Season’s Beatings

Wizzard can suck my glorious and elongated deftly painted shotgun.

“I wish” Roy Wood sang, in a 1970s explosions of crass, crazy and cocaine, “It could be Christmas every day”.

Three years ago I could have shared that sentiment. Two weeks off work, kicking back with a comfy jumper, warm mulled wine, partner of choice. Presents, dinner and all the relatives you could stand.

Now, Christmas is a focus of the kind of crazy my life has become.

This year not only has Krampus once again popped up his head from the place where we kicked his arse too last year, due norse, with the associated requirement to put his mum back to the ground. Not only has half the crap the Mayans attempted to pull a couple of years back returned (“Temporal Echos” say the experts back at HQ. By which I mean “guess the experts back at HQ) but even when someone invites me to see an opera it turns out to be in order to bring me up to speed on another threat to the national order.

And by “Bring me up to speed” I mean “Cause me to obtain a series of obscure references that might lead me in the right direction”.

Okay, so far so normal. I wouldn’t usually freak out so much about this, but it’s only a few days since I got back from Tokyo.

Tokyo was bad. Bad in an “I have the seen the future and it is black” way, bad in a “All roads lead to biblical threats” way, and bad in a “I’ve had to kill *far* too many things that once were human this week” way. Fighting unabashed monsters – even if they’re ginormous Ak’abs (and seriously, fuck Ak’abs) – feels like a holiday, and I hate that feeling so very much.

Some days of this, and then I’ll fly back to London and try to integrate with my family for a few days while they ask me about a) How my new job with this New York publisher is going, b) Are there any grandchildren on the way (There are a dozen layers to answering that question, none of them good, some of them fatal), c) Why I hardly ever speak to them anymore.

I suspect the answer that I hardly ever speak to anyone anymore will not help this.

So here it is, Merry Christmas, everybody’s having fun.

*blam*

The cats in the cradle

You know how weird it is that despite the broken fences, the open gates, the surrounding woodland and the lack of protection, the grounds of the Franklin Mansion itself are not part of the Ak’ab-infested wilderness that sounds them?

Weird, isn’t it.

Don’t fuck with the cats of the Franklin mansion. They can look after themselves, and anything else.

— Sal

Excitment in New York

I should update here a bit more.

Apparently there was some kind of [GAS MAIN ISSUE] that was causing problems in Times Square, so my bosses in the [GAS MAIN COMPANY] said I should take a look. Nearly a dozen of us [GAS MAIN WORKERS] from all three [MAIN GAS SUPPLIERS] working together to defeat this [PROBLEM WITH THE GAS SUPPLY].

Lucky all of us were there, because soon after we arrived an *incredibly huge* [GAS EXPLOSION] came out of the ground, and laid waste to the surrounding area. Someone sent the army in to [HELP] the area, but in the meantime it was up to us to defeat the [PROBLEMS CAUSED BY THE GAS EXPLOSION] as well as several people driven crazy by the [GAS].

After a few tries, we sent the [REPAIRED GAS MAIN] back where it belonged, deep in the earth.

Now I think I need a shower.

[What part of “tell nobody” did you fail to get? Fun fact: 85% of agents would not have survived this treason – KG]