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raurquiz · 8 months
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#Happybirthday #EugeneCordero #actor #EnsignRutherford #startrek #lowerdecks #kongskullisland #thekingsofsummer #themule #wheninrome #OtherSpace #Archer #BajillionDollarProperties #CentralPark #TacomaFD #CloseEnough #loki #themandalorian #goldenarm #eastersunday #startrek56
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yuuichi-2966 · 2 months
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株式会社パルコ 【PARCO×M.S.S Project 15th ANNIVERSARY POPUP STORE】 グッズ・告知用ビジュアル(SD/等身) https://art.parco.jp/otherspace/detail/?id=1414
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Some updates for fun!
The final phase of @gender-buddies has started, meaning the final 12 are being posted.
If you want to see an elemental dragon story I'm writing, check out @project--eclipse. I'm currently obsessing over recreating the map for it and figuring out each clan's backstory. Blog updates sporadically.
@storm-in-my-heart is my writing and poetry blog that doesn't update super frequently lately.
@the-otherspace is my alterhuman blog. It started off as just a place to write a fictional story updated in large parts but it ended up being an overall otherkin and plurality blog.
As always, check out my Ko-Fi if you want to buy fun stickers and pins. You might even see some familiar designs!
Uhh. I have a Twitter for my one-eyed cat at @/OneEyedGadget if you're into social media accounts run by cats.
I think that's all for now! 💙💚
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pinkbat5 · 2 years
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GREENSTAR-00AQT6-ζ, Head of the Greater Fringe Branch of the Ministry of Otherspace Affairs. Shown situated in a new, sun-walled meeting room, wearing a freshly grown work proxy and attended by two hand-picked beta guards, 2 months after first contact with the Realspace (aka Otherspace) Milky Way.
As the Head of the Greater Fringe Branch, GS is tasked with establishing positive relationships with realspacers in the Greater Fringe area. They buy land, establish embassies, negotiate trade deals, and manage the public reputation of the Visitant species in the area. Visitant are fond of social engineering and like to sway new populations of aliens into liking them, and GS is no exception. GREENSTAR's favoured method is encouraging the mass-immigration of Visitant into foreign nations, where they integrate into the population and eventually find their way into the government. Once you have Visitant senators, judges, and celebrities in your country, it becomes much easier to get used to the sight of them.
CIRCLEEYE, pictured right, would go on to become one of these "ambassador" visitant. The beta on the left, on the other hand, is still a guard. Sad!
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the-otherspace · 2 years
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You wouldn't think the cold could be comforting but in the otherspace, I'm surrounded by the chill of the empty space around me and I love it. I float, weightless, with nothing but the sound of my own breathing. My astral wings wrap around my body, my tail curling inwards to make myself as small as possible.
Safe beneath the shield of my wings, I close my eyes and listen to the sound of my own heartbeat. Thump-thump… thump-thump… The world outside may be in turmoil but here, I know true silence. I take a deep breath, inhaling literal stardust and exhaling all of my worries and fears into the void.
The stars all around me seem to glitter even brighter now that I'm here, breathing life into the universe. The cold is stagnant with the lack of wind, gripping me gently while I float endlessly past a sea of galaxies. I'm floating toward the closest one, a bright one of purple and pink hues that can be seen from anywhere. It's almost as if I'm being pulled into it.
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deepdarkspaceblog · 3 months
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Into The Alternate Universe / Contraband From Otherspace (The Saga of Commodore John Grimes Book 4)
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larathia · 5 months
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Sometimes I get dreams I can use. Sometimes not so much.
I was part of a crew of spacefarers. Not a very bright lot, not the most prone to self-care or bathing or anything. Somewhere between Serenity and Otherspace (for anyone that knows what that meant).
There were five or six of us to start with. Not exactly law abiding, but not quite pirates either. Smugglers, maybe, of a variety less cute than Han Solo. But we'd pissed off The Law bigtime, and our only choice was to somehow get all the way to the homeworld alive to clear our names.
This involved months and months of slow in-system travel because using the faster drives would leave a trail law enforcement could follow, and at least one intersystem jump gate.
We lost our shuttle at the jump gate. Running from the cops, we didn't dare slow down to properly attach a cable to the free-floating shuttle, so it would follow our trajectory. No, we had to aim the shuttle at the jump gate remotely, and then turn it on, and hope.
