hex_m_hell

The behemoth were not always so large and unwieldy as they are now. The first behemoth ever captured could hardly pull a dry sled with two dozen stones, stood shoulder to shoulder with a man, and could only walk a bit faster than a person could run.

Early behemoth were captured from the wild and highly prized. Early tamers mastered their beasts skillfully. Though their animals were still unpredictable, tamers were cautious. Even still, people were wary of the creatures. They watched from a distance, in both discomfort and awe.

One of the most skilled tamers captured an especially beautiful behemoth and gifted it to the king on the anniversary of his coronation. The king’s behemoth rider was always trained by the riders guild, but not all riders remained so skilled.

As the behemoth became a signal of power and prestige, tamers began to sell captured behemoth to nobles who would ride them carelessly. Behemoth are omnivores. When not well controlled they are prone to charge and attack.

There was much outrage after a young child was eaten by a behemoth while she danced near the street. The lord paid the family’s debts, and no more was said of it but whispers. Many such events happened in the kingdom.

The peasants would wonder, “why must we now fear our own roads? Why can the lords not ride the slender weilu that does not hunger for our flesh?”

But the nobles did not feel their pain and mocked them for letting their foolish children be eaten by monsters. Even still, the nobels felt the need to address the mumbling for fear it might escalate. So they seized common roads for their beasts and blamed peasants who were trampled or eaten by them.

The riders guild eventually learned the secret to breeding the behemoth in captivity. By giving some commoners low breeds, the people began to accept and even like the beasts. The highest breeds were always kept for the nobles, and the commoners learned to admire their ornate features.

Commoners learned that they were safer on the monsters than near them, so behemoth began to fill all the available space. People would ride their beasts to a neighboring house for fear of being killed while walking.

One, seeing how common it is, may believe that the king had proclaimed that all must ride the behemoth. But after so many years, the kingdom has simply been built around them. No law enforces their use, but no force can protect those who choose not to ride them. All who could, did.

None ride the graceful weilu, for behemoth have a taste for it as well.

Yet, even the riders of the beasts are not safe. Behemoth are prone to quarrel. As their numbers grew, battles became more common. Breeders began to focus on increasing size so the behemoth could wear armor. Now the behemoth are so large they can consume a child in a single bite without a rider even taking notice.

Yet, this has not made riders any more safe. Quite the opposite.

Today every behemoth is armored and carries a grand litter to protect the occupants, but this only makes them harder to control and the inbreeding only makes them more clumsy, anxious, and violent.

Many times a day now one may hear outside, near any behemoth path, the terrible screeching of their taunts and the loud thud of their strikes. These battles often kill both behemoth and rider. In their confusion will sometimes charge at building, crushing themselves under the collapsing walls and killing those inside.

The behemoth are strange creatures. As I said earlier, they were omnivores. While they hunger for flesh, especially humans, they also needed to eat several pounds of a specific fruit every day.

Even the smell of the olapi was wretched such that none would imagine it could be eaten by any other living thing. The fruit contains the very essence of death. It was the key to taming the behemoth, for without this fruit they would lie down and refuse to work. When fed the fruit regularly, they can be promoted to any work.

In the wild, the olapi tree was quite rare. It only grew in old graveyards, battle fields, and other ancient places of death. In it’s natural habitat, it did not spoil the land around it, at least not much. But when grown away from these places of death, it is want to turn fertile land to stone.

Fields once reserved for food have been cleared to make way for olapi trees, such is the demand, and farms have been pushed further and further out of the towns and cities.

The spring rains can be quite intense in parts of the kingdom. In the old days, channels would divert excess water to the fields. The fields would store the water though the dry sunmers. But now many of these fields have become stone, so water has no where to go. Many villages have started to flood in the spring and winter.

But this is not the only problem with the behemoth and their fruit. The flatulence of the behemoth is legendary. The people of the land seem to have grown accustomed to it, but outsiders are surprised and repulsed by the stink. The noxious fumes can become quite dense at times, especially on hot summer days when many behemoth gather in one place.

