Tidbit Tuesday: November PAD Chapbook Challenge 2019: Day 13: A Fetch Story Poem: The Ballad of Gerry Clifford: One So Small

Targeted version 7

Pixlr manipulation by The Real Cie

how can one so small

make a difference at all?

I fear all is lost

Gerry Clifford

Notes:

Fair warning that the explanation for the tidbit is longer than the tidbit. If you are the sort of nerd who enjoys reading about creative processes and what was going on in the author's fucked-up brain, you may enjoy this. If you prefer it when authors shut up and just tell the story, you'll probably want to give this mess a miss.

It may seem a massive--nay, an outlandish and well-nigh unforgivable exercise in utter laziness for me to repackage this poem which I published just yesterday and publish it again for Tidbit Tuesday. However, I have my reasons beyond laziness for duplicating and re-routing this little gem. You see, my muse has returned and I am inspired! The many wild, free-roaming chapters of Fetch are finally being corralled and structured into novelettes or novellas. I don't rightly know which yet. That will be determined when the manuscript is complete.

Each novelette or novella begins with a poem, and this is the poem that kicks off Book One. The artwork, which may or may not end up serving as the cover for the book, was created by Yours Truly using Pixlr. No credit is due to Photoshop, which I used to use exclusively, but Adobe is scummy and is making it so people like me, who have older versions of Photoshop, are not able to access those versions because they want to strong-arm everyone into paying monthly blood money for Creative Cloud. As our hero, Gerry Clifford would say, "fuck that shit." Although it would sound more like "fook that shite."

The November PAD Chapbook Challenge prompt for the day requested a Persona poem, and I was stuck. Then I thought of Team Netherworld's beloved protagonist, Gerry Clifford, and decided to let him take over and write a poem that sums up his personality and motivation in just a few words.

Fetch is an Irish term for an apparition of a person who is still living. Gerry's body is alive, but his brain is severely compromised, and so his spirit is starting to make more frequent astral excursions.

Fetch is the flagship story in Team Netherworld's Yadira Chronicles, and Gerry Clifford is its male protagonist. When Gerry's cognitive abilities became too deteriorated for him to remain at home, his wife, Anne, had him placed in London's Candlelight Ridge Care Center for Memory Loss. On his first day in the center, Gerry encountered Yadira Root, who presented herself as a kindly older woman volunteering her heartfelt help but who was, in fact, a daughter and high priestess of Nyarlathotep.

To Gerry's horror, he discovered that the residents of Candlelight Ridge were being targeted by a malevolent hive entity which appears as flashes of brilliant multicolored light. It quickly became apparent that the entity had a particular interest in Gerry and was biding its time for reasons he couldn't understand. 

Upon fleeing the entity, Gerry found himself in the presence of Pepper Baiij, a troubled caregiver working with memory-impaired patients in an assisted living facility thousands of miles from England in Ransom, Kansas. Pepper had strong psychic abilities. She had been devastated to hear of Gerry Clifford’s diagnosis. His band, Mainline, was a longstanding favorite act of hers.

We have enough Fetchy material for several books. We doubt anyone else is excited as we are, or, in fact, gives one single fuck. We don't care, we give a fuck and are going to unleash our words on the world regardless.

Nyarlathotep is the creation of H.P. Lovecraft. Everything else in this post can be blamed on Team Netherworld.

Five Line Fetchy Fragment: Hunger

Image copyright Skeeze

I'm so hungry for something I haven't a recipe for

I want to believe in magic

I want to believe in dreams

I want gentle ghosts to haunt my graveyard

And my house and my carousel

Cie for Gem

Ondina for Serab

Pepper for Gerry

Prompt Used:

You can stop right there and just read the poem, or you can continue on and read the long and rambling notes.

Notes:

This story poem was created for Team Netherworld's longest-running WIP, Fetch, which is a Lovecraftian paranormal romance.

