The Crooked Epic
Twyll th` ChyllTyrant
DESTROYER’S DEATHS
THE STORY OF TYR ~9,500
THE INN OF MATHEMATICAL MADNESS ~105,500
SAL’S SAUCE
THE READER ~12,000
THE MIST ANT ~21,500
THE FALL OF TYR ~32,500
CURSIVE COMICS
THE PRODIGAL SON
THE CALLING ~12,500
THE PROLOGUE
Zeus, having been sacrificed to appease the Netherrealm, had slain Lucifer in Hell. Directly after Armageddon, Tyr leapt through the gateway, abandoning Tank to rule Earth. Tyr would then be slain at the hands of Ishtar in her revengeful rampage which took her through Cipher after Cipher, until she transcended to the epitome of Elohim’s power, where she met the remnants of the Angelic Army. This was their final demise and at the moment that the gateway closed, Ishtar’s self-sacrifice at the hands of the all-powerful Elohim, that her final wish was granted; for her to be resurrected as the Ghost of the Holy Trinity.
The other angle of the trine was an ancient Cruithnean Dynasty warrior whose resurrection on the third day was everlasting and immortal on Earth. He had found a way to the Sun during the Dark Ages where he had remained until his reunion with young Prince Joseph. Here, at the brink of all extinction; the brothers, sons of Elohim, became one again. Their manifestation was as of Adam, the Original Man. The sacrifice of their brother and sister, the trine with Lucifers, was their balance that would again be fulfilled at the end of all time.
Adam, when he awoke, saw the purple rays of the sun shining through the garden of Eden. He had seen it all before and closed his eyes again. Today was Sunday...
Eve had three fathers and no mother. Adam was her first husband and her third husband. The children who were unnamed by the Qaballan Tanakh were Tula, Kula, and Wula, and they were three daughters. Their father was the Origin Prime, the Ghost. The three sisters fought viciously after their mother’s death. Tula’s families moved to India and Nubia. Then, Kula disappeared and Wula’s families moved to Mali and Pygmy. Then, Kul reappearing as Spirit of God could not cross the Nile and so fought with Wul to reach Morrocco and with Posidon to reach Ire. Tul also returned as a Spirit of God and moved to Lanka, and then to Arabia, and Wul, the Spirit of God, moved down to the Congo. When Tul’s family reached Tibet, they named them Hindu. When Kul’s family returned to Rome, they named them Juda and in Russia were named Pola. It was Wul’s family who became the Wus.
DESTROYER’S DEATHS
THE DRAGON’S TALE
Once upon a time; in those years of yore, when fire and earth and wind and water reigned over the dimension of man and the illusions of life in the Realm of Earth, there was (as is now,) a history of its own that ran on what it believed to be cycles of good and evil, rise and fall, and triumph and conquest. Harkened lies uncleansed devils into the streams of proverbial legend, hither wisdom’s overture begins in the minds of man. Our old, trustworthy span of time which punishes life with its stiffened arms of fate. In history’s eye where truths are with velocity’s intrepid realization in an accelerated science to the pinnacle of humanity pertained to such frail destiny, await judgment by each God’s prevalent faiths.
This story as such (although unique within its origins,) may have had its creation in times when values were different, ethics were bright and anew, and mystery was everywhere, (indeed hidden,) when cannot forever be explained, never told to this very moment…
It all begins in an agricultural town of Wus with their uncultured aggravate fire prior to the unforetold invention of the wheel, the landmark of commuters’ voyages; a mere homage to monuments of future times. Here, there were scarce populations in farming villages around the world. They survived on medicinal herbs, mostly struggling through short lives and harvested whatever they could while surviving against the wild beasts of an uncivilized era. Devils that began with the environments of the presented mayhem amongst the farmer families stretched into the cottages with evil spirits which conjured the wrath of the unknown.
Legend has it that during the times of the Dragon, before the invention of transportation and any reign of dominion, human life was either two ways; short-lived pome or with domes of longer legacy for family and tribal tomes of power. The latter was reserved especially for the female of our human species (specifically for installment of new conquest;) enterprises into this world of uncontrollable danger.
To lady, domain was given of government, control in limits which would drive men of each village. Fair Dian, Princess of the Kingdom ruled by Rall, was inhibited until she was almost skeletal in form. Preserved for two lifetimes of kingships since her father Afra, the pioneer of the region, whom had left his family with leagues of warriors to travel north and colonize Wus, whose perseverance was fallen in harsh colds of icy horrors. When those cavemen descended darkness in war and forced her kingdom to name a new leader, Dian’s brother was killed by Rall and these dark times for the once expanding empire were excruciating.
The poor people of these times had already developed ways of irrigation and for supporting small amounts of crop growth season to season. But by learning to do this, they had given up their location and identities to the Dragons who ruled the realm. Young Heir Daemon’s descent from the flame-building family who descended from the mountains in the last generation was meant to thwart the Dragon’s threat through a meeting of fire with fire.
The creation of the Dragon Lord was more complicated than it may seem, now. As the scarce information that reached beyond the measuring rod of written history is vague, ransomed by the chroniclers of the past, and intentionally stopped (for reasons hiding the identity of the Dragon,) and the cycles that long ago created it. The Dragon had manifested itself haphazardly at the origins of the sapient by misuse of medicinal herbs by our early ancestors. The fierce and feared creature of pre-historic times was an oppressor of country and the lands inhabited by human kingdom. These beasts were hybrid of man and dinosaur who were wielded as weapons in elementary laboratories by primitive scientists. A special type of alchemy and magic which has been long forgotten since the disappearance of the earthly vegetation that yielded such power to the bestowed warlocks and warlords.
What ended the violent reign of these dangerous Dragons was the eventual birth of an evil Prince and what happened to him and his wise companion and the legions of warriors who were sacrificed to destroy his terror is the reason we have the wheel of invention.
Anyhow, Daemon’s pride was undermined by determined lust for the Princess. However, a Prince from another land, far away, had arrived in black night, stealing her heart. Daemon cunningly never admitted his jealousy but instead formed a closer relationship with this Prince. As Dian and the bandit Prince plotted an escape from the kingdom, Daemon eavesdropped from a nearby building and hatched a plan of his own.
Dragons of all types (of which there are distinctly three,) breathe fire which comes from their bowels where they harness a power which can turn matter into only two forms of elements; water and body mass. As a dragon thrives on its victims it grows more aggravated and aggressive. The dragon can also control lightning during thunderstorms unless the Gods otherwise have forbidden it. This means that when the Dark Prince and his companion, Daemon, stole into the Royal alchemy laboratory and pursued to steal the ingredients and toxins to make the Dark Prince immortal they did not realize how the main compound in the formula would react during composition. To their surprise they magnetically attracted elements out of the existent Dragons on the planet therefore disintegrating them all into dust as their potion gathered the most radical powers of the multitude into a unified, immortalized, Dragon Lord.
What Daemon did next after the concoction’s mixture; was pure madness, as bravely he immediately grabbed the Prince Dragon's tail and bit into it with his bare teeth at the scaly tip in an act of courageous ingenuity. It caused the Dragon Lord to bend immediately to Daemon's will as the tail of the monster began to slowly dissolve into sputtering smoke. This is when Daemon threw the tail into a readied bucket of water and as the water began to boil and evaporate, the Dragon's pain was relieved.
Daemon's plan was to use the Dragon Lord to kill all his personal enemies including the King and Queen of Rall. Daemon sent the Dragon Lord to the King and Queen's chamber and when the Dragon reached the old castle he appeared as the young Prince again at the gates. The guards let him in and the false Prince cleverly made his way into the chamber, himself, and murdered both her parents in cold blood. The Dragon Lord flew to Daemon who had moved to the high mountain near the town. Here, the Dragon Lord and Daemon waited for night to pass while the Dragon soaked his injured tail in the natural springs on the mountainside.
Only one wise man in the whole country knew of the entire Legend of the Dragon Lords, so one young alchemist named Yosef went to seek him out during that night. When he successfully found the old wise man, a man of Wus descent, named Sal in a small cabin in the moonlit woods beyond the town's outskirts, he discovered the weakness. That night during rainstorm the alchemist and wise man left towards town. As they gathered themselves against brutal gusts of the storm on a bridge, they saw the shadow of the Dragon flying down the valley of the river. They followed its trail to the spring on the mountain and while Daemon was nowhere near, they assaulted the resting and defenseless monster and ripped out its heart. Daemon returned at the last minute and snatched its heart back from the hands of the alchemist and pushed the wise man down the mountainside. Suddenly the alchemist revealed his secret weapon.
This is where it gets comprehensively complex, when the cycle of Dragon must truly be understood. The Dragons were born of a special herb rebounded to the human genetic sequence through exposures. A Dragon is thereby bound to the element of Earth until it is either stricken by lightning, transcending to the sky or is killed by any other predator. The Dragon whom hath died once can only be reborn within the sky where the herbs that were used to create it crystalize. Then, Dragons can return to Earth as a giant monster up to twice the original size. If the Dragon is killed again here, while they are more fragile and nearly transparent apparitions; shining shadows wherever they walk, the Dragons become able to be harnessed only by uncontrollable waters of Earth, seas and oceans, where a Dragon’s final form is a Serpent which can jump from the water and fly across the land, scouring it but must always return to amphibious nourishments. These had not been seen since the Dark Time when the last Dragons had been thought to be relinquished by the powerful and heroic Ty of ancient Tul and Wy of Kul and now, the Dark Prince; Dragon Lord was a different, unique type of inquisitive Dragon, never before seen.
The alchemist grabbed from his bag an artifact which had been once stolen from a volcanic Dragon cave where one Dragon had slain another and from two pieces of shining crystal which had been blown with fire at such intense temperatures were created two round shields. When the alchemist grabbed the armful of heavy metal from the bag, Dragon Lord bellowed loudly causing an immense earthquake as the other one fell down to the wise man below. This special metal which had been the Dragon’s crystals formed in the eyes of battle threw the water from rain clouds and water in the spring on the mountainside, the rivers nearby, and the entire essence of all water blown backward away for a mile radius from the mountaintop. Lightning, as if from all the Gods, struck the Dragon and killed it as the metal shields exploded in flames.
The alchemist and wise man told the townspeople what they had seen. Daemon was banished in exile and died alone in savaged wilderness.
THE LOST SÉANCE
Along the Atlantean watchtowers were Orbs of Infinity, all but one spire held these Orbs where there now sat the icy Gargoyle. He had watched O'den, Myra, and Tyra row through the Strait.
The Chesapeake Bay where the trio landed was out of sight from the oceanic patrol.
As the path they tore down in the heavy woods led to mountain, they eyed it from the dark valley. They stared down the sunset and they viewed the red moon rise, watching for a sign. The smoke signal was during those early after- twilight moments when the transfer of birds, and the sounds of day, lose to the overpowering silence. Bats squeaked, swooping through the lowering sky, like the world was connected to the entire universe in twinkling stars that joined the search party.
O'den followed ascent up the terrain and the rocky climb up to the cave. Where my brother and I were waiting, we watched them and kept the embers hot and the game fresh.
Our mark was ten more miles west, and in the morning we crossed. O'den was old and our father, our mother Myra was younger than he but still the slowest in our party. Tyra kept up as much as she could, keeping pace with Myra and O'den and then bounding to us through the thick wilderness that covered America.
O'den led us forth with the determination and confidence that we had known from our clan. He held his staff for Myra to climb up the hills and steep land. Tyra never let emotions commit to her as she had promised herself when we left the village in Europe.
She had known men who had died and some whom we had met had won her heart but now we were alone.
The first thing we saw of the Native tribe was that there was someone of them who planted native men’s skulls on sticks throughout the miles leading to their settlement. At first, we tried to divert but the third one we saw gave away that only one rogue tribesman was responsible. As eerie silence fell over our party, Tyra stepped halfway into a hole where he had hidden the tools to make the long wooden stakes. The pit was blood-covered but there were no bodies inside, only piles of sticks and arranged primitive knives.
The next thing we saw were small, clawed animals who ran around like sprites in the jungle of American forest. Tyra managed to catch one easily after her second attempt in the woods, alongside us as we traveled towards our village mark. The small cat was partially a domesticated breed we had never seen before. She let it go rather than eat it when it scratched her neck. My brother Jon raised his bow and arrow to shoot but he drew back the bow string with no kill.
We felt the strong aura of human inhabitants over a ridge in the woods, here we spread out and agreed to meet within the fight that would pursue if caught. O'den pointed at a particular post outside of a key location on a hill with a hut atop of it where he had watched a bald man enter, he told us. We split up and waited for the midnight sleeping of the Natives, in cold, quiet darkness. Then, they rushed our camp suddenly and what happened next surprised everybody as from out of the entire hill with the hut, came flying devils through the night. Pale, translucent demons poured out of the hillside and engulfed the village on fire. We rushed onward nonetheless.
Tyra, Jon, and I made our way to the side of the hut first and looked down through the village at a murderous horror. When Myra and O'den reached us, O'den kicked a hole in the wood frame of the hut near the bottom of the wall. He kicked again and then banged down with his staff on a trap door beneath the hut. Although potentially lowering our overall survival chance, we all crawled inside, shielded behind O'den between silts.
Above us the floorboards rumbled and the hillside crumbled us in together beneath the riot outside. It slowly ceased into just screams of anguish in the night as people died in a blazing fire which died down as well, slowly at first. A rain started down on the hut and thunder claps shook the air even in our dark cellar.
A door busted open, suddenly, and shouts above kept us quiet and rang in echoes through our ears. There were men of the tribe upstairs and they wrestled with someone. Banging, a trap door sprung open and we were staring up at several Native men who rushed at us, angrily.
Our captors beat us and then a bloodied and bruised man struggled in a forced stumble over to the trap door above. The men raised themselves away from us. Quickly each stood back from the trap door cellar where we lay in torment. The old aged man whose bloody face winced and grimaced at us through the trap door, blew heavy smoke down to us. We all felt faint and passed out.
We awoke on a carousel of horror, each of us on large hanging platforms on a stage with spiked sticks below and above. We stayed bound on these posts for two days as each of us slowly starved. As we grew thinner, our platform raised on the carousel and we reached our deaths at once as the hanging bodies of O'den, Tyra, and Myra hit the spiked sticks and punctured their brains. Jon and I slipped off last, into an abandoned and cold world.
My name is Thor, these are the writings of the last days on Earth. In the morning fog, I looked out over the dark valley which my brother, Jon the Axe Wielder, and I, had captured in the wake of the assault on our hunting village. My father, mother, brothers, sisters, family are dead. The hangings we were forced to watch were a nightly reminder of the war that we had fought and lost in the North American wild. We voyaged down-river. The mouth of some great body of water was before us when the ambush began again. Jon pulled his ax and short lance, and I, my hammer and my bow. We fought the men off and discovered the tribe was small. Their encampment that we traced after the crash of our vessel was easy to spot for our trained eyes. Jon and I burned the camp to the ground during the night, in vengeance. The women and children too. I looked over a valley of death this morning, smoke still rising from bodies.
The night ahead was oncoming and we foraged with the instruments left behind. There were fishing lances and we began the hunt on a deer trail, late in the afternoon. At the other side of the river, we had seen the trail and each had eyed it with desire throughout the daylight which both dimmed in the noontime and late evening when we swam finally to the other side. On the other side of the opposite cliffs, we broke into a forest brush which led into a deep thicket towards which the deer trail broke into two where they kept their routes. Upward against a high mountain we sought the ground to take the night’s rest.
High on the crest of the mountain was a strange giant plant. It was unlike any totem we had ever seen but was an entirely wooden, five sparred shape that rose off of a long trunk. It was concave like a leaf on the opposite end which faced a long valley which led to a plateau almost a mile away. We camped underneath it in the middle of the night and stayed up watch half night for each other to rest. In the early morning though, I tried to wake Jon and couldn’t, and I fell back asleep.
In the morning ghastly, pale rays of the sun that shone down, we both awoke to a phenomenon never dreamed of, when the plateau was now a half mile closer and much larger across the area we had known, leading to what looked like one of the greatest sized bodies of water our people had explored seven summers ago. The totem had changed as well and was now only four sparred. The new shape was surprising and Jon shouted accusations that I had managed to knock it with my hammer. I denied this and we continued back to the Native encampment.
There, in the valley of death we left that morning, was a surprise when all of the bodies and encampment had been removed. We stayed nearby and that night something strange happened again, when our meal of raccoon had turned and was infected somehow with worms. Before we saw, we had each eaten bits and then had to force ourselves to go hungry. We camped and built a campfire and put it out with planks which we had made from a large tree we chopped down together.
That morning, we woke up again to the mysterious astonishment of teleportation back underneath the same ominously strange totem on the other side of the river where there were now only two dangling spars left. Across the mountain top was a wide, clear plateau, and we saw a building in the middle of it. We approached and felt it to be a trap so we retreated from the area.
Far down at the base of the mountain we saw a buck and knew we needed sustenance but by the time we had set up the capture it was late in the afternoon already. We set up camp once more while the sun set across from the mountain on the West side of the river. On our side the dark crept through like a stalking tiger.
That night I awoke to see Jon was missing, I heard his cry up toward the top of the mountain. I raced up the ledge of the summit, but when I got to the top, I felt the potent sense of evil and I slowed down.
I opened the cabin in the middle of the plateau. There was a cauldron in the center of six witches with six fires between each. I saw them passing around a stick lit on fire, they smoked on it with cracked and dirty lips. They ash into the cauldron, each in hypnotized trance. Supernaturally, Jon began rising from within the burning cauldron. From water his head emerged and then his naked shoulders came up from the waters.
I smashed the cauldron with my thrown hammer in a horrified rage I could not control. To my unfortunate fault, the specter in the cauldron melted down out of the broken fragments like it was made of liquid. The bonfires spit out and the witches vanished into the walls with wisps of curling smoke.
The ground began shaking and I fell back out of the door into a panicked run toward the field’s edge. The ground shook violently, I fell against the haunted totem for support, immediately it fell over having been unrooted from soil. It continued until it became a whirlpool of movement of Earth below me. I slid down the side of the mountain and off of the cliff, drowned in the river.
THE LEGEND OF THE DRAGONS OF FOREVER
Tyra, the slayer, awoke from her transcendence to heaven in soul dreaming of the serpents, along the shores of Iceland, the cold where northward delivered death, twin ice reincarnations of her life sat upright, lying dead, in foreign courts more ancient than time between enormous buildings,
O'den stood forth, unscathed nor changed behind one of the two buildings was dark, bellowed noise and a roar
Myra, somehow pregnant, stepped poised with blade, forced to perform slithering sides, grand fate and Dragon Lord's voice spawned form along the first floor, intertwined their vocal cords along the walls Tyra rushed with her sword, swiftly entered the door as distant howl within emerge two beasts' heads in blaze from windows, to transform behold Dragon of Forever, behind to Myra, Loki is born, as foretold Coyote came and swept Tyra off her feet in passion, and disappeared for the demon too, metamorphosis became incarnate rage, crazed fear Tyra, at last, rushed the top post, final stage of failed rebuttal faced with a phantom of hate, her family was caged by their doubles
THE STORY OF TYR
The Story of Tyr…
The young prophesier profiteer
…the story of Tyr…
Apprentice puppeteer’s frontier
The story of Tyr…
…
…Tyr…
In the first place, in outer space
There was once a ground on Earth base
And in the terminal of Dragons Eyes
They stood in the order of verbal masterized
And that’s where here’s quagmire of war
Became from swords with Empire’s form
And headfirst went the Dragons Eyes
Then came the murderers magnetized
Storming the hordes of Magna size
It’s like the townships can falter on Gibraltar
And now when you headchange it’s Greek as Tyrannosaur’s
The story of Tyr…
One on one one hundred years
The Story Of Tyr…
One on one one hundred years
The story of Tyr…
Potato famines and that’s why we’re starving
And in times in hard, we’ve gotten bribery farther
And the bibles we’d bothered were over-replaced
All stages and gambits of the Dragons we blaze
That’s where we sort of begin, when war is our sin
It’s at 1300 or thereabouts after Edward was King
But this is the true story of Longshanks redemption,
Banger Greez and Casher Smith, the oh, so long tempted in danger
In The Story Of Tyr
One on one one hundred years
The story of Tyr…
One on one – One hundred years The story of Tyr…
One on – one – one – hundred years..
Let the story set place
Let the story set place..
Let the story. Set. Place..
Ready?
Set…
Shh.
Shhh..
Shhhh…
…Shhhhhhh…
It’s goblin desire gun angles swing hired
Empire crooked lean crooked the choir
It’s goblin desire gun angles swing higher
Empire crooked crooked crooked the flyers
It’s goblin desire gun angles swing swing
Empire Lean Empire Lean Empire Lean in… Inn
The goblin desire gun angles swing higher
Empire crooked lean crooked the choir
It’s goblin desire gun angles swing higher
Empire crooked lean crooked the choir
Lean…
Ok…
Banger Greez, Casher Smith
Set the intro…
Let the Baron see the matchers with…
The intro…
…
100 years of war prepared our fieldhouse
With an arena for strategists in real towns
To mangle the civilians that migrated out
And tangle knights like gyrating jesters and clowns
Clouded mixed expectations of me and my chapters
Great consequences overseas- Scotland mercenary masters
The ideas I choose had stewed with my crew
Casher Smith the town Evangelist already knew
But Banger Greez grew through Lord to Baron
And Casher Smith, he was baronet to the barren
Because although the herrings were high on errands
The gentlemen together are that much more arrogant
And the initial plight of our land’s unfair sharing
Went with the Prince of Bristol, whose hand was uncaring
And these were the simpler times of earlier theorems
When our ancestors mixed us in unholy harems
And the serums of secretions in secrets
Are the evilest deeds of the unbelievable creatures
Riding in that night, we saw distant the castles of Bristol
And then the ground shook for a dragon’s taste tickle
In the air of forges and fogs of fate’s horrors
Horses that rode beside us suddenly teemed tortured
They were bound by Casher Smith’s million or so minions
Now they were all blown away, like winds on an idiot
Peasants out there on the outskirts of Brighton and darkness
Shouted horizon a’rising on then once was Sussex
The sounds of these shrieks of the eye of fear
Had the Scots come down? Or I, OverLord Tyr?
…
The doubts flew through their minds, shells of atrocity
And the hounds that knew mine, yelled out atrociously
At the height of the catastrophe
The final apocalyptic rhapsody
Behold the Dragon Beast
…
Goblins in choirs, the Tyr ain’t yet tired
Goblins for Greez of The Crooked Empire…
…My…
Quanta…
I…
Psi…
Versa…
Psi…
Ire Ore & Cursa…
Quanta Psi…
Mersa Psi Tertia Tyr Caedo…
Sea Eartha…
…
Zway…
…
Zway…
…
The sway of the autumn on the Roman road
The vocalized spectrum of omen’s of ode
In the words of the sonnet often it’s quantum
Fluctuate the facts of Sodom and Gomorrah
And it’s something to fathom natural mathematical
Anti-agnostic sports of spiritual battlefield
Its scroll was said harvest, the bottom of targets
The soul essence and garden of embodiment’s warden
And the crypt is the keeper of the feeling of tombs
And the lifted singers keep it feeling our tunes
But on the heaviest of blooms of these overtones
Becomes the deadliest moon of Tyr The OverLord
For in the fictional feuds of twilight’s truth
Is the frictional fuel to the magical tool, blind by truth
This is the moment of fate, the atonement was saved
The stolen graze of the beast, the Unholy ones’ brave
…
This is the moment of time, the alignment disguise
The enlightenment of trine, the fine signs of the skies
This is milestone grace, the firestone’s gates
The Golden Spiral of faith, the Mages await…
This is the moment of fate, the atonement is saved
The Golden Spiral of faith, the Mages wait…
For in the fictional feuds of twilight’s truth
Is the frictional fuel to the magical tool, blind by truth
The hypnotist of the inquisition was the suspicions
Yet the doubt of the Magna charter was its collision
And the suspicious crept lurking on the murky serfs
And propelled the wicked verses of hidden cursed
And the time of the wicked had befell our tavern
For in the nick of the hour the torment it battled
And the wise collected high tone on the autumn branches
Snapped them in half and so far as audible dances
In the invisible aftermath of this ravaged land
Casher Smith & Banger Greez & The Dragon of Death
It bellowed from out of the fury of fire & might
As the yellow flames flickered the red tongue’s fire bright
And the fire light as the fire’s sight was fires of fright
But the fire of the night landing surprised of no strife
This is the moment of fate, the atonement was saved
The stolen graze of the Beast, the Unholy ones brave
This is the moment of time, the alignment disguise
The enlightenment of trine, the fine signs of the skies
This is milestone grace, the firestone gates
The Golden Spiral of faith, the Mages await
This is the moment of fate, the atonement is saved
The Golden Spiral of faith, the Mages wait…
In prior times candles, now the dragon was waxy
Its wings green like glass sheets of expensive hashish
And the hands were like talons and talented haunches
Crept low on the ground and stood tall and undaunted
As its snarls grew on its nostrils its lips were then bled
Haunts crawled through the curls on the back of its head
The eyes of an infinite demon, with a daemon inhuman
And if its size was intimidating or beastly, imagine it suited
With plates of great flanks, scales like paneled armor
And a stake in its tail that whipped out at any karma
If it saw its greatness magnified so magnificent
The whole hatred of battle cries seemed insignificant
But the Mages were felt before the swaying earth fell
And they say they aren’t Saints, but Banger Greez ain’t to tell
For the moment its legs struck out in advancement
With The Mage of Bristol, the Prince had his chances
This is the moment of fate, the atonement was saved
The stolen graze of the Beast, the Unholy ones brave
This is the moment of time, the alignment disguise
The enlightenment of trine, the fine signs of the skies
This is milestone grace, the firestone gates
The Golden Spiral of faith, the Mages await…
This is the moment of fate, the atonement is saved
The Golden Spiral of faith, the Mages wait…
Underground dwellings with low cut ceilings
Were the homes of masterminds as well as crooks in dealings
Forsaken searchers of the flame that Dragon did bellow
Were among the trees and the unEarthly fellows
The road of Rome had long been abandoned
But our hope of a tablet and stone of Commandments
Was reached deep in the shame of the Mage’s potent sway
Where the Earth reaches density and the Dragon had stay
The wind of the sea can then shift its pace
And the Dragon and flame drifted out into bits of starry space
The Mage Vocal Zway, the legend of sorcery
But be warned of the Dragon, for its source is our forgery
“Come on, then, bloody Baron, Banger Greez or thereafter,
Beware the thuggish Scot mercenaries and the treaty their after”
…
Banger Greez, Casher Smith, Vocal Zway, and the squad
Here we stay, that’s the way, ok and Hammer The Scots
This is a fellowship born out of the battles of thought
A wide awakening within to the grandest of God
This is a fellowship here, and it was born out of fear
The eye of the dragon, and for I, OverLord Tyr
And here we stray, this way, ok Longshanks rescue
The ways of the Mage Vocal Zway had kept askew
But more on a faction of the land to be tract
And the action of man, and the plan of attack
Because of Princes of sale, as printed on mail
Stamps the seal of an envelope from which out I hail
The OverLord Tyr, contractor of taverns and jails
Led by the secrecy of The Dark Ages and hidden in Wales
But if I knew of the reasons, they’d be long to tale
So although Wales is my partnership, my ship is on sails
Off the coast the Isle of Wight, I watched the fight
Caught off in the night, where without Arthur, I write
The Story Of Tyr, must begin with my oath
For although your trust is tenfold, my wisdom was both
So listen up to the toast to the one that I’ve known
King Edward of England and the kidnapping of throne
For born of Henry III, he was given such prominence
Concerning the Barons, first he signed his own
Providence Teaching us that to fight death one must first honor it
And that the wicked pay penalty untouched by tolerance
I speak of times of hardships that started in Lewes
We took the rights off the noose, and tried not to loose
I seek of time’s hardships and the need for some suze
Old days of a kingdom resurrected in 1272
Henry died that year, and at his height of Crusades
Edward the sung son, through the light fought to escape
He made his way home, two years on Rome
Where he was taught of long verses, from which where I roam
I had been privileged of treasures, let’s say I was old
The Prince of Wales held securely my own weight in gold
I had begun writing the verse that would pose as the sonnet
That captivated William Shakespeare, Poe, and young Thomas
These hidden scriptures no scroll or soul could outdo
I was notarized by Poseidon and returned with the crown jewels
Barons of buffoons unfit for their own food
Overthrowing the Empire before knowing their own feud
Inspired by the trine of Amaury, Guy, and Simon
The coup was a ruse like this story which I’m writing
Cousins to the Old King, Patriarch Henry
Now sworn as French Barons rich on a Dynasty
They had been French from day one, now Edward their enemy
Although Evesham had left them divided only the prior century
Edward had slain Simon in a battle of knights
Pawns in the war over land captured in fog and night
Song and sprite, God and light, fawns and our life
We were caught like a cauterized knife on a slice
We were wrought of the hot and the frugal alike
But lost in the fog where only the Ruler ignites
We speak of a time when the peasants and serfs
Sold lives for less than nothing, and more than their worth
The Romans brought Christ to the Neanderthals that were here
And so had cost life to evolve out of fear, like Tyr
Seriously seer the Sirs and search for Guinevere
Yet the stake at which we fought was gullibly all clear
Little to live for, the peasants of the old 13th
Led blind into sections of cultured harvests in mercy
Crops that were taxed, handled and led to the thirsty
Fed back to the mouths of the unvaccinated and dirty
And these were easy times between then and the 14th
Knights fought for a fortress they were then forced to leave
Chivalry is an easy game for the starved and the depraved
Bitterly played by a Dark Kingdom of slaves
They themselves were barely worth great recognition
Missing link figures that would break with no weapons
The Barons, the headpieces of the feudal Lordships
Were more apt to mercenary life than the brutal warriors
They had charge of each village, for as small as it was
They had to settle treaties with the all the Lordships above
…
It had been surcharged to the quest of our Banger Greez
To exchange wicked jests of angry and players of the freed
The merchants awaited notice at the tavern they came
Burning awake the moments that alcohol never saved
The tract was a settlement to cross the Roman roads
And bring wine to a small township Casher Smith had exposed
For in desperations sought those wicked caught out as foe
Spirits of the bottle were thought of as stops in our bones
Where Banger Greez stood out on precipice of battle
His apprentice Evangelist might have outcast his own shadow
Wales had been quoted civilized and security maximized
But while they minimize penalty, criminals were taxed to die
So, while I stood a while on the Isle of Wight
I was understood as I could that what is wrong isn’t right
…
…
Banger Greez and Casher Smith and Vocal Zway hey
Banger bangs deep, Casher cashes on pain
Vocal Zway is the way we swayed to day, the day
Banger Greez and Casher Smith and Vocal Zway hey
Banger bangs deep, Casher cashes on pain
Vocal Zway is the way we sway today, the day, okay?
…
Bristol was at qualm, the Mage and the Alliance
It was a twisted dawn the day they chased the horizon
Vocal Zway would say the property rights was probably right
In London, properly wise
Tyr the OverLord was solemnly rife
It was a score to be settled with the prophesied light
Also known as the Dragon of Wight
Beyond the towns of Britain, in the Mage’s crystal
It was found the journey must begin at first night
When the grand Dragon of Death was forced to flight
Where men and women had refused to fight
Now was the opportune of their trine,
Due to the sight, the strong will break
Their quest shall begin, in songs before time, the dead sin
The time of nigh was the time to uplift
The trine of I, Tyr, shall behold its gifts
Banger Greez and Casher Smith and Vocal Zway hey
Banger bangs deep, Casher cashes on pain
Vocal Zway is the way we swayed to day, the day, okay?
Banger Greez and Casher Smith and Vocal Zway hey
Banger bangs deep, Casher cashes on pain
Vocal Zway is the way we sway today, the day, okay?
The terms of the solution were made
The turns of their constitutions, the Mage
Terminated the returned restitution of the game
To stray in the Great Forest to find their aim
For Casher was given extra intelligence
Although inhibited by the passions of wickedness
The villainous in visions would visit him yet
To Casher was given the power to command the mind
On any algorithmic sign, or rhythmic rhyming line
But Banger was no stranger to the dangers of angst
As he served in the second Baron’s wars in plain, enraged
However, as his trusted sword vanished in the range’s rain
In replacement, a cursed dagger for the Dragon was paid
Remember use your words wisely and choose them
Before you misconstrue them or confuse and lose them
Though Banger the dagger gave may lead to grave peril
Banger Greez and Casher Smith and Vocal Zway hey
Banger bangs deep, Casher cashes on pain
Vocal Zway is the way we swayed to day, the day
Banger Greez and Casher Smith and Vocal Zway hey
Banger bangs deep, Casher cashes on pain
Vocal Zway is the way we sway today, the day, okay?
As they moved through the forest, a signal displayed
The last step they had taken together was all it would take
As Banger peeped to the canopies, Casher Smith saw
Underneath the brambles, all animals scrambled off
Then, at the very point the two pawns turned to warn
The Mage’s eye panned at an angle aligned with the fawn
The fauna threw aside and it was none other than Pan
They crept out of the bushes and sought out our cross
Pan peered out from his nymph cloud and Minotaur clan
He sneered at our gimmick, and spoke in a limerick
“Creeps, what unnatural animals, the cross of a cannibal
Or the cross of a troll, whose toll is Pandora’s carnival
Let it be known that while London was stormed
They let out the shouts from the thousands of Lords
Tyr had been known to be bested before
Perhaps this is not time for an actual, but supernatural war.”
Banger bangs deep, Casher cashes on pain
Vocal Zway is the way we swayed to day, the day
Banger Greez and Casher Smith and Vocal Zway hey
Banger bangs deep, Casher cashes on pain
Vocal Zway is the way we swayed to day, the day
Banger Greez and Casher Smith and Vocal Zway hey
Banger bangs deep, Casher cashes on pain
Vocal Zway is the way we sway today, the day, okay?
Vocal Zway
Okay?
…
The Story Of Tyr…
…
…
It’s The Story Of Tyr…
…
…
Roman roads stroke the globe
Hold a stone of Odin’s old
Roam and row and throw the tome over the moat
Rome and rows, oh and rope
Roman’s road owed in ode
Unrobed soul, opened sole
Hold up the gold off the rails
Floating on stolen ship with broken sails
Tyr I am, and here I stand
Tiered contraband in uncivilized land
Tear out my hand, salt to Poseidon’s brand
Tear tied knots from out of a married man
Buried in quicksand faster than a fairy’s fan
Tired of hearing you say we’re all here to die
But I can’t witness wrath in whispering cries
Above, if love winks, the islands flood my mind
No mistake to shoot your stake, stabbing the steak
It can take your place while your breaths escape
While you chose your fate, a face to voice your name
They don’t have a choice to waste, Vocal Zway’s fame
Holding the brave to the Dragon’s flame in reign
The greatest fall back to the golden gates
The last handshake was taken away by maelstrom rains
When we became trapped on the island in waves
Evil’s smiling face was my timeless case arraigned
The trials awaited my triad I’d paid with style and grace
Defiled like the states of fermented grapes gone past prime
Like vines, I’d passed my line, and now I’d die
Trying to outgrow my rime, but I’m slow as slime
The sea’s unseen changeless price of sacrificed lives
In irate fright, I set up camp and perched up high
Until I at last might escape from the Isle of Mann
Castaway to create at least the Cape of the Gobb
Land Watchtowers’ archers stopped ours from hours atop
On the clock’s arching arms our doubts were stocked
Banger Greez be swift with Casher Smith
Vocal Zway don’t betray my gifts
I know I’m alright, but now I’m blind to the fight
Alone my allies may only strive for strife
Crowned king’s forlorn for as Lord at height
My enormous loss was only a portion of the heist
If this was conquest of fire and heat
Only with the Dragon’s demise could be complete
And with whose strength if not the orcs or cracken?
