Skydekkerix

The dray horse eases the cart along a heavily rutted track surrounded by twisted gums. I walk alongside the front, clearing dried branches to either side while mum sits on top with the reins sitting loosely in her hands. Mum wears a wide-brimmed witch’s hat to keep the blinding sun from her eyes. It shadows most of her face, leaving only her mouth visible, set into a bored expression.

The road splits into two parallel tracks, with a line of twisted lantana between them. Branches cover both sides.

“Ut.” Mum says, pulling on the reins and clicking her tongue.

I step forward and start clearing branches from the left track. I step on a pile of sticks and they crack and fall beneath my feet, revealing a cave that dips down into blackness. I wave at mum to back up and she steers the cart to the right track.

Cool air blows from the cave beneath, inviting in the searing heat of the summer day. I lean my head down and feel the breeze on my hair. I call down into the hole and my voice travels a long way before echoing back.

“Hello.”

“Don’t.” Mum says, “You’ll call Him.”

I step back and lead the cart onwards. The heat has thickened the air like casserole and the forest fills my ears with buzzing and chirping insects. The line of gums finally breaks onto the steep hill covered with sharp grass that leads up to our sheds.

The three sheds are dull grey corrugated iron, one long and squat with several bedrooms for all my siblings, one half open and littered with rusting and cobwebbed farm equipment, and one towering and insulated where we store our perishables.

I move to the back of the cart and push as the dray horse drags it up the slope. We stop repeatedly as I untwist the long grass from the wheels, my thick hide gloves not quite enough to stop the grass from pricking my fingers.

We get the cart to the flat at the top of the hill and my little sister untacks the horse. Mum lowers herself from the cart and starts removing the canvas sheet from the cargo on the back. Several hessian wrapped parcels are neatly packed into the cart’s tray, each labelled with the names of members of my family.

I pile up the parcels and lift them to the living shed, holding the top of the pile in place with my chin.

Inside the shed is dark and cooler, though heat still gathers near the roof and makes my scalp sweat. My family are gathered on disintegrating couches in the living room. Four brothers, two sisters, dad and mum. I bend my knees and let the pile of gifts down next to the plastic Christmas tree, missing half its branches.

My only older brother pulls me aside.

“Come see,” he says, “I’ve ordered the meat for Christmas.”

He grins, revealing one grey tooth sitting amongst the others. He takes me out the back screen door, lifting it off the rails that are encrusted with dirt and bug corpses. It screeches as he pulls it back and forward.

We step out into the heat. Grasshoppers flee us as we make our way through the grass, seeds sticking to our rutted boots. I shade my eyes from the sun and I can feel the top of my hand burning.

He leads me to the storage shed, unlocks the heavily insulated door and it swings open without making a noise, smooth and solid. Inside is dark. White powder dances in the sunlight slipping between our legs. He flicks a switch beside the door.

Fluorescent lights flicker far above and catch, revealing a landscape of meat piled high above us. Red, dry muscle rises almost to the ceiling in rolling peaks, shot through with veins of white sinew. White powder clouds around the lights. The smell of talcum invades my nostrils.

My stomach undulates as my eyes trace the crests of the mountains. I see things moving up there. Serrated bone raised in crooked claws. Sinews tensing and relaxing.

I turn to my older brother.

“This is fucked.” I say.

He looks hurt but I feel too sick to care.

“We gotta get rid of this. This is really bad.”

I push him outside and close the door behind us, trying to be quiet.

“Look,” I say, putting my hand on his shoulder, “We’ll go back inside and enjoy Christmas. I’ll find a place in the bush to dump the meat. We can’t leave it sitting around. He’ll come. Don’t worry I won’t tell the others.”

My brother nods but looks deflated. My mind reels with the task of getting rid of the meat. I want to burn the shed down and run.

We get back inside and I jiggle the screen door back into place. My family is sitting on the floor around the pile of presents, drinking bitter moonshine with the last of our ice cubes.

