jj-baruch

[jj-baruch]

Buck’s Broken Heart

Buck sat across a low, small table from Kirsti. The only light in the room was a dimmed lamp in the corner. His jaw was slack and barely restrained tears were in his eyes as he faced the woman he loved and had to let go.

“I said we needed to talk,” he began. “We’ve needed to talk for a long time.” He had trouble looking her in the eyes. “But we’re through.” He lifted his face to level his eyes with hers. Where his held sorrow, hers held wrath. “You lied to me about not wanting surgery. You could’ve said you weren’t ready or you wanted to take care of it yourself when I offered to pay, but you lied. You fly into a jealous rage whenever I so much as say hello to another girl. You…you’re violent. I mean, rough sex is one thing but you hurt me and wouldn’t stop.”

First one tear, then another streamed down his round cheeks.

“And I just can’t anymore.”

Kirsti saw him look up, over her head, as she heard a gentle click of a door shutting behind her. Contempt was in her voice. “So that’s how it’s gonna be? Like so many other corpses, just thrown away? Gonna have your little buddy take care of what you can’t? At least be a man and do it yourself.”

Buck closed his eyes and dropped his head toward his chest, gently shaking it side to side in a no. “That’s what you’d do. That’s not me. You still don’t understand. And that’s part of why we’re through.” He looked up to the form in darkness. “Be gentle.”

Kirsti felt a rough hand spread its fingers across her head and fell into a deep slumber.

A few minutes later, JJ pulled back his hand and grunted. “Just to be clear, we’re not telling any future partners about the manhu.” He shuddered. “I feel dirty now, messing around in someone’s mind just to make sure they forget.”

“Is it gone? All of it?” Buck couldn’t look his friend in the eye, either, knowing what he’d asked of the man.

“No. No way to do that without major damage.” Jabez had his limits and he wouldn’t cross them even for Buck. “They’re locked away deep.” He shuddered again. “Now let’s get her back to her dorm room and back so I can shower.” Buck could only discern a vague outline of his friend’s form in the dimly lit room but the anger was obvious as the lamplight reflected in his eyes. “After we finish up, don’t talk to me for a while.”

*          *          *

Passing a week in silence when you shared a house with your best friend was awkward at first and then trying and then torture. Separate meals, separate workouts, separate everything. It was obvious JJ approved of what Buck had done, but not how he did it or his part in the mess. He was thus surprised when, on a Sunday morning, a mug of khaffiyy and a small stack of silver dollar pancakes found their way to his place at the kitchen table. That was when he knew he and his friend would get through it. It wouldn’t be quick or easy, but they’d still be friends when this was all over. Jabez wasn’t exactly smiling from across the table, but it was a start.

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#Buck and Jabez #Buck and Kirsti #Breakup #Breaking Up #Transgender #GLBTQ #LGBTQ #Magic #Friendship #Patreon #GoFundMe #Go Fund Me #GFM #Hospital #Hospital Bills #Medical Bills #Guillain-Barre Syndrome #GBS #writers of tumblr #Support Living Writers

[jj-baruch]

A Man and His Sleep

Buck yawned and stretched as he pushed aside the tent flap and surveyed the valley before him. On the other side, the opposing camp was already abuzz in the pre-dawn light. Wondering what the hell had happened in the night, JJ wandered by, chunk of bread in one hand and a mug of hot tea in the other. He yawned but didn’t greet his old friend.

“What happened to you?” Buck inquired. His companion in arms wasn’t any sort of morning person if he could avoid it and was normally still in his bedroll at this hour.

“A thing needed doing.” JJ went into his tent next to Buck’s and refused to say more.

Uncertain what mess his fellow commander had made in the night, Buck went to the main tent to receive the overnight reports. He was aghast. If the scouts, spies, and newly taken prisoners were to be believed, half the opposing command structure was dead in the night at the hands of some unknown assassin.

Buck rushed to his friend’s tent and went inside without waiting for acknowledgement. He was met with a grumble that went into the Earth. “The fuck you think you were doing?”

“Way I see it, one of two things happen.” JJ finished the last of his tea and set the mug aside on the floor. “Either they surrender and I saved a lotta lives or they still attack and we win at a serious advantage and still save a lotta lives, just not as many.”

Buck was furious. “I’m the one who taught you that! Don’t treat me like an idiot. I meant what made you think it had to be you?”

Jabez, tired, slumped into his bedroll. “We got anyone else who could?” He cocked his head to one side, yawned again, and rolled toward the tent wall. “Yell at me later. Fighting’s about to start. Be generous when you accept their surrender.”

Buck didn’t know if the following snores were real but he left in a huff. His friend could turn the valley into a vast lava field if he really wanted to, and probably did, but had held off because Buck asked him not to. He’d convinced the magus this needed to be a victory their troops could point to as their own when they mustered out. The day that followed was hard but the troops won and saw it as their own.

