now linux mint is my best friend :3

my big beautiful five-month project is days away from completion, and will debut at the 2025 Beltane Fantasy Festival this Saturday! my fellow Idahoans are welcome to say hi; i'll be the devilishly handsome rooster-man 🐓
(or, if the weather ends up being too harsh on my poor feathers, you may see me in human form instead 😅 kudos to you if you can recognize me)

i've been preoccupied with a long-term crafting project, and most likely will not be done until sometime in march/april. around that time i've arranged for some PTO from my day job, so once i've used that time to decompress i plan to open up my commissions again with a new prices/info sheet.

https://bsky.app/profile/artsydudejude.bsky.social

im thewre now :)

just indefinitely deactivated my instagram. would have deleted it entirely, but with my insta @ watermarked on most of my past artwork I didn't wanna risk someone snatching up the username to try and scam people looking for commissions or something :/

insta was never my main bag, but lately it's just become such a short-form slopfest that i've just decided it's not at all worth maintaining a presence there. plus with all of meta's policy changes and the ai accounts they plan to implement... nah, i don't wanna be there.

apologies for the massive lack of art lately! between my day job, the heat, and all the wips in my backlog giving me indecision paralysis, i've just been extremely burnt out and exhausted these last few months (┬┬﹏┬┬)

good news is that i've made arrangements at work to switch to a four-day work week, starting around october! i still get to keep my benefits at 32hrs a week, and my financial/housing situation is such that losing out on that extra 8hrs of pay won't be a huge hit - and once i'm able to focus more on art and re-open commissions, i may even recoup more than i lose in the long run.

so yeah, i'll be bouncing back pretty soon if all goes well. here's hoping for another artsy october this year! (ﾉ*ФωФ)ﾉ

"bout damn time" - literally everyone

i've been in a major slump for a while, but i've got some PTO that's let me finally catch up on sleep and deep-clean my house; now i feel like a new man!

computer and some other essentials are all packed up, and i'll be moving them all to my new house tomorrow. internet and new locks are gonna be set up on tuesday, and from then on i'll be living there fully. i'll still be sporadically occupied with moving and organizing the rest of my stuff there from my parents' house, but overall the bulk of it will be complete.

bottom line is that once i've got the computer and internet set up in my new place i'll be able to start on some more personal art again, as well as opening up comms. might start streaming again, too!

hello all! sorry to have my commissions closed for so long, i was originally just taking a break to work on some personal art after finishing up a full queue. but within the span of a week i somehow went from idly checking out potential apartments → realizing that there are lots of mobile homes for sale → remembering i have a 50k college fund that i never used → holy shit there's a 3bed2bath one in great condition 9min away from my work → HOLY SHIT it's within my budget and the lot fee is a hell of a lot cheaper than rent these days → oh my god i'm gonna own this place. lots of credit goes to my dad for haggling it to 30k below the original price and advising me on the whole home-buying process.

sooooo long story short i've purchased a mobile home and i'll most likely be moving in within the next 3 weeks once we've got stuff like insurance and budgeting sorted out. needless to say, i'll be kinda busy with moving and everything that comes with it, so it'll probably be another month or so before i'm able to open commissions again. good news is that i'll have more time to dedicate to art/comms once i'm in my own home with a shorter commute and a dedicated office/craft room!

(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

1. i'd like to write more! maybe take a few prompts for one-shots, but more broadly i'd like to finally get some work done on an actual novel. there's a seafaring adventure tale that i've had on the backburner, and it's the best contender for an actual book (has an ending decided, follows a hero's journey structure, has fairly simple lore), so a lot of my focus will be going to fleshing that out.
2. i want to get a few comic pages done! only time will tell if i'll ever get around to making a proper webcomic out of Gutmouth, but i've got a decent 'part one' completely outlined and i've had the thumbnails for several pages sitting in my notebook for almost a year and they still look good conceptually, so i may as well bite the bullet.
3. i'll make a goal of drawing/posting at least one piece of personal (non-commissioned) art per week! whether it's a page of my sketchbook or a full illustration, i just gotta get something done. that was the one thing that bummed me out this year, despite all the progress i made in the rest of my life; i didn't draw a whole lot.

can't really think of much else lol. just wanted to have these goals in writing so i'll remember them better.

