Nescher Pyscher's First Attempt at a Webpage
Adventures from Tales of the Fallen (Book I)
Pt. 10
He was being chased into dream by an abomination.
He could feel it; the merest, thinnest, far edge of this deathly, invisible nothing. It was dark; heavy; hung from the sky like a massive thunderhead; a black glowering menace. He knew without question - the way one does in a dream - that should it find him with its ever searching, invisible eye, that it would devour him and make him part of its own filth-ridden existence.
Its determined lust baked off of it in palpable waves of hate. Its intent was to devour, to consume. It wanted to render all of creation into a nameless paste, and leave nothing of behind.
It rained blood down, seeking more. He knew that some of that blood was his own. It had tasted of him and it liked that taste right well. It wanted it all.
It opened wide its maw of biting steel and poisoned glass and wordlessly roared its hunger, its frustration. For the first time in nearly a thousand years, he shook and wept with fright.
~~~~~~~
The roars diminished like echoes and Solly woke with a start. A fire was burning somewhere nearby. Solly could smell the wood and the sound of the crackling flames filled him with an exhaustive relief. His eyes burned and ran tears. A strange haze had fallen over his vision, as if a cloud were surrounding him. Everything he looked at was faded and muzzy; gently soft around the edges. Looking long at his hand, he realized that the strange halo were the scratches of the sand on his eyes.
The flames leapt and danced in his eyes, hurting them. The light stabbed like long, thin needles. He closed them in misery as the acid wash of tears flooded them. They felt like they'd been replaced with molten balls of gritty glass while he slept. His hand throbbed with shrieking intensity as though it were still being eaten, and his head felt as though someone had been using it to mix mortar.
His entire body felt like it had been run through the glass-grinder he'd seen once in the halls of the Khan of Morterea. It had reduced useless bits of broken glass into something that could be spread on walls with a glue mixture to make them glitter in the sun like diamonds. The Khan had been very fond of it. It was ironic that it had been used by his successor to affect his succession, but ground glass in one's nightly wine cup was effective as a knife in the liver.
"Wh-wher-whuh?" he muttered. His movements were weak, drained. Exhaustion smothered his every effort. His heart was hammering in his chest with a weak, fluttering stutter. He carefully opened his eyes again, trying to get his bearings.
The firelight was momentarily blocked by something. A strong, firm hand held his lower jaw and a cold, wet vessel of stone was gently held to his painful lips. Solly had the barest presence of mind to sip the liquid slowly. Water, heavily laced with a minty herb of some kind, and when it touched his lips and tongue, they went immediately numb. He washed the inside of his mouth with the liquid first, feeling the water refresh him as it numbed the naked, abraded tissues of his mouth.
He took another sip, a larger one, and tried swallowing it. It was better than the finest wine and it watered the dry places in him like rain in the desert, leaving behind a wonderful feeling of euphoria. He took a third sip, and felt most of his pain slip away. There was a heavy, medicinal tinge on the air that Solly couldn't recognize. It took him some time to realize that the smell was his own breath.
"Whut was thaaat?" he asked.
"My people call it the "Flower that Releases Pain," a strong, masculine voice replied. "I do not know any other name for it. It grows in the cold, dark, places where the snow never melts and the sun does not shine. Our hunters sometimes take it to fall into the sleep that does not end when the pain of their wounds is too much. It is a very powerful medicine."
The voice subsided and the figure moved into Solly's line of sight.
Solly's senses fed him information that he processed as best he could in his muddled state. He lay on his back and a fur blanket was pulled up to his chin. The blankets smelled of wood smoke, leather and cured meats. As near as he was able to tell, he wore nothing beneath the fur blanket he lay under.
A number of efficient, simple cloth dressings covered his wounds, and he could smell an astringent odor he assumed was an antiseptic. He touched the bandages wrapped neatly around his face with fingers deadened by the herb, wondering if he still had a recognizable nose or ears. He could hear a wind raging outside, somewhere, but it was reduced to a thin whisper of what it had been.
The dull, echoing rattle of stone against stone sounded in the distance, along with the slow, dripping "clink" of water falling into deep pools. There was something about the acoustical quality of those sounds that suggested to Solly that he was deep underground.
He looked at his benefactor through foggy eyes. He couldn't see much. The man's skin in the tricky light of the fire was as red as blood, but darker; mellower. His face had the color and textural quality of the very finest leather. It was a weather-beaten and craggy face; wise and proud. White hair hung to the shoulders in neat, straight locks, framing it; a strong face with heavy features. His cheekbones were thick and high, like a ridge that ran from ear to ear. His nose was like an eagle's beak and fit him perfectly. It was a forbidding visage, something to respect and fear.
The man's eyes were as shockingly blue as a calm sea under a summer sky, and there was a sorrow lurking in them that was painful for Solly to be this close to, dizzy, sick and drugged as he was. There was an intensity in the man's gaze that Solly recognized as strength tempered with wisdom. The man held the stone vessel to Solly's lips again and gave him another long sip. With a graceful turn, the man laid the vessel aside. Solly saw a large, blue stone - the size and shape of a robin's egg - on a rawhide thong, dangling from his neck as the man turned in profile towards the fire.
"Welcome. It is good to see your eyes open in our world."
His voice was strong and masculine, but oddly toneless. The gentleness of it was a strange contrast in that Warrior's Face. His voice held no color, no sparkle and his accent was impossible for Solly to place.
The man laid one heavily calloused hand over his heart and continued to look into Solly's eyes.
"I am "Shadows-Dancing-On-Wall," or, as I prefer to be called among my people, "Shadow"'. For the time being, I offer you the peace and rest of my home, along with what comfort it contains. In time, we will speak of the hospitality price," he said. He then sat looking at Solly with expectation.
Solly croaked once, his voice viscous and clotted. He licked his numb lips and tried again. Lifting his hand and laying it upon his own heart, he said. "My name's Solly. Solly Mont. I thank you," he managed to croak. "And I will pay whatever price I am asked to by the man who saved my life." He closed his eyes with a thick wince as a bit of light lanced into them.
"It is well," Shadow said. "Your manners become you. But I must ask, how is it you speak my language? You are not of the People."
"No," Solly croaked. "At least, I don't think so. I mean, no. I don't speak your language. I hear you in th' language I speak."
Shadow nodded, once, sagely. "Ah. Strange are the ways of the dream walk."
He laid a gentle hand on Solly's shoulder and said, "Rest. There will be time later to explore this mystery. You have been grievously wounded."
Solly felt himself slipping away. He fought it for a while, but he was weak and exhausted. Just before sleep claimed him totally, he heard Shadow moving around the firelight, speaking to himself in a gentle whisper.
"I have offered him the peace of my home, for such time as peace is required. When the time for peace to end-"
Solly fell the rest of the way, and dreamt of fire dancing in the eyes of the wise.
~~~~~~~
He was dreaming. One of the benefits of being Solly Mont was his ability to tell, instantly, whenever he was dreaming. He'd learned all the tell-tale signs - like the scratches hobos leave on fences - of dreams and dreaming long ago.
Here was the mist of sleep, there, the warmth of his unconscious mind healing his body. He knew these things just as we know water is wet, snow is cold and fire is hot. The knowing didn't make it any less terrible.
All this will I give thee, if thou wilt bow down to me.
The voice sounded like oiled smoke and smelled of death and corruption. It whispered to him from its place in the grave, carrying with it the grinding wail of lost, tormented souls.
The voice was evil, poisonous, but he'd heard it before, dealt with it before. As bad as it was, it wasn't as bad as the naught wind, the thing that lived in the places between. The naught wind blew from places the voice had never even imagined: the cold, outer dark; the endless nothing beyond infinity; beyond the light of the oldest star; the dark craters before creation's coming.
The naught wind blew in the howling voice of void, of entropy, of slow, endless decay leading to nothing, and it was allies of old with the voice whispering in his ears.
He stood upon a high place and felt that sick, death-carrying wind crawl across him in hot and cold waves. It felt like fevered, bloody snakes dancing across his skin and it brought the visions.
Solly watched as all the cities of man burned. He watched the advances of man - every shining light that had been lifted to the heavens for Divine approval, every good thing man's hand had wrought - burned. The smoke poisoned the air and the cloud of its burning covered the sky from horizon to horizon.
He watched the rivers of the world flood. He watched them rise endlessly, sweeping away everything before them in a wet, roiling wave of destruction. They swelled until the bridles of the horses of war were drenched with the blood of human suffering.
Helpless tears rained down his face as he watched mothers and fathers sell their babies into prostitution; gave them to men with sly, sick smiles to use, kill and eat. Moaning, he watched children hatefully murder their fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers. He shook, his fists clenched impotently, as he watched man forsake his brother and turn his back on the pain of the suffering. He cried aloud as he watched a mother lift her infant - the child of her own body! - over her head and dash him to pieces against the ground with nary a second thought, her eyes empty and dull.
And he closed his eyes when he saw that same blankly staring daughter of Eve take a razor to her own skin.
He'd never felt such pain. He'd never known such sorrow. He'd never known such black and blasphemous evil lived in the hearts and minds of man. And through it all the naught wind blew, moaning and groaning in rapturous ecstasy while the diseased voice whispered and gibbered at him:
All this will I give thee, if thou wilt bow down to me.
All this will I give thee, if thou wilt bow down to me.
All this will I give thee, if thou wilt bow down to me.
He tore at his beard. He cast dust upon his head and tore at his clothes, begging forgiveness for his sins. He watched, again, the coming of the Greek, the Assyrian, the Roman, the Saracen. The city of his father was raped by the Saxon. The men trampled, stole, killed and destroyed, and the gloating, oil-smoke-voice on the naught wind pushed the crimes ever farther, ever more, ever bloodier.
Men gave themselves fully to bloodlust, ripping the unborn from its mother's womb, reveling in gory, mindless debauch; smearing blood and entrails on each other in glee.
Tearing at his eyes, he went mad with grief as he saw the sacred institution of the temple burn again. The flames of its burning were whipped to the very stars by the cancerous wind; the voice laughing now, mocking him and his pain.
That voice continued to wheedle while the naught wind blew and sang through the tormented halls of his mind.
All this will I give you.
All this will I give you.
All this will I give you.
~~~~~~~
"He dreams."
Solly heard the voice and recognized it on an instinctual level. He knew the owner of that voice from somewhere, and he knew that voice represented a return to the light of the living. But, for right now at least, that was far away and unimportant.
He felt a thin prick of worry. Was he safe here? In his nearly helpless condition, could he do anything about it?
The furs still covered him, and his host had promised him "peace" for a time. Keeping his eyes closed and his breathing easy and steady, he tried to touch around him with his mind. For all intents and purposes, he was still deeply asleep. Yet a small part of him, a part of him that had ever been watchful and wary, sat up and took stock of the situation while the rest of him slept on.
The dream held portents he needed to know, needed to hear. But he was afraid. He didn't want to sink back down into the halls of his mind, didn't want to see the blood-soaked horrors that awaited him there. He didn't want to hear that bone-squeak, groaning voice, or the slithering, gloating whisper of the naught wind.
"The poison that touched him. See? He sweats it out in his dreams. I think the ebon wind, the voice of Black Coyote, sings for him and calls his name in its poisonous howls. The house of the dead has tasted his life. They have touched at his inmost being, drank deeply of the waters of his spirit, and now they call for him from beyond. He fights it, but he is weak and hurt, like a bear with a wounded paw."
His bright spark of interior consciousness was fading now. He was still weak, and badly injured from his adventure in the desert. His body was drawing deeply on its reserves, and couldn't maintain this separated consciousness for long.
With his flagging resolve, Solly attempted to touch the mind of his host. He brushed against something cold and hard. It was sharp and strange, like obsidian in warm mud. His mind caressed at it, ineffectually, and Solly fell slowly back into his own mind's deepening shadows before he could explore further.
He fought, with everything he had left, to touch his host's mind.
Something like an angry avalanche fell on him, in thick, suffocating folds, and Solly's mind recoiled in fear. He fell away into sleep helplessly.
~~~~~~~
He dreamt, again, and his dreams were fearful, fevered things.
He stood alone in the dark, a wind moaning ceaselessly around him. He was in a black, howling void that had neither shape nor form. There was no sense of up or down, no sense of falling or moving. There was only him, and the ever moving, ever calling wind. He was more afraid than he'd ever been in his life.
The wind, that bleak and toxic wind, was still searching for him and in its mighty blunderings, its swipes and crashing strikes, it kept touching him. He felt the wind's touch not as hot or cold, but as a sickness, a weariness of soul. That wind touched him, and he felt parts of him die. They withered, and fell away like dead skin.
The naught wind's face turned toward him for the first time. It was the personification of an endless hunger. One great, diseased eye was staring out of that face, above a maw lined with all the teeth of eternity. That great, bloodshot eye was roaming endlessly in the void, dancing in sickening, dizzying swirls and spirals of movement. It sought him, Solly Mont. It sought his life, his soul.
He knew that he was hidden for the time being. That cold unfeeling eye could not see him, but it knew he was there, and it kept fumbling at him. His warm spirit was baking out at that keening maw like a heated iron under a woolen blanket. In this place of endless sorrow, pain, madness and death, the bright, warm animus that was Solly Mont shone forth with the heat of a star. He felt like a blind, crippled mouse hiding from a mad, hungry cat.
Solly Mont pulled the tattered shreds of his strength about himself, as a man would with a torn robe. He tried to call out, lifting his voice in a weak, terrified whisper.
"Hello?"
His voice echoed back at him with the laughter of other damned souls chasing it.
He felt the wind renew its rush, quickened by his call. It danced over his naked limbs, pulling and drawing at him. Solly shivered and the wind danced yet more. It seemed to center its activity around Solly's form in this not-place.
He felt an endless, insane hunger; an obese, malevolent intelligence, turn and regard him with baneful glee.
In that frozen instant - just before his mind broke like an egg and his screams started - Solly learned that there are things worse than death.
~~~~~~~
Shadows-Dancing-On-Wall cocked his head as if he were listening to something that only he could hear.
Shadow lifted his right hand and placed it over the other fellow's heart. Gently lifting the other Solly’s head, he cradled it in his lap. Shadow closed his eyes and began singing a high, wordless song. It climbed glistening scales of minor keys, and fell back down in a beautiful spiral of major ones.
In his torment, Solly could feel the touch of Shadow's hand, and he could hear something like a choir of church bells. Images began to gently intrude into his consciousness, like persistent puppies seeking to be cuddled. Shadow sang, and his music - wordless - nevertheless made these images come alive within the echoing chambers of Solly's heart and mind. They told stories of life, love, and the bright warmth of the sun on the face of a smiling child. They told stories of a proud, strong hunter swiftly and cleanly killing his prey. They told of thanking the prey for the meat, the blood, the bone, the skin. They told stories of clean water and the cold winds that blow across the mountains at the top of the world. They told stories of rivers that boiled in a dazzling display of power and majesty.
They told of the power of obligation already held, and they made war against the power of the naught wind.
There was no sense of invasion or intrusion, here. These bright, flittering stories nestled within Solly like treasured memories, or perhaps the dreams of memories of dreams. True, they were never his, but what of that? They were now. It was holy, and strange, and savage, and fierce, and wonderful, all at once.
Tears ran unheeded down Solly's face as he watched Moon gleefully chase her children into their places, gently tuck them in and bid them "Good rest" before Sun left for the hunt. Rabbit ran from Wolf across the sky. Their meeting was foreordained, but never would either place a wrong step before then. Their dance was perfect, and would remain perfect until the end of all things. They were content to be as they are, content to lead the lives Father Mind, the Creator Spirit, had placed before them at the beginning of the World, and all that was.
The naught wind roared in hungry frustration, its efforts stymied by the hope and joy of life being enacted in Solly's soul by Shadow's song magic.
Solly watched as Mother sat in her place, her arms empty, her heart broken. Her heel was viciously bruised, and the sadness on her face made his heart twist within him. He looked upon Mother's face, and he wished that he'd never been born. Father Mind wept, watering the lands of all his children with life-giving rain granted from the sacrificed blood of his own son.
He watched these things, these wonderful secrets that were not secrets, and Solly Mont wept for joy and for sorrow until he felt his heart would break.
The tears washed him back to the light of life. He lay in Shadow's arms, weeping for a very long time. Underneath the sorrow and the joy, however, was a great and wonderful peace. For the first time in who knew how long, Solly Mont felt still within himself. The tumult of his stormy heart was stilled. When at last he opened his eyes and wiped away his tears, he saw Shadow looking down at him, his eyes clear, his brow untroubled.
"I have fulfilled to the full my obligation of peace, Solly Mont. I am free of the consequence of law. We will speak of the price of hospitality."
And Solly, his heart still content, nodded in humble acquiescence.
~~~~~~~
Adventures from Tales of the Fallen (Book I)
Pt. 9
The Aurora - that song sung by the gods and translated into color and light - danced above him in slow, undulating waves. Some distance below, he could hear the ocean as it smashed itself against the ice he sat on. Cold, weary, and aching in more places than he could count, Weaver tried to remember the last time he had slept without pain.
The wind tasted strange: smoke, burnt metal and death. Weaver feared he was tasting the ashes of the many who had died in the warm lands during the sky-rent. His eyes and tongue felt gritty. His throat was dry. The breezes touching his face carried faces and voices he could barely discern. Pain and sorrow were thick here; sisters huddling together in shared misery.
Weaver contemplated the massive structure before him. He could feel the beat of time racing, but he did not know what to do. A scream was building in his chest; frustration, pain, weariness, it all threatened to boil over in one long, loud plaint. But that wouldn't help Moonlight.
Weaver lived in a society of boundaries defined by tradition, magic and laws older than the land they lived on. Doors were not boundaries. They were flaps of skin that held the weather out. There was no defining "This is here and that is there." with a door in a society where most everything, including the hut one slept in on a daily basis, was held as common property. Nor was there such a thing anywhere as a "gate".
The gate towered above him, inscrutable, with no obvious mechanism of action, no convenient knob or handle. It was a void-space defined by strange glass-like stone. Looking at it made Weaver feel awed and insignificant. There was a grave danger here of offending laws, gods and powers he did not understand.
What to do?
The blank space within the gate frightened him. It reminded him of the darkness beneath the deepest ice caves, where slept the creatures who lived just beyond the mind of man. The Shamans led the people in, once a year, to remind them of the fragile nature of their existence. The breathing of those massive, sleeping, faceless giants was the only sound heard in all that dark, endless cold, and one listened, feeling very small indeed. No lights were permitted in the ice caves - not the merest torch - for fear of waking those creatures and ending the world. The darkness there was a nothing, an empty, dull void, and it mimicked the darkness below the world. The void denied everything, going so far as to even block the wind when Weaver walked in front of it.
He did not know what the great pile of glass-stone represented, did not know how to access its magic. He did know that unless he grew fins like the barking seal, his journey was over. Looking out into the gray distance, he could see rolling breakers moving endlessly toward him. The waves crashing below him sent tremors up that he could feel.
The wind was relentless and deadly. Weaver could feel it worming its way into his warm furs, sapping his life and heat. He could feel that chill damp trying to steal his inner warmth.
He sat on the ice, gnawing on frozen bear meat, trying to decide what to do.
The voice, when it came, sounded like it was directly behind him, almost sitting on his back.
"What are you doing, Weaver?"
Weaver started up from his place on the ice, his hands shaking, his heart pounding. He whipped around, looking for the source of that voice. Snow Fox was sitting before him, its mouth lolling open, its eyes dancing mischievously.
"Yaahhh, Snow Fox!" Weaver shouted at it. He kicked at the ground and shook his fist at Snow Fox, dancing a bit in reaction and rage. He felt a bit silly, but Snow Fox had frightened him.
Snow Fox looked bigger to Weaver's eyes. When he had first seen the creature, it was no bigger than a newly born bear cub, a small bundle of flailing claws and white fur. Now it was the size of an underfed wolf.
Snow Fox watched Weaver with its wise, amber eyes. "You look very strange when you dance about like that, Weaver. Time marches ever onward and Moonlight lies behind us. Why are you still here?"
Weaver waved a hand vaguely at the gate. "My father once said that a wise hunter is careful not to step on the ice before he looks at it for cracks. I do not know what it is I am looking at, much less how to awaken its magic."
Snow Fox sniffed the wind blowing around it in a bored, disinterested sort of way. It looked at the gate and then looked back at Weaver.
"You're wasting time, you know. Stones-Falling-From-Sky lies beyond this gate. Will you let Moonlight lie in the cold, corrupting, because you are 'careful' and ignorant?"
Weaver gnashed his teeth. He would kill this impertinent creature and use its skin as a toilet. Clenching his fists he strode a pace toward Snow Fox.
Snow Fox barked merrily. "Ahhh. Your anger tastes like finest blood to me, Weaver-Of-Shadows," Snow Fox said, "and now you plan something violent and useless. How rare a gift you are!"
Weaver hands fell uselessly to his sides. He sighed, a noise that ended in a sob. Collapsing to the snow, he whispered in a hollow voice, "I do not know what to do, Snow Fox. I do not know the magic that this place makes and Moonlight . . .."
He couldn't finish the thought. Snow Fox looked up at Weaver, its muzzle lowering, its eyes suddenly hungry.
"And what will you do to learn the magic, Weaver?" it asked, in a whisper.
Weaver wiped his face, heedless of the pains that were racing through him anew. He sniffed mightily and stood on shaking legs. Taking a deep breath, he attempted to answer Snow Fox as a man of the People should.
"Whatever I must, Snow Fox."
Snow Fox sat up on its haunches, its muzzle lifted.
"Ahhh, Weaver. You do not disappoint! Is your knife still keen?"
Weaver drew his knife, looking at it disinterestedly.
Snow Fox sighed in ecstasy, almost dancing on two feet. "I hunger, Weaver. I hunger in ways you or any of the People would never understand. The small snack of your fingers, freely given in the bargain of blood and meat was a sweet aperitif to me, but I hunger for more substantial fare now."
"What must I do, Snow Fox?" Weaver asked, his voice hollow.
"The palm of your hand, Weaver-Of-Shadows. Draw the knife, crosswise, across the scar there.
Weaver didn't think about it, didn't think about what slicing a knife across that scar would mean. It was just a scar, wasn't it? Certainly, it was there as a life-long reminder of his ceremony of manhood, placed there by the Shaman, but what had it ever done for him?
He drew the blade of the knife across his palm as instructed, cutting deep into the scarred meat with a sudden gesture that sent blood spraying across the ice toward Snow Fox. A great gout of blood erupted from the injury. The still healing stumps of his fingers began gushing blood as well. Pain like he'd never known, as if he'd cut himself off from the font of all life, crushed him to the ice, moaning in inexpressible agony. Snow Fox leapt into that spray of blood, covering itself with the life that fled from Weaver's veins. It noisily chewed, eating something Weaver could not see, swallowing it with Weaver's blood for sauce.
Weaver lay face down on the ice, clutching his palm to him, fist curled in, in an attempt to stem the flow of blood. He gritted his teeth and flexed his arm, squeezing down on the bleeding stump at the end of his limb until he saw spots before his eyes. He lay there for a thousand years, whimpering and watching the blood slow.
Finally, the bleeding stopped to the merest of trickles. Cutting a strip of his furs free, he bound his wounds as best he was able with his other hand and his teeth. By the time he was done, the remains of his hand screamed blood, fire and thunder at him. Bright spots laggedly danced in his eyes, and a strange lassitude sat on his shoulders. Clumsily resheathing his knife, he tried to pull himself together.
Snow Fox sat before him, all traces of the blood it had eaten - and whatever else it had swallowed as well - long gone. Snow Fox was definitely bigger, now. Its feeding on Weaver's blood and flesh had increased its size some three-fold. It was now the size of an adolescent bear. It stood tall enough for its head to reach Weaver's waist, and Weaver felt the stirrings of honest fear. These dealings were having repercussions he did not understand.
Snow Fox looked up at him, its cunning teeth meeting together in its wily smile. "Are you afraid, Weaver?"
"Yes," Weaver answered, simply.
Snow Fox laughed: a harsh sound that sounded like the breaking of wings, the skitter of claws in the night.
"Weaver! We have a deal, you and I! You have nothing to fear from me!" Snow Fox said.
"Teach me the magic of the stones, Snow Fox, and leave me be." Weaver lurched upright, the bright spots threatening to overwhelm him for a long moment. He cradled his torn hand to his blood-smeared breast.
Snow Fox laughed again. The sound made shivers run up and down Weaver's spine. "It's a gate, Weaver. Walk through it!"
With that, it turned and loped off into the darkness, snarling its laugh of malice.
Weaver again secured all his furs around his body. He re-packed the small amount of meat left to him and made sure his skull bottle was full of ice and tightly sealed. Re-checking his knife in it sheath, he insured it was tied closely to him.
None of this was truly necessary; he was putting off the moment when he knew he would have to step into that blank, featureless void. Walking before the gate, he looked up at its blank face in the watery light of the moon.
Taking a deep breath, he stepped through.
~~~~~~~
Wind.
Fierce, sudden and everywhere, all at once.
He floated in a blank nowhere. There was no hot, no cold, no light, no dark, only a colorless, unlit nothing. The only sound was the wind. It howled around him, ripping and tearing at him. It drove its voice of rusty metal into his mind and pulled out each one of his nightmares.
Weaver wept in fear. He could feel the oily bite of the wind's maw on his skin. In his mind's eye, he saw that endless mouth, lined with teeth of biting steel and poisoned glass, wordlessly roar its eternal hunger, its frustration.
That wind blew from places Weaver had never even imagined. The wind blew from the cold, outer dark; the endless nothing beyond infinity. The wind blew beyond the light of the oldest star. The wind blew from the dark craters before creation's coming.
The wind in that place blew in the howling voice of 'void', of 'not'.
It felt like fevered, bloody snakes dancing across his skin. It felt like warm blood running all over him, and only some of it was his. The touch of that wind was madness and death, and Weaver screamed.
The not-wind moaned and groaned in rapturous, ecstatic response.
It hungered, that wind. It heard the beating of a heart, and it wanted that hot flush of warmth for its own. Weaver heard the gloating, oil-smoke voice on the diseased not-wind push against his own mind: fingering it, caressing it, poking and pulling at it. The not-wind teased at his mind the way a cat will tease at a string. It scraped and scratched at Weaver's mind, hurting him horribly. His screams of agony were whipped to the very stars by that cancerous wind. Creatures born a thousand years after the world ended heard Weaver's screams and feared them. Spirits walking the earth a thousand years before humanity stepped cautiously into the light of higher reason heard that scream and wept for Weaver. Weaver's scream of pain and fear raced across all of existence, touching every mind that could hear it with a brief glimpse of unendurable fear.
Weaver panicked as his mind split itself into cracked fragments. He didn't know where he was, he didn't know who he was, but if he didn't get away from the wind, he would spend the rest of eternity being driven mad by it and dying by slow inches.
Weaver drew his knife. He closed his mouth, closed his eyes, and closed his mind. He placed the knife against his neck and sent a final goodbye to those he loved most with the last shred of his lucid awareness before it evaporated into the all-consuming throat of the wind.
Then he pushed the knife as hard as he could into his flesh.
If you’ve enjoyed this, please be sure to check out Tales of the Fallen, Book I, now available in paperback and eBook formats!
~~~~~~
Adventures from Tales of the Fallen (Book I)
Pt. 8
Solly Mont's eyes grew wide and he found himself interjecting without meaning to. "Oh no, Shado'! Say it idn't so! Oh! Tha' poor man hadda watch his son die like tha'?"
Shadow looked at Solly, proud tears standing unshed in his eyes. "It is an evil thing to watch one's son die, Sul-lee Munt, far worse to watch him murdered by one own pride, I think. But I cannot speak to you of opinion, I can only sing the song as it was sung to me." Shadow's voice came out as a mournful sigh. He reached for the waterskin and took a deep draught, wincing a bit.
"Are ya' alright then, Shado'?" Solly asked, placing a hand on Shadow's shoulder, his face concerned.
"I am, my brother," Shadow said with a weary smile. "My bones are old, and this song is a hard one to sing."
Rolling his head on his neck, Shadow took a moment to collect himself. The Song Of Weaver was an old one, a curse borne by his people for far too long, never easy to sing; to sing it to strangers, to speak of a people's failings to one not of the Tribe, this was hardest of all. He shook his head. What was, was, and what will be, will be. Perhaps this was a poison that could be drained.
"The madness of Weaver began then, there, on the ice. My people sing his song as a lesson and a warning. Hear then, if you will, of the madness of Weaver."
Shadow lifted his face and his voice, his weary song spilling forth from him like pain from a wound.
~~~~~~~
The bear's immense paw crashed down on Moonlight's head with the force of a star exploding. Weaver felt a sympathetic shock in his own bones, and lurched as if a spear had punched through his heart. There was a sickening noise - like ice breaking off into the sea - and Moonlight's neck jetted blood in a crimson spray across the pristine white of the bear's fur. His head lolled broken and useless.
The bear reached down with its muzzle and gripped Moonlight by the tunic, shaking him while growling and snarling. The other bears raced away across the ice, loping in wide strides the hunters could never hope to match.
Weaver screamed, his voice cracking and breaking. He threw his spear at the bear, hitting it in the skull, laying open a large wound that hung a thick flap of fatty tissue over its eyes, blinding it. Blood ran from the wound in a torrent.
The bear roared in shock and pain. It rolled in a panic-driven frenzy across the ice, grating its face in agony against the ground, much like a man holding his head after striking it. It rolled atop Moonlight a number of times, further mangling and crushing him. Weaver could clearly hear the sickening sound of bones snapping and breaking.
He flew across the ice to the bear, reaching it in an instant, screaming incoherent rage at it. Pulling another spear from his quiver, he leapt into the air as high as he could and stabbed down. The spear drove deep into the bear's vitals, killing it instantly. Groaning a great sigh, the bear rolled one last time, quivered and was still.
This wasn't enough for Weaver. He ripped the spear from the bear, breaking it, and stabbed it into the dead beast, over and over again, still screaming chaotically.
This was grossest taboo, a violation of all the holiness of the manhood ritual akin to deepest blasphemy, but Weaver was far beyond rational thought. His mind dwelt in the black waters where swam madness.
Otter and Bear Claw reached him then and tried to speak to him, to pull him away. Weaver was covered in blood and viscera, his hoarse screams drowning them out. His eyes were wide and unseeing in his madness, as over and over again he drove the broken stub of spear into the bear's carcass. Tears, mixed with blood and sweat, blinded him. The slurry ran across his face to freeze on exposed skin.
When Otter grabbed his arm and attempted to pull him bodily away from the bear - from the fallen, mutilated corpse of a god feared and worshipped by the People - Weaver struck him across the face with the broken stub of spear, still screaming. It wasn't until Bear Claw hit him across the back of the head that Weaver fell into a boneless, grateful faint.
~~~~~~~
He was lying on his back, listening to the wind and the beating of small, cunning paws fade from his mind's ear. The cold under him was trying to drain his life. He came toward the light of life and reason slowly, like a man approaches a hot fire. He knew there was grief waiting for him when he opened his eyes, and he wanted to deny it as long as he could. He hurt in places he didn't want to think about. He wished and wanted and prayed to every god he could think of in his half-aware state to die before his eyes could open. The gods did not listen.
He opened his eyes to see Bear Claw looking down upon him. Bear Claw's eyes held glimmering pools of unshed tears. Weaver could hear Otter singing the Lament for the Dead over the sound of the moaning wind.
"No," Weaver whispered. He tried to sit up but his head swam alarmingly. He vomited where he lay and Bear Claw rolled him over on his stomach. He was sick for a very long time. Gasping and spitting, it felt as if his head was trying to spin away from him.
Bear Claw knelt by him. He handed Weaver a cloth to wipe his face with. When Weaver had cleaned himself as much as his feeble, exhausted efforts would allow, Bear Claw looked him in the eyes and said, "Lie still, Weaver. The blow I gave you has probably scrambled your brains a bit. Otter says you may be injured. He sees to your son's final journey, and he will see to you soon." His hand lay on Weaver's shoulder. His eyes were sad and empty.
"No," Weaver said, his voice wispy and weak. Clearing his throat, he said it again more firmly. "No." Knocking Bear Claw's hand away, and, with a mighty effort that took more of his strength, he stood. A flare of pain flashed in his head, threatening to take his feet from him. Summoning reserves of will, he stood until the pain subsided, gasping with the intensity of it. Bear Claw said nothing. He knew a man must sometimes see for himself before he would accept death.
For a long moment, Weaver stood in one place, swaying from side to side. Drawing mightily on his swiftly dwindling reserves of strength and will, he forced himself to stand straight. The taste of blood filled his mouth, and his tongue felt pierced and raw. He wondered idly, as men do when they are trying to avoid dealing with crushing pain and grief, if the blood was his, Moonlight's, or the bear's.
He turned then, his face pale and wan, and saw what was left of the crumpled body of his son.
A bruise, edged by torn and bleeding skin, sat on Otter's left cheek like an accusation. His mouth moved slowly around what must have been tremendous pain as he finished the Lament for the Dead.
Otter knelt over the fallen bear, under which, Weaver could just see the bloody fur leggings of his only son. There was a great pond of steaming blood pooling under the bear. Moonlight's corpse lay in several inches of it, his fur-covered feet dyed a gaudy red.
Otter thanked the bear for its gift of life, slit its throat as was proper, and attempted to assuage its vengeful spirit. The ritual should be completed, of course. Slaying a god was not a thing taken lightly by the People, and it would be best if Moonlight's spirit could go on to the House of the Dead a man. As to Weaver's broken taboo, well, grief made a man mad. This was known by men, god and vengeful spirit. Otter was confident that, given time and space, he could cleanse the taint from Weaver's soul.
He started to butcher the bear with swift, economical movements while Weaver watched.
"No!" Weaver shouted, grunting from the pain it cost him. Otter turned around, his eyes wide and curious, the bruise livid under the dancing lights of the aurorae above them. He saw Weaver standing there, his face twisted with a black agony. He thought to explain things to him.
"We must carry the bear off the ice, Weaver. The two of us," he indicated Bear Claw with one blood-smeared hand, "cannot manage you, the body of your son, and the carcass of the bear by ourselves, and you are in no condition to help."
"I will not let you take the body of my son, Otter. My son is not dead." Weaver said, looking Otter in the eyes. Otter flailed back as if from a physical blow at the hate-soaked madness he saw dancing there. An evil spirit - an insane, tormenting voice - rode Weaver. Otter could see it caper and dance in the shine of Weaver's mad, dead eyes. "As for the beast that has done this, you will leave it there to rot."
"Weaver. Please. To do such would offend all the gods. I know this must be hard for you, but what you say is madness, and evil besides!" Otter said, lifting imploring hands and trying to reach the man he knew and loved.
Weaver turned, his eyes casting about. Spotting his quiver some distance away, he began limping toward it.
Bear Claw, seeing his intent, interposed his body between Weaver and the quiver. "Please, Weaver. Please! Listen to reason!"
Weaver looked up at Bear Claw and Bear Claw shivered, backing hurriedly away from that haunted gaze. He wanted nothing to do with the demon he saw there. Weaver reached his quiver and picked it up, pulling a spear from it.
"My son is not dead. You will leave the bear on the ice," he said, shuffling painfully over to where the two bodies lay, his boots squelching through a slush of bloody ice. The spear was held point toward the ground, but Weaver kept it between him and the two men. The implicit threat was all too clear.
He refused to look upon the torn, mangled remains beneath the bear. It would all be fine. He need only remove the bear and Moonlight would be well. All would be well.
He lay his hand upon the bear and began pushing at the enormous corpse. The effort of pushing made the pain in his head swell and flare. Gritting his teeth, he pushed harder.
It was too much. He gave a great, sobbing wail of pain and fell to his knees, clutching at the sides of his head. Bright stars danced in his vision and he swam in a cloudy constellation of pain and nausea. He wept, clutching his head, in the still-warm pond of blood for a long time.
He laid his head against the hot, fetid skin of the bear. It smelled like warm meat. He could smell its hair, its blood, its life. He breathed deeply of it, enjoying the bear's death.
"I hate you. I hate you with everything within me. I hate you forever and always," he whispered into the bear's hide.
Clawing his way to his feet, his hands and soaked boots slipping, he drew his knife and began to butcher the bear himself, refusing any help from the other two men.
Several hours later, Weaver lay upon the ice with the mangled, fur-wrapped body of his son, alone. He suspected that what he had insisted upon was foolhardy in the extreme, but he had done it anyway.
Bear Claw had looked on, his eyes wide and sad. He well knew the depths of a father's despair, himself. He had lost a son - Buffalo Dancer - to the mad voices upon the great ice. They'd found him, naked, frozen and blue. The voices had tormented him for hours. Buffalo's skin was covered in deep, self-inflicted cuts. He'd managed to cut both of his hands off - his sharp stone knife still in his teeth when they found him - and his death was a lesson to the entire tribe.
Otter had tried to explain to Weaver that even one night upon the great ice was enough to kill a man, most especially a man as badly wounded as he was. He tried patience, he tried love, he tried everything he could think of to reach the man underneath the cloak of spirit-driven despair.
"Please, Weaver. Your Spider will need you. The Tribe needs you! I need you! Weaver, return with us, be the man we need you to be now!"
Weaver had looked at him, his eyes cold and dead, the spear interposed, point first, between the two of them. "I will not leave my son, Otter, nor will I allow you to take him elsewhere. We will remain here until Moonlight is better."
And that had been his final word. The other two men, sick at heart and weary to the bone, had turned away and began the long walk back to where the Tribe dwelt. They had not the provisions to stay longer, having been denied by Weaver so much as the smallest cut of meat or the merest drop of the bear's slowly freezing blood. With heavy hearts, they left Weaver to what they knew would be his death.
Weaver gave no further argument, no explanation. He could still hear the padding of small, cunning paws, and below the pain and head-sickness of his injuries and his loss, he felt a bright surge of hope flare into being like an ember from a dead fire. He heard the dead voice - the voice the other two men knew was there, but had not spoken of - whisper within him.
Yes, Weaver. Stay. Stay and find me. Stay, and we will find the flown soul of your beautiful, tall, strong son.
He listened to that voice, with its throat of dry stone, and he surrendered to its promises.
Weaver finished butchering the bear. Much of it was left on the bone, further violating the god. Then he dug a hole beneath what was left, tearing at the skin of his hands with brutal purpose as he did so, forming an impromptu - but well-insulated - icehouse for himself and the body of his son. Lining the floor with the many sheets of fire-leather he had brought with him to cook the ritual cuts of meat, he started a small fire. Weaver looked at those cuts now as they sat, bloody and pointless, hating them: the heart and liver of the bear - Warrior's cuts.
It took some time, but he scraped what was left of the bear's skin as clean as was possible here on the ice. Weaver lay beneath it now, sitting against the wall of his icehouse and felt the killing cold slowly seep its way in. The aurorae danced and shifted above him, luridly painting the ever-ice in colors a mad man's eyes deeply appreciated.
Weaver set his jaw grimly, arranged himself as comfortably as he could, and sat watch over the body of his only son.
He knew he'd only have to wait. The voice would soon tell him what he must do.
If you’ve enjoyed this, please be sure to check out Tales of the Fallen, Book I, now available in paperback and eBook editions!
~~~~~~~
Adventures from Tales of the Fallen (Book I)
Pt. 7
Weaver slowly and methodically stowed his spears in the fur-lined quiver he'd made from seal hide, ensuring that each broad stone tip was carefully covered. The spear tips for the hunt of the ritual of manhood were carefully crafted by Otter, with charms cast upon them to ensure a good hunt. It was said by the hunters in the Tribe that if Otter charmed your spear tip, they couldn't fail to taste blood.
Normally, Weaver took great joy in preparing for a hunt, but his joy in this hunt was soured by Spider's evil dream of the night before. His mind slipped back to the tense anger of that moment, despite his concentration on the hunt preparations.
Moonlight was in the hut of preparation for the night, lying on the bare ice, wrapped only in the single set of skins he was allowed, and so had heard nothing of his parents' discussion.
"Weaver! The voice spoke of your death!"
"Spider, all things must die. This is the way of the creator. All things that live, must di-"
"No! You do not listen! There is death and there is death. This death the voice spoke of was a death beyond death!"
"How can there be death beyond death, my mate?" Weaver asked, a teasing tone to his voice.
Weaver wished he could see Spider's face better, could clearly read her facial expressions, but the hut was as black as the inside of a Sin Eater's stomach. Weaver listened to the faint music within him and estimated the rising of the sun to be some time yet. He would have to wait.
Spider had no patience for him or his teasing, however. "Foolish man! There is the death of life, yes; the death that comes when life has ended; either at old age, or the tip of the spear. But that life returns to the creator. It is part of the weave of the universe. The voice spoke of your death being ripped from the loom, Weaver! The voice spoke of your life running out, your inner life! Your very soul! The life that should be returned to the creator! It said that you would die on the ice! Unknown, unmourned and unrecognized by the People. You would be pulled from the loom of all life and cast into the dark beyond!"
Weaver suppressed a shudder at Spider's words. There were legends among the People: stern warnings about listening to the voices upon the great ice, or voices in the dead of night. It was said these were lives that had been pulled from the weave and sought to return, however they could. They were worse than ghosts.
He pulled himself back from the memory and tried to concentrate again. He looked at the tips of his spears, all the while his mate's voice echoed in his mind, turning what should be brightest joy into ash. The tips were as broad as a hunter's hand, and easily capable of punching through the hide of any beast the People hunted. They were wickedly sharp, but also quite fragile. Weaver was very thorough in ensuring that his spear heads were protected. It would not do to hunt with a quiver full of blunt spears!
He pricked a finger on one of the points and watched as the blood first beaded, welled, then ran down his finger. It pattered with a gentle sound onto the floor of the hut. Weaver watched it for a moment, helplessly replaying the conversation with his mate in his mind.
"Don't go, Weaver. Don't let Moonlight go." Spider's voice was earnest. Fearful.
Weaver tried a conciliatory tone. "Spider, it is not my choice. It is the tradition-"
"Tradition be damned, Weaver!" Spider screamed, pulling herself roughly away from Weaver's gentle embrace. Weaver felt hot saliva fleck his cheeks from the force of her anger. "I speak of life forever lost and you, you speak to me of tradition! Or perhaps it is ambition we should speak of. Yes? The ambition of a father for his son and the pride that leads to madness!"
Weaver recoiled in shock. In all the many turnings he and Spider had been mates, she had never once lifted her voice in anger, choosing instead to chide him gently when she was displeased. She was the softest and easiest of mates to get along with. This dream must've been evil indeed.
There was a moment of shocked silence between them. Spider broke it by lifting a tentative hand to Weaver's face. "I-I am sor-"
"Very well, Spider. Let us speak of these things, then. Let us speak of life," Weaver interrupted, his voice like stone in his throat. "Life as we know it."
Spider said nothing.
"You do not speak? Very well. I will speak. We are of the Tribe of the Badger, the strongest tribe of the strongest people of the world. We live here, in a place of ice and cold, on the very edge of life itself. We live as we have for thousands of years, following the tra-dit-ions," he drew the word out, syllable by syllable, "of our fathers, and their fathers before them.
"We thrive and we prosper, here, at the edge of all things, because we obey the traditions that have become law, and more than law, passed down from father to son since the beginning of time.
"What is life against that, Spider? You would have me break the laws engraved on the walls of my soul? What would I be then, Spider? Would I be a man of the People? A member of the Tribe of the Badger? Would I, indeed, be a man at all?"
Placing the quiver gently down, Weaver sighed. Spider never understood what it meant to be a man. She never understood the complex web of duties and responsibilities that held a man up and allowed him to walk straight.
Thinking these sour thoughts, Weaver slowly began to dress in the carefully tanned furs he'd accumulated in the summer hunts. The great killing cold would not be as bitter in a few short weeks, and was even now mellowing to some degree. The time of the hot sun was soon upon them. A worm of worry bit into Weaver's gut at that thought. It nestled next to the ill-feeling he had for his mate, Spider, and the two combined to give him a sour stomach.
The ritual of manhood required the candidate to hunt the Tribe's fiercest quarry; the Great White Bear. The Great White Bear lived upon the great-old-ice-that-never-melts, and near the places where the many-waters-of-salt made the ice thin. The people of the Tribe did not live near the many-waters-of-salt, so they had to hunt upon the great ice. When the ever-present snow in the lands of the Tribe melted under the brief, fierce light of the time of the hot sun, the Great White Bear would retreat even further to his home at the roof of the world. It would return to its great lodge that stood under the Bear Star, along with the homes of all the world's other gods of cold, ice and snow. The Tribe would be unable to perform the Great Hunt until the killing cold returned to the lands and brought the Great White Bear with it. There was, therefore, a rapidly dwindling amount of time for the men of the Tribe to effect the Great Hunt, and, by extension, Moonlight's ritual of manhood.
There were some in the Tribe, Spider among them, in fact, who said the Great White Bear was a spirit and shouldn't be hunted, even during the ritual of manhood. There were some who whispered that perhaps the Great White Bear was a god in its own right. Weaver had tasted the Great White Bear's salty blood himself, and never listened to these whisperings. His thinking was that if it bled, it was meant to bleed to feed the Tribe. He was a practical man. He did not let ill-feeling for Spider stop what he knew must be done for Moonlight, just as he did not allow maudlin moaning by the weak and the silly stop him from harvesting good meat.
One Great White Bear would feed the Tribe for several turnings of the sun. It stood many times higher than even the tallest hunter. Its paws were as big as four or five of the strongest hunters' heads put together. It was a strong, wise, magnificent animal, and Weaver felt the shivers of anticipation moving through him, dissolving his worries.
If Moonlight could kill a Great White Bear, and bring the bounty of its meat back to the Tribe, he would have much honor, and by extension, so would Weaver.
This led to him remembering what Spider had said before dressing herself and going to the woman's hut - something she had not done, save for her time of moonflow, since they had become mates - leaving him to toss and turn under their bearskin until the sun rose.
"This is not about Moonlight, is it Weaver-Of-Shadows? It is, and always has been, about you."
She threw the skin back with an angry gesture and leapt from their mat.
"Where are you going?" Weaver asked, shocked and hurt.
"I am going, Weaver-Of-Shadows. Perhaps I will return when you remember that you are a father first, a man second."
Weaver sat for a long time, the skin around his naked waist, thinking. The sun had risen and he still lay there, thinking about what she had said, and trying to find where his greatest duty lie.
Moonlight entered the hut then and brought the cold with him. The sun was shining brightly in the sky, reflecting from the ice all round them.
"Father? Are you awake?"
Weaver forced Spider's fears and concerns from his mind. She was a woman, he was a man. That was all he knew, that was all he understood. He had a responsibility - as a man - to his son. Moonlight needed him this day, and he would not fail his son.
"I am awake, my son. Give me a moment to dress and we will go to Otter."
The day had passed and he had not spoken to Spider, had not sought her out. He went with Moonlight to Otter's hut and they had eaten with the Shaman and drank the ritual collection of the tribe's blood mixed with the urine and spices only Otter knew how to prepare, as was proper on the morning of the manhood ritual. Moonlight had then returned to the hut of preparation, to meditate, and Weaver had returned to the hut he shared with Spider.
The day had passed and still they had not spoken. Weaver prepared himself for the hunt, and now he stood there, holding his bloody hand, listening to the silence, and thinking many things.
Moonlight walked into the hut then, dressed in the traditional furs, stained with the blood of many bear hunts, a hopeful smile on his face. Weaver smiled up at his son, at fifteen, already many hands taller than his strong, tall father. His son. His wise, strong, swift son.
"Father? Did you hurt yourself?"
Weaver shook his head, still smiling up at Moonlight.
"It is nothing, my son. The passing of a moment. Let me look at you on this, your day."
And Weaver stood there, staring at his son with a smile on his face. He pictured Moonlight finally feasting on the Bear's heart. Weaver's spirit was warmed by the image of his fellow hunters lifting their bloody spears in acclaim to Moonlight, an enormous bear lying on its side, before them.
The two of them stood there, saying nothing, but speaking so much without words, smiling at each other.
Weaver cast all of his thoughts from him and focused solely on Moonlight. He finished his remaining preparations for the hunt in an absolute ecstasy of anticipation.
Today his son became a man!
If you’ve enjoyed this, please be sure to check out Tales of the Fallen, Book I, now available in paperback and eBook formats!
~~~~~~~
Adventures from Tales of the Fallen (Book I)
Pt. 6
"'Jack'? But tha's th' name o' the-"
Padraig blinked. He'd been drawn so tightly into the Storyweaver's tale he'd forgotten his purpose in coming! He threw a gaze at Ana. She shifted and smiled, but he could feel the tightly-wound coils of his magic about her yet. Nothing had changed there, then. Good.
He allowed himself a small smile of victory. At last. At long last, what he'd sought, what he'd crossed realms and lands and worlds for lay within fingernail's reach! He could taste his success, and it was like finest wine.
Countless miles he'd tracked the Last Father, following whispers and rumor; choking answers out of creatures older than stars and bleeding himself dry in service-sacrifices made to powers so ancient they'd forgotten their own names. The list of those he'd knelt to in abject, begging humility was endless: Nimrod. Gilgamesh. Cain. Maerlyn. Moirgraine. Bacon. Crowley. Night-Foot. Ambergrist. Fell. Oberon. Quatch. The things they required of him; the scars they left - for the merest, tiniest scraps of information! - hurt him still. But the worst of it was the keen light in their eyes. They knew what he sought. They knew he followed the fading trail of fool's gold into twisting labyrinths of madness. It made him wince to remember the indignities he'd endured for millennia, but more, those bright, shining, smiles chased him into restless sleep every night. Mocking laughter woke him every dawn, still burning with his all-consuming obsession: to find the Last Father.
But he'd done it. He'd done all they asked, bled and twisted, cried and cut pieces of himself away. Soul-slices, memories, blood, viscera, seed: they wanted it all. He bled, draining life from himself and changing every time he did. He could no longer remember things: his childhood was a void. He could remember nothing before his fortieth birthday. Where he'd been born; his mother's face; his father's name; all of it had been sacrificed to one power or another, all of it given up in the mad pursuit of his sole quest. Physical, spiritual and emotional torments had been the definition of his life for thousands of years. And all of it to hear this one story told by this one elusive Storyweaver.
Oh, he'd pain Solly Mont. He'd hurt him in ways that would become legend. Scraping away at him for ten-thousand years with dull knives made of broken glass would be the first part of his torments. Killing everyone he loved, everyone he knew, everyone he'd ever even looked at - while Solly hung, watching and helpless, from the chains Padraig would forge from the blood and bones of his children - would occupy ten-thousand years more. Padraig would cross and re-cross Solly's timeline, traveling up and down and through it, finding every last one of Solly's contacts, and he'd torment them into babbling madness before killing them and eating them.
He had plans for this damned Storyweaver, plans he'd made for a very long time. The life he'd cut away from Solly Mont would sustain him for longer than even Padraig could dream, but bringing the Last Father to the Night would be a victory beyond description. Padraig would be rewarded, yes, but he'd take a kiss from the Last Father first; a little something all for himself. It never hurt to have more.
Gloating a little, he called for a night-kin. Let the Storyweaver see a small part of what he could expect. Let him feel the fear of Padraig and his allies. For too long this Solly Mont had withheld things from the Night, and now the Night would have its due. The Night would have the Last Father, and Padraig would bring him to it with Solly Mont's help. The Last Father would serve him, or he would drown everyone here in their own blood.
Of course, he'd drown them anyway, and then consume their twitching souls, but it felt good to threaten.
The Storyweaver's fear was strong. He could feel it through his bound with the night-kin, and it was sweet indeed. Victory was near!
Thinking these thoughts made him warm and aroused. He looked at Ana. Perhaps a few moments with her would be diverting. The woman was a toothsome morsel. Let her writhe under him-
And that was when Solly's poker crashed through the night-kin's face, stunning Padraig and knocking him out of his chair.
Another thing to lay at the Storyweaver's feet. Revenge would be so sweet. There was the rest of the story to be heard, but once the Storyweaver had told it, giving Padraig the final piece of the puzzle, there would be a reckoning between him and Solly Mont.
`~~~~~~~
Adventures from Tales of the Fallen (Book I)
Pt. 5
"'Jack'? But tha's th' name o' the-"
Solly smiled. He thought that name would provoke certain members of his audience. Eyes flicking to where Padraig sat, he was unsurprised to see him sitting forward in his chair, eyes alight with eager anticipation.
Pulling himself back from the narrative, Solly happened to look into the fire that was roaring in the grate. He tried not to let his reaction show on his face but it was a near thing.
Ana's fireplace was a river-rock-lined hearth, big enough to roast an ox in, end to end. The draw of her chimney was tremendous. Unwary drinkers nearest the chimney had actually had full flagons of ale tipped when the wind blew just right. Ana had to keep the flue closed until the fire was burning good and hot, otherwise it'd extinguish itself trying to roar up the chimney. Ana's Hearth - spoken of in the proper sense by the people of Oakenfeld - wasn't a modest fixture.
Solly's eyes were arrested by the appearance of a pair of yellowing, rheumy eyes looking back at him malevolently. A head - smoke and soot blackened, with attendant wisps of white, wiry hair and scabrous flecks of leprous skin - was peeping from just under the bottom of the chimney wall. From its place above the greedy flames, it looked exactly like some sort of gargoyle - or devil-born imp - leering out at him.
Solly could see the fire licking over that raddled skull, could see the way the lips were cracking from the heat. He shuddered inwardly to think of the power necessary to drive that pain away.
Solly raised his tankard in a muted salute to the head and smiled politely. The head's eyes narrowed.
Oh, aye. Smile while yeh still got yer teeth, Solly Mont. A reckonin' is comin'! I will have my pound o' flesh, an' I wil' have it pounded thin!
The voice was thin, whispery, worm-eaten. It came not to Solly's ears, but to his mind; in a place Solly -no stranger to mental invasion attempts - had long ago isolated form the rest. He left it in plain sight, as a sort of irresistible lure, to those who would attack his innermost self. It was also a doormat of a kind, to those who would politely seek mental communication with Solly.
The voice lay across the polished-steel-sphere of Solly's mind like a rotten, thrown egg. Solly grimaced at the greasy, 'garbage-water' feel of it.
Solly suspected that Padraig - for that's who the eyes and head belonged to, whether he was using them at the moment or not - had revealed one of his allies: a night-kin. They weren't the smartest creatures, and they had little experience dancing in another's mind. Solly, on the other hand, could tango.
Like a hunter crafting a careful snare, Solly let a thin tide of fear rise within that isolated place in his mind. He understood this kind of night-kin; they felt their strongest when they could gloat. Solly, the careful hunter, drew Padraig's little friend in with the thin smell of hot fear. Cutting his eyes briefly to where Padraig himself still sat, he was unsurprised to see Padraig's eyes slitted in pleasure.
Scared, are yeh, boy? Should be. I've friends. Aye! Friends that've come a long way indeed to have a word or two with yeh. Friends that whisper and speak of black winds and darkest night and great, bloody shards o' poisoned glass. What think ye o' tha', Solly Mont?
