The Saga of Melkor the Manbaby: Part 2, In Which Melkor Gets a Fancy Chair

Hey there, true believers! Salutations from Ferelden, land of mystical elves and TERRIBLE posture. Not to mention bad hairstyles, weird fashion choices, and stupid facial tattoos.

His chiropractor is the richest man in all of Thedas.

Since I’ve written the first part of Melkor’s saga, the crisis of male insecurity continues to spiral. In spite of mass shootings lawmakers just passed a bill making it easier to carry bang-bang shooties, an Indiana police officer was suspended for daring to suggest that guys have an easier time in the world than gals, and oh yeah, agricultural workers in the U.S. are taking their own lives in record numbers, possibly because they find it more socially acceptable than asking for help. Guys continue to be in crisis due to a ritualistic, endemic reinforcement of their insecurity, and they continue to endanger others due to this problem. Just... You know. A little reminder of where we're at, right now.

But, back to the elves!! Melkor has been busy in Ferelden. He's killed his first dragon, gotten absolutely nowhere in romancing his crush, and has acquired a slightly more intimidating outfit than "whatever the Inquisition had in the lost and found."

Bringing the man-romper back, one Elf at a time.

 Let's recap. When last we left our whiny, emo protagonist, he'd been put in charge of the Inquisition--an ancient order designed to root out corruption and evil. Apparently, last time they started up one of these, it resulted in lots of dictatorship and torture. So, obviously the logical thing to do is start the whole thing up again and put an elven teenager in charge. Good plan, Ferelden. You really nailed that one.

Melkor's journey has gotten a little darker. Soon after allying with the Templars, his army's camp was attacked by a horde of evil wizards. These guys (apparently) are something called the Venatori, and they're led by an illustration from a 13-year-old boy's sketchbook of SUPER DARK AND EDGY ORIGINAL CHARACTERS.

"CRAWLING IN MY SKIIIN! THESE RED LYRIUM WOUNDS, THEY WILL NOT HEAL!"

For obvious reasons, this pissed off Melkor. Not only does the bad guy, Corypheus, have an army and a Darkspawn dragon (so cool!) he's also competing with Melkor for the #1 "Most Grimdark Character In Dragon Age" title. Melkor can't have that. He is the most edgy edge-lord here, not this Two-Face wannabe. So, he tries to duel the big evil guy... and gets his shit slapped.

"I'm gonna read him ALL my dark poetry. That'll show the POSER."

I took a video of this hilarious encounter, but my PS4 deleted it. Boo, hiss. Suffice to say, Melkor did not do well. The mystery mark on his hand made him vulnerable to Corypheus' magic, and also, he broke the first rule of playing mages in video games: Never, ever try to tank the boss. As a mage, you are squishy, and squishy does not do tanking. Squishy hangs in the back, and tries not to die.

Apparently Melkor hasn't played WOW, though, so he got throttled and then tossed down a mineshaft while his trebuchets went all Mulan on the bad guy's ass. 

It wasn't QUITE as epic as this scene, but really, that's setting the bar kind of high for Bioware.

Cue Melkor struggling through the snow, to collapse at his own army's tattered refugee camp. Damn, this got dark fast. It's almost like his horrible decisions have consequences, or something!

A short break for some armchair psychology. Privilege and insecurity thrive in the absence of challenge: when you're accustomed to walking all over people, the slightest resistance can make you feel like the world is ending. It's not, of course: you're just waking up from a dream of delusion where you thought your needs were more important, or somehow better, than everybody else's. But the reaction to this resistance can have serious consequences. Melkor isn't an asshole, but he is an arrogant Elf who's spent his entire life learning magic and simmering with rage towards humans and Dwarves. His personality is a primed explosive, waiting to go off.

Which is why I was pleasantly surprised to find Dragon Age: Inquisition slowly defusing that bomb. As we covered previously, democracy is hard--it requires compromise. Compromise, at least in theory, removes privilege as both parties try to find equal ground. But sometimes it takes more than a board meeting to help one young Elf realize he's mortal. Sometimes it takes a wake-up call, like Corypheus bitch-slapping him off the side of a mountain, for instance.

Suddenly, Melkor's on the same level as everybody else. Soldiers, generals, Inquisitor: we're all just miserable popsicles in the wake of the Venatori attack. After a sad discussion on religion and a really weirdly placed sing-along that is totally not a ripoff of Pippin's song from Return of the King, we can finally move on to my favorite part: the long-delayed, vitally important, MELKOR REDEMPTION ARC! Hooray!!

