Status Updates Aug. And Sept. 2018

August 2018

“Of course you’re going to get an Oscar. This is the role you were born to play, darling!”

“...The Only Conservative In The Village? That’s the real title?”

“Working title, dear. But they’ll have to give you an award. If they don’t, everyone will know why.”

“Because it’s not a good movie?”
“This is the Oscars. That is hardly a factor.”

There is no such thing as artificial food colouring. Everyone knows this, even if no one will admit it.

They called it a glitch when everyone got a notification that Facebook was in a relationship with them.

“I wasn’t scared of you.”

“I know.” The monster chuckled. “No one is anymore.”

“Are you going to drink my blood?”

“I can’t drink as much from you as the politicians have with their taxes.”

“...what?”

“That was a joke.” And that was when the monster stopped smiling and drank deep of human blood.

“Please,” the human begged. “Not like you. Don’t make me like you. I never want to live forever.”

“No one does any more,” the vampire said softly, and broke the neck as a kindness.

She smiled sadly. "Too often, evil is pretending what your allies do is normal solely because you are afraid of losing an identity you’ve clung to for so long."

“Blood?” The vampire sneered; she had a good sneer, one honed by long practise. “Do you even know what is in your blood? No vampire has drunk human blood in over two hundred years.”

“What do you take from us?” I whispered, half-against my will. Damnable, my curiousity.

“Unkindness. Anger. Hate. We drink it all, and wait for you to change.” She smiled, almost. “We live in the same world as you; we have no desire for you to destroy it.”

“But it’s not fair! All those ‘oh, here are excerpts from an honest vampire novel’ silliness isn’t fair!”

“Pardon?”
“That’s werewolf erasure. We’re right here!”

“Yes, but excerpts from an honest werewolf novel would just involve fleas, the pound, and being killed by hunters.”

“There is more to us than that.”

“The PETA endorsement?”
“...we don’t talk about that. Ever.”

“Of course I’m not afraid of you,” the child explained. “I’ve seen dragons on TV with dens that were huge studios and they aren’t scary at all!”

Once upon a time, a dragon discovered too late that insurance would have protected against the predations of adventurers, but spending money on insurance was antithetical to any creature with a hoard.

“But if we give up the valley to the enemy, we will lose the war,” the minister for agriculture screamed.

The general laughed. Even the king paused at that laugh. “It is a war, you old fool. All you can do is lose a war. This way, we can lose in a way that causes the least amount of deaths. Which some people might be in favour of.”

“Well, well you’ll be out of work!”

“That is what every soldier desires.” And the general turned and left.

Once upon a time there was a monster who found out the easiest way to not be a monster was to buy the loyalty of humans with coin. It proved so easy that the monster almost forgot what they were really were in time as well.

“And what is a king without a crown but a shadow with nothing to cast it?”

“My liege. You do not need your crown to lead, to be moral –.”

“Perhaps not to lead, but morality?” The king chuckled. “A king has no morality, save that of the people. The kingdom is the conscience and guide both, unless one wishes to be ploughed into the fields like the kings of old as a reminder of hubris. To be a king is to be ruled far more than it is to rule.”

Poem

You said pain was the only truth you understood, and never grasped why I could not stay.

“This homicide I am investigating makes no sense, Commissioner,” the Detective said. “It has been four days and no one else has been killed, the case is not connected to a cold case,l or a recent unsolved murder haunting me, and no one has tried to kill me yet. I am starting to wonder if it was really a homicide at all.”

You said that every time God closed a door, He opened a window. I just wish it hadn’t been while we were on the plane.

'frozen stars are falling in your adjectival eyes'

Why, yes, I do write poetry.

“This is very strange? We always thought aliens would come as invaders?”

The alien chuckled. “Of course we wouldn’t. Now, where are we building the next theme park?”

History only happens when we aren’t paying attention. That’s why there is so much of it.

“Look, Dave, there is no way you’re beating Simon Warwick in a fight.”

“What do you mean by that?”
“He has a last name. You don’t. He’s going to win because that makes him more important to this story.”

“I never hated you, not even during the two years in the psych ward when no one believed what you’d done, what you were. Not even in the years before, when you killed every friend I made because there could be only you.”

“Why not?” the monster whispered in a voice like rusted bicycle chains scraping over small animals.

“You helped make me who I am; if I hate you for that, I would have to hate myself as well.”

