On Communication

A while back, John Doucheyguitarguy famously declared Twitter dead, stating that the real action was on Tumblr, where people are trading ideas and concepts and engaging in conversations and it was one big free-love hippie commune of thoughts and expression.

Well, I’ve been doing this for over 100 posts, now, and I’ve noticed that Tumblr does not, in fact, enhance or promote communication.  A lot of blogs aren’t even set up to accept comments, you can’t reply to comments on your own fucking blogs without coming up with a pain-in-the-ass workaround, and there’s not even a decent private message system.

When I look at Twitter, and post on it, I see people replying to eachother and communicating ALL THE DAMN TIME.  Not a day goes by that I don’t get some satisfactory interaction from somebody on Twitter.  Tumblr seems limited to people “liking” your stuff, which is the simplest, most brain-dead and superficial way of granting validation I’ve ever encountered.  I blame Facebook.

There is nothing communicative or interactive about Tumblr.  It is narcissicm distilled to its basest component, and I’m deeply disappointed with the whole system, to be honest.

Tumblr has the capacity to be something special, the real marketplace of ideas that John Mayer thinks it is.  But it’s not there yet, and as long as we’re all content with “likes” on our “Feet Up Friday” photographs, it’s never going to be.

"What Was Mine" 11

My guts protested again, backing up further into my mouth.  My cheeks swelled to hold it.  Peyd was quickly closing on me.  I waited, then, when he was close enough, I adopted a fighting stance, reared my head back and, like a spitting cobra, launched a stream of acidic, partially-digested prison stew directly into Head Warden Peyd’s face.

The look of horror in Peyd’s eyes as he was bathed in my puke was a priceless memory I would forever cherish.  He stopped in his tracks, he wiped at his face, he momentarily forgot everything he knew about Stetory’s Rules.  With an accompanying fart, I slammed a boot full-force into the Peyd family jewels.  The man who’d killed General Hoistings in what may or may not have been a fair fight squeaked in pain, and he duck-walked two steps forward before crumbling to his knees.  For added effect, quite unable to control myself by this point, I vomited on his head.

I stepped back, breathing hard, and slapped his sabre hard with the flat of mine.  It flew easily from his limp hand, clattering on stone.  I kicked him over onto his back.  He landed with a splat.  “It’s no easy thing to be splattered with somebody else’s stomach contents, is it, Peyd?” I asked him between heaves and shudders.  I tucked my sword up under his chin.  “How does it feel to be covered in filth?”

Peyd was out of his mind, squirming and wiping.  I dug the sabre-tip sharply into his throat, but didn’t break the skin.  “Stop.  Lay there and soak in it.”

He slowly halted his throes, but was still breathing heavily.  He looked up at me through a mask of vomit and pure hate.  “You disgusting—!” his mouth worked, but he was too enraged to make his words work.  “I have never…!  You foul, repulsive…!”

“Yeah, I’m a piece of shit,” I gasped.  There was drool hanging from my mouth, puke on my chin.  I must have been a sight to make Suelanne reconsider her earlier promise.  “But I’ve got you hanging on my hook, so you’d better watch your mouth.”  He shut up and glared at me with red-hot eyes.  “Who were the people who paid to lock me up for life?”

“If you think I’m going to tell you that—“

“If you don’t, the next person will.  You can save yourself right now.”

“If you kill me, my men—“

“—will throw me a blow-job party.”

He set his jaw.  “I have my sense of duty,” he said quietly.  The stubborn sonofabitch.

“Byson!” I called.

There was a cough from behind me, then, “Uh…yes, Mr. Gunniver?”

“What was that rumor you were trying to tell me earlier?”

“Um.”  Another cough.  “Peyd’s supposed to have knocked up somebody’s daughter…somebody’s young daughter.  It was a scandal, because she was somebody else’s fiancé.  He wanted her to get rid of the child, but she wouldn’t, so they say that somebody pushed her in front of a hansom cab.  It wasn’t going fast, so she lived, but the baby…Anyway.”  He sighed.  “That’s what they say.”

