I sort of disappeared from my YouTube channel and largely from this Substack and, in many ways, have been online a lot less and just not quite in the loop as much when it comes to the wider culture, internet drama, what “teh kidz” are into these days and so forth. Just out of the loop, disconnected other than my weekly TV guide and my various reviews.
Some of this is for mental health reasons. Social media especially can drag you down when you have depressive tendencies. Some of it was for physical health reasons also. Chronic lower back pain / SI joint dysfunction and the countless doctors and PTs and other specialists and tests and scans. And on top of that, ongoing esophageal issues, trips to the ER, medications. Money money money. Time time time. And energy. Plus raising teenagers, my three dogs, my 8,369 house plants (rough estimate).
I’m not even trying to complain here. I’m actually doing quite well right now, as I type this, compared to where I’ve been. I’m losing weight because I think this will help with both digestive-related and joint-related issues (not to mention I am vain and want to look good and, in more practical terms, I want to be fit and healthy so that I feel good). I’ve been very active, getting quite strong, but I’ve had trouble shedding pounds until recently. Losing weight really is just about eating fewer calories, plain and simple. Exercise is great (and literally a life-saver) but it’s hard to get lean with just exercise. So I tackle yet another of my many addictions: Food. Glorious food. My oldest and most deep-rooted addiction.
I no longer drink alcohol. I am in the process of quitting nicotine (and have been down to just one Zyn pouch a day for the last few days, which is a remarkable reduction in nicotine). I am, in other words, really trying to get healthy and for a long time I used all this effort as an excuse to not make videos, to not write Substack pieces, to not pursue creative goals like my game design work, screenplays or short fiction. But really, getting healthy is also about doing the fun stuff that makes life worth living and I really enjoy my hobbies. I love making YouTube videos and talking about movies and TV shows and the occasional stupid streamer or blogger.
In any case, here’s my “I’m back” video which has two bits. The first is an intro talking about all of this and the second is me being kind of interviewed in a very casual way about my writing career and whatnot. Mind you, I’ve been on a liquid diet for a couple weeks, on various medications, and I’m working out like…7 or 8 times a week, so I might be a little forgetful or loopy at times. Bear with me.
I also wrote this very short fantasy sword-and-sorcery story below. I have this idea of writing a very sparse, very Conan-meets-Cormac McCarthy, fantasy novel. Maybe I’ll have to name one of the characters Cormac. In any case, I’m not Cormac McCarthy, nor Robert E. Howard, but I had a little fun writing this vignette.
by erik kain
The trading post was called Tallow. It sat at the edge of the Waste where the salt begins and it had a well, and the well was why anything sat there at all. Six or so buildings the color of dirt. A dry wind. At the town’s edge an iron crow cage hung from a gibbet arm, and in the cage was a skeleton, and the skeleton was holding the bars.
Men said the Waste had been a kingdom once. Vast and indifferent and filled with splendor. If so, it had kept none of it but the dead, and the dead in that country were restless.
Styrg came up the road at dusk and could smell the water. He was tired and thirsty, and he did not notice that the skeleton was watching. He stood over the well and looked for a bucket but found none and so he took his helmet from where it hung on his pack and knelt in the dirt. The sun was low now over the distant mountains and away off there was thunder. The skeleton put its jaw to the wind and whistled. One long note.
Four more stepped out of the hovels. They did not shamble. Two carried long curved blades gone to rust at the edges. Crept forward. Two carried spears, and they whirled those overhead like batons and shimmied their hips as if to some silent music.
The others pressed forward, a dry castanet clatter across the parched ground, quick and quiet over the cracked hardpan, and the lunatic thing in the cage laughed and gibbered. Styrg loosed his blade from its sheath and stood wary.
The two came at him first with swords while the others danced and the caged one clapped a rhythm. Styrg turned the first aside with his own blade and suffered a gash and did not wait to be hit twice. He went into them swinging and iron clamored against bone and a pale dust rose up around them to hide the killing. The first came apart at the spine and dropped. The second staggered, cracked through the shoulder. Styrg dropped low into a crouch.
The thing in the cage cackled and beat its bony fingers on the bars. Shook its head side to side and then when Styrg turned to look, raised a crooked finger to where its lips once were.
Styrg grimaced. There was a hunger here. Up from the throat. All else discarded, but a chittering hunger grew round his heels.
The dead came for him, then, all at once, all heaving and rushing and staggered blows, and most of those missed.
Styrg did not. The great black blade took the cracked one through the ribs and it went down and did not move again. He raised his boot and brought it back down on the skull.
Half were dust.
A spearpoint found the meat under his ribs. It went deep. Styrg felt the iron cold of it and then the wet heat after, and he knew that another would put him in the ground, and the ground here did not keep its dead.
Styrg clutched at the wound. Red fingers sticky. A metal smell. Copper and rust. Sweat in his eyes. Salt-blind, wobbling. Spears all red and glistening. Laughter as the caged skeleton shook its cage, beat its skull against the bars.
Lightning scraped nails across the distant sand. Then thunder.
Thunder, then anger. Styrg raised his sword. The skeletons trembled.
The fury took him the way it always took him, up from the boots, and the pain went somewhere else to wait. He swung and did not care what came back at him. The last two skeletons came apart mid-lunge yellowed bones scattered across the dirt. They clattered to the earth and then lay still. He knelt beside them.
The laughing from the crow cage stopped.
Styrg turned, eyes black. A red dusk and the storm fleeing now across the desert and the sun already lost behind the far-off escarpment, and the stars coming out manifold and cold in the gathering dark. He stood and he looked at that distant skyward fire and he walked toward the gibbet slowly, black sword dragging.
No laughter in Tallow now. Just the hunger.
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