More Orcakinder for you, yes, there is that, but there's something else. Something you need to know.
The other day, we took the fifth rail, the slick, shiny rail, the one that looks like a vein of marble spilling down into the tunnels. They say you should never touch any of the rails and it's a good rule to live by but the fifth is where everybody breaks that rule. Looking down from the car as it sulks away from bright blue daylight and dives into fuzzy dark and drifting jelly sodium glow lamps, watching that rail catching and twisting all that light, nobody ever holds back.
Not the first time. Never again after.
Me, the first time down the fifth, I'd been wrapped in heavy latex, straps and buckles binding me to three others in a manner that kept us unable to crane our heads back and see each other. No talking over the building roar of the machinery below and a scent like cranberry-rust so strong you could taste it. We all remained strangers in every sense but touch. One of the passengers went warm, started bursting inside their outfit, wet, flatulent sounds and soft creeping bulges gliding under his suit, stroking up and down my spine. The handlers cut him loose halfway down and we continued down the rail away from the dimming sounds of rubber tearing and howling, half-formed mouths.
Used to be the rule was "only strangers down the rails." Used to be nobody questioned it, but these days, well, these are questionable days. When we abandoned the poor burster I was in the rear seat and as little as it mattered with the Drop-Offs I wasn't about to let curiosity intrude on principle. So I kept my eyes down.
Down, down on the rail.
I don't even remember loosening the strap on my arm and dangling it off the edge of the car. I don't remember the handlers barking and throwing the hood over my face. Worse, I don't remember arriving at the machines and only vaguely recall the ascent, like the missing beat of a dream fabricated upon awakening. But I remember the feel of the fifth rail through layered synthetics like I'd touched it with my bare skin, like it's sliding across my fingertips even now.
Like some horror that never leaves my hands.
So the other day we all took the fifth rail down to the tunnels again. We all needed a laugh and it'd been so very, very long. The handlers are all gone and with them the rules and the knowledge that informed them. We sat where we pleased on the car and left the old, mildewed protective suits in the locker by the gate. And as the bright blue yielded to soft, throbbing orange and dark, orange and dark, they asked me about the rail. They asked me about touching it and they asked me how it felt.
And I swear, if I'd only known what the handlers knew, whatever wisdom they took with them when they abandoned the rails and the tunnels and that great cacophony of strange below us, I would've lied. I would've lied about electrics and poisons and radiation.
Because nobody ever listens when you just say "it's horrible, don't." Not ever. They just smile and wink and think to themselves, "well, how bad can it be?"
"You're still here, aren't you?"
And if they'd said it aloud, I would've replied, "sure."
"But I'm still there too."
As they all know now.
You didn't know them and you wouldn't have liked them but I still feel really bad about it.
So I just wanted to say I'm sorry.
And also that there's a new Orcakinder for you.
That's all.

Love,
the dead minotaur

Labels: sketch

I'll tell you what the score is: new mongrelstudios.com swag. T-shirts, t-shirts, and more t-shirts. Fill your closet or drawer with the marvelous wonder that is an official Mongrel Studios licensed piece of apparel. All you have to do is click here. Go on. Click it. That's good. I like the way you click.

Come say hello to our new Orcakinder.
Take a look at the new layout.
It's nice, isn't it?
It's nice visiting with friends.
Oh wow.
It really is.
Me, I've got friends in soft places.
Dark corners, thin presences. Faded.
My friends drift in faces like long loose hairs.
Like webs.
My friends stick and stick and never let go.
Never let go!

Love,
the dead minotaur

What? You don't already have the debut album from singer/songwriter Quinn Allan? You have yet to visit our music page and click on his name and download all ten glorious tracks of sweet sweet folk goodness for only ten bucks? And you call yourself a music patron. You call yourself our friend. Well "friend," if you plan on staying in our good graces, where the bounty is plentiful, then I highly suggest you click the awesome image of this album, "The Story of Elston Gunn," and bust out that old credit card. There, I think this little chat went rather well. Don't you?

Labels: music, Quinn Allan

Somebody went and messed up our site. Now it's all different.
We don't feel like fixing it so we'll learn to dig it.
As will you. In time.
Mongrel Pictures released another short for your enjoyment. You can watch Getting Off At Three AM in our freshly transmogrified Movies section and check out stills and commentary from all the movies Mongrel Pictures currently feels like acknowledging they've made.
I keep having these dreams where you and I are in a forest together and we walk into this massive hotel, this pine fortress, and as we search for your room you remember something, something important, and you leave me there in the hallway and I can't remember which way we'd come down. It was years I walked those hallways. To this day I walk those hallways.
I live on room service and knock on doors and run away and laugh all day.

Love,
the dead minotaur