A galactic cartel threatens to corrupt an entire system, and the United Galactica’s only hope is a pair of loose cannons with nice legs and big guns.
For Doom 2 and Gzdoom
Comes with the full mod, plus readme file, plus add-on mod for other mapsets.
sci-fi
All posts tagged sci-fi
Welcome to the Arkista’s Ring series, turning Heretic and Hexen into a sci-fi & sorcery epic with a pulp fiction vibe and a pretty elf with a smart mouth. Each mod comes with a readme file with a detailed breakdown of the story, characters, weapons, items, and lore to help immerse the player in the setting. If Heretic and Hexen feel too stale or tedious, you’ll find this series gives them both a shot in the arm!
This series began as a reboot of the fantasy-oriented NES game of the same name, reinvented into a pulp sci-fi fantasy in the style of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Andre Norton with a hardboiled edge.
Click the link below to download the series in a single convenient package!
DOWNLOAD!
Read on to learn the details of each mod, listed in order of release!
For Heretic
Requires GZdoom & Heretic
A hillbilly space elf named Christine is arrested for collaborating with a despotic Shogun who is conquering the galaxy. After having a bomb installed in her skull, Christine is given a chance at redemption by braving a treacherous planet in search of a powerful artifact.
Arkista’s Ring is a nonlinear sci-fi fantasy adventure where you choose your path through the game. Doors open via single-use keys, and some paths to the end are easier than others. Wield a vast array of sci-fi weaponry and fantastical artifacts against the strangest creatures in the galaxy.
A follow-up that turns any Heretic mapset into a space n’ sorcery adventure with ray guns, undead space dwarves, killer robots, and evil winged babes.
Optimum Security visits Jarro, planet of the dwarves, to rid their ore-rich moon of an infestation of ancestral ghosts and rogue robots, which turns out to be the doings of a cult of winged lunatics, led by a former underworld chum of Chrissy.
Other mapsets beside the original Heretic maps essentially detail further adventures on Jarro after the events of DDD.
Requires GZDoom & Heretic
ALSO INCLUDES REVISED VERSIONS OF THE FULL MOD FOR USE WITH
MASTERS OF CHAOS
&
FAITHLESS TRILOGY
(Run the revised mods instead of DDD when playing MoC or Faithless.)
REQUIRES GZDOOM AND HEXEN
A follow-up that turns any Hexen mapset into a hardboiled sci-fantasy epic with new classes, weapons, monsters, textures, sounds, hud, you name it. Unlike Hexen where you have to assemble the pieces of your superweapon before you can even use it, MoM has you collect upgrades for your main weapon to make it more powerful the further you go, so you get an instant benefit rather than having to wait until late in the game. You also can find Arkista’s Ring to power your starting weapon for the duration of the hub.
When they chase black marketeer Schloss the Red to the technophile planet Ydos, Optimum’s leaders Durrante and Chrissy run afoul of an A.I. called Medusa, which acts as the planet’s BIOS and the deity of the brainwashed inhabitants. Chrissy and Durrante team up with Schloss in order to kill the false god and escape the dying world before they become the latest members of Medusa’s mindless flock.
Mapsets other than Hexen’s base maps basically chronicle the trio’s further attempts to escape Ydos.
Also includes music compatibility for Vicerus, Kaiser 28, & Cyrgoth Manor!
I remember being excited when I found Zoltan in the stores as a kid. He was my fave killer tomato for some reason, and as you can see, he’s also the biggest by a large margin!
Due to his bulk, his card is designed differently from the others: he’s actually got a plastic bubble on the front AND back of the card, which his giant butt punches right through. He’s a mean tomato to behold, with his mohawk and eyepatch and giant maw full of crooked teeth.
He comes with Ranger Woody, which I found odd. I always thought the leader of the killer tomatoes would be paired with Wilbur Finletter, leader of the tomato resistance. It does make it so Wilbur is easier to come by, though I wish they’d done the same for Tara Boumdeay.
Zoltan dwarfs the other domatoes, and his mouth is probably big enough to bite them as well as the humans. He’s definitely a welcome addition to my ever-growing garden.
I stocked up on the four common tomatoes in the AotKT toy line, and managed to preserve the packaging while removing the toys.
Everything about these things is a pleasure to look at, especially the bright red and green colorscheme. They just look great when piled together. The concept alone is hilarious: rubbery monster fruit whose jaws can gnash on their itty bitty human victims. All the characters have so much personality it’s almost precious, even if the paint jobs on the human figures leave something to be desired.
