[DEFEAT. is a   coming-of-death novella. every week a new episode pops up, accompanied by full art by Brian Galiano. for fans of science fiction, fantasy, video games, comics, war epics, and feats of triumph]

Bursting into tears, the girl ran into her father’s open arms. She was seven years old and learning about the unfortunate end of life. Death. She was learning what it felt like to watch a loved one succumb, to fall victim to the force by which we are all eventually swept away.

He wasn’t her brother. But he sure felt like it, having been there for the duration of her entire short existence. From the very first day Betty brought her home from the hospital, the seven-year-old had been loved and protected by this surrogate-sibling. And now she had to watch as he withered away into nothing.

Nothing living, anyway.

“Daddy, why is this happening? It isn’t fair! I don’t want him to die!”

Stoically taking a rip from his pipe, the father looked at his only child. He was challenged in a way that was new and unnerving. Which was saying something, given the scope of his life experience.

He had survived war. He had moved to America with nothing and made something of himself. He had mastered the arena of political science, becoming the department head of a prestigious university.

And he had done all of this with self-assurance, an unwavering belief that the path he had chosen was the right one.

But now he wasn’t exactly sure what to do. He gently parted his lips, allowing for a light puff of tobacco smoke to billow upwards. The father savored the taste of the smoke and anticipated the rush from the nicotine. This was his ritual when preparing to do some heavy-duty–

“Daddy,” the daughter interrupted, “isn’t there anything we can do?!”

“I’m still doing zee heavy-duty thinking.” He hadn’t completely shaken his accent. Years later, when his daughter realized he had an accent, she’d find it endearing. But right now, she just wanted a solution to what had been described to her as an insolvable problem.

She had heard the word from all of them. Her mother. Her father. The doctor. They all had different ways of explaining what it meant. The maternal optimism that everything would be fine, despite what the word suggested. The paternal idea of confronting the inevitability of the word, becoming stronger in the process. The scientific defining of the word, plagiarized from a textbook. Yet, nothing curbed the inherent terror of the utterance.

Cancer.

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[DEFEAT. is Rendar Frankenstein’s truest attempt at fiction.   Presented in weekly episodes, the novella tells the tale of Daryl Millar – a hero who dies at the intersection of pop culture, science-fiction, war epic, and fantasy]

The man in the black suit had sex on his mind and murder on his lips. He strolled about the bar casually, basking in the waves of smoke and perfume and unadulterated passion. Ah, this feels so damn good he mused, soaking up the human emotions of which he was usually devoid.

Of which he was usually incapable.

But a year had come and gone, and the man in the black suit was again granted his one day. Twenty-four hours in which he would not only be able to feel again, but to feel in a way that no human could fathom. Sensation amplification, if you will. Food and wine tingling on the tongue in such a manner as to border on erotic ecstasy. Every neon bulb in the bar shining brighter than it had been ever been designed to. The chatter and laughter and soft whisperings behind ears, every single syllable being heard with a stereo clarity that wouldn’t be mastered for decades. Aromas, even sweat and tears, hitting his nose with a candy shop sweetness.

And touching another human being – well, that’s what the man in the black suit spent the year looking forward to the most.

Even incidental contact, brushing by others as he made his way through the lounge, was enough to make him close his eyes and breathe heavily. This pushed the man in the black suit toward his emotional precipice, threatening to derail his plans if he wasn’t careful. “Oh my,” he exhaled, “I had better get to it.” He was acting with resolve. Dark, deadly resolve.

Moving towards the back of the bar, the man in the black suit scouted the scene. He was one of only a few men at the club that wasn’t a soldier. And soldiers always wooed the girls away. A symptom of the times he figured. But for every member of the armed forces present, there were at least three civilian women. So there were plenty of choices, and besides, trying to filch away a woman from one of these soldiers would’ve been bad news.

Not that the man in the black suit couldn’t kill the lot of `em. But he didn’t want the mess. Not on his one special day of the year, anyway.

A stroke of luck! He spied a dainty, raven-haired beauty sitting by herself at a table, milking a cigarette for all its worth. Her impeccable smile, her slender frame, her gossamer throat, it was all so sexually invigorating. Even her pale complexion — she wasn’t a Geisha, but her milky face wasn’t too far off — it screamed for attention in the midst of a society that generally asked all members to keep their eyes glued to the floor.

And feeling the bloodlust rising within, the man in the black suit couldn’t help but imagine how good it would feel to absolutely destroy the girl. To pillage her. Mind. Body. Soul. Consentual sex wouldn’t suffice, not on this day of hyperbolic sensation. No, he would forcefully enter her, deposit his rotten, lifeless seed, and then murder her. Approaching his prey, he conjured images of wrapping his hands around her throat and squeezing, squeezing, squeezing existence away.

“Hello. How are you this evening?”

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[DEFEAT. is Rendar Frankenstein’s truest attempt at fiction.   Presented in weekly episodes, the novella tells the tale of Daryl Millar – a hero who dies at the intersection of pop culture, science-fiction, war epic, and fantasy]

Born into a family of mysterious vagrants, Rimina Jacoby spent her first years in Bavaria. Shortly thereafter, the Jacoby family was ousted by local villagers who grew suspicious of their idiosyncrasies. The family headed for Portugal, along with the remaining Bendjiems, whose widower of a father had been murdered. And, if the rumors were true, raped. The suspect – the brother of local woman Father Bendjiem had begun courting.

In a villa outside of Faro, both the families Jacoby and Bendjiem were absorbed into a small but accommodating gypsy population. As a toddler, Rimina learned how to persuade marketplace fools to spend too much money on flowers. They were stolen from a cemetery only a quarter-mile away. Her dirty hands and shoeless feet evoked pity while her rosy cheeks evoked the wallets.

She was the perfect resource for a society struggling for subsistence.

That was, of course, until the dog bit her left eye out. On Rimina’s seventh birthday she made the mistake of trying to sell stolen flowers to Pedro Jordão. Not only was Jordão the drunkest resident of the villa but he was also in a state of sorrow. Grieving for his recently deceased wife. So when the dirty gypsy girl with the delightful smile tried to sell him the same basket of flowers he had left for his wife that very morning, he lost his fucking mind.

With the command to SIC! this insanity was transferred from Pedro to his enormous Cujo of a mutt.

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