But first, we need a place for all these Inquisition soldiers. Somewhere sturdy. Somewhere like... a big, convenient castle that nobody has mentioned until now, and which has been conveniently abandoned for centuries in a strategically placed mountain pass.

... Wait, what?

Are you telling me this castle has belonged to the Inquisition this whole time? If so, why the hell weren't we using it to begin with? Was Hugo Weaving shooting a movie there, or something? Is that why we've waited this entire game to use our super-convenient, badass giant fortress?

Whatever, Bioware. Fine. We'll do this your way.

So we move into the new castle. Melkor gets elected Inquisitor, and makes a speech about how elves are awesome and everybody else sucks. And so begins the feedback loop of gameplay in Inquisition. See, Bioware games are famous for two things: salacious romance between fantasy and sci-fi races, and micromanagement. Micromanagement is meticulous, obsessive tinkering with squad abilities, gear, and game-world diplomacy, and it flopped real hard in Mass Effect 3 and Andromeda.

Someday, Ryder. Someday they'll make a game for your franchise that doesn't suck ass.

This stuff is tedious, time-consuming, and absorbs huge amounts of effort. Running a squad in Dragon Age is like being the leader of medieval Seal Team 6, if that leader had to spend endless hours crunching numbers and ensuring his team can chain exactly the right spells in exactly the right order. For hours.

And I fucking love it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a math guy. My dad's dyslexic, and I'm pretty sure long division is actually the Devil. And yet, I cannot resist the gameplay loop of Inquisition. You go out, you grind, your party gets its ass kicked. You limp home exhausted, and pull overtime at the forge to make sure Iron Bull doesn't fucking die from fire next time! Because god dammit, you have worked too hard on this squad for characters to die in combat! Too! Fucking! Hard!

It's a hefty dose of investment bias, compounded by your emotional investment in the story. It's a devious, cruel way to bring players back over and over and God help me, it's my favorite part of the game.

"Well, THAT quest is over. Time to go home and do MATH! Woo!"

Surprisingly, these endless hours of tinkering and perfectionism have had an influence on Melkor's character, too. He started the game as a cold, almost Spock-like loner who refused to care about any of his new "friends," even when those friends saved his life. They're humans, after all--why should he care about them? But for the Inquisition to survive, the Inquisitor has to invest in it. He has to do homework. He has to hump ass across thousands of miles of unstable, war-torn fantasy-land doing obnoxious quests and earning the approval of his party. In short, he has to consider the needs of others before his own. A lot.

Now, I could just throw that stuff to the wind and start chopping off heads. The game's judgment mechanic makes that possible: you get your own Iron Throne Inquisitor's Chair, and from there you can levy judgment on the heads of the FOOLISH UNDERLINGS below you. It's very despotic, and really, seems like it could benefit from a jury or something.

"This next prisoner says Mass Effect Andromeda is a good ga--" "HANG HIM. HANG HIM NOW."

Even though this seems right up Melkor's alley, I can't see him jumping right to it. Because he's also a people-pleaser, just like a lot of compulsive narcissists and liars out there, and he can't help but chase after his group's affections. At his core, he's still an insecure teenager. And while insecurity can result in horrific violence, it also exists for a reason: to push us towards the acquisition of social status. Without fear of losing social status, many great leaders would've never entered the world stage. By the same token, we'd be spared a lot of bad ones as well. It's a double-edged sword.

So even though his childish nature makes him want to go all Red Queen on these fools, he still feels a need to please them. To be their leader, and go where no Elf has gone before. Remember, he's carrying the hopes of an entire people on his shoulders. Not even a rampant egoist is immune to that kind of inherited pressure.

"Must... prove... masculinity... to... my weird Irish elf community!"

 And so, Melkor falls into the trap of... Kinda being a good person, sort of? It's like forcing a sullen preteen to do community service. He may bitch and pretend it's the worst thing that's ever happened to him. But in truth, he's making a difference in his community, and meeting people whose views run contrary to his own--which is like Kryptonite to privilege and xenophobia. Sooner or later, this experience will change him. He'll finally grow as a person.

Well... In most ways. In a lot of ways, he'll still be an asshole.

"It's called a Dracolisk, DAD! It's BETTER than a horse! You wouldn't understand!!"

Tune in next post, when Melkor goes to a fancy dinner party... And commissions a dwarf to write porn for his crush. No, really, this is a thing you can do in Dragon Age. I told you the micromanaging went deep, didn't I? So deep.

 Maybe too deep. I've been playing this game in my dreams. Please send help.

See you next time!

