Tomorrow I’m launching the Kickstarter for The Adventures of Horus & Motherfucker!
Sign up at the link to be notified when we launch! But because we’re launching tomorrow, I wanted to give everyone a taste for what to expect form this novel. Read the first three chapters below and take a gander at one of the illustrations by Tony Tran!
I
The girl said, “There are no gods. Everybody knows that.”
“Then what is the Tesha?”
The girl shrugged, “Don’t know. Probably just some guy. Who cares?”
Her companion gestured to the dead bodies, “Priests.”
“Priests work as much for the king as they do for the Tesha.”
“What king?”
“What?”
“You said—”
“The fucking king! Shit,” the girl threw down the bone she was whittling. “You know,” she whirled her knife as if the gesture encompassed the whole world, the bracelet of teeth clacking, “the fucking king. Everywhere’s got a king.”
“But which king?”
“Shit, I don’t know. Wherever we are.”
“If we don’t know what he’s king of, what makes him king?”
The girl slumped where she sat and sighed, “You’re really pissing me off.” She picked up the whittled bone and went back at it with the knife, the teeth bracelet rattling with every stroke. The scrape and grind of blade on bone vibrated up her wrist to the elbow.
Across the fire, her companion flayed the head of one of the dead priests, “Don’t see what there’s to get mad over.” Struggling with the skin on the nose, she gave up and sawed through the cartilage and let the severed nose fall to the dirt. “Who says there’s no gods?”
The girl snorted and shook her head, “Everybody.”
“Everybody don’t mean shit. You mean Alton and his family.”
The girl blew the bonedust from her hands and examined the blade she was making out of the bone. Her jaw clenched on one side and she reached down to her feet and groped for something with her eyes still on the bone in her other hand. Grasping at nothing, she looked down and then around her.
“What?” Her companion paused seeing what she was doing.
“There was a grindstone here.”
Her companion whistled and when the girl looked up, her companion tossed it to her. The girl went to grinding the boneblade smooth. “What’re you making?”
Her companion giggled, “Don’t know. Thought I’d make, like, a guitar.”
“With a skull?”
Her companion shrugged, “Not sure I know what a guitar looks like.”
“It’s like,” the girl paused, then giggled along with her companion, “like a thin thing and a hollow thing,” her words collapsed into full on laughter and her companion laughed with her.
The night wore on and the fire burned down to embers.
Her companion said, “Should we add more wood?”
The girl shrugged, “You tired?”
Her companion shrugged and tossed another log onto the embers, then a second. They sizzled, popped, and eventually lit.
“What got the wood wet?”
Her companion shrugged, “Blood, probably.” She was deboning the leg of one of the dead priests. “If there’re no gods, then why is there a Tesha?”
The girl sighed, “Same reason there’s kings, I guess.”
“Why’s that?”
“Shit, I don’t know.”
II
When the girl woke, her companion was sitting at the fire, tossing wet leaves onto it. The wind pulled the smoke towards three stakes.
“What you making?”
Her companion turned with a smile, “Couldn’t sleep.”
“Smells like shit.”
Her companion laughed, “Dick.”
“What?”
“Smells like dick.”
The girl wiped sleep from her eyes, jangling her teeth bracelet, “If you say so.” The morning was warm, the sun drying the forest and the bodies of the dead priests. She rolled to her feet and stretched as she walked through the clearing in the trees where they found the temple, where they burned the temple, where they met the priests, where they killed the priests. The faces were slack, emotionless. Some of them peeled off. All of them without teeth. They lay naked, exposed to the sun, and all of them had had their penis and testicles severed. “Didn’t know they were eunuchs.”
Her companion giggled, “They weren’t.”
The girl wiped her eyes and looked at the stakes. Penises and testicles hung from them. Her companion was drying them. “Not gonna eat dicks.”
Her companion shook her head, “Gonna wear them. Smoke them out so they don’t rot and make them into a necklace.”
“Why?”
Her companion shrugged, “Couldn’t sleep.”