After the lightning strikes of thunderous anthem
…
While I, myself, Tyr was destined to lose
The Story of the Dragon of Death continues
Aside from Vocal Zway’s knowledge of my retention
The only way to Roman Roads was their own intention
It was known, by now, there were sorceries beyond
But for Banger Greez the assertion led it was not
Of guides of Old Rome, or Holy Wars, it was now
The remaining redemption of the young sun down
Was the mark of desertion of London town
For with exemption of the Prince of Wales’s crown
They would have to build a supply to bury her sky
The mercenary and vicious peasants, likeminded surround
The stage of doom was martyrdom’s clowns
The Christian Satanists went mad with science
Of alchemy which the rat witches recited
They had a way with tools, the fools of dogma
They were also taught in schools how to produce monsters
London’s Bridge itself was guarded by the Society of Souls
While the countryside was haunted by goblins and trolls
So, while Casher Smith recalled the word of my parchment
They knew then, why Pan had discoursed this target
London was on course, and the morning glow
Dispersed among green, their secrets were hidden
That in depths of brambles was surely peace for the sinner
Sleeping through the awakening of the crows in the woods
Greez and Smith were shaken by the snow underfoot
Vocal Zway had known the omen sewn understood
The three of them would bestow in approaching the good …
The tree’s boughs dropped leaves in the camp they had set
As the sun gave way to clouds which clamored overhead
They made haste to the thicket, beside ticksters and spooks
With quick hands they pushed through bitter poison fruits
Moving for Zway the ancient Mage was far from easygoing
For they had never had horses and forth none forgoing
Stallions they let go in battalions, eons ago
They marched on in the talented barren kingdom
With the Barons’ and elder gentlemen’s bayonets’ elegance
Through the shrubbery and uglier thorns
While hungry and worn doubly with arms all torn
They pushed onward up mountains and into the swamp
Moments before twilight they smelt the goblins
While dusk approached, they made it through the marsh
But on the hilly plateau above, they came to a startled halt
The hearts of men have run cold to the points of death
But the valiant Casher Smith knew better than hold his breath
A troll of the higher plains had come and claimed his testing
If they wished to finish the quest, they’d answer his question
“If the query of the berry is marred by rounded mounds
Which souls at buried rest are below this hallowed ground?”
His inquisition more rhetoric than anyone expected
Yet Casher Smith made a meditated suggestion
The troll should be corrected, “souls at rest are in heaven,
Where no echoes sound, while the mouth’s swallowed berries
Are no longer buried underground, in bowls’ bellies are found”
With this lapse of reason, the troll forgot his gigantic mass
He gasped for breath, wheezing, and threw off a disgusted mask
At that moment Vocal Zway jumped along the path
Banger Greez and Casher Smith hurried and all passed …
…
Banger Greez was steady with his feet
Casher Smith ready to scrap through the streets
Vocal Zway ran to make headway in London’s retreat
But it was the deeds of the dead whose defeat was so sweet
The trio saw zombies when in spite of their sprites
The evil magic of the trap of the Dragon was their sacrifice
They ran through the city and killed all in their sight
Until the police could catch them all, and incarcerate their rights
The spirits they incarnated were all in their minds
The three fighters for good lost their lives for the fight
The Dragon of Death took flight, disappeared in the night sky
And I, Tyr, the Story told of, was stranded at sea where I died
…Story Of Tyr…
…
THE INN OF MATHEMATICAL MADNESS
TED1&2
1
1a.)
Whenever my beloved wife returned from the post office box in Nashua, New Hampshire (the one that my father had left to us and our family,) at the end of every month up until July of each year until 1961 was when I would drive the scenic route to the Webster bank to deposit the funds from my father's inheritance checks into the accounts for both home repairs and our children's savings. July to December was traditionally reserved for my older brother's estate, which he had perhaps overthought before he left with our father during the summer, 1927. My wife and I took each a half of the home repair account deposit and used it to either hold together my family homestead here in rural Merrimack county or expand the acreage's plentiful beautification projects, which through steadfast growth of the bountiful natural landscapes and our contributions of Perennial additions, gardens and trellises, hedges, stone masonry, and artisan lawn furniture arrangements was a source of a plethora of creativity and steady abundance of energy which spared us the typical admission of general cultural demise in the latter halves of our lives. In fact, our own children were raised this way to appreciate and respect nature and it wasn't until the boy Christian (our only grandchild,) left off to study business in the University systems of New York in the late 20th century, when we began to really settle down into our own forms of working retirement from lives given to trade and professorship as botanists. My brother's deposits separately, fed into the education systems of New England and New York museums; an anonymous fund he donated as were his last wishes.
Christian was the only child of our eldest daughter, Justina. Wanda, the second born, never raised children nor did our son, Edward. Justina was the victim of a tragic and drug afflicted life after leaving the New Hampshire countryside to pursue a career in marketing for a paper company in the north east. She ended up as a secretary in a distribution center in the coastal region of Maine where she became pregnant and claimed to never have known the name of the father. She left the job trying to acquire maternity leave on administrative suspension and never returned, instead moving to Boston, Massachusetts where she delivered the baby. Sara and I found all this out much later when she called us from a rehabilitation center office in 1982. Wanda drove down to pick up Christian and delivered him to us in Webster.
My father was the lone real law man in our family and as he was the only who had successfully protected our country, our county, and our family, I will always say how I had looked up to him quite significantly throughout our short, memorable time together. My wife, Sara, on the other hand came from a Polish settler family whose undeveloped farmland we would usurp as our own. We were not farmers though, despite our desires to harvest vegetable and floral gardens, arboretum and orchards. Some of this land we sold too, to impetuous granite prospectors who worked their lot for maybe only half a decade, late in the 1940's when we were still earning our way through Master's degrees at the University of New Hampshire. By then, Sara's father Oskar, had passed, and so her mother Mrs. Nowicki, would become our stay-at-home nanny. When Mrs. Nowicki passed in the late 1970's, she left us with enough inheritance to purchase back the quarry which was already overgrown with wild vegetation.
Christmas Eve of 1983 while Christian Goode was still quite young; he and I walked out to the quarry late in the evening. The moon cast her mournful light in a soft glow which was swallowed over the edge of the granite walls as we approached. Sparkling moon light along the walls of the quarry and the ice falling from the shimmering frozen creek bed, the flakes of snow covering the trees on the opposite end and below us a bottomless chasm of blossoming lights which twinkled against our frosty breaths, crisply fogged in the chilling air of winter twilight. It reminded me viscerally of the various visions my brother had described of the place he and my father had spoken of in our discovery, Hobb. Christian wobbled out in front of me a few feet too far, too close to the ledge. Snapping into parental instinct I stepped forward and put my hand on his shoulder, looking down at the back of his winter hat as he inquisitively raised his arm upward to the sky, exclaiming he had seen a shooting star and seeking acknowledgment. All I saw was light reflected brightly around the quarry igniting the scene for an instant of clarity until it was blindingly harsh and I raised my left arm to cover my eyes. Then, it was gone like memories too vital to forget.
Christopher James Goode; father of Alexander Harold Goode, my brother, and myself, Theodore Graham Goode, whose aura was felt that mystical evening in late December, disappeared from the face of Earth in 1927. He was survived by myself and my mother (his widow,) Ella who continued to raise me until I was able to move out at 19 years old in 1938. She was older than our father by a couple of years but her parents were much younger than our paternal grandparents when they had her. The last transmission that was received from Sergeant Goode was from somewhere North of the middle of New York State; the end of August, 1927.
I was eight years old in late 1927; the year of Hobb, Captain Gerard Hill, and the summer of our schism when Alex was thirteen (almost double my age.) Alex was born in spring of 1914, in late April; three years before the Great War draft of 1917 which took our twenty-one-year-old father out to the war that raged in Europe. I remember our father's cold study in the winter of that year and in the spring of 1928, before mother disassembled it all and the wall behind his desk that held the copy of the old Alan Seeger poem “I Have a Rendezvous with Death.” My father's house in Weare was a three-story Victorian style cottage with a large one hundred sixty-acre backyard tract which was vast and wild with birch, white pine, balsam firs, and wood ferns. There was an old barn that was used as a garage for the two cars which the family owned; one a gray 1918 Ford Model T town car, owned by father, and one a black 1924 Franklin Model T-10B which was used by my mother. A toolshed too, built by my father before we were born was adjunct to the barn. A long driveway led into the barn (that had been once a horse stable,) from an opened front, dark, metal gate which was lined with Solomon's Seal all down the property line; for four hundred feet flaunting with its fragrance of hanging flowers that blossomed in the spring under the shade of the connected white wooden fence. There also had been a Koi pond when father bought the land but there were no fish in it anymore, just rushes and switch grass. We were less than a mile East of Lake Horace near the Stage Road which led fifteen miles to Concord and twenty up Mast from Manchester where our father and mother worked both in separate parts of the Justice Department. Our father was a U.S. Marshal, our mother was a court stenographer.
Before, when I was seven years old still, I had an imaginary friend named Ahmad. He had been named after the first king of Afghanistan. My brother had been spending time borrowing books from the library and one was a historic account of the middle east. For some strange reason I had become fixated on the story of Ali Baba and the story of Gilgamesh. This peculiarity spoke to my personal introversion and seclusion from the social constructs of my brother’s peers. Eventually, he was replaced by other fantasies and dreams which all cut short during the tragedies of Hobb and Weare.
My mother died suddenly in early 1948 on an icy Concord road in a tragic car crash involving alcohol. It left me struck with depression and bitter seclusion. The other automobile's passengers survived its driver; an old, World War II army veteran driving home his brother and two young nieces from the train station to a farm near Canterbury. This was shortly after the 1945 summer when I had moved permanently to these outskirts of Webster following my decision to take a position with the education department in the local school district that would carry through my career. Now reluctantly and remorsefully, I made a return to North Weare a final time.
The crossroads near the old famous “upside-down” Tilton railroad bridge (deemed “upside-down,” because of the rail laying atop of the trusses, rather than surrounding the rail as was more normally seen in American architecture,) which led both ways to my new family home and back to the now recently vacated cottage of mine and my father's family, was where I saw the giant beast that Friday afternoon in 1948. Gray wolves were always rare sighting, unmistakably, so I pulled over my truck and watched it run off to the side of the road. I felt possessed by some inquisitive curiosity again, strangely captivated as I hadn’t felt so strongly in the years since finishing my extended academia. Leaving the car idle, I chased it out a couple hundred feet into the woods. The size of the extinct dire wolf of the Old World; I saw as this fantastic beast leapt up off the side of the frozen sharp and steep riverbank but as its long legs smoothly hit the water there were no splashes or sprays and I imagined how the wolf had submerged under the freezing waters beneath. Instead, as I climbed over the steep crest of the embankment and pushed past the bare brush, I saw a small, panting, curly-haired, black retriever pup pushing itself weakly along icy rocks. I hadn't seen an illusion such as this since I was very young and at first, I felt myself panicking as the pup arched its neck up to the sky and began howling and yelping. The puppy I brought to the house that evening would be the symbolic ward of my family home as I left for the night.
Sara had immediately named her Casey, I would later find out, which was to offset the name of Mrs. Nowicki's Siamese cat named Catey. They were both so small; curled up together by the fireplace while I packed my suitcases. In the late 1950's, eleven years after my mother's death, Catey went missing in the middle of a cold Spring and only days later Casey disappeared. Sadly, I found the cat deceased down near the Stage Road that led to my childhood home. Casey never showed up though and her fate remains a mystery to this day.
At seventy-two years Sara was diagnosed late with breast cancer and it took all of the reserved energy out of me for the short seven months that were left of her life to take care of the house and our land. After it was all over, after I had fought depression and agonized with the thoughts and fears of moving into a retirement home alone, I went back once more to the plots that we kept in Weare for both of our families. Mr. and Mrs. Nowicki, Mr. and Mrs. Goode, Sara, and my brother Alex. He hadn't even made it through high school and I remember the way I had felt obliged and responsible to fulfill the dreams of us both through my collegiate studies. But standing there in Weare in my 70's, a grandfather, I reminisced of those last couple of years with Alex and our father for more than I had in decades.
In actuality I was too busy raising the kids to give it much thought, juggling careers and upkeep of the house and finances. So, I decided, since I was in the area, that I should visit the cottage; the landmark of that era. Maybe in the back of my mind I believed I would be able to see something which would remind me of all of those buried and forgotten mysteries of Hobb and my youth. But when I pulled up my truck to park outside of the opened gate in front of the yard it had already gotten dark in the cold autumn months and the sullen gloom of an abandoned property set me to the decision to drive back home.
Mrs. Goode; Ella, my mother was the last matriarch in her genealogy. She was the true source of so much inspiration to me in my adulthood; the reason I became determined to stick together with Sara once I had emancipated myself from my family's property. Mother was fervently insistent for Christopher's will to be fulfilled to the very word, even as she aged into her 60th birthday and the World Wars had ended. She had raised us through the Great Depression and refused still to take any ownership in the charity that the Veteran's Affairs gave out to the family. She was a beautiful woman to us and even though she worked in the legal system after Christopher came home from the two-year tour in World War One, Ella Goode never showed any affliction from the fear that stirred the world.
On the dark ride home from the cemetery that evening I remembered my last day at home before I left to work in Portsmouth and studied at the University of New Hampshire. There wasn't much particularly remarkable about the day but I can recall vividly the faint light shining through the bedroom window that morning, the roast beef sandwich and potato dinner we had, the afternoon walk with the border collie around the road to the lake. In the setting sun I remember skipping flattened shale stones across the rippling water while the dog sat in the shade of the trees. Alone I began to weep that night, muffling sobs in my pillow as I lay down in my bedroom. Flipping over onto my back, I forced myself to stop though, and made the vow to never let the memories of my youth become a torment ever again. To my credit, my accomplishments as a working man and family provider were enough to wipe the slate clean.
That border collie wasn’t the same dog that we had when we were all together in Weare. It was bought a few years later and I would leave it with my mother when I went to college. After, I wouldn’t meet Sara for almost half a decade after I moved out and I wouldn’t bother with pet ownership on my own until Mrs. Nowicki came to live with us with her Siamese cat, Catey. While the children were attending elementary, it was a welcome addition for us to have Catey in the house. When Mrs. Nowicki came to live with us, Justina was only 18 months old and Catey was three. A year later Wanda was born and we rescued Casey.
In 1950 Sara gave birth to Edward who would go on to join the Manchester police department in the early 1970’s. He was certainly part of what brought me pride, as he grew through high school. He participated in baseball and little league until he was in high school. He had never gone to college as Wanda and Justina had. Justina was almost forty when she gave birth to Christian who may have been named in tribute to her grandfather, whom she never met.
1b.)
In fact, the dog we had on the old Weare property was a rescue dog as well. He was a black retriever that we had first seen running around in the backyard while we were in the dining room eating together. I was only seven years old and I was excited to see the dog running alone across the yard, pointing at him and shouting for everyone to look with me. Alex laughed with me but our father took on a look of surprise and displeasure. The black dog swiftly disappeared in the woods behind the house and we didn’t see him again for a half a year. It had been that autumn of 1926, before I turned eight in November and I was heading to grade school for the first time in two weeks. After the excitement of the first week of school was over, I remember watching out the dining room and back windows all evening waiting to see if the dog would return to the backyard. Finally, I confided to Alex that I had been wondering if the dog was really wild, feral, or a runaway, that might follow us to school and cause havoc. Alex reassured me how it probably belonged to a family in one of the nearby areas and even though we both recounted together how there had been no collar, this seemed to make us feel better. Possibly it persuaded us to wonder and propagate further of the whole world outside which we were unfamiliar with yet. The foreign and unknown country which stretched so far to the west and across the oceans to the east was an enormous curiosity to us and source of enormous imaginative contemplation.
My first year of school in the first grade was invigorating, fun and challenging. I made quite good friends with two classmates; Benjamin and Darren. By the beginning of winter of 1926, my brother’s friends from the sixth grade were becoming more friendly as well. He would let me mingle with his elder group of friends once in a while, when they came to visit on the weekends. Usually, I was permitted to be one of the G-men in the raids on the imaginary criminal gangs or I would be adaptively included for cowboys and Indians as a cowboy while they would play the parts of hardened sheriffs or crazy bounty hunters. The elaborate games of capture the flag with children of neighboring residencies were much more difficult for me to participate in as I was not nearly as fast or athletic, yet. So, I would watch their teams pair up and run out into the woods. As winter approached, I anticipated if the following year would bring opportunities for Ben and Darren to come visit and play with us.
As a student I was appraised as a potential star. The faculty of the school were familiar with my family already and proud to receive me. The reputation of our father was helpful; an acknowledged war hero who went on to serve his country as U.S. Marshal and our mother’s higher placement in the hierarchy of the region was a boost as well. Lyle Hearst, Al’s sixth grade teacher also proctored all of the school exams and on top of that ran the chess club meetings and tournaments out of his classroom. Mr. Hearst was very nice to me that year and encouraged me further to join the chess club or the science club. My grade’s teacher was Mrs. Becker who was also kind to me and I did well in all of the academic subjects in the first year. Many schools in other states had only one teacher for the entire school; ours was lucky to have enough facilities to employ one for each year of pupils and this put us ahead. Knowing that Alex was going to try out for the track and field team though, my admiration for his athleticism was probably a strong influence on my learning that first year as I enviously watched him and his friends play in the yard while I was still too small.
Our family was Protestant; both my mother and father. Only my mother ever went to church though, as we grew older. By the time I was six years old, our mother stopped bringing Alex and I, and even though I would later basically confess how I missed the wholesome community of church, I initially felt liberated and free to explore the wilderness of our country as a youth. Many of Alex’s friends were members of Boy Scouts and I had watched as Alex grew away and more distant from them as he grew older. As time went on, his secular attitude wore on me and I became more interested in science.
Rising in a snowy and cold cottage at dawn on Christmas, 1926, I received a magnificent hand-crafted chess set and learned to play strategically with Alex during the long winter. By New Year’s Eve I was actually able to win a match against him and although I was concerned how it may have been something which would potentially have embarrassed him in front of his friends, he did not let it defer his attitude of pride which was growing for me as a brother and confidante. Until the recess ended, I was excited to tell Mr. Hearst all about it but when we both returned to school for the session in 1927, I saw Alex’s grin through the classroom doorway and let it go, thinking of how it would be more fun to learn to play the games with Alex’s friends after school rather than staying to exercise my mind with chess club.
What I lacked in ambition for chess; in the pursuits of higher intellect, I made up for with my excesses in reading of books and study of nature. I had gained acute interest in the works of Darwin and Thoreau and had tried to explore the realms of science on my own. I also began a collection of Wells’ ‘The Time Machine’ and ‘War of The Worlds,’ and Verne’s ‘Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea’ and ‘In Search of The Castaways,’ and I was becoming very well read as a student. It was a surprise although disappointment, when one of Alex’s older friends, Clark, challenged me to bet on a chess match in which the stakes were my Verne collection for his which was only ‘The Mysterious Island.’ He of course won the match and I felt deeply ashamed as I handed over the two novels to him just before the beginning of summer. So, I studied the game that we had played, the last month of school, and with the precious last of my leftover savings from Christmas money I bought a book on chess strategy. I became determined and secretly swore how I would devote the entire summer to the mastery of that game.
During the last weekend before the last week would end our semesters, and as summer was beginning to unravel our disciplined schedules more and more, the black dog returned in the back yard. This time only I was available to see it. I was walking to the barn on a Saturday afternoon and was intending on being alone to look at a volume of the Encyclopedia that I had borrowed from the library. I had been starting to study animals of Africa and Asia and to try to draw them (imperfectly yet with strenuous effort,) and list their characteristics on sheets of notebook paper and the loft in the barn seemed to be a place that I could achieve independent solitude as long as Alex and his peers weren’t playing nearby too loudly. That weekend Alex was in town visiting with some classmates who were still Boy Scouts and were leaving to go off to stay at a camp during the summer. I packed up the presently engaged volume of borrowed Encyclopedia, the prized chess book, an Oxford dictionary and the notebook in a satchel and walked through the grass to the barn. The forest that sat behind our house was over two hundred feet back and to the side of the barn about the same distance. To the East, the other side of the house, the tree line was much closer (maybe only forty feet,) and in the back corner was a trail that led to a hill that gradually started rising to thousands of feet altitude over our land and stayed to envelope the horizon for at least a mile covered in woods. The dog was running down from that side barking madly.
Immediately I was scared by the unexpected sight of it and I started stumbling toward the barn door in avoidance. As I came to the front latch, I hastened and turned over my left shoulder to see that the furious little dog was chasing a darting rabbit and I stopped to see what would happen. My mother heard the barking and replied her own shouts out the back window of the kitchen at the dog and then at me to come back inside as the pair vanished quickly through the woods. Then I saw father walking rapidly out the back yard with his rifle and again I was scared into shock. I didn’t want him to kill the dog but I didn’t say anything, I just dropped the satchel and started backing up towards the front door.
“It’s just a pup!” Father shouted, “He’s just chasing something, a rodent, or a critter.”
“Well, then don’t shoot it, Christopher! It’ll just frighten the kids, killing a puppy.” Mother yelled back even though I was the only other person there.
Father turned back around and looked right at me, then grinned up at the window of the house mother had yelled from. “Well, if it comes back, I’ll see if I change my mind.” I knew exactly then how I wanted that dog for some indescribable reason. I became determined to find a way to keep it.
The next week was the last week of school for Alex, myself, and our friends. On our way Monday walking in the wet, foggy morning, I told Alex about the dog sighting and he reminded me of when we had seen it in the previous year. We then made an oath together to find him and rescue him. Not at all from any derelict reliance or out of ignorant disrespect to our parents but as a resilient brotherhood’s bond.
2
2a.)
In those trepid pursuits of uncertain future and determined motives of youth, the old ideas of regime, predictable agenda and observed rationale are all often stricken from the accelerated plans comprising our final days’ emptying from the halls of tested conformity into our robust experience of obtained vacation. There was no doubt on one precise day that chess and encyclopedias would fill break time and the next day my brain was suddenly absorbed again to its capacity and my body was thrown into the chase of fulfillment beyond the pre- defined and understood. An exploration of things which were not standing directly before the eyes of previous explorers and which were only conceived in the high mountains of the insurmountable unknown way after the monuments of geography which had already been measured and mapped. Following in traditions and original ideals of America, the Revolutionaries of the New World, the Pioneers in the Wild West, and in the sparking spirit of Progressivism kindled from Evolution, I abandoned with pubescence any articles of scientific maturity and objects of archaic histories and replaced them with my personal subjects of fascination and beliefs in an ego above governing states. The self-identifying ethical law of human discovery, ruling eternal forces of creativity; an investigation of hidden clues which spring from real nature, rather than the cues of deducted practices by existing systems which had worked laboriously to train me for the entirety of the ending school year.
As soon as that last bell rang in the school yard echoing against the eardrums as I sat in my stationed desk and behind all the children who rushed out the doors in front me, flying in the wind of moving life, the pure aura of a bright shining inevitability blew. The tensely unified and invincible crowds of inspired colleagues, scholarly fused yet continually categorized and assessed for weaknesses whom quickly dissipated from Alex's sides as everyone committed to their paths home were like ships voyaging through the spaces of Earth. I joined my brother and our friends, reconstructing our annually invisible personas into the consistently kept characters whom had uniquely been assigned from our earned social publishing. The distribution of the children of each grade into the patterns and groups whom comprised the changing and growing stories of our lives were the design of these developing pictures which were printed for the soul of each of our voyages into their awakened adventure.
Hierarchies and a growing fellowship between Alex’s caste of older peers and with the addition of my classmates Benjamin and Darren whom had both agreed to meet up with me in the next couple of weeks; by the time the final grades would make it through the mailbox to the hands of our parents like clockwork read conspiratorial oaths of rebellion. The invitation which was given out by Alex to go fishing together at Lake Horace was excitedly accepted. Personally, I think Alex wanted to enhance his reputation as a community leader, a social organizer of the younger kids into the world of adulthood may they later remember him with fondness and admiration as they grew older. Also, I imaginatively gathered my own particular notion of our mission to find the peculiar black dog behind the house as its obligatory secondary reasoning behind the recruitment of the two but I held no quibble to nor drew offense from it. Meanwhile, this once faint scent of a trail which our hunt for purpose drew from contained the promise of an ultimate reward greater than our pasts had hinted. Only mere fragments of the oncoming disastrous events held together pieces of our destiny to perceive and then conquer the impossibilities of the universe. These were mere manipulatable factors to the imminent self- destruction in the hearts of manhood and the eventual fate of modern humankind.
The walk home testified to the pledge of guardianship which my older brother had undertaken; guidance which built trust and responsibility to both of our parents. Our mother and father allowed the leadership of Alex to fortify the bond of siblings on travel between school and our home, in retrospect a long three-mile hike which in the latter half of the century could easily be misjudged as overly strenuous (although any critique in the 1920’s was contemporarily extraneous.) As long as I wasn’t left alone and had access to food and water once safely at home was sufficient for our mother to feel secure in her late arrival each afternoon to the homestead, timed long enough for her to finish business in the courthouse conducted in the mornings and reorganization of all her affairs in the clerk office before leaving to be home by 3 or 4 PM each evening. Father on the other hand wouldn’t reach the doorstep until a while later, sometimes as late as 6 o’clock just in time for dinner or later. Sometimes we would hear him toiling with tools in the barn and shed before he would come inside to join the rest of us and at which point Alex and I were sure to sturdy our demeanors, complete all of our house chores, tidy up and clean, and overview the homework assignments as necessary.
Nevertheless, it was far from unusual for any even subtle peculiarities which were noticeable on outtake of our walk to gain momentum until becoming an absolute abnormality in our timeline as our walk transitioned from mundane to extreme and spontaneous. For example; an idea might pop in Alex’s head how crawfish could be caught on the way home on Friday and it would be a race to change our clothes before our mother arrived later. Or in some instances I would have the undeterrable urge to visit the nearby library which would add an extra mile to our walk. We had made it all year though, without being caught by our parents for not following their commands nor had we gotten lost from one another or quarreled, argued, or even been so unruly as a pair to cause unflattering attractions from any person on our path as to be conspicuous or troublesome. This was good because our misadventures and sidetracks were a welcome and playful distraction for us from the rigid requirements of school and mild strictness of the house where we lived everyday with parents whose careers and lives were built around legal positions, political standpoints, and systems of government which were encompassing of all of the civilian life in the area. On a whole our parents were acutely observant of the professionals, proletariats, the peacemakers, and protection of the citizens of miles and miles of neighborhoods and residencies, businesses, and the whole county’s industry, so it would be a major failure of our own as their children to disrupt the delicately balanced diplomacy which was kept as a barrier between them and society in general. We were not angels, Alex nor I, yet we were never fallen from their graces together.
That afternoon, in the heat of the very first of summer, we were busy in our own heads thinking of the search ahead, the moves which we would each make and the conversation awaiting once we had put forth our plans. Like the first jig saw puzzle placements were being made; we quietly watched each other to see when any interruption could be made, motion of suggestion could be created and the bigger picture formulated. The igniting light of brilliance in Alex’s eyes as he turned up the road to our house and the echoing of my self-claimed ideas which stormed my movements more turbulently as we closed in on the perimeter of the fence along our property all built to the climax of the sight of Al opening up to a running gait directly at the door of our house as I felt torn between the soft, cooling shade and solitude of the barn loft, the fervent excitement of the hot days ahead, impeccable hunger for a slower pace of nice relaxation, and satisfying thirst to follow my brother to the fortitude of the mutual home where would surely be headquarters and center to our juvenile exploit.
Within the door of the house though, as I threw off and emptied my backpack in the front room where my and Alex’s school study desks were kept on opposite ends of a window, I heard the familiar voice of our fastidious mother confronting Alex in the middle dining room right behind the stairway wall which led to our bedrooms on the second level. Hanging onto the plans which had stimulated my brain, I could hear in Alex’s tone how the long conversation was not an emergency, so I disappointedly began resupplying my backpack with the notebooks and writing utensils that I reconsidered for an afternoon of studying and drawing either upstairs in my room or in the barn. Although relieved to be home I nonetheless was confronted with confusion and after I packed a few items and resources for a secluded meditation away from the customary afterschool activities, I walked to the dining room. Alex intentionally brushed my shoulder walking out and spinning up the stairs and he gazed down on me for a moment and stopped to stand up the steps to watch what my reaction was going to be.
Mother was leaning with one hand on the dining room table, watching the entryway as Alex had exited and my eyes met hers, when she forced a weak smile. “Your father is going to be out of town on business, I got a message from his office this afternoon. I decided to come home and give you both a welcoming after your last day.”
Even as I had not said anything at all since coming inside yet, the news she had given me was redundant and somewhat unnoteworthy. Still disappointed by the slower-than-expected pace of our homecoming, I looked back to Alex whose focused facial expression I might have expected to have been glaring or upset yet was instead blank and more anxious to get ready to go outside and find his plans for the day. Alex turned back around now, and continued up the stairs to his room.
“Alright,” Began my reply; ready to tell mother what school had been like that day, what I would expect of grades that year and even some of my aspirations to reflect my integrity throughout the next weeks as a studious and proud member of the family. My expectations were foiled again though as mother forced instructive yet strained and oddly distracted monologues which summarized the obvious moral duties of her husband as an official of the community and I knew (with some scrutiny,) of her extreme distress about something which he was involved in.
“Your father has bravely decided on his own to follow through with the extradition of a dangerous and criminal element which was brought into Manchester last year. Some of the bad people who he has to bring to the state prison have ties to other countries, and it is vitally important for him to keep them from any communication between other of the local inmates while they are in the county. He has to take them to the federal penitentiary way upstate after he removes them tomorrow from Concorde.” Mother continued, “He may not be back until Monday, and I know how he would want to send you boys his support and love. He’s very proud of you, Teddy, for finishing first grade without any problems or trouble. We both know how smart you two are, and couldn’t be happier how you are both doing so well. Tonight, for dinner, I want to take you two to Peterborough for a movie. How does this sound?”
This turn of events made me ecstatic to say the least. Apparently, Alex had been giving me a classic older-brother poker face and was overwhelmed, shouting “Oh boy! That’s so grand! ‘Go West!’” Alex of course heard me from upstairs and let out his joyous laughter from his bedroom. Buster Keaton’s ‘Go West’ was playing that week, which I had known all about because of the endless stories which still circulated the classroom from the encore showing the week before. Alex hadn’t seen it either and I was certain this would be the top choice for us which his laughter had indeed confirmed.
When I ran up to my room, I saw Alex’s door was ajar and couldn’t help raising my voice to catch his attention “Did mom tell you, too, Al?”
“Yeah, pretty sweet, huh? ‘Go West,’ finally! Going, going, gone!”
We both laughed uproariously, then. Alex was always clever and sometimes showed sharp humor, and I often looked up to his ability to riff and banter wittily with many of the older boys at school during lunch break and in the recess hours which we shared sometimes. He was so fast at gaining friends but was still somehow not intimidating to me. It helped me retain the ability to at times feel smarter or at least as intelligent, yet his resourceful wisdom and intellect was truly a model for me at the time.
The entire hot drive to Peterborough I studied the wooded terrain and highway signs, south through New Boston and into Mont Vernon where mother made her fastidious remarks about the Post Office sign that had misspelled the city’s name: “If they had wanted it officially named the same as President George Washington’s historic Mount Vernon, they only would have confused people.” At the Milford Oval, where we made our turn westward, the traffic was heavy and as we jammed through off of Nashua Street onto Elm Street, we saw the Union Square was filled with crowded storefronts of children and young people. As Temple Mountain rose and fell in the horizons, the violet skies above turned red and we entered Peterborough under twilight of Wednesday, May 18th.
We ate at a small restaurant down the street from the theater. We each had a delicious sandwich, clam chowder and lobster rolls and Alex and I had bottles of soda. In the concession stands we both chose candies too, and enjoyed the film giddily. Most of the ride home while the darkness of the road was pierced only ahead by cars’ lights, I slept dreamlessly until we reentered Weare. As I awoke to the gravel road becoming rougher under the tire treads, I felt the easing lull of our proximity to home from the pacing of the vehicle under the control of mother’s steering, the anticipation which hung in the space between us, the air of our lungs slowing into the culling of sleep. The sounds of crickets and birds of the night around us grew thick and I felt us slow down into the turn up the driveway.
2b.)
That dawn I tossed and turned and slumbered much later into the daylight than I was even recently accustomed to, and when I finally came down the stairs, I saw how our mother had already left to work. Out of the windows to the side of the den room I could see how the family’s cars were gone but the sound of running water in the kitchen almost perfectly synchronized with my subtle descent off of the first step. That our new nanny was here became a sublime realization which hit me like cold, crushed ice; abruptly unsettling the monotony of my lazy morning.
Almost every summer between the years that Alex had been at school, so far, we had hired a new nanny. The first two years, in 1923 and ’24, the young woman had traveled down from Lebanon, in the north west part of New Hampshire to share the duties with our mother of keeping us both fed, occupied, and safe during the working weekdays. Her name was Deborah and she stayed with us for the entire duration of the summer in our single guest room. In 1925 it had changed to a different, older lady, named Anne, who was from the nearby town of Dunbarton. She was nice but by the end of 1925 it had been her decision that the trip across the town was too far and she was reluctant to sleep at the house because she was married and her husband felt excessively encumbered to have to come pick her up every day. At the end of that summer, she did stay only a few nights however, she seemed overstressed the following days and Alex began to show his dislike in the last weeks of August. So, in 1926, Deborah returned which our mother and father considered very serious because they explained how the financial costs of a live-in nanny were very high. I think Deborah may have sensed her value though, and she increased her neatness, kindness to us, and overall graciousness as a guest which made it much harder to say goodbye to her at the end of the last summer before I would begin school.
“Theodore? I’m Irene Wilson, or Mrs. Wilson, your new nanna while your parents are working this summer. Your mother didn’t want to wake you, she had to leave almost an hour ago. But don’t you worry, I have oatmeal ready to get you started this morning. I’ll let you get ready on your own, at least for today. You don’t have to explain to me too much, but after breakfast we’ll cover the ground rules.”
Before I even saw Mrs. Wilson, I noticed how there was something different in her voice which made me aware how she was darker-skinned and raised in a different lifestyle than ours. She sounded quite nice though, and I had never had any history of problems with people who were of different races nor had either of my parents to the best of my knowledge. Still, when I entered the kitchen and sat down at the table the emotion must have been slowly fading off of my face because she turned around and gave me a more comforting smile intended to ease me into the new morning ritual.
“Your brother Alex got up with your mom and went into town with her. I think he was getting dropped off at a friend’s house, and maybe riding back here by noon, with them. Oatmeal is almost done, dear.”
After I finished the breakfast bowl with an apple cut up into pieces in it and maple syrup, I was ready to go fix my notebooks and pack my study bag to bring with me out to the barn. Slyly, I reconsidered how it may be better to do my reading upstairs in my bedroom that morning, while Alex was still out with his friends. Additionally, there was somebody new in the house who I thought I could impress more if I persevered with reserved position and stayed within supervisory limits, so I started over to the study room after putting my dishes in on the counter by the sink.
“Your mother, or your father, will be picking me up in the mornings, unless I need to stay the night. You’ll see, I mostly stay out of your way, but I’ll also be available if you have any thoughts or questions. My family raised me a Christian, in Milford, and I have some education of many subjects, much of which I learned by myself, as I grew up.”
Mrs. Wilson was in her 30’s, a tall 5’ 10”, thin lady who was wearing a fluffed black dress. From books I knew of some people in even segregated communities whom were able to find recipiency of an education, so none of her intelligence or confident demeanor surprised or alarmed me. The existence of a new babysitter was a little intriguing but mostly I was surprised by the unexpected presence that particular morning and was a little shy but only because I was fresh as a graduate of the first grade. With hesitant curiosity I spoke up to her about some of my interests, “I usually like to study out of Encyclopedias from the library, and about nature, and stuff.” She smiled again, which made me realize the abstract statement that I had just made and the unspecific descriptions I had so far provided of my favorite studies compelled me to continue the haphazard explanation, “I like to draw the animals, too, and I like to organize the kinds of plants in the Encyclopedia all in my notebook. I’m learning to play chess, too, and I play with Alex and his friends. Sometimes I sit in the barn and read.” As serious as I could muster, I paused and looked to Mrs. Wilson for her reactions and she smiled again somewhat empathetically.
“Well, you sound pretty smart, Mr. Theodore… Or Teddy, is that what you like to be called?”
“Ted, or Teddy is just fine, Mrs. Wilson. Oh, by the way, I think my friends Benjamin and Darren from school were coming to visit me, this summer. I go fishing with Alex, too. There’s no fish in the pond, out in front of the house. We have to walk to the lake.” Now I began to feel conversational enough to be topical anyway and I felt myself open up to Mrs. Wilson.
