Brimstone, what an odd name for a small city residing within the midwestern state of Minnesota. If one were to ask a local why it is named as such they would likely answer that on the hottest summer days and on the coldest winter nights this place feels a little like hell. Sounds a bit overdramatic to the average outsider, but for any local that statement has become a much more literal in recent events. Like any small city Brimstone had its essentials. It had several schools, a police station, a large grocery store, plenty of shops, six different churches, a museum, a research lab, a popular bar called Dante’s, a few restraurants, a local TV news station, and home to one of the largest shopping malls in the country. Now something else has claimed Brimstone as its home. Something darker and twisted. Or at least that is what the Bible and Brimstone’s churchfolk would claim. Right along the quiet neighborhood on Milton Ave was the Gravely house. It was a big red house with two floors, an attic, a basement, four bedrooms, and a large backyard. An odd bunch, that’s what the folks of Brimstone would describe the Gravely family. They seemed like any ordinary family to a mundane eye. A mother and her two daughters. Mrs. Gravely was a local celebrity inside Brimstone. An anchorwoman for the local news, along with being a co-host for their very own morning talk show, What’s Hot in Brimstone. There was also the eldest of the Gravely daughters who was ten years of age, Rosemary, or Rosie as she is called by her friends and family. The youngest Gravely was named Regan, about five years and starting kindergarten.

And then there was him.

No it is not Mr. Gravely, who was a good man. A music teacher and an awe inspiring rock musician who he and his band, Dain Bramage, would perform for local gigs, in hopes of one day performing for larger crowds and concerts. Sadly, those hopes ended the day Mr. Gravely was killed in a car accident several months ago. It was a tragic loss for the community, especially for the Gravely girls. Time passed and the family healed. Then about two months ago he came into their lives. Everyone in Brimstone knows what was now dwelling within the Gravely house. Or perhaps a more accurate term rather than what but who. If an outsider, perhaps the same outsider that asked about Brimstone, then asked who or what lived inside the Gravely house everyone would say that a devil came to that very house. And a devil is about to be summoned once more.

Little Regan Gravely rushed to her sister’s room as fast as she could. A large bag dragged along the floor as she hauled it with her small arms. She opened the door as the older sibling made the final preparations around the ominous red-painted pentagram that lay in the center of the bedroom.

“Did you bring it?” Rosemary asked.

“Right here,” Regan peeped, dropping the bag by the bedside. “Will this work?”

“There’s the only way to find out,” Rosemary confirmed. “All we have to do now is say the incantation.”

Rosemary pulled out an ancient book from a lockbox. It was a large book with a demonic skull on its cover, resembling an abominable corpse in the midst of decay. The eldest Gravely skimmed through each heavy page, which felt like peeling through layers upon layers of skin, but from what is hard to say. Or perhaps the answer is too obvious and yet terrifying to give. Much of its text was foreign to this mortal child, written in a daemoniac language. Penned in blood from unfotunate souls that were sacrificed and scribed by an unholy priest who pledged their blasphemous services to dark creatures of a forgotten abyss.

At last, she found the page and read its dark inscription aloud. “Arise, oh Emperor of Darkness, the fallen son. Spill the blood and blacken the sun.”

A cold air filled the room with each word she spoke. The lights flickered until darkness consumed the room. Rosemary had to pause amid her unholy incantation. She knew it was working. She then continued, “I call upon you from your deathly rest, for you to perform a dark request.” The earth and house then shook. The windows threw open, followed by a violent gust swung. Regan wrapped herself tightly around her older sister as the chaos ensued in their once safe home. She was scared, her older sister could tell. So was Rosemary, but she was so close. She could feel it. She hugged her little sister, showing that it was going to be all right. All she needed was to read the last of the scripture. The ritual cannot stop. They had to be brave for what would come next.

“Rise from the blackest pit you dwell!” She read louder. “Rise, Devil! Rise! I summon you, Dark Lord of Hell!”

