The Content Mill

Red lines like tail lights traced ovals around my face in dingy newsprint. The lines raced across the countrysides of text, undulating over photos of mountains, casualty reports, and turn-of-the-century industrial fires. I followed them, tiptoeing over Mr. Ree until somewhere between the bathroom and the galley kitchen I found it. The ink had run dry in the red pen, its bleeding turned to scratchi...

Cosmically, he was awake. For the first time in a decade. Ellington walked among the forest, their twinkling fruits burning brighter than the stars. He saw it all. The Mystery. Visit the website | Join the discord | Follow us on Twitch Social Links Eric is MrTheHuman Gianni is GianniDiCrosta Nate is HeroicHeadgear Phil is Phil Bothun

Ether-soaked and lost among the trees, Ellington drifted. Floated? Well, either way, he was among the limbs, each thought, each character, pluckable like apples. Who were they all...and why were they among his forest? The Dame? The Detective? The Emptys. Always the Emptys. Hollow cored and rotten. Planets orbiting his dying sun. He tugged on an apple, its face obscured by his hand...well, the bone...

Mr. Ree was, in fact, not his given name. He was known to many—millions even—by many names, none of which we shall disclose today. Mr. Ree was, indeed, someone who enjoyed a little pageantry, after all. It was all in the name, wasn’t it? We watch Mr. Ree—well, do we watch or does he?—travel from here to elsewhere. The city to the country. A blue house. Two red lights. One fated meeting that had ne...

Blue light pulsed to a different beat, flashing the towering pines in an ethereal glow. The ivy snaked higher than she remembered, but it had been years since she had been this deep into the forest. Centuries even. No one had been home since that fateful day, so she let herself in. Visit the website | Join the discord | Follow us on Twitch Social Links Eric is MrTheHuman Gianni is GianniDiCrosta N...

Red taillights streaked through the countryside, crisscrossing the forest and vales like lines on a map. The drum beat echoed in her head, pounding out a staccato rhythm piercing through the rev of the engine. A house. The house. His house. A facade she remembered from a lifetime ago. —— Thanks to AJ Fillari for joining us this week! Go listen to their show Dot Zip , or hire them to edit your audi...

In this episode of the Content Mill, we dig into the latest news and happenings in the games industry. Today's big story is the talk of the town: the games industry is taking a big old break. So sit down, relax, and hang out as we talk about the backlog games that will be filling up this year of no new releases! Visit the website | Join the discord | Follow us on Twitch Social Links Eric is MrTheH...

Mr. Ree was not having a great time. Did not have a great time. He'd been dead for at least a week. But, in a room filled to the brim with newspapers, the body was only the second most unexpected thing. The place had stunk to high Heaven, but I couldn't tell anymore. This wasn't my first rodeo. No, what grabbed my attention was the organized chaos of the newspapers and the red pen circling words a...

Predator. Prey. Stars. Smoke. A drum beat. Pounding. Quarter notes, then eighths. Urgency and danger. And then she blinked. The Dame—that's who she was now—couldn't shake the hollow gaze and incessant beat of the Emptys' drums. Even miles away, pushing the accelerator to the max, she could still hear them...getting louder, somehow? Predator. Prey. Stars. Smoke. Predator. Prey. Stars. Smoke. What d...

From the first days in the trenches when he found the first, Ellington’s Bones spoke to him. It took him weeks to determine that the dissonant whispers nagging at the back of his mind, edging in from his periphery, were emanating from the bone of unknown origin in the mud. A rat femur. Or rabbit, perhaps. The whispers never calmed though, not until he found more. Overlaying tones coalescing into s...

Mr. Ree's apartment door was loosely swinging on rusted hinges. The dial tone of a phone echoed through the hall, an incessant ringing too loud to make any sense. I shoved the door open with a gloved hand and stood in the doorway, my eyes unable to settle on what I saw. Newspapers covered everything. Stacks of every rag and sheet available between the rivers teetered like funhouse skyscrapers. The...

There were a lot of things that Ellington brought back from the War. Scars, callousness, his crew, and his Bones. Few things in his life were as hard-won and cherished as that vibraphone, built piece by piece over his years in the trenches. When he played, they sang. When they talked, he listened. And right now, they were telling a very interesting story. Visit the website | Join the discord | Fol...

Ten years ago. A soirée at War’s end. Combat boots and heels gliding along floors slick with champagne suds and gin. The sound of lost loves and newfound ones pounding in rhythm to the exuberant roars of a band letting loose. Romance was in the air and Ellington was loving it. Four long years and he was back; back in front of a crowd, and backed by his newfound friends: The Emptys. Visit the websi...

