RSSCategory: Drama

#24 Billy, Maggie, and the Bad Dog

| November 24, 2011 | 0 Comments

His life ends in much the same way it began: an accident. An accidental conception which involved a shotgun marriage. An unfortunate incident with a melon, a cat, and an improbable crossbeam.

(ow)

The moments between birth and death were not overly interesting, if Billy was honest with himself. If he had time to be honest.

 (wo
of)

Aside from the fact that his parents were uncommonly young (at least for the area in which he had lived), there was not much to differentiate the path his life had taken from others. He had gone to public school, played baseball throughout his teenage years without any hope of making it big, and had fallen in love.

(marry)
(me)

Maggie was a kind woman with soft, warm eyes (so prone to tears now) and an iron will. She could lead a horse to water and make it drink out of sheer stubbornness alone.

 (that was
                    the source of
           this problem)

If Billy had lived another month, he would have been married. The caterers had been contacted, the guests invited, the church decided. Everything would have been perfect.

The day they should have married hadn’t a single cloud in the sky.

 (I love you)

Death wasn’t a peaceful as Billy would have liked it. It wasn’t full of soft clouds and pearly gates like he had been promised, or heat and sulphur like he had feared. It was much like living but with the sound turned down. Or like someone had poked the world with a needle and let all of the colour drain out. (red threads binding, coupling, fating, choking)

Maybe that was how death was, to exist on the edges of the world you once lived in. However, that didn’t make sense because for the longest time Billy thought he had been a ghost alone.

 (not alone)

              of)
(wo

Nice dog, says another ghost to Billy. She reminded him of the old lady who had lived on the same street as him when he was ten, who used to fly her flag, day and night, rain or shine. When she eventually died, her children took down that flag, which had become so faded and frayed at the edges that it was barely a flag anymore.

I don’t have one, he replies. I‘m allergic.

(let me go)

He could see it now. Barely. If he looked out of the corner of his eye or over his shoulder, he could make out its shape, huge and monstrous. It kind of looked like a dog. It had four legs, a tail, fur, and a snout like a dog, but that was where the metaphor ended. Dogs didn’t have that many teeth in their mouths, nor oil-black fur which looked like the most macabre rainbow ever. Their tails didn’t seem to stretch out forever, twisting into smoke wisps. Their barks didn’t resound with the screams of a thousand ghosts whose lovers hadn’t been able to let them go.

(wOOF)

(but I love you)

(I will die if you don’t end our engagement)

(you are already dead)

(you know what I mean)

(WOOF)

(no I don’t)

(I love you)

(I love you)

(I love you)

(I‘ll save you)

(because I love you)

(how?)

(I can’t be saved)

(There’s nothing)

(no damnation)

(WOno salvationOF)

(I‘ll find a way)

Its stench is the only thing he can smell now. It reeks of fruit left out too long, of fresh blood, of – somehow – the screech of violins (Billy had never been good at playing one). The smell fills Billy like air in a balloon, making his lungs expand with its rot, leaving no room for anything else.

(you said that you would save me)

(I will)

(be patient)

He can’t breathe.

It hurts so much. He feels frayed and faded like that old woman’s flag, like that old ghost, out of touch with who he used to be (snapping at his heels, finding him because of the red thread). He barely remembers what it was like to be alive. He swings his arms like he’s up to bat, but can’t remember why. There’s no bat in his hands and he couldn’t think of why there should be or why he would want a beautiful day like this for any occasion other than for baseball and what is baseball what’s that who is he who is he who who who who

(who)

snap

slice

And then the world fades to white, and so does Billy.

(I won’t let you have him)

(bad dog)

(I said)

(bad dog)

(whap)

Day 24: Rollergirl

| November 24, 2011 | 0 Comments

So Another girl on Rollerskates.

#24 – Hyde: Man, Monster, Deliverer of Justice

| November 24, 2011 | 0 Comments

The Doctor is In

“Mr. Hyde I presume?”

A quiet and subtle voice, barely heard above the howling wind outside the hundred and second floor of Grayson Tower, the tallest building in the center of Hub City. “I suppose I will have to have those claw marks buffed out of the front of my building.” The speaker has his back to the window, sitting down, hunched over a desk. “You know, we do have an elevator.”

A thick cane leaned against the desk with a large black stone on its tip. He was writing something slowly. Once done, he folded the letter meticulously and placed it into an envelope. Slowly he rose, gripped his cane and turned around to face the window and the towering form of Hyde.

