Michael Scott Hand

picks up stones, says they are diamonds
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  • Category: Fragments

    • The Arrival

      Posted at 8:32 am by Michael, on January 20, 2021

      We watched the spaceships from our backyards. It was night, but the underlights of the ships made everything glow all fuzzy-like, like a garden party. The kids watched with us, I know we should’ve told ‘em to go back inside or something; to hide under their bed covers, or under their beds. But I’m not sure that really would’ve helped with anything.

      Sooner or later, they’re going to know the truth, that the planet earth had been invaded by aliens (extra-terrestrials Shaun calls ‘em as if there’s any difference) and it weren’t no invasion we were equipped to fight back against.

      By all accounts the invasion was over before it began.

      First, we saw the lights. Like so many stars coming home. Except they weren’t the same colour as stars, which mainly look so cold sittin’ out there in the distant dark. Yellow and red and orange were mostly the hues and they filled up the night sky something fierce!

      Experts on the TV news said that it was some sort of astrological event, involving the diffusion of particles from a disintegrated meteor being scattered by the earth’s atmosphere and refracting the light or some such nonsense. Shaun believed ‘em of course, he always believes the experts on the TV news.

      But that explanation didn’t hold for long. Because those meteorite particles just kept on gettin’ closer and closer til we was sure that humankind was about to go extinct like those big ol’ lizards did way back before Mary ‘n’ Joseph.

      Down they came, lower and lower and they brought their shadows with ‘em until finally shapes began to form around the lights, indistinct at first but now…

      My god… now.

      I ain’t never seen anything so grand or so terrifying. But let me tell you these spaceships aren’t like nothin’ I seen in one of them sci-fi picture shows. Those spaceships always look so sleek and perfect. Like tin cans jiggling on the end of fishing wire. Orbs and spheres and flying saucers, oh my.

      No sir, these spaceships look like nothing more than factories in the sky, and my Pa worked at Atwell Manufacturing so this gal knows what a factory looks like, if you please. And these spaceships are all girders and chimney stacks and pipes and metal grates and corrugated walls and vents and flashing blinkin’ lights all yellow and orange and red all lighting up the neighbourhood like a gosh-darn garden party.

      And here we all are just starin’ up at ‘em like slack-jawed fools as they slide across the sky, you can hear ‘em vibrating there in the sky. You can hear them rattling and shaking like an old car does when you’re driving it one last time to the wrecker’s yard.

      We can’t see the sky no more. And we ain’t seen no aliens yet. And the TV news isn’t working anymore, it just shows static and Shaun keeps trying to adjust the aerial like that’s going to help. There’s a radio on the kitchen table that is still working, but the folks on there don’t know what to say any better’n the rest of us know what to think.

      Crackle… fuzz… have you ever seen anything like it? Are these—aliens—or a more human menace?

      Darlin’ I thinks to myself as Jeremy’s little hand reaches up at clasps mine, his tiny little hand. I don’t know if he’s afraid or not. I don’t know if I’m afraid or not. But I do know that those ships-in-the-sky sure as hell ain’t no Communists.

      Next door’s son is a teenage lout and he’s up on the roof throwing trash up at the sky and callin’ out to ‘em like they can hear him. Somewhere else somebody is settin’ off firecrackers in a trash can. There’s a siren wailin’ somewhere in the distance. The closeness of the spaceships has squashed all the sounds of the neighbourhood together. Everything sounds like a muffled hub-bub. I can hear voices from three streets over, but I can’t tell what they’re sayin’.

      Shaun has gone to the garage, I can hear him rifling around in there for who-knows-what, that man always has to be doin’ somethin’  he ain’t never been content to just wait and see what comes next, but this time I don’t think we have much say in the matter—if we ever did.

      “Momma,” says Jeremy, squeezin’ my hand. “What’s gonna happen?”

      “Momma doesn’t know,” I tell him.

      Posted in Fragments | 0 Comments
    • Strife and the Terrible Feathered Thing

      Posted at 10:08 am by Michael, on January 13, 2021

      Strife, the one they call the Black Knight or the Man-Who-Can-Kill-Anything, clings to the rocks. With one hand he scoops up his shadow and uses it to form a pick—for this is his power, to command the bilious shadows that surround him into any shape he wishes.

      He uses his shadow to drag himself up the towering spire of rock, the eyrie of the Terrible Feathered Thing. Below him the Midlands spread out in all directions. The midlands are mostly desert, marked here and there by the vague twinkling of lights.

      Blocked from his view by the eyrie itself, yet commanding fully one quarter of the horizon, is the steep row of faded purple mountains; beyond them the churning tumult of the Cataclysm, forever raging; eternal.

