At sunset, the old gunslinger looked upon a fallen kingdom and found himself unimpressed. Music in Book 3, Chapter 19: Cullah - Please Bring Me Shelter (CC BY-SA 4.0) Crowander - Vanda’s Blues (CC BY-NC 4.0) Monolog Rockstars - Two Years (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) Blue Dot Sessions - Floor Shine (CC BY-NC 4.0) Blue Dot Sessions - Floretin (CC BY-NC 4.0) Rai…

The moment cut his word in half, flickered lights before his eyes, then shut it all down with a deep dark absence of color so grim it was difficult to put word on. Music in Book 3, Chapter 18: Cullah - Please Bring Me Shelter (CC BY-SA 4.0) Marcos H. Bolanos - Stranded (CC BY-NC 4.0) Allen Masterton - Iridian Siddhartha Corsus - Oh Radiant One (CC …

In the dark and rainy parking lot of the diner, Tom and Noah pulled the collars of their jackets up over their ears. Mark did not seem to notice the rain. Music in Book 3, Chapter 17: Cullah - Please Bring Me Shelter (CC BY-SA 4.0) Rain On Heavy Glass Blue Dot Sessions - Remsen (CC BY-NC 4.0) Allen Masterton - Iodine Borrtex - Going Undercover (CC …

Be forewarned, I can still taste the ferment on my teeth. Conjecture and abstract thought do not, admittedly, serve much purpose in a guide to the mysterious world you and I now inhabit, yet I would submit that you can cut as deep as you like as long as your implement remains sharp. Music in Book 3, Chapter 16: Cullah - Please Bring Me Shelter (CC …

Abranyah blinked through the rain, peering down both ends of the street, waiting for activity. Music in Book3, Chapter 15: Cullah - Please Bring Me Shelter (CC BY-SA 4.0) Blue Dot Sessions - Bask VX (CC BY-NC 4.0) Guitar Drone 1 - Ghost Hunter (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) Podington Bear - Submerging Blue-Black (CC BY-NC 3.0) Podington Bear - Dark Water (CC BY…

Bare-footed and with packs slung over their shoulders, Rhamuel and Abranyah made for the main gates of The Omaha Claim, fit to leave as fast as the dust would allow. Music in Book 3, Chapter Fourteen: ?Cullah - Please Bring Me Shelter (CC BY-SA 4.0) Blue Dot Sessions - Emmit Sprak (CC BY-NC 4.0) Blue Dot Sessions - Aloscape 2 (CC BY-NC 3.0) Podingt…

In a sun dappled stretch of the Scar, endless as it had always been, a young woman found herself near done with what the dust had to offer. So goes folk in younger years—just aged enough to know and appreciate the finer and subsequent illuminations of ferment—yet still damn fool enough to know nothing else of nothing else. Music in Book 3, Chapter …

The diner was far enough away from work, but nothing felt far enough when there was going to be talk of confidential things. Things some argue better left unexplained, not discussed, kept away from deeper thought—weird things. Music in Book 3, Chapter Twelve: Cullah - Please Bring Me Shelter (CC BY-SA 4.0) Podington Bear - Undersea Garden (CC BY-NC…

Knucklebones stepped one leathery bare foot into the plastic pool, bright and faded colors both rippling under the liquid. Filth bloomed in arcs from his foot, dirt and barren clouding the chemicals. He wrinkled an ancient looking triangle that sat center on his face, and enshrouded by the giant round disc his hat made, and Knucklebones inhaled dee…

King’s office was surprisingly empty for a man of his resources. There was no special reason for it—he was in charge of it all, the whole enterprise, but cared little for the more obvious of comforts or distraction. Music in Tincture: Book 3, Chapter Ten: ?Cullah – Please Bring Me Shelter (CC BY-SA 4.0) David Szesztay – Underwater (CC BY-SA 3.0) Sc…

We are always starving. It sort of goes with the territory—this being hungry in every odd tick of the day. An empty belly and its degrees of unpleasantness is better than any watch or sundial, and no further calculations on mood need interject. Music in Tincture: Book 3, Chapter Nine: ?Cullah – Please Bring Me Shelter (CC BY-SA 4.0) ?Scott Holmes –…

