Sluice Warrington was growing more and more annoyed with Rez, especially the man's side-street studio with its clitter clatter of canvases and layers upon layers of dust and paint-pocked floors as mindless as a Jackson Pollock. But worse, he hated how the man's oil canvases would sell for upwards of five grand; how entropy spawned celebrity. It seemed the more Rez became a mess of a human being, the more potent the paintings he pushed into galleries and living rooms and furniture stores and government buildings, while Sluice kept a tidy space—white and rounded as an Apple Store, clean and clinical as a nurse's ass—debarring his passion only on canvas, releasing himself like a frothing inmate given knife and vein—and made nothing. Not a quarter on skulls fading into moons, not a dime on robed figures biting into babies, not a nickel on statues wearing human skin, not a penny on nude women exhaling trails of beetles down their necks. But no one wanted truth anymore. No one wanted darkness. They wanted lazy pleasures that took a heartbeat to decipher. Rez's slurred landscapes, his blotted horses, the slop he called wildflowers and slabs of meat he called people, that sold.

But no longer! thought Sluice as he nailed up a shelf in his studio. Onto this shelf, Sluice piled the most obscure books he could find—travelogues of strange seas, manuscripts by madmen, maps, codices, scrolls, books of lost alphabets, ideas, and animals, illustrated stories about historical monsters, portents, prophecies, addendums to the Bible and Koran, alchemic recipes, pamphlets from an English secret society called the White Cloak, the lost diaries of Turriciano, Alan Moore's Providence (it was a good read), and heaps and heaps of spellbooks—any Sluice could find—from scratched out equations on toilet rolls to black blood volumes with poison green titles to crackling leather barely protecting crinkling vellum slips. It was in this search that he finally found what he was looking for: an edge.

The time was opportune, too, for Rez had reached a new tier of nuisance. The Bed Springs Fine Arts Museum was exhibiting a collection entitled: “Rez, Resurrected,” featuring his series of graveyards that looked like gray teeth on green lips. During the opening ceremony, Rez had attributed little depth to his works, describing them as: “Pretty, aren’t they?” and focusing instead on process. This was the worst of it, that someone with such talent would be an idiot. Only Sluice recognized “Rez, Resurrected” for having all the subtly of ape excrement.

But finally, inspiration. In a manuscript made from animal skin—the pages scrubbed so thinly they were translucent—Sluice found a text black as burns and slashing wildly as knife strokes. The manuscript's language had been lost in the loams of Persia, but he could read it legibly, although this induced migraines. Into these petrified layers of Sign and Sorcery, he peered. Most of it was murky as a cauldron, but here and there surfaced insights into the nature of magic, and the entire work seemed to promise to end the reader's sterility and that half-abominated world of near-but-never fame. Instead, the reader would be elevated to Subcreator, to really shape a Work from the materia, to make art that lives and pumps. Every artist before had been a neanderthal, grunting through the rubbish of language, smearing shadow people and spears on ill-lit caves.

So Sluice read and read, and read all over again. His day job at an IT firm assisted his mediation; the dull, tedious investigation of a computer’s interior workings and those codes which can bring configured metal to life helped him understand how script might Signify; how language could lunge from petty black symbols into systems of reality. He read through swollen eyes and a thunderous cavern of bone and finally he was ready and went to his wife and said: “It’s time we had a child.”


He did it. There were certain preparations. The candles were bloodmeal; the paste between the mattresses a viscosity of crushed raven, frog bile, and peaseblossom. He drew sigils in notebooks which he carefully placed about the room—the diagrams’ energies not deterred by the roofs of their binding. The Endless Words were uttered under his breath, and in the throes of passion, when the muttering would have discouraged the mood, he thought the Endless Words articulately, repetitively. The process gave him headaches, prolonging the creative process and letting him dive deeper and deeper into her folds. When he was done, he laid lustily in perfumed sheets as she sat on her back, legs in the air.

