ok good
pfffttt imagine not cutting out social media on Christmas
Couldn’t be me.
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“He talks a lot. He thinks is he playing a game, but this is a game of my rules.”
― Oleksander Usyk
what was that noise?
oh.
Winger hyperventilating
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Ok so in addition to his wooden mask Tott also has wooden fingers.
It was also implied that he is not technically alive.
…
Interesting.
1 Like
–
Chapter 14
–
I regret many things during my life.
For instance, when I was younger I would rearrange the labels of items at a second hand store in order to net a deal. Very underhanded and technically criminal, no doubt, but I did not see an issue with it - that is, until I was almost caught in the act, which set me firmly on the straight and narrow. I considered it a message not to fool about with nefarious actions and to keep myself from actions so petty.
Granted, my actions have been repeatedly petty since then. But that is a topic of self reflection for another time; at this moment I am referring to regret.
One major thing I regret is not paying the slightest bit of attention to what the cowboy’s legs were doing while I held his neck in place. Namely, they had braced during my display of ominous revelation and now extended, pushing his head directly into my face and sending me reeling. Freed from my grip, he reached out to my collar and swung with all of his body, throwing me clean into the wall on the other side of the room.
I really do regret allowing that to happen.
The very next second I kicked off the wall to avoid falling into the flames below. Lacking a traditional body, I could not allow this one to touch the fire, lest I lose it. Being alive was a valuable resource in my quest to accomplish things and add to that regret list.
Credit where credit is due, Diero had seen the attack coming and responded by intercepting my dive with a savage hook, knocking me across the house. I landed somewhat disgruntled in what I had to assume was the kitchen, except it also connected to the front door and had no proper divider between it and the living quarters of the house. It was very disappointing and reeked of the 70’s and I hate the 70’s almost as much as I hate Diero’s stupid hat.
Now Diero walked ominously out of the shadow of the room, rolling his thumb across something in his hand. The telltale click-click-click sound identified it as one of the revolvers he so proudly displayed, and I knew what it was capable of. I reached for the closest floor cabinet door as the first shot fired, and the force of the impact told me it had collided with my right shoulder. The joint was still operational, as the very next moment I had ripped the door off its hinges and used the momentum to send it flying towards Diero.
The impact sent him stumbling slightly, and I hesitated - something else I regret, by the way. My hesitation gave him enough time to intercept my charging jump and pump another bullet into me, but if there is any justification for my action, it is to be found in the reason for my pause - I connected that the bullet fired against his head before and the door now were both fully inanimate objects, just like my body. He was forced to respond to their physics even if they couldn’t technically hurt him.
But now I was in a bit of a pickle. Diero had his mind made up to eliminate me and I didn’t know of a way to kill him or even stall him outside of blunt impact. Perhaps the blunt impact of a house falling on his head would slow him a little?
Right, where was I… He had intercepted my approach a second time and right as I leapt for his head he fired off another shot. The world tumbled around me for a second, and when I had all the walls and furniture straightened out, I collided with the far wall, nestled back in the dark.
Now the situation was much worse. I had landed right in the middle of the only unconsumed part of the floor, since it contained the metal safe embedded in the woodwork. Around me flames licked inches from my body, threatening to light me ablaze, while he slowly walked forward, reloading his revolver and scanning the room to see precisely where I had fallen.
Hurriedly I returned my glove to its proper hand and stood up, the motion betraying my location. He turned and fired a third shot, this one causing some strange, metallic noise to occur somewhere towards my right. Something bad must have occurred, because he responded to the sound with a devious and rumbling cackle, advancing through the flames with little regard for his western wear while I threw my hands up to prepare for his advance.
Hold on… I threw my hands-
Oh. He shot me in the right elbow and destroyed the joint. My lower right arm pronounced this fate, extended straight from the elbow, refusing to raise any higher and obscure the expression of sheepish disbelief which must have rung in my eyes. Well, one visible eye. Because I’m wearing the… You get the idea let’s move on.
My turning away gave him the opportunity to grip my head and stick a gun barrel into the socket of the mask and almost directly into my actual socket. A hideous breath of satisfaction escaped his grinning jaws, having finally pinned this annoying threat to his master’s orders. The wall creaked, and I could sense him hesitating as if he was looking up to determine the stability of the house. I wish this wooden mask had been made with lenses so my other eyes could see. Ghid really should not have mandated all masks obscure the entire right side of vision because only seeing with one eye in moments like a macabre matador performing retinal surgery with the business end of a firearm can be extremely annoying.