Solly smiled again and tossed the ale remaining in his flagon off with a nonchalance he didn't feel. Night-kin were a dime a dozen. If you knew where to look you could find them congregating together in numbers. They lived under every rock, in every shadow, and at the base of every rotting tree. Give them the slightest reason to obey you, and they would, clothing themselves in whatever shape or form you desired. Solly had met his share, though he'd never met any that went so far as to mimic their master so closely. Solly decided Padraig must truly feel indestructible if he would go this far.
The problem here was not the peeping night-kin. The problem was Padraig did have friends, powerful friends who knew how to give Padraig the leverage he needed to draw Solly Mont into the open. Padraig he could handle. Night-kin he could handle, but Padraig's unseen, powerful allies? They could be a problem.
Standing idly, he stretched and cracked his back with a grimace, all the while never letting his eyes lose the head peeping from the chimney. Wondering what the Padriag-shaped-night-kin was holding on to, Solly moved absently toward the fire irons. The chimney walls were as smooth as glass and clean, besides. A sudden mental picture of a bloated spider with a Padriag-shaped-head and withered limbs looking at him with undisguised hate filled his imagination.
Holding the night-kin's gaze, he could feel witchy brushes against his mind. Drawing it in a little more, he let it feel some of the unease he was experiencing. He put out a mental perfume that acted on the night-kin in the same way a Venus Fly Trap's worked on a fly. Little by little, Solly coated the honeyslide of his mind with those weakening emotions the night-kin craved. And little by little, as the night-kin's confidence grew, it came further into the closed, and slowly locking box canyon that was Solly's mind.
Padraig, in his seat across the room, continued to gloat, not realizing that Solly held his ally - mentally speaking - in the palm of his hand. Solly bent to the hearth, under cover of warming his hands. The night-kin's face was inches from his own. Solly could smell smoke, ashes and raw, rancid meat on the night-kin's breath: service sacrifice, most usually eaten by the hopeful applicant. Solly wondered where Padraig had found the meat.
I'll burn this place down. Aye! Burn it down and piss on th' ashes! What think yeh o' that, Solly Mont? Eh? Think tha'll be a jolly time?
The little creature continued to gloat and whisper its diseased promises of death and retribution right up until Solly hit it in between the eyes with all sixty pounds of his poker.
The night-kin are, at best, weak, hedge-wizards - still struggling with the most basic of cantrips and ritualia. They are bound by the laws associated with their kind of magic. In order to perform this little reconnaissance and fear mission, Padriag's little friend needed to borrow power from something much stronger than it was. Solly was certain the lender was Padraig. And he was rewarded with this gamble by seeing, from the corner of his eye, Padraig fall out of his chair, mewling pathetically, and holding his head.
The fire roaring in Ana's hearth - that a minute ago wasn't of any consequence to the night-kin - roared up in greedy acclamation as Padraig's protection was ripped from it by the crashing impact of Ana's poker. It fled up the chimney, still tossing off vile curses and threats, fast as it could scuttle. Solly looked to the poker, and was unsurprised to see its end blackened and twisted as if it had come in contact with heat too great for it. There was no blood on the poker.
With a sigh, he laid it back down next to the hearthside.
All this took far less time than it takes to tell, and went largely unnoticed by the patrons of the Beller-Inn, save for those around Padraig's table, and he was up much quicker than Solly would have liked, rubbing his head and throwing a single, hate-filled and baleful glance Solly's way before sitting himself and righting his spilled cup.
Father Parsons, a man in touch with the invisible, called out, "Alrigh' then, Solly?" He'd only seen Solly bang the poker, with some force, against the bottom of the chimney's entrance.
"Aye, Father. Just knockin' a bit of filth free." He turned to face the crowd, in particular, a now furiously blushing Conley. He smiled at the reddening giant, wondering what was bothering him.
"Sorry, Solly," that worthy rumbled in his basso-profound way.
"Whyever for, Conley?" Solly asked.
"I din't mean ta' interrupt," Conley replied. Solly realized he'd completely forgotten about the voice that'd pulled him from his narrative. He smiled over at Conley.
"S'alright, Conley. I was gettin' a bit dry, myself. Who's for another, then?"
The shout that came from the crowd rocked Ana back on her heels. She was kept busy for several minutes, pulling flagons of ale and filling the food orders that came her way.
When all had returned to their places, ale flagons to elbows, Solly resumed his perch. His eye happened to fall on a very large, acorn-shaped nut atop the mantel. It was the size of a large watermelon. He looked at Padraig, who stared back, impassively. A curious idea crossed Solly's mind. Padraig had friends, but then, come to that, so did he!
"Now then," he said, taking a steadying pull off his flagon, "I b'leve you were tryin' ta' tell me summat, Conley," Solly said, smiling guilelessly.
The Conley blushed again. "I done apologized for tha', Solly, so I have!"
"Aye! An' I'm no' mad at yeh, yeh great, thunderin' bullywug! I'd like yeh ta' finish tha' thought, if you'd be so kind!"
The Conley grinned, a beautiful sight on a face that could kill a charging bull, and said, "Wall, I was sayin' summat about Jack. Ain't tha' th' name o' tha' hero in yer story abou' Fort Noplace?"
Solly laughed, his head rolling back on his neck. "It's Fort Nowhere, yeh tremblin' son o' Finn! Fort Nowhere, but aye, ye've hit the nail on th' head, so yeh have."
"Then tis th' same feller?" the Conley asked, his brow furrowing.
"Wall now, Conley, it's funny yeh ask tha'. For just then I interruped Weaver with a shout o' my own."
Solly sat back on his story-telling roost, his hand pulling the strange, over-sized acorn over to him. He went on with the story, but another part of his mind was remembering a debt owed.
If you’ve enjoyed this, please be sure to check out Tales of The Fallen, Book I, now available in paperback and eBook formats from Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. And be sure to check out what my friends over at The Apocalypse Gene are up to. They’re giving away a chance to win a free copy of their book, as well as a chance to win all three of mine. Click here to enter!
The Apocalypse Gene Kindle Giveaway!
~~~~~~~
My Review of Whispers of the Dead.
Whispers of the Dead is a short story cum novelette available on Amazon.com, iTunes bookstore and at the lulu.com storefront (http://www.lulu.com/cyberkyst) by author V. Artemis Reyd.
This story is a mystery/thriller, and it’s hard to write a review that talks about the story without giving too much away, but here goes.
In some ways, this story reads like a typical modern mystery or thriller. When it begins, the elements are all there. A pair of decapitated, disarticulated bodies are found in the woods in a graphic display obviously meant to be a statement. Zoe Delante, the story’s protagonist, is called on by the local police department to investigate the crime scene.
And then we turn left into the woods and the real fun starts.
Zoe is a powerful psychic with the ability to relive traumatic experiences through touch. Zoe is in many ways a fairly typical mystery/thriller protagonist. She’s tough and dignified in a barely approachable way, serious and somewhat anti-social. I found myself distancing from her in personal dislike; a testament, I think, to V. Artemis Reyd’s ability to live inside the character’s head. Zoe has all the normal problems of a young woman trying to find her way in life, compounded by her life choices and her abilities. It’s hard to date when you can tell your prospective beau all of his secrets before the appetizer arrives.
She is an isolated person. Some of it is by choice, but some of it is the result of people’s misgivings.
While it would be quite easy to dismiss Zoe as being a murder-mystery/thriller-protagonist cliché, a more attentive reader will find himself discovering that all of this posturing and posing is really her armor. Zoe solves murders; grisly, unsolvable murders, while reliving them. Her crime scenes have the same elements—the blood, the gore, the pain and death--of all crime scenes, but she gets to deal with seeing it happen—the very worst humanity has to offer—all over again. And she enters every crime scene knowing that. When the dead show up and ask to be saved, you have to reassess a character’s resolve. Zoe solves her cases with a tenacity that is hard to believe. She is not a cuddly, sex-kitten, cliché, but a determined do-gooder who happens to be a Wiccan-Psychic-Murder-Solving-Ninja with a little bit of an understandable chip on her shoulder.
In many ways, this story made me think of a love child between TV’s Bones and The X-Files. Zoe’s personality mirrors Dr. Temperance Brennan’s in many ways, and fans of either show will find much to enjoy here. There are many of the same elements, but done with an attentive touch to the occult that can only come from first-hand knowledge.
The universe Ms. Delante lives in is one in which legalized hunts for lycanthropes are sanctioned by the government, and an attack by a werewolf shouldn’t be ruled out in any murder investigation. Surprises like this lurk around the edges of the story, and I found myself wanting to peek behind the curtains at this interesting place to be.
Without giving anything away, the story features one of the better fight scenes I’ve ever read and V. Artemis Reyd, demonstrating a coolly clinical eye to blood and tissue throughout the piece, really cuts loose with the fight. The fur flies in every direction. It won’t ever be translated properly to the big screen, but it would be enormously entertaining to see the attempts.
While I read this story—the first I’ve read featuring this character--I got the impression that this is not the first story to feature Ms. Zoe Delante, and V. Artemis Reyd writes it as though the reader has known her for some time. In many ways I found this to be an inclusive effect and invited me to delve deeper into the piece. I found by the time that I had finished that I cared about dysfunctional Zoe, and I wanted her to be both happy and successful, as unlikely a possibility as that is.
The end of the story is both mean and satisfying and I encourage you to read the entire thing without skipping to the end. No cheating!
I don’t know that this story would work for everyone, but for the advanced reader, looking for something written with flair, style and a challenge to accept something above your comfort horizon, Whispers of the Dead fits the bill nicely. I recommend it to anyone looking for a story that won’t fit neatly on any genre shelf and still wants the frissionable entertainment of a great mystery/thriller.
My Review of The Apocalypse Gene
I am an independent author; otherwise known as a “freelance author.” That’s a really fancy way of saying I write for anybody who will pay me a nickel to do it. Given the opportunity I’d sell out so fast I’d leave scorch marks. Being an independent author is a full-time job because you’re constantly looking for gigs. You write your poetry, your plays, your novels and your short stories; your blog, your column for the local newspaper if you’re really lucky and for as many fanzines as you can find to accept your stuff. You join a million websites, hoping to make a few cents on a hundred word article about fly-fishing in the Arctic, and you generally make yourself as visible as possible. All while trying to create something new and wonderful that’ll get you a James Patterson-esque publishing contract.
Independent authors hang out with other independent authors. You used to do it at the smoke-filled coffee shop in the hip neighborhood, where a beret was de rigeur, and plaid was the height of fashion. Anymore that sort of intellectual exercise is relegated to the virtual community, and I “hang out” with close to a thousand authors I’ve never actually met. One of those authors is a cat in Chicago named Carlyle Clark.
There’s an old tradition in folklore that everyone has a doppelganger; a perfect copy of you in every conceivable way. If you’re really lucky, your doppelganger will be twisted to evil and bent on your destruction; a nemesis who longs for nothing more than to consume your flesh and swallow your soul. The trick, when realizing you’ve met your doppelganger is figuring out whether you’ve just met your twin or your nemesis.
Carlyle—Lyle, as I’ve come to know him—and I met on the writing site Fanstory.com. Through a careful application of etiquette and common sense, we began to brutally criticize each other with the specific goal of challenging the other to get better and out think the other with ideas that are so far beyond the pale as to be inconceivable. If you’ve enjoyed my novel Tales of the Fallen, you have, in no small way, Lyle to thank.
We have the same potato-like physiques, spend entirely too much time on the dark and twisted edge of fantasy, geek out to the same impulses, have had similar life experiences, and hang out with beautiful women who are entirely too good for us. Whenever I think of my relationship with Lyle, I think of the Harlan Ellison story, Shatterday. Frankly, if I woke up tomorrow in Lyle’s life, it wouldn’t surprise me. If I weren’t happily married, I’d move to Chicago so we could date even though the similarities between us are eerie enough to cause us to pause and reconsider the advisability of our relationship. I love Lyle dearly, but hanging out with him in close proximity makes me think of the reaction between matter and anti-matter. And we’ve yet to decide which of us the evil one is.
Which is why, when I opened my mail box and found Lyle’s latest novel, The Apocalypse Gene, I was both elated and worried. Elated, because if anybody freaking deserved to be in print, it was Lyle. Worried, because while he didn’t ask me to, I knew I’d need to write a review.
It’s what you do when you’re an independent author. When you finally get into print, you tend to send your baby to those people you like and respect; the ones who write the same kinds of things you do and will be interested in what you have to say. You don’t ask them to, but the unwritten, unspoken law is that you write a review that gets the three people who consistently read your work to go check out theirs. It’s the payola of the modern literary movement, and you play along as best you are able.
I am happy to be able to say that we’re going to be kicking Lyle out of the club soon.
So far as I’m aware, The Apocalypse Gene is Lyle’s first novel. He wrote much of it during our time on Fanstory.com. I read and critiqued it then, when it was little more than a zygote of a story. This story has been a part of my consciousness for nearly ten years. My involvement with it was largely minimal, but I have a great deal of affection for it.
Lyle’s girl, Suki, is listed as a co-author. This bothered me at first, as I thought The Apocalypse Gene didn’t need a Yoko coming along to muck up the works. Let’s face it; The Beatles were a better band before Yoko got all up in there and gummed everything up.
I’m well into the book now, and where I can see what I suspect are Suki’s fingerprints (she either has a huge crush on Mikah, the secondary protagonist, or Lyle has some lingering sexual identity issues he may want to address) her touch is light. What emerged from their partnership is a work bordering on fantasy genius.
The story begins in the undisclosed future in Chicago—drawn with enormous affection by the resident authors. A worldwide pandemic is raging, and life on the planet has changed to the point of unrecognizability. Olivya Wright-Ono, a half black, half Asian teenaged girl lives with her mother in their home cum hospice center. Olivya’s mother works for the government, providing those desperately ill with a place to die. Olivya is, in many ways, a typical teenaged girl. She has an attitude problem reinforced by her ninja-like martial arts skills, given to her by her deceased Japanese father. She tends to be stubborn to the point of insanity, she’s selfish, confident, self-absorbed and—in my humble opinion—a real pain in the ass. Olivya is a “mystic”; someone who can see the life energy auras of those around her. Her love interest is Mikah, a non-human Kindred who lives in a high-rise complex filled with quasi-demonic creatures who seem to be bent on world domination. Mikah is a powerful telempath, able to direct and change the emotional states of others. In one of the book’s opening scenes, Mikah comes to Olivya’s rescue when she is being threatened by a shiv-pack: a lawless group of degenerate gangsters who live on the edge of death brought about by their apocalyptic society. Mikah uses his telempathy to reduce the shiv-pack’s leader, Ripper, to a quivering mass of giggling skin.
The book starts with the throttle down, and it doesn’t ease up at all. The plot twists are thoughtful, surprising and carefully rendered. The book takes you on a journey into a world of “what if?” that I, for one, dearly wish I had written.
When I first read the book, several years ago, many of the events taking place were unlikely in the extreme and reminiscent of Star Trek. I was thrilled to see Lyle incorporating technological advances that took place in the interim, and flawlessly wove them into the plot. This book was written with careful respect to the craft and a great deal of affection for the characters and the story in general. There are elements of folklore throughout, as well as Easter Eggs of Lyle’s passion for fantasy and mythology. It is the kind of book that could save the publishing industry if more people wrote like this.
Anyone who is a fan of anime of manga will recognize The Apocalypse Gene. It has an atmospheres-deep, Akira feel to it, and if Suki and Lyle have not already begun the process of translating this story into a graphic novel, they should. I could easily see it selling well among the graphic-novel set.
The book straddles the line between Urban Fantasy and YA. The target audience for The Apocalypse Gene could easily be teenaged girls. Olivya’s pubescent struggles and teenaged misery would speak to that audience loudly and clearly. I could see it sitting comfortably on the YA shelves, but it provides enough of a meaty story for parents who want to read something along with their kids. There are a few elements that might not be suitable for children, so I encourage parents to read it first, and then give it to their children if they can bear to let it go. The timing of the release couldn’t have been better with this book. The Apocalypse Gene fits squarely in the paradigm of 2012’s End of Days and the recent fascination with the occult, disease and monsters so luridly portrayed in today’s media.
It goes without saying I enjoyed this book and recommend it highly, I think, but it’s worth repeating. The Apocalypse Gene is a satisfying book that will leave you lying awake, worrying about it. Go get a copy.
Speaking of which, Suki and Lyle are offering a free copy of their book, along with a chance to win a number of others—including all three of mine—on their The Apocalypse Gene website. Click here for a chance to sign up!
http://www.theapocalypsegene.com/cy-chi/
~~~~~~~
Smoke rose in lazy spirals, spelling messages of doom and hate. The smell of cordite was high in the air; concentrating on the lips and tongue. My last sammich was making a concentrated bid for freedom from the slow drip of blood and gore from the walls around me.
I hurt everywhere. I was certain the last ninja squad had broken most of my teeth and ripped what was left of my ears of my skull. I’d persevered through the moat full of barracuda, climbed the walls lined with broken glass—despite a body nature had never intended to climb anything—and swallowed buckets of my own blood after the fist fight with the Quentin Tarantino inspired Babes-With-Guns-Who-Don’t-Use-Them-In-Favor-Of-Swords* Squad. (*Even though this is the twenty-first century and no-one, anywhere knows how to use a sword.) It hadn’t been pretty. I am not ashamed to admit to some real fear after the nail-breaking, dental-veneer-spitting, hair-pulling attack had come at me from three different sides. It was all I could do to leap straight up, Matrix-like, and kick them all in the head as I came spiraling down, hooting—for reasons I don’t care to go into here—like a baboon.
When the Colonel had come boiling out of the closet, I wasn’t ready for him. He hit me seven or eight times across the head, face and neck with a bucket of extra crispy, screaming at me in Chinese and high-kicking me in the head at the same time. I went down under the flurry of his blows, betrayed by a Kentuckian and ready to die. He stared at me with those black, soulless eyes, grimacing in triumph, and I somehow found the will to kick him in the nards.
He went down, clucking, and I stuffed him in the closet—but not before stripping him of his eleven herbs and spices--with a head of lettuce, three green beans and a fork.
Mayor McCheese, Grimace, the M&Ms, Max Headroom, and even the idol they all worshipped; the King—Ronald, himself, came to do battle, and one by one I fought them off.
But I was done. I’d made it this far. Fought off zombies, farmers, frontier’s men, Mafiosos, robots, experimental donuts and dinosaurs. None of them had been able to stop me, but the accumulation had taken its toll. I was Batman at the end of Knightfall: ready to fall over, but unable to stop.
I crawled, broken-backed, down the hall with a ka-bar clenched in my teeth and my fingernails digging deep into the plush, pile carpeting. I tried not to think about what I was dragging behind me; the deep, pulling ache was a distraction and I needed to focus all my fury, all my hate, all my dying will on the accomplishment of my final objective: Mark Zuckerberg.
The blood I left on the floor looked like a sanguine comet’s final goodbye. It lubricated my passage and the going was briefly easier.
Zuckerberg cowered on the floor, gibbering, mere inches ahead of me as I crawled like a James Cameron nightmare toward him, blowing blood-tinged spit-bubbles and promising to do such awful, awful things to him. I cursed in three different languages: White Trash, American and Quiddish* (Quasi-Yiddish. It is so a language!)
This nightmare was his fault. His doing. If he’d only told the programmers, “Hey. Let them send status updates as a much larger block of text before they hit enter. This isn’t Twitter. I don’t need to get an ace-whompin’ from some random bald, fat guy with dialogue and plot-twisting issues.”
If only.
But here we were, inches from death while all around us the world burned.
Who knew? The Maya never said anything about Mark Zuckerberg, and all those fancy scientists with all their fancy equipment certainly never suspected that a gangly computer nerd from New York would be the author of Armageddon.
But I knew. I’d long suspected him of being a member of the Unholy Square of Corporate Evil. Those of us who pay attention know that Britney Spears, Pepsi, McDonald’s and Ford forged an agreement in the 1700s to end the world. It’s a plot worthy of Michael Bay, Nicholas Cage, and ten bazillion man-hours from the boys at WETA. Their corporate lackeys follow suit, toeing the line of cabalistic obedience with slavish devotion. I searched long and hard for the proof I needed, and when I found it, my shout shook the walls. I couldn’t stop Britney Spears. No power less than the concentrated evil of a Cheney/Rumsfeld Binary System could do that. Pepsi had left its claws in me and I feared it. I worshipped regularly at the temple of McDonalds. It is only recently—since they raised their prices—that we have been foes. And Ford . . . well, Ford held the note to my car, so I couldn’t be screwing around with Ford. But Zuckerberg . . . that smug, handsome, rich, young white man who swallowed hours of my day in a petty race to be witty; who used my intellect to click “Do Job’ ten-thousand times a day in Mafia Wars; who had the unmitigated gall to require me to wait for fifteen minutes to upload the cheesy movie of me complaining about the psoriasis on my scalp on his free website . . . Zuckerberg I could stop.
And I came for him. Riding like a demon from a comic book in my Twinkie-esque station-wagon, armed to the teeth with every bath-tub-explosive-recipe I’d ever seen, my copy of The Communist Manifesto and The Anarchist’s Cookbook, quips, clichés and pointless asides, plot-mangling devices I wasn’t afraid to use, and more guns and ammo than even War had. I would battle most magnificently.
So here we are, Zuckerberg, and I, face to face. One of us is ready to end the madness. The other just wants his Mommy. And the countdown I’ve been keeping to a thousand words ends here. Good luck, Jen. Godspeed.
~~~~~~~
Fuck you, Breast Cancer.
You come crawling in out of the dark, ambush a little girl like a mugger and throw some cheap shots like a punk? Hit a little girl that never hurt anybody? But that’s how you do. Isn’t it, Breast Cancer? You and your weak-ass family, you go looking for babies and old people. Can’t step to the strong, can you, Breast Cancer? Can’t step to the mighty. You look for little girls. You’re some kind of tough guy, huh? Pick on small, innocent little things who get all scared and cry.
Well, you screwed up this time, Breast Cancer. Sure. You got a couple of lucky swings in. You knocked us down, rang our bell a little; even had us scared and crying a bit. But I’ll tell you something for free, Breast Cancer. You didn’t give HER breast cancer; you gave US breast cancer. All of us. And you might’ve snuck a few cheap shots in, but we’ve got your timing now. We know where you’re at.
You wanna fight? It’s on, motherfucker. We’ve been waiting for you, looking for you, and ready to kick fifteen different kinds of shit out of you.
This ain’t gonna be no ‘holistic-wellness pink-ribbons burning-sage-in-the-hug-circle’ kind of a fight. This is gonna be a ‘steel-toed-prison-rape’ ass-beating. She’s not alone, you dumb bastard! Every time you try anything we’re gonna be riiiiiiiiiiiight there, breathing down your neck and stepping on your junk. When her strength fails, we’re gonna be there to hold her up. When she’s tired, we’re gonna be there to keep her going. When you take what you take from her, we’re gonna be there to put more back. We’re gonna crawl so far up your ass you’re gonna need our permission to blow your own damn nose. Breast Cancer, when we get done with you they’re gonna bury what’s left in a yogurt cup. We’re gonna dig your eyes out of your skull with our thumbs and shit in the holes. We’re gonna stomp a mud-hole so wide in you they’re gonna be able to take pictures of it from space.
We. Are. Not. Afraid. Of. You. We’re mad and we’re gonna take it to you with everything we’ve got. We’re gonna beat your ass to sleep with our bare hands. You stepped up to a whole world of hurt and it’s gonna rain down in a lovely cascade. We’re still gonna be here laughing at your weak ass in fifty years. We swear, we will do whatever it takes to rip your junk off and stick it down your throat. Every birthday, every Christmas, every Thanksgiving, we’re still gonna be here, pounding the hell out of you.
We’re not afraid, we’re not playing around, we’re not going anywhere, and you can suck our collective dick.
So fuck you, Breast Cancer. Fuck you running. Fuck you sideways. Fuck you, fuck your mom, and fuck your entire in-bred, knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing, asshole-baby-family.
Remember: when we’re standing over the top of you, picking what’s left of your face out of our knuckles, you brought this on yourself. You started it, but we’re gonna be the ones to finish it. Don’t go to sleep. Don’t turn your back. Don’t even blink. Once you do, we’ll be there, ripping shreds out of you with our fingernails and teeth if we have to.
Bring it, you bitch-ass, hooker-dick, son-of-a-bitch. You ain’t got the balls to take us.
14 March 11
Our friend showed me a photograph of you, and I remembered how we were. I loved you once, and I think that cost me more than I understand.
I am writing this to the girl I loved, twenty years ago.
You are a stranger; a person I do not care to know. Your life has been lived and your stories are told in a different voice. There is no music I care to share with you, no wine I care to drink. Our future is a corpse: buried and forgotten, and that is as it should be.
But the woman you were is important to me; she is cherished in the halls of my heart; treasured and remembered.
You were an ideal. I worshipped at your altar; I left costly gifts and the blood of my sacrifices rained and pooled around us. Family was forgotten, friends were forsaken. I whispered your name in my lonely darkness and my prayers were answered in turns with your kisses and scorn. You were the center of my world, my long-hoped for goal, the goddess I dreamt about.
I bore your love like a cross, happy to do it but ignorant of any other way.
In time, I felt the pain of your love and the scars took longer to heal. Still, I bore it, believing my service, my worship, my adoration would be returned in full measure.
Do I sound bitter?
Recriminatory?
The holes you tore in me have healed and my life has moved forward, but I still feel them; the tenderness is still there. There have been others, and now there is only one, but you were first, and you should know that.
Loving you taught me how to be loved. It taught me how to absorb the life of a person I wanted and to give myself in return. But loving you also taught me how to hurt, to bleed to die in slow, painful increments that stretched across days and months, years and years.
I missed you. Then I hated you. Then I hated all of you. And then I forgave you, and I found love again.
I am whole. I am complete and I am healed. I love and I am loved, but you were first, and loving you cost me.
And you should know that.
06 March 11
Every so often I like to take a break from the heavy stuff to do a little something for the peeps. You know, kind of like a public service sort of thing.
"Be Cool, Stay In School!"
"Only You Can Prevent Republicanism."
"Don't Drink And Drive, it makes you Die."
Et cetera.
I've also been known to accept challenges from time to time.
"Write me a thousand words about your left shoe."
"Write me a thousand words about your thumb."
"Write me a thousand words about an animal. Any animal."
What these poor saps don't realize is that it's really just an excuse for me to gently tease them underneath a thin covering of what they've requested.
(Hear that, Sally? I'm gonna make fun of ya'!)
Today's chapter is a challenge/request, courtesy of my friend, Sallyo.
Now, before we go any further, let me establish one very simple caveat. I like Sally. I like her a lot. She's a lot of fun, she's smart and she doesn't take herself too seriously. I consider her, as much as you can consider someone you've never actually met, spoken to, or shared a meal with, a friend. Thus far, in our online 'friendship', I've never once gotten any sort of indication that I've ever managed to piss her off. Ergo, what follows is a loving roast of sorts. Read it that way, and don't send me cheesy little emails wishing me luck with my 'loving relationship' with Sally, Okay? She's happily married and so am I. And even if I weren’t, I couldn't keep up with her anyway.
For those of you who don't know her, Sallyo is this really gifted author, poet and all around nice lady that lives in a faraway place called Tasmania, or Australia, depending on how provincial she's feeling at the moment.
I've been repeatedly assured that Tasmania really does exist, and it's a bit south of the place mentioned above called Australia. I'm simply reporting the facts as I know them, not advocating the existence of continents I've never seen. Okay? Calm down.
She lives there with a coven of Jack Russell Terriers, a husband and an assortment of other pets. Sally's managed, through her poetry and her prose, to convince me that her love of animals has gone well beyond a certain fondness into the realm of 'near-religious-observance'. Sally loves animals more than I love to eat them, and that's saying a lot.
If you go to any one of her online profiles, you'll see a picture of her holding two of her little doggie friends, hiding behind them as she does so.
Sally's writing reflects way more than her love of animals, but she picked the chapter topic, not me. She's been writing--for pay--as long as I've been alive and I imagine that in that space of time she's managed to sneak in a different topic or two, but I kinda doubt it.
I'll tell you how I picture Sally in my head, loosely based on her picture.
Sally's about five feet, five inches tall, and she weighs a little under a hundred-thirty pounds. I'm smart enough to know that no woman anywhere weighs more than a hundred-fifty. Ever. She's got short hair that's by turns light-ash-blonde or brunette, depending on how much time she's spent tanning by the glow of her monitor.
Her smile eats up ninety percent of her head; her laugh sounds like the sun rising; her children adore her; she has a Dr. Doolittle sort of relationship with the beasties in her locale; her husband worships her, and the rest of her fades into the background.
She's also very kind to all creatures, big and small; most notably--in my experience--to invertebrate, molluskian American Redneck creatures that bear vague resemblances to Samwise Gamgee.
I never get tired of that joke. That's why.
She speaks a strange version of English that precludes her from knowing the definition of 'homie'. It's the accent. Look! Sally's blushing!
I discovered the poetic genius that is Sallyo, for myself, a while back. For some reason, she used to enjoy slumming about on Fanstory.com, posting these breath-taking works of utter genius that made my tepid efforts look like seismic scribbling.
Think I'm exaggerating a bit there, don't ya'? Nope. Sally's one of those amazingly talented poets that other poets get all misty-eyed about. Picture, if you will, a bunch of college-educated-sweater-wearing-geeks standing around, listening to zither music, drinking coffee, and discussing the proper way of milking a kangaroo. I've got a dollar that says Sally's name'll come up, and they'll get all misty-eyed. High school students will be tormented with her pleached verses five-hundred years from now.
"What is Mrs. Odgers saying here, when she describes the underwear-less dance of Mama Bambarinabee? Why has Mama got Toad guts in-between her toes? Who can tell me what this means?"
Sally can, quite literally, toss something off that leaves you gasping for breath.
No. I'm being perfectly serious here (for the moment). Sally writes poetry like other people put on their fricking pants. It's just this natural, careless exercise for her. If I didn't like and respect Sally so much, I'd hate her freaking guts.
For those of you who haven't yet experienced a Sallyo poem, go run headfirst into a wall. Do it again. Do it a third time. Can you stand up? No? Okay. You've punished yourself enough.
Go to Sallyo's portfolio, pick a poetry collection at random, and read a single poem. I PROMISE you'll be enormously impressed.
Go read one!
Now!
Good, wasn't it? She can't write free verse worth a dang, though. Poor deluded lamb.
She writes prose too, but so do I, so that's no big deal.
But this chapter is supposed to be about animals, so I'd better get started on that. I've blithered on for nearly nine-hundred words about how wonderful Sally is; how easy she makes this writing thing look; how nice she is about accepting and giving constructive criticism; how good of a sport she is about constantly getting ribbed by a loud-mouthed, smart-ass, American punk who's not as old as some of her pants or shoes; how she's invented her own form of poetic expression that leaves you wondering if she's like, really some famous poet, pretending to be somebody else; how much she likes her two dogs--did I mention that? Sally likes her Jack Russells so much, she and her husband, a talented writer in his own right, wrote a couple of novels about them. Send her an email for more information. I'm not a press agent, after all.
Well, it wasn't about animals, but it was close, wasn't it?
02 March
Well, it finally happened. My Father, the epitomized-poster-boy for all anti-establishment causes, graduated.
From College.
With a Master's degree!
(I'm proud. Can you tell?)
He showed up at my house at two-o'clock in the afternoon. He woke me up by pushing in my front door and hollering, 'Are you asleep?'
I wasn't. Not yet.
I got up, got dressed, and exchanged a few insults with my Father, who was as giddy as a little boy on Christmas Morning. I grinned, took a shower, got dressed and we left.
Dad graduated on the 15th of December from the University of Louisville's Kent School of Social Sciences, with a Master's Degree in Social Science. Yet, when we parked, four hours earlier than we needed to, outside of the Kentucky International Convention Center in downtown Louisville, I had to help my Father put his hood and gown on. I assembled his tassel and his mortarboard, and I arranged his hood so the gold velvet showed.
Naturally, I took advantage of this situation by making as many snarky comments as I could.
'How many College degrees does it take to put a robe on?'
'Gee, Dad. It's a good thing I'm here. You'd'a gone across the stage naked!'
And etcetera, etcetera. I never pass up a chance to sling a couple my Dad's way.
We wandered around the Convention Center, riding the escalators, talking to people and generally having a pretty good time, all things considered. At one point, we went across the street to Louisville's Metro Deli, in the Aegon Center, and I bought a strawberry smoothie while Dad checked his e-mail.
We'd walk up to people Dad recognized and Dad'd say something along the lines of 'This is my eldest son. He's a published poet!'
And I'd put my hand out, and say, 'Hi! I'm eldest son!'
To which Dad would invariably reply, 'His name is Nescher and he's my eldest son.' The person usually had to introduce themselves as Dad has only a passing interest in learning people's names. He's just cool like that, I guess. This happened three or four times, so maybe him getting a Master's degree didn't make him all that much smarter.
After a certain point in these festivities, I was starting to get a bit tired. I'd been awake since seven-thirty the previous evening, having been to Bible Study and work, and Dad had interrupted my one and only chance at a nap.
'Dad, I'm gonna go sit down for a while.'
'Okay, Nescher. I'm gonna wander around some more.'
So I picked a seat in the highest row of the bleacher in the KICC and people-watched for a few hours while Dad wandered around, in his cap and gown, talking to people he didn't know.
I don't like crowds. Never have, never will. I don't like the feeling of being pinned in by a large group of people. Large groups of people give off all kinds of odors: sweat, funk, bad breath, flatulence, perfume, cologne, what have you. Somehow, when I'm in a large crowd of people, most especially when the crowd is indoors, those odors become magnified, and I start to freak out.
I'm telling you this because the University of Louisville is one of the nation's larger schools. There were about a thousand graduates when Dad graduated, and they all brought their stinky, smelly, crowd-pressing-in-on-Nescher friends and relatives.
I was glad I picked the seat at the top, lemme tell ya'.
Shortly before the ceremony started, my sister and her husband walked in.
I like my brother-in-law, Jerry. He's got an acid wit, he's not afraid to exchange loving insults with me, he's studying to be a scientist, and, most important in MY book, he worships the ground my sister walks on - something my sister, God Bless her evil little heart, takes outrageous advantage of:
'Jerry, I want to start running marathons for fun.'
'Jerry, I know you grew up in Kentucky and everything, but you're not allowed to eat any kind of pork anymore, 'cause it's not Kosher, and it makes me physically ill.'
'Jerry, we're gonna spend a week with my family, okay?'
'Jerry, can we get a Bentley?'
They walked up to our section in the bleachers, sat down, and we talked for a while. Dad, in his cap and gown, beaming with all kinds of pent-up emotions and pride.
The ceremony dragged on for a VERY long time. At one point I took a picture of Jerry, sleeping peacefully, his head on chest, his arms crossed. Dad'll treasure that one, I'm sure.
The highlights were few. Dad walked up to his seat in the graduate processional, and U of L had set up these jumbotron monitors. When Dad walked up to the camera, his beard spilling all over the top of his robe, his mortarboard perched atop his crow's nest afro, and a big cheese-eating grin on his face, he made the 'I love you,' sign at us.
We responded by hooting and hollering and being generally obnoxious.
'Goooooo, Dad!'
'Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaale Pysssssssscheeeeeeeeer!'
'Pretty darn good for a guy who couldn't read!'
The rich white lady in front of us kept turning around and giving us looks and that was a highlight in and of itself.
When Dad's name was mentioned - correctly pronounced and everything! - we yelled ourselves silly. We yelled his name, we made the 'roof-roof-roof!' noise of a large barking dog - Military thang. You wouldn't understand - and hooted and hollered like a bunch of loons. The black family in front of us was nice enough to help out, with screaming, stamping on the bleachers and making a LOT of noise for Dad's accomplishment. We reciprocated when their graduate walked across the stage.
I'm enormously proud of my Dad. He's managed to leverage the system he despises into paying for a College degree he wouldn't have been able to get ten years ago.
He's living proof that sticking it to the man CAN be fun and profitable.
23 February
Drive.
Get in the car; put it in gear and just drive. Some Tom Petty on the tape deck and nothing between you and the road but the gleam of your headlights. Find someplace higher than the rest of the world; scrub your fingers against the sky, dusting the stars with a light dose of laughter. Talk to God; ask Him what it's all about.
Find some open space and really put the hammer down. Drive it like it’s on fire, find some curves and turn the lights off.
Just Drive.
Wallet, knife, compass, keys. Exit the front door, making sure it's closed behind me and then look up. The sky here is so clear that sometimes you feel you could just pull down a star and pin it to your shirt. I tend to get a little transfixed when I look at the Kentucky night sky. Tonight's no different. The stars are glimmering wetly under a new moon and I feel the naked space between me and them. I tell God, or myself, or whomever I'm really addressing, 'The stars are beautiful tonight, aren't they?'
I feel a faint hint of satisfaction, as though something is acknowledging a job well done.
I almost forget that I'm running late for work as it is.
"Dear Lord Jesus. Please allow me to get to work safely and in a timely manner. Please help me to live my life today in a manner that would make you proud of me. In Jesus’ Name I pray, Amen."
First gear, second, right at the stop, left at the light onto the highway. Third, fourth, fifth.
"Let's see. NPR tonight? Some information on what's going on?"
A pause, a beat so imperceptible I nearly miss it, and then . . .
"No . . . no. Tonight I feel like music."
Scan. First up, the local Alternative Music Channel. The needy sounds of a familiar band bleed out of my speakers like pus from a wound.
That won’t do.
Tapes, then. The mellow, bluesy tones of Dale Thompson telling me the gospel. 'Rockin' Rattlesnakes in the playground,' indeed.
Cocooned in the music, my mind wanders. Past, present and future events play their ways through my mind. Sometimes a negative event will worm its way to the fore, and I shake it off as best I can. I try not to dwell on the negativity of my life. I've got enough to go around anyway.
The tape ends, and I've still got a bit of driving to do. I feel the need for something aggressive Deliverance fits.
It starts as a small chill at the center of my being, and it builds into goose bumps as the music continues. Did I say music? It isn't; it's a violent sonic assault and battery; a mauling by guitar and drums. The guitar is being played as though the guitarist is punching the chords out of whole cloth with a cleaver--fast, distorted, and concise. The drums sound like the manic heartbeat of some massive underground beast and topping it all are the clear-eyed vocalizations. The cocoon hardens, and I start to head bang along, while my foot presses the accelerator down. The music works its magic and runs through me like water through a desert. It irrigates and aerates dry parts of me and pulls me down further into my own head. I feel invincible!
The image that emerges is a black cloud of clustering evil vainly clawing at the musical teflon now coating my head. I grin at the picture of a streaming, black comet emerging from the base of my skull: demons doing everything they can to get in and keep up with the car.
Then the song I've been looking for starts: a cover of 'Jehovah Jireh' as defined by a Christian speedmetal band. Three minutes and forty-four seconds of thundering glory. There is no song anywhere that gets me up faster or harder. I turn the music up as loud as it will go and I fall head first into the words and the music.
To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin—“The guitar solo is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy."
'Jehovah Jireh,
my provider!
His grace is sufficient for me,
for me,
for me!'
I sing along as best I can, but it's hard to do with my head banging the way it is and my soul afire. I sing the words to my God and offer them as a sacrifice of praise; a conversation of conviction and need. This song stirs me deep inside. It drops the Holy battlelight of Heaven on me. I feel a sense of self-righteous anger begin to build within me. I want the enemy. I want to wrap my fingers around his scrawny, filthy throat, and squeeze until his dirty, scheming eyeballs explode on my hands. I want to cast him down and put my boot on his neck. I want to fight the fight of my God; to wield my sword in spiritual battle against the devil and everything he represents.
The song ends, and I pull up into work, charged and ready. My conversation with God has done what it needed to do.
16 February 11
Conversation with an angry young man
He swaggered up to my desk; drunk on youth, money and what smelled like most of a fifth.
He was dressed in what was once a very nice black sports jacket over a lavender shirt that was unbuttoned from the collar to just below his navel. I could see several gold chains winking out at me, as well as most of his hairless chest and belly. His pants were the same color and material; ripped at the knees and stained as if he'd been rolling around on the grass outside. His hair was cut short to his head in a gel-locked style a meaner part of me labeled as 'boy band.' He wore an over-sized Rolex, and his shoes were made of some sort of exotic skin.
I looked up, carefully arranging my features into the bland, innocuous smile I've perfected. It's my 'I'm here to do my job, and I'll do it as best I can.' look; very non-threatening.
He slapped both hands down on the counter and leered at me, swaying just a bit where he stood. His face was all sharp planes and angles. He looked like his last few meals had been liquid and low on nutritional content. I couldn't tell what color his eyes were. They were dark pits surrounded by a fiery halo of pink veins. His skin was a flushed bronze; the sort of thing only indolent people who spend a lot of time under a sun lamp can really pull off.
"Good morning, sir. Can I help you?" My delivery was a little louder and more precise than usual.
"I doubt it. You don' look like you're qualified to give me tha sorta help I need!"
He looked me over, belligerence sparking in his gaze as I sat there doing my level best not to provoke him. He scanned the surface of my desk as if he were searching for something to find fault with. His eyes landed on my Bible with its emblazoned celtic-cross cover. His sneer deepened until I began to feel concerned about his face caving in.
"Bible-boy, huh? Too weak to face tha' world on its own terms, are you?"
I stared back at him, a hot spurt of anger washing its way through my belly. Part of me wanted--desperately!--to jump up, grab him by the bottom lip, and shake him until his nose bled. I didn’t get paid enough to put up with spoiled rich boys and their attitude problems. I took a deep breath instead and tried an actual smile out for size. It didn't quite fit, but it helped.
"I don't know about 'weak', exactly." My voice was level, even, and pitched to reach the consciousness behind the booze. "I think I've just accepted that I'm a fallible human being. I choose to be a 'Bible-boy' as you put it, because I can avoid some of life's pitfalls that way."
He snorted at that, reached into a breast pocket, and pulled a silver cigarette case free.
"What do you make an hour? Seven dollars? Eight? Look at you. Sittin' like some kinda polyester monkey. If your so-called 'god' loved you so much, why's he lettin' you have such a crummy job? Why doesn't he just step down from his throne, smite all his enemies in a righteous display, and let love rule? I mean, what kinda 'god' would let disease, an' death, an' poverty run rampant across the world?"
He fumbled a cigarette free as he said this and pulled out what looked to me like a solid gold Zippo lighter. With a trembling hand he lit the cigarette, and fumbled everything back into his jacket. It was an oddly graceful display, like watching a blindfolded juggler perform on ice.
Without giving me an opportunity to respond, he said, "Look at me! I'm not even twenty-five, an' I'm a millionaire! I ain't got no 'god' to slow me down, an' I sure's hell don't need one. Anybody that ties themselves down to some kind of religion's a sap in my book. 'Do what I say, or I'll smite you with my holy, righteous rod of ineffable anger.'"
He pointed a square index finger at me, narrowly missing my nose. "You're a chump."
Again, I got angry in a big hurry. It took what seemed like a long time for me to calm down enough to respond.
"Okay. Fair enough, sir. But let me ask you this. Are you happy?"
He looked at me for a full minute. I looked back, matching his stare with one of my own. I was on familiar ground here.
He took a long slow drag on his cigarette, and then mashed it out on the surface of my desk. "I don't have time for this," he said. He turned to walk away.
I could’ve let him walk out. I probably should have. But I thought I’d let him have a little of his own back.
"Oh. Right. Well, I can certainly understand you're being too much of a wuss to answer me while pretending it's just because you don't feel that you need to. I mean, you're the hot-shot millionaire and I'm just a pissant security guard. But gee, it sure seems to me that if you really believed all that crap you just vomited on my nice, clean desk, you'd be willing to defend it."
My tone was even and easy. But I'd got his attention with that. He turned back towards me.
"I drive a Bentley. 2009. I live in a condo on the river. I just had sex with the Mayor's daughter, and I'm flying up to Frankfort to meet with the Governor tomorrow. . ."
I interrupted him before he could build up a good head of steam. "You’re not answering my question, sir. You’re bragging. I drive a Ford Festiva. The odometer quit more than a year ago and it had 189,000 miles on it. I live in a one-bedroom apartment. I've been celibate for the better part of two years. I'm as happy and as secure in myself as I can possibly be. How 'bout you?"
He stared, his bottom lip working. When he spoke, I could hear anger bleeding out at me.
"I made well over thirty million dollars last year. You see this?" He lifted his wrist in a rough gesture, showing me his Rolex. "This cost me fifty-thousand dollars. I had it custom made. How much money did you and your god make make last year, Bible-boy?"
I shrugged. "'Bout nineteen-thousand, give or take. But you still haven't answered my question. Are you happy? I mean, really happy? If all of that stuff was gone tomorrow; if you woke up and found out you were broke and homeless, would you still be you? Would you still be able to hold your head up and know, beyond a shadow of a doubt that everything was going to be okay?"
He looked at me for a moment, and then sneered yet again. "An' I suppose you're gonna tell me that your 'god' makes you feel all warm an' fuzzy inside 'cause you've been brain-washed."
I wiped my eyes in frustration at that, pinching the bridge of my nose. That sneer was beginning to grate.
"I get so tired of that statement. You tell people you believe in God, they assume you can’t think for yourself. Let me tell you about my God, okay? My God's not about 'Do it this way or I'll smite you.' My God's more of a 'Look. If you do it this way, this is what'll result. I love you. I want what's best for you. I don't want to smite you, I don't want you to be unhappy. But I'm not gonna take the ability to make your own choices away. If you decide to behave a certain way, I can't be the kind of friend we're supposed to be-"
"Ah-HAH!" His exclamation was triumphant. "So you're proving my point! 'Do what I want or I won't love you.'"
I shook my head. He was a stubborn one!
"Nope. Not at all. He loves us no matter what. But look. If you had a friend who stubbornly insisted on doing things that caused you pain, would you stick around? I mean, would you hang out with a guy that stole your money, slept with your girl, and talked bad about you behind your back? No! You'd probably beat the ever-lovin' crap out of him! My God doesn't do anything like that. He gives life, will, and the ability to decide. From the moment you're conceived until the moment you're drawn to your final judgment, my God's got his hand on you. My God says, 'Look. When you're ready to be friends, I'll be here. But I don't want to watch you destroy yourself. It hurts me! It hurts me so much for you to hurt yourself! Can't you understand that? I love you, and I always will.' My God's about you making the choice--all by yourself--to say, "You know what? I'm tired of being a complete jerk all the time. I think I'm gonna give this God-thing a try.' If he wanted mindless drones, he'da made mindless drones! And you still haven't answered my question! I mean, you've so clearly got the whole universe figured out! You don't need anything as piffling in your life as a 'god' as you so eloquently put it, but with all that crap that you adorn your life with Are. You. Happy? Simple question, man. If you're brave enough to answer it honestly."
He stood there, looking at me for a long moment, not saying anything.
When I spoke again, I tried to lower my voice to a more casual patience. "My life's not all that easy. I have to work, I have to pay bills, and I watch just about everybody I know do better than me. I ask God all the time, 'Why's life so hard, God? Why's there all this bad crud in the world? Why can't we just make everybody love each other?' It's frustrating sometimes, but I have this consolation. No matter where I go, no matter what I do, the greatest force in the entire Universe has his loving hand upon me, looking out for my good. How can I possibly be anything but happy?"
I stood up from my seat and leaned earnestly over the desk towards him. "Can you say the same?"
He looked at me for another long moment. Then without saying a word, he turned and walked out of the building.
I watched him go and felt a hot arrow of hurt pierce my heart on his behalf.
02 February 11
The dinner was a mistake, I think. But every once in a while a guy wants to hear some music and he wants to have somebody else cook. If that guy happens to be a bachelor, that usually means a night out at a restaurant.
As it seems with most things, I took him with me. "Hey. This place sells beer," he said in a nonchalant sort of way. Knowing where this conversation was going, I ignored him and continued to peruse the menu.
Not to be so easily dissuaded, he continued. "Boy. I sure could go for a beer. A Miller High Life. In the bottle. All cold, with the dew bedecking the bottle in that slightly erotic way that only beer has. The pleasant "hiss," and gasp of escaping gases as you twist the cap off, and that dry, bubbly taste. Mmm-MMM! Is there anything better than a cold beer?"
My patience already thinned, I answered rather shortly, I'm afraid. "No, there isn't much better than a cold beer. But that is exactly why we aren't gonna have any."
"What? Look, man. I'm talking about one beer, for cryin' in the mud. What's the problem with just one beer?"
"The problem is it's never just one beer. One beer leads to two beers. Two beers leads to a case. A case leads to a forgotten afternoon, and you coming back here later and saying something unbelievably ignorant and cave-man-ish to that waitress you think's eyeing you. Or better yet, yet more "initials carved into skin." What a good idea that was!"
Petulant, he continued the argument. "Hey. That was different. My ex was screwin' around on me. I just knew it. Besides. I was at home at the time, you were there to take care of me, and I didn't carve anything in anybody else. A guy needs to be ignorant from time to time. Beer lets us facilitate that."
Exasperated now, I let him have it. "Are you listening to yourself? Do you have any idea how weak that sounds? How totally lame it is? "Guys need to be ignorant." Wow. That's the stupidest thing I think I've ever heard. "Oh, Boo hoo hoo. My ex is cheating on me. I'm going to use this as an excuse to indulge myself in a flagrantly self-abusive manner, and it's all her fault." Shut the hell up and drink your soda."
He gave it one last try. "Hey brah. Chill out, okay? I just thought you might enjoy a good, clean, crisp beer. Alright? No need to get froggy. Besides, Jesus turned the water into wine, and Paul said, "A little wine for your stomach."
He plays this game so very well. It almost always comes down to the religion card, though. When I told him I wasn't going to smoke weed anymore, he tried, "Hey! God said "Every green herb in the field, I give unto you for meat." The arguments are old, and they are circular. It surprises me, now, how well they used to work.
Instead of lashing out again, I responded in what I felt was a calm sort of manner. "I would enjoy a beer. One beer. But that one beer would open the possibility to more beer. So, I think I'm gonna sit here, drink my soda, have a burger, and watch the world go by. No beer. No scotch. No bourbon."
And that's what I did. I ordered a big burger to compensate for the beer, and I let my inner drunk enjoy that instead.
26 January 11
She tried so hard to be tough. I could see the tears glimmering nakedly in her eyes, and I could almost see the nebulous, grey wings of despair wrapped tightly around her. She smiled bravely at me, a stranger, and began to tell me her story . . ..
"He was young. So was I. We thought we knew better. Surprised?"
I had to admit I wasn't, having been there myself, and having seen the twisted wrecks of others along life's verge.
"I loved him, though, and he said he loved me. How often does a pretty girl hear that, do you think? A million times, ten-million times, during her life?"
She was pretty. Even still. Pretty in that way that defies description . . . were it not for the bandages, tubes, wires and struts keeping her from moving, keeping her from pain. Whether she would still be pretty after she healed was still to be seen.
I didn't say anything. She didn't need someone to talk at her, she needed someone to listen.
Sighing, she continued, spitting out each piece like thick chunks of ice. I suspected that these words felt like heavy pieces of permafrost that had formed and clung to her heart, and only waited for a thaw, or a brief warm snap to loosen and puddle. And that is what happened now; the puddles melted and ran from her eyes.
"I tried really hard, too, but nothing I did, nothing I said made him happy. He never hit me, but his words . . .."
I knew. His words were a slap, a sting, a punch. Each one left a mark, a bruise, or a cut, each worse than the last and none healing adequately. How often had I seen the lowering of the eyes, the blinding shame of no self-esteem, or sense of personal self-worth?
"Have you ever felt as though you'd put up with anything, absolutely any bit of self-abuse just to feel as though somebody loves you? Allowing him to treat me any way he wanted, allowing him to say to me any thing he wanted, the other girls, the late nights, it was all there, and it all ended up being somehow my fault. "If you'd clean my house, if you'd make better love to me, if you'd clean yourself up, or lose some weight, I wouldn't need to go find other girls!" And I'd cry, and he'd leave. I hated him, but I loved him too. Why?
"So then I left, and he didn't even notice. I came home a week later, and he had moved a new girl in. She was wearing my clothes, she was using my dishes, and she was sleeping in my bed. The blood hadn't even been cleaned up, and she was sleeping in my bed . . .."
She trailed off, and I couldn't take anymore. I left the flowers I had brought and placed them gently on her bedside. I smoothed her bedsheets, and ensured she was comfortable, placing the call-button within reach. I surreptitiously wiped the angry tears from my cheeks, and gave her my best professional smile. Lucky me, the only one who'd listen . . ..
25 January 11
What are you doing?
"I'm trying to write a story. It's not going well."
What's it about?
"I'm not sure yet. I tend to find this out as I go. I think it might be another one of my 'Magical Happenings to a Damaged Soul' pieces."
You write a lot of those.
"Tell me about it.”
Any clue as to why?
“Oh, sure. My manic-depressive neurosis gang up on my creative impulse and shanghai it for their own amusement.”
Really?
“Probably. But I'm guessing it's really a reflection of my desire to believe in a world where magic can and does happen. It might be a romantically infantile belief, but I hold to it like a barnacle on a rock or a sand dollar on a toe. I believe in fairies. I believe in unicorns. I believe that somewhere, somehow, there's a witch stupidly putting her head in a stove while a desperate young girl stands behind her. I believe in genies, affrit, and all sorts of stuff like that. I believe there's a wardrobe that'll deliver me to a place with a talking lion, and I believe in dragons."
Ghosts and goblins, and Santa Claus too, I imagine. You really believe in magic, then?
"Sure! I mean, I believe in all kinds of different things I can't see. I’m a Christian. It’s the whole point of the process. I've never seen China, or India, and yet I've been assured over and over they're there."
Yes, but other people have seen China and India.
"Hence, my argument."
‘Hence.’ Seriously? ‘Hence?’
“What? I can’t drop an inappropriate archaism?”
It’s your story.
“Thank you.”
I’m not sure you’re using it properly, though.
“Yeah, well, ignorance has never stopped me.”
Clearly. But it seems your statement of belief suggests that other people have seen magic. Are you implying that?
"Maybe. Maybe other people didn't recognize it for what it was. We tend to filter our experiences through our personal perceptions."
I see.
"No, no you don't. You're entirely too disembodied to 'see'. What I really mean is the world I live in is bound about with all kinds of rules, sciences, and laws. And every last one of 'em was 'discovered' by a man, a human being. What if all of those laws, and rules, and whatever, are simply there because they make sense?"
Well, then that'd be right, wouldn't it?
"Sure. But magic is just like faith in that it’s beyond making sense. In our world, if you let go of something, it'll fall to the ground. That makes sense. But in a world with magic, it's entirely possible for Galileo’s feather and cannon ball to float up over the moon. We don't believe in things like unicorns because you can't go to the zoo and see a unicorn. Ergo, they don't exist.
And now you’ve dropped an ‘ergo.’ Is this a talent or a disease?
