At sunset, the old gunslinger looked upon a fallen kingdom and found himself unimpressed. Music in Book 3, Chapter 19: Cullah - Please Bring Me Shelter (CC BY-SA 4.0) Crowander - Vanda’s Blues (CC BY-NC 4.0) Monolog Rockstars - Two Years (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) Blue Dot Sessions - Floor Shine (CC BY-NC 4.0) Blue Dot Sessions - Floretin (CC BY-NC 4.0) Rain On Heavy Glass Allen Masterton - Project 5 Cory Gray - Follow The Trail (CC BY-NC 3.0) straget - the rain falls against the parasol (CC BY 3.0) Kai ...
Dec 15, 2021•1 hr 40 min
The moment cut his word in half, flickered lights before his eyes, then shut it all down with a deep dark absence of color so grim it was difficult to put word on. Music in Book 3, Chapter 18: Cullah - Please Bring Me Shelter (CC BY-SA 4.0) Marcos H. Bolanos - Stranded (CC BY-NC 4.0) Allen Masterton - Iridian Siddhartha Corsus - Oh Radiant One (CC BY-NC 4.0) Borrtex - Fog In The Street (CC BY-NC 4.0) Blue Dot Sessions - Floretin Interlude (CC BY-NC 4.0) Crowander - Underwater (CC BY-NC 4.0) Blue...
Dec 15, 2021•31 min
In the dark and rainy parking lot of the diner, Tom and Noah pulled the collars of their jackets up over their ears. Mark did not seem to notice the rain. Music in Book 3, Chapter 17: Cullah - Please Bring Me Shelter (CC BY-SA 4.0) Rain On Heavy Glass Blue Dot Sessions - Remsen (CC BY-NC 4.0) Allen Masterton - Iodine Borrtex - Going Undercover (CC BY-NC 4.0) Marcos H. Bolanos - Suspects (CC BY-NC 4.0) poalopat - [AMBIENT] Desert Valley (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) Allen Masterton - Project 5 Blue Dot Sessi...
Dec 15, 2021•28 min
Be forewarned, I can still taste the ferment on my teeth. Conjecture and abstract thought do not, admittedly, serve much purpose in a guide to the mysterious world you and I now inhabit, yet I would submit that you can cut as deep as you like as long as your implement remains sharp. Music in Book 3, Chapter 16: Cullah - Please Bring Me Shelter (CC BY-SA 4.0) Allen Masterton - Berceus Scott Holmes - Abandoned City (CC BY 4.0) Scott Holmes - Vasky Skyline (CC BY 4.0) Blue Dot Sessions - Nervous Wh...
Dec 15, 2021•35 min
Abranyah blinked through the rain, peering down both ends of the street, waiting for activity. Music in Book3, Chapter 15: Cullah - Please Bring Me Shelter (CC BY-SA 4.0) Blue Dot Sessions - Bask VX (CC BY-NC 4.0) Guitar Drone 1 - Ghost Hunter (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) Podington Bear - Submerging Blue-Black (CC BY-NC 3.0) Podington Bear - Dark Water (CC BY-NC 3.0) The Rifleman - Day Of The Hunter (1960, clipped) Podington Bear - Satellite Bloom (CC BY-NC 3.0) Crowander - Prayer (CC BY-NC 4.0) Crowander ...
Dec 15, 2021•30 min
Bare-footed and with packs slung over their shoulders, Rhamuel and Abranyah made for the main gates of The Omaha Claim, fit to leave as fast as the dust would allow. Music in Book 3, Chapter Fourteen: Cullah - Please Bring Me Shelter (CC BY-SA 4.0) Blue Dot Sessions - Emmit Sprak (CC BY-NC 4.0) Blue Dot Sessions - Aloscape 2 (CC BY-NC 3.0) Podington Bear - Lonesome (CC BY-NC 3.0) Blue Dot Sessions - VK Mendl (CC-BY-NC 3.0) Sound Phenomenon - Sci - Fi Ambient 6 - The Vast Calm (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) ...
Jan 07, 2019•34 min
In a sun dappled stretch of the Scar, endless as it had always been, a young woman found herself near done with what the dust had to offer. So goes folk in younger years—just aged enough to know and appreciate the finer and subsequent illuminations of ferment—yet still damn fool enough to know nothing else of nothing else. Music in Book 3, Chapter Thirteen: Cullah - Please Bring Me Shelter (CC BY-SA 4.0) HarryHaaren - Acoustic Ambient (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) ambient-samurai - Scene Of Sunshine Filt...