      Nobody knows for sure when the Cataclysm happened, only that it did. The Dictator, in his hubris, broke the world—broke all worlds—but ultimately could not control that which he had wrought.

      Reality conflated, compressed, folded in on itself for a period of time that might have been one second or a billion years. And then, the cosmic detritus of everything was vomited back up, thrusting back into existence as a lance of solid energy, recreating all around it in a misshapen reconstruction of what-had-been.

      Such was the Everyworld birthed, a solar system carved out of space-time that contained all the multitudes of all the things that had ever existed. And out of those multitudes was born Strife, the Man-Who-Can-Kill-Anything, he of the living shadow; a living shadow now ascending to the top of an eyrie to kill a beast corrupted by the taint of man’s ultimate creation: the Swarm.

      In truth, Strife himself bore the taint. The shadows that he carried with him grew thicker with each kill. And so his power grew in direct proportion to his guilt. Such was the burden of Strife.

      With one forceful exhalation, he hoisted himself up and into the opening of the eyrie, a cave open to the sky except for a few jutting pillars of stone. It was obvious that the Terrible Feathered Thing had no natural enemies, or else it would have sought out a more secure place to roost.

      Yet Strife was the natural enemy of everything.

      The attacks had begun sometime in the past six months. Travellers on the long road that stretched from the Cross-Hatched Union of Dubloun to the standing city of Atreiska had gone missing. Cars, wagons and trucks were found piled up along the road. Any supplies the travellers had carried with them had been left, but there was no trace any bodies, human or horse or otherwise. Those few who had survived spoke of a looming shadow in the sky—the Terrible Feathered Thing—who was snatching travellers from the road and returning to its eyrie to consume them.

      And here, atop the jumbled spire of boulders arranged upon the horizon like some phallic harbinger of doom, Strife witnessed the remains of those who had been taken. Hundreds of skeletons, bones picked clean and broken. So many bones that they crunched underfoot as he walked. Hands, arms, legs, skulls—so many skulls. Rib cages and hips and twisted spines.

      A lesser man would have been cowed by the sight. But Strife was no mere man. Strife was the Great Adversary of Love, the darkness-in-the-darkness… and he had a job to do.

      The shadow in his hand still resembled a climbing pick, but now its shape altered to form a hatchet, a battle-axe, a sword, a sawed-off shotgun. With his free hand he gathered the shadows around himself and settled against a dark corner of the cave where he blended with the rocks.

      When the Terrible Feathered Thing returned, he would kill it. Of this, he had no doubt. Strife was not afraid of dying, for it had happened to him many times. In fact, death was his natural state and he would not have been here at all had it not been for the Dictator and his Cataclysm.

      But he was here, possessed with a sentience of his own. And in defiance of the shadows that swathed him, Strife, the Great Adversary, would keep on fighting.

      In the distance, drawing closer, a shadow loomed in the sky…

      Posted in Fragments | 0 Comments
    • Reflections of Strife

      Posted at 10:03 am by Michael, on November 11, 2020

      Begin at the beginning Isa asked: but there are so many beginnings.

      Beginnings spread out like threads of hair, like Eluria’s red braid. They twist around and through one another; memories touching, tangling. Sometimes I cannot separate one strand of hair from another; I cannot grasp one single strand of memory.

      Begin at the beginning?

      I remember one beginning. I remember the wheat and the girl and the sun reflecting on her dark hair. I remember the sun on her hair because it really only touched the edge of that darkness and it glinted like gold; like a halo. I am a young boy, a little boy. Was that the first time I saw Love?

      Soon after, I found Strife.

      The Bully Boys, sleeves rolled up, dirty faces, dirty mouths. Swearing and joking. But none of what they said was really a joke. Nothing they said was funny. They hurt the girl, they hurt her.

      Clunk clunk clunk clunk. That’s the sound of the train. It’s still around the bend. I shouted at the boys. I yelled for them to stop. The girl is on the ground, her dress is ripped.

      The tallest Bully Boy, the leader, grinned at me. I didn’t grin back. He’s not the leader because he’s the tallest, but because he’s the meanest. No matter what the rest do, it’s because he tells them to. Or that they’re trying to impress him. Or maybe some other damn fool reason I can’t fathom.

      I fight them and they beat me. They busted my lip. I can taste blood. Clunk clunk clunk. Train is closer now. Girl is yelling for them to stop. Her dress is ripped.

      I’m on the ground; I’m in the dust. The Bully Boys are standing around me and laughing. The tallest boy, the meanest boy, the leader, is closest.

      Clunk clunk clunk.