“Okay, if it sounds fun for you. Let me know if you have any nice pictures to show me and your parents. I don’t play chess, but maybe I can show you how I play piano, someday.” Mrs. Wilson turned to the sink, and put on an apron that was on a chair and started running the water to wash the bowl and pots but she was still smiling while I walked out to the study room.
“Okay, I’ll be upstairs.” Then, I sorted through the books in my school bag that I kept next to my desk and put the ones that I wanted into my satchel. “I’m going to look at some books, until my brother Alex gets home.” Looking through the dining room I noticed Mrs. Wilson’s big tote bag of personal belongings sitting next to the kitchen door near the pantry attached between the side door and supper table. “When he gets here, let me know, okay?” The notification was ample for me and I didn’t stay to wait for a response, I walked up the stairs to my room.
Trustingly, the introduction that I had with Mrs. Wilson allowed me to immediately commence my summer studies of the both esoteric and entertaining essay volumes that I had selected. I cleared some surfaces to lay down my books and papers, and carefully put the ones that had been occupying the desktop and floor back on my shelves. The quick reorganization of my bedroom brought a renewed vitality to the space. Alex and I had desks and bookshelves in both of our bedrooms as well. Mother’s work area was in a small study across the hall from the master bedroom, which was between the stairs and the guest room. In it was a filing cabinet, shelves, large desk, and a splendid rug and sofa. Father kept his study space in the attic where we very rarely visited behind a locked door at the top of a narrow stairwell which was at the other end of the hall nearer my room and the larger bathroom on the left. Alex’s bedroom was directly across the stairs and our doors were separated by small closet spaces on either side of the hall. The downstairs also had a small bathroom on the side of the house with the pantry through the kitchen. The den room was where we kept our telephone, stereo with amplitude modulation radio, and our parents’ bookshelf. Our shared school study room, adjacent to the front door, had access to the set of stairs which led to the basement which was small with a laundry room and half unfinished with a bare cement floor beneath the mostly empty wine cellar. There was a storm exit that always stayed shut behind a door leading up to the backyard.
Sunlight streamed through my window and the rays shined so the faint blue of the clear sky threw a tinted yellow through the panes and curtain from which the rising angle gave way to brightening white streams of warmth in the air around my desk. Sometime after two hours of eyeing pages which turned by my hand without much of my relaxed brain’s retained attention and imagining mindless daydreams which I lucidly weaved in and out of as I exacerbated my ability to concentrate on any of the reading, especially while in the face of such an unprecedented long break from the monotony of schooldays; I stood up in front of the window and moved around my body to stretch. I came to the final decision how I might try to draw a tracing of a tiger as I had done some research on the animals of Asia that school year. Looking out at the long, green, back lawn with the low mowed grass and tightly trimmed bushes and tree line beyond, I resolved to go sit in the barn, hoping how I might regain initiative to start sketching again.
I took the satchel up again and walked down stairs where I peeked through the hall to the dining room and kitchen to see if Mrs. Wilson was still in there. She wasn’t and her bag was gone, so I curiously went around to the den room where I saw her sitting in one of the two seats by the big front window.
“I’m going outside,” As I walked to the pantry, “to sit in the barn and draw, more.”
“Fine idea, it’s beautiful out. I’m going to stay and read more, but if I’m not in here when you come back, it just might mean I’ve wandered out to the Koi pond.”
“Oh, there’s no fish in there. But, sure.”
Mrs. Wilson smiled, “Well, then I might walk down just to look at it. Or sit out in the yard, later, if Alex doesn’t come right back over here by then.”
“Okay,” Smiling back, I went through the side door into the bright light outside.
As I walked to the barn, I felt a slight hesitation in my pace as I neared the driveway. Recollecting the dog incident, I began wondering if it would happen again all of the sudden. Then, I started internally to wish it wouldn’t, because I didn’t know what would happen with Mrs. Wilson there and not our parents to intervene, if necessary, nor even Alex to share with the action. But the far tree line just waved its leaves in the breeze, sparkling tall green in a way which mimicked the grass blades with dancing imitation and the quiet of the clear air set me at ease.
Inside the big doors, the barn was dimly lit by a giant window which hung above where you could access it by a walkway extending off the left side where there was a giant wooden platform lofted fifteen feet above bare dirt below. The back right of the barn was a construction or work station which used the previously built walls that had separated the old horse stalls across from the additions our father had built of the small toolshed extension and workbench stations on the left side. There were also two windows on the right side of the wall of the barn and one more, smaller-sized in the work station in the back. There was a ladder near the front left that led to the loft where there were a few chairs and two tables. There was also a small radio and lantern in the loft and lanterns on either side of the door. Between the driveway and house near the barn there was also a picnic table.
The barn was sturdy built and well preserved for a large one its age as a pre- existing part of the stately property including Koi pond and previously remodeled three-story cottage. Our father assessed how it had been home to people before the Civil War, possibly a military family who had earned such tracts of land through their government service and hired help from farmers for the renovations of the buildings. We had gotten it through our father’s side of the family, it was his older brother’s whom had served in the Navy and had bought it from their maternal uncle. Uncle Harold had died young of typhoid fever at 29 following a work accident which left him debilitated at the age of 26, before Christopher was only eleven years old and had held the property in his will for our father until our father became of age. There had been little argument from Christopher’s stepbrother whom had been an apprentice for Harold until the typhoid fever set in, and then had Harold’s final days handled by a veteran infirmary station in White River Junction, Vermont. Harold had not fought in the wars but had joined the army at the same time as our grandparents.
From the loft where the table that I always used for books stood near the window, I could see across the whole front lawn, driveway, pond, gate, and road. There in my chair, I sat with my Encyclopedia open, the copy of the dictionary handy which I kept in the loft underneath the notebook I used for sketches, four of my pencils, and the pre-set chess board in the corner. Refocused here, I began outlining the tiger from memory and glancing at the Encyclopedia for reference. However, moment to moment, I would look up at the road and the tall grass, brushes, bushes, and shrubs across from our house and the plot beyond. Soon, Mrs. Wilson was visible near the small pond, leaning over the shorter rushes to peek through. Then, the next time I looked up she was gone and I was coming close to a finished picture, so I fervently maintained my workmanship.
As my attention was grabbed and absorbed into art, my awareness of time’s minutiae slipped away. Moments ago, I had finished two sketches of Siberians, males and females, although they weren’t much different from one another. Suddenly I heard the creaking of the wooden rungs on the ladder behind me and whirled around to see my brother’s hands reach over and atop of the loft platform. It was my summer’s savior at last, and from the noises below him I knew he had at least brought one of his older friends to release me, gladly from the functions which were beginning to remind me too much of the schoolwork which I had supposedly escaped from. As Alex stood up on the platform though, he didn’t make eye contact until he sat down on the chair at the other table. The anticipated committee of planning was to take place right away, and as Clark followed him up, I knew we were recruiting only the top brass of our circle of friends. Jacob, last up and us three, were about to determine the course to the heroic capture of the wild and untamed dog that had trespassed our neighborhood.
Clark began to recant the tales from the radio news broadcasts which followed the crew to our barn loft, “Race wars, a bombing in the Midwest American schoolyards this morning, fascism and war in the fields of the European fronts last week, dangerously wild dogs in the Goode backyard, what’s next?” His remarks were supposed to be humorous but only Alex sneered. At the time I hadn’t any idea what bombings there had been, their significance, nor did the insinuation of Mussolini’s Charter of Labour register any recognition or relevance to me.
“Next?” From the paused algorithmic synchronization of our group, and tone of his interjection I could tell Alex was starting to announce the commands and orders for the dog hunt. “Next, we split up and get to both sides of the road at one time. Five hundred yards out, search for a trail, and then return to post here, where we’ll split up east and west, groups of two again, a mile hike out along the road on this side on the way out, the other side on the way back. Clark and Jake, you guys go across the road. Ted will come with me in the back here.”
“Alright,” Jacob was eager to get the adventure started. Clark echoed his confirmation and the two started back down the ladder together and as Alex started mounting the ladder to descend, he stared back up to me as I stuffed the books into my satchel. I turned to the window and watched the two boys run towards the road, then walked over to the ladder and followed.
Through the back yard I struggled to keep up with my brother as he bounded through to the forest. Jacob started howling like a wolf across the road behind us and I could almost hear Clark’s laughter. Alex turned at the tree line to let me catch up to him and then spun back around when I was within ten feet. The dark shade of the woods was cool and the pine-scented air was stale from the humid heat which encumbered the barn loft. Brittle twigs and coniferous needles, small branches, and pine cones littered the ground past the layer of tall grass which cordoned the forest from the yard and past the first twenty or so feet of overgrown patches of grass and sparsely spread young saplings was another layer of thicket and thorn bush adorned with poisonous red berries and piles of dead leaves. These uninviting layers eventually gave out to the more traversable dirt, muddy leaves, mossy rocks, and exposed roots which continued into the main body of the massive forest.
None of the four of us were experienced in trail spotting or even hunting. Jacob’s family had always hunted for wild game and deer, but he had never joined them and Alex was a novice at tying fishing lures and line tests but he had no experience besides the rivers and lakes. Clark’s family hadn’t even been involved in military but he was probably the most avaricious in the expedition. It was no surprise when none of us had found anything remarkable at all when we met up at the barn door on the return from our reconnaissance.
“Shitty, we didn’t even see any dog shit.” Jacob laughed.
Clark showed his determination to continue the search though, “Yeah, well let’s get going. I bet if we finish up one search, we could fit in another before Jacob’s dad takes us home.”
This seemed to make sense to Alex, “We could time the searches, a little, and try to not make as much noise in case we scared him off.”
At this point I was becoming distracted by Mrs. Wilson’s look of concern through the kitchen window. The older kids were in different stages of adjusting to the demands of young adulthood, their self-importance and independence was contrast to their inexperience and undereducated intellects, resulting in the rebellious attitudes which I was sure Mrs. Wilson would find reproachful and uncouth. The others were unashamed and wild but I was embarrassed for them.
Alex must have sensed how I was unwilling to push forth with our search, so I wily diverted the attention of our party from my lack of enthusiasm for the search which would have only given a reason to point at my suspected physical inability. Instead of agreeing in compliance with the urgency of our mission, sneakiness was the tactic which I employed to regroup us for our afternoon ventures. “Mrs. Wilson will probably get sandwiches ready for us,” It may have seemed distractive, so I made my advice sound informative, “she’s our new babysitter. We should make one person go gather lunch for us, whoever’s hungry, while one guy stays here and watch the road through the barn window. The other two of us can split up on the sides of the barn to watch the backyard. That way we don’t miss anything.”
Clark was impressed, “Wow. I didn’t think you had the lookout plan, Ted, but good stuff! Must have learned it from either Alex, Harlowe, or me! Chess champs!”
“Alright, you stay up in the loft, Clark. Keep an eye on the road, and come down to get us when Teddy brings lunch out. Jacob can come back to the side of the barn with me. By the way, Ted, me and Clark already had a big snack at Clark’s house. Bring enough for all of us, though.” Alex took back command. Clark climbed up the ladder and I walked back to the side door with accomplishment and a maturity which raised my stride.
Once inside I approached Mrs. Wilson with my chest raised and ready with confidence in my voice, where I had been anxious of her approval before. With an integrity which I acquired from my inclusion and innocence conveyed from my secret desperation, I inquired the schedule of our snacks, “Mrs. Wilson, Alex and his friends sent me to ask you. When do we get to eat lunch?”
Mrs. Wilson replied how now would be a good time as it was almost 1:30 and she said how between noon and 2 would be good for us to gather with her to get lunches during the weekdays. Sandwiches of ham and cheese, soups when she could make it on the weekend and crackers, and fruits. She explained how she would try to make the soup for us that afternoon when the weather cooled down. She also talked to me briefly about our meal routines such as having eggs every morning except Friday when we could have oatmeal, and she assured me how we would have toast or sausage to go with the breakfasts. By the time she was done explaining how she would do what she could to supply variety to the dining schedules she was almost finished putting together the array of peanut butter sandwiches on the table for everybody. When her explanation began of the conservation of good meats for days when we did not have so many visitors, I finally interrupted her only to say how we would want to eat outside today. Mrs. Wilson kindly agreed to the idea and asked if I would carry the water pitcher out for her to the yard. I grabbed a pitcher out of the pantry and filled it in the sink and brought it out ahead of her to the picnic table.
“Hey! Lunch is on its way out!”
Everyone met at the picnic table, Clark coming last through the barn, “Where’s the cups? What are we supposed to do with a pitcher of water? Pour it on ourselves?”
“No…” Yet Clark had already grabbed the pitcher up. Luckily the side door swung open and Mrs. Wilson came out carrying a tray with sandwiches, a stack of plates, and cups. He sat with it down on the picnic bench. Jacob and Clark both seemed at ease but my brother seemed slightly repelled by the new babysitter, surprisingly.
Mrs. Wilson walked back to the house still smiling radiantly after setting the lunch down on the table and we all began ravishingly, grabbing at our plates and sandwiches, grubbily. I heard the rumbling noise of a car coming down the road. As the car became visible around the tree-covered corner of our property and over the high fence, it was recognized by Alex as our mother’s Franklin. Up the driveway our mother was arriving much earlier than expected. She parked to the side of the barn door and was in a hurry toward the house. “Hi, boys,” Was all she said, and Mrs. Wilson returned out of the side door to greet her. They spoke under their breath quietly in the afternoon and as we munched our sandwiches, the conversation was held secret.
“Children, I’m going to have to split up the party. When you’re all done eating, I have to drop off Jacob and Clark. Mrs. Wilson will stay here, tonight.” Mother said as she walked back to the car and unpacked her work bag and briefcase.
“Alright, Mrs. Goode,” said Jacob.
“Thank you, Mrs. Goode and Mrs. Wilson,” Clark added.
“You’re welcome, I hope you enjoyed the sandwiches.” Mrs. Wilson, holding her poise and smiling at us with a comforting demeanor. She waited by the house while our mother walked inside.
After our mother came back out from the house Clark and Jacob were done eating and ready to leave. They hopped into the car after saying goodbye and waved to us on their way out of the front gate. Alex and I were confused a little, but Alex managed to keep calm. He was a smidgen disappointed, nevertheless he didn’t need to be asked to help Mrs. Wilson gather the tray of dishes and then he walked inside behind her. Clark and Jacob had previously thrown up a baseball from off of a shelf in the barn, and I climbed up to the loft where I started to carefully examine my earlier sketches. Encouraging myself to try to enjoy the day still, I decided the worthiness of their appraisal by Mrs. Wilson, so I packed up the bag and climbed down and went back.
When I opened the side door Alex was walking from the front windows in the den room to the pantry. He opened the door behind me and left to the barn as I entered the kitchen and saw how Mrs. Wilson was doing the dishes still. Sensing a change in mood, I altered my initiative and decided to take apart my book bag upstairs in my room out of everyone’s way. Alex, meanwhile, went to the barn.
Suddenly, as I was taking my seat at my desk in my bedroom, I heard Alex wailing insanely and yelling like a mad man outside. When I looked out the window, Alex was rushing to our mother at the side of the house, with Mrs. Wilson flying out behind them. He had fallen from the barn loft and had broken his arm. Mother had to rush out again to bring him to the hospital which took the rest of the day in and out of the nearest emergency room facility in Concord. He came home later that day with a cast.
Studying chess was something which took my mind away for the moment and figuring out the chess strategy used by Clark in our infamous game three months before. Through the chapters on basic technique and fundamental basics of the history of the game there were few clues which aided the cause but as I was passing through the chapters on classic openings, I found out how I had used the English opening and he had used a Hungarian defense with a king castling by the seventh move. After studying past 3:00 alone again, I heard the front door open downstairs. Undisturbed, I looked through the chess book and the sound of our mother’s voice in the den room broke the silence of my studies.
“Barry Reeves got away, then. If the phone didn’t ring here, while I was away, then Christopher must be still in Concorde filling out reports. I’m very sorry that this was our first day of having you here, but hopefully this doesn’t reflect too poorly on us as a family. How was the day otherwise?”
Straining to hear Mrs. Wilson’s response, I stopped reading and entered a focused and intense trance but I was still unable to make out quite exactly what was being said thereon in. Wondering who Barry Reeves was, I realized that he was father’s newest special assignment. Lost momentarily in my thoughts, I stared out of the window of my bedroom until I heard the pantry door open and our mother yell up the stairs for me to come down to talk. Once more glancing at the chess club book to note the spot I had left off reading and marking it with loose paper, I yelled back out to say how I was on my way down to them in a minute. Mother was talking to Alex as I walked down the steps and she was speaking quick with directions for him.
“Ted, I told Alex that he can take whoever he wants on the fishing trip tomorrow. But he will need to have Mrs. Wilson go with him, and so you will have to go, too. Does that make sense?”
Of course, the whole trip was my biggest plan for Friday, I was getting old enough to be alright at fishing. If anything, it excited me more yet confused me more as to what the urgency of mother’s early return was. “Why did you come home early? What’s going on?”
“Are you sure? You can stay home with me, tomorrow, if you want to. I have to be here, in case your father calls. Also, we need to stay in, tonight, to make sure Mrs. Wilson feels comfortable her first day.”
“No, I’m sure, mom. I’ve waited to go fishing all week.”
2c.
In the morning I was awakened at almost exactly the same time as Alex, with light rain tapping and drizzling against the window in my bedroom. As I tossed over on my side to look at the weather, I heard the creaking floorboards in the hallway. Stretching my arms above my head, I pulled myself up in bed and wondered if this would affect our already postponed fishing trip. In fact, Alex wasn’t even downstairs yet, and as I swung around the corner of my opened bedroom door, I saw him going down so I rushed out to the railing and followed him. It was much later than he normally stayed in his bedroom and I had the jump on a rare occasion to catch his attention and assist with filling my own tacklebox.
Alex had told me before we made it to bed that previous night that he had gotten the fishing poles out of the toolshed and fixed both of the lines. After lunch he had gotten some lures out of the basement too, and looked over his stash of fishing gear. He had spent the rest of the afternoon in the den room looking at a magazine until supper, then switched the radio on. After I finished the chapter that I was on, of my borrowed library copy of ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ in my bedroom, I joined him to listen to the comedy show. A while later, I returned to the front study to my desk and read a little of the magazine that he had set down. It was an ‘All Sports’ magazine our father had left.
Imagining the passages that I had read of ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ I sat down at the kitchen table for breakfast. Our mother had already left to run some errands and check in at her job, so Mrs. Wilson cooked the scrambled eggs for us. “Your mother mentioned how we were supposed to go fishing today, but I don’t know if you looked outside, it’s still raining from last night. Normally I don’t mind if you boys want to go out in weather like this, but your mother asked if we would wait for her to come home.”
This was upsetting to Alex and he groaned, unhappy with the dismal outlook of the wet and foggy morning, and his fork hit his plate as he finished eating. It was unlike Alex to act like this but so early was the bad news given that it didn’t seem out of character to me, and Mrs. Wilson ignored his reaction. It didn’t even seem unreasonable that we should have extra time to invite our friends to come along with us unless we could make some arrangements ahead, so I didn’t show the same amount of discouragement. Besides the lack of necessary planning, I had not thought of any friends who I could bring, so while Alex would have to figure out how to let Jacob know to cancel, there was still the same opportunity for him tomorrow and an improved chance for me.
While I was waiting for our mother to reappear and make final decisions with us about going to the lake with Mrs. Wilson, I sat in my bedroom and began to thumb through the Encyclopedia. First, I was looking at the sections on land mammals and then moved to sections on birds. The idea was to flip straight to the section on fish after a few readings which was my routine, followed by plants and trees, bacteria, and minerals. The continents were separate readings individually with all of my favorite native species on each becoming a sketch towards the end of my studies.
Knocking at my door, Alex entered with his cast on and some magazines in his hand. “Hey I got some stuff, here, from the city when I was at the hospital. Magazines from the library and one I bought at the store, yesterday. ‘Action Stories,’ and ‘Weird Tales.’ Have you read any of these?” He handed me the issues each with some interesting covers. Intriguing titles and famous authors were printed on them with eye-catching graphics, my appraisal immediately was a very high value.
“Wow, can I look at them when you’re done?”
“Positively, Ted, I’ll let you know… Too bad about fishing, but don’t worry about it. If it keeps lightening up, tomorrow will be a better day for it. I’m not going to mope around, either. I already called Jacob, Saturday is better for him, too. He said it’ll give him time to run into town and grab extra sinkers.”
We split up to read in our own rooms but as soon as our mother came in the door, Alex and I met back up in the hallway to go back downstairs together. Our mother had a frantic strange look in her eye, talking quietly with Mrs. Wilson and gesturing to the car through the dining room window. She saw us as we slowed down near the stairway to listen, and turned toward us. “Boys, I’m sorry, but I’m going to take Mrs. Wilson back to Milford, shortly. There’s been a change and the fishing trip is canceled until tomorrow.” We had already known the first set of news she gave us but she continued speaking about things which she thought would help us come to mutual compromise. “Before we go, I want to ask if you would like it if Benjamin and his older brother Gregory came with you tomorrow. Teddy, I ran into your friend Benjamin’s mother at the grocer’s market this morning, and mentioned how the two of you were anxious to get your vacations started. Alex, Gregory is a little older than you are, he’s thinking about joining the service. I think if you all stayed together on your own, you would be fine. Benjamin’s parents, the Grants, said they would arrive in the afternoon to help escort people back home.”
“Okay, and Jacob said he’ll be able to come too.”
“Oh, it’s good, then. Well, I need the two of you to come with me to drop off Mrs. Wilson. I still haven’t heard from your father, but I’m expecting him to be home by tomorrow morning.” Our father had been on assignments like this before, so Alex and I readily accepted his absence and were prepared to leave with Mrs. Wilson promptly after a big lunch which we all shared together.
The car ride seemed to take longer than it normally should have, as if our mother was purposefully driving slower or making turns unnecessarily to waste some time before we returned to the house. Especially on the way back, after she made only sparse small talk with Mrs. Wilson about grocery lists, she was even more idle in any conversation with us. Mrs. Wilson lived in the outskirts of Milford, along a country road in a small ranch house with her husband sitting out front, greying hair, glasses, on their porch with a corncob pipe. He waved for us as Mrs. Wilson walked up the steps and smiled at her as she entered the door, turning to her left side to smile at him. Our mother waved back and pulled away from their driveway, making a U-turn in the road. She passed a couple of stores which seemed like they were out of the way and possibly were an unannounced destination which she had planned. Yet she only drove by, keeping quiet with a contemplative expression on her face. Something unspoken was definitely disturbing her thoughts as we cruised and although she tightly concealed her emotion, it was noticeable to both of us in the back seat.
Being forced to take the ride into Milford, early curfew and fishing cancelation, in addition to mother’s overall worrisome interaction with us, all of the signs of how father’s absence was more than the average fare of weekend agendas which we were accustomed to. We were eager to adapt to any of the family’s circumstances; with however indemnifying or stupefying the developments were occurring, but we did feel an unnatural aura of strange danger. Yet, as a crow rushed its beating wings into a low flight from a telephone pole to our right up across a rolling hillside there was a sense of adventure which was ardently building within us. Whatever the motivation, our energy was strengthening and we were filled with a desire to go forth from out of the captivity of the suspense.
As we pulled into our driveway, mother was still solemn and repressed, as I tried quietly to ask Alex what he was going to do with himself for the afternoon. Alex said he was going to finish reading one of the stories in ‘Weird Tales.’ We got out of the car and I slowly started toward the house, stopping by the picnic table as I saw Alex pass me. He wasn’t sulking but his voice seemed to be at a lower tone than the day before. Hesitant to go on with the day without something to make Alex’s mood better, I remembered how I had left a few magazines with stories in them up in the loft. So, I waited for mother to get almost all the way to the house, walking behind Alex who entered at the side door, and then announced to her how I was going up to grab them off the table and bring them inside.
Normally I was never a mischievous child, nor deceptive to anyone. As long as I was alive, I had looked up to Alex and to our father, and I valued the laws of America and rules of our house. They all seemed to fit with my experiences as a human and I held no grudge against anything which I had been exposed to. If anybody had ever tried to convince me of things in the world which were different from my own neighborhood it would confuse me, because this was the natural world and things which were governed by man were given final sanction by God. Granted I was believed to be very intelligent and I tried to be sociable and conscientious of myself. I often used my intellect to earn respect and also to philanthropize my charitableness. The things to come to fruition that summer adjusted those sentiments through accumulating amounts of unexplainable events which challenged my perception of life.
When mother closed the door behind her and while Alex leapt up the stairs to his room and pounced onto his reading, I carefully was examining something I saw in the mud by the toolshed. The rain had subsided and I could smell the heat of the summer grab the moistures of the ground into humidity. A large footprint had imprinted the dirt, so I cautiously crept up to investigate the scene closer during the moment of cleared weather. There were tiny slugs crawling around the rippling puddle, disappearing in the mud and leaving slime trails. Still, I was caught in the momentum of our abandoned lost dog search party, as well as the mysterious behaviors of our mother and missing father that week and the demand of my urge to compete in leadership as a younger boy than Alex and his friends whom made big decisions and intricate plans.
On inspection I noticed the pairs of footprints were made by large boots. They went into the toolshed on the side of the barn, where I saw how some of the tools had been moved around. The saw was taken down off its rack and some teeth were chipped blunt, and it was bent. The ax was missing too, from where it was normally sitting by the door to the barn. Not much else was different in the barn, the spare, red gas can was still in back, and the screwdriver kit and hammer were still on the table, where the toolbox was shut. But as I stared at the tools on the work bench, I imagined the only useful things an ax could accomplish, which were wood cutting or tree chopping or breaking through things or into places. The season wasn’t right for any of those tasks, so if someone had borrowed the tools while we were gone or if our father had come home and left already were the only logical reasons which could have caused these tools to be misplaced or vanished.
Outside of the toolshed I looked at the edge of a mud puddle that had been imprinted by the same large boot, at an angle towards the woods. Throwing aside my basic inhibitions based off of a hunch how there was something awry, I decided to follow the tracks, to at least the tree line.
The backyard was quiet and there was only a very slight breeze in the air as I stepped toward the trees which encompassed our yard. There was a buzzing in my ears as I neared the outer limits of the dank forest. Breaking the silence was a crackling of sticks to my left, loudly echoing against the brush in front of me, then I heard a dog barking twice and then more raucous movement from deep within. Inevitably, I pursued into the tall grass, trying to stealthily spy the sources and my interest in remaining unseen couldn’t prevent my conspicuity to be as easily forgotten as my allegiance to the household behind me. So, I pressed through the thickets and through thorns and shrubberies, only able to glimpse pieces of some rapid movements in the farther distance between bare tree trunks and tangled bushes.
Although obscurely, I remember everything deeper in the woods was blurred and partially obstructed from my view by the dense branches and trees, especially on the terrain which was hilly with ups and downs and curving sides which eventually led to a large escalating hill almost half a mile in to the north east that rose high above any trees' tops. The movement near the summits and around the inclining and declining, rocky, wild, and tree covered dark hills to the north drew my attention. As I began to walk a little further, a fast and strong animal brushed my lower thigh from behind and when I looked down, the black dog was running away to the north east near the giant hill in my periphery. Immediately I shouted at the dog but it ran forward another forty feet before it stopped atop a foothill and barked incessantly at the woods on the rising hill. In my frustration, I slowed my running down from jog to a rest, bending my hands over to my kneecaps while I caught my breath and silently assessed the probability of catching the dog alone.
Nearly fifty feet from the bottom of the massive hill and within only twenty feet from the black dog standing on the smaller foothill, I heard the angry shout of a man behind me; a voice I didn’t recognize. Turning my head to look over my shoulder, I saw a large bearded man with wild and uncombed hair. He was wearing the black and white striped jumpsuit that they gave to prisoners in the movies which I had seen and I knew he was coming to get me. Clumsily, I nearly toppled over in panic as I began clambering up the hillside, while I saw the dog speed up and over atop, then around the side to the north. Not knowing what else would be a good tactic at this point, I decided to follow the dog up the giant hill.
Luckily, as I looked back down much further up the hill, the man had started off several hundred feet back and impeded by the chains and handcuffs that were around his wrists. He had broken the chains around his feet but the steep and muddy hill was a difficult climb for him. Nearing the top, I climbed higher still, but he was a hundred yards away. I also searched my surroundings for the dog as I hurdled up over the rock, dirt, and roots on the side of the hilltop that I had run up.
Beginning to realize the futility of my chances of escape and the imminent horror if I were apprehended, I began to get desperate for some kind of distraction, diversion, or trick which might win me time or favor in my fight. The dog barked from somewhere, and I searched all around on the hill. My position in the chase had switched from being predator to prey. Then, I noticed the mouth of a cave opening against the hill surrounded by the roots of two giant sycamore trees. At the top of the cave was a poison hemlock and inside were giant boulders, some of which were covered with what looked like quartz. Quickly, I went in the cave and scrambled through for a moment until I quietly slowed down and hid behind a boulder, a hundred feet inside the damp earth.
Through the dank tunnel’s holes and creeping gravely corners, dirt and sodden ground which raised up into stalagmites and leaning walls covered in quartz and root veins, I scampered away from the opening light until it disappeared. It was replaced slowly with a glowing quartz which shone in the rocky surfaces throughout the catacombs like hazy, magical lamps. Only then did I hesitate to listen intently to the echoing silence which filled the damp air. Shuffling feet somewhere ahead of me suddenly grabbed my heart and raised my fears into unstoppable fury. Then, the true terror began as the sound of a tinkling and swiping metal chain being dragged behind the phantom aggressor began in to fill the void of noiseless black darkness. Frenetically, I pushed myself forward away from the tunnel and kept running away, chasing after the dog as I was being hunted.
When the descending tunnel started to level off at a dimly lit bottom, I was frantically worried if I would reach the end so far into the cave, that I would be lost forever. Mysteriously, a wind began to fill the air around me and as I walked, I noticed less and less of the glowing quartz of the rocks and boulder edges which I had fallen into. Then, there was the sensation of grass around my feet like a mowed field and I saw above to my complete astonishment what appeared to be stars filling a cloudless night sky but no moon in sight. Suddenly, my foot hit a big stone on the ground and I tripped over it, almost stubbing my toe and stumbling into a half-somersault until I had landed atop of a fresh dirt mound, directly in front of another large and upright stone. For a second, I looked behind me, until I could recognize the type of stone, then I waited quietly in the hush of the night to see if I heard the chains of the man that chased me. It was quiet though, with just the slight breeze of a warm summer evening. The stone was a grave marker.
Getting up off the ground, I stooped low and brushed off my clothes and then waited for almost five full minutes, crouching in hiding. The air buzzed with the sound of insects and there were beetles which were crawling around the ground, abruptly. Terrified, I stared behind myself into the void blackness which I had run from. My left shoelace was untied, so I stayed bent to tie another knot. Then I heard a voice behind me, another unrecognizable voice.
“Bury! You hear?”
Frightened and tired, I started crying while I ran back away from the voice behind me to the black void. The sense of the natural cave that I had fallen through began to surround me again and as I ran away the feeling of safety and security of home kept me going as strong and as fast as I could. Around boulders and over rocks and hills in the cave I ran and all the way out into sunsetting sky above the hill.
When I staggered into the backyard finally, covered in dirt and sweat, tears drying on my cheeks, I saw father’s car was in the driveway. It was obvious how I was in trouble if I didn’t think fast of a good excuse to tell everyone, so I ran over to the barn, to the toolshed hoping that my family hadn’t noticed me. Climbing the ladder, I felt afraid again, briefly wondering if the man in the woods was going to grab me even then. But I made it to my table and sat in the chair for a moment, trying to catch my breath.
The magazine that I had told Alex about much earlier, was laying on the other table, so I stood back up to gather it and retreat inside to our house. It was the best thing that I could think of to lie that I stayed up in the loft alone all afternoon. Then, out of nowhere, as if to put a cap on the bottle of adventures which I had just been through; a tiny cat cried in the corner of the loft, way to the back of the barn and I witnessed out of the corner of my eye, the black stray jumping down off the loft platform onto a haystack against the back wall. To my knowledge there were no house cats anywhere in our neighboring area, so this was strange to me again. As I walked over to where the stray cat had been, I was paying close attention to everything around me because I still wasn’t really sure yet if the crazy man would return and try to attack me. There was nothing out of the ordinary, then I noticed something laying on the hay stack. When I climbed back down the ladder, I walked over and picked up an ancient, golden, amulet engraved with thousands of etchings in spirals I had never seen before.
Inside the house I realized that I had only been gone for about an hour and although father was home, nobody seemed to miss me at all. Guessing that it was luck, I hid the amulet in my pocket and washed myself up.
TED 3
3
3a.)
Before the year 1300, in medieval England under the rule of King Edward I, the original “De Praerogativa Regis,” or the Statute of the King’s Prerogative was written. This law was made during the feudal state of the British Isles during a time when criminals were held by Sheriffs of each Peerage whose territory was divided under the rule of the Throne. It stated the responsibility of all property of every mentally disadvantaged citizen was to the King, while the mentally challenged person became an inmate of jails. Typically, the jail cells which held the disabled inmates were at the very lowest in the dungeon where food was scarcest and treatment was the worst.
Descriptions of permanent mental incapacitations were commonly “idiocy;” which describes someone who is incapable of retaining any information which may improve themselves, “lunacy;” which identifies people who are so mentally unstable it effects how they can become controlled by minor changes in environment such as lunar orbit, or “retardation;” which refers to an inflection where a person is prone to continuously commit the same mistakes. Many have historically compared the simple state of melancholy or anxiety with chronic depression and have likened human expression of passion and love with mania. The adjective in history most commonly used to describe mental handicap is “madness;” the wording also synonymous with rage or anger which are derivatives of emotional hate; the associated feeling of pain and symptom of ignorance. Insanity in and of itself is derived from the human’s lack of sane thoughts, which was an invention of homosapien to distinguish the publicly accepted reality from the personally creative imagination. The other most historically documented treatment of people who were innately deformed was stigmatic tribal abandonment; a leading cause of racial differentiation, stemming migratory populations, and premature infanticide.
Without our father; we had let unpredictability of alien fears unhinge our feeling of security and safety, even on our own property and in our home. With his return we were immediately relieved with self-controlled discipline and instinctive ethical rule. It was normally a time of peace when Christopher Goode was home with us and both Alex and I exerted individual efforts to learn from his leadership. Patience and understanding were some of our father’s greatest virtues and his teachings and guidance were vital to every day that he was there during our youth. Besides mentoring us on the natural strengths which we earned as we exercised our minds and bodies, he also gave us important tutorials on everything else that a young man might find useful. A relaxed and calmed mind was more adept for physical preciseness and a body which was powerful was a tool for mental reflections. Alex and I both felt the positivity of his presence during that afternoon and evening and by bedtime were exhausted. The letdown of sunrise was his car’s disappearance, and morning’s disappointment was our breakfast, after a full night of dreaming, yet quickly fleeting comforts.
That Saturday morning Alex and I walked down to the front of the driveway where the Grant’s parents pulled in with a red Ford up to the barn door behind our mother’s Franklin. Our father had already been gone when we woke up early in the morning and the spot where his car would normally sit was vacant with wet mud still drying in the morning sun. The Grants all got out of their car as our mother came walking down off the front stoop to greet them and Alex and I waited for the boys to get out of the back doors. My friend, Benjamin, and his older brother, Gregory, both hopped out on either side and Gregory came around from the other side to take the two fishing poles out of the rear window area. On cue Benjamin reached into the back seats and took a big tacklebox off of the floor.
As mother began talking to Benjamin and Gregory’s parents in front of the picnic table, Alex walked into the toolshed where he took out both tackleboxes for each of us, two nets, and a big creel that we shared, and I picked up my fishing pole off the side of the barn and took my tacklebox from his hand. Mr. and Mrs. Grant and our mother continued talking as Alex motioned for the other two to follow us closer to the road near the pond. Briefly Alex explained the directions to the lake, as Gregory quickly inspected his knots and reel line. Benjamin started to push apart the grasses which surrounded the pond and his parents looked like they were getting ready to leave us.
“We should get to the crossroads before eleven at the latest, and Jacob will either be there or we’ll just wait for him, a minute. That’s when he said he would be there.”
“Does your friend, Jacob, have his own tackle?”
“Yes, he does. He’s going to bring live bait, too. He told me he was out, picking nightcrawlers yesterday, and put them inside a tobacco tin with some fresh dirt and leaves in it, so they should be good, still.”
