House Wren in the Wren House

Gazing into The Deadly Nature

The Birds! oh, Horrors!

Early 2018 Varmints

cardinal & goldfinch

nuthatch 

robin with nest material 

 bluebirds!

mama cardinal

Great Falls, on the Potomac

Things left Unsaid

Episode Nine.
Start at the beginning HERE

Our vacation had taken quite a turn, and being stuck in a one horse town downwind of the Grand Canyon wasn’t exactly the high point. It turns out Billy is a mean drunk, and there wasn’t much else to do but drink. I didn’t care much for Billy after that. Billy’s a dick. We parted ways, but I met Samantha at the Rotisserie, and we hit it off. Sam has a few alterations, but when the tech came back online, we went all out. Optic upgrades, interactive tattoos (I learned some moves I didn’t even know existed!), and now my Jag has limited flight capability. Earth is fun again.

 Of course, we still have Cleveland showing us around. Northern California is spectacular. We did almost three-hundred over the salt flats. Scary fast, what a rush. And Yosemite was out of this world. Samantha got me some Ultra boots and gloves. I love extreme hiking! 

 The big news was, of course, the Battle over New York, where Skyland Resort was caught up in a great big controversy. The news was slow in coming, possibly leaked out from resistance fighters who infiltrated the Resort. The photos, if they’re real, showed some pretty hideous creatures up there. Apparently they were eating tourists? Billy and I had applied for the chance to go up when we were in the area, but we were denied. The official letter somehow blamed our enhancements, which I thought was bullshit, since all of that came from the overlords to begin with. Now I’m happy we didn’t go up. The pictures of Mr. Atrocious, if you haven’t seen them, are atrocious.

 I’ve been trying to keep up on current events, and Cleveland helps out. He shuffles the headlines and keeps me informed. Here’s the gist: There is a new head overlord; he’s a stern looking gent, looks a bit nervous to me, sort of on edge. Though the man in charge is not an alien, but a local. Which is to say, he’s an earthling named Patrick. Sources swear up and down he isn’t a flesh eating alien from another world, even if one half of him is pretty damned ugly. His left side is bloated and three times too big, and there are squidish things wiggling out of him. He tries to hide most of the bad half behind screens and large potted ferns, but I swear I saw a second mouth coming out of the side of his neck, and it seemed to be repeating every word he said out of the right side of his face-mouth. Sam and I were in a bar getting drunk on tainted mocha creams the first week after the takeover above, and a table at the back of the joint was filled with a gang of unruly locals. They were a bunch from the resistance that backed our man in the sky. Said his name was Scutum, and he was one of ‘em. The Astrologers, big news, and their leader was there too, Leo. He wasn’t bouncing up and down like the rest, just sat still with a mug in one hand and a dink on his lip, coloring the air over his head. He had a melancholy look, and a tawny cloud.  Still, he took a good many slaps on the back, and smiled once or twice.

 The overlord guy goes by the name of Mr. Face. He always stands behind Patrick, sometimes off screen. He’s got us back on track; there’ve been more upgrades than shutdowns. News comes slow, when it comes at all, but I see an upturn. He wants to cede more power to the Regions of Earth, but we have to play nice. Mr. Face is fair, but I imagine he has a heavy hand. He lets Patrick do most of talking, but we all know who is really in charge.

 Cleveland wants to take us into some caverns next, but I don’t like the idea. I’m a bit claustrophobic; I would just as soon stay above the earth. And Sam doesn’t like spiders. She wants to head out east and see if we can get to the Skyland Retreat when it opens back up. Won’t that be fun!

The Very End!

Ten Little Indians

Episode Eight.

He remembered the humanoids from boyhood days spent in front of the wall screen. There would be cartoons, when his folks allowed, but his most vivid memory was when the spaceship arrived, and the aliens came down to Earth.

 This was a time of hysteria, tempered by a dystopian backdrop and the wonder of life beyond the stars. Earth, the planet and all of its embattled cultures, was falling into an irreparable spin of self-destruction. The environment was a pissed-on cesspool and the good parts were doomed, under the thrall of vile businessmen and their heavy thumb of patriotic enterprise. The Overlords came just in time.

