Color pencil on black illustration board, 32″ x 32″. Om Namah Shivaya translates as “I bow to Shiva,” though it can also be interpreted with each of the five syllables (na mah shi va ya) corresponding to the five elements (earth, air, fire, water, space), Shiva having dominion over them.
Color pencil on black paper. This image depicts a fantasy character I’ve been developing for some time.
Color pencil and metallic watercolor paint on black paper.
Color pencil on black paper. The Christmas before last my partner gave me a pad of black paper and it’s really opened things up for me.
“Charybdis” spins and eddies in Birdy 131, November 2024, with art by Chris Austin. A resurrected assassin with a new neuroport finds that nothing is certain when AI superintelligences are involved.
Do you think killing someone’s easy for me? Up close like this?
No, not easy. Pleasurable.
That’s fucked up.
Charybdis said nothing more, this not being a question or anything that needed answering, and a sense Christian had lost the argument seeped into the ensuing silence. Charybdis, god of the deep, who sent whirlpools to swallow ships. Like a great white shark swimming over his shoulder.
“A Wolf Called Wormwood” stalks Birdy 130, October 2024, with art by Oksana Drozd. The wolf devours memories, making it nearly impossible to track; but one mnemonist plans to lay a trap.
One illustration in particular gripped them. A star with a tail like a dragon’s fell through the sky, roiling smoke, while the earth beneath it burned, villagers fleeing strangely angular buildings. The verses beneath, Revelation 8:10-11, were in vulgate Latin, but Eoghan translated them effortlessly in a hoarse whisper:
“And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters;
And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.”
Beneath the verse, in the wide lower margin, a later artist had drawn a vivid addendum: a red-eyed wolf, chained, slavering and furious.
“Fiddlywink Sings the Tune” pops up in Birdy 129, September 2024, with art by Jason White. Maya learns that once you have a neuroport, real and unreal aren’t useful concepts anymore–and Fiddlywink heartily agrees.
She turned again, down the alley, blindly, going anywhere, nowhere. She went three steps and Fiddlywink popped up like a jack-in-the-box, right out of the pavement, and seized her upper arms in his enormous gloved hands, squeezing hard, lifting her into the air. He grinned with carious teeth, grinned wider than anyone could grin. “Rub a dub dub,” he said, “tub full of blood.”
“Children of Ava” appears in Birdy 128, August 2024, with generative art by myself. Young Maya is on the run in the ruins of Salt Lake City–but her AI companion, Ava, has friends everywhere.
Her contact’s appearance was not reassuring. Black bug-eyed lenses stared above an industrial breathing mask, part of a single piece of gear that completely covered the head. It looked at once like a military relic and something homemade. Otherwise they wore a cowl of heavy textured fabric atop what she thought was a hazmat suit. The figure was small and slight, a teenager or very small woman, most likely. They spoke first.
Don’t you have a mask?
Their voice was not so much muffled as synthetic, the timbre androgynous, tone a little flat in the common manner of AI assistants, emitted from tiny speakers on the sides of their breather.
No.
The dust is full of poison. And you could get BCV, not to mention nanomites.
Thanks for the public health warning. I don’t know how to say this, but there are some guys following me, and—
We know. Come on.
“Jumping the Shark” sidles up and snaps its jaws shut in Birdy 127, July 2024, with art by Ryane Rose. Never thought a shark would be this goddamn chatty.
The gate’s stuck. But look, Jumping’s implant is fully functional. If he gets close to the gate, he’s going to get a nasty shock. Controlling the subject’s behavior is the whole point of the study.
I know the point of the study, I’m just not comfortable with — oh Jesus.
What is it?
It’s here, the shark’s in the tank. I’m getting out. I’m—
(screaming)
“Threshold of the Wild Hunt” appears in Birdy #125, May 2024, with art by @flooko. It’s a quick dip into the land of Faerie:
A horn sounded in the woods to the south and all heads turned toward it. Sunita saw the fae around her unconsciously quicken at the sound, twitching ears tufting with fur, faces lengthening, bodies hunching as though about to spring away on four legs. “The king’s horn,” Harald whispered.
THE FELL AND THE FAE 