Video Games as Thought Experiments: the Saga of Melkor the Man-Baby, part 1

Let's start with some heavy stuff first: Insecurity kills. It's not really up for debate, anymore. We've got insecurity in the White House, and it's wrecking the place every day. We've got insecurity in the streets, where road rage incidents turn normal people with problems into speeding battering rams. And we've got insecurity in our homes, where the slightest argument with a neighbor can spiral out of control into a "domestic dispute" that kills dozens.

I'm no stranger to insecurity myself. I've got the ol' social anxieties, the small-bicep blues, and savvy readers will note that novel I keep promising still isn't published. But I consider myself lucky. The majority of American men got hit with the insecurity stick a lot harder than I did, and they have less access to tools they need to fix it.

In lieu of that, a lot of guys take to the wrong places to resolve their fears and self-doubts. Places like MMA (I enjoy the sport myself, but there's no denying the fandom is toxic), online trolling, and Nascar. Dealing with male rage is difficult, and as a country we don't really know what to do about it. We don't know how to talk to our young men, to teach them how to reign in that frustration or put it towards something productive. But most of all we don't understand where it comes from, how it can take root in an otherwise well-meaning human being. I believe that this understanding is the key to solving things like the gun crisis, the idiotic testosterone supplement industry, and it might even help us figure out why some douche-bag cut us off on the highway on-ramp. But I'm not a psychologist, or really a behavioral scientist of any kind, so the only way I can really tackle this problem is with fantasy. Namely, with video games.

Enter Melkor.

Look at that mug. You can smell the "nice guy" a mile away, can't you?

Melkor is a character I've created in Dragon Age: Inquisition. I have purposely designed this avatar to look, behave and sound as insecure as possible. For those who don't know, "Inquisition" is a game designed to put the player at the forefront of a crusade to take back "Ferelden," a fictional country, from the forces of evil.

No, not THAT Inquisition. *tuba noises*

However, as with a lot of Bioware role-playing games, the emphasis is less on being a faultless heroic force for justice than it is about making you question your choices. The game is full of choices, both insignificant and world-shattering, and I thought it would be fascinating to take a character totally unsuited to responsibility... and see what happens when he controls the world of Dragon Age.

Let's find out, shall we?

Pre-Game: Manbaby Rising

In creating Melkor, I chose the traits that would make him a minority in his world. Insecurity thrives outside the circle of social acceptance, after all. To start with, I made Melkor an Elf. Elves are not quite reviled in Ferelden, but they aren't anybody's favorite people, either. They don't revere the normal God of Ferelden (gasp!) they're innately connected to magic (gasp, again!) and if that wasn't enough, they have pointy ears too. (Double gasp!) Elves aren't quite as "othered" as Qunari (big demon folk) or Darkspawn (the stand-in for orcs) but they are certainly outsiders.

Next, I made him a Mage. Mages are definitely a reviled group in Ferelden. Imagine if the obsessive, bug-collecting guy from the condo next to yours could shoot lightning from his hands... and also was a living gateway to a world of horrible demons. You'd be a little suspicious, right? Well, in Ferelden there's a whole group dedicated to keeping Mages in check. They're called Templars, and if you think they sound a bit reactionary, you'd be right. Their job is basically to kill rogue Mages.

The game added a bit of extra fun for me here by making Melkor a Daelish, one of a bunch of exile elves that... well, I won't bore you. But suffice to say by game start, Melkor was already feeling like an outsider. A put-upon, grumpy, emo-haired outsider with fire magic. What could go wrong?

Answer: Everything. Everything could go wrong with this.

So Melkor starts off in chains, accused of killing the Pope of this world. Great! I hastily assured the guards that I was innocent, and was carted off to the magical Breach to put my money where my mouth was. Okay, fine. Killed a demon, closed the Breach. I can go home and listen to Linkin Park now, right?

Of course not. For some reason, Melkor is the only one who can close these magical Macguffin portals, and there's a ton of them. The Inquisition keeps him on as kind of an advisor, and then... starts letting him make really important decisions, pretty much immediately?

"We couldn't think of anyone more qualified? Seriously?"

From a game standpoint, okay, this makes sense. Melkor is the only one who can close the portals, so you'd expect they would need him. And from a design standpoint, the game creators want to put you as close to the action as possible. This works pretty well here, as opposed to other Bioware projects, with the one side effect that a whiny teen goth Elf kid is now in charge of an entire army.

Once again: what could go wrong?

Presented without comment.

So now Melkor runs everything. Awesome! This is what he's always dreamed of! An Elf Mage exile, crowned Inquisitor! He's been burning to get his hands on REAL power since the first time somebody tweaked his ears, and now HE'S on top--he'll show those human chumps who's boss!!

