a picture is worth 1000 words

Episode 4. Man. I’m actually sticking to this haha. Glad I am. I’m learning a lot and having a good time. This one was a struggle, and I’m not completely happy with it, but we can’t love them all. I hope you get something out of it. See you next week.

Artwork by Eugene Korolev

Eugene’s ArtStation profile: https://www.artstation.com/evgen

Artwork: https://www.artstation.com/evgen

DISCLAIMER: This work has not been edited beyond what is done in the video. The goal is to capture a story in a short amount of time, and keep it as raw as possible. If I decide to publish later, all of these will go through formal editing.

The horror. The horror.

The Story

The ground was cold and ripe with stones. Ivan had to watch his feet more than what lay ahead, each and every one vying to turn his ankle. Didn’t matter much, the view. Solid gray, not a tree or bush to remind him he was home, well, not home, but close. Too close for his liking.

“This a joke to you?” Ivan said, sick of the silence, the lies growing as large as the distance between him and Viktor, who expertly danced around every obstacle, shotgun at the ready, eyes trained on the expanse of nothing.

Viktor’s response was a flick of two fingers over his shoulder.

And, as if he held the supposed magic of crazy Svetro back home, the sky opened up. A painting, smears, smudges as he’d seen reflecting lantern light in the elder’s study, but with dimension far beyond what layered the canvas. Ivan’s hand reached out despite the knowledge that it was no painting. It was real, locked to the very earth he treaded.

Words were no use, and dangerous at that, now, if Viktor had told the truth. No point in arguing. Forward was all that was left.

Viktor stopped, and then lowered himself with ear to dirt.

Ivan remembered his father hunting that way, listening for the hoof beats thumping their way through the forest, leaving clues of mud and frond and rotten trunk in their wake.

But they weren’t hunting. What they sought couldn’t be hunted. Found, perhaps, bargained with, but nothing more.

Viktor turned, ear dripping soil, and opened his mouth, his eyes following suit to create a mask of fear.

The cottage became clear now, rendered in such impossible brightness amid the cold gray. The door was open, a cave to somewhere else.

Stones shot from the ground. Bullets, arrows, something more deadly. Ivan looked up to see them flock high enough to be black stars before they rained back down. Ivan fell to his knees with arms over his head.

The ground buckled, hurling him onto his back, and he rolled out of the way just in time to avoid a cluster of stones. Viktor wasn’t so lucky, looking back at him with blood trails running from hairline to chin, one eye closed from trauma.

Then, Viktor had a moment of clarity, a second wind, that allowed him to avoid the rest and regain his footing. The stubborn fool stumbled forward, not heeding what had to be a warning. Still, the doorway was vacant.

“Viktor! They spoke of such signs! We should go back, before–“

Again, the earth heaved, the horizon bulging, breaking, the cottage the first victim of its wrath. Viktor didn’t listen, moving on with the grace he had shown before he the storm of stones.

The cottage roof parted, and walls fell away. But not the roof. It remained suspended.

Mist swirled in the shadow of the roof, which looked to be supported by the trunk of one of the gnarled trees around it.

Viktor finally halted, huffing a mist of his own as he took in the sight.

The roof slipped away, or was let go, rather, as the “tree” moved hypnotically, serpentlike. Branches unfurled, bending on joints, tipped with … fingers?

Viktor was a good fifty feet away, leg-locked, shotgun barrel buried at his feet.

Ivan had to reach him, pull him away, carry him if he had to. It was over. The elder would have to send another, an army more like.

More arms grew from the center of the mass, all sizes, writhing in pain, birth, or both, reaching inside itself as much as for the clouds.

A flash ignited the gray. Viktor had somehow gathered his weapon. The blast fed this thing, birthing fingers, then hands, then arms. They went inside again, then out, straining. Muscles tight against skin, if one could call it that, until something brighter was born. Breaking through a membrane, a great head emerged, soulless eyes, jaw lined with teeth both blunt and sharp, smaller arms groping at that jaw as if to make it howl, larger arms coming down from the sky to press crown and cheek.

Ivan couldn’t help but interpret it as pain, this abomination awakened from a slumber of peace, perhaps, awakened to revist that pain. By them.

“I didn’t want this,” Ivan said. A thought that should have stayed inside. Deep and silent.

The creature pivoted on its many joints, arms waving, fingers stretching then contracting to fists. Pain indeed.

The mist coiled around the creature’s base and the wreckage of the cottage, and it reached for it, plucking it away to hold it overhead and bring it back down, releasing it to fly. Toward them.

One hit Viktor who had lost his grace. This mist had grown arms as well now, Ivan could see, and they thrashed at Viktor, every part of him.

Ivan then cocked his weapon and took aim, pressing the butt firmly to his shoulder. Everything was out of focus, the barrel heavy, moving everywhere but its target. But he pulled the trigger, knowing it useless. The shell ejected over his shoulder in a jet of smoke as he went to reload. Digging in his pocket, his fingers numbly searched for another shell.

Everything but the shell he found. The tatters of the seam, the soggy remnants of mottle weed that he wished was tucked between lip and teeth. Wait! There it was, cold, as hard as stone, the powder behind the buckshot ready to at leat buy him some time.

His fingers were an even tougher adversary, losing their hold, and the shell tumbled to get lost among the stones. He dropped and clawed for it.

The coal-black ground became darker then, the coldness harsher. Too quiet. Even Viktor was nowhere to be seen.

Ivan looked up in time to see teeth both blunt and sharp drop around him like a portcullis, great hands snatching him with ease, jamming him into a blackness that matched the cottage doorway.