“Hater. My point is, that argument for the non-existence of unicorns is facetious. No one alive today has seen a living dodo. Are they mythological? Does it make sense to disbelieve something because no one's ever experienced it?"
Seems like an awful stretch to make. Your point is that the world has changed and we can no longer perceive magic all around us.
"Sort of. It's not that we can’t perceive it, we just don't. Our world is sterile. We've figured everything out, and the universe holds no more mystery for us, so we don't go looking for it anymore. It doesn't make sense to go looking for Jormungandr when we know about tectonic plates.”
Yore-mun-who?
“’Gandr.’” The snake that girdled worlds. The dragon eating its own tail. You know those trenches as the bottom of the ocean that go all the way around the world?”
Umm . . . yes?
“His house.”
Got it.
“Yeah. So the Mystery is Dead argument really breaks my heart.”
Can we go back to the bottom-of-the-ocean-snake thing for a minute?
“What?”
You carry that kind of information around inside your head?
“Doesn’t everybody have a section of their mind devoted to Scandinavian esoterica?”
Probably. So. Is this piece you're writing another story about that blindness?
"No, this is just a conversation between me and someone else."
Who?
"I'm not sure. It'll come to me though."
Oh, okay. Well, I'll leave you to it, then. Enjoy.
"I will. Thanks."
Don't mention it.
20 January 11
Smokin'!
I wrote this piece a couple of years ago in response to a smoker's essay about the "Violation of his Civil Rights" when he was asked not to smoke in a public place.
Frankly, I think I probably would've agreed with his irritation if he hadn't pulled the civil rights card.
~~~~~~~
Gonna talk about smokin' today, boys and girls.
Now, in the interests of clarity and transparency, I should probably tell you before you read this, I am not a smoker. Never really been a smoker . . .
of cigarettes . . .
(Let it go.)
So this piece is being written from the viewpoint of a non-smoker.
Now, I know I'm not gonna be able to change any of you smokers' minds. Ya'll got that weird cognitive dissonance thing happening.
"So what if 150 million people worldwide have died of lung cancer directly caused by smoking cigarettes? It won’t happen to me! ‘Sides. They ain't proven that conclusively!"
I know I could point out that the tobacco industry prints cancer warnings on packs of smokes now. I know I could set up the little man that smokes the cigarette, with his pink little lungs exposed, and you'd stand there, watching, making notes in your head about how your lungs aren't plastic, they're flesh.
I know all this.
I know you have rights.
I know you vote.
I know, I know, I know.
But listen anyway, okay? This isn’t really about getting you to quit. It’s about maybe opening your eyes to some of the mannerless ways you go about filling your lungs with crap.
Okay?
Okay.
Alright. So you've got John Doe, right? And John, well, he decides he wants to go to a nice restaurant for dinner. John's not a bad guy; he makes good money, treats his wife and kids okay, and doesn't participate in any socially unacceptable activities.
John's a smoker. Which is his right! Far be it from me to deny you the right to fill your bodies with poison and toxic chemicals of all kinds. Go nuts!
So John piles the wife and the kids into the car and they set out for the restaurant. John, he lights up a pre-dinner smoke, filling the car with his secondary smoke. He smokes it down to the filter, making sure his wife and kids get the benefit of the entire cigarette, and then what does he do?
Well, he rolls the window down and tosses the still-burning cigarette out the window, where it flies and hits my car's windshield.
Granted. It's not going to hurt my car any, but would you want me to roll my window down and throw my empty coffee cup at your windshield?
But we're not done, are we?
(No. We're not.)
'Cause John still wants dinner. So he goes to a fancy-shmancy steak place. The waitress, Jane, says, "Smoking or non-smoking?"
John, he says, "Smoking, by God! I'm a smoker and I'll die a smoker! I've got rights! I vote, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, and so on and so forth!"
So Jane, she sits John down.
John, he lights up, eats his dinner and leaves.
Jane, she's left to breathe John's cigarette, along with all the other cigarettes. Jane's a minimum wage waitress, doing the best she can. She's never been a smoker, but lately she's noticed some coughing when she first wakes up. Jane, she can't afford health insurance, and she can't afford a day off.
Couple of months go by. Jane finally breaks down and goes to the doctor.
"Guess what, Jane? You've got cancer! Oh, joy!"
Now, I know that if I were to go to a bar or a pizza joint or whatever, depending on the local smoking laws, I'd probably have to deal with second-hand smoke. I've accepted that and become used to it. No big deal.
But what about Jane?
Doesn't she have a right to work in a non-toxic environment?
And what is she gonna do about her cancer? Sue? Sue who? Sue the tobacco industry?
"Oh. Sorry, Jane. You weren't a smoker. It isn't like you can hold us liable if you never used our products."
Sue the small-business owner? Well that's a good plan. Let's make it even harder for small business to flourish in this country.
And even if Jane managed to drag the Tobacco Industry to court, and won, who's really paying this bill? The five-hundred year old industry, with tentacles all over the world?
Puh-leeese.
The Tobacco Industry, like any other industry, will protect its profits. The price of smokes will sky rocket--as they have--and the little guy, in this case, the tobacco farmer, will take it in the shorts, as they have in my home state of Kentucky.
"I know we bought this small bale of tobacco from you for four-hundred dollars last year, but this year we're only offering a hundred. Take it or leave it."
What's the price for a pack of smokes, now? Three dollars? What's the price for a carton?
Still feel like defending your 'right'?
Okay.
So what's the solution, Uncle Nescher?
Well, one solution that's been suggested is to allow business-owners to decide whether their business is to go smoking or non-smoking. I like that one. It says to me, "Hey. I own this restaurant. Don't smoke, or get out!"
Other solutions include making all public buildings non-smoking, or making entire cities non-smoking.
But you ask a smoker these same questions, and nine times out of ten they go up in brown-clouds of phlegm-flecked smoke.
"I've got rights! I should be allowed to smoke wherever I want to! I should be allowed to leave my drifts of filters to pile in front of buildings and let other people clean them up! I should be allowed to smoke in church!"
I don't understand this myself.
Start your head on fire and smoke like a chimney. Go right ahead. We’re not asking you to quit, we asking you to refrain from smoking while you're around us.
If you've been on a transcontinental flight in the last twenty years or so, you probably didn't smoke. You didn't smoke if you've had an operation recently. You don't smoke in church.
Essentially, you're being mildly and temporarily inconvenienced, not 'stripped of your rights.’
If you want to smoke, smoke outside. Smoke in your car. Smoke in your house. Yes, you have a right to smoke, but I also have a right not to smoke along with you.
I have rights, too, just as Jane does.
And you know what?
We non-smokers vote too.
17 January 11
Christmas At The Greasy Spoon
We didn't do Christmas, down here, on the ranch.
The Paterfamilias, he was convinced it's some kind of pagan holiday; an orgiastic devotion to a false god, incorporating all kinds of fertility myths.
"It's a stinkin' sacrifice to a sex god! Every year, at Christmas time, they'd dress up a tree, offering it sacrifices of gifts, and then they'd wait for their god to fall out of the sky in a special chariot, to deliver sexual favors to his highly esteemed! It's an abomination!"
He'd spleen on in that vein, for hours, ranting on about 'concessions by the Catholic Church' and 'conspiracies by Principalities and Powers' and 'Santa Claus? No. 'Satan's Claws!'
And almost every Christmas was the same.
"'What are you getting for Christmas?"
"'Nothing."
"Why?"
"'We don't celebrate Christmas. It's a pagan holiday."
Mom and Dad grew up with Christmas and I think that somewhere in their hearts, they knew that denying it to us was wrong. Dad wanted to spout on about being non-materialistic, but how do you explain that to a seven-year-old who just wants to unwrap presents on Christmas Day? Is the innocent joy shining in a child's eyes any counter against the steel-lined logic of legalistic religion?
So he'd shout at us, angry at himself for not being the shining scion of faith he was meant to represent, and angry at us for 'tempting' him.
Every once in a while, maybe every five years or so, they'd cave and give us a Christmas. Trees, decorations, presents, a dinner, it was all there, but there was a thick, syruped covering of 'This is wrong,' from my parents that soured the whole deal.
We got older, and Christmas stopped. And we went along with it. What choice did we have? He was Dad and he was in charge. Mom was a hollow, voiceless reed that let things happen and pretended her victimization was so much worse than ours.
"'I tried. I couldn't do anything."
And she'd fade off into some drug-induced bliss, leaving us to fend for ourselves.
I'd wander around on Christmas Morning, like some Dickensian orphan, picking through the neighbors' garbage, looking at the packages and wrapping paper and feeling miserable. Sometimes you got lucky. A toy would break, and some 'materialistic' parent, better equipped to provide on Christmas Morning, would toss the broken toy out for me to find and play with for a few hours.
And boo-hoo-hoo. Sounds like some awful After-School-Special-Pity-Whore-Extravaganza, doesn't it?
I don't want your pity.
We do things differently now. We're bigger than Dad now. Outweigh him, outnumber him, and we're masters of manipulation.
"Dad. Get in the car. We're taking you to Christmas dinner."
"We can't! It's an abomination!"
"Yeah, Dad, it might be, but if you don't get up and walk out to the car, I'm gonna sling you over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes and carry you out. It's up to you."
My sister can be tough when she puts her mind to it.
One year it was just me, my sister and my Dad. She'd driven two hours to be with us on Christmas, her sweet heart blowing holes out all over the place in a swelling gush of pity for the 'poor bachelors who don't have anyone to spend Christmas with.’ Evil manipulators we, we milked it for all it was worth.
"Don't know what I'll do on Christmas, sis. Probably sit at home, listening to the radio. Maybe they’ll play some Christmas music.”
And sniff, sniff, boo-hoo-hoo. Dad was worse, though.
"'Sure wish your Mother could be here. Your brother'll probably be off, feeling sorry for himself and listening to his radio."
It wasn't fair of us to tag-team her like that, but she's smarter than we are, so we need whatever advantages we can get.
"That's fine. I'll drive down there. His Nibs" (her hard-working husband) "is off performing experiments with guinea pigs in Hong Kong. Something about cancer. I forget."
My Father and I grinned at our respective places. Christmas! With the family!
We didn't exchange gifts. Hers was the two hour drive. Dad and I mumbled something about being broke. It wasn’t true, but she didn't care. She smiled at us, each in turn, her beatific grin lighting up her face.
"That's okay. It's not about presents anyway. I'm here. Let's go out to dinner!"
It's a known fact. The only restaurants open on Christmas Day are Chinese Diners and the greasy-spoon-truck-stops. Since we live in what basically amounts to the rural south, we were stuck with trucks stops. Fine eating, if you're not particular about what your food is coated with.
We drove around for a while, chatting, trying to find one. They hide, those greasy-spoon-truck-stops. They hide, knowing you're fuelled by desperation for something to eat. Your gratitude, when you do find one, allows you to overlook the fact that you're paying four dollars for a boiled, overly-greasy-toad-meat-hamburger.
When we did find one--a Waffle House some thirty-five minutes' drive away--it was packed. Every lonely soul, every forlorn face, every Christmas ghost in three counties had picked this Waffle House to eat their Christmas grits in.
We sighed, squared our shoulders and walked in.
~~~~~~~
She couldn't have been more than fifteen. Her hair was that blonde color you only get from irrepressible youth, and her eyes were a bright green, swimming with tears. She floated in her waitress outfit, two, maybe even three sizes too large for her. She walked up to our booth, freshly vacated by an unsmiling elderly couple, and tried to ask us what we wanted.
I heard myself say "What's wrong?"
It was my voice, but the compassion in it surprised me. I cared about what was bothering this poor thing on Christmas Day! I didn't want her to cry.
She swallowed and tried a teary smile on us.
It didn't work. All three of us turned the Compassion-O-Meter on her.
"Oh, now! Don't cry! You'll make me cry! You ever seen a fat man cry? It isn't pretty, I warn you!"
"Do you want a hug?"
My sister. Her hugs have been known to cause spontaneous healings.
Even Dad contributed in his small way. "You're doing an outstanding job!"
She smiled at us wanly, then fled. Another waitress came to try to take our order. We asked. She spilled.
"This couple came in here, on Christmas Morning, no less, and they just yelled at her! They treated her like a dog, and she's just here, helping out, trying to make a little extra money!"
There was silence around our table. The three of us looked at each other and the thought raced through our heads at the same time.
No.
No, there was no way this would stand.
"You go get her."
"What?"
"You heard me. You go get her. You bring her back out here, and you make her wait on us."
She left, fuming. The trembling, doe-eyed thing came back to our table. She apologized, and in a tremulous voice asked us what we wanted.
We ordered. She brought us our food, hands shaking. She spilled my soda, overfilled Dad's coffee and managed to tip my sister's fries onto the floor. We smiled at her, reassuringly. She brought us fresh plates, "Free of charge," she mumbled. We thanked her. Smiles plastered on our faces.
We ate our meal, talking about this and that, while a psychic wave danced through all three of our skulls.
I looked at Dad.
Dad looked at me.
I looked at my sister.
My sister looked at me.
"I'll do it," I said, grinning at the two of them.
They grinned back.
The shaking young thing came back with the check. For three meals, the total was less than twenty dollars. You could see in her eyes that she'd appreciated our patience and she was a little hopeful we were going to leave an okay tip. A couple of dollars, after spilling food everywhere, probably would've made her entire day.
Not our style, I'm afraid.
With as straight a face as I could manage, I said, "Go get your manager."
She stood there, trying to understand. Were we going to lash out at her, too?
"What?"
"'You heard me. Go get your manager." Gently, but firmly, I insisted with my gaze and my voice.
She nodded, looked down at the table, swallowed and fled once again.
The three of us grinned at each other conspiratorially. We loved doing this!
The manager came to our table, braced for trouble.
"How can I help ya'll?" Her voice was sugary, ready for whatever we were going to complain about.
"You can't," I began, in a voice that carried through the entire restaurant. I can really bellow when I try, and I was trying hard. "Whatever you're paying that girl," a head nod to the poor thing behind her, swallowing and trying not to sob. Then a weighty pause, because even when I'm doing something nice for someone, deep down inside, I'm really just a bastard, " . . .it's not enough. We've never had a more perfectly cooked, perfectly delivered meal. She was nice to us, she was efficient, and she was clean. Her hair smells nice, and she's got a nice smile. She walks on water, and you need to promote her."
This rhino-skinned, greasy-spoon, matron-manager-battle axe grinned down at me. The barest hint of a tear glinted in one eye. Her young ward, nearly hiding behind her skirt, sobbed once.
But we weren't done.
Dad's turn, and he's even louder than I am, as fifty generations of privates on the drilling ground can nervously attest.
"I have no idea why anyone would need another waitress working here. You should fire your entire staff and pay her their wages. She's strong, she's tough and she can take it."
By now we had an audience. The entire serving staff, the entire cooking staff, everyone shoveling food down their throats; the whole place had stopped to listen and watch.
My sister’s was the coup de tat. In a voice known and recognized by high school math students everywhere, she looked the trembly young thing in the eye and said, “I don’t know how you do it. Your job is so hard and you do it better than anyone I’ve ever seen. I know if it were me I’d probably quit after the first ten minutes.”
The battle axe grinned enough to show us her gold teeth.
"I want to shake your hand, sweetheart. You've demonstrated that a woman can be tough and smart and beautiful, without compromising those ideals that make us all women."
Yes. It was all nonsense. But it was nonsense the poor thing needed to hear. Not everyone in life is going to piss down your neck, beautiful!
The poor young thing was sobbing by now, grinning at us, and wiping her eyes with her apron.
We three stood up, turned toward her and applauded, grinning like loons from beyond the asylum's walls.
The rest of the restaurant cheered.
The young thing blushed and tried to go into the kitchen to hide and recover.
We still weren't done.
"Hang on. There's the small matter of your tip."
I have no idea how much it was. I reached in my wallet. I couldn't have had more than forty bucks in it. My sister was counting tens from hers. Dad just reached in his shirt, without looking, and pulled out the money he kept there.
When we handed the wad to her she had to use both hands. Tears were running down her face and she couldn't talk. We wished her a "Merry Christmas!" and we walked out.
We've since agreed, in the years that have passed, that one was the best Christmas ever!
11 January 11
A Recap Of Sorts
By Nescher Pyscher
For the last five years I have been trying to write a novel.
The title has changed, the basic plot has changed. The characters have gotten face-lifts and overhauls. I’ve deleted thousands of words, re-thought, and shuffled the text into the existing body of the story as something else.
In short, what started out going one way turned across eleven dimensions and nine-hundred degrees. It melted, evaporated, spontaneously combusted and froze, gently gelling into a liquid.
I tried to incorporate everything I’ve ever liked about stories, ever into this one novel. It’s got close to 200,000 words, and if I had my druthers, it’d have 500,000 more.
I’m calling it—at this point—Tales of The Fallen, and I’ve actually managed to write the entire damn thing, front to back, top to bottom, side to side.
I’m done.
Completely.
Except for the re-writes.
It's a fantasy novel set in a world enough like ours as to make no difference. The main character is somehow an amalgamation of Celtic and Arabic. His eyes are piercing and hawk like, his hair is dark, dusted with silver, and his skin color is a deep, rich bronze. He speaks with a booming, rolling accent that's changed from Scottish or Irish, to a bland, vanilla that I was told would work better to get the story moving. His name is Solly Mont. He 'works' for a disembodied goddess, or idea, or etheric personification--we're never really sure which--of 'Wisdom'.
Solly’s wife, Ana, owns an inn called 'The Beller Inn' in a placed called Oakenfeld. Oakenfeld is a rural setting with boisterous, good, hard-working people who like to yell good-naturedly at each other. It’s the kind of place I’ve always wanted to live.
Solly Mont walked into town one day – nobody's quite sure when – with his wife and purchased The Beller Inn from its current owner. She's been there ever since. Solly’s job takes him all over the universe, so he doesn’t get to come home as much as he’d like.
None of the Oakenfeldans know much about Solly, other than the fact that he is the 'Worl's wisest man'. As Solly himself puts it, 'But not the smartest, you understand. For there's a grave difference between the two!'
The ale is good, the fires are warm, and Solly tells a good story whenever he’s in town. It's enough for the people of Oakenfeld, who tend, by and large, to mind their own business, and let people get on with theirs.
When the story opens, Solly Mont is in a sewer at the end of the world, watching the whole thing burning down just before it all ends.
Ana comes to find him, tells him its their anniversary, and she’d like for him to come home. He starts to tell a story.
A lot happens.
There are a number of other primary characters. The forces of 'good' are represented by Shadows-Dancing-On-Wall, a shaman undergoing a 'spirit walking' who aids and abets Solly Mont while trying to solve his own problems. Shadow starts a round of storytelling himself – casting a spell much like the one Solly Mont cast on the Oakenfeldans– to 'hold back the night', and Taliesin-Sung-Meister, Solly’s first teacher and bard without peer.
The forces of 'evil' were represented by Clyde-of-the-Barrow. I'm not entirely sure why my head birthed Clyde as a primary character. The word 'Barrow' has connotations that imply the grave, and indeed, in certain mythologies, a type of ghoul was known as a 'barrow-wight'. Clyde is dead when he's introduced, and he finds himself 'here' on his way to 'somewhere else'. I gave him a bit of a character-spin. I attempted to humanize him; attempted to separate him from his mythology and clothe him in the frail fabric of skin. I'm not much of a history student and I imagine I got lots of small details very badly wrong. Clyde’s not part of the story anymore, and I kind of miss him. He strikes me now as being a good idea at the time.
If you’d like to read part of his story, you can find it in my short, Ghost Story. It’s pretty good, if I do say so myself, and I’m proud of it.
Solly's been around for a while. He never comes right out and says it, but you get the impression, talking to him, that he's seen most everything life has to offer and most of it makes him smile. And yes, there's far more to Solly Mont than initially meets the eye. He's as strong as two bulls, quick as lust, and as ready to fight as a wet weasel in a bag. He casts 'spells' with a casual wave of his hands, or a focusing of his eyes, and he's always got an answer of some kind. He’s calm, composed, confident and ready to fance any challenge.
In short, he's nothing whatsoever like me.
The story starts with a spell. Solly covers the Oakenfeldans in a thick shroud of story-telling magic; the very strongest kind of magic. (Or maybe it's just the magic of a really good story. That's the funny thing about magic. When it's done well, there's no discernible difference between it and everything else.) It projects them into the swell and sweep of the story, and protects them from those things that would perhaps harm them, should they get a good close look.
I started writing this story as a sort of tribute to two of my very favorite authors: Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. These two wrote a book called Good Omens. Mr. Gaiman is famous for lifting very small details from famous stories and Easter-egging them throughout his writing as a sort of 'hidden doorway'. You may be reading a chapter, and someone will mention living in 'the shadow of the Quinsy mountains', for example. (I'm not going to tell you why that's important. You'd need to read the story to make the connection. It's almost a pun.) It's a little as if Mr. Gaiman is knocking small holes into the real world where you can fall and find yourself sucked into the swirling maelstrom of a story.
The novel I'm attempting to write will twist, under my hands. I'm not trying to tell a story that's already been told. I'm trying to create something new and weird and wild and wonderful. This is made more difficult by the fact that I don't know what I’m doing.
I think I'm on to something good here, and if I can pull the twisting, fibrous, doubtful strands out, I'll be that much happier. My girl Christine has assured me she's going to help, so hopefully you'll be seeing some version of 'Tales' on bookshelves soon.
If the story doesn't eat my head first.
04 January 11
For whatever reason, I am often asked, “Are you a Christian?”
It’s not a simple question anymore. Time was, being a Christian ideally meant that you were someone who lived their lives according to the teachings of Jesus Christ. Now it seems to mean that you have a pre-determined set of choices that have been made for you, responses to situations you adhere to, and a militant outlook on life in general. Christianity has become a religion instead of a way of life. Instead of the emphasis on a “deeply personal relationship with Jesus Christ,” Christianity has become a club for people who all want to vote the same way.
I tend to believe that Jesus doesn’t recognize much of what is called ‘Christianity’ these days.
If you forced me to pick a system of beliefs that most closely conformed to mine, here's what I'd answer. I am an Apostolic-Evangelistic-Messianic-Jew. Which is really just a fancy way of saying my Dad's Jewish—or at least, he thinks he is, and he raised me with his quasi-Judean belief system--and I am a Holy-Roller Christian. The kind that head-bangs in Church, speaks in tongues, and gets real excited during worship services.
It means a couple of different things. The most important of which is that I try to be like Jesus. I try to have a real, vibrant and dynamic relationship with my God. Not something that I pull out twice a week and dust off. No, I'm talking about a friendship. He's the best friend I have, and I try to love Him with all my heart, all my soul, all my mind, and all my strength. I have a relationship with my God. I don’t practice a religion.
My relationship with my God is about loving Him. It’s also about loving everybody else.
No, I don’t often get that one right. It’s easy to see a bum and give him some money or whatever. That one doesn’t offer much of a challenge if you’ve got the money to give him. It gets harder when you’re being asked to love people who flout their beliefs in your face, argue with you about things they don’t understand and generally behave like they’d love to see you tied to a stake and burning.
“All gay people are going to hell,” is a good one. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had this argument. I don’t know who God sends to hell, and I don’t know why. All I know is what I believe. I believe God is love. I believe God is perfectly just, perfectly righteous and perfectly merciful, and I believe God knows what’s going inside a person’s heart regardless of what’s going on in their pants or whatever.
Yes, God is absolute. There is no gray. But my arguments tend to run like this. “Read your Bible, and look to see who Jesus actually judged. The only people He ever judged were the ones who decided they had it alllllll figured out. He never judged prostitutes, or pimps, or homosexuals, or anybody else. He judged the people who told those people they were going to hell.
Bottom line, God loves you and He wants you to be happy. Everything else comes from loving Him back and finding out His truth as best you can. Christianity isn’t, and never has been, about days and words, rituals and causes. Christianity is about loving “the LORD your God with all your heart, all your mind, and all your strength.” Loving God comes from loving your neighbor. You can’t do one without the other. “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” You can’t do that if you’re holding a placard in front of an abortion clinic shouting “Whore! Whore!” at all the women walking inside.
“Turn the other cheek.” You can do that if you’re howling for blood from our “enemies”. Yes, there is a time and place for punishment and even war. But I don’t think God wants us to kill abortionist doctors or Iraqis. I just don’t.
Yes, I have opinions about things, and those are allowed. God created me and he made me with the ability to think, to reason, to imagine and to believe. But as a Christian, it isn't my job to judge you. It's my job to love you and accept you for who you are. Because that's exactly what Jesus Christ did. He never labeled people, he never told anyone they couldn't be saved and he never called for us to carpet-bomb anything.
I had a conversation with a Baptist a few years ago who told me that all homosexuals were going to hell, and couldn’t be saved. At all. Ever. This blew my mind. Here was an otherwise intelligent person telling me that the love of GOD ALMIGHTY was somehow limited.
I know there are people who believe that if you aren’t a white, God-fearing, American, Conservative voter, you’re going to hell. They call themselves Christians, too.
But here’s what the Bible, the ultimate source for Christianity has to say about that: 'For GOD so loved the World that He gave His only begotten Son, that WHOMSOEVER should believe on Him would be saved.'
Maybe I’m reading that verse wrong. Maybe there’s something in there that says God doesn’t actually love people who aren’t Christians.
The question at the bottom is this: can we, as Christians, stand in the place of Almighty God and judge another human being?
No. And thank God for that.
'But what about abortion? What about drug-dealers, and thieves, and murderers?'
What about 'em?
No, seriously! What about ‘em? Jesus died for those people too. Here’s a radical concept, people. Jesus Christ died for Hitler.
He died to save the entire world. “WHOMSEVER should believe”!
Man, what a beautiful phrase!
And that’s what Christianity is about: believing. Believing that Jesus loves you, that He died for your sins, and He wants you to be free. It's not about being the best person on the outside where everybody can see. It's about changing your insides, that place only you and God know about.
I am the most miserable excuse for a human being on the face of the planet. I fail God somehow every friggin' day, sometimes multiple times a day. I drink, I curse, I tend toward sloth, and I probably break most every commandment there is at least once a day in one way or another.
But I keep trying. I keep going. I pick myself up and I keep ‘striving toward the high calling for which I was named.’ (Massive paraphrase there.)
I’m not good. I’ll never be good. But I don’t have to be. Jesus is. And he forgave me for my weaknesses. All I have to do is accept the free gift of his sacrifice and try. Every single day, I walk a little further. I ask God for His forgiveness, and I keep going. God isn't looking for perfection. That's what Jesus was about. God is looking for a willing heart.
“For all have fallen short of the glory of God.”
“What's that mean, Nescher?”
Well, here’s what I think. It means that ain't nobody righteous 'cept fer God. Dig? There's no degree of sin. A mass-murderer is no less guilty then a person who steals a stick of gum. Sin is sin, and it's all just as bad. So before you get up on your high-horse and shake your head in dismay at all the sin you see, remember your own. Jesus said it best. 'You hypocrite! First remove the beam from your eye so you can see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's.'
Jesus Christ died in horrific agony so that we could all wipe our slates clean and have a new life. Don't waste it judging people.
Being a Christian also means being a servant. Yeah. A servant. Jesus came to Earth to die. 'To seek and to save those that are lost.' If I'm not willing to 'crucify' my pride, roll up my sleeves, and to serve my fellow man, I'm not being a Christian. It means knowing when to shut the hell up, and listen to the other guy. It means knowing when someone is hurting and reaching out a hand, even if it's only in prayer. It means being humble, meek, and ready to bear the other guy's sorrow, and even apologizing when it's necessary. It means trying, every day to make the world a little better through direct, personal action.
Instead of calling the poor girl in front of the clinic names, give her a sandwich, or something. Tell her Jesus loves her and so do you. Reach out to her!
Being a Christian is hard. But the rewards vastly out-weight the cost. I wake up every morning knowing that no matter what happens to me today, God has got His eye on me for my greater good. No matter where I go, no matter what I do, He's watching me.
I trust God implicitly, and He never lets me down.
Look, you don't have to believe any of this. In fact, since it's me saying this stuff, I encourage not to. This is my personal truth and this is how I live.
Find out who God is, and what He wants for yourself. Ask Him what being a Christian really means. There's nothing you need to do, just be willing to talk to Him. He's been around for a while, and He's heard it all. You'd be surprised at the answers you'll get from Him, I think.
For me, here's what being a Christian is. I wake up every day and I try to listen to the voice of God. I try to be more like Jesus Christ. Sometimes my pride and stubborn self-will gets in the way. Sometimes I can't see beyond the end of my own nose. But sometimes, I get it right, and I manage to do more good than harm.
Finally, being a Christian means continuing to try until I find myself on my face before God's throne. Where He will judge me.
28 December 10
So I'm driving, right?
It seems I spend an awful lot of time in the car - going from one function, one place, one celebration to another, and rarely are those celebrations or functions about me.
Whining?
No, not really, just trying to explain what that feels like, I guess. It's all well and good to share in someone else's joy, but there comes a point when you wish it was yours.
Anyway, I'm driving. It's a long haul, and I've got the music up, and my brain is just disassociating all over the place.
Yours ever do that? Just pull stuff out from nowhere and run down the field with it?
Tell you a story. I had a dream once. I do a lot of dreaming, but that's a different story for another time. Just your average bit of subconscious filtering. Nothing major. For some reason, the dream crystallized around me reaching down this pipe with my left hand. I don't know why or what for. At the end of this pipe was a heavy, high speed, rotating metal blade that had what looked like a cheese-grater beyond it. Well, my obliviously reaching fingers touched the blade, and disappeared, and the shock of that meeting ran right up my arm and woke me up. It hurt like all blue blazes, but more, it shocked me.
That's what I'm referring to with “Does your brain ever runs down the field?”
So I'm driving along, literally and metaphorically, when my mind pulls up this scene from nowhere, and runs down the field with it.
~~~~~~~
He entered the gas station with her in tow. He'd been telling her about the head for the last twenty miles, and she wanted to see it just to shut him up.
The gas station's walls wept a dark, stained yellow, and the smell of old, ingrained smoke had buried itself in every available surface. A group of rough truckers lined one wall, playing the nickel slot machines. He walked by without garnering a notice, but she had them lifting their heads, and elbowing each other with greasy smiles.
He led her to the back, and there was the head, taking up the wall with its presence.
It was something from a bygone era; a pre-historic beast.
It was a stuffed and mounted deer head, but a deer head with thirty points and a spread of fifteen feet. It was a glossy, glass-eyed monster, and she put her hand to her mouth in shock.
"Hey. If you want to see a really big head, come on over here, sister!"
He turned to see the group of truckers leering at his girl. This is the kind of scenario that calls for Clint Eastwood. She's stuck with Adam Sandler.
"Leave her alone," he says, his voice trembling.
The largest, grimiest, moustachioed-est of the group puts his hands on his hips and spits a stream of tobacco on the floor. "Or what, shithead? What are you gonna do? Hit me?"
They all laugh, and the moment of suspense builds.
His eyes go wide and more than a little wild at that, and he reaches behind him.
"What am I gonna do? Well, I'm gonna shoot you twice in the kneecap as a warning to the rest of your faggoty buddies, here.”
They can’t hear him, of course, as his weak voice is drowned by the bullroar of two large caliber rounds discharging into the trucker's left knee, sending him howling to the floor.
“Then I'm gonna ask your buddies which one of them wants it next?"
He holds the weapon in his right hand, generally pointed in the group's direction. It's a massive hunk of gleaming black metal, and with part of his mind, he's praying that it doesn't fall out of his hands due to the palm sweat.
But the weapon doesn’t move. Not so much as an inch, despite his nervousness.
If his hand is steady, his eyes aren't. They tremble and wobble, and seem to be on the verge of falling out of his skull.
"What's that, a forty-four?"
"Nope. A fifty. And before you make some sort of dramatic statement about me not having enough rounds for all of you, I've got this thing tricked out as a full-auto. I've got plenty. Now. All I need to know is if me and my lady friend can walk out of here, or if you mouth-breathers are gonna charge. If you're gonna charge, I just need to know which one of you is gonna be first."
~~~~~~~
My mind leaves it there, with the stand-off unresolved. Mostly, I think because subconsciously, I prefer to keep things resting on the razor's edge. I try to come up with a resolution, but nothing feels right.
I try to explore my protagonist's motivations. Why such a severe and dramatic response to the trucker's sally? Is it my own unspoken desire to be seen as a swashbuckling sort of hero? If that's the case, then why is the hero so unbalanced?
These questions chase me into the night, and I enjoy trying to answer them. Other scenes, and stories play themselves across my mind's eye, but that's for another time.
21 December 10
17 November in Two Parts
- I -
My brother lives in Korea.
I call from time to time just to shoot the breeze; the usual fraternal chatter.
"How are you? How's your wife and kids? How are things going?"
I find myself listening with half an ear to his bland, vanilla responses,
and thinking about the time difference between us.
"What time is it over there?"
I feel almost as though I'm dipping my fingers into a larger world-pool
than the one I occupy, or that I'm talking to an Oracle from a future beyond mine.
"What kind of day is today going to be? Will it be a good day?"
He's already seen the sun rise, already tasted the winds
and rain that will blow.
I've never asked, fearing the response.
- II -
There's a Woman's Shelter down the street from where I work;
a healing place, with red-brick exterior, balconies and
porches. Porches - aplace where you can smoke, rock in a safe,
warm chair, and watch the larger world go by are important when your heart is broken.
I drive by every day and see the drifts of damaged women
sitting or standing out front, talking on phones, to each
other, or staring with thousand-yard, brittle eyes into the black
hole their lives have become.
You won't believe me, and that's okay, but I pray for these women.
I ask God to heal them, and I wonder at their stories.
Here is a young, beautiful blonde, her nose freshly broken, a gorgeous smile
stretched across her face like sunrise in the desert. There a middle-aged
matron with raccoon eyes and her hair pulled into a severe plait.
A woman holds a child as tears of fear run nakedly down her face.
Sitting on the curb, glaring at me as I wait for the light to change, is an elderly black woman,
her jaw clenched as though she'd like to pull me from my car
and beat me to death for the sins of every man, everywhere,
and I half feel as though I deserve it.
I see lesbians trying to cuddle each other through the pain
of their fresh bruises.
Young women - hardly more than girls, some of them, with the
fresh bloom of youth still shining under haunted eyes.
Old women - scarred warriors, limping and battered.
I wonder who would do the things that've been done to them, and I wonder
why they would allow it.
And I find it sad that the only time we humans are truly
united is when we are faced with a common sickness, a pain,
or a misery.
13 December 10
Goofiness for the sake of being goofy, I think. I sometimes wonder if anyone, anywhere is reading these. And if they are, what do they think?
Dark Night At The Boh Da Thone
In the same sense that “nowhere” is not, and never can be, a place, the Boh Da Thone is not a place. Not really. Not in the strict, three-dimensional way so necessary for humans to wrap their little meat-sack brains around.
That's an important distinction. “Place” is a noun. It assumes all the hard-edged, glinty, concrete aspects of reality. It has width, depth, length, and an awareness, however vague, of existing in, or at least participating in, the passage of time. Our quasi-semi-place does none of the above, but it could if given enough of a running start.
It is (was, could be, etc) more the “embodiment of pre-existent metaphysical potential taking on a tenuous half-reality for the purposes of demonstration,” than any kind of a “place”.
The sidereal place in question, as it were, exists beyond the boundaries of “Maybe” and “Could be”, and dwells firmly in the grey haze of the land of “What if?” or, more specifically, its capital, “Wouldn't it be really cool, if . . . ?”
As with any other destination of myth, magic and mystery, there are no maps or street-signs to guide us to our destination. No helpful characters looming out of the fog-shrouded darkness to provide directions; no third star to fly by. You either know the way or you don't. It's just that (un)kind of a (non)place.
If it were a place, it might look a bit like a badly lit, dingy bar with innocuous “American Bar Furniture Fixings” slathered over the top of shoddy construction. The over-stuffed red leather booths, the dusty neon, and the fake wall-paneling laid carelessly over the top of basic, square-sided, cinder-block construction might look real, but looks, as already discussed, can be deceiving.
The air would probably smell like several generations of badly fried food, perfume bought from the back of trucks, spilled beer, sour sweat and used dishwater. There might be an ever-present haze of cigarette smoke added to our funky miasma for continuity and depth. There'd definitely be a tinny country song playing in the background from the ancient juke-box in the corner. Probably Hank Williams or Merle Haggard at his morose best.
Its lights are long gone, and its glass face plate is punctured by a fist-sized hole.
The juke box is a standard fixture. Good music played badly on deteriorating equipment is de rigueur.
Having established the non-existence of our un-place, we move on.
Our other “fixture of note” would be our host. Assuming the potential possibility of the proto-place in question, you have to concede the host. These sorts of things have very complicated rules. They are woven into their basic structure like math and physics in the foundation of the Universe.
One of the main rules:
“Any bar-like structure has an owner/host/barkeep.”
The barkeep doesn't have to fit any specific stereotype, but things get a bit woobly – always a problem out here on the fringe - if there isn't at least a suggestion of one. Since there are so many archetypical barkeeps to choose from, this is rarely a problem, more an item of interest.
Our place has a host. He takes up quite a bit of psychic space, being the same size and general shape as a Volkswagen. At the moment we’re looking at him, he is lurking trollishly, in every appearance of a foul temper, behind his massive, fake wood bar. He - for our barkeep is quite aggressively “he” - is a squat, toad-like creature in a dirty, button-down, two-sizes-too-small shirt, a filthy, no-color apron, and a glaringly red bow tie. The tie manages, somehow, to peep out from beneath his chins like a chick emerging from beneath the world's ugliest hen.
He is perfectly bald, like a toadstool, and his skin is a very distinct grey color.
Our host doesn't have facial features so much as distinct flaps and grooves in the yards of skin draping his enormous skull that would correspond, roughly, with eyes, nose and mouth in a thinner man. His eyes are deeply set and one wonders if he has trouble seeing from beneath his heavy, lowered “skin-brows”. There is good evidence that his neck is trying, valiantly, to throttle his face.
As the mind’s eye roves – or recoils; however you like - the barkeep is sullenly wiping badly-damaged glasses in a rote appearance of cleaning them. He isn't accomplishing anything more than moving the grease around on the glasses, but we'll note the effort and move on.
The glower (one assumes it's a glower. That suet bag of a face probably isn’t capable of much mobility) on the barkeep's face doesn't seem to be directed at anything specific so much as at everything in general. It is the suffering moue of the toothache; the dyspeptic stomach; the foul odor in the elevator – with accompanying sheepish grin - that insinuates itself like burning plastic onto the surface of tongue and nasal membrane.
It’s quite the glare, is our barkeep’s.
Evidence suggests that there should be some sort of soup-like atmosphere surrounding our barkeep; an odor of epic proportions. Instead, there is merely the vaguest hint of pickled onion.
The hand-carved sign hanging over the barkeep's head declares to all and sundry that this, our not-place, was/is/could be (etc.) the “Boh Da Thone”.
Of course, all this is pure conjecture, and we'd do best to remember that, despite the twists and turns of “story”.
Looking on, as we are, we are shaken from these reveries by the cascading sound of trumpets, the battle call of the Almighty from “outside”. Glancing toward the grease-covered windows, a glaring, dying blood-red sky lights the “horizon”.
Having given us an “inside”, we now provide parameters for an “outside”.
But we’ll just stay in here, where we’re less likely to encounter anything that would cause us too much psychic damage. The ambience isn’t much in here, but all that screaming and bloody bubbling noises are very firmly out there.
We can see that only one other figure sits in our bar. The lighting is bad, as it always is in places like this, and we can't quite get a fix on what he looks like. If we hold our heads one way, he looks a bit like a nervous, stoop-shouldered, just-approaching-middle-age businessman. His tie is askew around his neck and his hat is propped carelessly on the back of his head. His face is lined and his eyes are tired and maybe a bit scared. His hair - dishwater yellow; cut far too close - has thinned noticeably from a high, clear, unlined brow. His eyes are a faded blue and have the unfocussed appearance of drunken befuddlement.
But if we move our heads a bit to the right, we might just look at our nervous drunk and see a gargantuan ball of flaming hot gases and immense, controlled, nuclear reactions.
Old woman or young woman; vase or two people trying to decide whether or not to kiss. It really is a matter of personal perspective.
There is a chipped, dirty glass full of the Boh Da Thone's “finest” sitting in front of our lonely customer. The glass is slowly dissolving and melting into the bar from around the liquor. Interestingly, the drink is stubbornly maintaining the shape of the glass.
Henasamef – the name of our barkeep; as it hasn’t yet been mentioned, and being quite rude, we haven’t asked – calls these drinks “Claw-Your-Own-Eyes-Out-With-The-Bloody-Remains-Of-Your-Fingers” or “Screaming Brain Eaters”, in loving memory of the first victim to try one.
They haven’t taken off as yet, but Henasamef has high hopes to market them to fraternal organizations. Perhaps as birth control cum “Spring Break Euthanizer”.
Our singular customer is compulsively breaking open the fossilized peanuts provided by the barkeep and very carefully ignoring the drink – his fourth of the evening – in front of him.
The rolling trumpet call crashes from the “sky” again and a smashing tide of thunder beats against the walls of the bar. The thunder is followed by a tortured, fear-lashed scream that fills the entire world. It sounds as if the planet itself is crying out in fear and pain. Our customer shudders once, convulsively.
Henasamef – our primal Ur-throwback barkeep from beyond the beginning of time – looks disgustedly at him and grunts in an uninterested sort of way.
The leather-padded, swinging door that is the bar's only entrance opens, and a woman enters. We can see a hard rain, blood-colored like the sky, and apparently full of glass and molten metal, falling.
The woman brushes herself off while still standing at the entrance. There is a meticulous thoroughness to her movements, almost as if she were trying not to offend the proprieties of any watchers. Like our nervous, multi-perspectived businessman, the woman's appearance is hard to nail down. From where we're standing right now she appears to be what would be called, in an earlier time and place a “mature” woman; a “matron” in certain polite settings, “a high-steppin’ biddy” in others.
There is a motherly roundness to her that suggests the successful raising of a brood of happy, healthy children, and an absolute mastery of all things home-related. You look at her and something says “house-wife.” But you don't want to say “house-wife”; you want to say “Domestic Engineer, Ninja Assassin Level.” (And if you knew what was good for you, you'd capitalize every word as you said it, too.)
There is something about her that says she’s mere seconds away from licking her thumb and briskly wiping a smudge of something unidentifiable from your face.
From where we stand, her hair is a nut-colored brown, and smells vaguely of freshly-baked bread. It's pulled back from her face in a convenient ponytail and shines with a radiant good health.
Her face has all the lines and wrinkles associated with a lifetime's worth of giggling, smiling, and laughing out loud at every opportunity. Her face suggests that if you looked as though you needed a hug, she'd be the one to give it to you. And it would be warm and tight and all-encompassing; everything a good hug should be.
Her eyes are merry and dancing, despite the way her garments now seem to be covered in blood and liquid glass from her knees downward, and one gets the idea that her eyes, at least, would suggest that World War Three was simply a bit of “unpleasantness”; a passing bit of “yuck” that'll clear up in no time.
She is dressed simply, in flowing robes that look as though they would comfortably fit a Hellenic statue, although she's quite soaked.
But again, if we moved our heads just a bit to the right, we might see a loosely collected group of flaming hot balls of plasmic chaos, separated by more billions of miles than it would be convenient to discuss, nevertheless, with imaginary, invisible lines drawn between them.
Perspective, perspective, perspective.
The woman sees our hero sitting by himself, and walks up to the bar with brisk, efficient steps that still look a bit too much like dancing not to be.
She puts a friendly hand on his shoulder, and in the matronly, comforting, voice we were expecting, says, "Wow, Shamus! He's really doing it, huh?"
”Shamus” nods once, crushing another peanut beneath his fist.
"I've asked you not to call me “Shamus”, Cassie. It's not really how you pronoun-"
"Yes, yes," Cassie interrupts, gently, the way a doting mother or elderly sister might. “Shamus, Sol, Lunos, you’ve got too many names, boy! I can never keep them all straight!”
“Actually, “Lunos” is the moon, Cassie.”
But “Cassie” seems not to have heard.
Shamus grins in spite of himself and crushes another peanut beneath his fist as Cassie climbs up onto the barstool next to his and scootches into a comfortable sitting position. Not an easy proposition in long, flowing, classical robes, but Cassie pulls it off with style and grace.
Henasamef trundles over to Cassie, and grunts something that may, after the appropriate language registers have burned out, be translated as "Woddawant?"
Cassie smiles brightly, as though she weren't addressing a genetic nightmare on legs, and says, "A Harvey Wallbanger, please. With a straw and an umbrella."
Henasamef grunts non-committedly and waddles away.
Cassie says "I've always wanted to try one of those!"
She gives a little giggle. Shamus smiles himself and turns a bit on his stool so he's facing Cassie. There's a certain relief in his eyes now. It's as if he's feeling, “Oh good. She's here.” There is a tension in our man Shamus that suggests he's addressing someone he respects.
"I saw Mike today, Cassie."
Cassie looks over at Shamus, her hand still on his shoulder. She pats his back in a comforting sort of way and gives a contented sigh. She looks clearly out of place there, with her ram-rod straight back and her gently dignified bearing, but she smiles brightly at everything. Her eyes beam, despite the way her hands stick to the greasy bar top. She itches abstractedly as something that fell on her in a dusty shower from the ceiling. A closer observation would reveal that the dust in question is largely cockroach droppings, but even this wouldn’t be enough to throw our girl Cassie.
"Did you?" she asks, her voice still carrying tones of warmth and comfort. "Did you say anything to him?"
Shamus shakes his head, turning back to face the bar.
"Naw. You know how it is, Cassie. There's all kinds of stuff going on. Scrolls and seals and what not. Stars crashing down and running riv-"
Shamus is interrupted by another tortured, bellowing scream of agony from outside. It ends on a cracking note that sounds like a stack of dishes – ten million miles high - being neatly torn in half, magnified ten billion times. Shamus closes his eyes and slumps a bit more in his chair.
"Goodness! What was that?" Cassie asks, her eyes wide, but still somehow beaming.
"Australia. Or maybe south-east Asia. I can never keep all of the continents straight. Which one has the jumping rats with the alligator tails and those naked black guys who wander around dreaming all the time and chalking on that big rock of theirs?”
“Beats me, Shamus. I never get close enough to see all those kinds of details.”
There is a quietly judgmental tone in Cassie’s voice; a gentle rebuke for someone’s apolitically incorrect insensitivity.
Henasamef, waddling along at speed, plunks something evilly viscous down in front of Cassie. It's in a long, thin glass with an umbrella desultorily sitting in it. The umbrella is covered in the remains of several generations of cobweb.
The fluid inside the glass slops over the barkeep's hand with a glutinous “blorp”. It is exactly the same color and consistency of cold beef gravy.
Cassie smiles her enthusiastic smile and takes a single sip before either man can say or do anything. She smacks her lips and nods, still-smiling, at Henasamef.
Henasamef looks back at her with wide eyes – or his general approximation thereof, anyway. He stares at her for a long moment, as if wondering whether she'll fall out of her chair, and then grunts at her. There is an admiring tone to it.
"Well, I wouldn't worry too much, Shamus. It's like puberty, isn't it? There's some excitement; what, with hormones and what not, but eventually everything settles down. It's just a bit of something that needs to happen so we can move on to the next phase of our growth," Cassie says, the muscles in her forearm flexing as she tries to stir her drink.
The front door “clunks” and a blood-covered body in military fatigues falls inside on the floor. It is still clutching the twisted, molten remains of what appears to have once been a rifle of some kind. It twitches, just once, and then quite audibly expires.
Shamus and Cassie both look around at the “clunk” and then turn back as Henasamef waddles to the door. There is a practiced efficiency to the way he bags the body and drags it behind the bar and on into the back. He moves with grunts and mutters, as if he’s doing a chore he’s done many, many times before.
The pungent odor of blood, roasted meat, and melted metal briefly overpowers the bar's resident smells.
Shamus, delayed by the disposal of tortured remains, belatedly replies, "Yeah. I guess."
"Come on, now! Let me see a smile!" Cassie says, her own face beaming brightly, while reaching again for her Harvey Gravy-Banger.
"This is really good! Would you like a sip?"
She proffers the glass to Shamus' face, holding the straw perfectly still in an unconscious, perfected, “mother movement”.
Shamus takes a small sip.
Cassie, wiping briskly at a bit of schmut on Shamus’ face, says, "Besides, this is happening elsewhere, isn't it? What's it got to do with you, dearie? Sure, it's sad to see those apes you're so fond of die, but everything does eventually. It's not as if He's mad at you!"
She takes another sip, her face giving every indication of total enjoyment. A small bit of her Gravy-Banger actually climbs up the side of the glass and makes a spirited bid for freedom.
"Yeah, I guess," Shamus replies, slumping a bit more in his chair. "There is that whole thing about “heaven and earth”, though. Do you think that applies to us, too?"
Cassie, enthusiastically trying to suck up the sticky remnants on the bottom of her glass, chokes and coughs, spitting grey-flecked bits on the bar.
She places the drink carefully down, fastidiously wiping her lips. She takes a long moment to regain her composure and Shamus looks over his shoulder at her, his face registering a thin alarm.
"Did you know," Cassie says, very slowly and carefully, "I hadn't considered that?"
Henasamef grunts. Is there just a hint of laughter in it?
Shamus slumps back down on his stool with a sigh, and he and Cassiopeia wait, silently, as “outside” Armageddon continues apace.
08 December 10
Another odd story. This time one about my alter-ego. Sort of. His name's Jack O'Green, and he's a lot like me if you took out everything that made me remotely redeemable and added several quarts of bad-assery.
A quickie
Friday morning, bleeding into afternoon.
Right about 1145 or so.
The breathless moment during the day when, normally, you'd look up at the clock and say,''Bout lunchtime, ain't it?'
I had the day off. Christine was at work, doing important and dramatic things that required her to be paid large sums of money. I'd already called. I could hear the distraction in her voice.
"Doin' okay?"
"Yeah. I'm alright. Just kind of busy. "
I swallowed the quick, sharp flash of juvenile hurt at her indifference to my needs. How dare she not stop her world immediately to tend to my whims!
I'm still trying to learn how to be an adult, it seems.
"Okay. Well, I'm gonna go find something to do with my day off. Have a good day, okay? I love you."
"I love you too! Have fun."
*Click*
"Something" ended up with me being in my boxer-briefs and sticky t-shirt in front of the TV on her ancient, gently-fossilizing couch.
It was hot. Hot in the archetypical Biblical sense; with the weeping and the gnashing, and the sticking and the general unpleasantnesses. It was hot in the "leather-seats-in-a-hatchback-with-no-AC-at-three-in-the-afternoon-after-the-kid-has-puked-for-the-fourth-time' sense. It was absolutely perfect weather for sitting inside with a nice, icy, bedewed glass of something interesting, with the AC working full blast, watching moronic daytime TV.
Unfortunately, while Christine and I own a large, beautiful house with all kinds of effects from back in the day when they built houses for the love of the thing as opposed to making as much money as humanly possible, they didn't believe in central AC a hundred years ago.
So I was hot. Sticky, prickly, 'rattle-snake-noise-Clint-Eastwood-glowering-out-from-under-a-really-cool-hat' hot. I could feel an itchy heat rash climbing up and down my neck. I scratched irritably and thought about how miserably hot I was while flipping through the channels. The cats, three of them: Squirt, Audrey, and Deli, were lying in various poses of feline misery. Squirt affected a corpse: lying on his head, with his back arched, his back legs spread. He was snoring gently. Deli was plopped in a pile, directly in front of the open front door. Her eyes were half-closed and she was purring softly.
I've noticed Deli has a tendency to flop these days.
'I'm hot, Dad. Don't you dare touch me!'
Flop.
Trip.
"Doggonit, Deli! I 'bout tore my sack! Look out where you flop down at!"
Audrey, the diva of the group, lay in an affected huddle of fur, giving voice to an occasional heat-fueled plaint. Loudest cat I've ever met, Audrey. She could double as an air raid siren when she really wants something.
"Hi, Audrey. Whatcha doin'?"
"MEEEOOOOWWWW!"
I'd like to believe she was saying something complimentary.
'Gee, Nescher. I can see why Mom loves you. The sweat sticking your t-shirt and boxers to your body really shows off your goblinesque physique.'
"Yeah. Me too, sweetie," I replied, popping a heat pimple.
Audrey, overly impressed with my burgeoning display of manhood, went off to find a cooler spot.
I flipped channels, doing my bit to move the hot, moist air around a little. Something caught my eye.
"Ooo! An 'I Love The 70s!' marathon! Sweet!"
I turned the volume up and let my attention drift while Michael Ian Black told me why a Snoopy Snow Cone Maker was a communist plot. I know. I know. But doggonit, I was hot.
I think I watched TV for about twenty minutes . . . .
Well, I say that, but I was no more actually watching the TV than I usually do. I was aware of the sounds and images from the TV, but I was really just sitting in front of this social altar, letting my brain congeal. I don't think my eyes were even focused. I was getting ready to change the channel for the forty-brillionth time; self-defense against the yelling car salesmen:
'WE'RE THE FRED MARTIN CAR GUYS . . . WE KNOW CARS.'
. . .when it happened.
There was a sound, first. There always is. It is the sound of an invisible violin string being tightened and bowed, by the world's biggest midget, until the sound crawls slowly into the ultrasonic range and beyond.
My next door neighbor's dog - a floppy, friendly, old, deaf thing – began to howl in panic.
I sighed and waited. The visual equivalent was next. Little black rainbows began to slowly fade into existence. Each one was the perfect bow shape and wouldn't register on an ultraviolet scan. It was the entire spectrum of anti-light, displayed in the size of a postage stamp. The black rainbows buzzed merrily around my head in complicated aeronautical acrobatics.
I sighed again. This one was gonna be a doozy.
I could smell burning hair. Squirt woke up with a feline snort and looked over at me quizzically, his nostrils flaring.
"Ear hair," I explained to him, shouting to be heard above the now-silent whine. I ran a finger through my ear for emphasis.
Squirt stood up, stretched and sauntered off to find someplace less noisy to nap.
There was a small pop. I could smell ferns, metal, and the forbidden touch of the mysterious. There was the slow scratching noise of a match being lit.
"So this is what you spend your time doin' these days, huh?"
Jack slowly bled into existence in the chair across from where I sat. He stuck his lit cigarette to his lips and took a deep drag.
"Yep," I replied, not giving him the satisfaction.
He looked at me for a moment, his features giving nothing away. I looked back.
He looked pale. He was wearing his horns and that never bodes well. Jack only wore them when he was feeling confrontational, dubious, stubborn or insubstantial. They looked like he'd taken a section of long-unused railroad tie, stuck it into his head, and twisted them into a tight spiral of metal.
I've seen Jack and metal. A railroad tie was an afterthought.