As the eldest sister finished the incantation, black fire sprouted from the pentagram’s heart like a fiery geyser, engulfing the room with black, sulfuric smoke. Rosemary and Regan clung to each other like helpless birds caught in the winds of a savage hurricane. The dark storm finally halted and the two sisters peaked their eyes out, glimpsing at what no mortal, little less children, should ever bare witness. A large pair of eyes staring back at them from the abyss they conjured, gleaming through the shadows like a hungry predator. They were the blackest eyes. The devil’s eyes. “You have summoned me, mortals,” the shadowy beast bellowed. “I have heard your call. You call for my services. What are you willing give? What is your dark request?”

Courage filled Rosemary’s soul as she stood against the devil. She then raised the bag before the Beast and furiously declared. “Mom said stop hiding in your office and take out the trash already.”

The smoke cleared the bedroom in a bright flash. Out of the fading abyss was the devil’s human form, a tall slenderish, pale-skinned man dressed in a bloody red suite. He had large amounts of black hair on his head that curved into a style that resembled devil horns. On his chin was a black pointed, goat-like goatee, nestled below his mouth full of perfected teeth and sharpened canines. His scarlet colored eyes shined in the now brightly lit room. “I beg your pardon,” the Devil said in his natural form, with no smoke and mirrors to disguise himself or deepen his voice.

“The garbage,” Rosemary repeated. “Mom wants you to take it out.”

“Can it wait? I’m kinda in an important meeting with a client.”

“No you’re not.” Regan said.

“Yes I am.”

“No you’re not.”

“Yes I am.”

“Prove it then.”

“You two can’t prove I’m not.”

“Today is Sunday.” the eldest Gravely daughter spoke up.

“And you don’t work on Sundays.” the youngest then chimed in. “You said so yourself.”

“Technically, yes. But as the ruler of Hell I am also technically working twenty-four-seven. That means twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week since you’re still learning how to tell time. So any day of the week there’s some lowly soul that needs to be punished and tortured for their sins, or one of my many demon underlings require some need to know info on how to properly torture a damned soul, or some moronic mortal is looking for an easy way to get through their limited lives that they’re willing to sell their souls to me.”

“She said now, Lu.”

Lu, yes, as in Lucifer, the Devil himself. A once proud angel of the Heavens who fell from grace, betraying his own brethren during the Heaven-Hell War, transformed into the demonic ruler of the dark realm, the Inferno, or as it is more commonly called by its other name, Hell. What mortals did not realize was that he was actually the seventh demon to hold that title—Devil being a title to describe the king of Hell by the demons. Mrs. Gravely met him two months ago and they wedded not long after.

“Come on. Can’t it wait until after dinner? It’s spaghetti night!” the Dark Lord begged. “How about I pay you both ten dollars to take out the garbage for me and say that I did it?”

“Make it twenty dollars,” Rosemary demanded.

“What? That’s insane.”

“Regan, if you’d please.”

The younger Gravely inhaled deeply and let out a loud, “MOOOOOOM!”

The Devil froze. He has dealt with and dealt out many horrors. But confronting his tempered queen, that was a horror he was unprepared for. “Alright, you win.” Lu conceded. “Twenty dollars for the both of ya.”

He surrendered a pair of twenties to his two stepdaughters. The duo gleefully accepted the bribe and walked off with the garbage bag. “Where did you two learn to bargain like that?”

“From you.” They both said. And then they were gone.

The Devil smiled. Conned by a couple of human children. He has lived for thousands of years, mastering his silver tongue, only to bested by a species of creation still in their infancy. He then pulled a cigarette from his suite pocket and stuck it between his lips. His fingers snapped, flicking a small flame above his index finger. The flame was about to kiss the tip of his cigarette when he heard the voice of his eldest stepdaughter. “Mom says you’re not supposed to smoke inside the house.”

This was going to take some getting used to, living by their rules. Yet he accepted it, after he touched the flame to his cigarette.

#sinsofthefather #fiction #fantasy #comedy #horror

Brimstone, what an odd name for a small city residing within the midwestern state of Minnesota. If one were to ask a local why it is named as such they would likely answer that on the hottest summer days and on the coldest winter nights this place feels a little like hell. Sounds a bit overdramatic to any outsider.

#sinsofthefather

Hi everyone!

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Thanks,

A.C. Wolfe

I have synesthesia.

My alphabet has colors. Sounds and voices and names has texture and color. I see colors and shapes and pictures when I listen to music, as well as taste and smell different flavors and scents depending on the song. It’s helpful for memorizing, as I have lots of associations. It’s fun to be colorful, but it can also be confusing at times.