“Nice,” agreed Greg while Benjamin came walking back from the pond.
Our mother and the Grants’ parents were getting done exchanging their informal cordialities and Arthur Grant looked over to his sons and then Alex and I with a smile of pride. He walked down the driveway and stood in it while he addressed all of us, “Boys, stay together and be safe. We’re a little uncomfortable letting Jacob go home by himself, but Mrs. Goode said that he lives much closer to the lake. So, do you boys have enough drinking water?” We all shook our head and Alex looked over at me anxiously while Gregory asked if he could borrow his father’s canteen. Mr. Grant agreed and walked back to their car and retrieved a water canteen with a carrying strap out of the driver side door and walked with it back to us down the narrow dirt driveway. Grinning again, playfully he lightly tossed it underhand to Gregory when he was within fifteen feet and Greg caught it with his right hand and slung the strap around his left shoulder. Mrs. Grant and our mother laughed politely.
“Nice toss,” Gregory said, and he turned around to face the rest of us as his father proudly went back up to the car, and Mr. and Mrs. Grant both climbed in on either side back into the front seats.
The four of us walked to the left side of the front gate and waited as the Grants’ red Ford pulled down the driveway backwards and our mother stood near the picnic table watching and waving as they reversed and then took off to the east. Then we got our gear and walked out and to the west.
The crossroads (as we referred to them,) were about a mile to the northwest down our private road which was used only by the two residencies to the east. They were both inhabited by much older folks and I never became personally acquainted with them all that well. One was a younger man, named Kai Greene who was still older than both of our parents, he worked as a chef at a restaurant and he lived alone in a cabin near the turnpike. The other was a much older retired couple, the Sanchez’s, who lived between us and the road which led up to Manchester. The crossroads weren’t a real road crossing either, it was basically a dead end where two paths led to the lake and up through the woods to the road that Jacob’s family lived on. Jacob’s road was private too and a little over a half mile north through woods. It was out of Jacob’s way to come down the path because his road continued almost all the way over to the lake, but he had made plans with Alex the day before. Alex had spoken to him at length on the phone, after he had returned from the hospital with his broken arm.
“Our father works in Manchester, too, like your parents. He’s a lawyer. He says he’s seen your father before at the circuit courthouse. Our mother doesn’t actually work.” Gregory was explaining to Alex some of his family’s business and personal life while Benjamin and I tagged along. They avoided the conversation of Alex’s arm.
“Oh, our father doesn’t work in Manchester all the time, he usually is in Concord. Our mother is there, though, regularly. That’s why our family has two cars, because the towns are in opposite directions.” Alex pointed out some of the differences between our two families. “Our father’s a U.S. Marshal. Our mother is a clerk part-time in the Hillsborough County offices. I don’t know who works harder, but our father’s job pays a lot more.”
“Yeah, we’re going to get a new Model A, our father says. Hey, it must be exciting having a Marshal job. Did your dad enlist or get drafted in the war? Has he ever busted any famous bootleggers?”
“He was drafted when I was young...” Alex glanced at me and I stayed silent. “How about your dad?”
“He didn’t have to. Not sure why. I’m going to enlist in the army. Soon, I hope, after I finish secondary school next year.”
We marched down the dusty road further, shuffling our tackleboxes and fishing poles in our arms while the distractions in the natural beauty of wilderness during summer enveloped us. The woods were alive with finches and warblers flying across the road and in tangling bush branches. Squirrels barked, busily chattered, and scampered along the higher limbs of trees and onto the ground crackled fallen pieces and pine cones, leaves, and twigs. Every once in a while, a tree stump or log along the side of the road would spring to life with a startled chipmunk jumping around the hills of the forest floor to its hole. As we reached near the crossroads, Benjamin and I hung back a few yards and I saw a cardinal flying from bush to bush parallel to us in the woods before lifting high into the trees behind us.
As we neared our meeting spot, the conversation was beginning to change from family stories to gossip of neighbors, school experiences and long-term career goals. Beginning to tell Gregory about my own dreams of studying animals in distant countries, I asked Benjamin what he wanted to do when he grew up and he replied how he thought it may be interesting to become a doctor. Alex had nonchalantly asked why Benjamin thought he would want to be a doctor and Benjamin was explaining how his father had been a lawyer for some people who had gotten sick in London on vacation, and had re-entered the United States.
“Well, if I was a real doctor, I would have made them stay in the London hospital until they were properly treated.” Gregory interjected with seniority on the idea. “Anyway, our father wasn’t their lawyer, he was the lawyer for the company the man had worked for. His family wasn’t working, and he shouldn’t have been allowed to bring the whole bunch of them back here. Mistakes in medical fields are one of the leading causes of deaths.”
By the time the meeting spot was in front of us, the discussion was still going. I bent back over to retie my shoelace, pausing meditatively. Alex was listening intently, so I remembered for us how we should slow down and wait at the crossroads. Jacob wasn’t there and Alex had started to continue into the path but when he saw me hesitantly looking up toward Jacob’s house, he turned around and put his tacklebox down somewhat dramatically.
“Yeah, but if America had more doctors who knew correct procedures, they would have been able to come back to the United States and received the medical care, which they needed, in better facilities.” Alex was quick to defend Benjamin, partly because Benjamin was my friend, but also because he wanted to exhibit for Gregory his versatility with comprehensive thinking and problem solving. He wasn’t always this creative but he would sometimes let the flare for intelligence show, especially when it came to matters which involved me. More often he was the one to stick up for the underdog because he knew how it gained allies and friends in the long term. Alex paused, “Hey, guys, look! Benjamin! Teddy! A toad!”
At that moment while we were all locked in the heated discussion about scientific theologies and moral, political philosophy, Benjamin tripped backward, shrieking in surprise as his tacklebox fell out of his hand and fishing pole went flying to the side. As he guffawed from the farceur, his hand reached back and grabbed empty air where I was hesitating my forward trod and my legs leaned my upper body forward in a balancing act with my pole leaned backward behind me and the tacklebox in my extended left arm jiggled to my side. Without any indication of what was going on, I felt Benjamin’s shoulder crash into my knees sideways while I heard Alex start to laugh hysterically. Finally, I looked up and saw a look of dumbfounded shock in Gregory’s eye and Alex covering his face while the wily prankster, Jacob, knelt down to give Benjamin a hand back up to his feet.
“Jacob, you're too funny. Gregory, this is my friend Jacob.” Alex winced and pointed at Jacob, who was wearing a dark green sporting uniform and had been hiding low in a bush to the side of the trail.
“Sorry, I thought I was going to scare Teddy.” Jacob snickered at me after Benjamin was back up. “Are you Gregory? I am sorry, but it was still pretty funny. Good sport, Benjamin. How’s your arm, Al?”
“Oh, it doesn’t hurt as much as it did the first day. Yeah, this is Gregory,” Alex changed subject, “Did you bring the bait? Where is it?”
“Yep, it’s back under the bushes, I’ll grab it up.” Jacob hustled back to join us as Gregory had turned back down the path and kept walking while Benjamin and I gathered the fishing pole and tackleboxes.
“Are you okay Ben?” Trying to lift his spirits I gave him a grin while I asked and Benjamin nodded, smiling widely and blushing a little. He brushed himself off and we wasted no time in getting back onto the path that led to Horace Lake, hurrying behind the older three.
We all walked through the cool and shaded forest along the path. From then on in, Benjamin and I did the least amount of speaking and we listened to the stories which Gregory told about his time in the secondary school. Alex and Jacob too, participated in the conversations less but led the way and we were making good time as a party of five now. It was Jacob’s belief in the fish’s slowing of their feeding in the later afternoon and he pushed us to a pace which would allow our arrival at the lake well before noon. Jacob had also brought his own net and creel and a nice Shakespeare rod set. Alex and I both had Shakespeare reels which were attached to Bristol rods.
Finally, the stretching density of trees in front of us began to lighten up as clear sky peeked through from atop of the forest and around the higher branches and leaves. The gentle buzzing of flying insects grew to a steady volume in the warm air and the thinning out of large trunks was replaced by smaller bushes and thickets, brambles and marshes. The path became muddy for bits of the walk as it swerved around ponds, swamp, and drained creeks. We gained speed as a group until I saw the opening of the path into the dirt surrounding the access point to the lake. Then, as we hopped over protruding roots and around slick and mossy rocks through fields of decomposing timber colored with fungi where spring had melted winter’s snow against slowly disintegrating stumps, sticks, and logs, and washed away or dissolved into trickling and dried streambeds, an outline of the lake became scenically visible. Our anxious movements slowed to a creeping plod to disguise ourselves and soften the noise of our steps from the fish, birds, and animals nearby.
Further on to the lake, as our acumen was equally distributed between the members of our party and we began slowing into a search of the various outlying positions which we may claim for our own, our mutual perspicacity to remain unnoticed and unheard was eventually broken by Jacob’s disruption from our group’s synchronized conduct. As Jacob haphazardly thrust his tacklebox onto a large stone ledge and the metal box jingled, our trances were adjusted into focus and study of our gear. Jacob set the bait tin on the ground while he examined his exposed line and knots, sinker positioning, and tugged on his hook. In turn, each of us looked through our tackles for bobbers and sinkers, hooks and lures as we organized and formed plans.
It did occur to me at this point that we would be separating from each other to make room and space between our casts so the lines would not cross. Additionally, I remembered the sporting magazines our father owned and Alex had showed me where men often used more than one line and cast multiple times at different angles, but nothing like this was available for the five of us on the lake that day. Yet still, this all reminded me of our mother’s voiced concerns of safety. Then, thoughts about the disturbing chaos of the days before returned to my head, including flashbacks of the cave chase and the crazy man, and a terrible anxiety which I refused to share with anybody was subconsciously unnerving me as I glanced around at my brother and our friends. My hand began to tremble as I tried to tie a new hook. The loss of control wasn’t completely unconcealable nor personally alarming but I fumbled with the line, missing the tiny metal eye twice. When I feebly dropped the hook to the ground, I could feel someone watching me and looked up to see Gregory giving a look of concern. Alex caught on quickly to my mild frustration too, and after he gave his line a quick tug, he approached to lend a hand.
Jacob passed the old tobacco bait tin to Gregory and Benjamin waited his turn to dig through and find a worm. Alex set his rig down and then motioned to me with his hand to pass him my rod and line. He used his knees and thighs to sturdily secure the rig between his legs, letting the handle rest on the rocky ground below while I gave the small hook over to him. “Here you go,” he said, calmly, “watch what I do. I’ll show you a trick.” Quickly, Alex threaded the line through the hole and held the hook up in the air by the two sides of line so I could see. “Twist it a few times after you thread it. Spin it all the way around about three times and then finish the knot off. This way the hook won’t fall out of your hand again while you’re tying it, and also it will help you tighten without breaking the line.”
“Yeah, now grab a worm and twist him around a couple times, too, so you attach him to the hook more than once. That way, your worm doesn’t fall off it when you cast or when he hits the water.” Jacob walked over with the bait tin and handed it to Alex, who grinned and handed the rig and tin to me.
Gregory and Benjamin were walking down to the lake shore while I stooped over the rocky surface and set the bait tin down. Rustling through the dirt, I felt the cold, slimy and wet mud around the worms and as fast I could I quickly found a big one. Pulling my hand out of the smelly tobacco tin, the nightcrawler was wrapping itself around my hand and wriggling. “You got it okay?” Asked Alex, and I nodded up at him with my eyebrows raised as the worm whipped back and forth against my finger. “Well, I’m going to move down to the water, then. Cover it up tight before you get it back to Jacob.”
Jacob waited without bait on his hook and I looked down to the hook that was swinging on my line. With my left hand I grabbed the line and followed it down to the hook which I pinched with my thumb and forefinger while I steadied it to the worm. Suddenly, as I looked down at the slimy, writhing worm, I felt sharp pain and a stinging sensation in my right finger. When I looked, the nasty worm appeared to be biting me. Gasping, I threw the worm down on the rocks and let go of my pole which crashed down. “What’s going on?” Jacob looked over at me, with a frown.
“I thought it bit me.” The pain had almost caused me to fall over, “Worms don’t bite, do they?”
“No, no way. That’s weird. There’s no way a worm has teeth or can bite. Are you okay, Ted?” Jacob started to walk over to me as I scoured the ground for the worm. The worm was a normal looking nightcrawler and even as I looked at skeptically and leaned over to see it up close, I didn’t understand how I could have been bitten.
“I got it, don’t worry,” Muttered under my breath, I was a little embarrassed of my naïve remarks, “I’ve never heard of a nightcrawler that can bite, it was probably something else.” Before I made the scene too dramatic, I picked up the worm and got it right onto the hook fast, and then adjusted it. “Strange.” With my hand above the reel, I dangled the bait in front of me and I observed it struggling desperately, hooked and helpless, but it seemed now like a totally average worm. So, while recovering from my shameful delusion, I tightened the lid back on the tin and handed the bait to Jacob. “Alright, I’m going down there.”
“See you later. Hopefully the fish still bite your crazy worm.” Jacob snickered, but I had already turned my back to him and faced the lake. With the tacklebox and net in my other hand, I began to descend to the lake.
Gregory had been the first to the shore and had cast his line out the furthest, twice as far as Benjamin. Gregory had walked just left of the path, maybe five feet and Benjamin was about forty feet south beyond him. Alex was north ten yards and as I walked down the path between them, so I deliberated which way I should turn and with whom would be smartest to stay nearby. Initially I thought how I might go over toward my brother, having just remembered the precautionary speeches of both our parents, but I slowed down my walk to watch as Jacob burst past me and down to the right toward Alex. Alex moved down the shoreline to compensate for Jacob’s entry to the line-up and then positioned himself for his cast. Even with his arm’s malady, he was able to draw a decent enough line out. Seeing how Jacob with his bait tin, had stationed himself between the elder two, comforted me how I would be safe and within reach of supplies. So, I finally went south about twenty feet past Benjamin. This put me at the edge of a corner to our small bay on the north east side of the lake.
When I came within fifteen feet of the shore, I set down my fishing net and stood up to survey the water on the lake, the depth and debris in it, and the lines which everyone else had cast. There were only a few waterlogged branches close to the shore, no fallen trees nor rocks, and it looked like the deep water extended around me to the left and to the right past Alex in our bay. The shade from the hanging limbs above me reflected across the lake until the blue of the sky and gray wisps of clouds spread clear across the lake. Ripples fell onto the edge of the water and there wasn’t much of a wind to make waves. Two dragonflies zipped around and buzzed in the tall, motionless grass to my left, as faint echoes of bullfrogs filled the distilling vapors of the dried shores. The citric smells where the green pine forest met the damp ground before the lake gathered pungency in the heat as the shallow bottom sank into murky brown mud below.
A cuckoo tweeted far out in the woods to my back and I glanced over my right shoulder to look at Alex and Jacob up near the trail, each waiting patiently for a bite to strike their lines. Gregory stepped up and threw another cast over his shoulder, far out into the lake. Splashing the surface, the sinker smacked with the line and Gregory knelt down behind some short bushes. Benjamin was somewhere between us out of sight, but I saw how his line was still out as well, twitching and bobbing in the breeze and currents of the waves. With the rod in my right hand, index finger pinching the line, I used my left finger to flick the bail on my reel and raised the line over my shoulder to throw it into the water.
The sinker and hook both splashed far out in the lake, slightly to the left where I had aimed. Steadying my arm and pulling down the bail, I raised the tip of the rod and grabbed the handle with my left hand. For a moment there was a lull in the commotion which we had made for ourselves on the shore, where insect buzz and the crash of the small waves absorbed the silences between. Staring along the shoreline across the lake and into the forest on the opposite side beneath the sky, I noticed something unexpected. The shapes of two young kids appeared to the south, at an angle where our bay curved around a corner where I knew there was an obstruction where Benjamin and Gregory couldn’t see the figures.
Purely with a lackadaisical effort I watched the two kids walk out of woods which I had never been through, and I took a knee to keep my fishing line steady and high, while I shaded my eyes from glaring sunlight with my left hand over my eyebrows. The two figures moved out from the woods toward the shoreline and one of them appeared to have a fishing pole in his hand. They were five hundred feet away or more and somewhat indistinct at their heights and distance, but I assumed they were at the lake to fish like us. It occurred to me how I should know their identities from my own familiarity with the neighborhoods around the lake but I ignored the consideration and looked back to my line which sat idle without even a nibble on my worm.
Benjamin’s line was retreating to the shore and Gregory stood up to reel back his bait, as well. Alex was moving further up the shoreline north and I watched them intently for a moment to see if they were getting the competitive spirit for the sport. They all seemed to not have seen the kids to the south and hadn’t caught anything either. Their overall demeanor was tranquil and I felt an exclusivity to my view.
Looking back at the two young people down to the south end of the lake, I winced into the sun to confirm the shapes which were still there. At first, I couldn’t see them in the sharp light, but then saw them moving together further south. The one who hadn’t held a fishing pole at first now commanded a big stick or branch, pushing the other one down with it. The unused fishing pole was nowhere to be seen and the scene had gone from fishing and tranquility to attack and violence as the one with the big stick kept pushing the other one down in the mud. It was a confusing moment when I felt surprised yet transfixed in my instinctive disdain, eventually compelling me to react.
My initial reaction was to begin reeling in my line a little faster than normal, and anxiously accelerating. When I looked back across the lake at the children, I watched as the one on the ground began flailing his arms in panic, pushing and grabbing the stick away from his neck. Alex and everyone with me were oblivious, but I reeled in as fast as I could and started shouting “Hey!” The snickers of Gregory and Jacob were enough to cause my frustration, yet I was determined as I dropped my reeled rod onto the ground and started bushwhacking through the forest towards the south.
My last sight of the two fighting children was the one with the stick beginning to jab down on the other kid’s head, neck, ears and face. The torment which was being inflicted was disturbing and scary to me as I started running and I felt a surge of anger rush over me. Thoughts of security and safety were abandoned while my brother and his friends only bickered behind me and laughed at me strangely with unscrupulous scrutiny. Imminent danger had presented itself with the two kids and as I approached into the last hundred and fifty feet to them the bushes around me were thickening and I began to lose my breath. Finally, I pushed out of the edge of the woods into the muddy shallow water around the shoreline and stood almost to my knees in cold water. The boy with the stick was pushing the other one down into the water, drowning him. When the splashing stopped, I was within a proximity to the scene close enough to manage an identifying look at the face of the boy on the shoreline; and in his eyes, nose, and cheek, what I saw was an unmistakable exact mirror image of myself. Fear shook me and frigid water made me tremble as sweat and water uncomfortably trickled down my forehead and I screamed in anguish, and fell backwards into the lake.
The boy on the edge let out a hideous cackling laugh which reminded me of a sinister version of my own and charged at me, before he threw the stick at me. The spinning, twirling, bloodied branch landed close enough to my right ear to slightly abrase and cut it, even as I skillfully dodged. Still on my back I saw his menacing grimace as he turned and walked back into the dark forest. Turning over and splashing muddy water into my mouth and nose, I began running back toward the shoreline and my friends. Stampeding through the woods and bushes I continued screaming for Alex and started to sob when I saw them closing in on me. Exhausted and scared, I collapsed on my knees and pointed back behind me.
“Did you see that?” Jacob came running behind Alex, who grabbed my shoulder and helped me up. Jacob had seen them and so had Alex, apparently. Gregory and Benjamin were far behind at the trail.
Alex leaned over to look at me in the eyes and tried to comfort me in my desperate shock, “Are you okay? Did that kid hit you?”
“Yeah, he threw the stick at me. Did you see? Jacob did you see what that boy looked like?”
Jacob was pale with the shock, and stammered to answer, “Yeah, Al, he looked just like Teddy. That was so weird, I don’t even know how to explain it.”
“Did you see the boy drowning?” Stuttering while I asked them, I was completely astonished, “Is he dead?”
“Jacob, did you see anyone else or only that one boy who threw the stick?”
Jacob shook his head and squinted his eyes. “No. No, all I saw was the crazy guy try to kill Teddy.”
Gregory came walking through the woods toward us with Benjamin, “What’s going on?”
Just then, the forest appeared to begin to literally shatter into millions of pieces. Vast darkness suddenly engulfed us and sunlight was drained from the canopy above. The roaring sound was loud, breathtaking, and until the squeaking sounds of the bats flying around us was audible through the crashing of leaves and wings, none of us could determine the source of the clamorous cacophony. They were crashing in an abominable balling swarm through the woods to the south, emanating from somewhere north east of us, crossing diagonally to the site of the inexplicable murder. Gregory, Benjamin, and Jacob scrambled backwards as Alex covered his head from the squall of blackness.
We all ran through the woods to the path and up over the swampy area until the sounds of the bats completely faded away. Gregory and Benjamin still had their fishing gear, and thankfully Gregory hung onto his father’s water canteen. We passed it around for a couple minutes, regrouping, and Jacob agreed to walk back to the shore for our fishing rods and gear which Alex and I had left.
Gregory looked over at Benjamin who was obviously frightened by the strange events. “I’m going to take Benjamin back to the main road up to your house, Alex. We’ll wait for you there. Is that okay?”
“Alright, I’m going to wait for Jacob, with Teddy. We’ll be right behind you.”
As I waited with Alex for our fishing gear, I patted my ear with the cuff of my shirt. The blood was drying up in the heat and I wasn’t in any pain. Alex sat down on the ground and put his head in his hands. “This turned into an unbelievably awful first trip, of the summer, didn’t it?” Although I felt sorry for Alex, I didn’t think sympathy could keep my act together. He didn’t know how I had been in the cave the day before. So, my only response was to walk back up the path a few yards to encourage our unified bravery as I looked for Jacob over the small marshes.
When Jacob came back with our fishing rods, the three of us started back to the main road together. Nobody was really hurt, so we were ready to head home peacefully. Gregory and Benjamin were not at the crossroads where they had told us to meet them, and Jacob turned up the trail to return to his house. He wasn’t as shaken up as the rest of us but during our escape he had lost his bait tin. We had only been gone for about an hour, however, the rest of our walk would get us to our house after twelve o’clock noon, lunchtime, and without bait there was no immediate hope for second chance at success in returning to catch any fish. Jacob waved goodbye and continued up the trail, and Alex and I walked up the road to home.
Within a few minutes, we saw Gregory running up the side of the road toward us. He was sprinting at full speed and didn’t have any of his fishing gear on him anymore. When he caught up to us, he bowed over and put his hands on his knees, panting and sweating. Alex stopped walking and grabbed my shoulder. Gregory raised a hand and motioned for us to stop and come closer, as he was out of breath. “I just came back from your house, Al. Our parents are there, with Benjamin. The Federal Bureau of Investigation was there while we were gone, because one of Ted’s friends went missing from school this morning. Darren?”
“We didn’t see him, this morning, did you, Ted?” Alex looked at me with worry across his face. The kids at the lake who we had seen struck out in my mind as the memories flashed back to me of my aggressor and the possible murder of a young boy across the bay. The victim was small enough to be the same size and height as Darren, my friend from the school.
I wondered if I knew the attacker or if I had been rushed and confused, as well. The revelations left me awestruck and speechless. Thankfully, I wasn’t held to an interrogation and I mumbled, “No.”
“The F.B.I. said they were coming to take you two away for questioning to Manchester. Because Darren had told his parents how he was visiting with you guys today. I guess he doesn’t live too far from your house, just south east of the country road east of here. I overheard the F.B.I. agents say they are suspecting foul play and Darren wasn’t actually given permission to leave his home, ever. He snuck out and ran away after Harlowe left their house, yesterday.” Gregory handed over the refilled canteen to us.
“Didn’t you say you saw someone else at the lake, Ted? Besides the kid with that stick?” Alex was quick to investigate with questions, I could tell from his expression how he was going to also be protective of me and defensive for our family name, above all else. Having failed already; his mission of keeping our crew safe at the lake, he had renewed his ambition to behave as an older brother and guardian.
“Gregory, can you keep an eye on our fishing gear? You can take it back with you, or borrow it, too, if you promise to return it.” Gregory took the gear from us both. He was older and maybe more responsible, yet he was understanding to us and of our dilemma. “Alex, I have to show you something.” The only thing I could think to do was to show Alex the cave. Maybe if he saw what I had seen the day before, the events at the lake would become more believable. If I was going to make sense of what happened before I was framed for a murder, I had to bring Alex over to the end of our property to the fantastic, mysterious cave. There I could hide and we could plan.
3b.)
I had potentially witnessed my friend’s unbelievable murder. The exchange of information at the crossroads was ominous, and as Alex and I went deeper south past, into the woods past our house, the sky above was growing cloudier and the air thickened in a darkened warm front of air which blew an oncoming thunderstorm in our direction, fast. Ushering Alex along terrain beyond the plots of our playground which youth had forgotten in rushes to and from various destinations which had been manifested from our elders’ guidance, I thought of the perplexing viability of our mutual incrimination against the possibilities of exoneration through retrieval of evidence. The limits of our previous travels were an adversity only met with our unification against the experienced enemies of professionals and matured cartographic experts. Against the tree line of our homestead, I found myself moved towards unshared knowledge, survival’s calling for singularity with strength and the powerful force of a mystery unknown.
Leading the way past the barn, I glimpsed the black car which the agents had driven into the driveway. Alex stopped very briefly to hover low in the bushes and stare at the vehicle and then jumped back into motion behind me. Suddenly we both heard the slamming of the side door of our house and we crept lower into the hidden valley between small hills and tree trunks, deep past the layers of tall grasses which extinguished our faces from the yard, but held our visibility in a piercing focus through our intended camouflage. The dynamics of our childhood games of tag and hide and seek held true of this moment, we were unseen and undetected; free to listen as long as we remained quiet.
“Thank you, Mrs. Goode. Agent Constantini and I will be in touch, this afternoon. Please, phone us over at the branch if you hear from the boys.” A man in dark suit and sunglasses was talking to our mother while his nearly identically adorned partner waited off the stoop.
“Thank you, and be safe out there, Agent Esposito. I know we certainly will.” We heard mother’s voice. Her words were cooperative, yet it remained undisclosed if her tone betrayed unspoken emotion or if she would truly remain protective of us. After the horror which I had seen at the lake, the identical face of the boy murderer and the swarming bat phenomenon, I was drawn to her for instinctive comfort, yet repelled by unnatural fear.
After another moment we heard the doors of their car open, “Hey, Gabe, you know, it may be a good idea to drive down to the lake path. We should probably take a look around, before we head over to the Murphy house.” Then, we watched as both of the doors closed and the car pulled out of the driveway. The side door of our house shut and just as the engine of the car faded down the road, the quiet lull was replaced with an auspicious high wind, light rain, and distant thundering.
While we found a way through the woods to the foot of the big hill behind our house, the drizzling rain got worse and the thunder began cracking above our heads and all around the big trees of the forest. The hard rain became a downpour as we scrambled up the muddy and rocky side of the hill, retracing my steps from the day before. Alex was courageously trudging behind me and I realized the probability of our motives being entirely different yet complimentary to each other. His mind seemed likely set on protecting me from the investigating agents and the insane child at the lake, while I knew only how the refuge of the hidden cave dwelling may hold answers as well as further problems for both of us. If there was a moment of guilt in my life, I would be regretfully misinformed about the reality of truth which awaited expounding in our intertwined fates. Yet regardless, I have aspired to persevere through the wildest and most fantastic adventures which may have ever existed in humanity.
As we trampled up and onto the crest of the hill, I thought of one other piece of missing information from Alex’s itinerary; the golden amulet that I had found in the barn. Gripping it in my pocket, I realized the abstract diamond shape of it and wondered about its true origin. Whether it was the escaped stalkers or our father’s property or if it was actually an alien talisman or clue to the cave, I imagined I would show it to Alex once we reached shelter from the rain storm.
At first, I could not find the cave and began reeling in fear from the possibilities that I had imagined it or had gotten lost on the hill. My excitement raised my worry and the search became more frantic. Alex continued to follow behind while my desperation in the rain was peripherally hidden by the sound of falling drops of water through the trees and against the ground and the blowing winds which seized into my chest. Finally, after I adjusted my path toward the summit and then southward further, I saw the giant sycamores that stood next to each other on the hill. Pointing my arm out, and running faster, I yelled back to Alex, “There, the sycamores, that cave under the hemlock tree!” We crawled up over the roots into the rocky cave inside.
The rain pelting the rocks around the cave and falling above, rolling over the mouth of the cave, made the opening appear to have the form of the inside of a waterfall. Alex and I leaned on either side, against the dirt walls of the entrance. “I’ve never seen this before, have you?” Alex pushed off the side of the cave wall with his hand, and looked deeper into the crystal-covered tunnel.
“Yesterday, before I came home. When mom pulled into the driveway, I looked over at father’s toolshed. I saw footprints that led into the woods, and I heard a dog barking… I saw the dog from last summer, Al… I followed him up the hill, but an old man started chasing me. I ran into this cave, to hide, but he followed me. There was something weird at the end of this cave, Al. Something is back there, people, too. I got away from the man, somehow, in the dark. The dog got away too, back here. But when I came back to the house, I saw dad’s car in the driveway. So, I went back and looked in the barn. I found this.” Alex looked at the talisman as I held it up. It was golden on the clasps but on the corners of them were some kinds of pale stones and the partially buried heart, inside looked like a dark diamond with intricate carvings and spiral engravings.
Although I felt relief with the satisfaction which Alex’s nod of understanding gave to me, I could sense how Alex had something which he now wanted to share with me. He leaned off the wall and then his hand swung back against it, as an urgent look crossed his face with comprehensive alert yet anticipation during my explanation. “Listen, Teddy, we have to go back home. Those two guys back at our house, they’re like police officers. They’re F.B.I. agents, they’re like our father. They probably are going to find us, anyway, and mom is definitely going to worry about us.”
“Alright, Al. But come with me to the back of this cave. We can look together, while it’s still raining. It’s safer to stay together, Alex.”
“I’m not going to try to stop you, Ted, but it’s going to stop raining soon. If you have to look at something in the cave, okay, I’ll wait here. But if anyone comes looking for us, I’m going to have to tell them where you went. I don’t really have a choice. I’ll give you five minutes or so, and I’ll come get you. If I can’t find you, immediately, I’m going to have to get help, as soon as I can.”
My chance to convince Alex was over but something in my heart told me there was only more trouble at the house now. If I didn’t go look once more at the end of the cave, I was possessed by the oddly sensational feeling that I might never have another opportunity again. So, compelled to try to change Al’s mind, I walked out to the mouth of the cave and looked down the hill through the heavy rain. There was no use though, and I returned over to Alex’s side. Any attempt which I made now would be a waste of time and I decided how the less I said to him the better. He looked at me with worry buried deep in his eyes and I simply walked past down into the tunnels beyond.
Deeper into the cave, it occurred to me the danger which I was leaving Alex in. The assailant at the lake who looked exactly like me, the stalker in the woods from the day before, and the ultimate uncertainty of the exact mission which the F.B.I. agents were leading; reasons were numerus to be distrustful of so many and yet there would be just my brother to judge on his own. Paranoia began to sink my gait around the pillars and halls of the cave and I drudged through the underground with qualm.
Eventually, I began to feel lost like I may have made a wrong turn while distracted by subconsciousness. The time slipped away and ten minutes was already gone when I heard Alex’s voice cry out and echo throughout the dirt walls and rocks. There was no way to see back the way I had come, so I shouted “Hey!” & I hoped Alex would be able to find me or respond. He eventually yelled back to me and I returned his call and then blindly groped through the darkness behind me toward his location. The sound of his slow footsteps finally became audible and I shouted once more and waited motionless for him in the cold.
“Teddy, come this way.” Alex’s hand grabbed my arm and led me through the cave, around a corner and down further. “I saw light down here, after I came looking for you. This may sound like we’re both mad, Ted, but I was waiting at the cave opening when I heard those F.B.I. agents shouting down the hill. I was going to go wave them over, when I looked out of the cave… Then, I saw that kid who looked just like you, a little way down… You were hobbling and limping up the hill, coming closer than the agents, but with different clothes on, than you have on, now, Ted. So, I crept up closer, and I could see it wasn’t you. & You were bleeding, Ted, like the other you might have been recently shot.”
3c.)
Alex had reluctantly followed me in, after I had witnessed the murder of one of my friends. In the light at the end of the tunnel, we saw a graveyard. The unmarked tombstones reflected dimly the purple sky above. A world unknown materialized amongst the glossy grasses which sparkled dew under a low mist. We waded from the exit of a mammoth monolith, through fog and into the shining, fogless and surreal twilight. Alex led us to the light and I silently took lead through the gateway. Crouching and staying low against the shadows of sarcophagi and sepulcher and remaining hidden through the acres of gravestones, we ducked through cemetery gates and down a small slope, while the church and chapel lawn was eerily silent. We crossed at the edge of a field of high grass to the right of the church and out to a dirt road.
Amazed, Al gazed up at the darkening sky as we snuck along the side of the road away from the church. He motioned for me to stop with a raised palm and grabbed my elbow. He put his left finger to his lips, indicating how we should stay quiet and pointed behind us and said “Ted, the church is on a dead end back there. It was only about two o’clock or three at the latest when we went in that cave.” The land all around us was flat, aside from small ditches on either side of the road, and there were no mountains in visible sight yet the terrain across the road was wooded past a few hundred feet of tall grass. “The sun must be setting, though, and it must have rained here, wherever we are. That means hours and hours would have passed while we walked, maybe only a mile, from back there. But that church and cemetery are due north from us right now, and the cave. Hey, and it rained today, here, too. The grass is all wet through the graveyard. This is very weird, Ted, I don’t get it… It’s quiet, let’s go.”
So, although we knew how danger would be right behind us on our trail in the form of at least one of the most wanted American murderers, we crept along the roadside between the ditch and the grass. Nervously we would glance over our shoulders back down to the church to check for any figures or silhouetted followers. When we had walked for only a few minutes, Alex grabbed my elbow again and pulled me down into the field. His left hand covered my mouth to stifle my gasp of surprise and he put a right index finger over his lips. His eyes were wide, expressing emergency, and his neck shifted his head to a nod to the roadside.
We waited in silence, kneeling in the grass and watching the road. Minute by minute, a noise grew louder down the road. Finally, the shuffle of the killer- kid’s footsteps passed us and we held our breaths to make sure we went unnoticed. Then, the noise of the two agents grew louder and a shout of one of them directed at the child pierced the air. They were running to catch him and we heard a gunshot from near the church, then another. There was no more noise and we waited even longer and there was only silence in every direction. After about twenty minutes of persistent silence and no sign of movement anywhere, Alex motioned for me to stay still while he peeked out of the field down the road.
When he was sure of the road being clear, he waved me out. Both directions down the road were empty and we started walking again. We continued away from the church in the same direction. There was nobody in sight, no sign of anyone, nor could we see where there had been any more bloodshed. Further down the road, ten minutes of walking, we saw an intersection where a perpendicular cement road created a T. When we got up closer, we saw how there was one main road which traveled east and west, and that our cemetery road ended here.
To the right, there was a street sign stuck out of a cement sidewalk that lay only on the side of our road but there was no writing on it at all. Twenty feet to the right, on the other side of the road, the sidewalk ended and there was a wheel cart that had nothing on it, where there leaned down a straw scarecrow with very peculiar garments on it. The scarecrow was wearing a businessman’s suit, long dark khakis with a silver buckled belt, a dark jacket of the same material, unbuttoned, and a white collared, buttoned up shirt underneath with a red tie. The odd-looking thing had a tall top hat, and was posted on a pickaxe so the pick side came out of its face like a nose. However, there were no crops anywhere to be seen, so the scarecrow was seemingly out of place.
To the left, the east, there was a huge billboard on the other side, on which was written the names of the nearest towns and their populations. Three long metal poles raised the sign and it only had one legible township printed on it, as the other two had been completely scratched or chipped off and under the population column they were marked with number zeroes with strikes through each of them, also. The one under the name column that was left on the sign was “Hobb,” and its population was only in a curiously hand-written symbol; five question marks. The other two seemed to be scribbled; “obb,” and “ob.” The billboard was wooden and aged darkly with white writing and stood on the posts, fifteen feet high off the ground above short and mowed grass just outside the line of forest parallel to the road we were on across from the church and cemetery. The forest grew thicker past the sign, and the cement sidewalk ended abruptly. Further down the road (half a mile,) the woods seemed to push closer on to the roadsides until, in the distance almost a mile, it swallowed the road in a darkening tunnel of trees.
