Monday, February 18, 2013

5 years

i seem to have one silent follower so far. hello! also, extra long post (yeah, i can get verbose...), so strap in for it...

SO! today i'm doublin' up the music for a lack of such yesterday. first is the title of this post, by bjork. so many things i love about bjork: she beautiful, she's odd, she's talented, she humble and she's a humanitarian. this particular song is one of my favorites because of the passion you can hear in her. singing a song is fine, but i love artists and music in which i can truly feel what the artist feels, and when you can really tell they perform for the love of the music.



next up, a lesser known artist that's been around for a while, but i'm almost positive you've never heard of him, antony and the johnsons. while i'm tempted to post 'hope there's some one", which is the song i fell in love with him for, i think it would be a neater to post an unusual cover of beyonce's "crazy in love". have a listen!



weird and amazing, right?
*wink*

even with all this musics, i feel the need to post some words as well. today's sampling is one that is very dear to me as it is an excerpt to the first installment of my first finished novel (that's a lot of firsts!). it's also one i share with people most often that ask (or don't) about my writing. a bit of world building: the main character you meet in this excerpt is a genetically enhanced assassin, tasked by her creator to eliminate a despot. she has entered a particular facility in a rescue attempt. hope you enjoy this snippet of her story!

It was dark in SL6, but Mo caught the flash of a camera lens as the elevator doors opened. Immediately she tumbled out of the elevator and jumped into the nearest shadow. She lay motionless for some time, always waiting to hear footsteps or guns being drawn. When she was sure there would be none, she crouched in the dim light of what appeared to be a storage room for the compound. It was a huge room, with rows and rows of high metal shelves filled with everything you might need to start a small war. Guns, armor, ammunition, the list went on. ‘Great,’ she thought. ‘I pick the floor where Anstin is least likely to be.’ Since she was there, she began searching around for anything she could use, staying as much to the shadows as possible. On a shelf, she found rucksacks, much larger than her own. She took one and transferred her things from the old pack to the new. Once she finished she sat on the floor, deciding what to do with the old bag. Finally she buried in the bottom of the pile of police packs. ‘By the time they find it, this whole mess will be over. Besides, Touk and I were careful. There’s no way they can trace it back to him or me,’ she thought confidently. Mo had a credit account that Ronan had set up with fake information. Should anyone look into her, they would think she was a wealthy widow living in the south continent on Capelle. Touk had a similar account, but the back story for his account was of a traveling salesman that frequented the Seasoned Arms on his travels.
“Which is excellent for explaining transactions both from the hotel and around different parts of the state,” Touk had explained. “But what I’ll do in this instance, is withdraw the cash from here. That way there will be no records showing a transaction at an outfitter.”
One of the Opposition Front members in Magrat worked for the State bank and created an account for an individual that never existed for Touk. All Touk had to do was make the first small deposit and he could funnel money through the account to anyone he liked as long as he had a contact on the inside.
With the pack stashed, Mo went on looking for more equipment. In a large crate near a wall, she discovered State police uniforms. She scrounged through them until she found one that would fit her and put it on, placing her own clothes in her new pack. In full police clad, she could walk around a little more freely and search the place for Anstin. As she began heading back for the elevator, she noticed something she missed before, but shouldn’t have. A large brick room painted black was built in the middle of the storage room. ‘That could be it!’ she thought. Mo went to the room and walked three of its four sides before she found the door, marked with a large red H. “H?” she wondered out loud. She tried the door handle and, to her surprise, it opened. Inside, the room was not any better lit than the storage room. It was empty except for steel barrels stacked in each of the four corners. Giant 6’s were painted in yellow on all four walls. And in the center of the floor was a target, with alternating white and black circles, surrounding a red dot. Mo’s genius failed to make the connection, but the sound of a motor starting and the sudden upward motion of the floor helped her think. “HELICOPTER!” she gasped.
The ceiling opened above her and she stumbled and crawled her way to the closest set of barrels and ducked behind them. From her hiding place, she watched the walls melt away under her to the fifth floor, the fourth, and finally coming to a stop on the third. On the other side of the barrels a clatter of boot falls and voices entered the room. “Not too close to the edges this time, alright boys,” called a voiced. There was some hushed conversation after this and helipad continued its voyage upward. The second floor gave way to the first, and finally above her the ceiling opened up to the evening desert sky and hot sand and wind flew into the shaft of the helipad as it emerged to ground level.
In the same instant, Mo saw a large black copter fly over her. “Hey!” a voiced from it shouted at her. She looked up and saw the state officers aboard the copter had seen her. It landed behind her hiding place and she stood, her mind working swiftly on possible escapes. Suddenly, they were on her. Five State police officers, all armed with M16’s, all pointed at her.
"Just what the hell do you call yourself doing, soldier?” one of the officers boomed. Mo just shook her head and looked down.
I asked you question-”
“Sergeant! Bring him to me,” shouted another man. The sergeant motioned with his gun for Mo to get moving and she was escorted to a man in a suit. He was tall, with a good athletic build, eyes the color of early morning mist and a ponytail full of hair so black and sleek, it shimmered red in the fading light of the day. Between him and the helicopter, stood another man. Much younger, he was dressed in dirty jeans and a t-shirt and appeared to be scared and confused.