EVERYBODYYYY

anyway. ya boi's finally on T 😙👌 two weeks in, actually, i just forgot to post about it here lol

things are honestly really looking up in my life lately. i've not been able to draw as much as i'd like, but that's cus i've landed a full-time job; which is another factor in my good mood, because the hours are good and pay is pretty decent and i find the work oddly fulfilling (it's just unpacking and putting away orders, but it keeps me active and i find the act of organizing and consolidating things soothing; plus they fuckin love me there). also! my doc put me on something for my adhd, so i'm finally enjoying the novel experience of Doing Things That I Need To Do When I Need To Do Them Instead Of Zoning Out Or Forgetting Entirely. imagine that!

hoping that life brings y'all good things as well in the coming months. i'm by no means abandoning my art career, but output will continue to be pretty sporadic. my commissions are still open, though!

he looks to normal in his ref sheet. i want him to be freaky. high-contrast. monstrous. i want both of my fursonas to be just so fucking out there. everest is this big weird winter beast that eats live birds underwater and carries a club. paulie is a gremlin that lives in truck stop hot dog machines. one is reflective of my standoffishness and maybe seasonal depression or smthn. the other is the me that exists when i actually leave the house and hang out with people i like. they are both autistic but paulie is more on the adhd side. neither of them know what sex is.

i'll be taking three new commissions before closing again. keep in mind that i just began working a full-time job, so my overall completion time will be longer than it has previously been.

i'm also open to doing nsfw commissions, so check out my alt   pinnipeen for examples of my lewder works.

  pinnipeen

first content will be up before long. it'll probably start relatively tame and gradually amp up as i get more confident in my ability to draw smut.

1. get started on HRT (a very realistic option for me now! yay!)
2. talk to someone about finally getting medicated for my ADHD because this shit is just getting infuriating
3. finish up a pair of abandoned drabbles and then proceed to write regularly
4. get SWOLE (the testosterone's gonna help with that)
5. practice drawing a lot of new stuff and expand my skillset*
6. overhaul and reorganize all my shit (this is actually the first thing i'm gonna do but I'm not rewriting this list)

*5b. finally make use of the nsfw alt account I made a few weeks back ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

there wasn't really anything wrong with my old one, but for practicality's sake i've decided to make the switch from a tablet monitor to a usb tablet + dual mounted monitor setup. it'll give me more desk space, with a smaller tablet and monitors up and out of the way, plus having two monitors will be useful for multitasking.

not much else to say, i'm just happy with my purchase (^_^) also, if anyone in western idaho is looking to purchase a used tablet monitor, hmu 🤙

Detective Suarez steels her nerves as she pops the tape into a VHS player that has seen better days. It settles into the device with a series of nostalgic clunks and clicks, and the old CRT screen lights up with snow.

It’s the first of five tapes they’d found. Three had been discovered by accident, purchased at thrift stores and estate sales with no knowledge of their gruesome contents. The other two had been mixed in among similar content owned by criminally perverse people, uncovered only after justice had finally caught up to them.

These are snuff films, dating back as far as 2002 and continuing up until as recent as six months prior to present day. Same brand of tape. Same handwriting on the spines. Same room in all the footage.

Same killer.

Next to Suarez, Agent Booker from the BAU clicks his pen in anticipation as the static gives way to a grim scene:

There’s a young woman hanging by her wrists from the ceiling. She stands on tiptoe atop a discolored concrete floor, swaying precariously. She’s clad in a trendy little dress and tights, brown hair mussed up, shoes gone, looking like she’d just gotten in from a fun night out. Her mouth is taped over, and her eyes are wide with fear as they track something behind the camera.

Footsteps and the sounds of objects being arranged come from offscreen. Then, a voice, distorted as if run through a vocoder: “Sorry to keep you waiting, hon, I had a few more things to grab before we get started.”