He wore a grey suit and over it a white lab coat. His suit, obviously expensive and his cufflinks flash in the brightly lit room. His face was brown like a burlap sack and his age was indeterminate. His eyes, black as coal, peek out from underneath wide and bushy eyebrows. He is bald but his face bears a well-manicured goatee. His full lips are peeled back in a predatory and menacing smile. His eyes however, do not share the smile. He leans back onto the desk. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

The man is calm, I’ll give him that. “Enjoy. It will be your last.” Hyde’s voice is gruff, coarser than usual. He was just finished healing from the beat down, he received two months earlier from the super-soldier commandos. The only thing that made that drubbing worthwhile was watching them turn into smoking, cancer-ridden piles of rotting meat. Whatever technology they were using was not ready for prime-time. It had taken two months of hunting, limb-breaking and old-fashioned detective work. The trail led him here. It was time for some payback.

Hyde turned his head to take in the room and saw an extensive laboratory filled with a variety of computers, autoclaves, other machines, some familiar, others not. A flash of memory sweeps over him and he remembers a biometric monitoring system across the room. He is not sure why he recognized it, but the memory was strong. Whoever this doctor was, he had money to spare. Not just anyone could afford this setup. Another mystery.

“You like my lab? It is only one of many. I will take you on a tour tomorrow, if you like.” The man uses his cane to point around the room.

Hyde snorts, “What makes you think you’ll be alive tomorrow? I plan to rip you limb from limb.”

“Really? Before you get the answers you have been searching for? Or should I say, Carlucci is searching for? That would be so anticlimactic.”

“Spare me the small talk. I think I will prefer the answers you will give me when I am ripping open your chest. People lie less when I am eating their ribs before their eyes.” Something’s wrong.

“Spare me the posturing, Mr. Hyde. I know who you are. I know what you are. In a way, I helped to create you.” He stood up from leaning on his desk and squared his shoulders. Though not quite as tall as Hyde, he was nearly six feet tall himself. “Now we can have this conversation, the easy way or the hard way. Your choice.”

Hyde clenches his hands and his knuckles crack with a rhythmic precision. He turns his head and his neck bones crack as well. A hot, metallic smell starts to rise from his person and his ragged jumpsuit begins to smoke. “You know what, let’s do this the hard way. I am sure I won’t break a nail on that nice Armani, you’re wearing. What do your friends call you? I want to know who to mail your head to.”

“In Japanese tradition, it is considered polite to give your name to your enemy. You have chosen the nom de guerre, Hyde. I will be Doctor Jekyll to you, sir, after all, I did help create you. And like the good Doctor, I too have a dark side.” Stepping out of his shoes, and taking off his lab coat, he throws it over the chair. “Anytime you’re ready, sir.”

Hyde needed no more prelude than that and leapt across the room arms outstretched, his carbon-hardened claws, extended, fangs opened in a bestial roar. In a movement Hyde can barely see, Jekyll steps to the side and grabs Hyde’s arm and whirling him around he slams him across the room into a bookcase. The bookcase crumples under Hyde’s massive weight. The two hundred pound teak bookcase crumpled like tissue. Hyde laughed, knocking books and wood off of his back. “Nice throw, Doctor. I hope your plan does not include Aikido to save you. It’s not nearly going to be enough.”

“Not at all Mr. Hyde. I am not counting on Aikido to save the day. I was simply giving you the chance to see you were out-classed and offering you one more opportunity to see reason before I have to actually hurt you.” While Hyde was climbing out of the bookcase, the doctor had taken off his suit and laid it upon his desk. He was wearing a skintight undergarment that covered him from neck to the ends of his extremities. Only his hands and feet were naked. “I await your pleasure.”

Hyde turned to the doctor again, trying to figure out what his senses were telling him. The smell was not one of fear, it was one of excitement, and something else, something chemical. It reminded him of the metallic scent of his own transformation. But the doctor looked completely unchanged.

Hyde exploded across the room, books flew from under foot as Hyde moving as fast as a train, reached out with a clawed hand directly pointed at the doctor’s face. And again, with only a minimum of movement the doctor spun and avoided Hyde’s hand. Completing his spin he kicked Hyde right out of the window. The doctor stopped to grab his cane and looking out the window, leapt after Hyde to the nearby rooftop where Hyde would land, hard.

Hyde crashed into a concrete stairway rising onto the roof. Tearing through it, he lay stunned. As he tried to get up, Jekyll land squarely onto his chest, driving Hyde into the reinforced roof of the building. Jekyll bounces away lightly and lands nearby. Hyde’s response was immediate. He swept rubble with both of his arms toward the Doctor and bounded to his feet, while the doctor used his cane to deflect the rubble, Hyde began attempting to close the distance between the two.

Despite the fact, he had just jumped thirty stories out of a building, the doctor didn’t even appear to be winded or surprised. Hyde kept up his assault his clawed hands lashing out as fast a cheetah’s killing blow and with as much power. The doctor used his cane to block Hyde’s strikes but did not attack. This only seemed to infuriate Hyde further. Their exchanges were faster than the eye could see and the doctor retreated the entire time. Hyde pushed the doctor back to the edge of the rooftop. Leaping over Hyde, he landed twenty feet away.