Except... he actually has to work with the human chumps, in order to keep his position. He can't just go riding around blasting people. Suddenly, his egotistical worldview needs to be tempered with patience. And this is where the "experiment" part comes in.

See, democracy is hard. Really hard. If you want to build a functioning society, you need to try and keep everyone happy. If you put someone like Melkor at the center of it, who's only out for himself, the equation gets really weird really fast.

Take the recent turmoil around Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe, whose refusal to depart from office has created huge problems for his country. The guy is ancient, yet he won't give up his office even after the military put him under house arrest. This is insecurity at its most extreme: He knows damn well the people don't want him there anymore, and that his long career of corruption and bribery will make him deeply unpopular if he abdicates. So he clings to power, far past logic and sanity, because his deep-rooted need to be more important than everyone else is now his only reason for living.

I was going to make a joke about his wardrobe, but honestly, it just feels like shooting fish in a bucket. Dead fish.

The presence of men like this in positions of power creates cascading problems for everyone beneath them. That's why the U.S. presidency has always been such a hallowed seat: because as ugly as the country can be, we hope for someone with genuine benign integrity will take control. This hasn't worked out lately, because once a sufficient portion of the country's men hit critical insecurity levels, it was only a matter of time before the worst of the worst rose to the top. Also, there was a scary girl on the other side of the ballot! We couldn't let a girl get elected, guys! Ew, cooties!

But I digress. Back to Melkor. Melkor immediately sets about doing all the things an Inquisitor is supposed to do: moving troops, hiring spies, getting everybody to call him "Sir" because his dad never loved him and was killed by dragons. But then something happened that I didn't expect--the kind of out-of-left-field twist that every philosophical experiment should have.

In every play-through, you're sort of forced to side with one of the two warring factions in Ferelden: the Mages, with their spooky but altruistic leaders, or the Templars with their autocratic--but reliable---soldiers. Last time I went with Mages, because fuck yeah, an army that can shoot fireballs! This time I went with Templars, though, because despite him being a Mage I see Melkor as a guy who goes for the biggest gun, when trouble crops up. And the Templars with their huge armor pauldrons and giant swords are definitely the bigger gun. 

"What do you mean, 'over-designed'? Sh-shut up, YOU'RE over-designed!"

Plus, at his heart, Melkor is just a big kid. An immoral, magical kid who looks a lot like Kylo Ren, but still just a kid. He wants his toy soldiers and he wants them now. But when I went to fetch them, (spoilers ahead) I ran into this guy:

"I'm, uh, here for the Human Centipede auditions?"

This charming fellow is an Envy Demon. It's unclear whether he was always the Templar leader or kidnapped him, but he's secretly running the Templars when you show up. And part of his elaborate super-villain scheme is to trap you in a maze in your own mind, filled with the kind of horrors your future might hold if you go full "Black Hat," as they say in Westworld.

Until now, Adam Driver--er, I mean Melkor--had been fully intending to turn into an autocratic dictator. Everyone else kept him on the bottom, why shouldn't he do the same to them? Et cetera. But what he got instead was a very "Empire Strikes Back" moment of confrontation where he's forced to accept that maybe his ideals of power and revenge aren't really worth that much. 

"What do you MEAN, actions have consequences? Speak Ferelden!"

In many mythologies, this kind of challenge is a major rite of passage. For example, the major Buddhist figure Bodhidharma spent nine years in a cave, frequently being tormented by demons in his mind, in order to pursue enlightenment. To have this kind of thing happen to Melkor, who at his core is a sneaky selfish child, challenged my assumption that the game would end with him on top of a pile of skulls, cackling while using forbidden blood magic.

So, now I'm forced to question whether Melkor is even suited for this kind of experiment. Right off the bat, he's had despotism revealed as a possible destiny. This makes him self-aware--and insecurity has a very hard time surviving, in the cleansing fire of self-awareness. He was designed as a total egoist, of the snobby obnoxious Max Stirner variety, but now I actually have to get off my ass and role-play him properly. Will he bear out my points about male insecurity in positions of power? Will I find a way to curb his ambitions, and teach him to be a better person? Will he ever gather enough magical shards and weapons to prove to his crush, Cassandra, that he's Totally The Best Inquisitor Ever and she should "like, uh, totally go out on a date" with him? (Melkor's words, not mine.)

"Melkor, what are you doing with all those red crayons?" "NOTHING, SHUT UP, COLE!!"

More importantly, how can all this fantastical frippery be applied to the real world in a practical way to help reduce male fragility and increase self-awareness among hyper-masculine and confused Americans? Is such a thing even possible? Find out next time, on: "THE ADVENTURES OF MELKOR, THE MAN-BABY!"