      I stand up and I push him.

      The kid’s in pieces. The train shreds him to ribbons. Two of the others are already running, but there’s one left standing there, covered in his friends guts looking scared. And he should be scared, because Strife’s not finished.

      I grab the boy and I start hitting him. All I can taste now is blood and not just my own. Love is still screaming. I hit him and hit him and hit him and hit him and hit him and hit him and hit him and hit him and hit him.

      Next thing I remember, I’m waking up in a mouldy room. Lady comes to give me medicine. I do what she says; I don’t hate her, yet. I listen to the voices in the walls. They call me “new kid”, but I don’t answer. I never answer. In spite of that they keep on talkin’. They teach me about this place where I’ve ended up.

      Quickly, I realise, I’ve gotta get out.

      Posted in Fragments | 0 Comments
    • The Fable of the Flitmice

      Posted at 9:25 am by Michael, on September 10, 2020

      Before men ruled the world it was the domain of beasts.

      All were guided by the Great and Noble Order, such that even those creatures who preyed upon one another for sustenance never took more than they needed and a long and glorious peace reigned.

      But then came Lilith, Queen of the Frozen Hells and spurned lover of Lucifer. And with her she brought a frost that stripped the earth bare.

      The beasts first began to starve and then they went mad. It was not long before they turned on each other, for desperation breeds evil; indiscriminate killing came upon the earth.

      Some of the creatures were faster to adapt than others. Among them the wolves, who became Lilith’s willing servants. The wolves roamed freely through these blighted lands they called the Frostwood and took whatever they pleased.

      It was not long, however, before game became scarce and even Lilith’s wolves grew hungry. They were forced to seek out ever smaller prey in their holes and burrows—foxes, rabbits and mice. Entire colonies were slaughtered, snatched from their homes by the jaws of the ravenous wolves.

      Some of the foxes fled, for foxes are cunning and quick-witted. Many of the rabbits fought back, with a thumping of feet and a gnashing of teeth. But the mice only cowered in their homes, uncertain of what to do and stricken with fear.

      The mice convened a council. Various suggestions were proposed and each was dismissed as more foolish or dangerous than the last. The mice debated until they could barely squeak another word. Eventually only one plan remained, but it seemed even more foolish and dangerous than all of the others had combined.

      The mice decided to seek out Ol’ Grandfather Crow, one of the oldest creatures in the Frostwood and a powerful magician. Ol’ Grandfather Crow had long been an enemy to the mice, but it was known that he had not aligned himself with the White Queen; if any could save them from the wolves, it would be he.

      And so the mice sent a delegation across the Frostwood to seek an audience with Ol’ Grandfather Crow. The adventures they had could fill several volumes. When, at last, they reached their destination they stood bravely before the magician and pleaded with him that they might be granted wings with which they could escape from the wolves as the crows were able.

      To the great surprise of the mouse delegation, Ol’ Grandfather Crow agreed. But instead of granting the mice the same shimmering feathery wings of his ilk, he instead cursed them with strange, leathery wings, such that they would never be confused with crows.

      Such is the way that Ol’ Grandfather Crow created bats—and why bats are sometimes called flitmice, by those who have lived long enough to remember the old stories.

      The flitmice were forced from their nests. Some used their new wings to flee the Frostwood and found refuge: on mountains and in caves, in distant jungles amongst the high trees. There they remain to this day.

      But others among the mice were displeased by the magician’s trickery and so, another council was convened. There they agreed to seek out an even greater enemy than Ol’ Grandfather Crow and an even more powerful magician… they sought out the Great Serpent himself and found him, at last, deep within the Frostwood, coiled up in the skull of a long-dead giant.

      Without pretence, the Great Serpent told the mice that their salvation could be found in Lilith’s garden. For although the frost had killed many of the plants in the Frostwood, there in Lilith’s garden, grew a tree heavily laden with a prickly red fruit: the vampire tree.

      In great numbers the flitmice descended upon Lilith’s garden, where they found the tree exactly as the Serpent had told them. In desperation they clutched and tore at the fruit, gorging themselves on it until their chins were stained red and dark droplets fell upon the snow.

      The Great Serpent had been right: for the fruit made the flitmice stronger and smarter… but it also made them thirsty.

      And that is the story of how mice became bats and how bats became vampires. And the moral, it is told, to never trust a magician no matter how desperate you become; for magic never comes without a cost.

      Continue reading →
      Posted in Fragments | 0 Comments
    • The Sphere

      Posted at 8:22 am by Michael, on August 5, 2020

      The first thing you need to know about the Sphere is that it’s not a sphere.

      The Sphere is a geodesic polyhedron.

