Sandpaper

By Jem Morgenstern

Our skin was raw and dirty, rubbed down by the vicious sand winds, thoroughly dried by the endless sunlight; every inch was aching and every uncovered portion left completely unprotected from the natural sting of sun and sand was torn and tanned like the many leather chairs found in the crumbling home of the mostly untouched North Ruin. None of us enjoyed this section of our journey - the birds, as always, were especially negative - making the giddy warmth these memories extract from our well-fed emotional paunches unexpected. That was the case with most of the horrible things we endured. The one exception to that being the day we were attacked by a truly violent and terrible clan of Dust Raiders. Most Dust Raiders are nothing more than bullies, who would only go as far to leave you with a few bruises or take a small portion of a traveller’s supplies. Some encounters can be pleasant; they’re not always on pillaging duty, and they’re very loving and welcoming during those times. When we saw the vicious dust raiders coming our way, we did run, but our previous encounters with Dust Raiders didn’t motivate us to make our run anything more than a playful jog. They caught up to us without effort and when they were near enough to us, we could feel an air of aggression, we could feel their passion for unsurmounted violence snaking its way up our spines, and we could smell the death they carried with them. Even before they engulfed our inexperienced group of couriers, we knew to regret our entirely fabricated attempt to outrun them. They only chose one of us - a purposeful darling, who rode the sweetest wildebeest I would ever meet and reminded me of myself - and we were lucky that one was all they wanted. When they roped her steed and thrust the bone-tipped spear through her spine, we kept moving. We left her behind. All we could save of hers were the staining memories of her deep red blood, the cracking of her bones, the tearing of her flesh, and the haunting yells she managed to throw from her lungs that we ignored and tried so hard to push out of our heads. When anyone mentions that trip, we feel those brutal memories slipping back up from the depths and we ignore that, too. We never talk about that day. If that day never happened, the rest of the memories we have of unpleasant times might not make us laugh, but having that experience knocking on the floorboards makes every complaint feel silly.

The Dim

By Jem Morgenstern

I was lost in the Desert of Midden Men. The Dust Raiders had chased the rest of my troupe away and I had been left behind. The sun was setting and the other sun was rising, putting an end to the day and bringing to me yet another dim. I still don’t understand how The Architects made the mistake of building a second sun instead of a new moon. The news of the moon’s dissipation was etched into every news rock and was scrawled onto every single one of the few paper news prints around and I’m sure the commissioners were very clear with their instructions to The Architects. Still, there was confusion somewhere in the process and now we’ve got a dimly glowing artificial sun instead of a fresh moon and a day and a dim instead of a day and a night. After finding myself alone in the dim, I was very grateful for their mistake. I’ve imagined how terrifying it would have been to find myself wandering that desert under a dark night sky with the nocturnal creatures roaming the sands, taking peeks at my flesh and licking their cushy lips (none of those animals exist anymore, obviously, since there’s no night for them to exist in). I knew that I needed to head West, but I wasn’t sure which direction West was, so I chose a direction and stuck with it. After a week of walking in that direction, I found that I had been walking Northward and not Westward, as I had hoped. Instead of walking directly Southward back to where I had started, I cleverly figured that walking Southwestward would save me a lot of time, so that’s what I did. About two days into walking Southwestward, I noticed that I was being followed. At first, I was worried that it might be a Dust Raider, but I was able to put myself at ease after realizing that the character wasn’t dressed in Dust Raider rags and was clearly not as tanned and musculicious as a Dust Raider would be. Inspecting the figure further, staring harder, squinting with unmatched intensity, I was finally able to identify him as a Klein. Their bromidic drab and unnoteworthy disposition makes it difficult to distinguish them from the nameless bodies in the backgrounds of memories. The only Klein anybody would be able to recognize is Hungry, who writes a monthly column of The Northern Rockface News Rock and isn’t actually a Klein. Knowing my follower was only a Klein and couldn’t possibly do me any harm, I wasn’t worried. He stuck around for a couple days and then strayed from my path, finding his own way to his own destination. With his departure, there was an odd sensation of abandonment, despite not having cared for him in the slightest and not having any interaction with him at all. That Klein was my stalker and I lost him. I lost something that was mine. Then a few hours passed and I got over it. Out of habit, I tried to evoke the emotion back from its pits because I do enjoy pitying myself, but I wasn’t able to fish even one sliver of it out of my emotional intestines. I had already shat it out of my system. Eventually, I was able to catch up with my troupe, just as they were leaving Los Angeles. Just in time to join them for the trip back home.

Courier Troupe Ten

By Jem Morgenstern

There I was, riding my buffalo into the ocean with my companions close behind me on their varied steeds. My favorite - apart from my own - was Theodore’s; a giant pitbull imported from China. When my buffalo’s first hoof hit the water, I could sense his worry. His teeth were chattering, hairs sprung up, pace slowed to a cautious slink. I did my best to reassure him, but he would stay that way for about the whole way through the Pacific. He was far from being the only of our animals to be so worried. That pitbull stubbornly sat at the shoreline for a good two minutes before she would be coaxed into diving down. The birds were especially put-off, for reasons that you can certainly imagine. Although its surreal nature was so intimidating, walking under the ocean was likely the easiest part of our journey. Under there, the Dust Raiders were nowhere to be seen, the Gullmen never dove deeper than six feet into the water, and the Horrible Centipedes had lost our scent miles before. The one thing we had to worry about were the regular creatures you would find in that part of the ocean, which are mostly non-intelligent and harmless. We did have an interesting encounter with an octopus hybrid about halfway to our destination, which is just about the only noteworthy thing to have happened during our ocean travels. I’ve described the details of that encounter to a dozen people before, but I’ve gauged from their reactions to the tale that most people are clearly not interested in hearing it. A few miles away from there, we did catch a glimpse of some sort of shark, which was mildly exciting, considering they’re so rare these days. We hadn’t accounted for the fact that trudging through water would so noticeably slow us down, so we were a little short on supplies near the end of our journey, but we made do with what we had. In about two weeks, we finally arrived at our intended destination, Los Angeles. We were able to finish our business ahead of schedule and the rest of our week there was spent relaxing, as if we were on vacation. Then, we stocked up on supplies and another journey began. Six more months of walking, but we would know what to expect and we would be prepared.