The official theme of Melkor, brought to you by a playlist from... uh, 2008.

Novel Preview: "Spirits of the Charles"

Hey there, Ramblers! It's a super-rare DOUBLE OCTOBER UPDATE!

This post is for showing off the intro to my NEW urban -fantasy pulp novel, "Spirits of the Charles," which--if everything goes right, fingers crossed!--should be available in early 2018 on Amazon Kindle! Hope you enjoy, and feel free to repost if you like what you see so far! There's 200 more pages where this came from, and of course, any commentary / criticism is welcome.

Follow me at @gaslightrambler on Twitter , for future updates on the status of the novel!

  

Prelude

            In 1867, Florence Nightingale built the first emotional distillers, hoping to “drain” excess feelings from shattered veterans of the Crimean War.
 
            It didn’t work.
 
            But Florence and her assistants had stumbled on something unnatural: the process while useless to the veterans and dangerous to the soul, produced a new substance unknown to mankind—and to the laws of physics. It was an impossible, non-Newtonian liquid, beautiful and strange. It was the essence of human feeling, condensed into physical form. It was revolutionary.
 
            It was also easy to make, and highly addictive.
 
            The secret to its production spread across Europe, and into America. Certain runes from an old Roman cult circulated in the blackmarket. Distilleries churned to life, condensing ‘Draughts’ in great numbers. By the turn of the century, condensed emotions had replaced alcohol as the United States’ drug of choice, and new, exotic varieties proliferated everywhere.
 
            The Great War arrived, slaughtered a generation, and went. Soldiers quaffed from flasks of Rage during Verdun; the survivors found Joy more to their liking, and drowned themselves in it. New Year’s Eve 1918, was toasted with champagne flutes of Hope and Nostalgia, mixed with bubbling champagne.
 
            By this time, the mutations caused by Draughts were well-known—but America drank them anyway. Breweries claimed these effects were temporary. The fact that the brewers had no idea what they were selling, or even how it worked, didn’t stop people from buying. New Draught companies were cropping up every day, breeding fear and panic in small communities worried about temperance. It was as if the Devil himself had arrived in person to corrupt them. Not only were young people dancing to the blues and smoking, now they were literally changing, warping into living Myths. Sometimes, they didn’t change back.
 
            The fear gathered momentum. Marches were held, distillers dragged into the streets and beaten. In response to this unstable market, the Draughts grew more powerful, more unpredictable. Myths were now a frequent sight. Wives no longer recognized husbands; preachers rejected their flocks. People drunk on Lust grew horns, or indulged in Love and became smothering cherubs, complete with wings. It was a theological crisis. Something needed to be done, before the country tore itself to pieces. The debate rose through ranks of power, and in the face of the strangeness devouring their nation, Congress finally took action.
 
            In 1919, the Volstead Act passed, making the selling of Draughts illegal. Prohibition was now the law, but it wasn’t enough.
 
            The party of mankind’s demise had just begun.





June 29th, 1926
 

            It had been a morning just like this, Rose Sweetwater thought, the day they’d burned her town to the ground.

            The morning dew rose off the fields in a slow, hazy mist. The chill of pre-dawn was full of sleepy birdsong, and the chitter of insects. The damp quiet hung close around her, numbing her nose. Today she’d risen full of fading dreams and scraps of nightmare; bad memories, Southern memories. Luckily, she had a fresh gig to distract her. She’d shined her shoes and donned her mechanic’s cap, rising earlier than the rest of Boston to do the city’s dirty work. The work better people, respectable people, left to people like her.

            Mood-legging work.

            At least it was predictable… usually. Cash changed hands, booze rattled in hidden compartments and glowed with infused emotional essence. Today was just a trade-off like any other—a shivering, cold dawn, and a quiet back-roads deal with scumbags and criminals. At least it’s a paycheck.

            Standing on a misty country road, she checked the safety on her Mauser for the hundredth time. She’d never fired it, and hoped she’d never have to. Contrary to what mosts folks thought, Draught-running wasn’t usually a violent business—unless somebody screwed up.

The safety was still on. Slipping of the stubby gun back into her overalls, she bounced on her heels, boyish frame too energetic for all this standing and waiting. She and Gus Henderson were standing on the edge of dense, overgrown woods and fields, listening for the sound of their supplier.

“They’re late,” she said, glancing at Gus. His craggy, sideburned face was bent over a few baseball cards, assessing their value. He was a big half-Myth with burly shoulders, ugly as sin but mostly loyal. As long as someone else wasn’t paying better, today.

            “They’re always late,” he said, his voice a gentle growl.

            “Today’s a bad day for that.”

