Lap Pillow: A Fantasy Story

My head cradled on her velveteen lap
Her fingers in my hair, heavenly nap
Stuck in zombie mode forever and a day
I lay in silence, but to this goddess I pray

Vampire fangs and gentle fingernails
Elven hair and flesh so milky pale
Faerie figure and the wings of an angel
Eye-to-eye contact for this fair female

She tells me everything I need to know
That it’s okay if I want to take things slow
It’s okay if I’m sad every once and a while
There will be other days for my artistic style

I believe everything she tells me and more
I believe in her kisses and what they stand for
Imagination is a powerful thing, after all
When you’re stuck behind plain white walls

I know she’s not real when I’m wide awake
I know there’s poison running through the lake
I know the sunshine is covered in smoke
I know my feelings were all just a joke

I know it’s my duty to keep her alive
Pages to preserve an imaginary wife
What good are the pages if nobody reads?
What good are the images if nobody sees?

I’m invisible in the eyes of everyone else
I could never grace their vast bookshelves
I don’t have the ability to save myself
Loneliness is mine and I wear it well

Cuddle Therapy

“I’m too ugly for this shit,” grumbled Fergal McQueen as he glared at himself in the bathroom mirror, his hands flat against the sink with his fingers tapping impatiently. His scaly green orcish skin, his thinning black mullet, his brown fangs, his ill-fitting Sepultura T-shirt and blue jeans, they came together to give him more than enough reason to want to punch the mirror. The shattered glass in his knuckles wouldn’t be worth it, so he refrained.

Fergal gazed around the bathroom with sandy yellow eyes and became jealous of the decorations he believed were more beautiful than him. The black marble sink, the red glass butterflies hanging over the mirror, the green paper lanterns with runic symbols on them, they made him shake his head and then face-palm for a while. He sighed through his pierced nostrils and said, “Here goes jack shit.”

He stormed out of the bathroom and stood at the lobby desk with his beefy arms folded, waiting impatiently for the owner of this establishment to show herself. A few long minutes later, she finally did. Flapping her butterfly wings and flipping her silken brown hair, she descended into her seat gracefully, but nearly shot up like a fountain at the sight of her latest customer.

“Um…uh…” said the owner with wide eyes and quivering lips. She fidgeted with her white halter top and black yoga pants to stall for extra time. “Um…welcome to Galatea’s Cuddle Sanctuary. I’m Galatea Lyon. How can I, um…help you?”

Being as socially awkward as he was, Fergal slammed a bag of money on the counter and had Galatea huddling on the floor. Once she slowly lifted her head, Fergal said, “I didn’t come here to be ridiculed. I came here to cuddle. Do you have an opening or not?”

With shaking legs, Galatea returned to her upright position and stumbled through her words some more. “Um…sure, I have an opening right now if you’re ready. Uh…follow me, if you will…” Her flapping and flying became more disoriented as she guided her customer down the hallway. “So, uh…what do you do for a living, Mister…?”

“McQueen. Fergal McQueen,” he grunted. “I’m a soldier in the Dragon Rider’s Army.”

“Oh, uh…that’s…cool…”

“What do YOU do for a living: pretend to speak perfect English?”

Galatea giggled nervously, still struggling to keep it together. “You’re funny, Mr. McQueen. Uh…yeah…here we are.” She pulled back the bamboo curtain and revealed a room with a red velvet bed and white crystalline walls, which meant more decorations for Fergal to be jealous of for their comparative beauty. “Have a seat on the bed, if you don’t mind.”

He did just that, not at the plush pillows, but at the foot, keeping a comfortable distance from a woman who clearly was anything but comfortable. She said, “Um…so since you’re obviously new here, I’ll explain to you how this works. This is a cuddle therapy session. This is a non-sexual service, so everything we do here is strictly G-rated. If you’re uncomfortable with what I’m doing to you, say so and we’ll try something else. Any questions before we begin?”

“Yeah, I have a question…so you’re all about unconditional love and being accepting of everyone just like your ad says, yet you can’t even put together a sentence around me. How does it feel to be a hypocrite, Miss Lyon?”