[jj-baruch]

Marines of the Imperium: Fragment 1

“So, there I was with these humans, naked ape things with back problems…”

“Give it a rest, sergeant,” objected the lieutenant. “Don’t fill the rooks’ heads with your nonsense. Again. And I’ll thank you to refer to them properly as Terrans.” He left the room, hooves clicking on the deck, knowing he would be disobeyed but moderately curious as to how the trainees would take to the information. It was all perfectly accurate, as he knew full well. He had written the script, though the sergeant’s improvisations gave it much-needed color. Of all the races encountered in the Imperium, the Terrans were the only ones intentionally kept to themselves as much as possible. This rule held for all things save the service, as all citizens were equally eligible and required to serve. It was their madness that made them dangerous as well as useful and the lieutenant had no great resources to spare for rooks getting hurt or killed. So it paid to weed out the ones in advance who were too curious about their fellow citizens.

Back in the ward room, the sergeant huffed from his third mouth and continued with the first as if nothing had occurred.

“So, these humans. Terrestrial world, lots of water, something like two-thirds covers it. But they can’t breathe the water. But they go out in it and on it all the same. They get it in their lungs, or any fluid, really, and it kills them. They’re rather select on what they can breathe. Just the air. And most of that’s nitrogen, which they don’t even really need.”

The amphibian students from Gllrp shifted to an embarrassed shade of orange. The lone Margulian, to whom nitrogen atmospheres above 4% were certain death, gagged.

“And then there’s the acid rain. Stuff eats up buildings and they go play in it. Just keep putting up new buildings. And that’s when the weather’s nice. Big storms called hurricanes can reach 350 kph and radii topping 900 km. Little storms called tornadoes are pencils in comparison but can reach almost 500 kph. Hells, there are tiny tornadoes caused just by the heat variations in the atmosphere that whip around the deserts and savannahs and animals ignore them.”

The Beltanes objected to all this as absurd. Such would destroy even land-based life forms and would have made their home world’s evolutionary history impossible given the aerial nature of their species.

“Just you wait, kids. You’ll meet storm fliers. They get in little aeroprop fuselages with external mechanical engines and go into the centers of these things where it’s all worst. But it gets better. Note I said they have deserts. They do. Deserts cover almost one-third of the land surface, hot and cold alike. Somehow they manage to cross these deserts on foot or on four-footed beasts, leading vast herds of grazing animals. I don’t know how they do it, but they make a living at it. And then the cold deserts. Wow! One whole continent is nothing but that.”

“And they live there?”

“Not much. It’s a bit hard for them. Temperatures get down to -90°C and winds can be as much as 330 kph.”

“Didn’t they die?”

“Of course they did! Lots of them. They kept sending more. Took four local centuries to get some of the bodies back.”

“OK, now you’re either lying or they’re insane. How’d they get citizenship again?”

“Not lying, I swear by my mother’s pouch.” One did not do well to doubt such an oath from a Quorg, not least from an experienced fighter like the sergeant. Citizens had died for less with their killers exonerated in Imperium courts. The students mostly subsided but a Horvath had a question.

“You said they also have hot deserts, though. How hot?”

“Something a bit above 55°C. They manage. Sweaty as all hells, though. And the smell! Ugh. For a species with no pheromones, they sure do manage to stink. Something about epidermal bacteria.”

“Then how do they communicate for mating?” The Xorgby’s translator device, usually a calm, even-toned rendering of the scents it emitted, somehow managed to sound disgusted.

“They call it romance. They go to exotic locations like volcanoes and avalanche zones and have fun and ask one another to get married.” The students were agog. “You heard me right. They go to volcanoes, love seeing the fireworks, they say. There’s even this one city on their home world that was plastered over by one and it’s a tourist attraction these days. Then the avalanche zones. Lots of snow and such. They get on these little flat poles and go whipping down mountainsides, sometimes flying up into the air and smashing back down. Great fun, they say. Nothing but gravity power to make it all work. I can show you quadvideo of them, ‘skiing’ they call it, with billions of tonnes of snow flying after them like it was nothing. I didn’t believe it ‘til I saw it in person.”

“So how did they become citizens? Did their world government get some kind of exemption?”

“World government? Ha! They’ve got something like two hundred local governments, squabbling with one another, sometimes using nuclear weapons, sometimes worse stuff. Once they got bored with being killed by their planet and the animals, they got really good at doing it to one another.”

“Are they mad!? Surely the Imperium would quarantine such a world if not obliterate it.”

“They are mad by our standards but perfectly functional by theirs. It lets them survive. And they’re not just on one world. By the time we reached them, they’d colonized every scrap of rock in their home system and a dozen neighbors. Yes, each colony has its own government, too. Something they call ‘revolution.’ I’m told it’s nasty business.”

“So how’d they get in?” Nargis-hei were notorious pacifists. The two present were only here as part of the drafting quota necessary for Imperium membership and were engineers rather than fighters.