Hyde pushed his body further, and felt his arms growing longer, muscles changing in texture and tone, hyper-oxygenating them, exchanging strength for speed. Hyde rushed the doctor and his clawed arms slashing out, striking the doctor on the belly and shoulder. The strange undergarment acting as an armor, the blows drew no blood. But Hyde was testing its strength and knew he could overcome it. His nails sharpened into needle-like points. The doctor withdrew outside of Hyde’s assault. He held his cane in two hands. Twisting the head, it transformed into a sword cane and armored sheath.

The two of them clashed together, a blur of motion, both landing strikes and taking blows, the sound of claws on steel range around the glass canyon as the two titans struggled for dominance. The doctor began to give ground as Hyde blows landed and one even tore his left arm’s armor away revealing muscular flesh beneath and the lacerations of Hyde’s diamond-tipped claws. The doctor, using his sheath, smashed Hyde in the mouth and knocked him across the roof.

Hyde shook his head, wiping away blood, “Nice. You’ve survived a lot longer than I expected. But this fight is just about over.” Hyde’s jumpsuit was bloodstained and nearly completely destroyed. Carlucci bought them in bulk since their arrangement. He was crouched and studying Jekyll for any sign of weakness. He didn’t see one. Palming a piece of rubble, an idea formed.

“I was trying to show you the pointlessness of this exercise and how we could work together. With my genius and your brawn, we could rule Hub City and remove the criminal scum that infests her.”

“You care about Hub City? I don’t think so.” Hyde stood gauging the distance between the two of them.

“But you do. Once we clear away Hub City’s vermin, I will show you things that will make Hub City worst criminals look like Girl Scouts.”

“You do realize I am an unreasonable person, right?” Hyde began to breathe faster and deeper. His muscles and bone density began to multiply. The scar on his chest began to heat up and his overall temperature rose.

Doctor Jekyll’s eyebrow rose in surprise. He is altering his nervous system, attempting to increase his reaction time and attack speed. He is reducing his mass to increase his speed. This was unexpected and exciting to learn. What is the source of his transformation energy?

Cupped in his hand, Hyde threw the piece of rubble with supersonic speed. As his deadly projectile crossed the distance between he and his target, his mighty legs were already propelling him right behind it.

Jekyll, momentarily stunned by the speed and ferocity of this improvised attack was struck by the deadly projectile in the left shoulder and dropped his sword. The missile exploded into dust.

“So you can be surprised.” Hyde landed his punch squarely across the jaw of the doctor and the doctor’s head snapped to the right with the force of the blow. With a reflexive backhand the doctor knocked Hyde sailing across the roof.

Hyde rolled with the blow and landed on his feet sliding across the rooftop. What the hell was that? How did he do that? I thought he was on the ropes. What did I miss? I need to buy some time. “The commandos, they were yours, weren’t they? They move like you do, fight like you do, mixing martial arts with superhuman strength and speed. But they turned into piles of rotting meat. But you don’t appear to be about to turn into a pile of organ-bursting goo. Why is that?”

“Nice strategy, make me talk while you look for my weaknesses.” Doctor Jekyll smiled. He rubbed his jaw. “That was a surprise. I didn’t know you could do that. I see why you refuse to use a weapon; its visceral, primal, savage. You see, there is so much we can learn from each other. But I think our time is done. I have learned all that I think I can today.” Dropping his sheath, he turned toward Hyde, dusting himself off. “You, for instance, will learn…” He disappeared from where he was on the roof and reappeared in front of Hyde. Hyde never saw him move. He punctuated every word with a powerful strike from his fists, driving Hyde’s face into the rooftop with each blow. “I.” Boom. “Don’t.” Boom.”Have.” Boom. “Any.” Boom. “Weaknesses.” Boom. And then Hyde lay still. Smoke rose from the hole in the rooftop. A light rain started to fall.

“I know you are teetering on the edge of consciousness, Mr. Hyde. I trust I have made my point. I will have need of you at some time in the future. When I do I will call for you. And you will come. Otherwise I will destroy everything you hold dear, Mr. Carlucci.”

Doctor Jekyll walked to the edge of the rooftop. He stopped to pick up his sword cane and sheath. Locking them together he leapt away into the night.

Hyde sank into unconsciousness.

The Doctor is In  © Thaddeus Howze 2011. All Rights Reserved

First Appearance: The man-monster Hyde first appeared in Hyde: Portrait of a Modern Monster, a novella due to be released May 2012. Hyde, transformed by an alien technology into a fusion of man, machine and psychopath, the monster Hyde is determined to bring order to the criminal element of Hub City if he has to kill every mobster, crimeboss and drug lord in the city. He never counted on the machinations of the criminal and scientific super-genius, Dr. James Eckyll.

