Fragment - El Orfaneo

Miranda grabbed the scissors when Black wasn’t looking and ran as fast as she could. She made it as far as the back fence before she ran out of breath and fell to the ground.

Catching her breath, Miranda placed the scissors in the dirt alongside the length of rope. She hoped she could remember how to tie the knot like Daddy taught her. She planned to catch a rabbit for him before he came back off the road. Black said they lived in the hills and there weren’t no rabbits out here and Miranda asked Black what did she know.

Miranda cut some rope about the length of her arm and started working on a knot. Thin ten-year-old fingers struggled with the twine, making the first knot. The sun was still high in the sky and Daddy didn’t usually come home until the sun was low and the sky had taken on the reds and purples like those in Black’s eyes.

So Miranda was surprised when she heard a horse coming up western path. She squinted because the sun was in her eyes but she knew the rider wasn’t Daddy. At first Miranda thought it was a thin man, maybe one who wore their hair long like Daddy’s friend Jude. The rider even wore a coat like Jude’s but it was different because the front looked like it had been dipped in maroon.

Black called from the main house.

‘Randa! Where you run off to with my scissors?

Miranda kept silent and worked on her knots, paying no mind to the rider. Her Daddy had riders come through all the time with bundles and bags and sometimes gifts for her. She thought about the coppery, hot smell they brought with them off the road. Most of them had scarred hands or were missing fingers. Miranda imagined sometimes that it was some kind of secret thing of going west – you had to come back with bags of secret things and gifts and more often than not, scars.

Her Daddy never came back hurt as far as she could see.

She was thinking about this and her knot when Black snuck up on Miranda and clouted her on the ear.

What you do that for?

You know what for! I’ma –

Black looked out at the rider.

Black wasn’t black like her name. Her skin was a deep dark grey. When Black looked at the rider though, she would swear up and down that dark grey went to pale.

Git in the house.

Miranda thought that maybe it was one of what Daddy called enforcemen coming up the way. Daddy would always promise to sic them on Miranda when she was being bad. But Daddy always talked of them coming in dozens and hundreds.

This was just one and he was riding funny.

And he was a she.

Git in the house, I said! Collie! Collllleeeeeee!

Miranda let Black drag her back to the main house. It was the only building on the property that had electricity yet and it was where Miranda and her Daddy slept. Black used to sleep in Miranda’s room but last year Daddy made her start sleeping round in the smaller house.

Big old Collie slept where he slept – in the sand for all Miranda knew. When Daddy went on the road, he left Collie there. Miranda was supposed to listen to Collie first, then Black, but Collie didn’t ever say anything. The stooped old man was still big, still needing to crouch when he walked through the door like he did now. With his one good eye he looked in on Miranda and Black. Satisfied they were okay he walked to the back path.

Miranda tried to twist free and follow Collie but Black was strong. Daddy said muties was always strong and Miranda had taken enough spankings to believe him. Miranda reckoned she’d have to watch through the window.

Collie reached the fence and for the first time Miranda thought about how old Collie must be. Miranda was sure he was the oldest person she’d ever seen and he looked so naked out there without his rifle.

The rider had a rifle out. He kept it across the horse’s back, cradling the stock in his arm.

She.

For the first time, Miranda noticed that the rider’s face wasn’t as hard as those she normally saw. It wasn’t doughy like Black’s but it wasn’t the face of a man.

Miranda recognized the nose and chin and the too-red hair. From when she looked in the mirror.

For some years Miranda thought that her Momma was dead, but here she was, pointing a rifle at Collie.

Fragment - Across the Wasteland

Fragment – The Savage

Because the Savage had the sun at his back and because of the steady loss of blood from Abby’s ear used to be and out of her chest it was hard to aim. She had no time to bandage her wound while keeping her rifle on the Savage – there was just no way.

She shifted her weight in the dirt, aiming up at the ridge. She was prepared to roll if he threw another spear, but didn’t know what fuck all good it would do. The Deacon once told her that muties could pass one of their bone-tipped spears right through a body at 1000 yards. Abby didn’t know anything about that, but she knew this one threw faster than she could draw on him.

That was something new.

So was this: she’d never heard of anyone being able to pay one of the grey-green skinned savages to do anything. Abby promised to revisit the question of how Jude got this one to come after her.

A high keening noise to her right, and Abby rolled to the left avoiding another of the Savage’s spears. It buried its six foot shaft in the sand beside two feet to her right. It was reassuring to think that maybe he was having trouble seeing her from up on that ridge.

Still, him and the compadre she shot didn’t have all bad luck: Abby spat out a wad of blood onto a patch of yellow sand. The spear that lanced her lung had gone straight through, which, all things considered was a plus. But on the way in and out it’d broken at least a rib. Worse still, breathing was a bastard.

But Abby noted that this wasn’t how she planned on dying. She’d make Jude patch her up after he answered her questions and before she shot him between the eyes.

For the second time today she lost sight of the Savage. This caused Abby to run through what could be approximated as fear for her. She scanned the ridge over the gunsight: nothing moved, not even the wind. Deacon would have said even nature conspired to bring Abby to the end of her path.