We watched that little shuttle bounce right off the top of the gate, just as we slid through.
Then came the long months of silent running. For me it wasn't a problem as such; in this dream I was a quiet wierdo of a guy who never talked if he could help it, and whose thinking was skewed enough that stuff i thought was normal and fine (like walking around the ship in the nude because it was laundry day and we all knew each other) gave everyone else something to talk and joke about.
But, one by one, the cops caught us. We'd leave the ship to get supplies on a moon or a station and someone wouldn't make it back.
Somewhere around Mars, that someone was me. I remember seeing the cops, trying to dodge them and be inconspicuous (which, given ME, was not working). I remember a tray of candy sprinkles, like you'd put on a cupcake, and selecting just one perfectly round dark red one. Telling someone that the dye for these beads was so intense that you could make a gallon of fake blood by putting just this one bead in a jug of water and giving it a good shake.
They ran away and I turned to see a bunch of very angry cops. And something hit me in the back of the head. I reached back and pulled out a big butcher knife; they'd shoved it up from the back of the neck and into my brain, and pulling it out was what dropped me.
My ghost went back to the ship, and took off his clothes and folded them up like it was laundry day. My naked ghost went to the rest of the crew - all two of them - unsurprised that they could see me, that they were staring at me with stiff trying-not-to-cry faces.
I said, "Well. Take care, boys," and walked off the ship. I watched it take off, and that was the end.
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starflamera
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citizen name: kori andersing.
citizen color: black long hair, light blue/light tan eyes, tan skin, light blue/white short shirt, light blue/purple skirt, short orange short pants, light blue shoes.
transforming vital bracelet: connetink.
super hero name: starflame.
super hero color: light blue/white star flame mask, white visor, light blue/purple/white star flame battle dress outfit, orange star flame short undersuit, light blue/white/orange star flame gloves, light blue/white/orange star flame boots.
model based: star, flame.
personality: she is from the outerspace to arrive at the world of men know as earth, she was trying to be very nice to the people of earth, she was fear about the people of earth will kill her in her nightmare, she just trying her best to keep her power to keep the people of earth safe as she stay away from them, she met dickicker grayork at the crime street as she walk by herself, she told him that she is from the otherspace all along, she was aid by him to join the super hero team, she is decided to help them to save the world, she just has a huge crush on dickicker grayork, she feel fall in love with him, she can use her power to fight the crime as starflamera.
weapon: star flame unarmed combat style, star flame handblast, star flame eyeblast.
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percontaion-points · 9 months
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Court chapters 92-95
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Click to see the rest of the snark & image descriptions
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Chapter 92
“The fooking thing wouldn’t disintegrate.”
Really? Are we really going to do this?
“Were you ever really dead?” 
He looks surprised by the question, but already I can see the truth in his eyes. 
“You weren’t, were you?” I ask. “You just disintegrated yourself.”
Well, that answers one question.
“It doesn’t matter,” he answers and turns and walks away—taking a huge piece of my heart with him.
Chapter 92 summary: It finally begins to dawn to Grace exactly how long that Izzy was locked up for. She will not stop going on about how shitty that Cyrus is… despite the fact that Hudson admitted to having undergone literally the same treatment.
He goes on to say that he forced himself to learn a second power. Because disintegrating himself was better than staying in there. It’s after he says this that Grace understands that Jaxon hadn’t actually killed his brother. 
She then realises that when they were trapped inside of her mind, they were in that otherspace, like where the gargoyles live in their little time bubble. Four months passed when they were trapped, but now she asks him exactly how long that they were trapped in there for. 
Chapter 93
I surrender to it all and as I start to sink, I pray that it’s enough to bring him back to me. That it’s enough to bring him back to us.
Chapter 93 summary: We interrupt the actual plot to bring you… Hudson feeding from Grace. Was this really necessary?
Say what you will about Grace finding out FOR THE SECOND TIME exactly how terrible Cyrus is. But at least it was somewhat relevant. This kind of seemed like the author got bored, so she decided to lead up to a sex scene. 
Chapter 94
“But you need to give yourself some grace, Hudson. This is war, and there will always be casualties.” Tears well in my eyes as I hold his turbulent blue gaze. “Don’t let us become one of those casualties.”