About the Artwork: Xue Duan, an artist of Beijing, China, archives samples of his work on cghub.com, produces some of the finest fantasy paintings I have had the pleasure of seeing. His creation FoX, was the epitome of what I was seeking for my man-monster Hyde. I have included a link so you can partake of Xue Duan’s photorealistic art style. Enjoy! Xue Duan retains all copyrights to his creation, FoX.

#25 Ghede Oussou

| November 24, 2011 | 0 Comments

Wears a black or mauve jacket marked on the back with a white cross and a black or mauve headscarf. His name means “tipsy” due to his love of white rum.

No 25

| November 24, 2011 | 0 Comments

19# Keisha

| November 24, 2011 | 0 Comments

She Ra was one crazy show. I didn’t watch it that much when I was little but now I’ve been watching reruns, that’s a crazy show with hiding messages :/ . This character is based off  She Ra and her name is Keisha. She slay dragons and demons and wizards and all that crap, no man on earth can’t defeat her, with unlimited strength she’s tough to beat.  Her lance can separate into two swords, she’s bad-ass.   Enjoy everybody. One…..:)

#24-The Unwashed

| November 24, 2011 | 0 Comments

A amalgamation of the world’s unknown dead souls, which was the first force the Globe Taskforce neutralized. The entity haunted the UN building for years and one day when the then little known heroes Twist and Quake were visiting, it re-acted to their presence. Their powers being connected to the Earth and its life web as much as the dead that composed the entity, Twist and Quake managed to talk it away from the building, not before it possessed head speaker though, and had been randomly taking it’s revenge until the first fully-formed version of the Globe Taskforce took it down.

No 24

| November 24, 2011 | 0 Comments

#24 Helmsley Sharnoff

| November 24, 2011 | 0 Comments

#23-Silverback

| November 24, 2011 | 0 Comments

Evolutionary biologist Professor Martin Stahls was a meek man, quietly focused on lab results and the slow and inexorable progress of scientific discovery. But his quiet demeanor masked an inner life, where he was consumed by contempt and anger at the restrictions placed upon him by society and the depression of the knowledge of his own insignificance.  When he is caught in a lab accident in the Nuclear Physics department and transformed into a giant atomic-powered gorilla, he decides it’s time that he stopped being afraid…and that everyone else should start.

 

#24 The Duelist

| November 24, 2011 | 0 Comments

He travels the wastes to test his skills against other martial artists.

 

16# Herman Claw

| November 24, 2011 | 0 Comments

Heathcliff cartoon was cool, he was one tough Mofo. This character is based off Heathcliff and his name is Herman Claw. Herman fight dogs , he kill them and skin them as well. Herman Claw from time to time eat other cats. Enjoy everybody. One…

Day 24 – Roland

| November 24, 2011 | 0 Comments

Roland

#20 – Atlas

| November 24, 2011 | 0 Comments

*These are small excerpts and fragments from Julio Cesar Moreira’s upcoming book “The Man behind Atlas: The Story of John Luther Rose”.

1890 – John Luther Rose is born in New York, NY. The first child of Dr. Nicholas Rose and his wife Charlotte, John suffered from serious health issues for most of his infancy. It was considered a miracle of modern medical science that he survived to be a year old, let alone that he managed to make a mostly full recovery.

1904 – John Luther Rose makes history by becoming the youngest man to ever earn a doctorate from the prestigious Oxford University. While there was controversy in that many believed young Dr. Rose did not possessed the maturity to practice medicine, his father and his teachers showed the utmost confidence and pride in him.

1911 – Dr. J.L. Rose stuns the scientific community and the World by unveiling his breakthrough achievement: The Atlas Serum. A miracle drug of Rose’s own invention, Atlas is capable of altering a human’s physiology, taking it to its peak optimal condition, making a person as fast, strong, smart and durable as that person could ever achieve to be. However, the process proved to be so incredibly expensive that Dr. Rose almost went through his share of the Rose family fortune in order to produce enough serum for himself. The military deemed the project “a resounding failure” after reviewing estimates of how much it would cost them to produce a single platoon of Atlas augmented soldiers.

1918 – 28 year old Dr. Rose comes home from the War, were he served both in his capacity as an augmented soldier for the United States government and as a field doctor for the countless of wounded in the trenches. Dr. Rose claims the experience has changed him “profoundly”.

1919 – Dr. Rose cancels his engagement of 5 years to his girlfriend Marie Renard. This made the news for months and shocked many of Dr. Rose’s fans, who saw the couple as the ideal example of young romance. Dr. Rose refused to discuss the subject with the press. Marie Renard returned to her native France shortly after this. She married two years later to one of her father’s business partners. They would never see each other again.

1920 – Dr. Rose founds the Atlas Corporation, a medical research company he hopes will help him achieve his dreams of bettering mankind and the human condition. Atlas was the first company of its kind to so aggressively employ both field researchers and theoretical scientists, not just staff researchers. Within the next 5 years, Atlas would open branches in Europe, Africa and South America. Atlas also became famous for its multiple charity drives and humanitarian endeavors, which Dr. Rose considered paramount to the success of Atlas, both as a company and as an ideology.