            “Every day’s a bad day in this business. Just stay loose.” He shuffled the cards, and tucked them in his shirt pocket. A racketeer and shyster, he would probably sell them at inflated prices later—the Greed he drank daily made him good at such schemes. It also made him hideous, but she could deal with that.

            In silence, they both glanced at the milk truck behind them. The glass jugs stood empty, coated in white paint. They’d rented the truck from Watertown Dairy, for camouflage, but it was a shoddy disguise. Liquid Grief was purple, not white, and once they filled the bottles anyone who checked would be able to see through the ruse.

            She brushed a coil of hair out of her eyes, watching the quiet country road ahead. Gus was lighting another cigar, despite the fact it had to be barely five in the morning, and the click of his cigar-cutter was deafening in the quiet.

            She wrinkled her nose at the fungal smoke. “Those things will kill you, Gus. You ought to quit.”

            His pebbly, distorted face bunched into folds as he smiled, and razor teeth glimmered in his mouth. “Faster than stomach cancer? Good.” He drew in a heavy breath and exhaled, clouding the verdant back-road with grayish blue smog. “It’s my guts, not my lungs I’m concerned for. Let the stogies have ‘em.”

            She shrugged.

            They were a strange a pair: a lithe black girl wearing bricklayer’s coveralls, and a man who looked like a cross between a gator and a rugby player. It was a wonder they’d even landed this gig, looking like they did, but their reputation had been enough to edge out the competition. Rose was the best getaway driver in Massachusetts, and Gus refused to do jobs without her—and he was the biggest bundle of muscle money could buy, south of Concord. So here they were.

            She stuck a toothpick between her front teeth. Her left pocket was full of them, and in the right one she had mint leaves. Rose was very serious about hygiene. “Damn Fomeroys are probably sleeping off a drunk.”

            “They’ll come.” Gus spat into a ditch, the saliva sizzling on impact. “Maybe not sober, but they’ll come.”

             “Sounds like you’re right.” The rattle of a car engine boomed through the birch trees, coming closer. She smelled the exhaust before she saw their truck: a thick, vile stench, almost as bad as the Fomeroys themselves.

            This tract of woods was not well-settled. The ground was full of stones, bad for farming. A long time ago, a bunch of moonshiners had settled here, populating the dense pines of western Massachusetts. This family had somehow gotten ahold of an emotional distiller—nobody knew how they’d done it. Overnight they’d become the biggest supplier of knockoff Draughts in the state. Those who couldn’t afford to smuggle from New Hampshire or past the Coast Guard had to go through the Fomeroy clan, and it wasn’t an easy process. The Fomerys had gone a little… funny, living out here and brewing Draughts.

            The supplier’ rickety pickup swerved up, its wooden slat-bed shedding old chicken feathers all over the road. She saw Gus reach for his Winchester, in the back of the milk truck—the pickup was coming on fast, too fast. She stood firm, though, and the squeal of corroded brakes sounded as the Fomeroys stopped just inches away. The driver’s door swung open.

            “You’re late,” she said.

            Dick Fomeroy, the eldest, hopped down from the cab with an unsteady wobble. He was a thick-set man, with long arms and beetle-brows, a ragged derby hat clinging to his head. His eyes wandered, watery and distracted. He stumbled to the back of the truck and began unloading a cargo of covered buckets.

            “We can be as late as we like,” Edgar Fomeroy, the younger, clambered out the passenger side. He was a gangly youth with an excess of pimples—and an excess of temper. “We gots a monopoly.”

            “Yeah? Good for you. Now give us the merchandise.”

            His lip curled. “Bossy. Brownie like you oughta to know better.” His shirt and overalls bulged and shifted—full of mutations, the result of mixing Draughts with shoddy equipment, and no expertise. Skin contact wasn’t usually enough to Mythify someone, but the Fomeroys were so sloppy they’d turned themselves into freaks just brewing their product.

            “You oughta do your job,” growled Gus, moving up to stand by Rose. He towered over both of them, six feet and change of ex-boxer. “Or do you need some reminders?”

            “Alright, alright. Keep your shirt on.” Edgar joined his brother, pulling a hand-beaten copper funnel from the cab. They took the milk bottles Gus offered, and set them up in a line.  “Damn big-city palooka.”

            They backed off as the brothers did their work, wrapping kerchiefs over their mouths.

            “Thanks,” said Rose. “I hate working with these two.” The brothers had begun pouring streams of Grief down the funnel and into the counterfeit milk bottles. “I don’t know which is worse-their attitude, or the smell.”

            “Definitely the smell.” Gus stayed close to the Winchester, watching the moonshiners with reptilian eyes. “Maybe it’s the Greed talking, but do our boys seem weirder than usual today?”