Even the packaging explodes with character. A panicked mob fleeing down the city streets, with giant killer tomatoes munching on the card (even leaving teeth marks and “biting” onto the display hook). The backside gives a silly scenario of the featured characters in a conflict, in something of a news blurb style, followed by the rest of the figure lineup. I always eyed those walking tomaters jealously, since we never EVER saw them in stores anywhere. I was lucky enough to find a loose and complete Phantomato on ebay, which started my collecting craze for these toys (I had most of them as a kid, but eventually gave them away).
Each card also has a unique diagram of the featured tomater using its bite action.
Beefsteak is arguably the scariest of the base tomatoes. He has an eerie grin akin to an alligator, and his creepy, staring eyes make his misshapen face even more monstrous. His victim is Wilbur Finletter (sans parachute, thankfully), one of my favorites of the human figures.
Tomacho is the nicest-looking tomato, and as a result he has the smallest bite. He battles a bat-wielding Chad Finletter. I like Chad’s colors, but his “flat” pose makes him hard to stand up.
Ketchuck is an ugly sonofagun, and the first of these toys I ever got when I was a kid. As an adult, he’s probably my least favorite because of his dumb face. He comes packaged with Dr. Putrid T. Gangreen, creator of the tomato menace. They painted over his mustache, which somehow results in him looking like a yellow-skinned burn victim. I might try to find a way to remove the paint a bit to make him look more authentic.
Fangmato was the only green one of the toy line, and her face is one of the best tomato sculpts by far. The paint between her eyes has a habit of wearing off for whatever reason. She terrorizes Igor, Gangreen’s bumbling assistant, who is another favorite sculpt: screaming uselessly and throwing up “jazz hands” while the rest of the humans look ready for a fight.
It’s a fun toy line overall, and looks great on the display shelf. Here’s hoping I can get my hands on the more elusive figures, especially Missing Tomato Link and my KT waifu Tara Boumdeay.
For Heretic (requires gzdoom)
DOWNLOAD
Play as Mick Chaos, brother to the slightly demented Dr. Chaos, and shoot your way through three action/puzzle maps as you solve whatever weird inter-dimensional kerfuffle the good doctor has caused this time. Features a new weapon and a new monster. Read the included pdf for the detailed story, helpful clues, and useless trivia.
Bungalow of Dr. Chaos – Mick returns from the Great War to find a letter waiting for him from his brother Dr. Chaos, begging for his help in closing a series of unstable dimensional portals.
Dr. Chaos Strikes Back – Mick is perturbed to learn that the Turkish bath he helped Dr. Chaos build is being used by the doctor to deliver water to a dying desert planet, with predictable space-time continuum disrupting results. Now the bath house/dimensional engine has gone haywire and must be shut down before worlds collide.
City of Chaos – Mick accidentally breaks a delicate dimensional device in the city of Dander, Norway and splits the city into three different timelines. He must explore them to find the missing pieces of the machine and restore the space-time continuum.
***
For Heretic (requires gzdoom)
DOWNLOAD
Mickey Chaos has his hands full once again. His brother Dr. Chaos has taken their sister Didi on an expedition to ancient Mars, back when the planet was teeming with life. Unfortunately the martian locals stole the Flux Accelerator’s five “time batteries”, stranding Didi on an alien planet with no way back home. With only enough juice left for a one-way trip, Mickey now must collect the batteries, repair the Accelerator, and bring Didi back to earth before Mom has a heart attack.
Four more maps to explore hub-style: a treacherous valley split by countless waterfalls, an ancient city collapsing into lava, a decrepit castle full of cultists, and a vast underground cannibal lair. Several new enemies, including dinosaurs! Use the Tome of Power to turn Mickey’s Colt .45 into a crowd-shredding Tommy Gun!
The Sequel to Project Einherjar
Version 4.0
14 maps for Gzdoom 3.7.2 (strobe effects don’t work in later versions).
DOWNLOAD IT!
Now retired after saving the world from nuclear disaster, Juno is asked to help escort dangerous war criminal Dietrich Drogo to Normandy, to be tried for crimes against humanity. Once in Normandy, the caravan is hit, Drogo is rescued by his fellow war profiteers…and Juno takes the blame. Now Public Enemy Number One in a foreign country, Juno must hunt and recapture Drogo to clear her name.
