Issue #11 | eBook Release and Excerpt from "Ma Dresden"

Hey there, you chthonic (a word which here means subterranean, but make it Greek gods) cutiesss! Just sliding by to let you know that the latessst issue of Planet Scumm, “Snake Eyes,” is available now as an e-Book, in both PDF and EPUB formats. Sssweet sssilicon sssuccor!

Now, sssure, you could just pick up this super Scumm issue as a seriesss of 0s and 1s that slither around on your computer or mobile device of choice. (And ssseriously, if you’re just into digital formats and don’t want to messs around with paper, that’s cool. You’re cool. Buy our cool mag.) BUT if you pre-order the paperback edition of “Snake Eyes,” you ssstill get immediate access to those digital formatsss. And not only that—paperback pre-ordersss will also receive a 5 x 7” Giclee print of Maura McGonagle’s “Snake Eyes” cover illustration. 

So that’sss a “Snake Eyes” PDF, an EPUB, a paperback, and a sssick-ass cover illustration you can hang inside your subterranean den. (Uh, this is a sssnake writing this, by the way.) If all that ssstill doesn’t quite whet your appetite, then here’s an excerpt from Laura Barker’s “Snake Eyes” story, “Ma Dresden.” 

EXCERPT FROM “MA DRESDEN”

AS SEEN IN PLANET SCUMM ISSUE #11

Written by Laura Barker

Illustration by Maura McGonagle

Ma Dresden is tall. Let’s start there. She’s taller than I am, she’s taller than the rest of our family, and she has tall legs as well. She never has to get on her tiptoes to reach anything, not in her own house, not in anyone else’s. She hasn’t stood on her tiptoes for years. Her left leg is slightly taller than her right leg. And she has locs down to her knees, white with age at the top, and black with youth at the bottom. A living archive. It’s quite striking. But you’d never really notice Ma Dresden’s hair because of the eyes. 

I know all this even though my seeing days are well behind me. No, do not feel sorry for me. Not being able to see properly anymore is the least of my worries, and I mean that very literally. But I know that you want a visual description, so that’s what I’m going to give you.

She has a face like a milk bun. Because Ma Dresden has a face like a milk bun, you don’t realise at first that she’s got these eyes. You think she’s got a lovely warm face, and then you look up those rich fat soft cheeks and you feel happy inside until you catch a glimpse of the eyes and you have to button your coat up right to the neck, right that instant. That’s how chilling these eyes are. And I’m someone who hates buttoning up their coat right up to the neck. Oh, you can speculate about why, if you like, but if you really want to know, you can ask my mother. She still lives at 28 Twobuckle Street and she’ll be alive for another ten years, guaranteed. And don’t go feeling sorry for me because when you’re on different sides of a war, even a silent, static, not going anywhere war like this one, when you come up on each other, you have to fight each other, especially if there’s someone watching, which there was. I was lucky to get away with the thick scars around my neck and a lifelong aversion to people getting too close to my throat or kissing me from behind. It’s not all bad. I’ve sort of switched roles. Now I do all the kissing from behind and the other person simpers into my arms. You just have to adjust to a new kind of life. 

Anyway. You didn’t come here to learn about my neck. You came to learn about Ma Dresden’s eyes. So here it is. Snake eyes, people call it. That’s what it’s called in a casino when you roll two dice and they both come up showing the single digit meaning one. It’s a 2.77% chance that you’ll throw two ones, the same chance of throwing two of anything, but throwing snake eyes is supposedly bad luck. 

What people always want to know is if she can still see through them, and the answer is yes. They’re regular eyes, for all intents and purposes, but the iris is white so the pupil is just a round dot in an otherwise completely white eye. The medically minded of you are thinking of arcus selinis, where phospholipid and cholesterol collect in the cornea and sometimes cover the iris in white patches. No. We are talking about an iris that has no outer ring around it. It is not pale, it is not faded, it is completely white. You can’t see it at all. 

The politically correct of you are thinking, “Fine. What does it matter if her eyes don’t look like conventional eyes? I would treat her just the same anyway.” Ha! You have no idea what you’re talking about. Yes, there is a whole generation of us whose bodies have been ruined by this silent and violent war, but this isn’t that. Those eyes are not a disfigurement. They are a consequence of what Ma Dresden has done.