III
A warm day, a bright day, they walked along the summer’s way through the trees. A narrow path, only wide enough for a horse and cart. The forest had grown wild there, bushes and trees grown right to the edge of the dirt, and new grass spotting the track of dirt between the trees. The canopy, too, was overgrown, crowding out the sun, allowing only slivers of light through. The girl and her companion walked without haste or even much purpose. The girl’s every step jangled with the teeth bracelet and the necklace made of knuckle bones bouncing together. Her companion swatted at flies buzzing around her necklace of cock and balls.
“You should get rid of it,” the girl said.
“What?”
“It smells fucking awful.”
Her companion frowned, “Seems a waste to just toss it away.”
“You don’t smell that?”
Her companion shrugged, “Used to it.”
The girl snorted, “You only put it on this morning.”
Her companion shrugged again, “Smelled worse. In the pit.”
The girl shuddered, “Fucking Alton.”
Her companion giggled and sighed, “Alton.”
“What’s that for?”
“What?”
The girl stopped and pointed at her companion’s smile, “That.”
Her companion giggled, “Just thinking about Alton.”
“That makes you smile, motherfucker?”
Her companion shook her head, “You’re just not remembering the right parts.”
“There were good parts?”
“Ending wasn’t so bad.”
The girl paused for a moment, her hand dropping, and then she threw her head back and laughed. Her companion laughed too, until the stink of her necklace made the girl gag.
“You gotta get rid of that thing.”
“Makes me fierce though. Badass.”
The girl spit out bile, “That’s true.”
They walked on, the girl standing as far from her companion as possible while walking beside her. Her feet sliding back and forth in her too-big boots, rubbing her skin raw at her heel. She eyed her companion’s barefeet. “Your feet don’t hurt?”
“Like the road’s made of knives.”
“Want the boots for a while?”
“Don’t fit.”
“How do you know?”
Her companion shrugged, “Tried them on when you went to sleep.” She turned to the girl, “They don’t even fit you.”
“I wear them to sleep—”
“Yeah, we need to talk about that,” her companion eyed her up and down, “you sleep too sound. Gonna get us killed.”
“When’s the last time you slept?”
Her companion shrugged, rubbed at her bloodshot eyes.
The girl noticed how sunken her companion’s eyes seemed. Dark rings reaching halfway down her hollowed out cheeks. Her skin tinged yellow, like she was always sick. “My skin look okay?”
Her companion eyed her again and shrugged, “Looks like skin.”
“Yours is yellow kind of.”
Her companion looked at her palms, then turned her hands over, then eyed the girl again, “Yellow?”
The girl moved closer so they were walking shoulder to shoulder. Her companion was a head shorter than her, so it was more head to shoulder. She thrust her hands out to compare, “My skin’s not yellow.”
“No shit,” her companion giggled, “black like shit.”
“Shit’s not black.”
Her companion’s eyes widened for a moment, “What color’s yours?”
“Your shit’s black?”
“What’s yours?”
The reek of her companion’s necklace was a fist in her throat but she didn’t gag or show her discomfort. Instead she shrugged to give herself a moment to compose herself, “All different colors. Sometimes it’s brown. Sometimes it’s like piss. Sometimes—”
Her companion raised a finger with a smile, “Got that, too. Piss shit.”
“Yeah. Comes out like a hot snake.”
Her companion laughed, “Shit snake.”
“Yours is always black?”
Her companion shrugged, “Your skin’s black. Don’t seem to matter so much.”
“Was your skin always yellow?”
“How should I know?”
The girl scowled at her, “It’s your fucking skin. How do you not know?”
Her companion shrugged again, “Never thought about it. It’s just skin.”
The girl opened her mouth to speak but then closed it and considered whether she had ever thought about her skin, or the skin of anyone else. Not till recently, she guessed, when they started flaying it from people and monsters to make things. It never turned out right and they left the abandoned project behind, but kept the bone jewelry.
The path opened a bit but became less distinct. The dirt of the road was overgrown with grass, but the trees and bushes thinned. Instead they were surrounded by waist-high grass that blew gently with the breeze. The sun was a wide-open eye screaming above them. The green comet just a bright spot in the sky. After a few miles, they were both sweating, and the flies harassing her companion seemed to multiply. She watched her companion struggle with the flies but said nothing and they walked on.
