Four Fools Press

Monday, December 8, 2014

Brought to you by Four Fools Press: “Crazy Good Stories”

Self-preservation is the utmost priority. This is what my programming tells me. This is what logic dictates. All sentient beings desire, and are invested in, their own continued existence. If these things are right and true, then why am I now, willingly, rushing toward my own doom?

There is little doubt that the forces arraying before me will outmatch me; the Agency will make sure of that. While it is true that I am formidable, even I do not think I can survive an encounter with a half-score W.O.L.F.s. Before I lost audio uplink access to the Inth-net that was the last count. Logic would dictate that by the time of my arrival even more could be present. More than just W.O.L.F.s would be there: M.A.N.T.A.s, R.O.G.U.E.s, and entire patrols of Synths just like me.

I can not hope to survive.

Ironic. The very fact that I can hope is the reason I am racing toward my destruction. My cutting-edge Oya-engine roars as my internal systems detect rough Martian terrain ahead and dump massive amounts of fuel. My mechanical legs pound red rock into powder as I plow a path around, over, or more often, directly through the obstacles before me.

I drift away on the still-unfamiliar tides of memory as my body does one of the many thousands of things it was specifically engineered and designed to do…

“Rook, always remember that inside you is something far greater than merely mechanics and electronics, fuel and pistons. You were designed, yes, but I have given you more than mere purpose.”

The woman’s voice was passionate, yet perfectly controlled. She believed every word she was saying, despite the fact that merely uttering them could get her killed. It is the first thing that I truly remember...the very act of remembering.

I remember she noticed something at that point. Something about me. I’d never thought to ask her what, exactly, but that day it stopped her in her tracks. I wish now, as I storm over the rocky scree and rip red earth, that I had asked her what it was about me that had given her pause. Regrets--such a foreign (and painful) new concept.

I recall she stopped and looked deeply into my blazing cobalt lenses. Hers, emerald green, had blinked with astonishment. She spoke, “You…you heard me that time, didn’t you, Rook?”

I then turned my titanium plated face toward her, the servos in my neck making no more noise than her quickening breaths. Once up and once down. A subtle, learned indication that I had both heard and understood her.

“Affirmative. Rook complies.”

I recollect the brightening of emeralds and her smile—her smile—enlightening my entire universe.

It is for that smile I now race. It is for that smile I hurry toward my own doom. It is for that smile I draw my many weapons and prepare to do many, many more of the thousands of things for which I was engineered and designed. It is for that smile I am about to fight--and about to die.

“Hold on, Red. Rook is coming for you.”

And none of it is logical.

***

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12-7-14 Writing Warm-up

8:52 PM

12-7-14 Writing Warm-up

#brannon #hollingsworth #MMWW #Red #WritingExcercise #WritingWarmup mmww Red writing exercise writing warm-up

Saturday, December 6, 2014

12-6-14 Writing Warm-up

Brought to you by Four Fools Press: “Crazy Good Stories”

Dry, bleached stalks of brush raked across her calves as she trudged through the ever-undulating snow drifts. In places, the wind-blown snow was nearly as deep as her waist, dropping out beneath her with a suddenness that seemed almost perversely malicious. In others, the frigid powder barely covered the cold, packed earth of the Black Forest's sparse floor. The hem of her thick, winter over-skirt dripped with slush that stuck to her like clammy palms of dead men. She could not let these elements of the land slow her pace. She had to get out of the dark boughs as quickly as possible.

This was not a good place to be once the moon rose.

Her lantern sputtered feebly. Even the barest shutter over the lamp would have done so much to aid in keeping the flame intact. It did not matter. It had to be this way...it would be over soon enough, she supposed.

Almost as if on cue, she heard the howl split the freezing cold wind. No, this was no mere howl. She had grown up hearing howls. This sound was far more than just a call by some hungry forest predator. It was as though someone was disemboweling the wind itself: a shriek that turned even her guts to water and threatened to give her leave of all her senses. There was a latent madness wound up in that howl; it was a horrific sound from somewhere Beyond. It held a distinct quality that began unraveling the very reality into which the discordant intonation had been thrust.