The Dame. The Broad. Madame Noir. The Woman with Black Hair. She had so many names and came from so many places it was hard to keep track. Behind the facade, who she truly is was hard to say anymore. They were like oil, glistening and swirling together, a rainbow of identity that only coalesces in unity when looked at the right way. She sipped her drink, waiting for Ellington to say something. Ice...

I peeled off a handful of bills and handed them to the cabbie, tipping my hat and pulling the collar of my coat close. The weather had not improved since I left Ellington and the Emptys on the boardwalk and I was grateful for the stack of cash the Dame had handed me. The case made no sense, but in this city the difference between reality and fantasy was blurry on a good day. Trash flanked the entr...

The Empty fortune hails from the Pacific Northwest somewhere. There's no real defined story and you'd never be able to nail Earl down on a real answer anyways—believe me, I've tried—but it really doesn't matter. This outfit was masquerading as a normal down-on-its-luck jazz troupe playing dives all up and down the east coast, when at least three of them had generational money from families they we...

Patinated brass and well-worn sheets of music. Blue light reflected off the chipped keys of the piano as Earl hammered out some melodious racket. It all blurred together for Ellington, the sound, the lights and the smoke. So much smoke. But through it all, there she was. Ellington—if that was his real name—had never seen a woman quite like her before. Indescribable, but desirable nonetheless. And...

The juice was pouring and Ellington was playin' them bones like no other. It had been months since that foggy evening I first stumbled into this joint, and times had changed. It was that time of year and every Tom, Dick, or Harry was bustling in for some tunes and a warm-me-up between bouts of boardwalk shopping. I was tapping my toes and slugging gins, watching an Old St. Nick get too deep into h...

The track held nothing for me, no dame in a fascinator or the pound of hoof beats could pull me from this stupor. So I walked along the boardwalk, rain slicking the creaking wood. A seafood shack styled as a golden ship, a rinky dink cafe ablaze with the Big Apple's skyline, none of it drew me in. Like a beacon in a storm, a club marquee flickered in the evening fog—it had been hours since I left...

The door hadn’t opened in seven days. The foil letters—an ostentatious facade to this disheveled abode—peeled, flaking away from the reeded glass like the petals of lilies in late spring. Water dripped into a tin bucket, the slow staccato rapping out gunshots. I hammered the “U” key on the typewriter in time. No paper, no ribbon, just the rhythmic patter of a smoke-swirled, scotch-soaked soliloquy...

EXTRA EXTRA: Mr. Shackleton Skellington, Magnate of the Skellington Bones Xylophones fortune found GUILTY of participating in illegal bones trade with Extraterrestrial being! Sentenced to thirty years in MAXIMUM SECURITY. Mr. Skellington alluded capture for multiple weeks, until Kzzshkt Ksshzkkkt found him holed up in a compound on "Bonedown Island." Authorities are now investigating Mr. Skellingt...

The sound of sleigh bells echoed throughout the house, punctuated by staccato thumps. Holiday cheer was all around. Tinsel hung from the mantle and lights twinkled on the tree, a rotten reminder of the happiness that should've been in this house. The thumps continued, but no one answered. I tiptoed through the house. Past the bowling ball, the toaster, and the sharpened keys of a Skellington bone...

Tzzzkt tzzkkktzzk "Hello?" zzkt "is—" zzzzktkkzz "—thing on?" "Somehow, I got turned around. On the way back from the pr—" zzzkt "—I got lost in the space-time conti—" zwwwripkktt "I'm adrift in time, like that part in my least favorite Christopher Nolan film, Inter—" zzzrookkt "Hold on boys, I'm—" Well howdy kiddos and kiddettes! Welcome back to the Skellington Bones Ragtime Entertainment Hour wi...

Hello and welcome back to KACL 780, that was “Rattlin’ Bones” by the Great Jingle Tingle Band from their 1996 promotional tour with Skellington Bones. It’s the top of the hour so we’ll have news and weather coming up on the 8s and 10s, but I’m going to open up the lines for a few minutes if you’ve got questions for your local radio psychiatrist, you can give us a call at 555-KACL. “Hello caller, y...

Hark! What doth I heareth upon the moors! 'Tis that the rattle of manacles and the xylophone timbre of thy Skellington bones? That's right, Ghouls and Ghosts, it's our first every Halloween Episode Sponsored by Skellington Xylophones, the premier maker of bone xylophones: "It's not a 'phone if it's not bone." This episode we dig into the spooks and the scares that get our skin a'crawlin', AND mayb...