To Peyd: “Is this story true?”  No answer.  I dug the sabre in deeper.  The skin broke, and blood started pooling about the point.  “Is that true?”

“Yesss!” Peyd hissed, now nothing but pure humiliation and hatred.  “It wasn’t a cab, though.  It was…it was one of the new steam-coaches.  And…”

“And what?”

It’s amazing what men will confess when they’re staring down death’s throat.  “And she was my sister,” he whispered. He gave a moan which sounded like the last of his humanity slithering out of his body.

“Peyd,” I said evenly.  “I don’t feel the least bit bad about my decision to kill you.”  His eyes widened.  My sabre sunk another two inches.  He gurgled, thrashed, and then died as I ripped the blade to the side.

I stood back, looked at his bloodied and befouled form, and then raised my head to check out the spectators.  There wasn’t a face to be seen that wasn’t purely terrified at what they’d just witnessed.  I threw the sabre on the ground.  The drama of the moment was undercut by the fact that I picked that exact moment to shit my pants.  “Get him out of here.  Somebody with a strong stomach help drag me to a bed before I fucking collapse.”

I fucking collapsed.
   

"What Was Mine" 10

It was a few minutes ‘til 5 c’clock.  My stomach felt like daggers were poking me from the inside, but I’d slurped down three bowls of soup before coming out to the courtyard nonetheless.  I was standing unsteadily in the sunlight, and I wasn’t completely certain that I wasn’t going to shit my pants as soon as the fight started.  I hiccupped and fought the rise of the stomach contents that were begging to rain free on the yellow stone beneath my boots.

The courtyard was surrounded on three sides by plain stone walls, two storeys tall, dotted with the occasional window, and a sturdy wooden gate, big enough to let through coaches.  It seemed to be a combination recreation area and delivery dock.  There were a few slate tables out here, with chairs and umbrellas to block the punishing sun, but they’d all been cleared to the perimeter for this occasion.

Everybody who worked or loitered around this prison was here: maybe twenty-five people in all.  I saw every guard who’d ever sneered or smiled at me, the Wrangler, Suelanne and two other girls (one of whom looked a lot prettier but a lot less accommodating, if you catch my meaning), Osef and a scattering of more of the hard little brown children that these facilities attract out here in the middle of nowhere.  Basically, everybody except for Head Warden Peyd.

Maybe he chickened out.

He entered the yard like a prizefighter, or a champion pit-cock, all strut and shine.  The crowd, well, Peyd probably expected them to erupt into applause, but it was the applauding equivalent of a forced march: slow to start and artificially sustained past the point of fatigue.  He was accompanied by another higher-up, one I hadn’t met before, who was carrying a black case by the handle.  The case was long and thick enough to hold two military sabres.

Peyd soaked in his subordinates’ obligatory adulation, then looked around the courtyard and looked annoyed.  Quickly, six men peeled away from the walls, and, hustling and grunting, moved one of the heavy slate tables into the middle of the area.  Peyd’s assistant placed the case on the table-top, and Peyd waved me over.

“Good morning, Mr. Gunniver,” Peyd said pleasantly.  “Are you feeling in prime condition?  I wouldn’t want to have you at a disadvantage.”

Little explosions rocked my guts and threatened to erupt out both ends.  “Tip top, sir,” I responded with no emotion.  That was fucking funny, that thing about not wanting to have me at a disadvantage.  This whole scenario was about having me at a disadvantage.

“I see you had somebody retrieve your clothes,” he observed with obvious disapproval.  He looked around at the men, as if trying to pick out which one would have his food rations restricted, or would be locked in his quarters, or would get the lash.  He gave me a smile.  “You’re pretty confident in the outcome, aren’t you?”

“Anything can happen.”

