Part Two
"You Have to Only Look"
STRANGE ADVENTURES # 2  Written by Jae Lizhini
Tim Hunter felt a catch in his throat, as he stammered on for some sort of grasp of sentence structure.  “I..I..I..”
 
The blue skinned woman looked at him with her slender green eyes.  She titled her head to the left trying to take in the nervous man who couldn’t edge out anything more than single syllable.  The confusion of this particular moment was edged out across her beautiful features.  “Are you okay,  Mr. Opener sir?  Are you angry I am here?  I did hear you yelling.”
 
“How, How did you get, into my bath,”  he said his left hand gesturing to the bottom half of her body which flipped in the water like a fish’s tail complete  with shimmering scales.
 
“I don’t know exactly, but I am very stuck here at the moment.  I would prefer not to be in this ceramic lake.  It is a little small,”  she explained her wet scarlet hair sliding across her high set cheek bones.  “Can you help me?”  Then she shook her head. “Of course you can help me. You’re the Opener, Timothy.”
 
Tim let a long sigh, as he felt at least a little of his capacity returning to him.  “I am no longer The Opener, if I ever was in the first place.  And I definitely didn’t bring you and the others here.  I haven’t much turned magic in the last five years.  But I think it’s a little like riding a bicycle.  It does need doing, if I’m going to be able to clean up before work I suppose.”
 
“Oh there is so much you don’t know, Timothy Hunter.  Magic doesn’t just decide someone is going to be important for no reason.  I also doubt it just lets someone go.  That’s why we’re in this situation I bet,”  the Nymph spoke in her same beautiful song like voice.
 
“I don’t care,”  Tim told her as he took a step back and extended his left hand towards her. He moved  his wrist in a few circle patterns and waved his fingers around.  “Here let me remember how this goes.  It should be pretty straight forward.”  Tim’s mind began to index spells and techniques long since forgotten.  The transformation spells were always the easiest and applied to a strict formula, much different than the spells that had variables on the part of the magician.
 
“Rie Reng Rebole...” Tim spoke in a very straight face manner.  His eyes seemed to glow beneath his glasses as shocks of blue energy coursed through his blood and veins.  The feeling of his natural connection to the physical world seemed like a memory.  The magical connection was always around, even when he didn’t use magic.  But it had been a long time since he felt himself as a conduit to those crude and primal forces, feeling them funnel through him.  It felt good.  He imagined it was not unlike his old friend Constantine’s first cigarette of the morning.
 
The Nymph’s body outlined itself with that same blue tinted electricity as her body began to shake and quiver.  She let out a painful murmur as her fish’s tail savagely split into halves.  Before her wide eyes she watched as the two halves began to  turn cylindrical and mounds of new muscles began to form.  The glistening scales receded to the same blue flesh of her upper body.  The most painful part of her ordeal had to be when her former cartilage swelled and formed into bone.  New feet emerged from the fringes of her fin, and knees came to the surface of newly formed legs.
 
Timothy Hunter watched this entire event, which happened in less than a minute.  It was not the best spell crafting he’d ever done, and he could definitely see that he was as rusty as five years vacation did allow.  It was painful to her just as it was to him.  He did not have the former grace of his youthful spell casting, instead this spell was brutal and forced and for that reason there was a backlash of reality, which rocked his physical body.  The former Opener had to take a step back as his head began to swim and his eye sight became blurry.
 
“Your… your nose is bleeding,”  the Nymph spoke as she carefully stepped from the bath with shaky new limbs.  Her beautiful face was now tensed with concentration as her wet feet slapped on the cold black and white linoleum.  Her long slender hands gripped his shoulders as she carefully confronted him.
 
“It’s alright; just a quick shower and things will be righted.  Just have you and the others quitted soon as I get home, yeah?”  he said as he slipped past the naked former Nymph and stepped into his shower.
 
