December 2011
1 post
the end
due to circumstances beyond my control, the raised by wolves project has come to a screeching halt. all the stories collected in Rbw 1-3 are lost to the aether. if you are in possession of any printed copies of these volumes, congratulations: you are now the proud owner of one of the only pieces of evidence that i have ever done anything productive with my life.
that said, it is time for new...
June 2010
8 posts
4 tags
At Sea part 6
“I was in the ballroom with all the hostages. I was stunning them one at a time, the ones I didn’t get in the first sweep, and then we heard that sound and the boat nearly flipped over. There were people flying in every direction it looked like, and furniture—tables and chairs and banquet tables and all of that stuff these people have stacked up around them, always counting on gravity to...
4 tags
At Sea part 5
The first one to get here is Yolita and she’s covered in blood and another black mystery liquid. Those strange eyes are glowing with an emotion that is very unsettling coming from Yolita: fear.
“Did you see it?” she demands frantically. “Did you see it?”
“See what?” I ask and she blows right past me. She slams and locks the heavy porthole behind her. “Hey now,” I say. “How are they going...
4 tags
At Sea part 4
It’s been maybe twenty minutes when my concentration is broken by the sound of steel girders, the impossible weight of the ship above us, groaning in a most uncomfortable way. I pop my earpiece back in and hear a bunch of static and nonsense. Jesus Christ.
“Everyone. Shut the fuck up and listen!” Weston’s gruff command tone over the static. “Deck B fire control is malfunctioning. That...
3 tags
At Sea part 3
When we land, we stick to the plan.
Yolita, Verne, and Weston (who is now accompanied by a limping but hard-nosed Dole) spread out and clear the upper decks one at a time, snagging hostages and storing them somewhere convenient. Goober and I proceed below deck to the command center and the safe. We have what we call ATE on this mission, (as in “the dog ATE my homework,”) Authority to Expedite,...
3 tags
At Sea part 2
I’m going to take this time to tell you a story about when I was a little boy, four or five. My parents decided it was time I learn to swim and took me to the pool. I looked into the deep end of the pool and it seemed to have no bottom. I looked over the pool and refused to believe the people in it were not fighting to survive as they splashed around. I imagined a monster in the bottom of...
3 tags
At Sea part 1
I wake from a dream of fire to the humming of engines in a small air craft. Goober is snoring almost as loud as the plane. Weston, with his stupid cowboy hat and mustache is yelling something across the cabin at the back of Yolita’s blonde head. No one can hear anything, but I can read his lips.
“Five minutes,” he’s yelling. Yolita turns and there’s that scar across her face,...
5 tags
Legbreaker part 11
It’s coming up on four in the morning. My guts are sloshing around inside me, awash with coffee. I feel all twitchy and fatigued. Gracie went home. She told me to call her if I need her, but I think I’ll be able to handle the rest of this weird god damn night on my own.
Von Tier. What the hell kind of name is that?
I remember the files Lusky gave me. Von Tier is—supposedly—the one...
4 tags
1 1/4 year(s)
here we are, it’s june now and there hasn’t been any activity here on RBW—and for that, I am sorry. for anyone concerned (both of you) I have not stopped writing. there are many reasons for the absence of new content on RBW, too many to get into here. i just wanted to let you guys know i’m sorry and that a new story will be starting soon. promise!
and now, the final part...
March 2010
1 post
4 tags
one year
today raised by wolves turns one year old. thank you to everyone who has encouraged and inspired me over the last year. there are too many of you to name, but your support has been invaluable to me as a developing writer. thank you, thank you, a thousand times thank you—it will never be enough. i am looking forward to another year of raised by wolves, and i hope that you are too.
February 2010
1 post
5 tags
legbreaker part 10
Wester’s is an all night diner. A different one on every corner it seems. This town has a lot of night owls. It sits, squat and vaguely ovoid in a dark corner. More neon signs. The walk leaves me sore. Gracie’s already there. Her blonde hair is disheveled and matted but looks as good as anything, just like it always does. She’s all wrapped up in a big black coat and a scarf...
January 2010
1 post
5 tags
legbreaker part 9
I stand and watch the burning cars. I wonder about the woman. Where could she have gone? I start walking. The blood runs through me like oil in an overheated engine. I’m all wired up from caffeine and killing. I need to get my head straight. I need to decide what I’m going to do.
As I walk down the street away from The Crab, I hear a strange sound, a whistling and a pop, but quiet and...