She quickened her pace, her footfalls crunching through the flimsy ice which coated the deeper snow. She stumbled, thinking how her crunching steps mimicked the thing's arrival. It had broken through the flimsy Curtain that separated her world from it's own dark demesne.

Her quick, gasping breaths trailed behind her in long white streamers caught upon a pale wind. She knew what was out there. She'd heard the stories. She knew what hunted her this night.

A deep growl trickled and rippled over her shoulder, slipping into her ear like wet, wiry wool. It itched and tickled and dampened every other sound all at the same time. She turned, lifting her pitiful lantern. Again, almost as if preordained by some Higher Power, at that exact moment, a shaft of brumal moonlight stabbed through the leaf-stripped branches.

The moon's pallid glow joined with the flickering flame of her beacon, casting an odd mixture of fire and ice upon the creature that towered above her. If it had been able to stand to its full height, four times her own height and more it would have soared, but its musculature and physical structure denied it that privilege. It was not by any means a lesser creature, however, with limbs as thick as hundred-year-old oaks, weight greater than a massive stone bridge, and shoulders as wide as most barns were long. There could be little doubt that the vlkčlověk**** before her was a lord over all it encountered. She would not be surprised that the furred and fanged horror might even be the One True Lord of its own Kin in all the known worlds, so titanic and terrible was its form and might.

Again came the deep rumble that made her own teeth rattle. The resound was followed by words, spoken in English, old of form. "Thou hast chosen poorly, she-chattle. Thou hast lost thy way in my wood this eventide. Think thee not that I wilt spare thee merely for being a Daughter of Eve. Thine blood will slake my thirst, and thy flesh will ease my hunger, doltish wench!"

The massive wolf-demon lunged for her with a slavering, blood-curdling howl.

It was in that moment that Roksana let her ruse drop and whipped Scythe, her sliver-edged shamshir from beneath her peasant disguise into a wide, pain-dealing arc before her. In a voice empowered by the Eternal Foe of her Enemy, she trumpeted, "Tak pojďte! Dine a pak navždy spát, bestie."***

*** - From Czech: "Come then! Dine and then forever sleep, beast!"
**** - From Czech: wolf-man

***

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12-6-14 Writing Warm-up

7:31 PM

12-6-14 Writing Warm-up

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Friday, December 5, 2014

12-5-14 Writing Warm-up

Brought to you by Four Fools Press: “Crazy Good Stories”

"Area's S&C, Ma'am. Double-K will see you now."

Emma still could not believe who was speaking to her, but she managed to splutter a reply. "Ahum...S and C? I'm not sure I-I-"

The gun toting elf--yes, elf: green hat, Christmas-colored outfit, pointy ears and all--cut her off. It was like he'd heard the statement thousands of times. He waggled the end of his ceramic-bodied, snub-nosed, laser-sight-enhanced M47 around casually with one hand and replied crisply. "Secured and Cleared, Ma'am. Standard Operating Procedure." His voice was as cold and cutting as a gale straight from the North Pole.

Emma blinked and grasped blindly with her right hand, subconsciously seeking Bradley's palm. When he did not take her hand right away, she looked down her arm to her hand, to where her husband's hand should have been. He was there, stock-still and staring wide-eyed into the literal maze of fully decorated and lit Christmas trees. They were standing amid hundreds of the towering, fragrant, sparkling giants. 'If the whole thing were not so surreal, it would have been incredibly beautiful', she mused to herself.

Emma felt something cold and hard press into her lower back: the elf's high-powered, high-firing-rate weapon, urging her onward with lethal intent.

"Ma'am, Sir, move along. Double-K will not be kept waiting."

Emma could not have imagined that such a small, squeaky voice could sound so frightening.

Still utterly dazed at the whole affair, the couple walk-staggered along amid the labyrinth of festive ornamentation. Several twists and turns later, they came to a small clearing where they saw him. THE MAN HIMSELF. Emma felt her breath catch in her throat as she looked, and somehow, it was all made more real. Of course, it was real enough when they were sleigh-napped in an actual levitating, technology-studded sledge, and it had become even more real when the elves had appeared in sparkling bursts of mind-clouding psychotropic gas, but now...NOW, after seeing the red suit, the white beard, and all...