I actually have tried explaining it to my family, but they think I’m weird, so I didn’t bring it up again. I met another person with synesthesia for the first time, and now we’re really good friends.

So, I guess if anyone wants to know what colors I see for their name, you can drop your name in the comments and I’ll let you know.

@Shayna13

it was grey to begin with

graceful gradients of grey

cooing like a dove

peaceful and smooth and even and calm

and i was in love with grey

til you showed up with your colors

rose` pinks and golds and greens and blues

tints and tones, tinges and hues

bursting in like music, like a symphony of light

and i was in love with color

the rain, it fell, like it always did

clear and calming and cold

i noticed its magic for the first time

secrets that held from stories of old

what color is the rain?

and the clouds and wind, they

whispered sweet songs of

patience and time without color,

for it is easy to love in the dark

but beautiful to share love with another

and the moment you stepped

foot into my life, I

saw the colors and knew

they splashed through my waters

and sparkled with the beauty of you

shades of blushing crepe pink erupted

from the rosy apples of your cheeks and

i learned that pink is loveliness

and i was in love with pink

shards of piercing cerulean neptune shone in

the vast, electric ocean-passion that is your celestial eyes and

i knew that blue, blue is my heaven

and i was in love with blue

tints of lustery, aeneous gold and sage and emerald green trickled from

your laughter, deep and warm and earthy, and

i decided that green is home

and i was in love with green

beams of sepia-washed sunshine dripped off

your adoring fingers, brushing against me in

creamy honeys and lemons and tuscan suns and xanthic love

i felt that yellow is joy

and i was in love with yellow

embers of sparking, fiery cherry wine spread from

your heart to mine, in deep consuming flames of crimson

the sweet, scarlet burning of longing engulfed me

i discovered that red is passion

and i was in love with red

the colors grew and expanded with my

love for you. colors i could not name

with our love, they grew brighter

and i was in love just the same

i loved and lived within your shades and tints and hues and tones

i breathed until your colors left. with you.

you took them all. you stripped all the rainbows we’d sewn.

a shadow, a phantom of colors that used to be, empty to never be whole

a shell of a canvas. lost in black and grey and white

and i was in love with colors you stole

i sink in washes of my grey, a ghost in murky smoke

dwell in cinders of charcoal tinctures. ash and mist, i have forgotten the colors.

the ones that rose in light when you spoke.

drowned back into the same dimness of

me before you.

and i was in love with a memory

and so. it was grey to begin with

graceful gradients of grey

steadfast and timeless and passionless

in this silvery shade it will stay

deep calls to deep. echoes reverbrate beautiful hues

of a volcano’s afterglow, the calm before a sea-born storm, the tears for stolen sorrows

far from the memory, fallen in my thundery clouds

that cling to the colors of you

stand in my fallen shades, watch yours decay

grey it began. and so it remains.

and i was in love with grey.

I lie awake in cinder block towers,

Scathing pavement peels pained flesh

Strings poke and prod

Like strokes against a harp.

So night calls in song,

I dismiss star eyed mania,

Troposphere to frosted,

Arid designed dimensions,

So far yet domestic,

Breathe in rain warped leaves,

Each collected scent

An animating vapor

Colonizing heart bent

Winds of zero motion.

At last the moment stops,

My mutilated cadaver dreams

No longer, I awake

Knowing of the microscopic jabs

And miniscule droplets of

Misguided sentimental

Inferno.

Devil Rider swirls out

Like grey car exhaust.

Chrome paint wears every

Thrust forth,

I doubt luminescence

Is needed once that is

All you have.

So much for stars!

Disregard that.

At last the breeze hits,

At last I know more

Than occasional pouts

And certainty.

I sought to stay in line,

But the cracks made it

Asymmetric.

Extinction threats during

My final malaise,

Breathe with me

Fatal thoughts,

Fictional fame

Coddles childish

Aspirations, I know

No heights higher than mine.

Cross-examine me

To uncover what I cannot,

I fade,

I fade...

What is my design?

