Released July 3rd, 2009
Anthology 2 #64
By Jacob Milnestein
The fan whirred lazily to life on the corner of his desk, pushing the paperwork slightly forwards before his hands pushed them down and reshuffled them.
The distant sound of a radio playing softly drifted in through the open window at his back, imported Japanese pop music for the mass market. He smiled slightly, his lips curling as he recognised the tune and the phrase of the song. The singer had gained some small amount of notoriety in the back pages of the tabloid press, disappearing less than a month after her single had charted in Australia.
Lifting his head and twirling his pen, Jeffery Carter idly wondered what had happened to her.
It had been several weeks since siblings Erlend Romanov and Anna Romanova had negotiated the terms of his employment, whilst driving a burning sword abandoned by the Imperial Magistrate through his side.
It was difficult to turn down a job when your prospective employer had driven a sword into your gut.
He sighed, leaning back on his protesting chair and closing his eyes, the breeze of the fan washing over his face and lulling him into a false sense of security. The sensation was not entirely unlike the rush of wind that seeped in beneath the folds of his alter ego’s masque, a timid reproduction, but with more than enough familiarity to make him feel a little uncomfortable.
“Sleeping on the job?” a voice at his side asked.
His eyes snapped open and he turned abruptly, the spinning pen falling from his hand and leaving an awkward ink stain on the paperwork before him.
Standing with her hands in her jeans pockets, dressed in a faded Ramones t-shirt, her long, copper hair loosely tied back in a ponytail, was his fellow New Mage, Eldritch.
He smiled up at her.
“Here at City Hall, we call it power napping,” he answered, without missing a beat.
Released June 26th, 2009
Fait commed back to base again. “We don’t see anyone matching your description, base.”
“There’s something there, Fait. Continue your search.”
The centurion grunted after the connection was broken and moved off to the east, his section of their search grid.
Magenta stretched into the grass that carpeted the apartment complex common area, digging her multi-colored nails into the sod and grinning up at the clouds that partially obscured the sun. It was a rare, fine day in this part of Ireland, and she wasn’t at all sad to take a brief break from what had been, so far, a fruitless search.
A shadow fell over her as she felt fingers strike her in the hollow of her collarbone, followed by a spot under her left ear, then again above her diaphragm, all in the span of a blink. A soft rush of air that could have held the beginnings of a charm sighed from her open mouth, and she could nothing but blink as she heard and felt her assailant lay beside her.
“Please don’t get too alarmed,” said the soft voice. “You can breathe, slowly, but you will be quite unable to speak or move for a short time.” Steel hands with a velvet touch grasped her hands, pulling them behind her back and binding them with the grinding of a zip-tie. “But I’m nothing if not a little cautious.”
Then the voice was gone.
Released June 20th, 2009
Anthology 2 #62
By Artifice Comics
“The city’s vibrant tonight,” Winters said quietly, his eyes intent on the distant lights of Harbour City. Slowly he turned towards his friend, the golden sunlight warming his pale face. “What will you do now, Mikey?”
Michael Licuan turned away from the city and looked up towards the pale skies and the shimmering sun.
“There’s so much I’ve yet to understand,” he said slowly, “I want to see the stars; I want to find any Millennium Men who have been abandoned. I want to see other worlds.”
He smiled and turned to look at them, glancing at each in turns.
“I know you’ll look after the Earth for me, I trust you and…” he paused, troubled for a moment as his eyes settled on Ohshiba, “I want to honour your brother’s sacrifice by making sure that no one will ever have to suffer like he did.”
Ohshiba Kunihiko nodded sadly and smiled despite the stained tears on his cheeks.
“Kenta never understood how miraculous he really was. I’m honoured that he was my brother.”
Calmly he extended a hand towards Licuan.
“Just as I’m honoured that, in his last moments, he had a friend and teacher as noble as you, Millennium Man.”
Licuan smiled and grasped the shorter man’s hand.
“That’s not my name, not anymore. Your brother owns that title now,” he said firmly.
“Then what shall I call you?” Ohshiba asked with a frown.
“Call me Michael,” Licuan responded and slipped his hand away, lifting his feet from the black soil. “Space is a big place and there are so many worlds out there. I want them to all know about Earth and her heroes. I want them all to know just how important you are to me.”
Winters stepped forward, wiping tears away with the sleeve of his new uniform.
“Take care, Mikey,” he whispered in a choked voice.
Michael Licuan nodded and the three gathered heroes; Charlie Winters, Ohshiba Kunihiko and Millie the Millennial Mutt, stood upon the edge of the pit, watching as he lifted himself into the air, paused to look over his shoulder and wave at them and then soared off into the distant heavens.
Released June 12th, 2009
“Cambodia. Man, that was a mother fucker. Surrounded by hostile insurgents and I’m armed with nothing but a machete. The first guy tried to take me without any gunfire. He rethought that when he jumped back, missing a hand. They all opened fire on me when their buddy fell down and started to bleed out. I was fucked, thought for sure.”
Leonard Andrew smiled at the man’s words, cigarette dangling between his fingers. He was sitting backwards in the old, wooden chair, his arms hanging over the chair’s back. Only one light source was valiantly attempting to brighten the room, but the darkness was overwhelming. Andrew brought the cigarette to his lips and drew the smoke hard into his lungs. He’d been told that cigarettes could kill you, but he knew he wouldn’t get to be that lucky.