I head for the hallway to get the shovel from the trunk under my bed. Dad sees me and rushes to his feet, spilling moonshine on the tacky carpet. He catches my eye and I stop as he approaches. He turns his back toward the rest of the family and I do the same.

“I already know what your mum got me.” He says, keeping his voice low. “I can tell from the shape of the package.”

I nod and force a grin, my eyes darting between the hallway and the screen door.

“It’s a new reloading kit.” Dad struggles to keep his voice down. “I’ve needed one since the vapours got into the barn. It’ll mean I can finally restock the 45-70.”

He raises his eyebrows. I nod.

“Yeah.” I say.

“That means proper game. I mean roos are alright but they haven’t got enough on them. This means I can clear those pigs from the dam, filter the water and get us back running proper again.”

“That’s good.” I say, “Look dad I…”

“I’ll get us some deer, do some venison roasts. Maybe I can sneak down to the creek and get us a buffalo. That’ll feed us for weeks. There’s plenty of room in the shed.”

I try to keep my legs from moving but they are starting to ache. Heat pours in from the ceiling. I can hear flies buzzing outside.

“I’ll bring your brother down. You can come too, do some spotting for us. I know you don’t like to shoot but it might be fun to come along.”

“Yeah sounds good dad. Look I gotta do something outside, I’ll be back in a sec.”

Dad raises his eyebrows.

“What’s wrong son?”

“Nothing. I’ll be back.”

I rush down the hall, feeling the weight of dad’s stare behind me. I open the makeshift mdf door to my older brother’s and my room, giving it a shove with my shoulder. It scrapes over the dried corpse of a gecko.

I can hear buzzing outside the small screen window, loud and machine-like. I drag my grey steel trunk from under the bed and it screeches on the concrete floor. I undo the latch, pull out my shovel and tartan bandana.

I hurry back down the hall. Dad has bailed my older brother in the corner, still talking about guns. My brother shoots me a sympathetic glance. I jiggle the screen door open, swear as I try to get it back into place.

The sun is setting outside, red light shining directly into my eyes. I juggle the shovel between my hands as I tie the bandana over my mouth.

I stop short as I see the door to the storage shed, vibrating and bleeding green light from around the doorframe.

I try to take a deep breath but I can’t seem to get air into my lungs. I hold my shovel close to my chest and approach the door. The heat coming off the grey steel walls is unbearable. Humming splits my temples like an axe bit, throbs in waves.

I take on hand off the shovel and twist the grimy steel door handle. I feel the lock uncatch and I push.

The door slides over neat grey carpet, tinged green with the light. Clean walls with a high roof stretch on for way too far. Potted ferns line the walls in perfect symmetry.

At the end of the room is a window, open and flooding green light that is almost solid. Before the window is a wooden desk with a small cactus sitting to one side. There is a figure sitting at the desk, I only catch a glimpse of Him.

A small, twisted body in a grey suit. A giant brown head with greasy black hair.

Something shoots out from under the desk, crosses the room in a second, rolling and bouncing. It cackles.

I drop my shovel and try to slam the door. The handle of the shovel catches between the door and frame. The little creature wrenches the door back, stronger than our dray horse. I kick the shovel away and pull the door back into place. The door crushes the little creature, it squeaks and folds like rubber.

I try to get the lock to catch but the creature is caught under the door. It cackles and squeaks with each pull. I hear the screen door jiggle behind me. Hear my dad talking to my brother as he walks outside.

Tears sting my eyes. I pull and the creature pulls back. Dad makes it around the corner.

“Shit.” He says, comes running.

“Dad…” I say, my arms wrench forward and back. I feel my muscles tear.

“He’s come.

You have to

Run.”

Dad runs up to grab the door handle. I push him away with my foot.

“Even though

I can’t do this

Myself.”

The door starts to twist.

“Please…

Get inside.

