Volume III April 2024
Hello, and welcome to the April 2024 edition of tight beam, the newsletter for the Descendant Saga book series. This third issue of the newsletter is going to be an interesting one. It will be both shorter and longer than usual.
As I mentioned in the previous issue of tight beam, I have set up a deal with a freelance editor, and given her a significant sum of money to do the final line edit on the book. The book in question being a second edition of the first book in the series for The Descendant Saga, re-titled as “Altar of Scales”. This will take about six weeks. I will be getting the manuscript back at the then of April. When I get the manuscript back, and we finalize the edits, I’ll start recording the audio book, and once that is done, I can format the text for E-book and paperback versions and we’ll go live with the book summer of 2024. To be honest, I don’t know if that means June, or July, or August, or maybe even September, but it will be this year. It’ll be ready as soon as I am humanly able. I may try to get some hard cover versions printed through another source, and make direct sales with those, but if I do, that will be a limited run.
I have a drawing tablet, and have been working on updating software on my computer to get it working again. It has been neglected and collecting dust for too long. I plan to make some stickers, and some simple emblems to go on the books’ spines. These stickers and other merch will be available through the partnered Etsy shop Nerd Smith Consolidated.
I got feedback from my most valuable of beta readers, and have started working on the second draft of the fantasy book. Working title Loch of Glass. But it hasn’t been jiving quite right, so progress has been slow on that front. Work on my handwritten sci-fi horror book “The Feasting” also continues, but slowly and grueling as it simmers on the back burner. It might be slow progress, but it is fairly steady at least. Maybe that will be the book I finish this year. Who knows, we’ll see what happens after the release of “Altar of Scales”.
Anyway, that’s the update, that’s all I’ve got, short and sweet since for the large part, my hands are tied while waiting for the freelance editor. Thanks for looking in on this edition of tight beam. However, I know that’s really sort, so for your viewing pleasure, I have prepared an old short story I wrote in the 2017 time frame and then updated to fit the world events when I submitted it to a short story competition in 2021. It’s about 2,300 words. I have cleaned it up a little, but the rest of this post will be this free short story.
Incase you missed it the previous posts, here’s the link to joining the Drop Pod, out new community Discord Server: https://discord.gg/NVuhgHUE9N
The Raptors Steve
Times were rough, it was rough for everyone. People were losing their jobs left and right and being cooped up in their homes, going stir crazy. Or at least I was. I had to get out of the house. I had never worked retail before, but after being laid off from my previous job, and in light of the local grocer’s growing need for employees who were willing to deal with the shambling masses of the public come to haggle over the maximum volume of bathroom tissue that was permissible for them to purchase. I figured I would take up such a potentially risky job offering just to get out of the house. I applied, interviewed and three days later, they offered me a job in the meat department of a supermarket within walking distance of my aging brick house.
My car, even though it was only a handful of years old, had no functional air condition system. That had failed the year before, and now summer was in full swing again and I couldn’t afford to fix it. Not since I got laid off from my previous job. Can you tell I’m still salty about that? Salty because I still have to drive in the sweaty heat. The heat was enough to convince me not to undergo the ordeal of driving in the sweltering car. The amount of time it would take to walk to the grocer was not worth the shorter amount of time in the substantially hotter car cabin.
So, twelve minutes and half a gallon of bodily fluids later, when I arrived at the store, despite my reservations of working with the public during the current global crisis, I was looking forward to the cool, dark tranquility promised by the meat locker buried in the back of the store somewhere. I greeted the floor manager, clocked in after dumping my backpack in the break room, took my new apron. Or at least it was new to me, it had already been stained with blood and reeked of meat. Gingerly, I made my way with it through the aisle back to the cold locker.
I was halfway there when the floor manager caught up with me again. He was a little breathless and had to stop and push his glasses back up onto his nose before he spoke. The brown leather belt on his black slacks struggling to keep his pants up around his girth, and his thin white shirt did little to help him as his mass was now perspiring lightly.
“Your shift supervisor,” Pant “just called out” Pant “He won’t be in, so we got a hold of Steve. He’s one of the guys from the night crew, but he’s going to stay and show you the ropes.”
