Since taking up residence on a windswept beach, surrounded by towering pines, I’ve come to discover that I am not a man of peace as I had thought. Rather, I am an unabashed agent of war and death alike. All of my long years I have cultivated peace and reveled in its bounty, unaware of my own destiny of blood and horror. Now, when grey finally reaches my temples and beard, and I have come to this place of great natural beauty, blood reigns in my heart, and the quiet I seek is the quiet of the grave.
The enemy comes in waves — droves really — each so alike from the next or previous that their deaths begin to blur and meld together. On winged lance they arrive, one after another, unheeding the all but certain death that awaits them. They cast themselves upon the rocky shore of my wrath until I feel that I am fighting a single foe, immortal and terrible. My enemy’s name? Mosquito.
While I have crushed untold hundreds with my bare hands, I have decided to chronicle some of the more . . . creative manners of death I have brought to this mighty enemy, in service of an unwinnable war.
At my side is a sanguine canine companion, sharp of wit and tooth, and he feasts regularly upon those foolish enough to venture near his ever watchful gaze. His gaping maw snaps, and a life is snuffed out.
Today it was my task to bag up this mighty companion’s defecatory leavings. As I heaved the laden bag of shit, no doubt laced with the bodies of fallen foes, I happened across one on the side of my house. And thus it was that an enemy perished, having been bludgeoned into the beyond by excrement.
A siege engine of terrible cunning and cruelty crowns my arsenal. The top of its tower emits a steady violet glow, bewitching the enemy with a siren’s song. Once they have blundered close enough, a mighty rush of air scoops them inside, to be bashed into a corpse pile at the bottom of its dungeons. The first arrivals received its only mercy, their bodies broken against its hard sides, lives snuffed out immediately. Since then, the corpses rose like a tide, softening the arrival of each new guest. Now they wander the dungeons in a languid haze, their only companions other doomed souls and the bodies . . . the countless bodies. They die a creeping death, thirst shriveling them to lay among their venerated forebearers, and doom those that follow with a downy arrival. Truly this weapon is the construction of a deviant mind.
My war calls me away. I must armor up and bathe in oils, for the mighty beast requires his evening constitutional amidst the vampiric hordes. More of the enemy shall die along the path, no doubt. Their blood will soak this day as it soaks all others. To victory! To death.
Sconnie Books 