Collaborations

I am the editor of a wonderful webcomic from SockBucketFrance called "The Freelance Club".

Fiction Samples

Introduction to Chapter One

      "You know why they say 'when Hell freezes over', right?"
      "Yeah, because Hell is 'fire and brimstone'. Just like this fuckin' microwave of a tunnel."
      "No, it's because the worst parts of it are already frozen. Your skin cracks and peels off."

       The tundras and tacomas of Hell are the only places in the entire pantheon where people are even rumored to reach enlightenment. Explorers and sables will tell you their general superstition concludes it must be related to the laws of nature. Closer to absolute zero, closer to quantum oneness. A rare occurrence of cold shamans on Earth, such as Wim Hof, are dedicated to perfecting the art of embracing the cold, but the practice remains esoteric. Ironically yet succinctly, the easiest entrances to Hell from Earth are in the Antarctic. The easiest entrance to Hell is at its most dangerous points. At night, the receding solar heat on the ice allows natural Bose-Einstein Condensation meters below the surface, but sometimes they form on the surface at higher elevations. These exotic states of matter offer an exceedingly rare rift in the Seven Point. Many people have gone missing due to sinkholes and astral walking. Though it's so easy to fall into Hell from these events that one can do it by accident, we can just say it isn't a pleasant experience and leave it at that. Due to the unpredictable nature of these events, Soviet expeditions in the Arctic and northern Siberia were historically the most routine way to "depart".

Introduction to Chapter Two

       In the early 1980s, under controlled zero-point energy field manipulation ("ZEM" for short), "lodonauts" at Cevero Station could depart to Hell with their expeditions and be met with vicious temperatures, tempests, and viruses. However, not only were these expeditions highly fatal, but the opening of the rift itself was dangerous. All personnel had to be evacuated to the watchtower above the second sub-level where the rifts were opened; whenever they were opened. Otherwise, the anti-aura of heat drain used to power the ZEM would absorb the energy from their bodies, resulting in instant death. The consequences of opening rifts didn't just end there, though. Specifically in the Siberian region surrounding Cevero Station, there live cryptids known as Yit. In the Siberian shaman myth, the Yit was the first dog created by the thunder god Ulgen to protect the first human. Soviet scholars at the station wrote that the myth must be true to an extent because of what the Yit do when rifts are opened. Seemingly to "protect" humans from entering the dangerous hellscape, packs of dozens of Yit would dig deep from the ground in a recorded 3.14-kilometer radius and rush to the rift point in order to eviscerate any human life near it. During ZEM routines, the watchtower would broadcast a warning signal directly to the Kremlin using the exterior as an antenna, pumping out lethal doses of AM electricity. This measure ensured a high likelihood of safety for staff during ZEM anti-aura charging, but despite these efforts, some larger Yit would dogpile up the tower in piercing screams of horror and manage to kill two to three staff every month. Even killing the Yit proved difficult in the case of a breach due to their unique metology (metaphysical biology), increasing strains on the operation of the ZEM program. Yit seem to have evolved to combat the cold in many ways, one of which is how they burst into boiling flame when they die. This offers warmth to the pack or to humans they are bonded with, but during a breach, they use up most of their energy and die either immediately after that or after attacking any staff. Advanced firefighting systems were installed in the watchtower to prevent Yit fire from destroying more infrastructure.

~

       Suddenly, the attitude of a grizzled cavalryman left my body. There I was again, a frail, starry-eyed girl mocked by this tall, stout man. I was simultaneously and suddenly at peace and extremely emotional, on the verge of sobbing. I hadn't felt this way in months. This feeling was amplified by my fresh shave and the parade uniform, designed very dress-like. Instantly, without hesitation and in one motion, I stepped toward him, pulled my blade, and smacked it across his throat. As I watch him fall and lie on the ground, he writhed; it looked as though it felt like how one would run in a nightmare. While he clutched his neck with both, burly, scarred hands, his face donned a grotesque shock. It disgusted me. After all the sabotage in the war and what he did to my sister, I was shaken to my core that this worm could not foresee his fate, let alone be pained. At this moment, I felt right, and he was subhuman to me. I knew now that the next phase of the revolution must march quickly. After him and others on the council dismissed the libertarians in the south as fellow anarchists, I knew the divide to fight the last of the bourgeoisie was still ahead of us. I dashed down the dimly-lit hall, already forgetting the dead thing lying there.