Tom smiled and nodded with the applause, but when the meeting resumed he went right back to staring directly into the center of a donut. Music in Tincture: Book 3, Chapter Eight: Cullah – Please Bring Me Shelter (CC BY-SA 4.0) Alterr – Small Group Applause (CC BY-NC 3.0) Scott Holmes – Origin II (CC BY-4.0) Seclorance – Dir (CC BY-4.0) Charlie Sala…

Torches had never done Allgood much favor, but that they lit up a question or two in the good populace was useful. Two old branches lit the stench of thoroughfare just before the bar-house, the tips never extinguished thanks to some flammable green-black sludge the fiddle fingers had cooked up for otherwise pursuit. They stunk, and while most folk …

Even in that too-bright light of the morning, Abranyah always struggled to wake with it. She preferred to sleep as long as possible, but the sun would eventually prove to be an enemy—fuel for whatever device the barren was planning to kill you with today. This morning was of little difference, but the body rustling through her pack had become lazy,…

An otherwise normal day in an otherwise normal life, time as it was. Tom had been fostering a general sense of unease for a while now, yet like a weird sort of depression, he had difficulty pinpointing its origin. Music in Tincture: Book 3, Chapter Five: Cullah – Please Bring Me Shelter (CC BY-SA 4.0) Podington Bear – Three Colors (CC BY-NC 3.0) Po…

The ways a body tends to crave its own undoing is a humanistic riddle that I no longer wish to endure. A short way to speak it, I suppose: my empathy muscles have atrophied. Music in Tincture: Book 3, Chapter Four: Cullah – Please Bring Me Shelter (CC BY-SA 4.0) Kosta T – Red in Black (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) Blue Dot Sessions – Stillness (CC BY-NC 4.0) B…

Rhamuel kept folks on a spectrum of his own design, the range beginning somewhere around “tolerate,” and ending near “abject avoidance.” Abranyah once asked where the disdain found its origination point, but the tanker would only reply, “Everyone seems to give me a reason.” Music in Tincture: Book 3, Chapter Three: Cullah – Please Bring Me Shelter …

This was the kind of fruitless nonsense that permeated The Scar—a seeming irregularity of principle and purpose to things. A body could rub a book to ash in their fingers. They could then take a step and trip over a heaping stack of books showing no more than frayed edges, dust, and that grainy kind of yellow that takes over the page after a while.…

Old splinters whistle. Everything across The Scar has aged long past the reek of decay, more so worn, faded, and abused by the transient miscellany that wandered through it over and over and over. There was a weird beauty when the too-bright day went purple as night prepared, no windows left to cover, no reason even if they remained. Music in Tinct…

The tanker was always a curiosity for Rachel. “What are you looking for?” she asked. “You said you had an idea?” Arachal was bent over the front seats of his black Mustang and rifling through the glove compartment. “I do. I’m looking for—ah, here we are.” Withdrawing his long frame from the car, he held up a stack of pink sticky-notes in one hand, …

Excerpted from: Revenants of War An Attempted Guide for Safe Warrant After The Whatever Much has been mired in speculation of the burnouts, most of it the mealy speech of a drunkard, or on occasion your humble author. People have actually visited the things, for Christ’s sake. Their jagged profile out on the horizon is a curious thing for those of …

This wasn’t the first time that something had tried to kill Abranyah. It was, however, the first attempt with a cannon. Music in Tincture: Book 2, Chapter Seventeen: Tom Vourtsis – Black Eyes The OO-Ray – Sleep Kingdoms Radere – Snow Noise (Overhead) Christoper Bissonnette – Downwards Lee Rosevere – Squinting At The Sun (radio edit) The OO-Ray – A …

Rachel stepped back into the church and spat on the floor. “Well we’ve got lights again, no thanks to you,” she said. “In the movies when they siphon gas out of a car, they never throw up. Guess who learned a new thing today?” Music in Tincture: Book 2, Chapter Sixteen: Lee Rosevere – Gymnopédie No. 1 (Satie) Tortue Super Sonic – Film 1 Julien Mier…

“I have every confidence in his ability to avoid a well deserved death,” said Abranyah. She only considered the words after she had said them, surprised that she had actually meant them. Marcus shook his head. “If you say so.” They both turned to face Barabbas, the large dog laying on his side in the bright morning sun. He was awake, but more grump…