December 2009
5 posts
4 tags
legbreaker part 8
I grab the woman by the arm when she doesn’t get to her feet quick enough. I put the gun back in my waistband. I’ll need to be quiet here. I could punch a hole clean through this woman at this range. This woman, I think. Who might be my mother.
Could I do it?
I can’t do this right now.
My head needs to be clear.
I take a deep breath.
We creep into the cave-like darkness of...
4 tags
legbreaker part 7
Now, I think, is a good time to tell you a little bit about my past.
My earliest memory is of looking up from a small bed, bundled up in foul smelling blankets at a man with a bald head and thin silver spectacles. This was the priest at a church-run orphanage far away on the outskirts of town. That is where I was raised. I tried my best to do good by the priest and the nuns who brought me up, but...
4 tags
legbreaker part 6
I find the first of them downtown. The files Lusky gave me are some real professional work. I look right to the addresses. It’s still early. Thugs only go out at night. I hail a cab.
I knock on the door and the thug who blasted The Boss opens the door. He’s still got a length of bandage around his hand where The Boss got him with his straight razor. His numb eyes go wide when he...
3 tags
legbreaker part 5
The Pallid Mallard is a squat brown building down town with neon signs advertising all sorts of stupid expensive beers, and big sandwich boards outside advertising lunch specials that are still overpriced. My stomach growls. The door jingles when I walk in, and the girl at the desk in the front’s eyes go wide when she looks at me. She’s a pretty little brunette. She looks scared to...
3 tags
legbreaker part 4
Breakfast is my favorite meal of the day. It’s the only one I usually cook for myself, and I make certain to make it count.
Two pots of coffee, four slices of toast, four eggs with cheese, six pancakes with maple syrup, a muffin or a danish, a half gallon of skim milk, a half gallon of orange juice or apple juice, a bowl of grits with butter and brown sugar, a plate of bacon and a stack of...
November 2009
8 posts
4 tags
legbreaker part 3
The next day after I ripped a bunch of tubes out of the machines I was hooked up to, I go with Gracie to the I See You, a place in the hospital where only people who get hurt the worst go. They don’t allow visitors, but even with a big stupid bandage around my head, I’m big and wide and people usually let me go where I want.
There’s the Boss, sitting in bed like a cardboard cut...
4 tags
legbreaker part 2
When I come to, it’s all sterile white sheets and a curtain and the buzzing of complicated machinery. Hospital. Haven’t been to one of these in a while.
Someone’s talking.
“Well, Mr. McGinnis, welcome back to the world of the living,”
It’s a man in a white coat with a stethoscope around his neck. He’s wearing glasses and looking at a clipboard.
“Legs,” I grumble....
4 tags
Legbreaker part 1
They call me Legbreaker because that’s what I do. If you don’t pay the Boss on time, you get a leg broken. If you don’t pay the Boss on time next month, you get your other leg broken. If you’re still behind after that, well…don’t get that far behind.
It’s hot. I’m sweating like a waterfall in the doorway of The Crab. The place is actually called...
5 tags
ashes part 14
Back on the surface, it’s pretty obvious our cover is blown. There is a horrible black vortex ripping down the hall in front of us. People are screaming and running, just like Santiago and I. We don’t have time to be discrete, and so we join the throng and hope that they picked the right direction. The floor behind us gives out and crumbles away into that magical void that things...
4 tags
ashes part 13
“What happened to you?” Sophie asks. Santiago and I have just burst into the chamber where we last left Sophie and the puppet Solomon. She’s sitting on his lap, and he’s smiling that vacant smile.
“Your new boyfriend is a fraud,” I say and point at Solomon. “No offense,” I add as his smile turns to a look of intense consternation.
“And we’re all walking into a trap. If the...
4 tags
ashes part 12
“Jesus Christ, that was unreal,” I grumble at the bottom. I step on my cigarette and look around. The chamber we’ve arrived in doesn’t look much different than the one we left somewhere above, except the lighting is worse and there’s a damp antique basement smell. Santiago puts his cigarette out and we resume snooping.
Eventually, down the dusty corridors of this basement...
3 tags
ashes part 11
And so, down the serpentine corridors we crept. The stone walls looked ancient, scarred by time’s insensitive passing. I can’t tell what sort of place this was before the vampire cabal set up shop here. It reminds me of something from long ago, but I can’t put my finger on what.
After a long time creeping up to and peering uneasily around corners, we come to a dead end. The...