His eyes were a flat, shiny steel color; no pupil, no iris, just the steel. His face had the very lightest touch of frost, and even as I watched, it evaporated into reality. He wore his usual blue hoody/jeans combo, along with his favorite pair of scuffed combat boots.
"S'up?" he said, nodding at me.
"Strait," I replied.
He grinned mirthlessly at me.
"Why do you do that? You are as white as sheet music, dude. You like, define 'cracker'. You're a freaking Nordic vampire, Nescher!"
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. Jack took another draw off his awful handrolled.
"And please don't give me any ( ) about being an albinic mulatto."
His lips formed a multi-syllabic obscenity, but since I write his dialogue, I chose to mute it.
"I do it because it bothers people, Jack. Me and Ted Nugent. Scarin' white people, kind of thing."
"You'd like to believe that, wouldn't you? Dude. You are so full of ( ) you ( ) squeak when you walk. You know that?"
"It's been suggested, yes."
He smiled his joyless smile at me.
Jack stood up and began to walk around the living room, touching things, looking at pictures. I could see a large red weal on the side of his neck.
"See Calliope last night?" I asked.
"Didn't just see her. I ( ) her ( ) brains out."
"You are a rare and beautiful gentleman, Jack."
He smiled at me again, his eyes flat and reflective.
He touched Christine's knick-knacks; looking, smelling, even tasting a time or two. He filled the room with the reek of his awful cigarette and walked into the adjoining dining-room.
"Nice place you got here, dude. Lots of space. These ceilings for real?" Jack's voice came from the kitchen.
I sat, waiting.
There was the sound of the refrigerator opening and closing, then the sound of a bottle-opener being used. Jack came back into the living room with a nicely bedewed bottle of beer I know wasn't in the refrigerator a moment ago.
The TV flashed its images at us, ignored.
"Oh, thank God," Jack said, sitting down in the seat across from me, taking his handrolled from the corner of his mouth, and swallowing a fourth of his beer.
"What?"
Jack pointed a lazy hand at the TV.
I looked and saw the high-speed, flickering images that composed the trailer for the new Miami Vice movie. Colin Ferrell opposite Jamie Foxx.
"There's a new Miami Vice movie," Jack said, arming imaginary sweat from his face. "I was so worried, man. That's just what the world needs: the Academy-Award-winning stylizations of Jamie as played against the sultry-scene-chewing visualizations of mah main maing, Colin. You see that stink-fest Alexander?"
"No. I missed that one."
Jack leered at me.
"Really. Angelina Jolie in a toga and you didn't watch it. Is that right."
It's been suggested that Jack is a personification of my ID; a boozy, foul personification of all those things about myself I try to expunge and keep buried; a psychic tumor, given legs and a caustic sense of cynical irony. He's every pimple attack I've ever had, let loose on an unsuspecting public. His appearance changes according to narrative necessity, but the default is pretty steady. He wore that appearance now. The resemblance is there, if you look hard enough and you know what you're looking for. His facial bones are harder and sharper than mine, and he doesn't smile as readily. He's smaller and wiry and his hair is quite a bit nicer. He's me, but younger, meaner, and better looking. if you will. Hyde to my Jekyll.
"You know, Jack, you really are just a crude beast."
"Nescher, morality is like soft-core porn."
"How's that?"
"It's all a question of ( ) angles."
He smiled at me and took another swallow of his beer.
I sat, staring at him in open-mouthd horror.
"That has got to be the most disturbing thing I've ever heard in my life. You are. . . you are . . . words . . . freaking fail me, Jack. You are an abomination!"
Jack looked at me. His steel eyes not giving anything away. He took a drag off his cigarette.
"At least I have the courage to be who I am," he said quietly, still looking at me.
I rolled my eyes.
"Here we go. Go ahead. Tell me how I'm failing myself, Father Jack," I said, throwing my hands in the air, melodramatically.
Jack grinned, skinning his hard, leathery lips back from his pointy teeth.
"Alright. I will. You're an author, and, God help us all, a poet, right?"
"Well, I try to be-"
"Yeah. Right. Whatever. How did that last one go? 'Goddess in a pair of control-top pantyhose'? Wow. You really pumped the bilges for that one, didn't you?"
I swallowed. I'd forgotten Jack shared my head.
"And what was the last piece you wrote?"
I mumbled something.
"Yeah. Real moving there, Nescher. A declaration of intent, huh? More like 'Please excuse me while I procrastinate 'cause I'm a chicken-( ). "
"Okay! I get it! This is about me finishing-"
Jack held up a hand, interrupting me as effectively as a two by four to the face.
"No, dude. This is about you," he said. He walked over to Christine's photo collection. He picked one up at random.
"Beautiful chick, dude."
"Yeah," I replied.
"Think you deserve her?"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Simple question, Nescher. Do. You. Deserve. Her."
" . . . no . . . ." I said, knowing where this was going.
Jack sat back down, putting his boots up on the table. Some sort of small animal bone was trapped in the cleats. I shuddered and looked away.
"And what are you doing about that? I mean, other than like, using her resources, sucking up her energy and being a general drain on her?"
".. . . nothing . . ."
"That's right. Nothing. You're a ( ) waste of space. I mean, I'm a slut. I curse. I whore around. I even kill people occasionally, but I do it unapologetically. You choose to define yourself as some kind of a storyteller, and you're sitting here, letting E! Television rot your brain out from the inside. I might be a dirtbag, but I am who I am. You're not even that. You're an intellectual leper."
I wiped a hand across my face.
"I might just be a personified fictionalization, but I'm gonna keep coming back, Nescher. 'Cause I'm also part of your embodied guilt complex. What are you doing? What are you doing for her?"
He set the photo down.
"Think about it, man. Girl like that, she deserves better. She deserves more. She deserves a guy who steps up to the plate and does the ( ) job."
He stood up, stretched and finished his beer. He threw the empty bottle at Christine's fireplace. It broke into a thousand pieces and the pieces slowly evaporated.
"Mozel Tov!" Jack shouted, throwing his arms into the air and grinning boyishly at me.
"Mozel Tov."
Jack dropped his cigarette on the carpet and ground it out with his boot. He nodded at me, turned and walked through the wall, taking the smell with him.
I sat on the couch, trying not to feel too sorry for myself, while the cigarette slowly evaporated and the tiniest bit of frost on my fatboy chair melted.
06 December 10
For the life of me, I have no idea what this is or where it came from. I'd oddly proud of it, though.
A Brief sojourn Into The Absurd
"There wasn't enough time."
The requirements for the stupid contest dictated that I started the story this way. The character had to open the story in direct, first person address with the line “There wasn’t enough time.” Now, if you ask me, this kind of thing stifles creativity and leads to stilted, inane writing, but who am I to say anything. I don’t make the rules, I just follow them.
"Time for what?" I asked, not really paying attention to what he was saying, as it was an inane feed-line. Instead, I decided I was eating French fries. There were undefended fries on a plate in front of me, and a bottle of A-1 near to hand. I began to drown the fried-spud-heaven in luscious, raisin-based-condiment glory.
I love A-1 sauce.
My Father, the person who first came to mind when I accepted the challenge of this writing contest, looked over at me from across his omelet, his mournful, puppy dog eyes fried-egg-big behind his new glasses.
"For anything," he replied, a large bit of green pepper stuck to the wild tangle of his beard.
"Wow. That sucks." Fork. Fry. Mouth. Chew. Napkin to chin, cussing under my breath after A-1 dripped onto my favorite t-shirt.
"I can't take you anywhere, can I?" Dad asked.
"You got a little somethin' riiiiiight there, Dad," I replied, pointing at his left eyebrow.
He grinned at me, making the green pepper in his beard bobble.
"Ha. Ha. Ha," he said. Just like that, with the spaces and the periods. "Is that your head or did your neck throw up?"
"Good one, Dad. Is that your head, or is a shaved monkey crawling down your chest, headfirst?"
Dad laughed harder, so I win. But then, I’m making this up, so I win anyhow. It’s in print, dammit!
"Yeah, but you're writing this!"
"So I get to tell it any way I want to, don't I?"
"That's stinkin' unfair, Nescher! You're misrepresenting-"
I was boo-hooing and wiping at my eyes, so I didn't really hear what Dad said.
We ate for a moment.
A-1'd fries are really good. I recommend them to any student of haute cuisine.
"Anyway. What were you saying?" Fork. Fry. (Well, fries, actually. I do tend to go for the big mouthfuls.) Mouth. Chew.
"There wasn't enough time."
"Right. You said that already. What's that supposed to mean?"
"How'm I supposed to know, Nescher? You're the one writing this stupid crap!"
"Oh, yeah. I am, aren't I. Why'd I start this one again? To challenge myself? Crap, Dad. I think the idea was to be authentic to your voice, character and mannerisms."
"That'd be a challenge, wouldn't it?" Dad said, sarcastically.
"Could you do it?"
"Absolutely. I'd start with Cary Grant-"
"Who?"
"Shaddup."
I grinned back. He hates it when I go for "Man, what's it like to remember The Flintstones asprime time TV?"
"Yeah. I didn't think so!" Fork. Fry (-ies). Mouth. Chew.
"See, there you go. Perpetuating stereotypes. I'm an old, grumpy Jew-'
"Who said anything about Jews? I didn't mention Jews, you did!"
"But you were gonna, weren't you?"
" . . .probably . . ."
"I'm sorry. What was that? Could you repeat yourself? It's a little hard to hear you over the racism."
"What?"
"You're racist, Nescher."
"Wait. What? I'm a racist? How do you come to that conclusion?"
"You make fun of people for being different, don't you?"
"Nooooo . . . I make fun of you, Dad-"
"Like I said. Racist. A ferkofta racist, too. And I'm sure you've got me being all tamavateh; doddering, blibbering in Yiddish and generally ineffectual. Have I got something stuck in my beard, too?"
"Well, now that you mention it . . ."
"You misspelled ‘fakofta’. And let me guess: I'm wearing a light-blue, button-down shirt and a pair of khaki pants." His glare had a bit of heat to it now.
"Okay, I defy you to apply a general spelling on any Yiddish word. And you forgot the hippie sandals and the Mad-Scientist-Glasses," I said, quickly stuffing another forkful of A-1'd fries into my mouth.
"You know, I do own other clothes, and just because my beard comes down to my navel, you don't have to portray me as having food stuck in it all the time. It's not like I'm some dirty shmegegi! Are we in a restaurant, too? Am I eating traif? You'd think all we ever did was go out to eat and have arguments!"
"See, now you're talking in my voice, Dad. If I move away from the established stereotype of 'Dad', I end up portraying you as different from what you are. Face it: you're an elderly, Yiddish- blibbering, Yid, flaming-liberal-pinko-commie-tree-hugging-"
"I'm not a commie, you stinkin' dirt-bag, I'm a socialist!"
"Yeah, Dad. Right. And if you stick twenty socialists in a room and only throw water balloons at the commies, guess who's gonna get wet?"
"What's that supposed to mean? I mean, that has got to be the most obtuse metaphor I've ever heard in my life."
"Dad."
"What?"
"Define 'metaphor'.
"Shaddup."
"Okay, spell 'metaphor'."
"Hur-hur-hur, Nescher. Em-Ee-Tea-Aye-Ef-Oh-You-Are. And that's why I got spell check on my computer."
"You're the man, Dad."
We ate in silence for a few minutes, grinning at each other.
"So. Is this story going anywhere?" Dad asked, wiping jalapeno and cheese from his beard with the tablecloth.
"No, I'm just about done with it, I think. Setting, plot-well, pseudo-plot, I guess-characters, resolution. I've got it all here, I think."
"You’re lazy, Nescher. Going for the "Kaufmannesque effect again, huh? He did it better."
"Yeah, yeah. Well, after the critics read this and award me with like, the Prize for Acclaimed Bullshit, I’ll be sure to worry about that.”
“You curse too much, too. You never used to do that. What is it about writing and authors that makes them think they have carte blanche to use whatever crudity they feel provides authenticity?”
“My voice, Dad.”
“Well, write mine then! Quit putting your dialogue into my voice!”
I sighed. Dad gave me a pitying look. I covered by filling my mouth with a forkful of fries. The waitress chose then, as I was wheezing around my mouthful of condiment-covered fries, to show up.
"Everything okay here?"
"Doggone, Nescher. Is she young, pretty and cheery? You're a stinkin' chauvinist too, you know that?"
Dad looked at the young, pretty, cheery waitress. Her name tag, high above young, perky breasts, read 'Cheri'. He pointed across the table at me, where I was trying to laugh, chew, and not spray A-1 everywhere.
"My son, the old-fashioned, misogynistic, chauvinist pig, is gonna need a hose, I think," he said, with one of his engaging smiles.
The waitress gave a bubbly laugh and refilled our drinks for us. Coffee for Dad, soda for me.
"Ice coffee for Dad!"
"Right, right. Ice coffee. 'Cause Dad's a namby-pamby sissy-boy whose tender widdle mouf can't take hot coffee."
"Puke on you, you stinkin' pinko. How can you talk around a mouthful of fries? When you're taking fire from the commie laser tanks, and you stick your hand in a puddle of goo, and Davy Crockett yells 'Geronimo!' well, then you learn to drink your coffee cold."
The waitress brought us the check. Dad and I looked at each other. I grinned. Dad sighed and reached for the check.
"What? I'm writing this! Are you gonna give me grief over picking up a fictitious check?"
"That's fine. Let your poor, old Dad and his fixed income . . .who lives off dog-food and water, and doesn't have heat in his house, and works ninety-seven hours a week, and sleeps on wet ply-board, pay for the food . . .."
Dad cleared his throat and paid the check, leaving a tip for the young, pretty, cheery waitress named 'Cheri'.
"Ya'll have a nice day an' come back an' see us real soon!" she called, in her young, pretty, cheery waitress voice. .
"Doggone, Nescher. Why'nt'chu just walk up to her and ask for her stinkin' phone number? You ever think with anything other than yer little head? Why on earth that nice girl you're going out with is still with you-"
"'Blah, blah, blah. My name is Dad, and I'm only forty-something-years-old, and I'm trying to make moral judgments at my thirty-year-old son, my eldest son. I wasn’t married to his mother when I conceived him at thirteen-“
"I was nineteen!"
"Save it for the judge, you pervert," I replied, mimicking a cop putting handcuffs on a perp.
"You shouldn't say 'cop', Nescher," Dad said, in his 'I'm being serious and I'm trying to teach you something' voice.
I grinned, unable to help myself. "Right. My bad, Dad. I meant 'pig'."
He rolled his eyes, sighed loudly, and we walked out into the sunlight.
05 December 10
Another older piece. I went through this weird period where I guess I needed to like, write poetry about everything I saw, experienced, felt and heard about.
How pathetic is that?
29 Oct 04
We'd never met,
this lady and I.
Yet,
her hands upon me were warm,
and gentle.
Her touch wasn't hungry,
it was the touch of a lover,
a mother,
a friend.
She touched my face gently,
spoke softly.
I woke,
wearing her perfume,
and wondering.
04 December 10 - I've written an awful lot of poetry over the last ten years. The vast majority of it is dreadful, and shouldn't be exposed to light. It's like fungus. It thrives in moist, dark and dirty. A few of the pieces I've written have some small value. I try to let those turn in the light from time to time.
I wrote this piece maybe three years or so after my ex-wife left me. It's one of the better poems to emerge from that period. I leave it to you to determine whether it's "good" or not.
24 October
i dreamt about your boyfriend yesterday
in every one of the fantasies i clutch to my heart
to keep myself warm in my exiled loneliness,
i'm doing brutal, punishing things to him.
i find myself hoping i'll bump into him
and he'll give me an excuse.
any excuse.
but yesterday i dreamt that we talked,
he and i
and instead of lifting him by his crotch and his throat
over my head and dropping him off a bridge,
we embraced as . . .
well, it wasn't as friends,
but as men who've come to an understanding might,
and I walked away
I'd still like for him to give me an excuse,
but maybe not so much anymore.
01 December 10 - Carnival of the Impossible
When the assignment hit Allison's desk she gave a little groan. "Jerry, what the hell is this?"
Jerry smiled at her discomfiture, his eyes twinkling behind the glasses he habitually wore. (Allison liked to think of them as 'Sigmund's Sunglasses'; a dig on Jerry's hard-headed practicality.)
She genuinely liked Jerry - the stuffy, little prat - but she wished he'd take a few minutes to consider his appearance every morning. Currently he was going through some sort of 'Academia-in-Distress' fashion mode. He wore grey, hounds-tooth slacks, a white, button-down shirt, and a dark, brown vest over top everything, neatly buttoned closed. His shirt's sleeves were meticulously rolled up to the forearm, and a silver watch-bob twinkled from his vest pocket. He clamped the stem of a pipe in his teeth, which gleamed whitely through the fringe of short, blonde, 'Amish-beard' Jerry adorned his face with.
Allison suppressed the urge to ask for a bubble.
"It's an assignment, Al. I give them out to my journalists. It's how we pay the bills around here." He waved one hand around the dilapidated office that housed 'The Daily News'; a lofty title for as yellow a paper ever printed - his face locked in his trademark grin.
Allison groaned again, settling back in her chair - which gave an alarming creak, and a bit of a shudder - before speaking again.
"I can see that, Jerry. What I'm asking is what it's doing on my desk? I'm still trying to finish the Cheney-Clone story!" Her green eyes danced in indignation, and the glorious mane of red hair she'd been crowned with at birth seemed to bristle menacingly in Jerry's direction.
"And now you've got this to look forward to, Al. Do have fun." Jerry walked away from Allison's spluttering protests, taking the vague smell of old libraries with him.
"Tweed-wearin' geek," she muttered under her breath.
"I heard that!" Jerry gaily called from the next cube down.
Allison smirked and reached for the folder.
Like all of the Times' assignment sheets, it was a plain manilla folder, much like you'd find in any office anywhere. It had 'Carnival of the Impossible' written on the outside in Jerry's neat handwriting, the letters heavy, blocky and square. The folder didn't seem to have much, if anything in it.
Allison opened the folder, her curiosity piqued. There was a single piece of paper inside; standard, lined notebook paper. A word that looked like a name was written on the top - 'Manolo' - and an address was written beneath that. 'Forty-seven, Riverside.'
Allison put the folder down, making a mental note of the name and address. She then went back to her computer, putting the finishing touches on the story she was fabricating.
~~~~~~~
She hadn't meant to be a tabloid 'journalist'. Like so many things often do in life, it just seemed to have happened to her. One day she was studying communications at a prestigious ivy league college - the next she was working for thirty cents a line for a guy she had dubious feelings of attraction to, her name and picture splashed all over the city's worst gossip/faux news/ urban legend rag.
No wonder she could never find a date.
Readership had sky-rocketed since she'd joined the staff, and Allison suspected that it probably wasn't because of her rapier wit and insightful commentary on suspected Bigfoot droppings in the park.
What the hell. The pay was good, she had fun, and nobody took anything she wrote seriously, anyway.
And it sure beat the alternative.
~~~~~~~
The next morning found her on the docks looking for the address. March was still hovering around, doing its 'biting-through-your-clothes' bit, and Allison was dressed in what she felt was a sensible, yet flattering outfit; a tan, fur-lined overcoat over a modest, flower-printed dress, her feet in practical shoes. (A good journalist always wears practical shoes.)
She had the lightest make-up on that she felt she could get away with. Allison was by no means unattractive, but this job required a little bit of 'role-filling'. A certain breed of guy expected a gal to look and behave a certain way. She had a sneaking suspicion that anybody who worked at any kind of a carnival would make her out to be right in that regard.
She could smell the river and wished fervently that she couldn't. The air was laden with the ripe scent of the local rendering plant, and other odors even worse. She was just about ready to get back into her car and call it quits- when she heard a calliope playing.
She turned towards the noise wafting to her ('Like the odors already on the wind,' her mind sleepily registered), and began walking in that direction. A parking lot she'd swear to her dying day was empty just a moment before now held what certainly fit the bill as a carnival.
Colorful tents, a few elderly, noisy rides, the sounds and smells of a busy coastal carnival; she was assaulted from every side, sensory wise. She simply stood there for a moment, trying to take it all in.
To her credit, when her sleeve was grabbed she only jumped a bit.
She looked down to see that a wizened figure (that looked somehow like a mobile shrunken head) was tugging on her coat sleeve.
"You the lady from the paper?" Its voice was high-pitched and girlish. It was impossible for Allison to determine age, sex, race, or any other feature about this strange figure. She stepped back a bit - more a reflex than a conscious decision - and tried not to shriek at it.
"You the lady from the paper?" It repeated the question in the same tone, almost as if it were a mechanical device running on some program - 'IF red-haired, green-eyed lady shows up, THEN -'
"Y-yes. I - I - I'm from the Times."
"Great. You're late. You wanna come in, or what?"
Allison shook her head. The cadence of the figure's speech was oddly out of keeping with its blank face and high-pitched, squeaky voice. She felt utterly adrift and floundering fast.
"Yeah. That'd be great. Listen, I'm looking for something or someone called 'Manolo.'"
"That's me, sweet cheeks," the shrunken head replied. It turned to walk into the carnival then turned back and leered at Allison in a decidedly male way.
"Well, that takes care of that," Allison muttered to herself before following.
~~~~~~~
The carnival was impossibly old, with rides and attractions that seemed to have been inspired by something from the previous century. She tried to listen as Manolo dictated the history and general mythos of the carnival to her.
It was the oddest experience of her entire life. She kept seeing things from the corner of her eye that disappeared or changed when she looked directly at them. For five minutes she became convinced that a minotaur - an actual minotaur! A beast with a bull's head and a human's body - was pacing them. She'd watch it walk around the sides of tents, following their same general path. Whenever she looked directly at it, it simply disappeared.
At one point she knew - knew without the slightest shred of doubt - that a dragon was circling in the air above them, again - just out of the corner of her eye.
The attractions were no better. She didn't recognize any of the penny arcade games or the food being offered. The 'elephant ears' were some sort of smoked meat served on a large platter, and she didn't look too closely at the 'corn dogs'. When she asked the frighteningly obese woman serving them for a 'soda' the woman titled her head to one side for a moment, and then pulled a spritzer bottle from beneath the counter. She filled a glass with water, and sprayed a spritz into it. .
"We've seen better times, I'm afraid," Manolo said as they walked past a pitching booth that required you to know how to 'hurl a brick bat.' "I blame that new-fangled internet for the drop-off. I mean, who wants to come see Caucasian Tigers and Griffins when you've got interactive por -"
"What?" Allison stopped in the middle of the oddly empty fairway, conscious of the looks the carnival's strange denizens were throwing her.
"Interactive pornography. On the internet. Surely you've heard of it?" Manolo was looking up at her with what could've been a confused look on his face. It was hard to tell.
"No, I mean, yes. I've heard of pornog - Look. You said a 'Griffin'?"
Manolo smiled, the skin on his face creaking alarmingly. "Yep. A Griffin. Cost you a dollar."
"This isn't one of those 'P.T. Barnum-type' scams is it? 'Come see the Griffin, Ha-Hah! It's a picture on the tent wall of ol Teddy'? Those are a dime a dozen."
Manolo smiled again, and held his hand out.
Allison shrugged. "I'm game, you midget. Show me a Griffin." She rummaged in her smart black pocketbook and managed to find a dollar. She dropped it into Manolo's hand, who made it disappear so fast she found herself wondering if it'd ever existed.
"This way, sweet cheeks."
~~~~~~~
The tent he led her to was no different from the others, save in size. It was at least three times larger than the carnival's other tents. It was made of the same old, dirty canvas that smelled of must, mold, dust and damp. It was patched in ten-thousand different places, making it look like it had some sort of exotic measles. Manolo held the flap aside and gestured for her to enter. He coughed once, and in a practiced sort of way said, "Step riiiiiiiiight up! Come seeeeee da' Griffin! Beast of myth and legend! Slayer of ten-thousand heroes! One dollah! Only onnnnnnne dollah to see the sight guaranteed ta make ya' wish ya hadn't! Step riiiiiiiight up!"
He looked apologetically at Allison's smirk for a moment. "Old habits . . .."
Allison walked into the tent without answering.
There was a frayed, weathered, yellowing rope stretched across the inside of the tent. The tent itself was badly lit by dusty beams of sunshine that managed to filter through some of the older patches in the tent's ceiling. Given the day's overcast condition, it made for a dark viewing of anything, much less a mythological beast.
The interior of the tent had a smell. Allison - who'd been expecting something cardboard hooked up to wires, or a feat of taxidermy - wasn't prepared for it, and the smell hit her in the face like a heavy mallet. It wasn't anything that Allison's refined nasal palette understood or recognized, but the shrieking savage who lived under Allison's mind knew it. The savage living inside Allison - the savage that had hunkered around the fire, fearing every cry in the night - knew that smell. It knew it and feared it.
The smell was something like the interior of an ice age Cave Bear's must've been like, powerful, inescapable, and fear-inducing like nothing else.
The tent smelled like beast.
It smelled like hunger, like blood, like cold, ready metal.
It smelled like the terrible cry of a victorious predator taking wing over frozen cliffs.
It smelled like lust, like something older than time, older than belief. To Allison's screaming inner savage, it was more real and precious and fiercely awful than anything she could understand or apply rational words to.
She took another fearful step - victoriously overcoming thousands of years of human self-preservation doing so - and saw the tent's lonely occupant.
It lay upon its stomach in the center of the tent, exactly the way a cat would. It loomed an easy twelve feet over Allison's head. It was the size of a tractor-trailer! It had the body of some huge cat and the head of a cruel bird of prey. Its wings lay over it like a tent, and Allison's mind told her in a distracted sort of way that when this thing flew, it must be look a little like a jumbo jet. Allison's gaze roamed over it, drinking it in. Without even thinking about it she stepped over the flimsy rope barrier, her eyes wide, her breath coming in fast, gulping gasps.
She walked up to the Griffin's side and laid a hand on it. The skin was hot; feverish feeling, and dry. She could feel the bellows-like movement of its breath, in and out. The skin of the Griffin somehow combined the qualities of both feather and scale, making for a hard, silky covering that was an iridescent, glowing, green-gold. When the sun hit it just right, Allison could see blue and red refracting off its skin.
Its feathers were a bright white color, and looked exactly like the feathers of a bird would. The Griffin opened its beak sleepily for a moment at Allison's touch, and adjusted itself slightly with a slithering rustle. There was a brief metallic creak when the Griffin opened its beak, and Allison walked to its front.
The beak looked like newly melted bronze. It was a shiny dull yellow color, and emitted a heaviness, somehow. Allison ran a hand over it, feeling the smooth contours of the beak, marveling at its construction. It looked like it could tear a cow in half with a single snap of its beak. 'Hell,' Allison thought, 'it could tear a tank in half!' There was a rumbling sound coming from the Griffin. It sounded like a helicopter was trying to lift off from inside the Griffin's stomach.
It took Allison a long, confused moment to realize the Griffin was purring.
Allison continued to feel the beak - her inner savage screaming incoherently - when the Griffin lazily opened one eye.
Allison gave a breathy little cry of alarm and stepped back.
The Griffin stood, ruffling its feathers and skin again, and blacked the light out in the tent quite effectively. Allison stepped even further back, alarm ringing its tones in her head. She could just see the Griffin's face from where she stood. The Griffin arched its back, stretched out its paws and extended its claws - one of which snagged Allison's coat and almost causally ripped a gaping hole in it. Allison had seen that exact stretching maneuver executed ten-thousand times by her old tom Buster.
Tears of joy and fear streamed unchecked down Allison's face as her eyes met the Griffin's. The Griffin sat there for a moment, clacking its beak open and shut, open and shut. Each time it did so, there was a creak, like old metal hinges that had been rusted for years being asked to operate. It looked steadily back at Allison, registering nothing on its strange avian face.
Its eyes swam with the same green-gold highlights its skin and feathers did, and there was something so amazingly real and wonderfully savage in its eyes that Allison felt herself wanting to sob and laugh hysterically at the same time.
The Griffin kneeled back down, closed its eyes, and promptly went back to sleep.
Allison stood for a long time, just looking at it.
~~~~~~~
When she finally emerged back into the light, Manolo was sitting there with a knowing smile on his face. "He getcha, then?" He pointed at the tattered hole in Allison's coat. She nodded mutely.
Manolo smiled even wider. "Yeah. He does that from time to time. Anything else you'd like to see?"
"There's more?" Allison's eyes were still wide, and combat-fatigue open.
Manolo laughed and shook his head. "'More'? You've seen one attraction sweet-cheeks!"
Allison stood for a moment, breathing heavily. She looked at her host, hoping to find some sort of an anchor. For one beautiful moment, reason tried to creep back in. 'That wasn't a Griffin! Griffin's don't exist!' She had only to look down to the hole in her jacket that was beading with blood to refute that, however.
She'd just met a Griffin.
A real one.
The living, breathing smell of the tent still clung to her clothes, and she could almost taste the Griffin's musk on her tongue.
She felt there should be some sort of a sign from the Universe signifying this meeting. 'Like, shouldn't there be 'signs in the Heavens and signs in the Earth'?' Her mind was whispering this to her in a panicked sort of way.
She realized that Manolo was becoming uncomfortable under her stare. He was fidgeting a bit, like her regard itched him in impolite places. She closed her eyes and took in great lungfuls of air. She felt as though she were having an asthma attack.
She felt well enough after a few moments to gasp out, 'That was a Griffin, right? I mean, that wasn't some sort of really high-speed virtual experience or something? I wasn't hallucinating, right? I mean, if I go back in there, I'm going to see a Griffin, right?"
Manolo smirked at her, and then replied, "Oh, you can't go back in there, darlin'."
Allison's voice of reason shouted triumphantly in her head, and her eyes narrowed. She slowed her breathing as the Universe slowly made sense again. Of course she couldn't go back in there! It was a scam of some kind, and it needed to be reset or something!
She wore a shrewd expression on her face now, her 'journalistic' instincts kicking in. "Oh? Why's that?" She asked Manolo this in her sweetest tones.
Manolo continued to smile. "You ain't paid for a return look yet, sweet-cheeks." He held his strange monkey-like paw out expectantly.
~~~~~~~
She lit a cigarette with trembling hands and took a grateful drag. She'd managed to quit doing this to herself three years ago, but after the things she'd seen today a cigarette was most definitely in order. Hell, a carton of cigarettes was in order. She sat for a long time, smoking cigarette after cigarette, watching the white blank of her cursor flick on and off.
She smoked until the back of her throat felt like a hot, dry rock had settled there, and her hands had stopped trembling. A thick pall of smoke hung over her. Her hands now hovered expectantly over the keyboard, waiting.
She lowered them and began to write.
~~~~~~~
Allison looked at Manolo's hand and a tight fist of fear grabbed her heart.
No.
Once was definitely enough in this case.
"Look, what is this place?" She was proud of the way her voice seemed to her to be pretty steady.
Manolo laughed, his voice rising even higher when he did so. "I already explained that to you, sugar-butt. It's a carnival."
Allison held a hand to her injured arm. It was beginning to hurt now, the shock of the encounter having worn off. "No, I mean, what is this place, really? I mean, I've just seen a Griffin!"
Manolo shook his head, his wizened features fixed in a grimace that could be a grin. "It's a carnival, lady. Specifically, it's a Carnival of the Impossible." The way he said it seemed to imbue the words with proper noun status to Allison's mind.
He continued talking, his entire mien becoming more animated as he did. "Look, you're familiar with the concept of black-holes, right? A star collapses in on itself, and because of the nature of reality, it eventually forms a hole that everything around it will fall into, right?"
Allison, on firmer ground here, responded, "Well, that's a gravely simplified explanation, but-"
"Right, right, right. But we're on the same page, right?" Manolo interrupted her, his face closing somewhat.
Allison nodded mutely.
"Right. Okay. So a hole, okay? Anyhow, what happens to the stuff that falls into the hole? Does anybody know, my ducky? No. No they don't. They have no clue. Right?" He looked expectantly at Allison who nodded again.
"Okay. So let's extend that metaphor a bit, okay? You've just met our Griffin. You've never seen a Griffin in reality because they don't exist anymore in reality. You can't 'perceive' a Griffin in reality. Your mind won't allow you to do it. It's like a defense mechanism or something. Like, your little world would fly all to pieces if you had to deal with the reality of a Griffin. You've got everything in your universe neatly explained, catalogued, and put away in tidy little boxes in your head. A Griffin just doesn't fit.
"Now run with this idea for a minute. You've heard this stated before, I'm sure. 'Perception is reality.' Since you - along with everybody else in the world - can no longer 'perceive' the Griffin, there's no more place for them in reality. For them, reality is a collapsed star; a black-hole."
He waved his little hands around, taking in the entire carnival as he did. "Well, sweet-cheeks, this is the bottom of that hole. It's a 'reality sponge', if you like. Down 'here', there's a place for things that don't have a place any more.
"Where's the Tooth Fairy live? Where have all the dragons gone? How come nobody's ever taken a picture of a goblin?" Manolo fixed his strange little eyes on Allison at that, and pointed towards the ground. "It's because they're all right here, my honey-weasel. They all live right here; down at the bottom of this 'no-place-limbo' in reality. This little no-where-non-space is our little home away from home, if you like. And if an enterprising businessman like myself can make a few bucks off it, well!"
~~~~~~~
What does magic look like?
Her fingers danced across the keys of their own accord. She was hardly aware of what she was typing; uncaring as to whether or not Jerry would even print it, and loving every second.
Does it have a sound? A taste? A smell? Does it come pre-packaged in delightfully designed containers that market-research has revealed will play well with certain demographics?
Does magic have FDA approval? Does it have Politically Correct effects? Does magic have the good taste to avoid offending minority groups somehow?
There was an anger rising inside her now; a hot, yellow tide that pulsed and ached and burned. She thought of Manolo's greedy little smirk, and she typed faster with hot tears splashing the keys under her fingers.
Maybe, just maybe, there's a way to find out.
~~~~~~~
Allison stared at Manolo, her mind slowly catching up to what he was telling her. "So what," she asked him, indignation making her voice burn, "you display these . . . these creatures of myth and legend like sideshows?" Her voice had risen to a shout, and she found her hands trembling in anger.
Manolo patronizingly patted a hand at her, like she was a small dog that had excitedly jumped up on him. 'Calm down, honey-buns. It's not like you guys have got any use for 'em. Besides, I got bills to pay, my little rose-bud."
"I swear, if you call me one more thing other than 'Allison' I'm going to pull your head off and shove it up your - "
"Temper, sweetie! Temper! I don't mean anything by it! Gee! I like 'em feisty, but wow!" Manolo laughed again, ignoring the red flush on Allison's face at his interruption. "Okay, 'AL-LI-SON,'" He drug each syllable out derisively in a way that Allison hadn't experienced since grade-school. She was actually embarrassed for him. But only a little. "I got bills to pay here. I mean, I don't know if you're aware of this or not, but a sick Griffin's not cheap. You got your overhead anyway, and then you've got your-"
Now it was Allison's turn to interrupt. "Wait a minute. The Griffin's sick? What's wrong with it? I didn't notice anything wrong?"
Manolo stared at her for a long minute and then laughed rather shakily. "You think that sad specimen in there," he said, with a furry thumb pointed back at the tent behind him, "is a good representation of a Griffin? Sweet Galloping Horseshoes, woman! No! That thing's so sick it's a wonder it's still alive! Hell, I keep expecting you people to come out wanting your money back because the thing's not moving! It's old too! Old, weak and sick!"
Allison swallowed once, her throat suddenly dry. "If that's a sick Griffin, what would a healthy one . . .." Her voice droned out as she saw Manolo's face flush and then pale. He shivered for a moment, and then looked away. His voice was whisper-thin when he replied. "Allison, I honestly hope I never find out."
Allison swallowed nervously again. "Okay," she croaked "if that one's sick, what's wrong with it?"
Manolo grinned at her. "Really got in there, didn't he? Well, swee- . . . Allison, he's sick because he doesn't belong in the Universe anymore. He doesn't 'fit'. Exposure to modern life, the continuing results of forcing his will upon an unbending reality, age, it's all catching up to him."
"Where's a Griffin go when it dies, Manolo?"
Manolo look up at Allison and responded quite seriously. "Where's a dream go when it's been dreamed? Where's a wish go when it's been wished, Allison? Once you don't even belong in 'no-where' anymore where can you go?"
~~~~~~~
"Perception is reality," she said to herself like it was a prayer. She continued to type.
~~~~~~~
Allison sat down on the ground then, hard. The idea that this glorious, terrible, wonderful, awful . . thing, -this Griffin! - soon wouldn't even exist at all was somehow so evil to her that it buckled her knees and broke her heart. A small, reasoning part of her looked around the squalid grounds of the Carnival and whispered, 'Maybe it'd be better off.'
She ground that voice into bloody paste in her mind, and stood back up, her eyes flashing angrily.
"I want out of here. Now." Her voice held an edge that could cut through a stone wall.
Manolo backed away from her in alarm. "Out? Why? Your editor assured me a full-page spread story by his 'Ace lady.' You've not even seen the whol-"
"Oh. You'll get your story, you little freak. You'll get a story the likes of which you've never even dreamed of. How do I get out of here?" Allison ground her teeth at Manolo.
Manolo took another step back, a sick smile on his face. "You walk that way, Ms. Allison. Just keep walking. You'll get there eventually. You're . . .uh, gonna write us a good story, right? Somethin' that'll draw some crowds?"
Allison smiled. It looked hungry and mean. She turned away then, and started walking.
~~~~~~~
She wiped her eyes and stopped typing for a moment. She could feel something hot, fierce and wonderfully alive moving around inside her soul. She knew it for what it was, and she gloried in it.
It felt like enormous wings seeking an updraft. It sounded like the triumphant scream of a predator as it took down a meal. It sounded like the opening and closing of a great, metal beak.
It felt like being alive!
"Perception is reality!" She shouted it at the screen, wanting, hoping and needing with all of her heart, mind and soul.
She re-read what she had written, whispering the words to herself.
I saw something today that defies explanation, belief, and even reason.
Today . . . today I saw a Griffin.
I felt its skin beneath my hands, felt the way its muscles pulsed and moved beneath that skin. I felt its beak, and I looked into its eyes.
Somebody told me that things like Griffins no longer have a place in our world. This feels like a sin to me; a crime.
I feel that if anything, we need them even more!
She smiled at that, and lit another cigarette. She depended it from the corner of her mouth, and continued to write, tears beading on her eyelashes.
What does magic look like?
"Does it have a sound? A taste? A smell? Does it come pre-packaged in delightfully designed containers that market-research has revealed will play well with certain demographics?
"Does magic have FDA approval? Does it have Politically Correct effects? Does magic have the good taste to avoid offending minority groups somehow?
"Maybe, just maybe, there's a way to find out.
"I saw something today that defies explanation, belief, and even reason.
"Today . . . today I saw a Griffin.
"I felt its skin beneath my hands, felt the way its muscles pulsed and moved beneath that skin. I felt its beak, and I looked into its eyes.
"Somebody told me that things like Griffins no longer have a place in our world. This feels like a sin to me; a crime. I feel that if anything, we need them even more!"
~~~~~~~
She'd stopped for a moment, and wrote on a handy Post-it the following message to herself in large, black letters.
PERCEPTION IS REALITY!
There was a realization growing in her soul; an understanding of the underlying foundation of the Universe. She couldn't put it to words. It was beyond words. It was a simple understanding of a fundamental truth larger than anything she'd ever encountered, and it was neatly encapsulated by the Post-it glaring at her from the top of her monitor. She felt it, knew it, and hoped with all of her energy.
If she'd known what she was putting in motion, she may have reconsidered. But like all lovers everywhere, Allison was firmly held by the heart.
The trembling had stopped in her hands, and she wrote with a focus that she'd never before experienced. It was as if she were tapping deep into the center of herself and pulling the words forth. It felt as though she were somehow channeling her soul. It burned. It was a sob that had been locked in her chest for so long finally finding release. She didn't think about what she was writing; didn't consider it or the ramifications. She simply let her fingers dance on the keys, and to hell with the consequences!
~~~~~~~
"I wish I could make you feel how looking into the Griffin's eyes was like seeing a reflected part of myself I had though was long dead.
"Like you, I've lived in a Universe that's been sterilized, homogenized, purified and placed in neat little boxes and rows. Everything in life is explained and scientifically labeled. There are no mysteries, no miracles and no surprises.
"If science can't explain it, well then, neighbor, it doesn't exist, does it? It's relegated to the realm of 'myth and fancy'. 'There's no Griffins, there's never been Griffins, and there never will be Griffins.'
Right?
"WRONG."
~~~~~~~
The part of Allison that was still paying attention told her to listen for just a moment. Allison paused, and in a place she'd never be able to identify - whether it was head or heart - she heard the steely rustle of scaly feathers. She heard the beating of mighty wings. Her heart soared into her mouth, and a simple, joyous sob leaked out.
~~~~~~~
"I saw one today.
"It belongs to a miserable . . . "
~~~~~~~
"Well, crap," Allison said aloud. "That is a problem, isn't it?" she continued.
She looked at the screen of her computer as if it could tell her the answer. She took a cigarette from her pack and lit it before realizing that there was one still burning in her mouth. She put it out, and dangled the other from her fingers while considering the Manolo problem.
She'd given very little thought to what, exactly Manolo was. She was relatively sure . . .it . . . was male, but beyond that she couldn't be sure. Was Manolo even human?
She gave a mighty groan when she realized she'd not even bothered to ask.
"You're supposed to be a journalist, girly! What's wrong with you?" She shouted at her reflection in the monitor.
Her heart knew that answer, though. She'd seen the Griffin, and some things no longer mattered.
She shook her head, determined to get those answers somehow, and continued to write.
~~~~~~~
" . . . little monster called Manolo. He's keeping it as a side-show attraction and it's dying by inches."
~~~~~~~
The Griffin lifted its head absently. It felt a stirring in its bones that it hadn't felt in long years. It was like the quickening that used to happen after the coldsleep. For the first time in nearly a thousand years, the Griffin felt the need to hunt. It felt the need to spread its wings and take to the thermals. It felt the need to rip, to tear, to pull its prey apart with the ferocity that only it could.
It held its head up, and let the feelings inside stir it. It rattled its wings a bit and dust flew. It was slow, this process, but the Griffin was patient.
All hunters are.
~~~~~~~
"Feel with me for just a moment, if you can.
"Imagine what it would be like to walk into a room and see a living, breathing, saber-tooth tiger sitting there. It's alive! You don't even need to see its breath moving around, or hear the feral grumble of its purrs. You can feel the intensity of its life from where you're standing. You know this thing can leap up and kill you before you've even registered it has moved.
"Now imagine that underneath all that - underneath the glorious prowess of the predator, underneath the rippling musculature of the near-monster, underneath everything that makes the saber-tooth so fearsome - it's sick to death, and dying of something you don't even understand.
"Can you imagine?
"Can you even conceive how powerless and sorrowful you'd feel in that moment?
"Can you understand how you feel as though you'd do anything - go to any lengths to do whatever it took to see that cat stand to its feet and lunge?
"I honestly believe that most of us would rather never have seen it than experience that sorrow.
"Most of us would rather die."
~~~~~~~
The Griffin gave a small cry as it felt something like lightning course through its veins.
The small creature that kept it fed with old blood entered then, and the Griffin fixed its eyes upon it. The Griffin could hear its heartbeat, could hear the way its warm, life-giving blood rushed through its veins. The Griffin could taste the prey-smell coming off it in deep, sensuous waves. It fixed its eyes upon the prey-thing, and extended its claws lazily.
The Griffin was deeply gratified to smell the prey-thing's fear just before it rushed back out into the night.
The Griffin lifted its head, and gave full voice to its cry.
~~~~~~~
"I'm supposed to be writing what's known around our office as a 'paid advertisement'. I'm supposed to be writing about Manolo's Carnival of the Impossible in such a way so that you'll rush right out and buy tickets to the place, lining Manolo's pockets.
"I can't, though. I can't write about the place because I only noticed it as an afterthought. It was there, and I registered some strange things that are certainly worth the trip, but the only thing I really saw was a Griffin; The Griffin.
"If I had an opinion I'd care to share, I'd tell you to do whatever you had to do to go see the Griffin. I'd tell you to pawn everything you owned, sell your children into slavery, sell a kidney if you have to, but go see the Griffin. Go before it's too late!"
~~~~~~~
"Allison, can I see you in my office?"
Allison looked up from the blank screen she'd been considering since she got here. She was at a loss as to why she'd even bothered to come in today. She could've easily driven in and left the piece on Jerry's desk. Some perverse quirk of her nature made her stay, and she'd been staring at a blank screen for three hours.
She'd never been one to give herself to anything. She didn't believe in God. She didn't believe in anything outside of the explained, the reasonable. Allison didn't believe in Magic.
But her encounter with the Griffin had changed all that. She'd felt a part of her waken and cry when she'd been with the Griffin. It had cried for nourishment, for comfort. A part of Allison had been re-born in her short encounter with the Griffin, and she was still dealing with it.
She'd poured herself into the story, and she knew that it was no less a part of her than a baby would be. She still felt as though she were existing somehow outside of herself, and she'd put the piece on Jerry's desk five hours ago.
It took her a minute to realize that Jerry - good, decent, practical, hard-headed Jerry - was looking at her oddly from the entrance to her cube. He had a concerned look on his face that irritated Allison for some reason. It was the kind of look you give to accident victims, or the terminally-ill. 'Are you gonna be okay?' (Slight head tilt, caring inflection to the voice.)
Allison quietly chuckled to herself, causing Jerry's eyebrows to climb out from under his stupid little glasses.
"Sure, Jere. What's up?"
"I'd really rather not do this here. Can we talk in my office?" He still had that look on his face, and Allison's stomach sank. She had a feeling she knew what was coming. She stood from her desk, ran her fingers through her hair, and followed Jerry into his office.
Jerry closed the door behind her, took his seat behind his desk, and indicated the one across for Allison.
Jerry's desk depressed Allison. It was clean and neat, and held all the things you'd expect an anal-retentive editor's to have; right down to the brass twiddly bits that editors the world over seem to require. There was a neatly scripted nameplate - with Jerry's name on it - that held an inkwell and a quill, and a matching brass paperweight shaped like a clothespin. Allison wondered if it all came as a set.
Jerry sat down behind his desk, tilted his head a bit, and with a caring inflection in his voice asked, "Is everything okay, Al?"
Allison grinned, and kept the mirth bubbling inside her to herself. She replied, "Sure, boss. I'm fine. Never better. Why?"
Jerry opened a desk drawer and pulled Allison's piece on the Carnival out. He put it on the desk, and smoothed his hands over it. He looked up at Allison, and said, "Well, it's not often I get a piece on griffins from my star reporter. I'm just wondering if maybe you need some time off, or something."
Allison's stomach clenched. She swallowed around a throat gone suddenly dry. "What do you mean, boss? I write silly nonsense all the time! Why should seeing a Griffin" (she winced inwardly at the way her voice capitalized it) "be any different?" She tried to keep her voice neutral, and knew by Jerry's eyes that it wasn't working.
"Look. Al. It's a good piece. It really is. But I'm not sure that it's what I was looking for here. I mean, an op-ed piece is all well and good if you feel that strongly about Manolo's performers, but Al-
"Cut to the chase, Jere, " she interrupted; her voice barely making it past the lump in her throat.
Jerry sighed then, removed his glasses, and rubbed his eyes. When he looked back up at Allison, his face looked naked, stark and hurt without his stupid little glasses.
"Al, I can't run this."
Allison sat back in her chair. It felt as though the breath had been knocked from her, and she couldn't tell you why. She swallowed, trying to dislodge the hard piece of cement that seemed to have grown there, and with all of her might, croaked out, "Why?"
"'Why?' I'll tell you 'why', Al. I gave you a simple piece. 'Write up this Carnival.' You come back here with a passion-filled piece about a griffin! What the hell am I supposed to do with this? I mean, even if this Manolo character doesn't sue me for libel, mis-representation, and outright fraud, I still haven't got a place for strong feelings, Al! I'm trying to pay bills here, not start a tree-hugging movement for mythological creatures!"
A thousand arguments sprang to Allison's mind then. She wanted to leap across the desk and pull Jerry's tongue out. She wanted to laugh, to cry, to scream. She wanted to somehow give vent to the feelings she'd been experiencing all week.
She wanted to fly . . . !
She didn't do any of those things. She sat across from Jerry - hard-headed, decent, hard-working, practical Jerry, in his stupid little glasses and his hokey, Sigmund Freud getup - and she nodded.
She reached up and removed her 'Daily News' Press ID from her lapel and tossed it across the desk at Jerry. "Okay. Fair enough. I quit."
She stood up then, still looking at Jerry. Jerry stood up himself, and lifted a placating hand towards her. "Hey, Al,.don't be like that-"
"Go to hell, Jere," she interrupted.
She walked out, not bothering to close the door or stop by her cube, or anything. She ignored everything Jerry tried to say, and walked out to her car.
It wasn't until she'd driven nearly home that she pulled over and cried until it hurt a little less.
~~~~~~~
Later that night, Allison had a dream.
She dreamed she was flying over the tops of knife-edged mountains. The sun was high in the sky above her, and she could feel the wind blowing through her (scales) feathers. Far below her a herd of horses was stampeding across a plateau. She dived then, and picking a large horse at random, sunk her talons deep into its back and lifted it off the ground while it was still galloping. She gave voice to a fierce cry, and made her way back to her nest where she fed on the still-twitching corpse of the horse.
The blood ran down her beak and watered the dry places inside her. She'd never tasted anything finer. It was alive with the fear-smell, the prey-smell. It was life, it was love, it was electricity, and it coursed through her like fire.
She ate her fill and then turned to her young, ready to feed them as well.
When Allison woke later, it was to the feeling of stiff, joyful tears that had run unchecked down her face.
~~~~~~~
Several days later, Allison received a very unusual letter. The envelope was made of some sort of yellow parchment, and had no return address. Her name and address was scrawled across the envelope in some kind of archaic script that made Allison think of illuminations done by Franciscan friars.
She flipped the letter over and saw a glob of red wax had sealed the letter shut. A Seal had been pressed into the wax that featured a grinning skeleton juggling skulls. The letter 'M' was twined throughout the Seal.
Her heart thumping, Allison tore the envelope open. A torn bit of The News fell out, and with a happy lurch Allison saw that it was her story. Jerry - that stuffy, insufferable git - had printed it anyway!
She saw with amazement and trembling fingers, that the Magic wasn't quite done. She'd never titled her piece; never really gave it a thought. She was suprised to see that Jerry had given it one that fit perfectly.
The tagline read 'Perception is Reality!'
Another clipping had fallen out. It featured a blurry picture of something from a long distance away shot in profile. Whatever it was, it was rearing in the sky, like a horse would. It looked for all the world like . . .something, - something with a yellow beak, and claws as big as an SUV - the size of a jumbo jet was flying off into the distance, trailing a bit of colored circus tent on one iron colored claw.
'Strange Creature Crashes Circus!' Allison skimmed the article, tears of joy standing in her eyes.
A short letter that had been written on the same yellowed, parchment-like material - and in the same archaic hand - accompanied everything. It was short, curt and to the point.
"Allison,
"I hope you're happy.
"I have no idea how I'm going to make up the loss.
It was signed, simply,
'Manolo'.
27 November 10 - Go read Puerile Rantings of a Slackwit. That's where I post the good stuff.
28 November 10 - The house smells like pie. I love my wife for that; the warm smell of home-made pie. I don't know that she enjoys filling a stereotypically female role of wife and mother; cooker; baker; home-maker, but I love the smell of pie.
10 July 10 - I am pondering maturity. A man I never met died recently. something a friend of his said has started resonating inside me, and I'm left with pictures of myself standing on a hilltop behind a monument, watching our afternoon's procession roll in.
The guys were leering. It's what you do when you're twenty-something-years-old and you're a manual laborer. Gravediggers get horny, too. We just tend to be grossly inappropriate about it.
It never failed. Some pretty young thing, wearing a demure skirt in a muted color would become a target, and before you knew it, five guys were making comments about her that would have a Spartan blushing.
That started me thinking about maturity. Maturity means not needing to see her legs. Maturity means not needing to say something like, "I'd crack her open on this monument right now! how about YOU, Nescher?"
Maturity means realizing you're thirty-five years old, happily married with an infant son, and there's no need to rise to their gibes. You've got nothing to prove.
And that's all.
01 July 10 - Fifteen days or so. I like it here and I don't want to move again, but what are ya' gonna do? When the guy can arbitrarialy fire her for whatever reason, there isn't a lot. So we'll go back to Cuyahoga Falls, or we'll move to Guam, or we'll go wherever her job takes us. And I'll follow loyally along behind because I love her and it's what yo do when you love someone.
But I really don't want to move again.
30 June 10 - Lewis Grizzard probably wasn't the first person to ask it--or at least, not the first person to put it in print-- but I think it's a valid question, nonetheless. Milk I can understand. Baby cows drink it and they turn into bigger cows, and bigger cows are good eatin'. To a lesser extent, I can even appreciate the thinking on eggs. I mean, chickens were probably on the buffet not long after Mr. Cow.
But who was the first guy to look at a shelled invertebrate, covered in sea-sludge, scrape it off the rock, break it out of its shell and go, "What the hell. How bad could it be?" Who was the first guy who thought it was a good idea to eat an oyster?
27 June 10 - Today's posting in Puerile Rantings is me whining about people whining. I think I originally put it a little something like this: I tried to write this in a frank and earnest manner, and as a result, I think I came across as more than a little . . .awful. I hope, if you read this, you read it as being some of MY thoughts and feelings, and you read it with an open mind. Let's start some free-thinking, here. Let's start some dialogue. Tell me what YOU think, not what you've been trained and spoon-fed to think. Free speech means being willing to say what you think, not just being able to.
19 Feb 06
Nescher Pyscher
25 June 10 -
Today's blog posting is about racism. What follows is a frank and earnest discussion about something I feel passionately about. I imagine I'm going to piss off quite a few of you. I apologize. That is not my intent. I hope you can read this with that in mind.
Racism and 'racial pride' are hot-button issues with me. I get fired up and start preaching about their evils. I tend to not be very politically correct anyway.
17 Jan 06
24 June 10 -
Got an email yesterday from an email about The Fist of Hand. It goes out tomorrow night. Say a prayer for me, will ya'?
22 June 10 -
Every once in a while I need to remind myself that God is running the universe, not me. It's hard some days, to let go of my perpetua need to be in control and surrender. Today's blog posting - What I Learned From a Serpentine Belt - is a gentle reassessment after a disaster. Appropriate for the situation my wife and I find ourselves in, I think.
21 June 10 -
I'm still dealing with the fact that the internet les me do this. Don't they screen for bums like me? I mean, isn't tere anyone keeping out the riff-raff? Well, okay. Whatever. I've got a blog up now. I'm calling it the Puerile Rantings of a Slackwit. It's basically crap I've dug up from all over that I don't believe anyone would ever want to read. Check it out if you like. It's the little block in the upper right hand corner.
20 June 10 -
Isn't the internet great? Every pogue with a modem can logon and create himself a web presence, whether it's a good idea or not. We live in exciting times, and I'm proud to be a part of it!
