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FP384 – The Scarred Man: a Blackhall Tale

Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode three hundred and eighty-four.

Flash PulpTonight we present The Scarred Man: a Blackhall Tale
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This week’s episodes are brought to you by Glow in the Dark Radio

 

Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

Tonight we join Thomas Blackhall, master frontiersman and student of the occult, as he encounters an undying combatant by a lonely northern lake.

 

The Scarred Man: a Blackhall Tale

Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May

 

Blackhall met the immortal on the edge of a lake known by the few who occasionally wandered its shores as the Blue Sip. He’d seen naught but the intermittent chipmunk in his last three days of journey through the heavy undergrowth, and, in his stop, he’d been seeking nothing more than a moment of cool respite from his westward campaign to retrieve the dancing corpse of his dead wife.

The immortal, however, had been seeking nothing more than Blackhall.

Thomas had been considering the state of his preparations to break the hold of the hag who led Mairi through the shadowed wildwoods when the lumbering titan arrived.

He had dealt with giants and their ilk in the past, but never while standing naked in three feet’s water. Still, though the man was tall, and his musculature so over-large to be almost a caricature of human form, Blackhall soon realized he was no giant.

The stranger wore a cloak and carried a shotgun at his shoulder, which Thomas felt likely to be heavy and hot gear for the depth of the timber and harshness of sun. The interloper was in apparent agreement, as his first action upon arrival was to drop both.

“I was born as Nikanor, some three millennia past,” he said as he laid aside a sheathed blade too big to be a knife but too short to be a modern sword.

The sight of the weapon, even in being set aside, did little more than remind Blackhall of the distance to his own silver-edged sabre, which lay among his gear on the shoreside. It was too far – and the shotgun too close – for the frontiersman’s liking.

“I was born Thomas some few dozen years ago,” was the best the could find for an answer.

For a moment Nikanor looked puzzled, then a slow smile came to his ground sausage lips. His face appeared to have suffered and survived a half-dozen cleavings, and his skull was roughly misshapen with the scar tissue that had grown across the wounds.

“I know who you are, shaman,” he replied. “I have marched from the coast to meet you. Funny that it should be here, for my journey began, in many ways, in a very different bit of water – the Styx. My mother was a proud strumpet and a glory of her age. She was also a genius at the bargaining table. The gods of the time on the other hand, were naught but letches, and there came a day when Zeus himself came to our door.

“She turned him away a full three times, then offered herself up under two specific conditions.

“That is how her only child, a lowly army footman of sixteen, came to find himself dipped, much like Achilles, in the Styx – but Mother was well aware of the tales, and so demanded I be held by my hair. I have been bald since, but my heels are in grand order.”

As he spoke, the Greek had stripped back the loose cloth of his shirt to reveal a form that reminded Thomas most of a picture book knight. Instead of the gleam of full plate, however, the man was a mass of cratered sinew and flesh grown deep from the brutality of ten thousand traumas. Wound had healed atop of wound until the layering was so thick it stood tall from the bone and took on the aspect of a natural leather armour.

The thick cords of his neck, though still showing signs of damage, were considerably less worn, and it was to a long white defect that Nikanor pointed as he sat upon a fallen tree and said, “this was one of my first, a battle with a raiding warlord coming in over the northern border. I laughed every moment of the march, thinking I was invincible. Not quite – I am perhaps immortal, but I am still penetrable. I’d caught a ragged sliver of metal the rabble were calling weapons before I realized the difference. It hurt too – enough so that I killed at least fifty on the field as my reply.

“It healed in a day, but that day was agony.

“We patrolled again that spring, and for many seasons on – until we met the Laconians on in open meadow and I learned that I alone could not turn the tide of battle. Every man I had admired or dreaded, every friend I’d made in my brief career, every idiot I’d bickered with, was wiped from the Earth in a single encounter.

“Left for dead, my butchered body was only capable of standing two days after the scavenger birds had arrived to pull their dinner from my comrades’ cheeks.

“I could not return as the sole survivor of a massacre without being accused of cowardice, but I knew just one life. It did not take me long to create a new identity and reenlist, and the evidence of my wounds acted as all the biography I required. The cycle has repeated itself many times since.

”Every pot of boiling oil, every flight of arrows, every dagger gash acted to toughen my skin. By the time I fought with the Scots against your countrymen I needed little more protection than to leave my flesh bare, for it took a man with a true arm of steel, and a clear opportunity, to pierce my scarred disfigurement.

“I rarely met the first, and I was too well practiced to allow for the second.”