Lock the doors.”

Dad backs away, eyes wide. He turns for the back door.

“Tell everyone

I said…”

The creature cackles and squeaks. The light flickers from green to deep red. The creature pulls the door off its hinges. I grab the shovel.

“… Merry Christmas.”

A little while ago I had the best dream I’ve ever had. In it Claire and I lived in a house in the middle of my primary school oval. We spent our days wandering through paddocks getting chased by angry cows and we had a big black dog named Horse that hated me. We sat together in a field reading through a book with every story I ever wrote in it with cool moving pictures of horrible monsters. Then Claire got grumpy with me because I had been sneaking out of bed in the middle of the night to go play need for speed 2 on the shitty desktop computer in the spooky ice cave in our basement and I woke up happier then I ever had after a dream because as far as I can remember they have always been bad.

I used to get sleep paralysis real bad. I would seem to wake and not be able to move or I would get half out of bed and collapse then wake up in bed again but still asleep. I would be attacked by the most fucked things and lie in bed screaming at the top of my lungs but it would never seem to break the surface of reality. It’s happened once since I was married and just as shit was about to get hectic Claire put her arm around me and I woke up instantly.

Anyways I had this nightmare recently and it felt like it took forever but when I woke up Claire was right next to me and nothing bad had happened. It made Claire real sad when she was reading it but it made me real sad having it and what I am really trying to say is that sometimes someone is a superhero for just bein right next to you.

Wife 1

2.

I kill my second wife accidentally. She is one of those terminally happy people, bounces along floors and tries to lessen every blow with good news. I like her but her warmth never hits me too hard.

We live in a giant greenhouse with several stories and flowered vines wrapped around swings hanging from the roof. Wife 2 sings to the flowers as she walks by them. It makes them grow better. The floor is mainly taken up by a shallow pool with fountains and a bright mosaic of blue tiles lining the bottom. Rent is pretty cheap.

Wife 2 is swinging from the middle of the roof and I am smoking. I am smoking because my first wife isn’t alive anymore and I know it. I try to hide it even though wife 2 is too happy to care about my cigarettes.

Wife 2 sings and her voice is ok but I am thinking about wife 1’s singing and I feel guilty for it. Wife 2 hits a bad note and I cough violently and the only fire alarm in our weird house goes off. I drop my cigarette and wife 2 is startled and slips on the swing, only holding on by one hand.

I want to make it to her and save her but I take too long because I can’t figure out how to get across on the swings and besides I’ve always hated swings since I was in preschool because I get terrible motion sickness and wife 2 falls into the pool at the bottom which is way too shallow.

All I can see is my cigarette butt floating next to her and I know it is my fault but it doesn’t hit me too hard

3.

I am in a bar and the lighting is slightly brighter and less warm than the bar that I met wife 1 in and the music is almost metal and I know this is where I meet wife 3. I light a cigarette inside even though it is not allowed.

Wife 3 walks up to me and asks if she can have some of my cigarette and I look around for the bouncers but there are no bouncers in the bar only a series of weird ledges like a shuffled up inside amphitheatre. Wife 3 is shorter than wife 1 and the black horizontal stripes on her shirt are thicker than the ones on the shirt wife 1 wore.

We smoke and I decide to Lay on the Charm which I don’t know how to do and I’m not sure if what I’m doing is actually charming so I stop thinking about it and just talk and smoke half a cigarette.

And I know I’ve stopped caring but I don’t think about caring and I know that she will leave me two weeks after getting married on paper because she wants to try and quit smoking and it is not possible for her to quit because I have stopped caring about quitting.

I know that we should never get married, we are only doing it because we are sharing a cigarette but I stop thinking and I pass her the cigarette anyway

4.

I am a professional football player which is something that I never thought would happen and I can’t quite remember how I got here and to me it doesn’t make a lot of sense.

