yay
maybe
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or a prequel
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Will I die a horribly violent death at the hands of my son?
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#givecordaxabackstory
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0/10 author avatar is a mary sue I will destroy you for this.
/s
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–
Chapter 2
–
The door slowly swung open, my knee resting securely on the knob, now several feet off the ground as the cold, empty street lay before me. This was hardly the most concerning portion of the current dilemma, as now the doorknob was threatening to disconnect from the rest of the door while I am several feet off the ground. It’s the impending contact with a hard surface at a considerable velocity which is the most worrying, not simply my distance from the impact zone.
Out in the cold, dark street, silence reigns supreme. Outside of the creak of hinges from the door I cling to, no sound permeates that pause in ambience. Not even the wind makes a noise. The entire world is poised to watch me drop, hoping the knob would break.
And yet, I know- I know somewhere out there someone is watching. Peering out of the void, just beyond what I can see here, wondering what it was that sounded just a moment ago. Could this person see me, know me from such a distance? The street light fell full upon my body, and I stare daggers at it in return. No sense of privacy. If Ghid did one thing right, it was to-
Oh no. The top screw is stripping the threading in the wood. A moment too long, a position incorrectly timed or thought-out, and the doorknob will entirely disengage. If I can possibly redistribute my weight to my hands where I grip the edge of the door, perhaps I can-
Hm. I should put in a proposal that all doors and doorways have cat latches or something so there’s some possible way for me to get in and out alone without having to deal with this garbage.
If you’re wondering, yes. I am now tasting brick.
Picking myself up, I realized in utter disgust that my fall had thrown my hat into the street. Swinging the busted door shut, I shuffled over to retrieve it- oh, for crying out loud, now I have to explain that too, don’t I? If I keep going at this rate there won’t be any vagueness or mystery about my attire, stature, age, dental plan, or whatever else you clods reading this pester me about.
It’s a newsboy cap. What color? None of your business. One must fight for one’s comforts, and if I don’t start now I won’t have any left.
Regardless, I barely have time to place it on my head before I feel a knife at my throat. My hands unfolded into the air, tense with anticipation at whirling around and smashing this would-be assailant against the wall. As the figure lowers himself to my height, I could feel the comically large brim of his hat push against my own scalp attire, and in that moment I realized this person had no fashion sense whatsoever.
The steely head crept towards mine across a stiff leather collar, two pinpoint lights serving as the pupils of what was otherwise a void in each socket. His head was skull-ish in appearance, with exposed teeth, a nose cavity, and a built-in grin, but calling it a skull in a true sense would be incorrect. It seemed to be comprised of rock, grey in appearance with a very matte texture and no radiance of warmth.
As for the rest of his appearance… I could not see much then, but he suddenly gave me the great benefit of grabbing me by the chin and forcing my neck at an uncomfortable angle, the side effect being the revelation of the rest of his appearance. He was dressed like a stereotypical cowboy who somehow has modern-enough attire to be a stereotype in the fullest sense. Bone-thin legs arched into black bellbottom jeans and extremely pointy cowboy boots, while his leather jacket hid two revolvers to add to the existing pair on his hips. His shoulders were boxy and angular, and his hat - oh, his absurd, idiotic, overly wide hat - was wider than his shoulders could ever dream to be. Evidently he thought he was something special else he would never go out in public looking like such a clown.
At least, I hope he wouldn’t.
“It’s a bit late out tonight, mister.” He spoke, charging his voice with the worst attempt at a manly southern drawl that you could conceive. I’m telling you, it was hard not to laugh spontaneously at it. Very.
“Weren’t you supposed to be in bed by ten?” I quipped back, earning a nice knee in the side and a rethreatening of the knife. “Your mother will be very cross at you, you know.”
Oh, and fingerless gloves. He had fingerless gloves.
My retort quip didn’t seem to dissuade him. Instead he began standing back up and, perhaps just to see if he could, lifted me into the air by the collar. “Tell you what son, why don’t we go have a chat with the man and see if he’s willing to let you tag along. Alright?”
I didn’t have much choice. In response I folded my arms and glared. As this story proceeds I imagine I will be glaring an awful lot.
“By the way, my name’s Diero.” He continued his horrible south of the dixie line drawl as we - or perhaps I should say he, with me as luggage - started walking toward the darkness. “In case you’re left alive you ought to know. If not, there’s no harm in telling you, is there?”
