I'm Not Tom Collins

I’m not particularly subtle with my metaphors.

The red snake was dancing again.

“Not this time,” I tell it. “You don’t tell me what to do.” I can’t see it dancing, but I know it’s doing so all the same. It loves to coil around my guts and squeeze. Always gently at first, but the longer I ignore the sensation, the stronger it grows. Once, it became so bad I couldn’t even eat until it stopped.

“That’s what you said last time, and the time before. Oh, and do you remember what happened previous to that one?” I hate when the snake teases me. I’ve figured out by now that it loves to make me feel helpless, like I need it to live. Some days, its grip on me feels so tight that I’m inclined to believe it. Trust of the matter is, reality is the opposite.

“You’re the one who needs me,” I shoot back, completely unprompted. The snake doesn’t require a coherent conversation anyway. It can read my thoughts. “I say no, and you starve. Now fuck off.

The sensation of a hundred pins needles my shoulder. The left one, to be precise, where the snake likes to live most of the time, hidden away beneath my uniform’s pauldrons. Years ago, it started on the back of my hand. Everyone mistook it for a tattoo. Nobody ever stuck around me long enough to realize that it disappeared, crawling up my arm to where it resides now. Logically speaking, if I don’t exorcise it soon, it’ll be infesting my head.

“Don’t say words you can’t take back.” The prickling stops. Soon, a flash of heat replaces it, washing over me from head to toe. Sweat beads on my forehead, mucking up the grime already caked there. “You wouldn’t be here without me. You’d have been another corpse on the battlefield long ago.”

It’s right. When the snake is being cooperative, when it’s hungry at the right time, it shares its talents with me. It makes me strong, alert, fearless. I become the perfect soldier. But I only do it on the snake’s terms; when it wants me to. Still, too many times I’ve dodged a spear with its help. I shouldn’t antagonize the snake, because it can always find another host.

“Next time, I’ll get you double.” Sometimes bargaining works, when it’s not too hungry. “This prisoner is important. I’m not executing him for your appetite.”

“It’s so cute when you try to resist.” The tip of its tail tickles the underside of my chin. It knows I hate that. Only one person gets to do that, and it’s not the snake. “I’m hungry tonight, and that means I’m eating. Now get to it, human.”

“Make me.”

“Fine.”

Even after years of living with the parasite, I still don’t know what kind of magic it uses. All I know is that I was begging it to stop in seconds. I lift my head off the canvas of my tent, and there’s a giant sweat stain where I had fallen. The knot in my guts unwinds and the pressure in my head calms down, but not entirely. The snake doesn’t want me to forget why we’re feeding.

The prisoner’s tent is on the other side of camp. I hurry. None of the patrols bother stopping me. They know better than to bother the commanding officer when he’s got a look of urgency on his face. The pair of troopers guarding the prisoner salute. I make a point of dismissing them before they can ask any questions, which they’re all to eager to do. None of the rank and file like being around an interrogation.

I tie the flaps of the tent shut behind me. The prisoner raises his head and looks me in the eye before he realizes who I am. He flinches, no doubt remembering my right hook. He’s saying something to me, but his words are drowned out by the snake’s whispers in my ear. 

“Just make it fast,” it says. I look down at the prisoner. He’s shying away from me, trying to back away despite being tied up. He’s not looking forward to what’s coming next. He has no idea. I thumb my dagger, one last instinct resisting drawing my weapon. “I’m losing my patience.” I drag my feet as I circle behind the prisoner. I obey.

A stab to the heart is enough. I have to clamp my hand over the prisoner’s mouth to stifle his screaming, but all I hear is the snake hissing in unbridled joy. It blesses me with a surge of strength to keep my victim pinned beneath my arms as the life bleeds out of him. The prisoner’s struggles die down. The snake leaps from my shoulder and coils around the dying man’s neck. Its fangs plunge straight into his throat, sucking blood. If the animal could make any noise, its slurping would be heard across the entire camp.

The tension and pain inside me dissipates. The snake is too busy drinking blood to pay any attention to me. I’m holding a corpse in my arms, but even that can’t dent the relief I’m feeling. A few breaths later, and my breathing is back to normal. I twist the knife to make absolute sure he’s dead. I’ve seen what the snake does to live meat, and I don’t wish that on anyone.

“Satisfied?” Now that it’s not tormenting me anymore, I realize what it’s made me do. Central command will probably demote me for executing an important spy.

“Very.” It smacked its lips in a way that no real snake could do. “There’s no need to feel bad. He was dangerous. Don’t you think your superiors will agree that the empire’s better off with him dead?” The snake always has some kind of justification ready when this happens.

“Leave me alone,” I say with pursed lips. I have to stay in the tent a while longer if anyone’s to believe that the prisoner tried to escape and I had to take him down.

“Until the next time you need me, of course.”

Line that deserves a story but won’t get one 15

“A better world needs more men like him, and less men like me.”

I felt like writing words so I wrote words

A thousand times she told herself the chants were no more difficult than in training. A thousand times she believed that because she had to seal something real this time, her body would survive the strain. A thousand times she felt the stress crushing her. Maiel’s focus broke. Every pair of eyes in the room turned to her as her chokes echoed off the stone walls.

Chills washed over the room as frost blasted in every direction. Rock froze over in an instant. Bodies dove onto the ground as icicles ripped through the air. A chunk of ice smashed into Maiel’s face. In the confusion, her feet tripped over each other, and she tumbled to the ground. The warmth of her blood oozed from her cheek, down her fingers. The shock from fumbling such an important spell blotted out any pain from the injury.