      Beyond the Sphere is the Blue Sky; also the Dark Sky. But the panels of the polyhedron are neither opaque nor transparent; they reflect (and do not reflect) both the interior and the exterior in equal measure and thus, it is impossible to see within the Sphere from without, or without the Sphere from within.

      The Sphere is an island, a particle, floating in that which we call the Imagination or also the No-Place. It is not real, yet it is real. It is real because I am telling you about it. It assumes a reality. It cannot not exist, for it does exist, right now in these unwieldy words.

      Unwieldy words give rise to unwieldy worlds. The multiverse is not truncated but flows out to eternity like the spilling of water and as water evaporates it does not disappear but is merely altered.

      The environment inside the Sphere might remind you of a desert. The sand is white-yellow. There is sunlight and there is darkness but they are mere simulations. It is night for one hundred minutes. It is day for one thousand. It is night again; who knows how long it will last. There is no moon or stars. There are no clouds. The sky within the Sphere is empty.

      Within the Sphere two great trees interlock, for this is the truth of Yggdrasil. Roots and branches entwine with roots and branches both downwards and upwards, the Tree is not visible. It is unknown whether it is the Cause or the Consequence. We only know it exists because of the way it shifts matter around it.

      The energy made manifest within the Sphere splits it through the centre as a great Prismatic Column. The Facility has been built around the Column in order to contain these great energies. The Facility has only one objective: avoid Event-Y.

      Event-X is inevitable and cannot be averted.

      The Facility bends beneath the gravity of the Prismata, but is not broken. The Sphere holds. The energy of creation is routed through Synaptic Switches and into vast vats of Neurochemical Reagents.

      The Facility is surrounded by 65,536 black monoliths.

      The energy of the Prismata is dispersed within these dark surfaces and within them can be seen dancing motes of colour as new universes are birthed. Yet each monolith can store only so much energy. It is the job of those who work at the Facility to ensure the balance is maintained and to adjust the flows when necessary.

      The flows are controlled by unlabelled buttons and switches. Each Department has a User Manual that is one million pages long. The people who work here are called Homunculus and they wear tan uniforms with name patches sewn on. Their consciousness is fleeting and limited; they have no back story that is not an illusion and they serve no purpose except to adjust the flows.

      Posted in Fragments | 0 Comments
    • Instructions

      Posted at 10:58 am by Michael, on June 22, 2020

      Amongst Great Grandfather’s box of old things was:

      A carved wooden duck
      A paper-weight
      An oddly shaped knife with a dancing man engraved on the hilt
      Three paperback books
      An unmarked bottle of what I presumed to be wine, but did not have the courage to open
      An antique toy bi-plane
      A drawing of a giraffe
      Four different keys with no indication as to what they opened
      An old leather notebook filled with indecipherable scrawls and also containing…
      A brown paper envelope, upon which was written:

      INSTRUCTIONS AS TO MY RESURRECTION IN THE EVENT OF MY DEATH

      Posted in Fragments | 0 Comments
    • It’s a Rough World Out There, Kid

      Posted at 9:15 am by Michael, on May 27, 2020

      “It’s a rough world out there, kid,” I say and I exhale smoke. I’m an old man. I have a small, prickly beard and a moustache and my hair is long and grey and gathers around the collar of my coat. I’m wearing finger-less gloves.

      I’m sitting in a small, almost-empty bar. The lights hang from the ceiling, wearing old-fashioned fabric, oriental lampshades. The lampshades are red so the interior of the room is red: red light against shadow. Smoke coils upwards.

      The boy looks at me, uncomprehending. I take a sip of my drink.

      Outside the bar a sandstorm is raging. But I am only aware of the storm when I look at the windows. The rest of the time it’s silent. I look at the little boy and he is silent. The boy is me–from the past. The old man is me–from the future.

      So, what of the present? Where am I now? Am I merely the narrator, the creator of this fiction? Or am I the sandstorm that rages beyond this flimsy half-place; this dive bar at the End of Everything?

      Perhaps I am vibration of the window pane, or the truth that spills from the old man’s lips or the curious face of the child looking up at him.

      Am I filled with hope, or truth?

      Outside: there is a sandstorm.

      Posted in Fragments | 0 Comments
    • The River Yolan

      Posted at 9:24 am by Michael, on May 4, 2020

      Casting south from that exotic port they call Absalom, the Maiden Circe and its crew were at first pleased to be away from that foreign city with all its strange customs and curved blades that are renowned for their ability to behead a man with ease.

      Yet as we rounded the cape and the looming walls of the jungle presented itself to us, a great many of the men made utterance that they would rather return to the sandstone walls of Absalom than face the jungle and its multitude of dark places.