1925 – Dr. Nicholas Rose dies at the age of 77. He dies in his sleep, accompanied by his wife Charlotte, who would go on to die just a few months later, also from natural causes. The incident is worth noting due to the fact that Dr. J.L. Rose did not attend the funeral due to business out of the country. A private service would later be held for mother and son in the Rose’s family estate.

1932 – Over the last ten years and making use of Atlas’ South American branch in order to procure all sorts of exotic herbs unique to that region, Dr. Rose was able to improve upon his previously enhanced physiology. The results of his research and experimentation had augmented his abilities tenfold, providing him with super-human strength, speed, stamina, reflexes, impregnable skin, a denser bone structure and sturdier muscle fiber. Even his aging process seems to have become halted as the now 42 year old doctor does not look a day over 20. Though most people are still supportive of Dr. Rose and his work, a small sampling of the populace is starting to grow uneasy with him and questioning his motives.

1935 – Although in the last 3 years Dr. Rose had been operating as a police-sanctioned law enforcer, helping the department in various successful raids and arrests that could have resulted in civilian casualties, Dr. Rose had been kept strictly at street level by the Commissioner and the Mayor’s office. Through his own detective work and with the help of Chief of Police Mason O’Shaughnessy, Rose was able to uncover a ring of organized crime and corruption that deeply implicated the Mayor, the police Commissioner and various respected industrialists and members of the social scene. This immediately transformed Dr. Rose’s perception in the eyes of the public. Low and middle class citizens immediately approved of the doctor’s actions, while the wealthy high class and the political sphere started distrusting Dr. Rose and his motives, distancing themselves from him both personally and in business. The Atlas Corporation did not suffer from this.

1936 – It’s in this year that the nickname “Atlas” was attributed to Dr. Rose as his “super-heroic identity”, forever merging Dr. Rose and his company in the people’s subconscious.

1942 – For the second time in his life, Dr. Rose serves as a soldier in a World War. This time, however, Dr. Rose spends less time being a doctor and more time helping the allies reclaim Europe from the Axis. He was also a member of the upper echelon of the Manhattan Project, along Howard Hughes, Nicola Tesla and J.R. Oppenheimer, and was the only one who voted against the bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki three years later. In later interviews, the doctor claimed he was “as disturbed from what I saw in the battle field as from what I saw back at home amongst our allies”. The Third Reich and Hitler in particular would profess a great admiration for the doctor and his work, quoting that “in his research you can find the true spirit and ideals of the Nazi Übermensch”.

1948 – With the War over, Japan indefinitely isolated from the World and Hitler behind bars, Dr. Rose begins a new age for the Atlas Corporation with the inauguration of Unbound Technologies, a new branch of his company originally dedicated to the study of various nascent fields of research that were inspired by his work on the Manhattan Project. Unbound Technologies would go on to become a Fortune 500 company and one of the biggest innovators in the fields of science and technology in the 20th century.

1950 – Dr. Rose once again goes through a new metamorphosis thanks to the Atomic Particle research division of Unbound Technologies. Using a new radioactive isotope of his own discovery, Dr. Rose is able to improve upon the Atlas Serum. Thanks to the new procedure, his strength, speed, stamina and endurance are once again multiplied tenfold. He is now capable of producing rays of clean isotopic energy from his body, which he can use as a blasting weapon as well as to allow him supersonic flight capabilities. His eyes are now able to see through multiple light spectrums and he is also capable of sensing different radiation frequencies. By this point, Dr. Rose/Atlas had become a staple of the super hero community.

1954 – The United States’ Senate of Internal Security Subcommittee calls for Dr. John Luther Rose, as well as the Atlas Corporation and Unbound Technologies to bear trial due to accusations of communist association and charges of treason and war profiteering. The trials are preceded by Senator Joseph McCarthy himself. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover is also seated in the room, as well as many of the industrialists and entrepreneurs Dr. Rose uncovered as corrupt during the 30’s. The hearing stands as one of the most embarrassing displays throughout the McCathyism era, with the image of the Senator accusing Dr. Rose of being “a red abomination and a Nazi sympathizer” as well as the series of interviews that journalist Edward R. Murrow conducted with the doctor both during and after the hearing being popularly accepted as the turning point in McCarthy’s career and the beginning of the end for him. While all accusations were lately retracted by the Supreme Court, the hearings had a negative effect on Dr. Rose both publicly and on a personal level, with many tracing the beginnings of Atlas’ misanthropy in this time period.

