Does consistency count?
I’m not very good at updating my website. You want to find me? Search for Darragha on Facebook. Seriously…I check my Facebook page quite often. Now go ye and read.
Introducing “The Big Stromboli”
Oh, goodness…I work in an Italian restaurant (owned by my sister-in-law) and such ideas pop into my head! This is a very cute, very naughty short, coming soon from Summerhouse Publishing.
Again, with the tweakage of my webpage
As always, this site is a work in progress. Enjoy.
The family restaurant
Guido’s Italian Cuisine Steakhouse and Pizzeria.
This is my nephew, the pizza chef. This boy can cook!
If you ever find yourself in Ferndale, Washington, do stop by!
5611 Third Ave., Ferndale, WA.
Motto: Man cannot live by bread alone, unless he chooses Guido’s Garlic Knots
“Sweat and Seduction” now available!
“Sweat and Seduction”
Who needs a magic lantern when you can have a genie in your treadmill?
Enjoy!
Excerpt from current WIP (writing in progress)
c.2011 Darragha Foster
Songs of the Flesh
Reggie lowered her head and pulled her hood down over her face as she stepped onto the old cattle walkway used for incoming foot traffic into the city. The concrete and iron structure had withstood the test of time, unlike most of humanity. The cattle path was a rarity in that it reeked of both the past and the future. Not many places still on the grid had ties to the before times and the constructs of the second Age of Steam. Reggie had little faith in the new era and its architects, but knew how to work the system—their system—and planned on using her cunning to its full advantage.
As her sand and dust-covered mismatched boots clanged against the rusty steel cattle grid she figured she was headed toward her last battle—a steam-generated doom. She was good—but how good were the others who had come to answer the underground call of the Queen for a Battle Royale?
Against odds the strongest man would fear…I’ve made it this far. I can do this. I have to do this. I must win my brother’s freedom before he’s used up, re-sold and lost to me forever. Him, and all Zone pretty boys. I can’t stand to see another one of them paraded about on a leash before Wasteland auctioneers.
Zoners, especially citizens of the Red Zone far to the south, such as herself, generally shied away from civilization with its airships and machinations of the elite and subversive underpinnings of moral decay. In the Zones things could be taken at face value. There were no rules of etiquette or conventions to be applied to their daily lives. Sex was sex. A slave was a slave. Food meant life and no food meant continued struggle. Death was death. In the city, even the dead were at the mercy of the Queen. Recycling took on a whole new meaning once inside the city walls.
The historical cattle ramp only reminded her of what she was to the ruling class of Ironhedge-Ghillie, the central city. The only city.
Meat. Choice cut on a china plate to be prodded and grilled and seasoned however they wished. She took another step up the ramp and vocalized a soft “maw,” like a calf calling for its mother. She chuckled. How appropriate an entrance to Ironhedge. A one-time path to certain slaughter. Welcome Outlanders!
Hot puffs of steam wafted up from the lower sector where great, blue-hot turbines powered the city. It was a place both revered and reviled that had not seen a dry day in over a hundred years. Steam power had left everything in a perpetual state of dampness, both below and above. She and her RZ kin called Ironhedge-Ghillie a wrinkle-free zone since steam was used to press out wrinkles in the old days. IG’s wrinkles were neatly pressed into hiding. She knew they were there. Everyone knew they were there. But like a piss-stain on the front of a gentleman’s trousers, no-one said a thing. That’s what IG was…one big classy, wrinkle-free piss stain on the trousers of humanity.
She made her way up the rusty grating abhorring the puffs of steam, first assaulting her with heat, leaving her wet and shivering. This was the way of things in the city. Steam came first. Steam was everything. Steam made the city and its unique opportunities…well…opportunities. Opportunities in a world gone mad from warfare only a hundred years prior, where the whispers of technology still echoed like forbidden sirens’ songs on the wind. She had been born into a world were Steam was always spelled with a capital “s” and where to purposely douse a fire used to generate steam was a capital crime. She’d have been walled up, beheaded or dunked until drowned years ago had she not been born a Zoner. And a fighter. Therein her value lay. Thereby her transgressions and petty crimes had been overlooked in favor of her ability in a pit fight.
Reggie smiled, recalling how much she enjoyed dousing her cook fire over which she had boiled drinking water on her trek across the Wastelands. She had controlled the fire, the water, the steam and had taken away their power. She hadn’t said a prayer of thanks, filed a travel plan or signed a notice of intent to cap off steam’s holy vapors. She’d just handled things the way her fore-mothers had for thousands of years. She did it. No permission. No notice. No remorse.
Personal victories in these post-war years were few and far between. This had been a simple, meaningful, private victory—and the impetuous for a greater one yet to come.