“None for you.” I replied. “Me, I’ll have to think about how dumb Diero’s hat is for the next ten minutes.”
–
11 Likes
In this new and exciting chapter of The Book of Dreams a short person in a newsboy cap finds out what concrete tastes like and gets kidnapped by a skeleton cowboy! That’s what I call “good literature”!
That was surprisingly quick, I thought you were going to post them once a week at most.
Anyways, looks like Diero is going to be a ton of fun to draw when I get to making the book cover for this one.
Also, is this bad that I find his fashion sense extremely cool?
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ooh?
ooh?!?
awww…
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I can totally imagine him with a bad southern accent.
ah so the story takes place in London.
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London’s looking better than I remember.
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Eh heh hehh uhh…
Might get to a sluggish once every three weeks if I’m as lazy as I was with the last one. Trying to motivate myself to write as often as possible for this; each chapter takes a little less than an hour so far and there’s going to be more chapters than any previous ones have had.
Although as you can probably tell, the pace is a fair bit slower. Maybe that’ll change later on as well.
I completely forgot to start the story with “Gee, golly, gosh, Gloriosky”
I have failed as a writer
One can always hope. 
As if I would imply good guy to be tall in any way, shape or form
You were supposed to eat it
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i’m not gonna eat a knife that’s dangerous
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Very polite kidnapper
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KILL IT WITH FIRE
–
Chapter 3
–
It seemed like an insufferably long amount of time, that ten minutes, during which I hesitated every time the perfect insult for that wide-brimmed monstrosity atop the brow of the perfect gunslinging stereotype rested on the tip of my tongue. Not because I was afraid of either death or this clearly overcompensating clod, but because I was actually enjoying the free transportation. Walking gets tiring for someone my height, that someone being me specifically.
However, my agonizing journey ended abruptly as we rounded a wall of trees and broke in upon a rather hushed conversation held by two individuals shrouded in the gloom of the darkness. Of course, at this distance, they wouldn’t remain hidden from my view for very long.
“That was remarkably quick.” One of the party said, cocking a sidelong glance at the two of us. Goodness, did I just refer to myself and this strop-strapped gaucho as ‘us’? I need to stop this guilt by association thing before it does me in. “Please tell me you didn’t break in and cause a row.”
“Nah,” Diero began, the first word dropping the southern dialect while the rest of the sentence immediately picked it back up and doubled down on the dialect to save face. “Mister walked right out in the middle of the street. Saved me a heap’ve trouble, and saved them folk the disturbance of a good night’s rest.”
“Diero, you-” One of the figures began, irritation sinking into his teeth and dripping from his most likely scowling mouth, as he began to walk forward, but abruptly stopped after a single step. “He’s still wearing his mask.”
“Huh?” Diero whirled around in a dramatic tornado of leather and stabbed his chiseled face directly into my personal space, dropping me on the ground in the process. “You little scamp! I thought you were just that ugly all on your lonesome. Hand it!”
As you may have suspected, the accent vanished without a trace during his surprise and irritation, but there would be no successful attempt on his part tonight. Deftly I caught the wrist of the hand that dove madly towards my eyes, threatening to deprive me of my mask. As I felt the unmoving skin beneath my gloved fingers, I- ugh. Ugh ugh ugh did I seriously just admit to be wearing gloves? Have I lost all amour-propre as a dramaturge so expeditiously? Should I stop using histrionic and daedalean lexemes which in their incogruous usance they flat-hat aloft the capitulum of the cumulative elocutionist assemblage that punctilious perusal of a lexicon is paramount for the perspicacity of the belles-lettres?
Yes, I have gloves. Yes, they are perfectly fit for my oversized hands. Yes, they are leather gloves. And yes, I want you to shut up so I can finish my thought.
As Diero’s wrist was caught in my big, stupid, gloved hands that want to give you a black eye for existing, I noticed the unmoving skin was extremely coarse and very stone-like. What was the secret of this callous clowboy, who now stared down at me in flaming disbelief that I could be so bold, so ambitious, as to grasp at the hand that dared to dominate and remove my lovely mask?
“Don’t bother.” I replied lazily, glaring up at the stunned desperado. “To avoid the machinations of Ghid I carved my mask out of wood. See?” I tapped at the mask which let out a resounding timberland tone. “So don’t touch it. Or me. Ever.”