The football field is empty but I am definitely playing because there is a big crowd and they are cheering and it must be for me because I have the ball in my hands and there are no other players on the field.

I run along the field and my legs seem too short and it takes a long time. The lights are blinding me but I hear everyone cheer louder so I know I must have crossed the try line. I dive to the ground and skid on my front but it doesn’t hurt.

I stand up as the crowd is cheering real hard and I look for wife 4 in the crowd but the lights are blinding me and I can’t see the stands and besides I know she isn’t there because she hates football. You can’t smoke in the stands and the game is boring because it only has one player

5.

I am sitting in a large dark room littered with ashtrays watching a shitty old television while crouching because there is no chair. I am smoking three cigarettes at once and the smoke keeps getting in my eyes.

There is a cult on tv saying a lot of blasphemies and laughing. A big yellow furry monster with antennae comes down from the sky and gets really angry with them, shouting and waving its sesame street arms. Then the camera pulls back into the sky and all the lights go out in that part of the city. There is a short and quiet woosh and a bunch of giant black hairy monsters with bird skeleton faces rush in like a rapid gust of wind. They tower over the city all bunched up around the place with no lights on and I turn away because I get scared.

I put my cigarettes out one by one and go to tell wife 5 what is happening even though I don’t know if it is the news or a tv show. I walk through the hallway which goes up beside the big dark room and way further on. There is a door in the side that leads to my room and has a rectangular glass window at the top.

I stand on my toes to look through the window and wife 5 is in there with one of her friends and they are sitting on the bed naked and her friend’s hairy fat body makes my stomach sick. I open the door and yell at them and they both say sorry a lot and leave.

I look around the empty room for wife 1 even though I know she has been gone for a long time and I am alone and there is no-one else to tell

1.

I am standing outside in the city on a clear night having a cigarette. The streets are empty and there are no lights in the buildings. The sky is a sea of stars and the pavement seems to glow from their reflection.

Wife 1 is there in front of me. She is wearing the shirt of mine that she really likes. I want to reach out and hold her, but I know that she is a ghost. That she has been gone for a long time.

I sit down on the pavement and the cold from the concrete fills my body.

I tell her that I want my first wife back.

Tears sting my eyes.

I tell her that I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t figure out how to love someone else.

She nods because she knows.

She tells me that I am still smoking.

I tell her that I couldn’t do that either, not without her.

I stub out my cigarette and cross my legs.

I ask her if I killed her. She crouches in front of me and says yes. I feel like I’ve been stabbed.

My medication poisoned her when I kissed her even though that doesn’t make sense.

I look into her face and she seems sad but not so sad that she is crying. I tell her that I want to go back. That it has been night for a long time. That she is far away even though she is right next to me.

I tell her that I know this is a dream but I have been dreaming for way too long now and I can’t remember what it was like anymore, I can’t tell if any of it was

real

I was about 21 when a group of my male friends started playing a game they called Summer of Love. I’d been in one intimate relationship and had sex a total of twice in my life.

The game was as follows: you get points for having sex with a member of the opposite sex over the summer, extra points for blowjobs, threesomes and different partners. It was negative 100 points for starting a relationship in that time.

I remember finding the whole thing repulsive. It reduced women to points to be scored, encouraged and perpetuated predatory behaviour. I came in at dead last with -100 points when I stopped counting.

I did the wrong thing.

I didn’t call out anyone involved, didn’t challenge this awful behaviour. I refused to take part, but sitting back and watching is still being complicit. I was a coward.

I don’t like the word hate. I believe hate only festers, only gets in the way of progress and understanding.

Regardless

I hate my world’s culture of toxic masculinity.

I hate that the actions of males have turned people I respect angry and bitter.

I hate that my wife has to dress a specific way to feel comfortable just walking down the fucking street.

I hate that writers I know who are way more talented, thoughtful and dedicated than me don’t enjoy the same freedom to create without abuse or criticism, solely for the reason that they are women.