Fetch's protagonist is Gerry Clifford, a Scottish musician raised in London's seedy Crouch End borough from the time he was twelve years old. (As inspired by Stephen King's Lovecraftian short story, Crouch End, which can be found in the 1980 anthology, New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos.) As Gerry's cognitive and physical abilities deteriorate, he is placed in London's Candlelight Ridge Care Home. Gerry's spirit begins to go AWOL from a body which no longer works properly, and he discovers that the unfortunate residents at Candlelight Ridge are not simply succumbing to the ravages of age and infirmity, their souls are being harvested by Yadira Root, an ancient high priestess of the notorious Cthulhu Cult and the daughter of Nyarlathotep himself. Pursued by a hostile hive entity, Gerry turns to troubled American medium Pepper Baiij for help.
Many millennia previously in another star system and possibly another dimension, Gerry was a thief named Serab. Serab was a member of a race persecuted by West Zecor's tyrannical King Qweh, who captured the hapless thief one day and presented him to his sister Princess Ondina, an empath whose primary function was attempting to ameliorate the destruction and chaos caused by Qweh.
Qweh hoped for Ondina to be irritated when he gave her the tiny, elfin Serab as a replacement for her slain bodyguard, but Ondina did not react as Qweh hoped. She treated Serab respectfully. There was an immediate attraction between Ondina and Serab, although Ondina was statuesque, stately, and a member of the ruling class while Serab was small, rough, and a member of an oppressed race.
When Serab was brutally murdered by Qweh at the end of the doomed planet Zecor's existence, Ondina sent his soul to "the realm of the yellow sun" with the admonition that the pair must never meet again. Ondina hoped to protect her beloved from Qweh's threat that he would destroy Serab in any lifetime where he and Ondina reunited.
Serab eventually reincarnated as Gerry Clifford while Ondina reincarnated as Pepper Baiij. The star-crossed lovers were finally reunited when Gerry's spirit or Fetch began leaving his body in search of help.
It's doubtful that Fetch will ever be published in any kind of cohesive form. It remains Team Netherworld's favorite WIP.

Disclosure: If you purchase the book through this link, I earn a small commission.

OctPoWriMo 2018: Day 29: Three of Swords

At the Beginning of the End Version 6

Photoshop Manipulation by The Real Cie

In unity were we well met

But that was before

My soul was crushed by the duality

Of everything and nothingness

When my soul was still filled with belief

In things spiritual and mystical

Now nothing is left but pain and sadness

Within this empty human life

You were perfection

I was lucky to find you

In a life full of suffering

You were a gift of great auspiciousness

I was destroyed when I lost you

And now all I have

Is loneliness

And nothingness

Eternally

Ondina Rvaga

Regent, Lost Zecor

Notes for Nerds: 

This is one of the story poems for Team Netherworld's WIP, Fetch.

The story, at its core, is Cthulhu Mythos fan fiction combined with elements from an original Star Trek episode (The Lights of Zetar) which gave me nightmares from the time I first saw it at the age of ten years old. 

Ondina Rvaga is a reluctant princess of Western Zecor on the planet Zetar 6. She spends her time working in a laboratory, using her empathic gifts to heal the victims of her violent and sadistic brother King Qweh if she can, compassionately dispatching them to the realm of spirit if she cannot. 

The people of West Zecor love the Princess Ondina and know her to be kind, but they also realize that she does not have much power to help them. Her brother is extremely powerful and controls the armies of West Zecor. Brutal soldiers happily do his bidding. 

Ondina is miserable in her existence. She does not expect to find love. She had been expected to marry her twenty-four-year-old half-brother, Prince Qweh, when she was twelve years old. She was resigned to her fate, believing herself blessed until she discovered Qweh's true, brutal nature. At that point, she used her healing gifts in reverse and destroyed her reproductive organs so she could never conceive an heir for the corrupt regime. 

Qweh knew that Ondina loved her people and couldn't bear to see them in pain. Over the years, he reveled in watching her suffer as she attempted to heal those devastated by the brutal attacks of his armies.

After Qweh groped her during a scouting mission, Ondina attempted to commit suicide by jumping from a precipice. She was encouraged by the spirit of Serab's twin brother Joub to repair her injuries. He promised her that someone who would bring the love that she could never have imagined was about to enter her life.

