Even nothing stories need to make sense...

Working on The Beast Dines Out and I just chucked everything I did for Chapter Four. It was silly and self-indulgent, and went nowhere. I had the Beast proving to Warren...no, I'm referring to him as Dirc, from now on. It was proving how completely in control of him it was...when that's been obvious from the beginning of this story. Why would it need to prove anything?

After grumping around for half the day and making myself go out in the middle of a snowstorm to drop my last Christmas card in the mail...and get brownie mix because I really, really wanted brownies, tonight...I figured out the real issue is, if Dirc is to work with the Beast something has to be done about him being a fugitive. He's slated for execution so he'll be on the FBI's most wanted list, and considering his notoriety for being a massively prolific serial killer, his face is known by everyone.

Unless he's dead or in custody. So the Beast is going to make a clone of him and dump it back at the scene of the bus wreck. That gets found. Maybe in a coma. Maybe dead. Word gets out and around, change his hair or grow a beard, and he's safe to help set up the intergalactic truck stop.

He's being paid in gold nuggets, which he needs to explain. They're very prevalent in the universe. So I remembered Call of the Wild and how crazy it got when hundreds of thousands of men and women set out for the Yukon to hunt for gold. Meaning...start up a new gold rush and let the meat come to you.

That's a pretty callous way of approaching this story, I have to admit, and it makes me more than a little antsy. The humanist in me points out the lives and futures lost, innocent men killed and fed to aliens...but I think of the incoming administration and the direction America is hurtling down, and it's seeming more and more like I'm just referencing a form of reality in this country.

I just don't understand America, anymore, and I'm hoping this story...and more of Blood Angel...can help me sort things out. Or let off some anger and confusion. Because apparently denying healthcare to people in order to maximize profits...which often kills them...is considered business as usual while someone fighting back against it by killing the head of one of the worst perpetrators of it is terrorism.

And FWIW, I wound up making the world's worst brownies, this evening. Burned on the bottom; center not cooked. Master chef, I am not; foul mood, I am in.