Category: serial fiction

  • Episode 1: What the Dark Returns, Part 2

    Vengeance, My Heart is a work of serialized fiction. Jump to key story links to read earlier content.

    The ultramarine-eyed stranger closed her eyes and breathed in, whether to garner courage or in regret for making such a promise, the pilgrim couldn’t decide. Perhaps she did it to center herself. It was not his place to know these things — he didn’t want to know. But he would not refuse such a promise of assistance, one normally reserved for those in a higher strata than he, as it had been sworn.

    The stranger turned on her heel and marched towards the gaping black mouth of the ramshackle remains. Six dust-scratched eyes followed her passage as she stepped from gloam to gloom, the pilgrim’s daughter whispering a prayer that was only occasionally broken by the serpent’s kiss of sand over sand.

    (more…)

  • Episode 1: What the Dark Returns, Part 1

    Vengeance, My Heart is a work of serialized fiction. Jump to key story links to read earlier content.

    It came as a dervish, rising up from the alkali flats bathed in a wash of perpetual twilight; at first a flea on the horizon and growing larger as it drew closer. The shape was largely black with a touch of rich burgundy and loose cloth flapping in the wind, tassels dancing as gravity pulled downward against the wind. The air played tricks with sound, carrying over the sands a firm, but steady crunch of hooves grinding lime on hard pan.

    It would be foolish to hail the newcomer, to wish the visitor well, for thieves walked these lands. The pilgrim and his kin had been warned about this, as they had been warned about the ruins near the aged well by which they sojourned. He didn’t issue a command to hide, for there was no place to hide in this barren place save for the well itself, which might be worse than the fluttering black ghost moving their direction on a pale horse. The pilgrim hoped the outrider would see their threadbare robes and worn, twisted-hemp sandals and understand it was custom for pilgrims to give most of their possessions away before their journey. He uttered a whispered curse for not waiting until the next caravan of faithful made the trek. He would have had the benefit of safety in numbers and then perhaps his son—

    He let that thought go. What was done was done and wishing for something else was clinging to another illusion to shed when they reached Absalom. If — he reminded himself, not when — they arrived. If they reached the oasis city of this wretched land. He had already begun the process of removing his son from memory.

    (more…)
  • Episode 0: Epigraph

    Episode 0: Epigraph

    Vengeance is in my heart, death in my hand,
    Blood and revenge are hammering in my head.

    — William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus

    Drifter coming in
    Never touching down, never leaving ground
    A twilight world in which we roam
    Still we don’t belong — Drift on    .

    — Siouxsie and the Banshees, Drifter

    The first episode of new serialized gothic western by Michael Raven, Vengeance, My Heart, begins tomorrow.

    Full episodes will typically span three to four posts. New story posts will drop approximately three times a week at 18:00 GMT (Noon CST/11:00 CDT); drop days may vary initially until an achievable rhythm can be established.

    — Story Links —

    Beginning of Vengeance, My Heart

    Begin with part 1 of the current episode

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    Table of Contents for Vengeance, My Heart

  • SDPC Post-Mortem and Aftermath

    Image generated by Gemini, with direction by Michael Raven

    Well, Miss Vivian Locke had gone back to her life of not dealing with exorcisms, divorces cases and whatnot. Back down into The Gills with it’s static rain and Cookie’s coffee. Mr. Cross is not what he might seem on the outside, but isn’t that always how it is?

    I had fun writing Sunny Day Parasol Co., but I will readily admit that it went off in a direction I hadn’t anticipated when I started writing the story. In fact, I thought it had maybe 10,000 words and was solidly in the short story realm when I started. Turns out I was wrong at more than double that amount (~ 21,500 words, roughly 65 printed pages on A4 — for those who care about such things).

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  • Epilogue

    an episodic Vivian Locke occult noir

    Image generated by Gemini, with direction by Michael Raven

    Sunny Day Parasol Co.

    Epilogue

    This is a serialized story. Start with Case File #1 here.

    The Meridian Club had been a monument to high-stakes vice; now, it was just an open wound catching the city’s freezing rain. Red and blue police lights pulsed through the ruptured doorway, casting long, fractured shadows across the pulverized baccarat tables and the sea of abandoned chips.

