on

I just lost my entire post. All the bad blood, all the energy. All the emotion.

It cuts like a knife.

I talked about how I don't do Happy Shiny. I can write it but I'm never pleased with the results. I don't handle it well. I drink from a dark reservoir when I write but those things aren't necessarily inside of my. I am not particularly an unhappy person; quite the opposite I am happier here than I've been anywhere else.

We interrupt this blogpost repost to bring you cold sweats and headaches.

I draw from a bleak spring to write but it isn't mine. Those things do not dwell inside of me, not for long. I don't do well living with demons. That doesn't mean, however, that I don't keep them around. I use them for inspiration when I need to and I think I worry people that I've got these deep down seeds of despair growing, that I am unhappy with the way things are. This is not the truth.

I have a morbid fascination is all, if I had to label it in any way. I like happy endings in stories I enjoy, if that makes sense? I like the Good Guy getting the Girl, I like the Bad Guy getting Comeuppance. I like fairy tales to end in the Disney way instead of the Grimm's way. For my own writing, though? It doesn't work enough magic for me.

I guess we can stick with the demon comparison. I exorcise them, I suppose is the way I see it. Take the bad things and convert them. I bleed out the bad blood, I vent the steam. Release safety handle, avoid steam. I have a macabre drawing to the damned, though. I like blurry heroes, I like contested alignments. I like skeletons in closets, I like inner demons in my characters. I like writing conflict, and in happy endings, conflict is ceased.

I like my characters to finish their work, their job, their task, their quest, and I like the world to not know any better. I like the eponymous City to still be a dank place. I need the Dirty Gin to still harbor gangsters in backrooms. I need the sun to set behind an ash-and-soot choked sky, dimming any sort of luminance that might have been obtained behind the cloak of apathy. Another day, another corpse. One mob boss taken down, one more to rise in her place. Another day, another dollar. Another job. Another bullet. Life goes on. Sometimes it doesn't.

Bang.

Spoilers.

That's the best of it. Life is pain. Pain is proof we're alive. Loss is truest way of having in those worlds, the best experiences are just memories. Whether it's the memory of the Way it Used to Be, or the phantom scent of her mix of sweat and perfume as you pressed against her, it's the One That Got Away. It's the Best Conquest. They are the Days Gone By, they are what Was. The City burns at both ends and time is running out.

It's the feeling in your knuckles the day after you've beaten them against something until either they gave way or his face did. It's that creak when you bend fingers, the dull pangs that remind you of how good it felt. Scabs from friction on the bag, the dull throb of a headache after too much sauce and one too many gunshots. The best things in life are gone, and remembering them and holding onto them is what keeps us alive, keeps us honest. There's nothing to look forward to except one day thinking back on these, the last days of our lives in a rotting landscape, poisoned from the inside, looking back on these days and thinking about how good we had it, back before whatever new plague sweeps in.

Loss is the greatest form of possession. You will never love anything as dearly as you do once you miss it. It's that bitter pain that fuels the cast of the City. The sun goes down behind a painted charcoal sky and nothing that happened that day mattered to anyone except those who took part in it. The sun rises on another crime scene, another taped-off balcony and the rays catch crimson and shine against sheets with distinct shapes under them.

None of it matters unless you were there. Life goes on. Sometimes it doesn't. But the City burns inside and some of the greatest stalwarts to ever carry a badge trudge on, usually alone. The worst scum to walk foot on the sidewalk saunters, dressed in finery and protected by a veil that is all talk. The greatest battles of good and evil, the most intense of rivalries play out in bittersweet harmonies ending in bloodshed. The greatest stories with the greatest casts ever told or recited, the boldest of plans and the most incredible schemes. They happen in a City with no future and no meaningful past, they happen when there's nothing left to lose or gain. There's a desperation in those sorts of places, to succeed, to survive, to win. To move on.

It sounds grim, I admit. It isn't, though. It's therapy. It's practice. It is made up, a glimpse into worlds that I don't live in, that I will never live in. I can peek into those worlds and write those things and plan those schemes and pull those triggers because that isn't my day to day. My day to day is much brighter, much happier. There's no need to write Shiny because, as a narrator and speaking to the people in my day-to-day, you all know the story. The Guy gets the Girl. Bad Guys get Comeuppance. They live happily ever after.

...This one doesn't have the same feel as the blog that got devoured. I can live with that. I'm not sure what this is, but I don't mind it. Not everything is propaganda.