The early days of her pregnancy were normal. He read the book often. It stayed, this manuscript, by the bed, and he consulted the text as if it were a child-rearing guide. The words were less legible now, revealing only glimpses of truth which devolved into blaring, world-tearing headaches. Sometimes he felt the thinness in the air, or the quiet sound of movement, or a gonging noise like the heartbeat of some alien pressing its chest against his ears. But the reading wasn’t as helpful anymore. The process had been completed: the canvas had been her, the paint the black text, the brush his tongue slapping against teeth. The Great Work, hidden beneath her bump, needed to ferment like alcohol.

His wife was always hungry—she would eat loaves of bread in the check-out aisle and could never keep a stocked fridge. She also felt impressions of the art within her. She complained of dreams that there was a parasite in her belly—sometimes it appeared like a squid thing with the face of a spider, or a plated beetle coated in slimy horns, or a bundle of worms whose heads ended in an array of needle-roots piercing the womb lining. Did all pregnant women feel this way? Feel slowly eaten alive from within? Her stomach swelled larger and larger but her legs, butt, neck, etc., all remained thin. The baby was gorging itself on her—sipping her nutrients through the straw in its belly. Sometimes it pressed against the womb, and the impression pushing out of her skin wasn’t a foot, but something like a sliding eel. But Sluice didn’t want an ultrasound. “We can’t afford it,” he said. “You lost your healthcare and most of our income is going toward student loans and I’m afraid in three months we’ll be out on the streets or moving in with your parents.” But Sluice said this with a gleeful intensity and his eyes didn’t match the sour news. Instead, the narrow bands of blue around his engorged pupils glittered in anticipation and she thought—he’s excited about the baby.

But she was worried about Sluice and the darkness of his appetite. Sluice avoided his friends, especially Rez. His nights were spent at home, dozing, or reading the crumbles of paper he called “the Manuscript.” There was a smugness there despite the black bags bordering his eyes and the strained, rashy complexion of his skin. And a patience, too, which exceeded all compassion and bordered on the stoicism of a scientist cultivating a petri dish. They did not have sex—he didn’t feel comfortable pressing against the bulge too harshly.

Sluice kept reading, and the book kept revealing new layers of text until he thought he must be at the organs of the thing, or digging against the bones. The further he pressed his face into the Manuscript, the more Signs he uncovered, until he realized this book was an autopsy of sorts—an unraveling of the corpse of the cosmos.

The day came when he was dreaming about ruins that a text buzzed on his phone: [Hurry. Now. Having contractions.] Sluice rushed out his cubicle past confused glances, his phone pressed to his ear. “Sluice,” she moaned over the phone while he stood in the elevator. “This doesn’t feel right.” “There’s blood, Sluice,” she said as he pulled his car from the lot. “And—And something else.” The exit by the toll booth was accompanied by a series of moans, almost in pleasure. By the freeway they’d curdled into fulsome screams.

When Sluice pulled up to his driveway, the house was like an egg cracked open and poured into a pan. The wall to the living room had shattered into tufts of concrete and insulation foam and the veins of electrical wires. Coating it all were smears of what could have been jelly, only they stank of umbilical fluids and maggots. Sluice examined a series of craters on the driveway and, with the satisfaction of an artist who, masterpiece complete, must put away the tools, went inside to put away his wife.

She picked at the frayed ends of her hair, loose sandy tendrils twining around her fingers in the breeze. The cigarette was mashed into a knot in the tree stump beside her, in the company of several others she couldn't remember smoking. She shut her eyes as she thrust her hands into the cool, damp grass under her knees. Took a slow, deliberate breath and exhaled. The sharp smell of smoke still burned her from the inside, familiar and foreign at once. This smoke was different, heavier.

She'd always enjoyed the smell of burning wood and cigarettes. But she loved the smell of extinguished flames the most.

She opened her eyes and blinked against the sting. She wanted to look at the smoldering ruins, burn the image into her mind. With one hand she wiped at her face, smudging ash across her cheek. With the other she reached for her jacket pocket and rubbed her thumb over the smooth metal of the lighter.

Between two trees exploded into boulder stumps, Elemmírë raised a fist. Behind him, ten figures, barely visible above the gloom and bloom, dropped to their knees and scanned the street. They relied solely on the ghostly green readouts from their face masks, as their actual sights would have been distracted by the feral tapestry of flowers, the result not only of civilization gone wild but the biodegradable ammunition being used in the War. Inside each bullet was a gene seed which, when struck by fire, would sprout by day’s end into a single flower. It'd been the only agreed-upon convention between the elf factions—a way of turning war zones into gardens, of reducing the carbon imprint from endless shelling.