Recently a cloud of behemoth fumes became so dense, on one late summer afternoon, that ignited into a raging firestorm. One of the richest villages in the land was razed to the ground, and the stampede of burning behemoths trampled everything else that remained. Though they destroy the jewel city of the land, few questioned their dedication to the behemoth.

But there is one even more sinister detail that I have not yet described. The olapi tree hungers for death to feast upon. The behemoths concentrate that hunger as they eat the fruit, and they leave behind a strange and Infectious madness in their dung.

Rain washes the madness out to the fields. It soaks in to the soil and infects the crops. It washes out to the rivers and poisons the fish. All the people eat has become infected, and by eating they become infected. The Land of the Behemoth has become overtaken by a terrible hunger. All they harvest brings death to the land.

So many admire the Land of the Behemoth from a distance, but so few know the truth.

And now we have learned thet the king has fertilized the Royal garden with the dung of his prized behemoth. His temper has grown wild and madness spills from his lips. He threatens his neighbors and orders his nobles to eat the dung directly.

How long can a kingdom survive in such madness? How long can a people live who spoil their own crops, burn their own houses, and feed their own children to monsters?

I left this kingdom to its madness, and it has troubled me to have seen behemoth in my new home.

Now that you know the truth, will you still praise the Land of the Behemoth, nation of pestilence, eaters of dung, kingdom of fools? Will you let your fool’s knowledge of this land lead us all to the same fate, or may we learn from their folly and free ourselves from the burden of this beast?

When it finally took her, no one was really surprised anymore. The mutation, the disease, the cancer, the infection, the curse, had become so obvious she could no longer deny it. Her battle had been quite visible and her loss undeniable. Now, it was in control.

Was this predestined, written into her fate at birth? Was it a result of her ravenous addictions? Perhaps both. Were they ever really different?

Some grow out of the selfishness of youth. They learn from their mistakes and try to correct them. Others, in their shame, learn to hide their flaws, to manipulate those who see, to silence those who speak.

One who lives a life of deception only fools themselves in the end.

Oh, how she had been admired. Even in her darkest days, she was a beacon of hope. So many had come to her for help, and now they had begun to fear the monstrosity she had become and ran from her. Perhaps, it would be more apt to say that they feared the monotonousness nature that she could no longer hide.

Oh, how she had been celebrated. She was one of the heroes who had slain such beasts as this before. They had cast her as Beowulf defeating Grendel, but she always knew, on some level, that she was Grendel’s Mother. She was the source of the infection, and now we all know.

How many of her children did she think she could she eat before she felt Saturn’s indigestion?

There were those who had pointed it out. There were those who had yelled, cried, screamed at the top of their lungs. But how could she ever do wrong? Even if these claims were true, what could anyone do? Were her allies, perhaps in some ways, also her hostages?

Now had she become the puppet, or had she always been controlled by some invisible hand?

She could feel death’s gaze, cold and yawning, the abyss that stare. She wanted to turned and run, but it drove her body forward, the worm, the cordycep, the nameless. Was there ever a time she could have freed herself from it?

Was there ever a way things could have been different?

She had protected it, this horror growing inside her, as if it was her own child. Perhaps the unspeakable truth is that, in some ways, it was. Had there ever been a time when she wasn’t infected? Was it in the blood she was born from?

Was she, like an aphid, born pregnant with this beast? Had it crawled up from the graves at her feet, those that she had dug in her youth, to haunt her in to her own? Or had it driven her to fill those graves in the first place? Perhaps it was an ancient curse, inflicted through her ancestors at their first taste of human blood. Was this the simple conclusion of some sort of original sin, an affliction carried by all of her kind?

Could this curse ever have been lifted, or was it a horcrux, a phylactery, a vital organ, perhaps even the true essence of her being?

The others could see the light drop from her eyes. All the humanity that was left in her screamed one last time before it was silenced.

“What,” they all wondered, “would become of her now?”

Wouldn’t we all like to know?

• for America

Some would say that if you pile enough gold together, a dragon will smell it and come. Others said that dragons spawn naturally any time enough gold is together in one place. No one knew for sure.