The ornate brass clock above the ancient wrought iron gate struck one o’clock as she passed through the first check point. There were four “wayfarer’s stations,” into IG. Each had an attendant and “guest relations advocates.” There were about a hundred regulations for visitors. Failure to comply meant public censure (which she was sure city-dwellers enjoyed, the sick bastards) or personal encoding forbidding city entrance in perpetuity. Reggie had been dreading this moment since leaving the Zone. More than leaving home, more than leaving her brother a slave to salacious buggers, more than crossing the Wastelands on foot, entering IG was both the bravest and most frightening act of her life.
The Battle Royal was worth it. Worth everything.
Zoners said that only fools and victors ever made the trek to arena at the heart of the central city. She was no fool.
A scar above her left eye ached. It acted like a signal when she found herself in tense situations. Entering the grand central city of Ironhedge had the scar pulsating like the last breaths of a fish out of water. She rubbed her fingers across the healed flesh to relax the palpable pain assaulting her. It was a thick scar; unsightly and outlawed. Open displays of having suffered a violent life were not considered polite. One of the regulations. Outbursts, fighting, protests…any display of aggression was outlawed by royal decree. Scarring and bruises—even if from an accident—were to be kept hidden.
Reggie had never tried to hide her scar, though it bisected her eyebrow and radiated out like a spider’s web at the corner of her bright hazel left eye. She’d sewn the wound up herself with plasticized thread she’d found half-buried along the shore. “Floss.” An unusual name for an item made of a substance no longer manufactured from a time before the Age of Steam. From the before-times. Before the war.
She felt suddenly conscious, as if she had a large red arrow hovering over her head indicating that she had once suffered the consequences of rage. Her hood did little to obscure it, and there was no use trying to arrange her hair to cover the blemished flesh. She’d long ago given up trying to keep her unruly hair in place. She’d gone to an extreme to keep it out of her way—short of going bald—which was always an option.
An old woman skin the color of tar and who rapped on a cook pot to make music had taught her how to wrap her hair to create what had once been called “dreads.” Reggie liked the name of the style. She liked to incite “dread” into her opponents.
The bronze-tone woman was the oldest. Simply that. On the planet, so far as anyone knew, she was the oldest. She was one hundred twelve years old and remembered the times before the war. She knew of things like gasoline-powered engines and disposable nappies for infants. Magical items. Forbidden items. The Old One had lived through the war and survived her youth foraging in the Wastelands—a vast area created during the bombing. Because she was the oldest, she received a small stipend from the Red Zone council enabling her to eat and sleep indoors as long as her stories were filled with the horrors and atrocities of the old world. Reggie had befriended the woman and had learned other stories.
Lost in thought, Reggie nearly stumbled on the switchback cattle grate as she reached her destination. Such a graceful entrance. I’ll be lucky if the gatekeeper doesn’t have me gutted where I stand then light fire to my entrails and use the boiling blood to generate Steam for holy communion.
She cleared her throat as she stood before the high desk of Wayfarer Station Number One.
The attendant didn’t even look up from his scrawl-pad…a steam-powered device upon which he wrote with a fingernail cap which instantaneously transmitted the data through a wire to the Grand Archive at the heart of the city by way of taps and clicks which were then translated into words. She knew she was about to be “memorialized.” Every Zoner knew about the info-dumps on every heartbeat in IG. It was an accepted form of technology because it relied on steam to generate it. Whip out a surviving, old-fashioned typewriter and one would likely be drawn and quartered.
Not looking up or acknowledging her in any way, the attendant asked. “Male or female?”
Reggie replied softly. Very softly. “Female.” She wasn’t dressed as a female and city code dictated that lone females were not allowed to move unaccompanied within the outer walls.
The attendant glanced up through the steam emanating from his scrawlpad. “Human or hybrid?”
Reggie leaned in, trying to keep their conversation private. “Hybrid.”
“Hybrid ability?”
“Visual,” Reggie replied. She didn’t have to divulge the nature of her hybrid abilities except by the single word catch-phrases allowed via the Equality for All Act enacted in Year Two, post war. Visual, auditory, tactile, projection, detection…one word was all a recording agent could obtain.
“Zoner?” he asked.
Reggie withheld a snide remark. Do I look like a Wastelander, you moron? “Red.”
“Long journey to find work, assuming that is the advent of your trek. We have need of a few Sanguinarians at the hospital, and we can always use more Disposals. Oh, you’re not an airship pilot, are you? The fleet is always looking for new recruits, and the pay is quite good I hear,” he paused, taking a thoughtful look at her. “Though if you’re here to ply your pillowing skills, I’m afraid you’ll have to audition for placement in a brothel.” He nodded toward a partition to his left. She could see a grease-stained feather mattress through rips in the curtains draped over the wooden frame. “Or perhaps you are simply another strong back and seek the hard labor but high rewards of the underground…”
“I’m not a vampire, nor am I a garbage eater,” Reggie replied. “And I am not a whore or shovel jockey.”
