Olgy and Incher and black-tongued Ewards, each selling coke to burn blue in your stove; at the foot of the Furnace they’re bastard dukes. But each must answer to the Coal King.
“I asked,” booms the King, “where’s my real share.”
“Oh!” babbles Coker Ewards, dangling from the King’s grip above the Curbin Street well. “I hadn’t counted pieces of coke I sold multiple times but I see now that was wrong!”
The Coal King bobbles his belt for a second; a squeak echoes down the abyss.
“Afraid of the dark?” chuckles the Coal King, whose name, once, was Nat.
There’s a church named after him in Kansas, which is hilarious. From 1922 to 1978 he made it a point to stop by the night before his own feast day, every year, and paint something obscene on the front doors–until they caught on in ’66 and he had to start writing on the grass with gasoline instead.
He would have liked to pee on the altar, but of course that would mean setting foot inside. Stupid rules. Eventually they paved the lawn and he got bored and went to Madagascar.
No way Ahasuerus is ever getting one, so, y’know, there.
“Hello!” beams Ryan as the ululations subside, “and welcome back to Graven Idol. Before the break you got to see Enlil perform ‘Ripening the Harvest,’ followed by Raël’s interesting take on ‘The Driving of the Infidel from the Lands of Our Fathers.’ Next up, let’s see what Molech’s got for us!”
The spotlight picks out a lopsided red clay figurine. His priest scuttles onstage, sets fire to a little pool of lamp oil, and dunks a baby in it.
“Okay!” says Ryan. “Judges?”
“That was really something special,” sniffles the one who’s usually a mean drunk.
“╚╘ï®â‚ªâ‚ª,” replies Molech, in cuneiform.
“Don’t,” she says.
“Too fast?” Their lips hover very close.
“Keith!” Her urgent eyes. “This isn’t as easy as it feels, this isn’t–if you–you can’t. It means too much.”
“All right,” he says. “What about a peck on the cheek?”
“Maybe–”
“Or on the soft place,” he murmurs, “right here behind your jaw…”
“Nnno!” She pulls back. “You’re not playing fair.”
“All right,” he says, a little hurt, reckless. “You tell me what I’m supposed to do, then.”
She holds out her hand.
“Here?”
He takes it.
“Okay.”
“Ready?”
“Okay.”
Then they kiss so hard she splits her lip.
“The goddess was bathing, and so she carved a sandalwood boy to stand guard,” mutters Reaching the West Reaches. The cave is dark, and his broken sword will not light the way. “But he was curious, and looked upon his mother in the bath; and her husband arrived home to find them–”
See Me leaps out, sword whole and gleaming. Reaching the West Reaches parries and feints, strikes, strikes again.
See Me’s head rolls to a stop. His own lacquer eyes look up from it.
“So the god cursed the boy,” he pants, “with an elephant’s head, too heavy to bear…”
The thing nobody thinks about is that it’s difficult to hold things, without fingerprints. Dollar bills, telephones, pub darts and pens: they just disappear when Tegan2‘s applying what should be the right amount of pressure. She’s broken more glasses that way.
It’s one of the minor side effects of clonehood–forced growth means skipping the details–but it occupies a frustrating amount of Tegan2‘s attention. Her friends joke that she should become a burglar, as if every scrap of her DNA isn’t owned.
Marlo’s learned to be quick at catching. Tegan2 keeps meaning to look up t-ball leagues.
“You’re aware of why you’re doing this, right?” Amy waves at the screen. “Working, throwing it all out there, panting over every inbound link? It’s such a transparent cry for affection–”
“Like you?”
“Like me.”
“But free distribution of digitizable content is the only model that even makes sense anymore!” Jake protests.
She smirks. “Coincidence. You only download music to get back at the RIAA too, right?”
“So what, I should put it behind a subscription wall? Print stories on t-shirts?”
“Well,” she says, “you could resell it in hardcopy.”
Jake winces. “Do I have to call it a ‘blook?'”