A figure saunters into frame, dragging a wheeled tray table behind them and arranging it a few feet away from the hanging girl. The figure is a woman, slightly shorter than her victim and clad neck-to-ankle in a clear vinyl suit, beneath which she wears a well-loved bra and briefs. Her athletic sneakers are similarly well-used. Her head is obscured by some kind of distortion effect, appearing as a murky smear above her neck.

Atop the tray table sits—worryingly—a closed metal box, a rolled up bundle of canvas, a blowtorch, and a power drill. The woman ghosts a hand over the latter.

“Let’s get the necessary part out of the way first, eh?” She picks up the drill, revving it a few times, and the hanging girl’s eyes go impossibly wider. “I’m gonna have to take you down from there at some point, and we can’t have you running out in the middle of a scene.”

The hanging girls squirms, feet scampering in place as she tries fruitlessly to put some distance between her and her captor. She wheezes for breath through her runny nose, the sound of it the loudest thing in the room. Mascara tears stain her cheeks.

“Save the waterworks, kiddo,” the woman says, casually, “You’ve got a long performance ahead of you.”

She kneels down, camera zooming in on where she tears a hole in the knee of the girl’s tights. The drill revs again, and—

Suarez pauses the tape, freezing the screen on the image of a drill bit approaching a kneecap. “You can deduce what happens from there,” she mutters.

“I’ll have to watch the whole thing to complete my profile,” Booker says, though he looks a bit green at the idea.

Suarez huffs, “Well, you can wait until I’m out of the room to do it. I’m not watching that filth again. Right now, I’d like to talk to you about my own ideas.”

Booker adjusts his pad and pen, motioning for her to continue.

“We’ve identified the victim in the video, plus two others, as missing people who disappeared around the same dates written on their respective tapes. No bodies have been found yet. Unless these people turn out to be incredibly dedicated method actors, this definitely isn’t any sort of hoax or film project.

“The genders, ages, and ethnic backgrounds vary greatly between the victims. Of the ones we identified, there are no notable shared interests or occupation—“

Booker jots something down.

“—aside from them all disappearing within the same county. The methods of torture and execution also vary between the videos, as do the methods of restraint; two of the tapes feature the victims suspended, two have the victims tied to a chair, and one has them bound spread-eagle to a wooden frame.

“The only consistency between them is the killer and the location. Regretfully, we have zero promising leads on either, which is why you’re here.”

“And this is the earliest film you found?”

“Yep.”

“Yet she seemed completely comfortable in what she’s doing… there’s no way this tape was her first time.”

Suarez rolls her eyes. “Yeah, that and the fact that there was already dried blood on the floor.”

Booker taps his pen against his notepad, frowning. On the page, a woefully sparse list has formed:

-closed-off, private location. basement or warehouse
-professional but possibly outdated equipment
-takes measures to obscure identity—tapes were probably intended for distribution
-female, average height/build, olive or tanned skin
-practical, but showy. takes pride in her work.
-probably older than her victim
-camera zooms in—edited, or the work of an accomplice?
-no preference for victims or methods. opportunistic, uncertain, or enjoys variety?

“Get me the rest of those tapes,” he says, grimly, “It’s gonna be a long night.”

[[posting this here because I hate the way FA makes you upload a writing doc to post stories, and it feels easier to just post a title and text in journal form; will be doing the same with my other writing prompts. I'm open to feedback, though, so if posting my writing as journals is unappealing to y'all then let me know. I honestly don't care about faves when it comes to my writing stuff, I'm a man who thrives on comments.

BTW, I'm still taking prompts for future writing shorts this month, so if you want to see a character of mine in a certain (sfw) scenario, leave a comment and I may devote 100+ words to it.]]


Rita does not like to start fights.

All things considered, in fact, she feels like she’s exercised some pretty impressive self-restraint in recent months. It’s not always easy to hold her tongue and walk away, but she chooses to, for the sake of her own health and peace of mind. If it means being the bigger person, she can put away her pride and not let a simple disagreement turn into a broken nose and a lifetime ban from Red Lobster.

Joining fights, on the other hand… well, there’s no shame in that. If someone else has already dealt the first blow, then what moral ground is there to lose?