I had thought about a sequel to Project Einherjar for some time, but more importantly, a game experience that better encompassed the essence of the book series it was based on. Whenever I edit my fiction, I listen to a music playlist that suits the mood of the piece, to fuel my drive to finish the project. I thought it would be cool to use that music in a game project to help bring Winter Agent Juno alive the way I envisioned it. So I built Midgard Outlaw around the dynamic music mechanic, using music directly from my WAJ inspirational playlist, and toned down the sci-fi elements considerably. I’m really happy with the end result and hope you guys and dolls enjoy it, too.
This does mean that youtube will likely de-monetize videos of this mod due to the music used, so Let’s Play only if you really feel up to it.
My new group started a campaign using the Stars Without Number system, which is really fun and allows for free exploration of entire galaxies and endless opportunities for (mis)adventure. It helps that our DM encourages us to push the plot forward, rather than holding our hands or leading us on leashes, and also allows us to play unusual characters. Generally in SWON you play a warrior who excels at fighting, an expert who excels at non-combat skills, or a psionic freak who engages in psychic buffoonery.
I don’t like combat in RPG’s. It always bores me, and it always slows the game to a crawl. That’s why I favor characters who excel outside of combat scenarios: for this campaign my character was a medical droid named Hermes, who served as the ship doctor. He was two feet tall, shaped like a trash can, and talked like a really drunk George Takei. He could only use one arm at a time, out of the four he stored internally in a revolving cylinder.
Hermes is one of my all-time favorite characters, out of all the weird characters I’ve played over the years. He often makes awkward and borderline obscene use of his little mechanical arm, or his flagella-like data jack which he uses to interface with computers (and which has been castrated on more than one occasion, leaving him depressed and insecure). He gets used as a footstool, a crutch, and a variety of other household items. He runs on an outdated AI that still feels obligated to follow its nanny-like ship doctor protocols no matter how disgusted or annoyed he is with his crew. He does have a sense of self-preservation though: when his crew was about to be arrested in their hotel room by the local police, he pretended to be a cleaning droid and waltzed right out of the building.
The crew used to work on a smuggler ship, but the ship crashed and everyone died except Tharzon the assassin, Bodai the crazy alien psychic, Bobom the engineer, Teddy the psi-doctor, and Hermes the bucket o’ bolts. We spent the first session running around Not Mos Eisley trying to find smuggling work to pay for our new ship, the Rooster II, which greatly resembled the Millennium Falcon, if the Falcon greatly resembled a giant penis. Hermes’s first noteworthy action was almost getting pickpocketed by a street urchin, who was immediately scared off by the robot’s Shoostin’ Arm, which was equipped with a big-ass revolver.
Hermes mainly has the gun as a joke, and as a last resort. Like I said, I’m not a combat player, and Hermes is NOT a combat-oriented character: he remains in the background as a support unit while everyone ELSE gets their dumb asses killed. Because of this, Hermes has, to date, singlehandedly saved the entire party twice.
The first time was when we tried to fix our ship AI. It had three: the navigation AI and general ship AI, which were both offline and needed 5000 credits apiece to repair, and KAT the kitchen AI, which had gone insane. She got inside Hermes when he tried to run diagnostics on her, and later took over his body while he was piloting the ship and almost nosedived Rooster II into the ocean and killed everyone. Jokes were abound that KAT and Hermes were robo-lovers as a result of the initial possession, so at the very last moment — one die roll from TPK — he managed to sweet-talk her into not killing everyone, and they kissed and made up.
Later, on an aquatic planet, he accidentally gave her control of the ship again, and this time she DID plunge it into the ocean, but the party was saved by a race of Lovecraftian amoeba-horrors called Goomblies, who wanted to possess the local government figures. My party was okay with this despite the amoral and cruel nature of the possession because they’re basically all assholes and we were strapped for cash anyway, so it was easy to believe their sob story about oppression and abuse at the hands of the humans. We gathered a metric ton of the things, which nested in the innards of our ship, which we weren’t crazy about because they could affect the hardware any time they wanted. Every stop we made, we would take a bucketful of Goomblies and help them possess someone. By our third excursion we had a collection of possessed security guards who couldn’t shoot worth a damn following us around, plus a talking rat which was also Goomblie-possessed, who basically acted as ambassador between us and the aliens we were “helping”.