I hate that people I love, my mother, my sister, my wife and every single woman I know have been degraded, assaulted and intimidated by the disgusting behaviour of men.

Most of all I hate that my cowardice has been a part of that.

Women have always been braver than men. They’ve had to be. Men can hide behind a system they’ve created, a world where the supposed natural order of things makes it a living nightmare for half the population.

Men need to be brave. It is not our nature to act like this. Human nature is to rise above ourselves, to tear down evil constructs and replace them with what is right and good.

We can be better. It is not an impossible task to make this world a safe and equal place for the women in our lives. It is not too hard to change a thought, and once we lose the part of ourselves that raises us by dragging women down we will be ten times better for it.

If ya’ll been watching the internet lately you’ll know that it has turned into entirely piece of shit politics. Trump is doin like at least 4 different awfuls per day, people are writing yells at gay people for no damn reason and then someone’s gotta go and dress as an opposite ghost in parliament just to distract from the fact that their party is a swirling toilet bowl and also racism.

We are not standing on the brink of a war, we are in the middle of it. This war could never be fought with guns and bombs, we all have to use words. Guns only kill people, burning things down will only make this last longer.

Use. Your. Words. Don’t throw them around. A single sentence can kill and a thousand swear words can go unnoticed.

The one advantage we can have over the Trumps and Hansons and all the other mad idiots in dangerous positions is

thinking

before we speak.

Speech

Do not take this lightly

Kids were mowed down by machine guns in thousands for your freedom of speech

Kids drowned crawling in mud to stop blameless people rotting in prison camps

Kids were forced to watch cities melt in fire to stop industry overtaking reason

Kids slit other kids throats, drove over them with tanks, strangled and bit for gay people, for black people, for jews and muslims to have a place next to ours

Kids were forced to kill millions for you to speak today

So speak wisely

Because these kids did not kill for a country

They didn’t kill for a flag, or a culture, or for the names of their ancestors

They killed and died in droves for a world not to be ruled by fear or hate or evil men

To use our freedom to fuel the fires of hate is repugnant

To pull away our hands in reckless, selfish fear is to lose a long fought war

Be the people kids were slaughtered for

Well hi my big babies I know I ain’t been at it on this here website in a bit but that is because I got some Projects goin and I thought I’d get back onto skyblagadang and talk about them cos I miss youuuuuu here’s:

THE NUSE

Distant Lights

Well I know it’s got a different name now but the novella that I put on this very shithole of a blog is currently being turned into a book through my dawgs at Tiny Owl Workshop. I dang took it offa here because now you gotta pay someone else to read it but that is the way of things.

Elevator pitch: Memoir about mental illness and my adventures as a real damn wizard tryin to fight all my problems with fireballs and such. My Grandparents read it and said it was weird but one of my best friends read it and cried like a baby so I guess I hope your reaction is somewhere around the middle(?)

Brambles

I been working on a very complicated project with a group of the coolest people that I could find and they are all smarter than me one of them is my WIFE. The explanation is a real mouthful but basically I get three artists to play a game of my own homebrew dungeons and dragons (Dnd if you are hip and/or fly) system run by certified genius Harry Vening and I sit and frantically write by hand everything that happens and turn it into a book illustrated by the actual characters in the story! My brain aint ever gonna stop hurting!

We are randomly generating the plot using actual magic and some real cool crazy shit is happening. It is pretty much the funnest and coolest project I could hope to work on and whats more is I done made this job up myself.

Mawwaige

Hey also I done got married what’s good. Now I know all you ladies are glad to see me out of the dating pool where I was just muddying up the waters and swimming around making shark noises and grabbing peoples ankles but this also means a lot of big deals to me too.