Although there was little time left for us to see with the light that the sky provided, we walked east beyond the sign into the arching trees which covered our shadows. The sounds of the forest replaced the windy fields behind us and as solemn quiet enclosed the road, I noticed the familiar sounds of the woods. There were brief chirps of the warblers and the finches and the clattering of chipmunks. As evening began to settle in against the treetops above, I saw how the same pines and maples, birches, and oaks populated the woods here as in Weare. Eventually, the noise of the birds hushed and after over half an hour of walking, we were both getting fatigued. Alex tugged at the slung canteen twice in the passage of five minutes, before turning to me and halting the march. A mile down the road we could see where it curved to the left. Alex casually opened the top of the canteen and drank a couple of gulps of water before passing it. A whip-poor-will swooped through lower branches to our right. Handing the canteen back to Alex, we were going to continue when a deep growl to our immediate left broke the silence. The growling of a mammoth black bear hiding in the woods, was enough to make the hair on my neck stand up. Alex’s eyes grew wide and we edged to the right shoulder while continuing the same direction.
Our short lifespans had not been long enough to introduce us to some of the more dangerous wildlife which existed even in our remote town in New England, so it was an instinctive reaction alone activating our acceleration to the changed trajectory of the swerving road ahead. Walking faster after approaching the bend, our fears were alleviated by the distractive sounds of flowing water nearby. Falling water, crashing against a pool in a large river which flowed from the right side of the road, became visible in an opening in the forest, after we turned the bend. The higher ground to the right was covered in trees and bushes, above a ravine which ended at a waterfall. The sides of the ravines were rocky cliffs, while the side up ahead was a big hill, almost as tall as the one in our backyard that we had entered. On the road in front of us was a one-way bridge for vehicles and pedestrians. A vision of the streaming water, as well as the raucous noise which filled the air, brought both of us to the height of our excitement. We sped up to the bridge and stopped to look up at both the thirty-foot cascading waterfall and back down the road behind us the last eighty or so feet to watch for the source of the earlier growling.
“I don’t think whatever that thing was will come after us here… But we should keep going, and see if this road leads somewhere, we may be safer.” Alex leaned forward against the rail on the bridge. He looked down at the river and pointed. There were fish, schooling around and swimming under us.
“It was a bear, wasn’t it?” Seeing the fish made me wonder if we were at all safer at this or any distance, especially near a place that may be the enormous bear’s hunting ground.
“Well, it sure sounded like one.” A rattling bush behind us took our attention. We kept low and quiet and moved swiftly across the rest of the bridge. The river was twenty-five feet wide or more at parts and the embankment was ten feet tall and steeply graded against the damp forest floor.
When we had gotten across the bridge, Alex turned to look behind us one last time, as if we permanently had abandoned home. He stood upright again with a look of determination on his face which portrayed our courage as he turned his head to me. Those bushes, which shook behind us, kept stolid and menacingly still and the growling phantom was gone now. Always to this point, I had been confident our journey would prove something to Alex but now his temperament exhibited the real reason why I had invited his companionship. Trouble waited at home with its prestige, although cautious curiosity had guided us, mystery was conduit to these dangers which had followed us here. Any security I could get was useful, even if it came as inexperienced as Alex. The elapsed time it had taken us to get here was only an hour and a half from the cemetery where we began yet the night was getting dark already.
A half mile from the bridge, the dirt road began a slow decline, which we naturally picked up our pace on. The woods began thinning out as we headed away from the river which meandered and babbled beside us for a while to our left until it disappeared out into the dark. The dirt underneath us became gravel and after another hundred feet there was a sharp dip in the road’s angle downward. The road also changed composition from stones to elaborate brick, and we were caught off guard by the change in scenery as the massive forest began to dissipate around us and was replaced with fields of short grass and distant trees on either side.
An open sky returned above us, from behind encompassing branches which blanketed the stars. Incredible stars glowed brighter than ever before, like each was under an observatory telescopic magnification doubling size. As we walked the next two hundred feet with slow rhythm down the left side of the sharply descending road in front of us, our eyes began exploring the fluorescence below which rose to our line of sight, observing as we neared the small town that shone light inside houses and around buildings. The city lights became our beacon and the wind in our sails was our reassumed familiarity with civilization’s signals of welcome from the wilderness.
With each step toward the first row of buildings that we saw through the glowing reflections, refractions, and shadows of lamps along streets, torches around corners, lanterns atop stoops, and windows filled with shining bulbs, chandeliers, and candles; against the brick, stone, bridge, and blade of planking dare to our voyage’s backdrop and motive of extorted fear. We grew impatient and shrunk against the hill and forests, rivers and wildlife. Convalescing into the incandescence of human dwellings and gatherings of people brought us hope for rest and food. Besides the fact that we had been chased by abnormal offenders twice in a row now, the necessities for survival were becoming far too real to ignore. We both hadn’t eaten since breakfast and had only an empty canteen, no food, and penetrating deliria of nearly psychotic insomnia. Our clothes which were wet from the rainstorm were barely dry and my pants were still damp from running through the pond at the river.
Eventually, the brick road became cobblestone as it entered the village. Along the preliminary buildings was a fence and the road went between them under an arch over the gate opening. Beyond the first buildings there were more for five continuous initial blocks until the road separated in a V at the center of the town, at which point the buildings grew larger. To each side of the two buildings which were next to the arch stretched small markets and shops. On the right side, to their east, there was another block of buildings, parallel to a concrete wall which began after the markets and afterwards was a large park. The park was big enough so we couldn’t see to the other side of it in the dark. On the western side there was a similar block of buildings, although not as wide, and then a boardwalk around a very small lake. The lake had a gazebo on a bridge that was barely visible from the arch and we saw a small pier on the shoreline which reached nearest to the forest. It seemed to be fed into by the river behind us and it too was bordered by a high, barbed wire, and double- fenced wall. Also, far on the end of the lake between the bridge and river, a towering shape rose into immense shadows silhouetted across the celestially speckled sky.
So, we walked up the partitioned cement on the left under the iron arch, around the wooden red fence toward the splitting streets. The tall buildings on both our left and right had doors facing the road which were set in from the outer walls, creating a short hall to the doorway which were wooden. Each side of the halls had windows and after the entranceways there were larger windows facing the street. Both had the letters ‘S.S.O.’ printed onto the windowpanes and within the “O” of the lettering there was a symbol that looked like a numeric 4 or capital Y with an extra embellishment under the bottom descenders that resembled a hook facing the left sides of the special characters. In the windows of both buildings were lights and there was a man sitting and reading a newspaper in the building to the left.
Seeing the first sign of another human was monumental for us and we both immediately inspected him, stopping our walk short at a distance of ten feet up the sidewalk from the window, presumably in the more shadowy area where his attention would not be caught. He was an older man who seemed to be a receptionist or secretary for the building and he wore glasses and a white collared shirt which was buttoned up but without a tie. “Teddy, I think those are military posts or militias. & Not American.” Alex whispered, covering his mouth with his hand and leaning up to my left ear. The man inside looked American to me, but I sensed how he wasn’t any officer of peace, or law, or wayward soldier to the American armed services. There was no flag nor symbol of any kind, which made me suspicious but behind him was a wall where there were filing cabinets, cubbies, drawers, and a few bookshelves, underneath a series of signs that read foreign language on them. The security seemed organized, tightly planned, with intricately designed architectures from which to survey the town. Whoever the people here were, they were ready despite the oversight of our infiltration. The magnitude of such a discovery was easily conspiratorial in premise, yet it seemed a doubtful chance of our father being able to hide cooperation with any nation other than the United States or keeping this big of a secret especially from his superior command, or us, his own family.
Across the road, the other building was very similar inside. The effaced wall in the back, had blackboards with erased chalk writing on them, with less drawers and bookshelves than the one to our left and the language was in English. There was nobody inside but there was a door which was ajar against the right side of the wall. The man who was sitting to our left now, turned the page of his newspaper and then looked up. We crouched lower as he paused for a moment, waiting to decide on our next move. As he stood up and spun around from the seat, Alex took my hand and led me closer to the wall underneath the front window past the entranceway. We were going to sneak around the window but I wasn’t sure why. Rather than ask, I followed my brother’s directives, preparing to make a run either back past the gate if we were spotted, and passed the window into a further, darkened corner, between the next building and this one.
As quiet as we were able to creep around the light which was shining from the window, the night around us was quieter still.
There was no music nor noise in the air from people or vehicles, wildlife nor stereos. Inside, the man leaned against the drawer while looking at one of the bookshelves. The scene made me wonder if the town we had stumbled into was without technology or if it was one of those religious communities we had heard of where there were restrictions on industry, entertainment, and socializing. The only thing which made me consider otherwise was the lighting along the streets by lampposts. When I looked up higher, I was able to see telephone wires attached to many of the buildings, as well as antenna dishes on the rooves of the two buildings we were passing by that may have been used to attract radio signals. Then, the door across the street in the entranceway swung open, creaking and moaning as it slid out from the hinges. A man with a military uniform came out with a rifle slung over his back. His boots clicked on the cement and echoed. Luckily, Alex and I were only a few feet from the end of the building past the big glass window and emanating light within. Before the soldier had fully exited onto the sidewalk, we managed to get around the corner into an alleyway between this building and the next.
We deliberated our route while we waited in silence even though we were tired and hungry, we eyed the man’s actions with scrutinous patience while being as inconspicuous as possible. Evading the man’s detection until he was soon out of view, we waited longer as his footsteps moved toward the building we had recently snuck around. A door opened and closed, slamming, and muffled voices bounced off of the window into the alley. Then, we didn’t hesitate and quickly moved to the wall of the next building, skulking around the corner and away from the sentries.
Across the road was a large horse stable and we were passing by a municipal facility for the waterfront. After the stable was another building with a window to a darkened room and then there was a small parking lot and barn which was big enough to extend back to the field which we saw in the distance. The big barn smelled like farm animals and the odors were wafting across the street to us as we passed a tall brick building with fewer windows which were at eye level, only smaller ones, lower to the ground, and barred up with steel. It was attached to another building which did have two levels, and both buildings were wider than the sentry towers we had snuck through. Even I, with so few years accumulated on the planet, knew this was probably an old jailhouse. The lights were all out here, too.
Then, there were three two-story houses on the right side of the street, where the lights were on but dim, in the front windows and a few in the second levels. The street curved past the junction, where there was an enormous brick building on the right side with darkened windows in each of its three levels. High on the roof were stone gargoyles, staring off the ledge with bat-like wings hanging by their sides.
To our left stood long vacant lot and rickety gallows on a lawn which led to the muddy banks of the stagnant lake. Next there was a large brick building with four cement pillars that sat atop of the wide set of stairs, guided by railings on either side and in the middle and the double doors between the pillars let out onto a balcony overlooking a small yard containing a reflection pool and two sets of benches. There was also a statue that I recognized of the Greek Titan Atlas between the pedestrian sidewalk and yard of the unbelievable estate, to which I appropriated the designation of town courthouse. Atlas, whom I had studied, the God of astronomy and archnemesis of Zeus, or Jupiter, held two telescopes in his arms which both stretched upwards at angles. At the tip of the telescope in his right hand was a circular object held upright with multiple triangles along the bottom hemisphere creating a jagged surface. The other telescope held the same circle but with the identical triangles protruding off of its top, like a crown. On his shoulder blades balanced a magnificent satellite object, round and concave.
At the edge of the vacant lot, Alex started to jog. Keeping up wasn’t easy but I didn’t let it frustrate me. We veered left at the intersection and jogged down the street past a closed grocery store on our left. In the center of the intersection was a garage, it looked like an automobile shop, then on the right were a few more shops with giant front windows. On the left began a row of houses and we kept running until we passed at least ten dwellings, each silent but visibly inhabited. Many of the houses had modern cars out front on the side of the street or in driveways with garages. Most of the residencies were well lit inside but all were quiet.
The next intersection was a perpendicular road which crossed the ongoing street and continued on both sides to be residential. We turned left where the road ran parallel to the lake for the next three blocks and an iron guard rail began rising along the shoreside shoulder. Over the rail, we stayed out of lights as much as possible in the eerie night. On the next block we saw more closed shops and finally an open, well-lit restaurant with a “Sal’s Sauce” sign.
Alex stopped jogging, and then he ducked behind the guard rail. “We should go in there. We should see if we can find help, or find out where we are.” The urge to find food and something to drink anywhere that offered safe haven from the craziness which we had run from was almost impossible to resist for me. It took my own personal focus and a firsthand rationale and survival instinct which Alex had apparently lacked in his brave yet undisciplined insistence of his ability to protect me against criminals and murderers (whom he had only trusted,) to believe in my truthfulness about. Although I agreed with a nod, I hopped the rail first and sprinted across the road before he could go directly to the restaurant. This misdirection caused his cue to be wrongly interpreted as miscommunicated and allowed me to avert him from running head-on into the restaurant, without first taking a closer look.
When I reached the other side of the road to the right of the restaurant where the shadows which fell from the dining area, where there were several tables filled with older men and women; I took refuge and began to optimize my ability to escape, alone if necessary. Here, where the shades of obstructive shapes lay motionless and forms which moved under the lights inside made their theatric dance in the lawn between, I attended my plan. As darkness’s strewn puppets dramatized in silhouette against the looming walls and the canvas of night floated over sidewalks, I clung like a snail to the side of a shop wall and watched Alex approach. Resting with my back turned to the restaurant, I noticed how the shop I stood next to was a toy shop. The lights were dim inside whereas most of the other markets and shops had been closed and too dark to really see what products were on the shelves. It was probably a gift shop of some sort for daytime’s waterfront enchantment and potential tourism luring. As Alex turned his trajectory to align with me and came closer to the shop, I could see his pace was slowing as he stared into the window behind me.
The shop was lined with miniature railroad tracks, train stations, tiny figures lining the ticket booths, villages, and terrains painted to mimic the countryside. There were even miniature cars on roads, trolleys and trucks. There were model airplanes on an airstrip, and there were larger model planes, a zeppelin, and hot air balloons hanging from the ceiling on wires. On the back counter there was a wide variety of stuffed animals including: stuffed black bears, polar bears, panda bears, black wolves, white lions, Clydesdale horses, Bactrian camels, elephants, giraffes, zebras, and Holstein cows. There were dolls for girls, baby dolls and dress up dolls, porcelain and cloth. Wooden puppets hung on either side of the shop, artisan as well as ventriloquist, including marionettes.
Alex’s pace changed again, quickly, and he burst into a quick scuffle as he ducked, almost to a crawl in advance toward me and his inhalation became so fast that he seemed to be about to nearly hyperventilate. He grabbed me by my arm and dragged me down to the ground where he whispered again, out of breath, “There’s someone inside. A big fellow… who doesn’t look like he’s the kind of guy who would own a toy shop… or give out any free food, or directions to kids, Ted. He’s almost as big as a giant...” I had to look for myself of course, and I did my best to not be discovered when I leaned up against the bottom of the window and looked into the store. There he was; a giant man almost seven feet tall. He saw me and came to the door of the toy shop.
“Come inside,” The man said as he opened the door. A small bell jingled above the doorway and Alex stood up first, then I did. “I am Ahmad, I own this shop. It is a toy shop, but that’s not why I want to talk to you.” The man’s voice was strangely familiar like I had heard it recently but I did not recognize his face. I grabbed for Alex’s hand, but reached for his left arm which was still wrapped in a cast.
“We’re lost,” Said Alex, “We were looking for somewhere to buy food. I only have two dollars.” Alex said, lying, as I knew he had more, “We’re from Weare.”
“That’s why I have to tell you two, this place is not safe for Americans.” The man waved us to come closer. “We are not in New Hampshire. This is Hobb. We built this, underneath America.”
“Alex, I told you this had something to do with why the F.B.-“ Alex interrupted me, with a jab to the rib with his elbow.
“I’m Alex, this is Ted. We’re Goodes. It’s too late to walk in the woods to get back home, sir. There was an animal or something in that forest, and we had to walk for hours just to get here.”
“Alex, this is not a safe place at all for the two of you. Come inside, quickly, and I will tell you how to get out of here. You must follow all of my instructions, and do not tell anyone what you’ve seen.”
“Why would you trust us? If this isn’t America, and we would be in trouble for being here, why would you tell us how to escape?”
Ahmad smiled very mysteriously given the severe disadvantage he revealed to us of his non-citizenship. Behind him was a small store where robbers would easily be able to burglarize, the town was tiny compared to the entire state of New Hampshire and miniscule against the United States as a whole. “Have you heard of the legend of the Cave of the Squid?” He asked us with an ominous undertone.
Alex shook his head and proceeded to listen. The stranger made me paranoid and I desperately wanted to get away from him and the entire place. The mistake I had made in returning was terrible and I was hungry and exhausted.
“A group of colonists from Europe traveled to America in separate ships. One night, a storm caught them off guard, and the families were shipwrecked at sea, and landed on a deserted island in the middle of the ocean. In fact, only two families survived, and they both landed on opposite sides of the same island, at two ends of a giant cave that went from one end to the other. They each began walking to the other ends of the tunnel, but then there was an earthquake and they both became trapped in the cave, separated by fallen debris in the middle, and cut off from the rest of the world by rocks that blocked out the exits at each end. They had no tools left, and very little food. What they did have was a small amount of fresh water, each, a skylight above them both which was too high to reach, and access to a very deep pool of water that was actually connected to both chambers deep underneath the cave. The pool of water was so deep; there was nobody who could swim through it, and it was only useful as a renewing source of fresh water. There was one other living creature which was in the cave, and both families wanted to eat it. However, the creature was a giant squid that lived in the pool of water. This squid had a special ability to turn salt water into fresh water. If one of the families ate it, the other would die first. But if neither of the families ate the squid, the squid would continue to make fresh water for both families until they both died of starvation. The only thing these families knew was how the next colonists would probably be following right behind them, and might see their shipwrecks on the island. But what did they do? Do you know?”
That was when it occurred to me, how the voice was the same as the one I had heard in the graveyard when I was chased by the man through the woods. While I nearly choked in fear, Alex merely shrugged.
TED 4
4
4a.)
In modern times, the definitions of many words have undergone transformation. In fact, this is not new to human languages, as interpretations have often been invented historically for various terms which are either too old for exact translation or have found new usage in our changing vocabulary. Slang itself, much like patois or creole is a form of lingual adaption for Americans who have adapted English; beyond accents, cultural tradition, and regionalism, and past the point of even speech impediment, as well as dialect and vocabulary, to create an operational nuance to old ideas as well as introduce new sounds and purpose to communication, which produce premier meanings. It may seem to some, possible for the slang to be appropriated from popularity, their origins with roots from elite leaders, social aristocrats, or the word of mouth which sprouted from the voyeurs of the popularly elected. However, the slang phenomenon may just as easily be understood as an algorithmic semantic nuance which is brought into existence merely by chance and pure divine luck. Some may have easily forgotten the truth of human nature is how our civilized words and definitions were replacements for archaic verbal expressions of danger, hysteria, fears, and insanity among primitive mankind. Heroism, horror, humanism, then humor, is the chronological timeline for spoken as well as written languages since time began.
For terms of practicality and the applicability to my story, take for instance; the word “coach.” In one more recent, classificatory sense; the coach is somebody who is in management of a sports team. They are teachers, mentors, and guidance counselors whose administration of coordination between players is vital to winning teamwork and the drawing of successful plays from the sidelines. This tutorial position of the team coach is designed to keep off of the field during gameplay and provide structured support for their teammates. This was invented in fact, from slang which originated in 1830’s dictionary prints. Prior to the 1800’s, there were very few coached sports, although there were athletic trainers dating to the Greek Olympics. Chariot races in Rome too, had sports-coaches but most of the mentoring was done without sports as their designated purpose.
Even later, a coach has changed its typical meaning again. Now it has become the adjective describing the contrast between lower-costing, passenger- friendly, and aesthetically different areas within a transportation vehicle, such as a locomotive train, jet, airplane, or sail ship. The area which costs more and is reserved for the decorated members of society, where food and drink is expensively dispensed, and entertainment is better, is known as first class, whereas areas and sections which are less expensive are called second class or coach.
The older, more classical category of the noun version of coach is the stage coach. The preferred mode of transportation for centuries between areas of the world, the stage coach was a four-wheeled version of the Roman chariot. The invention of this kind of coach was from the Hungarian town of Kocs, where the crossroads between the capitals of Hungary and Austria became a hub of travel. Leading in manufacture of carts for the voyage between Budapest and Vienna and later into the World Wars and in rural transportation, coaches were a natural continuation of the domestication of horses and mules to haul luggage. Some people may remember the terms buggy and carriage as referring to the coach but these were also slang terms use to describe the number of infestations and overuse regularly associated with the particular route and equipment.
During the year 1768, the first traveler’s hospital was built in a town called Exeter; meaning trainer, in Greek, on the River Exe, in England. Coaches were able to stop here and other similar establishments to nourish their livestock, heal their wounds, and nurse the illnesses. The idea of a traveler’s hospital later became abbreviated, as opposed to a government facility, or infirmary, and was dubbed; the hotel, from the French word which was circumflexed. The circumflex initially was turned into an “s,” spelling hostel; now referring to a special variation of the traditional hotel, where people can temporarily rent out a room, which is shared by a permanent inhabitant whose portion of space is owned in tenancy. The motel is a version of hotel which is normally rented by motorists or people who are not intending their visit to be extended and are expecting to continue moving on within a short time. Although popularized by the English coaches of the 1700’s, the original traveler’s hotels were actually founded during Greco-Roman times too, and the period of the Persian dynasty.
The island of Japan has its own special hotel which is called an onsen. Three of these are very famous, yet their distinguishing quality alone make them noteworthy, which is the way they are formed atop of the naturally occurring hot springs. Japan is geographically prone to seismic activity and earthquakes which can cause eruption of volcanic mountains. However, it is also a naturally cold climate being surrounded by water and high in the latitude above the equatorial belt. This makes these destination spots ideal for vacationing. Another interesting fact about hotels is how they are usually the only tourist stops, aside from national monuments, which uses the definite article when referring to them.
Alex had refused to answer Ahmad’s riddle and it was now my own ambition to use the restaurant which sat next door to our rendezvous on the unlit corner of Hobb to recover my composure under the supervision of more people than the one who had caught us snooping around the alleys of an unknown and probably illegal province that had only been described as being underneath the same American country to which we all seemed to naturally belong. Not only had Alex’s failure to obey Ahmad’s request of entering the toy shop inevitably given Ahmad the insight of our untrustworthiness as he was not as easily fooled as he had assumed and, as well of our allegiance to America as menaces or probably spies, but it had also conversely revealed to us the ways in which our capture was going to be a prolonged endeavor performed by most likely, one madman whose motives were beyond uncertain, and at least highly, villainously meticulous. The resulting circumstance was this one, where we were posed with a simple choice; either submit immediately to laws and systems of judgment which were decided by Ahmad and his coup of illegal immigrants and refugees or run away and try to fend for ourselves against a populated city which would most likely react even more threateningly as a whole, no matter how wisely we attempted to explain ourselves.
The occupants of Hobb were an unknown faction to us with exception of how Ahmad had claimed they were a danger to us; they spoke languages which we did not know and lived in an undiscovered habitat that was probably designed by forces which would work against America. In short, our choices were neither promising nor hopeful unless Alex and I were able to work together to manifest the wile which would outmaneuver our foe. Unfortunately, Alex seemed to believe in Ahmad being more reliable than I did, because he had only learned of my escapades during that day which had been strenuous enough to make us both extremely exhausted. The compounded duress multiplied under Alex’s complicity with Ahmad’s manipulation.
Ahmad easily convinced Alex how past the restaurant there was a hotel where the owner would provide shelter for us for the remainder of the night. So, we both were led far away from the toy shop, behind and past the restaurant that my instincts had kept us from entering down the road first, and then across it after the guard rail ended to walk past the small waterside park with the bridge and gazebo. Looking out at the lake in the darkness of the night, I remembered the amulet that I had kept in my pocket. Ahmad began speaking again about dangers of being caught in Hobb and telling us how even though the toy shop and restaurant existed to service their population; everything was a trap to outsiders.
As we neared the end of the road, I saw how the T section in front of us had a restaurant and bar to the right with lights on inside and muffled voices which vibrated against the window and through the door. People at tables and with pitchers, on barstools with glasses, a bartender and barback, and a bouncer all were visible through the window. Some of them looked like soldiers, others like normal citizens with nothing else remarkable about them. Beyond the bar were more closed shops and marketplaces and as we got closer to the intersection, I saw how there were more streets to the right also. To the left I saw residential houses; some big and some small which lined both sides of the road. The side which bordered the lake had larger houses and manors, mansions and estates. To our left the gazebo itself was whit, and bore resemblance to the top of our nation’s capital building; a giant drum atop a lantern and base adorned with tambour and pillars. It was across a fifty-foot bridge and was thirty feet high, forty feet in diameter, and the bridge itself connected to the park in the middle of four giant willow trees which stood, hovering like figures holding an archaic ceremonial ritual along the lake shore.
Almost all the way to the intersection, right as we were passing the bridge to the gazebo, there was commotion which was raised noisily from the end of the bridge. Footsteps approached beneath shadows and it wasn’t until they were within twenty feet and raising in decibel when Ahmad and Alex had any reaction. As they were closing in, it became apparent how it was the sound of two people running and where the night was camouflaging their movements was an indication of them wearing black. In apprehensive distress, I reached into my pocket to grab onto the amulet and felt its sharp edges which felt surprisingly warm. When the two men emerged into the glow of a nearby streetlamp, Alex and I identified them. They were the two F.B.I. agents whom we had seen at our house in Weare, and had followed us into the graveyard earlier.
The amulet in my hand became suddenly hotter and had surpassed my body temperature. Pain shot through my arm from the diamond. The last thing I heard was Alex shouting my name and I managed to see Ahmad grab him away from me with a frightened expression before everything turned bright white, blinding me, and then I blacked out.
4b.)
Waking in an amnesiac state, I was surrounded by white crystals. Laid on my back, staring upwards, all I could see in every direction was a countless number of polymorphic lattices in series; a unique crystallization in all corners and surfaces above me. When I turned my head, my neck and shoulders slid over pointed tips and jagged edges and I was met on either side with more shining colors in a small room. The chamber was barely high enough to fit my height if I was standing straight up and I rolled on the palms of my hands as gently as possible to avoid scratching and cutting. As I knelt low and looked around, I saw a way out and crawled toward the light in a narrow tunnel covered in the glassy rainbow.
Eventually I made my way through the twenty or so feet of sharp and quartz- like crawlspace and into the mysterious cave where Alex and I had entered the strange and alien town of Hobb through. Stunned from the amazing effects of my unintended transport or teleportation, as well as immediately shocked by the loss of my brother to unforeseen events, which defied logic or reason, I looked up the dark cave trail to the right and saw how outside of the mouth of the cave was the light of day. Sunday had come quickly in Weare, if that was really where I had gotten to.
First, I decided to test the desperately optimistic theory of this being my home of Weare, so I walked up to the opening below the hemlock and looked out at the hill below me. Still unconvinced, I decided to walk down the hill, to the backyard. As I began my journey I was struck with waves of disbelief. Ahmad had said how the town was underneath New Hampshire but we had observed how the stars had appeared remarkably strange in the sky. Also, the times of day in Weare and Hobb changed very dramatically, however, and there had been a setting sun in Hobb, which meant it could not be necessarily “underground.” Something had obviously been devious about Ahmad but the fact was that the F.B.I. agents were trying to blame me for murder and possibly being a spy. It was enough to give me a warning sign to not get too close to the house if anybody was even there. Skepticism was an unnatural sensation in face of the unpredictable adventures which I had undergone, yet my caution was a tool which had proven useful.
Then, there I was in the luscious chaparral and hilly landscape of the woods which I had known my whole life. Along floated vague memories of wandering with Alex, exploring the backyard and thickets and childhood games which utilized the many acres which stretched around our property. The sun had just risen and by my estimation it had been only at most; four or five hours, I had spent in Hobb. Enigmatically, my definition of time was returned to the preordained, structured sense while my memory became fuzzy and indistinct of the recent past. On my steady descent into the same woods, the setting where Friday had been stage to the chases by the madmen, murderers, and phantoms, I sternly reminded myself of those volatile conditions which my brother was left in and the unchanged dilemma compromising the safety of home.
My obsession with the outcomes which awaited, made the gambit of my return a relentless and arduous journey but when I walked within view of the house, as it sat sovereignly between the branches of trees between, I was instilled with the incredible courage which I had seen Alex exhibit in protecting me, earlier. Walking with head held high, out to our sunny green lawn from the dark forest behind, I made haste to my house, regardless of the consequences. It simultaneously became an initial urgency, which had not previously occurred cognitively, of my dire need to eat, bathe and clean my scratches, sleep, and so on. As I accelerated my approach diagonally, I turned into the front side of the house and yard from the eastern side of the back lawn and I noticed how the vehicles parked in the driveway numbered only one. This meant our father was still away and I couldn’t help but wonder if he was searching for Alex, even though it would mean he had prior knowledge of the cave to Hobb, which still somehow, seemed unlikely.
Mrs. Wilson appeared from the front door. She was surprised to see me but was quick to recover her relief with a comforting look which beckoned my return. “Theodore?” She stepped out and on the lawn. From behind her, I could see my mother coming to the door.
My paranoias were immediately put out from disbelief and surprised test to rest. Aside from my terrible worries about my brother, our starvation and the need to sit down; the necessity of discussion of the investigations was my first concern. Until I knew for certain where my father was, there were several different plans which I would need to assess. Quick thinking helped me prepare a story to tell my mother about Darren and I would want to execute a fast explanation so we could address the problem of my missing brother. Of course, the pressure climbed as mother held open the door for me to enter and I could sense how her fears were strong enough to acquire the assistance of Mrs. Wilson to help out at the house. It was Sunday, and not customary for our babysitter to make her abilities present on the weekend, especially one with this amount of mayhem. Nonetheless, I braved the situation at hand and walked right up to stand in front of my school desk in the front study. There was no alternative than to adhere to the rules which our parents carefully set out, and yet expediting the sharing of information was crucial.
“Mom, Alex is on the hill. We were running from somebody who chased us from the lake. Did Benjamin or Gregory tell you what happened?” Mindful to try not to sound exaggerate or deceitful to my mother and Mrs. Wilson, I initiated the confession and asked the first of my potentially imperative questions right away, hoping to get as much understanding as I could while the attention was on my safety.
“Gregory said how Jacob and your brother saw a boy being attacked by somebody at the lake. Is your brother still on the hill? Why is he hiding up there? Are you alright? Teddy, we were frantic, and practically mad with worry, this whole time. It’s been an entire day since I saw you last!”
“I’m okay, mom, I’m just really hungry. Is father here, or is he coming home, soon?”
“No, he’s out, still. An investigator was here for your father’s case, and was looking for Alex and you. Mrs. Wilson came over to help me, here, at the house, while we waited to find out what was happening.” My mother was lying about some of the details but I felt positive of her sincerity in doing whatever she could to protect me.
Without our father’s presence at the house, I was unsure of the details of the real investigation which Gregory had told us about. Moreover, it was almost impossible to decide who I could trust to help with my brother’s kidnapping. The only choice I had was to let my mother and Mrs. Wilson take short-term control. The directions I gave to where Alex was hiding would be seen as unhelpful, anyway, so I had to plan on rescuing him by myself. It was early on Sunday, I noticed the downstairs clock said how it was only 2 o’clock in the afternoon, so I would need to wait a few hours until I could sneak out again late at night. Excusing myself to the bathroom and then my bedroom to nap, I planned on waking up and spending time studying anything I could find about local geography in our book collections.
When I sat in my room, after cleaning myself and changing my clothes, Mrs. Wilson came upstairs carrying a big lunch tray. I thanked her and she set the food down on my desk. She carefully leaned over and sifted through the books and comic books that were around my study area.
“These comic books look interesting,” She said casually, with a smile, “I hope you realize that your home, here, has a wonderful quantity of books for your selection.” As I nodded, she continued, “All of the ideas which are shared in these pages, the stories told, came from experiences of the writers' lives, themselves. It’s truly an achievement to have lived life bold enough to have survived with glory, and yet to comprehend the nature of yourself and path you’ve made is to have legacy, beyond even death. When I read the Bible, I think about the people who have gone through such lengths to recreate writings of God, and how the strength of its manifestation was so legendary it gave us the ability to do battle with the devil, for ourselves.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Wilson.” Unsure of how to respectfully respond to her, I nervously shuffled the comic books into a stack, “I read a lot, especially for my age. I go to the library during the school year, and borrow books to read at home, here.”
“Teddy you should lay down, with your brother missing, this might be a madhouse by morning while we all wait to figure out what happened. You know they’re going to want you to answer a lot of questions. Your mother is contacting the school, and reaching out to find out what is happening with your friends. If you don’t wake up in time, we’ll get you up. You need to be healthy, and eat.” Although it interested me how calling our school could accomplish anything productive, I smiled and Mrs. Wilson walked out and closed the door to my room. By the time her footsteps softly reached the first-floor landing, I had tucked myself into bed.
When supper was ready, I felt my mother’s hand against my arm, gently holding onto me while I rolled over on my side to look at the clock. “You have scratches on your neck and all down your back, Teddy, and Alex still hasn’t come back. Come downstairs and have some more to eat. You must be exhausted.”
The dinner table was unusually quiet, Mrs. Wilson helped mother cook a sapid vegetable and beef stew with potatoes, buttered cornbread and turkey sandwiches with cheese. Mrs. Wilson said grace with us and it was all of the speaking that was done, until only a few crumbs of cornbread were left in the bread basket, and my plate was scraped empty. “I knew you were going to be hungry, so I have extra cheese slices and cold cuts, for sandwiches.” Mrs. Wilson’s graciousness gave me a warm feeling, and I politely replied how I was full.
“Teddy, your brother’s teacher from sixth grade is coming to visit us tomorrow morning. Lyle Hearst, do you know him?” Remembering my proposed chess mentor, I nodded, “Your father will be home later in the week, but Lyle wanted to speak to you and Alex about your classmates. It seems as if your brother wasn’t the only child from your school who went missing this weekend, and there are law enforcement people doing a full search of the entire Weare region and possibly further, starting tomorrow morning.”
“Alright,” As I began to stand up from my chair, I decided to reinforce the location of the cave, “But I’m sure we can find Alex if we go back to the hill behind our house. Between two sycamore trees and hemlock at the top, there’s a big cave that we found.”
Mrs. Wilson looked up at me surprised, and then stood up to go to the kitchen. My mother’s fears began to resurface and I was reminded of the drive home from Peterborough, but also of Alex’s desperation, and of the impending dangers which faced us all. I felt that it was necessary to prepare myself to act- in as the man of the house. As her face began to blush, I pushed my chair in and calmly walked upstairs.
In my bedroom, behind the partially closed door, I heard the sound of dishes being washed and food being stored, from downstairs in the kitchen where our mother and Mrs. Wilson tidied up. It was after 7 o’clock and I was already tired enough to get into bed. The story book, the horror-story themed one which Alex had lent to me, kept me awake for almost a whole hour before I fell asleep. I was exhausted, but extremely worried about my brother.
In the middle of the night, I awoke from deep but forgotten, sunken dreams. It seemed as though there had been a noise which startled me and I couldn’t fall back asleep, so I lay on my back staring up at the ceiling above and looking at moonlight streaming through the window curtains. The time slipped by in surreal waves of consciousness and memories, scenes of dreams and sounds of the night. Our home felt peaceful, even though I couldn’t sleep. After turning on my stomach, then over to my side, I turned and looked over at the clock which said it was 3 A.M. and I decided to get up out of bed to use the bathroom. When I was done, I felt hungry and before I was back in my bedroom, I decided to get food. Mother’s door was closed, and it was quiet upstairs and I saw the guest room where Mrs. Wilson was sleeping and I hesitated for only a moment, while I made sure they were still asleep.
In the kitchen, without turning any downstairs lights on, I began preparing a small half of a sandwich using one piece of bread instead of two, leftover turkey and cheese, and I poured a big glass of milk from the refrigerator. When I was done, I set the dishes into the sink as quietly as I could and I benignly noticed there was a tall man lurking in the dark near the barn.