.2201 I met the most interesting man today. He sleeps at the fire while I write this, another few inches of bulk to my daily carry, but I find the exercise of keeping a journal cathartic. His name is Israfali. He has asked me to call him Fali, and we are very much alike in that we both are harnessed to a tank we know nothing about. We must’ve had t…

The day had started to stretch on, and there were always more questions. The animals were silent, distanced at the far end of the property near Urcent’s odorous work barn, and everyone else was out in the sun, mired in deep contemplation. Music in Tincture: Book 2, Chapter Thirteen: Allen Masterton – Cowboy Conversations Kreng – Celeano Krowne – Em…

With a shriek and a rumble, the black car awoke. Rachel breathed a sigh of relief. She tested the clutch pedal and pushed the gear shifter into a variety of patterns, then held her thumb out of the window to Arachal. Music in Tincture: Book 2, Chapter Twelve: Lee Rosevere – Phase of Prisms Lee Rosevere – Illuminations Vitus Von Degen – Pulse Lee Ro…

Unlike most in the barren, Barabbas was unconditional. Marcus, Yerses, and Devil were still asleep, the trio lying around the smolders of the previous night’s fire—the two decoy fires still within sight, but smoldering the same. Abranyah sat several yards out from the group, watching Barabbas torment Salt, the two a few yards even further, and it w…

Excerpted from: Revenants of War An Attempted Guide for Safe Warrant After The Whatever Let us be practical. Most bodies who wander in and out of their day, they do it while accepting a relative amount of uncertainty. When one cannot remember this-or-that, taking a long mosey across the dust, a day trip putting heel after heel into the world on som…

Vagueness and the inevitable questions it created only frustrated Rachel, and she had decided that her current predicament was simply one spot too many. “Sorry, from up here it sounded like you said ‘your chair’ told you I’d be arriving,” she yelled. The static voice returned. “Well, yeah. I’m not sure if he talks to other people, though. I’ve been…

None of this felt real. Abranyah ran her palms over her jacket, the same brown duster she’d been wearing since taking on the mantle of sheriff. It was night, sort of, but everything was covered in a wily haze, blurred like she had one pull too many from the ferment bottle. Shapes and corners were punctuated by an aura that faded outwards. Abranyah …

To enjoy fishing, a body didn’t require much by way of supplies—but water was a good start. In two old chairs sat two old men, Eloy and Emmett, twins by birth. The creaky old barn served up a good dose of shade on mornings like that, the ones where everything was just a tad brighter than it felt like it should be. They sat in the quiet shade, liste…

I begin my day with calisthenics, then soon after, I start withdrawing my own blood. Without an accurate view of the sun, my internal clock is sufficient to ensure I awake properly, however, the stop-watch I placed in the adjacent room has proven my biology to be reliable. I find long periods of stretching to affect my moods in a positive way, thou…

Marcus had always thought of gambling as a fool’s exercise, and this was his usual justification for losing at cards. “That’s three of the same shape and color,” quipped Gordius. “That means I claim the winnings, yes?” Marcus sighed, slapping his cards face-down on the large wooden spindle they were using as a table. “Yeah, it does. Again.” Music i…

Excerpted from: Revenants of War An Attempted Guide for Safe Warrant After The Whatever So much we don’t understand, so much we’re trying to quilt together, so much that we never will. Days, hours, and whatever other increments we fret with, the more we dig out from the dust only serves to confuse our already time addled brains. Some folk will find…

She’d arrived at dark, and it was the men with loaded rifles that cemented Rachel’s distaste for strangers. She had been standing in the open field for almost thirty minutes, she figured, and under this dark of a night it made her uncomfortable. The man she was arguing with was sitting on the ground with his legs crossed, assault rifle laid over hi…

The boy was long past making his decisions of fate. The green canvas he’d wrapped around his nose and mouth had been chafing for the better part of the day, but he had finally reached town, so the prospect of things to come occupied his thoughts instead. Out in the barren, a body could only lift their heels for so long before they started to wonder…

Truth found little purchase in a barren sown with lies, and this went doubly so for the Devil. When time turned funny, most folk looked to one another as they struggled through their day-to-day, figuring things out and doing their best to set up four walls for them and theirs. Some had always liked lacing up the shoes of a nomad and wandering acros…

