Author Archive: Tosche
Gentleman cartoonist, illustrator, writer and podcaster. Powered by the magic of tea, coffee and painkillers.
Day Fifteen: Vid-helm
Just because a girl still lives on tape doesn’t mean she’s a damned hipster, just, archaic.
~Tosche
Day Thirteen: Mr. Spilts.
His mind is grateful for the distraction the fall affords it.
His knees are going to hate him.
~Tosche
Day Eleven: Ardent Way
It had all lead to this, she’d put in a hell of a lot of effort to get this far, the odds had been far out of her favor and yet she had triumphed. A cup of coffee, altogether too hot and sweet, was hers. Triumph.
The darting eyes of waiters under thick black hair and too much pressure from the obnoxious American canoe competition team on table four had not looked her way, the steaming pots of cheap coffee and weak tea poured by without ever diverting in their path to her table but still she had triumphed over the odds. With a cunning combination of feminine charm and obstinate determination that comes from paying a ludicrous fee for the breakfast buffet she had broken through the ranks of waiting staff to her goal: the coffee. Kind of a shame that it tasted so awful.
~Tosche
Day Ten: Mystic Oats
A hairy hipster with magic in his hips and cosmic weight on his shoulders, blessed with phantasmagorical finger powers and cursed with sweaty socks — unwashed for going on three days now.
~Tosche
Day Nine: Space Piratex
Space, that was the dream. Space — the place children (our future) all across her country had lived for, before they discovered reality TV in their teen years, the place though which ufological wonks of all ages had wanted to drift.
The actual place was less majestic than the men and women of science-based television programing had promised and closer to an afternoon floating with the refuse of a billion people in the waves of a Lama Island beach in a waning Summer.
The Space Piratex probe didn’t mind, for a start she’d never been to any of Lama Island’s waste-disposal beaches and so was unable to see the sad similarity. No, an enterprising class of public school over-achievers hadn’t built her to despair at the state of the space, Space Piratex had been built to win that class the finals of the “Sweep It Under the Rug: Environmental Solutions” competition. Her directives were clear: clean, clean that cosmos up long enough to get her masters a photo in three of their local papers. It was a task she probably could have completed too, if it weren’t for those attention lacking kids and their rudimentary android building skill sets.
~Tosche
Day Eight: Rum-Ram Bloodstold
Tired old man, tired old Bloodstold, in his throne of imitation leather and sipping a glass of tonic and lemon because he’s all out of gin. His runes are all cast, his deceitfully youthful body ached more and more as the nights when he can get a rise out of his magiks became increasingly few and depressingly mundane. Rum-Ram Bloodstold, the last of his kind in this world to not have given up and departed for the old soul’s dimension, took another sip of his tart drink and fondled thoughts of when the tarts he had at night weren’t just the liquid or pastry variety.
One more sip, Rum-Ram decided, one more sip and then a slip — into sober sleep.
~Tosche
Day Seven: Astromicus Manicus
On a hill side, in the sun and wind like a long-shot in a romcom, slipping through the dewy terrain while smiling and sweeping down the slope. Grunting and falling, shoe, body tripping in motion and landing in a crumpled heap at the incline’s base.
Mud on shirt, bruise on face, dent in dignity, hair still fine.
Astromicus rolled over, spine clicking into place and limbs hesitantly following direction of brain and body, tried to push upright and buckled at the attempt. Getting up and brushing this embarrassing fall off would clearly take some time, this lesson in not running down freshly wet grass would not take as long to absorb.
Day Six: Amorveous (Amy)
Two minutes, that was quick, indeed — a new record. Where once piping hot pudding and melting mountains of ice cream slouched were now faint streaks of creamy, crumbly, residue of dessert and regret. Amy finished polishing the bowl with her tongue — don’t ask where the mouth is — until the, now cool, ceramic surface tasted more of object and less of desire.
This jaunt into flavour country would mean a lot of mirror-gazing but damn, the descent into self doubt was tasty.
~Tosche
Day Five: Bodey Socksmon
Scruffy. Itchy skin under tight tufts of fur. Exasperated, exhausted, extinguished. With a yawn he is all these things and yet as he pulls up a cup, burgeoning on boiling hot, to his mouth and tips in a hot and sweet morning elixir, wipes from his mouth the sticky residue and caffeinated skin, he is for a moment none of these things. He ponders his first conscious thought since he and the sun rose — to shit or shave — and his day is begun.
~Tosche
An ear-piercing gone wrong left her with a dimensional porthole warping her already infected ear lobe. Kids, make sure those metal implements you’re sticking into yourselves aren’t of non-terrestrial origin.
