1 comment on "Snake bite in bad novel"

Reading this novel and… Opening scene: Heroine gets bitten by a poisonous (venomous?) snake. Hero saves her life by sucking out the poison. She rests on the side while he completes her farm work. They both go back to their everyday lives. The romance novel begins.

So, I figure everything past the initial snake bite is a venom-induced fantasy produced by a dying brain. And what we don’t see is the guy panicking and shaking her body as her eyes are rolled back and she’s frothing at the mouth, blood bubbling out of every orifice.

SHE NEVER GOES TO A DOCTOR!

It’s bad enough he sucked the venom out with his mouth, likely killing himself too, but afterward they’re just like “Everything is good now. Back to normal life” and she doesn’t even get checked out at the commune clinic or anything.

It’s like when someone writes about someone having an allergic reaction and they’re like “Character receives epinephrine shot. Allergic reaction defeated. Back to the story” when in reality it’s a race against time to get the person to the hospital within 15 minutes after giving the shot so they can receive treatment FOR THE STILL HAPPENING ALLERGIC REACTION.

There’s so much bad biology takes out there that everyone just accepts as normal. It is 2026 and people just accept that stuff as hard fact.

I am surprised more humans don’t die everyday than currently do. Just bananas.

  • epinephrine is given to keep a person alive until they can receive medical care

  • after an allergic reaction, there is likely to be a secondary allergic reaction. Get to a hospital and stay there.

  • snake venom should not be sucked out, as the sucker will be poisoned

  • tourniquet the snake bit extremity and go to a hospital for antivenin

  • anuses are not self-lubricating

  • lactation requires pregnancy, or the introduction of hormones

  • a penis is not long enough to “breech” the cervix, and if it is long enough to mash against the cervix, it’s very painful and non-masochists do not enjoy it

  • there is not a secret opening into the sphincter that will bring amazing pleasure to the dick that reaches it

  • surprising someone with piss-, shit-, breath-, weird object insertion-, gun-, etc. -play is not fun or edgy

  • carbon is not a treatment for an open wound

  • butter, ash, oil, mayonnaise are not treatments for burns. If someone is splashed with boiling water or hot stuff, rinse with cool water for at least 15 minutes and contact medical professionals.

  • do not mix a bunch of cleaning chemicals. You don’t get a better clean; you get found passed out or dead on the floor.

  • nutritional yeast does not give you yeast infections. Nutritional yeast is cooked, so it’s dead, for one thing. For another, that’s not how yeast infections work.

  • eating rabbit meat when pregnant won’t give a baby a cleft lip

  • the sky is not blue

  • people do not see through their irises. You look through the pupil.

  • sperm DNA is not stored in other people’s bodies. If a paternity test says that’s not your kid, that’s not your kid. No, your lady did not have sex before meeting you and that man’s sperm DNA has not been stored in her body waiting to transform your baby into someone else’s offspring. Your lady cheated on you, sample reports were mixed up, babies were switched, or you are a chimera. But no, sperm DNA does not remain forever in someone else’s body like something out of a sci-fi story.

  • humans are not ready for reproduction just because they’ve begun displaying signs of puberty

  • people do not need to be kept awake if they have a concussion. Once someone has received medical care, it’s actually better for them to sleep as their body can fully focus on healing the damage.

  • worm eggs can survive 2 years in carpets. Why are you walking around barefoot in random motel rooms?

  • eggs are nutritious and not as bad for your heart as previously suggested. It was that people usually paired eggs with bacon and cooked them in bacon fat. Or they would eat a fried steak and eggs everyday. Eggs are not the overarching problem, cooking methods are.

  • fluoride prevents tooth decay. A toothpaste or mouthwash containing fluoride is an easy way to prevent cavities.

  • carnivore diet is a dangerous fad. Colorectal cancer is on the rise. Constipation, which can be caused by a lack of fiber, can contribute to colon cancer. Eat an apple. Eat some leafy greens. Don’t pack your insides with red meat and gristle.

It is a miracle the human race has lasted as long as it has. But some people out there are definitely out to shorten some lifespans with misinformation and just bad advice in general. Because that’s what the algorithm likes: misanthropy.

Allies & Enemies at Amazon
0 comments on "Moral and Ethical Queries Not Accepted"

Saw a skeet where someone made a joke about how mogwai meat is a sustainable resource and…

There are times when he has to wonder if what they’re doing is wrong. In more than just the “tormenting a sentient creature to consume its offspring” kind of way.

In a moral, soul-destroying kind of way.

But then he sees all the well-fed people. Realizes that no one is ever going to starve ever again. And he eats a mog-burger with fries and that wondering voice in his head goes silent.