Pt. 10
He was being chased into dream by an abomination.
He could feel it; the merest, thinnest, far edge of this deathly, invisible nothing. It was dark; heavy; hung from the sky like a massive thunderhead; a black glowering menace. He knew without question - the way one does in a dream - that should it find him with its ever searching, invisible eye, that it would devour him and make him part of its own filth-ridden existence.
Its determined lust baked off of it in palpable waves of hate. Its intent was to devour, to consume. It wanted to render all of creation into a nameless paste, and leave nothing of behind.
It rained blood down, seeking more. He knew that some of that blood was his own. It had tasted of him and it liked that taste right well. It wanted it all.
It opened wide its maw of biting steel and poisoned glass and wordlessly roared its hunger, its frustration. For the first time in nearly a thousand years, he shook and wept with fright.
~~~~~~~
The roars diminished like echoes and Solly woke with a start. A fire was burning somewhere nearby. Solly could smell the wood and the sound of the crackling flames filled him with an exhaustive relief. His eyes burned and ran tears. A strange haze had fallen over his vision, as if a cloud were surrounding him. Everything he looked at was faded and muzzy; gently soft around the edges. Looking long at his hand, he realized that the strange halo were the scratches of the sand on his eyes.
The flames leapt and danced in his eyes, hurting them. The light stabbed like long, thin needles. He closed them in misery as the acid wash of tears flooded them. They felt like they'd been replaced with molten balls of gritty glass while he slept. His hand throbbed with shrieking intensity as though it were still being eaten, and his head felt as though someone had been using it to mix mortar.
His entire body felt like it had been run through the glass-grinder he'd seen once in the halls of the Khan of Morterea. It had reduced useless bits of broken glass into something that could be spread on walls with a glue mixture to make them glitter in the sun like diamonds. The Khan had been very fond of it. It was ironic that it had been used by his successor to affect his succession, but ground glass in one's nightly wine cup was effective as a knife in the liver.
"Wh-wher-whuh?" he muttered. His movements were weak, drained. Exhaustion smothered his every effort. His heart was hammering in his chest with a weak, fluttering stutter. He carefully opened his eyes again, trying to get his bearings.
The firelight was momentarily blocked by something. A strong, firm hand held his lower jaw and a cold, wet vessel of stone was gently held to his painful lips. Solly had the barest presence of mind to sip the liquid slowly. Water, heavily laced with a minty herb of some kind, and when it touched his lips and tongue, they went immediately numb. He washed the inside of his mouth with the liquid first, feeling the water refresh him as it numbed the naked, abraded tissues of his mouth.
He took another sip, a larger one, and tried swallowing it. It was better than the finest wine and it watered the dry places in him like rain in the desert, leaving behind a wonderful feeling of euphoria. He took a third sip, and felt most of his pain slip away. There was a heavy, medicinal tinge on the air that Solly couldn't recognize. It took him some time to realize that the smell was his own breath.
"Whut was thaaat?" he asked.
"My people call it the "Flower that Releases Pain," a strong, masculine voice replied. "I do not know any other name for it. It grows in the cold, dark, places where the snow never melts and the sun does not shine. Our hunters sometimes take it to fall into the sleep that does not end when the pain of their wounds is too much. It is a very powerful medicine."
The voice subsided and the figure moved into Solly's line of sight.
Solly's senses fed him information that he processed as best he could in his muddled state. He lay on his back and a fur blanket was pulled up to his chin. The blankets smelled of wood smoke, leather and cured meats. As near as he was able to tell, he wore nothing beneath the fur blanket he lay under.
A number of efficient, simple cloth dressings covered his wounds, and he could smell an astringent odor he assumed was an antiseptic. He touched the bandages wrapped neatly around his face with fingers deadened by the herb, wondering if he still had a recognizable nose or ears. He could hear a wind raging outside, somewhere, but it was reduced to a thin whisper of what it had been.
The dull, echoing rattle of stone against stone sounded in the distance, along with the slow, dripping "clink" of water falling into deep pools. There was something about the acoustical quality of those sounds that suggested to Solly that he was deep underground.
He looked at his benefactor through foggy eyes. He couldn't see much. The man's skin in the tricky light of the fire was as red as blood, but darker; mellower. His face had the color and textural quality of the very finest leather. It was a weather-beaten and craggy face; wise and proud. White hair hung to the shoulders in neat, straight locks, framing it; a strong face with heavy features. His cheekbones were thick and high, like a ridge that ran from ear to ear. His nose was like an eagle's beak and fit him perfectly. It was a forbidding visage, something to respect and fear.
The man's eyes were as shockingly blue as a calm sea under a summer sky, and there was a sorrow lurking in them that was painful for Solly to be this close to, dizzy, sick and drugged as he was. There was an intensity in the man's gaze that Solly recognized as strength tempered with wisdom. The man held the stone vessel to Solly's lips again and gave him another long sip. With a graceful turn, the man laid the vessel aside. Solly saw a large, blue stone - the size and shape of a robin's egg - on a rawhide thong, dangling from his neck as the man turned in profile towards the fire.
"Welcome. It is good to see your eyes open in our world."
His voice was strong and masculine, but oddly toneless. The gentleness of it was a strange contrast in that Warrior's Face. His voice held no color, no sparkle and his accent was impossible for Solly to place.
The man laid one heavily calloused hand over his heart and continued to look into Solly's eyes.
"I am "Shadows-Dancing-On-Wall," or, as I prefer to be called among my people, "Shadow"'. For the time being, I offer you the peace and rest of my home, along with what comfort it contains. In time, we will speak of the hospitality price," he said. He then sat looking at Solly with expectation.
Solly croaked once, his voice viscous and clotted. He licked his numb lips and tried again. Lifting his hand and laying it upon his own heart, he said. "My name's Solly. Solly Mont. I thank you," he managed to croak. "And I will pay whatever price I am asked to by the man who saved my life." He closed his eyes with a thick wince as a bit of light lanced into them.
"It is well," Shadow said. "Your manners become you. But I must ask, how is it you speak my language? You are not of the People."
"No," Solly croaked. "At least, I don't think so. I mean, no. I don't speak your language. I hear you in th' language I speak."
Shadow nodded, once, sagely. "Ah. Strange are the ways of the dream walk."
He laid a gentle hand on Solly's shoulder and said, "Rest. There will be time later to explore this mystery. You have been grievously wounded."
Solly felt himself slipping away. He fought it for a while, but he was weak and exhausted. Just before sleep claimed him totally, he heard Shadow moving around the firelight, speaking to himself in a gentle whisper.
"I have offered him the peace of my home, for such time as peace is required. When the time for peace to end-"
Solly fell the rest of the way, and dreamt of fire dancing in the eyes of the wise.
~~~~~~~
He was dreaming. One of the benefits of being Solly Mont was his ability to tell, instantly, whenever he was dreaming. He'd learned all the tell-tale signs - like the scratches hobos leave on fences - of dreams and dreaming long ago.
Here was the mist of sleep, there, the warmth of his unconscious mind healing his body. He knew these things just as we know water is wet, snow is cold and fire is hot. The knowing didn't make it any less terrible.
All this will I give thee, if thou wilt bow down to me.
The voice sounded like oiled smoke and smelled of death and corruption. It whispered to him from its place in the grave, carrying with it the grinding wail of lost, tormented souls.
The voice was evil, poisonous, but he'd heard it before, dealt with it before. As bad as it was, it wasn't as bad as the naught wind, the thing that lived in the places between. The naught wind blew from places the voice had never even imagined: the cold, outer dark; the endless nothing beyond infinity; beyond the light of the oldest star; the dark craters before creation's coming.
The naught wind blew in the howling voice of void, of entropy, of slow, endless decay leading to nothing, and it was allies of old with the voice whispering in his ears.
He stood upon a high place and felt that sick, death-carrying wind crawl across him in hot and cold waves. It felt like fevered, bloody snakes dancing across his skin and it brought the visions.
Solly watched as all the cities of man burned. He watched the advances of man - every shining light that had been lifted to the heavens for Divine approval, every good thing man's hand had wrought - burned. The smoke poisoned the air and the cloud of its burning covered the sky from horizon to horizon.
He watched the rivers of the world flood. He watched them rise endlessly, sweeping away everything before them in a wet, roiling wave of destruction. They swelled until the bridles of the horses of war were drenched with the blood of human suffering.
Helpless tears rained down his face as he watched mothers and fathers sell their babies into prostitution; gave them to men with sly, sick smiles to use, kill and eat. Moaning, he watched children hatefully murder their fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers. He shook, his fists clenched impotently, as he watched man forsake his brother and turn his back on the pain of the suffering. He cried aloud as he watched a mother lift her infant - the child of her own body! - over her head and dash him to pieces against the ground with nary a second thought, her eyes empty and dull.
And he closed his eyes when he saw that same blankly staring daughter of Eve take a razor to her own skin.
He'd never felt such pain. He'd never known such sorrow. He'd never known such black and blasphemous evil lived in the hearts and minds of man. And through it all the naught wind blew, moaning and groaning in rapturous ecstasy while the diseased voice whispered and gibbered at him:
All this will I give thee, if thou wilt bow down to me.
All this will I give thee, if thou wilt bow down to me.
All this will I give thee, if thou wilt bow down to me.
He tore at his beard. He cast dust upon his head and tore at his clothes, begging forgiveness for his sins. He watched, again, the coming of the Greek, the Assyrian, the Roman, the Saracen. The city of his father was raped by the Saxon. The men trampled, stole, killed and destroyed, and the gloating, oil-smoke-voice on the naught wind pushed the crimes ever farther, ever more, ever bloodier.
Men gave themselves fully to bloodlust, ripping the unborn from its mother's womb, reveling in gory, mindless debauch; smearing blood and entrails on each other in glee.
Tearing at his eyes, he went mad with grief as he saw the sacred institution of the temple burn again. The flames of its burning were whipped to the very stars by the cancerous wind; the voice laughing now, mocking him and his pain.
That voice continued to wheedle while the naught wind blew and sang through the tormented halls of his mind.
All this will I give you.
All this will I give you.
All this will I give you.
~~~~~~~
"He dreams."
Solly heard the voice and recognized it on an instinctual level. He knew the owner of that voice from somewhere, and he knew that voice represented a return to the light of the living. But, for right now at least, that was far away and unimportant.
He felt a thin prick of worry. Was he safe here? In his nearly helpless condition, could he do anything about it?
The furs still covered him, and his host had promised him "peace" for a time. Keeping his eyes closed and his breathing easy and steady, he tried to touch around him with his mind. For all intents and purposes, he was still deeply asleep. Yet a small part of him, a part of him that had ever been watchful and wary, sat up and took stock of the situation while the rest of him slept on.
The dream held portents he needed to know, needed to hear. But he was afraid. He didn't want to sink back down into the halls of his mind, didn't want to see the blood-soaked horrors that awaited him there. He didn't want to hear that bone-squeak, groaning voice, or the slithering, gloating whisper of the naught wind.
"The poison that touched him. See? He sweats it out in his dreams. I think the ebon wind, the voice of Black Coyote, sings for him and calls his name in its poisonous howls. The house of the dead has tasted his life. They have touched at his inmost being, drank deeply of the waters of his spirit, and now they call for him from beyond. He fights it, but he is weak and hurt, like a bear with a wounded paw."
His bright spark of interior consciousness was fading now. He was still weak, and badly injured from his adventure in the desert. His body was drawing deeply on its reserves, and couldn't maintain this separated consciousness for long.
With his flagging resolve, Solly attempted to touch the mind of his host. He brushed against something cold and hard. It was sharp and strange, like obsidian in warm mud. His mind caressed at it, ineffectually, and Solly fell slowly back into his own mind's deepening shadows before he could explore further.
He fought, with everything he had left, to touch his host's mind.
Something like an angry avalanche fell on him, in thick, suffocating folds, and Solly's mind recoiled in fear. He fell away into sleep helplessly.
~~~~~~~
He dreamt, again, and his dreams were fearful, fevered things.
He stood alone in the dark, a wind moaning ceaselessly around him. He was in a black, howling void that had neither shape nor form. There was no sense of up or down, no sense of falling or moving. There was only him, and the ever moving, ever calling wind. He was more afraid than he'd ever been in his life.
The wind, that bleak and toxic wind, was still searching for him and in its mighty blunderings, its swipes and crashing strikes, it kept touching him. He felt the wind's touch not as hot or cold, but as a sickness, a weariness of soul. That wind touched him, and he felt parts of him die. They withered, and fell away like dead skin.
The naught wind's face turned toward him for the first time. It was the personification of an endless hunger. One great, diseased eye was staring out of that face, above a maw lined with all the teeth of eternity. That great, bloodshot eye was roaming endlessly in the void, dancing in sickening, dizzying swirls and spirals of movement. It sought him, Solly Mont. It sought his life, his soul.
He knew that he was hidden for the time being. That cold unfeeling eye could not see him, but it knew he was there, and it kept fumbling at him. His warm spirit was baking out at that keening maw like a heated iron under a woolen blanket. In this place of endless sorrow, pain, madness and death, the bright, warm animus that was Solly Mont shone forth with the heat of a star. He felt like a blind, crippled mouse hiding from a mad, hungry cat.
Solly Mont pulled the tattered shreds of his strength about himself, as a man would with a torn robe. He tried to call out, lifting his voice in a weak, terrified whisper.
"Hello?"
His voice echoed back at him with the laughter of other damned souls chasing it.
He felt the wind renew its rush, quickened by his call. It danced over his naked limbs, pulling and drawing at him. Solly shivered and the wind danced yet more. It seemed to center its activity around Solly's form in this not-place.
He felt an endless, insane hunger; an obese, malevolent intelligence, turn and regard him with baneful glee.
In that frozen instant - just before his mind broke like an egg and his screams started - Solly learned that there are things worse than death.
~~~~~~~
Shadows-Dancing-On-Wall cocked his head as if he were listening to something that only he could hear.
Shadow lifted his right hand and placed it over the other fellow's heart. Gently lifting the other Solly’s head, he cradled it in his lap. Shadow closed his eyes and began singing a high, wordless song. It climbed glistening scales of minor keys, and fell back down in a beautiful spiral of major ones.
In his torment, Solly could feel the touch of Shadow's hand, and he could hear something like a choir of church bells. Images began to gently intrude into his consciousness, like persistent puppies seeking to be cuddled. Shadow sang, and his music - wordless - nevertheless made these images come alive within the echoing chambers of Solly's heart and mind. They told stories of life, love, and the bright warmth of the sun on the face of a smiling child. They told stories of a proud, strong hunter swiftly and cleanly killing his prey. They told of thanking the prey for the meat, the blood, the bone, the skin. They told stories of clean water and the cold winds that blow across the mountains at the top of the world. They told stories of rivers that boiled in a dazzling display of power and majesty.
They told of the power of obligation already held, and they made war against the power of the naught wind.
There was no sense of invasion or intrusion, here. These bright, flittering stories nestled within Solly like treasured memories, or perhaps the dreams of memories of dreams. True, they were never his, but what of that? They were now. It was holy, and strange, and savage, and fierce, and wonderful, all at once.
Tears ran unheeded down Solly's face as he watched Moon gleefully chase her children into their places, gently tuck them in and bid them "Good rest" before Sun left for the hunt. Rabbit ran from Wolf across the sky. Their meeting was foreordained, but never would either place a wrong step before then. Their dance was perfect, and would remain perfect until the end of all things. They were content to be as they are, content to lead the lives Father Mind, the Creator Spirit, had placed before them at the beginning of the World, and all that was.
The naught wind roared in hungry frustration, its efforts stymied by the hope and joy of life being enacted in Solly's soul by Shadow's song magic.
Solly watched as Mother sat in her place, her arms empty, her heart broken. Her heel was viciously bruised, and the sadness on her face made his heart twist within him. He looked upon Mother's face, and he wished that he'd never been born. Father Mind wept, watering the lands of all his children with life-giving rain granted from the sacrificed blood of his own son.
He watched these things, these wonderful secrets that were not secrets, and Solly Mont wept for joy and for sorrow until he felt his heart would break.
The tears washed him back to the light of life. He lay in Shadow's arms, weeping for a very long time. Underneath the sorrow and the joy, however, was a great and wonderful peace. For the first time in who knew how long, Solly Mont felt still within himself. The tumult of his stormy heart was stilled. When at last he opened his eyes and wiped away his tears, he saw Shadow looking down at him, his eyes clear, his brow untroubled.
"I have fulfilled to the full my obligation of peace, Solly Mont. I am free of the consequence of law. We will speak of the price of hospitality."
And Solly, his heart still content, nodded in humble acquiescence.
~~~~~~~
Adventures from Tales of the Fallen (Book I)
Pt. 9
The Aurora - that song sung by the gods and translated into color and light - danced above him in slow, undulating waves. Some distance below, he could hear the ocean as it smashed itself against the ice he sat on. Cold, weary, and aching in more places than he could count, Weaver tried to remember the last time he had slept without pain.
The wind tasted strange: smoke, burnt metal and death. Weaver feared he was tasting the ashes of the many who had died in the warm lands during the sky-rent. His eyes and tongue felt gritty. His throat was dry. The breezes touching his face carried faces and voices he could barely discern. Pain and sorrow were thick here; sisters huddling together in shared misery.
Weaver contemplated the massive structure before him. He could feel the beat of time racing, but he did not know what to do. A scream was building in his chest; frustration, pain, weariness, it all threatened to boil over in one long, loud plaint. But that wouldn't help Moonlight.
Weaver lived in a society of boundaries defined by tradition, magic and laws older than the land they lived on. Doors were not boundaries. They were flaps of skin that held the weather out. There was no defining "This is here and that is there." with a door in a society where most everything, including the hut one slept in on a daily basis, was held as common property. Nor was there such a thing anywhere as a "gate".
The gate towered above him, inscrutable, with no obvious mechanism of action, no convenient knob or handle. It was a void-space defined by strange glass-like stone. Looking at it made Weaver feel awed and insignificant. There was a grave danger here of offending laws, gods and powers he did not understand.
What to do?
The blank space within the gate frightened him. It reminded him of the darkness beneath the deepest ice caves, where slept the creatures who lived just beyond the mind of man. The Shamans led the people in, once a year, to remind them of the fragile nature of their existence. The breathing of those massive, sleeping, faceless giants was the only sound heard in all that dark, endless cold, and one listened, feeling very small indeed. No lights were permitted in the ice caves - not the merest torch - for fear of waking those creatures and ending the world. The darkness there was a nothing, an empty, dull void, and it mimicked the darkness below the world. The void denied everything, going so far as to even block the wind when Weaver walked in front of it.
He did not know what the great pile of glass-stone represented, did not know how to access its magic. He did know that unless he grew fins like the barking seal, his journey was over. Looking out into the gray distance, he could see rolling breakers moving endlessly toward him. The waves crashing below him sent tremors up that he could feel.
The wind was relentless and deadly. Weaver could feel it worming its way into his warm furs, sapping his life and heat. He could feel that chill damp trying to steal his inner warmth.
He sat on the ice, gnawing on frozen bear meat, trying to decide what to do.
The voice, when it came, sounded like it was directly behind him, almost sitting on his back.
"What are you doing, Weaver?"
Weaver started up from his place on the ice, his hands shaking, his heart pounding. He whipped around, looking for the source of that voice. Snow Fox was sitting before him, its mouth lolling open, its eyes dancing mischievously.
"Yaahhh, Snow Fox!" Weaver shouted at it. He kicked at the ground and shook his fist at Snow Fox, dancing a bit in reaction and rage. He felt a bit silly, but Snow Fox had frightened him.
Snow Fox looked bigger to Weaver's eyes. When he had first seen the creature, it was no bigger than a newly born bear cub, a small bundle of flailing claws and white fur. Now it was the size of an underfed wolf.
Snow Fox watched Weaver with its wise, amber eyes. "You look very strange when you dance about like that, Weaver. Time marches ever onward and Moonlight lies behind us. Why are you still here?"
Weaver waved a hand vaguely at the gate. "My father once said that a wise hunter is careful not to step on the ice before he looks at it for cracks. I do not know what it is I am looking at, much less how to awaken its magic."
Snow Fox sniffed the wind blowing around it in a bored, disinterested sort of way. It looked at the gate and then looked back at Weaver.
"You're wasting time, you know. Stones-Falling-From-Sky lies beyond this gate. Will you let Moonlight lie in the cold, corrupting, because you are 'careful' and ignorant?"
Weaver gnashed his teeth. He would kill this impertinent creature and use its skin as a toilet. Clenching his fists he strode a pace toward Snow Fox.
Snow Fox barked merrily. "Ahhh. Your anger tastes like finest blood to me, Weaver-Of-Shadows," Snow Fox said, "and now you plan something violent and useless. How rare a gift you are!"
Weaver hands fell uselessly to his sides. He sighed, a noise that ended in a sob. Collapsing to the snow, he whispered in a hollow voice, "I do not know what to do, Snow Fox. I do not know the magic that this place makes and Moonlight . . .."
He couldn't finish the thought. Snow Fox looked up at Weaver, its muzzle lowering, its eyes suddenly hungry.
"And what will you do to learn the magic, Weaver?" it asked, in a whisper.
Weaver wiped his face, heedless of the pains that were racing through him anew. He sniffed mightily and stood on shaking legs. Taking a deep breath, he attempted to answer Snow Fox as a man of the People should.
"Whatever I must, Snow Fox."
Snow Fox sat up on its haunches, its muzzle lifted.
"Ahhh, Weaver. You do not disappoint! Is your knife still keen?"
Weaver drew his knife, looking at it disinterestedly.
Snow Fox sighed in ecstasy, almost dancing on two feet. "I hunger, Weaver. I hunger in ways you or any of the People would never understand. The small snack of your fingers, freely given in the bargain of blood and meat was a sweet aperitif to me, but I hunger for more substantial fare now."
"What must I do, Snow Fox?" Weaver asked, his voice hollow.
"The palm of your hand, Weaver-Of-Shadows. Draw the knife, crosswise, across the scar there.
Weaver didn't think about it, didn't think about what slicing a knife across that scar would mean. It was just a scar, wasn't it? Certainly, it was there as a life-long reminder of his ceremony of manhood, placed there by the Shaman, but what had it ever done for him?
He drew the blade of the knife across his palm as instructed, cutting deep into the scarred meat with a sudden gesture that sent blood spraying across the ice toward Snow Fox. A great gout of blood erupted from the injury. The still healing stumps of his fingers began gushing blood as well. Pain like he'd never known, as if he'd cut himself off from the font of all life, crushed him to the ice, moaning in inexpressible agony. Snow Fox leapt into that spray of blood, covering itself with the life that fled from Weaver's veins. It noisily chewed, eating something Weaver could not see, swallowing it with Weaver's blood for sauce.
Weaver lay face down on the ice, clutching his palm to him, fist curled in, in an attempt to stem the flow of blood. He gritted his teeth and flexed his arm, squeezing down on the bleeding stump at the end of his limb until he saw spots before his eyes. He lay there for a thousand years, whimpering and watching the blood slow.
Finally, the bleeding stopped to the merest of trickles. Cutting a strip of his furs free, he bound his wounds as best he was able with his other hand and his teeth. By the time he was done, the remains of his hand screamed blood, fire and thunder at him. Bright spots laggedly danced in his eyes, and a strange lassitude sat on his shoulders. Clumsily resheathing his knife, he tried to pull himself together.
Snow Fox sat before him, all traces of the blood it had eaten - and whatever else it had swallowed as well - long gone. Snow Fox was definitely bigger, now. Its feeding on Weaver's blood and flesh had increased its size some three-fold. It was now the size of an adolescent bear. It stood tall enough for its head to reach Weaver's waist, and Weaver felt the stirrings of honest fear. These dealings were having repercussions he did not understand.
Snow Fox looked up at him, its cunning teeth meeting together in its wily smile. "Are you afraid, Weaver?"
"Yes," Weaver answered, simply.
Snow Fox laughed: a harsh sound that sounded like the breaking of wings, the skitter of claws in the night.
"Weaver! We have a deal, you and I! You have nothing to fear from me!" Snow Fox said.
"Teach me the magic of the stones, Snow Fox, and leave me be." Weaver lurched upright, the bright spots threatening to overwhelm him for a long moment. He cradled his torn hand to his blood-smeared breast.
Snow Fox laughed again. The sound made shivers run up and down Weaver's spine. "It's a gate, Weaver. Walk through it!"
With that, it turned and loped off into the darkness, snarling its laugh of malice.
Weaver again secured all his furs around his body. He re-packed the small amount of meat left to him and made sure his skull bottle was full of ice and tightly sealed. Re-checking his knife in it sheath, he insured it was tied closely to him.
None of this was truly necessary; he was putting off the moment when he knew he would have to step into that blank, featureless void. Walking before the gate, he looked up at its blank face in the watery light of the moon.
Taking a deep breath, he stepped through.
~~~~~~~
Wind.
Fierce, sudden and everywhere, all at once.
He floated in a blank nowhere. There was no hot, no cold, no light, no dark, only a colorless, unlit nothing. The only sound was the wind. It howled around him, ripping and tearing at him. It drove its voice of rusty metal into his mind and pulled out each one of his nightmares.
Weaver wept in fear. He could feel the oily bite of the wind's maw on his skin. In his mind's eye, he saw that endless mouth, lined with teeth of biting steel and poisoned glass, wordlessly roar its eternal hunger, its frustration.
That wind blew from places Weaver had never even imagined. The wind blew from the cold, outer dark; the endless nothing beyond infinity. The wind blew beyond the light of the oldest star. The wind blew from the dark craters before creation's coming.
The wind in that place blew in the howling voice of 'void', of 'not'.
It felt like fevered, bloody snakes dancing across his skin. It felt like warm blood running all over him, and only some of it was his. The touch of that wind was madness and death, and Weaver screamed.
The not-wind moaned and groaned in rapturous, ecstatic response.
It hungered, that wind. It heard the beating of a heart, and it wanted that hot flush of warmth for its own. Weaver heard the gloating, oil-smoke voice on the diseased not-wind push against his own mind: fingering it, caressing it, poking and pulling at it. The not-wind teased at his mind the way a cat will tease at a string. It scraped and scratched at Weaver's mind, hurting him horribly. His screams of agony were whipped to the very stars by that cancerous wind. Creatures born a thousand years after the world ended heard Weaver's screams and feared them. Spirits walking the earth a thousand years before humanity stepped cautiously into the light of higher reason heard that scream and wept for Weaver. Weaver's scream of pain and fear raced across all of existence, touching every mind that could hear it with a brief glimpse of unendurable fear.
Weaver panicked as his mind split itself into cracked fragments. He didn't know where he was, he didn't know who he was, but if he didn't get away from the wind, he would spend the rest of eternity being driven mad by it and dying by slow inches.
Weaver drew his knife. He closed his mouth, closed his eyes, and closed his mind. He placed the knife against his neck and sent a final goodbye to those he loved most with the last shred of his lucid awareness before it evaporated into the all-consuming throat of the wind.
Then he pushed the knife as hard as he could into his flesh.
If you’ve enjoyed this, please be sure to check out Tales of the Fallen, Book I, now available in paperback and eBook formats!
~~~~~~
Adventures from Tales of the Fallen (Book I)
Pt. 8
Solly Mont's eyes grew wide and he found himself interjecting without meaning to. "Oh no, Shado'! Say it idn't so! Oh! Tha' poor man hadda watch his son die like tha'?"
Shadow looked at Solly, proud tears standing unshed in his eyes. "It is an evil thing to watch one's son die, Sul-lee Munt, far worse to watch him murdered by one own pride, I think. But I cannot speak to you of opinion, I can only sing the song as it was sung to me." Shadow's voice came out as a mournful sigh. He reached for the waterskin and took a deep draught, wincing a bit.
"Are ya' alright then, Shado'?" Solly asked, placing a hand on Shadow's shoulder, his face concerned.
"I am, my brother," Shadow said with a weary smile. "My bones are old, and this song is a hard one to sing."
Rolling his head on his neck, Shadow took a moment to collect himself. The Song Of Weaver was an old one, a curse borne by his people for far too long, never easy to sing; to sing it to strangers, to speak of a people's failings to one not of the Tribe, this was hardest of all. He shook his head. What was, was, and what will be, will be. Perhaps this was a poison that could be drained.
"The madness of Weaver began then, there, on the ice. My people sing his song as a lesson and a warning. Hear then, if you will, of the madness of Weaver."
Shadow lifted his face and his voice, his weary song spilling forth from him like pain from a wound.
~~~~~~~
The bear's immense paw crashed down on Moonlight's head with the force of a star exploding. Weaver felt a sympathetic shock in his own bones, and lurched as if a spear had punched through his heart. There was a sickening noise - like ice breaking off into the sea - and Moonlight's neck jetted blood in a crimson spray across the pristine white of the bear's fur. His head lolled broken and useless.
The bear reached down with its muzzle and gripped Moonlight by the tunic, shaking him while growling and snarling. The other bears raced away across the ice, loping in wide strides the hunters could never hope to match.
Weaver screamed, his voice cracking and breaking. He threw his spear at the bear, hitting it in the skull, laying open a large wound that hung a thick flap of fatty tissue over its eyes, blinding it. Blood ran from the wound in a torrent.
The bear roared in shock and pain. It rolled in a panic-driven frenzy across the ice, grating its face in agony against the ground, much like a man holding his head after striking it. It rolled atop Moonlight a number of times, further mangling and crushing him. Weaver could clearly hear the sickening sound of bones snapping and breaking.
He flew across the ice to the bear, reaching it in an instant, screaming incoherent rage at it. Pulling another spear from his quiver, he leapt into the air as high as he could and stabbed down. The spear drove deep into the bear's vitals, killing it instantly. Groaning a great sigh, the bear rolled one last time, quivered and was still.
This wasn't enough for Weaver. He ripped the spear from the bear, breaking it, and stabbed it into the dead beast, over and over again, still screaming chaotically.
This was grossest taboo, a violation of all the holiness of the manhood ritual akin to deepest blasphemy, but Weaver was far beyond rational thought. His mind dwelt in the black waters where swam madness.
Otter and Bear Claw reached him then and tried to speak to him, to pull him away. Weaver was covered in blood and viscera, his hoarse screams drowning them out. His eyes were wide and unseeing in his madness, as over and over again he drove the broken stub of spear into the bear's carcass. Tears, mixed with blood and sweat, blinded him. The slurry ran across his face to freeze on exposed skin.
When Otter grabbed his arm and attempted to pull him bodily away from the bear - from the fallen, mutilated corpse of a god feared and worshipped by the People - Weaver struck him across the face with the broken stub of spear, still screaming. It wasn't until Bear Claw hit him across the back of the head that Weaver fell into a boneless, grateful faint.
~~~~~~~
He was lying on his back, listening to the wind and the beating of small, cunning paws fade from his mind's ear. The cold under him was trying to drain his life. He came toward the light of life and reason slowly, like a man approaches a hot fire. He knew there was grief waiting for him when he opened his eyes, and he wanted to deny it as long as he could. He hurt in places he didn't want to think about. He wished and wanted and prayed to every god he could think of in his half-aware state to die before his eyes could open. The gods did not listen.
He opened his eyes to see Bear Claw looking down upon him. Bear Claw's eyes held glimmering pools of unshed tears. Weaver could hear Otter singing the Lament for the Dead over the sound of the moaning wind.
"No," Weaver whispered. He tried to sit up but his head swam alarmingly. He vomited where he lay and Bear Claw rolled him over on his stomach. He was sick for a very long time. Gasping and spitting, it felt as if his head was trying to spin away from him.
Bear Claw knelt by him. He handed Weaver a cloth to wipe his face with. When Weaver had cleaned himself as much as his feeble, exhausted efforts would allow, Bear Claw looked him in the eyes and said, "Lie still, Weaver. The blow I gave you has probably scrambled your brains a bit. Otter says you may be injured. He sees to your son's final journey, and he will see to you soon." His hand lay on Weaver's shoulder. His eyes were sad and empty.
"No," Weaver said, his voice wispy and weak. Clearing his throat, he said it again more firmly. "No." Knocking Bear Claw's hand away, and, with a mighty effort that took more of his strength, he stood. A flare of pain flashed in his head, threatening to take his feet from him. Summoning reserves of will, he stood until the pain subsided, gasping with the intensity of it. Bear Claw said nothing. He knew a man must sometimes see for himself before he would accept death.
For a long moment, Weaver stood in one place, swaying from side to side. Drawing mightily on his swiftly dwindling reserves of strength and will, he forced himself to stand straight. The taste of blood filled his mouth, and his tongue felt pierced and raw. He wondered idly, as men do when they are trying to avoid dealing with crushing pain and grief, if the blood was his, Moonlight's, or the bear's.
He turned then, his face pale and wan, and saw what was left of the crumpled body of his son.
A bruise, edged by torn and bleeding skin, sat on Otter's left cheek like an accusation. His mouth moved slowly around what must have been tremendous pain as he finished the Lament for the Dead.
Otter knelt over the fallen bear, under which, Weaver could just see the bloody fur leggings of his only son. There was a great pond of steaming blood pooling under the bear. Moonlight's corpse lay in several inches of it, his fur-covered feet dyed a gaudy red.
Otter thanked the bear for its gift of life, slit its throat as was proper, and attempted to assuage its vengeful spirit. The ritual should be completed, of course. Slaying a god was not a thing taken lightly by the People, and it would be best if Moonlight's spirit could go on to the House of the Dead a man. As to Weaver's broken taboo, well, grief made a man mad. This was known by men, god and vengeful spirit. Otter was confident that, given time and space, he could cleanse the taint from Weaver's soul.
He started to butcher the bear with swift, economical movements while Weaver watched.
"No!" Weaver shouted, grunting from the pain it cost him. Otter turned around, his eyes wide and curious, the bruise livid under the dancing lights of the aurorae above them. He saw Weaver standing there, his face twisted with a black agony. He thought to explain things to him.
"We must carry the bear off the ice, Weaver. The two of us," he indicated Bear Claw with one blood-smeared hand, "cannot manage you, the body of your son, and the carcass of the bear by ourselves, and you are in no condition to help."
"I will not let you take the body of my son, Otter. My son is not dead." Weaver said, looking Otter in the eyes. Otter flailed back as if from a physical blow at the hate-soaked madness he saw dancing there. An evil spirit - an insane, tormenting voice - rode Weaver. Otter could see it caper and dance in the shine of Weaver's mad, dead eyes. "As for the beast that has done this, you will leave it there to rot."
"Weaver. Please. To do such would offend all the gods. I know this must be hard for you, but what you say is madness, and evil besides!" Otter said, lifting imploring hands and trying to reach the man he knew and loved.
Weaver turned, his eyes casting about. Spotting his quiver some distance away, he began limping toward it.
Bear Claw, seeing his intent, interposed his body between Weaver and the quiver. "Please, Weaver. Please! Listen to reason!"
Weaver looked up at Bear Claw and Bear Claw shivered, backing hurriedly away from that haunted gaze. He wanted nothing to do with the demon he saw there. Weaver reached his quiver and picked it up, pulling a spear from it.
"My son is not dead. You will leave the bear on the ice," he said, shuffling painfully over to where the two bodies lay, his boots squelching through a slush of bloody ice. The spear was held point toward the ground, but Weaver kept it between him and the two men. The implicit threat was all too clear.
He refused to look upon the torn, mangled remains beneath the bear. It would all be fine. He need only remove the bear and Moonlight would be well. All would be well.
He lay his hand upon the bear and began pushing at the enormous corpse. The effort of pushing made the pain in his head swell and flare. Gritting his teeth, he pushed harder.
It was too much. He gave a great, sobbing wail of pain and fell to his knees, clutching at the sides of his head. Bright stars danced in his vision and he swam in a cloudy constellation of pain and nausea. He wept, clutching his head, in the still-warm pond of blood for a long time.
He laid his head against the hot, fetid skin of the bear. It smelled like warm meat. He could smell its hair, its blood, its life. He breathed deeply of it, enjoying the bear's death.
"I hate you. I hate you with everything within me. I hate you forever and always," he whispered into the bear's hide.
Clawing his way to his feet, his hands and soaked boots slipping, he drew his knife and began to butcher the bear himself, refusing any help from the other two men.
Several hours later, Weaver lay upon the ice with the mangled, fur-wrapped body of his son, alone. He suspected that what he had insisted upon was foolhardy in the extreme, but he had done it anyway.
Bear Claw had looked on, his eyes wide and sad. He well knew the depths of a father's despair, himself. He had lost a son - Buffalo Dancer - to the mad voices upon the great ice. They'd found him, naked, frozen and blue. The voices had tormented him for hours. Buffalo's skin was covered in deep, self-inflicted cuts. He'd managed to cut both of his hands off - his sharp stone knife still in his teeth when they found him - and his death was a lesson to the entire tribe.
Otter had tried to explain to Weaver that even one night upon the great ice was enough to kill a man, most especially a man as badly wounded as he was. He tried patience, he tried love, he tried everything he could think of to reach the man underneath the cloak of spirit-driven despair.
"Please, Weaver. Your Spider will need you. The Tribe needs you! I need you! Weaver, return with us, be the man we need you to be now!"
Weaver had looked at him, his eyes cold and dead, the spear interposed, point first, between the two of them. "I will not leave my son, Otter, nor will I allow you to take him elsewhere. We will remain here until Moonlight is better."
And that had been his final word. The other two men, sick at heart and weary to the bone, had turned away and began the long walk back to where the Tribe dwelt. They had not the provisions to stay longer, having been denied by Weaver so much as the smallest cut of meat or the merest drop of the bear's slowly freezing blood. With heavy hearts, they left Weaver to what they knew would be his death.
Weaver gave no further argument, no explanation. He could still hear the padding of small, cunning paws, and below the pain and head-sickness of his injuries and his loss, he felt a bright surge of hope flare into being like an ember from a dead fire. He heard the dead voice - the voice the other two men knew was there, but had not spoken of - whisper within him.
Yes, Weaver. Stay. Stay and find me. Stay, and we will find the flown soul of your beautiful, tall, strong son.
He listened to that voice, with its throat of dry stone, and he surrendered to its promises.
Weaver finished butchering the bear. Much of it was left on the bone, further violating the god. Then he dug a hole beneath what was left, tearing at the skin of his hands with brutal purpose as he did so, forming an impromptu - but well-insulated - icehouse for himself and the body of his son. Lining the floor with the many sheets of fire-leather he had brought with him to cook the ritual cuts of meat, he started a small fire. Weaver looked at those cuts now as they sat, bloody and pointless, hating them: the heart and liver of the bear - Warrior's cuts.
It took some time, but he scraped what was left of the bear's skin as clean as was possible here on the ice. Weaver lay beneath it now, sitting against the wall of his icehouse and felt the killing cold slowly seep its way in. The aurorae danced and shifted above him, luridly painting the ever-ice in colors a mad man's eyes deeply appreciated.
Weaver set his jaw grimly, arranged himself as comfortably as he could, and sat watch over the body of his only son.
He knew he'd only have to wait. The voice would soon tell him what he must do.
If you’ve enjoyed this, please be sure to check out Tales of the Fallen, Book I, now available in paperback and eBook editions!
~~~~~~~
Adventures from Tales of the Fallen (Book I)
Pt. 7
Weaver slowly and methodically stowed his spears in the fur-lined quiver he'd made from seal hide, ensuring that each broad stone tip was carefully covered. The spear tips for the hunt of the ritual of manhood were carefully crafted by Otter, with charms cast upon them to ensure a good hunt. It was said by the hunters in the Tribe that if Otter charmed your spear tip, they couldn't fail to taste blood.
Normally, Weaver took great joy in preparing for a hunt, but his joy in this hunt was soured by Spider's evil dream of the night before. His mind slipped back to the tense anger of that moment, despite his concentration on the hunt preparations.
Moonlight was in the hut of preparation for the night, lying on the bare ice, wrapped only in the single set of skins he was allowed, and so had heard nothing of his parents' discussion.
"Weaver! The voice spoke of your death!"
"Spider, all things must die. This is the way of the creator. All things that live, must di-"
"No! You do not listen! There is death and there is death. This death the voice spoke of was a death beyond death!"
"How can there be death beyond death, my mate?" Weaver asked, a teasing tone to his voice.
Weaver wished he could see Spider's face better, could clearly read her facial expressions, but the hut was as black as the inside of a Sin Eater's stomach. Weaver listened to the faint music within him and estimated the rising of the sun to be some time yet. He would have to wait.
Spider had no patience for him or his teasing, however. "Foolish man! There is the death of life, yes; the death that comes when life has ended; either at old age, or the tip of the spear. But that life returns to the creator. It is part of the weave of the universe. The voice spoke of your death being ripped from the loom, Weaver! The voice spoke of your life running out, your inner life! Your very soul! The life that should be returned to the creator! It said that you would die on the ice! Unknown, unmourned and unrecognized by the People. You would be pulled from the loom of all life and cast into the dark beyond!"
Weaver suppressed a shudder at Spider's words. There were legends among the People: stern warnings about listening to the voices upon the great ice, or voices in the dead of night. It was said these were lives that had been pulled from the weave and sought to return, however they could. They were worse than ghosts.
He pulled himself back from the memory and tried to concentrate again. He looked at the tips of his spears, all the while his mate's voice echoed in his mind, turning what should be brightest joy into ash. The tips were as broad as a hunter's hand, and easily capable of punching through the hide of any beast the People hunted. They were wickedly sharp, but also quite fragile. Weaver was very thorough in ensuring that his spear heads were protected. It would not do to hunt with a quiver full of blunt spears!
He pricked a finger on one of the points and watched as the blood first beaded, welled, then ran down his finger. It pattered with a gentle sound onto the floor of the hut. Weaver watched it for a moment, helplessly replaying the conversation with his mate in his mind.
"Don't go, Weaver. Don't let Moonlight go." Spider's voice was earnest. Fearful.
Weaver tried a conciliatory tone. "Spider, it is not my choice. It is the tradition-"
"Tradition be damned, Weaver!" Spider screamed, pulling herself roughly away from Weaver's gentle embrace. Weaver felt hot saliva fleck his cheeks from the force of her anger. "I speak of life forever lost and you, you speak to me of tradition! Or perhaps it is ambition we should speak of. Yes? The ambition of a father for his son and the pride that leads to madness!"
Weaver recoiled in shock. In all the many turnings he and Spider had been mates, she had never once lifted her voice in anger, choosing instead to chide him gently when she was displeased. She was the softest and easiest of mates to get along with. This dream must've been evil indeed.
There was a moment of shocked silence between them. Spider broke it by lifting a tentative hand to Weaver's face. "I-I am sor-"
"Very well, Spider. Let us speak of these things, then. Let us speak of life," Weaver interrupted, his voice like stone in his throat. "Life as we know it."
Spider said nothing.
"You do not speak? Very well. I will speak. We are of the Tribe of the Badger, the strongest tribe of the strongest people of the world. We live here, in a place of ice and cold, on the very edge of life itself. We live as we have for thousands of years, following the tra-dit-ions," he drew the word out, syllable by syllable, "of our fathers, and their fathers before them.
"We thrive and we prosper, here, at the edge of all things, because we obey the traditions that have become law, and more than law, passed down from father to son since the beginning of time.
"What is life against that, Spider? You would have me break the laws engraved on the walls of my soul? What would I be then, Spider? Would I be a man of the People? A member of the Tribe of the Badger? Would I, indeed, be a man at all?"
Placing the quiver gently down, Weaver sighed. Spider never understood what it meant to be a man. She never understood the complex web of duties and responsibilities that held a man up and allowed him to walk straight.
Thinking these sour thoughts, Weaver slowly began to dress in the carefully tanned furs he'd accumulated in the summer hunts. The great killing cold would not be as bitter in a few short weeks, and was even now mellowing to some degree. The time of the hot sun was soon upon them. A worm of worry bit into Weaver's gut at that thought. It nestled next to the ill-feeling he had for his mate, Spider, and the two combined to give him a sour stomach.
The ritual of manhood required the candidate to hunt the Tribe's fiercest quarry; the Great White Bear. The Great White Bear lived upon the great-old-ice-that-never-melts, and near the places where the many-waters-of-salt made the ice thin. The people of the Tribe did not live near the many-waters-of-salt, so they had to hunt upon the great ice. When the ever-present snow in the lands of the Tribe melted under the brief, fierce light of the time of the hot sun, the Great White Bear would retreat even further to his home at the roof of the world. It would return to its great lodge that stood under the Bear Star, along with the homes of all the world's other gods of cold, ice and snow. The Tribe would be unable to perform the Great Hunt until the killing cold returned to the lands and brought the Great White Bear with it. There was, therefore, a rapidly dwindling amount of time for the men of the Tribe to effect the Great Hunt, and, by extension, Moonlight's ritual of manhood.
There were some in the Tribe, Spider among them, in fact, who said the Great White Bear was a spirit and shouldn't be hunted, even during the ritual of manhood. There were some who whispered that perhaps the Great White Bear was a god in its own right. Weaver had tasted the Great White Bear's salty blood himself, and never listened to these whisperings. His thinking was that if it bled, it was meant to bleed to feed the Tribe. He was a practical man. He did not let ill-feeling for Spider stop what he knew must be done for Moonlight, just as he did not allow maudlin moaning by the weak and the silly stop him from harvesting good meat.
One Great White Bear would feed the Tribe for several turnings of the sun. It stood many times higher than even the tallest hunter. Its paws were as big as four or five of the strongest hunters' heads put together. It was a strong, wise, magnificent animal, and Weaver felt the shivers of anticipation moving through him, dissolving his worries.
If Moonlight could kill a Great White Bear, and bring the bounty of its meat back to the Tribe, he would have much honor, and by extension, so would Weaver.
This led to him remembering what Spider had said before dressing herself and going to the woman's hut - something she had not done, save for her time of moonflow, since they had become mates - leaving him to toss and turn under their bearskin until the sun rose.
"This is not about Moonlight, is it Weaver-Of-Shadows? It is, and always has been, about you."
She threw the skin back with an angry gesture and leapt from their mat.
"Where are you going?" Weaver asked, shocked and hurt.
"I am going, Weaver-Of-Shadows. Perhaps I will return when you remember that you are a father first, a man second."
Weaver sat for a long time, the skin around his naked waist, thinking. The sun had risen and he still lay there, thinking about what she had said, and trying to find where his greatest duty lie.
Moonlight entered the hut then and brought the cold with him. The sun was shining brightly in the sky, reflecting from the ice all round them.
"Father? Are you awake?"
Weaver forced Spider's fears and concerns from his mind. She was a woman, he was a man. That was all he knew, that was all he understood. He had a responsibility - as a man - to his son. Moonlight needed him this day, and he would not fail his son.
"I am awake, my son. Give me a moment to dress and we will go to Otter."
The day had passed and he had not spoken to Spider, had not sought her out. He went with Moonlight to Otter's hut and they had eaten with the Shaman and drank the ritual collection of the tribe's blood mixed with the urine and spices only Otter knew how to prepare, as was proper on the morning of the manhood ritual. Moonlight had then returned to the hut of preparation, to meditate, and Weaver had returned to the hut he shared with Spider.
The day had passed and still they had not spoken. Weaver prepared himself for the hunt, and now he stood there, holding his bloody hand, listening to the silence, and thinking many things.
Moonlight walked into the hut then, dressed in the traditional furs, stained with the blood of many bear hunts, a hopeful smile on his face. Weaver smiled up at his son, at fifteen, already many hands taller than his strong, tall father. His son. His wise, strong, swift son.
"Father? Did you hurt yourself?"
Weaver shook his head, still smiling up at Moonlight.
"It is nothing, my son. The passing of a moment. Let me look at you on this, your day."
And Weaver stood there, staring at his son with a smile on his face. He pictured Moonlight finally feasting on the Bear's heart. Weaver's spirit was warmed by the image of his fellow hunters lifting their bloody spears in acclaim to Moonlight, an enormous bear lying on its side, before them.
The two of them stood there, saying nothing, but speaking so much without words, smiling at each other.
Weaver cast all of his thoughts from him and focused solely on Moonlight. He finished his remaining preparations for the hunt in an absolute ecstasy of anticipation.
Today his son became a man!
If you’ve enjoyed this, please be sure to check out Tales of the Fallen, Book I, now available in paperback and eBook formats!
~~~~~~~
Adventures from Tales of the Fallen (Book I)
Pt. 6
"'Jack'? But tha's th' name o' the-"
Padraig blinked. He'd been drawn so tightly into the Storyweaver's tale he'd forgotten his purpose in coming! He threw a gaze at Ana. She shifted and smiled, but he could feel the tightly-wound coils of his magic about her yet. Nothing had changed there, then. Good.
He allowed himself a small smile of victory. At last. At long last, what he'd sought, what he'd crossed realms and lands and worlds for lay within fingernail's reach! He could taste his success, and it was like finest wine.
Countless miles he'd tracked the Last Father, following whispers and rumor; choking answers out of creatures older than stars and bleeding himself dry in service-sacrifices made to powers so ancient they'd forgotten their own names. The list of those he'd knelt to in abject, begging humility was endless: Nimrod. Gilgamesh. Cain. Maerlyn. Moirgraine. Bacon. Crowley. Night-Foot. Ambergrist. Fell. Oberon. Quatch. The things they required of him; the scars they left - for the merest, tiniest scraps of information! - hurt him still. But the worst of it was the keen light in their eyes. They knew what he sought. They knew he followed the fading trail of fool's gold into twisting labyrinths of madness. It made him wince to remember the indignities he'd endured for millennia, but more, those bright, shining, smiles chased him into restless sleep every night. Mocking laughter woke him every dawn, still burning with his all-consuming obsession: to find the Last Father.
But he'd done it. He'd done all they asked, bled and twisted, cried and cut pieces of himself away. Soul-slices, memories, blood, viscera, seed: they wanted it all. He bled, draining life from himself and changing every time he did. He could no longer remember things: his childhood was a void. He could remember nothing before his fortieth birthday. Where he'd been born; his mother's face; his father's name; all of it had been sacrificed to one power or another, all of it given up in the mad pursuit of his sole quest. Physical, spiritual and emotional torments had been the definition of his life for thousands of years. And all of it to hear this one story told by this one elusive Storyweaver.
Oh, he'd pain Solly Mont. He'd hurt him in ways that would become legend. Scraping away at him for ten-thousand years with dull knives made of broken glass would be the first part of his torments. Killing everyone he loved, everyone he knew, everyone he'd ever even looked at - while Solly hung, watching and helpless, from the chains Padraig would forge from the blood and bones of his children - would occupy ten-thousand years more. Padraig would cross and re-cross Solly's timeline, traveling up and down and through it, finding every last one of Solly's contacts, and he'd torment them into babbling madness before killing them and eating them.
He had plans for this damned Storyweaver, plans he'd made for a very long time. The life he'd cut away from Solly Mont would sustain him for longer than even Padraig could dream, but bringing the Last Father to the Night would be a victory beyond description. Padraig would be rewarded, yes, but he'd take a kiss from the Last Father first; a little something all for himself. It never hurt to have more.
Gloating a little, he called for a night-kin. Let the Storyweaver see a small part of what he could expect. Let him feel the fear of Padraig and his allies. For too long this Solly Mont had withheld things from the Night, and now the Night would have its due. The Night would have the Last Father, and Padraig would bring him to it with Solly Mont's help. The Last Father would serve him, or he would drown everyone here in their own blood.
Of course, he'd drown them anyway, and then consume their twitching souls, but it felt good to threaten.
The Storyweaver's fear was strong. He could feel it through his bound with the night-kin, and it was sweet indeed. Victory was near!
Thinking these thoughts made him warm and aroused. He looked at Ana. Perhaps a few moments with her would be diverting. The woman was a toothsome morsel. Let her writhe under him-
And that was when Solly's poker crashed through the night-kin's face, stunning Padraig and knocking him out of his chair.
Another thing to lay at the Storyweaver's feet. Revenge would be so sweet. There was the rest of the story to be heard, but once the Storyweaver had told it, giving Padraig the final piece of the puzzle, there would be a reckoning between him and Solly Mont.
`~~~~~~~
Adventures from Tales of the Fallen (Book I)
Pt. 5
"'Jack'? But tha's th' name o' the-"
Solly smiled. He thought that name would provoke certain members of his audience. Eyes flicking to where Padraig sat, he was unsurprised to see him sitting forward in his chair, eyes alight with eager anticipation.
Pulling himself back from the narrative, Solly happened to look into the fire that was roaring in the grate. He tried not to let his reaction show on his face but it was a near thing.
Ana's fireplace was a river-rock-lined hearth, big enough to roast an ox in, end to end. The draw of her chimney was tremendous. Unwary drinkers nearest the chimney had actually had full flagons of ale tipped when the wind blew just right. Ana had to keep the flue closed until the fire was burning good and hot, otherwise it'd extinguish itself trying to roar up the chimney. Ana's Hearth - spoken of in the proper sense by the people of Oakenfeld - wasn't a modest fixture.
Solly's eyes were arrested by the appearance of a pair of yellowing, rheumy eyes looking back at him malevolently. A head - smoke and soot blackened, with attendant wisps of white, wiry hair and scabrous flecks of leprous skin - was peeping from just under the bottom of the chimney wall. From its place above the greedy flames, it looked exactly like some sort of gargoyle - or devil-born imp - leering out at him.
Solly could see the fire licking over that raddled skull, could see the way the lips were cracking from the heat. He shuddered inwardly to think of the power necessary to drive that pain away.
Solly raised his tankard in a muted salute to the head and smiled politely. The head's eyes narrowed.
Oh, aye. Smile while yeh still got yer teeth, Solly Mont. A reckonin' is comin'! I will have my pound o' flesh, an' I wil' have it pounded thin!
The voice was thin, whispery, worm-eaten. It came not to Solly's ears, but to his mind; in a place Solly -no stranger to mental invasion attempts - had long ago isolated form the rest. He left it in plain sight, as a sort of irresistible lure, to those who would attack his innermost self. It was also a doormat of a kind, to those who would politely seek mental communication with Solly.
The voice lay across the polished-steel-sphere of Solly's mind like a rotten, thrown egg. Solly grimaced at the greasy, 'garbage-water' feel of it.
Solly suspected that Padraig - for that's who the eyes and head belonged to, whether he was using them at the moment or not - had revealed one of his allies: a night-kin. They weren't the smartest creatures, and they had little experience dancing in another's mind. Solly, on the other hand, could tango.
Like a hunter crafting a careful snare, Solly let a thin tide of fear rise within that isolated place in his mind. He understood this kind of night-kin; they felt their strongest when they could gloat. Solly, the careful hunter, drew Padraig's little friend in with the thin smell of hot fear. Cutting his eyes briefly to where Padraig himself still sat, he was unsurprised to see Padraig's eyes slitted in pleasure.
Scared, are yeh, boy? Should be. I've friends. Aye! Friends that've come a long way indeed to have a word or two with yeh. Friends that whisper and speak of black winds and darkest night and great, bloody shards o' poisoned glass. What think ye o' tha', Solly Mont?
