The Mortal Burden
Book I


The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter III
The Mortal Burden â Part XIII: Zombie or Zombi?
The Mortal Burden – Part XIV: “I Can’t Take You Anywhere!”
The Mortal Burden – Part XIV: The Third Coast
The Mortal Burden – Part XV: Infinity as My Witness
The Mortal Burden – Part XVI: The 4th Wall
The Mortal Burden – Part XVII: Eternity Is a Concept



The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter III
The Mortal Burden â Part XIII: Zombie or Zombi?
The Mortal Burden – Part XIV: “I Can’t Take You Anywhere!”


The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter II
The Mortal Burden – Part VII: Remember
The Mortal Burden – Part VIII: Gods of One
The Mortal Burden – Part IX: Cold Heat
The Mortal Burden – Part X: A World to Die On
The Mortal Burden – Part XI: Boundaries Into the Deep
The Mortal Burden – Part XII: The Singular I


The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter II
The Mortal Burden – Part VII: Remember
The Mortal Burden – Part VIII: Gods of One
The Mortal Burden – Part IX: Cold Heat
The Mortal Burden – Part X: A World to Die On
The Mortal Burden – Part XI: Boundaries Into the Deep


The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter II
The Mortal Burden – Part VII: Remember
The Mortal Burden – Part VIII: Gods of One
The Mortal Burden – Part IX: Cold Heat
The Mortal Burden – Part X: A World to Die On


The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter II
The Mortal Burden – Part VII: Remember
The Mortal Burden – Part VIII: Gods of One
The Mortal Burden – Part IX: Cold Heat


The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter II
The Mortal Burden – Part VII: Remember
The Mortal Burden – Part VIII: Gods of One




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 people,
of all the universes, of every string, of all reality,
of all time
Have been strummed
The metronome will stop
when the last song
Is finally sung
It’s the time, when all things, and all time, all of everything everywhere it’s the end of all things, it has finally come

ÂŠī¸ Jacob Pickard.2026.

The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter I
The Mortal Burden Part I: Specicide Blues
The Mortal Burden Part II: This Mortal Burden
The Mortal Burden Part III: Blood Furnace

The Mortal Burden – Part IV: Six feet of razor-toothed bloody destruction

The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter I
The Mortal Burden Part I: Specicide Blues
The Mortal Burden Part II: This Mortal Burden



The Mortal Burden
Book I
Chapter I
I decided to serialize my novel. Chapters are just two big for this media type.


I create. I desecrate. I am the one. I equal none.
My presence is a curse, to those at this place.
Irreverent to the scene, a perversely orchestrated machine. Am I selfish when I ask how others view me, or is it a violation to judge others on how they view themselves.
Counter Culture
Sub Culture
Pop Culture
To tactfully dislike this illusion of community; I create myself, distance myself, sick of this illusion based on over self-indulged rightousness.
How they judge themselves more pure than the rest of society, an illusion created by the
imaginary dissection of a cog
forever perpetuating the movement
of the American capitalist Machine
ÂŠī¸ Jacob Pickard. 2026. Written ~mid 1990’s about the MKE/Madison, WI, punk scenes.

Sleep Paralysis
Had lots of it in my 20s and 30s..I still have them, but they are not as acute as when I used to sleep on my back. I’m conscious, while my brain locks down my physical reactions so I can not move. The opposite of night terrors & Sleep walking.
A wall of fear has kept me from the abyss of eternal sleep.
This wall feeds upon my soul; it hungers for my nightmares, a half-delusional matrix caught betwixt consciousness and the domain of vivid alien visions.
Somewhere in this realm lurks a terrible shadow of my reality. A grotesque mocking of the material plane. It teases and prods me, offering unknown vistas of experience and mind. A quest through the immense expanse of the universe, beyond the normal view of existence, to places where only the mind can enter.
The shadow mocks me with these alien expanses of thought and space; it forces me back with a wall of my own fears. This fear, my loathing, and the inability to take that final step, cross that narrow line that will force me over sanity’s edgeâan edge I know I can never come back from.
Yet, I crave the genius of insanity, that foresight of the unkown senses, reaching farther beyond the greatest minds, to have insight into the depth of the soul, to know the mad creator of the universe, to be one with omnipotent existence!

ÂŠī¸ Jacob Pickard 2026.