The little guy is his friend. His cute little buddy. Though when he goes to visit him, the little guy will turn his face away and no longer makes sounds of greeting. Used to turn his back to him and huddle in the corner of his wire mesh cage, though now he doesn’t do that anymore. Will just lie on the pile of wood shavings that makes up his bedding.

His little buddy won’t greet him anymore. Won’t stand up and nudge against his hand and hug him. But he still sees the little guy as his friend. Still loves him the way he always has.

Even if mog-burgers are delicious, that doesn’t take away from their friendship. Their closeness. Their sense of family.

Just as he refuses to consider any questions of morals and ethics, he refuses to accept that their relationship has been changed. Broken.

Approaching the cashier, he ordered a mog-burger, a 6-piece box of chicken fried mog-nuggets, a medium french fries, and a cola. Then steps to the side to wait for his food.

Gazing at nothing. Thinking about nothing. Emptying his mind of any kind of question or concern. Waiting to eat his lunch. Planning to visit his little buddy after work.

They’re friends, after all.

All Systems Red at Amazon
0 comments on "12 Days of Xmas: 10 Cents a Minute"

Time travel was more serious than he’d thought it would be. Mostly because everything he knew about the past had come from contemporary entertainment media.

On arriving in the past, the first thing he’d noticed was that fashions were not like he’d thought they’d be from everything he’d seen on TV. And the way people talked was different too. The way people had looked at him when he’d tried to ask for directions had made his skin crawl with self-consciousness. It felt as though he were an alien visiting from a far away planet.

And when he’d used the phone at the motel… The bill had left him cringing. Because while it wasn’t a lot of money, it had taken a big chunk out of the money he had on hand. It wasn’t like he’d been able to get a hold of a lot of old fashioned money before he’d traveled back in time.

Even the size of the bills was different from modern money!

He hadn’t realized that phone calls charged per minute, and that $0.10 a minute really added up when he was trying to get complex concepts across to someone on the other side of the country while using a scratchy line that kept cutting in and out. He’d had to repeat himself so many times that he’d worried he’d lose his voice.

When he’d time traveled, he’d thought it was going to be easy.

Sure, there was no Internet or GPS and finding people or places involved using phonebooks, but he’d been confident in his ability to handle things. But once he was in the past, nothing was as easy as he’d thought it would be.

There were phone booths, but using them involved carrying around a pocketful of dimes. And when he’d stepped into his first one across the street from the bus station, he’d been surprised by how filthy it was. Putting the handset against his ear had quickly taught him to always wipe off phonebooth handsets before using them. He still cringed away from the memory of other peoples’ ear grease touching his skin.

And the cars.

Every single one released a cloud of exhaust that wreaked havoc with his asthma.

He’d been surprised on first seeing the sky during the day. There was a perpetual haze that left everything with a creepy orange hue that made him think of that old crank conspiracy about the sun being replaced.

He’d never experienced so much air pollution in his life. The air quality outside was terrible, and whenever he went into a public place the air was thick with clouds of cigarette smoke, to the point that his first visit to a diner had left him horrified by the reek and he hated the way the smell clung to his hair, skin, and clothes. He didn’t think his lungs were ever going to fully recover.

But at least he had completed his mission.

It was with a sense of relief that he returned to his own time. Where the sun was bright, the sky was clear, and he could draw in a deep breath without instantly feeling as though he were going to die from the pollution.

He cradled his smartphone against his chest and promised to never let it go.

Because while the future had its own difficulties to deal with, the past was not the utopia he’d fantasized it would be. TV and movies had lied to him. Or maybe he’d lied to himself by not learning about the little details about the past, the things they never focused on in time travel stories. The casual miseries that people back then were so used to that they didn’t even notice.

Starting at $0.10 a minute and stretching to encompass the horribly pervasive cigarette smell that was everywhere, giving the walls and the sky a yellowish tint that couldn’t be washed away no matter how hard he scrubbed his skin. He no longer fantasized about traveling back in time to make a fabulous life for himself. Instead, he was grateful he was born in the future where a loaf of bread cost more money, but where he could order anything he wanted online and have it delivered direct to his door.

Time travel was more serious than he’d thought it would be, but it had taught him to appreciate the moment he was in. Because the past was never as good as someone remembered it to be, and the future was never as bad as someone imagined it would be. It was the contemporary moments that mattered because they never lasted.

Time was always moving. And at $0.10 a minute, the bill would always add up, and would always need to be paid. So why not enjoy the moment he was in. The Now that would someday be looked back on as a Then.

=END=

~Harper Kingsley

https://paypal.me/harperkingsley.

https://patreon.com/harperkingsley.

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https://www.youtube.com/c/HarperKingsley.

https://amazon.com/shop/harperkingsley0.
https://www.harperkingsley.net/blog.
https://kimichee.com.