In this mountain, long ago, a wicked king hoarded the gold he stole from his subjects. His advisors warned him of the consequences, but he was unable to listen.

He had not always been so wicked, and was once well loved among his subjects. There had been, even among his lowest subjects, many a toast to his health in the months after his coronation.

It had been easy for him to levy taxes to build and improve the town, to build fortifications and raise an army to oppose great threats. He had not resisted celebrations held in his honor. He had built a healthy reserve of wheat and gold, quite enough for a few short harvests or to hire mercenaries if his kingdom found the need. His wisdom had turned lack into excess, did he not deserve luxury in return? Coin by coin he filled his own coffer, asking more and more tribute of his subjects. He even sold off the granary for a pittance that he may pocket a few more coins.

He had, when stone could be squeezed no more, bought, with the blood of his people, a gold mine. That mine he held at great cost to those soldiers, though he felt their blood still a cheap trade for such riches as it regularly produced. Some dreamt that this would satiate his hunger, that his mind and heart would return. But somehow, in defiance of the plenty, the craving wildly grew. This horde of his became an obsession, his only duty. As his greed grew, so too, in his imagination, did the greed of all others.

Every day he became more and more afraid that someone would steal his gold. He couldn't part with even one single coin. First he had his guards count each coin nightly. Later he had other guards guard them while they counted. Finally he couldn't trust anyone else anymore.

He moved the gold to a secret cave outside the city, known only to his most trusted men. Each night he would sneak out of the castle to the cave, and each morning his carriage would come to bring him back. Through the night he would count each coin an piece again and again, while guards stood outside to protect him when he finally fell asleep.

One morning his carriage was dispatched to the cave but it did not return. Guards were dispatched to find out what happened. When they returned, the guards reported that the carriage had been destroyed and that the king must have been consumed by the dragon as he slept. They found only charred remains before they had to run for their lives from a great beast.

The kingdom had sent it’s best knights to fight the dragon, but none ever returned. Year after year the dragon demanded the king’s tribute and more, to be delivered directly to the cave. The kingdom sent for knights from other realms, promising the dragon’s hoard to any who could free the people from the shackles of this terror.

One knight answered the call. His bravery was only matched by his hunger for glory and riches. He would fight any battle to satisfy this craving, and there was no greater wealth than in this cave. Though no one had ever conquered a dragon, he had fought many battles with great beasts and won.

He had been observing the beast for some months, watching its habits, tracking its movements. He knew its patterns. He knew it's weakness, and how to attack it.

He crept in silence around the mouth of the cave to collect the creature's scales, and of them made armor and a shield. He had a special blade forged, and had it blessed, then tipped with the most powerful poison, from the most powerful wizard, in the realm. After months of watching and preparing, he chose the night of the yearly tribute to attack.

He hid among the gold, in one of the chests. The dragon sniffed each one as the workers wheeled the cart in, but didn't notice. The knight had worn gold and even eaten some to cover his scent from the dragon. It seemed to work, but perhaps the dragon had grown careless in its greed.

That night, when the dragon rested, the knight crept out. He moved silently. He had wrapped the dragon scales of his armor in soft leather to dampen the sound as the plates moved against each other.

Bones were strewn among the wealth, some charred others white and clean. A few skeletons were impaled on their blades, perhaps, he imagined, some had fallen on their blades to end a searing pain. What a fine challenge, he thought, that no other had managed to complete. He crept closer and readied his blade.

The dragon shifted, and awoke with a start. It sniffed the air, locked its eyes on the knight, and spit a torrent of flame. The knight leapt forward into it, surprising his adversary by diving towards it's weakness, knowing the scales would protect him through it.

The smell of burning flesh hung in the air. The knight stood, sword plunged deep in the dragon’s chest. It now lay limp across the cavern. He took off his smoldering armor and collapsed from exhaustion, into glorious dreams about claiming his title as the first dragon slayer.