~

       "We were in their living room, sharing whatever fresh produce they could spare in a gut-wrenching last supper," she recalled. "My father handed me my plate, a strange concoction of pasta, shrimp, and other things. It sounds so silly now, saying it aloud."

       "It's not so strange," Adrien said, hastily. He had been raised in Greece and somehow, illogically, felt a deeper connection to his Italian heritage through it.

       "I suppose. I remember so vividly looking across to my sister, already engulfed in righteous flame, as if it was her duty to eat. It was like in that moment she was a machine, fuelling her rage. I was always averse to eating, especially in such a sudden, turbulent time. The alien things on the dish were both so detailed and yet so blurred, like I had no choice but to stare as I ran away. My father spoke to me, 'There, there, it's okay, Alyx. You can be strong today and rest tomorrow, but you must eat the good food while it lasts.' I told him I wasn't hungry, he said, 'You may not be now, but you will be later.' I told him it hurts to think of eating.

       Again, he pressed me, this time speaking to me in English, our family's sacred little secret, 'Alyx, I love you. It will hurt now or it will hurt later. Remember how Papa always says to do the hard thing first. Be grateful for the small pains.' He was always the beacon in mine and my sister's lives, his caring words always encouraging. Emulating my sister, I focused and ate the last of the 'good food' (though I tried hard not to notice that I was eating at all). Later that night, I panicked in disgust and threw it all back up. Yet there my father was again, telling me how brave his little girl had been and how that's all that mattered."

       The evening was dry and sweet. The sun roosted behind its blanket of clouds for the night and the sky was ablaze.

       "You have such a way with words," said Adrien, after gliding on just the right amount of moments. "Whatever happened to your sister, anyway?"

       "She takes care of small villages and brings aid to remote tribes in Africa. It's funny, although we're twins, we have such opposite demeanors. Ivy left very early to fight in the war, while I stayed behind to tend to Heidelberg. I really wished we could join together again one day if the revolution hadn't ended so much earlier than my father believed. I could have been her adviser and she could have been my bodyguard... what an adolescent dream..." her voice trailed off as though it was boarding the sudden breeze like a train home.

       Adrien shifted to a more natural sitting position with his foot up against the bars of the porch and began, "Why not move down with your sister? Surely you must miss her after she was of the few to make it out of the war. I suppose you would have to leave your poor mother, though."

       "Ivy is rowdy and primal, like the locals she lives around. The wilderness is her home, full of danger and mysticism. I just can't live like her, I enjoy the peace and quiet too much," she said, voice slowly fading to just a whisper.

       "You call Berlin peaceful and quiet?" Adrien asked, in honest confusion.

       "It is right here and now, isn't it?" Alyx replied.

~

He looked in her eyes, and out from the flame in her soul, he saw passion. She saw in his eyes a black abyss of tears,
and not only of those he had hurt.

The world skipped.

It was in this moment, as half of the castle vanished in stray lines as if the Sun was a blade,
they realized their hate was their love, their love was their hate.

The world skipped.

Flames as high as mountains spread across the oceans of Earth.

The world skipped.

She kissed him, desperately, grasping in futility at that deep abyss, hoping to drown in some requiem of absolution, of dissolution, of solution.

He kissed back, harder, feeling his skull against hers, against every skull in the CD that they had created,
pressing deeply in an attempt to be crushed, how they all had been.

The world skipped.

They died, gaining only a single raindrop in their eternal desert.

The world skipped.

The CD shattered into innumerable cosmic dusts. Earth was smashed into fractals while the Spirit Realm whipped about it as a fog of colors never seen by human eyes, nor would be seen by any eyes ever again.

Jesus wept.

Essays

The Death of Art's Importance (2020)

The History of Audio Recording & Storage (2017)