A Requiem for Ricky

Learning to be Alright, When It's Not Alright

Outlaws!

Happy New Year and congrats on surviving the start of 2025. I feel like the train is already off the rails and its not even really down the track. That’s life sometimes though, and you just have to keep pushing.

I’ve got a melancolic topic for today, but I also have great news. I’m going to do the good stuff first, and If anyone wants to hang around for the philosophy and waxing poetic, all the better.

I’ve got some killer news, that has been a long time coming and makes me both proud of how far I’ve come in my first six months of officially being a “Pro Author.”

I’ve landed an assistant editor role in a huge antho. The antho will include Hydra King: Darkleaf Exotic Animal Rescue. If you have been hanging around, you’ll know the main characters, Bucky Bob and Pam Jo, and sweet little Blender. I plastered them all over social when the story was initially penned months ago. Well its now a small novella, and not only do I get to include my own tale in this chunk of an anthology, I get to take the wheel as an editor and have a small role in everyone else’s work as well. I’m beyond excited, because I’m also in the process of leading an anthology for the first time. I haven’t cleared what can be public and what can’t but it looks like an April release date for my editorial debut.

Concept art for Pam Jo, came out really well.

On top of the editing gig I have progress on another story. One of my favorite works is Dead Wolf. A tale about the dark side of war, the struggles of soldiers coming home from the Great War on Terror, and how sometimes, things are not alright. Not just for our men, but for the people of invaded nations as well, the butcher always gets his due.

It starts something really special, a group of characters that are going to carry over into The Holy Diver and The Midnight Sea. Dead Wolf was accepted back in April of last year, but life likes to kick everyone in the ass and delays meant that I haven’t really been able to say it was making progress. Well the paperwork is done and I can say that Dead Wolf will soon be coming to life. I don’t know the offical release date, but I’ll keep everyone updated.

That Midnight Sea thing, by the way. That’s my big work. My Wheel of Time or Dresden Files, but I wanted to do something a little different. I’ve gathered an All-Star crew of authors. They are helping me set the stage for a place where all the worlds come together and aliens cut deals with sorcerers for interdimesional gear. Cybernetic Street Knights clash with Atlantean warriors and desperate men make deals to travel across time and space to find the one thing they need.

We have an offical due date for the authors, we have a file with the publisher. We have me at the project head, and I’m have both my own tale, and another killer author’s story, In my own universe. Those two are complete. I have been blessed with trust and faith as a young professional by men and women with more experience and accolades than me to be the driving force and brain child behind this, and it is no longer just an idea. Its got stories, and its got lots more coming.

So that’s the book stuff. If thats all you wanted, have a good one, safe travels. Love you, May We All Find What We Seek.

Concept art for The Midnight Sea

OK, the boring people are gone, now for the deep stuff.

I’ve found a theme. In my life, my own wordsmithing, and in my music. There is a song I heard one day, watching a stream, and the chorus struck me so hard I spent a half hour tracking it down. It’s by a Sythwave band called Let Em Riot, and the song is It’s Not Alright. The chorus is as follows.

We could never be the ones we want

This will never be the life we dreamed about

Nothing here for us to figure out

No, It’s not alright

Dance with me under the pale moonlight

Last forever even if it’s just tonight

We grow out of еverything in time

No, it’s not alright

The song clearly addresses a break up, and when I heard it years ago I had just been through a pretty hellish one. I’d lost a friend of many years, someone who I spent a huge chunk of my life loving long before romance took hold. It stuck with me. I was going to never see this person again. Never hear that voice again. It was not alright. It would never be alright. Life had irrevocably changed. That was the big kicker. A dream was dead. Another one on what was a long growing pile. I’d been through it before, and it hurt then, but this no longer young version of me felt the sting of that fact a lot more.

Fortunately that wound lead to another realization in me, that when it is not alright, and will never be so, all you can do is push forward and learn to accept it. Just like a death, the loss could only be adapted to. Failure to adapt could turn into something far beyond a single wrong. Hurt people hurt people afterall, and a single man or woman’s nightmare can grow in a heart until it becomes a problem for a whole family. That can ruin generations, countries or even the world itself.

Years down the road I’ve been blessed with my Mallory, and that single wrong matters little. It’s still not alright. I’m going to carry that weight, and bare the scar, but my shoulders grew to the burden, and the scar lost its color.

So that theme carried over into Dead Wolf. I made a villian that was that same chain of events on a grand scale. A wrong occured, that wrong grew to something that shifted the globe. Good men caught in the nightmare did what they had to and at every turn someone suffered. Then I took the innocent and broken survivors and let the loss and grief, the fact It’s not alright, take the reins.

I often write righteous vengance. I believe in it. I believe its something the world often tries to make disappear when its part of the natural order. I do not find it mutally exclusive from Morality or Justice. The difference is it’s execution. It’s scope. Punishment must fit Crime. Debts are personal, they should not extend to others.

It lead to a paradoxical place. When the sin was grave enough and the wound deep enough that it dragged nations into the crossfire, it became cyclic. At some point, every man and woman involved has a reason. So what seperated the good and the bad here?

The answers I found were Healing and Control.

So I wrote a villian who never found those things. Never kept the pain in control and lashed out far beyond taking his blood price, and in that lack of healing, and loss of control, instead something else took the driver’s seat. It was shockingly similar to rabies.

Violence manic outburst, wild spasms, near foaming at the mouth fanaticism for making the other party pay. It was a spiritual and emotional virus.

So a line was born. “Rabid dogs get put down, even when it’s not thier fault.”

Because the truth was, every dog bites, and fights, and kills. Most even gleefully, but that doesn’t stop them from being your loving lap dog for all thier lives. It’s the rabies, both literally in the example of the dog and metaphorically in the spiritual sense, that takes control and makes a monster.