I thought the manager was done. I turned to leave, my optimism for the rest of the day already a little crestfallen. Another more insistent pant from the manager stopped me in the middle of my turn and grudgingly drug me back around. His blue paper face mask puffed outwards as he panted again, the breath fogging the bottom rim of his spectacles. “Steve’s a little odd, so don’t take it personally, but he really knows his meat.”
Now the manager turned and trundled away. I turned again and finished my journey back to the meat locker. My optimism had now dropped like a newborn giraffe and squirmed helplessly. Cold, messy, covered in dirt, and very confused. My resolve kept me from hesitating despite the lack of optimism. It was literally my first day. How bad could it be? Besides, my momma didn’t raise no quitter.
At last, I stood before the big shiny metal door of the walk-in meat chiller. I stifled a yawn, tightened my butcher’s apron, and pushed my way inside. The first thing that struck me as odd was that the lights were off. As the metal doors swung shut behind me, the only light came filtered in through their circular windows. The chill of the room caused what little moisture there was to condense, making a layer of fog hang semi-permanently in a layer a foot above the floor. It swirled, stirred by the swinging doors.
He said Steve normally worked nights. I had worked nights for eight months in my previous job and understood very well how some people who spent a long time on the night shift got to be a little odd. Maybe Steve was one of those guys. Still, the gloom, gently wafting mist and the chill that made me shiver as I was still glistening with the sweat from my walk in the sun to the supermarket all worked together to make the mood un-nerving. I stood silent, waiting long enough to decide Steve wasn’t there.
I figured maybe he was pulling a double and had gone off to get an extra cup of coffee or something. I had done the double shift thing before, too. It was rough. I didn’t blame this Steve person. Gotta take that overtime when you can, am I right? Gotta make that money.
I shifted my weight, planning to make a turn to my left and follow the wall in search of the light switches. But something stopped me before I actually moved. I couldn’t pin down what it was for sure, but the yawning depths of the meat locker gave me pause. I hovered a moment more, unsure, and took a single step before stopping again. There was definitely something going on back there among the racks of white paper packages that loomed in the darkness.
My curiosity got the better of me, and I carefully tread on the tile floor. It was slippery with a frosting of water built up from the constant chill. I crossed the open middle of the storage room and looked down the right-hand aisle of the two rows of metal rack shelves. Somewhere in the gloom, I saw something moving. My eyes strained, trying harder to see in the black. Cautiously, I made my way down the row. My tired old steel toes and their worn soles working hard to keep me from slipping on the cold tile.
Half a dozen paces later and I was able to make out the massive broad shoulders of a very tall man in a dark trench coat. This must be Steve. I relaxed. I realized I hadn’t taken a breath since that first hiss of cold, dank air entered my lungs when I came through the door.
Steve stiffened, in the way a person freezes when caught doing something they shouldn’t be doing. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, resumed whatever it was he was doing in earnest. Like a dog, caught eating from the trash and was wolfing down the last desperate mouthfuls before you could get across the kitchen to stop the delinquent pet.
I meant that both figuratively and literally, yes, mouthfuls. There was huffing and heavy breathing and the odd squishy sound of meat and chomping aggressive chewing laden with thick saliva. Steve was eating raw meat with gusto and passionate abandon. Steve was wearing a broad-brimmed leather hat, spread nearly as wide as his large lumpy shoulders. For a shocking moment, I watched the edge of the hat’s brim shake back and forth as Steve’s head moved and jaw worked at two pounds of raw, ground beef.
My footing suddenly less unsteady, I came up behind Steve quickly and reached up to slap a hand down on his should. Intending it to be both a friendly and commanding gesture. The manager wasn’t kidding, Steve being a little weird. Eating raw meat like that was just inhuman. I had several stern questions to ask, even as the new guy, I knew without a doubt, he should not be eating raw packaged meat. I never got to ask those questions. My words died in my throat, my mouth agape.
The trench coat fell away as my hand made contact. Slipping from his shoulders as if Steve had shrugged out of the dark garment like a bathrobe. As it fell away, I wasn’t sure if it was brown because it was a leather trench coat or brown with dried blood. That’s when I really got a shock.