For a heartbeat, Elemmírë's Sight picked up a cracked skull, lilac seeping out like purple brain. Then he was Focused on the lights of armored cars bouncing across perforated rock-wake. A set of hand signals and the Ten disappeared, their gaudy red-and-gold camouflage blending with laceleaf and marigold. What Elemmírë's scouts were about to do was an ugly thing; an undignified ambush of a supply convoy. But in another way, a way beyond the soulless tactical hell of battle, they'd be returning motorized death-cannons and plated mercs wearing the ears of enemies around their necks to the serenity of nature.

The android was making them all uncomfortable with its Zelzer Stiff eyeing them from its hip. It’d only been forty point three seconds since the landmark decision to include artificial humans in the Second Amendment and this son of a manufacturing plant had just walked into the Rig & Rattle with a laspistol holstered, twinkling. Kghoshi—a real bastard on a good day—splashed his drink on silver chestmetal and said, "You packing, tin can?" The bartender—a saint on a bad day—put an arm on the droid: "C'mon, now, let's not do this." The move was registered as an offensive action and the android shot the bartender between his eyebrows. Kghoshi's finger moved a centimeter toward his gun when a second shot put a red dot on his forehead as uniform as urna. The men in the bar leaped to their feet. Offensive actions. The men in the bar toppled over chairs and tables. By the time the android reached the counter, empty now of breathing souls, a feed of reaction times, facial registers, psycho-prints—all pointing to self-defense—had been submitted to local authorities.

We scrambled to get our belongings together for our first family vacation. Who knew a baby needed so much stuff? My world changed forever two months ago, and its been a blur of sleepless nights and drowsy feedings in the dark of our small apartment ever since. I'm often in survival mode, just trying to get through the hard moments, craving that next smile or happy coo. But here, I can look out at the world from a vast green forest. The baby sleeps soundly in her bed. The world is quiet. And when she wakes up crying, I bounce her in my arms to soothe her, and breathe in the mountains to soothe myself.

[An excerpt from the famous orc scholar and adventurer Brakis Grimdear. For the full text, please consult the librarians of Teatree U in Harkness.]

"The underworld is not the heart of a volcano as described by the Cult of Fire, nor a blue ice-fringe as described by the Cult of Ice. There is no eternal whirlwind, meaning the djinn of the Cult of Air are wrong (or metaphorical). Perhaps the Cult of Earth understands this realm best, for the underworld is a cave that expands to bounds unknown. Here, shadows rule, and the darkness has such potency that it becomes fluid and runs on the rocks. The void is lessened only by the blue lights emitted from the souls of the dead, and by the cairns, or stacks of stones and skulls, which glow internally from some secret flame, and the lanterns at the docks. 

The terrain is mostly plains of a material akin to obsidian, and is intercut by hills and shade-cloak rivulets; these 'rivers' are called Little Fugues and are easy to cross as long as you don't step in them. The entrance of the realm ends at the Great Fugue, an immense black channel, although I am sure it has no current. To be truly initiated into the dark halls, one must cross the river. This is usually done by a barge called the Ferryskul, although I believe that boats buried in tombs can be used as well. On this side of the Great Fugue, the undead do not emit a glow, for they still carry their meat and cloaks and any possessions left in the grave. I think the lantern-light attracts them for they crawl across the plains intently and growl if deterred. At the docks, sarlowes strip the dead of their belongings, load the barge with freshly-shaved souls, and ferry across the Great Fugue. The dead's luggage is tossed into the river which is, in some form, alive. I did not see where the refuse went, but if you peered into the muck, you might glimpse lights in the depths and the honeycomb of tombs.

