Skip to content

Category: Creative Writing

Afterlife, For Sale

Published by NiteMayr on September 29, 2025

Post-Morts
A slang term for people who sold their bodies to their national governments, found themselves sold to Corporations, used as private security, private soldiers as well as battlefield support in Skirmishes among their Corporate Owners. When it becomes too expensive to support their long-dead bodies, they are kicked out onto the street and left with a stipend and fond wishes.

“They don’t use the Z-Word anymore,” Erin observed over her pad. She arched her eyes at the Post-Mort that had walked into the room, the smell of old-deserts and dry leather announcing that a veteran had come on the scene.

The Post-Mort wore the uniform of a field medic from a Corp War so long ago, not even the Corporation that made it existed anymore. The Coat looked like new. Rivia didn’t even stare, like Erin was. She took a look, turned back and went intently back to her pad and caf.

“I’m just saying, for most of them, it’d be correct. This one is grey! It’s just the right word!” Erin wasn’t about to let this go. Alice put down her pad and looked into Erin’s face.

“Erin, you’ve got stubble.”

The two of them looked at each other over the low table between them, they were comfortable in the wide facing semi-circles of foam, sitting with their feet curled up next to them, they had held court at this corner of the cafe for weeks; Alice decided that there needed to be a change.

The Veteran ordered a Caf and a pastry and sat next to the window, looking at the people and sights outside. They didn’t pull out a pad or anything, they just savored the caf and pecked at the pastry.

Alice moved over to sit with Erin, if only to look out the window over the shoulder of the living history that was staring out into the world. Erin got up and walked over and sat herself carefully next to them, sitting quietly next to him staring into the same space.

“How old would you say I am?” a voice that came from where he was, more than his mouth.

“Looking at the symbols on your badge here, I’d say pre-Corp. Maybe 70?” Erin wasn’t even put off. “If that was your only tour, I’d put you at about 70-80?”

“It wasn’t, I’m not.” he drained his caf and turned to take in Erin.

“Wow! How much of that was deadhead?” Erin was shameless with strangers, and worse with friends. “Are you a first-gen?”

He pulled back a sleeve on his left arm and showed the blocky black QR code tattoo that all first-gen post-mortem assets got from the reanimation group. Erin traced it with her hands, without hesitation. She tapped her temple to take images of the marks, it was on her socials before she even exhaled. She ran her hands over his arm and hands, snatching it up and saying “I’d like a history lesson, you up for it?”

“I’ve got time for it.” he relaxed and followed Erin back to where Alice had moved back to her seat and he sat between them at the far edge of Erin’s couch they made three points around the table.

The Boxed Djinn.

Published by NiteMayr on December 25, 2023



Professor Albert Groom labored in obscurity; a man without a patron or an audience in an age of change and fiendish conformity. He kept to himself and dabbled as a gentleman scientist. The very image of the enthusiastic amateur with only the formal education his family paid for to guide him.

The Party at the End of the Street

Published by NiteMayr on July 3, 2023

If you were to look up the words “Party” and “Celebration” you’d find something that describes what we expected to find. It was Parade Season in New York, so we’d expected it to be Parade Season pretty much everyplace where humans were.

We were like that. Ignorant.

So, we were wandering around; shore leave on a colony so far out on the edge that they had given up on standard English centuries ago and spoke like old videos from the 20th. Good news, the 1990s Media had just reached them via Radio waves Arriving AFTER the colonists. Bad News, everyone thought being disaffected and rude was “in”

This was the blessing of Faster than Light Travel, we raced ahead of our own culture reaching out into space. So a Culture would meet humans who had spent 100s of years in space then they’d bump into the Radio waves of Human Culture as i passed through space. After a few bad meets, an enterprising scientist developed the “Leading Wave” project that sent FTL ships ahead of the “Human History Wave” to establish “good faith” for Humanity before the wave reached intelligent people out in the void.

The upshot of all this is humps like me find ourselves crewing massive diplomatic ships going in one direction from Earth OUT.

And we needed a Party.

So we stayed here on “Planet MTV” as they wanted to be called. They had been blessed with a loop of 90s American Culture and decided it was the nadir of humanity and just went with it. Imagine a 90s than ever ended like an old Star Trek where they are stuck in World War 2 forever. That kind of thing, but with beanies and weed. They could throw a party though, there was this never-ending 2 part “Woodstock” festival going on here in the “Burbs” district. Basically one part is a riot and one is like full of Non-Aggro Mud People.

The Party that never ended on the planet that never left the 90s. It was like living on old times for our crew, from before their grandmas were born! They threw a good party for us working stiffs on shore leave. In less than 4 days we’d be back on the ship , getting our genetics in line to make us “neutral” before we head out again, diplomats who clean toilets on a space ship, racing our own history into the Universe.