3 tags
ashes part 10
Sophie smiles at me over Solomon’s shoulder encouragingly. I take his hand confidently and spout some smooth-sounding bullshit about being eager to see what he can do.
“Ah-ha! But you already have,” he said, gap-toothed grin big as a slice of watermelon. “If you have not noticed, the sun no longer holds sway on us. This is but the first of a series that will finally bring our kind to the...
October 2009
2 posts
3 tags
ashes part 9
After the usual hello-how-are-you-where-have-you-been-the-last-odd-decade-or-two’s are done, Sophie tells us in fuller detail about what she meant by “this of all nights.”
“Tell me you haven’t heard? Tell me you haven’t noticed, Sergei!” Sophie exclaimed. She sat atop the bar, sipping serenely from a martini glass. The scene hadn’t changed much. There we sat, drinking...
4 tags
ashes part 8
The pause, the words, the look are imperceptible to everyone in the place but me, it seems, and the hollering only gets louder as the dance continues.
Finally stripped bare, Sophie stands and twirls herself around a metal pole jutting out of the stage. She moves like a feather, or like water, fluid, weightless. Sublime. And then, she’s grinning down the bar at me and she’s asking for...
September 2009
10 posts
3 tags
ashes part 7
A week later and we’re heading south. The sun shines it’s red-tinted light on us and our car, a white convertible that we picked up from some unfortunate man in the midst of a midlife crisis. The engine purrs like a jungle cat. I’m in the back and Santiago is driving.
“What’s this place called again?”
He’s asking me the name of a nightclub. It’s...
4 tags
ashes part 6
We chuckled and soon fell into the old rituals. Santiago broke out a bottle of ancient wine and we began the process of catching up. We laughed and talked for a long while, and eventually the thirst began to make its presence felt in Santiago’s throat.
“Sergei, my friend, it’s always so nice to see you. What say we step out for a drink? I know this great club, open all night. They...
3 tags
ashes part 5
The city hummed with activity, a distant humming that reverberates endlessly through your ear canals and makes your head hurt even when you are by yourself in silence. It is different from the silence of the night. So much life all around, so much bustling and moving, so much motion that your stomach starts to hurt from thinking of it, like the insides of a washing machine stuck on the spin cycle...
4 tags
ashes part 4
What the Spider Lady told me was laden with double meanings, conundrums and gypsy-speak. Riddles and word games, most of it, but the important parts were these:
Long ago, an evil magician summoned a manifestation of a dark and forgotten god into our reality. This manifestation, the magician believed, would put him in a seat of unquestionable power for the remainder of time. Instead, the dark god...
3 tags
ashes part 3
The Spider Lady is something unique in this world. Something horrible that makes your skin crawl, something nasty that makes your teeth chatter, something inexplicable that makes the hair on your arms stand up, something absolutely one-of-a-kind.
In the years I’ve had the misfortune of knowing the Spider Lady, I’ve never been able to figure out what the hell she is. She doesn’t...
3 tags
ashes part 2
I squinted and marveled at just how different everything looked in the full blaze of daylight. My street was nearly unrecognizable. The buildings seemed taller, the trees more numerous. I kept my head down and squinted at the sidewalk, also bathed in bright, harsh luminescence. I noticed after a few blocks that I was sweating. The sun gave off heat I remembered in an abstract sort of way. I...
2 tags
Ashes part 1
I woke up very thirsty, which is not at all uncommon for a vampire. I stretched and yawned and clucked my tongue against the roof of my mouth, which made a sound like two pieces of chalk smacking together. I rubbed my eyes and looked around. Same dusty basement room as always. Bed, book case, candelabra, tiny shelf. I threw out my TV after I realized it was destroying my sleep schedule. I got up...
detective story part 3
Like I said, we’ve been tracking Naomi Glass since Seattle. We’re in Vegas now, with at least ten dead truckers, hoodlums, cardsharps and general scum behind us. The first was Dominic Martin, caucasian, 23, a young crackhead who made extra money for his habit hustling guns. Just as often as not when a deal was arranged, Martin would rob his prospective customer instead of part with the...
1 tag
detective story part 2
Speaking of my partner, I almost lose the bead on Dorsey’s forehead when I hear a low, pathetic gurgling, like the sound of someone desperately trying to breathe through the river of blood that works it’s way up your esophagus when most of your insides have been turned to table scraps. It’s my partner. Here I was thinking we wouldn’t get out of this.
My partner’s name...