“What? No, no, no, it’s not like that at all.” She scooted across the bed and reluctantly placed her hand on her client’s shoulders, squeezing them as gently as she could without getting her hands too dirty. “To be honest, this is all new for me. You know, the, uh…uh…”

“Look, if you don’t want to get your perfectly manicured nails dirty from touching my disgusting orc body, then say so and I’ll go somewhere else. You didn’t even have to complete your sentence. I’d know that look anywhere. You’re a racist.”

“Mr. McQueen, it’s not like that at all.”

“Of course it is!” he snapped, causing his cuddle therapist to scoot back in fear. “Everywhere I go, people look at me like I’m a six-foot tall horse turd walking by. They back away like I’ve got the plague. They think just because I’m ugly as fuck that it’s okay to walk faster down the street to avoid me. I seriously thought this place would be different. But no, not you. You’re about unconditional love as long as your clients are a bunch of sexy princes with more abs than hairs on my ball sack.”

Galatea gulped. “Um…Fergal, please listen to me. This has nothing to do with you looking a certain way. It’s just that…um…how do I say this without sounding insensitive? Um….you…don’t look like you’ve washed today.” Her voice became squeakier as she finished her sentence and shrugged her shoulders.

Fergal took a whiff of his arm pits and said, “That’s not BO. That’s just me looking like a giant green turd.”

“Please, stop saying those things…”

“Look at you!” he shouted as he stood up. He pointed an accusatory finger at the trembling Galatea and yelled at her some more. “You can’t even look me in the eyes! You can’t even stand up straight when you’re around me! Sure, I don’t have the best social skills in the world and I don’t look like a fucking supermodel, but I still need this service, damn it!”

Unwrapping her hands from her head, Galatea shakily stared into her client’s yellow eyes and tried her damnedest to keep it together. “You…you need this service? Why?”

“Because I can’t get it anywhere else, that’s why!” snapped Fergal while throwing back the red blanket. “Nobody wants to be around me! Hell, I don’t want to be around me half of the time! And don’t give me crap about how it’s because I’m yelling all the time! If a sexy supermodel was yelling at you, you’d think it was some kind of BDSM fantasy or some shit!

Who else am I supposed to cuddle with? A wife I never had? My fellow soldiers? Yeah, good luck with that! I’m not so sure even a human or a pixie like you would ever want to snuggle up to a bunch of rowdy ass soldiers who make fun of everything and call everyone fags! So what am I supposed to do, Galatea, if that is your real fucking name and you didn’t just steal it from a poetry book?!”

Fergal’s heavy breath filled the air and intensified the silence between himself and the shivering pixie before him. The more he stared down at her, the angrier he became as visions of racist bullies and loudmouthed politicians swarmed his mind like a war flashback. Rocks thrown at him, laughing, pointing, running away, and every racial slur in the book pelted his brain.

To him Galatea was no different despite her pretty disguise. If anything her prettiness made her casual racism even worse because she clearly hid something from him while others were at least honest about it. But maybe the thing she was hiding wasn’t an agenda after all…

“I think we can come to a compromise, Mr. McQueen,” she said with her hands raised defensively. “If you promise to calm down and take deep breaths…we will continue our cuddle therapy session…in a bathtub. Of course, you’d have to change into a pair of swim trunks, but…it’d be the answer to both of our problems. Clients are encouraged to show up to these sessions clean and spotless, because…well…it’s my job to hold you and touch you and…”

Fergal held up his hand and cut her off, taking even more intense breaths, but not out of anger. He was actually trying to calm himself down long enough to listen to reason. He wanted to give this a shot. It was his only chance at getting the affectionate touches he needed. “Okay…I give up. Let’s do this.”

“Great!” said Galatea with a little more pep in her voice. “There’s a pair of swimming shorts in the drawer over there. I’ll leave the room for a while and give you some privacy while you change. Okay?” She smiled with a lingering hint of nervousness and tiptoed her way out of the room.

Once she closed the door behind her, Fergal went to work in stripping down and changing into a pair of red shorts. They were a little tight around his waist, so he walked like a penguin in an attempt not to rip them. From there he followed Galatea down the hall and into the bath spa.

Sure enough, there was a black marble bathtub in the center of a white crystalline room. Red paper lanterns gave the room a dimmed lighting affect that did its job in soothing Fergal’s nerves. Galatea flew to the tub and filled it up with warm water before dropping a bath bomb inside and creating a mountain of suds and trippy colors. Holding a sponge in one hand, she waved Fergal over with her opposite finger and patted the rim of the tub. “Come on in,” she said in her cutesy-wutesy voice, giving a light shade of red to Fergal’s green scaly complexion.