            “Yeah. That takes doing.” The Fomeroys were muttering under their breath to each other, and the stench of the Grief—like a mix of licorice and seawater—washed over them. The hairs on Rose’s neck began to rise. She’d had that feeling right before the riots in Florida: that creeping, crawling sensation that something was wrong. It seemed to come from everywhere, triggered by a change in the wind, a distant sound… something on the edge of her perception. A far-off rumble reached her, through the placid trees.

“Someone’s coming.”

            “I hear ‘em.” Gus held his rifle in the crook of his arm, shouting at the Fomeroys. “You two! Hurry it up!”

            “Can’t rush this,” said Dick, muffled under his handkerchief. “It’s a delicate art.”

            “He’s right,” Eddie said. “Spill this stuff, and your payment disappears. Betcha Mr. Wallace won’t be pleased with that.”

            Rose winced at the mention of her employer. Frank Wallace was a brutal Irish thug, whose brothers had promised her and Gus solid payment for land-shipped Draughts.. The Wallaces were con men and murderers… but they paid.

            She had no love for Frank or the “boys,” but she needed this money--badly. And so did Gus. “Screw the payment. Hurry this up, or we’ll give you a reason to hurry.”
            The Fomeroys looked at her… and kept pouring at the same speed. They knew she was no bruiser, and were calling her blugg. But she could put on a mean poker-face, and the gun looked serious enough. She pulled the Mauser, The brothers glanced at her pistol, nodded… and kept on pouring at the same snail’s pace.
            Gus growled deep in his throat. “Engine’s getting closer.”

            “Engines, plural. There’s more than one.” Rose covered her mouth and nose; the fumes from the Grief were making her sleepy. Depressed. “Wait a second. That stuff is gray!”

            “So?” Ed said, defensive. But his eyes shifted to Jack for a moment, and back.

            “Grief is purple, you backwoods sunsabitches,” said Henderson. “That stuff’s Misery, not Grief! What are you trying to pull?”

            “Our Grief is always gray,” said Ed. “It’s just how the batch comes out!” But he stopped pouring, and so had Dick. They seemed frozen, lacking even the creativity for fresh lies.

            “It’s a play,” said Rose. The pieces snapped into place so quickly she felt stupid for not seeing it. “Gus, they’re selling to someone else. Someone paid them to meet us here—knock off the competition.” Her throat went dry as the roar of the approaching cars drowned out her voice. “This is an ambush.”

            The Fomeroys didn’t bother with deception, instead bolting for their truck. Rose could see Edgar tugging a pistol from his pocket as he went. Her partner raised his rifle, and put a round through the fender of their car. The booming crack of the gun hammered her, and she bolted for the milk truck.

            Gus was furious. “Get back here! Lying shit-heads!”

            “Gus, leave ‘em! We gotta scoot!” She cranked the starter handle on the front of their truck—too quickly. It leapt from her fingers, swinging around and bashing her hand. Her knuckles went numb and she bit back profanity.

            “Two-timing finks!” Gus followed her as Ed steadied his corroded revolver on the pickup’s steering wheel, firing wild. The gunshots rattled her, threatened to stun her to inaction; instead, she grabbed the starter and shoved it again. Every second of delay put them closer to death—the Fomeroys couldn’t shoot for shit, but whoever was coming down that road probably could.

            At last the old milk truck stuttered to life; she leapt behind the wheel as a bullet whizzed through the canopy, leaving behind a shaft of dawn-light. “Got it! Let’s go!”

            “I needed that cash!” But he jumped in the passenger side as the Fomeroys went into reverse and pulled away, still firing.

            “Now’s not the time!” She jerked the truck to forward-gear just as two big Ford cars came roaring down the road—one from each direction. It was a smart move: the milk truck was positioned at a bend in the road. There would be no cross-fire. 

            The incoming cars swerved and stopped, forming a blockade. Men piled out—men in thick polo coats, faces grim. From beneath their coats they produced an assortment of firearms. She saw Colt pistols, Springfields, and even a massive Browning chopper, its drum pregnant with murder. Fear twisted her insides as they drove towards one of the firing squads; the eyes of these men were steel. They had done this many times.

They were eighty feet out from the guns on the long, dusty road. Rose pressed the gas.

            “Those are Family cars!” Gus chambered new rounds into the Winchester, slapping the barrel on a side mirror and squinting down the iron sights. “We hit the Family, we’re a target—”

            Sixty feet. “We’re already a target! Shoot, goddammit!”

            Gus levelled his rifle, and there was a fruitless clicking sound. “It’s jammed! Cover me!”