“Well, well. Do we have ourselves some kind of deserter here?” he asked casually. Mo glanced up at him quickly, but in that fraction of a second, their eyes met. She said nothing, but kept her face down. The man looked at her closely, his brow furrowing in confusion, and frowned. Without another word, he raised his hand and knocked the helmet off Mo’s head. A tumble of dark red hair cascaded to her shoulders and into her face.
A collective gasp and an amazed, quasi-aroused “It’s a GIRL!” followed. With her secret revealed, Mo knew she had nothing to lose and in her mind a solution had formulated. The man in the suit eyed Mo with what was almost amazement. “Who are you and how did you get here?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she answered softly, raising her head to meet his eyes.
“Doesn’t it? How do you suppose?”
“Because I’m about to leave.”
“About to-” Mo grabbed the gun out away from a soldier to her right and butted him with it, sending him stumbling backwards. Before the rest could respond, she hit the ground and tripped the soldier standing next to the gunless soldier with a leg sweep. His finger gripped the trigger as he fell, spraying bullets into a soldier opposite him and into the air. “Get her you asshole!” the sergeant yelled to the last officer. Mo turned on him, still crouched to the ground. As she stood, she took one step toward the sergeant with her left foot and brought the other foot straight up in a kick to the sergeant’s chin. His knees buckled beneath him and hit the ground, unconscious.  Mo quickly turned the gun on the last soldier standing. The tripped solider regained himself and pointed his weapon on her and shouted shakily, “That’s it! Move and I blast you!”
“Hold your fire, soldier.” Suit Man walked through the two soldiers and directly into Mo’s face. His eyes never left hers as he commanded them, “Stand down, return to the helicopter and prepare for departure. She watched as the two soldiers gathered their fallen men and shoved the other young man into the copter. In her distraction, the man snatched the gun from her and tossed it away. Mo lifted a hand to strike, but he grabbed her wrist mid-swing.
“Ah ah, that’s not very nice,” he mocked. “You’re good, very good indeed. And beautiful on top of that. I don’t know how you got here, but I’m willing to spare your life if you’d be willing to join the State. We could use someone like you. I could even offer you a place in the Alliance. All you'd need is a little re-education.”
“Let Anstin go. Or you won’t live to offer me anything!” Mo hissed back. The Suit glanced at the boy in the helicopter, then returned his gaze to Mo. But his expression had changed to disappointment.
“You’re one of his parent’s Opposition buddies. We have no use for you. How you got this close to our operations, I don’t know, but it’s too bad. You would have made one hell- OH!”  Mo cut him short with a swift blow to the sternum. “ANSTIN! I’m here to help! RUN!” she cried. Only Anstin never moved, only watched with dull fascination.
The man in the suit had never let go of Mo’s wrist, and twisted so it was pushed painfully against her back. “Quiet!” he shushed angrily. “You’ll ruin his programming.” With all her strength, Mo thrust her free elbow back at the man’s head. He leaned back to dodge, but let her wrist go in the compromise. It was all the room Mo needed to turn and drive him back with a series of kicks and punches. He blocked and avoided every one with the skill of a master and the style of a model.
From the copter a voice shouted “Sir! Fifty men are headed to the roof. We have to get the subject out of here!”
“Agreed!” he shouted back. He ducked under one more back swing of Mo’s arm before driving a hard fist into her rib cage, stopping her assault. Mo staggered back as he ran to the helicopter and bounded inside as it took off. Mo began to give chase but, beyond the rising helicopter, a trap door opened out of the helipad’s surface and State police began pouring out of it. Instead, Mo ran to the edge of the helipad. Below her was nothing but sand. Behind her, an increasing number of State police officers and a helicopter aiming to plow her down. She closed her eyes, took a breath and dove, just as bullets began to fly at her back. The copter rushed over her head and, before she was immersed in sand, she noted it was headed southwest. Mo burrowed deep into the sand until she was sure she wasn’t visible from the surface. Bullets drilled all around her, some coming quite close, but none touched her. Soon they stopped all together. She waited: three minutes passed, then another ten. She was about to complete the next twenty when her lungs ached for air. She began to dig upwards and, after 27 minutes underground, she emerged gasping and exhausted. She looked up at the helipad but there was no one there. She only gave herself a moment’s rest; she was sure soldiers were on their way to make sure she was dead. She dragged herself out of the sand and looked in the direction the helicopter had gone. She decided today was not the day to chase, but the day to flee. She climbed over the rise beyond where she had taken her dive and found herself back in the flat area just beyond where she first sighted the periscope. She ripped her bag from her back, changed back to her camouflage in mere seconds, buried the police uniform in the sand, then buried herself. The sun was already very low on the horizon. ‘If they do look for my body, they can’t look for long in this light. And flashlights would give away their location to anyone that might dare wander into the desert,’ she thought. So there she lay, nearly mummifying in the heat of the sand, well beyond sunset, beyond the rising of the moon and after. Eventually, she shifted from her sandy hiding place and headed north to find refuge in Penthara until she had a chance to contact Ronan and make her next move.
Copyright© K. Knight 2011
hope you enjoyed that, kids. thanks for reading. lastly, i feel the need to live up to my +18 warning tomorrow and post some risque art or prose. sex for the sake of sex? a lil bit. but also because human sexuality, and all it's expressions is as fascinating as any artform to me. i personally don't label my sexuality. i know what i like i know when i find it. for me, at least, it's sometimes difficult to express or define relationships with others that aren't strictly platonic or strictly antagonistic. i'm a weird, feely type person...

so what shall you look forward to in the way of adult content? not sure yet. a bit of prose, pictures and art. maybe more. nothing has struck me as post worthy, so tomorrow's offering will literally be for the sake of sex. look forward to it...
shifty eyes




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