 
--Now arriving at Piccadilly Circus Station.  Please Mind the Gap--
 
It was obvious To Timothy Hunter as he exited the tube car’s metal doors, that the infestation of Fair Folk was not limited to his flat.  There were the hordes of London commuters trying to push their way through the dark grey platform towards the escalators.  But they were not all the usual ruddy cheeked faces in business suits he came across every day.  Those same mundane faces were present, but so were huge gray skinned golems that looked like they were built with a bunch of random boulders and rocks, twelve feet tall thin creatures that had tree leaves sprouting from their fingers and skulls, and many other strange creatures.  Many even Timothy had never seen the like before.  There was obviously something very wrong going on in West Minster.
 
The chilling air of London’s October caught Timothy’s face as he stepped onto the concrete.  The ice cold breeze easily cut through his khaki long coat and black leather gloves.  The ends of his plaid yellow and brown scarf danced across his shoulders as turned on the heels of his red converse shoes.   He directed his stride towards the bookshop where he was presently employed.  Unfortunately he only got a few steps before he felt tiny bodies smashing painfully across his face.
 
“Hey arseface, would you mind watching yourself?” a tiny voice yelled swarming over his ears.
 
Tim turned his head to his left to see twenty or so tiny winged sprites all hunched over, brooding angrily at him.  Each of the miniature faces sneering in resentment.  The leader of the heckling sprites was a thin woman with transparent wings buzzing so quickly it was hard to really see them.  Her hair was long and blond with beautiful ringlets that slid over her bare shoulders.  Her pouty mouth was in the middle of more insults when she stopped suddenly.  “AND YOU TIMOTHY HUNTER SHOULD KNOW BETTER.  I HAVE HALF A MIND—“
 
Tim turned his head away from the micro lynch mob and resumed his walking, shoving his hands into his coat pockets.  “What else can possibly happen?” he muttered to himself, more annoyed than angry.  It was as if the world, wanted to make him react, for what he saw next chilled his very bones.
 
Not twenty feet ahead of him he saw a small and rotund Londoner walking nonchalantly ahead of him.  The man’s orange-red hair was covered mostly by an arsenal beanie hat, and his ears plugged up with white earbuds.  His head was bowed down to his feet as he walked.  He was seemingly looking with admiration of his nicely polished dress shoes.   How he did not see what confronted him more than a foot away of his march was beyond Timothy to understand.
 
A huge creature stood, with his arms drawn up over his head, the huge mitted like hands gripping an uneven wooden club the size of the Londoner.  The creature was hairless with brown leather like skin, matted with huge splats of blood and other unidentifiable bracken fluids.  Its face looked like a bat with a flat nose in the center of his ugly guise and a huge overbite showing yellowing tusks almost a foot long.  Its yellowed eyes were narrowed with full concentration, ready to smash the Ginger in front of him, for merely being there.
 
“LOOK OUT!”  Timothy shouted to the man ahead of him.  Getting no instant response, the Magus leaped forward, the toes of his sneakers pushing his body a few inches off the ground.  Tim’s shoulder slammed into the man’s side knocking him to the cement.  The Red Cap grunted murder as his huge, man sized club crashed to the cement ground, creating a huge dent in the concrete, creating a web like shattering glass.
 
The Ginger wheeled around, slugging Tim hard in the jaw.  The force of the impact caused the Magus to roll off the man’s body.  The man then proceeded to pull himself off the ground and dusted what dirt he invisibly must have accumulated during his fall.  “What the fuck's wrong with you?  Goddamn nutter,”  he exclaimed as he took one more look at Tim who by now was rubbing his reddened cheek; before turning away and walking quickly past the savage Red Cap, as though the monster was invisible.
 
“yOu  RuInEd MaH KiLl!”  the Red Cap growled, his monstrous face turning to Timothy who was busy rubbing his jaw and trying to slide his glasses back up his nose bridge.
 
“Okay, Okay I get it, world.  You want to be a bastard, fine!  Fine!  But don’t expect me to do it right,”  Tim spoke seemingly talking more to the air than the threatening Red Cap.
 
“WhAt ArE YoU MeAnIng?”  The Red Cap asked, still with his huge club drawn back over his head.
 
“Don’t you know who I am?”  Timothy asked with a grin.
 
