Fantasy, Fiction, Flirting, Fighting.
Watching a friend or coworker out themselves as a Republican voter is jarring and upsetting and alarming: somewhere between watching a man open his trench coat to reveal a bomb strapped to his chest, and watching a man open his trench coat to reveal his naked body beneath.
(There is no good ending when a dude opens his trench coat in broad daylight. There is no good surprise waiting when a coworker says that he's “concerned about all this 'woke' nowadays.”)
Is it weird that i can feel it? Like, really feel it. it's late. I've seen this time before. I know what time it is. I know exactly what time it is.
This is when 15 year old Salt put his legs in the unheated pool in the Los Angeles winter and just waited for God to see him (suffer) and
This is when 17 year old Salt gripped his chest and fell to his knees and moaned and prayed and
This is when 19 year old Salt poured his very soul onto papers and screens to tell you and everyone else about the yawning black hole tearing a hole in his chest and eating every feeling inside him until all that was left was desolate empty antipathy churning and sloshing and seething and pulsing and
This is when 21 year old Salt jogged and ran down the campus quad and up the steps and sat and yelled at God when he was certain his poems wouldn't amount to anything and anyways it was no good and no use and
This is when 23 year old Salt sat and sank into his bottles when he realized God wasn't going to yell back at him and even if he did would he even hear Him because he hadn't in so long and
This is when 27 year old Salt watched his wife sleep peacefully and wished he could do something about the 12 year torment keeping him awake at the witching hour and he wanted the quiet around him to quell the loud loud loud loud inside him and
This is when 31 year old Salt takes a shower, drinks water, and lays down, certain that he and his aches and his ADHD are beheld by a caring God and that his struggle has meaning and that it will neither consume him nor define him and that he has work in the morning and that his emotional dysfunction will be overcome by medication and sleep
I know this time very well. And it too will pass.
Find shorter thoughts at https://c.im/@NaClKnight
Early March, The Year Before Everything Happened
====================================== “You're fucking kidding me. I mean she's kidding right?” Sofia Gomez groaned. She stood there on the stage, wearing gym shorts and a sports bra. She'd comfortably made weight for her third professional MMA bout only to watch her opponent shed nearly all her clothing to barely make it under the 136 lb limit on the second attempt. Worse yet, the tall black woman had maintained a starry eyed, goofball expression throughout the proceedings as if she were simply happy to be there.
Sofia wondered if she'd looked that starstruck ahead of her professional debut. She doubted it; back then all she'd thought about was just beating the other girl by any means possible. As a final indignity, when they turned toward each other for the weigh in and matchup photos, her opponent had met Sofia's serious, 'fists raised' pose with a broad smile and a goofy pose more suited for a cartoon than a fighter. Sofia clenched her jaw: this girl must be fucking with her. She might not take Sofia serious yet, but once the cage door closed, this goofy teen would realize just how serious she was.
Unlike Sofia’s first two opponents, tonight's victim came with a little buzz of her own: amateur boxing, kickboxing, and MMA experience, and a famous mother. Her opponent's mother might be “The Assassin” but Sofia wasn't fighting Yolanda Freeman. She was fighting the daughter, an apparently starstruck college freshman. Sofia and her team didn't need tape to expect a technically proficient striker and only needed their eyes to recognize a girl in over her head. She ran her hands through her brown tresses and grimaced. Mauling a famous person's daughter might be just what she needed to finally earn the attention she deserved
When the Heavy Gate opened and the godjinn Jhuuba reached through it nearly a century ago, the sprawling desert northwest of the city sprung to life in response. The Nam-Yensa desert became the Nam-Yensa sandsea, a sprawling expanse perpetually churning and shifting on the whims of the Earthen deity. The city of Moghad stood just past the southeastern edge of the Nam-Yensa sandsea like a gateway to the Yol-Jhuuba principalities beyond.
The thriving city offered a number of amenities, not the least of which was the arena. Every city of any renown in Akkreja held an arena; in smaller cities the arena might double as the public square. Though the kingdoms of Yol-Jhuuba did not hold physical combat in the same regard as their equatorial neighbors, Moghad's proximity to Akkreja ensured a bustling, well regarded arena flourished there too. Inside it, in a broad lobby reserved for contestants, not spectators, a young man argued his case to one of the arena's many employees.
He'd expected more from this place. More theming: dirt and dust, glistening gems, or solid stone intricately carved by expert masons like in the stories his countrymen told about this place. Yol-Jhuuba, a sprawling land of mines and merchants formed less than a century ago from the more than two-dozen fiefdoms that dotted the stonelands. The country lay less than a week's journey southeast of his homeland of Akkreja, assuming a smooth trip across the unpredictable sandsea.
Travelers' tales swore that in Yol-Jhuuba, (frequently shortened to 'Yolj') a man's worth was measured by his money, not his might, and freedom was bought, not earned. Isaiah Wylde looked forward to discovering for himself what kind of place so many of his fellow initiates from the Wylde school had traveled to in order to test their mettle and their spellcraft.