The sarlowes (these labormen of the underworld are robed halflings with faces concealed by hoods, although each had a single blue eye which shone from within; not cycloptic, but as if the other had been punctured) were efficient carvers, and could whittle a man to spirit in seconds. I watched an elf lose her long-ears and long hair, her pale skin, her accruements of sexuality, her green and brown leather coat, and a single arrow puncturing her neck, and when this was peeled away I watched the sarlowes scrape away muscle and bleached bone and even bits of personality, including her elvish grooming, artistic ability, honor, freedom, vitality, and grudges. A dwarf tyrant, too, I beheld; I think it was Urist II of Val Dhuhaim (he had died of an energetic bowel). The stone-faced king was first parted with his beard and jewelry—diadems, rings, a crown, armor plate laced with silver. Then his gentle red cloak, his garments, and all other materia that makes a fattened monarch. Urist almost kept his cruelty and folly if an observant sarlowe hadn't pulled him from the barge for a second snip—then the tyrant lost his lust, glory-love, and insolence, too.

Finally, it was my turn, and those robed barbers examined me confusedly. "Yes," I said to them. "I am still alive." The creatures chittered to each other in an underling vernacular, and then one of them asked about my trip. I explained my rationale; how I was not satisfied with the wars between humans and goblins and other species, nor the political conflicts of Harkness, that rotting capitol, or world cultures. All of these endeavors were arbitrary, and it was a testament to the entropy of scholarship that I was one of the few who still wondered what the gods were made of, if they were merely magical mortals, if there was an afterlife, how magic originated, from where the different races derived, etc, etc. How could anyone let themselves be distracted from examining the principles of the cosmos?

The sarlowes wanted to know how I had come to the land of the unliving. I will not detail my process of reaching the underworld here for it was a tedious project, but I explained to them my preparation. Just imagine a ritual with the usual accruements of necromancy: signs made from blood, infernal words, candles lit and extinguished by cold gusts of wind, wails from invisible spirits, etc, etc, and a breach into reality itself—down into which I climbed.

Finally, the sarlowes took their blades to me. It was fascinating to watch my physical experience be severed from immaterium. First they took my armament—my foul-wind sword, my cloak of ever-fire, my flying scabbard beetle for a shield, and the black crown I let hang by my neck from a chain. Then they cut away my green flesh and layers of muscle beneath, and pried away my bones. Of my persona, especially my intellect, courage, pride, and independence, I would not depart.

All of this luggage they secured in a chest for my return. And then it was the onto the Ferryskul, and onward to Hell, not to rescue a lost lover, not to seek ancient counsel, not to conquer some infernal beast or steal a wondrous artifact, but to better the annals of mankind through the cogency of research."

There's always that one friend who sticks to the group like a discount sticker on a used book, and who is tolerated by necessity because any removal might leave behind a sticky residue. Among Skye, Keith, and Kim, this was Lames, whose Mom had long admitted to being high when she tried to write "James" on his birth certificate. When Skye, Keith, and Kim came upon the Cube, without hesitation they excluded Lames from the Pact. And they didn't care years later when, at Lames's 89th birthday, he glared bitterly at their youthful bodies. They could wait a little longer.

My sister will not eat seafood. She is a brown-haired, brown-eyed girl, all inherited from my mother, and she is picky, an inheritance from no one. Or perhaps a suspicious ancestor—maybe the caveman who ate the poisoned mushroom?

We (the boys) are wide, sandy, blue-eyed beasts. We'll eat anything, be it a bagel or small dog. It's that cavalier attitude Mom rewarded with meals that stretched the definition of food. She was not the best cook, and sometimes pizza would be recast as "lumps," or toast as "carcinogens with a side of yeast." Nor was she the most honest about ingredients. She wanted us to eat, after all.

So, Sis found herself in a constant state of seafood consumption. She'd eat tacos and realize afterward: "These were fish tacos!" She'd eat red beans and rice to discover soggy shrimp.

My poor sister. She's had more sushi than a sushi chef.

A cigarette on the beach:

Cold,

Light-headed,

Salty,

Composed.

You inhale with the coming of the waves;

You breathe out as they slip away.

The drowsiness you feel is the cooling of the earth

as it spins through a universe of cold, salty thoughts.

The embers in the stub are little suns.

You flick away a shooting star

and know at once how small you are.

[Wrote this, hmm, must have been 2010, mid-way through college]