    In the dead center of the devastation, Cross stood up from the gray ash and dusted off his suit.

    (more…)

  • Case File #15: Absolute Zero

    an episodic Vivian Locke occult noir

    Image generated by Gemini, with direction by Michael Raven

    Sunny Day Parasol Co.

    Case File #15: Absolute Zero

    This is a serialized story. Start with Case File #1 here.

    Kogan’s lead ampoule shattered under my bandaged knuckles. The purified salt and cold iron filings scattered across the green felt, but the dead quicksilver didn’t just spill… It leapt. It shot from the broken glass like a liquid soul, violently drawn to the impossible shape of the Black Sulfur token.

    It hit the velvet exactly as Cross’s rotting entropy and Gallow’s crushing stasis slammed into the table.

    The ignition didn’t produce a fireball. It produced an execution.

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  • Case File #14: Lead Comes to Dinner

    an episodic Vivian Locke occult noir

    Image generated by Gemini, with direction by Michael Raven

    Sunny Day Parasol Co.

    Case File #14: Lead Comes to Dinner

    This is a serialized story. Start with Case File #1 here.

    Cross’s amused smile vanished, replaced by a look of ancient, profound annoyance.

    I sat dead still in the crushing quiet, my breath shallow and held tight. The dull, rhythmic ache from the deep cuts on my left hand from the shattered neon glass was a sharp, ordinary pain, the only thing anchoring me against the impossible physics tearing the air apart. My bandaged fingers held steady over the lead ampoule, caught in the dead center of a hurricane where absolute stasis was locked in a brutal collision with pure, corrosive entropy.

    (more…)

  • Upcoming gothic western serial

    base art generated by Gemini; text and design by michael raven

    While Sunny Day Parasol Co., the serialized noir I’ve been posting, has been “in the can” for about a week now and the publication of the story has been winding up, I have not been idle with the spare time I have had at my disposal.

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  • Case File #13: Quicksilver

    an episodic Vivian Locke occult noir

    Image generated by Gemini, with direction by Michael Raven

    Sunny Day Parasol Co.

    Case File #13: Quicksilver

    This is a serialized story. Start with Case File #1 here.

    “I’ll pass on the gin,” I said, keeping my posture relaxed but ensuring my right hand rested casually near the slit in the midnight blue silk. “It dulls the reflexes, and I prefer to keep my head clear when I’m collecting a fee.”

    Cross’s smile didn’t waver. He leaned back, his tailored suit seeming to absorb the harsh glare of the chandelier above us.

    “Fair enough. Though I notice you are traveling remarkably light for a retrieval job, Miss Locke. Tell me you didn’t leave my property sitting in the back of that rented hack you took from the Brass Canary. It would be a terrible shame to lose our investment to a common cab driver.”

    “I wouldn’t insult either of us by being careless,” I said. My left hand, wrapped tight in fresh white gauze, went to the velvet clutch resting in my lap. My burnt fingers brushed the velvet, feeling the unnatural, freezing weight of Kogan’s ward humming against the escrow token.

    (more…)

  • Case File #12: The Devil’s Doorway

    an episodic Vivian Locke occult noir

    Image generated by Gemini, with direction by Michael Raven

    Sunny Day Parasol Co.

    Case File #12: The Devil’s Doorway

    This is a serialized story. Start with Case File #1 here.

    The scalding water of the club’s cast-iron shower felt like an exorcism. I stood under the sputtering spray until the hot water tank coughed its last, watching the black, sulfurous grime of the past eighteen hours… Had it only been eighteen hours? …swirl down the drain like a broken promise.

    I stepped out into the humid, cramped bathroom and dried off with one of the thick, luxurious towels The Canary kept around — one of several small luxuries afforded the employees who worked the club. I winced, tracing the deep, clean glass cuts across my left hand, then carefully redid the bandages. A girl gets used to the sight of her own blood in this city.

    Margot had left a dress hanging on the door. Midnight blue silk, the kind that whispered promises. It was cut on the bias to cling like a second, dangerous skin, but with a slit high enough to allow a full, unimpeded draw from a thigh holster. I strapped the heavy snub-nose to my leg, the cold steel a comforting anchor against the soft fabric, and slipped the silk over my head.

    A sharp knock rattled the frosted glass of the door.

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