Of course, for what man, woman, child, or mutie was this ever not the case?

She sniffed the wind. What came back to her: the smell of her last spent round… her own blood and sweat… the recently-cured leathers of the dead Savage lying face down100 feet away. She thought about putting another round into the body, this line of thinking towards getting the Savage’s blood up. Abby rejected that line of thinking: she’d need the bullets if and when she caught sight of the Savage again.

She knew from the westward movement of the light that she’d been pinned here for five hours or more. She’d been skewered for half that, at least. An hour more and Abby wouldn’t have the strength to hold the rifle up.

Was he just waiting on her to die? Savages not being know for their patience, Abby didn’t count on it. Still, there was some inscrutable strategy at play, and Abby was having trouble sussing it out. Abby thought she’d been told that Savages would pound the earth with their palms to attract members of their tribe.

She pressed her ear to the ground, hoping to hear the tell-tale beating… getting nothing more than the pulsing of her own heart.

Abby lay like this for a while – enough for the sun to travel further west and long enough to allow the Savage to get within five paces of her. From the surprise in his gross black eye, he obviously thought she was dead when he came upon her. Her being dead didn’t preclude him from keeping a spear poised to strike.

It was only his startlement that allowed Abby to pull the trigger those four times before he could throw. Abby lost track of how much longer she stayed there – was it even the same day? She knew the Savage’s blood was cold and sticky on her cheek. But it hadn’t been long enough for carrion birds to decide that the two of them were fair game.

She propped herself up using the rifle, but used the mutie’s spear as a walking stick. Jude’s shack was near enough. She thought maybe he should do his doctoring before telling her what she needed to know. Thinking of how she’d probably have to ask her questions, Abby thought it best to let Jude keep his hands intact for the time being.

"It was Billy... Billy Conner!"

Due to a missed train Saturday (thanks, LIRR) I missed the chance to see some Total Non-Stop Action Wrestling with my friend Jeff (who will undoubtedly swear brutal revenge on me tomorrow at work).

But as slim consolation I was reunited with one of my childhood terrors - The Beast Within (1982). It's a strange mix of hostile Southern yokels, murder mystery, and body morphism horror... Tobe Hooper by way of David Cronenberg.

The film is about a couple and their teenage son revisiting a small Mississippi town where something... traumatic... happened to the mom 17 years ago. The 17-year-old son (eh, you see what they did there?) is going through some kind of changes, and the return to this town is making him stranger... more decapitate-y.

If you were to do a keyword search for this movie, the words hillbillies, rape, decapitation, psychics, revenge, and mutant cicada rape, would pretty much dominate any description of the film. There's very little on that list doesn't sound like cinematic perfection to me*.



Of course, the movie comes from a style at the time where horror movies would share some of the pacing and tone of a TV movie and a cast comprised of TV regulars (seriously, check the IMDB page of the actor who plays Sheriff Pool).



It's a great snapshot at early 80's horror, sharing more in common with a drive-in film than anything else.

Where the The Beast Within is anxious about the stability of the biological form and our failed attempts at burying our genetic heritage, Earth X is downright obsessed with conjectural origins of the species and how ultimately, it all means something.

I finally got around to reading that this weekend (burdened as I was with free time) and I have to say I was... not bored? That's the best I can really say about it, as the miniseries really took about 10 of its 12 issues to actually get to the point. But when it finally did, it was an interesting attempt to create a unified cosmology for the Marvel Universe. Well, not THE Marvel Universe, but one of the other ones where Spider-man has gotten old and fat, Dr. Doom's bitten the dust, and just about everything is grim.

Earth X takes place 20 years in the future, where everyone is a mutant, seemingly the result of a failed experiment on the part of Mr. Fantastic, and something ominous is about to happen. I would complain that the book relies on its readers previous familiarity with the characters and history with the Marvel U, but the series exhaustively, exhaustingly details the histories of every little character, both in-story and with little prose pieces following each chapter, filling in the details of the 20 year gap.



It's essentially alternate universe continuity porn that has a hard time telling a story in its present tense. It's lots of, "Look at Tony Stark - shut-in, and the tentacle rape of New York by Hydra." I'm not 100% sure who the target audience was for the project at the time, but I could see people dropping it during the original run. It's the kind of thing DC would publish periodically to explain away a Supergirl's many costume changes or something along those lines, but it serves less of a function for Marvel which has always been the company whose stories take place in the world right outside your door (their words, not mine).

Like The Beast Within it has everyone freaking the fuck out when their bodies start going through funny changes, with hair growing in funny places, and each person just wanting someone to love them for being special and different.

Don't rush out to read it (unless you want to see some truly gorgeous art by Jim Krueger based on Alex Ross's character designs). But do see The Beast Within. Because, you know, mutant cicadas, and all.

* Wait, let's not all go crazy here - it's not the RAPE part that makes the movie cool; it's the MUTANT CICADA RAPE part that makes it a must-watch.