The observation, in quick hindsight caused me to jump and I stepped back from the kitchen window trying to not be seen. Then, there was the barking of a dog somewhere to the west side of our property and I leaned back to look out of the pantry window but saw nothing outside. When I looked back to the yard near the barn, the spot where I had seen the man was now empty. Only our mother’s car was in the driveway and when I was sure that whatever I had seen and heard was gone, I stood taller against the window pane but I still felt more unsafe. To keep from being seen, I stayed motionless for five agonizingly long minutes in the darkness of the kitchen. Finally, I strayed back to the dining room, convincing myself it may have been my eyes playing tricks on me and how I should return to bed. Even though the forest and backyard were eerily quiet, I hardly slept for the remainder of the night, haunted by awful dread, fear for my brother’s welfare. I tossed and turned in my bed until the morning sunrise.
4c.)
Noontime slid by without any abnormal occurrence aside from the dragging hours of morning after breakfast when I sat alone in my bedroom, forbidden from going outside even with two adults at home. Of course, it wasn’t an average day for me by a longshot, with father and brother both not at home all attempts which I made to complete research on Hobb or even the remedial activities to regather my bravery and strength quickly faltered into menial and repetitive cycles of unfocused zone and traumatic ticks. With Alex missing, my lack of self-discipline only enhanced my realization of how I had lost concentration somehow due to the frightening shocks which were now plaguing my subconscious. I had suffered some amnesia, but was regaining my memories quickly in an overwhelming feeling of ominous anxiety.
Mrs. Wilson used some of the morning to do a major reorganizing of the cellar which was above expectations. Mother left to go shopping at the grocery market. It was up to me to keep myself busy and not let the inevitably hopeless circumstances get the best of my emotions. Not until mother’s absence reached two hours which was by 11:30 AM, that I began to rethink my entire idea of father being able to help Alex wherever each of them was. Mrs. Wilson was in the basement and I was alone.
Depression started setting in at 12:30 and I began to become anxious of Mr. Hearst’s 2:00 appointment. The weather was bleaker than the days before; a dark cloud hovered on the eastern horizon. The barn was shadowy inside the open loft window and the toolshed puddle had hardly shrunk since I had seen it on Friday night, and followed the footsteps. Noticing how the trail was gone, I began to worry more and became mournful of my lost family members, and began sensing fear and yet rage. Introspection ate away at my innocence and I was forming guilt for not returning to Hobb to rescue Alex, even if it was without our father’s assistance or anyone else’s help.
Finally, at 1:30 in the afternoon I heard the front door open and close. Mother called down the basement steps to Mrs. Wilson to help with carrying groceries inside and I turned off the radio station which I was listening to in the den room. As mother walked back to the front door, I hurried over to say, “Hello.” We met by the stairway and she asked for my help because the appointment was less than half an hour away and she had rushed home to ensure the groceries were put away and to ensure she had time to finish tidying up. Agreeing to help, we each began to unload the car. The back seat was packed with bags and it looked as if it potentially would take extra trips to and from the kitchen. Thinking of how I could shorten our steps, I started by eagerly carrying too many bags at once and as one of the handles broke, a bag spilled in the yard with packages of vegetables falling onto the ground near the toolshed. Leaving the spilled bag on the ground, I dropped off the rest of the packages which were in my arm in the kitchen and told Mrs. Wilson and my mother how I was running back to grab the lost items and the last three bags.
From the front door, I noticed something awry in the yard near the barn door. Towards the driveway there was a low moving blur of grass blades around some grocery items. Slowly, I stayed on my toes and approached carefully. There had been strange things going on our property that weekend when using precaution may have provided preventative measures. As I walked near the picnic table, I started to stretch my shoulders up and try to gain height for perspective. When I did this, small tuffs of fur became visible darting around through the grass and fallen groceries. Closing in on five feet from the commotion, several of a horde of rats suddenly began dashing away through the mud and dirt around the barn. The disgusting creatures climbed over one another with matted hair and scurried into other areas of the barn and yard. Begrudgingly, I picked up what I could hold of the fallen groceries, which was all except a sack of rice, and went back to the house. Just inside the front door, I set down the items and inspected the carrots, cabbage, corn cobs, and sack of potatoes for vermin. Once satisfied, I ran back to grab two more bags. Fitting one in both arms, I glanced down at the rice and rushed back to the house with the packages.
On the final trip to the car, I climbed in and grabbed the last bag out of the front seat of the car and shut the door, then leaned over to gently pick up the rice in its newly, and strangely frayed sack. The barn door rumbled; a shuddering tremble which shook the walls so violently that chips of red paint from the trim fell around the toolshed suddenly and I put the packs back down on the grass to investigate. At first, I waited for it to rumble again, so I stood still and stared at the barn with intensity. It was as if the walls would have been hit with an unrecognizable, strong wind, although there had been no gusts which I could have felt in the yard nor were the leaves in the trees where I should have seen them shaking across the lot in back. But the quaking had stopped and I was only wasting time if I wasn’t bringing back the groceries away from the rodents which were sure to return to their gross reaving. It instinctively occurred to me how the rats were the sign of some kind of bigger problem, as if food being left out was attracting them, but whatever had truly brought them to our house was the problem I was most interested in solving. Forgetting the barn, I picked back up the bags and went into the house with them.
After mother had thanked me for the help, I looked at the clock to see how long I should have until Mr. Hearst came over. There was fifteen minutes until 2 PM and I looked around for Mrs. Wilson. Mother was putting food into the cabinets and cupboards of the kitchen and restocking the pantry. The cellar door was open, so I walked over and looked down the stairs into the darkness below. Something about the dark where I heard Mrs. Wilson finishing her cleaning project, rummaging through our mongered belongings, and organizing, reminded me of the cave on the hill and I remembered the loss of my older brother in the strange Land of Hobb. Then, Mrs. Wilson moved into the faint light which reached through the door to the bottom of the stairs, carrying a garbage bin filled with broom sweepings, filthy rags, and odd, stocked items with expirations defying the memory of anyone.
“Mrs. Wilson, were there rats in the basement?”
In response, Mrs. Wilson’s face conveyed a displeased embarrassment for my interpreted, accidental accusation of her sanitization methods’ ineffectiveness or of our family’s house of lacking of necessary upkeep, or generally at any ecosystem in which was a capability of such infestations. Meanwhile, mother had finished restocking the kitchen and pantry with perishables and goods and was walking up from behind me, across our school study room. Mother silently paused between Alex’s and my seat, leaning her hip and thigh against his desk’s polished and clean top. She crossed her arms and looked at me and then out to the window with a frown. Mrs. Wilson saw my momentary distraction, using the few seconds to reconsider her reply. She began coming up the steps as she spoke, “No, dear, there was nothing down here at all. No creepy crawly critters in this cellar, not even a spider. There were cobwebs, sure, but no spiders running around, or scampering out. There wasn’t even much down here, except extra cleaning supplies, some cooking utensils and boxes of dining sets.” By the time she reached the top step, she saw how I was looking at mother and continued, “There were a few boxes I didn’t open or touch, I assumed they were heirlooms, mostly in a trunk that was down there. But no, sweetie, no mice, no rats, mostly just dust.”
It made me feel better to make sure by looking down in the basement on my own. So, I let Mrs. Wilson walk the bin outside by herself, without trying to tell everybody what I’d seen, lest I make more of a fool of myself in front of them. Without turning to look back then, I hit a switch on the side of the stairway and started to walk down the steps into the basement. The lights were still off, so I hit another switch stationed on a support post, halfway across the room. There was nothing down there, as I looked around, but I walked back to the storm door and pushed it open to check everywhere. Another rumbling filled the air and the ground shook around me as it grew louder and echoed in the small area between the back doorway and the steps to the backyard. When it stopped, I identified how it had been different from the sound by the barn and the way it more resembled an engine running, and idling, before being turned off.
“Teddy, Mr. Hearst is here!” My mother yelled from the top of the basement stairs.
Stepping back out of the storm door area, I passed by the light switch on the post, headed to the door. Remembering how I should turn the lights back off, I returned to the post and flicked the switch, which seemed to coincide with another, deeper rumbling which shook through the basement and then stopped when I hit the light off simultaneously. Running back upstairs, I felt around in my pocket for the amulet, beginning to think how I could show it to Mr. Hearst. Somehow, I had forgotten that I hadn’t found it in the pants or clothes which I wore on the day before, making it another piece of the mysterious Hobb now, seemingly lost in my unconscious return to the cave. Subsequently, while walking through the observation study towards the window, I wondered if the memory loss was caused by a serious concussion. Then I thought if the missing amulet had something to do with effectively transplanting me into an unknown part of the cave, and then, still, what the actual origin of the amulet had been. Finally, at the window, I saw Mr. Hearst’s car parked beside ours and noticed how the barn door was now opened. However, Mr. Hearst, himself, was nowhere to be seen. My mother was upstairs and I couldn’t hear Mrs. Wilson. In fact, the house was silent and I suddenly felt alone.
Initially, I was curious to see Mr. Hearst outside the walls of school with its parameters of attire, etiquette, and schedule. Then, in the basement, after discovering the absence of my amulet, other tentative agendas came to fruition for our interview that afternoon, including the local geography which eluded my research, attempts at deciphering those languages which I had seen on the walls of the guardhouse in Hobb and details on Darren’s disappearance or death, to help me verify the murder I had witnessed at the lake.
Two, excruciatingly slow minutes elapsed, during which my impatience grew and Mr. Hearst still wasn’t in plain view from the front windows where I was waiting. So, I decided to head back through the dining room and pantry to see if he had already entered the house, although there were no voices from the other areas of the house. Mrs. Wilson appeared in the den room, reading the bible on the sofa, and she smiled when I walked by. Mother had walked downstairs too, to the bathroom, now looking in the mirror with the door open, washing off her hands, after she had put down her hair brush on the vanity. A tea kettle was quickly coming to a steaming boil, unattended on the stovetop. The side door was closed and there was no sign of Mr. Hearst, so I asked my mother if she had seen him yet, and she tried to reassure me how she had seen him pulling his car into the driveway and he would be inside at any moment. Unfortunately, my warnings of impending dangers had gone unheeded, regarded as nugatory, and I didn’t see how nagging would improve matters.
After opening the side door, I started to smell something repugnant out in the yard. The stench grew more odiferous as I walked over to the barn and I heard a repetitive clicking and tapping, which stopped and then started again, behind the barn door. Then, there was a loud squeak followed by a shuffling sound like multiple pairs of legs were moving around inside the barn and more squeaking. Within fifteen feet of the barn door, I heard crunching noises, ripping, wet smacking, and grumbling.
The righthand door was open and it was swung backwards into the barn to lean on a work table, which seemed unnatural because although one end would pivot slightly, the double doors were intended to slide out of the way to the left and right on rails behind the front walls. Besides this inconsistency, I didn’t see anything too alarming or out of the ordinary, so I entered the barn thinking maybe Mr. Hearst had found something we had left behind from the groceries. Perhaps the rats which I had seen were coming back to scavenge again. This was not what I found when I saw Mr. Hearst behind the door. His body was dismembered by three gigantic rodents which were as large as tigers and blood was all over the wall of the nearest stable. Their hair was matted and their maws were dripping wet, sloppily drooling their meal of guts and bones. Hovering over the dead schoolteacher and clawing in competition for his innards, whipping their tails in against one another, their yellow eyes were bloodshot and even the whiskers drooping off of their noses were covered in crud. Hypnotically repulsed, I was struck with paralysis from shock until one of the monsters looked up, noticing me.
If luck wasn’t on my side, I may have been the next victim of the beasts within the barn, but before the rats finished their agitated snarling and hissing from over the carcass, there was a loud bark and angry growl from the opening behind me. The same black dog as before instantly ran from the right side of the barn doorway and pounced between me and the aggravated pack. It lunged down on forelegs, guarding me, and growling viciously at them, as I stumbled and fell back onto the ground.
The fight between the one canine and three gigantic rodents was getting ready to begin, when I felt someone smash their hands against my shoulder, then grab and twist around my head and jaw. Two strong arms pulled me upward by my neck and head and then a forearm choked me against a much bigger man’s chest and ribs as they dragged me toward the toolshed. Struggling and flailing my hands to resist apprehension, I was forced to watch the giant rats attack the dog, savagely biting and jumping onto each other. The dog managed to hurt two of the beasts badly but was bleeding from both its ears already.
There was no question of my mother having heard the noise from inside but I was more relieved when she did not come out to check on me because of the crazed, uncontrollable violence all around the barn. Then, I was watching the back of the barn shrink and disappear behind the tall grasses behind the back lawn and was manhandled by a tall man with dark, short, styled hair through the woods towards the hill. The dog was behind us but I heard barking and saw the two injured rats off to our left running away, whining in pain. When the third rat jumped through the rough foliage of the forest toward us, I realized whoever had kidnapped me acted unintimidated by it, as if he had some power over these horrible animals. The terrible rat simply ran behind as a defender against the enraged dog that had given chase. The dog charged our rear, impeded by a limp.
As we neared the small foothills which led up to the big hill and I punched and elbowed against the man who had captured me, I was surer than ever how he was the insane stalker who had chased me to Hobb and had returned in the shadows of the night before. Anticipating the man’s climb to the tunnels which led back to the mysterious town, I continued to attack my captor by biting, scratching, and screaming, desperately. With the dog lagging further back, I became morbidly terrified. The maniac held me as hostage and laughed to antagonize me and squeezed my throat harder, cutting off my breath and compressing my windpipe to near suffocation. Without preemptive warning, I saw a fifth figure emerge in the chaos; a huge object was crashing through the trees, rushing down the slope from the cave above. A strong, brown stallion with a darkly cloaked rider was on course to collide with us. The kidnapper slowed down on the foothills in preparation for the oncoming battler.
The man let go of his grip on my neck as the cloaked rider was getting closer to us. Finally, he threw me to the ground and I landed on a log where I scraped knees on splintering wood and was knocked against a dense, but rotted, tree core. The landing took away my breath and I began gasping again, desperate to breathe, holding my stomach and wincing in pain. The rat which followed us began pacing around me, snarling as the black dog raced at us, still barking. When the stallion came within forty feet, galloping between the trees, it occurred to me the amazing courage of the horseman. The man who kidnapped me was definitely the same person who had followed me into Hobb and he must have had connections to the people living there. Ahmad’s voice in the graveyard that Friday might have actually been saying his name, “Barry,” which was who I had heard our mother speak of with Mrs. Wilson, referring to the fugitive whom our father was looking for.
Unable to run still, I started to crawl away from the criminal and the rat stomped his humungous toes on my left arm and swatted me in my side. A deafening bang shook my eardrums and I curled into a ball, crying in fear and pain. More banging filled the forest and the waves of sound produced a ringing inside my ear canal. The man who had taken me from my home, who had assisted in the murder of Mr. Hearst and was our father’s nemesis, was shooting a revolver at the horse-riding assassin. Squinting into the sky between the leaves of the trees above, I saw a flash of white which filled my eyes.
When I regained vision, we were near an unknown lake. There was myself, Barry, and my brother. Alex was flying through the air away from the horse which fled, and he was landing on top of the man. Barry fell backwards and Alex reached back into his belt and pulled out a long dagger. His left arm with the cast was dirty and obviously in pain, but Alex was desperate. After slitting Barry’s throat and stabbing his forehead, Alex stood to his feet off the writhing body as the dying man grabbed his neck, losing blood.
4d.)
The Inn of Hobb, on the other hand, was called the Innn. It was past the lake which fell within the walls, laying in a special enclosure separating it from the forest and the rest of the city. It was the tallest building in Hobb, five levels high with a massive basement and special antenna atop a spired tower which escalated into the sky, almost a quarter mile. It was with guard turrets stretching from each four corners. This was where the traveling populations of merchants, refugees, and infantry, all resided. There were several properties to this real estate which were unique to the dimension of Hobb, and in many ways this building which served as an embassy was also an intricate military stronghold.
In the end of our skirmish when Alex was looking out over the lake, he fell to his knees and raised clenched fists to his temple, tearfully. The distress he had prevailed through on his lonely journey, mentally drained him, weakening his spirit. He told me we were lost and how he only knew that we were somewhere in the Land of Hobb, where he had tried to escape. None of this made any sense to me yet, so Alex prepared to fill in some of the missing pieces of the timeline, after I had mysteriously vanished from the park. Apparently, the agents had been hiding near the lake in Hobb to look for us. Ahmad had retreated immediately and the F.B.I. had taken Alex, at first. But a small militia of men with weapons ambushed the agents right near the two guardhouses at the brick road which had led us down the hill from the forest. Fortunately, Alex had made the first escape, then. He ran down to the stables where he quickly untied several horses and let them out, while the men were busy with the two agents. During the melee he ran back around the jailhouse near the lake and took the cover of darkness against water pumps at the utility station.
An hour later, the militia disbanded from the area and Alex was able to move further down the lake. Seeing the big hotel in the distance, he got back on the street where he had last seen me and started walking by the bridge and gazebo. That’s where he found the magic amulet, he told me, on the ground where he had seen me fall and disappear. Picking it up, he wandered further towards the hotel which eventually he was able to see was a fortress of sorts and although it bore the name “Innn,” on its marquis, it was unlike any hotel he had ever heard of. After he assessed the quality of hospitality, it occurred to him that there wasn’t any good reason to go inside the hotel, so he had staked out a position next to a nearby house and watched for anyone to go up to the monolithic building. After a long time, a convoy of trucks lined up to the front gate of the hotel, a line which was so long it ended with four trucks on the outside premises, creating an extra barricade around the walls of the building. Soldiers piled out and began forming ranks to enter the inner area leading into the lobby. The line slowly filed in as Alex lay completely still, quiet under cover of night and shadows of the wall, motionless even though his belly was upset from hunger and his head was aching from exhaustion.
Finally, the procession emptied out of the street in front of my brother and he got up and left his hiding place. He gathered enough courage to check the window of the house that he was next to and found the building looked empty. Indoors was deserted, so he went inside to try to forage around for food, water, or anything which could aid him through the rest of the night. It was devoid of any provisions, without running water, nor any real furniture aside from built- in cupboards and shelves. Thankfully however, all of his scrounging in every cabinet and drawer within the place eventually provided one dagger, auspiciously located right near the back door in the kitchenette. He paused and looked outside through a window that pointed toward the back lot between the house and barrier wall.
Holding the amulet and dagger, he saw an unattended horse walking around, clomping its hooves in the grass. Ameliorated from despair, Alex ran over and commandeered the steed (as he had learned to do during summer camp the previous year,) riding it swiftly back into the forest by the river and cutting through to the tall fields across from the cemetery and church. The cave was barely big enough to fit the stolen animal, so he stopped outside of the church on the road near the tall grass and tried to decide whether to leave it behind. In the epinaos of the church, he saw dark cloaks hanging behind a wardrobe door. Having been cold, hungry, and tired, he prepared to sleep off the disastrous day. He tethered the bridle on the horse onto a branch of a hedge that was closer to the entrance of the cave and began to try to sleep in a crawlspace underneath the church while the entrance was being staked out with the cloak wrapped over his body for warmth.
When daylight returned in Hobb, he forced open his sleepy eyes and peeked out through the misty gravestones for his horse. There was no sound and no human was visible, so he came out from under the church and took the horse into the cave. He rode through the tunnels and made it out but when he saw me being held by the estranged escapee, he grabbed the amulet and hit his heels on the horse’s sides. The horse charged toward the kidnapper and I, and without knowing what to do, Alex pulled out the amulet with resulting effect of a teleportation which included both myself and Barry, the criminal.
Recuperating, we commented how it was strange how the amulet had an effect on the trio of us, specifically, but not on the species of animals which were everywhere around us in the woods behind our house. It was also weird how I teleported only myself the first time in the park, but the second time worked for all of us. What was more bizarre even yet, was how the amulet was now vanished completely, as if it was meant to only work its magic for us twice; once in escape from the Land of Hobb and once again in return. Having found my brother in such a diminished, malnourished, and weakened state, I became determined to bring him back home. It did not phase me how exceptionally fantastic and excruciatingly terrific his story was, it only mattered how we would be able to successfully save each other. The lake where we had appeared was not the same as the one near Weare but with deductive reasoning I hypothesized the location to be within the circumference of Hobb and surrounding areas.
Alex was overall emaciated yet temporarily rejuvenated at the moment of our reunion. Searching the place where we materialized, looking for the direction we should start our hike, I noticed the shape of the lake was large yet not dissimilar, at all, to the lake we fished at, at home. It had a section which was hidden from our view around a small peninsula. To get to the other bay we would need to cross through the wooded area which enveloped the horizons above. So, after reminding Alex the likelihood of the chance that the body of water having an inlet or outlet, we bushwhacked the eighty feet to the point. My theory proved correct and the vantage point from the tip of the peninsula showed us the river’s mouth which moved over a man-made dam system. The small stretch of land where we scouted the lake helped me improve my geographic bearings and sense of direction and I saw the delta which fed into the lake on the other side, much further away than the part we had left Barry Reeves’s body. With only diminutive consideration from Alex; Alex and I agreed we should walk downstream. For one, the river would lead to a larger body of water eventually, rather than the opposite direction which might lead only to higher altitudes or mountainous terrains. Secondly, the river’s pond where we had crossed on the bridge was flowing to Hobb and the irrigation and lake which was gathered there.
So, we began to walk through the woods around the shoreline to the river, then followed the current downstream and through the forest, hopefully back towards Hobb or civilization. The day’s brightness was being replaced with shadows though, and soon we were hiking through the quickly darkening forest. If I had brought a compass along it would have been useful, but for me this had begun simply with groceries and for Alex had been a postponed and only mildly eventful fishing trip, at home, where we were almost always accustomed to knowing our way. At one point I found myself wondering what had happened to the canteen but I never asked as silence was a tactic which may be just as useful if we were spotted by enemies in the alien landscape.
We had walked for only forty-five minutes when we spied an empty field to our left through a rare sparsity in trees that caught Alex’s eye after the acres of densely populated woods. We crossed over to the edge of the field and saw a road which divided the field we stood on from another similarly large and open tract which stretched out a few hundred yards on both sides of the highway. Exasperated with the jubilance of hope and exacerbated loss of strength, we jogged perpendicularly through the field toward the road in hopes that we would make it without being too visible, if someone was watching out for us from some unseen position. When we got on the road we turned right, continuing our path’s same direction forward with the current of the river. The visibility across the field and down the road indicated the sloping of the land we were traveling on, something which we were blind to realize in the forest. The slope began to decline more aggressively in the next few hundred yards and we were back to walking at a brisk pace down the highway. These fields seemed to be used for seasonally harvested crops, much like in American agriculture. The increased slope also was paired on each side of the road by a line of trees, followed by small patches of woods which separated large fields. We walked for another half hour and I noticed Alex was growing more tired.
In time, we found ourselves needing to take a break from walking. Alex was starting to whimper, causing me to lose my concentration. We took a quick break on the side of the road but as Alex began to fall over onto his back in complete loss of stamina, I knew we had no choice but to keep moving. Soon, the sun was setting to our left and I looked over at Alex who was barely keeping it together; shivering and losing his balance. To both sides of the highway were fields of tall grass now.
“Alex, if we have to take another break, I’m afraid you’ll fall asleep and we’ll be found by those crazy people again.” Alex had glazed eyes, a look which meant his body was giving up on him. It had been three days since he’d eaten.
“What’s that?” Alex pointed down the road behind me. “Is that someone… down there?” He was too tired to fight back or make evasive maneuvers to avoid our capture now. Looking back down the road in the direction we had been walking, I saw what he was pointing at.
“Alex, don’t you remember? The scarecrow! The scarecrow near the church!” He grunted and we continued to walk together down the dirt road to the landmark we recognized.
Then, there was a dog bark. The noise halted our march and we looked past the scarecrow and around the sides of the road. The fields to both the west and east were covered with the four-foot-high grass, obscuring our sight beyond even a few yards in either direction. There was more barking, closer to us, and we waited. Suddenly, the lost black dog barged through the waving grass and there was more commotion behind him. A giant rat was still chasing the maimed dog and when the dog ran up to us, it spun around, growling ferociously at the monstrosity which was rearing back onto its hind legs.
An immense electrical orb began generating around the rat which cried and shrieked into the sky. There was a flash across the fields and road which reached up to the sky all around us, blinding white. When the light disappeared, the rat was gone, an old lady appeared; deformed, naked and wild haired, with warts and blemishes, all across her skin and face, wrinkled, sick, and vile looking. She grinned, wide with wild teeth, and lunged at the dog, biting his nose off as he too jumped at her, in combat. Savagely grabbing his jaws, she slammed his head to the ground, bashing it on the gravel and then she stood and stomped her foot and snapping his neck. The woman seemed decrepit but quick, strong, fearsome and fierce. Her black hair and tattered clothes were glistening with wet blood and she howled at Alex and I, intimidatingly.
“Run!” Alex shouted, and I did.
It was the last time that I ever saw my brother.
ALEX 5
5
5a.)
The end of June, 1927, a total solar eclipse is visible from parts of Earth, occurring one fortnight following the total lunar eclipse of mid-June, 1927. New Hampshire is one of the few places where this phenomenon is not visible at all in North America, as in both instances the passing celestial orbits began after they pass the area of New England. The moon, moments ago passed over during the lunar eclipse. The sun, also had already set during the solar eclipse. I was unable to see any of it.
After I ran through the fields and graveyard in back of the church, I entered the cavern between Weare and Hobb and fell unconscious. The witch-woman whose transformation from rat enabled undeniable advantages to swap and transfer through her embodiment of infuriated physique, killed the dog effortlessly and with wicked heartlessness pursued me, despite Alex’s diversionary tactics. Alex had thrown his dagger at the deceivingly old-looking lady and had succeeded in landing it on her forehead as she drew herself into a running stance to take me. Using predatory instincts, she had speculated my diminutiveness as the weaker prey and compiled her efforts in my recapture. Then, while she was disturbed with the freshly-wounded slice on her face as it caused her momentary distraction, he ran forward and heel-kicked the side of her right knee, collapsing her legs. She staggered off the road onto the field howling in anguish, as Alex jumped for the fallen dagger and I ran for the cavern. As soon as Alex had the dagger in his hand, he swung out at her again, as she was regaining stable footing and cut deeply into her left forearm.
Meanwhile, I reached the cemetery in a panting rush of fear and determination as night fell around me. The mist which was rising around the cavern helped rather than hindered my search for the way to safety. Tripping over my feet right before I made it in, I fell so fast, I barely caught myself before landing on my face. Desperately, I crawled half of the remaining thirty feet and when I raised myself to stand, the crystals on the walls around me in the cavern were glowing an eerie light, green. A few steps further and the walls rumbled and rocks collapsed around the exit to Hobb. Over the next few weeks, I would see how the blocked exit could be cleared, but at the moment I was far too tired.
My father, Christopher Goode, has done his due diligence in sending me the response from Alexander, my brother, by leaving the nine hand-drawn cards at the mouth of the cavern above our land in Weare. When I had the letters in my hand, I immediately used 16 matches (the entire front two lines in a book,) to read the letters quickly. For this, I am eternally thankful because when I emerge from the cavern which led to Hobb back into the light of day in Weare, the letters have become empty pages, deleted scripts which were only blank papers to hold onto as I moped my way to the foot of the mystic hill. Later, return visits to the hill provide insight only to the revelation of our father’s mission’s success; through obliteration, self-imposed implosion, and destruction of the cavern system. In short, within the turning months, June to July, the cavern disappears; disintegrated from the face of the Earth. The following story is what I have assembled from my memory, of what my father was able to relay to me after his return and the vivid mental images I have of my brother’s short letters.
My beloved brother began the first day in Hobb’s church, where he was able to escape to, hours after my first departure. He found his writing materials within the bookracks of the nave. Hallowed ground, although he was unaccustomed to the traditions of Christian mass, was an intuitive sanctuary even for Alex. His secular life was quickly replaced with prayer to God Almighty during night’s remaining hours. In depth, his escape from the clutches of the witch were far from instantaneous nor simplistic in fortuity. Four hours after I had seen Alex for the last time, I was already home and, on my way to begin days’ worth of investigations. Alex was on the other hand, on the other side of the tunnel still, scrambling for his life through midnight and the following night was finally able to find time to record an entry in his journal, chronicling what he already feared would be his last days alive.
It was weird, how the descriptions of the people became so colorful in such a short volume of writing. On the first letter, Alex talked about a man named Drakkyn, an Italian quantum physicist, who claimed to be descended from Egyptian Pharaoh. Physicists, in the decades up to 1927, advanced studies of atomic radiation and fission, dramatically. German and French laboratories worked to create renewable energy to replace pollution-causing natural resources. Civilization had grown in population with tremendous acceleration due to the preceding, industrial revolution of the late 1700’s, and the cost of larger numbers of people was incurred on agriculture and food industries, as well as healthcare. The latest half-life experiments, of Ernest Rutherford, became internationally acclaimed as the greatest advancement in science, since the 1800’s.
Previous Westerner advancements in industry began in Britain’s invention of the atmospheric steam engine. This was an invention which was used to pump floodwaters from mines, and came from a mind belonging to a man who was both an iron wholesaler, as well as preacher. The next major development was a spinning jenny, a tool used for manufacturing clothes. It took one hundred years before telephone and electrical technology was discovered in America, which coincided with assembly line factory implementation, as well as the beginning of scientific exploration for more efficient energy.
Drakkyn was exiled from Italy for controversial experiments which centered on theories of multiple, invisible universes existing at subatomic levels. Using special, stolen materials, he was able to create temporal, nuclear, black-hole suspension during radioactive, atomic processes. He was able to multiply energy output, and store extraneous, potential, energy outputs in different dimensions, and release energy at seemingly infinite intervals, of both time and space. Using the power of a singularity-operational battery, Drakkyn was successful in finding an alternative universe, from which he extracted enough elements to loop the flow of electrical current through multiple stacks of universes to create his own world, which was just outside our Earth.
The truth is; the Westerner advancements in industry which lasted from the early 1700’s into the middle of the 1900’s, came almost two thousand years after the governments of Egypt and Babylon discovered the same technologies. The Temple of Hathor, Egyptian Goddess of Love, exhibits the image of royalty accessing and using an ancient light bulb. Later, when invaded by Greeks during the Ptolemaic period, the Egyptians shared the aeolipile which was an early steam-powered engine. Evidence of batteries being used in Babylon and Egypt, dates to 500 B.C. Also, similar to American and Western chronology, Egyptian and Babylonian healthcare, medicinal advancements, and science were profoundly improved during times when industry and technology were at their peaks. The Egyptian use of mummification, which was used to preserve souls for the afterlife, was only a percentage of the utilized advancements revolutionized by these ancient cultures.
It is uncertain what Drakkyn’s birth name was, he went by the name he had converted to within Hobb. Alex’s description was that he was tall and thin, solidly-built, with lightly tanned skin, and short, combed, yet curly, black hair. Also, Drakkyn wore a hemhem, which was a variation of crown used by Egyptian pharaoh, though he was directly descended from Italian clergy members. The only way Alex knew Drakkyn’s descendance was Italian actually came from a special shrine in the church’s basement which seemed to serve at some point, as a dormitory. Here, he would return during the second night in an effort to try to devise a method of breaking through the rocks which fell behind me as I left Hobb. Looking through the church, he found a stairway which led to a hallway with five rooms featuring bunkbeds and two desks on either side. At the far end of the hallway was a master suite with a dresser, adorned with various trinkets, and ornaments the parish priest had retained from Italy. Among them were old daguerreotypes of an Italian priest in a soutane and Roman collar, and a young boy wearing a cassock. Alex would later be able to identify the pictured boy as a young Drakkyn from the shape of his eyebrows and corners of his mouth. Young Drakkyn may have been in his early teenage years like Alex. The writing on papers on the desk did not seem to use the English alphabet. There was nothing which otherwise suggested any formal nomenclature which might have been abandoned, only the title ‘Drakkyn,’ was on several letterheads and a nameplate hanging on the door.
Drakkyn, the disgraced physicist whom had built the town of Hobb, was at war with America from the inside. Reviled from his native country, he had sought asylum on Ellis Island only months prior to the beginning of World War I. The dates on the letterheads referred to years before Alex or I were born, a time when perhaps Drakkyn was attempting to personally recruit people for his military. The ideas were too controversial for Fascist Italy at the time; allowing someone to truly believe they were capable of harnessing energy powerful enough to fuel the entire world. His rejection from his family, religion, and governing politicians and lawmakers had angered Drakkyn at first. Then, during the time leading into the World War with Austria, he offered to sell his weapon ideas to foreign countries. After being arrested by Secret Intelligence Service while leaving Vienna to return to Italy, he was supposed to stand trial for treason as an unaffiliated citizen whose inventions were seen as deterrent to national security. His disappearance from French maximum-security prison in Devil’s Island remained a mystery until Interpol was able to trace communications between Drakkyn’s undercover mercenaries and groups of United States anarchist party members.
Alex had wounded the rat-woman and had been able to find haven in the church after discovering barricaded entry to the cavern. The witch was not far behind though, and the inflicted wounds did not keep her from following him that night. She came through the graveyard, running rampant and screaming in angst for the church had indeed been a sanctuary which mysteriously kept her out with the power of exorcism rituals and protection spells. Alex watched as she hissed and spit at the steps of the front doors. The wind in the night blew at his face and it threw her hair wildly around the air as with Alex’s full force, he attempted to shut the doors.
A great gust held his arms against the doorframe and he heard the witch screeching on the steps below. Then, as hard as he pushed, the doors would not budge to latch in their final inches. He looked up at the sliver of space between the doors which allowed him to see a tall shadowy shape standing and opposing his shoves outside. Alex heaved his weight one last time against the heavy wooden doors but was thrown backward across the narthex. He landed his arm against a pew and felt stinging pain rush up his shoulder. The figure in the doorway turned around, covered in what looked like a cloak with a hood which covered its head as the sky cracked again and began raining. The witch scowled and held her left arm, and in a bowing posture, side-stepped away from the church and walked back toward the main road.
The doors slammed behind the visitor and his hood fell off of his crown; the hemhem worn by Pharaohs thousands of years ago. The elaborate style of Egyptian hemhem consisted of six, spiraling rams’ horns, shaped around the underlying sutures between skull bones underneath. On it were many eagles’ feathers, and a stela of three winged aten, made of limestone, atop of a conjoined, golden, uraeuses cobra. Closing the doors, the man spun around to face Alex, his cloak rippling as he swung his arms. He wore a dark, maroon robe under the cloak which covered his soutane.
“I am Pharaoh Drakkyn. We know you are Alexander Goode, your father’s first son, and your father will be sent to rescue you.” From under the red robe, Drakkyn pulled out his right arm which held a long scepter with a glass orb. Alex had no choice; he dropped his only weapon. He looked down at his arm which had crashed into the pew and saw blood falling from his hand, where his grip on the dagger had slid, cutting his left palm, on the arm which was still wrapped in bandages.
Alex lifted himself up with his right hand and leaned on the back of the seats. He wiped his bloody limb on his shirt without losing sight of the intruder. Then, as my brother was bandaging his throbbing hand in the cloth of the stolen garments, Drakkyn slowly walked over. Drakkyn stood and watched cynically, from a safe distance, and when Alex started nervously struggling and as the wrap began to become undone; Drakkyn swept away the dagger with his scepter. He tapped Alex’s shoulder with the bottom end of the long, iron pole and Alex winced, whimpered exhausted hubris and grabbed his humerus bone.
“You don’t need to bother. While fatal endings stand, mortal fears heal.” Drakkyn shushed Alex, who looked up at Drakkyn and cried. Drakkyn grimaced and pinned Alex shoulder to the pew behind him with the scepter and then angrily threw his body onto the ground. “Stand back up. Come with me, boy.” Drakkyn commanded Alex to follow him up the aisle to the transept. He pointed his scepter up toward the altar, behind which a twenty-foot, wooden, ankh-shaped cross hung against the wall. “Beyond the walls is the cavern, you entered… Past the other side, you would walk west through New Hampshire, across America. Here, in Hobb, you would walk past that cavern, far east, to the end of the world.”
“No! I’m not going anywhere with you,” My brother replied, defensively, “I don’t know where I am! I want to go home!” Drakkyn reached into a pocket in his robe and withdrew a purple pouch. He put his fingertips gently into the pouch and then tossed a tiny pinch of powder at my brother’s face and Alex fell unconscious.
