By Mack McColl with Grok and Co-Pilot | Purely experimental creative writing as we speak | Black Satire Collaboration
Copyright 2026 All Rights Reserved Mack McColl
Prologue
Abram watched the sentries pause for a drink of water in their rounds, because it was time to stand still and survey the landscape. A well‑trained crew. Men who understood the night was host to a living darkness, not emptiness painted with transcendence and bombastic theatre. Those are distractions that open their hearts to rending.
A sentry's silhouette moved with the quiet assurance of he who survives long periods in deserts, or sudden flashes of extraordinary battle with kings, and the confidence of long memories of forefathers surviving odds that appeared to be impossible. Abram felt steady in his pride, not swelling and blind, but the grounded pride that reminds him the foundation is strong, enduring, and eternal.
Nothing else belongs in the encampments.
Ur’s nightly uproar pressed against the edges of the plain, echoed across the water in the canals and causeways, loud with drums, pipers, ecstatic shrieking of worshipers working to arouse a god who loves a frenzy of transcendence. The sound rolls across the distance like a fever. Abram’s men paid it no heed. They heard it too many times bother. They knew it meant drowning themselves in the beverages of transcendence, disconnection, urinating massive streams, according this to the latest interpretation, glorifying the misalignment of the piss with the wind, And not stopping before sunrise often pissing into said wind. Every night. Never a shortage of strong wine in Mesopotamia. Stop laughing.
Abram breathes, letting the fire’s warmth settle his bones. This was the compartment the Most High had given for the night: rolls, tea with honey, bonfire, scroll, the men, women making tea, delivering savories, the tents flapping in the wind, the conversations carrying the weight of the day. Abram felt life was good. Recent victories made it better.