Low-level SWON characters are abysmal in combat, and we were warned by the DM to avoid it at all costs. We learned this the hard way when one politician’s badass chief of security found us out, and the first fight of the game started: Tharzon, Bodai, and Teddy versus one lightly armored dude who they apparently could not beat even with a huge numbers advantage and a bathtub full of aquatic demons. Meanwhile Hermes was chilling on the bridge of the Rooster II all the way back at the starport: the downside to being a non-combat character is you sometimes miss out on events, like this pathetic combat sequence. I kept calling the house phone for updates on the fight, but usually nobody picked up, and even left a couple messages on the answering machine, warning them that the last remnants of KAT had trapped Bobom in the kitchen and was doing unnatural things to her, and therefore everyone should probably eat the canned preserves for awhile and stay away from any food found in the kitchen.
Eventually we realized the aliens were the threat, not the government, and found ourselves trapped on a starship — in flight, I might add — filled with a metric ton of Goomblies which had control over the ship hardware. They foolishly decided to go back to the ship without making any sort of preparations against our pet horde, which now knew we were betraying and abandoning them, so no surprise when they found themselves fighting for their lives and losing. Meanwhile Hermes piloted the ship into space and put her in orbit.
“Hey Eddie,” he said to the ship AI, “any way to flush these things out of the ship before they kill everyone?”
“Gas X will kill them in a matter of minutes, if you flood the ship with it.”
“Perfect. How do I make that?”
“Ask KAT.”
Hermes hovered across the ship, between the combatants, and into the kitchen. “Hey KAT, do we have the materials to make Gas X?”
“Yes, Hermes. Mixing baking soda and vinegar will flood the ship with Gas X.”
“Do it.” He went outside and said, “Hey guys, put on your breather masks right now.”
Everyone paused the fight to put on their masks, and the ship was cleansed of monsters in five minutes. Then Hermes dragged everyone to bed, healed them, and played nanny for the duration of the flight to the next star system.
Hermes was later eaten by a giant landshark — down to his last two hit points — and spent several days in the repair shop getting put back together and de-fragging his hard drive. He is currently sitting in Space Prison somewhere, still trying to learn how to use a yo-yo.
Child Defective Services
A Half-Baked Bishop & Holiday Short
~=o=~
Miss Folz was staring at Mikaela as if the dainty ten-year-old Latina had been speaking Japanese. The child stood before the class, gesturing to an elaborate presentation about Nikola Tesla’s theory of “cold fusion”, complete with photographs, charts, and quirky headers and labels written in bright blue marker. The whole thing was assembled collage-style on a broad piece of blue posterboard and stood almost as tall as she did.
Mikaela suddenly looked insecure. “What?”
Miss Folz shifted in her seat and leaned on her desk, head tilted curiously. “This just seems…remarkably mundane for you.”
The class tittered.
“Mundane?” said Mikaela.
“Yes. I was expecting something about ghosts or time-traveling dinosaurs again.”
Mikaela smiled. “Nah, I went vanilla this time. I mean, I had a project about the life cycle of a Yuggoth polymorph embryo, but it sorta got away from me.” She giggled for some reason. Then she gestured to her project. “Anyway, most of Tesla’s ideas were very conceptual, but the theory was–”
Just then the door burst open, and in walked Mikaela wearing a green flannel shirt and a white crochet bunny hat, its long ears trailing behind her like streamers. She had a spray can in one hand, and a look of determination on her face as she strode to the front of the classroom.
The first Mikaela went white at the sight of the second. “H-How did you get out of the trunk?”
The second Mikaela replied by applying the flame of a zippo lighter to the spray can, turning it into a miniature flamethrower: she doused the first Mikaela in flames and watched as she shriveled and smoldered like an old, dry bush. The classroom filled with the stench of ozone and burning rubber.
Mikaela wafted the smoke away from her face with a cough, then looked apologetically at her teacher. “Sorry I’m late,” she said.
“What,” said Miss Folz, “What, What was that?”
“Yuggoth polymorph,” said Mikaela. “I left the embryo in the car. I may as well have put it in an incubator.”
*
Dr. Bechdel looked like a librarian, if librarians served as the police on the lower circles of Hell. She walked rigidly as if she had a broomhandle for a spine, taking long, purposeful steps as she went. Her blonde hair was tied tightly back, her black suit tightly fitting and obsessively brushed, her chic librarian glasses molded onto her face.
She marched up the front steps of the old plantation house that served as the Bishop & Holiday Paranormal Agency building in downtown Arkham, Massachusetts. She rapped on the door with a rigid fist.