For the first time in my life, I made a maneuver that had not been calculated to any degree. I guess you would call it panic, but given my level of intelligence I never really experienced that emotion, so I would not know the legitimacy or accuracy of such a label. Regardless, calling it ‘panic’ for lack of a better title, I jammed my left hand outward and grabbed at whatever I could find. It was a strange, incredibly hard loop, like the handle of a cup, but too small to fit my fingers into. I would liken it to children’s scissors - the handle part, not the stabby- I mean slicey part - except somehow even more uncomfortable to grip.
I had clutched this for almost two seconds when suddenly the gun dropped from my socket and the figure of Diero slumped downwards, smothering me with the brim of his stupid, stupid hat. It took a few seconds to elbow him out of the way to see what had happened: The flame in his eyes had gone out.
Tentatively I reached for his sockets and felt the bridge of his nose which I had gripped. Any time which would have been spent pondering over what just happened and if I should stick my hand in the fire to sanitize it was stolen away from me like self-confidence from Cordax by the creaking and rumbling of the walls. The house was set to cave in on itself and I, poor little old me, was trapped in the middle at the furthest point from the door with a possibly dead skeletal cowboy.
I could bolt, but not through the fire. The chair was already engulfed in flames, and Diero was too thin to use as leverage to hop across the inferno despite how not catching on fire he was. Which begged an interesting question: How???
Far be it from me to theorize when there is a life on the line, however. Mine.
Gripping the jaw of the cadaverous cowpoke I slung him up across my shoulder and trudged towards the door, using what little body mas he had to shield from the flames. Once they caught across my drooping right sleeve, but I stepped on the offending portion until it extinguished. Only then did I realize my hat had flown off my head during the kerfuffle and lay in the kitchen, so I trudged out of my way to retrieve my loyal headgear.
The woodwork was going up like paper, and even the kitchen walls were coated in fire now. I had almost made it to the door when there was a loud groan, which ended in a tremendous roar as the ceiling caved downwards suddenly and terribly, cutting off all visible light and pinning the cowboy on top of me.
I hate having to inform you of things, but one thing I dreadfully despise is very enclosed spaces, especially when I am inside them. Were that not the case, I would’ve happily remained trapped under that prison of timber and tile, but I am not a man of curling into a ball and crying whenever a little inconvenience like everything going wrong happens. My motivation to be freed from this prison I was completely guiltless of forming was doubled by this discomfort.
I pushed upwards with my bad arm for a moment before I remembered that it wasn’t currently functioning, then switching to my left to see how much give there was. The ceiling refused to budge. The smoke from the ruined abode was getting insufferable and completely smothering my vision, making the whole dramatic escape thing rather difficult. Very well, the next option would have to be pursued - kicking at the one board I could feel with my feet and hoping the door was on the other side of it. Not even that seemed to give, rigidly resisting each effort to push it aside.
And it was then that I realized I was thoroughly caught between the deadsperado - I really do deserve some kind of award for comedic genius dedicated to my person for the reminder of my lifetime for that one - and what was formally the kitchen floor, now smeared with burnt wood and flaking ashes. No amount of effort could free me from this prison I was in; I had no avenue of escape. Frightful of being illogically trapped forever despite the rest of the group most definitely still existing in the vicinity, I reached out for help from somewhere, someone, just to free me from my fate.
There was a click. Not an audible one, but something felt, like… Well, I don’t know, like… Like when someone is staring into the back of your head and you know that it’s happening, even though you can’t see it at that moment. It was like… that. Look, I’m trying, okay?
And then, something inexplicable. Something I was not seeking, but found; something not dreamed of, but determined by someone beyond my field of vision. An emotion, a message, delivered by the desperate cry of another heart and soul reaching through the smoke and timber to pull me to safety. It was an open gift, bought and paid for, free for me to claim in the trust of a hand stronger than my own.
It was hope. Limitless and unyielding, it cut through the air and debris like a piercing sword from the skies, devouring the panic and desperation in a blinding display of fury, emboldening my efforts and unveiling strength I was not certain could exist. Not of this wooden body, but the mind which lied behind.
My constitution restored, I threw my weight against the board with an unfettered resolve, resulting in a satisfying crack running through the length of the beam. Again and again I smashed my heels against it, and it broke into more and more pieces, finally giving way and revealing the night air beyond. Digging my toes in I pulled as hard as I could, dragging my upper half along while my functioning hand held the cowboy by the jaw.
Heh. Deadsperado. I like that.