Chapter 94 summary: Grace gets angry at Hudson for constantly acting like he’s going to hurt Grace every time he feeds from her. This leads to a huge fight, and I kind of feel like it came out of nowhere. Plot? What plot? Not in this fucking series. 
Chapter 95
Even before Hudson rolls me back over and shows me that, right here, right now, he feels exactly the same way.
Chapter 95 summary: Grace now physically kisses him all better… and they have a vague sex scene. 
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biglisbonnews · 1 year
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Otherspace: a science-fictional place for when no other space will do There are many terms from classic and modern SF that remain unresearched, and the Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction will be continually updated, especially as additional resources are put online. Boing Boing is syndicating new entries from the HDSF on a regular basis. — Read the rest https://boingboing.net/2023/01/25/otherspace-a-science-fictional-place-for-when-no-other-space-will-do.html
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recentanimenews · 2 years
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Japanese Department Store PARCO Prepares Expensive And Life-Size Atelier Sophie 2 Statues
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  Japanese department store PARCO has a history of collaborating with Atelier RPG franchise developer Gust and publisher Koei-Tecmo for elaborate and expensive large-scale figures that reflect the devoted fandom for their respective franchises and characters, and the latest collaboration is no exception.
  The department store is now collaborating with the developer once again for life-size statues based on the most recent game and character in the aforementioned franchise in Atelier Sophie/Sophie Neuenmuller as part of its ONE/SLASH initiative to encourage the production of pop culture art in the wake of the ongoing pandemic that will be featured on the 5th floor of the PARCO department store in Shibuya. In addition, the 6th floor will be dedicated to a Koei-Tecmo pop-up shop with exclusive Atelier Sophie merchandise
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        The department store will sell life-size statues of Sophie in Japan and China on a custom order basis for ¥4,290,000, or $33,570 at current exchange rates (above left). However, and very likely due to the challenges of shipping such a large piece overseas, the life-size statues are limited to Japanese and Chinese orders. In additrion to the life-size statue, Parco is also holding a lottery for an even more expensive 1:1 one-off statue with a more elaborate ruins motif priced at ¥6,050,000 or $47,190 at current exchange rates (above right).
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    For the vast majority of us who aren't lucky enough to live in either Japan or China to be able to buy the life-size statues, or have the requisite deep pockets, Parco is offering a much more manageable 1/7 scale figure that will be open to international orders and will be available for order at ¥23,980 or $187 at the current exchange rate.
  The life-size statue will be on pre-order from April 27 to July 18, 2022 alongsidse a raft of new merchandise. A new video has also been produced by the department store chain detailing the life-size Sophie statue's development and final design, which is embedded below:
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    SOURCE: PARCO OTHERSPACE ONE/SLASH ©2022 コーエーテクモゲームスAll rights reserved.
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  By: Humberto Saabedra
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gaymaxheadroom · 2 years
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zalian fletcher they/them pronouns <3
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gyorinokedli · 3 years
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Nem mondom hogy szép, de igenis működik!!
Karier veszi kezdetét!
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found-fabricated · 4 years
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Hinterland structures.. stilted, sketched forms hinting at habitation. An ongoing series exploring vessels as raised structures echoing piers, lookouts, hides and walkways. As a remnant if habitation. Steel, driftwood and silver sheet #hinterland #structures #habitation #imaginedspace #architectural #sketch #sculptural #sculpture #other #liminalspace #other #otherspace #fromthefringes #vessel #stilts #stilted #drawing #home #hide #lookout #pier #memory #aftertheflood #wasteland #fringespaces #imagined #form #architecturalforms #building #architecturalmodel #linear https://www.instagram.com/p/B-1oW06JjQg/?igshid=1jyci3kauq2hu
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And Awaken in a New One
Kim broke out of her trance when the car door slammed shut. She blinked and knew they had passed into the otherworld already. On the surface, it almost looked the same as the world they hailed from. But it had changed.
The blue covering the canvas of the sky around the horizon rippled gently, like a heavenly pond into which stones had been cast. The Hidden Deserts That Had No Name reflected bright light from everywhere and nowhere, with no sun to be seen, wherever she looked. The mountains in the distance refused to stand still and moved—ever so slightly, like the ebb and flow of an ocean lapping lazily at the shoreline of a beach.
The clouds drifting through the air coiled and began moving in the direction of where their car was parked. Like snakes, those clouds crawled towards them.