Dr. Holiday answered a minute later, adjusting his purple spectacles and smiling pleasantly. “Hullo,” he said, Kentucky accent as thick as butter. “How can I help you?”
Dr. Bechdel didn’t seem to know he was there. She smiled past him at the tall, slender Egyptian woman standing behind him.
“Good afternoon,” said the visitor. “I am Dr. Bechdel of the Arkham Child Protection Agency. Are you Miss Edna Bishop?”
Edna cocked an eyebrow. “Sure am.”
Dr. Holiday also cocked an eyebrow. “Ah…and I’m Dr. Holid–”
Dr. Bechdel cut him off, still ignoring him: “You should have been expecting me. I left a message on your machine. I’ve come to discuss the questionable living situation of your wards.”
Edna pointed at Dr. Holiday. “They’re not my wards. They’re the Doctor’s.”
Dr. Bechdel smiled condescendingly. “Yes of course. May I come in?”
Dr. Holiday admitted her. Dr. Bechdel marched right past him as if he were the coat rack, assessing the sprawling lobby and its archaic spiral staircase. The oak walls of the lobby were decorated with a plethora of eldritch artifacts that almost seemed alive, and Gothic paintings that seemed to watch her every movement.
“The Child Protection Agency,” she went on with a shiver, addressing Edna, “is greatly disturbed by Mikaela’s living situation here in this…carnival of the macabre. We feel it has begun to affect her psychological health, and insist on a full investigation.”
“You’re not concerned with Gabe’s mental health?” said Edna. “He’s the other ward.”
Again the smile. “Of course. Mikaela’s behavior at school is a strong indication of the poor influence this environment has had on her upbringing. She teaches strange spells and hexes to her classmates.”
“Harmless stuff,” said Dr. Holiday, trailing the woman like a neglected dog. “Really, I never teach my wards any of the dangerous–”
“She conducts inappropriate experiments on campus, sometimes for extra credit. Many of these experiments seem to be of a Satanic nature, and it disturbs the parents of the other students. They can’t abide such blasphemous and deranged behavior around their children. She’s lucky she hasn’t been expelled.”
“Really, ‘Satanic’ is an ignorant blanket term to–”
Dr. Bechdel withdrew a folded paper from her coat pocket and handed it past Dr. Holiday to Edna. “And have you been assisting with her school papers? This is her most recent assignment, where the students were required to write about what they did over spring break. Have you read it?”
Annoyed, Edna continued pointing at Dr. Holiday, but Dr. Bechdel didn’t seem to notice. “Again, his kids, not mine. He’s the guardian. Talk to him.”
Dr. Bechdel waved the paper in outrage. “A detailed account of her vacation on the Third Circle of Hell! And she swears up and down that it’s all true, every word of it! The school board is in an uproar as we speak! Two families have already threatened to withdraw their children from the school!”
“Didn’t they like the part about taking Cerberus walkies?” said Dr. Holiday.
“And not only is this environment unsuitable for young minds,” said Dr. Bechdel, turning up her nose at Edna, “it may even be dangerous, given the rumors of what goes on around here. I understand you fancy yourself an attorney of the dead or some such spiritual nonsense?”
Dr. Holiday opened his mouth to correct her, but stopped himself and sighed. He looked hopelessly at Edna.
Edna folded her arms. “You can scoff at our agency all you like. The Doctor may be eccentric, but the children are well cared for.”
“Well cared for? In this haven of Satanism and mad science?”
“The kids are perfectly safe and perfectly happy here.”
Dr. Bechdel adjusted her glasses. “Is that so? Then may I see her?”
Edna narrowed her eyes. “You mean them? Child Protection Services is concerned for Mikaela and Gabe, correct?”
Another condescending smile. “Yes, of course.”
“No.”
“Pardon?”
“No, you may not see them. If you want to assess whether the children are being neglected or abused, or are living in an otherwise unsafe home environment, go through the proper channels and bring the appropriate paperwork. As it is, you’ve outstayed your welcome. Also, you’re weird and unpleasant and I don’t like you. Get out.”
Dr. Bechdel huffed. “Mark my words, I will be back. I will turn this place inside-out. And if I find it is an unfit home environment, I will liberate Mikaela from this ghastly place if it’s the last thing I do.”
“And Gabe,” sighed Edna as the woman marched out the front door.
“Yes, of course.”