The shiny black motor flew across the barren, and vengeance followed. As Abranyah piloted, Rhamuel sat in the passenger side window well, one palm on the roof of the motor, the other wrapped around the trigger of a long rifle. Music in Tincture, Chapter Nineteen: Dexter Britain – Telling Stories Bersarin-Quartett – St. Petersburg Origamibiro – Flic…

Marcus felt like he was drowning, and his imminent demise tasted of ginger root. Music in Tincture, Chapter Eighteen: Jahzzar – Whisper Trans Atlantic Rage / Balogh – Seeing The Illumination Of The Sun Mark Neil – The Cold From Within Tom Fahy – The Long Long Epitaph (Futurity Suite) Ilyas Ahmed – Unveiled Nightmare Cobra – Joyeux Drille Allen Mast…

The sun had left the day, times as they were, and Allgood was set for blood. Music in Tincture, Chapter Seventeen: Zero V – Notch Tom Fahy – Creeping Trans Atlantic Rage / Balogh – Soul Search Allen Masterton – Sehv Tsahno Ambient Jahzzar – Guilty Dan Warren – The Decline (Instrumental) Tony Higgins – The Hungerford Bridge Cobra – Prud’Hommes…

Rachel liked the smell of a wood fire, yet, she felt a bit more uncomfortable when that smell—and the fire—were indoors. She blinked her eyes rapidly, taking in the scent of things, then, when they were good and proper open, she scrambled onto her backside and slid into the corner. Music in Tincture, Chapter Sixteen: Ilyas Ahmed – Moon Falling Tran…

Excerpted from: Revenants of War An Attempted Guide for Safe Warrant after The Whatever One of the hardest things to reckon out in the wide barren, times as they are, is not only losing folk that you held close, but trying to keep a strangle on the memories they left. Music in Tincture, Chapter Fifteen: Ilyas Ahmed – Phantom Sky Peter Rudenko – Nig…

Every time he balanced one of the massive tobacco jars between his arthritic fingers, Morris briefly considered escape. Music in Tincture, Chapter Fourteen: Jahzzar – Joke Tom Fahy – Letters To Allayne Mitsuru Shimizu – H Action Davis – Pale and Blue Bersarin Quartett – St. Petersburg Jahzzar – Sleepin…

Rhamuel watched the helicopter effortlessly lift into the air, and he briefly pondered how useful such a thing could be out in the barren. Music in Tincture, Chapter Thirteen: Tom Fahy – Watchers Dexter Britain – Night’s Tale Allen Masterton – Sehv Tsahno Ambient Spuntic – Union Flow Tom Fahy – Long Winter’s Journey Into Spring How How – Flimp Orig…

Stirring, Abranyah woke, and after a small stretch of lip smacking and unfocused blinking, she saw that Rhamuel was covered in blood. Music in Tincture, Chapter Twelve: Tom Fahy – I, Unfortunately, I Am Russel Huggins Plankton Wat – Hash Smugglers Blues Caligine – M? ???????? ??????? Dexter Britain – Calling (Instrumental) Spuntic – Ultima Co.fee –…

There was a solemn nature about a place designed to fly folk around the landscape—especially one now long past use—but the way Rhamuel figured, it was just a big graveyard without any bodies. Music in Tincture, Chapter Eleven: Tom Fahy – Thimbleful of Black Tom Fahy – Being David Duff Ono – Difference Dexter Britain – From Truth Tom Fahy – The Mare…

Excerpted from: Revenants of War An Attempted Guide for Safe Warrant after The Whatever Some think The Whatever came in the form of an all-out piece of military vengeance, someone with their mitts too close to the red button and a predilection for sociopathy. Music in Tincture, Chapter Ten: Dexter Britain – Slow Motion Strut Version Two Spuntic – C…

How he’d awoken in the middle of tall grass probably should’ve been his first question—but instead—Rhamuel simply wanted to know what time it was. Music in Tincture, Chapter Nine: Howie & Ann Mitchell – Clogger’s Inconsequential Selection Spuntic – Wake Up Regis Turner – ouais non je sais pas des fois je suis juste un peu mélancolique Tom Fahy – Bl…

The rumbling engine of the big motor was loud enough to drown out her thoughts, and for once, Abranyah was glad for it. Music in Tincture, Chapter Eight: Tom Fahy – Rabbit Asleep Ono – Difference Spuntic – Ulitma Spuntic – Movement, Album Edit Indian Wells – South Beach