Although they moved slowly, their steady creeping told Kim to limit her time here.
The car slumped forward a tiny bit when the weight of Javi sitting on its hood depressed it. He was the one who had slammed the door shut and now he lit up a cigarette with a stainless steel lighter, flicking the little silvery thing shut in a fluid and practiced motion right when a puff of white smoke arose from his face.
Strange bushes topped the sands. Unlike the ones native to the Nevada desert from where they had crossed over into here, these plants featured purple color and shivered out of sync with the warm breeze sweeping over these rocky plains.
Javi took a drag from his cigarette, puffed it out with haste and pointed at the clouds. The car’s windows muffled his words, “Only a matter o’ time till those—whatever those are—till those things get to us.”
Kim got out of the car as well. Letting her gaze sweep across the sky above them made her dizzy and almost a bit sick to her stomach. The watery nature of the above offered no solid point to focus on and the unsteady mountains, too, refused to help.
The only thing that looked the same from their last visit: the old black tour bus of the band once known as The Lost Number, standing lonesome in the middle of this desert, caked in sand and beached like a steel whale. Like one of those anchors that existed in different timelines and dimensions, all tenuously connected by such rare universal constants.
She sat herself onto the hood next to Javi and plucked the cigarette from his fingers, then took a long drag from it. The words escaped her lungs like the smoke—scratchy and labored—when she said, “How long have you been a smoker?”
In the previous world, Javi had never smoked. One of many small details that had shifted, ever so slightly, when she returned from the House of Change—when the world was reborn.
“I started when I was, uh, like, eleven, I think?” he said with a shrugging twitch of his left shoulder.
“You not worried about cancer?” she asked while handing him back the cigarette and studying every inch of his face.
The messy black hair on his head and a burly stubble lining his sharp jaw framed a face as handsome as ever—that much had not changed. Plenty of reality’s details had stayed the same, at least on the surface. The eerie light of this otherworld sparkled in his dark eyes as he studied Kim with a curiosity to match her own.
His shoulder twitched again, accompanied by a tilt of his head as he replied, “Lotta things can kill me, and statistically speaking, I think one o’ these hunka-junks is gonna do me in first.”
Javi thrust out a thumb to the sports car they were sitting on. Although dirt and dried mud clung to its every surface, the fast vehicle standing still underneath them looked way too fancy for their budget.
“Look, not to be a pain in the—” he started, the thought trailing off. “You might wanna—”
His sentences kept dying halfway out of his mouth. She knew what he was getting at, his eyes darted up, towards sky, to underline that.
The clouds kept creeping. Ever closer. Like snakes in the water, homing in on them. On prey.
She nodded to him and peeled her eyes off of the living clouds, meeting his gaze again. Lingering there for a longing amount of time.
Kim wondered if she should ever tell him about all the things she noticed that had changed with the world. So many subtleties, so many curious details—so fascinating. And the more often she slept and the more she dreamt, the more the last world felt like a distant, fading memory. Javi would understand, she thought. But what was the point?
She wished none of the previous world back. Precious to some, meaningless to her. Some of the key differences to this one were all that mattered to her.
She pushed herself off the hood of the car and started walking towards the stranded tour bus. Mystified by how it had been taking less years to decay in this secret desert than would be natural.
“You want me to, uh?” he started muttering behind her.
“No, s'all good,” she breathed.
The closer she strayed towards the bleached black body of bus, the more her chest tightened.
It represented a cornerstone—or a pillar—the things that held the fabric of reality together despite any transitions from one world to the next. A bridge through space and time and likely the only reason that an invisible pocket of void connected our reborn world to this one, here. Now. And never.
Gunshot holes still pockmarked the walls of the bus, having been torn from the inside out. Other holes had been punched into it by long, dagger-like claws of an unspeakable creature.
The memory of Michael’s screams echoed in her mind. She stuffed back down whatever guilt that brought bubbling up, shoving it into the cellar of repressed memories and slamming the door shut.
Something else—something physical—slammed shut behind her, prompting her to pause and look back. Javi had removed a beaten up backpack from the trunk, sagging from his one hand, the cigarette in the other. He had started dragging his heel over the ground, drawing a crude circle into the sand around his car. The first step in crafting a ritual ward to keep otherworldly entities like ghosts and demons at bay.