      Although thick forests grow in the land of my birth, the jungle was an altogether different thing to behold. Ne’er have I seen trees and plants grow in such abundance, crowding amongst and atop one another in a desperate clamour for sunlight. Such was the number of trees that no land could be seen, so it was impossible to tell what manner of beasts dwelt beneath the broad canopies of the trees.

      The mouth of the river at once humbled our own great Char, appearing at once less like a river and more like a great inland sea. A good dozen of the Queen’s ships would have had little trouble docking at the sea port of Elangin, though the moorings there are rotted and unsteady in places so I would not recommend it.

      The deep blue of the ocean merged with the thick brown outpouring of water from the river’s mouth, but this was not the alchemical affluent that we are used to, but dust stirred up from the bottom of the river. The water was so discoloured by the stuff that it was impossible to tell if anything dwelt in the waters below the ship and it gave me cause to wonder if everything in this place was designed to obfuscate some truth about itself.

      I wished to obtain a sample of the jungle water, renowned by some for its regenerative properties and I lowered a bucket from the side of the ship. When the bucket was a matter of inches away from the water a great churning began beneath it and several shapes began to bob up and down in the water, showing a myriad of teeth.

      At first the deckhand was so perturbed by this frightening vision that he almost let the rope go, but I ordered him to hold steady and he dropped the bucket into the water, whereupon I promptly ordered him to haul it back up again with great haste. A sample of the brown river water was one thing, but if I could capture one of those toothed horrors in the bucket than I would be happier still.

      Beneath the water the bucket was pulled violently this way and that and I was forced to grab the rope and help the deckhand retrieve. Attached to the side of the bucket, locked into the wood by their teeth, were no less than five of the sharp-toothed fish, each one about the size of sailor’s closed fist.

      When we hauled the bucket onto the deck the deckhand stumbled away and several others did likewise, terrified of the fearsome creatures, but as with most fish there was little to fear from these fanged snappers once they had been removed from their natural habitat; I watched as they flopped grotesquely and drowned on the air and I made myself the note of never to fall into the river Yolan.

      Continue reading →

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    • Mygar the Mighty

      Posted at 8:53 am by Michael, on April 22, 2020

      Mygar and the Dragon warred for days. Each time the Warrior God cornered the Dragon, she would slither free and thus her serpentine grace saved Queen Turmoil again and again. The battle waged across continents. Mygar’s sandalled feet kicked up sandstorms in Yesbet. In Qer, he was  forced to lay down in a crevasse to sleep to avoid the ice-blighted winds.

      In Eldreth, near the coast, he broke off the top of a mountain and sent it crashing into the sea, in order to bury the Dragon; but still, Turmoil escaped. Not even when he pinned her beneath the trunks of two uprooted Darnath Trees could he find a way to reign supreme.

      But, as a God, each defeat made Mygar grow more Mighty. And so too did the Dragon Queen Turmoil grow ever more monstrous. Until, at last, on a day prescribed by the prophets, the two met on the white sands of Yslin for one, final confrontation.

      The White Desert was decimated. Great holes were torn in the earth and spewed forth lava. Tears in the very fabric of space-time birthed all manner of abhorrence. The dead walked and hungered for flesh. Great armoured centipedes crept out of the cracks and besieged human villages. Heroes rose, blessed with great powers, but too often unable to control them and therefore, doomed to failure.

      And then a mighty roar sounded out across the skies, a rumble that everyone heard—if not with their ears, then with their hearts, or deep within their bones.

      The war was over, but which of the Gods had prevailed? Plague and famine spread across the land. People hoarded mouldy bread and built stone walls to protect walls of brick. And, eventually, there was a new sort of peace—for no longer did living Gods ravage the countryside.

      With each generation that passed, people spoke less about the gods. The stories of Maygar the Mighty and the Dragon Queen Turmoil fell out of favour and were forgotten. In small temples across the land a few small statues persisted, the lighting of a small candle and the whisper of a small prayer.

      But you, brave reader, have found a place where the truth awaits you: tales of the old-times, of nameless kings and desert tombs and magic. Long-forgotten secrets and stories of adventure await.

      But first, I shall tell you of a time, as yet far removed from the present day, when a figure with skin like bronze, woke up—face down, deep within the forest near Eldreth…

      Posted in Fragments | 0 Comments
    • Birds of Babel

      Posted at 11:09 am by Michael, on April 8, 2020

      Two girls stand at the top of a tower:

      One has blood in her eyes. The other has hope.

      Posted in Fragments, Philosophy | 0 Comments
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