Neither the broken man or the infected dog are in control, but no responsible man could allow either to keep walking once thier “disease” takes hold.

Concept art for Leonidas Vanagandr, my protagonist in Dead Wolf

Ok, Jess, this is all interesting, what the hell does it have to do with this Ricky dude from the title?

Well, I’m from Georgia, and like lots of the south, if you don’t live downtown, you encounter critters. Those critters are part of your home: The fox and the coyote, opossums, skunks, deer, and raccons. They jump out in front of you on the way home, get in your trash, and sometimes just walk up and ask for a snack. Foxes seem to strangly enjoy the banjo when played well.

So being the smart ass I am and growing up with animals as characters in kids books, everyone gets a name. Opossums, the O being silent, are Petey. Skunks are Peppe after everyone’s favorite looney tune loverboy, and the list goes on.

Our “Trash Panda” population, little bandits that they are, I like to call Ricky.

I’m rather found of Ricky’s. Lots of fun most of the time, cute little guys and gals. Never been much trouble and they are pretty damn smart. Fact of the matter is if I was less broke and had a little more time, I’d have my own Ricky. At least until I had to hand him a 9mm and tell him to get our squirrel and run, because the Government was coming for them. (RIP Fred and Peanut. Someone should have hanged for what happened to you.)

Well Saturday morning I got hit with a big bag full of hammers labeled Practice What you Preach.

Mallory is sweet enough to take the dogs out each morning, knowing I’m about as fond of early rising as getting punched in the mouth. So she gathered up the derpy dog patrol and ventured out onto the little hilltop that is the current abode. It’s thickly wooded, down a dirt road and while the neighbors are close enough to help, we have trees on all sides.

I wake up easy, so I wasn’t sleeping, but I was headed back that way when instead of giving commands, Mal was full on yelling. Not paniced, but in that tone of voice when the shit hit the fan and its not in any kind of fun way. She was trying to control a fenzied pack of animals.

Well, that’s my que to grab the ole iron and go see what the hell is wrong. I walk out in nothing but my damn boxers to find that the dogs have discovered a daytime wandering Ricky basically on the wall of the house.

For anyone that doesn’t know, Ricky is not a daytime animal. Ricky sleeps with the sun, unless desperate, and then wanders out at night to have his highjinks and wash his food in the local creek. If you see a daytime Ricky for more than a moment, Ricky is in a bad place. So our daytime raccon does not run for the trees, or shelter, but instead goes right into the overhang that shelters out outdoor tools and equipment.

Mallory then says the nightmare words. “It’s rabid.”

My heart sinks, but I have to check the signs myself. As I get eyes on Ricky, I ask what he was doing, double checking my fiancee’s diagnosis.

Then I see it, the ticks, the foam around the mouth. The fact he is out in the daylight, and the odd way he moves. Ricky is seriously sick. He’s also barely old enough to be on his own. He’s huddled up in the open, in the gap between a paddleboat and a tarp, not hiding or sheltering, but watching me with panic and spasming.

For just a moment all I want to do is help Ricky. Creator, Christ, and Aesir this poor little dude just needs help, but the moment breaks with another spasm. A dark truth settles in those heartbeats. If he isn’t rabid, he’s still in deep shit. There is no way this little critter makes it.

If I leave him here, he either goes manic and ends up jumping the dogs or us, goes more septic to die a terrible death (I spent a month septic, its hell), or wanders on to get snapped up by Bernard or Betty bobcat, who likes to yell at us from a spot five yards further on. Our County has no animal control. There is nobody to call. It’s me or passing the buck to fate or the next unlucky soul. If he attacks a neighbor I’ll never forgive myself.

No matter what it is. Rabies, infection, or nurological struggle. Ricky is not in control, and Ricky cannot heal.

The sight picture comes from long practice, the trigger wall is familar, and the air pressure adjust in my ears as this little creature looks at me in confusion and pain. The crack and ring are short lived. It’s always like that when you are shooting for real. What normally rings forever if you forgot you ear-pro on the range is only an afterthough. Ricky falls, and I check my work over my sights. He spasms again, kicks and twist, then stands. The same look of confusion, the same random seizure. Another clear sight picture, another short crack and ring. Anything worth shooting once is worth shooting again.

The second hit drops him flatback, like a lineman just shouldered him down. Short, rapid breaths follow, then stillness. Ricky is gone from the world leaving only an empty shell.

It was not Ricky the raccoon’s fault. He bore my little tribe of fur and family no ill will. He was only sick, it was not alright, it could not be alright. Ricky could not heal, and could not take control. So I took him. It’s not aliright. This is not the short little life Ricky wanted, but fate marched all the same.

Careful inspection begins with gloves, long handled tools, and plastic bags. My bullet holes are clean, one body and one head. The bite on his back leg is ragged and puss filled. Something small taking hold and not wanting to let go. Some other creature stricken by the loss of control and spreading it.

We built a fire for Ricky as the sun set. I let the first log burn all the way down to hot coals, Mallory hunting me more kindling and small fodder by flashlight. I’ll never know what took his little bit of control. Rabies, infection, or some other terrible afffliction. I just know that I made sure it couldn’t spread.

It took time, flame, and moonlight to turn little Ricky to ash. A lot longer time than you would think. It’s not alright, and I think I’m going to remember that little furry critter for a long time. The sun rise as I made a dark choice for him, and the moonlight as we rendered him back to the dust of the woods that birthed him. It’s not alright, it never will be, but we will carry on.

Protect your peace, gentle friend, protect your control, and your healing. Guard it until you’ve seen your last sunrise, and your loved ones send you off with the moonlight.

May We All Find What We Seek,

Jesse James Fain