He stopped for a second, looked up at her, and waggled his eyebrows with a twitch about the corners of his lips. As if to politely remind her to hurry things up.
She flashed a smile back at him and returned her attention to the abandoned tour bus. Only with delay did she notice how she had sucked in a good amount of air and was now holding her breath. Her whole body had tensed up.
Kim produced the revolver whose weight had been burning an imaginary hole into her leather jacket’s pocket, and gripped it tightly. She pulled the ajar door fully open and ascended the small stairs, entering the bowels of the steel husk. The door did not want to stand still and swayed in the wind, emitting high-pitched squeaks as its hinges creaked.
She raised her weapon and pointed it wherever she looked, wary of any threat that might be lurking in here.
But nothing awaited. Nothing hungry, and nothing alive, at the very least.
It all looked the same. A painful reminder of a recent past and distant memories alike.
Time had chewed up the dark red leather on the seats everywhere. Heaps of trash still littered the bus’ interior, matching the cliche of a rock star’s devastated hotel room.
Nails still pinned newspaper clippings to one wall, though some of them had fallen out and joined the junk on the floor. Reports of two men who had mysteriously gone missing—a Brent Carver and a Rick Sutton—members of the defunct indie rock band named “The Lost Number.” According to the jumble of clippings, only one band member had not vanished without a trace: Kevin Spilner.
Yet he only existed in the past now, and as far as Kim was concerned, would stay there.
Forever.
His mugshot, painfully familiar to her, still clung to one of the cut-out articles despite the ink’s slow process of fading. She did not like looking into the mirror and seeing that face anymore.
Although the rebirth of the world rendered memories of the previous one blurrier and fuzzier with the passage of time, flashes of that past life haunted her, flashing through her mind like the flashes atop old analog cameras.
How Brent and Rick disappeared out here in the desert, how no bodies were ever found, and how the police eventually released Kevin into the wild where he started a new life. And eventually found Kim.
The plastic of a broken CD case crunched underneath Kim’s shoe as she stepped over a pile of crumpled cans and walked deeper into the hopeless bus.
Nobody and nothing worthwhile here. As if she had been holding her breath all this time, she exhaled a deep sigh and lowered her gun, though her muscles refrained from relaxing. The tension remained.
She lifted her shoe and inspected the jewel case that had splintered underneath her step: an autographed copy of the EP, Sexy Vampire in the Basement by The Lost Number. The stylized photo of the three band members adorning its artwork, dressed like douchebags, replete with their faux hawk hairdos that had been the fashion du jour of any grunge band at the time.
It took her a second to realize the sharp sting of pain that began throbbing from her left palm. Inspecting it showed only that she had dug her fingernails deep into it from the sheer tension gripping her all the while. She sighed again.
Looked up. Followed the rest of the line of articles plastering the wall. The rest of Kevin’s career trajectory.
Either the rebirth of the world had changed nothing of it, or this pocket dimension had preserved this glimpse into a different age and existence. The flamboyant, cross-dressing bass player of the critically panned rock band had transformed into a successful stage magician on the Strip over the years that followed, drawing a small cult following. A snippet from a Rolling Stone interview book-ended the assortment of notes.
In red color, years ago, Kevin had spray-painted over the tail end of this creepy collage:
BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR
Kim sighed again and let her gaze sweep over the sad past, just one more time. The pile of discarded cans of beans and bacon and empty lighter fluid, the ridiculous number of empty cigarette boxes stacked up on the table.
What a pathetic mess.
Struggling to grasp how long she had lived here, hiding out in this pocket space—it disgusted her. She had hid from the world for too long, in a place where mundane folk never wandered, where only demons and ghosts and rejects found comfort in dwelling.
She swallowed the lump of nothingness that had gotten itself stuck in her throat and had one last thing she wanted to look at.
The thing sitting in the back of the safe, sitting in the back of the tour bus. It was what she had come for.
Blood and gore had been sprayed and splattered along the narrow, almost claustrophobic walls leading ever deeper inside, long dried and flaking off. A strange substance, black like pitch and now with the consistency of caked, cracked mud now covered the area. Kim’s mind reeled with the imagination of how a creature native to this world had dissolved into goo there.
To get to that safe, to get to that thing she sought, she would have to walk this narrow corridor. Through the refuse and the haunting clues of past violence.