Solly smiled again and tossed the ale remaining in his flagon off with a nonchalance he didn't feel. Night-kin were a dime a dozen. If you knew where to look you could find them congregating together in numbers. They lived under every rock, in every shadow, and at the base of every rotting tree. Give them the slightest reason to obey you, and they would, clothing themselves in whatever shape or form you desired. Solly had met his share, though he'd never met any that went so far as to mimic their master so closely. Solly decided Padraig must truly feel indestructible if he would go this far.
The problem here was not the peeping night-kin. The problem was Padraig did have friends, powerful friends who knew how to give Padraig the leverage he needed to draw Solly Mont into the open. Padraig he could handle. Night-kin he could handle, but Padraig's unseen, powerful allies? They could be a problem.
Standing idly, he stretched and cracked his back with a grimace, all the while never letting his eyes lose the head peeping from the chimney. Wondering what the Padriag-shaped-night-kin was holding on to, Solly moved absently toward the fire irons. The chimney walls were as smooth as glass and clean, besides. A sudden mental picture of a bloated spider with a Padriag-shaped-head and withered limbs looking at him with undisguised hate filled his imagination.
Holding the night-kin's gaze, he could feel witchy brushes against his mind. Drawing it in a little more, he let it feel some of the unease he was experiencing. He put out a mental perfume that acted on the night-kin in the same way a Venus Fly Trap's worked on a fly. Little by little, Solly coated the honeyslide of his mind with those weakening emotions the night-kin craved. And little by little, as the night-kin's confidence grew, it came further into the closed, and slowly locking box canyon that was Solly's mind.
Padraig, in his seat across the room, continued to gloat, not realizing that Solly held his ally - mentally speaking - in the palm of his hand. Solly bent to the hearth, under cover of warming his hands. The night-kin's face was inches from his own. Solly could smell smoke, ashes and raw, rancid meat on the night-kin's breath: service sacrifice, most usually eaten by the hopeful applicant. Solly wondered where Padraig had found the meat.
I'll burn this place down. Aye! Burn it down and piss on th' ashes! What think yeh o' that, Solly Mont? Eh? Think tha'll be a jolly time?
The little creature continued to gloat and whisper its diseased promises of death and retribution right up until Solly hit it in between the eyes with all sixty pounds of his poker.
The night-kin are, at best, weak, hedge-wizards - still struggling with the most basic of cantrips and ritualia. They are bound by the laws associated with their kind of magic. In order to perform this little reconnaissance and fear mission, Padriag's little friend needed to borrow power from something much stronger than it was. Solly was certain the lender was Padraig. And he was rewarded with this gamble by seeing, from the corner of his eye, Padraig fall out of his chair, mewling pathetically, and holding his head.
The fire roaring in Ana's hearth - that a minute ago wasn't of any consequence to the night-kin - roared up in greedy acclamation as Padraig's protection was ripped from it by the crashing impact of Ana's poker. It fled up the chimney, still tossing off vile curses and threats, fast as it could scuttle. Solly looked to the poker, and was unsurprised to see its end blackened and twisted as if it had come in contact with heat too great for it. There was no blood on the poker.
With a sigh, he laid it back down next to the hearthside.
All this took far less time than it takes to tell, and went largely unnoticed by the patrons of the Beller-Inn, save for those around Padraig's table, and he was up much quicker than Solly would have liked, rubbing his head and throwing a single, hate-filled and baleful glance Solly's way before sitting himself and righting his spilled cup.
Father Parsons, a man in touch with the invisible, called out, "Alrigh' then, Solly?" He'd only seen Solly bang the poker, with some force, against the bottom of the chimney's entrance.
"Aye, Father. Just knockin' a bit of filth free." He turned to face the crowd, in particular, a now furiously blushing Conley. He smiled at the reddening giant, wondering what was bothering him.
"Sorry, Solly," that worthy rumbled in his basso-profound way.
"Whyever for, Conley?" Solly asked.
"I din't mean ta' interrupt," Conley replied. Solly realized he'd completely forgotten about the voice that'd pulled him from his narrative. He smiled over at Conley.
"S'alright, Conley. I was gettin' a bit dry, myself. Who's for another, then?"
The shout that came from the crowd rocked Ana back on her heels. She was kept busy for several minutes, pulling flagons of ale and filling the food orders that came her way.
When all had returned to their places, ale flagons to elbows, Solly resumed his perch. His eye happened to fall on a very large, acorn-shaped nut atop the mantel. It was the size of a large watermelon. He looked at Padraig, who stared back, impassively. A curious idea crossed Solly's mind. Padraig had friends, but then, come to that, so did he!
"Now then," he said, taking a steadying pull off his flagon, "I b'leve you were tryin' ta' tell me summat, Conley," Solly said, smiling guilelessly.
The Conley blushed again. "I done apologized for tha', Solly, so I have!"
"Aye! An' I'm no' mad at yeh, yeh great, thunderin' bullywug! I'd like yeh ta' finish tha' thought, if you'd be so kind!"
The Conley grinned, a beautiful sight on a face that could kill a charging bull, and said, "Wall, I was sayin' summat about Jack. Ain't tha' th' name o' tha' hero in yer story abou' Fort Noplace?"
Solly laughed, his head rolling back on his neck. "It's Fort Nowhere, yeh tremblin' son o' Finn! Fort Nowhere, but aye, ye've hit the nail on th' head, so yeh have."
"Then tis th' same feller?" the Conley asked, his brow furrowing.
"Wall now, Conley, it's funny yeh ask tha'. For just then I interruped Weaver with a shout o' my own."
Solly sat back on his story-telling roost, his hand pulling the strange, over-sized acorn over to him. He went on with the story, but another part of his mind was remembering a debt owed.
If you’ve enjoyed this, please be sure to check out Tales of The Fallen, Book I, now available in paperback and eBook formats from Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. And be sure to check out what my friends over at The Apocalypse Gene are up to. They’re giving away a chance to win a free copy of their book, as well as a chance to win all three of mine. Click here to enter!
The Apocalypse Gene Kindle Giveaway!
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My Review of Whispers of the Dead.
Whispers of the Dead is a short story cum novelette available on Amazon.com, iTunes bookstore and at the lulu.com storefront (http://www.lulu.com/cyberkyst) by author V. Artemis Reyd.
This story is a mystery/thriller, and it’s hard to write a review that talks about the story without giving too much away, but here goes.
In some ways, this story reads like a typical modern mystery or thriller. When it begins, the elements are all there. A pair of decapitated, disarticulated bodies are found in the woods in a graphic display obviously meant to be a statement. Zoe Delante, the story’s protagonist, is called on by the local police department to investigate the crime scene.
And then we turn left into the woods and the real fun starts.
Zoe is a powerful psychic with the ability to relive traumatic experiences through touch. Zoe is in many ways a fairly typical mystery/thriller protagonist. She’s tough and dignified in a barely approachable way, serious and somewhat anti-social. I found myself distancing from her in personal dislike; a testament, I think, to V. Artemis Reyd’s ability to live inside the character’s head. Zoe has all the normal problems of a young woman trying to find her way in life, compounded by her life choices and her abilities. It’s hard to date when you can tell your prospective beau all of his secrets before the appetizer arrives.
She is an isolated person. Some of it is by choice, but some of it is the result of people’s misgivings.
While it would be quite easy to dismiss Zoe as being a murder-mystery/thriller-protagonist cliché, a more attentive reader will find himself discovering that all of this posturing and posing is really her armor. Zoe solves murders; grisly, unsolvable murders, while reliving them. Her crime scenes have the same elements—the blood, the gore, the pain and death--of all crime scenes, but she gets to deal with seeing it happen—the very worst humanity has to offer—all over again. And she enters every crime scene knowing that. When the dead show up and ask to be saved, you have to reassess a character’s resolve. Zoe solves her cases with a tenacity that is hard to believe. She is not a cuddly, sex-kitten, cliché, but a determined do-gooder who happens to be a Wiccan-Psychic-Murder-Solving-Ninja with a little bit of an understandable chip on her shoulder.
In many ways, this story made me think of a love child between TV’s Bones and The X-Files. Zoe’s personality mirrors Dr. Temperance Brennan’s in many ways, and fans of either show will find much to enjoy here. There are many of the same elements, but done with an attentive touch to the occult that can only come from first-hand knowledge.
The universe Ms. Delante lives in is one in which legalized hunts for lycanthropes are sanctioned by the government, and an attack by a werewolf shouldn’t be ruled out in any murder investigation. Surprises like this lurk around the edges of the story, and I found myself wanting to peek behind the curtains at this interesting place to be.
Without giving anything away, the story features one of the better fight scenes I’ve ever read and V. Artemis Reyd, demonstrating a coolly clinical eye to blood and tissue throughout the piece, really cuts loose with the fight. The fur flies in every direction. It won’t ever be translated properly to the big screen, but it would be enormously entertaining to see the attempts.
While I read this story—the first I’ve read featuring this character--I got the impression that this is not the first story to feature Ms. Zoe Delante, and V. Artemis Reyd writes it as though the reader has known her for some time. In many ways I found this to be an inclusive effect and invited me to delve deeper into the piece. I found by the time that I had finished that I cared about dysfunctional Zoe, and I wanted her to be both happy and successful, as unlikely a possibility as that is.
The end of the story is both mean and satisfying and I encourage you to read the entire thing without skipping to the end. No cheating!
I don’t know that this story would work for everyone, but for the advanced reader, looking for something written with flair, style and a challenge to accept something above your comfort horizon, Whispers of the Dead fits the bill nicely. I recommend it to anyone looking for a story that won’t fit neatly on any genre shelf and still wants the frissionable entertainment of a great mystery/thriller.
My Review of The Apocalypse Gene
I am an independent author; otherwise known as a “freelance author.” That’s a really fancy way of saying I write for anybody who will pay me a nickel to do it. Given the opportunity I’d sell out so fast I’d leave scorch marks. Being an independent author is a full-time job because you’re constantly looking for gigs. You write your poetry, your plays, your novels and your short stories; your blog, your column for the local newspaper if you’re really lucky and for as many fanzines as you can find to accept your stuff. You join a million websites, hoping to make a few cents on a hundred word article about fly-fishing in the Arctic, and you generally make yourself as visible as possible. All while trying to create something new and wonderful that’ll get you a James Patterson-esque publishing contract.
Independent authors hang out with other independent authors. You used to do it at the smoke-filled coffee shop in the hip neighborhood, where a beret was de rigeur, and plaid was the height of fashion. Anymore that sort of intellectual exercise is relegated to the virtual community, and I “hang out” with close to a thousand authors I’ve never actually met. One of those authors is a cat in Chicago named Carlyle Clark.
There’s an old tradition in folklore that everyone has a doppelganger; a perfect copy of you in every conceivable way. If you’re really lucky, your doppelganger will be twisted to evil and bent on your destruction; a nemesis who longs for nothing more than to consume your flesh and swallow your soul. The trick, when realizing you’ve met your doppelganger is figuring out whether you’ve just met your twin or your nemesis.
Carlyle—Lyle, as I’ve come to know him—and I met on the writing site Fanstory.com. Through a careful application of etiquette and common sense, we began to brutally criticize each other with the specific goal of challenging the other to get better and out think the other with ideas that are so far beyond the pale as to be inconceivable. If you’ve enjoyed my novel Tales of the Fallen, you have, in no small way, Lyle to thank.
We have the same potato-like physiques, spend entirely too much time on the dark and twisted edge of fantasy, geek out to the same impulses, have had similar life experiences, and hang out with beautiful women who are entirely too good for us. Whenever I think of my relationship with Lyle, I think of the Harlan Ellison story, Shatterday. Frankly, if I woke up tomorrow in Lyle’s life, it wouldn’t surprise me. If I weren’t happily married, I’d move to Chicago so we could date even though the similarities between us are eerie enough to cause us to pause and reconsider the advisability of our relationship. I love Lyle dearly, but hanging out with him in close proximity makes me think of the reaction between matter and anti-matter. And we’ve yet to decide which of us the evil one is.
Which is why, when I opened my mail box and found Lyle’s latest novel, The Apocalypse Gene, I was both elated and worried. Elated, because if anybody freaking deserved to be in print, it was Lyle. Worried, because while he didn’t ask me to, I knew I’d need to write a review.
It’s what you do when you’re an independent author. When you finally get into print, you tend to send your baby to those people you like and respect; the ones who write the same kinds of things you do and will be interested in what you have to say. You don’t ask them to, but the unwritten, unspoken law is that you write a review that gets the three people who consistently read your work to go check out theirs. It’s the payola of the modern literary movement, and you play along as best you are able.
I am happy to be able to say that we’re going to be kicking Lyle out of the club soon.
So far as I’m aware, The Apocalypse Gene is Lyle’s first novel. He wrote much of it during our time on Fanstory.com. I read and critiqued it then, when it was little more than a zygote of a story. This story has been a part of my consciousness for nearly ten years. My involvement with it was largely minimal, but I have a great deal of affection for it.
Lyle’s girl, Suki, is listed as a co-author. This bothered me at first, as I thought The Apocalypse Gene didn’t need a Yoko coming along to muck up the works. Let’s face it; The Beatles were a better band before Yoko got all up in there and gummed everything up.
I’m well into the book now, and where I can see what I suspect are Suki’s fingerprints (she either has a huge crush on Mikah, the secondary protagonist, or Lyle has some lingering sexual identity issues he may want to address) her touch is light. What emerged from their partnership is a work bordering on fantasy genius.
The story begins in the undisclosed future in Chicago—drawn with enormous affection by the resident authors. A worldwide pandemic is raging, and life on the planet has changed to the point of unrecognizability. Olivya Wright-Ono, a half black, half Asian teenaged girl lives with her mother in their home cum hospice center. Olivya’s mother works for the government, providing those desperately ill with a place to die. Olivya is, in many ways, a typical teenaged girl. She has an attitude problem reinforced by her ninja-like martial arts skills, given to her by her deceased Japanese father. She tends to be stubborn to the point of insanity, she’s selfish, confident, self-absorbed and—in my humble opinion—a real pain in the ass. Olivya is a “mystic”; someone who can see the life energy auras of those around her. Her love interest is Mikah, a non-human Kindred who lives in a high-rise complex filled with quasi-demonic creatures who seem to be bent on world domination. Mikah is a powerful telempath, able to direct and change the emotional states of others. In one of the book’s opening scenes, Mikah comes to Olivya’s rescue when she is being threatened by a shiv-pack: a lawless group of degenerate gangsters who live on the edge of death brought about by their apocalyptic society. Mikah uses his telempathy to reduce the shiv-pack’s leader, Ripper, to a quivering mass of giggling skin.
The book starts with the throttle down, and it doesn’t ease up at all. The plot twists are thoughtful, surprising and carefully rendered. The book takes you on a journey into a world of “what if?” that I, for one, dearly wish I had written.
When I first read the book, several years ago, many of the events taking place were unlikely in the extreme and reminiscent of Star Trek. I was thrilled to see Lyle incorporating technological advances that took place in the interim, and flawlessly wove them into the plot. This book was written with careful respect to the craft and a great deal of affection for the characters and the story in general. There are elements of folklore throughout, as well as Easter Eggs of Lyle’s passion for fantasy and mythology. It is the kind of book that could save the publishing industry if more people wrote like this.
Anyone who is a fan of anime of manga will recognize The Apocalypse Gene. It has an atmospheres-deep, Akira feel to it, and if Suki and Lyle have not already begun the process of translating this story into a graphic novel, they should. I could easily see it selling well among the graphic-novel set.
The book straddles the line between Urban Fantasy and YA. The target audience for The Apocalypse Gene could easily be teenaged girls. Olivya’s pubescent struggles and teenaged misery would speak to that audience loudly and clearly. I could see it sitting comfortably on the YA shelves, but it provides enough of a meaty story for parents who want to read something along with their kids. There are a few elements that might not be suitable for children, so I encourage parents to read it first, and then give it to their children if they can bear to let it go. The timing of the release couldn’t have been better with this book. The Apocalypse Gene fits squarely in the paradigm of 2012’s End of Days and the recent fascination with the occult, disease and monsters so luridly portrayed in today’s media.
It goes without saying I enjoyed this book and recommend it highly, I think, but it’s worth repeating. The Apocalypse Gene is a satisfying book that will leave you lying awake, worrying about it. Go get a copy.
Speaking of which, Suki and Lyle are offering a free copy of their book, along with a chance to win a number of others—including all three of mine—on their The Apocalypse Gene website. Click here for a chance to sign up!
http://www.theapocalypsegene.com/cy-chi/
~~~~~~~
Smoke rose in lazy spirals, spelling messages of doom and hate. The smell of cordite was high in the air; concentrating on the lips and tongue. My last sammich was making a concentrated bid for freedom from the slow drip of blood and gore from the walls around me.
I hurt everywhere. I was certain the last ninja squad had broken most of my teeth and ripped what was left of my ears of my skull. I’d persevered through the moat full of barracuda, climbed the walls lined with broken glass—despite a body nature had never intended to climb anything—and swallowed buckets of my own blood after the fist fight with the Quentin Tarantino inspired Babes-With-Guns-Who-Don’t-Use-Them-In-Favor-Of-Swords* Squad. (*Even though this is the twenty-first century and no-one, anywhere knows how to use a sword.) It hadn’t been pretty. I am not ashamed to admit to some real fear after the nail-breaking, dental-veneer-spitting, hair-pulling attack had come at me from three different sides. It was all I could do to leap straight up, Matrix-like, and kick them all in the head as I came spiraling down, hooting—for reasons I don’t care to go into here—like a baboon.
When the Colonel had come boiling out of the closet, I wasn’t ready for him. He hit me seven or eight times across the head, face and neck with a bucket of extra crispy, screaming at me in Chinese and high-kicking me in the head at the same time. I went down under the flurry of his blows, betrayed by a Kentuckian and ready to die. He stared at me with those black, soulless eyes, grimacing in triumph, and I somehow found the will to kick him in the nards.
He went down, clucking, and I stuffed him in the closet—but not before stripping him of his eleven herbs and spices--with a head of lettuce, three green beans and a fork.
Mayor McCheese, Grimace, the M&Ms, Max Headroom, and even the idol they all worshipped; the King—Ronald, himself, came to do battle, and one by one I fought them off.
But I was done. I’d made it this far. Fought off zombies, farmers, frontier’s men, Mafiosos, robots, experimental donuts and dinosaurs. None of them had been able to stop me, but the accumulation had taken its toll. I was Batman at the end of Knightfall: ready to fall over, but unable to stop.
I crawled, broken-backed, down the hall with a ka-bar clenched in my teeth and my fingernails digging deep into the plush, pile carpeting. I tried not to think about what I was dragging behind me; the deep, pulling ache was a distraction and I needed to focus all my fury, all my hate, all my dying will on the accomplishment of my final objective: Mark Zuckerberg.
The blood I left on the floor looked like a sanguine comet’s final goodbye. It lubricated my passage and the going was briefly easier.
Zuckerberg cowered on the floor, gibbering, mere inches ahead of me as I crawled like a James Cameron nightmare toward him, blowing blood-tinged spit-bubbles and promising to do such awful, awful things to him. I cursed in three different languages: White Trash, American and Quiddish* (Quasi-Yiddish. It is so a language!)
This nightmare was his fault. His doing. If he’d only told the programmers, “Hey. Let them send status updates as a much larger block of text before they hit enter. This isn’t Twitter. I don’t need to get an ace-whompin’ from some random bald, fat guy with dialogue and plot-twisting issues.”
If only.
But here we were, inches from death while all around us the world burned.
Who knew? The Maya never said anything about Mark Zuckerberg, and all those fancy scientists with all their fancy equipment certainly never suspected that a gangly computer nerd from New York would be the author of Armageddon.
But I knew. I’d long suspected him of being a member of the Unholy Square of Corporate Evil. Those of us who pay attention know that Britney Spears, Pepsi, McDonald’s and Ford forged an agreement in the 1700s to end the world. It’s a plot worthy of Michael Bay, Nicholas Cage, and ten bazillion man-hours from the boys at WETA. Their corporate lackeys follow suit, toeing the line of cabalistic obedience with slavish devotion. I searched long and hard for the proof I needed, and when I found it, my shout shook the walls. I couldn’t stop Britney Spears. No power less than the concentrated evil of a Cheney/Rumsfeld Binary System could do that. Pepsi had left its claws in me and I feared it. I worshipped regularly at the temple of McDonalds. It is only recently—since they raised their prices—that we have been foes. And Ford . . . well, Ford held the note to my car, so I couldn’t be screwing around with Ford. But Zuckerberg . . . that smug, handsome, rich, young white man who swallowed hours of my day in a petty race to be witty; who used my intellect to click “Do Job’ ten-thousand times a day in Mafia Wars; who had the unmitigated gall to require me to wait for fifteen minutes to upload the cheesy movie of me complaining about the psoriasis on my scalp on his free website . . . Zuckerberg I could stop.
And I came for him. Riding like a demon from a comic book in my Twinkie-esque station-wagon, armed to the teeth with every bath-tub-explosive-recipe I’d ever seen, my copy of The Communist Manifesto and The Anarchist’s Cookbook, quips, clichés and pointless asides, plot-mangling devices I wasn’t afraid to use, and more guns and ammo than even War had. I would battle most magnificently.
So here we are, Zuckerberg, and I, face to face. One of us is ready to end the madness. The other just wants his Mommy. And the countdown I’ve been keeping to a thousand words ends here. Good luck, Jen. Godspeed.
~~~~~~~
Fuck you, Breast Cancer.
You come crawling in out of the dark, ambush a little girl like a mugger and throw some cheap shots like a punk? Hit a little girl that never hurt anybody? But that’s how you do. Isn’t it, Breast Cancer? You and your weak-ass family, you go looking for babies and old people. Can’t step to the strong, can you, Breast Cancer? Can’t step to the mighty. You look for little girls. You’re some kind of tough guy, huh? Pick on small, innocent little things who get all scared and cry.
Well, you screwed up this time, Breast Cancer. Sure. You got a couple of lucky swings in. You knocked us down, rang our bell a little; even had us scared and crying a bit. But I’ll tell you something for free, Breast Cancer. You didn’t give HER breast cancer; you gave US breast cancer. All of us. And you might’ve snuck a few cheap shots in, but we’ve got your timing now. We know where you’re at.
You wanna fight? It’s on, motherfucker. We’ve been waiting for you, looking for you, and ready to kick fifteen different kinds of shit out of you.
This ain’t gonna be no ‘holistic-wellness pink-ribbons burning-sage-in-the-hug-circle’ kind of a fight. This is gonna be a ‘steel-toed-prison-rape’ ass-beating. She’s not alone, you dumb bastard! Every time you try anything we’re gonna be riiiiiiiiiiiight there, breathing down your neck and stepping on your junk. When her strength fails, we’re gonna be there to hold her up. When she’s tired, we’re gonna be there to keep her going. When you take what you take from her, we’re gonna be there to put more back. We’re gonna crawl so far up your ass you’re gonna need our permission to blow your own damn nose. Breast Cancer, when we get done with you they’re gonna bury what’s left in a yogurt cup. We’re gonna dig your eyes out of your skull with our thumbs and shit in the holes. We’re gonna stomp a mud-hole so wide in you they’re gonna be able to take pictures of it from space.
We. Are. Not. Afraid. Of. You. We’re mad and we’re gonna take it to you with everything we’ve got. We’re gonna beat your ass to sleep with our bare hands. You stepped up to a whole world of hurt and it’s gonna rain down in a lovely cascade. We’re still gonna be here laughing at your weak ass in fifty years. We swear, we will do whatever it takes to rip your junk off and stick it down your throat. Every birthday, every Christmas, every Thanksgiving, we’re still gonna be here, pounding the hell out of you.
We’re not afraid, we’re not playing around, we’re not going anywhere, and you can suck our collective dick.
So fuck you, Breast Cancer. Fuck you running. Fuck you sideways. Fuck you, fuck your mom, and fuck your entire in-bred, knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing, asshole-baby-family.
Remember: when we’re standing over the top of you, picking what’s left of your face out of our knuckles, you brought this on yourself. You started it, but we’re gonna be the ones to finish it. Don’t go to sleep. Don’t turn your back. Don’t even blink. Once you do, we’ll be there, ripping shreds out of you with our fingernails and teeth if we have to.
Bring it, you bitch-ass, hooker-dick, son-of-a-bitch. You ain’t got the balls to take us.
14 March 11
Our friend showed me a photograph of you, and I remembered how we were. I loved you once, and I think that cost me more than I understand.
I am writing this to the girl I loved, twenty years ago.
You are a stranger; a person I do not care to know. Your life has been lived and your stories are told in a different voice. There is no music I care to share with you, no wine I care to drink. Our future is a corpse: buried and forgotten, and that is as it should be.
But the woman you were is important to me; she is cherished in the halls of my heart; treasured and remembered.
You were an ideal. I worshipped at your altar; I left costly gifts and the blood of my sacrifices rained and pooled around us. Family was forgotten, friends were forsaken. I whispered your name in my lonely darkness and my prayers were answered in turns with your kisses and scorn. You were the center of my world, my long-hoped for goal, the goddess I dreamt about.
I bore your love like a cross, happy to do it but ignorant of any other way.
In time, I felt the pain of your love and the scars took longer to heal. Still, I bore it, believing my service, my worship, my adoration would be returned in full measure.
Do I sound bitter?
Recriminatory?
The holes you tore in me have healed and my life has moved forward, but I still feel them; the tenderness is still there. There have been others, and now there is only one, but you were first, and you should know that.
Loving you taught me how to be loved. It taught me how to absorb the life of a person I wanted and to give myself in return. But loving you also taught me how to hurt, to bleed to die in slow, painful increments that stretched across days and months, years and years.
I missed you. Then I hated you. Then I hated all of you. And then I forgave you, and I found love again.
I am whole. I am complete and I am healed. I love and I am loved, but you were first, and loving you cost me.
And you should know that.
06 March 11
Every so often I like to take a break from the heavy stuff to do a little something for the peeps. You know, kind of like a public service sort of thing.
"Be Cool, Stay In School!"
"Only You Can Prevent Republicanism."
"Don't Drink And Drive, it makes you Die."
Et cetera.
I've also been known to accept challenges from time to time.
"Write me a thousand words about your left shoe."
"Write me a thousand words about your thumb."
"Write me a thousand words about an animal. Any animal."
What these poor saps don't realize is that it's really just an excuse for me to gently tease them underneath a thin covering of what they've requested.
(Hear that, Sally? I'm gonna make fun of ya'!)
Today's chapter is a challenge/request, courtesy of my friend, Sallyo.
Now, before we go any further, let me establish one very simple caveat. I like Sally. I like her a lot. She's a lot of fun, she's smart and she doesn't take herself too seriously. I consider her, as much as you can consider someone you've never actually met, spoken to, or shared a meal with, a friend. Thus far, in our online 'friendship', I've never once gotten any sort of indication that I've ever managed to piss her off. Ergo, what follows is a loving roast of sorts. Read it that way, and don't send me cheesy little emails wishing me luck with my 'loving relationship' with Sally, Okay? She's happily married and so am I. And even if I weren’t, I couldn't keep up with her anyway.
For those of you who don't know her, Sallyo is this really gifted author, poet and all around nice lady that lives in a faraway place called Tasmania, or Australia, depending on how provincial she's feeling at the moment.
I've been repeatedly assured that Tasmania really does exist, and it's a bit south of the place mentioned above called Australia. I'm simply reporting the facts as I know them, not advocating the existence of continents I've never seen. Okay? Calm down.
She lives there with a coven of Jack Russell Terriers, a husband and an assortment of other pets. Sally's managed, through her poetry and her prose, to convince me that her love of animals has gone well beyond a certain fondness into the realm of 'near-religious-observance'. Sally loves animals more than I love to eat them, and that's saying a lot.
If you go to any one of her online profiles, you'll see a picture of her holding two of her little doggie friends, hiding behind them as she does so.
Sally's writing reflects way more than her love of animals, but she picked the chapter topic, not me. She's been writing--for pay--as long as I've been alive and I imagine that in that space of time she's managed to sneak in a different topic or two, but I kinda doubt it.
I'll tell you how I picture Sally in my head, loosely based on her picture.
Sally's about five feet, five inches tall, and she weighs a little under a hundred-thirty pounds. I'm smart enough to know that no woman anywhere weighs more than a hundred-fifty. Ever. She's got short hair that's by turns light-ash-blonde or brunette, depending on how much time she's spent tanning by the glow of her monitor.
Her smile eats up ninety percent of her head; her laugh sounds like the sun rising; her children adore her; she has a Dr. Doolittle sort of relationship with the beasties in her locale; her husband worships her, and the rest of her fades into the background.
She's also very kind to all creatures, big and small; most notably--in my experience--to invertebrate, molluskian American Redneck creatures that bear vague resemblances to Samwise Gamgee.
I never get tired of that joke. That's why.
She speaks a strange version of English that precludes her from knowing the definition of 'homie'. It's the accent. Look! Sally's blushing!
I discovered the poetic genius that is Sallyo, for myself, a while back. For some reason, she used to enjoy slumming about on Fanstory.com, posting these breath-taking works of utter genius that made my tepid efforts look like seismic scribbling.
Think I'm exaggerating a bit there, don't ya'? Nope. Sally's one of those amazingly talented poets that other poets get all misty-eyed about. Picture, if you will, a bunch of college-educated-sweater-wearing-geeks standing around, listening to zither music, drinking coffee, and discussing the proper way of milking a kangaroo. I've got a dollar that says Sally's name'll come up, and they'll get all misty-eyed. High school students will be tormented with her pleached verses five-hundred years from now.
"What is Mrs. Odgers saying here, when she describes the underwear-less dance of Mama Bambarinabee? Why has Mama got Toad guts in-between her toes? Who can tell me what this means?"
Sally can, quite literally, toss something off that leaves you gasping for breath.
No. I'm being perfectly serious here (for the moment). Sally writes poetry like other people put on their fricking pants. It's just this natural, careless exercise for her. If I didn't like and respect Sally so much, I'd hate her freaking guts.
For those of you who haven't yet experienced a Sallyo poem, go run headfirst into a wall. Do it again. Do it a third time. Can you stand up? No? Okay. You've punished yourself enough.
Go to Sallyo's portfolio, pick a poetry collection at random, and read a single poem. I PROMISE you'll be enormously impressed.
Go read one!
Now!
Good, wasn't it? She can't write free verse worth a dang, though. Poor deluded lamb.
She writes prose too, but so do I, so that's no big deal.
But this chapter is supposed to be about animals, so I'd better get started on that. I've blithered on for nearly nine-hundred words about how wonderful Sally is; how easy she makes this writing thing look; how nice she is about accepting and giving constructive criticism; how good of a sport she is about constantly getting ribbed by a loud-mouthed, smart-ass, American punk who's not as old as some of her pants or shoes; how she's invented her own form of poetic expression that leaves you wondering if she's like, really some famous poet, pretending to be somebody else; how much she likes her two dogs--did I mention that? Sally likes her Jack Russells so much, she and her husband, a talented writer in his own right, wrote a couple of novels about them. Send her an email for more information. I'm not a press agent, after all.
Well, it wasn't about animals, but it was close, wasn't it?
02 March
Well, it finally happened. My Father, the epitomized-poster-boy for all anti-establishment causes, graduated.
From College.
With a Master's degree!
(I'm proud. Can you tell?)
He showed up at my house at two-o'clock in the afternoon. He woke me up by pushing in my front door and hollering, 'Are you asleep?'
I wasn't. Not yet.
I got up, got dressed, and exchanged a few insults with my Father, who was as giddy as a little boy on Christmas Morning. I grinned, took a shower, got dressed and we left.
Dad graduated on the 15th of December from the University of Louisville's Kent School of Social Sciences, with a Master's Degree in Social Science. Yet, when we parked, four hours earlier than we needed to, outside of the Kentucky International Convention Center in downtown Louisville, I had to help my Father put his hood and gown on. I assembled his tassel and his mortarboard, and I arranged his hood so the gold velvet showed.
Naturally, I took advantage of this situation by making as many snarky comments as I could.
'How many College degrees does it take to put a robe on?'
'Gee, Dad. It's a good thing I'm here. You'd'a gone across the stage naked!'
And etcetera, etcetera. I never pass up a chance to sling a couple my Dad's way.
We wandered around the Convention Center, riding the escalators, talking to people and generally having a pretty good time, all things considered. At one point, we went across the street to Louisville's Metro Deli, in the Aegon Center, and I bought a strawberry smoothie while Dad checked his e-mail.
We'd walk up to people Dad recognized and Dad'd say something along the lines of 'This is my eldest son. He's a published poet!'
And I'd put my hand out, and say, 'Hi! I'm eldest son!'
To which Dad would invariably reply, 'His name is Nescher and he's my eldest son.' The person usually had to introduce themselves as Dad has only a passing interest in learning people's names. He's just cool like that, I guess. This happened three or four times, so maybe him getting a Master's degree didn't make him all that much smarter.
After a certain point in these festivities, I was starting to get a bit tired. I'd been awake since seven-thirty the previous evening, having been to Bible Study and work, and Dad had interrupted my one and only chance at a nap.
'Dad, I'm gonna go sit down for a while.'
'Okay, Nescher. I'm gonna wander around some more.'
So I picked a seat in the highest row of the bleacher in the KICC and people-watched for a few hours while Dad wandered around, in his cap and gown, talking to people he didn't know.
I don't like crowds. Never have, never will. I don't like the feeling of being pinned in by a large group of people. Large groups of people give off all kinds of odors: sweat, funk, bad breath, flatulence, perfume, cologne, what have you. Somehow, when I'm in a large crowd of people, most especially when the crowd is indoors, those odors become magnified, and I start to freak out.
I'm telling you this because the University of Louisville is one of the nation's larger schools. There were about a thousand graduates when Dad graduated, and they all brought their stinky, smelly, crowd-pressing-in-on-Nescher friends and relatives.
I was glad I picked the seat at the top, lemme tell ya'.
Shortly before the ceremony started, my sister and her husband walked in.
I like my brother-in-law, Jerry. He's got an acid wit, he's not afraid to exchange loving insults with me, he's studying to be a scientist, and, most important in MY book, he worships the ground my sister walks on - something my sister, God Bless her evil little heart, takes outrageous advantage of:
'Jerry, I want to start running marathons for fun.'
'Jerry, I know you grew up in Kentucky and everything, but you're not allowed to eat any kind of pork anymore, 'cause it's not Kosher, and it makes me physically ill.'
'Jerry, we're gonna spend a week with my family, okay?'
'Jerry, can we get a Bentley?'
They walked up to our section in the bleachers, sat down, and we talked for a while. Dad, in his cap and gown, beaming with all kinds of pent-up emotions and pride.
The ceremony dragged on for a VERY long time. At one point I took a picture of Jerry, sleeping peacefully, his head on chest, his arms crossed. Dad'll treasure that one, I'm sure.
The highlights were few. Dad walked up to his seat in the graduate processional, and U of L had set up these jumbotron monitors. When Dad walked up to the camera, his beard spilling all over the top of his robe, his mortarboard perched atop his crow's nest afro, and a big cheese-eating grin on his face, he made the 'I love you,' sign at us.
We responded by hooting and hollering and being generally obnoxious.
'Goooooo, Dad!'
'Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaale Pysssssssscheeeeeeeeer!'
'Pretty darn good for a guy who couldn't read!'
The rich white lady in front of us kept turning around and giving us looks and that was a highlight in and of itself.
When Dad's name was mentioned - correctly pronounced and everything! - we yelled ourselves silly. We yelled his name, we made the 'roof-roof-roof!' noise of a large barking dog - Military thang. You wouldn't understand - and hooted and hollered like a bunch of loons. The black family in front of us was nice enough to help out, with screaming, stamping on the bleachers and making a LOT of noise for Dad's accomplishment. We reciprocated when their graduate walked across the stage.
I'm enormously proud of my Dad. He's managed to leverage the system he despises into paying for a College degree he wouldn't have been able to get ten years ago.
He's living proof that sticking it to the man CAN be fun and profitable.
23 February
Drive.
Get in the car; put it in gear and just drive. Some Tom Petty on the tape deck and nothing between you and the road but the gleam of your headlights. Find someplace higher than the rest of the world; scrub your fingers against the sky, dusting the stars with a light dose of laughter. Talk to God; ask Him what it's all about.
Find some open space and really put the hammer down. Drive it like it’s on fire, find some curves and turn the lights off.
Just Drive.
Wallet, knife, compass, keys. Exit the front door, making sure it's closed behind me and then look up. The sky here is so clear that sometimes you feel you could just pull down a star and pin it to your shirt. I tend to get a little transfixed when I look at the Kentucky night sky. Tonight's no different. The stars are glimmering wetly under a new moon and I feel the naked space between me and them. I tell God, or myself, or whomever I'm really addressing, 'The stars are beautiful tonight, aren't they?'
I feel a faint hint of satisfaction, as though something is acknowledging a job well done.
I almost forget that I'm running late for work as it is.
"Dear Lord Jesus. Please allow me to get to work safely and in a timely manner. Please help me to live my life today in a manner that would make you proud of me. In Jesus’ Name I pray, Amen."
First gear, second, right at the stop, left at the light onto the highway. Third, fourth, fifth.
"Let's see. NPR tonight? Some information on what's going on?"
A pause, a beat so imperceptible I nearly miss it, and then . . .
"No . . . no. Tonight I feel like music."
Scan. First up, the local Alternative Music Channel. The needy sounds of a familiar band bleed out of my speakers like pus from a wound.
That won’t do.
Tapes, then. The mellow, bluesy tones of Dale Thompson telling me the gospel. 'Rockin' Rattlesnakes in the playground,' indeed.
Cocooned in the music, my mind wanders. Past, present and future events play their ways through my mind. Sometimes a negative event will worm its way to the fore, and I shake it off as best I can. I try not to dwell on the negativity of my life. I've got enough to go around anyway.
The tape ends, and I've still got a bit of driving to do. I feel the need for something aggressive Deliverance fits.
It starts as a small chill at the center of my being, and it builds into goose bumps as the music continues. Did I say music? It isn't; it's a violent sonic assault and battery; a mauling by guitar and drums. The guitar is being played as though the guitarist is punching the chords out of whole cloth with a cleaver--fast, distorted, and concise. The drums sound like the manic heartbeat of some massive underground beast and topping it all are the clear-eyed vocalizations. The cocoon hardens, and I start to head bang along, while my foot presses the accelerator down. The music works its magic and runs through me like water through a desert. It irrigates and aerates dry parts of me and pulls me down further into my own head. I feel invincible!
The image that emerges is a black cloud of clustering evil vainly clawing at the musical teflon now coating my head. I grin at the picture of a streaming, black comet emerging from the base of my skull: demons doing everything they can to get in and keep up with the car.
Then the song I've been looking for starts: a cover of 'Jehovah Jireh' as defined by a Christian speedmetal band. Three minutes and forty-four seconds of thundering glory. There is no song anywhere that gets me up faster or harder. I turn the music up as loud as it will go and I fall head first into the words and the music.
To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin—“The guitar solo is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy."
'Jehovah Jireh,
my provider!
His grace is sufficient for me,
for me,
for me!'
I sing along as best I can, but it's hard to do with my head banging the way it is and my soul afire. I sing the words to my God and offer them as a sacrifice of praise; a conversation of conviction and need. This song stirs me deep inside. It drops the Holy battlelight of Heaven on me. I feel a sense of self-righteous anger begin to build within me. I want the enemy. I want to wrap my fingers around his scrawny, filthy throat, and squeeze until his dirty, scheming eyeballs explode on my hands. I want to cast him down and put my boot on his neck. I want to fight the fight of my God; to wield my sword in spiritual battle against the devil and everything he represents.
The song ends, and I pull up into work, charged and ready. My conversation with God has done what it needed to do.
16 February 11
Conversation with an angry young man
He swaggered up to my desk; drunk on youth, money and what smelled like most of a fifth.
He was dressed in what was once a very nice black sports jacket over a lavender shirt that was unbuttoned from the collar to just below his navel. I could see several gold chains winking out at me, as well as most of his hairless chest and belly. His pants were the same color and material; ripped at the knees and stained as if he'd been rolling around on the grass outside. His hair was cut short to his head in a gel-locked style a meaner part of me labeled as 'boy band.' He wore an over-sized Rolex, and his shoes were made of some sort of exotic skin.
I looked up, carefully arranging my features into the bland, innocuous smile I've perfected. It's my 'I'm here to do my job, and I'll do it as best I can.' look; very non-threatening.
He slapped both hands down on the counter and leered at me, swaying just a bit where he stood. His face was all sharp planes and angles. He looked like his last few meals had been liquid and low on nutritional content. I couldn't tell what color his eyes were. They were dark pits surrounded by a fiery halo of pink veins. His skin was a flushed bronze; the sort of thing only indolent people who spend a lot of time under a sun lamp can really pull off.
"Good morning, sir. Can I help you?" My delivery was a little louder and more precise than usual.
"I doubt it. You don' look like you're qualified to give me tha sorta help I need!"
He looked me over, belligerence sparking in his gaze as I sat there doing my level best not to provoke him. He scanned the surface of my desk as if he were searching for something to find fault with. His eyes landed on my Bible with its emblazoned celtic-cross cover. His sneer deepened until I began to feel concerned about his face caving in.
"Bible-boy, huh? Too weak to face tha' world on its own terms, are you?"
I stared back at him, a hot spurt of anger washing its way through my belly. Part of me wanted--desperately!--to jump up, grab him by the bottom lip, and shake him until his nose bled. I didn’t get paid enough to put up with spoiled rich boys and their attitude problems. I took a deep breath instead and tried an actual smile out for size. It didn't quite fit, but it helped.
"I don't know about 'weak', exactly." My voice was level, even, and pitched to reach the consciousness behind the booze. "I think I've just accepted that I'm a fallible human being. I choose to be a 'Bible-boy' as you put it, because I can avoid some of life's pitfalls that way."
He snorted at that, reached into a breast pocket, and pulled a silver cigarette case free.
"What do you make an hour? Seven dollars? Eight? Look at you. Sittin' like some kinda polyester monkey. If your so-called 'god' loved you so much, why's he lettin' you have such a crummy job? Why doesn't he just step down from his throne, smite all his enemies in a righteous display, and let love rule? I mean, what kinda 'god' would let disease, an' death, an' poverty run rampant across the world?"
He fumbled a cigarette free as he said this and pulled out what looked to me like a solid gold Zippo lighter. With a trembling hand he lit the cigarette, and fumbled everything back into his jacket. It was an oddly graceful display, like watching a blindfolded juggler perform on ice.
Without giving me an opportunity to respond, he said, "Look at me! I'm not even twenty-five, an' I'm a millionaire! I ain't got no 'god' to slow me down, an' I sure's hell don't need one. Anybody that ties themselves down to some kind of religion's a sap in my book. 'Do what I say, or I'll smite you with my holy, righteous rod of ineffable anger.'"
He pointed a square index finger at me, narrowly missing my nose. "You're a chump."
Again, I got angry in a big hurry. It took what seemed like a long time for me to calm down enough to respond.
"Okay. Fair enough, sir. But let me ask you this. Are you happy?"
He looked at me for a full minute. I looked back, matching his stare with one of my own. I was on familiar ground here.
He took a long slow drag on his cigarette, and then mashed it out on the surface of my desk. "I don't have time for this," he said. He turned to walk away.
I could’ve let him walk out. I probably should have. But I thought I’d let him have a little of his own back.
"Oh. Right. Well, I can certainly understand you're being too much of a wuss to answer me while pretending it's just because you don't feel that you need to. I mean, you're the hot-shot millionaire and I'm just a pissant security guard. But gee, it sure seems to me that if you really believed all that crap you just vomited on my nice, clean desk, you'd be willing to defend it."
My tone was even and easy. But I'd got his attention with that. He turned back towards me.
"I drive a Bentley. 2009. I live in a condo on the river. I just had sex with the Mayor's daughter, and I'm flying up to Frankfort to meet with the Governor tomorrow. . ."
I interrupted him before he could build up a good head of steam. "You’re not answering my question, sir. You’re bragging. I drive a Ford Festiva. The odometer quit more than a year ago and it had 189,000 miles on it. I live in a one-bedroom apartment. I've been celibate for the better part of two years. I'm as happy and as secure in myself as I can possibly be. How 'bout you?"
He stared, his bottom lip working. When he spoke, I could hear anger bleeding out at me.
"I made well over thirty million dollars last year. You see this?" He lifted his wrist in a rough gesture, showing me his Rolex. "This cost me fifty-thousand dollars. I had it custom made. How much money did you and your god make make last year, Bible-boy?"
I shrugged. "'Bout nineteen-thousand, give or take. But you still haven't answered my question. Are you happy? I mean, really happy? If all of that stuff was gone tomorrow; if you woke up and found out you were broke and homeless, would you still be you? Would you still be able to hold your head up and know, beyond a shadow of a doubt that everything was going to be okay?"
He looked at me for a moment, and then sneered yet again. "An' I suppose you're gonna tell me that your 'god' makes you feel all warm an' fuzzy inside 'cause you've been brain-washed."
I wiped my eyes in frustration at that, pinching the bridge of my nose. That sneer was beginning to grate.
"I get so tired of that statement. You tell people you believe in God, they assume you can’t think for yourself. Let me tell you about my God, okay? My God's not about 'Do it this way or I'll smite you.' My God's more of a 'Look. If you do it this way, this is what'll result. I love you. I want what's best for you. I don't want to smite you, I don't want you to be unhappy. But I'm not gonna take the ability to make your own choices away. If you decide to behave a certain way, I can't be the kind of friend we're supposed to be-"
"Ah-HAH!" His exclamation was triumphant. "So you're proving my point! 'Do what I want or I won't love you.'"
I shook my head. He was a stubborn one!
"Nope. Not at all. He loves us no matter what. But look. If you had a friend who stubbornly insisted on doing things that caused you pain, would you stick around? I mean, would you hang out with a guy that stole your money, slept with your girl, and talked bad about you behind your back? No! You'd probably beat the ever-lovin' crap out of him! My God doesn't do anything like that. He gives life, will, and the ability to decide. From the moment you're conceived until the moment you're drawn to your final judgment, my God's got his hand on you. My God says, 'Look. When you're ready to be friends, I'll be here. But I don't want to watch you destroy yourself. It hurts me! It hurts me so much for you to hurt yourself! Can't you understand that? I love you, and I always will.' My God's about you making the choice--all by yourself--to say, "You know what? I'm tired of being a complete jerk all the time. I think I'm gonna give this God-thing a try.' If he wanted mindless drones, he'da made mindless drones! And you still haven't answered my question! I mean, you've so clearly got the whole universe figured out! You don't need anything as piffling in your life as a 'god' as you so eloquently put it, but with all that crap that you adorn your life with Are. You. Happy? Simple question, man. If you're brave enough to answer it honestly."
He stood there, looking at me for a long moment, not saying anything.
When I spoke again, I tried to lower my voice to a more casual patience. "My life's not all that easy. I have to work, I have to pay bills, and I watch just about everybody I know do better than me. I ask God all the time, 'Why's life so hard, God? Why's there all this bad crud in the world? Why can't we just make everybody love each other?' It's frustrating sometimes, but I have this consolation. No matter where I go, no matter what I do, the greatest force in the entire Universe has his loving hand upon me, looking out for my good. How can I possibly be anything but happy?"
I stood up from my seat and leaned earnestly over the desk towards him. "Can you say the same?"
He looked at me for another long moment. Then without saying a word, he turned and walked out of the building.
I watched him go and felt a hot arrow of hurt pierce my heart on his behalf.
02 February 11
The dinner was a mistake, I think. But every once in a while a guy wants to hear some music and he wants to have somebody else cook. If that guy happens to be a bachelor, that usually means a night out at a restaurant.
As it seems with most things, I took him with me. "Hey. This place sells beer," he said in a nonchalant sort of way. Knowing where this conversation was going, I ignored him and continued to peruse the menu.
Not to be so easily dissuaded, he continued. "Boy. I sure could go for a beer. A Miller High Life. In the bottle. All cold, with the dew bedecking the bottle in that slightly erotic way that only beer has. The pleasant "hiss," and gasp of escaping gases as you twist the cap off, and that dry, bubbly taste. Mmm-MMM! Is there anything better than a cold beer?"
My patience already thinned, I answered rather shortly, I'm afraid. "No, there isn't much better than a cold beer. But that is exactly why we aren't gonna have any."
"What? Look, man. I'm talking about one beer, for cryin' in the mud. What's the problem with just one beer?"
"The problem is it's never just one beer. One beer leads to two beers. Two beers leads to a case. A case leads to a forgotten afternoon, and you coming back here later and saying something unbelievably ignorant and cave-man-ish to that waitress you think's eyeing you. Or better yet, yet more "initials carved into skin." What a good idea that was!"
Petulant, he continued the argument. "Hey. That was different. My ex was screwin' around on me. I just knew it. Besides. I was at home at the time, you were there to take care of me, and I didn't carve anything in anybody else. A guy needs to be ignorant from time to time. Beer lets us facilitate that."
Exasperated now, I let him have it. "Are you listening to yourself? Do you have any idea how weak that sounds? How totally lame it is? "Guys need to be ignorant." Wow. That's the stupidest thing I think I've ever heard. "Oh, Boo hoo hoo. My ex is cheating on me. I'm going to use this as an excuse to indulge myself in a flagrantly self-abusive manner, and it's all her fault." Shut the hell up and drink your soda."
He gave it one last try. "Hey brah. Chill out, okay? I just thought you might enjoy a good, clean, crisp beer. Alright? No need to get froggy. Besides, Jesus turned the water into wine, and Paul said, "A little wine for your stomach."
He plays this game so very well. It almost always comes down to the religion card, though. When I told him I wasn't going to smoke weed anymore, he tried, "Hey! God said "Every green herb in the field, I give unto you for meat." The arguments are old, and they are circular. It surprises me, now, how well they used to work.
Instead of lashing out again, I responded in what I felt was a calm sort of manner. "I would enjoy a beer. One beer. But that one beer would open the possibility to more beer. So, I think I'm gonna sit here, drink my soda, have a burger, and watch the world go by. No beer. No scotch. No bourbon."
And that's what I did. I ordered a big burger to compensate for the beer, and I let my inner drunk enjoy that instead.
26 January 11
She tried so hard to be tough. I could see the tears glimmering nakedly in her eyes, and I could almost see the nebulous, grey wings of despair wrapped tightly around her. She smiled bravely at me, a stranger, and began to tell me her story . . ..
"He was young. So was I. We thought we knew better. Surprised?"
I had to admit I wasn't, having been there myself, and having seen the twisted wrecks of others along life's verge.
"I loved him, though, and he said he loved me. How often does a pretty girl hear that, do you think? A million times, ten-million times, during her life?"
She was pretty. Even still. Pretty in that way that defies description . . . were it not for the bandages, tubes, wires and struts keeping her from moving, keeping her from pain. Whether she would still be pretty after she healed was still to be seen.
I didn't say anything. She didn't need someone to talk at her, she needed someone to listen.
Sighing, she continued, spitting out each piece like thick chunks of ice. I suspected that these words felt like heavy pieces of permafrost that had formed and clung to her heart, and only waited for a thaw, or a brief warm snap to loosen and puddle. And that is what happened now; the puddles melted and ran from her eyes.
"I tried really hard, too, but nothing I did, nothing I said made him happy. He never hit me, but his words . . .."
I knew. His words were a slap, a sting, a punch. Each one left a mark, a bruise, or a cut, each worse than the last and none healing adequately. How often had I seen the lowering of the eyes, the blinding shame of no self-esteem, or sense of personal self-worth?
"Have you ever felt as though you'd put up with anything, absolutely any bit of self-abuse just to feel as though somebody loves you? Allowing him to treat me any way he wanted, allowing him to say to me any thing he wanted, the other girls, the late nights, it was all there, and it all ended up being somehow my fault. "If you'd clean my house, if you'd make better love to me, if you'd clean yourself up, or lose some weight, I wouldn't need to go find other girls!" And I'd cry, and he'd leave. I hated him, but I loved him too. Why?
"So then I left, and he didn't even notice. I came home a week later, and he had moved a new girl in. She was wearing my clothes, she was using my dishes, and she was sleeping in my bed. The blood hadn't even been cleaned up, and she was sleeping in my bed . . .."
She trailed off, and I couldn't take anymore. I left the flowers I had brought and placed them gently on her bedside. I smoothed her bedsheets, and ensured she was comfortable, placing the call-button within reach. I surreptitiously wiped the angry tears from my cheeks, and gave her my best professional smile. Lucky me, the only one who'd listen . . ..
25 January 11
What are you doing?
"I'm trying to write a story. It's not going well."
What's it about?
"I'm not sure yet. I tend to find this out as I go. I think it might be another one of my 'Magical Happenings to a Damaged Soul' pieces."
You write a lot of those.
"Tell me about it.”
Any clue as to why?
“Oh, sure. My manic-depressive neurosis gang up on my creative impulse and shanghai it for their own amusement.”
Really?
“Probably. But I'm guessing it's really a reflection of my desire to believe in a world where magic can and does happen. It might be a romantically infantile belief, but I hold to it like a barnacle on a rock or a sand dollar on a toe. I believe in fairies. I believe in unicorns. I believe that somewhere, somehow, there's a witch stupidly putting her head in a stove while a desperate young girl stands behind her. I believe in genies, affrit, and all sorts of stuff like that. I believe there's a wardrobe that'll deliver me to a place with a talking lion, and I believe in dragons."
Ghosts and goblins, and Santa Claus too, I imagine. You really believe in magic, then?
"Sure! I mean, I believe in all kinds of different things I can't see. I’m a Christian. It’s the whole point of the process. I've never seen China, or India, and yet I've been assured over and over they're there."
Yes, but other people have seen China and India.
"Hence, my argument."
‘Hence.’ Seriously? ‘Hence?’
“What? I can’t drop an inappropriate archaism?”
It’s your story.
“Thank you.”
I’m not sure you’re using it properly, though.
“Yeah, well, ignorance has never stopped me.”
Clearly. But it seems your statement of belief suggests that other people have seen magic. Are you implying that?
"Maybe. Maybe other people didn't recognize it for what it was. We tend to filter our experiences through our personal perceptions."
I see.
"No, no you don't. You're entirely too disembodied to 'see'. What I really mean is the world I live in is bound about with all kinds of rules, sciences, and laws. And every last one of 'em was 'discovered' by a man, a human being. What if all of those laws, and rules, and whatever, are simply there because they make sense?"
Well, then that'd be right, wouldn't it?
"Sure. But magic is just like faith in that it’s beyond making sense. In our world, if you let go of something, it'll fall to the ground. That makes sense. But in a world with magic, it's entirely possible for Galileo’s feather and cannon ball to float up over the moon. We don't believe in things like unicorns because you can't go to the zoo and see a unicorn. Ergo, they don't exist.
And now you’ve dropped an ‘ergo.’ Is this a talent or a disease?