Though it was summer, they wore only what they had taken over the course of the last month. Knives and swords, a handaxe. Her companion wore a leather jerkin, once fit for a man of ranking, now soaked through with the stink and sweat of a month on the road. The girl wore only a thick hemp shirt they had taken from a farmer after the silk one she took from a merchant became little more than filthy rags. They both wore trousers taken from that same farmer. A wiry old man, nearly blind but strong. Until he wasn’t.
The clothes were better suited for early spring, but summer had sprung upon them early.
“Fucking melting,” her companion swatted at flies and wiped at her face.
“Thought things would be easier after we left. Like we wouldn’t need nothing, but now it seems like we’re always needing something. Used to think clothes was just clothes but now I got to think about which clothes are best for what. Your shit,” she motioned to the leather jerkin, “it’s just too hot. Animal skin doesn’t breathe right, I guess.”
“I like it at night but it’s a bitch during the day.”
“That’s what I mean,” the girl said, “different clothes are better for night and day.” She shook her head and spat, “Dumbest shit I ever heard but here I am thinking it’s true. Remember all the clothes they had? Some for morning, some for afternoon, and some for evening, and then different ones to sleep in.” She spat again, “Fucking ridiculous. But here we are wishing we had something to change into now that it’s hot as fuck.”
Her companion nodded, “Feels like I sat in a puddle.”
“What?”
Her companion grimaced and reached a hand into her trousers, “All wet between my ass cheeks. Pussy, too. Wet as fuck and just cause it’s so shitting hot.”
They kept walking, though, complaining of the heat and the complications of life until they heard the slow grind of wheels struggling through the grass and a few human voices bellowing their misery.
The girl motioned off the road but her companion waved her away, “Shit on that. Done hiding from fuckers.”
“Might be they’re from Tuam.”
Her companion smiled, “They better hope they’re not.”
“Just get off the fucking road before they see us.”
Her companion’s smile widened, “Really think they’re from Tuam?”
The girl sighed, “Don’t know. I think we’re lost.”
“Can’t be lost if no one cares where you are.”
“Think they see us?”
Instead of answering, her companion walked faster towards the sound. The girl’s skin crawled, but she followed after her companion, towards the cart.
The cart was pulled by a donkey and driven by two men, a woman, and a child. They all wore hemp clothing, like the girl, but they were plumper, rounder.
The girl’s companion licked her lips as she got closer, “Fat fucking pigs.”
The men were arguing loudly beside the stopped cart and their voices grew more distinct as the girl and her companion got closer.
“…can’t this way,” said the younger man.
“It’s the only sure way from Shanrah!” The older man wore a straw hat.
The younger man stomped his foot, “Look!” he gestured to the grass in front of them and both men’s eyes were drawn to the girl and her companion. Whatever was going to be said died in the young man’s throat. He swallowed and waved, “Ho!”
The girl and her companion glanced quickly at one another and the girl raised her hand, “Ho.”
Her companion said, “Selling anything?”
The older man swallowed, eyed the woman and child and coughed, “Not merchants or tinkers. Just honest folk headed west.”
“A good way to go, I reckon.” Her companion nodded, “Yep.”
The girl measured them up. The younger man was lean and lithe, able to wrestle and maybe handy with a knife or a scythe. The older man was strong, but not the kind of strong that mattered in a fight. The woman was younger than both men. Younger even then her and her companion. The boy she didn’t even bother looking at. “What’s your names?”
The older man had taken their measure too. She saw it plainly on his face: fear. Two road-dirty and armed women heading where they were leaving. She knew he was lying when he told her their names but she knew it didn’t matter anyway. Not from the way her companion looked at them.
“And you?” The woman spoke up from behind the men. The older man held his breath and the younger clenched his fists.
The girl and her companion looked at one another. Though they had known each other since birth and had been together night and day for a month in the wild, they had never given thought to this kind of question. The girl asked a question with her expression and her companion giggled.