Days later, Serab was apprehended by King Qweh's lackeys and brought to Ondina as a joke. The king laughingly postulated that the tiny Serab, who stood approximately five feet three inches tall, replace Ondina's previous bodyguard, who had been slain by Qweh in a fit of rage. Ondina, however, did not see the suggestion as a joke. She claimed Serab as her bodyguard and assistant and treated him with a compassion which he had not thought possible from a member of West Zecor's wicked royal family.

Serab and Ondina were smitten with each other from the start but initially attempted to keep their feelings in check.

When the ill-advised sorcery of King Qweh under the direction of Yadira, High Priestess of Nyarlathotep, caused the demon sultan Azathoth to trigger the small sun in Zetar's binary star system to begin consuming the large sun, the majority of Zecor's residents fled to other worlds. Ondina, Serab, and Ondina's longtime friend and caretaker Xegran along with Qweh and his most devoted lackeys were still on the planet when the gamma rays rendered their spaceships useless. 

Ondina had planned all along to take herself, Serab, and Xegran through a gate to "the realm of the Yellow Sun," a peaceful, primitive world many light years away. Qweh demanded that Ondina bring himself and his toadies along as well. When she refused, he beheaded Xegran and brutalized Ondina. Serab was slain when he stepped in to defend his beloved. In spite of his protests, Ondina dispatched his spirit and that of Xegran to the Realm of the Yellow Sun.

Although Qweh and his lackeys were unable to invade the new world, they were not doomed to an inevitable death. Utilizing scientific and mystical abilities taught to him by the powerful High Priestess Yadira, Qweh caused the astral bodies of himself and his companions to form a community of pure energy; for all intents and purposes, a giant, malevolent brain. The hive entity sped away from the doomed world, leaving Ondina to her fate.

The traumatized Ondina believed herself to be at fault for the death of her old friend and her beloved. She tenderly lay each of their bodies in state beside her and spent the next six hours dying with only her regrets for company. She resolved to stay well away from Serab forever so that Qweh would not punish her by harming him in future lifetimes.

The heartbroken Serab never forgot Ondina. In lifetime after lifetime, he attempted to find her, although he forgot the exact nature of his original purpose. 

Serab was reunited with Ondina during his most recent lifetime, although they did not encounter each other in the flesh. He was, for all intents and purposes, part of the spirit world. Although his body still lived, he was no longer able to function properly through it. Gerry was a Fetch, an Irish term essentially describing a ghost which has a body that still lives but through which it is temporarily or permanently unable to interface.
Ondina had reincarnated as Pepper Baiij, a troubled woman with strong mediumistic abilities which she tended to write off as delusion. Pepper knew who Gerry was. Along with his brother, Paul, he was a well-known musician whose work she admired.
Pepper was the only person who could help Gerry, who was being pursued by Yadira Root. This left Gerry in a precarious position. On a good day, Pepper believed strongly in her abilities and in Gerry's affection for her. On a bad day, her self-deprecation caused her to believe that she was merely insane, and/or that Gerry was yet another cad who would use her to get what he wanted and then leave her high and dry.

The story is far from finished, although it has, sadly, had to be back-burnered recently. These story-poems are, I feel, a valid form of keeping it viable.

Serab's Senryu: The Ghosts of What Was

Zetar's End Version 13

Photoshop Manipulation by The Real Cie

Sometimes I sense ghosts

From a world long dead and gone

I weep for what was

~Serab~

Cie's notes:

Serab is a past incarnation of the musician Gerry Clifford, the main male protagonist in Team Netherworld's eternal WIP, Fetch. Serab was a resident of Zetar 6 (Zecor), a world with a binary star system where the smaller sun began pulling energy off the larger sun, setting off a nova which destroyed the inner planets and rendered the sixth planet incapable of sustaining life.

Serab in spirit form viewed the nova just before being relocated to a place which his beloved Princess Ondina, a powerful sorceress, referred to as "the Realm of the Yellow Sun." 

