Free chapter of Tales of the Lost Toxics
Popping in and out today. The hardcovers for Tart Vol 3 are supposedly in port an hours drive south of me in Miami. So depending on Customs I could have them in days or weeks. So I need to finish my day job responsibilities as soon as possible so I can clean out my garage to make space for them!
But before I go, I wanted to offer up a free introduction to the Tales of the Lost Toxics work I’ll be publishing in the paid subscriber tier over the next few months. I set it to the lowest price point substack will allow ($5 a month) and am very happy with how the stories are coming out so far.
But I don’t want you to have to guess how this will go before you lay your money down. Without further introduction, I lead you to… oh crap… the introduction.
Tales of the Lost Toxics
INTRODUCTION
We have the unique opportunity to hear Tart Acid’s story straight from her point of view. It seems the most-distilled way to join her on her journey; unfiltered by knowledge outside of her experience.
Tart Acid is, however, not the only Toxic Fruit. In fact, if judged generationally, she would be one of the newest Toxics to join the fight. With Tart reaching the midpoint of her adventures, it seems to us a good time to explore some of her predecessors. Most of these stories, however, she does not know, and cannot tell us. So we feel it is best to explore them in a different manner.
Our journey together will introduce us to many of Tart’s predecessors. We are implored not to get too close to any characters we meet, as we are mostly meeting them on the final leg of their journeys. The hope being that those endings will help us understand where Tart has been on her journey, and possibly predict where she may possibly go.
Do not worry, Tart will remain the star of her portion of this telling, but in keeping with the style of this piece, we will be telling it ourselves. As Tart understands what it means for her, and we are interested, today, in seeing how it fits in the history of the group.
Also because she prefers to illustrate her stories and we feel these tales need to be told a different way. We hope you enjoy these stories for what they are and what they tell us.
We will dispense with one mystery before we even start. Many of the stories we experience today will, as the title suggests, chronicle the endings of the Toxic Fruit you meet. But the parts pertaining to Tart are only in the middle of her journey. So rest assured, Tart will be not perish at the end of our story. Of the other Toxic Fruit… we can not be as reassuring.
THE NEVERENDING TRAVELS OF SATSUMA CRASH
The trenchie smiled.
His line of work basically guaranteed long droughts without customers. Some demons can travel dimensions on their own. And few humans have any idea it’s an option.
But this was now four times in two months that Toxic Fruit who introduced herself as Satsuma Crash came his way. That seemed excessive to him, but that wasn’t his business. And her payment was good.
Careful readers might remember Tart Acid sending a directive to the Trenchies to keep away from facilitating the abduction of children, but everyone involved in this story is unaware of that. First of all this story starts in San Francisco instead of New York. And it occurs in 1934 instead of 1955.
We don’t yet know how Trenchies as a group feel about that directive, but it is one humble person’s opinion that they’d likely be less excited to work with a Toxic Fruit after that than this Trenchie does. Forgive this moment of contextualization; we don’t want to confuse ignorance of the issue with acceptance of it.
He’d first met Satsuma when she acted as an emissary between The Toxic Fruit and that little Devil they call Fork.
He liked working with Toxics. They seemed to have a largess of baby teeth, the currency under which all manner of dark deeds and desires can be procured. What he specifically liked about them is they didn’t welch on their agreements. His thoughts on Fork were… less enthusiastic. He was a member of the Ruling Family of Hell, so you had to do as he desired. This particular Trenchie’s felt like if Fork told you the unvarnished truth one out of ten times, you were ahead of where you should expect to be.
That job had brought her around multiple times, but as she returned from her last ride, she’d told him that business was done and that she didn’t expect to be around in the future. Yet here she was less than a week later.
The desired destination and payment were organized quickly. It seemed to him that she wanted more stops than the job she described would necessitate. But that wasn’t his business. And her payment was good.
* * *
There she is again, he thought to himself. She looked a little more haggard than she ever had, and the places she wanted to go seemed less likely to help her achieve anything, much less what she said she needed to do.
He was starting to realize that the travel was what she was here for, and not her other responsibilities. What he needed to do was set the hook while she still had some control. If she was taking more legs on this trip than necessary, he made sure rides were longer than they might specifically need to be. She seemed on the edge of losing control of this situation.
But that wasn’t his business. And her payment was good.
* * *
There was no longer any pretense to their conversations. If she had teeth she had access. And if she had access, just like any other addict, she took the ride.
He incorporated two other trenches to help him deliver the rush she needed. With three Trenchies involved, she didn’t even need to touch ground before being whipped back through time and space.
It was less work for them, and a bigger charge for her. They’d allow her to drift in a stupor between time and space for what we would comprehend of as days, and sometimes weeks before they’d bring her back.
Upon her return to the human dimension she would stumble off to find more teeth to take another ride.
As far as he knew she never returned to the Toxic Garden.
But that wasn’t his business. And her payment was good.
Huge thanks to my friend from college Shane Savanapridi for volunteering to provide some illustrations to this project. He also named Satsuma Crash, which thrills me. Coming up with a combination that roles off the tongue is not always easy.
If you enjoyed this chapter, please think about joining our Paid Subscriber tier. I am going to try to publish one chapter the second and fourth Wednesday of every month. There are a lot of things in these stories that contextualize our world a little bit. Prose allows me to be a little more forthcoming about some of the happenings that you as a reader might have to fill in for yourself. But I try not to overdo it.
Please join us. You’ll get a deeper understanding of the world Ludo and I worked to create. And you’ll be helping us pay for art to continue telling it in the form of sequential art.
I really hope you enjoyed this chapter. They aren’t all dark… but the nature of this particular project means that most of them probably are.
Kevin