“Then what do you have to offer IG? And who, may I ask, is your escort?”
Here it goes. I have crossed hundred of miles of crap-land on foot and worked my whole life for this moment. I can do it. I can say it. “I can fight.” She said it very softly. “And I need no escort.”
“Fighting is illegal,” the attendant replied. “Any contact sport from the old system has been outlawed by the Queen. Wrestling, boxing, martial arts…all illegal.”
Reggie nodded. “All the same, I’m very good at what I do.”
The attendant tapped nervously on his pad. Something quick. Two words, maybe. Reggie hoped it wasn’t “kill her.” He cocked his head and held very still for a moment. Reggie noticed he wore an ear piece. Someone was controlling his decisions from behind-the-scenes. Someone else was watching her. Right then. Right there.
The attendant nodded as if Reggie had spoken to him. She had not. Another sign that the scrivener was not acting alone. He straightened his posture, and very abruptly said, “I’m giving you a three day pass to the outer city. If you intend to travel beyond your lodgings for any reason, you must pay for an escort. They dress similarly, in black, and any one of them can procure another for you. They work on a grid. Each one is connected to the other.”
“Fine. Whatever.” She held out her hand as the attendant used an air-injection wand to insert a tracking device into the soft tissue between her thumb and index finger. The instrument’s brass flashed in the dim light. She could see the pattern carved into the brass was well-worn from countless of jabs into the hands of city-goers. The forefinger and thumb depressions of the attendant had etched themselves onto the device.
“Now, we just need to wait for the data stream,” he said. “You do know what that is, don’t you, Zoner?”
“I know what a data stream is. We don’t call it that in the Zone, but it is all the same thing. You’ve been at this job for a long time, huh?” Reggie asked.
“Yes. I’m lucky to have it,” the attendant said. “How can you tell?”
“Your wand is worn about the edges as if it was molded to fit your hand.”
“It is the tool of my trade. And you, Zoner, are very perceptive.” He leaned forward. “A smart trait in a fight, no?”
“I’d like to stay at the Zeppelin Hostel,” Reggie said. The Zeppelin Hostel was an enclave for ex-pat Zoners living in the City. At least she wouldn’t feel so alone and out of place with her own kind.
The attendant read the symbols as they appeared on his scrawlpad. “You are a disease-free hybrid female.”
“I am aware of that.”
The attendant made a slight motion with his right hand. “These escorts will guide you to the Clockworx Tower. There’s no room at the ZH just now.”
Reggie felt the soft touch of a gloved hand against her arm. She turned her head to find two identically dressed “guest” escorts standing behind her. She wrinkled her nose. She didn’t like their type. Dandies. Pseudo dandies. Each wore a purple velvet jacket, beige riding breeches, a top hat and a monocle. They were dressed according to the Queen’s personal tastes. Ridiculous uniform of a ridiculous ruler. “Thanks for the escort, but I can manage.”
The escorts shook their heads and in unison, replied, “No unaccompanied females in the outer rim.”
Reggie tried a second time to free herself of her escorts. “I can take care of myself. I know where the Clockworx Tower is. I can see it from here. I’ve never used the services of Pseudos before and I see no reason to begin now.” She realized how bigoted her statement sounded. Pseudos couldn’t help what they were. They were epic fails. Reanimated, reconstructed and recycled. They were used for labor and in the brothels. Given a task, they did it well. Given an abstract thought, they basically self-destructed. In the Zones they were called “Sortas” for “sort of human,” or “Kindas” as in “kind of human.”
“It is not permitted. For your safety. The Queen so commands it.” The lead escort squeezed his fingers.
Reggie cast an annoyed glance at the attendant. “Really? Pseudos? A girl can’t even get a real man to show her around the place these days?”
There was no response from the attendant or the purple velvet dressed, top-hat wearing creature next to her.
“I can handle myself. Do you think for one moment that I couldn’t beat down an attacker?”
The attendant chuckled. “The idea is to make it so that there is no reason to beat anyone down, as you so brutally put it. Women are escorted, children are herded to avoid mishap, and shops have security precautions. This is a conflict-free zone for a very good reason.”
“What’s the reason? I’ve never known,” Reggie asked.
“Truly, we are not at liberty to say,” the attendant said.
“You don’t know, do you?” Reggie said.
“As I said, Zoner, I’m lucky to have a job. That’s all that matters. Now, please, you’re holding up traffic. And do cover up that scar, girl.”
She sighed, giving in. “Fine. Fine. Let’s go. Just don’t expect a tip or anything,” she replied, striking one of the escorts on the back in a friendly manner.