So when she hears the unmistakable sounds of an impromptu brawl happening just behind the bar where she’s parked her bike, Rita wastes no time sticking her earrings in her pocket and rolling her sleeves, chomping at the bit for that next rush of adrenaline.

Except there’s no real fight going on. Instead, she rounds the corner to find some frat house reject laying kicks into a balled-up figure on the ground, bellowing the kind of language that makes her think that this guy doesn’t have a very good reason to be beating someone’s ass in an alleyway. Rita, on the other hand, feels entirely justified in her decision to grab the nearest makeshift weapon (a miraculously unbroken liquor bottle, good for her!) and bash it over Mr. Slur’s head with all the fury that her five-foot-five frame can muster.

As predicted, the guy goes down in an instant. Rita spares a second to press a finger to his neck, just to make sure she hasn’t done anything too crazy, and huffs a sigh of relief when she finds a pulse. Good. She does not need anything else on her conscience.

A pained groan cuts through her train of thought, and she turns to find the balled-up figure from before attempting to sit up, with an arm curled protectively around their ribs and a curtain of greasy blond hair obscuring their face.

“Oh, shit,” she blurts out, scrambling to crouch beside them, “Hey, buddy, you alright? Do you, like, need a hospital, or somethin’?”

The person shakes their head, waving a hand around dismissively, before spitting up what looks like a gob of blood onto the asphalt. They gingerly begin to get up (and Rita gets up with them, worriedly hovering), still holding their ribs and groaning as they finally manage to stand. In the dim light of the back door’s exit sign, Rita tries to get a good look at them.

He’s a guy, as far as she can tell, with straight hair down to his collarbones and a short, ill-kept beard. A pair of round sunglasses (at night???) completely obscure his eyes, and the rest of his face is pale and sunken. He’s taller than her, even while slouching, but skinny enough that Rita thinks she could knock him clean on his ass even if he weren’t at his current disadvantage. His jeans and his well-worn bomber jacket both hang off his frame, and his sneakers look to be held together with nothing but duct tape and a prayer.

He looks like shit, is what Rita thinks. Damn her bleeding heart.

“Hey,” she says, clapping a hand on The Guy’s shoulder. The Guy jumps at the sudden contact, looking up from where he was prodding at his (probably badly bruised) side. “Do you live around here? I can give you a ride home, if you want,” Rita offers; because she’s nice like that, dammit.

The Guy shakes his head, hands burying themselves in his pockets.

“’No’, you don’t live around here, or ‘no’, you don’t need a ride?” Rita asks.

“First one,” The Guy mumbles, barely opening his mouth.

Great. “You got anywhere nearby you can stay at?”

The Guy grimaces, glancing briefly downwards where Rita spots (Jesus fuckin’ Christ!!!) a sad pile of blankets laid out on the ground next to the bar’s back door. Great. Perfect. Just when Rita thought her heartstrings could hold their own against this sad, scrawny man.

“Okay!” Rita announces after an awkward pause, “Okay. C’mon, buddy, you’re gonna stay with me tonight. No arguments,” she says with finality, gripping The Guy’s jacket and pushing him in the direction of her bike.

He digs his heels in for a second, reluctant. “I—uh, you don’t have to—,”

“No arguments!”

[[posting this here because I hate the way FA makes you upload a writing doc to post stories, and it feels easier to just post a title and text in journal form; will be doing the same with my other writing prompts. I'm open to feedback, though, so if posting my writing as journals is unappealing to y'all then let me know. I honestly don't care about faves when it comes to my writing stuff, I'm a man who thrives on comments.

BTW, I'm still taking prompts for future writing shorts this month, so if you want to see a character of mine in a certain (sfw) scenario, leave a comment and I may devote 100+ words to it.]]

“Frankenstein. What on earth are you doing?”

From her precarious seat on Adam’s shoulders, Vicky regarded Dr. Jekyll with a look of incredulity. She gestured expansively with her well-used feather duster, as if an answer to the question was floating around somewhere in the immediate vicinity.

Adam himself was seemingly unperturbed by his creator’s antics, focused instead on an open paperback held in one of his giant hands.