He awoke the next morning as dawn’s light glinted off his glorious new treasure. The hoard seemed so much smaller than he remembered from the night before. He couldn't find the body of the dragon anywhere, but instead only a frail doll that looked just like a tiny man, impaled on a tiny sword. That sword was familiar. It looked so much like a miniature of the tremendous blade he had crafted to slay the great beast.

A new smell filled his nostrils. The room was alive with it, yet he had never noticed it before. He felt as though the scent had woke a hunger inside of him, and that hunger had now consumed him whole.

I remember, as a kid and adolescent, watching planes fly overhead, far far away. They were just lines, contrails, going from one side of the horizon to the other.

I'd flown a few times. My grandparents lived in Hawaii. They were pretty well off. I'd been there a couple of times. A lot of the folks I knew had never left whichever little town we lived in at the time.

My mother left California for a lot of reasons. Really we couldn't afford it after my parents divorced. The economic pressure of Regan's America destroyed a lot of families and made the (old) American dream unreachable. Rural Oregonians hated Californians because… I don't know… Because they hated a lot of things. Both of my parents lived in various trailer parks before moving further into the country. We occasionally lived in trailer parks even in the rural area.

Living in the country is different. It stays the same for a long time, generations. The run down grocery store in the middle of town was built in the 1800's when the place was settled. The building was never updated, at least on the outside. The ideology was basically the same. The school taught about how Manifest Destiny made America great, Jim Crow was bad but MLK fixed it, Malcolm X and the Black Panthers were either not mentioned at all or only mentioned as unhelpful in comparison to nonviolence.

I didn't really know any black folks until I was 18 or 19. There was one black guy in the town I went to highschool in. He was adopted. There were a few hispanic folks, but they were generally pretty segregated. I remember one of the white kids breaking up, I assume broken up with, a hispanic girl who spoke limited English. After their breakup, she just disappeared. There were stories that he had called INS (before ICE) and that she had been illegal.

I remember being on the bus once and one of the kids talking about how he finally beat up his dad. His dad had beat him and his mother for years and he finally beat his dad up. He was proud. He was a bully who regularly started fights and intimidated people.

Most of my senior class didn't graduate. I dropped out half way through because I had enough credits to get a diploma. A few folks did this. A lot of people just did meth and went to work at the mill. A kid who was a Sr before I was a freshman robbed the Circle K with an air pistol and went to prison.

Folks who lived on the same street as the police station knew what a patrol looked like. There was only one cop on patrol at a time and response times could be two hours if something happened at the farthest extent of a patrol.

The kid had planned that part out, but, of course, the person working at the store knew exactly who he was because that's how small towns work. I don't remember if he wore a mask or not. It wouldn't have mattered if he did.

People thought that the US should invade Mexico to stop the migration. People thought that the US had the god given right to invade Canada. People thought that indigenous people didn't exist, even though one of our classmates was Blackfoot… But everyone saw him as white, even when he pointed it out.

People who aren't white were “the OK ones,” or invisible, or actually the enemy, depending on who you were and who they were. There were really racists, straight up klansman, but they were rare and mostly made fun of. The pervasive racism and misogyny was not the dedicated and explicit one of incels and vocal bigots, but a deep ignorance.

The government was far away. There were cops, sometimes. The local government was wildly corrupt and opaque. You were either in the good-ol-boys club or you didn't know how it worked. There is no electoral integrity in rural America… And that's why all of this is so familiar.

Rural folks voted for what they knew. They voted for what was familiar. The hand of the state is most strongly felt in cities. Trans folks would have been killed, so they were invisible there. Gay folks would have been killed, but that became a bit less of a thing as time went on.

Sex Ed was basically non-existent. The church has all the power. They say abstinence, and that's what kids learn. The idea that abortion should even be legal was something I was debating with people in the late 90's.

Basically, government policies didn't impact people except when “the liberals shut down the mill to save the spotted owl” which collapsed the already weak economy. What government programs didn't help people, or were invisible. Disabled people weren't visible because there was no infrastructure.

What I'm saying is that all the people Trump will hurt are people that rural folks don't think about, are ignorant about, or don't care about. They know that it makes city liberalis mad, and that's all they care about. The system has been fucked for them for generations and Trump was finally an opportunity to make it fucked for everyone. He's the corrupt sheriff of every small town. He's the crooked mayor who's rigging elections and embezzling. He's familiar.