“We need them. Those bastards can survive anything. And, if they don’t on the first go, they figure it out on the second or the second hundredth. They don’t stop. If we hadn’t let them in, military projections had them beating the Imperium within a century. Today, they’re part of us but we still keep them at arm’s length. The Gllrp cream that lets you folks visit dry worlds? They modified their sunscreen for it. Yeah, they get nasty burns and even cancer from their own star. The Xorgby translator? Them, too. Seems their lack of pheromones made them spend centuries at figuring out scents, natural and artificial, to cover their stink. Their air scrubbers keep the nitrogen low in our ships so Margulians can breathe. They don’t need the nitrogen; lungs can’t even process it. They get enough in food. It’s just how their planet worked out. The chiller the Horvath cabins have was them, too. Something about chilling the carcasses of slaughtered beasts as they shipped them across oceans to be eaten elsewhere. Gross, yeah, but it is what it is. They still do it, too, so don’t accept any dinner invitations. The Beltane wing struts for high winds? Look up wing-suits and hang gliders when you get a chance. And you Nargis-hei, what do your parents do?”

One answered promptly, “My father has a respectable position as a lawyer for the Imperium’s criminal defense division.”

“Then you owe them something, too. We got the idea of both common law and a right to a defense from them. It was that or keep losing to them in the combat arenas in one-on-one combat. Only the Zobnians stood a chance against them and they always ended up psychologically scarred. The emotions were so intense the big lunks’ telepathy circuits fried. They even killed a few Quorgi, I’m told. They civilized us by being better warriors a few hundred years back.”

“Why are you telling us all this? Why are schoolchildren kept ignorant if these people are so amazing and so dangerous?” the other Nargis-hei demanded.

“Because you’re going to be working with them. And because, if you think about it, ignorance makes sense. These madmen saved us in a real way and made a genuinely galactic Imperium possible with their ability to survive anywhere, or at least to give it a few dozen tries. And all that tech? They just gave it to us. Didn’t barter or anything. They saw a need among our people and they said, ‘We have an idea.’ That’s usually a scary thing from them but they helped most of the time if you weren’t too cautious or curious about how they got the idea in the first place.

“They also integrated the service. Before about four hundred years ago, each ship was its own thing with its own crew, segregated out by species. It made the plumbing a nightmare but they’re excellent plumbers. Some have a god called Mah-ree-oh; he’s a plumber. I don’t have to tell you about the civil wars the old way made possible. Not no more, folks.”

“When do we meet one?” the Gllrp, who had most managed to regain a skin tone indicative of composure, asked.

A door off to the side opened and an unfamiliar form walked out, with medium-dark skin showing only at face and hands, the rest being covered in a singlesuit and shoes. A tuft of some material grew from the top of its head in a shade of orange-red that would be obscene on almost any other species in the Imperium.

“Funny you should ask. Kids, this is Henrietta. It’s a female, I think. And she’s your new boss. Don’t let her talk you into anything stupid. She’s the one who took me skiing.”

“Sgt. Causrt, that’s a base canard and you know it. You asked me what it was all about and then insisted.” Turning to the trainees, “I’m Lt. Henrietta Montez. I trust everyone’s had their shots? Good. You’ll need more,” began the Terran female. “We’re discovering new diseases all the time. The newest nasty little bug seems to be something dredged up from the tundra permafrost global warming thawed out. It’s unicellular, sort of, the egg heads are still arguing about it, and digs into host cells and takes them over to make more. Really hard for the immune system to recognize when it spends 90% of its time inside the host’s own parts. Fevers have been recorded up to 43°C. Not fun. Kinda leaves you scrambled if you’re lucky.”

“This is something on the base world we’re heading to?” asked one of the Marines.

“Oh, no. It’s from my home world, Earth, or Terra in the Imperium almanacs. Billions of little bits of nastiness and most of them don’t care if you’re local or not. Some of them are worse for you guys; deadly while giving us a minor case of sniffles. Don’t even ask about the megaviruses. Those things are bigger than some cells. And some of them have integrated themselves into our cellular structure, our very DNA, over evolutionary time scales. There’s really no way to tell when one will pop out and start offing you folks. Luckily, we’ve got practice at making vaccines or at least treating symptoms. We have a pandemic two or three times a century. Over a billion died in the last one on thirteen worlds before we figured it out. That one popped up from a cave a volcano opened up for the first time in a million years or so. I’d be glad to tell you more, but shots first. Come on. You folks have about a hundred thousand things that can kill you that I wouldn’t notice.”

The trainees were not looking forward to this experience.

#imperium #marines #recruits #vaccination #galaxy #sf #scifi #science fiction #sff #virus #terra #humans are weird #hell world #hell planet

[jj-baruch]

People of the Corn and Soy

For ages the Natives of what is now the American Midwest reported strange lurkers wandering through their fields and forests, strange beings not quite human and yet not entirely of another world. They were helpers, mostly, if one did not go mad in meeting them. Warnings of dire events to come, directions to lost travelers, cookie recipes that didn’t make sense until the invention of the convection oven. That sort of thing. They continued their odd sort of help even after the Europeans came and turned the rolling plains of forest and open pasturage into regular rows of corn and soybeans. They did their best to keep the fields in corn, because then they couldn’t see the strangers, but the triennial cycle of crop rotation forced them to deal with the realities they had inherited. Until, one day, they were gone. No one knew whence they had come or whither they went, but whole communities breathed sighs of relief. Until they realized cookies no longer baked in their ovens, travelers never returned, and terrible things happened without warning. The corn and soy still grew straight and all but nothing else was quite right. And now the good people of the Midwest are looking for what they never knew to treasure.