Jekyll pinched the bridge of his nose and huffed, “We speak in words here, Victoria, not vague visual cues. I’ll ask again: what are you doing up there?”

“Dusting, obviously,” Vicky said at last, “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but our dear laboratory could use a bit of sprucing up. The cobwebs have gotten ridiculous as of late.” She tugged lightly on Adam’s hair, causing him to step lazily sideways in the direction she’d nudged him; like an untalented man controlled by an ambitious rodent. He didn’t even look up from his book.

Satisfied, Vicky turned her attention to an un-dusted spot on the wrought-iron chandelier. Five feet below her vantage point, Jekyll was still dissatisfied with the answer given.

“And why are you dusting from atop your creature’s shoulders?” he groused.

“For the added boost, of course. I cannot reach the ceiling from my normal height, you realize.”

“And why not just have your creature do it himself??? Surely he can follow basic instructions by now.”

“’Her creature’ can hear you, doc,” Adam threw in, still not looking up, “And I’m busy, in case you haven’t noticed.”

Jekyll paused, staring at Adam with a look of disbelief, before addressing Vicky again: “When did he learn to talk​?!”

Vicky glanced down, puzzled. “Last month, over the course of a few weeks’ lessons,” she said, “He picked up on things rather quickly. Have you two not spoken yet? He was quite chatty with Mr. Hyde.”

Adam scoffed, “Because Eddie’s actually fun to talk to. Besides, it’s not like the doc ever bothered to start a conversation.”

“Wha—I—,” Jekyll floundered, visibly red in the face, “Y-you can’t expect me to start a conversation when I didn’t think you were capable of talking back!”

“That’s never stopped you before,” Vicky interjects, “That shepherd down in the village scarcely says a word to anyone, yet you have a tendency to talk their ear off every chance you get!”

Adam burst out into laughter, nearly bucking Vicky from his shoulders. Jekyll, meanwhile, had somehow gone even more red.

“Just finish your damn cleaning,” he muttered as he stormed out of the lab.

[[posting this here because I hate the way FA makes you upload a writing doc to post stories, and it feels easier to just post a title and text in journal form; will be doing the same with my other writing prompts. I'm open to feedback, though, so if posting my writing as journals is unappealing to y'all then let me know. I honestly don't care about faves when it comes to my writing stuff, I'm a man who thrives on comments.

BTW, I'm still taking prompts for future writing shorts this month, so if you want to see a character of mine in a certain (sfw) scenario, leave a comment and I may devote 100+ words to it.]]


“No, Braggart,” Blythe says for the twentieth time. Ze quickly wipes hir hands off on hir apron and pointedly spins to check the temperature on the oven. A few more minutes, probably, then the bread can go in. Ze snatches up the olive oil from hir cabinet and turns hir attention back to the dough.

The book flutters loudly beside hir. Upon Braggart’s leathery pages, a response begins to scrawl itself out in looping calligraphy: “I don’t see what the problem is. This spell will not only improve the flavor of your baked goods, but will surely win you favor with the other block party residents.”

“Yeah, by hypnotizing them, Braggart!”

Ze carelessly drizzles the oil over the dough, spreading it out with her fingertips afterwards. “Do you think I don’t bother reading up on all the spells you offer me? I’m not putting a mind-control charm on my focaccia!”

[[posting this here because I hate the way FA makes you upload a writing doc to post stories, and it feels easier to just post a title and text in journal form; will be doing the same with my other writing prompts. I'm open to feedback, though, so if posting my writing as journals is unappealing to y'all then let me know. I honestly don't care about faves when it comes to my writing stuff, I'm a man who thrives on comments.

BTW, I'm still taking prompts for future writing shorts this month, so if you want to see a character of mine in a certain (sfw) scenario, leave a comment and I may devote 100+ words to it.]]


“And this one here is a camel spider—careful, don’t drop her.”

Phineas held a hand out, still locked in a staring contest with the live praying mantis sitting atop his knuckles. He spared a glance to the glass frame as Gerald placed it in his palm. Another dead bug, what a surprise.