            Thirty feet.

            Rose leaned out the window, pistol ready, and froze. The blank faces ahead of her were fearless and hateful, but she’d seen what bullets did to people. Back in Florida, she’d seen bodies turned chunks, human lives reduced to meat. The memories were visceral and stamped on her mind so firmly for a moment it was all she could see. Then reality snapped back to her. She shoved her weapon at Gus. “Use mine—I’ve got the wheel!”

            Gus took the gun, leaned out the passenger side and started shooting. He was a former army grunt, and unlike her, he had no trouble unleashing lethal force. The men stood firm, even as windshields exploded and one of them went down hard, a bullet leaving a hole in his long coat. Rose felt sick, but there was no time to react—she had to swerve to avoid return-fire, the noise of it washing away everything but her terror.

            She wasn’t sure if God was on her side, but somebody must have been watching, because her final swerve took them around the Family, riding two wheels and sending assassins diving for cover. The wheels slammed down, engine whining—and then they were clear.

She hunkered low and winced as Browning rounds peppered the truck, shattering milk-bottles and tearing through the chassis. She heard Henderson roar with pain, and blood spattered the dashboard.

            Oh dear Jesus—But they were rounding the bend now. The road was uneven and their truck jolted and rattled, threatening to pitch over, but they’d survived. She allowed herself to breathe again, trying to follow the road, searching for twists and turns to throw off pursuers. “Gus, you… you shot somebody.”

“We’re outlaws, Rose. Stuff like this happens.” He was clutching his shoulder; she couldn’t see how bad it was, and was too panicked to ask.

She swallowed, and sent up a quick prayer for the man’s soul. Somehow, she didn’t think he’d make it to heaven. “Think they’ll chase us?”

            “Don’t think so. They already took a risk, shooting big irons off… Christ, that hurts.”

She looked over, horrified, to see his entire left shoulder was a mass of red. Blood soaked his shirt, seeping through his fingers.

            “Gus! Are you—”

            “I’m fine. Just need a shot of the dog’s whiskers.” He reached into the glove compartment and fumbled through trucking permits and fake identities. She heard him wheeze with agony; scaly or not, a bullet to the shoulder still hurt him. “Ah, there it is.” He plucked a brown bottle of Greed from under the papers, its contents yellow and viscous.

            Despite her panic, she was disgusted. “Gus. You promised you wouldn’t drink that stuff on the job.”

            “Bitch me out when I’m done bleeding, okay?” He unscrewed the cap and chugged the last of it, tossing it out the window. “Ah … That’s the good shit.”

            She watched as his greasy hair sprouted golden spines, fingers extending. His face grew longer, shrewder, and more reptilian. It made her stomach turn, but it had the desired effect: his new mutations slowed the bleeding, bronze scales growing over his wound. He tore off a sleeve from his shirt, tying it over his shoulder. “See?” He belched. “All better.”

            Rose gripped the wheel in frustrated silence. She relied on him to get them through scrapes like this one, but it was hard to trust a man who was half-drunk all the time. And his looks didn’t make him easier to work with: his scales and claws had been caused by a batch of bad Greed years ago, and every drop of the stuff he took seemed to make it worse. Most times he was tolerable, if sullen, but the Draughts blurred his judgment even while they kept him alive. Then he began to talk, voice a little deeper and scratchier than before. She knew what it would be about, before he opened his mouth: he always returned to his favorite subject, after a drink. Money.

            “You ever think about hitting Providence?”

            She shrugged. “We just got shot at. I’m not thinking about anything.”

            He ignored her. “We should hit Providence sometime. I hear they got a king’s ransom coming in down there. We’d be made with a slice of that… just made.” His voice was silky with the rush of Greed.

            She sighed. “Yeah. I’ve thought about it. I’ve also thought about staying alive.” She sighed. “Get your blood off the dashboard. I don’t want to end up in the slammer when a cop sees your guts all over the place.”

           “Sure. Say, you got a dollar? I could really use a dollar."

           Still shaking, Rose rolled her eyes and thanked God for letting them live. Then she gave him a dollar.

            He dabbed at his own fresh blood with it, then held it up to the light. The sun shone through it, stripes of light dancing over Washington’s blood-soaked face. “There he is. The big cheese.”

           “You owe me a buck.”

           “Add it to my tab, honey.”

           “Call me that again, and I’ll put another hole in you. Maybe two.”

            He pocketed the money. Her jibes seemed to sober him up; he was a rascal, but he still had priorities. “Alright, alright. Keep your bloomers on… and get us back into town. We need to tell Wallace about our little problem, back there.”

      Their little bootleg truck rolled east.