Ah, but fool that I was to so easily let him go, as his hand resumed its mission to grasp my mask. Only now he simply ran his thumb over the grainy, painted surface to confirm my word was true. With a hiss of disappointment he resumed his stoic stance, folding his arms and becoming even more angular somehow.
“Disappointing.” The figure in the dark resumed his march, coming up to where we stood before crouching to glare me directly in the one visible eye. I couldn’t help but admire his dedication to leaving an impact. “The one job I thought Diero could accomplish without any difficulty. Well, I assume you know why we brought you here.”
Trying my best to ignore the reaction of disparity Diero possessed at the comment of failure I examined my rather unfriendly host. He wore a series of ragged black robes, obscuring the vast majority of his body, but his eyes gleamed out of the dark hollow they were nestled into. He looked like a large pile of trash bags; probably extremely cool in his own mind, but here he was just disappointing to look at. He seemed to sense this, his eyes squinting past the strange, black breathing filter across his mouth and nose, while the rest of him stood back up and grumpily marched back to his compatroit in the background, immediately blending in with the shadows.
Off to my side Diero had lit a match and was now igniting a cigar. As he dropped the match I caught it, pulling out a cigarette of my own to consume. By its light I barely identified the second figure, but he was so reflective it was impossible not to have discerned him with anything brighter. He was metallic, armored to the teeth, having no visible part of his body exposed. What was it with these people and completely closing off all exposure to air? That can’t be healthy for the skin.
Regardless, he was a head below the trash bag figure, yet in spite of this and his comparatively smaller frame, he had a presence which made it more than obvious he was the leader of this little expedition. With glowing white eyes he approached and glanced downwards at me, giving me a much better look at his armor. It was clearly some kind of metal, although almost artistically shaped and smithed, archaic in its layering and detailed with different designs. Despite his smaller frame the suit gave him the appearance of being fairly well-built, but it was impossible to tell if this was compensation on the part of the design or if he was that way underneath it all.
“I expect a great deal of information from you, Cordax.” He began. “It took us a great deal of time to locate you, and I hope you’ll be cooperative with helping us find your friend.”
Yes, I know you’re wondering why he addressed me as Cordax when my name is obviously Tott, and to be honest I have no idea what a Cordax is. Maybe it’s an insult for an exceedingly short person or something. I imagine with this interrogation-style questioning I’ll find out soon enough, especially since the moment he finished speaking he handed Diero a note of some kind and stalked back to the living dumpster.
Diero removed the cigar from his mouth, using its feeble light to inspect the contents of the note with a nonchalant air. Then, to my utmost confusion, he snapped up the note like some kind of hungry dog, devouring it with a voracity extremely unbecoming of someone of his dress and attire. Wordlessly he grabbed me by the back of my collar again and marched me over to the pair, revealing by proximity that they were standing in front of a logically impossible machine resembling some sort of wheel-less motorcycle with extremely extended seating.
“You’re going to tell us where Monopoly is, Cordax, and when we find him we’re going to ensure justice is done.” The silver figure said, walking over to the rear seat of the vehicle where a square object was obscured by a cloth. “We have it on good authority he is responsible for several murders and the detonation of a nuclear warhead.”
“Good authority?” I mused, sticking the cigarette in one of the lower holes in my Akaku.
The silver figure pulled the cloth off of the square object with dramatic flair, revealing an incredible object which I had absolutely no clue as to its purpose. It seemed completely useless, being a long rectangle of heavily-compacted metal, on top of which - and slightly crammed into the rest of the shape - rested a drawn, alien-like robotic head, sickening twisted pits where eyes presumably would go, and coupled with a pair of long, sinister pincers, which were the least damaged portion of the entire thing.
“Only the best.”
–
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BEEG yoshi chapter today, as a little gift before thanksgiving. I really hope you enjoy the world I’m setting up here, and don’t worry, the character deaths will start before very long.
Fans of the past books will most likely immediately have a heart attack at the last paragraph, in which case I would recommend having a team of EMTs on standby while you read this. On second thought, maybe I should have said this at the start of the chapter instead of after the end of it…
Fashionable and courteous aside from the knife part.
Tott’s getting some special treatment tonight. I mean Cordax. I mean Tott, I mean Cordax I mean Tott I mean Cord- agh, I’m getting another migraine.
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I would change my username to Tott if I had any username changes left
Also rectangle Krelikan rectangle Krelikan
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MY SON!
Best chapter so far
I guess I’m still a pile of funny moon sand tho since @Krelikan Is also a rectangle
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