Precognition
Active since childhood
Rare now but more vivid and I remember more had this vivid dream in mid ~2004
Tsunami Wave hitting on the ocean archetype/city with cloned humans from mainland.
Dead people’s bodies together touching trapped in a purgatory (French women and family, Americans, Asian, etcâĻ.) Same dream, etcâĻ Can not get out.
People who die and face death again are freed.
People who will not accept keep on being trapped.
People who figure out their situation are even more screwed because they will not accept anything as real. Although they soon are able to figure out differences between real and fake situations.
These people are helped by aliens/angels, etcâĻ as guides to try to help them out of the situation?
French woman’s husband (with another soul) brought back (he was human) to their house on the shore high atop a cliff. The human who could not accept his death/fate was alive (for real) this time, but the caveat.
Wife and children still dead, other dead people can now come back and haunt the man who came alive again and his living life is now part of their purgatory life.
You can not escape death, death follows you?

ÂŠī¸ Jacob Pickard. 2025. Written ~ 2004.

The wildfire đĨ smoke has reached Milwaukee. The air smells of old crusty campfire and the skies hazy, with particles. Hazardous to those with allergies, and to the people just learning they have allergies, or chronic diseases such as heart disease and asthma, all of which can cause pulmonary blockage.




Air pollution contributes to deaths at about ~7 million worldwide a year.

“Wisconsin has seen blazing heat in recent days with an extreme heat warning or heat advisory in effect across the state Wednesday. The National Weather Service offices in Duluth and Milwaukee/Sullivan said temperatures will feel close to 100 degrees or more.”
Minnesota and Canadian Wildfires Bring Hazardous Pollution to Wisconsin
A not so fun fact, but in the Bush 2 administration they made the decsion to change “Global warming” to “Climate Change” which does not sound as scary. Guess that psyop worked very well, because climate change and the science around it is much more difficult to explain and message, whereas “Global Warming” is easy and direct, you understand what’s happening with two words.
Let’s go back to calling what’s happening “Global Warming”, the science had been clear since the late 70’s regarding the loading of C02 and other heating gasses into the atmosphere and what it is doing on a global scale. In system dynamics, the heat, its adding energy, which pushes systems to be more chaotic.

I’m an Ecologist, when the threads and connections, the mechanisms among and between life forms and their environment start to break that’s when extinction happens. There’s only so much energy (heat) that biotic organsims can process to keep them in homeostasis, even non-living things such as soil, have properties change at heat (energy) is added.
….. and I’m a realist, and every day we take one step closer to self-inflicted speciecide.
ÂŠī¸ Jacob Pickard. 2026

For whatever reason these four short scifi stories are interconnected. It was never my intention nor concept, these stories were written at different times in my life; yet they all speak to the philosophy & concepts of reality, creation, chaos, order, and individuality.




All works ÂŠī¸ Jacob Pickard. 1995-2026.
In the vast expanse of space, all the material physical things that exist in it, then time, the utter insurmountable distance among and between each.

We exist.
Does it matter why? Or who? Or what?
You exist.
Is this…
Not enough?
Reality……...is
        Fantasy………is not
              Â
  but

a fools hope
.
.
.
Â Â Â ÂŠī¸ Jacob Pickard. 2026.
To those who pick themselves up in silence, un-noticed, lost, but won’t give up
I know how it is
To go through the daily ritual. Unwilling to yeild, but exhausted and tired
 Some of us with partners that are cold and frigid, not giving empathy, affection or love shut themselves off from you, then you shut yourself off
Â
Others, who are single, but with the same fire in your heart, to give it all, but nobody to accept your power and love, you shut yourself off

You feel deeper, down to the working foundation of others, to touch, express your heat.
Open nerves, always giving, just wanting that touch, the lips, the pressure, to taste, to experience.
ÂŠī¸ Jacob Pickard. 2025.
1st published on Substack
  Â
Meatloaf Amorphous

1 lbs of pork, turkey, 90% lean beef. Ketchup, worschteahire, herb mix, season salt, pepper, minced onion, celery, breadcrumbs, & an egg.
Shaped

Loathed in bread loaf pans, don’t ask about the fat-stack. FYI, I was banned from finger painting in kindergarten if that helps.
Solid

Roasting indirect heat between 375 to 400 F.
Weather

Glaze: ketchup, worsheshire, unfilteted apple cider vinegar, hatch chili bacon (pre-cooked crsipy), lager beer.
Severe weather:

Sexy dressed meatloaf. Prefers oral.
Final form? Or is it?

Caramelized.
There’s more:

Add more sin for flavor:

Oh, being fried in the bacon grease, covered sinfully naked in glaze! Definitely a fetish.
Slathered, caramelized, and sliced.