The only reason to brave this wretched place.
After taking the first steps, registering the taste of grit on her tongue, and finding that her knuckles had whitened as a result of how tightly she gripped the gun in her hand, she realized how fast her heart was racing. Pounding away.
Crunching and thumping noises behind her caused her to spin around and point the gun—at Javi, who stumbled up the stairs into the bus. She lowered her gun but the tension only grew, for panic marred his pretty face.
And terror made his voice tremble in an unsettling contrast to the words he said next, “Okay, time’s up. We got a problem, baby girl.”
Through gritted teeth, she asked, “What?”
Her gun rose, following suit as he raised the sawed-off shotgun in his hands, backing away from the entrance as if to back away from an invisible threat, twitching at every sound of the breeze pouring in through the bullet holes in the body of the bus.
The wind picked up and shook the world around them, like an earthquake. A chorus of whispers engulfed them. But not like wind should. Gibbering and incomprehensible but clearly words. Alien.
She stepped forward, some of the cans and plastic trash clattered and rustled underfoot as Javi and Kim ducked closer to one another, guns pointing away from each other, backing up until their backs touched.
“Ritual ward ain’t workin’ no more,” he said, voice still shaking. Before she could answer that, he added, “And no, I didn’t make no mistake. Somethin’s wrong.”
Something big moved, obscuring the otherworld’s diffuse light and making it flicker as the body of a huge serpent-like shape coiled around the bus, suffocating the light. It howled. Then whispered again.
“No, I don’t think it was you,” Kim breathed. “Shit, I shoulda known bett—"
The bus shook violently and the steel groaned. Screeched in pain. The metal twisted, bent. The walls slumped inwards, gripped and deformed by tremendous force. And that deafening howl resounded again, carrying with it a chorus of furious whispers, only intervals in the rising storm of howls and screeches.
“Let’s hope bullets work,” Javi shouted over the cacophony.
The muzzle flare made Kim see stars for a second, accompanied by black spots in her field of vision. Making the presence of the thick white clouds wrapping and coiling around the bus all the more menacing. And a sharp ringing in her ears followed the thunderclap of Javi’s shot. And then the next.
The howling turned to screeching, fluid and somehow alive, unlike the metal being rent apart.
She squinted and took a shot at something that appeared more solid than the rest, and the unnatural howls that followed suggested that bullets might be working after all.
Bright light flooded the inside of the bus, spreading to the tune of more metal being peeled back like an onion’s skins. The hungry cloud ripped away the entire ceiling and a roiling mass of living white smoke loomed over them.
Javi’s next shot made it recoil. It moved like a dragon with dozens of short limbs, more like a centipede. Its form defied definition. Kim could almost make out something resembling a neck. That neck ended in something resembling a hungry maw, consisting of thousands of teeth that were not teeth, struggling to take shape and just flowing like water and solidifying and back and forth.
She shot into the center of whatever this thing was and it screeched again, dispersing just like any cloud should but reshaping at the edges of the torn metal ceiling and taking cover from their shots. Looming, like a predator waiting for the right moment to pounce.
The string of profanities Javi eked out behind her only underlined his panicked attempts at reloading his gun and fumbling with the ammunition. But the world had grown strangely quieter, through a screen of the deafened ringing in her ears from the many loud shots. Gun smoke stung as it filled Kim’s nostrils.
Her pistol punched another hole through the side of the bus as she took a potshot at the hungry cloud. The angry howls that followed were only a prelude to the thing grabbing and shaking the whole bus with violent force. The world nearly spun around as the bus nearly toppled over.
Two more blind shots made it stop and another hungry cloud darted across the hole in the ceiling, coiling around the bus and crisscrossing with the first one. The bus rumbled and shook, falling back into its upright position, making her stomach churn.
They had no eyes but Kim felt watched. Felt the hatred radiating from these things like heat.
A raging inferno.
The blue water of the sky began to swirl like a vortex, like a whirlpool was beginning to form in it. But she had no time to ponder it, for tendrils of the hungry cloud formed claws, prying at the hole and trying to force its way deeper inside. The maw closed in.
She took another shot that caused it to recoil, backing away and then flowing back outside. She continued pulling the trigger, but the weapon just clicked away with empty chambers.
Click, click, click, click.