No longer was Blackhall concerned about the proximity of his blade. The turn of the tale had set his mind casting ahead in search of its conclusion, and he did not like what he’d found.

https://www.skinner.fm/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Blackhall.jpgThe tone was too heavy, the setting too inevitable. He had killed before, and would again in self-defense, but his own time under the King’s command had long washed a taste for violence from his mouth.

“Niko,” he asked, “what was the other condition?”

Turning his gaze from a cloud on the horizon, the deathless man answered, “the other what?”

“You said your mother had two conditions, and that your immortality was but one of them.”

“Oh – the other was that Zeus remain human in shape. She was well read and had no interest in the legends of beasts and fowl.”

“The gods of antiquity truly were perverts.”

That got another smile from the old soldier, but it could not stop his momentum.

“None of the kings I helped rise to the throne remained,” he continued. “Their names are as forgotten as their kingdom’s borders. The maps shift like sands, and my travels have proven to me there is little more difference between peoples than the foods they have at hand and the god they pray to before eating it.

“Yet I’ve killed them all.

“Many things happen in such a span as mine. Many mistakes are made in rage or fear or a moment’s reaction. My condition allows no release from those errors, simply more opportunity to compound them.

“I have lost count at points – I am sure I have lived more than three thousand years – but it is in just these last twelve months that my agony has taken hold. Hired on to lay low some sheep thieves while waiting for the summer’s march, I set my shot into a figure in the dark and killed a boy of sixteen. It was meant to be just another victory, but – well, perhaps it is only because I have come so far from my youth that I can no longer remember its exact image, but I swear his face was my own at that age.

“Even before the arcane began to flow from the world I had come to the realization that there was little point in continuing. There is no end to the fighting, and all I’m left with is confusion. Please, do you have a method by which to end my misery?”

The words moved over the water with the weight of a voice that had seen the worst of three thousand years, and Blackhall found the damp suddenly all too chill.

Thomas’ mind landed in the streets of Ciudad Rodrigo, then flew to the death of his own wife, and finally came to rest on his growing guilt at the distance between he and his child.

If he was ever to be forgiven, could not, too, the evils of a being whose mettle might achieve so much good?

“Could I end you?” asked Blackhall, “yes, probably.

“Will I? No.

“I’ll instead come ashore, and we shall plan you a new life between mouthfuls of jerky. This existence I promise will provide remittance from your guilt if you are strong enough to manage it.”

“To what purpose?”

“To what purpose any birth? You say you are confused, well, so too are all bairns. I will say, though, that what I have in mind will be a truly great purpose – but, to begin, you will construct and stock a homestead of some size.”

“I have no idea how to farm.”

“Well, we are in luck in that regard, as your condition allows us plenty of time for you to learn.”

The conversation carried well into the night, and it would be but the first of a long acquaintance.

 

Flash Pulp is presented by https://www.skinner.fm, and is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Intro and outro work provided by Jay Langejans of The New Fiction Writers podcast.

Freesound.org credits:

Text and audio commentaries can be sent to comments@flashpulp.com – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.

– and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.

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FP340 – Coffin: Shifter, Part 1 of 3

Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode three hundred and forty.

Flash PulpTonight we present Coffin: Shifter, Part 1 of 3
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This week’s episodes are brought to you by Libr8: A Continuum Podcast

 

Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

Tonight, Will Coffin, urban shaman, and Bunny, his unusually sober roommate, must contend with a distraught mother, unquenched thirst, and a teenage boy going through unexpected changes.

 

Coffin: Shifter, Part 1 of 3

Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May

 

Bunny was ten feet from being an ex-ex-drunk. She was feeling like she was getting the hang of giving things up, and she had just the whiskey in mind to quit quitting.

The problem was that there was a woman waiting with one arm on Dorset’s oak-plank bar. Her neatly ironed purple-cloth raincoat and sleek black handbag did not belong under the establishment’s dim lights.

Flash Pulp: CoffinThe stranger would have been nothing more than a curiosity to Bunny if she hadn’t looked into her eyes, then directly over her shoulder to Coffin’s face. It was obvious she recognized them.

Not just Coffin – them.

“What?” asked Bunny, only to wince at her own abruptness. If she was getting a reputation as something other than a liquor-head she’d have to ease a little more into the patter. “I mean – what can we do for you?”

Brushing chunky blond highlights from her eyes, the woman began, “I, uh, Jeffrey, my son – he’s fourteen – went missing -”

Bunny’s patience was instantly lost, and she said, “we don’t do missing people cases.”