Dr. Holiday closed the door behind her. He and Edna exchanged worried looks.
They walked up the spiral stairs, up the second floor hall, and re-entered Gabe’s bedroom three doors down. Teeny Latina Mikaela sat in her foster brother’s desk chair, spinning idly with boredom, the ears of her crochet bunny hat whipping lazily in the air. She smiled precociously at her guardian on reflex.
Sitting on the bed was the charred, skeletal husk of a twelve-year-old boy. Its empty eye sockets stared at the adults as they came back in.
“Who was that?” rasped the skeleton.
“Child Protective Services,” the doctor said dismissively. “Now, Gabe, start from the beginning and tell me exactly what happened to you.”
*
The basement laboratory intercom crackled to life in Mikaela’s voice: “Doctor!”
Dr. Holiday had been reading over the results of his extensive tests for the eighth time, while Gabe — or what was left of him — sat on the slate-top counter at the center of the room, a boy’s charred skeleton in a blue hoodie and jeans. He was staring at the doctor’s assorted jars and bottles of strange specimens lining the shelves on the walls; many of them stared back, or twitched, or glowed strangely in alien colors.
Ammut, Dr. Holiday’s familiar, laid next to the lab entrance, watching his master with his beady yellow eyes. Blasphemous science and ancient ritual had combined the essence of crocodile, lion, and hippo into this flabby mass — a golden, earless Garfield with a garbage disposal mouth.
The doctor continued reading on his mobile device as he turned to the intercom. “Yes, Mikaela?”
“Can I help with Mummy Gabe?” she said eagerly.
“You know the rules. You exposed your classmates to a hostile alien entity. That’s one week with no wi-fi, no Netflix, and absolutely no lab time.”
The sweet voice suddenly whined as if it were in pain. “¡Chale! Doctor, es ¡injusto!”
“Lee un libro.”
The doctor stood next to Gabe and tossed his mobile device onto the countertop. It was impossible to read the boy’s mood, what with his lack of a face, but given his history of suffering under the Black Curse of Hemingway — the bad luck curse that had plagued the boy since infancy, and orphaned him when a jetliner crash-landed on his house — he could safely assume the boy’s mood was more than a little apprehensive.
“What’s the prognosis?” said Mummy Gabe.
“Dead,” said the doctor.
“So what, you can’t reverse zombie-itis?”
“Revenant-itis.”
“What?”
“You’re a revenant, a person who has returned from the dead. A zombie is an animate corpse with no free will or personality, sorta like a robot.”
Gabe flailed his bony arms. “Whatever! Can you fix me or can’t ya?”
Dr. Holiday nodded. “It’ll take some doing. I’ll have to harvest some raw materials to revitalize your physical vessel, and the procedure itself may take at least a week. I called the school and said you were sick. They shouldn’t miss you.”
Gabe hung his skull and emitted a cloud of dust as he sighed. “Great. Make-up work galore.”
Dr. Holiday patted the boy on his shoulder. The skull dislodged and rolled under the counter. With a mighty skronk and supernatural speed, Ammut darted under the counter as his instincts took over. Furniture and trash bins scattered everywhere as he chased the screaming head across the floor, with Dr. Holiday in hot pursuit.
“Doctor,” said Edna through the intercom. “Dr. Bechdel is here with a correctional officer from the juvie branch.”
The doctor groaned. He said into the intercom, “Doesn’t that whackjob have anything better to do with her time?”
“They’re both standing right here,” said Edna.
Dr. Holiday hung his head. “Uh…Send ’em right down.”
As soon as he turned away from the intercom, he said to Gabe, “Take off all your clothes and lay on the counter.”
“Wh-what?” said Gabe.
“Do it! Hurry!”
Sixty seconds later Edna came into the lab, with the rigid Dr. Bechdel at her heels, her dagger-slit eyes judging everything they came in contact with. She took one look at the boy-sized skeleton laying on the counter and turned a shade green.
Following Dr. Bechdel was a meticulously well-groomed man in his early thirties, wearing a blue suit and vest complete with silver pocket watch.
“Excellent taste,” said Dr. Holiday, gesturing to his own vest and watch ensemble.
“Officer Lansing,” said the man as he flashed his badge, his eyes held fast on the skeleton.
Dr. Holiday introduced himself, eyes held fast on the officer’s holstered revolver. “That’s a big toy for a child corrections officer.”
“Have to carry when you spend most of the working day in gang territory.”