Party on Wayne.

Good ‘n Disturbing

Published by NiteMayr on May 24, 2023

After those geese flew North and I said “Bye” I watched two eagles meet, one flew North and West, the Other East and North and when they met they turned to circle each other: a bald eagle and their mate, two eagles turned around an axis only they could track and the two spun south-west and away over the houses and gone.

My Demons are well dressed

Published by NiteMayr on May 24, 2023

Ever since I was a very young boy, I’ve been haunted by material success.

My personal demons clutched at me from the corners of my room, in the ceiling. They tore me from my bed scrabbling for the blankets. Yanked from bed and sleep and tossed bodily into the night sky, spinning into forever before I had even seen a picture of the moon.

Or, I thought. It’s possible I had seen a space program that night and my brain made a nightmare where I was tossed into space by the shadow men that whispered from the dark corners of my ceiling.

Years later, I’d find myself in the street outside of my house, somehow curtained with velvet scarlet curtains that stretched impossibly into the night sky above. The street lights lit the curtains, these long wide, but not “curtain” wide strips of soft, red cloth, attached at intervals to the ground forming boundaries that were not walls showing sky and neighborhood around.

There was a pounding from the earth. A slamming sound, from a glowing rectangle in the dirt on the ground.

I looked into it, deep down there was a man tied to a stone table, another man swung a hammer at the writhing man and where the hammer hit, a geyser of gore would erupt like a volcano of the flesh.

The man with the hammer turned and pointed at me, a grin that said “You’ll be here soon!”

Or maybe I saw a Poster for Ozzy Osborne and made a whole scenario up in my head for a nightmare. The guys who tell me stuff in my dreams, they think that’s how it is. I still get uncomfortable when I think about it, I avoided looking at that poster for a decade.

Then one of the guys started showing up in places. He’d be this smiling, silent, mad-eyed Polish Airman. He’d show up every-time I was left alone outside of the house. He wasn’t a threat or something, he just would sorta appear, hang out like “don’t you forget, we’re always here” and then take off.

Or I dunno, I imagined this very detailed idea of a ghost that’s doing some kind of Spiritual Racket on a guy. Who knows.

The Patient Gentleman, he says that it’s never gonna stop being like this until I can pay them off for all they do for me.

Higher Res Version of the Header.

Summer Nights that never Ended

Summer Nights that never Ended

Published by NiteMayr on May 23, 2023
People attend a party in a back yard, string lights above the party and a firepit burns at the right hand side

There were nights in the Summers of my Youth that never came to an end.

They twirl endlessly in my mind, never quite reaching sunup and always just on the cusp of being long passed and forgotten.

They come and go, visitors from a past that is ever more distant, friends and faces that don’t exist or have long passed and forgotten.

We gamboled and gossiped, the night drew in close and intimate. The Stars and night a light blanket of warm nights and camaraderie that would end up passed and forgotten.

The Summer Nights, that never ended.

Hidden Geographies

Hidden Geographies

Published by NiteMayr on April 28, 2023

There’s these towns that I dream about over and over, their geography is getting to be familiar to me, to the point that when I see the places that the dreams were inspired by, I get a little confused because I thought I dreamed them.

There’s an intersection that my family passed seemingly 100s of times on family trips here and there through my life, it’s not even a major intersection, but we passed it dutifully so many times that whenever I take a long road trip in a dream, I’m sure to pass by it. It marks the boundary between the known and the unknown, the familiar and the exotic. It’s an almost literal HERE and THERE sign in a dream for me.

There are a series of small towns that I dream of with peculiar hidden geographies, side streets and alleys and shopping bazaars. These always seem to involve a street that splits in two directions, in one direction is a familiar stretch with a post office, a carpet shop, a cinema, a chip shop and a toy shop. I’ve drifted down (or rather up) this stretch so often that I can envision the walk passed easily. Inevitably the dream will lead through some side street to “the other bit” where the mystery place will be, the thing the Dream is “about” will be in this other part of the town, a part you can only approach without going there.

The People of these towns don’t exist for the most part, they aren’t even “Dream people” more like “filling” that’s not true, there are these, I don’t know, characters that end up being around town. There’s a Hotel/Hostel/BnB at the far end of town that vacillates wildly from being a 70s Drama and a Turn of the 20th Century Flop House.

There’s a Massive house at the far end of the main strip, it houses the rich old town founders family, they never live there long, they always sort of wander out, leaving a hollowed out mansion full of empty rooms with no ceilings.

There’s a strip of roads that lead out of town in three directions, 2 south, 1 north. or 1 east west and 2 south.

That’s it, it’s always the same otherwise.

Sometimes there’s a curving road that leads up to a highway of sorts, sometimes the whole affair is perched on a cliff with a modern posh hotel slam in the middle.