My freshman year of high school, my mother received a call from my guidance counselor because I had tried to kill myself and had to be admitted to the hospital immediately. I have never seen such a sadness in my mother’s eyes or heard such a petrified tone in her voice until that moment. That night, one of my younger sisters sat with me in my hospital bed and said, “I don’t ever want to see you in a casket. I don’t ever want to see you in a hospital bed ever again.” I’ve never seen my sister cry from pure sadness until then. My sister left the room so my youngest sister could come sit with me, and all she could manage to get out was the word “why?” Hospitals and suicides are not beaitiful.

I talked to an old best friend last week. We lost touch due to her moving two states away. She told me she had to get her stomach pumped because she tried to overdose and poison herself with four bottles of alcohol. I remember she used to spend the night and we would always talk about how we would always be there for eachother. I failed her. Overdoses and alcoholism are not beautiful.

My junior year of high school, I had a friend who was dealing with anorexia and bulimia. I’ll never forget the night I spent at her house when I heard her throwing up. She was crying and kept telling herself to stick her fingers down farther. When she came back into her bedroom, I held her for a long time and told her I loved her. We both cried and a few weeks later she went away for treatment. I haven’t seen her since. When she first went away, her mom would talk to me about it. I saw the same type of sadness in her mother’s eyes that I saw in my own mother’s eyes. Eating disorders are not beautiful.

My cousin shot himself in the head on the second of November, three years ago.. I missed three days of school. When I went to his funeral, his mother and my aunt hugged me and thanked me for attending. I shouldn’t have been there. None of us should have. The seats in the funeral home fled and there had to be over two hundred people in a line out the door because there were so many people who wanted to attend. Funerals and caskets are not beautiful.

During my first hospital visit, I had a roommate that was absolutely gorgeous. I was so envious. She told me she was mad at herself for not cutting deeper. I told her that I am glad that she didn’t. As soon as the words ran off my tongue, she lunged into my arms. After a very long and emotional hug, she told me her mom didn’t love her anymore. Utter sadness is not beautiful.

Please take your romanticism and glamorization of self-harm, eating disorders, suicide, alcoholism and sadness and bury them deep beneath the ground. This is not beautiful.

I have a small mouth on the top of my lips,

A talker I would say...

Perhaps a mocking external mind

Tunneling all I can not express

By shouting at my thumb.

I own ears with enough wax to light a city,

Some sort of device I think?

Certainly for sounds of sorts...

Echoing from high, receiving

Signals I cannot detect.

Some days I reflect on words I have typed,

Puzzled as to who I am

And what I was.

The writer’s tongue is but a thumb, or Hands for those of old ( write however I just need some tongue and cheek).

The only thing I know for sure is that all the philosophers were wrong. Death is not pleasant nor something to not be feared, death is cold. Dante was right by setting the 9th circle of hell in ice because torment is not burning eternally it is being gnawed by frost’s relentless bite.

The slow thawing was when I regained conciousness. Not some half-assed pediatric conciousness but Jungian conciousness, acute awareness and wisdom. The reverberations of life permeated my body as waves of sensation crawled across my frame. It was like being stabbed over every inch of my body.

As I began my slow journey outward I began to sense more and more. My eyes adjusted to light as if they had been hibernating and needed to relearn how to see. My body began to shiver from the cold as my feeling bagan to return. Torents of sound richotcheted around my brain like bullets colliding isnide of my skull.

It took a few minutes to relize I was not alone. I truly think that for a few minutes I beleived I was the only man alive, blissful minutes. The men who stood around me were tall, but I had no great claim to perception of height because when I looked across the room I saw a drinking glass stand seven feet tall.

“His irises are uneven and they keep unfocusing,” one of the doctors said. But to my untrained ears it sounded like a hoard of racoons clawing through trash,

My sight remained tinged for a few minutes but soon my senses began to dull. The heightened state of conciousness, however, did not leave me.

It was days before I could remember why I had gone into the cryochamber. Peices of the complex puzzle of life formed in my mind and slowly conected. The yound boy who would one day become Adolf Hitler. My mother who carried me a few years to early so that I would have to serve in one of the biggest blood bathes known to man. The mother of a future German soldier who would throw a hand grenade near me in such a precise location that only a few shards hit my frontal lobe leaving me wounded but not dead. The years of trying to find expieremental surgeries to remove the shards and finally my retreat to the cryochamber.