Another deafening shot from Javi’s shotgun behind her maintained the numbing screen of ringing in her ears. More angry howls. The presence of the clouds disrupted the flow of air, and a violent gust of wind heralded a sudden change.
The giant forces shaking and crushing and tearing up the old tour bus let go of it. Distanced themselves.
Even at a growing range, Kim could feel the flaming despise emanating from these unnatural entities. Although they possessed no facial features, she sensed one of them catching a glimpse of her as something distantly resembling a head flowed past the hole in the ceiling, joining the other cloud-dragons.
Even as the distance between the bus and the hungry clouds grew, the adrenaline still pumped. Kim’s heart continued pounding like a drum, underscored by that painful ringing in her ears. She continued to point her empty gun at the intangible things while the unspeakable entities backed farther and farther away from the bus, melting into wisps of other clouds adrift in the rippling skies.
Where they recovered. Re-channeled. Readied themselves for their next assault.
With a trembling hand, she pawed around in her other jacket pocket for spare bullets but found none.
“You got what you came for?” Javi asked. His voice quaked.
They had both ducked down and cowered, glued to the old demolished furnishings inside the bus. Things that offered comfort in the illusion of providing cover, but provided none against entities that moved like mist and possessed the power of giants.
“No,” Kim breathed.
“Then fuckin’ get it. They might be coming back,” he said.
She glared at him.
He grimaced and said, “Sorry.”
Staying low and moving while staying crouched, she sidled along the length of the corridor into the back of the bus. Javi stayed behind, keeping his gun trained on one of the gaping holes that the fog-things had ripped open in the chassis of this steel carcass.
Kim paused when something metal clanked. A shard of scrap metal had fallen down and Javi’s gaze met hers. He shook his head and she turned, continuing on.
The pounding of that drum that was the heart of fury and adrenaline, it calmed. Slowly. Although it felt longer than it was, a minute had passed since the retreat of the roiling cloud-monsters.
She dared to stand up straight and look around in the room with the ratty bunk beds. For a moment, she expected to see Michael sitting there. But all she saw was her own shadow, her silhouette cast into a humanoid shape where she had seen him sitting last. A reminder of the demon that had taken him—taken him over, ascended as the Glass King. A wide smile, too wide to look natural, baring bright white, clean teeth. Underlining a set of piercing steel blue eyes, and that flash of silver in them.
That evil. That ambition.
None of it here, now. Nobody was here. Nobody but Javi waiting near the exit, and nobody else but Kim.
She turned and her eyes came to rest on the small black safe set into the wall. Still intact.
The door of the safe stood open. First and foremost, dust and grit filled its insides. That, and a small mirror standing at the back wall, inside the safe.
Kim stared at herself, lost in the sinuous vision. Not vanity enthralled her, but fascination over every curve of her own face, so unexpected and yet so true to what she had imagined. So right.
So her.
Most of all, she felt content. So content that everything was a million miles away. The memories of demons and Michael, the cloud creatures, the weight of the revolver in her hand, the perils of the House of Change, the oblivion that swallowed people whole in the otherworlds, the laws of magick, the constant paradox, the dreams that blended with reality, even Javi—they all faded away. Peeled back like layers of reality unfurling like flower petals, like a rose blossoming and blooming in a time lapse.
All that remained—all that remained was this mirror.
She reached inside the safe and took it. First, Kevin had seen it here, mystified by its meaning and terrified by what it might represent. Michael had left it here, to see through it from beyond any veil, and to control his potential thrall. Now, Kim took it. She would make it her own.
Held up close, she looked into her own eyes, the rest of her appearance and this bright otherworld around her all cropped out by the angle.
Infinity churned in those black holes, framed by vibrant colors, scintillating with fire and metal in the color of her irises. Life, vibrant, and yearning.
Her fingers curled around the small reflective object as she closed her eyes and breathed. The adrenaline, the rushing of blood in her ears all distant and subdued.
Content, finally.
Kim shoved the mirror into her jacket’s pocket and left.
Nervousness still marked Javi’s face when he looked up at her from his hiding spot. His brow shot up into a high arch of confusion. Kim knew how serene she must have looked now, felt the thrum of this powerful calm from the core of her body and emanating outwards like a bright aura.
“Done. Let’s go,” she breathed at him.