#corn #soybeans #strangers #people of the corn #midwest #cookies #night people #crop rotation

[jj-baruch]

Lay On MacDuff

There had been thousands like it in the nation’s history and doubtless would be thousands more like it in the country’s future. A tent revival meeting set up by a non-descript faith healer sprawled at the end of a gravel parking lot of the loop around a small West Texas town and attracted a crowd of true believers. People had heard of Elroy “Lay On” MacDuff. First it was only a few who attended, having seen postings online or catching the handbills scattered in the ever present winds about town. Then it was dozens. Then it was a packed house. No tickets were sold, no admission fee required, but the offering bowl at the front was full when the two men investigating the claims arrived and not a single person was guarding it.

Adherents, in this town and elsewhere, insisted that MacDuff’s miracles were real. That wasn’t the least bit strange or worthy of investigation. Medical records after the fact, though, indicated serious changes in patients who’d suffered various conditions for years coming away right as rain. The lame walked and the blind could see. Doctors were, of course, dubious, but gradually whispered chatter in the hospital lounge as their confusion grew made its way elsewhere after radiologists began talking and two men, more than suited for the task, put on their suits and attended a faith healing session.

They took up a pair of chairs in the back row near the corner hoping not to be noticed. They weren’t. All eyes were on MacDuff as he came on stage in an ice cream white suit and matching patent leather shoes. His shirt was open at the collar and showed a nasty scar along his left external jugular vein. In giving his witness, he insisted that the woman who healed him taught him how to do it, through faith, and that it was his calling to share that with others. He never quite specified in which divinity he had faith, but the hymnal pamphlets all appeared to be fairly standard issue under a casual observation. To the investigators, that lack was intriguing in itself as it closely matched with the man’s spiel on stage. But they didn’t care about his version of the good news. They wanted to know about the healing, if such it was. The organist and small choir that doubled as stagehands in setting up the tent on the road were probably irrelevant but it was too early to be sure just yet.

The second man, a subordinate to the first, leaned over to his partner and tapped on his knee in a shorthand form of Morse code that might be translated as “Tell me again why we’re here? Even if real, it seems literally the opposite of harmless.”

The senior in both authority and apparent age, replied in kind. “It’s a violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It’s one of the few laws of nature made into a statute.”

The second man scratched his curly ginger hair, not entirely sure he understood his gaunt, craggy-faced associate. He knew, in a general way, that the Second meant any increase in order in one spot required an equal, but more likely greater, increase in disorder somewhere else. But what that had to do with anything here was beyond him. The second man was, after all, only newly recruited from the FBI into this special office jointly run by the Department of Energy. He also wasn’t sure why the Witch Hunters were involved in what was almost certainly a con job. But he kept quiet and listened and watched. He was good at that.

Hymns and exhortations done with, the choir gently humming in slowly evolving harmonics, MacDuff called on the crowd for someone in need of healing to come up to the stage. A bent and broken bluehair was rolled up in her wheelchair and, where the investigators had seen other alleged faith healers force loved ones to lift such a chair and its occupant onto the stage so all eyes remained on the main attraction, MacDuff jumped down onto the temporary floor and knelt so he could speak to her at eye level. He quickly stood back up and announced through his microphone, “This is Mrs. Loretta Penhaligon, ladies and gentlemen, a widow of some years, here with her two sons and their wives. She is confined to this wheelchair and even then cannot sit upright in it. She has prayed for deliverance, that she might look her grandchildren and great-grandchildren in their loving eyes before she departs this world for glory.” He spread his hands and smiled, the lights glinting off his dental veneers and hair pomaded to immobility. The organist, with perfect timing, gave the movement a bit of a sting.

“Now, folks, loving and wanting to see love returned. Isn’t that the gate and the key to what faith is all about?”

Choruses of Amens were shouted all around the tent. The second man darted his eyes to his boss and saw the man was already nervous. The second observer knew his boss was a particularly stern sort of Catholic and his bubbe was as bubbe as they come, so neither would’ve agreed with MacDuff. But doctrinal differences weren’t why they were there. Whatever was causing his concern was obviously much worse than that.

“And so, now,” MacDuff resumed before the shouts fully died away, “I shall lay on and, through faith, be the humble conduit for her healing.”

Something changed in the atmosphere of the tent. The second man’s leg hairs felt staticky and the ones on his neck stood straight up. It was like the sudden drop in barometric pressure that presaged a storm, and yet sunlight and a friendly breeze still came through the open tent flaps. A strange stink, faint and far away, as of a whole universe of rotting carrion was just beyond perception, came to his nose as he felt tendrils of power coursing through the tent and focusing itself on MacDuff.