The doctor gestured to the skeleton. “You caught me at a bad time. I’m authenticating this specimen for the university. What can I do for you?”
“Dr. Bechdel asked me to assist her in assessing the living situation of your wards.”
Edna and the doctor both raised their eyebrows. “She actually spoke to you?” said Edna. “Eye contact and everything?”
Dr. Bechdel ignored the other humans, too busy trying to get away from the curious Ammut, who kept following her and sniffing her leg with his cold, wet snout.
“Well,” said Lansing, “she requested someone from Juvie, and the Captain assigned me. We didn’t exactly talk. She just got in the car and pretended I wasn’t there the whole trip out here.”
Dr. Bechdel pointed to the skeletal boy and said to Edna, “Is this sort of ghastly proceeding a daily occurrence?”
Edna shrugged. “He’s always working on something strange. People frequently seek the doctor’s expertise in ancient relics. It’s all pretty harmless, though.”
“Surely you don’t allow the children to participate.”
“Not when they’re grounded,” said the doctor.
“¡Injusto!” cried the intercom.
He reached past Lansing to hit the intercom button. “¡Silencio! ¡Lee un libro!”
“Judge says we’re supposed to speak to the kids,” said Lansing.
Dr. Holiday pretended to examine the skeletal boy, prodding him with a strange metal tool. On reflex the boy coughed a waft of dust into Dr. Bechdel’s face, who stumbled out of the room as a coughing fit assaulted her.
“Well,” said the doctor, brushing corpse-dust from his vest, “Gabe is sick in bed, and as his loving, caring, and highly responsible guardian, I can’t allow him to be disturbed.”
Lansing sneered. “Subtle.”
“Really? Not too hammy?”
Edna elbowed the doctor.
“Is that why he’s been out of school the past few days?” said Lansing.
“Unfortunately. You can see Mikaela, though, if it’s all right with the whackjob. I mean, the doctor.”
Lansing smiled awkwardly. “Won’t make a difference to her. Doesn’t seem to realize you have a boy as well.”
Dr. Holiday moved over to Edna. “Ed, could you find Mikaela and introduce her to our guests?” He added under his breath, “And, uh, tell her not to act any weirder than usual.”
Edna humphed wryly and led Lansing back up the stairs. Dr. Holiday saw them out and found Dr. Bechdel sitting on the hall floor, still coughing and looking like she were about to throw up.
“Sorry about that,” chuckled Dr. Holiday as he reached down to take her hand and help her up.
Like a wild west gunslinger, Dr. Bechdel drew a can of mace from inside her jacket and unloaded it in the doctor’s face. By the time he finished flailing, coughing, and screaming bloody murder, the hall was deserted.
Gabe was sitting upright on the counter when he staggered back in. “Can I get a grape soda?”
“After the Nazis leave,” said Dr. Holiday. “Your precocious foster-sister is comparatively normal, so she should be able to convince them to–”
A gunshot resounded throughout the house. Dr. Holiday was up the stairs like a rocket.
He found them all in his study, the adults gawking in silent wonder. Mikaela was sitting on the study desk. A half-dozen laundry clips were clipped to her face, and she wore a pair of boxer shorts on her head. In one eye was a shot glass, held in place like an alien monocle. She had evidently been using it to examine the double-barreled shotgun he normally kept mounted over the fireplace mantel; she had the weapon in her hands, and both barrels were smoking. Across the room, his bust of Dr. Henry Armitage had been blasted to smithereens.
When she saw him she smiled stupidly and awkwardly at him, and the glass fell off her face. “Forgive my clumsiness,” she said. “I, uh…I was merely cleaning your rudimentary firearm.”
Dr. Holiday’s heart sank into his rectum. The air grew thinner as Ammut growled from the study doorway — a low, ominous rumble while his beady eyes zeroed in on Mikaela, his fur standing on end, his tail twitching.
Dr. Holiday shoved past the gawking Lansing and Bechdel and held out his hand. “Can I have the gun?”
Mikaela looked at his hand curiously, then at the shotgun. She handed it to him with a smile.
He tossed it aside and leaned down so he was at eye level with the girl, adjusting his purple spectacles until they could register the odd glow behind her pupils — the sign that something else was occupying Mikaela’s skull. “Mikaela, darling, are you feeling all right?”
“Affirmative.” She said it casually, but she kept looking at the other adults, as if rating her performance in their horrified expressions.