He stumbled a bit as he got to his feet and took the lead. Paused at the bottom of the stairs leaving the old tour bus, pointing his gun from one side to the other and then poking it outside. The fright of the cloud-creatures still haunted him and showed itself in his every abrupt motion, but Kim followed behind him in a trance of almost unnatural tranquil.
With nothing in sight, he began making his hasty return to the sports car outside, kicking up dust as he jogged up to it.
Kim followed and only now registered the heavy pull of the emptied gun in her hand. She stared at it and remembered all the times she had used it in the past, savoring the idea of tossing it. Then she changed her mind and shoved it into the other pocket of her leather jacket.
Javi swung his weight to plop back down into the driver’s seat, causing the small lithe vehicle to bounce a few inches under the sudden impact of his weight.
Kim clicked her tongue and smiled through her speaking, “Let me.”
Javi peeled his eyes off the sky where the cloud monsters dwelt. Stared at her in disbelief, realizing how she had stopped paying attention to those potential threats. Kim took twice the time to walk towards the car, not speeding up her pace at all.
He shook his head and climbed back out of the driver’s seat. Tossed the keys to her which she caught with precision that surprised even herself. They took their seats in the car, slammed the doors shut, and within seconds, the engine’s motor roared back to life.
Wheels kicked up dirt as the Dodge spun on the spot and circled around, then sped off towards the cracked and pothole-riddle strip of forgotten asphalt. Metal screeched and sparks flew as the vehicle scraped over tarred grounds and found proper traction on the broken road.
All the while, Javi kept rubbernecking around, peering out of the windows to see if he could spot the things nearing. Kim just kept her focus on the road in front of them. Unconcerned of what lurked in the bright sunless sky.
A gust of wind carried a tempest of sand, engulfing the car. When it passed, the Dodge was driving down a different road. It looked almost the same, but it was more intact than the otherworld’s imitation of one.
This was the natural world they came from.
The sun set to their right. A yellow fireball in the sky, scorching hot and a reminder of them having returned to our world. Or what our world had become.
The car thundered past a weathered sign by the roadside.
SOUTH
306
NEVADA
“Any ideas why the ritual ward didn’t work? Was it those things?” Javi asked after a long bout of silence and a subsequent deep sigh that conveyed a sense of relief.
After all, those cloud-beasts could only exist in that otherworld, or by taking possession of a body from our world.
“Got a hunch,” she replied. Nothing else. That calm drowned out the desire to over-explain.
She could feel his gaze resting on her but she did not meet it, keeping her eyes on the road still. Only shooting a glance at the speedometer. Needle climbing, going fast. The hum and vibration of the vehicle felt good and she savored the pressure of the sheer velocity.
Without looking at him, she could sense the gears churning behind his forehead.
“Got a feeling that all of the old magick doesn’t work anymore. I remember reading some old book. Like, all the old spells from the late medieval period? This one monk said they stopped working at some point. A later occultist wrote some babble about magick only working because you believe in it despite the paradox of it not existing, evidenced by all the old rituals that never worked. But I think that guy had no clue.”
Javi scratched the stubble on his chin, sounding like sandpaper on wood.
“And you think that’s what happened in the House o’ Change? Because o’ what you did in there?” he asked, the pitch of his voice rising with each question. “Does that mean you're—”
“Yes,” she said, interrupting him.
Smiled.
“What if someone else makes it to the Heart of the House? If they birth the next world, does that mean you—”
“No,” she said. The smile solidified on her face, yet softened. Like molten steel. “Nobody can change me—nobody change my metal soul. Nobody.”
Her words trailed off with her thoughts. The road to Vegas would be long and something sinister still awaited them there: the Glass King and his flock.
Kim swallowed the lump in her throat, pushing that thought back down. She felt something more powerful that trumped it.
Hope.
Then she added, “I will now always be me, no matter what becomes of this world, or the next, or any that follow.”
Silence draped itself over them again, filled only with the constant sounds of the engine and the tires rolling down the road at high speed.
Kim removed her hand from the stick and held it out to Javi. An open, empty palm. Yet, invisible to the naked eye, she held her heart out on display for him.
He looked into the hollow of her palm, then let his gaze wander up the length of her arm till their eyes met again. Just before she could feel uncomfortable about it, he seized her hand.
She smiled again.
Squeezed.
—Submitted by Wratts
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benreystims · 5 years
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Michael Newman (Other Space) Stimboard
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