So Self Evident I'm Gonna Die

I was raised in very exciting times. Legislation was about to be passed that would, in the minds of northern men, see slavery outlawed and create a huge economical shift. Legislation that was nearly 30 years in the making, hardcoded in our constitution as a thing that could not be set in motion until an appropriate amount of time had passed. Something many people dreaded for fear of the change it would bring. Some others heralded as our moral obligation as a country founded on notions of liberty.

And then there were people like my father. The real reason changes like these come to pass. People who stood to make a fortune on these changing tides. People who were staking their very livelihoods and bending all the rules to get an upperhand.

I lived on a farm in Delaware. Or a plantation maybe? I forget which. It had slaves of course. Crux of the story. My father had a plan. He could see the writing on the wall. For as long as he can been in control of our house, he had been teaching the slaves to read in secret. He had been giving them freedoms and luxuries. Pampering them in a way other would have scoffed at if only because it cut away from our bottom line. It was money out of our pockets and time that could have been better spent elsewhere.

My father had it in his head that if he could get our slaves good and grateful to us, that they wouldn't leave when we set them free. In fact, he was so confident in this plan and took it so far because he wasn't just hoping to hold on to his free labor turned cheap labor. He was hoping that once the legislation hit, word of mouth would reach other about how well we treated our people that they would flock to him in droves.

I don't think that plan worked... but then, maybe it did? I didn't get to see the end of that year to watch the chaos he was sowing ensue. Everything would happen so fast. I guess it had been happening for a while.

The more I look back, the more I see things I was too naive to notice then. Like how suspicious it was that my mother required a priest to come pray with her everyday to help deal with an unknown illness that brought about fits of headaches and... moaning. How much more like the good Father Michael my sister looked than my Dad, same red hair and piercing green eyes.

How close my Father was to Tobby, a slave who as best I could tell was a slave in name only. A slave my Father would punish me for not listening to. Who referred to me as son. Who my Father often asked me to think of as a second Father. I can only imagine what those two were actually up to on those oh so frequent hunting trips.

It was funny growing up to see my Dad bark orders at our priest. You'd think Father Michael and Tobby had switched places at some point with the way my dad treated him.

But then, maybe these clues weren't clear. I remember my sister tried to spell it out for me. But we lived in a politer time then. It wouldn't have been proper for her to plainly state that our Dad was blackmailing the priest for fucking our mother while he fucked Tobby. I can only assume she recognized her true parentage and hated them all for it. Hated me for being so blind to it.



I remember standing on the porch with my Dad, Father Michaels, and Tobby...


"By why? They're ours. They're property. You can't just let them all go! That would be like... like letting all the cows go! They'd die. They're stupid critters. They can't take care of themsevles!" I declared. It was an argument I was having with my dad a lot then. I was only 8 but I could see he was looking to give away a huge chunk of my inheritance. The labor that made the farm work. At the time I just couldn't wrap my head around it.

I remember a sharp pain in the back of my head. I looked up to find it was Tobby behind me. He struck me again. I looked up at my father expectantly but he just looked amused. I don't know why I was surprised. It certainly hadn't been the first time he'd let Tobby strike me for voicing my disdain for his impending freedom.

I looked to Father Michaels but he just shook his head at me. "Fifth commandment child. Honor your Father," the priest commanded.  I just glared down at the floor.

"I know you can't see it now but this is for the best," Dad said.

"You're giving away what is rightfully ours!" I huffed.

"And I'll be getting back so much more in return. Slavery is gonna be abolished with or without us. When everyone goes free, they're gonna hear about how good we treat these people and they're all gonna come to me! We'll be able to triple the farm!" my Dad declared.

"Of course its also the right thing to do," said Father Michaels. "It should be enough that this is a godly deed," he insisted.

"God helps those who help themselves," my Dad smirked. "Why shouldn't I be rewarded for being such a good christian?"

The good Father gave Tobby a harsh look. I remember that confused me because he had just gotten done defending Tobby after he struck me not a moment ago. "I can think of a few reasons," he scoffed.

My Dad reached out and give the priest a good shove against the wall. "Is that so? Well I'd love to hear them but the wife's come down with another headache. So we can talk about /our/ sins later, why don't you go attend to her for hers," he said in a stern scary tone. All the force in Father Michael's demeanor deflated against the wall as he held his bible tight to his chest and slide along the wall to the door to disappear inside the house.

"O-Of course," remarked the good Father as he disappeared from view.

"Nerve of that guy," scoffed Tobby. "Man of God indeed."

He turned back to my Dad to find he was getting a stern look that just as quickly deflated him as it did the priest. Tobby looked down at me and recognized his mistake, which confused me. I couldn't grasp why Tobby was suddenly in trouble at the time but I guess my Father felt it likely he was about to let a secret slip in front of me.

"Just what makes owning slaves so bad" I asked them.

"Its un-American," my Dad plainly answered. "Tobias, we went over this in class just the other day. What is the very foundation of American society?"

Tobias smirked. This had become a running gag at the house. Whenever I complained about the families plan to free our slaves they would start reciting the Declaration of Independence to me.

Both of them spoke in a chorus at once as if it was dogma or payer. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

I just groaned. "Their pursuit of happiness is gonna take them elsewhere," I huffed.

"And when they find out how much worse it is everywhere else they'll come back and bring more with them. It's all part of the plan," my Dad smirked.