As he closed his eyes, from somewhere in the Land of Hobb, a moaning bass tone rose through the air, and Drakkyn covered his ears and winced. When Alex opened his eyes, he felt the ground shaking underneath him. The room he was in had black walls and was small enough to make him claustrophobic and paranoid of the chance he was being buried alive in a coffin. The walls were made of velvet fabric and as he tried to sit himself up, he felt himself encumbered by the maladies previously doled by Drakkyn. Furthermore, he sensed restriction from shackles around his ankles, braced thighs attached to the cot, straitjacket, and handcuffs. When he opened his mouth to gasp at his helpless predicament, he found himself fully muzzled with a leather facemask. However, still able to sit slightly upright in his bouncing and moving, dark chamber, slowly, Alex realized Drakkyn had put him onto a horse-drawn carriage inside a special box. The sounds of the horses in their traces steadily clopping their hooves on the road was muffled to Alex, but soon they were approaching the hill into Hobb as Alex could tell from the speeding pace of pounding rhythms around him.
The noise continued, Alex’s position shifted forward to his feet and calves and the carriage began the descent into the town of Hobb. Moments later, the carriage went from speeding downwards to straightening into a slow, rolling stop at what Al sensed must be the front gate and guardhouses. Then, voices approached from either side and a knocking on the area around his case. The voices became hushed, and the carriage began to move again, causing Alex to feel momentum along the road through the town. Only a couple of minutes later momentum slowed, disorienting Alex’s sense of direction, before it eventually slowed once more. This was a brief pause and the final resting stop, where he arrived which was only half of a minute afterward. My brother inferred a location much further than the jailhouse; somewhere deeper within Hobb’s perimeter, beyond the town walls and two guardhouses.
From inside the box, he heard people moving around the carriage. He was beginning to weep as self-pity was sinking in and a harsh pain in his shoulder returned. Noises surrounding his ears reawakened his horrific fright and metallic sounds of unlocking and chains sliding off the exterior of the dark box alerted Alex to the space behind him. The box’s lid finally opened and his eyes met two, grim soldiers whose arms came down his sides and lifted his frail and weakened torso out by the shoulders which caused him a muffled cry of pain.
Alex saw the giant structure in front of him as rain continued to fall and pelt the carriage behind him. The sitting gargoyles on the rooftop glared down at him from their obtuse angles at each corner; demons of misfortune. He was dragged into the giant building, up a tall stoop through a double doorway and into a wide hall. There were lights along both walls, between long spaces across rooms with closed doors for a distance of eighty feet, until there was a lobby where two front-facing carpeted staircases led to a second floor and two staircases on the side of the first floor led to a balcony and level even higher.
The two soldiers brought Alex between them, carrying him barely above the marble floor as his shoes skidded and slid behind him and his head was hanging with shame of being caught. He kept closed eyes after the lobby as the soldiers took him between the staircases and into a second hall. Alex was afraid and the sights and sounds were overwhelming him with traumatic waves and an aching head and body. He was thrust down a left turn into an intersecting hall and after a dozen more feet was pushed through a door where he reopened his eyes to see a large table shaped like an omega symbol, and two long tables in the middle, forming a V. He was brought to the table and shoved onto a bench where the soldiers bent over, attaching his shackles to the sides of the seat.
As he turned over his shoulder to look behind him at the door, he saw Drakkyn enter, followed by four more men. The men were wearing similar cloaks as Drakkyn but were not wearing anything on their heads, instead letting the hoods fall over their foreheads. More men were filed behind as Alex could see by straining his neck from his position.
Suddenly, the sound of gunshots echoed in the hallway, and some of the men were ducking, dodging, and rushing to avoid what seemed like a surprise attack being staged. Moments later, one of the F.B.I. agents from the investigation, Gabriel Esposito, stepped into the room as the other, Victor Constantini, stood guard by the door, a bandaged wound with fresh blood clung around his waist. Drakkyn moved out from behind the others and gruffly knocked the man down with his scepter. The wounded agent pointed his gun to the door and backed up into the room where Alex was. Despite the strike from the glass orb, Gabe got back to his feet and lunged, uncoordinatedly, at one of the higher-ranking, cloaked soldiers who had escorted Alex. His rank was distinguishable by the similar design of the insignia of an Omega symbol with a V marked on the back of his short cloak. Then, Gabriel grabbed another man’s collar and pointed his gun at the gun at his own jaw, fumbling with disorientation. Whatever was trying to control the agents was only partially successful as Gabe resisted and proceeded to frisk him for keys to Alex’s shackles.
“Your weapon is out of bullets.” Drakkyn said, with a snicker. “Guards, kill this unarmed sham!”
The other soldier drew his rifle up as Victor attempted to charge and tackle Gabe. Gabe found the keys and rushed back to Alex until Drakkyn stepped between them. The soldier’s rifle was knocked aside and Victor tried to strike him with the handle of his pistol but the soldier was unphased. Gabe’s attack was held by a strange, invisible force from Drakkyn, and he struggled to move further. As Gabe stumbled over, the soldier whose keys were robbed had time to stand back to his feet and was getting his own rifle steadied and aimed. Thankfully, Victor was quickly pivoting around to throw his gun at the guard, whose right eye was struck directly. When the misfired rifle shot a bullet into one of the cloaked figures, Drakkyn’s attention was turned long enough to allow Gabe to reach over with the keys to the shackles. Quickly, he unlocked Alex’s legs as the armed soldier fired a shot directly into Victor’s chest.
Al stood up, and Gabriel weakly untied the straitjacket, as Victor fell from the bullet wound. Drakkyn’s scepter swiped out at Gabe from behind and hit his spine. Gabe had tried to block it with his left arm which now caused him to lose his balance, and the F.B.I. agent fell against Alex. The person in the cloak lay on the ground, so Alex rolled on his side out of the way of the fight and onto the dead man. Alex’s maneuver gained him a moment as the armed guard moved to position himself to shoot Gabriel and Drakkyn’s boot crushed Victor’s neck. Alex limply grabbed at the cloak which was tied with a string around the dead man’s collar but the straitjacket sleeves caused him to feebly lose his grip on the fabric pieces. Managing to quickly pull up one sleeve with his teeth, he freed one hand and was able to push the string out of its knot as he heard the shot of the rifle behind him. With the opportunity of escape vanishing, Alex threw himself back to his feet and held onto the cloak, unwrapping it from the man on the ground.
Alex spun with the cloak over his shoulders, hoping it might cause enough distraction to leave him space to make it through the hallway behind the door. As he turned around, what he saw was different from his expectation, however. The man with the rifle was shot, and another cloaked figure held his hand through the doorway for Alex. Gabe was on his feet again, with anger across his face, as he rushed toward the downed soldier and reached for the rifle which had fallen to the floor. In the hallway, Alex ran alongside the cloaked figure, and they turned back down the hall which had led Alex past the lobby. As they did, Alex saw a rear exit, and he simultaneously heard the rifle shoot again from behind. Gabe had somehow become an aggressor, and as he was chasing them with the recovered gun of the dead guard, Drakkyn’s shouting for more guards and soldiers was bringing more attention to the escape route. Only seconds later, the hall behind them was filled with guards, and doors on either side, leading to the back exit, swung open filling their path to freedom with dozens of opponents.
The cloaked rescuer grabbed one of the enemies from an open door forty feet from the exit and used him as a human shield against Gabe’s shot which hit the unsuspecting person in the stomach. Alex was able to make it to the door and begin to push it open as the rescuer grabbed the dead hostage’s pistol from his hip and fired back at Gabe while backing up to the door. Alex held it open and looked around outside where light had begun to return in the cloudy sky. He saw the connecting courtyard between surrounding structures behind the building was vacant. Then, hearing Gabriel cry in pain after a gunshot from the man, he turned around and saw the F.B.I. agent fall, gripping the bloody side of his jaw.
Once outside, the cloaked figure pointed behind a building and shouted for Alex to follow. Alex recognized the voice and as they ran to the spot across the courtyard, he looked over to see who it was. Without verifying the man’s face, the exit burst open behind them and soldiers swarmed into the yard. When Alex made it to safety around the corner of the building, he turned around to see who the man was again but already the cloaked man was hopping onto a horse which had been tied to pole. When he was on the horse, the man removed his hood to reveal it was Ahmad from the toy shop. Without any time to think, Alex leapt and grabbed the saddle as the horse took them out from the alley and into the large field behind the stable. To Alex’s surprise, the horse did not take them directly past the guardhouses nor to the stable but to the other side of the grass field, along the side of buildings on their left.
When they were at the corner of the field, an alarm siren blared and Alex turned to see if they were being followed. As soon as he was able to see the soldiers coming out into the open, he was sure they had spotted the horse but his ride turned abruptly between two houses. Then the horse slowed down, stopping next to a house with a veranda. Ahmad jumped off the saddle and helped Alex down, tied up the horse. They both ran into the house which upon entering appeared to be abandoned like the one Alex had hidden inside by the hotel. Down the street, past the far end of the fence enclosing the field there was a train station which ran north to south along a railroad track. It was hundreds of yards away however, Alex noticed it as they entered the building and wondered what the purpose was and where trains leaving Hobb could travel to if they were underground.
As they entered the house, Alex sensed that a coup had already occurred; there was no furniture in the house nor lightbulbs in any fixture but the light through the windows from the sunrise gave both Alex and Ahmad visibility to find a door which led downstairs to a basement. Alex followed Ahmad whose daring courage rebuilt Alex’s attitude and perseverance. In the basement was a small freezer box, unplugged from an electrical outlet which Ahmad moved sideways off a trapdoor underneath. First, Ahmad grabbed a wooden stick sitting next to the stairs and pried up the square cement block enough to grab a piece of twine between the crevices. Lifting the rope handle on the piece of removable cement, Ahmad pulled the trapdoor away. In the hole were just a few duffel bags yet Ahmad ruffled through them and found two with smaller bags inside of them. He handed one to Alex, “There’s food in here, stolen bread from the Innn.” Then another bag, “This one has water canteens, some clothes outfits, and this one,” He said, reaching again for another bag from the duffels, “has a leather and woolen sleeping bag, canvas and wrapped tarpaulin, ropes, and stakes. Eat, something, fast, first.”
Alex opened the food bag and looked inside at the contents which were all wrapped in cloths. Reaching into the bag, he found a smaller cloth containing hard and dense components of a silverware set. Sifting further, he felt something softer and large which he opened. He broke open a piece of the bread while Ahmad opened another bag, for himself, and withdrew a canteen. He unscrewed the lid and passed it while Alex swallowed and took another bite, chewing while he began to drink the water. He tried to smell the air around him as he ate in the dark basement. His hand wound had healed and as he started to look for more makeshift bandaging it finally occurred to him that something had helped him recover almost miraculously.
Visually observing the boy in front of him, in the dark, Ahmad stood up and started to the staircase. “Come back up when you’ve changed clothes. Hurry please, I will need to replace the freezer box before we leave here.”
“Are we going home?” Alex asked, as Ahmad climbed the steps.
“Not me. I have nowhere else to go, I have to stay here. One of my doubles has been out to create mischief in America, and the wars which are coming are going to make things worse for the people like me who want to leave here. The federal agents who came to get you and your brother, they have known of these secret murderers in Hobb for decades but will not aid any side of these terrible factions growing on Earth.” Alex listened, trying to understand how Ahmad said the agents were anti-American, what he meant by double, and why the wars would involve him and our family. While Ahmad explained, Alex also assembled a personalized rucksack of gear. It was mysterious how his parchment of unwritten letters survived the kidnapping and brave battles but they were there; rolled together and tucked in his pants pocket, in back. Alex went behind the freezer box and changed his clothes, into the outfit he had found in a duffel bag, which matched most of the soldiers’ uniforms. “I want to go home, though. The cavern opening was covered with rocks…” Alex walked over to the stairway and looked up at Ahmad who was standing at the top landing, frightened, with his finger pressed to his lips and his other hand around his ear, motioning to hush their speech, listening to something outside the house which was inaudible to Alex, downstairs. Alex began to ascend the stairs slowly, keeping his toes at the edges of each step to limit the noise made by his footsteps.
Then, Ahmad waved him up, and his eyes were wide and dilated, showing fear and uncertainty despite proving improvement and providing leadership during Alex’s time of angst and desperation. Alex continued and Ahmad waved again faster, indicating to Alex emergency. So, Alex began to move faster up the dark stairs, wondering where the next attack would be coming from.
Suddenly, as the landing was only a few steps away, the witch tackled Ahmad out of the doorway. Alex rushed the rest of the way to the top and looked quickly to see the witch had pinned Ahmad down. Ahmad was screaming and had dropped the rifle right next to him but when Alex stepped to retrieve it, the witch spun her head around, flashing pointy fangs and twisted, oversized mouth around occluded, gangling teeth. She grabbed his jaw and face with her hand while using her other hand to secure the rifle. Alex backed up and tried to figure out if there was any way to get the rifle back but decided it wasn’t possible as the witch bit into Ahmad’s face, ripping off parts of cheek and eyebrow, mutilating him.
With Ahmad gone, Alex was on his own again and the only way to escape seemed to be the horse. With the kit-bag’s straps sharply clinging to his shoulders and tightened around his waist and with only a few days’ worth of food supplies, Alex jumped with intuition towards the backdoor. Ahmad was still struggling and the witch may have had the upper hand on him but her focus could not be pulled away or he would resume combat with her, even though his grotesque disfigurement would cause severe disadvantage. The witch had come in from the front door which was open, so Alex was holding faith for finding possibly, undetected getaway; despite the search parties which were surely scouring the entire town. Outside, their horse was waiting by a wall which sheltered his visibility and Alex fearlessly pivoted, and climbed up onto the saddle and, using his elbow, grabbed hold of the cantle. All around the grass field to his right, there were crowds of uniformed guards huddled in groups and taking commands from superior officers who were organizing the search. Alex visualized his path to vindication: his only escape depended on if he was able to find a way to get over the top of or somehow around the walls around Hobb; so, it was his best idea to try and ride the horse to the lake where it might entail a swim to the river.
At first try, his horse left its maintainable and controlled, gait, instantly, and Alex grabbed hold, pushing his feet into the swinging stirrups. It started running in the right direction which was away from the field where it must have already heard and sensed the militias gathering and the ruckus across the street. Here, it rallied in speed even harder, bursting to the left, directly towards the side of town with the hotel and lake. Alex turned once more to the train station behind him, wishing he had a better plan with a wider range of options or accurate details of the area’s geography. The guards in the field didn’t notice him at first but when Alex’s horse came to the first intersection, there were men lining the roadside looking through buildings and moving in the direction Drakkyn had insisted was west at the church. While Ahmad was left behind to be killed by the witch, Alex was riding without any sense of direction or map. As he passed, the guards did see him and some began positioning themselves to shoot their rifles. Behind, the witch ran into the street, screaming at the sky. The horse kept moving and shots missed Alex as he quickly left the line of sight for the riflemen.
Hundreds of feet remained between the next intersection where to the left had been the introduction to Ahmad by the restaurant and diagonally ahead was the gazebo. The horse was fast and when Alex looked around to see where the witch was, she hadn’t even pursued chasing. His path was clear, Alex leaned into the mane of the stallion and was fleeing the wrath of Drakkyn and his militia, successfully. As Alex neared the gazebo, he turned left to look down the street where the restaurant and toy shop stood and saw a man who appeared to be Ahmad calmly walking towards him, without any mangle. Instead, Ahmad was holding a leash attached to the muzzle of a dog.
The dog was short-haired and black but with brown on its legs which were thin and held his muscled ribcage. Ahmad bent over the dog and unlatched the muzzle from his face and the dog was already baring teeth and snarling with its nasty, sharp fangs, and growling angrily. Then unleashed, it barked and began running full speed at Alex and his horse.
Past the bridge, the horse was gaining momentum and able to distance itself from the dog, yet Alex saw ahead was the hotel which was barricaded with cars and trucks around the exterior wall. In daylight, the hotel’s giant tower stretched high into the air with the sun brightly reflecting around the satellite dish at its apex. Atop the perimeter wall, Alex was now able to see cannons which pointed out across the town and this gave him the idea to try to somehow infiltrate the hotel while riding his horse. Approaching quickly, Alex looked at the front gate which was still open and unguarded, so he pushed himself lower on the horse and readied himself to enter the outer area of the hotel. The dog followed them, barking from a hundred feet behind, but the horse did not lose much speed as it weaved around and directly through cars and trucks and galloped under the gate.
Once inside the hotel’s border, Alex looked to the furthest corner from the town’s center. Luckily, ramps were used to move the cannons to tiered levels up the walls where they sat along a walkway. There were only two guards, at either side of the gate, who spun around with rifles in time to see Alex and the horse run up the nearest ramp to the corner. Alex had planned to use the vantage point for his final escape.
The guards had their guns readied in moments though, and as Alex’s horse began to climb the ramp; they shot. The dog was running up from behind and gaining fast, as both bullets punctured the horse’s legs. Alex fell off as the horse reared back and dropped off the ramp. Alex’s fall was rough, landing on a stone walkway with a full pack but he raised himself up and ran up to the top walkway before the men could aim accurately to shoot again. As he reached the walkway, he turned to the left, which obscured sight from the guards behind the bottom foundation of the tower, but the dog had run up to the first level on the ramp. When he came to the safe side of the walkway, he looked down off the wall and saw shallow water from the lake, below him, which was fed by the deeper river. He grabbed his pack and slung it off his shoulders as the dog careened around the ramp to the ledge.
Within forty feet from my brother, the dog was charging to attack when Alex pulled the pack open where he found the silverware cloth. In less than one second, the deranged dog was jumping and Alex was retrieving a fillet knife which he pointed into the dog’s mouth. The dog squealed and yelped, falling over on its side and hanging its blood-gushing mouth, impaled with the serrated, carving utensil, landing roughly down between its forelegs. It fell on its side, pawing at the knife and retching in brutal pain. Alex reached into the pack and took out a long rope, cinching it around a cannon carriage’s trunnion and tire and used the other side to harness to the straps on his pack. Then, he jumped off the ledge, holding a piece of the rope and climbing quickly down.
Up on the walkway, the guards were flanking with their rifles but Alex reached the shallow flood water and puddled ground in mere seconds and he was quick to untie the pack, as well. The soldiers began firing but Alex had already reached the bushes beyond the outer walls of Hobb and soon was deep enough within the thick forest to blend in, unseen by the snipers. He ran and ducked in the thickets along the right side and against the current of the river away from Hobb.
Much further into the forest (fifteen miles, nearly half a day,) Alex became sure he had eluded captivity. However, wandering through the woods near the river, he was becoming extremely tired. Paranoia grabbed a hold of his psyche as he thought of the crazed dog which he had slayed and the militia men with their rifles who had tried to shoot him. He realized there was a good chance he would be found when he stopped walking and refused to let himself break from running away. He didn’t know where he was going but knew he would need to find his way home soon. The pack weighed his steps down and the little food he had eaten in the basement was not nearly enough to bring him to full nutrition. Sustenance was critical to his continued survival, so he began to plan a way to stay near the river while setting up camp. The sun was still high but the light was golden through the tree leaves shining from the sun, which meant it was late afternoon. He still didn’t understand which way was east and west nor did he know the boundary of the militia’s search but assumed a spot to camp away from the river would be his best hope for survival. So, to eat, drink, and rest; became top priorities.
5b.)
While my brother, Alex, was in Hobb, trying to sleep in a dark, pitched tent in the mysterious wilderness, being hunted by foreign enemy militia, I was getting to rest in our house in Weare. The day had brought our father home to our hysterical mother’s side. Mrs. Wilson was paid and given a ride home and our father and I rode back home from Milford, in complete silence. I thought that by the end of Monday, I would be asked to tell my story. Honestly, I didn’t know where to begin with making him understand the horror we witnessed and the peril which Alex still faced, alone. If I could do anything in retrospect today, it would be to strongly convince my father, or run away somehow and make him follow me to Hobb. Yet, nighttime came fast and I only was asked to be ready to answer questions for an investigator on Tuesday morning. Reflecting before bed, I meditated on the pasts of the natural world and prehistoric man.
Three and a half million years ago, the first man evolved in north western Africa, a product of breeding between species of apes which have now died out. They were exposed to special types of local plants, which also went extinct during the fourth global ice age, and were able to mutate their genetic sequence quickly, as a result of having exposure to the powerful chemicals in these botanical lifeforms. When the ice age began, most living creatures died out, but new characteristics of the human mind gave us advantages over ecosystems, and the ability to adapt to new living conditions. Millions of years later, the domestication of animals as pets, and livestock, was linked directly with the three spreading migrations of native Americans to the Northern hemisphere: from Spain and Romania; through Mongolia, Peking, Siberia, and the Bering Strait; to below the islands which circle the North Pole’ and from Spain, and from Greece, and then, from Spain and Britain, through the Patagonian and Victorian Strait, and the Atlantic Ocean.
Almost a hundred thousand years ago, humans were able to biologically engineer edible plants through farming science and agricultural traditions. Eventually, the processes were perfected enough to create modern fruits and vegetable varieties which have remained in worldwide circulation throughout civilization after the Roman empire’s introduction. Onions and potatoes were the first biologically engineered vegetables, both cultivated at the same time on different continents near the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age. Onions were invented chronologically earlier, prior to 60,000 B.C., popularly used along the Nile in Egyptian empire. This coincided with the South American natives’ invention of potatoes. 10,000 years later, during the Holocene Ice Age, South Americans would invent the tomato plant, and cucumbers. In 10,000 B.C., lettuce was produced in Europe, and five thousand years later came cabbages and celery. Fruits were widely available through central Asia and Europe in the form of oranges and apples, respectively, in 4,000 B.C.
Wild animals, however, were somewhat trickier to domesticize for man. Some of the first animals to be domesticized were used as pets and others were for transportation. Humans had created complex barter and trade systems as early as 80,000 B.C., but not yet writing or account keeping. So, in time, people were in need of faster transportation between regions, of larger numbers of goods. First cows and sheep became tamed, farmed, and stocked, then pigs, and soon horses were tamed for use, by 40,000 B.C., and camels.
The first migration of Siberians across Beringia began in 20,000 B.C, 50,000 years after the Greek titans. At that time, the dog was already widely used as a pet throughout Asia, since about 120,000 B.C., from its initial genetic divergence in the same area which kept its genetic line in Northern Europe. This area of Caucuses Mountain was where much preservation of living pets and livestock, as well as the fruits and vegetables, and sages we now enjoy, were located at high altitudes, where cave dwellings became frequented by the grudging Neanderthals and other, early species of human, titan, and dwarf whom were endangered, or due to become extinct over the period of 100,000 years between the beginning of homosapien, and the end of that same ice age which caused the Magellan Ice Bridge. Domesticated dogs evolved from a species of gray wolf, probably in multiplicate instances of human intervention. Eventually, as natives arrived in North America across the Bering Ice Bridge, they brought their cultural traditions, pets, genetics, and technology. This ice age was significantly destructive on many populations of humans, and 20,000 years ago, began a period of reconstruction of lifestyles among the people who would continue to migrate both on the American continents, and to repopulate Eurasia and Africa. Some migratory groups from Africa and Arabia were even able to cross the Pacific through Indonesian islands during the Pleistocene ice age, and inhabited the continent that is now Australia. However, at that time, most Earth species of animals had become entirely extinct, and the Caucuses mountains were one of the few places where domestication technology was kept, secure, for future generations, due to general hording of technology by tribes of warring people, whose unmoving homes remained unchanged by global climate events. In the end, most tribes in that area would die out or be conquered by invaders, but their accumulated knowledge and tools continued to be stolen or shared.
The domesticated dog would later become miniaturized, while attempts to domesticize many other animals either failed or succeeded, during the dog’s first 110,000 years. During that time, North and South American sabre-tooth cats became extinct, as climate changes continued and a new ice age emerged. Ways were discovered, in central Asia, to manipulate animals into becoming smaller, and reinvention of domestication gave birth to new species and varieties of animals. One of the first new species of animal was made in an area near Egypt, where African wildcats were tamed inside cages, and genetically altered with plants, medical techniques, and other man-made ingredients to create the modern domestic housecat. Within the timespan between 15,000 and 5,000 B.C., novel editions of miniature elephants and hippos were displayed in Cyprus, where the world’s oldest water wells were used to provide animals with natural supplies of food and drink. Cyprus, a Mediterranean island, was fought over, thereafter, for millennia. Also, 15,000 years ago, the second migrating tribes of the from the Old World to the New, over Beringia and the Bering Strait, came from a region surrounding Portugal on the Mediterranean Sea. The Solutrean people were able to bring new inventions with them across the ice pack during this ice age, including stone age tools, weapons, and certain kinds of weaving and pottery which came from transference of knowledge and commerce between central Asia and Europe through the middle eastern flow of geographical paths and modes of transportation, as opposed to the migratory tribes of the Eurasian-Caucuses mountains, whose contributions were useful during a very different cycle of ice age glaciation. The primitive wheel, however, was unsuccessful in following this migration, because of its lack of necessity in transportation across deserts, and water, whereas other, newer technologies arrived during the later-Holocene interglacial period.
Cats, all of which genetically descended from the same four ancestral parenthoods in Africa, except one in ancient America, did not cross the Atlantic Ocean ways, until the early 1500’s, and late 1600’s, with Spanish slave traders, to North and South America, following the Spanish Inquisition. Later, in the middle of the 1800’s, shortly after the American Civil War, several new breeds of dogs were specialized in fighting and police training. Many of them were bred from Rottweilers, a dog which was developed for use by German butchers in the 1700’s. These herdsmen spoke broken Spanish, having lived for thousands of years without formal language, at all, prior to the Brunswick recognition of Germans and their newly adopted language, which a saint of the Christian church originated on his own, with intent to unify multiple kingdoms. Barbaric tribes of northern Europe held closely to traditions which outdate the formation of Mesopotamia, and were less modernized when it came to domestication, farming, or even trade. Native Americans, however, had always recognized the cat deity, and possessed the beliefs in mastery of habitation and ownership of pets. Bobcats and lynx were sometimes viewed as symbolic entities to the natural world and became included in special family ceremonies, primarily burials.
The next morning in the woods outside of the town of Hobb, Alex awoke to the sounds of something scratching at the sides of his tent. It was a light, gentle scratching, and the sunshine was a bigger stimulation on his eyes than the noise, at first. He rolled lazily over onto his side and tried to rest longer. There was a moment where he could almost return to tranquil dreams, where his mind went blank, peacefully empty when realization jolted consciousness. The soothing fur brushing lightly over his temples and the purring of a cat inside his tent, finally startled him awake. Looking at the white cat, he wondered where she could have come from as he lay still in his sleeping bag. On the ground where he had found a space for camp, he hadn’t seen any animal droppings nor did he notice any nesting areas in the dim twilight hours which preceded. The forest had gotten dark quickly, as he had set camp up, he remembered, and the unheated cans of meat, soup, and beans were the only things he ate. Stretching, he wondered if the smell of foods had attracted his feline visitor and sat up in his tent to look around at the foodstuff. It all appeared untampered with so my brother took out a loaf of bread, as the cat sat at the door flap and watched. He drank some water, reading his first letter to home while finishing a quick breakfast and started to stand up afterwards. Immediately, the cat stepped out of the tent waving her tail proudly in the air, inveigling Alex to follow her.
When it had left the tent, he saw her pure white coat was not dirty like a stray, so Alex idly wondered if it was someone’s lost pet; from Hobb or back home in Weare. As he slowly stepped out of the tent, she perched nearby on a log, laying and watching as he packed his belongings and folded the canvases. It was warming up outside and the sun was shining as Alex filled his knapsack. He took care to rewrap silverware which had made for a useful weapon resource during his escape the day before and was returning his thoughts to sordid moroseness and morbidity when he noticed the cat yawning, stretching, and carrying on with self-cleaning and licking her paws and fur. He watched for a moment until he caught her attention and she hopped off the log and rubbed his legs while he strapped his backpack on his shoulders. Then, when he was ready to reach down and pet her, she ran away from him toward a thick area of shrubs. She scurried under the low bushes and then turned to look back at him and Alex followed, thinking how although the river was in the opposite direction, perhaps she could show him where her home was, possibly leading the way to a place where there might be better shelter, food, or safety. The version of Ahmad who appeared in the cloak, whose valiant rescue by horse from Drakkyn was sabotaged, had been willing to assist him, so Alex hoped for a pet to possibly be kept by somebody else who would help.
Alex walked through the shrubs for a few minutes before he lost sight of the cat underneath the green foliage which was covering every inch of ground below him. Then, pricker bushes began to grow thicker and thistles started to fill his path. Spines shot sharply from leaves and thorns stuck out of nearly every branch which sprouted from thin tree trunks. Then, they grew thicker still, until the forest became filled with thorns shooting from trees and limbs branching off of brambling bushes. It was frustrating, but he was too far to turn around, so he found a way to turn his back to the brambles and push his backpack against them as a shield. Turning around to see how much further the brambles continued, he caught sight of a large clearing. When he finally reached through the dense pricker bushes, he turned to face a hawkweed field of daisies and wildflowers. The field stretched for over a mile on both his left and right, overgrown with rolling hills and plateaus.
He looked for the cat, his companion for the journey and didn’t see her. In front of him however, knoll after knoll for a couple thousand feet lay between a row of evergreen pine laurels and hedge bushes which rose high atop a plateau. Around this wall of green was a cement sidewalk, a surprise to Alex, making the scene even more bizarrely out of place, so he started to walk through the weeds toward it. At the top of the first hill, he could see a few hundred feet over the top of the bushes and it was enough to distinctly review within them. Inside the front row of bushes there were miles of rows and columns. He had never seen something so elaborately conceived by men of plants, yet it was also obviously not well maintained nor gardened regularly; with many segments of wild green bushes seeming to be missing and bare while others were either shortened or grown taller. When he looked around the hills, he saw the garden stretched much further on his left. Also, far out from where he stood toward the middle there was a ciborium dome structure glaring its staunch reflection.
Coming down from the second hill, the tall hawkweed and daisies were replaced with low crab grasses, dandelions, and nettles. The cat was rolling around the sidewalk in the sun and lay on its back as Alex continued to move towards the hedge wall. Closer to the cajoling cat, he saw behind her in the wall there was an interstice. He walked up and knelt above her as she tossed playfully to her belly, looking up. In contemplation, he stroked her fur for a while and looked into the hedges then, stood and walked through to see what was behind. There were just rows and columns, turns and paths between bushes, and he decided to try to at least walk in the direction of the structure in the middle. He still had enough food and it seemed alright to him as long as he kept walking straight and didn’t get upset if he didn’t find it on the first try. The cat had given him clues to follow and he decided to go forward and out toward the left.
Surprisingly, Alex walked in the general direction he had decided to begin on, to straight and left, and found his way through the maze with ease. Half an hour after embarking within the outer wall of hedges, he was walking into floral and botanical gardens which led to the flowering, ivied and immense arched walls of the white building he had seen from the hill. Along the short steps surrounding and leading into the building were boxes of pyracanth and sunflowers, in alternating boxes within the rings around it with brick footpaths separating them. Twelve thirty-foot tall and fifteen-foot-wide pillars comprised the inner, spectacular, circular ciborium center of the otherwise roofless building; making it slightly reminiscent of the smaller gazebo at the small lake in Hobb. This was Alex’s single hint to any original purpose of the structure besides the precarious caretaking of the magnificent garden surrounding it. It gave him the new hypothesis of it possibly being a special type of majestic monastery within the labyrinth. In the very center of the limestone building under the giant dome was a strange and mysterious object; a tall, brown clay- looking box on the tiled floor with tightly closed doors in doorframes which flushed out to the extremities of the weird box structure and metal doorknobs on each side.
From behind him, the cat burst through the garden to the door. Alex watched as she made meowing noises and scratched at the bottom of it and then walked back to him, and then, back up to the door. After he examined it from top to bottom and side to side, and then tested the doorknob; he opened it. Inside was the most deep, pitch-black, coy, dark emptiness of enticing, blank void he had never seen, dreamt of, or imagined the likeness of. The cat disappeared into the darkness and Alex stood with mouth agape, in total awe of the vanishing companion’s striding confidence through the nothingness within.
He thought it unwise to just jump into the door without being able to see inside, so he pleadingly called for her through the doorway, clicking his tongue and making kiss noises and tried to coax her back. When she didn’t return, he decided he should just put one hand into the blackness and see how it felt. The experiment yielded nothing conclusively informative and he was still able to see his hand waving through the empty doorframe, so he decided to move on to the next test which was to step through with one foot. As he was moving his leg through, he saw the cat’s eyes light up from behind the invisible veil of darkness and he was warped instantly into a force of magnetic attraction into a new room.
Despite the unnatural, nearly motionless movement, Alex underwent minimal physiological discomfort when he emerged inside a new room which appeared identical in decoration and layout to the dormitory of the church basement. Here, he saw two doors on either side of a tiny room, only ten feet wide. Twenty feet in front of him, the wall held the same ankh-cross as the church from the graveyard, near the cavern though. The cat meandered slowly and gracefully walked over to a bowl near a table in the room and began eating a portion of cat food from the dish. Alex was stunned but realized an opportunity might have arisen to check the cavern again, if he was nearby. He walked to the door on the right and turned the knob.
Inside, there were bunkbeds, the same as the church basement and another door was on the left side of the room. He walked across the bedroom, opened the door and saw across this next room through an open door into the hall of the basement. The cat was still in the room behind him, so he left all doors open and proceeded to the hallway staircase. Once he reached the top, he opened the door slowly, peeking through to the back room.
It was still light outside and the rays of sun hitting the stained-glass windows were enough to see clearly upstairs. Alex held the door open more and listened carefully for the quietness of solitude before having true faith in the church’s sanctity; as his belief had been ruined by Drakkyn once already.
There were no sounds to alarm Alex, only the soft patting of the cat’s climb of the stairs behind him. She ran out from behind again, and Alex began to move into the area in the church beyond the apse and altar wall. Then, he heard other footsteps louder, approaching him. He stepped back and closed the door slightly in front of him and waited. Then, there was a masculine voice, speaking fluent Spanish and cooing, clicking their tongue, and Alex realized it was someone with the cat. The footsteps continued and a man with a black soutane and Roman collar walked into the room, holding the white cat against his chest, petting her. He did not mark any resemblance to Drakkyn but he was suspicious looking, so Alex refused to step into the open. He was taller than average; over six feet and a hundred pounds bigger, dimensionally, than young Alex who was just over five-foot. He was much broader with wide, strong shoulders, and a belly that stuck out over his stocky thighs. His hair was curly and black but his skin tone was much darker than Drakkyn’s and he had a short beard, below a round nose and big brown eyes.
Behind him, more footsteps approached and a young man entered, holding a rifle. The young man was clean-shaven with very short hair like the other soldiers but his was more brunette-colored with bluer eyes. Most of the other soldiers had gray or green eyes and were blonder and larger. The priest turned to face the young man, who was not in military garb, and set the cat down, petting her once more as she ran in the opposite direction of the man with the rifle. At that precise moment, Alex sensed his vulnerability and closed the door to only a few inches and took slow steps backward down the staircase. He was unseen by the two men in the church and needed to hold his composure to remain uncaptured. The conversational tone between the two men caused enough noise for them to not hear his retreat and Alex was able to understand some of it as the young man spoke plain English with the older priest.
“Sir Torro, broadcast on the radio said the reinforcements are scheduled for a 10 A.M. debriefing outside the church. Is there anything else we need to do in here, before they arrive?” The young man addressed the priest in a manner which indicated he served as a personal apprentice; he kept his tone lowered, retained his cadence and patience.
“Oh now, how all human life is there -James.” Torro’s deep baritone replied in homage, wittily, and his footsteps approached the basement door above Alex whose lowering steps continued attentively, “Earlier this morning, Mr. Edmund, I was letting her out in the marabout. She usually likes to play along the pastures. Such a wise animal, always knowing its way through the maze, without need for any guide.” Even while the footsteps slowed, Alex did not dare to look behind him but moved swiftly backward to the landing, “My thoughts, if she has returned, there is definite probability of her having had contact with someone, the portal doors are always kept closed. Shall we check, my good, Mr. Edmund?”