Mrs. Penhaligon, all 4’10” of her plus her bouffant, stood up.

The second man knew now which god MacDuff served even if the healer didn’t. “YG,” his boss tapped on his knee. The second man nodded firmly. This was bad.

*          *          *

They waited until late at night, when the crowds had gone home and the choristers and organist were asleep in their trailers to minimize fuss. MacDuff was duly arrested pursuant to Title 16 USC 12, read his rights, and taken into custody.

“But I’m helping people! Really helping!” MacDuff protested as he sat at a wooden table in a nondescript room of green-painted cinderblocks and cement floor glaring the two agents in shock and confusion.

From the other side of the table, nearer to the door, the gaunt senior agent effected what passed for a smile on his grim face. “We know. And that’s the problem.”

For this and more, please visit me at https://patreon.com/jjbaruch

#Dept of Energy #Department of Energy #2d Law of Thermodynamics #Second Law of Thermodynamics #Witch Hunters #Lovecraft #HPL #Yog-Sothoth #16 US 12 #Coventry TX #Texas #West Texas #Tent Revival #Faith Healer

[jj-baruch]

A Brief Description of the False Unicorn (Pseudomonoceros Tyrans ferox)

While true unicorns and their near cousins can be quite dangerous enough on their own, the false unicorn, Pseudomonoceros, is a unique case of mimicry by an entirely unrelated family of animals. Indeed, it is recommended that one treat a unicorn encountered in the wild as if it were a false unicorn until proven otherwise. Among the true unicorns, there are well-documented cases of this mimicry for all types except the Arctic unicorn (Monoceros arktos). With regard to related genera, there are only a very few poorly-documented instances in the Old World generally and none at all in the New World, Australia, Oceania, or Insular Southeast Asia. That said, when any variety of true unicorn has been imported to a new geographic area, reports of false unicorns, some well-attested, inevitably follow.

Referring to true unicorns as “true” is more a matter of custom and convenience than of genetics or actual relationship. Their phylogenetic history remains elusive with respect to one another and with respect to the other animals they superficially resemble. It is uncertain if there even is a relationship. False unicorns are similarly obscure with respect to one another, true unicorns, and the other animals they resemble. What is certain is that the earliest fossils of a true unicorn (the poorly named European unicorn, M. monoceros) come from the arc of mountains north and east of the Tigris-Euphrates Valley and somewhat eastward on the Iranian Plateau. False unicorn fossils, though considerably rarer, also appear here first.

What follows is a description of Pseudomonoceros Tyrans ferox, which mimics M. monoceros. This is considered the type species of the group and other types mimic their respective true unicorns in almost identical ways. T. ferox is also the most aggressive of the false unicorns and, as such, presents a special danger.

T. ferox, like other false unicorns, represents one of the most extreme cases of sexual dimorphism among terrestrial vertebrates. Like certain deep sea fishes, the male and female are vastly different in size and morphology, with the male eventually merging into the female body and becoming little more than a sperm-producing appendage.

A single pregnancy may result in several hundred young, male and female alike. However, the females are carnivorous and cannibalistic even within the womb. As they reach parturition, they begin eating one another and, eventually, eat their way out of the womb, bursting the mother’s body which provides them with one last meal. At this point, the sexual imbalance may be as high as 25 males for every female. As the females mature and compete for territory and/or dominance, this ratio increases dramatically.

Males are herbivorous in nature. Upon birth, they range from 0.5 to 0.75 cm in length, their main body concealed within a shell that will, in time, grow to a horn 25 cm to 100 cm in length. At birth, the poison sac at the tip of the horn already exists and is a danger that may be fatal to children, the elderly, or those with compromised health. At maturity, the poison is invariably fatal to human beings, leaving them in agony for approximately nine days at which time death follows. It is important that anyone who dies by this method, especially if a female T. ferox is at or near sexual maturity in the region, be cremated. Religious considerations must be set aside at all costs.

Males will do battle for access to mates, jousting with their horns. As these growths are enervated and vascularized, even a nominal winner in such contests may be so badly injured as to die in the aftermath. There is no established correlation between length of shell and reproductive success but rather strength in surviving impacts from other combatants. The strength of the male’s shell along with its poison, combined with the physical mass of the female with which it later unites, is one of the principal defense mechanisms of the species. Sexual maturity is generally attained in the first two to three years but may be delayed in colder climates.

Upon birth, a female T. ferox appears indistinguishable from a fully grown normal horse (Equus equus), albeit small enough to fit in the palm of a human hand. Actually doing so is inadvisable as they are carnivorous from before birth and will eat human flesh as readily as any other. Over the next five to six years, they will maintain this form as they reach sexual maturity. At full size they are the same size as a regular horse, if not somewhat larger than average. Sentience slowly grows as the body matures and, at full maturity, they can begin to control minds of other animals, including humans, around them. Young people, especially pubescent or pre-pubescent youth, and those who have died due to poison from the male are especially vulnerable to this control. While those who are still alive at the time of contact may resist for a greater or lesser period, those who are dead have no such protections and are often used as lures to gather in more food for the female T. ferox. This process accelerates after mating.