1 tag
detective story part 1
There is a sickly sweet smell in the air, like garbage in the heat of July. Everything about this place makes me want to vomit. The man pointing a gun at my head is not helping. His face looks like rotten meat. You can see his teeth, or what’s left of his teeth, sticking out of a hole in his cheek. One of his eyes is ruptured and leaking an unwholesome sort of goo down what’s left of...
August 2009
9 posts
5 tags
the alley part 7
Hours later, the cops have left. The medical examiners have confiscated the severed hands in order to identify them. They will go to the local emergency room and look for a man with no hands and they will likely arrest him. I look up at the black sky and wonder how you could handcuff a man if he hasn’t got any hands any more. It starts to rain.
The store clerk enters my alley through the...
another hiatus
my computer is SO fucked, guys. i’m too nervous that i’m going to wind up losing all my shit on here before I can get it fixed, so I’m going to put off writing anymore until after that happens. the conclusion of The Alley should be the next post you see here though, so keep an eye out. thank you again for your continued support and interest.
5 tags
the alley part 6
When I open my eyes, I realize that I am inside the convenience store, still with the machete clutched tightly under my arm, inside my coat. I see the clerk, the one who unwittingly feeds me every night, eying me suspiciously. He thinks I’m shoplifting. I must be crazy, hallucinating. The clerk is small and Mexican-looking, with dusky features and a complexion like bricks downtown....
5 tags
the alley part 5
It is dusk here, and the sun filtering through the dying branches of trees in autumn reminds me of fields of golden flax and grain, a memory I didn’t know I had. I look up at the sky through the trees. Behind my mask, I smile. The temple is multileveled and very wide, like something right out of a Hong Kong action movie. The only door of the strange, angular temple is a yawning mouth with...
4 tags
The Alley part 4
In the morning, I wake up and wonder what I will do that day. I cannot recall dreaming. I stretch my arms above my head and I feel something hard and sharp and metal beneath the pile of coats I was using as a pillow. My skin nearly leaps off of my back and I can’t believe it’s still there, that it was not a dream. I pick up the blade and examine it closely. I slap it’s broad side against the...
5 tags
the alley part 3
I usually puke in the morning and today is no different. I climb to my feet and shuffle away from the pile of partially digested meat byproducts and malt liquor. I dig into the trash and find donuts and bagels and eat my fill before wandering out into the sun to meet the day. I find an abandoned shopping cart nearby and for lack of anything better to do, I begin pushing it along in front of me. I...
5 tags
the alley part 2
That night, I go for a walk. It is not raining for once, and I find a park bench with a complimentary discarded newspaper and set myself up. In the breast pocket of my jacket I have a couple leftover kielbasa, which I will eat over the course of the night. Earlier in the day I also found an empty plastic bottle with the lid still on it, which I then filled with water from a public faucet. These...
5 tags
the alley part 1
In this old city the rain falls so heavy sometimes you feel like all the problems of the world are held in each drop. Each wet plop could be a tear falling, each one full of someone’s pain and regret, fear and loneliness, anger, hatred, disgust and shame. The streetlights look like the burning eyes of cyclops. They are weeping, too, with the rain veiling them like a silk curtain. Before I know...
5 tags
on integrity
so listen, i gave up on that last story while i was on my little hiatus.
the reason i went on the hiatus is this: the internet connection in my house is not one i pay for. it filters in through the walls of my neighbor’s house. we like to think that they got us the internet for christmas and were too shy to ever say anything about it. a few weeks ago, however, the signal vanished...
July 2009
6 posts
1 tag
extended hiatus
due to circumstances beyond my control, i no longer have steady access to the internet. unfortunately, this will seriously impede updates to Raised by Wolves. thank you for reading. stay tuned for more stories and Raised by Wolves #3.
4 tags
the voice part 11
We decided on empanadas and milkshakes. It turned out we were both trying to kick the meat habit, and so we only put cheese and vegetables in the crispy flour shells. The milkshakes were made with soymilk and fresh fruit and vanilla ice cream. When Nola arrived, she didn’t bother knocking. I was sitting in a chair reading an old magazine, killing time while I waited for her to show up. She moved...
4 tags
the voice part 10
She sighed and in the other room I could hear my work alarm going off. I told her I had to go, but that she could call me later. She sniffed again and thanked me, then said she loved me and hung up without another word. I couldn’t get the sound of her pixie-sobs out of my head the rest of the night. But at the end of the conversation, her voice sounded lighter, like a weight was off her shoulders....