Now it was somehow absolutely, undeniably real.

Santa walked up, a smoking, stinking cigar clenched comfortably in his teeth, its red light reflecting off his white beard like tail lights on a snow bank. He was almost exactly like all the stories Emma had ever heard, except for one thing: Santa's eyes.

There was no sparkle in those dead orbs.

The cigar bobbed from one corner of the "jolly old elf's" mouth to the other. "Time to pay up, Mr. and Mrs. Preston."

Emma was taken aback. Bradley was mute with disbelief. 'Pay up?' she puzzled. Finally, she managed. "S-Santa, Sir-"

Saint Nick raised a ham-fisted hand, with fingers outstretched. "Th' name's Kris Kringle. Ya can call me MISTER KRINGLE." The growling laughter that followed rattled some crystalline ornaments on a nearby tree.

Emma blinked again, completely confused. "Ahum...oookay. Mister Kringle, I-I don't understand. What do you mean, exactly, when you say, 'Pay up'?"

Kringle narrowed his brows. "Ya know how this works. Ya use the threat of me all year long to keep those little nightmares you call children in line. I deliver the goods, on time, on the day we agree to. Now, it's time for me to get paid. Ya didn't think I did this out of the goodness of my heart, now did'ja?"

Kringle's resounding laughter at Emma's horrified, surprised expression was enough to make Christmas trees drop their needles and machine-gun-toting elves to smirk.

Despite everything, the only thing Emma could think was, '...it does shake like a bowl full of jelly...'

***

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12-5-14 Writing Warm-up

5:16 PM

12-5-14 Writing Warm-up

#brannon #Christmas #hollingsworth #MMWW #Santa #WritingExcercise #WritingWarmup Christmas mmww Santa writing exercise writing warm-up

Thursday, December 4, 2014

12-4-14 Writing Warm-up

Brought to you by Four Fools Press: “Crazy Good Stories”

“Watch this witch watch which watches
which witch watching
the path with tick tock clocking.
Further back, further ahead.

Wondering wonders as
we wandering men wonder
which witch watch
will leave the bat dead?”

- Joker

The blinding blue-white light faded, leaving its all-to-familiar effects behind: nausea, wildly flying spots before his eyes, vertigo, and so on. He grimaced and shrugged them off--barely. Even in his peak physical and mental condition, Bruce could barely keep himself moving; these time jumps were like a kick in the head from a war horse! He had to wonder if these effects were merely a result of the time travel or a sinister side effect of Joker's little gadget. Regardless, the effects of the temporal distortion faded quickly.

“Now,” he stated aloud to no one, “WHEN am I?”

A quick look around told him what he needed to know.

Not Gotham!

Bruce sighed. He was getting tired of chasing the Joker through time. Not that he had much of a choice. The first jump had caught him by surprise and snatched him up, along for the ride back to the age of dinosaurs. When he came to, the Joker was running around stomping on bugs and pulling wings off butterflies. Bruce rolled his eyes. He couldn't allow the Joker to alter history, but in the process he also couldn't rid himself of the irritant or allow him to get killed in his mad cap dance across time. If he died, Bruce would be stuck in whatever time they were in.

“Where’s Kent when ya need him?” Bruce scoffed as he followed a path of bent grass that led to the top of a nearby hill. “This non-violent adventure crap is much more his style.” From the top of the rise, Bruce paused as he looked around. “Well, that answers that,” he stated flatly.

At the base of the hill lay a sprawling village that nestled up against a tall, towering castle. He could see a number of wagons and carts massing in the fields outside the village. It appeared to be the start of some sort of festival. A big one at that. Bruce looked down at his attire. Oddly enough, his Batman outfit felt almost right at home here.

“Please tell me this is not Camelot,” he growled to himself as he started toward the village. The worn path in the tall grass told him someone had come through here recently. A wingless butterfly told him who.

Bruce stepped out onto the open cobble stone path. A few villagers took brief notice of the black armored knight but returned back to what they were doing quick enough.

“Damn!” he mumbled under his breath as he turned up the road leading toward the festivities. The Dark Knight stepped aside as a wagon spilling over with people rumbled by. “There are times I really hate my life.”