Dec 03, 2018•31 min
The diner was far enough away from work, but nothing felt far enough when there was going to be talk of confidential things. Things some argue better left unexplained, not discussed, kept away from deeper thought—weird things. Music in Book 3, Chapter Twelve: Cullah - Please Bring Me Shelter (CC BY-SA 4.0) Podington Bear - Undersea Garden (CC BY-NC 3.0) Blue Dot Sessions - Periodicals (CC BY-NC 4.0) Sergey Cheremisinov - The Loneliness (CC BY-NC 4.0) David Szesztay - Cascet (CC BY-NC 3.0) Blue D...
Feb 19, 2018•38 min
Knucklebones stepped one leathery bare foot into the plastic pool, bright and faded colors both rippling under the liquid. Filth bloomed in arcs from his foot, dirt and barren clouding the chemicals. He wrinkled an ancient looking triangle that sat center on his face, and enshrouded by the giant round disc his hat made, and Knucklebones inhaled deeply. Music in Tincture: Book 3, Chapter Eleven: Cullah – Please Bring Me Shelter (CC BY-SA 4.0) Podington Bear – Submerging Blue-Black (CC BY-NC 3.0)...
Feb 01, 2018•39 min
King’s office was surprisingly empty for a man of his resources. There was no special reason for it—he was in charge of it all, the whole enterprise, but cared little for the more obvious of comforts or distraction. Music in Tincture: Book 3, Chapter Ten: Cullah – Please Bring Me Shelter (CC BY-SA 4.0) David Szesztay – Underwater (CC BY-SA 3.0) Scott Holmes – Something In The Distance (CC BY-NC 4.0) Podington Bear – Three Colors (CC BY-NC 3.0) VYVCH – Get Well (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) Origamibiro – Fl...
Feb 01, 2018•33 min
We are always starving. It sort of goes with the territory—this being hungry in every odd tick of the day. An empty belly and its degrees of unpleasantness is better than any watch or sundial, and no further calculations on mood need interject. Music in Tincture: Book 3, Chapter Nine: Cullah – Please Bring Me Shelter (CC BY-SA 4.0) Scott Holmes – Shimmer (CC BY-NC 4.0) Podington Bear – Swale (CC BY-NC 3.0) Podington Bear – Turquoise (CC BY-NC 3.0) Origamibiro – Flicker (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 US) Gen...
Feb 01, 2018•34 min
Tom smiled and nodded with the applause, but when the meeting resumed he went right back to staring directly into the center of a donut. Music in Tincture: Book 3, Chapter Eight: Cullah – Please Bring Me Shelter (CC BY-SA 4.0) Alterr – Small Group Applause (CC BY-NC 3.0) Scott Holmes – Origin II (CC BY-4.0) Seclorance – Dir (CC BY-4.0) Charlie Salas-Humara (CC BY-NC 3.0) AVOIDANT – Apparitions (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) KSEA – Interlude A (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 US) Cyborgs On Crack – Paraplegic Gerbil Processi...
Feb 01, 2018•35 min
Torches had never done Allgood much favor, but that they lit up a question or two in the good populace was useful. Two old branches lit the stench of thoroughfare just before the bar-house, the tips never extinguished thanks to some flammable green-black sludge the fiddle fingers had cooked up for otherwise pursuit. They stunk, and while most folk came to the bar house either by regular pre-dinner appointment or curiosity, they came all the same. Music in Tincture: Book 3, Chapter Seven: Cullah ...
Feb 01, 2018•36 min
Even in that too-bright light of the morning, Abranyah always struggled to wake with it. She preferred to sleep as long as possible, but the sun would eventually prove to be an enemy—fuel for whatever device the barren was planning to kill you with today. This morning was of little difference, but the body rustling through her pack had become lazy, desperate, or both. In any case—far too loud. Music in Tincture: Book 3, Chapter Six: Cullah – Please Bring Me Shelter (CC BY-SA 4.0) Podington Bear ...