Deal 1: I am no longer a Sad Guy who smokes cancer sticks

Deal 2: I actually do stuff like cook meals other than mayonnaise sandwiches and wash dishes more than just blowin on them real hard

Deal 3: I swear I had more of these

wait Deal 4: I straight up got the best lady fkers suck it woooo

So now I am all respectable and shit and I got a ring that I paid exactly zero dollarydoos for and I work like all the time and things are going gr8. If you been reading my stuff (Y?) you’ll know I been stacked up with crazy and rough goings for a while and I guess what I wanna say is

shit gets better.

I don’t know there’s been a lot of times when I needed to hear that so I’m sayin it now.

One day

All the fucked up shit you’ve seen

Will become hilarious

And all the sadness you feel

Will make your joy sweeter

All the time you spend lost

Is setting up for the day

You are found.

POETIC PROCESS:

A couple of months ago I told my future wife that I would write her a love poem and then I sat in an abandoned quarry in the sun and wrote most of this thing and read it to her and then apologised because it wasn’t what either of us were expecting.

I was passengering with her on a drive through the mountains and we were listening to pirate punk and I got that special kind of sad that you get when you know things are at their best and I thought about this poem then I fixed it.

Doing poetry is like doing maths that beats you up.

The Pit

Sometimes love is a pit

Or rather

Love is everywhere else

And you are in the pit

You don’t understand

Why you won’t climb out

Because how can you be in love

And be so sad

You don’t understand

When despair drags you deeper and you let it

Because no one can see you

Down in the pit

You don’t understand

Because you were the one that climbed in

All you wanted was shelter

And now all you can go is down

And then I remember

That if you were gone

I couldn’t go a step further

And I would scream at the universe

To keep you forever

That I feel sorrow

Because I need you more than ever

And nothing could ever be

Without your love

It is hard to believe we are winning. The Nazis popped up like everywhere but Germany this time. Our solution to global warming is burn everything faster. The people in charge are very stupid. Modern music is mainly about dicks now.

Life manages to convince you that you are not an important part of the story and then bang it slaps you in the middle of space world war 3 and woop its up to a bunch of young fuck ups to make it better.

Life has a purpose, but it is different for each person and you might never figure out what it is even if you do it. It’s best not to think about it and just do shit.

You cannot escape life. You can sit around dodging bullets for years on end and then you are suddenly a lot older and life is a lot harder now.

We all got it pretty bad. We were born into a species of angry bald murder apes thinking the future just meant the videogames would be cooler.

We can only rise to our challenges, there is no other option. They will find you in any hole you crawl into.

It is hard to believe we are winning when we feel so lost.

We cannot see above the mountains.

But we are winning.

Every day hateful people conspire against each other.

Every day good people do a million good things.

There are seven billion of us. The number explodes from your mouth. Everything you do is important. Every opportunity has a chance of turning the tide.

We need every damn one of us. The sick, the broken and the weak. There is no challenge we cannot get through together.

We cannot help but grow. Each day, each challenge we face makes us bigger. And by the end we will be as tall as mountains.

The only haiku I really Got was by a dude(?) called Basho that I know exactly zero about that I heard on a japanese animation movie called my neighbours the yamadas that has really nothing to do with what I’m talking bout but here it is:

How cruel,

a grasshopper trapped

under a warrior’s helmet.

We are warriors now. We did not ask for this. I see it in the things we say, in what we feel. Our hearts lie in peace, but despair has us trapped under a pile of hate and trash.

Evil is in plain sight. It has tried to convince us that our anger is hollow. That our mouths and hands and desires are pointless. It has tried to distract us, but we can see it. It is real.

Do not forget that you are strong. Do not forget that evil is a coward, that fear is its enemy.

And it fears you.