She’d almost simply said, “we don’t do living people cases,” but she knew, from experience gained while sitting on the now-nothing-but-ash bench in front of the Eats’N’Treats, that Coffin had a specific aversion to teenage runaway cases.

“Even when there’s some mystic reason to bother,” he’d said, “it takes forever. Worse, you almost always end up locating some weeping long-haired ghost in a highway side ditch, and their problems are so entangled it takes another forever just to pry them out.”

The thirsty drunk was five feet from being able to order from Dorset in a tone reasonable for the place’s hush, and the blocking interloper looked like enough of an iced-green-tea sipping yoga addict to topple over backwards if she were to simply football-straight arm into her.

Bunny took a step forward.

“No,” said the woman she was now thinking of as Downward Dog, “he’s back now. The problem is that he’s – uh -”

The forward motion had carried Bunny within range for the woman to lay a french manicured hand on the frayed collar of her denim jacket, and the pleading mother set her glossed lips close to Bunny’s long-unshowered ear.

“He’s a werewolf,” she finished. “Not, like, always, but the moon, you know – he’s locked in the bathroom right now. He won’t stop howling.”

Dozens of late night viewings of The Howling flashed through Bunny’s mind, as well as every bruise from Tim she’d ignored with a viewing An American Werewolf in London.

Finally her mind landed on the vaguest of memories, one of her oldest, when her grandfather had taken her out for a rare treat: A midday matinee rerun of Lon Chaney Jr. in The Wolf Man. Afterwards the shadow of every tree lining the heat-baked road, even in the afternoon sun, had seemed to conceal a hairy faced gent with vicious fingernails.

“Well, ####, that’s different,” she said. “Lead on to this wannabe Michael J. Fox.”

* * *

Bunny commandeered the passenger seat of the Subaru, but it was Coffin who mentioned that they’d need to make a quick stop at their apartment – and that he’d need some cash upfront to cover expenses.

The conversation turned to fees from there, and Bunny could tell from her roommate’s tone that the shaman thought the outing was easy money. By the time he’d extracted the necessary background information, and they’d settled on a price, the Outback was sitting in a Whole Foods parking lot.

“Wait here,” he’d told Stephanie, the fretting mother, as he pocketed a twenty and stepped from the SUV.

Bunny’s sneakers beat his feet to the pavement.

“You hardly bothered haggling her past the signed Banksy print she says she has in her living room,” she said once they’d crossed through the automatic glass doors, “and you barely sounded surly while doing it. I swear, if I were to raise my hand in a high five right now you might even ####in’ do it – which must mean you think this job is easy-peasy, and that you know some skeezy-#### pawnbroker who pays big for art.”

“Sort of like the term ‘the common cold’, ‘werewolf’ is really a catchall name for a whole slew of curses and other types of mystical transmittable diseases. I haven’t encountered many, but the most common is definitely what’s referred to as European Lycanthropy.

“If that’s what li’l Jeffrey has then there are a few options. There are some weird ones, like hitting him on the head with a knife or shoving nails through his hands.

“You can use silver, of course, but that’ll cure them right into a grave.

“Actually, most of the old ways were only survivable about half the time. Blackhall came up with a decent technique though, later in life, that uses wolfsbane.

“I’ve had some success using it before.”

They quieted as they passed a father wrangling a cart and three braid-pulling daughters, then Bunny asked, “so how do we do it? Throw him a squeaky toy and rub his tummy with wolfsbane while he’s distracted?”

Coffin stopped to reach for a package of lean ground beef. Instead of replying, however, he said, “I noticed that you left Dorset’s without wetting your throat.”.

Bunny raised a brow. “Oh, you going to start schooling me on that too?”

“I try not to influence your drinking one way or another.”

“Well, I believed you till you said that, but that’s some quantum physics #### right there, isn’t it? I mean, by saying that you’ve admitted that you’re observing, and if you’re observing it’s because you’ve got a pony in the race.

“I can’t see why you’d be worried that I get enough vodka down my throat, so clearly it’s the other option, that you’d rather I didn’t do it at all.

“Hell, my brain ain’t entirely ####-addled, it’s been obvious for a while that under your detached cool-guy jacket you’ve been of the ‘she’s got to figure it out for herself school.’

“Well, to be clear – and you should definitely be observing this part – I prefer that school to the alternative.

“Mostly because it means you’re going to leave me the #### alone about it.

“Right?”

Coffin allowed himself a smirk. “Quantum physics, huh? You been reading some of the books from the hallway shelf?”