“—not actually spiders! They’re solifuges, which are still arachnids, but—“

Whatever this thing was, it was ugly as hell. Big, hairy and beady-eyed, with ten spindly legs and a face that reminded him of a puppy that had just eaten a bee.

“—jaws make up nearly a third of their bodies, and they can sometimes eat entire rodents—“

He held up the frame up close to the mantis, getting it within in its eyesight to see if it would react.

“—sprint at up to ten miles-per-hour, and—“

He watched curiously as the mantis reared up, waving its little arms and splaying its wings in a futile attempt at scaring off the would-be attacker.

“—really not dangerous at all. They’ve been known to chase people sometimes, but that’s only to—hey! Cut that out!”

The frame was quickly snatched from Phineas’s hand, and he glanced up to see Gerald looking angrier than he’d ever seen him—which is to say, just a little bit ticked off.

“Don’t rile her up like that! You’ll just stress her out.”

Phineas’s obnoxious retort caught in his throat as fingers brushed against his own, carefully herding the mantis off of his knuckles and into Gerald’s palm.

“There we go, sweetheart—“

WHA—oh. He was talking to the bug.

“—let’s get you back into your enclosure, hm?”

Gerald walked away, mantis in hand, leaving Phineas to stare dumbly at the back of his hand and wonder why he suddenly felt envious of an insect.

[[posting this here because I hate the way FA makes you upload a writing doc to post stories, and it feels easier to just post a title and text in journal form; will be doing the same with my other writing prompts. I'm open to feedback, though, so if posting my writing as journals is unappealing to y'all then let me know. I honestly don't care about faves when it comes to my writing stuff, I'm a man who thrives on comments.

BTW, I'm still taking prompts for future writing shorts this month, so if you want to see a character of mine in a certain (sfw) scenario, leave a comment and I may devote 100+ words to it.]]


Charlie wasn’t an angry person.

Standoffish? Maybe. Rarely smiled? Absolutely. Cursed like a sailor? Preferred her solitude? Frequently seething with barely contained frustration?

...Look, the point is: while no one could safely say that she was cheery by nature, Charlie was far from the fire-breathing dragon that some folks took her for.

Life had dealt her some shitty cards, and she felt no obligation to pretend it hadn’t, but she did her damnedest to make sure that the strongest things she felt never saw the light of day.

From early on she had become very good at keeping her emotions contained. Open-palmed discipline had been her first motivator, and with the executor of said discipline dead and buried, she became responsible for disciplining herself. This proved… difficult, to say the least, and ultimately ineffective. Teenagers are far more emotionally volatile than children, after all. And, as it turns out, shoving all your feelings in a box and kicking them into a metaphorical pit is not the best idea in the long run.

Through trial and error, she found other ways to keep calm. Nicotine, deep breaths, screaming into pillows, fingernails digging into palms and such. Projecting a positive mask was exhausting, so she instead chose to project indifference.

No one in her life could accuse her of being loud, mean, nasty, scared, hurt, lonely, weak, or wanting.

Plausible deniability across the board, just how she liked it.

[[re-posting this here because I hate the way FA makes you upload a writing doc to post stories, and it feels easier to just post a title and text in journal form; will be doing the same with my last few prompts. I'm open to feedback, though, so if posting my writing as journals is unappealing to y'all then let me know. I honestly don't care about faves when it comes to my writing stuff, I'm a man who thrives on comments.

BTW, I'm still taking prompts for future writing shorts this month, so if you want to see a character of mine in a certain (sfw) scenario, leave a comment and I may devote 100+ words to it.]]


“Snake’s coming,” the bartender breathes as she swipes up an empty glass.

Before he can ask what she means, a massive hand tangles itself in Douglas’s hair and slams his head down on the counter, smashing his nose against the wood where the glass tumbler had sat not two seconds earlier.

“Your break ended four minutes ago, Mr. Faye,” a deep voice says cheerily.

Douglas feels blood pouring down his chin as the hand yanks his head up and sideways to meet the merciless eyes of his employer. Mal Serpico is leaning an elbow against the bar-top, chin resting on one sinewy hand, expression casual as if he hadn’t just ordered one of his goons to assault the new pit boss. He gestures vaguely to the bartender—Casey, her name tag reads—who quickly places the glass in front of him before crouching down to find something under the bar.

