Chris Tannhauser

@hivegod.bsky.social

380 Followers 123 Following

finger firmly on the pulse of the void author of SCREAMS LIKE MEAT 🤖🍖

“I dance up the building façade as the Waffen-SS troops piling out of the back of the truck fire wildly with their MP 40s, pocking the brick in a zigzag trail just behind me as I reach the roof and backflip behind the fountain in the center of the square—only to burst from around it with a feral scream and seize two of the Nazis by the throats, taking them off their feet and dropping to one knee to slap their heads against the ground so hard their helmets ricochet off the cobbles like flying gore gongs—following through, I scoot forward on my butt and kick the leather-trenchcoated SS officer square in the chest with both feet, sending him out of frame through a third story window; then I kip up, snatch the tarp from the back of the truck and matador it over the wire across the alleyway, giving the rest of the team momentary concealment from the advancing Tiger tank!”
Cadaver Synod, Pope Formosa and Stephen VI, 1870 painting by Jean-Paul Laurens
telephone pole / town cryer Arcata, CA
I’m at a convention for has-been superheroes or retired professional wrestlers—it’s not clear which, and could go either way, with flamboyant costumes straining against herniated paunches, and faces that have seen the hard end of too many punches, drugs, motel rooms and rented love.   For some reason I’m responsible for two small children who are currently being looked after by other con guests while I luxuriate in the swimming pool.  Suddenly, an earthquake rocks the city, buildings swaying in time with the sloshing pool water.  It’s raining glass, everything’s going haywire—a car crashes through the fence and plunges into the pool.  There’s a family of three trapped inside; I dive down and assist in getting them all back to the surface... where the mom and little girl are choking on something, and with great effort the mom pulls an entire bulldog puppy out of her mouth and throat, while the people resuscitating the little girl are pulling kitten after kitten out of hers, really reaching in there, like to the elbow, to get the last one.  They were apparently driving with their pets in their mouths, a current TikTok trend.   But now they’re all safe, hugging and crying, when the dad says, “Mrs. [unintelligible], I know you don’t know me,” it is now obvious he’s attached to a curvy orange exoskeleton, clamped to his neck, he’s dangling from it like a hanged man in a cage of spider legs, “but something must be done—they have machines that find icons!” He screams this last part, produces an assault rifle, and begins firing into the crowd.  From the reaction I guess they’re pro wrestlers after all—it’s pande-fucking-monium in every direction but toward the shooter.   I secure one of the kids I’m responsible for and try looking for the other, working to keep the sounds of automatic weapons fire and screams as far from us as possible.
free flying lessons
“Is that hair?” “No—eyes.”
Good nyborg, man.
When you find your face pressed into a god’s megaphone you do not hesitate nor stutter—speak clearly and plainly that your physical representatives on this plane, who will reveal themselves presently, are to be pleasured and fed, and all riches are to be surrendered unto them. Amen. Standing in the smoking ruins of the nearby town, houses stomped flat, people-shapes pressed like book-flowers in deep depressions, we have to ask, Where is our bounty? Our Grand Fête overflowing with nudity and wine? For all that we have done for you, this is our reward? Yes, we burned the fatally negligent clergy and freed three demons, one of whom possessed the Laughing Idol of Lar-Shann, and, bending its great metal limbs, strode for the horizon. We did all this for you at great personal peril—surviving only through cunning play, brute force, and a not inconsiderable amount of dumb luck. It’s not our fault that all who opposed us were slain; and truly, how can we be expected to honor centuries-old rituals when there were no enumerated enchiridions to guide us, and the only brain that contained any memory of it chose to envelop my blade? We are blameless and frankly insulted, reduced as we are to picking through the remains of your once vibrant and bustling town for our just reward, stooping like midden-pickers without even scented cloths for our wrinkled noses. You have failed us even as we won you the day—in this you will never be forgotten.
don't make me tap the sign