Newsletter #37: Break out the rocket ship underpants
It’s been an up-and-down couple of weeks. Creatively, just trying to keep things going has been tough. Not in a super-negative way, just in a work-is-done-for-the-week-I-don’t-feel-like-writing way. You know?
Anyway, back to it this weekend. Finalizing the outline and starting to write the script for Feral: The Beast Within. Fun, right? Right. It is. For sure. Or at least it will be when I get back to it.
In the meantime, I’m looking for inspirational material. Re-watched season two of Ted Lasso before the next season comes out, which is not so much inspiration as it is feel-good, not-all-content-needs-to-be-apocalyptic-dark-and-dangerous, type of material. Re-reading (re-listening in some cases) certain books: Brent Weeks’ Lightbringer series. Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive. Watched Netflix’s Arcane series (loved). That sort of thing.
Surprisingly (or maybe not), Calvin & Hobbes often brings out the fun, joyful aspects of writing for me. I loved the strips as a kid, and I still enjoy revisiting them to this day. The artwork. The writing. The relatability of the material. And the characters themselves just make me smile.
Any movies, TV series, music, comics, etc. you can think of, or that work for you, would be great to hear about.
Moving on… how about another chapter of “Hungry Harry”? Any thoughts on it to date? Good thoughts only, please. Welcome to part six of my prose short for Attic Door Media’s Tales from the Chimeranverse, which you can get online.
Hungry Harry: Part 6
By Mike Connell
New Hope, 2010
“It would just be one time only. One or two times, Harry. You know I wouldn’t ask you this if it wasn’t important…”
Sully was a good cop. But not good enough. He had failed the sergeant’s exam a number of times, and his wife, Marcy, had cancer. The treatments were expensive, and Sully was drowning in debt.
So, when one of his CIs let slip some details about a burgeoning black market for body parts in New Hope, Sully had an idea.
Instead of lighting a fire under the waning flames fueling his dedication to law and order, Sully’s desperation kicked in.
“How many bodies are you picking up these days? How many end up at the crematorium? You can get almost half a mill for a corpse that hasn’t been dead long, and that’s in good condition.
Individual organs can go for millions if the timing is right and depending on how fresh…”
Harry had never told Sully that he’d actually been active in the black market body business for some time. He hadn’t wanted to put his friend in an awkward position. But now Sully had come to him.
“You know how expensive Marcy’s treatments are. It’s for a good cause. What do you think? For me? For Marcy?”
Harry didn’t have any issue with this at all. He had what you would call a certain level of moral and ethical flexibility that, it could be argued, was somewhat necessary to flourish in his chosen field.
“I’d do anything for you and Marcy, Sully. It isn’t about what needs to be done. It’s about what that means about you and me. We go down this road, it’ll change things.”
“I don’t know if I have a choice, buddy… Marcy’s cancer. It’s eating her alive. It’s eating us alive.
I don’t know if we can survive this, but the money we can get from this gig will give us a fighting chance.”
So it began.
New Hope, 2012
One or two times turned into four. Then 10. Then multiple times per month. Marcy had survived the cancer, but now something new was eating at their family.
Even without the hospital bills, Sully never seemed to have enough money, and Harry quietly fed Sully’s habit. Harry had become the Heisenberg of the human organ black market.
And where Sully never seemed to have enough money, Harry never seemed to be able to wait for that next score. So much so, that he decided to hustle things along.
Turns out, the organ market had two targets. Normal human organs for, well, normal humans, and Chimeran organs. While organ compatibility between Chimerans and other humans was likely, there was a much higher success rate of the body accepting the transplant the more it matched the physiology in question.
So Harry started… expediting the process. As the… accidental deaths in the region started to climb, good ol’ New Hope turned its habitual blind eye. Deaths? Here? Nothing worth noting, right? That, and no one seemed to notice that a majority of the victims were Chimeran. Well, not quite no one.
New Hope, 2013
Sully opened the door to Harry’s house. He hadn’t heard from Harry for a couple of days, so he’d come to check to make sure everything was okay.
The door was cracked open, and Sully could hear music playing.
You see my hands are steady
You've seen my face before
Soon you can take your last look
And they'll close the door
I stand accused before you
I have no tears to cry
And you will never break me
'Till the day I die...
What was that? Gowan? Harry had some strange taste in music.
“Harry? You here?”
No answer. It smelled terrible.
“Harry?”
There was a retching sound in the next room. Sully stepped over some garbage, beer cans, cigarette cartons, and plates of half-eaten food and walked into the kitchen.
Harry was bent over the kitchen sink, shaking violently. He was wearing an old bathing suit. And nothing else. His body was glistening with sweat, super pale.
“Whoa. What’s up buddy? You okay?”
“It’s been too long since I foun… since we’ve picked up any… orders,” Harry said, panting hard.
Body counts were down of late. Made Sully’s job easier, but the money had been slower, for sure. He hadn’t thought Harry needed the cash so badly.
“Don’t worry, man, things’ll pick up. You seem to be taking this pretty hard, you don’t mind me sayin’?”
“Body’s building up a tolerance. I nee… wait. Never mind.”
Tolerance? What’s he talking about? Man, was he ever shaking. Sully had seen guys act like this. Heavy users.
“Um, Harry… what’s going on?”
Harry turned to look at Sully, a small grin on his face. “Oh, you know Sully. You’ve always known. I’m trying to control it, don’t worry buddy. I’ll be okay…”
Sully looked at Harry. Really looked. And things started to click. He recalled their drunken discussion all those years ago. He thought about the coincidental nature of the sheer volume of Chimerans who had died in... accidents? All within the New Hope city limits over the past couple of years.
The music seemed to get louder, and Harry seemed to be shaking more. Sully couldn’t really tell whether it was in pain, or laughter…
A criminal mind
Is all I
All I've ever known
They tried to reform me
But I'm made of cold stone
My criminal mind
Is all I
All I've ever had
Ask one who's known me
If I'm really so bad...
I AM
Shit.
“Hungry Harry” will conclude next time. Don’t miss it!