When ready to mate, a female will send out a signal, it is uncertain if this is pheremonal or mental in nature, to attract all nearby males. Males will then compete for access. Survivors will unite their bodies with the foreheads of the females, thus producing the classic true unicorn appearance. If a female later decides, for any reason, to rid herself of the acquired mate, she can break it off and find another. Upon union, the nervous, circulatory, and other systems merge and the male loses any identity. If separated, it dies.

During the early stages of pregnancy, the female remains mobile and able to forage but increasingly becomes sessile as the reproductive tract expands and all internal processes become geared toward advancing the pregnancy. Legs disappear within the expanding torso and the mental control function becomes a necessity rather than a convenience. Servitors in this period function to lure others to the den as food for the pregnant female and, at the end, become food themselves. The precise nature of this mechanism is not understood, only that it is extremely dangerous and thus requires the extermination of all false unicorns, male and female alike, as thoroughly as possible. Servitors, especially the dead, will try to prevent this, which is why they must be destroyed. Living servitors who survive the death of their mare are forever mentally damaged and will seek out another mare to serve.

There are advocates for the conservation of these creatures, pointing out that they are even rarer than true unicorns in the wild today. This is true. However, such advocates should be examined for previous mare service. As for the false unicorns, if allowed to go unchecked, they will consume all life, plant, animal, and otherwise, in a district before moving on. They have been known to turn lush forests into wastelands in relatively short periods of time. As with humans who have died from the male’s poison, females are able to control other dead false unicorns for the purposes of foraging and defense. Cremation, dissolution in acid, and other similarly thorough disposal methods are the only known ways to prevent this postmortem control in any species taken as prey.

They must be rooted out wherever encountered.

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#unicorn #false unicorn #zombie #psychic #cannibal #extermination #Pseudomonoceros Tyrans ferox #pest control

[jj-baruch]

They weren’t tights, they just looked that way from the angle of the image. But even so, neither Picard nor Riker had any problem with wearing a dress other than that they were uncomfortable. Seriously. There’s even a Riker in a dress action figure (although it has the wrong rank insignia for some reason).

Christopher: A woman? Kirk: A crewman.

[jj-baruch]

A Group of Theremins Is Called a Mistake

Buck pulled his ’86 Impala into the driveway and noticed the garage door was open. So was the hatch leading down to the cellar. As he turned off the car, Kirsti asked from the passenger seat, “Um, why does your house look and sound like a B-movie?”

“I have a feeling we’re about to find out what was in all those boxes JJ ordered.” Buck led the way down to the cellar and stopped at the bottom of the stairs as he saw a large wooden table he didn’t know they owned covered with a strange pattern of devices.

JJ looked up, goggles on his face, as the sound stopped and smiled. “Success! It works!”

Dubious, Buck replied, “Uh…congrats. What’s with the rave?”

Undaunted, JJ pulled off his goggles and ran a hand through his thinning ginger hair. “I needed something that’d work for a project but not attract too much attention so I got these theremins…theremini….hmmm.” He looked thoughtful for a moment, scratching his beard. “You’re the English major. What’s a group of theremins called?”

“A mistake.”

“Right, so,” JJ continued, not realizing his friend was being sarcastic, “I made this mistake pattern and the positioning cancels everything out until it detects a disturbance in local dark matter.”

Buck and Kirsti both blinked twice, not entirely sure what to say to that. “And, um,…” Buck tried to maintain his composure, “what about the light?”

“No idea! And I’m pretty sure it should be blue but it’s green!” JJ’s smile was triumphant. “Isn’t that exciting?”

Kirsti, ever the pragmatist, cut the weirdness short. “So, I’m thinking movie night.” She tugged at Buck’s sleeve. “Jay, we’re gonna go upstairs. Meet us in a few minutes, ‘k? I’ll make popcorn.”

“Sure! Sounds great.” Jabez replied as he took off his gloves and set them on a work bench. “Be careful, though. Sparky’s been in a bad mood all evening.”

Whatever she had to put up with from the boys’ colicky pet shoggoth was bound to be less weird than the mistake in the basement.

For this and more, see my work at https://patreon.com/jjbaruch

#Buck and Jabez #Buck and Kirsti #Coventry #Texas #Sparky #Shoggoth #Lovecraft #HPL #B movie #Free Story #Short Short #Impala #Writers of Tumblr #Dark Matter #Theremin

[jj-baruch]

Ripples in the Pond: A Young Jabez Story

It was June and already warm, promising a long, hot summer ahead. But for now, Jabez was enjoying the breeze as he sat atop the pile of dirt at the park that fellow kids called the Mound. He’d only ever overheard them, not really feeling welcome there when others played. But, today, it was all his. Or almost.