Casey comes back with a bottle of something far more expensive than Douglas has ever tasted, robotically pouring it into the glass and placing it on the counter once she’s done. Mal, apparently, doesn’t care for ice in his drinks, which makes sense considering where he’s from. He sips slowly from the glass, coppery eyes still locked on Douglas as the man struggles to breathe evenly through a bloody nose.

“Listen, Douglas,” Mal says, smacking his lips, “I’m gonna let you off with a warning, since this is your first slip-up, but I need you to understand that we do not tolerate this sort of behavior here at the Cottonmouth.” He speaks like a disappointed parent, head cocked and tone admonishing; then he smiles, his bared teeth an obvious threat, “I’d hate to have to take away any of your employee benefits.”

“Benefits?!” Douglas finally sputters, incredulously, pawing at the hand still tangled in his hair, “What benefits?”

“I don’t need to give you breaks at all, you realize,” he drawls, lazily swirling the liquid in his glass, “Not only is there no law or union to enforce that down here, but the… conditions of our little contract mean that the only thing I am required to do for you is keep you out of jail. A bed, hot meals, consistent scheduled breaks; those are all privileges here.”

He gestures to the goon still holding Douglas in place, “Take Ezra, for example! He’s always on call, he eats when I see fit, and he sleeps whenever I don’t need him immediately on task. So really, Douglas, things could be a lot worse.”

Mal leans forward, mock-conspiratorially. “Between you and me,” he stage whispers, loudly, “I think it’s started to fry his brain a little bit. A shame but, really, it’s not like I hired him to think.”

He throws back the last of his drink, and the glass thumps down on the bar-top as he gets up. He then snaps his fingers in the direction of the goon—Ezra—and points him toward the exit.

“Take him to the infirmary. Tell West I want him cleaned up and back on the floor in thirty minutes.” He turns his gaze back to Douglas and pats him roughly on the cheek, “Get up an hour early tomorrow. You’ll want to make up for the time you wasted.”

Mal finally leaves, sauntering away in the direction of his office.

Behind the counter, Casey audibly exhales and begins to busy herself with wiping down the bar.

The hand in Douglas's hair lets go, dropping gently onto his shoulder and letting him slump forward over his knees. Ezra’s thumb begins rubbing circles into Douglas’s back; apologetic.

Douglas wipes the blood away from his mouth and wishes he’d taken his chances in prison.

[[re-posting this here because I hate the way FA makes you upload a writing doc to post stories, and it feels easier to just post a title and text in journal form; will be doing the same with my last few prompts. I'm open to feedback, though, so if posting my writing as journals is unappealing to y'all then let me know. I honestly don't care about faves when it comes to my writing stuff, I'm a man who thrives on comments.

BTW, I'm still taking prompts for future writing shorts this month, so if you want to see a character of mine in a certain (sfw) scenario, leave a comment and I may devote 100+ words to it.]]


Sam made a good living off of what he did. Nebraska, like too many other states, didn’t have much in the way of gun restrictions, but there were still plenty of folks who would go the extra mile to make sure their purchases went untraced and unspoken, and that extra mile brought them to Sam’s doorstep.

Felons, preppers, white trash gangsters—none of them were as unnerving as the lady that stomped through his door on the second Sunday of every other month.

Here’s what was weird about Grace (her name, if the embroidered patch on the coveralls she sometimes wore was anything to go by): she bought a lot of body armor. Tactical, military-grade shit. She seemed to go through arm guards like it was her job, and aside from those she was buying what added up to an entire suit over the course of each year.

The rest of her purchases were more like Sam would expect; tons of buckshot, some magnum rounds, a new gun every once in a blue moon, and—uh—about a dozen tear gas canisters per visit.

Pretty tame, all things considered.

But the armor thing was, again, weird, because Sam was pretty sure that most militia larp dudes didn’t even blow though armor that fast, no matter how many Punisher skull tattoos they sported. He found himself wondering frequently what exactly Grace was doing to render tactical gear unusable in a matter of months.