1961 – In June of this year, President John F Kennedy personally asks Dr. Rose for his assistance in the Vietnam War during a personal appeal at the White House. President Kennedy receives no immediate response from Dr. Rose. His response would come on November of that year, when Dr. Rose would be responsible for singlehandedly putting a stop at the American occupation of Vietnam, forcing military forces to return home and staying in the country for the following six months until all conflict within were solved through negotiations he personally supervised. This split once again the public’s view on the doctor, with many accusing him of being unpatriotic while other applauded his efforts for peaceful resolution. The following year, Dr. Rose would step down as CEO of both Atlas and Unbound, and very little would be seen of him in public appearances.

1966 – Through a private effort of Unbound Technologies, the first Lunar Colony, Charlotte 1, is built by the end of the year. It is revealed the colony will be populated not only by Unbound employees, but also by a cadre of international scientists and researchers combining their efforts to expand human knowledge of space and the Universe. Dr. Rose would continue to evade the press and the media, in complete opposition to his more boisterous persona from the 30’s and 40’s.

1968 – It is finally revealed through an article in the National Enquirer that Dr. Rose has been living in Charlotte 1 for the last 6 years. Public opinion on the doctor is by this point at an all-time low, with many people considering him weird and confessing to be scared of him. This proves especially true for the younger generations, who’ve only recently begun to know about him through the media. Flora Marcelle’s book, “Atlas: The Truth”, is also published by the end of the year, further fueling the fires of distrust in the people. Marcelle, who is Marie Renard’s great granddaughter, claims the book was based on Marie’s original journals from the era when she and the doctor were still engaged and “paints the picture of a different man than the one in the newsreels, one far more sinister and unstable”. The book stayed in the bestseller lists for most of 69 and early 1970.

1985 – An unofficial attempt is made by an alliance of the Soviet Union and the United States to bombard the surface of the Moon with a total of 76 nuclear missiles with the explicit intention of terminating Dr. John Luther Rose, a.k.a. Atlas. The missiles however dismantled themselves in mid-flight. When a rescue team was sent to recover the plutonium warheads, they discovered the plutonium had somehow inexplicably been turned to lead. Rumor has it that 14 days after the so-called “Operation: Eclipse” both the U.S.S.R.’s general secretary and the U.S. president received a direct transmission from Dr. Rose. The contents of this transmission, which lasted only 3 minutes, are wildly speculated and uncertain.

1986 – The Soviet Union officially disbands, seemingly overnight.

2011 – The Orbiting Lunar Station “Charlie 15” is officially inaugurated. While Atlas Corporation and Unbound Technologies have become huge transnational companies with branches all over the world and beyond, they remained anchored by Dr. Rose’s vision of helping to the betterment of mankind. Both companies host a long list of charity programs, outreach centers, special scholarship programs and research grants. Dr. Rose himself has appeared in front of the public eye very scarcely in the previous years, only doing so in his capacity as Atlas in helping the superhuman community with situations of imminent catastrophe for the planet and for the most part remaining secluded in his lunar estate in Charlotte 2. Dr. Rose’s keynote in honor of the 90th anniversary of Atlas’ foundation in 2010 was a global event, with the transmission being translated to a hundred different languages and dialects around the World by the doctor himself as he spoke. The current reach of his power is unknown but it is believed that he is no longer required to sleep or eat and that his aging process has completely stopped altogether. It is also speculated that he has acquired telekinetic abilities, with some sources even claiming that what Dr. Rose is truly capable of is sub-atomic manipulation. Still, speculation is all we have as the doctor has refused to give an interview or even entertain guests for the last 25 years, as he has distanced himself from most of his company’s operations and even stepped down as the public face of Atlas back in 1991. Dr. Rose celebrated his 121st birthday this year, and it seems like he has another 121 years still in him. As reclusive and mysterious as he has become, it is still comforting to know that we can all gently rest our worried heads in Atlas’ shoulders and trust that he will help us go into whatever future is waiting for us.

#24 Ghede Masaka

| November 23, 2011 | 1 Comment

“He is an androgynous or transgendered male gravedigger and spirit of the dead, recognized by his black shirt, white jacket, and white headscarf.”

His companion comes next!

#20,21 May & Boss

| November 23, 2011 | 1 Comment

 

May and Boss are great pals and they look out for eachother. Ironically,  May acts more like the boss sometimes…but Boss is happy to obey.

 

*A bit lack of creativity in my recent posts cus they’re more like little caricatures I’m doing of friends in my life….regardless…this was a fun one to do!*

#22 Viola Darling

| November 23, 2011 | 0 Comments

#23 Flora Blackwell

| November 23, 2011 | 0 Comments

I really don’t know how to explain how I got here, standing in my best friend’s apartment while washing blood from my clothes.

(It’s not mine or hers.)