He'd expected glitzy, ostentatious splendor and feverish movement and noise from a sprawling port city that might as well be one giant bazaar. Who wouldn't want to sign up for an arena this big, this widely advertised throughout the city? Instead, the broad youth stood in a long chamber ringed by drab, sand-colored walls. A solitary employee stood behind the counter at the end of the near empty room, yawning and staring at a clock near the counter.
Isaiah Wylde rolled his neck, took a deep breath, and prepared to change his whole life.
When I got my account banned from the Mastodon server hosting it earlier this year1 I had motherfucking feelings. I was confident 2 that I hadn't violated the spirit or the law of the server's rules. Being banned for a first offense felt particularly egregious.
This is gonna be messy. Not because I'm uncertain about my answers, but because I'm uncertain about best practices and accepted terminology. Bear with me. Rock with me. Suggest corrections. Comment.
So! The easy part is that I'm straight and cis. No surprise if you've read my other work. But I'm neither of those things by default. I've come to those conclusions after a lot more thought than I thought I would have to give them.
But I have good friends. They thought long and hard about themselves and their bodies and identities and desires. I followed suit. We've had fun, thought provoking conversations over the years.
She said she dated me because I had words when other men didn't. She said she fell for me because I had words that teased and taunted and tickled her. Words she had to think about for more than two seconds. Words she had to turn over and check for references and entendre and insight.
She liked the ones I wrote and the ones I spoke aloud.
She said I made her feel things she didn't think she was capable of. Like lust for a human in real life, or the desire for a man to rub her butt.
It took two whole years before she admitted that she thought was asexual, rather than demisexual, and for her to admit that her brain liked my words first.
And then her body followed.
I utterly love her. I love her like I love my life But that insufferable cliche is insufficient for the sentiment. I've loved her even, and especially, when I didn't love my own life.
Writing is a skill. A muscle to be clenched and relaxed. Trained and built. She likes a lot of my muscles. I love her.
When I sat down, I thought of this like a stretch for that muscle. Like touching my toes or wrapping my arm in front of my chest. Like normal though, my clearest thoughts are my second and third.
This isn't a stretch.
This? All of this? This is a Flex
Find shorter thoughts at https://c.im/@NaClKnight
Staff Sergeant Tiffany Couch had never been so happy to watch a man plummet from the sky. It was a curious thing to even consider. But as the wiry man fell towards the earth, his dirty blonde hair tousled by the wind, she couldn't shake the unmistakable feeling that their situation would improve dramatically once he hit the ground. The Army veteran hunkered down behind an uprooted tree and watched.
The man turned over in midair, righting himself right before he hit the tree line. A translucent purple haze covered his body, slowing his descent until his feet grazed the mossy carpet of the frosty Colorado forest. Sergeant Couch sprinted at him, trusting her squad to keep the attention of the monster they'd attracted.
“Glad to have you, Major,” she said, her voice low and tense. “Did Joint Command fill you in on the situa-”
“Jeez, you look like shit.” The new arrival interrupted her, looking past her and into the dense woodland behind her. “MC2 mentioned an 'unidentified hostile mage.' Something about 'hard light.' I'll figure it out as I go.” He shrugged.
“That's not just 'some mage.' That's Verdict, the religious terrorist.” She explained. “He's one of those Manifestations,”
“Pulse, Riot, Moon. Go get these folks to safety.” The tall broad man in the white and red outfit explained. Fire ensconced his head. It and his short fade haircut gave him the distinct look of a very brawny matchstick. Tension colored his voice, and he bounced in a boxer's stance: knees bent and fists ready. “I'll deal with her.”
10 feet behind him, the athletic woman working as the hero Pulsar felt her jaw tighten immediately. Heatstroke was treating them like kids again, like sidekicks instead of apprentices. The Korean American college student felt the cold air around her hands and felt, rather than saw, the swirling orbs of blue-white plasma growing in either palm. She fired a ray at the nearest shadow monster, obliterating it and leaving an ugly burn mark on the wall behind it. Pulsar saw it and gasped, then shook her wrists to dissipate her powers. Her aunt preached nothing so much as she preached perfect and unwavering control of the powers she and her niece shared, and Pulsar had let hers get away from her if only for a moment. She wiped her half-gloved hands on her sporty white and blue outfit as if she could literally wipe away her guilt.
“Heatstroke, we can help.” We can take her down together and...”
“Yeah, you can.” He interrupted her, punching clean through a shadow beast as it leapt at a terrified businessman. The summoned shade disappeared in a flash of light and heat and Heatstroke didn't turn around when he addressed the teen trio behind him. “But right now you three are gonna turn around and make sure those innocent bystanders live to see another day. You're gonna do a damn good job keeping them safe. Understand? “