In her grief and guilt over Serab's murder by her brutal and jealous megalomaniac brother King Qweh, Ondina believed it necessary that she and Serab should never again cross paths. Serab's longing for Ondina eventually overrode her spell, and, near the end of his lifetime as Gerry Clifford, he found her again. She had reincarnated as Pepper Baiij, a medium living with major mental illness whose life had never gone quite right.

As Gerry and Pepper became reacquainted and their love rekindled, memories of their past incarnations on Zecor were awakened, and an old and dangerous foe re-emerged in the form of Yadira Root, a powerful high priestess of Nyarlathotep, whose plans for Gerry were most unsavory.

TL:DR

We majorly deviated from the prompt given today.

Yama's Shop of Souls

 Copyright Samuel Araya

 Copyright Patrick Jennings

Yama's Shop of Souls

Yadira set up shop down in the Bayou

If you give her one week's wage then you can buy you

Access to the soul of one who's crossed

Across to the land of death and gotten lost

Sometimes people try to stop you, you know they just don't hear ya

Forget them and take your troubles to Yadira

For the Team with love from Yeris

I hope you like it!

I believe

Prompts Used:

Pic and a Word Challenge 

Six Sentence Story 

Victorious Vocabulary

Writer of the Prompts 

Notes:

Yadira Root is a character created by Team Netherworld for our WIP novel, Fetch. She is a wonderfully wicked villain. I thought she deserved her own spin-off. 

Cross-Posted to:

Dark Hearts Love Too

Fetch

Strands of Eternity

Yama's Shop of Souls 

OctPoWriMo 2016: Day 25: The Red Curtain

http://www.123rf.com/profile_dvarg

The Red Curtain

What lies behind the red curtain, Pepper dear?

Is it the lost dreams of your wasted youth?

Is it everything that you have come to fear?

Is it the ugly, unforgiving truth?

You are everything that your young self despised

Perhaps it is she who will confront you now

Perhaps you'll see your wretched life eulogized

But who would wish to remember you anyhow?

Do you think that anyone could ever love you?

Do you think that your precious ghost will want to stay?

Why would anyone stay when they don't have to?

At first chance, he'll surely run away

You'll be alone forever in the end

No one even wants to be your friend

Yadira Root

to 

Pepper Baiij

form:

Beymorlin sonnet

(Shakespearian form)