Finally I could feel the open air, and I stood, leveraging my full weight against the ground as I pulled on the disgruntled deadsperado heh out from under the flaming wreck. With him in a pile I turned around to see the front door - or what was left of it - still standing. I butted my head against it, sending it tumbling to the ground and revealing myself and my compatri- my Not Compatriot to the world again.
There was a silence broken only by the groaning and popping of the flaming wood. I walked down the street, dragging the cowboy behind me, as the party I had previously left was now staring at me in wide-eyed shock while I approached. Was it because I looked like Columbo had crawled down a chimney? Or perhaps it was their unstoppable killer ranch hand had been underhandedly bested in what he was best at?
“Not my best look, I admit.” I began, going with the former of the two possibilities as it would lead into more jokes. “And yes, I do enjoy a good smoke, but… Well, he wasn’t a fan. Can’t blame him, though. You know, shag tobacco and shag carpeting aren’t interchangeable for most, but with great power comes-” I faked a cough “Great respiratory ability. What, no encore?”
I could feel someone staring into the back of my head. The party in front of me had shifted their gaze upwards. There are many things I regret, but none of them so much as getting up this morning.
–
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You need to stop running while reading these
It is now implied he might not be alive in any sense in five minutes.
Ruh roh.
n-no comment
6 Likes
eeenteresting…
Also yay a new chapter
It’s been six days since the release of the latest chapter and still no conspiracy theories!? That’s unacceptable!
Time to fix this, I guess…
Now hear me out: I think I figured out who Tott is. He is obviously both Pinocchio and a cat at the same time… somehow…
And obviously he’ll turn out to have been the main villain of the story all along and the other characters will have to team up with Monopoly, Yuo and Ghid to beat him. I am obviously right and not going crazy, I swear!
As for the other stuff,
Awwwwwww, what a shame, you killed off Diero (he’s truly Diero now, isn’t he?) again…
Or did you?
7 Likes
I … it didn’t show up in my unreads for the new chapter. Weird.
3 Likes
–
Chapter 15
–
I looked down at the cadaverous cowboy comatose on the ground beside me. Behind my head I heard a click - far more audible than the one I had felt before. Leveraging as much weight as I could, I swung about, dragging the clod off of the street and into the air, swinging it violently at the individual behind me.
There was a wet, slimy impact, and the furious yellow face of that vile eight-armed monster burned its furious hatred down upon me, solid red eyes, gleaming daggers into my mind. I barely had time to drag Diero’s floppy body over my head before a hail of lead beat down upon it, riddling his back with bullets which shattered into flakes of metal, flying in every direction.
Overtop of me I felt the pressure of a weighted step, and the large monster reeled backwards, silently aiming his guns upwards. A slight peek told me Jethryn and his creepy lower half had tackled the fiend, with the competent part trying to drag the creature down, and the part named Jethryn wrapping his arms around as many of the mechanical arms as he could, which tried desperately to twist their wrists around and plant a bullet in his brain. Such a monumental effort, I thought; how difficult it must be to shoot a grain of rice.
“Hold!” The silver stooge shouted, bolting towards the creature and- oh, no wait, he was running towards me and taking away my wonderful bullet proof shield. Why did he have to be a jerk even when being attacked by a giant yellow blob?
“How on earth-?” He gawked, lifting Diero’s skull and staring in shock at it. Sensing the next move, I rammed myself into the side of his hip to knock him out of the way, as the large creature threw the lower half of Jethryn towards the anodize airhead. Do not equate this action as genuinely caring; I had to imply that I did lest he think I maliciously took out Diero.
Two arms swung to the side to grapple Jethryn’s arm, while the remainder he had been clinging together wrapped around his other. “Change of plans!” Jethryn cried out, trying his best to look over his shoulder. “Dream: HawkflAAAAAAAUUGHH!!”
The large monster had ripped Jethryn nearly in half. My body completely froze in shock; I had no idea how to process what had just happened. Knowing now that this action would seal Jethryn’s fate, I find myself incapable of sleep at night; how can I rest, how can my mind be at ease, knowing that action here might have prevented that from occurring? How will I ever find the means to stop this grief, this silent sickle ripping deep gashes in my heart, pulling my voice from my throat, shuddered sobs and choking gasps forced to fill the void? Were I in possession of the power to rewrite the past I would alter many things, but I would spare Jethryn this unkind card dealt him by this foul fiend and the forces which drove him to act.
One hand caught hold of the arm which still clung to the largest half of Jethryn, while the remainder aimed all seven revolvers at myself and drew back the hammers. Cordax had taken the opportunity to disappear. The silver stooge and myself had no visible opportunity to defend ourselves from the imminent hail of lead.