He dipped his foot in the water and hissed at the warmth, slowly lowering himself in and accidentally letting out a bubbly fart upon parking his ass in the tub. “Sorry about that. You probably don’t want to…”

“Nah, don’t worry about that,” interrupted Galatea with a smile. Without hesitation or nervousness, she gently ran the sponge across Fergal’s arms, chest, and shoulders while resting her head on top of his. The warm water, the massaging touches, the extra affection, and even the potent lavender smell was enough to make him want to squeeze his legs together so that he didn’t accidentally become…you know…

“What happened to your chest? You’ve got some nasty cuts and bruises there. Is that from your job?” she asked.

“No, those aren’t war wounds…unless you’re talking about my war with the racist assholes who pummeled me with stones all my fucking life. Sharp stones, big stones, little stones, they all feel the same to me. I was actually kind of hoping one of those stones would be powerful enough to kill me, but as it is…”

“Oh my god…Mr. McQueen, that’s terrible! I truly do feel awful for my reluctance around you. I didn’t realize…I mean…Look, I’ll tell you what. For what I did tonight, your first cuddle session here is free.”

“You…you don’t have to do that, Miss Lyon,” said Fergal as a singular tear ran down his face, a face he still believed was the ugliest thing on the planet. “Sorry, I don’t normally cry like this…”

“It’s okay to cry here, Mr. McQueen. I’m not one of your fellow soldiers. I won’t call you horrible homophobic slurs. Let the waterworks out. You’re not the first to cry under my care and you won’t be the last. You are loved, Mr. McQueen, whether you realize it or not.”

Fergal let the waterworks flow indeed as Galatea continued to gently scrub and massage him into relaxation. No more droughts tonight. Not now. Not ever. The tears had been a long time coming. They were greasy. They were oily. But they were less messy than any drop of blood he spilled on the battlefield, be it with the racist mobs or the enemy he fought in the army. Crying sucked and felt good at the same time.

"The Golden Bell" by Aurora Styles

BOOK TITLE: The Golden Bell

AUTHOR: Aurora Styles

YEAR: 2018

GENRE: Fiction

SUBGENRE: Dark Fairytale

GRADE: Pass

Lady Bellicent is a royal politician with undeniable physical beauty, a strong belief in fairytales, and a desire to gentrify her city into an educated, high-class metropolis. Her methods come across as arrogant and vain, so much so that she encourages the wrath of Rosamund the apothecary and her golden bell, which is used to summon necromantic faeries whenever she needs them. Bellicent’s controlling husband Lord Fitcher also serves as a thorn in her side, especially with his harsh demands of keeping her out of his “special room”. Sooner or later, everything will come crashing down upon this magical kingdom and Bellicent’s happily-ever-after story will turn into a sick and twisted nightmare she can’t wake up from.

When you first read this wonderfully dark story, your eyes will widen at the scene of Lord Fitcher sewing corpses of his past wives together into one piece of art. The only thing his “creation” is missing is a head, but don’t worry, because he has lots of inspiration for that particular piece. Fitcher seems to be happy and deranged as he marvels at his masterpiece. He’s basically the love child of The Joker and Hannibal Lector, which is why it’s imperative that nobody enters his secret chambers. But you know deep down inside his cover will be blown at some point in the story. It has to. You can see it from miles away. Such tension will follow you throughout your reading adventure and that’s part of what makes this story so good. Aurora Styles leaves no stone unturned when it comes to her craft and it brilliantly shows throughout her work.

Serial killer aside, I also enjoy the shades of gray logic Aurora employs with her characters. Yes, they do awful things such as framing each other for witchcraft or casting spells that will doom each other forever, but at the same time, you can’t help but feel sorry for the characters when these bad things happen to them. Yes, Bellicent comes off as arrogant and spoiled, but did she really deserve her fate at the end of the story? Yes, Rosamund is quite arguably the most sympathetic character in the book, but was her revenge plot against Bellicent overkill? Even Lord Fitcher with his psychopathic ways comes off as a charmer when dealing with the public (then again, lots of serial killers do in order to keep up appearances). At the end of the day, there’s no clear answer as to who the reader should cheer or boo. Trust me, that’s a good thing, because it keeps the reader on their toes and makes them anticipate the second part of this series.