Skulls on our Uniforms

Dear Leader

Have you ever been so angry

That you caught fire

That your skin bubbled

Burst and cracked

That your flesh sloughed from your bones

Replaced by ash and stink

Dear Leader

Have you ever sunk

So deep underwater

That your eardrums burst

Filled with salt

That cold rammed a claw down your throat

And tore your lungs ragged

Dear Leader

Have you ever felt so small

That your every move

Is dodging someone else’s footsteps

Scared and darting

Between the treads

Of a giant’s boots

Dear Leader

At what point

In your life

Did you let yourself become the bad guy

What fucked you up so bad

That you forgot

People scream when they burn

You have made clear

What makes you scared

It shows on pale faces

As sweat on cold thrones

You fill our mouths with voices

Not our own

We wear skulls on our uniforms

Thin lines where our mouths should be

Our eyes stare wide and we whisper

I cannot see, I cannot see

I tried to quit smoking in Japan. I mean I’ve been trying for like five years, can’t count the amount of times I’ve had a last cigarette, still smoking way too much. I didn’t quit smoking in Japan.

Japan was three weeks I wouldn’t be around smoking housemates or pouches of tobacco. I smoked right up until the day I left. Smoked while I was there but I tried.

My fiancé passed out in a hotel in Tokyo after getting a Japanese cold on the arse end of a Brisbane one. I sat in bed next to her, she radiated heat and I was sweating. I watched a Japanese tv show where a group of comedians went to restaurants, sat around big tables and just talked to each other over meals. I couldn’t understand a word of it and no one got hit in the balls. I turned the tv off, tried to sleep, sweated, got dressed and walked outside.

I walked up the road deserted street that my hotel was on looking for a bar. Ambulances drove past every twenty minutes or so, loudspeakers blaring in Japanese “Please something”.

Raindrops sparked through the light of neon signs, felt like little bites on my scalp and cheeks where they splashed from the collar of my jacket. I passed a vending machine that sold cigarettes, doubled back and stood in front of it. Thought about god and the devil. Thought about dying and satisfaction. Thought about whether or not to tell my fiancé that I had a cigarette. I had a moment and kept walking.

I started to get out of the zone I could comfortably return from without risking getting lost in the biggest city in the world. Saw a bar called “Cantina”, sign written in English. The stairs leading up from the front door were lined with bottles of my favourite beers. Pictured a smoky bar with assorted Japanese Sci-Fi characters, maybe aliens. The bar was empty except for a manly looking Japanese guy wiping the counter and a Japanese girl smoking a cigarette and talking to him.

The bartender looked up as I entered, said “Not Open”. I left, checked the sign on the way out, the bar didn’t open for twenty minutes. I looked up the street towards the centre of batshit Shinjuku, made back for the hotel.

I passed the cigarette machine on the way back, doubled back and stood in front of it. Thought about god and the devil. Wanted my last cigarette to be a Lucky Strike in the rain in Tokyo and not one I salvaged from the dregs of a pouch of Port Royal, Winfield Gold and JPS Red.

I put in my money, pressed Lucky Strikes. A Japanese Lady’s voice blared at me from the machine, a light flashed. I checked the tray, no cigarettes. I pressed the button again, swore, looked around. An old Japanese man stared at me from a warm and comfortable looking bar. He looked neutral, stared at me blankly and lifted a cigarette to his mouth. Could have been looking at a reflection. Freezing rain dripped from my mess of hair. I hit cancel and made back for the hotel.

I ducked into the convenience store next to my hotel, dripped all over the floor next to plastic wrapped umbrellas. I stood in line in front of an old lady half my height. Said two words to the attendant, “Lucky Strikes”. He nodded and handed me a pack.

I paid and went to walk off, checked my pocked, swore. I got back in line and waited again. Said “Lighter” to the attendant, made a lighter action with my thumb. The store attendant motioned to the shelves behind me, said something in Japanese. I turned and searched the shelves. Frowned.

A friendly looking man in a business suit led me around the corner of the shelves and pointed at the lighters. I grabbed one, said sorry to the built up line. I couldn’t tell if they were angry or just from Tokyo.