He barked a mild laugh.  “Yes…”  He nodded at his assistant, and the case popped open.  There were two sabres, in their scabbards, nestled into the red velvet interior.  Peyd pointed at the top-most one.  “This is my Army-issue sabre.  I used it in the war.”  At the other: “This one belonged to General Hoistings of Vidalia.”  He raised an eyebrow.  “Have you heard of General Hoistings?”

“Of course,” I growled, my agitated bowels getting hold of my tone and steering it toward the nasty.

“Why do you suppose I have it?”

I sighed.  “Hoistings fell at the battle of Broken River.  I assume at your hand?”

A self-satisfied smile spread across Peyd’s gaunt face.  “That’s right!  His sabre was presented to me after my discharge, by my commanding officer.  It’s the one you’ll be using, Gunniver.”  I noted that Peyd had dropped the formality of “Mr.”  “Let’s see if history will repeat itself, shall we?”  He withdrew his sword, slid it free of its scabbard, and pressed that back into the case.

I suddenly felt very tired.  My stomach and asshole were both clenched tight.  Maybe I had Byson spike the soup with too much of that stuff, or maybe I had a few too many bowls.  I grabbed Hoistings’ sabre, drew it, and tossed the scabbard randomly back into the case.  Peyd frowned at me and fitted it back into its molded nook.  His assistant closed and snapped the case, and then the six guys picked the table up and shuffled it back to the edge of the courtyard.

I looked down at the sabre.  It was definitely a fine example of a cavalry officer’s sword, all shiny and sharp, with the name “General Lucius F. Foistings, Vidalian Royal Military” engraved near the lapis-embellished handle.  It felt awkward and clumsy in my hand, but then again, it didn’t need to feel right if this worked.

My stomach kicked, growled and pinched.  Wind was hissing out of my ass.  I couldn’t tell if it was accompanied by precipitation, and I didn’t care.  Peyd backed about a dozen steps away from me.  “Are you familiar with the Stetory Rules of gentlemen’s duelling?”

“Can’t say that I am,” I croaked.

He smiled condescendingly.  “Well, we’ll just say, last man standing wins…that’s a rule you can understand, I presume, Gunniver?  Isn’t that the law of the frontier?”  I was almost bowled over the the realization of how much I hated this man.  He raised his sabre in front of his face and gave me a formal military salute.  In response, I waved my weapon in his vague direction.  “Are you ready, Gunniver?”  I felt a lurch down below.  I hiccupped, and felt my mouth flood.  I nodded and waved Peyd on.  The old military man’s grin reflected generations of bloodthirsty war-making.  “Sorry about this, Gunniver,” he said with no sincerity, and then he came at me.

"What Was Mine" 9

The next few hours were spent in preparation.  I asked the guard to bring by my actual clothes, so that I wouldn’t have to die in some raggedy gray work-linens.  He wasn’t sure if they were still in storage, but he would check.  I busied myself with quiet meditation and all the food that the boy, Osef, could sneak out of the kitchen for me.

My clothes arrived an hour and a half after I’d requested them.  Nothing was missing, which surprised me on one hand, since my duds weren’t cheap.  On the other hand, Peyd ran a tight ship, and stealing from the prisoners was probably harshly punished.  I slowly dressed, feeling more like myself and less like a captive with ever article I donned.  The rust-red dungarees, tailored by an ancient native, slid on like a glove.  The shirt, white cotton, was as soft as an elf’s eyelash.  The black vest, decorated all down the front with embroidered silver filigrees and the like, buttoned nice and snug.  My black boots were simply designed, but made of the hide of an adolescent dust-drake I’d personally witnessed a native boy run through with an obsidian-tipped spear.  I looked at the hat.  It was a fine hat, fitted, sturdy, black with a band as red as blood.  I held it for a few moments, and then I tossed it back to the bed.  The hat would wait until I was a free man.

