An Inhuman Condition

The lights dimmed again. They were always blinking in and out or wearing down like an abandoned campfire. He always thought his life would be more glamorous than this. Even a few years ago he still thought there was something important ahead of him. They never told him that everything extraordinary he wanted would fade into the background and wilt into something like the petty nagging of poor lighting. It wasn’t just the lighting though, their electrical systems were all in a state of decay. On any given day, it was a crapshoot what would work correctly. One day it’s the computers that glitch and go down while he has to sit and wait for the automatic repairs to finish. Another he might find the refrigerator has already thawed out his frozen breakfast and have to go through it all checking to see if anything spoiled. The microwave was the worst part of the kitchen, blowing the fuse at least once a day. He was so used to things not working that it was remarkable when a day passed without beating on an appliance or turning a breaker. But even on these rare days, he would still see the dimming of the lights.
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1

Adam is speeding down interstate 114 in his two-tone Dodge Dart, and his shoulder is killing him. The car’s powder-blue paintjob gives way a little more to the encroaching rust every year. The hood and roof look like a copper penny shoved through the center of a robin’s egg as it shakes it’s way down the road. The sun is setting, and he can barely make out the Lakeview exit for the glare. His normally slick and slightly curled hair is matte and dirty with the same blood covering his cheek and neck. His bed-head hairstyle is much more literal, resting on his face like James Dean wearing a mophead as a hat. His eyes are burning sapphire on the road as he snorts, taps the brake and forces the wheel to the right with his lip curling from the pain of the gunshot wound. As he squints to check for traffic, he sees Jenny’s ring on a chain around the mirror. He wishes he’d never gotten her involved in all this again, and he hopes he can get her out this time. His right foot hits the floor, and pain be damned, he spins out around the corner racing down the street.
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“To new beginnings?”
“To new beginnings,” she said.

I wasn’t sure when we spoke the words, and now the weight of that unknowing is the ballast in my gut.

“I love you,” I said.
“I love you, too.”

But did she? Did she really?

I awoke to the diddle of a text; my blurred vision struggling with the electronic luminescence of the screen. There she was, in the top left corner among the widgets and hieroglyphs describing the phone’s current condition: the time, three bars of service, WiFi connection, battery charging and Jessie. I pulled out the charger cable and brought the phone back to bed. Dragging my finger down the screen, I saw the message:

“I can’t sleep.”
“What’s up?”
“My brain is just racing, and I feel terrible. I don’t know if I want to talk about it.”
“Alright, is there anything I can do to help?”
“I just don’t want to hurt you.”

There we go. I sat up in bed and grabbed my cigarettes from the nightstand. The clock burned a red “2:32” in my vision like a warning. I was well aware of every passing second as I felt for the lighter, formed a cautious response in the back of my head, prepared for the worst and lit the cigarette. The flame was brighter yet, and it hurt watching to make sure the damn thing lit. I took a long moment to inhale before pressing my thumb to the screen.
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Mental Note: NEED TO KEEP WORKING ON THIS!
Sketch art and characters are from my bittery dick of a pal at http://ugisart.com/. He also has these really funny comics for sale at http://futurelandfillpress.bigcartel.com

VII – Patientia

While the Curia Nocte sit gathered at the Apostolic See of St. Simon, Mother Death is escorted by Lord Hat through the catacombs to the chamber. Lord Hat has slowed his pace to match her frail speed. Neither the shadow man nor the Mother require a torch, and instead make their way through the darkness in near silence. It’s rare that the Curia requests her formal presence at their chamber, and the messenger was very vague about the purpose of their meeting. Whispers of the pope’s illness had already reached them, but it was clear the Camerlengo was concealing the true nature of events. Lord Hat was the first to step from the shadows and appear before the council. In the dim torchlight, he was nothing but the silhouette of a form as he addressed the Curia Nocte.

“Presenting Mother Death.”

She moved slowly into the light, first appearing as nothing but rags and shadows like her Lord escort. As the light filled under her shroud, the cracks and crevices of her exposed skull could be seen. Her hands withered down to the bone and grit of cartilage like the rest of her shrunken figure, but much larger than the rest of her frame. The deep sockets that used to hold eyes and nose stayed a shadowy void as if the light dared not enter. Her jaw remained, but had stretched unnaturally wide filled in with the rotting ivory stubbs of what were once full teeth. To the few cardinals among them seeing her for the first time, the shivering feel of decay seemed to emanate from those dark gaps staring forward at them like the void of death itself.

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Adam is speeding down interstate 114 in his two-tone Dodge Dart, and his shoulder is killing him. The car’s powder-blue paintjob gives way a little more to the encroaching rust every year. The hood and roof look like a copper penny shoved through the center of a robin’s egg as it shakes it’s way down the road. The sun is setting, and he can barely make out the Lakeview exit for the glare. His normally slick and slightly curled hair is matte and dirty with the same dried blood covering his cheek and neck. His bed-head hairstyle is much more literal, resting on his face like James Dean wearing a mophead as a hat. His eyes are burning sapphire on the road as he snorts, taps the brake and forces the wheel to the right with his lip curling from the pain of the gunshot wound. As he squints to check for traffic, he sees Jenny’s ring on a chain around the mirror. He wishes he’d never gotten her involved in all this again, and he hopes he can get her out this time. His right foot hits the floor, and pain be damned, he spins out around the corner racing down the street.