I tried to find a place to smoke, there were no smoking signs plastered all over the streets. I walked down the alley beside my hotel, past two ladies who glanced up at me warily as they walked, past broken vending machines. Found a strange park, very small with a shrine and a street sign in the middle, surrounded by high-rise buildings. It was lit with a pale light like glow worms or if an elf did it.

I pulled out a Lucky Strike, got a fat drop of water on it from my hair. Covered it and lit. Breathed in and felt like a different version of me, like I switched personalities to something equally as familiar. Stood in the rain in Tokyo and watched the raindrops flash through pale light, watched my cigarette burn down.

I grabbed a coffee so I could smoke a second one without gagging.

When I walked back into the hotel room my fiancé was awake. She said she was proud of me for heading out and exploring on my own. I told her I smoked two cigarettes and then I threw the pack of Lucky Strikes into the small hotel bin. They sat there on top of mucus drenched tissues, label facing up and burning itself into my brain.

They sat there all night, and through the day as we dragged our suitcases through batshit crowded Shinjuku, headed for the shinkansen and South to Kyoto. Somewhere in the back of my head is still making plans to return and find them. To smoke those bastards with an expensive shitty coffee or a cheap amazing whiskey.

Until then they sit in my head and wait.

I been pen and paper RPing for as long as I been drinking, so like early high school. For the layman (fantasy term for n00b) it is a bunch of drunk awfuls sitting around a table pretending to be elves and pissing off the one person who actually puts effort in (Dragon Maker or DM). But ya’ll knew this because it is 2016 and nerd is cool and nobody can make teases at me for doin magic noises during my lunch times anymore. What a world.

I started making my own system when I was a teen because Dungeons and Dragons played like a microwaved quarter pounder and I was only allowed a half hour of computer time a week which I inevitably spent playing starcraft with every cheat on. I scrawled into a hundred exercise books whatever I had ripped off from videogames and Ancient History lessons about swordy stuff. The system has been goin strong now for as many of my years as it hasn’t and I am still working on it even though I am technically an adult.

I wanna do another Thing on my blog now even though I have finished exactly zero of the other ones but what you gonna do woop here is some stories from dungeons and dragons over the years with my incredibly inebriated friends. Luv ya.

Team Cock

At some point some idiot (me) decided it would be a good idea to make a Bad Guy party. I would not recommend doing this for any DM with some scrap of self respect or empathy. My system of naming my friends’ parties is to insert bad puns or innuendo until I get maximum groans and then force everyone to call it that until it becomes second nature. The winner was Team Cock.

Team Cock consisted of a cleric of the most offensive religion (which I will not name) called The Reverend, a troll monk called Duke Facepunch, a terminally high gnome illusionist called Arno Fusegadget, a Disney version of Wolf Creek called Kangaranger and a wizard called tom.

After pulling a train heist for the thieves guild the party were hired by the state to investigate a tavern fire that killed some foreign diplomats that tom started in an earlier session. The only known witnesses were two Halfling drifters called Frido and Balbo. The party was sent to ask them some questions.

The party found the Halflings smoking under a bridge in the poor district. The Halflings saw tom and started to run immediately. Frido got away but Balbo jumped into the river. Kangaranger shot him in the leg with her bow and Duke Facepunch dragged him out.

Duke asked him who started the fire. Balbo refused to answer because tom was standing near him. Duke tried to twist his arm. I reminded Duke that he was a troll and this was a Halfling. Duke broke his arm. Duke asked him who started the fire. Balbo screamed in pain. Duke tried to choke him until he answered. I reminded Duke that he was a troll and this was a Halfling. Duke broke Balbo’s neck.

The party reported back to their contact at a tavern in the docks. They said “We found the Halflings but one escaped.”

The contact said “What do you mean escaped?”

The party burned down the tavern and skipped town.

A short while after the party made a deal with some demons to hunt down Frido the Halfling and his entire family, after burning down an entire village because the The Reverend decided he had a vision. I ended the party because it made me sad.