“Keep your eyes open,” the commander’s voice hollered in her head. “Watch and remember the price of failure.” With the frigid air whipping and stinging her face, Maiel’s eyelids could only crack a slit. A whirlwind of dust, ice, and blood spun around the altar, obfuscating the victim’s body. The ties in Maiel’s hair ripped to shreds, and the bun tore apart into a tangle.

As suddenly as they started, the winds scattered, tossing debris all over. While her chest heaved from trying to catch her breath, the hands of the commander clamped onto her shoulders, pulling her upright.

“This is what happens when you fuck up,” the commander said. Bodies laid on the floor, four of them total, each one its own mangled heap. Three of them were the cultists. Being next to the altar meant their bodies absorbed the brunt of the damage. The fourth was hidden beneath a shredded set of imperial robes, adorned with a mess of red hair. That had to be Hagen.

She killed Hagen.

Nobody had time to mourn. The victim on the altar shrieked, piercing every eardrum nearby. The first drew long, ending with a sharp inhale. A series of staccato screams followed, peppering the air with his pain. The last one before his mouth foamed over was the loudest, leaving a ring in Maiel’s ears. His voice washed out with gargles of blood as a pair of clawed hands tore out from his stomach, reaching to the sky.

The victim’s body convulsed, twisting in its chains as it was ripped apart from within. Everyone held their breaths, knowing better than to manipulate magic in a volatile situation. The thing that crawled out of his flesh had no skin itself, nothing more than a hulking mass of sinew. Though humanoid in shape, its upper body was the size of a giant’s and its legs were diminutive even by human sizes. What should have been a head looked more a lump of skin with a fanged maw stretching across it. The thing bellowed and screamed the entire time it entered the mortal realm. When it finished pulling free from its host body, it greeted the world by smashing the altar and the long dead victim to pieces with both its fists.

All of Maiel’s strength went to holding in her wimpers. She had seen diagrams of these things, but nobody told her about the demonic presence that made her heart want to stop beating. Curling her shoulders and chest inwards, she wanted to run and hide until the commander made it go away. A glancing fist across her chin told her otherwise.

“The academy said you were the best, so show us.” The commander stared dead into her eyes, even as he focused himself for a spell. “And get used to it, because this is what we demon hunters do.”

The junior mage couldn’t look at her commander and she couldn’t look at the demon. With her head hung, she looked back down at her hands, watching her cold energy gathering into her palms. The commander wasn’t lying when he’d said that she’d regret signing up for this, but neither was she when she’d said that she could handle it.

All she had to keep her company in the cell were her memories. By now, she had reflected on her favorite hundreds of times.She and her sister had managed to slip into one of the lower chambers of the arena. She figured out that they had never snuck by the guard, so much as he had let a pair of starry-eyed children through. From below, through a barred window, they watched the gladiatorial games, with the thunderous roars of the crowd echoing from above.

“See, Imperial soldiers are the strongest!” her sister said every time an Imperial won. “I’m gonna be strong just like them when I grow up!”

The footsteps of the jailor shook her from her daydreams, heavy boots tromping down the stone hallway. On a good day, the brute was half-again her size, but after so many weeks in the cell, the difference could only be greater. As the key clanked in the lock, Lieutenant Masen curled her bony fingers into a fist.

“You’re right,” she whispered to the memory of her long dead sister. “Imperial soldiers are the strongest.”

Baste was shivering. The chattering of his teeth was the only sound competing with the priest’s droning. Masen didn’t like it either, being stuck in one of their demon summoning houses and listening to a one of them screech for hours, but a pilgrim refusing to show up for holy services would have drawn immediate suspicion. Her command of their language didn’t allow her to catch more than every few words, but he was clearly talking about the holy crusade. There was something twisted about how righteous these people could be, when Masen had seen the things that their army did to prisoners.

A few words slipped distinctly into her ears. “Tera make me strong,” they repeated. Oh Sola, no. Baste was praying, and he was doing it in the language native to his and Masen’s land. Chills washed over her as she raised her head from her false prayer. Everyone else in the house was staring at her and Baste. None of them understood her scout’s words, but they all knew he was a heretic.

Let’s bring this shit back

Masen threw her arms in front of her face, but the light still pounded into her eyes. The thing almost resembled a human shape, but the white light refused to hold still, rippling one way before wavering another. Its voice shrieked in words she did not understand, but the sound bore to the center of her body and welled its way out. Masen’s hands couldn’t decide whether to guard her eyes or ears. Instead, they squeezed the sickle’s handle. By the goddesses, this thing was a farming tool. The blade was not fit for ordinary warfare, much less striking down demons. Clutching until the wooden grasp threatened to splinter and her knuckles were ready to burst out of her skin, Masen wondered if her bare fists would fare any worse than this chipped tool.

“Get back,” she hollered over the demon’s voice. She glanced over her shoulder. Everyone else cowered on the ground, and only the mage had enough nerves to keep his head up. Forcing her arms back to her side, Masen roared back at the luminous being. Lieutenant… No, Captain Masen was sending this thing back to Hell, even if that meant going with it.

Intro to a story I *will* write

The product of NaNoWriMo may be a nearly unsalvageable piece of shit, but at least it’s sparked the creativity engine again.

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Oh yeah, I finished NaNoWriMo.

Congrats to me.

The few excerpts I was foolish enough to publish are getting deleted now.