I guess it started a few years ago when I was ten. The Puberty fairy came to me early, which wasn’t a very happy event. Imagine waking up one morning and not only does your chest hurt but it is apparently alive and growing and something is bound to burst out of your chest and you’re going to die a horrible death. I didn’t take it well, needless to say. That’s not the point, or the whole point. My point is, puberty is already hard to begin without adding freakish powers into the mix. That started when I was just about to enter high school. I suppose that it wouldn’t have been as bad as it was at first without those powers, so I do suppose I am grateful for them. Without those powers, I wouldn’t have been doing so poorly, letting my grades slip while I figured out what the hell was wrong with me. Without my grades slipping, my parents wouldn’t have noticed how badly I was suffering (not that they were completely inattentive, but some things did slip out of focus for them). Without my parents noticing, I wouldn’t have met Riley.

Riley is the best thing to have ever happened to me, and I wouldn’t trade anything in the world for that, even to be normal.

(I’ll stop here about her, because otherwise I will go on forever.)

Do you want to know about this freakish power? It’s getting to be a growing news topic. Some people have even figured out the source of it. You might not have heard about it, but there used to be a town called Bramley. Long before I was born, my mother used to live there. She can’t remember too much about the explosion, only that it had been on a hot August night, so humid that your clothes stick to your body and you can’t get comfortable. That’s really the only thing she remembers about that night because the resulting explosion made everything meld together.

Oh, I should actually tell you about my power. I can heal people. I know you think that it’s a little lame, but it’s really not. I thought at first that – aside from it being absolutely strange and horrible – there wasn’t any real use for my power besides in a passive setting. Then I learnt something the hard way.

I can bring the dead back to life. (I just wish I could get the blood out of my shirt.)

It doesn’t work on all dead bodies, I’m sure. I haven’t had a chance to break into a morgue and test on someone embalmed or otherwise preserved, but I do know that it doesn’t work on those who have been cremated (alas, poor Snuffles, I never knew ye). But the freshly dead – they’re game.

Riley thinks I should test my power to the extreme, but I’m not a big fan of that idea. I know how my power works, but I don’t see the point in doing something probably illegal to figure this out. I’d rather take the chances to test my powers as they come. I can raise the dead, and I can heal any injury – including a crossbeam through my spine, but that’s an even longer story.

Riley’s other plan is one that I am surprisingly OK with, despite it basically painting a huge target on my back. I am also not a fan of Spandex, but I managed to talk her out of that one. It hasn’t stopped her from designing a superhero outfit for me, though. I also won’t have a choice when she finally does design one that I like. I can’t say that I am a big fan of these “sexy nurse” ones, or the ones that look like Superman’s threads mated with Sailor Moon’s.

(The Templar Knight one wasn’t bad, but she crumpled that one up a long time ago. Oops.)

Do you want to know more about me? I don’t see why that is of much interest to you. I’m nearly done my undergraduate degree and am terrifyingly aimless, except for Riley’s idea of making me into this town’s superhero (which wouldn’t be bad, considering the number of shootings in certain areas). Don’t ask how I’m supposed to support myself while doing that. Just because I can heal myself doesn’t mean that I can go without sleep. I still have a lot of anxiety issues, but Riley is wonderful in helping me with that (and insists that this “gig”, as she puts it, will help even more, but I don’t see how that will work). I still live at home with my parents, which is why I’m still in my best friend’s bathroom trying to get a once-dead-man’s blood out of my shirt (I think it’s a lost cause now).

My name is Flora Blackwell, and I no longer wish I could be normal like you.

Baku

| November 23, 2011 | 0 Comments

The BakuThe allegiance’s of the Baku along with her real name are not very clear. For the time being she is assisting Nina on her mission to track down the kidnapped Concubines.

#17 Marina

| November 23, 2011 | 0 Comments

She could feel the demon approaching her, could feel his intent zeroed in on her just as much as she could feel the interest in him the rest of the room was trying to hide.  He was smooth, it was obvious from the way he slid towards her, and clear in his intent.  So, most likely he’d been sent.  And she could well imagine by whom.  She’d been none too gentle with Jared.

But this demon was in for a few surprises, the first of which being that she wasn’t what Jared had led him to believe.  Not who, but what, because ‘human’ would only describe her in the barest of terms.  She wasn’t even certain if, at this point in the game, it would be appropriate for her to use that term at all.

Certainly she looked the part, even though her long black hair and pale skin gave her an ethereal quality, but she had long lost the important parts, those delicate and sensitive places in a soul that were the corner stones of both the strength and weakness of humanity.  She was cold and maybe even dead inside, she wasn’t sure, she was no necromancer.  She was only lost, trapped on dry land, and cursed to live.  She had no idea for how long.  She only knew that she had not aged, even though by all rights she should be dead and rotted out by now.

And even after all these years, she still craved the company of men enough to play these games, to become the story they wanted to hear.  And she would play her part so well that there was no parting that was kind.  But her kind were never exactly masters at gentle leavetakings.  It was traditionally their role to cut and run, if not the minute they saw fit, then the minute their captors let down their guard.  Because inevitably the longer she stayed, the harder it was for her lover to let go.