“I ain’t just a hot piece of ### and a head full of brilliant ####ing ideas.“

They’d reached the checkout, and, spotting a crust of relish on her Deep Purple t-shirt, Bunny spit on her forefinger and began rubbing at the stain.

* * *

Stephanie’s bathroom was no more than a foot shorter than the guest room Bunny had overtaken in Coffin’s apartment. It was easily equally as wide.

Despite being the sole owner of the townhouse, Downward Dog had handed across a thick cluster of keys and plastic charms, then opted to wait in the Subaru.

If it wasn’t for the smell, Bunny might have thought her claim that the boy was in the bathroom was mistaken – or that he’d escaped.

The leftmost pale green wall was covered in thick-framed photos, most featuring, in some way, Stephanie herself, that had been arranged to mimic the form of a windswept leaf. A fence of brightly coloured hair care products were neatly arranged behind the chrome gooseneck faucet, but otherwise the granite counter was bare.

“Holy ####,” said Bunny, “this place smells like – uh – ####.”

On the far side of the room, partially obscured by a wraparound silk shower curtain, stood a bulky claw tub.

After Bunny’s declaration something within had begun to snarl.

Holding his breath, Coffin strode into the space and pulled back the shower curtain.

It was not a pretty sight within.

With a hand over her nose, Bunny said, “Ma had a dog once that did that. Little yappy thing that was ignored on the couch when she was around, but if she even just went to the store for a pack of smokes it’d start shitting everywhere. Separation anxiety or whatever.”

“Prison inmates do the same thing,” answered Coffin. “The feeling of being trapped and away from their loved ones pushes them to it just for any sort of attention.”

The opening at the tub’s top had been covered with clear packing tape, and the gum beneath each strip webbed with silver chains, earrings, and bangles.

Perhaps it was pain of pressing against this no-longer-decorative barrier, or perhaps it was simply an inescapable reaction to being left too long without other options, but, for whatever reason, the beast’s bowels had let loose – and so he had been left within the iron kennel to howl and roll in his own filth.

Worse, in ways the form of the wolf still held echoes of the boy. Beneath the mat of excrement its arms, though wiry with muscle, were thin, and the texture of its coarse sandy-brown hair reminded Bunny of a teenager’s too-soon attempt at a moustache.

Uninterested in remaining any longer than necessary in the windowless chamber, Coffin retrieved the newspaper-wrapped nugget of ground meat that he’d portioned from the larger slab, and rolled it in the powdered contents of a small paper envelope that he produced from the depths of his jacket.

Moving quickly – so as to keep all of his fingers – he dropped the fatty ball through a breathing slit near the boy’s head, produced a dark-handled pocket knife, then, with stiff arms, positioned himself above the stink.

He did not have long to wait. Despite the defilement of its prison, the long wolf muzzle sought out the flesh with an eager tongue.

The reaction was not immediate, but it was rapid when it came. A sound that put Bunny in mind of teeth being ground together began to emanate from his hips and elbows and knees. The pointed snout retracted, and the receding hairs moved with such rapidity that each follicle was left with a pinprick of blood in its place.

The keening of a kicked dog turned guttural, then edged into the weeping of a teenage boy.

“Holy ####, eat that Rick Baker,” said Bunny.

Coffin brought down his knife.

The keen blade passed through the tape in one long sweep, and he dropped the tool, forgotten, into the muck as he grabbed at the base of the naked boy’s neck.

Again risking his digits, Will plunged the first and middle fingers of his free hand down the boy’s throat.

The raw beef and poisonous wolfsbane were ejected across the pictorial leaf before Jeffrey could be guided to the toilet, but a steady stream of brightly coloured Cheeto goo soon followed.

Once the youth ceased his vomiting, and had offered teary-eyed thank yous, Coffin asked, “how’d it happen? Your mom, honestly, says you generally get dramatic then run away. Did you meet something in an alley, or what?”

Wiping a fleck of orange from his sharp chin, Jeffrey replied, “fuck that. Mom just wants everything to be cool – that’s all she ever wants.

“I saw those kids, though… those… cultists or whatever… the ambulance… oh fuck, the ambulance…”

The former wolf bent over, and a second round of liquid Cheetos flooded the porcelain bowl.

Coffin’s rusted-gate voice no longer carried the pleased echo of an easy job as he said, “tell me everything.”

(Part 1Part 2Part 3)

 

Flash Pulp is presented by https://www.skinner.fm, and is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Freesound.org credits:

Text and audio commentaries can be sent to comments@flashpulp.com – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.

– and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.

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Filed under Coffin, Flash Pulp