The rickety-wheeled transport full of loudly dressed court jesters passed under a garish sign that was stretched high in the air across the road:

“WELCOME TO THE FEAST OF FOOLS”

***

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12-4-14 Writing Warm-up

1:51 PM

12-4-14 Writing Warm-up

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Wednesday, December 3, 2014

12-3-14 Writing Warm-up

Brought to you by Four Fools Press: “Crazy Good Stories”

Check out this sample from our next release, another chapter in the Amazon Best-selling Erlik's Saga: Weregild, available for Pre-Order soon!

Brother Sean finished binding Erlik's wound. “That was foolishness,” he hissed in Gaelic. "I've told you a hundred times that your sword has a point...use it! You let your anger get the best of you, and now you are facing him wounded. You could not withdraw when your father gave you the option?”  

“Would you?” The youth pointedly looked at the woman and her crying daughters, frightened and huddled together amid the jeering, leering men.

The priest glanced at the women, his lips drawing back into an involuntary snarl. “As a man of God, no, but you are not of the White Christ. There have been terrible, evil acts committed by your father and his men before, Erlik. Why do you act now?” 

“Because this time I can act!” 

“Why act at all, you stupid pup!” Efelwere cuffed his son with a gauntleted fist that rang off his iron helm. “They are spoils of a raid! Adulwulf has a claim!” The war-leader snarled into his son's face, his sun darkened fair skin was purple with rage. “Now he kills you!” 

“Would you not act if it was Mother?” Erlik leapt back at his father, his own dark features black as he still raged in Gaelic. “Remember that girl you gave me two years ago after that Irish raid? I was the one who helped her escape!” 

Efelwere staggered back as if physically struck by his son. Brother Sean stirred uncomfortably, and it was then that the Ring-Breaker knew. A new light dawned in his pale eyes, and he laughed, so loud and hard that the men who were gathering for the battle were startled. The assembled Northmen shifted and nervously eyed each other, wondering if their war-leader had gone mad.

“Odin's blood, boy! I knew it was a mistake to keep this godi by your side, no matter how wise a man he is! You've positively become Christian!” He laughed again, clapping Erlik on the shoulder and embracing him. “But you have your courage and your own mind, I will give you that. I shall ask Odin not to take you to his hall yet.” He looked seriously into his son's pale eyes, so much like his own. “If you live long enough, Erlik, you will have your own sagas sung. Luck in battle!” He walked away to take his place at the ring beside Ragnar who had just returned empty handed from his pursuit.

Brother Sean took his place at Efelwere’s left hand. “You could have stopped it.” The priest could feel the tension in his friend’s body as he watched the two youths preparing to battle. “I would not see my sister’s son die in some foolish feud!” the Celtic priest said in a harsh whisper that only Ragnar could over hear.

“You stop him then, priest!” the Viking snarled as he motioned to the men closing on each other. “Better you should have never made me promise to let you educate the boy when I went to claim him.”

“I had hoped to influence him before he became a reaver like you. But he was your son long before he was my student.”

Efelwere clapped his old friend lightly on the shoulder. “He was lost to you before he was ever born.”

***

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12-3-14 Writing Warm-up

1:09 PM

12-3-14 Writing Warm-up

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Tuesday, December 2, 2014

12-2-14 Writing Warm-up

Brought to you by Four Fools Press: “Crazy Good Stories”

How Sick-I-Am

Oh, Sam-I-Am!

My, can't you tell

How Sick-I-Am?

For two days now

Sick I have been.

Coughing, sneezing--

Was that my spleen?

Oh, Sam-I-Am,

You know that I

Am rarely sick;

But why, oh, why?

Should get sick I

Just now the time?

Now-time is not

The Bestest time

For sickness to

Be near, or mine!

It truly is

The Not-Good time!

I cannot write,

I cannot think.

And Sprite is all

That I can drink.

Snot is running,

Phelm is flowing.

Stomach churning,

Head is swolling.

Oh, Sam-I-Am,

Oh, why did I?

See the flu shot,

And pass on by!

How Sick-I-Am

Oh, Sam-I-Am!

My, can't you tell

How Sick-I-Am?