“Hater. My point is, that argument for the non-existence of unicorns is facetious. No one alive today has seen a living dodo. Are they mythological? Does it make sense to disbelieve something because no one's ever experienced it?"
Seems like an awful stretch to make. Your point is that the world has changed and we can no longer perceive magic all around us.
"Sort of. It's not that we can’t perceive it, we just don't. Our world is sterile. We've figured everything out, and the universe holds no more mystery for us, so we don't go looking for it anymore. It doesn't make sense to go looking for Jormungandr when we know about tectonic plates.”
Yore-mun-who?
“’Gandr.’” The snake that girdled worlds. The dragon eating its own tail. You know those trenches as the bottom of the ocean that go all the way around the world?”
Umm . . . yes?
“His house.”
Got it.
“Yeah. So the Mystery is Dead argument really breaks my heart.”
Can we go back to the bottom-of-the-ocean-snake thing for a minute?
“What?”
You carry that kind of information around inside your head?
“Doesn’t everybody have a section of their mind devoted to Scandinavian esoterica?”
Probably. So. Is this piece you're writing another story about that blindness?
"No, this is just a conversation between me and someone else."
Who?
"I'm not sure. It'll come to me though."
Oh, okay. Well, I'll leave you to it, then. Enjoy.
"I will. Thanks."
Don't mention it.
20 January 11
Smokin'!
I wrote this piece a couple of years ago in response to a smoker's essay about the "Violation of his Civil Rights" when he was asked not to smoke in a public place.
Frankly, I think I probably would've agreed with his irritation if he hadn't pulled the civil rights card.
~~~~~~~
Gonna talk about smokin' today, boys and girls.
Now, in the interests of clarity and transparency, I should probably tell you before you read this, I am not a smoker. Never really been a smoker . . .
of cigarettes . . .
(Let it go.)
So this piece is being written from the viewpoint of a non-smoker.
Now, I know I'm not gonna be able to change any of you smokers' minds. Ya'll got that weird cognitive dissonance thing happening.
"So what if 150 million people worldwide have died of lung cancer directly caused by smoking cigarettes? It won’t happen to me! ‘Sides. They ain't proven that conclusively!"
I know I could point out that the tobacco industry prints cancer warnings on packs of smokes now. I know I could set up the little man that smokes the cigarette, with his pink little lungs exposed, and you'd stand there, watching, making notes in your head about how your lungs aren't plastic, they're flesh.
I know all this.
I know you have rights.
I know you vote.
I know, I know, I know.
But listen anyway, okay? This isn’t really about getting you to quit. It’s about maybe opening your eyes to some of the mannerless ways you go about filling your lungs with crap.
Okay?
Okay.
Alright. So you've got John Doe, right? And John, well, he decides he wants to go to a nice restaurant for dinner. John's not a bad guy; he makes good money, treats his wife and kids okay, and doesn't participate in any socially unacceptable activities.
John's a smoker. Which is his right! Far be it from me to deny you the right to fill your bodies with poison and toxic chemicals of all kinds. Go nuts!
So John piles the wife and the kids into the car and they set out for the restaurant. John, he lights up a pre-dinner smoke, filling the car with his secondary smoke. He smokes it down to the filter, making sure his wife and kids get the benefit of the entire cigarette, and then what does he do?
Well, he rolls the window down and tosses the still-burning cigarette out the window, where it flies and hits my car's windshield.
Granted. It's not going to hurt my car any, but would you want me to roll my window down and throw my empty coffee cup at your windshield?
But we're not done, are we?
(No. We're not.)
'Cause John still wants dinner. So he goes to a fancy-shmancy steak place. The waitress, Jane, says, "Smoking or non-smoking?"
John, he says, "Smoking, by God! I'm a smoker and I'll die a smoker! I've got rights! I vote, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, and so on and so forth!"
So Jane, she sits John down.
John, he lights up, eats his dinner and leaves.
Jane, she's left to breathe John's cigarette, along with all the other cigarettes. Jane's a minimum wage waitress, doing the best she can. She's never been a smoker, but lately she's noticed some coughing when she first wakes up. Jane, she can't afford health insurance, and she can't afford a day off.
Couple of months go by. Jane finally breaks down and goes to the doctor.
"Guess what, Jane? You've got cancer! Oh, joy!"
Now, I know that if I were to go to a bar or a pizza joint or whatever, depending on the local smoking laws, I'd probably have to deal with second-hand smoke. I've accepted that and become used to it. No big deal.
But what about Jane?
Doesn't she have a right to work in a non-toxic environment?
And what is she gonna do about her cancer? Sue? Sue who? Sue the tobacco industry?
"Oh. Sorry, Jane. You weren't a smoker. It isn't like you can hold us liable if you never used our products."
Sue the small-business owner? Well that's a good plan. Let's make it even harder for small business to flourish in this country.
And even if Jane managed to drag the Tobacco Industry to court, and won, who's really paying this bill? The five-hundred year old industry, with tentacles all over the world?
Puh-leeese.
The Tobacco Industry, like any other industry, will protect its profits. The price of smokes will sky rocket--as they have--and the little guy, in this case, the tobacco farmer, will take it in the shorts, as they have in my home state of Kentucky.
"I know we bought this small bale of tobacco from you for four-hundred dollars last year, but this year we're only offering a hundred. Take it or leave it."
What's the price for a pack of smokes, now? Three dollars? What's the price for a carton?
Still feel like defending your 'right'?
Okay.
So what's the solution, Uncle Nescher?
Well, one solution that's been suggested is to allow business-owners to decide whether their business is to go smoking or non-smoking. I like that one. It says to me, "Hey. I own this restaurant. Don't smoke, or get out!"
Other solutions include making all public buildings non-smoking, or making entire cities non-smoking.
But you ask a smoker these same questions, and nine times out of ten they go up in brown-clouds of phlegm-flecked smoke.
"I've got rights! I should be allowed to smoke wherever I want to! I should be allowed to leave my drifts of filters to pile in front of buildings and let other people clean them up! I should be allowed to smoke in church!"
I don't understand this myself.
Start your head on fire and smoke like a chimney. Go right ahead. We’re not asking you to quit, we asking you to refrain from smoking while you're around us.
If you've been on a transcontinental flight in the last twenty years or so, you probably didn't smoke. You didn't smoke if you've had an operation recently. You don't smoke in church.
Essentially, you're being mildly and temporarily inconvenienced, not 'stripped of your rights.’
If you want to smoke, smoke outside. Smoke in your car. Smoke in your house. Yes, you have a right to smoke, but I also have a right not to smoke along with you.
I have rights, too, just as Jane does.
And you know what?
We non-smokers vote too.
17 January 11
Christmas At The Greasy Spoon
We didn't do Christmas, down here, on the ranch.
The Paterfamilias, he was convinced it's some kind of pagan holiday; an orgiastic devotion to a false god, incorporating all kinds of fertility myths.
"It's a stinkin' sacrifice to a sex god! Every year, at Christmas time, they'd dress up a tree, offering it sacrifices of gifts, and then they'd wait for their god to fall out of the sky in a special chariot, to deliver sexual favors to his highly esteemed! It's an abomination!"
He'd spleen on in that vein, for hours, ranting on about 'concessions by the Catholic Church' and 'conspiracies by Principalities and Powers' and 'Santa Claus? No. 'Satan's Claws!'
And almost every Christmas was the same.
"'What are you getting for Christmas?"
"'Nothing."
"Why?"
"'We don't celebrate Christmas. It's a pagan holiday."
Mom and Dad grew up with Christmas and I think that somewhere in their hearts, they knew that denying it to us was wrong. Dad wanted to spout on about being non-materialistic, but how do you explain that to a seven-year-old who just wants to unwrap presents on Christmas Day? Is the innocent joy shining in a child's eyes any counter against the steel-lined logic of legalistic religion?
So he'd shout at us, angry at himself for not being the shining scion of faith he was meant to represent, and angry at us for 'tempting' him.
Every once in a while, maybe every five years or so, they'd cave and give us a Christmas. Trees, decorations, presents, a dinner, it was all there, but there was a thick, syruped covering of 'This is wrong,' from my parents that soured the whole deal.
We got older, and Christmas stopped. And we went along with it. What choice did we have? He was Dad and he was in charge. Mom was a hollow, voiceless reed that let things happen and pretended her victimization was so much worse than ours.
"'I tried. I couldn't do anything."
And she'd fade off into some drug-induced bliss, leaving us to fend for ourselves.
I'd wander around on Christmas Morning, like some Dickensian orphan, picking through the neighbors' garbage, looking at the packages and wrapping paper and feeling miserable. Sometimes you got lucky. A toy would break, and some 'materialistic' parent, better equipped to provide on Christmas Morning, would toss the broken toy out for me to find and play with for a few hours.
And boo-hoo-hoo. Sounds like some awful After-School-Special-Pity-Whore-Extravaganza, doesn't it?
I don't want your pity.
We do things differently now. We're bigger than Dad now. Outweigh him, outnumber him, and we're masters of manipulation.
"Dad. Get in the car. We're taking you to Christmas dinner."
"We can't! It's an abomination!"
"Yeah, Dad, it might be, but if you don't get up and walk out to the car, I'm gonna sling you over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes and carry you out. It's up to you."
My sister can be tough when she puts her mind to it.
One year it was just me, my sister and my Dad. She'd driven two hours to be with us on Christmas, her sweet heart blowing holes out all over the place in a swelling gush of pity for the 'poor bachelors who don't have anyone to spend Christmas with.’ Evil manipulators we, we milked it for all it was worth.
"Don't know what I'll do on Christmas, sis. Probably sit at home, listening to the radio. Maybe they’ll play some Christmas music.”
And sniff, sniff, boo-hoo-hoo. Dad was worse, though.
"'Sure wish your Mother could be here. Your brother'll probably be off, feeling sorry for himself and listening to his radio."
It wasn't fair of us to tag-team her like that, but she's smarter than we are, so we need whatever advantages we can get.
"That's fine. I'll drive down there. His Nibs" (her hard-working husband) "is off performing experiments with guinea pigs in Hong Kong. Something about cancer. I forget."
My Father and I grinned at our respective places. Christmas! With the family!
We didn't exchange gifts. Hers was the two hour drive. Dad and I mumbled something about being broke. It wasn’t true, but she didn't care. She smiled at us, each in turn, her beatific grin lighting up her face.
"That's okay. It's not about presents anyway. I'm here. Let's go out to dinner!"
It's a known fact. The only restaurants open on Christmas Day are Chinese Diners and the greasy-spoon-truck-stops. Since we live in what basically amounts to the rural south, we were stuck with trucks stops. Fine eating, if you're not particular about what your food is coated with.
We drove around for a while, chatting, trying to find one. They hide, those greasy-spoon-truck-stops. They hide, knowing you're fuelled by desperation for something to eat. Your gratitude, when you do find one, allows you to overlook the fact that you're paying four dollars for a boiled, overly-greasy-toad-meat-hamburger.
When we did find one--a Waffle House some thirty-five minutes' drive away--it was packed. Every lonely soul, every forlorn face, every Christmas ghost in three counties had picked this Waffle House to eat their Christmas grits in.
We sighed, squared our shoulders and walked in.
~~~~~~~
She couldn't have been more than fifteen. Her hair was that blonde color you only get from irrepressible youth, and her eyes were a bright green, swimming with tears. She floated in her waitress outfit, two, maybe even three sizes too large for her. She walked up to our booth, freshly vacated by an unsmiling elderly couple, and tried to ask us what we wanted.
I heard myself say "What's wrong?"
It was my voice, but the compassion in it surprised me. I cared about what was bothering this poor thing on Christmas Day! I didn't want her to cry.
She swallowed and tried a teary smile on us.
It didn't work. All three of us turned the Compassion-O-Meter on her.
"Oh, now! Don't cry! You'll make me cry! You ever seen a fat man cry? It isn't pretty, I warn you!"
"Do you want a hug?"
My sister. Her hugs have been known to cause spontaneous healings.
Even Dad contributed in his small way. "You're doing an outstanding job!"
She smiled at us wanly, then fled. Another waitress came to try to take our order. We asked. She spilled.
"This couple came in here, on Christmas Morning, no less, and they just yelled at her! They treated her like a dog, and she's just here, helping out, trying to make a little extra money!"
There was silence around our table. The three of us looked at each other and the thought raced through our heads at the same time.
No.
No, there was no way this would stand.
"You go get her."
"What?"
"You heard me. You go get her. You bring her back out here, and you make her wait on us."
She left, fuming. The trembling, doe-eyed thing came back to our table. She apologized, and in a tremulous voice asked us what we wanted.
We ordered. She brought us our food, hands shaking. She spilled my soda, overfilled Dad's coffee and managed to tip my sister's fries onto the floor. We smiled at her, reassuringly. She brought us fresh plates, "Free of charge," she mumbled. We thanked her. Smiles plastered on our faces.
We ate our meal, talking about this and that, while a psychic wave danced through all three of our skulls.
I looked at Dad.
Dad looked at me.
I looked at my sister.
My sister looked at me.
"I'll do it," I said, grinning at the two of them.
They grinned back.
The shaking young thing came back with the check. For three meals, the total was less than twenty dollars. You could see in her eyes that she'd appreciated our patience and she was a little hopeful we were going to leave an okay tip. A couple of dollars, after spilling food everywhere, probably would've made her entire day.
Not our style, I'm afraid.
With as straight a face as I could manage, I said, "Go get your manager."
She stood there, trying to understand. Were we going to lash out at her, too?
"What?"
"'You heard me. Go get your manager." Gently, but firmly, I insisted with my gaze and my voice.
She nodded, looked down at the table, swallowed and fled once again.
The three of us grinned at each other conspiratorially. We loved doing this!
The manager came to our table, braced for trouble.
"How can I help ya'll?" Her voice was sugary, ready for whatever we were going to complain about.
"You can't," I began, in a voice that carried through the entire restaurant. I can really bellow when I try, and I was trying hard. "Whatever you're paying that girl," a head nod to the poor thing behind her, swallowing and trying not to sob. Then a weighty pause, because even when I'm doing something nice for someone, deep down inside, I'm really just a bastard, " . . .it's not enough. We've never had a more perfectly cooked, perfectly delivered meal. She was nice to us, she was efficient, and she was clean. Her hair smells nice, and she's got a nice smile. She walks on water, and you need to promote her."
This rhino-skinned, greasy-spoon, matron-manager-battle axe grinned down at me. The barest hint of a tear glinted in one eye. Her young ward, nearly hiding behind her skirt, sobbed once.
But we weren't done.
Dad's turn, and he's even louder than I am, as fifty generations of privates on the drilling ground can nervously attest.
"I have no idea why anyone would need another waitress working here. You should fire your entire staff and pay her their wages. She's strong, she's tough and she can take it."
By now we had an audience. The entire serving staff, the entire cooking staff, everyone shoveling food down their throats; the whole place had stopped to listen and watch.
My sister’s was the coup de tat. In a voice known and recognized by high school math students everywhere, she looked the trembly young thing in the eye and said, “I don’t know how you do it. Your job is so hard and you do it better than anyone I’ve ever seen. I know if it were me I’d probably quit after the first ten minutes.”
The battle axe grinned enough to show us her gold teeth.
"I want to shake your hand, sweetheart. You've demonstrated that a woman can be tough and smart and beautiful, without compromising those ideals that make us all women."
Yes. It was all nonsense. But it was nonsense the poor thing needed to hear. Not everyone in life is going to piss down your neck, beautiful!
The poor young thing was sobbing by now, grinning at us, and wiping her eyes with her apron.
We three stood up, turned toward her and applauded, grinning like loons from beyond the asylum's walls.
The rest of the restaurant cheered.
The young thing blushed and tried to go into the kitchen to hide and recover.
We still weren't done.
"Hang on. There's the small matter of your tip."
I have no idea how much it was. I reached in my wallet. I couldn't have had more than forty bucks in it. My sister was counting tens from hers. Dad just reached in his shirt, without looking, and pulled out the money he kept there.
When we handed the wad to her she had to use both hands. Tears were running down her face and she couldn't talk. We wished her a "Merry Christmas!" and we walked out.
We've since agreed, in the years that have passed, that one was the best Christmas ever!
11 January 11
A Recap Of Sorts
By Nescher Pyscher
For the last five years I have been trying to write a novel.
The title has changed, the basic plot has changed. The characters have gotten face-lifts and overhauls. I’ve deleted thousands of words, re-thought, and shuffled the text into the existing body of the story as something else.
In short, what started out going one way turned across eleven dimensions and nine-hundred degrees. It melted, evaporated, spontaneously combusted and froze, gently gelling into a liquid.
I tried to incorporate everything I’ve ever liked about stories, ever into this one novel. It’s got close to 200,000 words, and if I had my druthers, it’d have 500,000 more.
I’m calling it—at this point—Tales of The Fallen, and I’ve actually managed to write the entire damn thing, front to back, top to bottom, side to side.
I’m done.
Completely.
Except for the re-writes.
It's a fantasy novel set in a world enough like ours as to make no difference. The main character is somehow an amalgamation of Celtic and Arabic. His eyes are piercing and hawk like, his hair is dark, dusted with silver, and his skin color is a deep, rich bronze. He speaks with a booming, rolling accent that's changed from Scottish or Irish, to a bland, vanilla that I was told would work better to get the story moving. His name is Solly Mont. He 'works' for a disembodied goddess, or idea, or etheric personification--we're never really sure which--of 'Wisdom'.
Solly’s wife, Ana, owns an inn called 'The Beller Inn' in a placed called Oakenfeld. Oakenfeld is a rural setting with boisterous, good, hard-working people who like to yell good-naturedly at each other. It’s the kind of place I’ve always wanted to live.
Solly Mont walked into town one day – nobody's quite sure when – with his wife and purchased The Beller Inn from its current owner. She's been there ever since. Solly’s job takes him all over the universe, so he doesn’t get to come home as much as he’d like.
None of the Oakenfeldans know much about Solly, other than the fact that he is the 'Worl's wisest man'. As Solly himself puts it, 'But not the smartest, you understand. For there's a grave difference between the two!'
The ale is good, the fires are warm, and Solly tells a good story whenever he’s in town. It's enough for the people of Oakenfeld, who tend, by and large, to mind their own business, and let people get on with theirs.
When the story opens, Solly Mont is in a sewer at the end of the world, watching the whole thing burning down just before it all ends.
Ana comes to find him, tells him its their anniversary, and she’d like for him to come home. He starts to tell a story.
A lot happens.
There are a number of other primary characters. The forces of 'good' are represented by Shadows-Dancing-On-Wall, a shaman undergoing a 'spirit walking' who aids and abets Solly Mont while trying to solve his own problems. Shadow starts a round of storytelling himself – casting a spell much like the one Solly Mont cast on the Oakenfeldans– to 'hold back the night', and Taliesin-Sung-Meister, Solly’s first teacher and bard without peer.
The forces of 'evil' were represented by Clyde-of-the-Barrow. I'm not entirely sure why my head birthed Clyde as a primary character. The word 'Barrow' has connotations that imply the grave, and indeed, in certain mythologies, a type of ghoul was known as a 'barrow-wight'. Clyde is dead when he's introduced, and he finds himself 'here' on his way to 'somewhere else'. I gave him a bit of a character-spin. I attempted to humanize him; attempted to separate him from his mythology and clothe him in the frail fabric of skin. I'm not much of a history student and I imagine I got lots of small details very badly wrong. Clyde’s not part of the story anymore, and I kind of miss him. He strikes me now as being a good idea at the time.
If you’d like to read part of his story, you can find it in my short, Ghost Story. It’s pretty good, if I do say so myself, and I’m proud of it.
Solly's been around for a while. He never comes right out and says it, but you get the impression, talking to him, that he's seen most everything life has to offer and most of it makes him smile. And yes, there's far more to Solly Mont than initially meets the eye. He's as strong as two bulls, quick as lust, and as ready to fight as a wet weasel in a bag. He casts 'spells' with a casual wave of his hands, or a focusing of his eyes, and he's always got an answer of some kind. He’s calm, composed, confident and ready to fance any challenge.
In short, he's nothing whatsoever like me.
The story starts with a spell. Solly covers the Oakenfeldans in a thick shroud of story-telling magic; the very strongest kind of magic. (Or maybe it's just the magic of a really good story. That's the funny thing about magic. When it's done well, there's no discernible difference between it and everything else.) It projects them into the swell and sweep of the story, and protects them from those things that would perhaps harm them, should they get a good close look.
I started writing this story as a sort of tribute to two of my very favorite authors: Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. These two wrote a book called Good Omens. Mr. Gaiman is famous for lifting very small details from famous stories and Easter-egging them throughout his writing as a sort of 'hidden doorway'. You may be reading a chapter, and someone will mention living in 'the shadow of the Quinsy mountains', for example. (I'm not going to tell you why that's important. You'd need to read the story to make the connection. It's almost a pun.) It's a little as if Mr. Gaiman is knocking small holes into the real world where you can fall and find yourself sucked into the swirling maelstrom of a story.
The novel I'm attempting to write will twist, under my hands. I'm not trying to tell a story that's already been told. I'm trying to create something new and weird and wild and wonderful. This is made more difficult by the fact that I don't know what I’m doing.
I think I'm on to something good here, and if I can pull the twisting, fibrous, doubtful strands out, I'll be that much happier. My girl Christine has assured me she's going to help, so hopefully you'll be seeing some version of 'Tales' on bookshelves soon.
If the story doesn't eat my head first.
04 January 11
For whatever reason, I am often asked, “Are you a Christian?”
It’s not a simple question anymore. Time was, being a Christian ideally meant that you were someone who lived their lives according to the teachings of Jesus Christ. Now it seems to mean that you have a pre-determined set of choices that have been made for you, responses to situations you adhere to, and a militant outlook on life in general. Christianity has become a religion instead of a way of life. Instead of the emphasis on a “deeply personal relationship with Jesus Christ,” Christianity has become a club for people who all want to vote the same way.
I tend to believe that Jesus doesn’t recognize much of what is called ‘Christianity’ these days.
If you forced me to pick a system of beliefs that most closely conformed to mine, here's what I'd answer. I am an Apostolic-Evangelistic-Messianic-Jew. Which is really just a fancy way of saying my Dad's Jewish—or at least, he thinks he is, and he raised me with his quasi-Judean belief system--and I am a Holy-Roller Christian. The kind that head-bangs in Church, speaks in tongues, and gets real excited during worship services.
It means a couple of different things. The most important of which is that I try to be like Jesus. I try to have a real, vibrant and dynamic relationship with my God. Not something that I pull out twice a week and dust off. No, I'm talking about a friendship. He's the best friend I have, and I try to love Him with all my heart, all my soul, all my mind, and all my strength. I have a relationship with my God. I don’t practice a religion.
My relationship with my God is about loving Him. It’s also about loving everybody else.
No, I don’t often get that one right. It’s easy to see a bum and give him some money or whatever. That one doesn’t offer much of a challenge if you’ve got the money to give him. It gets harder when you’re being asked to love people who flout their beliefs in your face, argue with you about things they don’t understand and generally behave like they’d love to see you tied to a stake and burning.
“All gay people are going to hell,” is a good one. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had this argument. I don’t know who God sends to hell, and I don’t know why. All I know is what I believe. I believe God is love. I believe God is perfectly just, perfectly righteous and perfectly merciful, and I believe God knows what’s going inside a person’s heart regardless of what’s going on in their pants or whatever.
Yes, God is absolute. There is no gray. But my arguments tend to run like this. “Read your Bible, and look to see who Jesus actually judged. The only people He ever judged were the ones who decided they had it alllllll figured out. He never judged prostitutes, or pimps, or homosexuals, or anybody else. He judged the people who told those people they were going to hell.
Bottom line, God loves you and He wants you to be happy. Everything else comes from loving Him back and finding out His truth as best you can. Christianity isn’t, and never has been, about days and words, rituals and causes. Christianity is about loving “the LORD your God with all your heart, all your mind, and all your strength.” Loving God comes from loving your neighbor. You can’t do one without the other. “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” You can’t do that if you’re holding a placard in front of an abortion clinic shouting “Whore! Whore!” at all the women walking inside.
“Turn the other cheek.” You can do that if you’re howling for blood from our “enemies”. Yes, there is a time and place for punishment and even war. But I don’t think God wants us to kill abortionist doctors or Iraqis. I just don’t.
Yes, I have opinions about things, and those are allowed. God created me and he made me with the ability to think, to reason, to imagine and to believe. But as a Christian, it isn't my job to judge you. It's my job to love you and accept you for who you are. Because that's exactly what Jesus Christ did. He never labeled people, he never told anyone they couldn't be saved and he never called for us to carpet-bomb anything.
I had a conversation with a Baptist a few years ago who told me that all homosexuals were going to hell, and couldn’t be saved. At all. Ever. This blew my mind. Here was an otherwise intelligent person telling me that the love of GOD ALMIGHTY was somehow limited.
I know there are people who believe that if you aren’t a white, God-fearing, American, Conservative voter, you’re going to hell. They call themselves Christians, too.
But here’s what the Bible, the ultimate source for Christianity has to say about that: 'For GOD so loved the World that He gave His only begotten Son, that WHOMSOEVER should believe on Him would be saved.'
Maybe I’m reading that verse wrong. Maybe there’s something in there that says God doesn’t actually love people who aren’t Christians.
The question at the bottom is this: can we, as Christians, stand in the place of Almighty God and judge another human being?
No. And thank God for that.
'But what about abortion? What about drug-dealers, and thieves, and murderers?'
What about 'em?
No, seriously! What about ‘em? Jesus died for those people too. Here’s a radical concept, people. Jesus Christ died for Hitler.
He died to save the entire world. “WHOMSEVER should believe”!
Man, what a beautiful phrase!
And that’s what Christianity is about: believing. Believing that Jesus loves you, that He died for your sins, and He wants you to be free. It's not about being the best person on the outside where everybody can see. It's about changing your insides, that place only you and God know about.
I am the most miserable excuse for a human being on the face of the planet. I fail God somehow every friggin' day, sometimes multiple times a day. I drink, I curse, I tend toward sloth, and I probably break most every commandment there is at least once a day in one way or another.
But I keep trying. I keep going. I pick myself up and I keep ‘striving toward the high calling for which I was named.’ (Massive paraphrase there.)
I’m not good. I’ll never be good. But I don’t have to be. Jesus is. And he forgave me for my weaknesses. All I have to do is accept the free gift of his sacrifice and try. Every single day, I walk a little further. I ask God for His forgiveness, and I keep going. God isn't looking for perfection. That's what Jesus was about. God is looking for a willing heart.
“For all have fallen short of the glory of God.”
“What's that mean, Nescher?”
Well, here’s what I think. It means that ain't nobody righteous 'cept fer God. Dig? There's no degree of sin. A mass-murderer is no less guilty then a person who steals a stick of gum. Sin is sin, and it's all just as bad. So before you get up on your high-horse and shake your head in dismay at all the sin you see, remember your own. Jesus said it best. 'You hypocrite! First remove the beam from your eye so you can see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's.'
Jesus Christ died in horrific agony so that we could all wipe our slates clean and have a new life. Don't waste it judging people.
Being a Christian also means being a servant. Yeah. A servant. Jesus came to Earth to die. 'To seek and to save those that are lost.' If I'm not willing to 'crucify' my pride, roll up my sleeves, and to serve my fellow man, I'm not being a Christian. It means knowing when to shut the hell up, and listen to the other guy. It means knowing when someone is hurting and reaching out a hand, even if it's only in prayer. It means being humble, meek, and ready to bear the other guy's sorrow, and even apologizing when it's necessary. It means trying, every day to make the world a little better through direct, personal action.
Instead of calling the poor girl in front of the clinic names, give her a sandwich, or something. Tell her Jesus loves her and so do you. Reach out to her!
Being a Christian is hard. But the rewards vastly out-weight the cost. I wake up every morning knowing that no matter what happens to me today, God has got His eye on me for my greater good. No matter where I go, no matter what I do, He's watching me.
I trust God implicitly, and He never lets me down.
Look, you don't have to believe any of this. In fact, since it's me saying this stuff, I encourage not to. This is my personal truth and this is how I live.
Find out who God is, and what He wants for yourself. Ask Him what being a Christian really means. There's nothing you need to do, just be willing to talk to Him. He's been around for a while, and He's heard it all. You'd be surprised at the answers you'll get from Him, I think.
For me, here's what being a Christian is. I wake up every day and I try to listen to the voice of God. I try to be more like Jesus Christ. Sometimes my pride and stubborn self-will gets in the way. Sometimes I can't see beyond the end of my own nose. But sometimes, I get it right, and I manage to do more good than harm.
Finally, being a Christian means continuing to try until I find myself on my face before God's throne. Where He will judge me.
28 December 10
So I'm driving, right?
It seems I spend an awful lot of time in the car - going from one function, one place, one celebration to another, and rarely are those celebrations or functions about me.
Whining?
No, not really, just trying to explain what that feels like, I guess. It's all well and good to share in someone else's joy, but there comes a point when you wish it was yours.
Anyway, I'm driving. It's a long haul, and I've got the music up, and my brain is just disassociating all over the place.
Yours ever do that? Just pull stuff out from nowhere and run down the field with it?
Tell you a story. I had a dream once. I do a lot of dreaming, but that's a different story for another time. Just your average bit of subconscious filtering. Nothing major. For some reason, the dream crystallized around me reaching down this pipe with my left hand. I don't know why or what for. At the end of this pipe was a heavy, high speed, rotating metal blade that had what looked like a cheese-grater beyond it. Well, my obliviously reaching fingers touched the blade, and disappeared, and the shock of that meeting ran right up my arm and woke me up. It hurt like all blue blazes, but more, it shocked me.
That's what I'm referring to with “Does your brain ever runs down the field?”
So I'm driving along, literally and metaphorically, when my mind pulls up this scene from nowhere, and runs down the field with it.
~~~~~~~
He entered the gas station with her in tow. He'd been telling her about the head for the last twenty miles, and she wanted to see it just to shut him up.
The gas station's walls wept a dark, stained yellow, and the smell of old, ingrained smoke had buried itself in every available surface. A group of rough truckers lined one wall, playing the nickel slot machines. He walked by without garnering a notice, but she had them lifting their heads, and elbowing each other with greasy smiles.
He led her to the back, and there was the head, taking up the wall with its presence.
It was something from a bygone era; a pre-historic beast.
It was a stuffed and mounted deer head, but a deer head with thirty points and a spread of fifteen feet. It was a glossy, glass-eyed monster, and she put her hand to her mouth in shock.
"Hey. If you want to see a really big head, come on over here, sister!"
He turned to see the group of truckers leering at his girl. This is the kind of scenario that calls for Clint Eastwood. She's stuck with Adam Sandler.
"Leave her alone," he says, his voice trembling.
The largest, grimiest, moustachioed-est of the group puts his hands on his hips and spits a stream of tobacco on the floor. "Or what, shithead? What are you gonna do? Hit me?"
They all laugh, and the moment of suspense builds.
His eyes go wide and more than a little wild at that, and he reaches behind him.
"What am I gonna do? Well, I'm gonna shoot you twice in the kneecap as a warning to the rest of your faggoty buddies, here.”
They can’t hear him, of course, as his weak voice is drowned by the bullroar of two large caliber rounds discharging into the trucker's left knee, sending him howling to the floor.
“Then I'm gonna ask your buddies which one of them wants it next?"
He holds the weapon in his right hand, generally pointed in the group's direction. It's a massive hunk of gleaming black metal, and with part of his mind, he's praying that it doesn't fall out of his hands due to the palm sweat.
But the weapon doesn’t move. Not so much as an inch, despite his nervousness.
If his hand is steady, his eyes aren't. They tremble and wobble, and seem to be on the verge of falling out of his skull.
"What's that, a forty-four?"
"Nope. A fifty. And before you make some sort of dramatic statement about me not having enough rounds for all of you, I've got this thing tricked out as a full-auto. I've got plenty. Now. All I need to know is if me and my lady friend can walk out of here, or if you mouth-breathers are gonna charge. If you're gonna charge, I just need to know which one of you is gonna be first."
~~~~~~~
My mind leaves it there, with the stand-off unresolved. Mostly, I think because subconsciously, I prefer to keep things resting on the razor's edge. I try to come up with a resolution, but nothing feels right.
I try to explore my protagonist's motivations. Why such a severe and dramatic response to the trucker's sally? Is it my own unspoken desire to be seen as a swashbuckling sort of hero? If that's the case, then why is the hero so unbalanced?
These questions chase me into the night, and I enjoy trying to answer them. Other scenes, and stories play themselves across my mind's eye, but that's for another time.
21 December 10
17 November in Two Parts
- I -
My brother lives in Korea.
I call from time to time just to shoot the breeze; the usual fraternal chatter.
"How are you? How's your wife and kids? How are things going?"
I find myself listening with half an ear to his bland, vanilla responses,
and thinking about the time difference between us.
"What time is it over there?"
I feel almost as though I'm dipping my fingers into a larger world-pool
than the one I occupy, or that I'm talking to an Oracle from a future beyond mine.
"What kind of day is today going to be? Will it be a good day?"
He's already seen the sun rise, already tasted the winds
and rain that will blow.
I've never asked, fearing the response.
- II -
There's a Woman's Shelter down the street from where I work;
a healing place, with red-brick exterior, balconies and
porches. Porches - aplace where you can smoke, rock in a safe,
warm chair, and watch the larger world go by are important when your heart is broken.
I drive by every day and see the drifts of damaged women
sitting or standing out front, talking on phones, to each
other, or staring with thousand-yard, brittle eyes into the black
hole their lives have become.
You won't believe me, and that's okay, but I pray for these women.
I ask God to heal them, and I wonder at their stories.
Here is a young, beautiful blonde, her nose freshly broken, a gorgeous smile
stretched across her face like sunrise in the desert. There a middle-aged
matron with raccoon eyes and her hair pulled into a severe plait.
A woman holds a child as tears of fear run nakedly down her face.
Sitting on the curb, glaring at me as I wait for the light to change, is an elderly black woman,
her jaw clenched as though she'd like to pull me from my car
and beat me to death for the sins of every man, everywhere,
and I half feel as though I deserve it.
I see lesbians trying to cuddle each other through the pain
of their fresh bruises.
Young women - hardly more than girls, some of them, with the
fresh bloom of youth still shining under haunted eyes.
Old women - scarred warriors, limping and battered.
I wonder who would do the things that've been done to them, and I wonder
why they would allow it.
And I find it sad that the only time we humans are truly
united is when we are faced with a common sickness, a pain,
or a misery.
13 December 10
Goofiness for the sake of being goofy, I think. I sometimes wonder if anyone, anywhere is reading these. And if they are, what do they think?
Dark Night At The Boh Da Thone
In the same sense that “nowhere” is not, and never can be, a place, the Boh Da Thone is not a place. Not really. Not in the strict, three-dimensional way so necessary for humans to wrap their little meat-sack brains around.
That's an important distinction. “Place” is a noun. It assumes all the hard-edged, glinty, concrete aspects of reality. It has width, depth, length, and an awareness, however vague, of existing in, or at least participating in, the passage of time. Our quasi-semi-place does none of the above, but it could if given enough of a running start.
It is (was, could be, etc) more the “embodiment of pre-existent metaphysical potential taking on a tenuous half-reality for the purposes of demonstration,” than any kind of a “place”.
The sidereal place in question, as it were, exists beyond the boundaries of “Maybe” and “Could be”, and dwells firmly in the grey haze of the land of “What if?” or, more specifically, its capital, “Wouldn't it be really cool, if . . . ?”
As with any other destination of myth, magic and mystery, there are no maps or street-signs to guide us to our destination. No helpful characters looming out of the fog-shrouded darkness to provide directions; no third star to fly by. You either know the way or you don't. It's just that (un)kind of a (non)place.
If it were a place, it might look a bit like a badly lit, dingy bar with innocuous “American Bar Furniture Fixings” slathered over the top of shoddy construction. The over-stuffed red leather booths, the dusty neon, and the fake wall-paneling laid carelessly over the top of basic, square-sided, cinder-block construction might look real, but looks, as already discussed, can be deceiving.
The air would probably smell like several generations of badly fried food, perfume bought from the back of trucks, spilled beer, sour sweat and used dishwater. There might be an ever-present haze of cigarette smoke added to our funky miasma for continuity and depth. There'd definitely be a tinny country song playing in the background from the ancient juke-box in the corner. Probably Hank Williams or Merle Haggard at his morose best.
Its lights are long gone, and its glass face plate is punctured by a fist-sized hole.
The juke box is a standard fixture. Good music played badly on deteriorating equipment is de rigueur.
Having established the non-existence of our un-place, we move on.
Our other “fixture of note” would be our host. Assuming the potential possibility of the proto-place in question, you have to concede the host. These sorts of things have very complicated rules. They are woven into their basic structure like math and physics in the foundation of the Universe.
One of the main rules:
“Any bar-like structure has an owner/host/barkeep.”
The barkeep doesn't have to fit any specific stereotype, but things get a bit woobly – always a problem out here on the fringe - if there isn't at least a suggestion of one. Since there are so many archetypical barkeeps to choose from, this is rarely a problem, more an item of interest.
Our place has a host. He takes up quite a bit of psychic space, being the same size and general shape as a Volkswagen. At the moment we’re looking at him, he is lurking trollishly, in every appearance of a foul temper, behind his massive, fake wood bar. He - for our barkeep is quite aggressively “he” - is a squat, toad-like creature in a dirty, button-down, two-sizes-too-small shirt, a filthy, no-color apron, and a glaringly red bow tie. The tie manages, somehow, to peep out from beneath his chins like a chick emerging from beneath the world's ugliest hen.
He is perfectly bald, like a toadstool, and his skin is a very distinct grey color.
Our host doesn't have facial features so much as distinct flaps and grooves in the yards of skin draping his enormous skull that would correspond, roughly, with eyes, nose and mouth in a thinner man. His eyes are deeply set and one wonders if he has trouble seeing from beneath his heavy, lowered “skin-brows”. There is good evidence that his neck is trying, valiantly, to throttle his face.
As the mind’s eye roves – or recoils; however you like - the barkeep is sullenly wiping badly-damaged glasses in a rote appearance of cleaning them. He isn't accomplishing anything more than moving the grease around on the glasses, but we'll note the effort and move on.
The glower (one assumes it's a glower. That suet bag of a face probably isn’t capable of much mobility) on the barkeep's face doesn't seem to be directed at anything specific so much as at everything in general. It is the suffering moue of the toothache; the dyspeptic stomach; the foul odor in the elevator – with accompanying sheepish grin - that insinuates itself like burning plastic onto the surface of tongue and nasal membrane.
It’s quite the glare, is our barkeep’s.
Evidence suggests that there should be some sort of soup-like atmosphere surrounding our barkeep; an odor of epic proportions. Instead, there is merely the vaguest hint of pickled onion.
The hand-carved sign hanging over the barkeep's head declares to all and sundry that this, our not-place, was/is/could be (etc.) the “Boh Da Thone”.
Of course, all this is pure conjecture, and we'd do best to remember that, despite the twists and turns of “story”.
Looking on, as we are, we are shaken from these reveries by the cascading sound of trumpets, the battle call of the Almighty from “outside”. Glancing toward the grease-covered windows, a glaring, dying blood-red sky lights the “horizon”.
Having given us an “inside”, we now provide parameters for an “outside”.
But we’ll just stay in here, where we’re less likely to encounter anything that would cause us too much psychic damage. The ambience isn’t much in here, but all that screaming and bloody bubbling noises are very firmly out there.
We can see that only one other figure sits in our bar. The lighting is bad, as it always is in places like this, and we can't quite get a fix on what he looks like. If we hold our heads one way, he looks a bit like a nervous, stoop-shouldered, just-approaching-middle-age businessman. His tie is askew around his neck and his hat is propped carelessly on the back of his head. His face is lined and his eyes are tired and maybe a bit scared. His hair - dishwater yellow; cut far too close - has thinned noticeably from a high, clear, unlined brow. His eyes are a faded blue and have the unfocussed appearance of drunken befuddlement.
But if we move our heads a bit to the right, we might just look at our nervous drunk and see a gargantuan ball of flaming hot gases and immense, controlled, nuclear reactions.
Old woman or young woman; vase or two people trying to decide whether or not to kiss. It really is a matter of personal perspective.
There is a chipped, dirty glass full of the Boh Da Thone's “finest” sitting in front of our lonely customer. The glass is slowly dissolving and melting into the bar from around the liquor. Interestingly, the drink is stubbornly maintaining the shape of the glass.
Henasamef – the name of our barkeep; as it hasn’t yet been mentioned, and being quite rude, we haven’t asked – calls these drinks “Claw-Your-Own-Eyes-Out-With-The-Bloody-Remains-Of-Your-Fingers” or “Screaming Brain Eaters”, in loving memory of the first victim to try one.
They haven’t taken off as yet, but Henasamef has high hopes to market them to fraternal organizations. Perhaps as birth control cum “Spring Break Euthanizer”.
Our singular customer is compulsively breaking open the fossilized peanuts provided by the barkeep and very carefully ignoring the drink – his fourth of the evening – in front of him.
The rolling trumpet call crashes from the “sky” again and a smashing tide of thunder beats against the walls of the bar. The thunder is followed by a tortured, fear-lashed scream that fills the entire world. It sounds as if the planet itself is crying out in fear and pain. Our customer shudders once, convulsively.
Henasamef – our primal Ur-throwback barkeep from beyond the beginning of time – looks disgustedly at him and grunts in an uninterested sort of way.
The leather-padded, swinging door that is the bar's only entrance opens, and a woman enters. We can see a hard rain, blood-colored like the sky, and apparently full of glass and molten metal, falling.
The woman brushes herself off while still standing at the entrance. There is a meticulous thoroughness to her movements, almost as if she were trying not to offend the proprieties of any watchers. Like our nervous, multi-perspectived businessman, the woman's appearance is hard to nail down. From where we're standing right now she appears to be what would be called, in an earlier time and place a “mature” woman; a “matron” in certain polite settings, “a high-steppin’ biddy” in others.
There is a motherly roundness to her that suggests the successful raising of a brood of happy, healthy children, and an absolute mastery of all things home-related. You look at her and something says “house-wife.” But you don't want to say “house-wife”; you want to say “Domestic Engineer, Ninja Assassin Level.” (And if you knew what was good for you, you'd capitalize every word as you said it, too.)
There is something about her that says she’s mere seconds away from licking her thumb and briskly wiping a smudge of something unidentifiable from your face.
From where we stand, her hair is a nut-colored brown, and smells vaguely of freshly-baked bread. It's pulled back from her face in a convenient ponytail and shines with a radiant good health.
Her face has all the lines and wrinkles associated with a lifetime's worth of giggling, smiling, and laughing out loud at every opportunity. Her face suggests that if you looked as though you needed a hug, she'd be the one to give it to you. And it would be warm and tight and all-encompassing; everything a good hug should be.
Her eyes are merry and dancing, despite the way her garments now seem to be covered in blood and liquid glass from her knees downward, and one gets the idea that her eyes, at least, would suggest that World War Three was simply a bit of “unpleasantness”; a passing bit of “yuck” that'll clear up in no time.
She is dressed simply, in flowing robes that look as though they would comfortably fit a Hellenic statue, although she's quite soaked.
But again, if we moved our heads just a bit to the right, we might see a loosely collected group of flaming hot balls of plasmic chaos, separated by more billions of miles than it would be convenient to discuss, nevertheless, with imaginary, invisible lines drawn between them.
Perspective, perspective, perspective.
The woman sees our hero sitting by himself, and walks up to the bar with brisk, efficient steps that still look a bit too much like dancing not to be.
She puts a friendly hand on his shoulder, and in the matronly, comforting, voice we were expecting, says, "Wow, Shamus! He's really doing it, huh?"
”Shamus” nods once, crushing another peanut beneath his fist.
"I've asked you not to call me “Shamus”, Cassie. It's not really how you pronoun-"
"Yes, yes," Cassie interrupts, gently, the way a doting mother or elderly sister might. “Shamus, Sol, Lunos, you’ve got too many names, boy! I can never keep them all straight!”
“Actually, “Lunos” is the moon, Cassie.”
But “Cassie” seems not to have heard.
Shamus grins in spite of himself and crushes another peanut beneath his fist as Cassie climbs up onto the barstool next to his and scootches into a comfortable sitting position. Not an easy proposition in long, flowing, classical robes, but Cassie pulls it off with style and grace.
Henasamef trundles over to Cassie, and grunts something that may, after the appropriate language registers have burned out, be translated as "Woddawant?"
Cassie smiles brightly, as though she weren't addressing a genetic nightmare on legs, and says, "A Harvey Wallbanger, please. With a straw and an umbrella."
Henasamef grunts non-committedly and waddles away.
Cassie says "I've always wanted to try one of those!"
She gives a little giggle. Shamus smiles himself and turns a bit on his stool so he's facing Cassie. There's a certain relief in his eyes now. It's as if he's feeling, “Oh good. She's here.” There is a tension in our man Shamus that suggests he's addressing someone he respects.
"I saw Mike today, Cassie."
Cassie looks over at Shamus, her hand still on his shoulder. She pats his back in a comforting sort of way and gives a contented sigh. She looks clearly out of place there, with her ram-rod straight back and her gently dignified bearing, but she smiles brightly at everything. Her eyes beam, despite the way her hands stick to the greasy bar top. She itches abstractedly as something that fell on her in a dusty shower from the ceiling. A closer observation would reveal that the dust in question is largely cockroach droppings, but even this wouldn’t be enough to throw our girl Cassie.
"Did you?" she asks, her voice still carrying tones of warmth and comfort. "Did you say anything to him?"
Shamus shakes his head, turning back to face the bar.
"Naw. You know how it is, Cassie. There's all kinds of stuff going on. Scrolls and seals and what not. Stars crashing down and running riv-"
Shamus is interrupted by another tortured, bellowing scream of agony from outside. It ends on a cracking note that sounds like a stack of dishes – ten million miles high - being neatly torn in half, magnified ten billion times. Shamus closes his eyes and slumps a bit more in his chair.
"Goodness! What was that?" Cassie asks, her eyes wide, but still somehow beaming.
"Australia. Or maybe south-east Asia. I can never keep all of the continents straight. Which one has the jumping rats with the alligator tails and those naked black guys who wander around dreaming all the time and chalking on that big rock of theirs?”
“Beats me, Shamus. I never get close enough to see all those kinds of details.”
There is a quietly judgmental tone in Cassie’s voice; a gentle rebuke for someone’s apolitically incorrect insensitivity.
Henasamef, waddling along at speed, plunks something evilly viscous down in front of Cassie. It's in a long, thin glass with an umbrella desultorily sitting in it. The umbrella is covered in the remains of several generations of cobweb.
The fluid inside the glass slops over the barkeep's hand with a glutinous “blorp”. It is exactly the same color and consistency of cold beef gravy.
Cassie smiles her enthusiastic smile and takes a single sip before either man can say or do anything. She smacks her lips and nods, still-smiling, at Henasamef.
Henasamef looks back at her with wide eyes – or his general approximation thereof, anyway. He stares at her for a long moment, as if wondering whether she'll fall out of her chair, and then grunts at her. There is an admiring tone to it.
"Well, I wouldn't worry too much, Shamus. It's like puberty, isn't it? There's some excitement; what, with hormones and what not, but eventually everything settles down. It's just a bit of something that needs to happen so we can move on to the next phase of our growth," Cassie says, the muscles in her forearm flexing as she tries to stir her drink.
The front door “clunks” and a blood-covered body in military fatigues falls inside on the floor. It is still clutching the twisted, molten remains of what appears to have once been a rifle of some kind. It twitches, just once, and then quite audibly expires.
Shamus and Cassie both look around at the “clunk” and then turn back as Henasamef waddles to the door. There is a practiced efficiency to the way he bags the body and drags it behind the bar and on into the back. He moves with grunts and mutters, as if he’s doing a chore he’s done many, many times before.
The pungent odor of blood, roasted meat, and melted metal briefly overpowers the bar's resident smells.
Shamus, delayed by the disposal of tortured remains, belatedly replies, "Yeah. I guess."
"Come on, now! Let me see a smile!" Cassie says, her own face beaming brightly, while reaching again for her Harvey Gravy-Banger.
"This is really good! Would you like a sip?"
She proffers the glass to Shamus' face, holding the straw perfectly still in an unconscious, perfected, “mother movement”.
Shamus takes a small sip.
Cassie, wiping briskly at a bit of schmut on Shamus’ face, says, "Besides, this is happening elsewhere, isn't it? What's it got to do with you, dearie? Sure, it's sad to see those apes you're so fond of die, but everything does eventually. It's not as if He's mad at you!"
She takes another sip, her face giving every indication of total enjoyment. A small bit of her Gravy-Banger actually climbs up the side of the glass and makes a spirited bid for freedom.
"Yeah, I guess," Shamus replies, slumping a bit more in his chair. "There is that whole thing about “heaven and earth”, though. Do you think that applies to us, too?"
Cassie, enthusiastically trying to suck up the sticky remnants on the bottom of her glass, chokes and coughs, spitting grey-flecked bits on the bar.
She places the drink carefully down, fastidiously wiping her lips. She takes a long moment to regain her composure and Shamus looks over his shoulder at her, his face registering a thin alarm.
"Did you know," Cassie says, very slowly and carefully, "I hadn't considered that?"
Henasamef grunts. Is there just a hint of laughter in it?
Shamus slumps back down on his stool with a sigh, and he and Cassiopeia wait, silently, as “outside” Armageddon continues apace.
08 December 10
Another odd story. This time one about my alter-ego. Sort of. His name's Jack O'Green, and he's a lot like me if you took out everything that made me remotely redeemable and added several quarts of bad-assery.
A quickie
Friday morning, bleeding into afternoon.
Right about 1145 or so.
The breathless moment during the day when, normally, you'd look up at the clock and say,''Bout lunchtime, ain't it?'
I had the day off. Christine was at work, doing important and dramatic things that required her to be paid large sums of money. I'd already called. I could hear the distraction in her voice.
"Doin' okay?"
"Yeah. I'm alright. Just kind of busy. "
I swallowed the quick, sharp flash of juvenile hurt at her indifference to my needs. How dare she not stop her world immediately to tend to my whims!
I'm still trying to learn how to be an adult, it seems.
"Okay. Well, I'm gonna go find something to do with my day off. Have a good day, okay? I love you."
"I love you too! Have fun."
*Click*
"Something" ended up with me being in my boxer-briefs and sticky t-shirt in front of the TV on her ancient, gently-fossilizing couch.
It was hot. Hot in the archetypical Biblical sense; with the weeping and the gnashing, and the sticking and the general unpleasantnesses. It was hot in the "leather-seats-in-a-hatchback-with-no-AC-at-three-in-the-afternoon-after-the-kid-has-puked-for-the-fourth-time' sense. It was absolutely perfect weather for sitting inside with a nice, icy, bedewed glass of something interesting, with the AC working full blast, watching moronic daytime TV.
Unfortunately, while Christine and I own a large, beautiful house with all kinds of effects from back in the day when they built houses for the love of the thing as opposed to making as much money as humanly possible, they didn't believe in central AC a hundred years ago.
So I was hot. Sticky, prickly, 'rattle-snake-noise-Clint-Eastwood-glowering-out-from-under-a-really-cool-hat' hot. I could feel an itchy heat rash climbing up and down my neck. I scratched irritably and thought about how miserably hot I was while flipping through the channels. The cats, three of them: Squirt, Audrey, and Deli, were lying in various poses of feline misery. Squirt affected a corpse: lying on his head, with his back arched, his back legs spread. He was snoring gently. Deli was plopped in a pile, directly in front of the open front door. Her eyes were half-closed and she was purring softly.
I've noticed Deli has a tendency to flop these days.
'I'm hot, Dad. Don't you dare touch me!'
Flop.
Trip.
"Doggonit, Deli! I 'bout tore my sack! Look out where you flop down at!"
Audrey, the diva of the group, lay in an affected huddle of fur, giving voice to an occasional heat-fueled plaint. Loudest cat I've ever met, Audrey. She could double as an air raid siren when she really wants something.
"Hi, Audrey. Whatcha doin'?"
"MEEEOOOOWWWW!"
I'd like to believe she was saying something complimentary.
'Gee, Nescher. I can see why Mom loves you. The sweat sticking your t-shirt and boxers to your body really shows off your goblinesque physique.'
"Yeah. Me too, sweetie," I replied, popping a heat pimple.
Audrey, overly impressed with my burgeoning display of manhood, went off to find a cooler spot.
I flipped channels, doing my bit to move the hot, moist air around a little. Something caught my eye.
"Ooo! An 'I Love The 70s!' marathon! Sweet!"
I turned the volume up and let my attention drift while Michael Ian Black told me why a Snoopy Snow Cone Maker was a communist plot. I know. I know. But doggonit, I was hot.
I think I watched TV for about twenty minutes . . . .
Well, I say that, but I was no more actually watching the TV than I usually do. I was aware of the sounds and images from the TV, but I was really just sitting in front of this social altar, letting my brain congeal. I don't think my eyes were even focused. I was getting ready to change the channel for the forty-brillionth time; self-defense against the yelling car salesmen:
'WE'RE THE FRED MARTIN CAR GUYS . . . WE KNOW CARS.'
. . .when it happened.
There was a sound, first. There always is. It is the sound of an invisible violin string being tightened and bowed, by the world's biggest midget, until the sound crawls slowly into the ultrasonic range and beyond.
My next door neighbor's dog - a floppy, friendly, old, deaf thing – began to howl in panic.
I sighed and waited. The visual equivalent was next. Little black rainbows began to slowly fade into existence. Each one was the perfect bow shape and wouldn't register on an ultraviolet scan. It was the entire spectrum of anti-light, displayed in the size of a postage stamp. The black rainbows buzzed merrily around my head in complicated aeronautical acrobatics.
I sighed again. This one was gonna be a doozy.
I could smell burning hair. Squirt woke up with a feline snort and looked over at me quizzically, his nostrils flaring.
"Ear hair," I explained to him, shouting to be heard above the now-silent whine. I ran a finger through my ear for emphasis.
Squirt stood up, stretched and sauntered off to find someplace less noisy to nap.
There was a small pop. I could smell ferns, metal, and the forbidden touch of the mysterious. There was the slow scratching noise of a match being lit.
"So this is what you spend your time doin' these days, huh?"
Jack slowly bled into existence in the chair across from where I sat. He stuck his lit cigarette to his lips and took a deep drag.
"Yep," I replied, not giving him the satisfaction.
He looked at me for a moment, his features giving nothing away. I looked back.
He looked pale. He was wearing his horns and that never bodes well. Jack only wore them when he was feeling confrontational, dubious, stubborn or insubstantial. They looked like he'd taken a section of long-unused railroad tie, stuck it into his head, and twisted them into a tight spiral of metal.
I've seen Jack and metal. A railroad tie was an afterthought.
His eyes were a flat, shiny steel color; no pupil, no iris, just the steel. His face had the very lightest touch of frost, and even as I watched, it evaporated into reality. He wore his usual blue hoody/jeans combo, along with his favorite pair of scuffed combat boots.