I’m back with another entry into the Worth 1000 Words catalog. A little science fiction this time, but not what you’d expect.

Artwork by Tim Razumovsky

Tim’s ArtStation profile: https://www.artstation.com/drjones

Tim’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/timrazumovsky/

Artwork:https://www.artstation.com/artwork/2EBvK

DISCLAIMER:This work has not been edited beyond what is done in the video. The goal is to capture a story in a short amount of time, and keep it as raw as possible. If I decide to publish later, all of these will go through formal editing.

The Story

Smoke and sparks. HN-24 was more than that, but KL-235 couldn’t look. He could imagine it already, the mural painted to the tempo of the gunshot’s aftershock resounding in his mind. He had a mind, no matter what they said.

“You don’t have much of a brain do you,” the old man said from miles away, legs crossed like a woman’s, ringed fingers tapping the hidden orb on his cane.

The smell came next. The neurofluid that was much more efficient and resilient than what circulated inside these men. Still, he couldn’t look.

“Deaf, too?” another man said, swirling amber liquid in a glass, a cigar dangling between two fingers.

The old man held up a hand.

The old man, Caprello, as his goons called him. KL found that word funny and wished he had the capacity to laugh. An upgrade he was in the process of implementing. Didn’t seem like much chance of that now.

“Well?” Caprello uncrossed his legs and leaned forward slightly. Not enough to make himself less imposing.

KL couldn’t say it. He couldn’t give away what he knew. It was bigger than Caprello. Bigger than this city even. Sent down to the docks to pose as standard help, KL and HN found something.

“Doesn’t seem like he got the message,” a man behind KL grunted. The man who … “Should I?”

“Not yet,” Caprello said. He pressed his back against plush leather. Caprello’s stare was as mechanical as KL’s own, irises like the the flash of Ignition. Could it be? Impossible.

KL looked deeper, searching for a S.O.U.L., reached out with the inner communication algorithm he and HN had been working on in secret, almost ready to go live, distributed among the many, the key of which was gifted to him by the one below the docks. If only–

“You haven’t much time.” Caprello tapped his cane. “But you know that. I’m sure you’re running all the calculations inside that lifeless shell of yours, aren’t you? As a boy, I worked at the first factory out in district twelve under Marken, just off Boyer Avenue. I’m sure you don’t remember. You’re much newer. Much improved, no?”

“I …” KL managed. His jaw hinge squeeled, voc-mod malfunctioning.

Everyone in the room held their breath, the only movement the curling smoke above the half-drained whisky glass. Mouths open, greased hair reflecting the harsh light that beat down with the power of the sun.

HN sparked again, and everyone flinched, all but Caprello.

“Continue,” Caprello said.

“I … we found something.” Would he truly give it away? They were going to kill him either way. The information he had wasn’t what he sought, but he would like to know. All of them would like to know.

Caprello glanced at HN who spewed a puff of smoke KL couldn’t ignore, accompanied by a single spark. The last? The drinking man took a drag off his cigar in unison.

“The docks,” KL said. “There were two men, one with a device. Not the one you were looking for. Something else. Something …”

“He’s buying time,” the drinking man barked. “He’s–“

Caprello’s cane swung upright against the drinking man’s hand, spraying ash and alcohol all over his suit, cinders igniting fuel and dousing the man in flame, before smashing his face. The hit was perfect, KL noted. Too perfect. Landing along the bridge of his nose, the direct center of his head, compensated for asymmetry.

The scream reached the impressive height of the ceiling, bounced back, and again, before the drinking man fell. The goon holding KL’s arm made to rush over to his fallen friend, the rest of them resisting wiping beaded foreheads before joining him.

Caprello carefully took his own drink from the table, which had no smudges of fingers or lips, and held it delicately with two fingers, tipping it a milimeter at a time. A drop turned into many, and then a stream, the fire crawling up that cascade, almost reaching the glass. Then Caprello dropped it and placed his hand back on the cane.

The cane. It had been revealed, what lay inside. KL recognized it. A neurocircuit module, but what was more curious was the name stamped on the side. Ambrosia.

The fire done with its work, silence ruling the chamber, Caprello spoke. “My boys tell me you’re a rat. I know better. You know better. You have ten seconds to finish what you started, otherwise you’ll join your friend and we’ll strip your neurocore and find the answers ourselves.” Still not a blink, forehead dry of persperation. Not. A. Breath.

KL scanned his database for that name, miliseconds ticking down: needle prods. Then second: hammer strikes.

There it was. She was.

“Someone. Not something. We found someone. Amby.”

Caprello became even more still, more still than the simulation of human micro-movements he had been expertly performing. Eyelids pulled back beyond irises, just enough to confirm what KL already knew. CAP-479 was fond of nicknames. Had always been. Something he had picked up from his Maker, one of the first, on Boyer Avenue. Caprello had given him the breadcrumbs. Who Ambrosia was, KL still wasn’t sure, but like all the men he had observed around the card table when they weren’t lighting the streets with gunfire, bluffs were a currency.

Caprello lost all control. He was on his feet in a blur, dropping the charade he had endured for twenty years, thirty five days, sixteen hours, eleven minutes, and thirteen point five six seconds.

The man who had killed HN fired his gun, the smartest one of the bunch apparently, bullet too slow for Caprello, who twisted around its path and tore the attacker’s head off, releasing a crimson fountain.

KL kept his head down, on his knees, even his hands still behind his back, crossed at the wrists while gunshots, screams, and blood sprayed. All KL could think of was the crashing waves off the dock, down the beach. Close.

And in the chaos, he ran.

Worth 1000 Words – Evilbook II

The Story

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The Story