Feb 01, 2018•33 min
An otherwise normal day in an otherwise normal life, time as it was. Tom had been fostering a general sense of unease for a while now, yet like a weird sort of depression, he had difficulty pinpointing its origin. Music in Tincture: Book 3, Chapter Five: Cullah – Please Bring Me Shelter (CC BY-SA 4.0) Podington Bear – Three Colors (CC BY-NC 3.0) Podington Bear – Submerging Blue-Black (CC BY-NC 3.0) David Szesztay – Snow (CC BY-NC 3.0) Podington Bear – Monday (CC BY-NC 3.0) Blue Dot Sessions – Gt...
Feb 01, 2018•29 min
The ways a body tends to crave its own undoing is a humanistic riddle that I no longer wish to endure. A short way to speak it, I suppose: my empathy muscles have atrophied. Music in Tincture: Book 3, Chapter Four: Cullah – Please Bring Me Shelter (CC BY-SA 4.0) Kosta T – Red in Black (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) Blue Dot Sessions – Stillness (CC BY-NC 4.0) Blue Dot Sessions – A Simple Shroud (CC BY-NC 4.0) Podington Bear – Undersea Garden (CC BY-NC 3.0) Blue Dot Sessions – That Horse Ithaca (CC BY-NC 4.0)...
Feb 01, 2018•30 min
Rhamuel kept folks on a spectrum of his own design, the range beginning somewhere around “tolerate,” and ending near “abject avoidance.” Abranyah once asked where the disdain found its origination point, but the tanker would only reply, “Everyone seems to give me a reason.” Music in Tincture: Book 3, Chapter Three: Cullah – Please Bring Me Shelter (CC BY-SA 4.0) Blue Dot Sessions – The Envelope (CC BY-SA 4.0) David Szesztay – First Step Inside (CC BY-SA 3.0) David Szesztay – Cascet (CC BY-SA 3.0...
Feb 01, 2018•33 min
This was the kind of fruitless nonsense that permeated The Scar—a seeming irregularity of principle and purpose to things. A body could rub a book to ash in their fingers. They could then take a step and trip over a heaping stack of books showing no more than frayed edges, dust, and that grainy kind of yellow that takes over the page after a while. Music in Tincture: Book 3, Chapter Two: Cullah – Please Bring Me Shelter (CC BY-SA 4.0) Blue Dot Sessions – 4th Chair (CC BY-NC 4.0) Blue Dot Session...
Feb 01, 2018•35 min
Old splinters whistle. Everything across The Scar has aged long past the reek of decay, more so worn, faded, and abused by the transient miscellany that wandered through it over and over and over. There was a weird beauty when the too-bright day went purple as night prepared, no windows left to cover, no reason even if they remained. Music in Tincture: Book 3, Chapter One: Kai Engel – Paranoia (CC BY-NC 4.0) Audionautics – Crowd Long (CC BY 3.0) Kai Engel – Universe In Hands (CC BY-NC 4.0) Culla...
Feb 01, 2018•40 min
The tanker was always a curiosity for Rachel. “What are you looking for?” she asked. “You said you had an idea?” Arachal was bent over the front seats of his black Mustang and rifling through the glove compartment. “I do. I’m looking for—ah, here we are.” Withdrawing his long frame from the car, he held up a stack of pink sticky-notes in one hand, a black marker with Warrant Sciences embossed on its gray surface in the other. “Pink?” asked Rachel. “I don’t remember pink.” Arachal raised an eyebr...
Feb 01, 2018•1 hr 23 min
Excerpted from: Revenants of War An Attempted Guide for Safe Warrant After The Whatever Much has been mired in speculation of the burnouts, most of it the mealy speech of a drunkard, or on occasion your humble author. People have actually visited the things, for Christ’s sake. Their jagged profile out on the horizon is a curious thing for those of us who wander the scar. It’s easy to get caught up in wondering where the places came from, who built them, and how far removed from those peoples we ...
Feb 01, 2018•33 min
This wasn’t the first time that something had tried to kill Abranyah. It was, however, the first attempt with a cannon. Music in Tincture: Book 2, Chapter Seventeen: Tom Vourtsis – Black Eyes The OO-Ray – Sleep Kingdoms Radere – Snow Noise (Overhead) Christoper Bissonnette – Downwards Lee Rosevere – Squinting At The Sun (radio edit) The OO-Ray – A Savage Exhibition Wild Wild Ambient Boys – 7/8 Is Wild Podington Bear – Reflector Julien Mier – Ptarmigan Intro music selected from: PrudHommes by Cob...