There was no mirror, so I had no way to appraise my look, but the outfit felt loose on me, like I’d lost a lot of bulk swimming in a wizard’s pet’s guts for two years.  My getup felt incomplete, and it wasn’t because I hadn’t put the hat on.  The familiar weight of my trusty Break-Smythe was absent: the smoothness of the dark walnut handle, the smooth, reliable pull of the trigger, the sun glinting off the polished silver plating, the music of the click and roar.

Well, I’d get that back, too.  I’d get it all back.  Everything of what was mine.

END OF CHAPTER ONE

"What Was Mine" 8

I wiped down with a coarse towel then handed it to Suelanne.  She discreetly ran it between her thighs then reached behind to mop up the seed I’d spilled on her plump cheeks.  She was flushed red, but I couldn’t tell if it was from shyness or excitement.  She buttoned her dress back up, fixed the hair I’d dishevelled, then came to me and grabbed my neck, bending my face down to hers.  Her lips parted, and her tongue darted surprisingly into my mouth.  I understood then something I’d missed earlier: Suelanne, young as she was, was not inexperienced.  How many men had preceded me?  There were plenty about.

Her lips disengaged with a moist smack.  She smiled at me lasciviously.  “We’ll do more once you’ve had your duel, gunslinger.”

“You’re gonna fuck a corpse?”

She barked a laugh.  “Nobody’s getting the drop on you, Mr. Gunniver.”

“My name’s Stad.”

Her eyes melted into mine.  “Nobody’s getting the drop on you, Stad.”  She kissed me again, and her right hand caressed my cock.  “See you soon.”

She went to the door, unlocked it, waved goodbye, and exited.  The guard who’d been waiting outside came in with a sour look on his face.  I was still naked, and the funk of sex was heavy in the air.  “Don’t be so proud of yourself,” he said.  “We’ve all been in that one.”

“Yeah?  How many of you have made her come?”

He didn’t have an answer.

I told the guard two things on the walk back to my room: that I’d be ready to face Head Warden Peyd by five this afternoon, and that I wanted to ask some more questions of Wrangler Byson.  The guard plainly didn’t like the idea of being my messenger boy, but he nodded nonetheless.  He left and locked the door with an angry rattle of his keys before stomping away.

I sat on my cot then eased myself back onto the pillow, locking my hands behind my head.  A good fuck was good to clear the head, and I got to thinking about my plan.  It wasn’t cheating, as I saw it.  From my perspective, Peyd was stacking the deck in his favour just by insisting on a sabre duel: he knew my reputation, and he knew that maybe no man in this prison could drop me in a fair gunfight.  It was only natural for me to want every advantage I could wrangle, so to speak.

Somebody knocked at the door about forty-five minutes later.  It was a solid, masculine knock, so it wasn’t Suelanne coming by for a second helping.  “Yeah?”

“You wanted to speak with me, Mr. Gunniver?”  It was Byson.

“Yeah, come on in.”

The door opened, and the guard glared at me over Byson’s shoulders as the big man barrelled in.  The guard shut us in, giving us the privacy I needed.  Byson looked at me with an open, pleasant expression.  “You have more questions about how the cells work?”

“Is that what you call those beasts?  Cells?”

Byson shrugged.  “What else are they?”

I sat up and put my feet on the floor.  “What do you do when the prisoner’s sentence is up?”  Byson frowned at me with confusion.  “I mean, not everybody’s a life sentence, right?”

His face brightened.  “Oh!  We have a special food that triggers expulsion.  It’s similar to ipecac.  The animals just start puking and shitting until the prisoner comes out, splat!”  He chuckled.

I frowned at him.  “I don’t see what’s so funny about it.”

His laughter dried up instantly.  “I didn’t mean anything—“

“Relax, Byson.  I didn’t invite you over to rough you up.  It’s not your fault I spent two years in some animal’s belly.  What I need is for you to mix up some of that ipecac, but in a smaller dose.  Just enough for a man, you understand?”

“Is this about your duel with the Head Warden?”