He got an answer on a Wednesday, five days earlier than he knew to expect Grace’s presence at his little mobile home-slash-storefront. She came thundering through his door, soaked through by rain and looking worse off than he’d ever seen her. Grace was intimidating at the best of times—tall for her gender and built like a marine, with a scowl as constant as the knife on her hip—but this time in particular, glaring through wet hair and blood falling freely from a massive wound on her forearm, Sam was tempted to call the cops for the first time in his life.

She stomped up to his makeshift counter (a folding table covered in NRA stickers and cigarette burns), wordlessly dropping something in front of him, and Sam tore his eyes away from her death glare to look. It was an arm guard, bloodied and wet, with deep gauges like an animal’s teeth marring its surface. One of the straps had been torn cleanly from one side where it had been previously attached. Grace held up the wound on her arm, eyes still boring through Sam's skull,

“Straps were faulty,” she growled, “I expect a discount this week.”

Sam didn’t even try to argue, just nodded his head mutely while doing his damnedest not to cower under her gaze. He offered to let her use his first aid kit, trying to diffuse the tension, and she grunted an affirmative before mercifully turning her gaze toward his wares.

When Sam shuffled back to the counter, metal case clutched under one arm, Grace was peering at her reflection in one of his display cases, running her tongue over her teeth. In under ten minutes she had her arm cleaned, stitched in the worst spots, and wrapped tightly in gauze that probably hadn’t seen daylight since 2002. Sam watched on, holding his tongue as his mind whirled with possible explanations.

She had to be some kind of hunter, was his first thought. Only a big predator could have torn up her arm like that. But then, if that’s how her arm guards kept getting damaged, it raised even more questions… namely, what kind of hunter went out to wrestle their prey on a regular basis?

Sam’s brain bounced around in his skull, desperately trying to connect the dots, as he gathered up Grace’s usual purchases. Finally, he landed on a conclusion that made some amount of sense: dogs. People who worked with big, angry dogs always wore those pillowy things on their arms, right? Sometimes entire suits made of padded material, trying to get the dogs to bite on command without risking their limbs to a mouthful of teeth. That was it, Sam concluded as he made his way back to the counter. Grace was some kind of attack dog trainer, possibly working for shady dog-fighting outfit, and probably opting for body armor over weird pillow suits because her guns and ammo guy sold it in bulk. And the guns and ammo were for hunting or doomsday prepping or some other normal gun nut shit.

Perfect. Solved. No more losing sleep over this, Sam, you nosy idiot.

Grace paid with a wad of assorted bills, as she typically did, and Sam counted them out while she loaded her items into two of the dozens of milk crates that were lying around for that very purpose. Satisfied with the payment (armor discount excluded), Sam stuffed the cash in his lock box before fixing his customer with a wary smile.

“Alright, well, take care, then,” he said, waving weakly as Grace hefted the crates into her arms. “And—uh—happy hunting.” Grace blinked, briefly losing the scowl as she processed his words. Sam felt a bead of sweat trickle down his neck.

Then, like a screeching hinge, Grace threw her head back and laughed.

“’Happy hunting’! Hah!” she guffawed as she shouldered her way out the door, “That’s one way to look at it!”

Once the laughter was drowned out by the revving of a pickup truck, Sam slumped back into his folding chair. Huffing a sigh of relief, he closed his eyes and thought about pit bulls.

had to close my comms for a few days while i was out of state. they're open again now!

also: i'll be breaking form in the next few weeks by posting short writing projects in response to prompts, as part of my own version of nanowrimo. not going for a full book, just writing 100+ word drabbles featuring my characters in an attempt to get myself back in the groove of writing.

the prompts i've got so far came from asks on my tumblr, but if any of you want to contribute, simple writing prompts are welcome in the comments of this journal (either one word prompts or slightly more specific ones, like: "X character does so-and-so".

no romance prompts please; if im feeling like writing that then i can work it into another prompt, but i'm rarely into writing romantic stuff. also no nsfw prompts cus i'm not good at that shit. believe me, i've tried T_T'