~Tosche
Day Three: Nanobot Lad
This is what the singularity will bring, a thousand confused teenagers identifying as animals getting the chance to fulfill their animal desire by use of nanobot injections. Call now and get a bonus vial of zoological avatars and a nifty book-light free!
~Tosche
Day Two: Trifole
Tree-born and ground-bred, he uproots and wanders out, now he walks on concrete streets and avoids dog shite turned white — a far cry from his prior life as a nesting place for birds and pissing place for dogs.
~Tosche
Day One: Technopolis Rex
Cursed–! In a mad dash to connect himself with the fruitful god, the cloud gestalt he worshiped, a humble hipster was transformed into a god-like entity you’ve probably never heard of.
~Tosche
Day 4: “French Vanilla”
“She stared up at the building with a trace of despair, a slip of paper in one hand and her purse in the other. The landlord had told her that it was a dreary building, but she was in no way prepared for the sight with which she was greeted. The paint was peeling from the window sills, the tiles were falling off the roof, and the numbers above the doors hung slightly askew.
She stepped back to the cafe on the other side of the street and ordered a coffee. As she drank, she looked at the paper she had with her. It promised an apartment with cheap rent and a street view. She didn’t really care about the rent or the state of the apartment, she just needed somewhere with her name on the letterbox. She wanted to get away from the world, away from overly curious people who cared about her and her life. Tomorrow, she would rent out another place, on the other side of town, under a completely different name.
Many people thought they knew her, but they only knew what she let them see of her. Each person came to know a different version of her. She learned to become like this out of necessity from a very young age, trusting nobody and expecting those around her to show the same level of mistrust.
She plucked a toothpick out of the canister on the table and chewed on it absent-mindedly.
She supposed that one day she would make friends again. She couldn’t live her whole life without
people, but for now she would give it a good shot.
Glancing at the clock on the wall of the cafe, she saw that she had five more minutes before she had to walk through those doors and become yet another version of herself. Hopefully, she would not have to keep this one up for long. She did not have the energy to do this much longer.
Standing up, she left her coffee untouched on the table. Carefully, she smoothed her dark blonde hair back under her hat and left the cafe.
Crossing over once again to stand front of the building, she looked at it with a different perspective. Perhaps this was indeed the wrong thing to do. No matter what though, it was necessary.
She took a deep breath and steeled herself before stepping through the doors.”
 Words: Lana, Art: Julian (Tosche)
Day Two: “Confederate Money”
 She collapsed in a chair in the kitchen and looked down at her muddied feet in dismay. What was her Aunt going to say about this? She’d only been in town for about 6 months and already she had gotten into more scrapes than she had back home.
She sighed and brushed her auburn hair away from her face, trying to arrange it in some semblance of neatness before going past the room with her Aunt.
She rummaged through her purse for her cigarette case and lit one up.
Her aunt had been ill for nearly a year now, she had moved to New York from Louisiana to care for her. During the day, she cared for her Aunt, making sure that her every need was cared for. During the night and early hours of the day, however, she would be out gallivanting on the town or around the docks, trying to calm her cravings for adventure. These romps were helping her develop what she saw as a true New York accent. From everyone else’s perspective, she became a broad parody of her ideal.
Tonight had been one such adventurous night. She had dressed for the occasion as well, wearing her favourite shoes and a beautiful dress. She would have to replace both those, and goodness knows what had happened to her shoes. She stubbed out what was left of her cigarette, and pulled herself out of the chair.
She left muddy footprints on the carpet as she crept past her Aunt’s open bedroom door.
Words: Lana, art: Julian (Tosche).
Day One: “XYZ”
“I stand at the edge of the crowd, looking at the people. I am about to change.
Who I am has started to bore me. I need something different, like a holiday.
It’s good, this thing. I don’t know what to call it. Power, perhaps? Every time I touch someone, I take on a little of their personality. Sometimes it’s their fashion sense, sometimes it’s their music taste. Once it was their accent.
The only problem with this is that I lose friends along the way. People close to me never quite know what to expect. With so many personality changes, it can become difficult to keep up. The one thing that stays the same are my boots. I don’t care if they don’t match with the rest of me. They are left over from before, back from when I knew who I was. They will never change.
If I touch enough people, I become a completely different person.
That’s why I like crowds. When I get tired of the way I am, I can just step into the crowd and come out as someone new.
I close my eyes and step into the crowd, bumping into as many people as I can.”
Text by Lana, art by Julian (Tosche).
#30Characters Chatter…