Completed again, but ready to be put in sandwich porn form for your pleasure.

Meatloaf sandwich with horseradish sauce, mustard potato salad (not me), berry salad with a little sugar (not me).
“Shut your mouth look around
This motherfucker is burning down
And nothingâs gonna save us now“
  I’m cynical by watching the majority of the left become politicaly apathetic, self-deafeating, ignorant, complacent, arrogant, aggreived victimhood, isolated to their towers of self-absorption after Biden was elected gives me little hope for the future.
As a politicaly active person on the left all my life, the betrayl doesn’t come from MAGA or Republicans, it comes from the left and Democrats, because it’s been castrating itself willingly over the last 20 years.

So this is what you want
Choices are made and given up
I just cant comprehend the need to sit when you can stand
The game is rigged, the money spent
Shut your mouth look around
This motherfucker is burning down
And nothingâs gonna save us now
Get outâĻ and save yourself
Thereâs only so much I can say
tried so hard to help you find your way
But every step a wasted breath of false hope and promises
Thereâs nothing to save, thereâs nothing left
Nothingâs left of you today
Save yourself or die away
So this is what you want
Your choice was made, youâve given up
Iâll never comprehend the need to sit when you can stand
Thereâs nothing left, the money spent
Writer(s): Nathan Gray, Joshua Latshaw, Robert Ehrenbrand, Charles W Istvan, Christopher Rakus album: “While A Nation Sleeps…” (2013)
BoySetsFire – While A Nation Sleeps.
“I am falling
I am fading
I have lost it all“
This was the theme song or the Anime “Serial Experiments Lain”. It has never left my head from the first time ive heard years and years ago.
   The song reflects & anime (to me), the disjointed, etherial, and dark atmosphere, like there’s a thing just out of your reach, but can’t quite hold it or see it.
Once you seek it, however, it’s heavy, foreboding, and descends upon you without warning.

And you don’t seem to understand
A shame, you seemed an honest man
And all the fears you hold so dear
Will turn to whisper in your ear
And you know what they say might hurt you
And you know that it means so much
And you don’t even feel a thing
I am falling
I am fading
I have lost it all
And you don’t seem the lying kind
A shame that I can read your mind
And all the things that I read there
Candle lit smile that we both share
And you know I don’t mean to hurt you
But you know that it means so much
And you don’t even feel a thing
I am falling
I am fading
I am drowning
Help me to breathe
I am hurting
I have lost it all
I am losing
Help me to breathe
I am falling
I am failing
I am drowning
Help me to breathe
I am hurting
I have lost it all
I am losing
Help me to breathe
Ah-oh, yeah
Ah-oh-oh, yeah
I am falling
I am failing
I am drowning
Help me to breathe
I am hurting
I have lost it all
I am losing
Help me to breathe
Written by: Paul Richard Turrell, Ben Henderson, Jasmine Rodgers, Alexander Caird, Lee Sullivan, Stephen Paul Rodgers
Album: Duvet (ScummV Remix)
Released: 2022


Energy
Given freely
Is as breathing
For me
Understanding
Until now, ive had so much of it
But, frankly
I
Am
Utterly
Exhausted
I
Speak Truth
I
Endless hope
I
Set
Boundries
I
Don’t give up
……Why do I feel guilty?

Truth
I
am
prey
Human predators smell empathy
As
Sharks smell blood in the water
Allowing myself to be used
without equal reciprocity
Used
Endless cycle(s) of neglect
Affection to weapon
Sex to Weapon
Shrunk as weapon
Tool of endless emotional grounding
Control
Power
Stability
Comfort

I
Am
Tired
…….So very very tired
And I’m afraid
I
Have
Changed
I
Am
Broken
Victim
Survivor
Pariah

Empathy is a curse
ÂŠī¸ Jacob Pickard. 2026.
I am Pariah
A life devoid of touch, love, passion, a pillar of rough-hewn granite, to make otherâs lives more comfortable so they donât have to feel guilt. A mirrored avatar to reflect what they want to see; taking responsibility for the cowardly acts of their Phantoms.
Selfish Ideological Narcissists, making victims that exist in the interstitial spaces, Acceptable losses in the war.
A living taboo, stigmatized, no one wants to touch this flesh, it is taboo made real.
Aged masculinty shattered into dull edges, ego ripped out, longtime ideological identity destroyed; the devouring motherâs hunger satiated.
I no longer want to try to identify with anyone, as anyone, or with any group. All are phantoms.
The gulf is now infinite. Not your spaces in-between, because nothing exists on either side.
Playing my part in the background, while the Phantoms roleplay; itâs the curse of total detached awareness & empathy. Pain hidden in the shadows, invisible to all.