“Yeah.”

“Are you looking to cheat?  I don’t want to get involved with—“

“You don’t like Peyd any more than any of the other men around here.  He treats you all like servants and thinks he’s some sort of special, even though he must have screwed up in a major way to get sent here.”

Byson looked side to side conspiratorially.  “Rumor around the camp is—“

I raised a hand.  “Don’t really care.  I figure he fought or fucked the wrong person.  That’s how most things play out.  Do you want to help or not?”
     
Byson swallowed.  “Are…are you going to kill him?”

I smiled.  “Truth be told, Wrangler, I haven’t made up my mind.”

"What Was Mine" 7

The water wasn’t exactly hot, but it wasn’t cold.  Either way, it felt good enough on my filthy body, and the harsh brown soap was doing its job.  The bathroom was as cramped as any other room in this facility, and the tin wash-tub didn’t quite hold my gangly form, but it was a bath, and it was good.  I soaked, scrubbing my skin, which was finally healed enough to get a proper wash, and thought back over the information I’d learned today.  I was angry, right pissed off actually, but I wasn’t sure who I was more mad at: the people who had paid to put me here, or that fucker Peyd, who’d carried out their wishes.

I decided on Peyd, for now, since he was the man standing between me and freedom, the man I needed to defeat or kill (I wasn’t clear on that point) to get my kit out of storage and put this place at my back, and anger was useful in a fight, especially in a sword-fight.  The sabre was not my weapon of choice, and if I wanted to get the better of a man who’d probably been born with a military blade in his hand, I was going to need some raw ferocity.

There was a quiet knock on the door, the sort made by a slender woman’s hand.  “Yeah?” I growled.

The door swung open, and a girl entered, looking shyly in my direction, carrying a platter with an earthen mug and a bowl of steaming soup.  She wasn’t the cutest girl I’d ever seen, but she had a certain kind of frontier handsomeness, a pert bosom and thick legs that looked like they could take a lot of punishment.  More to the point, she was old enough.  “Thought you might like some lunch,” she said with a light smile, and the voice was familiar.

A life without risks is a life unlived, a fellow once said, before his brain ate a round from my Break-Smythe.  “Did you like what you saw?” I asked her, in the harsh almost-whisper that was my voice these days.  Her back was to me as she set the food tray on a table, but I saw her stiffen up nervously.  My eyes lingered on her ample ass, and the way it filled out her drab green dress.  Yeah, she’d do fine to break me in.  “Turn around,” I said, stern but kind.  She slowly revolved to face me, and I saw that she was blushing.  “You want a better look?”  She didn’t respond, but her eyes widened and there was hungry curiosity there.

I stood, right there in the tin washtub.  I flatter myself that I’m a sight to look at, especially for a young country girl like this, surrounded my hard military men.  Somebody’d once said I was the prettiest man he’d ever seen kill.  I didn’t know if that was true, or if that gent had just seen a lot of dead-ugly sons-of-bitches, but from that moment on I’d paid special attention to the way that women looked at me, and the way they looked at me was exactly the way that this girl was now.

Her eyes looked down at all the important parts.  Her breasts were heaving hard, with a slight shudder.  “What’s your name?” I asked, splashing out of the tub.

“S-Suelanne,” she said.

“Suelanne, I’m not gonna hurt you…that’s not the way I do.  But if you want to get to know me, all you have to do is lock the door.”  I paused and swallowed.  All this talking hurt like hell.  “If not…just leave, and no harm.  You understand?”

I looked at all the perfect parts of her where the dress tugged and swelled just right.  I could feel myself getting stiff just from the looking, and she could see it, too.

She nodded once to herself, then quickly crossed and locked the door.  She turned around, looked at me with those wide, hungry eyes again, and started unbuttoning the front of her dress.

If you can fuck, you can fight, a guy said once, as I was rolling off of his wife.  I pushed Suelanne hands-first against the table with my lunch on it and pulled her dress up, her britches down.  She gasped with something like relief.

