pt.1 Pre-emptive echoes

Belfry rose above mist overlooking drap, grey housing blocks beyond the vacant field left to it's abandoned state.
The red worn tiled factorybuilding had been empty for ages, void of bluecollars to stamp their clocks since the Great war and it's walls and structure wore a wound on her side after stray vultures of Luftwaffe bathed it with blitz.

Reeds and bitterroot swayed on the field as lone figure huddled ahead. To belfry. To home. Back from sea say the blindmen, they say they say.
Hunched figure passed through the bent wrought-iron fence, hopscotched twice, giggled and started ascent on the spiral stairs.
"Raising, raising, raising sun" muttered the climber.
He stopped.
His long coat of veal had spatters on it.
Driplets and drops, specks of deep burgundy phasing into sepia-tones of dark earthy mudbrown.
The clothes were most certainly drenched in gore.
And he was holding and long, jagged blade in his right hand. And nothing on his wrong hand.

The Mock Turtle knew it wasn't his blood as it wasn't of pearly violet color that passed his veins, circulated through his sad, baffled heart and in his twisted limbs.
Mock Turtle hoped he could remember who he had maimed, mauled or slain.
He worried a bit.
Most upsetting.
Most.
An obscenely large moth cluttered past him leaving a trail of dust marking it's erratic lines around the flickering light bulb.
Such grace and practical sense in reservedness the Mock Turtle admired.
And worried no more as he rose evermore the stairs to home.

Mock Turtle stepped to his apartment in the belfry. His mirror image waved a hello to him but he was too tired and weary to notice or respond.
He sat on his broken armchair and sighed.
The end was nigh as it had been day before, a year on the edge, a decade on doom's doorstep.
Good.

Mock Turtle set on his ache. His bones chafed on his muscles and where his skin did not droop it was too tight. The scabs had opened again.
He missed the sea.
Longed for those caressing waves. Though there was some weeds drying against his legs.
There might have been murder by the river. Maybe.
So fuzzy.

Mock Turtle heard the roof clank and creak. The Gryphon. They were friends who hated and they shared aloness.
Gryphon shrieked at the roof. A long, snotty and bloodcurling grate of noise. Mock Turtle knew the sound. The Gryphon was on a grand mood.
He had either killed something or taught crows to speak again. Nevermore, evershore, we all live in Broadmoor.

Mock Turtle envied Gryphon. The easy, suave gait it slid in from shattered window.
"ggrsshhhpf" Gryphon's eyes flashed "I see the prodigal otter has returned."
"Why yes I think I have" Mock Turtle replied as Gryphon licked his fangs clean.
" I see you have had a fine evening out, falcons or owls as your hors d'oeuvre?"
Gryphons belly shook with his hackle.
"Diet done, buffet born. Ate half a junkie and washed it down with some harlot."
"I wish we had crisps. Or fish. Or crippled fishes and apples"
"We could go to Tesco's"
This aroused happy surprise in Mock Turtle.
"Yes, we could Why wont we, like we used to?"
Gryphon remained silent
"Tell me Gryphon for I can't remember"
"Past september you disemboweled a cashier and tore a woman's head open for wearing yellow"
Mock Turtles shoulders shrank and he bowed his head.
"worry not I devoured them. She was feisty. The flames went high"

The duo went to sit on the table and started playing solitaire.
Gryphon dealt the cards, five for each, three to table and rest to the deck.
"You get to start the match as you are losing" Gryphon said
"oh my" exclaimed Mock Turtle.
He raised a card from his hand.
Gryphon stared at it.
" a Jacquette of Hearts. Haven't had those in a fortnight."
Gryphoon held up a trusty rusty pair of scissors.
They said in unison "Off with 'er head" and sheared the card in two.
"What else do you have" Gryphon inquired.
The Mock Turtle showed his hand
"Just Death"
"Beats my flush of rooks. You win. Another"