She wished she had been so wise when she had been young, and the city had been young, and the coast was still a wilderness.  When she had fallen so hard for a man that she had willingly given him her pelt, so that he could keep her with him, so that the sea no longer had a hold over her.  She had been exceedingly young and exceedingly stupid, and for all she knew the man she had thought she loved had been buried with her pelt beside him.

It would have fit the pattern.  It went along well with the curse he somehow laid upon her when she left him, if not for the sea, then at least for somewhere away from him.  She had thought that maybe time would have loosened his grip, his obsession, his anger.  But he died without giving her the one thing she wished for.  Her freedom to return to her home.  What she had too late come to realize was her true home, far off the shore, in the unforgiving depths that ranged the coastline.

She wondered idly, as the demon sat before her and speared her with his beautiful eyes, if he would like to savor her true agony.  She wondered if he would be another of many, incapable of letting her go, therefore incapable giving her the happiness that only her freedom could provide.  But he was a demon, so her happiness would never be an issue.  And without her pelt, she was but half a creature, her soul lost in the depths far off the shore somewhere.  She doubted she would ever let him deep enough to taste the sorrow that beat within her, as unrelenting and salty as the sea which daily called her down.  She wondered, though, if she did– would it be enough to drown him as it did her?

Day #25 Zombie Face

| November 23, 2011 | 0 Comments

Day #24 Zombie Face

| November 23, 2011 | 0 Comments

Day #23 Zombie

| November 23, 2011 | 0 Comments

Day #22 Zombie

| November 23, 2011 | 0 Comments

Day #21 Jackson Wyntrson

| November 23, 2011 | 0 Comments

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jackson Wyntrson

 

  • Albino
  • Billionaire
  • Former philanthropist who has lost hope for humankind
  • Decides to relocate to Titan to seclude himself
  • Is mistaken for a zombie once the outbreak occurs

 

#16 Blade

| November 23, 2011 | 0 Comments

#16 Blade

 

Smooth as silk and as sharp as glass.  He knew this was what he was, he knew this was what he looked like when he walked across a room.  He had it on good authority, and even if he may have been an utter failure of a demon, he could still feel the want, fear, and hunger he inspired.  He’d have to be dead not to, and half-starved as he always was, he was always ready to soak in what energy got thrown his way, even when it was little more than a vague unsettled irritation that he was not for them.

There was one who would give him far more than that, he knew.  She didn’t stand a chance. His next meal, his next treasure, his next masterpiece.  She had never met him, but the knew more about her than she probably cared for anyone to know at the moment.  But that’s what happens when you confide in and then brutally tear apart a boy who knows a thing or two about vengeance.  And Demons.

He was Summoned, as was proper, and the young man in question made his deal, the same deal that all of them make when they summon him.  Or summon an idea and get him.  for the rest of his life the man would relive all his torments, his personal tragedies, his agonies, upon Blade’s request.  It was a good deal, considering.  Most demons have far simpler requests- your soul, to torture for an eternity after death.  Although most of the time the detail about torture was left out.  In Blade’s opinion, one would be a fool not to expect it, though, when dealing with a demon.  Pain was, after all, their favored form of sustenance.

In exchange for the young man’s pain, Blade would exact a precise and vicious form of vengeance upon the girl in question.  Simply put, over time, he would destroy her.  Systematically.  Until the young man balked or the young woman died, most often by her own hand.  He would make the vengeful party watch, make them witness the fruits of their labor in excruciating detail, as these memories would be some of the most agonizing, and the guilt that came with them was one of Blade’s favorite flavors.

Fair?  No, it was not fair.  It might have seemed fair in the beginning, vengeance always does.  But one was a complete fool to think that calling upon hell for satisfaction would ever end gently.  Even when one was playing with a demon so far removed from his vicious origins that all he fed upon was the pain of justice meted out unmercifully on careless creatures who called out for hell itself to do a job they should have done for themselves in the first place.

And he was not so broken a demon as to ever consider mercy.

#23 – Sam Appleton – Server

| November 23, 2011 | 0 Comments

Day 23 - Sam Appleton - Server by George Ward

Sam is a busboy/ server at the Checkers cafe along with his wife, Zoa (Day 22).  He works hard in hopes of owning the place one day. He acts friendly and helpful around customers but he gets pretty stressed out talking to people and wishes he could work in the back room all the time.  He enjoys cleaning the dishes as it gives him time to himself and his thoughts.

Day 22: Soccer

| November 23, 2011 | 0 Comments

Day 17 Mustachio Mafioso

| November 23, 2011 | 0 Comments

Mustache is a made man…

No 23

| November 23, 2011 | 0 Comments

Harlequin Guards

| November 23, 2011 | 0 Comments

Mep!What they lack in brains they make up for in numbers, and boy, do they need the numbers.