“AnOtHeR NoTcH oN mY cLuB?”  the Red Cap asked his huge mouth twisting into a bigger grin.
 
TO BE CONTINUED…

"FATE: Part Two"
STRANGE ADVENTURES #2 Written by Ed Ainsworth


“To understand why I did this, I suppose, I need to tell you of my Father,” Hector began, as Claire sat enraptured in his dull, quiet tones. An odd man to focus on, the claims of being a terrible Father left a heavy note on each word he spoke.

“Did your Father do the same to you?” She removed her water spattered glasses.

“In a way,” Hector agreed, watching her eyes dribble with both salt water and the rain, “Our story is a complicated one. My Father and Mother...they were destined for each other.”

“Oh, that’s nice. Romantic,” Claire said, a dull smile creaking on her face.

“Mhm,” Hector said, wondering the extent of their history he should reveal, “Romantic.”

His parents had neglected him. Or so he felt. His Mother had retired from crime fighting, leaving on his father in the guise of Hawkman to play the hero. Hawkman was something that constantly plagued Hector’s dreams. A recurring theme, he thought to himself.

“My dreams were inhabited by my father in his costume,” Hector paused wondering if the sarcastic edge to his voice was enough to dislodge the potential reconciling of his father being a superhero. It seemed to work, or perhaps it was the alcohol on the woman’s breath that let him get away with it.

“I still dream of my Dad,” she said, sadly. The weight of her words hung on Hector. It always ended up being about him, or his family in some way. He paused and took her hand gently.

“Tell me about him,” Hector said gently. She smiled a soft smile and thumbed the corners of her jacket.

“I don’t know. Dad just wanted money from me, I guess. I hadn’t seen him for months on end, and he turns up asking for a small loan.”

Setting her teeth on edge and offered him a strained grin.

“I gave him some money and he asked for some more, and then a bit more. Small bits, you know? Like, Twenty or Thirty dollars. Said he’d pay me back.”

Looking down at her feet, Hector knew that he didn’t. Probably didn’t even say thanks either. Or that he loved her. At least Hector hoped he loved her.

“Your relationship with this man,” Hector asked, realizing his own detachment from it. This man;  which was how he described his Father in his mind. Was that how Daniel described him? This man; not a loving man nor so much as a name, but just a gesticulation towards another male.

“He’s my dad,” she said, looking up at him. Rain dripped from the end of her nose, but the streaks of black that leaked from her eyes lead to the understanding that perhaps the uniform lines weren’t from the rain itself.

“Some people don’t get on with their fathers,” Hector replied, folding his hands into his lap. “Some fathers just don’t understand their sons.”

“Or Daughters,” Claire said, “I got on with him… sort of?”

“What does sort of mean? Sort of implies that you got on with part of the time, was it the part where he wasn’t stealing from you?”

“That’s not fair,” Claire asserted, “He might have stolen from me this time, but he’s still my Dad and you’ve no right to talk about him like that.”

Hector paused, a tiny wrinkling of a smile breaking his features.

Blood was thicker than rain, right?

“My Dad used to write me letters,” she said affectionately, “even when he was still around. He’d leave them for me and I’d have to sit and learn to read from them.”

Hector smiled. Letters were sent by his father as well, but they were to his mother, and never to nor about him. Some dig site, some discovery, some monster that needed to be hit.

“You learned to read from his letters?”

“Write, too. He used to make me write him back, which was weird, I guess. But it was fun. We had our own little secret thing. Mom never knew about it, and it was just us. She thought I was a genius, and he maintained that lie for me.”

She smiled, wringing her hands together.

“He always said I was a genius first.” She looked over at Hector, who didn’t share her smile. He looked like he was lost in thought.

“We used to have private jokes as well. Everything between us was private. We didn’t share it with mom or my sister. Didn’t need to share, we were all we needed. Then he did something.”

“What did he do?” Hector asked, snapping out from his glazed, vacant thought process.

“I think it was an affair. Mom never said, not even when she died.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Hector said, quietly.

“S’okay. Was a few years ago now. Doesn’t hurt so bad. Like I said, she never said what it was he did, but it was bad. He moved out. They got divorced. I didn’t see him again until three years later and he looked rough. Said he had been writing me but I never got the letters.”