 They were scary, but in an older uncle, distant sort of way. Patrick would back away from the screen when the Overlords broadcasted their special announcements.  Their words were unimportant at that time, he preferred shows about dinosaurs and talking dogs, but he would always remember the faces of the aliens. They stood in a triangular formation, with the leader, he supposed, at its peak, and his lieutenants fanned out behind. They had human faces, mostly, but they were queer, and unsettling. The leader was stout, with a hardened look and golden cheeks. Patrick and the world knew him as the Prime Overlord, who was ever present at the broadcasts. He was firm, but benevolent. The lesser folk of earth came to love him.

 The others were a blur, but for one whom always stood to the back of the triangle, a sharp point in the geometry of the group. He was unnamed, but had a face Patrick could never forget. His eye always drifted to that one. Patrick took to calling him Mr. Face. He was lean and tall. And his face, though unimpressive, reminded Patrick of the screaming mien in Munch’s iconic masterpiece. The face haunted his dreams and left him sweat soaked and trembling in the wee hours of the night.

 The years slowly passed, and the world became a more hospitable place. It was like a garden under the supervision of the Overlords, but there was unrest too. The people had comfort, but creativity waned and life for many was stagnant. They aliens gave, but they repressed as well. And later, well into the occupation, people began to disappear. Some people revolted, and they were quelled without comment. That was when the resistance movements began, and the more secretive they were, the longer they lasted, and harder they hit. Patrick was older now; Patrick was a vital follower of the Astrologers, maybe the last hope of a free race of earthlings.

 He was in the boardroom of the beast, a newly ordained general of the beast, naked among his peers in the hook of Thee Most Atrocious. The ten squirmed like oily maggots on the body of the beast, held by wriggling tethers, in an orgy of galactic depravity. Thee Atrocious gathered his new generals, naming them as filthy apostles to his flesh, and together they pounded, caressed, and tugged on his fat, grotesque body and pulsating appendages. Green sweat oozed out and covered the generals. Patrick had squirmed sideways around the fatty arm of the beast, and hung suspended near its back. He was grasping at its bony plates, trying to avoid most of the mucus and throbbing members as they whipped and groped the humans. The more they struggled, the further excited Thee Atrocious became. In this state it moaned and occasionally pulled the head or a limb off of an unlucky general, then chewed it absent mindedly.  

 The ordeal was reaching its crescendo, and the rigid shafts began to pulsate, the beast stiffened, and sticks of pinkish bone prickled out from its corpulent, gummy body, impaling some of the generals, and ending their misery. A bony shaft pierced Patrick’s shoulder, and he shrieked, and then fell off of Thee Atrocious when the protrusion retracted and cut the leathery tether that held him.  He was loose in the fluid soaked platter when the thrusting members spewed sticky seed onto the beast’s belly and covered the writhing generals, as they screamed and clutched at the beast. A whipping appendage discharged toward Patrick, and the semen splattered across the left side of his face and body. It burned, and filaments of spaghetti skin formed on his slick skin, winding out like worms, or leaky veins. Patrick had escaped the worst of it.

 The other generals, the ones with heads attached, caught the bulk of the ejectant, and were screaming and cursing. Their bodies pulsated and morphed rapidly in time with the thrashing monster that bound them.  Patrick felt sick and he vomited. He began to crawl away, trying to put distance between him and hellish orgy. “Scutum,” he heard the soft, gasping plea. “Scutum,” she cried out, but her face was puss covered and into the lesions her face and lips disappeared.

 “Oh my god, Minerva. Minerva.” Patrick knew it was too late for Tina, probably for him as well. Operation Bowstring had come undone. “Minerva,” he gasped. “We are lost.” The generals were becoming little monsters themselves, as the creature’s seed seeped into their dilated pores. Where the sticky fluid had once infected its hosts and germinated on a hope and a prayer inside unsuspecting guts, this airborne sploof corrupted the flesh and mixed with the epidermis, bone, and cartilage, creating miniature and atrocious beasts. They turned on the master, falling onto its flesh, and consuming. One general with serrated bones exuding out of places that once owned a head and legs began sawing into the wailing, atrocious monster. "Thumuffa bitch," it shrieked in distress. 

 Patrick backed away, trailing green ooze and blood, and came to an impasse along the back wall. There he slumped weakly and waited for the end that must be coming. He heard a metallic screech, and beside him a once invisible ventilation grate wheezed off its screws and plunked onto the ground.  A head poked out, one Patrick could never forget.

 The Face that screamed, but now it was calm. This wasn't a dream. “Come with me, if you want to live,” said the Overlord. He stretched out a thin hand.

Episode 9