The soup spilled.

I could fight.

"What Was Mine" 6

It was essentially a cow, but twice as tall, with a round, distended belly.  Also, it had six legs.  It was covered with coarse brown-black hair and had no horns.  Its right flank, facing us, was branded with a large double-digit number: “17”.  It paid us no mind as we leaned against the gate of its tiny enclosure.  “We let ‘em graze free, normally,” said Wrangler Bison, spitting a stream of tobacco into the mud and shit., “but this one’s been here in the stable since it shit you out.”

I blinked and shook my head, feeling a bit nauseated.  For almost two years I was inside that creature.  No wonder my skin was raw all over: it was from burning in stomach acid for 23 months.

“It was a private contract,” said Peyd from behind us.  He was standing in the middle of the stable, between the two rows of horses and a couple of these beasts.  It was very obvious that he was hoping to avoid soiling his mirror-polished boots.  “I find the concept distasteful, naturally, but running a facility like this has certain fiscal requirements.  The principality’s funding is hardly enough.”

I gave Bison a quizzical look.  “…Where…?”  I threw a hand at the creature.

“Oh, yeah, remember those frontier arcanist wars back before the big one?  All those crazy magic-users setting up their little fiefdoms in the unsettled territories?  These things are a product of that.  They’re magically bred from, from cows, or buffalos or something.  I don’t know what they used to use ‘em for, but it turns out they can swallow a fellow and keep him alive inside for years!  I’ve sort of become an expert in keeping ‘em.  They graze on grass and a special grain mixture I’ve come up with, keeps ‘em nice and fat.  It’s what you’ve been eating too, inside there, though I can’t figure how it gets into your body.  Don’t really want to know.”

My stomach lurched.  “…Who…the private…contract?”

Bison jerked a thumb over his shoulder.  “He’d know, not me, and I doubt he’ll tell you.”

“Our clients are confidential, Mr. Gunniver,” Peyd sniffed.

“See?  Now, these things’ll keep a man alive for ages, like I said, but every now and then, a guy turns out to be incompatible with the process, and they get expelled, either through the throat or out the pucker.”  Bison winked at me.  “You took the lower route.”

I nodded absently as rage started boiling deep in my belly.  Somebody paid to put me in here.  To get me swallowed up by some fucking magical cow.  I cleared my throat.  “What happens…to me?”

“Well, that’s the real question, isn’t it?” said Peyd, appearing suddenly at my right side.  I looked at him, and he fixed me with those resolute, steely soldier’s eyes.  “I’m not fond of the private contracts, as I said, so I take your rejection by Number 17 as a sign that you shouldn’t be here.  I’m all for letting you go as soon as you’re physically capable of riding a horse out of here.  But…”  His moustache twitched excitedly.  “I have my sense of duty.  Therefore…”  He safely backed away out of the mud once more.  “Once you’ve recovered enough to swing a sabre, we’re going to have ourselves a proper duel.  Very simple rules: if you win, you get to leave.  We’ll even give you provisions and your sidearm back.”

I frowned.  “How many times…has this happened before?”  My throat screamed.  I coughed phlegm and spat it dangerously close to Peyd’s boots.

“These sort of unanticipated expulsions?  Three times since we’ve started the program.  Three times over…seven years, I believe.”

“Were any of those…private contracts?”

“One of them, yes.”

“How did that turn out?”

Peyd grinned savagely.  “No man has ever left this prison before his sentence has run out, Mr. Gunniver.  Is it safe to say that we’ve caught you up to speed?”

Stringio

Good point.  Personally, I don’t even see the point of a blog that people can’t comment on.  I guess communication just frightens some people.

Speaking of which, when are we going to get the ability to reply in thread to comments on our posts?  This is a basic level of interactivity that EVERY FUCKING BLOG SERVICE ON THE INTERNET HAS but Tumblr does not.  What the hell?