Hector cast a weary smile. He knew where this was going.

“Grew apart from there; our private jokes didn’t mean anything anymore. I was older, he still thought of me as a tiny girl. Sing song voices and games we played when I was still in little dresses and played house. I’m not that girl anymore.”

Hector nodded gently. Perhaps she was lending him more advice than he’d lent her thus far.

“You grew up…Grew apart.”

“Yeah,” she added quietly. “He wasn’t there anymore. What right did he have to come in and try and be a part of it. He ruined everything.”

Ruined everything—those words stuck with Hector. Had he not been so cavalier about everything, maybe Daniel wouldn’t resent him. (Did Daniel resent him?) Hector made it clear in his own mind that he did. He made it clear that he was exactly the same father that his father was and it shamed him. He was supposed to be better than that. He was supposed to be the one to break that cycle of distance and disassociation, and instead he not only perpetuated it but made it worse.

He rubbed his face gently and got to his feet.

“We need to get out of the rain.”



"Battlefield"
STRANGE ADVENTURES #2 Written by Hunter Lambright

“Clean your room,” she says. You look down the stairs and wonder how she can make such a heavy request.

Your room is your haven, you think. It is a place you go to escape from the mundane. Everything that has ever mattered to you is there, some of it in boxes, some of it in the closet, but all of it there nonetheless.

Your room is the one place Mom lets you have Jack out of his cage. As you sit on your patchwork-quilted bed with your knees pulled to your chest, you look around at the mess, the wonderful mess that is yours, and think about it in order to stall the inevitable.

You look at the rug on the floor, covered in the remnants of the battle you staged earlier in the week. Autobots and Decepticons lay among the rubble, half-transformed and crumpled in various stages of defeat. Not far from them is Batman on his knees, with a host of fallen G.I. Joes around him. You led that army into battle, and it was a glorious thing to see. You know that the enemy will regroup and be back next week, probably right before your English project is due, but that is how the enemy works. You will be ready for them, and you suppose that cleaning up the battlefield is the least you can do to get ready.

Your eyes travel to your dresser, littered with ticket stubs from matinees and chocolate wrappers, all of which cover the small, sterilized box of syringes and needles. You’re feeling fine, though, and you hope your insulin stays a-okay today. Your army is counting on you.

Your backpack lays discarded near the hatch that leads to your attic room, and you’re sure you’ll remember to do your algebra homework sometime between now and when the bus drops you off at school. You figure that the replacement of X with any given number can wait as you’re strategizing for next week’s human-robot war, although you doubt Ms. Prentiss will understand. She never understands.

Sometimes you wish Jack was a dog instead of a rat, so that he would at least eat your homework every once in a while, although that’s never stopped you from “accidentally” smearing your homework with peanut butter in hopes of tempting Jack to do just that. You make a mental note to throw 0.7 lead into your backpack later, so that doing your homework on the bus is possible without bribing a fourth-grader for a pencil with your lunch money like you did today.

You stand up and move to the mirror on the back of your door. You might need a haircut soon, although Mom will probably suggest that she do it herself. You wonder for a brief moment if you finally have enough facial hair to shave, but you dismiss the light fluff as still invisible to anyone but yourself. Yeah, you might think you’re a little on the thin side, and you’ll probably never be in the Army like Dad was, but you figure you’re good enough looking that someday you’ll find the right somebody and you won’t be alone forever like all of the girls in your class moan about online.

You move to the notebook by your beanbag chair and wonder, not for the first time, if anything that you’ve drawn will ever be good enough to be wanted by somebody. You’re sure that there’s a job somewhere for you in the fast food business if not, but you’d rather not take the chance. Your sketchbook is filled with intensely detailed drawings of battlefields and futuristic soldiers. You imagine wars where men never die, but are instead repaired to go back out on the battlefield the next day.

You wish your dad had been an Autobot, and you blink back tears, not realizing how much the simple thought would sting.