I remember throwing my hands in the air in frustration. He was just being plain unreasonable.

"Raph!" my Dad called after me.

But I didn't listen. I stormed off to my room to read. I think I had actually gone off to read my Bible of all things. I wanted to find grounds to argue with Father Michaels on whether or not having slaves was immoral. It was clear to me then that my Dad couldn't be reasoned with but if I could convince Michaels, and since he was both an adult and an authority figure around here, he could argue with my Dad and Tobby for me.

A fruitless effort to be sure, but I too blind to see that. Even if Father Michaels could be convinced, he was far to wrapped around my Dad's fingers to ever act against him.

I suppose we all were.

       Fracture out

Once Upon a Time

Long, long, ago I wasn't named Fracture. Fracture is something Duckie named me within the last 10 years. Before I was pretending to be Frank Tanner pretending to be Fracture, I was pretending to be Hans Dellard pretending to be Handler as a proud handler of the Bureaucracy trying to be the cancer that would rot the old Bureau from the inside out before Loveless had me executed in front of a class of students I was in the process of conditioning. But then that was a good call on his part because I was a fucking traitor. You see, before that I was pretending to be Travis Leer pretending to be the Traveler.

Most people probably aren't familiar with my deeds as Travis. I ran a nationwide cult of proxies. You know, until the bureaucracy became aware of me. Join or die is a hell of an ultimatum. But hey, blowing up the nerve center of my operation with me in it was definitely a mature and reasonable way to deal with competition.

I could keep going like that for hours but after Travis we lose relevance to the present. It all becomes old names and references to people and grudges no one cares or knows enough about to get any insight from were I to offhandedly mention them.

Suffice to say, I have been a lot of people over the years and more often than not who I was ends with a murder attempt or a coup of some sort that I survive without them realizing and I come back as someone else right under their nose to fuck them over. Its been a long vicious circle of wrath and retaliation that I have had the good fortune of surviving.

And you might think thats where the name for these blogs come from but uh... you'd be wrong.

See, there's no point in getting into who I was before I was Travis because you don't have context. So to give you the context you need to appreciate who I was and where I came from more than a generation or two ago we have to go to the beginning. The very, very beginning.

To back before I was an abomination of Gods, Monsters, and Men. Before my great and unfortunate rebirth, when I was just a child with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge with a goofy nickname.

Back when I was Wrath. Or as I use to spell it then, Wraph. Or as my parents would have called me Raphael Beekman, back when they were still alive in 1807.

That's right. Wrath has always referred to me. How fucking vain am I that all these blogs are named after me? I'm like Disney up in this bitch. But... probably way lamer. In my experience things are only ever cool when other people do them.

Fuck me right?

Whatever.

Wraph out!

Duckie's Lullaby

How do you start a story? An age old question that haunts many would be writers. The answer is, of course, from the beginning. And that's its own can of worms isn't it?

No such thing as a beginning. Everything that ever was and ever will be is a culmination of event's so seemingly inconsequential to one another that we can never hope to know how a thing truly began. You just have to pick a point and go.

Just think of the earliest most relevant thing and start plotting out a wide set of the important events. Then start filling in the big events with the little events. Then start filling in how each little thing came to be. And before you know it, you have a story.

When you go to publish it, you just find the most interesting block of events that fit in book size and publish that first. Then you can start publishing everything as squeals and prequel after you've got them hooked. Doesn't matter how boring or uninteresting those block of events are. People are gluttons, all they want is more.

But now I'm rambling. Suppose I'm always rambling. That's probably gonna be the bulk of this blog. What I'm trying to say is... this is a prequel and I don't know how interesting that's gonna be to read. I consider this time in my life to be more interesting by far. Everything else before I used Duckie to rob and punish the old Bureaucracy and started my own Faction with the funds... then passed it off and became a dog for yet another Faction... its all kind of blur. Maybe that's just history though. Never feels quite as happening as the present.

And while some cool and happening writers might use the foresight to whittle away past events to just show the important parts that played into things going forward to create some sort of narrative or give their work a point or meaning, I can promise you that I won't be falling into such trappings.

For better or worse, this is gonna be everything last thing I can recall. Maybe, just maybe, someone will find something useful in here. Or perhaps like the writings of my predecessor these words will drive you all crazy. Wouldn't that just be a special kind of awesome.

So how do you start my story? I can think of no better way than to repeat the way my story originally started for you all long before you had any broad sense of who I was. We're gonna start it with Duckie.

I know a piece of you is out there somewhere you sick fuck. I miss you. My arms and legs still hurt. About the only good thing you ever did is give me this kick ass handle and kill Highest Loveless.
So... This is dedicated to you. I'll sure you'll recognize it.

So much to say, so much to see.
So much in the world but not a thing to be.

This worlds so gray. Yet this fires so bright.
I chase it through the beasts but they whittle my life.

I press on and fight with all of my might.
I scream for help to find me. A hopeless plight.

When life is nothing but pain, it all feels the same.
At the end of the day, you are what you leave.

Creation requires sacrifice and my tatters of me are all I've to give.
My only solace to be, that my rage will out live me.

Yet at the end of my path, I find I'd take it all back.
Know that my only true win, was feeding the flame I died in.

This win could be yours. Just follow my course.
Let the Fire guide you.

Such terrible advice. I miss you mutt.

                   -Sincerely, 

                    The Man You Named Fracture