Great-Uncle Ruach was in town! He lived up in Kansas, a retired geologist, and had brought Jabez a gift: A hound’s tooth golf cap in grey and white! It was just like Ruach’s and Jabez felt special because of all the great-nephews and nieces, he was the only one who got one. He adjusted it slightly in the breeze as he looked down at his uncle and the one cousin who’d insisted on joining them. Rupert.

Rupert was all of two months older than Jabez and lorded it over him. Rivkah, Rupert’s mother, was less than two years the senior of JJ’s mom, Priscilla. They’d never liked one another very much, and had passed on something of that rivalry to their sons. Jabez was smart enough to see what was going on, but hadn’t yet figured out what, if anything, he could do about it. So he played along. Even so, he felt no ambiguities at all where it came to Great-Uncle Ruach.

Rupert doesn’t care about rocks or stars or math or anything that matters, Jabez thought, watching the pair stroll around the park’s little pond where it bordered on the service road near the southern terminus of I-44 that led away to Lawton and points north, maybe even to Topeka where Ruach lived. JJ wasn’t sure. He was still learning about maps and had hoped his great-uncle would spend some time with him on those wondrous representations of reality.

He could hear his cousin below, rambling on about some girl he thought was cute. We’re 6 and you’re ugly! Jabez wanted to shout down at Rupert. That wasn’t strictly speaking fair, even JJ had to admit. It wasn’t Rupert’s fault he was blond, unlike all the real Beit Hayudah. But did he have to be so stupid, too?

Ruach and Rupert were making the last corner by the service road and walking widdershins along the little path that would take them closer to the Mound. Thirty feet above them, JJ noticed a strange thing, an oddity. He almost wrote it off but it appeared again. A small string of ripples showed in the brown pond water that went against the wind. They dove, and then came on again, bigger, faster this time, angling toward a spot where the path passed close to a steep edge of the path where Ruach and Rupert walked, the boy closer to the water.

Jabez wanted to scream out a warning. Jabez wanted to help whatever was in the water. A face, filled with sorrow, the hair streaming behind and hands all of water reached out toward the land, screeching as she rose in a white roil of motion.

Splash!

Jabez found he couldn’t move, so great was the shock. Madly screaming, shrilly begging for help, Rupert was half in the water already before Ruach grabbed his wrists and tugged. A healthy, hale man, or as much as he could be in his 80s, he tugged mightily against whatever was in the water to save his great-nephew as might any man. Though hearing, JJ couldn’t understand what the old man was saying. Slowly, with great strain against whatever was thrashing just below the surface, his strength prevailed and Rupert was once again on dry land, exhausted, chest heaving, clothing soaked.

As JJ ran down to them, heedless of the sudden drops in the Mound’s sides, he heard Ruach admonishing Rupert. Vos hob ikh gezogt, plimenik?” Ruach asked.

Rupert, able, just barely, to understand the old family language but not speak it, replied, “Yes, Great-Uncle Ruach. I’ll be more careful.”

Out of breath, JJ insisted, better informed of tradition, “Aber ikh hab gezen…”

“You saw your cousin slip and no more, plimenik.” Ruach was firm, staring the boy in the eyes, and would brook no objections. “Now, lozn aundz zen, is he injured?”

Rupert was unhurt but filthy, and, once home, Nana made him strip and hose off behind the house. Meanwhile, Ruach took Jabez into Reb Claudius’ study. The door tightly shut, Ruach studied his great-nephew with care before telling the boy to sit down in one of the great overstuffed leather chair the Reb preferred.

“Zi hat file nemen. Llorona, Cihuacōātl, Nigheag na h-Àth. Apkallu. Zi iz dedli geferlekh. And you will never tell your cousin about it, and talk about it, aoyb ir muzn, only with me and with the Reb. Andere veln lakhn. Mir veln farsteyn. Now go. Rest. Dinner will be soon.”

Jabez, unsure what else to do, did as he was told, still in awe at being addressed as an equal by a man he respected little less than Gramp Rebbe.

Emerging from the shadows, Claudius looked at his brother-in-law, coal-dark eyes burning for a change. “He’s too young. Too…broken.”

“Then patch him up, Reb. Or it’ll be too late. We both know vos…ver ikh gezen.”

Neither man had to say that what had been seen in the water was the least of their concerns.

For this and similar stories, visit me at https://patreon.com/jjbaruch

#Llorona #Chihuacoatl #Nigheag na h-Ath #Apkallu #Deep One #Jewish #Judaism #Rabbi #Young Jabez #Wichita Falls #Texas #TX #The Mound #Lovecraft #Yiddish #Ginger

[jj-baruch]

This is Buck and JJ, the heroes of most of my stories. The art by @crimsondreamprod is awesome and you should contact them for commissions. The second one has them with their pet shoggoth, Sparky.