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An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good at Amazon
0 comments on "12 Days of Xmas: It Comes From Inside"

Ever since the stranger had come to Burrow Town, life had never been the same.

There was a strange miasma. A sour but somehow sweet odor that pervaded everything, clinging to fabric and wood, seeping into brick, clinging to skin and hair. Or perhaps being produced from the blank-eyed townspeople, a result of what was happening within them. A vile biproduct of the monsters inside them.

Sammy had not understood what was happening at first. Why her parents had suddenly changed. Not until she had seen the wriggling white worm-thing being put into her older cousin.

She and her brother had hidden amongst the trees and had watched the horrifying process of her cousin being turned into one of those things. The sound of the older girl’s screams had hurt her ears and she had clutched her brother so hard that he had bruises on his arms later.

She hadn’t understood what was happening. Had never imagined that such a horror could ever exist. But her brother was a few years older and knew more than she did. Things their parents had told him but protected her from because she was too young.

Spirit worms. Demonic entities bred and controlled by spirit masters to be used to enslave humans.

They could only be used on those that had gone through puberty. Sammy’s youth was the only thing to protect her. And as a child she was seen as harmless–helpless–by the spirit master that had taken over Burrow Town.

She was years too young, but her brother was close to the "right age." It was only a matter of time before their not-parents would take him into the woods for the spirit master to put one of those things into. And then he wouldn’t be her brother anymore.

"We have to run away," Ren said.

Sammy bit her lip but nodded. They could not let Ren be turned into one of those things. "Where will we go?" she asked.

"We have to go to Crown City. Report to the authorities," Ren said. "The Judiciary has to know what is happening here. They will stop it."

"Can they fix it?" Sammy ask. "Can they take those things out and make Mommy and Daddy themselves again?"

Ren hugged her. "I don’t know. I hope so. But I don’t know."

Sammy sniffled. "You won’t turn into one of those things, will you? Please don’t leave me. I don’t want to be all alone."

"You’re not going to be alone. I’m going to be with you. I won’t let them put one of those things in me. I promise."

"Okay." She buried her face in his shirt, breathing in the scent of normal human skin, no sickly sweet sourness coming out of him.

"Tomorrow," Ren said firmly. "We’ll leave tomorrow morning. As soon as the sun comes up."

"Yes," she said. Those things didn’t like to out in the daylight. They would be out all night doing whatever it was the spirit master had them doing in the woods, then retreat into the house during the day.

Their not-parents being outside all night was the only thing that allowed Sammy to sleep at night. There was no way she would have been able to close her eyes if they were inside with her. Sitting so frighteningly still with their unblinking eyes that saw everything.

"We’ll have to leave fast," Ren said. "You’ll have to be very brave and you’ll have to keep up. Can you do that?"

"I can," Sammy said.

"Are you sure? I can’t carry you, Sammy." He pushed her away enough that he could look directly into her eyes. His expression was serious. "If I leave you here, they’re not going to hurt you."

She shook her head and grabbed onto him tighter. "Don’t leave me here, Ren. I’m scared of them. Please take me with you. Please. I promise I can run real fast. You won’t have to carry me. Just don’t leave me here."

"Okay. Tomorrow. We’ll go tomorrow," Ren said firmly, and hugged her again.

Sammy snuggled against her still-human brother and vowed to herself that she would not slow him down. Because while those creatures preferred to stay inside during the daylight hours, that didn’t mean they couldn’t go outside if they needed to. And they were fast, going from eerie stillness to sudden motion in a way that screamed "INHUMAN!"

"Let’s get some things ready for tomorrow," Ren said. "Then we can sleep a few hours before they come back. We have to be careful. We can’t let them see what we’re doing or that man will know."

Sammy shuddered. "I’ll be careful."

"Good." He kissed her forehead. "Come on. We can hide our supplies in the space under the stairs."

Sammy followed her brother around the house, creeping through the darkness as they didn’t dare to light a candle. There wasn’t much food left, but they took what wouldn’t be missed, along with some fishing hooks and string and a flint to start a fire. It would be several days journey to reach Crown City and they didn’t know how far that man had spread his worm monsters so they couldn’t trust any people along the way.

She had been scared for so long, but now there was a bit of hope. She and her brother would get far away from here and they would bring help back.

Hopefully they could save their parents and friends. And if not, at least they could stop that man from turning everyone into monsters.

Hopefully.

=END=

~Harper Kingsley

https://paypal.me/harperkingsley.

https://patreon.com/harperkingsley.

https://ko-fi.com/harperwck.

https://www.youtube.com/c/HarperKingsley.

https://amazon.com/shop/harperkingsley0.
https://www.harperkingsley.net/blog.
https://kimichee.com.

https://harperkingsley.bsky.social.
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/HarperKingsley.