You go to Jack’s cage and spin his wheel. He waddles out of the sawdust and up onto the back of your hand. You are glad for his company. Too often, no one understands you like Jack does. Besides, you can’t go to your friends and ask them to nuzzle you with their wet noses or chase them around your room in a plastic ball. That would just be weird. Jack satisfies those needs just fine.

You twist the ball into locking position and let Jack go, tumbling the ball across your battlefield. He is a scavenger, you think, and you wonder if the warrior Chakk has found any good weaponry among the dead. Surely a batarang would do him some good, and you check Batman’s utility belt to satisfy that curiosity. Sadly, Chakk will have to make due with a spring-loaded freeze ray from the Batman & Robin toy line, which you think really wasn’t all that bad of a movie, but that’s only because you like puns and haven’t really developed a definitive movie taste yet.

You watch Jack roll around in his ball as you pull out a plastic tub and begin to load your toys into it. You pull your trash can near so that you can easily dispose of the last battle’s destroyed paper planes, because you’re too worried you’ll break one of the models that you and Dad made before he was shipped overseas to use the real planes. And, as you begin to explore the remnants of last Thursday’s epic battle, you find yourself immersed in their world, checking with your soldiers to see who is wounded and who is lost. You begin to wonder if Superman is wasted when the Decepticons have Kryptonite, and if he would be better used from a distance with his heat vision next time. You discover that you’ll need to dig out the super glue again to make sure Snake Eyes doesn’t lose his forearm again. You pick your way through the battlefield, and you have to be yelled at about three times before you realize your mom is calling for dinner. You deposit Jack back in his cage with some fresh water and food, trusting him to be there when you come back.

As you leave your battlefield behind, climbing down the rope ladder that leads to your room, you take one last look at the now half-empty battlefield that is scattered across the rug.

Yes, you think, you may be Joe Manson everywhere else, but in your room? You are Joe the Barbarian.
Next Issue: More on Tim Hunter!  Possibly more about Hector Hall's dad!  Other strangely small adventures!  

On The Ledge...

So we're into Issue Two, of our new experimental Anthology here at Subculture, and I thought, maybe some sort of editorial was in order .  So I decided to take a couple minutes to thank everyone who has joined us for the first issues, of Strange Adventures.  I hope that everyone has been enjoying the stories by Ed, Chris, and Hunter so far, and know that there is a lot more to come.

I suppose that Strange Adventures seems like an odd duck admist the various titles people have read in the past here on Subculture, and JLU as well as most comics Fan Fiction, which usually work as  a single story.  I'm not sure why these sorts of titles don't do multiple stories like the prose counterparts more often-- but this idea was not something I came up with on my own.  The idea was actually first concieved by the Jac and Jason over at Artiface Comics, and their successful Bentobox anthology series, and with the amount of content and ease it was in writing for that anthology and others getting stories out-- I thought that something similar could be done on other sites.  

For the last few years, there's been only a few titles that have came out on a semi-regular basis at Subculture, and with the rich history of characters and stories that Vertigo has had over the years, I felt it seemed off somehow.  So I decided to try a different approach and talked to Curt and Chris about an anthology series where more Vertigo series, and more of the amazing and interesting characters could appear.  Something that could be done with little effort, but would allow these characters to shine.  Possibly to have a series that could be a spring board for full on series once creators tried out various characters in small bite sized narratives.  And so Strange Adventures was born.  

Now with two excellent issues, I feel really positive about this series, and  I  am so excited to see so many different ideas springing to life and seeing so many different stories starting out within these pages.  With Chris, Ed, and Hunter's work so far I'm excited to see where we go from here (I obviously already have a good idea where Tim Hunter is going).  

So with that said, I also encourage more people to give it a go.  If there's a story you've always wanted to write that might be outside what we expect in Comics Fan Fiction, or a Vertigo character you've always wanted to write, but you just don't feel you have the time-- why not try for a bite sized narrative?  Why not give your ideas a test drive?  Every writer has at least a few Strange Adventures.

Jae Lizhini
12.10.2011

Stories © 2011 Hunter Lambright,  Ed Ainsworth, & Jae Lizhini and may not be reproduced without permission.