I found myself not looking at a man, but at a large yellow eye, equal in height to mine. The long narrow head, the lower jaw still dripping with meaty giblets of ground beef turned sharply, a short quick, birdlike movement. Casting off the broad-brimmed hat aside with the motion. A thick semi-opaque eyelid audibly snapped shut over the eye like a camera shutter. I stood in utter confusion, as if my feet were set with the same grout as the meat locker tiles. I blinked too, and with a quick glance, looked up and down to find three short, long-tailed bipedal creatures standing atop each other’s shoulders. All three of them had long three-fingered hands clutching a foam tray of raw meat, partially devoured. Their clawed feet, each dexterously held onto the shoulders of the one below it and were all adorned with a massive sickle-like claw longer than my fingers. Steve was three Velociraptors. In a trench coat.
Short bristled plumage along the back of the long narrow head and down the neck abruptly stood up, spreading their odd mix of green and yellow hues into the cold air, still heavy with gloom and now icy with dread. Without the trench coat or the hat, only the mostly white butcher apron hung from around the neck of the topmost raptor and draped sideways along the necks of the other two as their heads poked out past it. Their toothy jaws dangerously close to my knees. All three of them turned to face me. My mind started talking to my body again, and everything seemed to happen all at once. I screamed. Not a particularly manly noise, I will admit. “AAAAaaaahhhhk”
To which the raptors Steve replied with an exclamation of their own. A strange high-pitched noise the human larynx can’t replicate. It sounded something like the squeak of a parrot if that parrot was also a puppy whose tail you had just trod upon. With that, the raptors Steve split apart. With equal parts confusion and terror. I tried to move backward, to put distance between myself and the beasts. Instead, the worn soles of my work boots chose that moment to slip on the cold wet tile floor of the meat locker. I fell backwards, crashing into the metal racks stacked with various cuts of pork. The shelving unit fell flat into the open aisle on its other side and I went all the way over with it, finding my rump sinking between two shelves onto the rump of a pig and I slammed back into the still-standing shelves on the other side. The rattling knocked loose the several packages from above and a half dozen T bone stakes fell from the shelf above and rained down like so many blows on me.
I was sure the teeth and claws were coming and I would be the next meaty meal, and for a moment, I regretted some of the less healthy meal choices I had made since my recent house arrest. The slashing and gnawing never came. As I came to a rest among a pile of chilled meats, the three dinosaurs, because yes, that’s what they were. Dinosaurs, the three of them, had unstacked themselves and were scrabbling on clawed feet to gain traction on the icy floor. Collectively they shot off, each no larger than a long-tailed albeit brightly colored German shepherd. They slammed into and pushed their way through the swinging metal doors I had come through just a minute or two before and disappeared into the endless rows of the supermarket. One of them still trailing the apron drooped over its neck as they went. More high-pitched squawks drifted through the doors after them.
I slowly detached myself from the shelves and struggled to my feet, completely stunned, both from the fall and the encounter. Tentatively, I picked up the trench coat. The plastic name tag read “phteven”. Still, with much confusion, I slowly exited the meat locker myself. Forgetting I was still holding the trench coat, I just stood there dumbly. The store manager strode past on his seemingly ever-important business.
He stopped and looked me over, looked over the large trench coat I held, as my eyes looked off into the middle distance. I heard him mutter under his breath “oh no.” before he turned and spoke loudly, his voice slightly muffled by his face mask “Steve! WAIT!” With that, he made off as fast as a man of his size could controllably manage. Some high-pitched scream sounded off in the depths of the store. A woman’s hair curling scream. I stood there, shocked into stillness, trench coat still in hand.
Off to my right, the raptor with the apron still around its neck emerged from the end of the cereal aisle, spotted me, and as its plumage bristled before it turned sharply and trotted back up the isle its claws making audible “Clack, Clack” noises as it went.
That is how I met the Raptors Steve.
If you have read this far, please leave a short comment, and tell me what you think of this fun little story.
The Descendant Saga 