There’s a Shopping center that services the whole district, it never changes, it’s perpetually under siege by pop singers.

One Dirty Dog

Published by NiteMayr on April 25, 2023

Wind and dust and the smell of desert herb that comes with the only moisture of the day with the meager morning dew whipped by the winds of dawn and riven through the dry bones of the last Ghost Town in the Last Ghost State in the Whole Damned Ghost United States.

It’d been decades since the town had seen a stable visitor. There still came the odd visitor, a curious type looking for some evidence of America here in a park set up for families in a time of peace.

Every day the Cyborg Cowboy would patrol the empty streets, ferreting out animals and repairing the whole facility. It never wanted for parts or power, or even for function, there was a non-stop stream of animals into the compound. Drawn by the noise of the musical machines in the bar and the sounds of gun-fights that played over the loudspeakers.

The Cyborg was freed every night at closing time. A voice will announce: “Good Night, Buckaroos!”

And the Cyborg finds herself free of the yoke of the day, she can wander the empty streets and investigate the fences and decide whether to let the animals in again that night.

I admit, the idea of a new “Barda” focused Story is intriguing

Published by NiteMayr on April 24, 2023

For one thing, a Barda-Only Story where Barda gets her hands on the Onyx Sword from Gods and Monsters and jumping universes to meet the somewhat criminal Superman of that earth would make for a cool comic.

The Premise is fun, there was an anomaly at the Source Remnant on New Genesis. The Source Remnant has this sword hilt in it, when grabbed the MotherBox like tech in the sword activates and tells Barda a secret way into this alternate universe. It also tells her that in this alternate Scott Free is a strong and powerful warrior.

You set up that she needs “Scott Free” from Gods and Monsters Universe to donate some blood for Local Mister Miracle because his time on Apokolips robbed him of something from his diet that every child on New Genesis gets. Subsequently an organ is shutting down.

Barda has to get a sample and reading from “Bad Scott Free” to save her husband, strangely the sword “Wants to Go Home”

You CAN Tell Them What to Think!

Published by NiteMayr on April 17, 2023

“God Bless the Scottish!”

It was the first thing that Wilf heard from the wild man outside the TV Station.

“God BLESS the Scottish! Andrew Marvin! PLEASEDTAMEETCHA” He pumped Wilf’s hand as if he thought it would push Wilf into speaking like one primes a water pump.

“I’m glad to meet you, Mister Marvin. Wilf Broadericz” Wilf looked the man in the eye and gripped back with as much enthusiasm as he could muster.

“Broadericz, eh? Are you a Commie?”

“No, Sir! I’m a former GI and fought for OUR SIDE in the War!” Wilf nearly shouted. He’d been used to ribbing about his name, but his family had been in America almost as long as Texas. He bristled at any suggestion he was anything less than a Patriot.

“Hold on! Hey!” Mr. Marvin Raised his hands “I was only joshing, you wouldn’t be standing here if there was any question if you loved your Uncle Sam!”

Mr. Marvin gestured to the double doors behind him, up 3 short steps, and began to lead Wilf to the Door. “Son, you are gonna go in there, meet your future and you and I are going to be working together, I tell you what.”

The Foyer of the TV Station was a wide space with a single wide desk in the modern style with a pretty young lady sitting at it. Behind her a single giant Television (nearly 24 inches!) sat on a pedestal behind her showing what was being shown on television at the time.

She looked up as Wilf approached and held out a black rectangle towards him: “Mr. Broadericz! Here’s your pass for the building. You will be photographed and given a printed ID card in the future, hold onto that pass for the time being.”

Mister Marvin nodded to stairs that led up into the dim second floor on either side of the room, Wilf followed and they ascended into the offices of the TV Station. Mr. Marvin lead Wilf to an office at the end of the corridor, opening the door and stepping into the room and opening some blinds.

“Your office, Wilf.” He gestured around the nicely appointed room, with space to entertain and an impressive oak desk with well appointed shelves and cabinets around the room. At the corner between the two windows there was another monster TV facing into the room.

Mr. Marvin pointed to a book on the desk, “right there is your manual for working here at the Station. Read it today, take notes if you need them, it DOES NOT LEAVE this office, nor do you take home notes. You leave your life outside at the door and you leave your time in here at the door when you leave. This is the MOST important rule here at the Station and it’s why I’m telling you it before you read it again on the first page of that Manual.”

Wilf nodded solemnly “I had heard security was tight, but I had no idea it would be opsec tight.”

Mister Marvin stepped close “Look kid, we didn’t recruit you because we were impressed with your KP skills. I need say no more?”

Wilf got the picture, he was referring to his time as an intelligence asset behind enemy lines and his experience with OSI.

There was nothing more to say, Wilf sat at his desk, took in the view and then set to reading the Manual for his new Job.

End of Part One