Show a little leg.





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The Man in Charge wears a transparent faceplate.

The only muscles still present are the ones needed to move his eyes, eyelids, and jaw. The rest is just chalk-white bone under two inches of glossy, transparent resin. The irises of his expressionless eyes are bright yellow.

The rest of his skin is grey. I cannot tell his race. I call him The Man in Charge because he is not tied to a chair and he has a gun.

He has boosted muscles pushing the seams of his suit to their limits. I’m sure he has custom clothes for his frame but I guess the suit was last minute to get into this charity dinner and up to my room.

I heard a few seams purr open when he body slammed me onto the plush carpet. It was the first ten seconds of six very painful minutes he used to make sure that I was both motionless and paying attention. The carpet is now a Pollock painting of my blood. I don’t think I’ll ever walk properly again and I’m done playing the piano.

My security would have arrived by now so I can only assume that they’ve been bought out or killed.

The Man in Charge looks at me with an almost insectile curiousity. He opens a cel phone, dials a number, and attaches it to my head with a thick rubber band. He gets close and I can tell that he isn’t sweating or breathing hard.

This henchman in front of me is worth millions.

I hear the digital chirp of a ring tone in a different continent before the click of a receiver picking up. It sounds like a party.

“Ronald? You there, Ronald, you old scamp?” says a drunk London accent.

I recognize the voice immediately. I gift the Pollock painting in the carpet with a convulsive jet of urine.

“Have you met La Lune? He’s the exquisite man I told to get your attention. I trust he has? He’s a very…ah….thorough employee. Angela!” the voice on the other end of the line says. He’s talking to someone else at the party now. “How nice to see you. Just a second dear, I’m in the middle of something. Talk to you soon. Ronald? You still there?” he asked.

I gurgle through missing teeth something approximating a positive response.

“Good, good. La Lune should be setting up a video feed now so that we can all learn a valuable lesson. There’s a few people here that aren’t entirely on board yet and I need to show them what happens to people who try to jump ship. Can you see him?” he asks. I can almost smell the expensive champagne on his breath.

La Lune is indeed setting up a tripod and a small camera a few feet away. It’s pointed at me.

I think the next few minutes are going to bring me new experiences.

The red light on the camera comes on.

I hear cheers from the phone.

“Ladies and Gentlemen!" says the voice on the phone to the party guests, "Before dinner gets underway, I must ask you to bring your attention to the screens above the buffet tables and at either end of the hall. The man in the chair is a man you’ll recognize. He was here just last week. He left our little organization with the idea of telling the outside world about our plans.” He says.

“He will be our entertainment before dinner.” He chuckles. “La Lune? You may proceed.”

La Lune, the skullface in the tux, nods and walks towards me.

I figure I might as well scream.



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I’m tied up better that Bettie Page and struggling not to choke on my gag. I’m squirming around in the spacious red vinyl back seat of an old Chevy. It’s like I’m in a restaurant booth going 100mph down the ragged highway of bat country.

It’s night out. There’s a one-eyed vampire at the wheel shouting my secrets out the window into the ears of jackrabbits and coyotes. The engine is becoming one with his low, ravaged voice. It sounds like he’s powering the engine with what he’s stealing from me. His teeth click together on the consonants like he’s eating these treasures, these things I struggle to keep inside.

They’re more valuable than blood to his kind. The wind dives into the car playfully as our passage shreds the calm of the night-time desert. His long hair turns into medusa turbulence and tugs at his eyepatch.

I can’t give up. I try to saw my bonds with my ragged fingernails. Maybe if I bleed enough, I’ll be able to slither free. There’s too much blood in my nose. I have to breathe around the gag.

My life has been a whip in motion since my birth. Free will is choice. Choices are made based on values. Values are instilled during childhood. The years of my life have been long braids of leather strung together and my childhood has created a destiny that’s pulled the years tight into an arching thrust that has only one inevitable outcome.

My entire life has been a beating and I was never told the safe word.

The arm is coming down now. The end of my life is about to break the sound barrier with a snap that every dominatrix is familiar with.

The demon driver pulls a hard left with his one good arm and now we’re off-road, bumping into the night, kicking up dust.

He’s getting low on secrets and looking for other people to exploit. His desperation is making him take a straight line across the desert to another victim. I can’t let that happen.

I managed to get one hand free. I stop moving. I’m slick with blood and burning from the ropes. I reach up to the gag and undo it.

The vampire-demon driver screams “I am free!” out the window, pauses, and slams on the brakes in panic.

Too late.

I arch up over the back seat like a gymnast. We become each other’s nightmares.

His teeth worry the flesh of my stomach in a wet, chattering maul. With my one arm free, I punch into the weakening flesh of his chest. I’ve put toothpicks under my nails. Five stakes pierce the driver’s heart.

I can feel myself getting dizzy in time with the driver’s slowing pulse.

The car is now a coffin. We die together in a supernatural suicide pact, our corpses in a fully-clothed 69 that will confuse the police if they ever find the vehicle.

We die in the desert but it feels like burial at sea.




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Vein networks. Tree branches. Tributary rivers. The spatter patterns of supernovae. Lightning reaching down to the earth. That crack in the ceiling. The ivy on the side of city hall.

The perfect parabolic curve of smooth flesh snuggled up against the hardness of his hip-bones.

The colourful reaching of muscle ringed around the twin pinhole cameras staring forward. The dendrites connecting the neurons in the human brain glitter like tinsel on a Christmas tree as electricity arcs from abandoned post to abandoned post. The water is a conductor to a symphony of second thoughts surfing inside the meat.

He stares at the back of her head.

They’re cuddled up cozier than forks in a drawer.

He should be comfortable.

Three decaf soy-milk lattes. Five traded childhood recollections. An honest laugh that neither of them expected. Two burned steaks. Sixteen nervous tics. Nudity. One person asleep, one person awake.

Nine months. 46 chromosomes. Knife-throwing target practice at the terrified volunteer tied to his clenched heart. Worry without limits lying in a crib down the hall in a room coloured with fresh wallpaper. Toys with the price tag still attached lined up against the wall.

Trace a pattern of gold-dust and iron filings on a map. The impurities winding through a slab of marble. Seaweed on a beach.

Tiny shoes.





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