It Can Always Get Worse

  • Post category:News
  • Reading time:6 mins read

In the grim darkness of the far future, there are no happy endings, and the greatest mistake one can make is to foolishly hope for a better tomorrow. For most, the best future is one where things stay just as the way they are – miserable, but a familiar misery. 

Unfortunately, in a galaxy rife with plague, violence, and treachery, it can always get worse.

This month we’re looking at stories of the poor saps who just can’t catch a break. Those who started at the bottom, and somehow fell lower. In the cruel space of the 41st millennium there is no rock bottom, only a bloody cliff where the most unfortunate souls continue to fall.

5 Stories of Misfortune and Ill Fates

Out of Fear by J.S. Savage – The life of a hive citizen is difficult, even at the best of times. When fate isn’t in your favor, however, you do what must be done to survive. When Elam’s wife gives birth to a mutant, he makes the difficult to choice to abandon the child in the hive’s lawless depths—a decision that haunts him until the end of his life.
 
Her Cold Smile by Jack Van Beynen – Once a guardsman enlists and leaves his home behind, the only family he’s likely to know are his comrades in arms. Yet some fools still dream of a wife and children. They dream of love, and their dreams blind them to the nightmare hiding right before their eyes.
 

Reaping Agony by E. Nicole Gary (Audio narrated by Carla Mack) – The Drukhari are a people for whom it can always get worse is practically a catchphrase. They are artisans of torture and connoisseurs of suffering, creative with their agonies and sculpting each horror specifically to the individual. In the hands of the Dark Eldar, not even death is a promise of release. Read it yourself or listen to the narration by Carla Mack.

Rare Meat by Chris Buxey – The average lifespan of an imperial guardsman is fifteen hours. Those few who live long enough to become veterans—let alone retire—are few and far between. But sometimes, an individual is rewarded for their service with a prize worth more than almost any other in the galaxy: a peaceful life. Chris Buxey’s guardsman is promised that peace after twenty years of service… after one final task.
 
The Last Hours of Merrick Dahler by Matthew Tansini – It says a lot about the universe of Warhammer 40,000 that there are worse fates than being lobotomized and made into a servitor—the mechanized zombies who perform the menial labor and simple tasks of the Imperium. When Merrick Dahler’s procedure is interrupted, he learns how truly awful fate can be.