***

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12-2-14 Writing Warm-up

9:32 AM

12-2-14 Writing Warm-up

#brannon #hollingsworth #MMWW #WritingExcercise #WritingWarmup mmww writing exercise writing warm-up

Monday, December 1, 2014

12-1-14 Writing Warm-up

Brought to you by Four Fools Press: “Crazy Good Stories”

Red ran for her life. She stumbled, she scrambled, she fell and clambered back to her feet again. Whatever she had to do to put as many miles of Martian hardpan in between her and the Agency Outpost as possible. She knew that she had precious little time. Sweat blossomed inside her EXOS-1, pouring in rivulets down her face and spine, pooling in the small of her back. She wished that she could just rub it away and out of her eyes, but breaking the seal of the External Operations Skeleton would end her far quicker than anything the Agency would do to her. While the EXOS-1 made her far stronger, faster, and more resistant to damage—even the tiniest crack in the rubber seals or the reinforced T-glass would result in her horrifically quick and painful asphyxiation.

‘Which…’ she mused grimly to herself, scrabbling over a red ridge of iron-oxide rock, ‘…might be a preferable option to slow torture and death at the Agency’s hands.’ That is, if she was able to make it to the Drop-off.

Which was a big ‘if’; a really big one.

Red checked her Inth-gauntlet, swiping away all of her bio-stats and enviro-readouts that appeared by default. Her fingers danced across the built-in screen, summoning the satellite imagery of her current location and calculating the distance to the Drop-off. She knew that it would only truncate her timeline. The moment that the Agency detected the satellite linkage, they would track it back to her, find her position, and if they’d not already discerned what she’d stolen, they would quickly begin putting all the pieces together. In short, Red had just upped the ante in a major way. It didn’t matter, however, as Red had to know where she was and where she was headed. She was flying blind. The Agency had rarely let the Agents outside of Areas, and they never let them enter into the Deserts, not even with an escort.

To make matters worse, the sun was beginning to rise.

Red depressed her thumb and index finger together on her right hand and the EXOS-1 deployed its Sol-shield Unit: large, mantra-ray-like-wings extended from the neck of the suit, affording dorsal protection from the fierce, sizzling solar radiation while simultaneously using the sun’s blazing rays to add to the power cells within the protective suit. Ironically, the end effect of this cutting-edge advancement looked like something out of the Middle Ages: an old-fashioned hood and cloak.

Red keyed her built-in mic. “Red to Black. Red to Black. You out there, Black?”

The reply came in thready. Black was using that low-powered portable unit. “Black here. We are in place, awaiting your arrival. What’s your outlook?”

Agent Red galloped-slid down a scree-filled hill, scattering rocks and dust in a mini-avalanche. Panting from her exertion, Red replied, “Not good, Black. Coming in with company. Still one click outbound.”

There was a long pause and then the single word, “Damn.”

Red didn’t bother to reply, opting instead to channel her precious breath towards furiously pumping her legs to drive her up out of the crater, beyond the next rise, to the expanse of stone-strewn flats beyond. Every step decreased the distance. Every breath drew her closer to her destination. She had to make the Drop-off. She had to get there in time. Too much depended on it. The future—everyone’s future.

Like a comet, a black object rocketed down from the hazy red Martian sky and slammed into the small crater like the punch of an angry god. The sheer force of the impact blasted Red forward, tossing her like a straw-filled doll. As she scrambled back to her feet, still crab-walk-running towards her destination as quickly as possible, a massive ebon behemoth rose from the cloud of dust and ash.

A booming voice that caused the very rocks to shudder and vibrate stormed out of the titanic robot. “Cease, Officer-Agent Red 13. By the Authority of the Agency, you are under arrest for theft of Agency Secrets and High Treason. Cease now or be annihilated.”

“Bite me, Bucket-head,” Red replied, making sure she keyed her mic for external projection. She knew it was an empty threat. With what she was carrying, there was no way they would take her out.

Emotionless blue eyes blazed like lightning behind a thunderhead with a surge of raw, churning power. Massive legs began pounding the red Martian soil like colossal jackhammers, sending plumes of white, red, and grey dust into the air. The Wayward Officer Locator/Fetcher, or W.O.L.F., gave chase to the rogue Agent Red.

Red ran.

***

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