Thursday, May 16, 2013

Only Human - Chapter 1: Needle from the hay


High up on an imposing bell tower, a dark figure hovers deep in thought while contemplating the world from atop its stone altar. Veiled by darkness, cobalt eyes slice through the shade, themselves attached to a dim silhouette crouching in the gloom.
The shadow fidgets, making graceful checkmarks in the air as the next move in a mental chess match is plotted and played. Twenty stories below, the bustle of the restless city hums and beats as people traverse a busy intersection.
Midnight nears.
As the mental stampede rumbles between both temples, the eyes flicker back and forth, at times screening the crowd though often just searching for a thought that momentarily slipped the shade’s grasp.
Mumbles and whispers seep from the shadow and occasionally spoken outbursts of apparently groundbreaking ideas appear. But they hardly last and before any sense is given to them, they melt into unintelligible clicks and hisses.
Time suddenly freezes.
The gaze no longer dances madly across the crowd and the shadow visually dissects something below. What once were dark blue orbs frost into white lightning.
Hawk-like, the gaze burns onto one point, one single crow within the murder. Its breathing picks up and transitions from a slithering four by four to an all out fugue. Its pulse mimics a child’s when coming face to face with the largest Christmas parcel.
The hawk follows its prey with military precision while two hands break free from the vice-like grip each had on the other. They slither to the shade’s center, tugging lightly on a thin gold chain that sparkles in the dark. A gold ring hangs at the end surrounding a multicolor glass that looks predominantly like amethyst. The golden trickle hangs in the darkness and the figure nervously inches the disc towards the white-blue orb on its right side.
“Please let me be right,” rasped a man’s whisper. “Let human hope shower atop the head of one of the condemned, as they would call me. Let me for once weep of jubilation instead of frustration.”
The ever-changing lens leapt suddenly from his hand pressing against his right eye socket, digging and raking itself into arctic flesh that now showed under the glow of the lens. His broken breath signaled pain as all muscles tensed in unison from suppression, but there was no screaming. This pain was not new.
After a moment, only a thin gold trickle leaks out of the once sapphire eye. A myriad of colors begin parading phosphorescently unlike anything known to man. A heavy breath heaves as the figure adjusts to the new found vision and the deep raspy voice once again breaks the sky’s silence. “Now, where is my little friend? He must still be around. He has to be.”
The multicolored eye desperately scanned the scene, backwards and forwards over the crowd until finally the eye shrieked to a dead halt. The newly polychromatic cornea fixes on a young man who entertained himself with a half eaten pretzel. His brown hair was messy and his face was clearly sullen from fatigue.
The flesh and blood gargoyle became utterly fascinated by his newfound specimen and just barely, one could hear a whisper that counted in ascending fashion. With every new number a smile gleamed in the darkness until a twisted grimace not unlike that of a mad scientist glowed in the gloom. “At last, I’ve found some hope in this barren wasteland we call the present.”
He then tugged firmly on the thin gold whisper that wept down his right cheek. A small groan escaped his mouth because of the effort. Through grit teeth, two exceptionally sharp fangs shine dimly in the moonlight. The lens finally slides free from the white flesh, dragging with it a single solitary ruby tear.
“I think I’ve found myself a date,” said the shade as it caringly tucked the disk back into his shirt.
Afterwards, the shadow casually stepped off the ledge, plummeting and laughing madly for sixty feet until the darkness of an alley below swallowed him whole. His laughter echoed long after it should have logically ceased. 

Saturday, May 11, 2013

Only Human: The Prologue




Pitiful humans… How you parade and frolic in your false grandiosity. There you go again, constantly proclaiming your dominion of the cosmos, while remaining oblivious to an existence you barely grasp. “Masters of the Universe!” you boldly declare yourselves.
Please.
At best, you are the logical primate that has for some irreverent reason proliferated and become the dominant species; some malignant termite that through sheer force in numbers has climbed echelon after echelon in the evolutionary scale, until reaching the zenith of this world’s food chain. If alive, your Darwin would be most unpleasantly surprised.
Plagues, natural disasters, epidemics, World Wars and still your societies prevail as a collective pest that not only survives, but thrives with reckless abandon, no matter what grave circumstances it may face.
If pressed for an answer, surely any of your kind would say that all this has been possible through the delightful virtue you call hope. I would counter by singling your resilience as the only true asset worthwhile of your kind. And no, resilience is not the same as hope. One is tangible while the other is almost poetic, metaphorical even. Still, no matter the adversity, as a whole you always manage to remain tick-like, refusing to be shaken off your carrier. Quite a useful quality, since you also represent the livestock of sustenance for other species.
How impressive that for however un-evolved and barbaric as you may be, you still manage to be the dominant race on this planet. Something to truly marvel at, because even hating each other and discriminating based on color, creed, race, and whatever other classification you so ingeniously concoct, the status quo of your quid pro quo ways remains. Flesh begets flesh while your souls result in nothing more than a mockery of the very gods you so doubtfully fear.
Yet now we must look to aid you in regards to the biggest problem humankind faces: itself. My kind and others in line must put aside our differences to rescue all world kind, no matter how close we have come to extinction at the hands of one another. For now, we shall forget our mutual aversions in the hope that we may all survive to kill each other some other day.
But the abomination that is humanity is the reason we unite, for it seems that in the enemy resides the solution to our common predicament. Quite interesting since like vaccines, it seems the cure is found within the disease. Let us hope that my instincts and judgment prove true instead of having failed me once again. 

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Who is J.D. Estrada?

Communications specialist, Public Relations strategist, creative copywriter, translator, brand strategist.... these are all terms used to describe J.D. Estrada in his day job setting. 

The fact is that these are all masks he has worn at some time to earn a living and he's done pretty well for himself, focusing on results rather than awards. Yet still something inside him begged for attention... the desire to write... not functionally or strategically but creatively.

After years working in advertising, J.D. decided there were better ways to write fiction. Born on August 13th, he always dreamt about being an inventor, he just didn't know he'd do it using words. Where some people choose to invent new products, he has chosen to invent worlds through words.


He has just digitally published his first book and it's called Only Human. There will be more information about the book and probably even an excerpt or two so you can get the gist of it and see if it's something you'd enjoy reading. If you'd like to see his author page on Amazon, here's the link:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00CP4834O

This blog was created to share what I write with the world, so thanks for visiting and hope you enjoy what you read. 

Peace, love and maki rolls.

J.D.