• Hero – Corporate Murder Industrial-Complex

    I woke up on a street bench this morning, no surprise though, my loss of memory has been more frequent these past few weeks. I can only attribute this to him, the other side of me, my constant companion and most distant enemy.

    What does he do?
    Who is he?
    Why is he changing me?
    Does he want to have control over me?

    I will not let that happen. I took the fifteen back to my hovel. It took an hour instead of the usual thirty minutes because of stupid fucking slow-ass sunday drivers.

    One thing I do remember is that I did drink myself into oblivion last night. I just blacked out.

    My loft, eaten by the sickness of decay,, swirls with drafts whisked in by the cracks in the sills. The once beautiful oak trim and wood floor are painted over with ugly drab white paint; a cheap technique used by landlords to rent their properties quickly. They have no respect for old homes. They respect only their pocketbooks.

    I did succeed in getting a hangover. I wonder if he was drunk also?

    My dehydrated body needed water, which I greedily sucked down—two cold glasses—while turning on the television. It was too late to go back to bed and I decided to watch the a.m. news.

    “…Russell and Barbara Shenick are two more victims to be added to the long list compiled by the city’s latest serial killer,” the local news correspondent typically ends her sentence, displaying a sickly form of sensationalist journalism hyped by local media.

    The camera pans back to reveal a middle-aged man, hair chopped to a fine widow’s peak, with the blonde correspondent outside the crime scene.

    “With me is Detective Shadowould of the,” She pauses.

    “Thank you for being on the show,” Melanie greets him with a smile, making a mockery of the situation.

    “You’re welcome,” he replies slyly.
    “How many victims has this one killed?”

    “As of this moment he has killed seventy-seven residents of all races, genders, creeds, and colors.”

    “So he will kill anybody,” she adds with a look of fabricated TV concern.

    “Yes,” the detective counters with a solid reply. “An equal opportunity serial killer.” The detective grins as he is obviously pleased with his response.

    “Do you have any suspects?” she asks.

    “You are following up on leads…”

    “Stupid fucking bullshit,” I say out loud as if I’m in an argument with them. They don’t even have one lead. They never do, the corporate murder industrial complex demands it!



    ©️ written ~ 2020. Jacob Pickard.2026

  • Last Song Sung

    When every song has has been sang, when all rhythm becomes one,
    when the melodies have gone flat,
    Each and every cord has been played and the strings have all been strung
    When all configurations of all music depleted
    the choir’s harmony lost
    When all the bright golden angels of our nature have rusted and dimmed
    And all and every demon bled thin
    When all the lyrics have been written and every word sang
    When all of the combinations of music
    of all the world’s, of all of the peoples,
    of all the universes, of every string, of all reality,
    of all time
    Have been strummed,                                   then all things, all of time, all of everything/everywhere, the end of all things has finally come

    ©️ Jacob Pickard.2026.

  • The Mortal Burden – Part I: Specicide Blues

    The Mortal Burden – Part I: Specicide Blues

    Read ahead or read behined follow this link to Book I:

    The Mortal Burden – Book 1


    Part I: Specicide Blues

    These things rot in my primal brain. They eat through my sanity. It was slow at first, but gradually the plot thickened and I was left with the aftertaste of insanity. I have seen the battle between Gods and monsters, and seen the revelation that the Gods are the real monsters.

    A painful march of death orchestrated by the symphonic hateful metronome of the defiled saints; fodder for those immortal beings.

    Humans are nothing on the battlefield, except for rotting corpses, a welcome mat for oblivion. Their only use is for the advent of fear, and the haste of self-loathing. My only wish is to finally die before the aftermath—a hell not from the fear factories of the gods, but from the true Titans of Ragnarok, those of which have been too blasphemous to speak of throughout history’s slow, bloody march.

    Death now can only be hastened for the few remaining, for I will bring it to them with open arms, and have them greet it with the warmth of friendship. They will slay their foes with a ferocity that no being has or will see for the rest of infinity. I wither in sadness, immortal, vacant of soul, terrified of freedom.

    A festering cloud of disease and rot batters the landscape with its omnipotent sickness, defiling the pure, pristine life-force, decaying it with its stench. The rain, or what should be rain, storms down in a sickly brown torrent upon the earth. Parasites devour the life energy of those creatures within the range of hills. A spell of sickness conjured by an arch-demon of decay.

    The vast armies of decay sow their seeds upon the earth, devouring all life for its wretched abuse.

    This is war. This is oblivion.


    Written ~ 1997. © Jacob A. Pickard 2025. All rights reserved. This work is protected by copyright and may not be reproduced, republished, excerpted, or used for academic, commercial, or derivative purposes without written permission

  • Hero – Pennace

    Hero – Pennace

    I serve the thirst for my penance with torture. For those who righteously deserve their bloodstained fate and too myself for the crime of existing. I hate myself, but committing suicide is the coward’s way out. I’m not a coward, I am a malignancy. I stand with disgust, stained in the red of pain, clotted on my mutated hands. 

    This is a message to all those who 

    Guilty

    I will cross your path.

    I shall flay your skin off at a snail’s pace just to hear you suffer. I want you to languish for my sins. Trust no one. Your fate is mine, murderer, a sinuous fabrication, but you’ll get what you deserve. Won’t you? 

    I am your predator. Fear me before you fear yourself.



    ©️ written ~ 2020. Jacob Pickard.2026

  • Hero – Zerosum

    Hero – Zerosum

      Lately it’s been surfacing through my waking hours. It seems that it is slowly taking control of me. Even my friends have noticed how different my behavior has been. They think I’m depressed or I’m going crazy, but they’re wrong. If they only knew the real reason; I’m confused. I need to rest. I need to escape before it kills me, or even worse I kill it. It has such a thirst for revenge, an overwhelming desire to serve its own self-righteousness. To destroy and obliterate any ideas contrary to what it believes to be its god-like truth. And any violent action it takes is then proven correct and is thus served accordingly, with cruelty, pain, and death.

    It has planted a seed of hatred in me, so ingrained that if I don’t keep it smoldering within me I will not be whole. The difference between my hate and its hate is that mine is soiled, impure. My hatred does not come from disgust for myself, but for that of it. It just hates and despises itself and uses this as an excuse to hurt others. I just hate other people, an outright expression of human nihilism, this is selfish; I don’t understand why but it seems right. Will I kill it, or shall I annihilate… power scorches my sinews, it knows what I will do. My God! It’s so deafening, so bright!

    Gray sky, cold drizzle, strong wind driven with a mediocre intent, daylight locked away overshadowed by tricks of the mind. What bothers me the most on days such as these is the drizzle. It sticks to your skin, freezing your flesh, wrapping you in a blanket of silent discomfort. The drizzle weakens your soul, hammering depression, spiking it deep inside your soul. That’s when I know something’s wrong; I can feel when horrible things will happen. I sometimes view myself as a raven. The messenger of the doom; a harbinger of ill tidings.

       A sickness follows me blazing like the sterile tail of a comet, the bastard afterbirth forged, in the cradle of the universe’s birth.



    ©️ written ~ 2020. Jacob Pickard.2026