“But you weren’t, apparently,” Len – as Leonard liked to be called, or again, so he had been told – said to his companion. The other man was soaked through with sweat, his thick beard dripping with perspiration as he went about the business of cleaning and stripping his pistol.
“By the time we hit the village,” the soldier continued, his eyes focused obsessively on the weapon in his hands, rubbing it fiercely with a rag, “there were only the four of us left. Rest of the squad had been caught by some booby-traps left by whoever had been there before us. One guy, swear to God…his head exploded with absolutely no fucking warning at all. Just, y’know…just BOOM! Instant blood shower for the rest of us, early retirement for him. But anyway, when we found…it…in the village, it changed us. We weren’t human anymore.”
Released June 5th, 2009
Anthology 2 #60
By Jason Kenney
This is the dilemma a sexy beast of a would-be hero like I must face time to time.
The city, she calls to me, a siren song wailing for my approach to sooth its savage heart.
The wemmen, they call to me, a siren song wailing for my approach to sooth their sexy, sexy wants.
Usually both calls come at about the same time of day, around dusk, just after I get off the paying gig and before I settle for a night of watching I Love Lucy reruns until I fall asleep on the couch. Again.
Sometimes both calls come on the exact same day.
Ninety-nine percent of the time the wemmen win out.
Because, let’s face it, they’re much hotter than Pacific City.
Released May 29th, 2009
Anthology 2 #59
By Jason Kenney
She inhaled cigarettes like oxygen and when I ran out of wine she’d be gone. I’d never seen her in the daylight, only running into her at night, either in some dive or alley or attached to some half-gay boy wearing more make-up than she ever did. It never took any effort to pull her away to some pay by the hour joint and do things to one another that would take multiple confessions to cleanse myself of.
In all our nights together I never caught her name and never gave her mine. I once made a remark that she was nothing more than a midnight snack and from that night on she was “Snack” and she never complained.
Now she was like so many others, bled out in a shit apartment on the wrong side of town, so far dead that I couldn’t get a feel for any essence of her in the room.
Madness had gone prowling the streets looking for murder and found Snack.
Released May 22nd, 2009
Anthology 2 #58
By Ashley Corgan
“Look if ya’ll really wanna know what’re ya gonna look like in the future -”, the pause hung over the handful of teens.
“Check out your Mom,” exasperated groans and whines filled the lobby of the housing complex.
One of the five girls cast a wicked glance at the quiest of the group, then chimed, “yeah, naked.”
The groans turned to sour squeals and furious head shaking. The quiet one gave no such reaction, her demeanor never changing no matter the adolescent outburst.
“C’mon, you there, how come you ain’t laughin’? You saw your mum outta her skivvies or what?”
Lina’s expression broke, she looked up from the graffiti’d table top and spoke, “there’s not a man on this block that ain’t seen my Mother in some stage of undress.”
The girls murmured and squirmed at the once silent one’s address. The levity now gone, the group slowly disbanded for the day leaving Lina alone with the table and the quiet.
Visions of her Mother played across her mind’s eye. Her swaying and promendading coincided with the beating of her heart.
Released May 15th, 2009
1901, Wisconsin
The lumber was stacked, the meals were consumed and the night fires burned. Now was the time for the tall tales.
Every lumberjack had an outlandish story to share, a yarn that claimed so-and-so or such-and-such was able to do one thing better then any other human alive, be it sawing, milling, cooking, herding, or any of a number of tasks. Across the country people gathered as the night blanketed the sky to share their tales, entertaining each other as they waited out the hours till sleep took them.
Released February 9th, 2009
Abducted by an unseen force, forced to pilot a warship that has the ability to reconfigure itself into a massive humanoid form, Schezerade now finds herself confronted by the creator of the vessel. The architect, a former Imperial Officer gilded from head to toe in a
halcyon colored skinsuit, was allowed entry into the Seraphim Wing’s cockpit by the ship’s Navigational Computer, or what Rade thought was the Navicomp.
The artificial intelligence guided the woman all the way to the control cabin against Rade’s wishes and now she hovered about an inch off the cockpit’s equally golden interior in complete silence. Wisps of bright energy wafted about like miniature tongues from the very surface of her skinsuit, dancing to an unheard rhythm.
And all Rade could think was, ‘I’M GONNA DIE…’
Released November 17th, 2008
Artifice Albion #4
By Jacob Milnestein
Rapid eye movement; the painfully slow dull throbbing of a dream not yet in focus and the whispered words of forlorn lovers; sentiments destined never to be spoken.
Magenta the Magician crossed the surface of the scorched world, her feet blistering and her forehead bright with beads of sweat.
Somewhere amidst the landscape of the possible future was the last remaining remnant of a once proud magician, the body long since interred beneath the soil of the city and his spirit left to cling to the possibility of return whilst, all the while, yearning for release. Yet despite that yearning, the soul remained amongst the disquiet of the vast, universal human collective, called the astral plane by some, the collective unconscious by others.
Magenta made no comment as she continued to pass beneath the blistering, white-hot sun. The shadows of decimated buildings and the gentle breeze that stirred the sand at her feet afforded little in the way of shelter. It was as if the burning light were in everything, shining through all matter and intensifying the temperature upon the sterile world.
It didn’t have to be this way, Magenta reflected. The image she presented before her was not a definite reflection of the state of the collective. She could have imagined the winding streets and narrow alleyways of her adopted city; the warm air that rushed up from the tunnels of the Underground and the quiet birdsong of the green belt but, instead, she chose the image of desolation.
