Don't Forget to Mention Garmentrude

From:
These Are the Winter Tires of Our Truck's Undoing

A Story in the Modern Style
by Ran Screaming.

Chapter 1.

Rickolas was sitting at his kitchen table, sipping cold coffee and staring at the rising sun -- the same rising sun that shone into the kitchen window of his ex-wife, Rhondola, whose divorce lawyer, Spearmint, could see the rising sun from his penthouse on 833 West Anthrax Avenue, but even a penthouse could offer no compensation for the loss of his cloned son, Jiffer, to the Sons of the Rising Sun Rising cult of Warsaw, where the rising sun was not yet visible at this hour to Franchise, the Crown Prince of Porkrind, who was now sitting in his boudoir and sipping coffee that was much warmer than the coffee being sipped by Rickolas as he sat at his kitchen table, watching the rising sun rising.

Damn, thought Reego. What am I going to do about Peever's guacamole problem?

Bracing Himself For The Worst

From:

Nightgems of the Dragon's Jewels

An Epic in the Modern Style
by Ran Screaming.

He'd often thought back to that moment.

Gripping his poignard, brandishing his sword, tugging his forelock, cleaving his gaze unto her own, he'd entered the nunnery, bracing himself for the worst.

"Halt!" he'd whispered, savagely.

She'd blushed.

"Sir, why do you unhinge the dignity of this night by intruding upon our personage?"

He'd stared back at her, unmanned, unable to reply, silent, at a loss for words.

"And furtherto, what is more," she'd husked, sulkily, "Wherefore the sword, the poignard, the tugging of the forelock, the quiet savagery?"

He'd spat. "It is Doom, your Ladyship. It is Doom and the utter Violation of All that Space and Time have been to us."

She'd wondered at his words, pondering, questioningly staring, beseechingly querying within her mind thoughts that'd been hard to express in otherwise vocal terminology accessible to one of such low status as he.

"Pray forgive my brief and momentary silence," she'd apologized contritely, "but far afield had been my thoughts. You did, I trust, mention a certain Doom?"

He'd rolled his eyes at that, scratching at his armpits, clutching at his harness and heaving up his sagging breeches in a tardy display of hardy manly modesty.

"My Ladyship," he'd gasped, "It is thus. Word has come of the Trilogy. Three Books shall not suffice. The Gods and Great Ones of Earth and Air and Sea and Crystal and Dragon's Ichor have fore-ordained, that just as the Scene before us attends to its Terminus, then indeed shall the Blood be pouring."

The spear'd pierced her neck. She'd crumpled. The blood'd run red upon the tesserae.

He'd barfed.

COMING SOON!

Volume Four of the Dragon Sigils of Unicorn Dreams Trilogy Series Five, by Ran Screaming:

The Frozening is Coming

Now a TV series and an iPod app!

Yak-Oil Soap

From:

Cricket Eyes And Bee Stings And Ears That See The Wonder

A Novel of Modern Life
by Ran Screaming.

Chapter MMMMDCCLXXVII

"John?"

He looked at her, and remembered summer nights, pizza, calamine lotion, vitamin pills, electric razors, thermostats, and jaundice.

"Yes?"

She looked at him, and remembered bobbing for apples, hopping over cracks in the sidewalk, skiing down snow-frosted mountains of snow, hoping for sunny days, waiting for buses, scouring the dishpans.

"I --"

Then he remembered that night back in 1992.

Yes, that night. On that night, he had looked at her, and he had remembered pop tarts, microwave ovens, rubber cement, socks, cake ingredients, yak-oil soap.

She had looked at him, and said, "What?"

And then she had remembered herding wildebeest, sacrificing a goat to the gods of abstinence, bursting balloons in the park as children looked on with tear-filled eyes, pumping gas into bottles and then stuffing up the bottles with rags and then lighting the rags and then running like hell.

Then she had remembered that she had remembered that afternoon in 1986.

"This --" 

Welcome to the Death of Nuance

A: It sucked!

B: It rocked!

A: It sucked!

B: It rocked!

C: Although I find the characters two-dimensional, I respect the writer's implication that traditional forms of character development might not work in a story that places more emphasis on metaphysical imagery than on standard narrative arcs. For what it's worth, I still found their circumstances compelling in a visceral way.

A & B: You suck!!!!!!