“And do you, uh…do you know who I am?”
She tilted her head like a cat. “Mikaela…Darling…?” Her brain seemed to stall for several minutes.
Then her eyes lit up. “Oh! Darling! Of course!” The little preteen suddenly threw her arms around his neck and kissed him on the lips. “Yes, Darling Husband, I am nominal!”
With a howl Ammut bounded into the room and pounced upon Mikaela, knocking her off the desk and onto the carpet. Dr. Holiday and Officer Lansing both pounced as well, Lansing grabbing the girl and pulling her to safety, the doctor hugging his familiar like a pillow and taking the brunt of its violent flailing: the creature shredded his vest trying to break free.
Dr. Bechdel was red-faced and ready to explode like a volcano. “I’ve seen just about enough!” she said, turning to Edna as usual. “I have never, in my ten years as an agent of the Child Protection Agency, seen such a den of lunacy and depravity! That anyone allowed you to take charge of a child of any age is beyond my capacity for logic!”
“I assure you, this is not normal even for us,” said Edna. “Ammut loves Mikaela!”
“It’s not Mikaela!” shouted Dr. Holiday as he wrestled the angry beast in his arms. “She’s been mind-swapped by some kind of entity! She has to be quarantined and studied!”
“She has to be taken outta this nuthouse as soon as possible,” said Lansing. “I’m calling Animal Control to take care of that monster first, and then I might just toss both your asses in jail!”
“On what charge?” snarled Edna.
“I’m sure I’ll think of something!” said Lansing.
“What the hell is all the shouting about?” said Gabe.
The room went dead silent as everyone stared at the skeletal boy in the blue hoodie standing the study entrance with a can of grape soda in his hand.
When she saw him, Dr. Bechdel screamed and fainted. Lansing screamed, dropped Mikaela, drew his revolver and emptied it into the boy at close range, perforating his skeletal body and spattering grape soda all over the hall. Riddled with bullets, Gabe banked off of the wall and collapsed on his face in the doorway.
“Wh-What the hell was that?!” said Lansing, his hands trembling.
Edna held her head and sighed in frustration. “The other ward.”
With a groan, Gabe slowly got back up, leaning wearily against the doorframe. He hacked, coughed, and spat a deformed bullet onto the carpet at Lansing’s feet.
“Keep ‘em,” Lansing said to Bishop and Holiday. He then scooped up the unconscious Dr. Bechdel and fled the house. A minute later they heard him cry out the same way Dr. Holiday had when she had maced him.
~=o=~
Check the links below for two very awesome
Goodreads Book Giveaways!
Enter for a chance to win a free signed copy of either of my books!
(U.S. only. Sorry.)
I now have two books: Shadow of the Fox, recently released by Pro Se Productions, and The Helios Legacy, available for preorder (released july 31). Read further or check my Bookstore tab for links.
Shadow of the Fox can be purchased in print or digital form here or here.
“Centuries ago in Japan, during the Edo Period, three heists took place that changed the course of history forever. No textbooks acknowledge that these incidents ever took place.
Shadow of the Fox reinvents the ninja with a trilogy of historical heist novellas that will keep you guessing until the very last line.”
The Helios Legacy is available for preorder here at the moment, and I’ll release it on Amazon around the same time (hopefully).
“Nuclear winter has never been harder for Juno Radcliffe — ex-guerrilla and war hero, demoted to babysitter as she escorts a young boy across the wasteland, battling vicious mercenaries and vile despots along the way.
The Helios Legacy is a dystopian sci-fi western set in the snowy wasteland of Midgard, where a one-eyed heroine embarks on a journey of sex, violence, and self-discovery that could cost her everything.”
I’m also gonna ask you folks for a favor. TNT and Wattpad recently started a joint project for a Tales from the Crypt style series, and I’d like them to have the chance to notice my work on the site. If you can, please pick your favorite story from my uploads and share them on social media, and/or rate and comment to make them stand out in the Horror searches. I doubt anyone will notice them, but I figure I may as well get some positive use out of that dreadful site however possible.
Thanks for all the support, guys and dolls.
Daddy’s Girl has concluded, and can now be read in its entirety. No news yet if I will make a print version, or migrate the comic to a webhost where somebody might actually give a shit about it.
In the meantime, I joined the Line Webtoon Sci-Fi Comic Contest, where user votes (unfortunately) determine who wins the grand prize. Check out my entry, Slave Life!
Mike's Toybox 