Envy has more forms than anything else I know, even silence. I envy him the simple ‘Hey’ he gives me every morning, the way he call pull out small talk from nowhere as though it wasn’t small at all. That he found this space between popular and not, and slipped into it without any effort I’ve ever seen. He can hide better than anyone I know, because he’s never hiding at all. His face hides nothing, even if he thinks otherwise. And I envy him that too.

“Why? The poison in my…” He coughed. “I’m dying. Why?”

“Because you are a monster. The dead are as much a part of the world as the living. To be an exorcist is to execute the dead for crimes they have not committed. You hold the dead to the standards of the living, and there is nothing more monstrous than your arrogance.”

Sept 2018

I wonder how much of current US/Canada relations might be caused by Trump thinking poutine is Putin?

“I understand that only fools seek vengeance. But sometimes, just sometimes, I can be quite foolish indeed.”

“Wait. You can bring the dead back to life. And you… you’re… what are you doing?”

“What else is resurrection for, if not to ensure you get the best information from a suspect?”

“…”

Huxley’s father chuckles softly. “Knowing who you are is important, Bodhi. But in my experience it’s not knowing yourself that is important as much as learning to love what you find.”

Once upon a time, there was an evil wizard who wished for peace on earth and was left alone in a world where nothing else existed at all.

“Oh, this? It’s my dinner. I just tell people I’m on a diet and no one asks any questions about maldernourishment.”

“Oh, hell. Boss, you can’t –”

“Cannot? I have spent over six centuries sealing monsters. I believe I have some idea of what I can and cannot accomplish.”

“No, because this is a meme. You can’t contain it. No one can. The only thing we can do is try and defang it.”

“And that will work?”

“Only sometimes.”

“You can’t expect the world to dance for you just because you figured out a single tune.”

“You don’t eat people, do you?” Boy asked.

“What a peculiar place you are from to think we do,” the witch said.

“That’s not a yes or a no.”

“Ah,” the witch breathed, half a laugh. “I would be way, Boy, of questions that can be answered so easily.”

Boy raised his chin. “What about people who won’t answer them at all?”

“I am no politician,” the witch replied with gentle calm. “And bluntness is a crude instrument that never covers fear. Nor does it hide the thoughts under your thoughts.”

Boy said nothing.

“Tell me, what do you make of Reynard Fox?” the witch asked in the way of witches, which is to ask a leading question.

“Why ask questions you know the answer to?” Boy almost snapped.

“Sometimes I am pleasantly surprised,” the witch replied and Boy flushed slightly.

Amusements of a new job: a truly ridiculous amount of paper clips in a filing cabinet drawer.

“You could try being a good person. Just to see what it is like?”
“No, no I think not. Good too often tends to be addicting. Evil at least one can trust. Evil simply wishes to be left along to be evil; good always seeks to impose upon others.”

“You’re a superhero.”

“Yes,” Wonder Star admitted.

“And you don’t fly, or use fire?”

“It’s been over sixty years, okay?! Every good name is taken or in copyright!”

“I imagine there is a great deal about your world that is admirable, but very little that is real,” Bess said to the fox.

Reynard Fox only smiled. “Every world is less admirable the more real it is.”

It turned out that witches had no reflection as well, but that was solely because mirrors were scared of them.

I bet this could be

A very boring haiku

If it wanted to

The war ended by by the simply expediency never happening at all.

“The important thing, in the end, was the friendships we made along the way.”

“No. No, I think it was more the bodies we buried.”

“Well, we did that together too.”

“If it bleeds, we can kill it!”

“Sir, that – that’s not blood.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“According to my scanner, those are tears.”

“If it cries, we can kill -.”

“Tears of happiness, sir. I believe it thinks we’re playing a game.”

“We shot it with two impact rifles on full power. You could disable a civilian aircraft with that!”

“Yes, sir.”

“… perhaps we find something for it to fetch?”

“A wise decision, sir.”

“And you’re certain that isn’t a monster?”

“Well, most monsters don’t have Twitter - wait, never mind, probably a monster.”

“I know they want our money, but I really doubt the Girl Guides use the proceeds from their cookies to fund terrorism.”

“I don’t know why you’re scared; they’ve never met anyone like us before.”

“Yes, well, we’ve never met anyone like them either.”

“Oh. Good point.”

“I never meant to hurt you.”

“Would it be different if you had?”

You are the poem I should have written

Had I the words with which to write

2018: watching scared old white men lie for other scared old white men.