Pariah is my rightful place, I am the sacrificial king: I will let this demon eat my soul.
……and I will REVEL in the consumption
One with the Pariah that haunts the
interstitial spaces
the Pariah that whispers to the
phantoms in your nightmares
ÂŠī¸ Jacob A. Pickard. 2025. OriginallyÂ
published on SubStack.

                                Bond

I’ve been reluctant to share this one. The vulnerable parts of me in this water color are still part of me now.
Some people re-invent themselves, that is a skill I don’t possess. I carry everything because it’s me and good or bad I own it, and owing it is important. If you don’t own your choices, you make villians of others as an excuse for your actions. There is far to much of that in our world.
“We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness.”

I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible; Jew, Gentile, black man, white, we all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there’s room for everyone and the good Earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.
Charlie Chaplin: (00:40)
We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood for the unity of a soul.
Charlie Chaplin: (01:12)
Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world. Millions of despairing, men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those are going to hear me, I say do not despair. The misery that is now upon us, but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress, the hate of men will pass and dictators die. And the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.
Charlie Chaplin: (01:45)
Soldiers, don’t give you a sales to brutes. Men who despise you, enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel. Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don’t give yourself to these unnatural men, machine men with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don’t hate. Only the unloved hate, the unloved and the unnatural.
Charlie Chaplin: (02:14)
Soldiers, don’t fight for slavery. Fight for liberty. In the 17th chapter of St. Luke it is written, “The kingdom of God is within man, not one man, nor a group of men, but in all man in you. You, the people, have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You, the people have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.
Charlie Chaplin: (02:36)
Then, in the name of democracy, let us use that power, let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age of security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfill that promise. They never will. Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people.
Charlie Chaplin: (02:59)
Now want to just fight to fulfill that promise. Let us fight to free the world to do away with national barriers, to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness. Soldiers, in the name of democracy, let us all unite.

A wall of sound, like a train into solid mountain granite
A cacophonic quartet of smashing rhythm
Surrounded by darkness and a halo of thin light.
The bar, black walls, stale smoke and beer
Illumination of execution by genocide, crucifixion for/of beliefs
Murder, letting of blood
Metamorphosis
Material to ethereal, body to spirit
Or some would call it glory, ascendancy of man to heaven
Cyclical thunderous melody, droning and blooming into monotonous complexity
Bombastic renewal of circles cycles, of intricate repetition.
The eye of Isis, the death and rebirth of Osiris. The annual flooding of the Nile.
Life is a system, the process of rearrangement of cyclical moving parts, like a wall of sound.
Written around ~1995 after seeing the band Neurosis at Okayz Corral in Madison, WI. It was so loud I couldn’t hear correctly for an entire week. ŠJacob A Pickard. 2025.

I’m stronger than you’ll ever be
Because, to endure and have your sanity, to make it so long, a clearly defined character, rock hard in its clarity
I am strength
hidden in the hot exhale of your breath
only seen in the cold void
when there is nothing left
Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â ÂŠī¸ Jacob Pickard. 2025.

Credit to the prompt goes to https://justrojie.com
How do you actually define this?
When you stand for something, that means you should be automatically against the binary inverse, unfortunately pride, arrogance, aggrieved victimhood, situational ethics (tribalism), can & will take these parts of character, twist them into unrecognizable mutants, and destroy those things once held dear into phantoms and outright frauds.

The above are three human conditions, I stand against. I have stood against them for basically my entire life. They are reflected in most of my actions, down to where i shop (I keep it small, local or regional as possible), who I support politicaly, and personal interactions with others. I view all people as equal at birth and all should have the same opportunities.
I question everything, even my personal philosophy, my left leaning politics, my character, my actions, what I beleive since I was young. Growing up in conflict has conditioned me into a powerful detachment, yet I am endlessly passionate when it comes to my beliefs, that “being rational”, that empathy & compassion in the end will make the case that these base human needs will win out and are more important than rage, bigotry, hate, apathy, & indifference.
“Those who stand for nothing fall for anything.”
Alexander Hamilton

  No doubt I am a fool; but at the end of the day, looking into the mirror, it’s far more important that I expressed my character honorably and that I stand my ground.
ÂŠī¸ Jacob Pickard.2026.
Rays Liquors Wauwatosa, WI (MKE area)
Put Cheese & Beer, and Music in a parking lot on a 25 degree day and we shall come.







