skonen_blades

April 30/30

23/30

Gingers have a rhubarb patch
Brunettes have a thicket.
Blondes possess a flaxen thatch
So guys know where to stick it.

Brunettes have a licorice ruff
Blondes a golden ticket
Gingers have a copper tuft
So girls know where to lick it

Blondes display a honey crest
Gingers red wine wicket
Brunettes sport a charcoal tress
So everyone can flick it



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Hair was the secret.

Our bodies replicate and build the dead cells into keratin that squeeze slowly out of us like time-lapse toothpaste to form hair and fingernails. They have markers that tell them when to grow and when to stop.

Markers that we’ve found. Markers that we can manipulate. We’re hoping that later on, we can manipulate living flesh. Right now, though, we’re giving the gift of regeneration to the world.

A ‘toupee’ of scalp tissue is grafted onto an amputee’s arm. The hair is ordered to grow in the shape of a human arm. It takes five weeks for the arm to grow.

It’s grey like the horn of a rhino and stiff to the touch, like a fingernail in the shape of an arm.

With our command over neurotransmitters and nerve arrays, we can install a robotic armature inside the arm that will respond to the patient’s mental commands. It takes a lot of practice but it works. The flesh is technically dead so it doesn’t reject the implants.

Also, we can split the nerve cells from a few points around the patient’s body and bury them around the new limb. That way, while they won’t have the complexity of feeling that you and I take for granted, they can at least feel rudimentary pain and pleasure.

The new limbs can be painted to match the skin tone of the patient. Nail polish, we call it amongst ourselves.

The army is talking to us about giving soldiers back their arms and legs to send them back into battle. We can picture them, grey skinned and patchwork, going back into the hell they’d been taken from. They’ll be augmented in ways we never thought of.

It’s going to be great. We’re going to be rich.



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His eyebrows were angry animals that guarded the twin caves of his eyes. A wet, malevolent intelligence glittered back there in the depths. I’d say that his eyebrows were perched there but they were entirely too flat to his skull and too large to be compared to anything as agile and graceful as a bird. They were like satan’s pet black caterpillars.

They were wiry. They did not meet in the middle and they had sporadic shoots of grey through them.

They jumped and lanced at arguments. They wiggled and caroused when he was being quite serious. They were frightfully distracting. He used this to great effect during debate.

Just as one got a good solid argument underneath one, along came those jittering eyebrows seemingly intent on tying a knot between them. If they had the capability to grasp knitting needles, there would be a scarf all the way to the ground by the end of half an hour. One scarcely needs to imagine what an effect those giant bear-like hair-nests had on a person.

One of them would waggle furiously and just as one was wondering if such a feat was possible, the other part of one’s mind would put forth the notion that it must be possible as one had just seen it with one’s own eyes. This would also push one to wonder if maybe one could complete such a feat with one’s own meager amateur brows.

Around this time, one would notice an embarrassing silence in the room and realize that one had just been asked a question.

These eyebrows could not have been the mere eyebrows of a mortal. They must have been the result of a midnight tryst between mortal woman and a malign god generations back in his bloodline. A lower-level god with great charm, perhaps. A god of facial-hair swooping in and making Tom Selleck look like a twelve-year-old with peach fuzz.

A mohair pyjama wearing Adonis with locks that made Bigfoot look clean shaven. A Cousin It with muscles. A man that would make Yosemite Sam look down in cross-eyed shame at his own pathetic lip-warmer. A god who possessed sledgehammer eyebrows that could have taught Groucho Marx a whole new language.

A small percentage of this god’s power had been passed down through the generations to this man. This man who used his powers for evil and personal gain instead of the greater good.

He was the Dean of my school and I hated him. I hated how those thick bushy signposts thwarted my every attempt at intelligent discourse with him. I was a deer and those oncoming eyebrows made me stand stock still and gape with no thought in my mind other than,

“Wow. Check those eyebrows out.”

While my mouth stumbled through the underbrush of argument and tripped in the brambles.

I hated his eyebrows. I fumed at them in silence. They became my nemesis, almost completely disassociated with the Dean himself. Disembodied, they’d haunt me in my dreams.




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They prowl the streets in military dress that was fresh in the morning and is hopelessly damaged by the evening. The women wear satin dresses stained with wine and sweat. They all look a little like royalty.

Their faces are tattooed.

These are the Royal Bastards. There are twenty six of them in all.

Royalty is still a family affair here. The offspring of cousins, brothers, and sisters is still preferred. The royal family here is large, though, and whoring is frequent. So is sleeping with women who are stupid and hopeful of making an entrance in high society.

Illegitimate offspring litter the dirty kitchen floors of common houses like rats.

They are kept track of. A capital R is tattooed above their right eye in the ornate stamp of the royal family. They are untouchable. They are given money on the one condition that they never contact their royal brothers and sisters. Other than that, the law is told to turn a blind eye to them.

They stumble loudly and sing and fight on the cobblestone streets amidst the stone buildings and brick alleyways. They are ignored by pedestrians and a hindrance to carriages.

To harm a Royal Bastard is a death sentence.

They are consumed with hatred and physically stronger than their privileged relatives thanks to fresh genes. All the more fuel for the anger at the injustice of their existence.

They have a palatial house in the middle of the city that always hosts the best parties. They live to excess and don’t live very long. They have cleaners and their wallets are always full. All of their friends are fair-weather and the weather’s always fair. They are prone to duels. They are prone to anger. They are prone to cynicism and depression.

Until now, they’ve fought each other and held their very lives in contempt.

Until now, they’ve been kept so drunk and sexed that the thought of banding together never entered their minds.

Until now, they would never think of taking back what should be theirs.

Until Anshion Rephale. The Older Brother. One eyed with long red hair, his hatred was always the blackest. He took a hot poker to the eye that had the tattoo above it in a sign of protest. Afterwards, he scarred the tattooed R on the bottom to make the form of a crude B. For bastard.

He’s an excellent swordsman and huntsman and friend to no one. He’s not actually the eldest. It’s just a nickname. He called this meeting and they all came to listen.

All the bastard brothers and sisters and cousins are here. Even the young ones. The two that can’t walk are being carried. They are all on the ground floor of the mansion gathered around the fireplace that Anshion is standing beside. There is silence. The constant party that has raged through this baroque bawdy house for decades has stopped for this evening.

Anshion turns to them with a contemptuous smile and the fire pops. His red hair seems to take on the glow of the flames. The unblinking dark shadow of his eye socket stares them down. When he speaks, they all know that change is coming.


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