http://www.thepoetsgarret.com/sonnet/beymorlin.html

OctPoWriMo 2016: Day 13: Lament for Zecor

Copyright: fyletto / 123RF Stock Photo

Lament for Zecor

Zecor, my home world

Beautiful you were

Your pristine waters flowing

Like the hopes in my young heart

Beneath the gentle glow of the twin suns

The reign of an evil so extreme

Corrupted everything 

Hatred took its toll

The small sun began to feed off of the larger

A malevolent haze glowed constantly in your once beautiful skies

Lost forever were you, Zecor

And lost with you was I

Unfortunate Princess Ondina

I always thought that I would never find love

Then one day love came quickly

And was as quickly taken from me

I died with you, Zecor

On the day the larger sun went nova

But my heart died at the moment

That I sent my love away

Far across the galaxy

The ghosts of Zecor still roam

Damned, restless spirits, attempting to invade

Destroying the unfortunate minds of their victims

In attempt to fulfill the insane quest of a madman

Spurred on by the vain hope of pleasing

The crone who serves the malignant master

In whose veins flows blood as cold as death

The joke will be on you when you discover

You were nothing but his pawns

I was drawn many miles from Zecor

Across time and space by a need so extreme

My love could be alone no longer 

My broken heart could not resist his call

Fear not, Serab, your Ondina will never allow

You to be enslaved by the one who made the king a jester

All the riches in this world can't save you

Any more than Zecor could have been saved

The love in my heart will be your salvation

Your Ondina will not be taken from you again

 Zecor is dead

But our love remains forever

For Serab

From Ondina

Form: Epic/Narrative, Personification

OctPoWriMo 2016: Day 7: Yadira's Taste in Men

Copyright: keeweegirl / 123RF Stock Photo

Yadira's Taste in Men

A tiny morsel of a man

Not enough to make a tasty treat

For anything that likes to eat

Its victims by the pound

But it's not your body I'm after

And it surely isn't your face

Or your hair that's always out of place

I only want your mind

I need you more than you'll ever know

But I don't want to be in your arms

I care not for your questionable charms

I only want your soul

I want to take you to my lair

But I don't want to kiss or hold you tight

And when you scream into the night

It surely won't be for pleasure

You see, I have a yearning need

That only you can fulfill

Ruling the Cosmos gives me a thrill

But to succeed, I need your brain

You see, I don't care if you're handsome

I don't even care how you taste

But a mind's a terrible thing to waste

Which is why I plan to take yours

Please don't bother to struggle

It will only be in vain

You see, I must have your brain

Then the Universe will be mine

I don't care about your body

I only want your mind

Yadira Root to Gerry Clifford

Form:

Dramatic Verse

OctPoWriMo 2016: Day 5: Yadira

Copyright: maxontravel / 123RF Stock Photo

Yadira

Mind sharp like a knife

Her heart is made of black ice

 Nyarlathotep's high priestess is she

Kept alive unnaturally

Yadira holds power supreme

O'er waking life and o'er dream

Woes betide the unfortunate ones

Whose lives she makes come undone

Once you are trapped in her web

You have a great deal to dread

She's glad you can stay for a while

Your screams only make her smile

Yadira, the root of all sorrow

Will make you wish there would be no tomorrow

~Adam and Cie~

Subject:

Our story's wonderfully awful antagonist, Yadira Root

Form:

Couplet

Spellbound

Evil Sorceress by Anna Elizabeth

A Voodoo doll from the Louvre

Fetched v3 by The Real Cie

 Explanatory note follows the poem

Spellbound

(As told by Yadira Root)

Welcome to your nightmare, Poppet

Are the warbling ballads crooned into your shell-like ear

By the diminutive giant who has won your wanting heart

Worth the crushing, piercing pain

Pain visited upon you by a witch whose power

Was birthed in a furnace whose flames predate the forge of Hephaestus 

A power far older than this miserable world

A power darker than the blackest depths of eternity

The disruptive snowfall which drifted this pathetic Fetch to your door

Can never soothe the baleful burns

Which I shall bestow upon your corpulent corpse

The memory of his kiss cannot distract you from pain of such magnitude

Don Juan he may not be

But he didn't have to be

To win the pathetic likes of you

All too easily

When I am done with you

He will be my eternal slave

His mind to serve my will despite his own

He is much more than his lowly exterior would suggest

And you I will keep my prisoner for eternity

Torturing the likes of you relieves my stress

You will plead with me to make each breath your last

Your cries will only gladden the dark heart

Of Yadira the Merciless

Created by:

The Real Cie

Polly Nguyen

Rose LeMort

Notes:

The prompt from napowrimo.net was to create an index poem. Cie wasn't really feeling that. So in a burst of shameless self-promotion, we went to the very first page of the blog for Team Netherworld's WIP story, Fetch, and created this poem in the voice of our tale's main antagonist, Yadira Root.

Yadira is an ancient sorceress, born in the first century CE to the Egyptian Queen Nathicana and the powerful Spanish sorcerer Iohannes. She is a powerful devotee of Nyarlathotep, who himself taught her much of what she knows.

Yadira has targeted English musician Gerry Clifford, who is suffering from dementia, to become part of a powerful hive mind over which she will maintain control. During his astral travels, the terrified Gerry encountered American medium Pepper Baiij, who promised to keep him safe. Yadira's resentment of Pepper's interference in her plans makes Pepper a prime target for Yadira's sadistic spells.

We hope you enjoyed our very cheesy poem. If you would like to follow our progress on the actual story, visit us at the official blog for Fetch.

Poem cross-posted to:

Dark Hearts Love Too

Fetch