#Buck and JJ #Coventry #Lovecraftian #Queer #LGBTQ #GLBTQ #Jewish #Judaism #Asatru #norse paganism #pagan #veteran #US Navy #USMC #Marine #Shoggoth #College #Writers of Instagram

[jj-baruch]

Legends of Webber Mesa

Northwest of Coventry, across the line into Seelig County, one finds the strange location known as Webber Mesa. The only sign within the distance of the horizon of modern white settlement in the area is a group of roving Arabian oryx, their tawny white coats stark against the reddish-black of the land, that escaped from an attempt at domestication of the beasts in the 1960s. Compared to their far more arid homeland, the region is a veritable paradise with its seasonal rains and scattered scrub. Their curling, twisted horns, if seen without the beast and only one at a time, might well explain later legends of the unicorn so prominent in European myth. But there are stories enough about Webber Mesa not to worry about them.

Rising above a skirt of fallen rubble, the mesa itself is hardly an imposing structure, perhaps 100 feet in height, all banded and colored with different layers of harder rock left behind when the Great Plains were eroding away to their present level, and covering some three square miles at its top. The ascent is marked by a wide, flat, and obviously artificial path of uncertain antiquity. The summit is deceptively smooth when seen from the air or by the few visitors on the ground. Around the edge, one finds a narrow walkway or trail, theories diverge as to its origin, with solid, smooth stone, pallid white against the ochre of the material underneath. Woe unto any who strays too far away from this edge! The stories are many of ranch hands and entire herds lost after making their arduous way up the trail to the crown. For, beneath a thin coating of dust that often swirls with heat vortices, lies a strange layer of material with nigh unto zero friction and sworn by some not to be of this Earth.

Scientists at Coventry University were and still are quite baffled as to the origins of this material, which, up on examination, appears to be an exotic species of buckminsterfullerene unknown in any other natural context and which, indeed, would seem to deny full classification. While the exterior shells of the little spherules are comprised of a lattice of iron, copper, and aluminum, as one might expect, the atom trapped within is a mystery. Analysis shows it to have an absurdly high atomic weight and number, leading some to speculate privately about a “Second Island of Stability” well beyond the range of known elements. None has yet published on the matter, so the question may remain forever unanswered.

Whatever the case, surely this strange composition cannot fully explain the more than supernal horror at mere impending death that infused the final shout of one Thaddeus Spencer (d. 1903), who called out as he was lost, “It’s got me, Dan!” Speculation was rife at the time and, no doubt, would continue to be so if anyone of a modern mindset gave more credence to such legendry as low dunes that shifted and swirled of themselves, or of occasional sightings of what appeared to be a pair of many-tined antlers rising therefrom in the sunset light. Few have dared to stay long enough for a good look and fewer still who have had no look at all believe them.

Native legends are, of course, not believed, though perhaps they should be. The Comanche, when they would speak of the place at all, called it Hweebuur, which may in fact be the origin of the English name, as no one named Webber can be associated with the geologic structure by antiquarian investigators. The meaning is obscure and even the Tribe’s oldest elders admit they do not know the meaning of it.

Their stories tell of a once-great city, fallen to ruin when its people displeased the gods, of a Lord of Obsidian and a Lady of Quicksilver who ruled over the People of Stone. They grew haughty in their wealth and power in a great edifice of brass that surrounded an ever-full spring set amid a courtyard of many pillars. Merchants came from all the world over, as they knew it, to exchange their wares and do homage to the Lord and Lady and People. Jade and feathers from the far south. Maize and beans from the east. Gold and medicines from the west. Furs and hides from the north. Dreams and far stranger things from somewhere known only as “Below.” All that the Lord and Lady and People might desire was brought to them and came to them in the tithe of the traders as they met and assembled in the court of pillars around the only source of water for many, many miles around.

As profits rose, so did prophets, denouncing the debaucheries and cruelties of the Lord of Obsidian and Lady of Quicksilver and People of Stone. Foul treatments did they give to strangers who did not amuse or enrich them as much as they might desire. And these prophets denounced the Lord and Lady and People for seven years. Their hearts were hardened. For seven years, the spring ran dry and the traders came no more. Still, their hearts were hardened and what had formerly been brought to them, they now went out and took by force of arms, heaping cruelty upon cruelty, making their former depredations seem as the blushing sins of youth against those of men and women full grown in evil.

And then the prophets, those who had survived the tortures of the Lord and Lady and the People, left one night. The many-pillared court of brass resounded with triumph, songs of how they had proven themselves mightier than the gods themselves. And on the seventh day of feasting, they were taken. An antlered serpent, miles long with eyes of obsidian and scales of quicksilver and teeth of stone, arose over the mesa and breathed out smoke and fire and dust, melting and burning and burying all. This serpent, called Hweebuur in the telling gathered by an ethnologist of a century ago interested in snake tales, took up residence in the shifting piles of death and destruction, to guard against any who might dare to resurrect the lost splendor of the city that had fallen to its wrath.

Thus does the legend end and none today visits Webber Mesa save the fleet oryxes of distant Arabia in their gamboling search for scrub plants upon which to feast in the craggy outskirts of a place avoided by mankind.

For this and more stories, visit me at https://patreon.com/jjbaruch

#Lovecraft #Lovecraftian #Texas #West Texas #Ubar #Irem of the Pillars #Lost City #Mesa #Legend #Snake #Giant Snake #Writers of Instagram