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In the hopes that I continue working on this soon, I’m posting a raw section of Synod Horrenda. Sketch art and characters are from my bittery dick of a pal at http://ugisart.com/. He also has these really funny comics for sale at http://futurelandfillpress.bigcartel.com

II – Fidgit

“Life is messy and people stink. Like diarrhea stains on the grundle of the world, we’re all just waiting to be wiped out. I think that’s why the end of days is such a popular trope. It’s comforting to think that all the pain, struggle and obligations will burn away, but I’m not so sure. I’ve dipped my dick in death, and for whatever reason I’m still here. I’m a walking example of all the ways a person shouldn’t act, and despite everything I’ve done, the sleep won’t come. I can’t help but laugh whenever I hear about tragedy: a happy family killed by a drunk driver, a fitness instructor getting an embolism at 45. And for all the suffering in the world, miserable cocks like us are free to run around unfettered sticking needles into our arms and our pricks into anything that wiggles and won’t say ‘no.’”

Fidgit moves his jacket aside and sticks the needle between a couple dirty bandages rust stained with dried blood. Wrapped around his chest and next to his heart, his ‘skin’ is a decomposing mess. The dirty wrappings covering his body contain the decay. The few cracks in the coverings let his spiked hair, rotting jaw and a single strained eye socket poke through.  He squeezes the plunger and, for a few moments, finds a hypodermic heaven.

“And if you don’t like me, that’s fine, but you’d be blind to think we’re any different. If you even have eyes, I guess.” Read the rest of this entry �

This is my doing. It’s me, and I accept that. Sartre said our actions and decisions make us, and this war is mine. It’s inside me now, and I own that. The world, my isolation – it’s my fault. I’m not saying I caused the political bullshit, but it’s like the pieces of a puzzle. You start with these odd, disconnected bits and assemble the corners, work along the border and fill in the middle from there. At some point you should start to see what the photo is, but I didn’t. There was no box to show me the end goal; it was all blurred. I never even finished the damn thing, but they saw the picture first. Envisioned and given life through my work, there was no way to unsee it, and then they remade whole, damn planet in my image.

Looking back I feel like a naïve child. When we started using DNA to manufacture microprocessors, I should have made the leap. When we tagged ourselves with radio-frequency chips in the name of healthcare, people should have filled the streets in anger, but instead it was all a convenience. We were coddled at every step with the cushy blanket of progress. We dumped ourselves to the Internet, gave it our thoughts, wants, emotions – we became it. We reinvented ourselves as pixels communicating at unprecedented speeds. From the server room to the home then the coffee shop and the pocket, the next logical step was under the skin.

With rampant dematerialization and convergence giving us smaller computers, the lines blurred between our devices. The desktop computer was a television, the laptop made phone calls, the cellular phone checked email and our TVs browsed the Internet. People carried a record store’s worth of music on something the size of a cigarette pack – a library of books the size of just one. We could buy any novel, song or movie in the world and have it on a gadget in our pocket within minutes. It was the fastest and most effortless form of consumption our species invented – the Internet. Once the ones and zeros made their way into every home in the country, there was no coming back. The ease of consumption consumed us all.

Once we were all praying at the altars of God Internet, any advance that made it faster, shinier, more inclusive, involving was lauded as a step in the right direction. We laid bandwidth pipe as fast as we could, replacing old lines with faster ones every few years. Our wireless speeds lagged behind, but even they caught up in the end. The towers went up everywhere, and the signals only got stronger. Corporations spent billions researching and implementing technology to connect us as fast as possible. Once that began, the cell phone companies started selling full size tablets and laptops the same way they sold phones. Nobody needed a dedicated line into their home when they could connect from anywhere in range of a tower. They were obelisks of triumph, the final step to connecting the world and uniting it under one religion – God Internet. Read the rest of this entry �

VII: Got Love?  completes my day’s work on the Blue Valentines page. Happy VD.

VI: Get Real

Beautiful women are like a drug. They make you feel good, and it’s fine every now and then but they can really ruin your life if you get addicted. You ever hear the phrase “I’m a sucker for a pretty face?” It’s a problem with men; we’re all suckers staring at the pretty girls begging to be fleeced. Like camouflaged predators, they wait to lure you in before pouncing.

It starts with dinner – you always pay for the dinner. Then you have to keep coming up with the endless series of trinkets, spending money to get her things or spending time doing things for her. You even “spend” time together. I know you’ve seen the clingy types who latch on and leech away all the other parts of your life until you turn into that guy who needs to ask permission to play a game of cards or go to the car show.

Sure they have guilt and other forms of manipulation to keep reeling you in. Even plain girls can use their tricks to keep a guy in line, but the most dangerous ones are always beautiful. If you find yourself with one of those, you keep asking how you got so lucky. It seems like a small sacrifice to be available for all her needy whims. I mean, you got a pretty one. You should be ecstatic. Don’t fuck that up, and you’ll be happy, right?

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V: Don’t Tell

She’s avoiding me. I can’t bear the thought of it, but that’s exactly what she’s doing. It’s so hard to communicate with other people that I don’t know why I give a damn half the time. This seems pretty serious; it’s not the usual doghouse, I-fucked-up, kiss-and-make-up kind of problem. I know her well enough to see that some serious shit is going on in those pretty, green eyes. It scares the hell out of me because I want this to work out. The way she looks at me has changed. There’s this deadness in her eyes where there used to be bounding excitement. They were bright, moist and magnificent before and now they’re dry and heavy and pale.

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