Further along river Thames in an unassuming office a man dressed in well-cut gray read files on his desk with great concern. His mouth was a straight, narrow and unforgiving below his steely gaze.
There was a questioning tap on the door.
"Enter"
It was Frances, his secretary. A small slender waif of a homosexual in glasses, who couldn't have looked meeker with added tail and a rodent's furry overcoat.
"Sir, the applicants are here"
"Show them in"

The two women came in as Frances exited and closed the door after him. They stood as there were no other furnishings in the room then the desk and the chair the gravely man was inhabiting.
"No questions. I have heard them and I answer none of them. This is on a need to know-basis. If you ask a question I will shoot you dead on the spot."
Women remained silent.
"Good. I am so weary in killing half-wits"

He pointed at the brunette on right standing in military camouflage fatigues.
"Annalice Heard, Royal marines support officially, Black ops training.Loaned to MI-6 FUBAR in Northern Ireland, re-FUBAR Helmland.
Psych evaluations state you unable for fieldwork and most unlikely to return to society"
Man turned to redhead on left.
"Janis Gander, special investigator in the MP. After hunting arsonists and serial killers you are now in special taskforce hunting organized crime.
known as 'ice queen'. No friends, no family"
"As of this moment your former lives are over and belong to me and this agency. officially I don't exist and neither does this unit.
Therefore: We can do what we want, where we want and when we want. You two are a team. My team. Once I give you permission you can leave this office and Frances will supply you with sidearms and mission briefing.
Failure isn't an option, refusal to accept the mission will cause immediate elimination."
The man paused.
"You don't need my name. Some of the others call me EG, from Early Grave.Most use SOB. You may leave"
Cautiously the females left.
Man sat in silence. Somewhere in the ether darkness beyond these walls the machine was humming, spawning apocalypse.
And he would send those two broken frail girls to it's maw. Accompanied by monsters.

The Gryphon sniffed night air. Kerosine mixed with lust, grime softly intercoursing with hope.
The screeching nasal request pulled him out of it.
"I am so tired, I must sleep but killed all the lambs. Every single lamb"
Gryphon turned to Mock Turtle.
Mock Turtle huddled on a corner, laying on crumpled pages of The Guardian.
"I lost the record" Mock Turtle weeped.
Gryphon waited. he enjoyed watching tears form. Mock Turtle's eyes swell and glistened and few moist spheres rolled down the crevices on his face.
"Please?"
Gryphon grunted and set himself sitting besides Mock Turtles misshapen form.
In one of it's throats a series of buzzing notes raised up. His tongue clicked at his beak like a drum and Gryphon's midthroat mimicked to it's best crooning ability a distinct human voice.
Gryphon sang it once, the instruments and vocals, and then twice as Mock Turtle rocked himself back and forth.
By the time he was midway to Dio's Holy Diver the third time the Mock Turtle fell sleep to his lullaby.
Gryphon kept singing it for three hours more.

A wind blew. A soft tender promise of chaos and radioactivity. It made Gryphon dream awake as Mock Turtle slumbered of tattooing zeppelins.

pre-op briefing

Open to anyone security clearance above ultraviolet:

This began as mission 3 of Comic punks blog. The subject chosen was Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Almost everyone at least knows of this book, by pseudonym Lewis Carroll who was born as Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.
The story is now in public domain but unfortunately most know only versions by Disney and Tim Burton ie. utter crap.
The truth shall set you, no, not free, but see the view askew, pretty in it's black and blue, dreadful like the sharks of noon.

What follows is my version of Alice in Wonderland as the title states Operation Jabberwocky .

For the reader: Lewis Carroll was English, anglican clergyman, mathematician and very conservative.
I am Finnish, metalworking comics creator and hippy-hating idealist.
You want sugary fairytale: not found here.

Originally this was ment be Alice in Thunderland. Apparently that is a christian coverband from USA.

For inspiration : the original work, My Sari who put the mission up and stands me, Jeff and Ann VanderMeer and Richard Morgan.
Thank you.

Buckle up.