Her companion said, “Shit,” loud enough for it to be heard. “You know,” she turned back to the travelers, “you’re the first to ask us that in a long, long time.” She threw her arm around the girl’s neck and said, “Go on, tell them your name.”
The girl’s heart leapt in panic, and then she laughed, and they all stared at her, and when she was done laughing she said, “Horus.”
The boy turned to his mother and whispered real loud, the way all children do, “That’s a boy’s name.”
The woman covered the boy’s mouth, her expression full of fear as she shushed him.
The girl laughed again, “Boy’s right. It is a boy’s name, but it’s mine too. Horus. This here,” she backhanded her companion’s stomach, “she’s…what was it again?”
Her companion giggled and shook her head, “Horus Horus Horus, how could you forget?” She turned to the two men and said, “Name’s Motherfucker.”
The pronouncement got caught in the air and stayed there. No other sounds were heard but the donkey snorting and stomping its foot. Then there was the sound of Motherfucker taking a step, and another, and Horus following.
The older man said, “Please,” but the younger men launched himself at Motherfucker, fists cocked and ready. Horus almost felt bad that he didn’t have a knife or anything but then she was on the older man, plunging her boneknife into his stomach and chest over and over till blood spilled out his mouth. She looked back at Motherfucker but she was already running after the woman. All Horus saw behind her was the younger man’s headless body.
She watched Motherfucker chase the woman while she held the younger man’s head by the hair in one hand and her bloody sword in the other. She was giggling foolishly as she chased the woman, and instead of cutting her down, she threw the younger man’s head at the woman. It struck her in the back of her left knee, and she tumbled into the high grass. Motherfucker stood over her laughing. Through her laughter, she gave some command that Horus couldn’t hear, but she saw how the woman began undressing.
The boy was weeping in the cart and Horus looked down at him, “Your momma didn’t tell you to run?”
The boy kept crying so Horus asked him again but he just kept weeping, so Horus hit him in the face, hard. He fell back, his mouth leaking blood and Horus said, “Your momma tell you to run or what?”
The boy’s broken lip quivered and Horus said, “You cry again and I’ll rip your fucking eyes out.” The boy whimpered but he didn’t cry. Horus repeated herself very slowly, “Did your momma,” she motioned to where the woman was still stripping and Motherfucker was still laughing, pointing her big sword at her, “tell you to run?”
The boy nodded, tears rolling down his pudgy cheeks.
“Why didn’t you run?”
The boy’s broken lip quivered. Snot and blood ran from his nose.
“You were scared, huh?”
The boy nodded.
Horus sighed, “Know how that is. Believe me. I fucking know.” She sat down beside the boy in the cart and patted his chest with her hand, leaving a bloody handprint there, “I’ve known boys like you. Oh sure, all kinds of boys end up just like you. Seeing violence too soon in life and left to the road or some orphanage or sold off to a palace or wherever people want to own children. Sadly, it’s a common story.”
The boy held down his sobs while he bled and cried, and Horus saw his trousers darken with wet. The stink of hot piss brought back too many memories and so she watched Motherfucker cut off the woman’s legs and then saw through her hair while the woman screamed and then eventually didn’t.
“What’s your name, boy? Your real name.”
The boy’s voice faltered, “Honus.”
“For real?”
The boy nodded. So pitiful was he that Horus brushed the hair out of his face and tried to wipe away the blood from his mouth and nose. But her hands were covered in the blood of the boy’s father—or who she guessed the father was—so all she accomplished was smearing more blood on the boy. She said, “Maybe we’ll be your mommas now. Ever thought you’d be so lucky as to have two mommas?”
The boy shook all over and Horus nodded, for this was good. A good thing she was planning.
Motherfucker came back with the woman’s blue dress and black hair, giggling until she saw the boy. “What’s this?”
“His name’s Honus.”
“That’s your name.”
“No,” she smiled, “I’m Horus.”
Motherfucker squinted at her, “You sure?”
Horus snorted with laughter, “Not really.”
Motherfucker laughed with her, and then went off to collect firewood, leaving Horus and Honus alone.
This is cool. Glad you shared the first few chapters