Speaking of shades of gray characters, whether you like him or not, you have to admit that Lord Rhazien’s skull motif is pretty cool. He wears them like armor, he has skulls on his magical staff, and he pretty much is a skeleton demon who’s described as having burning green eyes. This is the kind of character videogamers would love to play as or against. Constantly throwing fireballs, controlling hordes of goblins and undead creatures, and transforming everybody he captures into disgusting orcs. Yep, he’s definitely a videogame-worthy character. It makes me wonder what kind of creativity cosplayers would whip up if they decided to go to a convention dressed as Rhazien. So many dark fantasy dream scenarios, so little time!

Considering how well this novel was written, I’d say that The Golden Bell, the first in a series, is a resounding success. Sure, there are a few sentences that look like they could be typos, but then again, it could also be part of the classy dialogue that fantasy novels are known for. Buy a copy of this book and enjoy yourself. It’s only a hundred plus pages long, so you’ve definitely got time to blitz through this magical adventure full of twists and turns. A passing grade is what this wonderful book deserves!

Tyler Cutty

NAME: Tyler Cutty
AGE: Immortal
OCCUPATION: Mummy Serial Killer
CANON: World of Darkness: Washington 2

You’re looking at Tyler Cutty’s occupation and are probably wondering if he’s goes around randomly killing mummies or if he’s a mummy who happens to also be a serial killer. The latter is what I was trying to imply. But why is an ancient Egyptian creature running around with the name Tyler? Cleopatra, Ramses, Xerxes, and now Tyler. Such progression, I know. Evolution couldn’t have come up with a better byproduct than a fucking American mummy named Tyler! With his invincible undead body and a sword bigger than he is, it’s more believable than it sounds.

Although the second installment of World of Darkness: Washington never came to fruition, the first one was a real thing at one point and now it’s digital dust. The idea behind each WOD:WA story is that three different kinds of undead creatures are tracked in three different cities in Washington state, my current home. In the first novel, mummies lived in Bellingham, vampires lived in Seattle, werewolves lived in Chehalis, and they all congregated to start life over again in Aberdeen.

In the second novel, which would have been Tyler’s home, mummies, vampires, werewolves, and hunters lived in Tacoma, demons lived in Port Orchard, and changelings lived in Purdy. Although Tyler is a mummy to the core, he would actually be a part of the third act in Purdy with the changelings.

If you’ve never been to Purdy before, don’t forget to bring your blanket and pillow; you’re going to need them in such a boring backwoods area. Purdy is so boring, in fact, that it’s a perfect place for a serial killer like Tyler Cutty to take residence. Nobody would ever think to look for him there. Granted, he has to actually go out and venture into the bigger cities to look for victims, but he’s more than capable of doing that, because he looks completely normal riding a city bus in his mummy wrap.

Unfortunately, because WOD:WA2 never got realized, Tyler Cutty never got developed past his name, race, and occupation. All we know about mummies from the first novel is that they become those creatures by allowing magical wrappings to snake around their bodies and turn their innards to dust. The only way to kill a mummy, as pointed out by Egyptologist Dr. Shawn Phoenix, is by cutting at their wrappings with a 12-inch knife. No more, no less. Only a knife of that length could ever possess the combination of strength and precision necessary to perform such a surgical strike.

Dr. Shawn Phoenix got the shit kicked out of him in the first novel, so those who actually know the 12-inch blade secret are few and far between, and they’re certainly not out in Tyler Cutty’s part of Washington state. Which means of course that Tyler is free to either slowly torture his victims by ripping their limbs off or slash them to bloody pieces with his oversized sword, which is far more than 12 inches, I can assure you that. If you’re a changeling, which is basically a kind of faerie in World of Darkness terms, how do you stop a guy with infinite strength and sadistic urges to back it up? You might be able to do it if you found out about the 12-inch secret, but even if you did, you still have to be a better fighter than a super powerful mummy. Good luck, little fairies!

　

***LYRICS OF THE DAY***

“Maybe I should let her go, but not until she loves me.”

-Slipknot singing “Killpop”-