“Dream…” A feeble voice whispered. “No Mercy.”
The sound of steam rising from a kettle broke onto the scene, shattering the silence. As it grew louder and nearer, I suddenly realized the noise was not the hiss of steam, but the hiss of a living voice. Absolute, white-hot rage, boiling over the limit of reason.
Like a bowling ball of violence the lower half of Jethryn smashed the three of us aside, and I saw with a thrill that the large, bizarre skull of this Dreamer was glowing bright white, mist-like flames licking off its scalp. All the revolvers fired at once, but the bullets melted into red streaks of metal in a flash across his face. I was about to watch someone die, and I was captivated with a thrill of an act of justice being accomplished. Not with the act itself; I was horrified and very shortly after thoroughly disgusted with the method and the notion, but I will not lie and say the excitement was not there.
All the arms emptied their bullets into this thing’s face to zero effect. With the cry of an angry dove, it lept atop the device and bit savagely into the yellow creature’s face, the gelatinous flesh sizzling and bubbling from the heat. It gave no cry of pain, slamming its hands into the avenger in an attempt to repel the assault, but to no effect. No living thing could stop a Dreamer.
The attack grew more and more ferocious, the little thing absolutely decimating all organic substance in the frame, and then turning in a blind fury upon the mechanical components, biting down on whatever could fit into the elongated jaw. Nothing could withstand the intent of the Dreamer, and before long nothing but random scraps and the smell of fried seafood remained.
Chromeboy and myself exchanged flabbergasted glances. The cough of Jethryn brought us both back to reality, and we tore across the street to reach him, he kneeling down at the side of what left of his friend and I trying to focus both on the pair and the still glowing Dreamer which had terrified me seconds ago.
“Jethryn, we can fix this. We’ll get you to safety and figure out how to undo all of this.” Chromeboy kept promising as he tried relocating some of the excess rags to cover the open wound. “Stay with me, okay? You’re not out of the game yet.”
Jethryn didn’t respond, looking up with an expression of resolution. Perhaps he intended to die. I would never find out his intent, however, because Diero decided to take the opportunity to stand up. He sniffed the air and brushed himself off extremely casually, looking about and stopping at the sight of the completely destroyed house.
“Well, I guess that’s one way to accomplish it.” He stuck his hands in his pockets and rolled his jaw. “Say, what’s that vile smell? Somebody been cooking octopus or something?” He turned around and saw Jethryn lying on the ground, causing him to cock his hat downward. “Mighty sorry about that, mister. Anything I can do to help you there?”
The reflective rogue scribbled something on a piece of paper and thrust it towards Diero, who took if casually and chewed it into powder. He suddenly bolted over to Jethryn’s lower half and forced the head of the fiend to make contact with the exposed wound, searing the gash and stopping the loss of bodily fluids. Jethryn hissed violently in retaliation of the pain, and the lower half immediately cooled off as a result. Diero lifted the remainder of Jethryn’s upper half and froze, one hand traveling to his revolver while his eyes swept the area.
I could feel the presence of a hundred eyes bearing down all around me. In the moment it felt as if I was staring at myself from countless angles. The group around me seemed to be suddenly aware of this sensation as well, as they all began turning about to find the source of the feeling, and from every closed door, barred window, dark alley, and shadowed corner approached the Akaku-wearing citizens, braving the danger to investigate what had occurred.
Diero leveled his revolver at a number of them, scowling angrily. Jethryn’s lower half braced in a lunging position. Chromeboy began scanning the sky for a way to escape. Cordax tumbled out of one of the doors, backing away from the crowd with his knife drawn and held underhand.
Why the sudden fear? It was because every Akaku they wore had glowing orange eyes, piercing the darkness. It was because Ghid was now officially watching, officially aware.
And if the rest of these morons’ reactions were correct, officially angry.
–
7 Likes
alright Ghid is now aware of his own characters
things’ll get interesting soon
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First chapter of the new year. Let’s start things off on the right foot with the first character death!
Really wanted to show just how dangerous a threat the Dreamers are if given the right tools. Don’t worry though; this is the least of the feats we will see accomplished by different Dreamers throughout the story.
And I do quickly want to clarify something else - the lower half of Jethryn was not and is not a boards member from the signups.
Yet.
Yeah I had no idea I was writing a book until now, funny how that works huh
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Gone, but not gone.
I mean forgotten. Gone but not forgotten.
Yeah.
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hwat
I thought it was Burnet …
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he said yet
nuuuu i’m like three chapters behind
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