If even one of those peices had been altered slightly, it would have changed my future and subsiquently made a blemish in the overall history of mankind.

I was under constant surveilance, as if I were in the Soviet Union and not the United States of America, in the facility.

I was given a small room, which resembled a hotel with plad curtains and a TV. The TV I was given was like I remmebered: small, boxy and black and white. They told me a lot had changed but if the TV were a symbol for how much things have changed then not much seemed to have shifted. This beleif was soon destroyed as I eyed the mini fridge (that is what I was told it was called.) The shelves were decked with food that I did not recognize.

As I was inspecting my room for clues of what the future meant for me, a doctor entered my room.

“I assume that knocking is a foreign concept in 2019,” I said sarcastically to the doctor. His only response was a shameless chuckle which infuriated me.

“I do apologize for that, but I am very eager to be talking to you. There are only a handful of people who have been frozen for as long as you have and survived.”

“Please get to the point of why you are here I wish to sleep,” I said with a hint of distaste.

“Yes of course. We have given you scheduled times that you may leave with an assistant so that you may begin to familiarze yourself with the world,” the doctor said.

“If this TV is any indication of what this world has become then I will not have to familiarize myself with much,” I responded.

“Oh. That is not what televisions look like now. We have tried to decorate your room in a manner which fit your time period. Televisions are very large now.” My superiority wavered at this. Up until this point I hadn’t thought much about the advancments of human technology because I had beleived it hadn’t advanced too much.

“Well I guess we will see how I can handle it,” I say incredulously, “Now please leave.”

The doctor swiftly got up and drifted out the door.

The first thing I noticed, when I left the facility, was that cars had advanced so that they looked like sharp wasps instead of fluid worms. They moved faster and vibrant colors splashed across each one. Even the dull greys and browns were glossy and colorful.

The second thing I noticed, as we drove into the suburbs of New Jeresey, was the ammount of people. I was told that we were still leagues away from any actual city, but swarms of people choked the streets. They were all different colors, mixing together like choclate powder in milk. Like ants, they all flowed from there dwellings and recreation centers clogging the world.

We eneded at a park in New Jeresy outside of all city limits. The grass had seemed to dull in the years since I had seen it. The clouds were darker as if they had been pumped with gasoline (I later figured out that was the case).

I envisioned my world, my life in the fold of this gargantuan monster of planet. I was enveloped in the claustrophobic feelings which were created from the sheer ammount of people I had seen.

The park itself seemed so uncomfortably unsanitary that I retreated back to the car. The trees were the only thing which hadn’t changed all too much. They stood like sentinals of time unhindered by its flow.

It reminded of a story I had been told when I was young. It went a little like this, “One day a strong storm swept across a forrest leveling many trees. As one of the trees fell, it landed next to a little fern which had not fallen. The tree, while laying there, asked the fern ‘how is it that I have fallen and you have not?’ The fern responded, ’Dear friend, the wind is proud, for this reason we ferns bow to it whereas you trees stand steadfast. You would not have fallen if you had shown humility.”

I found myself seeing the planet in the same way. The advancments made by human kind were just the steadfast stubborness of the tree and one day soon, I am convicned, we will follow that fate.

Last night, I finished the first draft of River’s End. This means I wrote 13 chapters or about 43.5k words in a little over 3 weeks.

What now? It’s still NaNoWriMo, and that 43.5k is not 50k yet. Feral has been patiently waiting for me to get to it, and I can’t wait to dive in. It feels like cheating, though, to count Feral’s words under River’s End’s goal tracker on the NaNo site, and the site won’t count it as a win unless those 50k words are in one book. So, here’s what I’m going to attempt. Throughout these remaining 6 days of November, I’ll visit the parts of River’s End that I know I need to tweak and work on adding in the stuff I want there. This should easily nab me those remaining 6.5k words for NaNo.

Feral has been so patient, so I’m also going to allow myself to work on it, too, now. I highly doubt I’ll finish it in these 6 days, so it’ll spill over into December. This means it probably won’t start appearing here until January. I have some other things in the works for December as well, so keep an eye out for those.

Any thoughts? I’d love to hear from you! Thank you so much for being with me here on my writing journey. I really appreciate you.

#NaNoWriMo