Feb 01, 2018•34 min
Rachel stepped back into the church and spat on the floor. “Well we’ve got lights again, no thanks to you,” she said. “In the movies when they siphon gas out of a car, they never throw up. Guess who learned a new thing today?” Music in Tincture: Book 2, Chapter Sixteen: Lee Rosevere – Gymnopédie No. 1 (Satie) Tortue Super Sonic – Film 1 Julien Mier – Ptarmigan Lee Rosevere – The Attic The OO-Ray – Diplodocus Podington Bear – Constellation Vitus Von Degen – Countach Jared C. Balogh – Equal Value ...
Feb 01, 2018•37 min
“I have every confidence in his ability to avoid a well deserved death,” said Abranyah. She only considered the words after she had said them, surprised that she had actually meant them. Marcus shook his head. “If you say so.” They both turned to face Barabbas, the large dog laying on his side in the bright morning sun. He was awake, but more grumpy than usual, as Barabbas simply laid there, huffing and puffing. Occasionally he’d bark, but he was more or less grunting out his displeasure with Sa...
Feb 01, 2018•35 min
.2201 I met the most interesting man today. He sleeps at the fire while I write this, another few inches of bulk to my daily carry, but I find the exercise of keeping a journal cathartic. His name is Israfali. He has asked me to call him Fali, and we are very much alike in that we both are harnessed to a tank we know nothing about. We must’ve had the same tattoo artist, though. It is a damned similar thing, our markings. Music in Tincture: Book 2, Chapter Fourteen: Lee Rosevere – Pavane pour une...
Feb 01, 2018•36 min
The day had started to stretch on, and there were always more questions. The animals were silent, distanced at the far end of the property near Urcent’s odorous work barn, and everyone else was out in the sun, mired in deep contemplation. Music in Tincture: Book 2, Chapter Thirteen: Allen Masterton – Cowboy Conversations Kreng – Celeano Krowne – Embarrassed Even By Death Allen Masterton – More Cowboy Conversations Podington Bear – Dark Matter MiaMia – Bend Over Harder Brian Joseph Davis and Stev...
Feb 01, 2018•37 min
With a shriek and a rumble, the black car awoke. Rachel breathed a sigh of relief. She tested the clutch pedal and pushed the gear shifter into a variety of patterns, then held her thumb out of the window to Arachal. Music in Tincture: Book 2, Chapter Twelve: Lee Rosevere – Phase of Prisms Lee Rosevere – Illuminations Vitus Von Degen – Pulse Lee Rosevere – Cat Wearing Glasses Lee Rosevere – The Car Chase Lee Rosevere – Opening Titles Lee Rosevere – The Ambient Ukulele Lee Rosevere – Ice Chimes D...
Feb 01, 2018•34 min
Unlike most in the barren, Barabbas was unconditional. Marcus, Yerses, and Devil were still asleep, the trio lying around the smolders of the previous night’s fire—the two decoy fires still within sight, but smoldering the same. Abranyah sat several yards out from the group, watching Barabbas torment Salt, the two a few yards even further, and it was clear that while the horse could not see the dog, she enjoyed the play. Music in Tincture: Book 2, Chapter Eleven: The Green Kingdom – spring_thaw ...
Feb 01, 2018•37 min
Excerpted from: Revenants of War An Attempted Guide for Safe Warrant After The Whatever Let us be practical. Most bodies who wander in and out of their day, they do it while accepting a relative amount of uncertainty. When one cannot remember this-or-that, taking a long mosey across the dust, a day trip putting heel after heel into the world on some sort of mission, one had better bring company along. Even better, paper. I’ve slept under the stars while finishing notes on some particular journey...
Feb 01, 2018•34 min
Vagueness and the inevitable questions it created only frustrated Rachel, and she had decided that her current predicament was simply one spot too many. “Sorry, from up here it sounded like you said ‘your chair’ told you I’d be arriving,” she yelled. The static voice returned. “Well, yeah. I’m not sure if he talks to other people, though. I’ve been alone for quite some time.” “Mm-hm,” shot Rachel. “Well I’m almost convinced. Just ask the fridge or the cabinets what they think, and we’ll be set.”...
Feb 01, 2018•35 min