There are plenty of rural leftists. I was a Communist before being an anarchist, and I picked that up partially from my friends. But the dominant culture is strong. Most of the people who voted for Trump have no idea what they did, and no idea how many people around them they will hurt… Including their families and theirselves.

The real hard analysis to accept is that we have failed to help rural America for so long, and it has decayed so far, that it was easy for rich fascists prey in that weakness. Liberalism has failed. It's failed to protect vulnerable people in cities and it's failed to improve the living conditions of folks outside of them. It has failed to offer real hope… And without hope people are vulnerable to revenge.

I also want to make sure people understand that “rural America” is a complex place. I'm talking about a couple of slices from a long time ago.

Some of the most radical leftists I've met have been in rural areas. I remember seeing some cowboy looking folks (t-shirt, tight jeans, cowboy boots, buff), except one had a hammer and sickle shirt. When I said, “hey, nice shirt” the other cowboy big cowboy looking guy showed me his hammer and sickle tattoo. There are all kinds of strange and unexpected things like this. It's complicated.

And my experience was 20 years ago or more. The grocery store I mentioned closed at some point after I left. I was there during the meth epidemic. Opioids hit rural America even harder. The neighbouring town burned down in a big wildfire. Everything is far worse, far harder… And far more steepen in right wing propaganda.

Originally posted Nov 07, 2024, 12:41 PM: https://kolektiva.social/@Hex/113441486616050200

As I write this, in 3 weeks it will have been four years since an intoxicated Trump supporter shot me. After my third surgery, my surgeon told me how close the bullet had been to the artery that runs in to my heart.

“Most people shot there just bleed out on the spot. The blood just dumps out like rushing water. There's nothing anyone can do.”

His ability to repair a tattoo was top notch. His human skills were perhaps not quite as adept at times. This seems to be how surgeons are, in my experience, but I still enjoyed chatting with him.

This injury was not unfamiliar to me. In general, my dad didn't really tell stories about Vietnam. So on the rare occasions he did, I listened. He only told this story once, but I paid close attention.

No one expected the Tet Offensive, since Tet is Vietnamese New Year. An offensive in asymmetric warfare isn't always what one would think of as a military action. Though most of the offensive involved soldiers fighting each other, other things happened as well.

American soldiers were having dinner in the mess hall when the bomb went off. Apparently putting a landmine under a stack of plates in a mess hall wasn't an uncommon way to carry out such an attack. Aside from the shrapnel from the mine, the plates shattered and plate fragments became projectiles.

There was a tiny hole in the man's chest. My dad never talked about the blood, just that the hole was tiny and that there was no time. This man died in my dad's arms in minutes. There was no time to operate, no time to act. My dad, who was a medic, was completely powerless in the situation. There was just a tiny hole, the sound of rushing water, and then a dead man in his arms.

I saw my dad cry once, at my grand father's funeral. The war took away pieces of him one by one. He tore a ligament in his knee chasing a fellow soldier who'd just snapped and run off in to the jungle. There were no other medics in his unit, so he stayed until he could be relieved. By that time there was nothing anyone could do for his knee. After decades of pain, he's now in a wheel chair.

Growing up I remember how often he had knee or back pain. This body was permanently scarred by the war. I knew that story. When he told the story about the mess hall, I started to understand the other scars.

Now I have my own.

[Added 2025.04.10]

I couldn't convey the emotion. I still can't. There are simply cold facts. I stare off, after reading this, to some distant place with a gaze that lacks focus. I can feel it. It's the same stare, same cold recounting of facts, I recognize in the memory of my dad telling me about the Tet offensive.

He couldn't have seen this coming. I expected to leave his trauma in the past, not to see it revisited on us for another generation. I look at my daughter, who's six now, playing happily in the water.

There's a strange continuity to history, one that doesn't come through the stories of wars told from the perspective of nobles and presidents.

She asked me once, “papa, when will I get my scars like you?”