"S'up?" he said, nodding at me.
"Strait," I replied.
He grinned mirthlessly at me.
"Why do you do that? You are as white as sheet music, dude. You like, define 'cracker'. You're a freaking Nordic vampire, Nescher!"
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. Jack took another draw off his awful handrolled.
"And please don't give me any ( ) about being an albinic mulatto."
His lips formed a multi-syllabic obscenity, but since I write his dialogue, I chose to mute it.
"I do it because it bothers people, Jack. Me and Ted Nugent. Scarin' white people, kind of thing."
"You'd like to believe that, wouldn't you? Dude. You are so full of ( ) you ( ) squeak when you walk. You know that?"
"It's been suggested, yes."
He smiled his joyless smile at me.
Jack stood up and began to walk around the living room, touching things, looking at pictures. I could see a large red weal on the side of his neck.
"See Calliope last night?" I asked.
"Didn't just see her. I ( ) her ( ) brains out."
"You are a rare and beautiful gentleman, Jack."
He smiled at me again, his eyes flat and reflective.
He touched Christine's knick-knacks; looking, smelling, even tasting a time or two. He filled the room with the reek of his awful cigarette and walked into the adjoining dining-room.
"Nice place you got here, dude. Lots of space. These ceilings for real?" Jack's voice came from the kitchen.
I sat, waiting.
There was the sound of the refrigerator opening and closing, then the sound of a bottle-opener being used. Jack came back into the living room with a nicely bedewed bottle of beer I know wasn't in the refrigerator a moment ago.
The TV flashed its images at us, ignored.
"Oh, thank God," Jack said, sitting down in the seat across from me, taking his handrolled from the corner of his mouth, and swallowing a fourth of his beer.
"What?"
Jack pointed a lazy hand at the TV.
I looked and saw the high-speed, flickering images that composed the trailer for the new Miami Vice movie. Colin Ferrell opposite Jamie Foxx.
"There's a new Miami Vice movie," Jack said, arming imaginary sweat from his face. "I was so worried, man. That's just what the world needs: the Academy-Award-winning stylizations of Jamie as played against the sultry-scene-chewing visualizations of mah main maing, Colin. You see that stink-fest Alexander?"
"No. I missed that one."
Jack leered at me.
"Really. Angelina Jolie in a toga and you didn't watch it. Is that right."
It's been suggested that Jack is a personification of my ID; a boozy, foul personification of all those things about myself I try to expunge and keep buried; a psychic tumor, given legs and a caustic sense of cynical irony. He's every pimple attack I've ever had, let loose on an unsuspecting public. His appearance changes according to narrative necessity, but the default is pretty steady. He wore that appearance now. The resemblance is there, if you look hard enough and you know what you're looking for. His facial bones are harder and sharper than mine, and he doesn't smile as readily. He's smaller and wiry and his hair is quite a bit nicer. He's me, but younger, meaner, and better looking. if you will. Hyde to my Jekyll.
"You know, Jack, you really are just a crude beast."
"Nescher, morality is like soft-core porn."
"How's that?"
"It's all a question of ( ) angles."
He smiled at me and took another swallow of his beer.
I sat, staring at him in open-mouthd horror.
"That has got to be the most disturbing thing I've ever heard in my life. You are. . . you are . . . words . . . freaking fail me, Jack. You are an abomination!"
Jack looked at me. His steel eyes not giving anything away. He took a drag off his cigarette.
"At least I have the courage to be who I am," he said quietly, still looking at me.
I rolled my eyes.
"Here we go. Go ahead. Tell me how I'm failing myself, Father Jack," I said, throwing my hands in the air, melodramatically.
Jack grinned, skinning his hard, leathery lips back from his pointy teeth.
"Alright. I will. You're an author, and, God help us all, a poet, right?"
"Well, I try to be-"
"Yeah. Right. Whatever. How did that last one go? 'Goddess in a pair of control-top pantyhose'? Wow. You really pumped the bilges for that one, didn't you?"
I swallowed. I'd forgotten Jack shared my head.
"And what was the last piece you wrote?"
I mumbled something.
"Yeah. Real moving there, Nescher. A declaration of intent, huh? More like 'Please excuse me while I procrastinate 'cause I'm a chicken-( ). "
"Okay! I get it! This is about me finishing-"
Jack held up a hand, interrupting me as effectively as a two by four to the face.
"No, dude. This is about you," he said. He walked over to Christine's photo collection. He picked one up at random.
"Beautiful chick, dude."
"Yeah," I replied.
"Think you deserve her?"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Simple question, Nescher. Do. You. Deserve. Her."
" . . . no . . . ." I said, knowing where this was going.
Jack sat back down, putting his boots up on the table. Some sort of small animal bone was trapped in the cleats. I shuddered and looked away.
"And what are you doing about that? I mean, other than like, using her resources, sucking up her energy and being a general drain on her?"
".. . . nothing . . ."
"That's right. Nothing. You're a ( ) waste of space. I mean, I'm a slut. I curse. I whore around. I even kill people occasionally, but I do it unapologetically. You choose to define yourself as some kind of a storyteller, and you're sitting here, letting E! Television rot your brain out from the inside. I might be a dirtbag, but I am who I am. You're not even that. You're an intellectual leper."
I wiped a hand across my face.
"I might just be a personified fictionalization, but I'm gonna keep coming back, Nescher. 'Cause I'm also part of your embodied guilt complex. What are you doing? What are you doing for her?"
He set the photo down.
"Think about it, man. Girl like that, she deserves better. She deserves more. She deserves a guy who steps up to the plate and does the ( ) job."
He stood up, stretched and finished his beer. He threw the empty bottle at Christine's fireplace. It broke into a thousand pieces and the pieces slowly evaporated.
"Mozel Tov!" Jack shouted, throwing his arms into the air and grinning boyishly at me.
"Mozel Tov."
Jack dropped his cigarette on the carpet and ground it out with his boot. He nodded at me, turned and walked through the wall, taking the smell with him.
I sat on the couch, trying not to feel too sorry for myself, while the cigarette slowly evaporated and the tiniest bit of frost on my fatboy chair melted.
06 December 10
For the life of me, I have no idea what this is or where it came from. I'd oddly proud of it, though.
A Brief sojourn Into The Absurd
"There wasn't enough time."
The requirements for the stupid contest dictated that I started the story this way. The character had to open the story in direct, first person address with the line “There wasn’t enough time.” Now, if you ask me, this kind of thing stifles creativity and leads to stilted, inane writing, but who am I to say anything. I don’t make the rules, I just follow them.
"Time for what?" I asked, not really paying attention to what he was saying, as it was an inane feed-line. Instead, I decided I was eating French fries. There were undefended fries on a plate in front of me, and a bottle of A-1 near to hand. I began to drown the fried-spud-heaven in luscious, raisin-based-condiment glory.
I love A-1 sauce.
My Father, the person who first came to mind when I accepted the challenge of this writing contest, looked over at me from across his omelet, his mournful, puppy dog eyes fried-egg-big behind his new glasses.
"For anything," he replied, a large bit of green pepper stuck to the wild tangle of his beard.
"Wow. That sucks." Fork. Fry. Mouth. Chew. Napkin to chin, cussing under my breath after A-1 dripped onto my favorite t-shirt.
"I can't take you anywhere, can I?" Dad asked.
"You got a little somethin' riiiiiight there, Dad," I replied, pointing at his left eyebrow.
He grinned at me, making the green pepper in his beard bobble.
"Ha. Ha. Ha," he said. Just like that, with the spaces and the periods. "Is that your head or did your neck throw up?"
"Good one, Dad. Is that your head, or is a shaved monkey crawling down your chest, headfirst?"
Dad laughed harder, so I win. But then, I’m making this up, so I win anyhow. It’s in print, dammit!
"Yeah, but you're writing this!"
"So I get to tell it any way I want to, don't I?"
"That's stinkin' unfair, Nescher! You're misrepresenting-"
I was boo-hooing and wiping at my eyes, so I didn't really hear what Dad said.
We ate for a moment.
A-1'd fries are really good. I recommend them to any student of haute cuisine.
"Anyway. What were you saying?" Fork. Fry. (Well, fries, actually. I do tend to go for the big mouthfuls.) Mouth. Chew.
"There wasn't enough time."
"Right. You said that already. What's that supposed to mean?"
"How'm I supposed to know, Nescher? You're the one writing this stupid crap!"
"Oh, yeah. I am, aren't I. Why'd I start this one again? To challenge myself? Crap, Dad. I think the idea was to be authentic to your voice, character and mannerisms."
"That'd be a challenge, wouldn't it?" Dad said, sarcastically.
"Could you do it?"
"Absolutely. I'd start with Cary Grant-"
"Who?"
"Shaddup."
I grinned back. He hates it when I go for "Man, what's it like to remember The Flintstones asprime time TV?"
"Yeah. I didn't think so!" Fork. Fry (-ies). Mouth. Chew.
"See, there you go. Perpetuating stereotypes. I'm an old, grumpy Jew-'
"Who said anything about Jews? I didn't mention Jews, you did!"
"But you were gonna, weren't you?"
" . . .probably . . ."
"I'm sorry. What was that? Could you repeat yourself? It's a little hard to hear you over the racism."
"What?"
"You're racist, Nescher."
"Wait. What? I'm a racist? How do you come to that conclusion?"
"You make fun of people for being different, don't you?"
"Nooooo . . . I make fun of you, Dad-"
"Like I said. Racist. A ferkofta racist, too. And I'm sure you've got me being all tamavateh; doddering, blibbering in Yiddish and generally ineffectual. Have I got something stuck in my beard, too?"
"Well, now that you mention it . . ."
"You misspelled ‘fakofta’. And let me guess: I'm wearing a light-blue, button-down shirt and a pair of khaki pants." His glare had a bit of heat to it now.
"Okay, I defy you to apply a general spelling on any Yiddish word. And you forgot the hippie sandals and the Mad-Scientist-Glasses," I said, quickly stuffing another forkful of A-1'd fries into my mouth.
"You know, I do own other clothes, and just because my beard comes down to my navel, you don't have to portray me as having food stuck in it all the time. It's not like I'm some dirty shmegegi! Are we in a restaurant, too? Am I eating traif? You'd think all we ever did was go out to eat and have arguments!"
"See, now you're talking in my voice, Dad. If I move away from the established stereotype of 'Dad', I end up portraying you as different from what you are. Face it: you're an elderly, Yiddish- blibbering, Yid, flaming-liberal-pinko-commie-tree-hugging-"
"I'm not a commie, you stinkin' dirt-bag, I'm a socialist!"
"Yeah, Dad. Right. And if you stick twenty socialists in a room and only throw water balloons at the commies, guess who's gonna get wet?"
"What's that supposed to mean? I mean, that has got to be the most obtuse metaphor I've ever heard in my life."
"Dad."
"What?"
"Define 'metaphor'.
"Shaddup."
"Okay, spell 'metaphor'."
"Hur-hur-hur, Nescher. Em-Ee-Tea-Aye-Ef-Oh-You-Are. And that's why I got spell check on my computer."
"You're the man, Dad."
We ate in silence for a few minutes, grinning at each other.
"So. Is this story going anywhere?" Dad asked, wiping jalapeno and cheese from his beard with the tablecloth.
"No, I'm just about done with it, I think. Setting, plot-well, pseudo-plot, I guess-characters, resolution. I've got it all here, I think."
"You’re lazy, Nescher. Going for the "Kaufmannesque effect again, huh? He did it better."
"Yeah, yeah. Well, after the critics read this and award me with like, the Prize for Acclaimed Bullshit, I’ll be sure to worry about that.”
“You curse too much, too. You never used to do that. What is it about writing and authors that makes them think they have carte blanche to use whatever crudity they feel provides authenticity?”
“My voice, Dad.”
“Well, write mine then! Quit putting your dialogue into my voice!”
I sighed. Dad gave me a pitying look. I covered by filling my mouth with a forkful of fries. The waitress chose then, as I was wheezing around my mouthful of condiment-covered fries, to show up.
"Everything okay here?"
"Doggone, Nescher. Is she young, pretty and cheery? You're a stinkin' chauvinist too, you know that?"
Dad looked at the young, pretty, cheery waitress. Her name tag, high above young, perky breasts, read 'Cheri'. He pointed across the table at me, where I was trying to laugh, chew, and not spray A-1 everywhere.
"My son, the old-fashioned, misogynistic, chauvinist pig, is gonna need a hose, I think," he said, with one of his engaging smiles.
The waitress gave a bubbly laugh and refilled our drinks for us. Coffee for Dad, soda for me.
"Ice coffee for Dad!"
"Right, right. Ice coffee. 'Cause Dad's a namby-pamby sissy-boy whose tender widdle mouf can't take hot coffee."
"Puke on you, you stinkin' pinko. How can you talk around a mouthful of fries? When you're taking fire from the commie laser tanks, and you stick your hand in a puddle of goo, and Davy Crockett yells 'Geronimo!' well, then you learn to drink your coffee cold."
The waitress brought us the check. Dad and I looked at each other. I grinned. Dad sighed and reached for the check.
"What? I'm writing this! Are you gonna give me grief over picking up a fictitious check?"
"That's fine. Let your poor, old Dad and his fixed income . . .who lives off dog-food and water, and doesn't have heat in his house, and works ninety-seven hours a week, and sleeps on wet ply-board, pay for the food . . .."
Dad cleared his throat and paid the check, leaving a tip for the young, pretty, cheery waitress named 'Cheri'.
"Ya'll have a nice day an' come back an' see us real soon!" she called, in her young, pretty, cheery waitress voice. .
"Doggone, Nescher. Why'nt'chu just walk up to her and ask for her stinkin' phone number? You ever think with anything other than yer little head? Why on earth that nice girl you're going out with is still with you-"
"'Blah, blah, blah. My name is Dad, and I'm only forty-something-years-old, and I'm trying to make moral judgments at my thirty-year-old son, my eldest son. I wasn’t married to his mother when I conceived him at thirteen-“
"I was nineteen!"
"Save it for the judge, you pervert," I replied, mimicking a cop putting handcuffs on a perp.
"You shouldn't say 'cop', Nescher," Dad said, in his 'I'm being serious and I'm trying to teach you something' voice.
I grinned, unable to help myself. "Right. My bad, Dad. I meant 'pig'."
He rolled his eyes, sighed loudly, and we walked out into the sunlight.
05 December 10
Another older piece. I went through this weird period where I guess I needed to like, write poetry about everything I saw, experienced, felt and heard about.
How pathetic is that?
29 Oct 04
We'd never met,
this lady and I.
Yet,
her hands upon me were warm,
and gentle.
Her touch wasn't hungry,
it was the touch of a lover,
a mother,
a friend.
She touched my face gently,
spoke softly.
I woke,
wearing her perfume,
and wondering.
04 December 10 - I've written an awful lot of poetry over the last ten years. The vast majority of it is dreadful, and shouldn't be exposed to light. It's like fungus. It thrives in moist, dark and dirty. A few of the pieces I've written have some small value. I try to let those turn in the light from time to time.
I wrote this piece maybe three years or so after my ex-wife left me. It's one of the better poems to emerge from that period. I leave it to you to determine whether it's "good" or not.
24 October
i dreamt about your boyfriend yesterday
in every one of the fantasies i clutch to my heart
to keep myself warm in my exiled loneliness,
i'm doing brutal, punishing things to him.
i find myself hoping i'll bump into him
and he'll give me an excuse.
any excuse.
but yesterday i dreamt that we talked,
he and i
and instead of lifting him by his crotch and his throat
over my head and dropping him off a bridge,
we embraced as . . .
well, it wasn't as friends,
but as men who've come to an understanding might,
and I walked away
I'd still like for him to give me an excuse,
but maybe not so much anymore.
01 December 10 - Carnival of the Impossible
When the assignment hit Allison's desk she gave a little groan. "Jerry, what the hell is this?"
Jerry smiled at her discomfiture, his eyes twinkling behind the glasses he habitually wore. (Allison liked to think of them as 'Sigmund's Sunglasses'; a dig on Jerry's hard-headed practicality.)
She genuinely liked Jerry - the stuffy, little prat - but she wished he'd take a few minutes to consider his appearance every morning. Currently he was going through some sort of 'Academia-in-Distress' fashion mode. He wore grey, hounds-tooth slacks, a white, button-down shirt, and a dark, brown vest over top everything, neatly buttoned closed. His shirt's sleeves were meticulously rolled up to the forearm, and a silver watch-bob twinkled from his vest pocket. He clamped the stem of a pipe in his teeth, which gleamed whitely through the fringe of short, blonde, 'Amish-beard' Jerry adorned his face with.
Allison suppressed the urge to ask for a bubble.
"It's an assignment, Al. I give them out to my journalists. It's how we pay the bills around here." He waved one hand around the dilapidated office that housed 'The Daily News'; a lofty title for as yellow a paper ever printed - his face locked in his trademark grin.
Allison groaned again, settling back in her chair - which gave an alarming creak, and a bit of a shudder - before speaking again.
"I can see that, Jerry. What I'm asking is what it's doing on my desk? I'm still trying to finish the Cheney-Clone story!" Her green eyes danced in indignation, and the glorious mane of red hair she'd been crowned with at birth seemed to bristle menacingly in Jerry's direction.
"And now you've got this to look forward to, Al. Do have fun." Jerry walked away from Allison's spluttering protests, taking the vague smell of old libraries with him.
"Tweed-wearin' geek," she muttered under her breath.
"I heard that!" Jerry gaily called from the next cube down.
Allison smirked and reached for the folder.
Like all of the Times' assignment sheets, it was a plain manilla folder, much like you'd find in any office anywhere. It had 'Carnival of the Impossible' written on the outside in Jerry's neat handwriting, the letters heavy, blocky and square. The folder didn't seem to have much, if anything in it.
Allison opened the folder, her curiosity piqued. There was a single piece of paper inside; standard, lined notebook paper. A word that looked like a name was written on the top - 'Manolo' - and an address was written beneath that. 'Forty-seven, Riverside.'
Allison put the folder down, making a mental note of the name and address. She then went back to her computer, putting the finishing touches on the story she was fabricating.
~~~~~~~
She hadn't meant to be a tabloid 'journalist'. Like so many things often do in life, it just seemed to have happened to her. One day she was studying communications at a prestigious ivy league college - the next she was working for thirty cents a line for a guy she had dubious feelings of attraction to, her name and picture splashed all over the city's worst gossip/faux news/ urban legend rag.
No wonder she could never find a date.
Readership had sky-rocketed since she'd joined the staff, and Allison suspected that it probably wasn't because of her rapier wit and insightful commentary on suspected Bigfoot droppings in the park.
What the hell. The pay was good, she had fun, and nobody took anything she wrote seriously, anyway.
And it sure beat the alternative.
~~~~~~~
The next morning found her on the docks looking for the address. March was still hovering around, doing its 'biting-through-your-clothes' bit, and Allison was dressed in what she felt was a sensible, yet flattering outfit; a tan, fur-lined overcoat over a modest, flower-printed dress, her feet in practical shoes. (A good journalist always wears practical shoes.)
She had the lightest make-up on that she felt she could get away with. Allison was by no means unattractive, but this job required a little bit of 'role-filling'. A certain breed of guy expected a gal to look and behave a certain way. She had a sneaking suspicion that anybody who worked at any kind of a carnival would make her out to be right in that regard.
She could smell the river and wished fervently that she couldn't. The air was laden with the ripe scent of the local rendering plant, and other odors even worse. She was just about ready to get back into her car and call it quits- when she heard a calliope playing.
She turned towards the noise wafting to her ('Like the odors already on the wind,' her mind sleepily registered), and began walking in that direction. A parking lot she'd swear to her dying day was empty just a moment before now held what certainly fit the bill as a carnival.
Colorful tents, a few elderly, noisy rides, the sounds and smells of a busy coastal carnival; she was assaulted from every side, sensory wise. She simply stood there for a moment, trying to take it all in.
To her credit, when her sleeve was grabbed she only jumped a bit.
She looked down to see that a wizened figure (that looked somehow like a mobile shrunken head) was tugging on her coat sleeve.
"You the lady from the paper?" Its voice was high-pitched and girlish. It was impossible for Allison to determine age, sex, race, or any other feature about this strange figure. She stepped back a bit - more a reflex than a conscious decision - and tried not to shriek at it.
"You the lady from the paper?" It repeated the question in the same tone, almost as if it were a mechanical device running on some program - 'IF red-haired, green-eyed lady shows up, THEN -'
"Y-yes. I - I - I'm from the Times."
"Great. You're late. You wanna come in, or what?"
Allison shook her head. The cadence of the figure's speech was oddly out of keeping with its blank face and high-pitched, squeaky voice. She felt utterly adrift and floundering fast.
"Yeah. That'd be great. Listen, I'm looking for something or someone called 'Manolo.'"
"That's me, sweet cheeks," the shrunken head replied. It turned to walk into the carnival then turned back and leered at Allison in a decidedly male way.
"Well, that takes care of that," Allison muttered to herself before following.
~~~~~~~
The carnival was impossibly old, with rides and attractions that seemed to have been inspired by something from the previous century. She tried to listen as Manolo dictated the history and general mythos of the carnival to her.
It was the oddest experience of her entire life. She kept seeing things from the corner of her eye that disappeared or changed when she looked directly at them. For five minutes she became convinced that a minotaur - an actual minotaur! A beast with a bull's head and a human's body - was pacing them. She'd watch it walk around the sides of tents, following their same general path. Whenever she looked directly at it, it simply disappeared.
At one point she knew - knew without the slightest shred of doubt - that a dragon was circling in the air above them, again - just out of the corner of her eye.
The attractions were no better. She didn't recognize any of the penny arcade games or the food being offered. The 'elephant ears' were some sort of smoked meat served on a large platter, and she didn't look too closely at the 'corn dogs'. When she asked the frighteningly obese woman serving them for a 'soda' the woman titled her head to one side for a moment, and then pulled a spritzer bottle from beneath the counter. She filled a glass with water, and sprayed a spritz into it. .
"We've seen better times, I'm afraid," Manolo said as they walked past a pitching booth that required you to know how to 'hurl a brick bat.' "I blame that new-fangled internet for the drop-off. I mean, who wants to come see Caucasian Tigers and Griffins when you've got interactive por -"
"What?" Allison stopped in the middle of the oddly empty fairway, conscious of the looks the carnival's strange denizens were throwing her.
"Interactive pornography. On the internet. Surely you've heard of it?" Manolo was looking up at her with what could've been a confused look on his face. It was hard to tell.
"No, I mean, yes. I've heard of pornog - Look. You said a 'Griffin'?"
Manolo smiled, the skin on his face creaking alarmingly. "Yep. A Griffin. Cost you a dollar."
"This isn't one of those 'P.T. Barnum-type' scams is it? 'Come see the Griffin, Ha-Hah! It's a picture on the tent wall of ol Teddy'? Those are a dime a dozen."
Manolo smiled again, and held his hand out.
Allison shrugged. "I'm game, you midget. Show me a Griffin." She rummaged in her smart black pocketbook and managed to find a dollar. She dropped it into Manolo's hand, who made it disappear so fast she found herself wondering if it'd ever existed.
"This way, sweet cheeks."
~~~~~~~
The tent he led her to was no different from the others, save in size. It was at least three times larger than the carnival's other tents. It was made of the same old, dirty canvas that smelled of must, mold, dust and damp. It was patched in ten-thousand different places, making it look like it had some sort of exotic measles. Manolo held the flap aside and gestured for her to enter. He coughed once, and in a practiced sort of way said, "Step riiiiiiiiight up! Come seeeeee da' Griffin! Beast of myth and legend! Slayer of ten-thousand heroes! One dollah! Only onnnnnnne dollah to see the sight guaranteed ta make ya' wish ya hadn't! Step riiiiiiiight up!"
He looked apologetically at Allison's smirk for a moment. "Old habits . . .."
Allison walked into the tent without answering.
There was a frayed, weathered, yellowing rope stretched across the inside of the tent. The tent itself was badly lit by dusty beams of sunshine that managed to filter through some of the older patches in the tent's ceiling. Given the day's overcast condition, it made for a dark viewing of anything, much less a mythological beast.
The interior of the tent had a smell. Allison - who'd been expecting something cardboard hooked up to wires, or a feat of taxidermy - wasn't prepared for it, and the smell hit her in the face like a heavy mallet. It wasn't anything that Allison's refined nasal palette understood or recognized, but the shrieking savage who lived under Allison's mind knew it. The savage living inside Allison - the savage that had hunkered around the fire, fearing every cry in the night - knew that smell. It knew it and feared it.
The smell was something like the interior of an ice age Cave Bear's must've been like, powerful, inescapable, and fear-inducing like nothing else.
The tent smelled like beast.
It smelled like hunger, like blood, like cold, ready metal.
It smelled like the terrible cry of a victorious predator taking wing over frozen cliffs.
It smelled like lust, like something older than time, older than belief. To Allison's screaming inner savage, it was more real and precious and fiercely awful than anything she could understand or apply rational words to.
She took another fearful step - victoriously overcoming thousands of years of human self-preservation doing so - and saw the tent's lonely occupant.
It lay upon its stomach in the center of the tent, exactly the way a cat would. It loomed an easy twelve feet over Allison's head. It was the size of a tractor-trailer! It had the body of some huge cat and the head of a cruel bird of prey. Its wings lay over it like a tent, and Allison's mind told her in a distracted sort of way that when this thing flew, it must be look a little like a jumbo jet. Allison's gaze roamed over it, drinking it in. Without even thinking about it she stepped over the flimsy rope barrier, her eyes wide, her breath coming in fast, gulping gasps.
She walked up to the Griffin's side and laid a hand on it. The skin was hot; feverish feeling, and dry. She could feel the bellows-like movement of its breath, in and out. The skin of the Griffin somehow combined the qualities of both feather and scale, making for a hard, silky covering that was an iridescent, glowing, green-gold. When the sun hit it just right, Allison could see blue and red refracting off its skin.
Its feathers were a bright white color, and looked exactly like the feathers of a bird would. The Griffin opened its beak sleepily for a moment at Allison's touch, and adjusted itself slightly with a slithering rustle. There was a brief metallic creak when the Griffin opened its beak, and Allison walked to its front.
The beak looked like newly melted bronze. It was a shiny dull yellow color, and emitted a heaviness, somehow. Allison ran a hand over it, feeling the smooth contours of the beak, marveling at its construction. It looked like it could tear a cow in half with a single snap of its beak. 'Hell,' Allison thought, 'it could tear a tank in half!' There was a rumbling sound coming from the Griffin. It sounded like a helicopter was trying to lift off from inside the Griffin's stomach.
It took Allison a long, confused moment to realize the Griffin was purring.
Allison continued to feel the beak - her inner savage screaming incoherently - when the Griffin lazily opened one eye.
Allison gave a breathy little cry of alarm and stepped back.
The Griffin stood, ruffling its feathers and skin again, and blacked the light out in the tent quite effectively. Allison stepped even further back, alarm ringing its tones in her head. She could just see the Griffin's face from where she stood. The Griffin arched its back, stretched out its paws and extended its claws - one of which snagged Allison's coat and almost causally ripped a gaping hole in it. Allison had seen that exact stretching maneuver executed ten-thousand times by her old tom Buster.
Tears of joy and fear streamed unchecked down Allison's face as her eyes met the Griffin's. The Griffin sat there for a moment, clacking its beak open and shut, open and shut. Each time it did so, there was a creak, like old metal hinges that had been rusted for years being asked to operate. It looked steadily back at Allison, registering nothing on its strange avian face.
Its eyes swam with the same green-gold highlights its skin and feathers did, and there was something so amazingly real and wonderfully savage in its eyes that Allison felt herself wanting to sob and laugh hysterically at the same time.
The Griffin kneeled back down, closed its eyes, and promptly went back to sleep.
Allison stood for a long time, just looking at it.
~~~~~~~
When she finally emerged back into the light, Manolo was sitting there with a knowing smile on his face. "He getcha, then?" He pointed at the tattered hole in Allison's coat. She nodded mutely.
Manolo smiled even wider. "Yeah. He does that from time to time. Anything else you'd like to see?"
"There's more?" Allison's eyes were still wide, and combat-fatigue open.
Manolo laughed and shook his head. "'More'? You've seen one attraction sweet-cheeks!"
Allison stood for a moment, breathing heavily. She looked at her host, hoping to find some sort of an anchor. For one beautiful moment, reason tried to creep back in. 'That wasn't a Griffin! Griffin's don't exist!' She had only to look down to the hole in her jacket that was beading with blood to refute that, however.
She'd just met a Griffin.
A real one.
The living, breathing smell of the tent still clung to her clothes, and she could almost taste the Griffin's musk on her tongue.
She felt there should be some sort of a sign from the Universe signifying this meeting. 'Like, shouldn't there be 'signs in the Heavens and signs in the Earth'?' Her mind was whispering this to her in a panicked sort of way.
She realized that Manolo was becoming uncomfortable under her stare. He was fidgeting a bit, like her regard itched him in impolite places. She closed her eyes and took in great lungfuls of air. She felt as though she were having an asthma attack.
She felt well enough after a few moments to gasp out, 'That was a Griffin, right? I mean, that wasn't some sort of really high-speed virtual experience or something? I wasn't hallucinating, right? I mean, if I go back in there, I'm going to see a Griffin, right?"
Manolo smirked at her, and then replied, "Oh, you can't go back in there, darlin'."
Allison's voice of reason shouted triumphantly in her head, and her eyes narrowed. She slowed her breathing as the Universe slowly made sense again. Of course she couldn't go back in there! It was a scam of some kind, and it needed to be reset or something!
She wore a shrewd expression on her face now, her 'journalistic' instincts kicking in. "Oh? Why's that?" She asked Manolo this in her sweetest tones.
Manolo continued to smile. "You ain't paid for a return look yet, sweet-cheeks." He held his strange monkey-like paw out expectantly.
~~~~~~~
She lit a cigarette with trembling hands and took a grateful drag. She'd managed to quit doing this to herself three years ago, but after the things she'd seen today a cigarette was most definitely in order. Hell, a carton of cigarettes was in order. She sat for a long time, smoking cigarette after cigarette, watching the white blank of her cursor flick on and off.
She smoked until the back of her throat felt like a hot, dry rock had settled there, and her hands had stopped trembling. A thick pall of smoke hung over her. Her hands now hovered expectantly over the keyboard, waiting.
She lowered them and began to write.
~~~~~~~
Allison looked at Manolo's hand and a tight fist of fear grabbed her heart.
No.
Once was definitely enough in this case.
"Look, what is this place?" She was proud of the way her voice seemed to her to be pretty steady.
Manolo laughed, his voice rising even higher when he did so. "I already explained that to you, sugar-butt. It's a carnival."
Allison held a hand to her injured arm. It was beginning to hurt now, the shock of the encounter having worn off. "No, I mean, what is this place, really? I mean, I've just seen a Griffin!"
Manolo shook his head, his wizened features fixed in a grimace that could be a grin. "It's a carnival, lady. Specifically, it's a Carnival of the Impossible." The way he said it seemed to imbue the words with proper noun status to Allison's mind.
He continued talking, his entire mien becoming more animated as he did. "Look, you're familiar with the concept of black-holes, right? A star collapses in on itself, and because of the nature of reality, it eventually forms a hole that everything around it will fall into, right?"
Allison, on firmer ground here, responded, "Well, that's a gravely simplified explanation, but-"
"Right, right, right. But we're on the same page, right?" Manolo interrupted her, his face closing somewhat.
Allison nodded mutely.
"Right. Okay. So a hole, okay? Anyhow, what happens to the stuff that falls into the hole? Does anybody know, my ducky? No. No they don't. They have no clue. Right?" He looked expectantly at Allison who nodded again.
"Okay. So let's extend that metaphor a bit, okay? You've just met our Griffin. You've never seen a Griffin in reality because they don't exist anymore in reality. You can't 'perceive' a Griffin in reality. Your mind won't allow you to do it. It's like a defense mechanism or something. Like, your little world would fly all to pieces if you had to deal with the reality of a Griffin. You've got everything in your universe neatly explained, catalogued, and put away in tidy little boxes in your head. A Griffin just doesn't fit.
"Now run with this idea for a minute. You've heard this stated before, I'm sure. 'Perception is reality.' Since you - along with everybody else in the world - can no longer 'perceive' the Griffin, there's no more place for them in reality. For them, reality is a collapsed star; a black-hole."
He waved his little hands around, taking in the entire carnival as he did. "Well, sweet-cheeks, this is the bottom of that hole. It's a 'reality sponge', if you like. Down 'here', there's a place for things that don't have a place any more.
"Where's the Tooth Fairy live? Where have all the dragons gone? How come nobody's ever taken a picture of a goblin?" Manolo fixed his strange little eyes on Allison at that, and pointed towards the ground. "It's because they're all right here, my honey-weasel. They all live right here; down at the bottom of this 'no-place-limbo' in reality. This little no-where-non-space is our little home away from home, if you like. And if an enterprising businessman like myself can make a few bucks off it, well!"
~~~~~~~
What does magic look like?
Her fingers danced across the keys of their own accord. She was hardly aware of what she was typing; uncaring as to whether or not Jerry would even print it, and loving every second.
Does it have a sound? A taste? A smell? Does it come pre-packaged in delightfully designed containers that market-research has revealed will play well with certain demographics?
Does magic have FDA approval? Does it have Politically Correct effects? Does magic have the good taste to avoid offending minority groups somehow?
There was an anger rising inside her now; a hot, yellow tide that pulsed and ached and burned. She thought of Manolo's greedy little smirk, and she typed faster with hot tears splashing the keys under her fingers.
Maybe, just maybe, there's a way to find out.
~~~~~~~
Allison stared at Manolo, her mind slowly catching up to what he was telling her. "So what," she asked him, indignation making her voice burn, "you display these . . . these creatures of myth and legend like sideshows?" Her voice had risen to a shout, and she found her hands trembling in anger.
Manolo patronizingly patted a hand at her, like she was a small dog that had excitedly jumped up on him. 'Calm down, honey-buns. It's not like you guys have got any use for 'em. Besides, I got bills to pay, my little rose-bud."
"I swear, if you call me one more thing other than 'Allison' I'm going to pull your head off and shove it up your - "
"Temper, sweetie! Temper! I don't mean anything by it! Gee! I like 'em feisty, but wow!" Manolo laughed again, ignoring the red flush on Allison's face at his interruption. "Okay, 'AL-LI-SON,'" He drug each syllable out derisively in a way that Allison hadn't experienced since grade-school. She was actually embarrassed for him. But only a little. "I got bills to pay here. I mean, I don't know if you're aware of this or not, but a sick Griffin's not cheap. You got your overhead anyway, and then you've got your-"
Now it was Allison's turn to interrupt. "Wait a minute. The Griffin's sick? What's wrong with it? I didn't notice anything wrong?"
Manolo stared at her for a long minute and then laughed rather shakily. "You think that sad specimen in there," he said, with a furry thumb pointed back at the tent behind him, "is a good representation of a Griffin? Sweet Galloping Horseshoes, woman! No! That thing's so sick it's a wonder it's still alive! Hell, I keep expecting you people to come out wanting your money back because the thing's not moving! It's old too! Old, weak and sick!"
Allison swallowed once, her throat suddenly dry. "If that's a sick Griffin, what would a healthy one . . .." Her voice droned out as she saw Manolo's face flush and then pale. He shivered for a moment, and then looked away. His voice was whisper-thin when he replied. "Allison, I honestly hope I never find out."
Allison swallowed nervously again. "Okay," she croaked "if that one's sick, what's wrong with it?"
Manolo grinned at her. "Really got in there, didn't he? Well, swee- . . . Allison, he's sick because he doesn't belong in the Universe anymore. He doesn't 'fit'. Exposure to modern life, the continuing results of forcing his will upon an unbending reality, age, it's all catching up to him."
"Where's a Griffin go when it dies, Manolo?"
Manolo look up at Allison and responded quite seriously. "Where's a dream go when it's been dreamed? Where's a wish go when it's been wished, Allison? Once you don't even belong in 'no-where' anymore where can you go?"
~~~~~~~
"Perception is reality," she said to herself like it was a prayer. She continued to type.
~~~~~~~
Allison sat down on the ground then, hard. The idea that this glorious, terrible, wonderful, awful . . thing, -this Griffin! - soon wouldn't even exist at all was somehow so evil to her that it buckled her knees and broke her heart. A small, reasoning part of her looked around the squalid grounds of the Carnival and whispered, 'Maybe it'd be better off.'
She ground that voice into bloody paste in her mind, and stood back up, her eyes flashing angrily.
"I want out of here. Now." Her voice held an edge that could cut through a stone wall.
Manolo backed away from her in alarm. "Out? Why? Your editor assured me a full-page spread story by his 'Ace lady.' You've not even seen the whol-"
"Oh. You'll get your story, you little freak. You'll get a story the likes of which you've never even dreamed of. How do I get out of here?" Allison ground her teeth at Manolo.
Manolo took another step back, a sick smile on his face. "You walk that way, Ms. Allison. Just keep walking. You'll get there eventually. You're . . .uh, gonna write us a good story, right? Somethin' that'll draw some crowds?"
Allison smiled. It looked hungry and mean. She turned away then, and started walking.
~~~~~~~
She wiped her eyes and stopped typing for a moment. She could feel something hot, fierce and wonderfully alive moving around inside her soul. She knew it for what it was, and she gloried in it.
It felt like enormous wings seeking an updraft. It sounded like the triumphant scream of a predator as it took down a meal. It sounded like the opening and closing of a great, metal beak.
It felt like being alive!
"Perception is reality!" She shouted it at the screen, wanting, hoping and needing with all of her heart, mind and soul.
She re-read what she had written, whispering the words to herself.
I saw something today that defies explanation, belief, and even reason.
Today . . . today I saw a Griffin.
I felt its skin beneath my hands, felt the way its muscles pulsed and moved beneath that skin. I felt its beak, and I looked into its eyes.
Somebody told me that things like Griffins no longer have a place in our world. This feels like a sin to me; a crime.
I feel that if anything, we need them even more!
She smiled at that, and lit another cigarette. She depended it from the corner of her mouth, and continued to write, tears beading on her eyelashes.
What does magic look like?
"Does it have a sound? A taste? A smell? Does it come pre-packaged in delightfully designed containers that market-research has revealed will play well with certain demographics?
"Does magic have FDA approval? Does it have Politically Correct effects? Does magic have the good taste to avoid offending minority groups somehow?
"Maybe, just maybe, there's a way to find out.
"I saw something today that defies explanation, belief, and even reason.
"Today . . . today I saw a Griffin.
"I felt its skin beneath my hands, felt the way its muscles pulsed and moved beneath that skin. I felt its beak, and I looked into its eyes.
"Somebody told me that things like Griffins no longer have a place in our world. This feels like a sin to me; a crime. I feel that if anything, we need them even more!"
~~~~~~~
She'd stopped for a moment, and wrote on a handy Post-it the following message to herself in large, black letters.
PERCEPTION IS REALITY!
There was a realization growing in her soul; an understanding of the underlying foundation of the Universe. She couldn't put it to words. It was beyond words. It was a simple understanding of a fundamental truth larger than anything she'd ever encountered, and it was neatly encapsulated by the Post-it glaring at her from the top of her monitor. She felt it, knew it, and hoped with all of her energy.
If she'd known what she was putting in motion, she may have reconsidered. But like all lovers everywhere, Allison was firmly held by the heart.
The trembling had stopped in her hands, and she wrote with a focus that she'd never before experienced. It was as if she were tapping deep into the center of herself and pulling the words forth. It felt as though she were somehow channeling her soul. It burned. It was a sob that had been locked in her chest for so long finally finding release. She didn't think about what she was writing; didn't consider it or the ramifications. She simply let her fingers dance on the keys, and to hell with the consequences!
~~~~~~~
"I wish I could make you feel how looking into the Griffin's eyes was like seeing a reflected part of myself I had though was long dead.
"Like you, I've lived in a Universe that's been sterilized, homogenized, purified and placed in neat little boxes and rows. Everything in life is explained and scientifically labeled. There are no mysteries, no miracles and no surprises.
"If science can't explain it, well then, neighbor, it doesn't exist, does it? It's relegated to the realm of 'myth and fancy'. 'There's no Griffins, there's never been Griffins, and there never will be Griffins.'
Right?
"WRONG."
~~~~~~~
The part of Allison that was still paying attention told her to listen for just a moment. Allison paused, and in a place she'd never be able to identify - whether it was head or heart - she heard the steely rustle of scaly feathers. She heard the beating of mighty wings. Her heart soared into her mouth, and a simple, joyous sob leaked out.
~~~~~~~
"I saw one today.
"It belongs to a miserable . . . "
~~~~~~~
"Well, crap," Allison said aloud. "That is a problem, isn't it?" she continued.
She looked at the screen of her computer as if it could tell her the answer. She took a cigarette from her pack and lit it before realizing that there was one still burning in her mouth. She put it out, and dangled the other from her fingers while considering the Manolo problem.
She'd given very little thought to what, exactly Manolo was. She was relatively sure . . .it . . . was male, but beyond that she couldn't be sure. Was Manolo even human?
She gave a mighty groan when she realized she'd not even bothered to ask.
"You're supposed to be a journalist, girly! What's wrong with you?" She shouted at her reflection in the monitor.
Her heart knew that answer, though. She'd seen the Griffin, and some things no longer mattered.
She shook her head, determined to get those answers somehow, and continued to write.
~~~~~~~
" . . . little monster called Manolo. He's keeping it as a side-show attraction and it's dying by inches."
~~~~~~~
The Griffin lifted its head absently. It felt a stirring in its bones that it hadn't felt in long years. It was like the quickening that used to happen after the coldsleep. For the first time in nearly a thousand years, the Griffin felt the need to hunt. It felt the need to spread its wings and take to the thermals. It felt the need to rip, to tear, to pull its prey apart with the ferocity that only it could.
It held its head up, and let the feelings inside stir it. It rattled its wings a bit and dust flew. It was slow, this process, but the Griffin was patient.
All hunters are.
~~~~~~~
"Feel with me for just a moment, if you can.
"Imagine what it would be like to walk into a room and see a living, breathing, saber-tooth tiger sitting there. It's alive! You don't even need to see its breath moving around, or hear the feral grumble of its purrs. You can feel the intensity of its life from where you're standing. You know this thing can leap up and kill you before you've even registered it has moved.
"Now imagine that underneath all that - underneath the glorious prowess of the predator, underneath the rippling musculature of the near-monster, underneath everything that makes the saber-tooth so fearsome - it's sick to death, and dying of something you don't even understand.
"Can you imagine?
"Can you even conceive how powerless and sorrowful you'd feel in that moment?
"Can you understand how you feel as though you'd do anything - go to any lengths to do whatever it took to see that cat stand to its feet and lunge?
"I honestly believe that most of us would rather never have seen it than experience that sorrow.
"Most of us would rather die."
~~~~~~~
The Griffin gave a small cry as it felt something like lightning course through its veins.
The small creature that kept it fed with old blood entered then, and the Griffin fixed its eyes upon it. The Griffin could hear its heartbeat, could hear the way its warm, life-giving blood rushed through its veins. The Griffin could taste the prey-smell coming off it in deep, sensuous waves. It fixed its eyes upon the prey-thing, and extended its claws lazily.
The Griffin was deeply gratified to smell the prey-thing's fear just before it rushed back out into the night.
The Griffin lifted its head, and gave full voice to its cry.
~~~~~~~
"I'm supposed to be writing what's known around our office as a 'paid advertisement'. I'm supposed to be writing about Manolo's Carnival of the Impossible in such a way so that you'll rush right out and buy tickets to the place, lining Manolo's pockets.
"I can't, though. I can't write about the place because I only noticed it as an afterthought. It was there, and I registered some strange things that are certainly worth the trip, but the only thing I really saw was a Griffin; The Griffin.
"If I had an opinion I'd care to share, I'd tell you to do whatever you had to do to go see the Griffin. I'd tell you to pawn everything you owned, sell your children into slavery, sell a kidney if you have to, but go see the Griffin. Go before it's too late!"
~~~~~~~
"Allison, can I see you in my office?"
Allison looked up from the blank screen she'd been considering since she got here. She was at a loss as to why she'd even bothered to come in today. She could've easily driven in and left the piece on Jerry's desk. Some perverse quirk of her nature made her stay, and she'd been staring at a blank screen for three hours.
She'd never been one to give herself to anything. She didn't believe in God. She didn't believe in anything outside of the explained, the reasonable. Allison didn't believe in Magic.
But her encounter with the Griffin had changed all that. She'd felt a part of her waken and cry when she'd been with the Griffin. It had cried for nourishment, for comfort. A part of Allison had been re-born in her short encounter with the Griffin, and she was still dealing with it.
She'd poured herself into the story, and she knew that it was no less a part of her than a baby would be. She still felt as though she were existing somehow outside of herself, and she'd put the piece on Jerry's desk five hours ago.
It took her a minute to realize that Jerry - good, decent, practical, hard-headed Jerry - was looking at her oddly from the entrance to her cube. He had a concerned look on his face that irritated Allison for some reason. It was the kind of look you give to accident victims, or the terminally-ill. 'Are you gonna be okay?' (Slight head tilt, caring inflection to the voice.)
Allison quietly chuckled to herself, causing Jerry's eyebrows to climb out from under his stupid little glasses.
"Sure, Jere. What's up?"
"I'd really rather not do this here. Can we talk in my office?" He still had that look on his face, and Allison's stomach sank. She had a feeling she knew what was coming. She stood from her desk, ran her fingers through her hair, and followed Jerry into his office.
Jerry closed the door behind her, took his seat behind his desk, and indicated the one across for Allison.
Jerry's desk depressed Allison. It was clean and neat, and held all the things you'd expect an anal-retentive editor's to have; right down to the brass twiddly bits that editors the world over seem to require. There was a neatly scripted nameplate - with Jerry's name on it - that held an inkwell and a quill, and a matching brass paperweight shaped like a clothespin. Allison wondered if it all came as a set.
Jerry sat down behind his desk, tilted his head a bit, and with a caring inflection in his voice asked, "Is everything okay, Al?"
Allison grinned, and kept the mirth bubbling inside her to herself. She replied, "Sure, boss. I'm fine. Never better. Why?"
Jerry opened a desk drawer and pulled Allison's piece on the Carnival out. He put it on the desk, and smoothed his hands over it. He looked up at Allison, and said, "Well, it's not often I get a piece on griffins from my star reporter. I'm just wondering if maybe you need some time off, or something."
Allison's stomach clenched. She swallowed around a throat gone suddenly dry. "What do you mean, boss? I write silly nonsense all the time! Why should seeing a Griffin" (she winced inwardly at the way her voice capitalized it) "be any different?" She tried to keep her voice neutral, and knew by Jerry's eyes that it wasn't working.
"Look. Al. It's a good piece. It really is. But I'm not sure that it's what I was looking for here. I mean, an op-ed piece is all well and good if you feel that strongly about Manolo's performers, but Al-
"Cut to the chase, Jere, " she interrupted; her voice barely making it past the lump in her throat.
Jerry sighed then, removed his glasses, and rubbed his eyes. When he looked back up at Allison, his face looked naked, stark and hurt without his stupid little glasses.
"Al, I can't run this."
Allison sat back in her chair. It felt as though the breath had been knocked from her, and she couldn't tell you why. She swallowed, trying to dislodge the hard piece of cement that seemed to have grown there, and with all of her might, croaked out, "Why?"
"'Why?' I'll tell you 'why', Al. I gave you a simple piece. 'Write up this Carnival.' You come back here with a passion-filled piece about a griffin! What the hell am I supposed to do with this? I mean, even if this Manolo character doesn't sue me for libel, mis-representation, and outright fraud, I still haven't got a place for strong feelings, Al! I'm trying to pay bills here, not start a tree-hugging movement for mythological creatures!"
A thousand arguments sprang to Allison's mind then. She wanted to leap across the desk and pull Jerry's tongue out. She wanted to laugh, to cry, to scream. She wanted to somehow give vent to the feelings she'd been experiencing all week.
She wanted to fly . . . !
She didn't do any of those things. She sat across from Jerry - hard-headed, decent, hard-working, practical Jerry, in his stupid little glasses and his hokey, Sigmund Freud getup - and she nodded.
She reached up and removed her 'Daily News' Press ID from her lapel and tossed it across the desk at Jerry. "Okay. Fair enough. I quit."
She stood up then, still looking at Jerry. Jerry stood up himself, and lifted a placating hand towards her. "Hey, Al,.don't be like that-"
"Go to hell, Jere," she interrupted.
She walked out, not bothering to close the door or stop by her cube, or anything. She ignored everything Jerry tried to say, and walked out to her car.
It wasn't until she'd driven nearly home that she pulled over and cried until it hurt a little less.
~~~~~~~
Later that night, Allison had a dream.
She dreamed she was flying over the tops of knife-edged mountains. The sun was high in the sky above her, and she could feel the wind blowing through her (scales) feathers. Far below her a herd of horses was stampeding across a plateau. She dived then, and picking a large horse at random, sunk her talons deep into its back and lifted it off the ground while it was still galloping. She gave voice to a fierce cry, and made her way back to her nest where she fed on the still-twitching corpse of the horse.
The blood ran down her beak and watered the dry places inside her. She'd never tasted anything finer. It was alive with the fear-smell, the prey-smell. It was life, it was love, it was electricity, and it coursed through her like fire.
She ate her fill and then turned to her young, ready to feed them as well.
When Allison woke later, it was to the feeling of stiff, joyful tears that had run unchecked down her face.
~~~~~~~
Several days later, Allison received a very unusual letter. The envelope was made of some sort of yellow parchment, and had no return address. Her name and address was scrawled across the envelope in some kind of archaic script that made Allison think of illuminations done by Franciscan friars.
She flipped the letter over and saw a glob of red wax had sealed the letter shut. A Seal had been pressed into the wax that featured a grinning skeleton juggling skulls. The letter 'M' was twined throughout the Seal.
Her heart thumping, Allison tore the envelope open. A torn bit of The News fell out, and with a happy lurch Allison saw that it was her story. Jerry - that stuffy, insufferable git - had printed it anyway!
She saw with amazement and trembling fingers, that the Magic wasn't quite done. She'd never titled her piece; never really gave it a thought. She was suprised to see that Jerry had given it one that fit perfectly.
The tagline read 'Perception is Reality!'
Another clipping had fallen out. It featured a blurry picture of something from a long distance away shot in profile. Whatever it was, it was rearing in the sky, like a horse would. It looked for all the world like . . .something, - something with a yellow beak, and claws as big as an SUV - the size of a jumbo jet was flying off into the distance, trailing a bit of colored circus tent on one iron colored claw.
'Strange Creature Crashes Circus!' Allison skimmed the article, tears of joy standing in her eyes.
A short letter that had been written on the same yellowed, parchment-like material - and in the same archaic hand - accompanied everything. It was short, curt and to the point.
"Allison,
"I hope you're happy.
"I have no idea how I'm going to make up the loss.
It was signed, simply,
'Manolo'.
27 November 10 - Go read Puerile Rantings of a Slackwit. That's where I post the good stuff.
28 November 10 - The house smells like pie. I love my wife for that; the warm smell of home-made pie. I don't know that she enjoys filling a stereotypically female role of wife and mother; cooker; baker; home-maker, but I love the smell of pie.
10 July 10 - I am pondering maturity. A man I never met died recently. something a friend of his said has started resonating inside me, and I'm left with pictures of myself standing on a hilltop behind a monument, watching our afternoon's procession roll in.
The guys were leering. It's what you do when you're twenty-something-years-old and you're a manual laborer. Gravediggers get horny, too. We just tend to be grossly inappropriate about it.
It never failed. Some pretty young thing, wearing a demure skirt in a muted color would become a target, and before you knew it, five guys were making comments about her that would have a Spartan blushing.
That started me thinking about maturity. Maturity means not needing to see her legs. Maturity means not needing to say something like, "I'd crack her open on this monument right now! how about YOU, Nescher?"
Maturity means realizing you're thirty-five years old, happily married with an infant son, and there's no need to rise to their gibes. You've got nothing to prove.
And that's all.
01 July 10 - Fifteen days or so. I like it here and I don't want to move again, but what are ya' gonna do? When the guy can arbitrarialy fire her for whatever reason, there isn't a lot. So we'll go back to Cuyahoga Falls, or we'll move to Guam, or we'll go wherever her job takes us. And I'll follow loyally along behind because I love her and it's what yo do when you love someone.
But I really don't want to move again.
30 June 10 - Lewis Grizzard probably wasn't the first person to ask it--or at least, not the first person to put it in print-- but I think it's a valid question, nonetheless. Milk I can understand. Baby cows drink it and they turn into bigger cows, and bigger cows are good eatin'. To a lesser extent, I can even appreciate the thinking on eggs. I mean, chickens were probably on the buffet not long after Mr. Cow.
But who was the first guy to look at a shelled invertebrate, covered in sea-sludge, scrape it off the rock, break it out of its shell and go, "What the hell. How bad could it be?" Who was the first guy who thought it was a good idea to eat an oyster?
27 June 10 - Today's posting in Puerile Rantings is me whining about people whining. I think I originally put it a little something like this: I tried to write this in a frank and earnest manner, and as a result, I think I came across as more than a little . . .awful. I hope, if you read this, you read it as being some of MY thoughts and feelings, and you read it with an open mind. Let's start some free-thinking, here. Let's start some dialogue. Tell me what YOU think, not what you've been trained and spoon-fed to think. Free speech means being willing to say what you think, not just being able to.
19 Feb 06
Nescher Pyscher
25 June 10 -
Today's blog posting is about racism. What follows is a frank and earnest discussion about something I feel passionately about. I imagine I'm going to piss off quite a few of you. I apologize. That is not my intent. I hope you can read this with that in mind.
Racism and 'racial pride' are hot-button issues with me. I get fired up and start preaching about their evils. I tend to not be very politically correct anyway.
17 Jan 06
24 June 10 -
Got an email yesterday from an email about The Fist of Hand. It goes out tomorrow night. Say a prayer for me, will ya'?
22 June 10 -
Every once in a while I need to remind myself that God is running the universe, not me. It's hard some days, to let go of my perpetua need to be in control and surrender. Today's blog posting - What I Learned From a Serpentine Belt - is a gentle reassessment after a disaster. Appropriate for the situation my wife and I find ourselves in, I think.
21 June 10 -
I'm still dealing with the fact that the internet les me do this. Don't they screen for bums like me? I mean, isn't tere anyone keeping out the riff-raff? Well, okay. Whatever. I've got a blog up now. I'm calling it the Puerile Rantings of a Slackwit. It's basically crap I've dug up from all over that I don't believe anyone would ever want to read. Check it out if you like. It's the little block in the upper right hand corner.
20 June 10 -
Isn't the internet great? Every pogue with a modem can logon and create himself a web presence, whether it's a good idea or not. We live in exciting times, and I'm proud to be a part of it!