Now, Alex knew the people upstairs were coming to see if he was in the basement. He also realized from what he had overheard, reinforcements would be following, too soon to try overtaking the two men alone. He looked up the stairs as he slid into the bedroom on the right where he had come from. Two shadows were cast down the stairway and their necks stretched across the last step to the landing. Alex closed the door again, to only a few inches, and backed up through the room until he hit the edge of the bunkbeds. He listened to Mr. Edmund’s voice in its whispers, unable to make out any distinct words and then heard another pair of shoes walking down the steps. He pushed off the bunkbed, rushing to the next room, tiptoeing but sweating from the pressure of his elusive acrobatics. The static air around his ears buzzed, his fright was wracking his brain and burning his eyes with strain. The door which he had come through, accidentally reentering the church basement, was open.
Again, Alex was warped through a black void and when he arrived in the maze garden, he felt queasiness and was becoming unexplainably short of breath. He wasn’t at all certain how this machine worked, so he closed the box’s door and stared uncertainly at it for a moment, trying to concentrate on what he should do next. He still had a backpack of food and water and remembering the water made him want to sit and rest. The maze would only provide a short amount of time for Alex to attempt evasive tactics from the organized troops which would be assembling behind the mysterious door.
Then, Alex heard a door open right next to him. He jumped but couldn’t see where the sound came from and the door he had used was still closed. Quickly realizing it was on the other side of the box, Alex spun and ran toward the inner rings of flowerboxes which surrounded the building. Suddenly, he heard a familiar voice echoing in the walls of the mystical limestone structure. “Alex Goode? Is that you?” Alex hadn’t made it off of the platform before he turned and saw Clark, his friend. “I thought it was you! Where were you? Did you see that train station covered with soldiers? I saw your brother, Alex. Ted was shot in the stomach, dead. I came to find you.” Alex was walking back, hesitantly but already was feeling relief and could sense Clark could be trusted.
“Clark? Where did you come from? Train station? That door I came through-“ Alex was excitedly interrupted but stopped himself from competing to speak his turn, opting instead to listen thoroughly and walk to Clark. He wanted to look inside the door Clark had opened and emerged from and stay close enough to move through it, if Torro and Mr. Edmund came.
“Yeah, I heard you were missing, from Jacob, after you all went fishing. I just looked on the hill, because I was thinking it would be easy, enough, to find you. Hey, this door has a train station-“ Clark was now interrupted by Alex who grabbed Clark’s arm, pulling him through the doorway. Clark continued though, on the other side where they were in the train station Alex had seen in Hobb. “I’ve been experimenting with this weird thing. The other door just led to the back of a pet shop. But, anyway, I saw you coming down the hills, when I found a telescope station on the roof of a strange mortuary. I think it’s the owners of this place’s family, behind the dead end by the church... I’ve been here, a while, I had to push some rocks out of the way, just to make it through that cavern on your hill… Actually, I wasn’t sure it was you, because you had that strange uniform on, and that backpack.” Clark was wearing normal clothes and this set Alex on alert, immediately. They had come out of this door somewhere else entirely, and it was mobbed with army troops unlike the church. Alex grabbed Clark’s arm and pulled him to a nearby wall which was lined with crates and cages. Clark was surprised, then concerned as he noticed Alex’s trembling fear.
“Clark, they’re going to see us. I forgot I had on these clothes, but these soldiers are going to kill us. They’ll kill anybody from America who they find, and they’ve been chasing me for days. We have to get out of here, but the church is being set up as a patrol station, now. That box, with the doors, somehow connects to different places in this town, which is called Hobb. From what I’ve seen, we aren’t really underground, somehow, we’re somewhere else... They make replicas of people, too, they made a copy of Ted.”
Train whistles were blowing in the station and a freighter was coming down the tracks. The floor around the two boys was shaking and rumbling and the soldiers were scrumming into lines, grouping into their assigned positions along the stage for unloading whatever was being transported. Clark was trying to talk more but Alex could barely understand anything he was saying. He looked up at the door they had entered through and realized the chances of Torro and Mr. Edmund following them were high. Also, as he looked around, he wondered if they would be spotted during the loading of the train. All around them were crates and boxes, cages and containers, of all different sizes. Most of them on their side seemed to have plants, fertilizer soils, and boxes with foodstuffs which were labeled. The other side of the station, past booths where soldiers were showing identification to porters and baggage sat on benches while loaders and dispatchers were waiting for the trains; there were more crates and cages, some containing visible animals and livestock.
Several men in plainclothes and some in denim-overall suspenders were walking as a group through the mob, passing by the tramping two children when Alex saw someone in the middle of the crowds who looked exactly like Clark but wearing different clothes. The other Clark was looking around, then he noticed the plainclothes group as they were almost past Alex and he caught Alex’s eyes. Alex tried to duck behind the crates further, squishing against the wall but his friend was too late and his jaw dropped and he began turning pale when he saw his mirror image standing in the station. “Oh my gosh.”
The other Clark was waving and shouting, pointing at their hiding spot. They had been discovered, Alex was cornered and Clark was doomed. The door they had come through reopened and Torro walked through angrily. Torro was traveling alone but immediately saw the fake Clark and traced his index finger over to the crates where the two cohorts in cahoots were trapped.
Then, Barry stepped out from the mob, untouched in full health, and took a long machete out of a sheath which was hanging off his belt. Clark raised his arms, meekly attempting to cover his head from the swinging blade. As the scrawny, decapitated body fell limply against Barry’s shins, Alex slipped into the chaos. Torro walked over to Clark’s severed head and kicked it over with his shoe, looking into the face of the invader. Alex waited near the portal door for Barry and everyone else around the train station to realize they were in the midst of killings. When their attention was fully on Barry and Torro, he pushed through the door back into the maze garden.
Alex looked around the garden quickly and went to the other side to see the door was still open which led to the church. He hesitated, knowing soldiers would be coming, so he opened one of the remaining two doors, praying it to be the correct, safer choice. Stepping through the next door, that fearful feeling returned, shortness of breath and nausea, blinding light and buzzing noise.
This room was dark. He put his hands out in front of him and slowly straightened them out, stretched them around his sides and then dropped to the floor, feeling the surface below. Al’s eyes were barely adjusting to the room when a light was turned on. An Ahmad stood with a lantern by a door which led through a large storeroom; filled with caged animals, noisy and smelly. Stepping behind him, another man came into view in the doorframe.
“See, Motu? I told you these animals were acting unruly for a reason. They smell Alex, our boy.” Ahmad was smiling and started to laugh as Motu firmly grabbed Alex’s shoulder. Motu was a fatter, dark-skinned man, shorter, and with straight, black hair, and combed, paper-thin moustache. He was wearing bifocals and looked Asian and snickered with groomed lips. He wrinkled his nose as he inspected Alex’s face.
Ahmad leaned in, over Motu’s shoulder. “Another riddle for you, Alex. If you were given an anonymous gift of a button which would kill anyone else in the world, in return for all monies owned by another person, entirely, both at random; would you press it?”
ALEX6&7
6
6a.)
When night had fallen in Weare, I was adamantly preparing my monologues and imagining myself wangle through scenarios of conversation and memorizing various points in my complex story. But by morning, after deep sleep had erased my sense of immediacy and danger, the investigation was pitifully useless. Sitting with the detective, I was kept on a limited number of questions, involving my missing brother and more was said about my witnessing of Mr. Lyle Hearst’s strange murder than anything. Groggily, I had awoke with marred vigor to help my brother until increased pressures and contrived stares from the investigator and his partner; Detective Blake Plympton and Detective Tol Gettinger; heaping their unwarranted suspicions which orchestrated the undermining of my unspeakable guilt. Soon, I was strongly subduing any initiative to admit lack of innocence. By 9:30 AM, I already had whittled my testimony to bare sketches and my peart mind became sluggish. The lamenting of lost mentors was not as convincing as hoped and I became desperate in dwindling minutes as my statements were recorded.
First, Detective Plympton asked if I was alone outside of the barn at our house the day Mr. Lyle Hearst was murdered. My answer explained there was only Mrs. Wilson and my mother inside, waiting for me to retrieve groceries. Then, I was asked to identify the man who had kidnapped me and Detective Plympton handed me a picture of Barry Reeves which I confirmed. At that time, I had made it already clear what had happened when I arrived, so when the detective asked me if I had seen anyone else inside the barn, I told him about the giant rats. He convinced me however, to make an official statement describing them as wild animals the size of large dogs. When he asked me to explain where Barry Reeves had taken me, I gave the description of the cave on our hill, although all of us never entered it together because I hoped it would still lead them to where Alex had been lost. That was all the questions and Detective Plympton asked father to speak in private, so I was dismissed and left the den.
The remainder of my day was used unwinding from the tenseness of the interview and with very little communication between my parents and I. Encyclopedias were useful for using as much energy possible directly after I left the den room, and I was studiously spending time in my bedroom until afternoon, when my appetite began to catch up to me. Later in the day I would finish “The Tomb,” in the Weird Tales volume lent to me by my brother. Our father spent the afternoon in his study, after the morning which was spent half with the detectives and half in the barn cleaning up after Sunday’s ambulance. However, midnight hours had just struck in Hobb where Alex was encaged.
Three and a half billion years ago, the first instance of microorganisms began as archaea prokaryotes, which are single-celled organism lacking nuclei. Nuclei contain much of the translatable, reproductive, and utilizable genetic information of cells. The remaining instances of the archaea species have only 15% of their genome proteins used by their cell processes. This contrasts humans’ brains, for instance, which use 100% despite perpetuated myths which have disputed otherwise. Another prokaryote which is pivotal to the function of Earth’s living ecosystems is cyanobacteria, blue-green algae, which is hugely involved in the photosynthesis of oxygen.
Eukaryotes are cellular organisms which contain nuclei, and structured membranes to control various functions of the cells. Plants and animals are eukaryotes, as well as most other kinds of algae. Red algae, for instance, or rhodophyta, is a common marine seaweed with multiple cellular variations. There are also versions of rhodophyta which are considered terrestrially asexual, such as in sea caves with high sulphuric acidity, but since 25% of genetic lineage of the original organisms eventually became extinct, the evolution was bottlenecked. They are still an internationally implemented ingredient, popularly in European and Asian cuisines, as a traditional food additive.
In 1887, German scientist Julius Richard Petri invented the petri dish, which was a shallow dish which could be covered and used for experiments with biologic organisms, microscopic measurements, standardized scientific instruments and equipment and studies of populations of microorganisms. In contrast with the microscope slide, which does not allow for very many populations to grow with controlled inputs of food and water, it allowed for new experimentation methods to implemented. One of the easiest microorganisms to be produced in any natural setting on the world is bacteria, which you can find on almost any surface of the planet. Curating the sample of bacteria is easy, with a piece of cotton or by extraction through Pasteur’s pipette, or eyedropper. Most of the common bacterial samples have the same food source, too, and it is obtained by simply boiling rhodophyta cellular walls to create a substance called agar.
With water, agar, and a sample of bacteria in a petri dish, you will see the bacterial reproduction to multiply on what is expected to be a naturally exponential rate. The hypothesis exists, of how controlled sources of infinite food and water within a petri dish can simulate the overpopulation problem of Earth’s living ecosystem. The bacteria begin as a small spot on the dish, then grows to its maximum capacity. Soon, the amount of food and water no longer is as necessary for the bacteria’s survival as is space, air, maneuverability and the elements which are required for internal processes to continue uninhibited. &, the bacteria’s most suffocated segments blacken and die, causing those portions of the dish to become uninhabitable and useless to the population. Then, the bacteria die out completely, essentially becoming an extinct organism within its unique habitat.
Alex couldn’t get his mind off of Clark’s untimely, horrific death. His wide blue eyes facing Barry’s reflecting wave, shining bright like two suns in a desert sky. The flesh tearing on his neck like pie, blood splattering into his dark brown hair as his head landed on the dirty train station platform. His cheek being smushed together under Torro’s shoe, his lips curling like a taunting prankster or schoolyard bully. No kids our age from anywhere we were familiar with had seen such violent atrocities of demonic evil; it was unthinkable even for children whose parents had been overseas in war and whose grandparents or at least great grandparents had been alive during the American Civil War. After what I had seen at the lake, I knew the psychological horror wrought from seeing a child murdered but Alex was still completely alone.
He twitched with anger throughout the night, having been thrust into a cage; and then he sat alone, ripened in bitterness in the back of the warehouse. The first letter which Alex had written alongside eight sheets of paper was rolled in his pocket and as he sat, he dreamt of the freedoms enjoyed by us, his family at home in Weare. He remembered how he had always supported my scholarly studies, admired my intelligence, and had never interfered with my days’ dreaming of higher purpose, experimental writings, or exploratory drawing. However, respect for my creative process became mutated into an internal source of sorrow, his wishes to look with me toward a future, unfulfilled, desire, uninterrupted, to hold faith to a joyous tomorrow; all, no longer promised. Not claiming to disparage my endeavors, only to sacrifice his sovereignty and renew his cache of pain for exchange with anger, he more tangibly controlled.
There were times when shapes and shadows would move around the room in front of his cage. There were moments when the sudden movements would catch his eye and he would become lost in thought about their origins. Other times, they would move too fast and disturb him, while he contemplated other ideas and memories; when the speed of life’s events was incongruent with the observations currently allotted from his viewpoint in the cage. He thought sometimes about his father’s job; inmates at penitentiaries and at jails. He thought about the Black Moriahs, and the people who were immobile within a moving police van. When there was no movement for long periods of time, he would worry he’d been forgotten, abandoned to die already.
The chaotic noise and horrific sounds he heard in the dark, back corner of the shop composed an outrageous symphony. Against his internal, oblique rhythm, the animals roared and raised again, in contrary, deceptive cadences. The animals would die down for stretches of mere quarter hours at most and only in certain portions of the room. Other areas would remain a racket almost every second and reminded him of instigators or antagonists in the schoolroom when the loud and offensive were infectious of the rest of the students. Then though, there were rules and restrictions, civilized etiquette for even childishly impolite and uncouth, whereas here, there were none observable for mature conduct. Each section of catastrophic cacophony played louder and louder, drowning each other out in competition for dominance.
But the abomination of the smells was foul and the stench drove him to sleepless dementia. Practically comatose with fear, he lay on his back with his neck leaning against the cage which was dimensionally too small for him. His eyes remained open as if reviewing the recent sequences of situations which led him to this predicament. Hour after hour, he waited in the darkness and as night slipped by, he lost any hope. Thoughts flashed in his head concerning my own safety and whether I had even permanently escaped or if I had returned after Clark and died in a similarly grotesque ending.
His neck began to stiffen and he felt malnourished and weak; the beginnings of getting sick. Alex straightened up and looked up at the corners of the ceiling. He could see two sides of the room’s walls; the others were obstructed by cages and shelving. The side of his cage was pushed up against the wall behind him and the other side was only fifty feet away and both were taller than most residential house’s ceilings; stretching forty feet high. There weren’t any visible windows where he was sitting but as time continued into morning hours, there was a gradual lightening from the hanging fixtures above, inside the shop. Finally, he could see well enough to write a part of his next letter to us. He hadn’t made it very far with the composition when he began to feel sicker and also needed to relieve his bowels and bladder. With nowhere to go besides in his cage, he started to consider whether he should hold himself when he heard the noises around him excessively raising decibel. Alex folded his writing promptly and looked around, expecting to notice another person’s presence. It was the early daytime and the duties entailed in zoological maintenance were pending and overdue. If the animals were taken care of, then it may mean contact with the people responsible for his captivity. He idly watched as birds flew around the ceiling and walls, yet never came near to him.
Shelving units surrounding his cage prevented clear visibility of the myriad species; wild and tamed within the space. Yet, he felt strangely comforted he heard the whimpering of a dog or animal’s begging, coming from the furthest corner. To Alex, this was interpreted to mean that it was probably going to be a wait before he met the people or person in charge. However, laughter erupted on the side that was being tended already, sounding distinctly like it was Ahmad. Then, whirring of gears and machine parts buzzed around the cages along the walls. There were a few strange machines which were moving laterally within the rows of cages, pausing at each cage for a half minute and turning on pivots around corners throughout the animal shelter. When the machine working down his side came close, Alex saw red lights shining a spectral ray, flat, oblique, opaque, raising and lowering along six-foot wide spots in quick five second intervals. Then, the machine shot a similarly-shaped spray of ubiquitous liquid into the air, followed with two more noises which sounded like extending and retracting mechanical arms. He had yet to lay eyes on Ahmad or Motu, so Alex waited patiently to see what would happen next, in silence.
When the machine finally came within view, it rolled across the floor to Alex’s cage. It was a pyramid-shaped robotic machine which lay on four swiveling wheels, and at the top of its pinnacle was a leveled off small platform which held a tripod carrying a telescopic lens. On one side however, the pyramid shape was incurvate with five-inch-wide drawers hanging at a low height from the bottom and an odd, spherical fixture extended from the frame at a slightly higher point. The robot was controlled from a remote location and was functioning off of programming which was transmitted through radio signals; received through an array of antennae, sticking off three top corners. It rolled to Alex’s cage and then came to a stop, three feet away, with its lens facing him. Alex’s cage was metal on all sides, half-inch squares comprised of thick rods; much too strong to bend. The robot’s lens began to shine the red lights; starting along the bottom of the cage.
Again, laughter erupted from nearby and Alex assumed it was still Ahmad; deriving his assumption from the exposition of his comical, characteristic display at the pet shop. It took his attention away from the robot’s mechanisms until he saw the other, darker-skinned and short, strange man approach from around the left corner of his row behind the shelves which shook as he passed. Behind him, Ahmad came into view, briefly observing Alex’s reaction to Motu and then walking back behind the shelves. Ahmad was carrying a small box with a panel configured with buttons and an inset stick in the middle of the contraption. It was a foot long and almost as wide with an antenna extending from the end pointing away from Ahmad. Ahmad pushed three buttons and the robot immediately stopped shining the red lights and pushed out two trays from the drawers which extended long ramps with conveyer belts on them. The ramps connected directly to the cage where there were two slats of metal which were lifted up by small clasps on the tips of the ramp. The ramp on the right slowly dropped an orange-colored, paper-covered bowl of water in front of Alex.
Ahmad laughed more from the other row. Then, Motu approached and spoke to Alex about his physical condition in the cage, “Alex Goode, are you well this morning?”
Confused, Alex responded by shaking his head, “no.” “I haven’t gone to the bathroom all night. I’m hungry.”
Motu frowned and turned his head to the shelving behind him, shouting, “Ahmad, fetch a bedpan!” Then, he continued to speak to Alex, “We don’t want you to get too dirty, before Drakkyn returns. Drakkyn has to finish what he started with you, before your escape efforts, yesterday. He will be here soon.”
Ahmad walked back, pushed two more buttons on the box in his hands and a robot rolled backwards and turned right, rolled straight past Ahmad across the nearest set of shelving units and right again away from Alex and down the next aisle. He was wearing a long trench coat now and had a lever-action rifle slung over his back. He also was wearing a trilby hat covering his short, black, curly hair, and horse-riding boots without stirrups. Ahmad spun around and walked over to watch the robot’s movements while Alex sat back down against the rear side of his cage. Motu disappeared too, and Alex was left alone, straining to control his nervous trembling.
Five minutes later, Motu arrived again, carrying a jute matting and bedpan. He put the bedpan on the cage and stood back a few feet as Alex looked up at it. Next, Motu pulled out a magnum revolver and a key from underneath his white lab coat and scrubs and held the pistol close to the cage’s bars while he reached up to a set of locks with the key. Motu’s hair was tied underneath a taqiyah and he was wearing a surgical mask and smock underneath his lab coat. The gun which he had taken out was held in a belt holster which became visible as he reached up to the locks around the cage. Alex hadn’t seen any of these locks as they were built-in with the cage’s top, two-inch-thick, metal edge. There were three locks along the top, Alex saw now, and three along each vertical side, all which took the same key as Motu reached to the second lock, turned his key and unlocked it. When he had only the one on the top left and two on the left side atop the cage opened, he stretched up the top left corner and slid the bedpan into the slit. After it fell in front of Alex and rattled around the floor, Motu relocked each lock. Then, he threw the matting over the top and adjusted it to let it hang off the side to the floor, providing cover on a part of the cage.
It was almost half an hour later when Ahmad returned with Motu and carried a tray with a napkin over it, which Alex hoped would contain his food. Motu manually opened the slatted sheet of metal on Alex’s left and Ahmad took the napkin and pushed it into the hole, quickly. Alex didn’t pounce at any opportunity to attack Ahmad’s hand, instead he feasted his eyes on the turkey drumstick and bread bun sitting in the tray and waited for them both to be pushed through and dropped onto the napkin.
“Two hours. The Pharaoh is finishing reassignment of the committee. Enjoy your last meal.” Ahmad swung his rifle under his armpit and tapped Alex’s cage with the barrel and the two men walked away behind shelving.
6b.)
It was late in the afternoon in Weare and father had not left his private study all day, striking his paltry, noon lunch-time, and a two o’clock bathroom break. Every time I was in the hallway, whether to eat a snack, grab water, or use the bathroom, I would perk my ears and eyes around the stairway to the attic. Sometimes I heard the radio but I wasn’t sure if it was static from a misdialed broadcast station or if the police radio was on, and sometimes I would hear his voice on the phone or radio and be unsure which, or if it was the house phoneline or his private business line. When he walked down the stairs, all of my activities at my room’s desk became exaggeratedly slow as I divided concentrating my attention to my study or reading while monitoring his presence; whether he would speak to me or just checking to hear if he still had left the radio on, or behind, up in his study in the attic. Then, he would return in tranche and I would act with sincere innocence as though my luck could become purified if I remained incorruptible.
When three o’clock had gone by and I had done nothing except sit and read all day, I exhaustedly decided it was time for a shift of my focus from books and drawings to the weekly, broadcast radio entertainment. I would try anything possible to keep my mind from dwelling on the inevitably unchangeable distance from my lost brother and fill his absence with simple placidity. As I walked down the stairs, I thought I heard my father’s footsteps coming from the attic behind me but as I slowed my movements’ rhythm there were only floorboards’ lightly thumping above as he paced and spoke in a garbled decibel on the phone. Downstairs, I walked into the den room and sat in the seat nearest the radio. Mother was upstairs in her office room and loneliness sunk into my brain, pushed my backbone against the seat as I leaned my elbows against my knees and looked at the radio dial.
Pushing the dial over to an AM station and flicking the power on, I hadn’t even heard enough notes to identify the melody which was broadcast when there was a ring from the phone in the dining room. After about five seconds of distracted listening, I turned the volume down quickly. Nobody had picked up the phone, so I yelled up the stairs, “Can I pick it up?” But nobody responded and I assumed mother had answered the call, so I sat back and tried to hear her talking to the caller upstairs. Compulsively, I wanted to find out if it was one of my friends but realized how the recent events had disrupted the entire working dynamic of our family and social lives.
There was nothing I could do to help my brother besides run, and there was no escaping my conscience. Even as I turned the radio back on, I realized the rest of the summer was already ruined. Arguably, there was no recourse with which I could have prevented the situation I was in and essential continuation against the indomitable forces of the world seemed to be a destined failure, ultimately incriminating myself beyond redemption. Remaining inactive was the only thing keeping me from falling into mourn; stagnation was a compromise with which I traded for in emotionally overwhelming myself.
The radio was drowned out by my thoughts and I was startled when I felt the hand on my shoulder. Not knowing whose it was, I spun my neck to the side and jumped in my chair grabbing for the wrists. My mother stood with a serene smile, she was obviously not new to high pressure and demanding times but the loss of her eldest child was a load which bore heavy burden, too suddenly to shake off. Calmly though, she said to me, “Alex’s friends are all worried about him. & us, too. Jacob’s family hasn’t let him go outside today, which you know is surprisingly authoritative for Mr. Murphy.” Standing and watching my reaction while I thought of how to respond, mother turned her gaze towards the front window. “You know, Darren hasn’t shown back up at home. & I just spoke to your father after getting off the phone, and Clark has gone missing since this morning. We are so thankful, you are alright. Your father is trying to take this week off from working, even though they need him right now. Mrs. Wilson will come back later this week, or by the weekend, at the latest.”
Still, I didn’t know how I should react but hearing about Clark’s disappearance made me even more uncomfortable. Mother probably didn’t realize my sensitivity; yet she had told me about our babysitter, which made me think she wanted to distance even herself from the ongoing search as well as from even the inaner interactions of household upkeep and communication to, or about her children. It wasn’t really until she walked out of the den room when I gave more thought to Clark’s disappearance. It reminded me of Alex’s attempt to rescue me from Barry Reeves and I tried to think of the possibility of there being other entrances to Hobb other than the cave, or if there was some way to get through the cave to remove the rocks which blocked it all off. Before then, I thought I was somewhat safe at home but now I was significantly less positive of our safety; even together. The need for amelioration became drastic and it pressed much more parlous action to be strategized.
6c.)
While Alex’s malnourishment meant his ability to digest food was hindered by his own biological processes breaking down of metabolic catalysts, Drakkyn was preparing to monopolize distribution chains throughout the international economic market. While America was unprepared to take position as world trade leader because of overspending on government, and symptoms of impairment of freedom through nonreciprocal tax burden hardships, Hobb was busy completely replacing the existing structured demographics of all world governments. Alex was only a pawn now, but as a spirit unto his own; was defiant to the tyranny of despotism he was victimized by. The excessive gears of industry were in motion, the dimension of Hobb was binding its contract with its cache of accelerated resources and manpower.
In the back row of filthy and dark storeroom, Alex sat in the gloom, stinking from untamable pheromones of rebelling wild, surrounded with the feral furies by encaged animals, vengefully poised. Either side of him were cages filled with dead bodies. He was preparing to die without valor or hope of seeing the day’s light, Earth’s sun, or freedom of life.
But something happened which changed the course of destiny. As Alex battled against death’s grip, he was startled by a tremendous crash from across the warehouse. Just as he was letting go of resistance, beginning to succumb in futile despair, the crashing noise was followed by a deep roaring bellow, resonating against the walls and ceiling of the storage shop and the noise echoed in each cage where the animals renewed their plethora of restless rage. The sounds of banging persisted and Alex sensed scuffling beasts rushing around in an ensorcelled frenzy, released. Dogs ran amok in his peripheral vision and out of the corner of his eye he saw birds flocking and heard other animal calls.
The monster which had freed the animals in the warehouse toppled over the shelves near Alex, causing the contents to fall loose over his cage. His sight was blocked and in the covered cage’s darkness there were muffled noises all around him.
Gunshots and then something threw his cage onto its side, trampling over it, and parts of the warehouse were visible again. An enormous, black grizzly bear was fighting with Ahmad and Motu, growling and slashing with paws which were four feet wide and a ferocious mouth of sharp teeth that was the size of a small house as it stood on four legs. My brother saw broken links in the ripped bars and pried them loose enough with the bedpan to fit through the ramshackle cage.
Before Ahmad and Motu could react, he stumbled to the back room of the shop. Then, after recovering the contents of his backpack which were haphazardly left in the vicinity of his exit, he was running toward the room containing the portal door which led back to the ciborium. In the room of the portal door, he noticed a small map brochure on a table and grabbed it.
He made it through the hedge maze far enough to rest, eat, and recount in his next letter to us, those crazed moments of his amazing encounter. Then, he tossed himself into a shady briar-patch bush and slept.
7
7a.)
Alex had slept in broad daylight and to late afternoon but when he awakened, he was still disoriented without enough preparation for lengthy rest, hungry, and did not know the correct time of day. To him it seemed early, possibly just after 1 PM, but in fact it was almost 5 PM. His eyes were adjusting slowly to the sun’s glare as he crawled out of the hole which he had hidden himself in, made of thorny branches and flowers. He vaguely began to remember faint noises and sounds he had heard somewhere toward the center of the maze, the marabout garden, while he had slept. The memories were lucid seeds in a fabricated dream field, woven within an invisible planet’s plains of consciousness. But now there were only birds’ chirps, the buzz of insects, and the call of a crow somewhere, reverberating the conifer walls and air around him. He looked around for any traces of the soldiers who had searched the area but the cleared walkways showed no marks or signs of passage. Finally, he sat down further away from the spot he had made his nesting and looked at ants gathering and lining near the edge of the cement along the pathway. He was still feeling the effects of his tormentors’ abuse, hadn’t slept for more than eight hours in the past couple of days, and his diet of canned food hardly met his normal meal requirements.
He had to reason with himself to stand up, his moxie completely exhausted, and his rationale was simply how organization of the enemy’s search for him would be more persistent and effective than his own efforts to abscond. Alas, his road to home’s providence was blocked while the gateway to perdition was faceted. The gamble of approximation seemed to be his only salvation as he slowly decided which way to go on his quest, but with a renewed vigor he set down his backpack and held out his stolen prize from Motu’s warehouse. He garnished his map while hiding in the hodgepodge hedges and arboretum gardens of ciborium maze and fervidly routed his emancipation.
The brochure he had taken was a single-fold pamphlet, like a booklet with four pages which contained maps. The front page was headlined ‘Hobb,’ and contained a map of the town he and I had visited previously, which contained the train station, Innn, and lake. The second page contained a page dedicated to the maze which showed the entire plot as it had been intentionally constructed. Next, was an outline of the surrounding areas of Hobb, the river, the church, and other landmarks with legend descriptions. The back panel had a picture of the railroad and the areas it connected to in the region.
Alex studied the rail system and admired the workmanship which must have been involved with setting the intricate design illustrated. According to the map legend; the railroad at the station in Hobb traveled northeast to an oceanic or sea cape marked Nobb, or southwest toward a bay and river delta on a huge sea area marked Gobb. Past the inland sea, the railroad continued across the river until it turned east around a bend and crossed the river again at another area in the south, before continuing back to Hobb. The northern cape made one tail of a circuit as well, as it bent western and looped along the coast, before returning to the Hobb station.
While looking at the map of the rail-serving region, Alex compared it with our geographic area in New England, and there were some remarkable similarities although he appeared to be on a western coast. It seemed like a reasonable assumption to think the northern area was part of an ongoing expansion from Hobb. There seemed to be age, structurally, in the buildings around Hobb, and the people there must have needed a place where they could outsource work. The southern area near the giant ocean reminded him of the Great Lakes on the border of Canada and the United States and the place where the railroad crossed may have been an area for resource gathering. The planet of Hobb was alike our own in almost every way and it would make sense for it to follow the rules of physics and geologic formation which Earth did. If it was true for it to be the same in those attributes, then it would have had the same causes for ice ages and glaciation causing sedimentary depositional landforms. Crustal plate tectonic theory would have been a critical contributor to the permanent creation of the water cycle which we witnessed with fog and rain, and this also meant the oceans would have saline properties from volcanic activity. We had seen the moon and this might have created global tidal movements but the stars were brighter and fuzzier which may have meant a thinner atmosphere. Considering all of this was important as he would need to know what laid at the ends of the railroad in Hobb and if another dimensional teleportation system existed out from their universe.
Alex opened the pamphlet up and looked at the two maps on either side of the inside sleeves. Topography which the right-hand map showed was the outlying areas including the cemetery, church, and the ciborium’s location. Forgetting Drakkyn’s discombobulating compass directions at the church, the train station was located on the far eastern edge of the paper and the railroad went up and down the side of the paper. To the north of the city of Hobb was the ciborium, the maze, and the river flowing to the left across and over the church, and in the middle of the page was the cemetery, underneath which was the long road into Hobb and the other part of the river which flowed to it, with the lake where we had been lost together right after I was kidnapped by Barry. For the first time, Alex distinguished the differences between the two separate rivers which he had seen in the area around Hobb. He had jumped off of the Innn’s wall and landed on a different side of the stream which came out of the lake in Hobb leading to the maze he was in. The southern river which flowed into the lake came from mountains in the south and continued into the forest with the waterfall and bridge, where we had heard the growling and walked down the brick hill to Hobb, while the northern branch continued west and then curled back to Nobb. This meant there were high-altitude mountains between Gobb, where the river collected tributaries, and Hobb, where the water was used for irrigation and agriculture as well as purified in the pump stations for drinking and consumption. Down the road far west from the church cemetery was the location of the pet shop, or storage warehouse, next to which laid a manmade canal with barges and dams through a zone which looked like a vast farming area, connecting at the northern river, before curling back to Nobb. This confirmed the distance he traveled from the portal box within the maze.
The left-hand sleeve contained a legend for the portal box, depicting the four locations which the portal box traveled to and three caricatures of governing officials with unique inscriptions of presiding title and district office over a miniature artistic representation of the maze’s interior walls. On the left side, the portal box pointed to the pet shop where Ahmad and Motu had tried to hold Alex in the cage. It was symbolized by a drawing of a warehouse with high windows and a dog’s silhouette above a giant door. Below the portal box was the cemetery church where the cavern was located and Drakkyn had captured Alex once with the rat-witch. It was pictured with an insignia of the ankh-cross. The train station shown on the right where Torro and Barry had killed Clark, had a railroad crossing sign. The top portal showed the Innn where the dog had chased Alex on the horse up the ramp and over the wall and it was signified by the tall radio tower. The three figures drawn on the top of the page were clearly meant to be Drakkyn with his hemhem, Motu with a taqiyah, and Torro with a zucchetto. Drakkyn was pictured below the church and portal box and above the maze diagram and had the inscription underneath “Pharaoh of Hobb.” Motu was to the left of the warehouse and had the inscription “Keeper of Nobb.” Torro, to the right of the train station where an inscription read “Warlock of Gobb.” Over the top of the first page simply was a variation of strange character which occupied the “O” in the watch posts in front of Hobb’s entry arch and gateway. It was the numeric “4” in a calligraphic font with serifs on its strokes up and down, but this version had a small trident pointed downward in the open center of script symbol like an inverted “Y” with its middle line extended.
The front of the pamphlet was dedicated to Hobb and illustrated the town neatly. It showed the hill with red bricks leading through the gateway at the bottom and between the guarded watch towers until it split in two and went up to the train station on the right and hotel on the left. Toward the left the road veered around the lake and met with an intersecting road which ran across the page east to west and to the right it veered around the field. There were writings and legends on the front, describing the buildings in the town but they were in another language which Alex could not decipher.
Looking at the picture of the hotel in Hobb, he remembered the hundreds of vehicles and cars which were parked around the front. He wondered if he could drive one himself, since many were abandoned and not patrolled by any soldiers when he had last been there. If he could hijack a big enough truck, Alex thought it might be possible to harness ropes around the boulders blocking the cavern, tugging away the blockage with the motorized engine’s power. The multitude of risks included possibilities of being spotted and killed by guards and soldiers, apprehended trying to take control of the automobile or chased while driving the escape vehicle. Despite all of these conceivable negatives, it seemed his only viable hope was to attempt a heroic siege by himself.
Deep within his meditation, Alex’s breaths were pulling loudly through his nostrils, pumping his stomach with air, and his mind was beginning to completely clear before he charged into the portal box. As wind whistled with his inhaling chest, he thought he heard a soft tune in the maze, a slow melody picking faster pace as it grew louder through the hedges. It was surreal and he stopped his breath short during an exhale and looked deep within the rows of fauna around him. In the momentary silence, he heard music from blown instrument, a stripped sound which echoed against the sidewalk and hills, reverberating arpeggio and combined chord arrangements, haunting the air. As he moved toward it, standing up, he heard it soften again, and on his feet the noise ceased, deliberately synchronized. He walked through the maze in the direction of the ciborium and as he came to a turn leading into the garden, he saw something in the bushes; glowing eyes. Green eyes, brighter than the hue of grasses and slit downward like cats’ pupils.
At first Alex winced into the dark undergrowth around the eyes, then stepped back as a form began to emerge from within the bush. The body coming forth moved through without rustling nor bending branches and pines and in the open light on the sidewalk Alex saw a tall, strong man, with wild, greyed hair and beard, horns like a goat, hooves and wool-covered legs. In his right hand he held a flute, his grinning expression was calm and he gently plucked a wooden branch off of the bush and chewed it. “Don’t look surprised, Alex. Do people on Earth not remember me, at all? I’ve understood I was declared dead, but I’ve always returned when I was needed. From continents to countries, dragon lairs, dungeons, and asylums of insanity, now mazes through universal portals. I am Pan, I have traveled all through the dimensions and brought strength to life, given power to the animal spirits.”
A primeval God spoke to Alex and my brother was speechless. Tired, confused, and not entirely sure who Pan was, Alex felt reassured by Pan’s non-violent attitude when the God pulled a thyrsus out of his belt and held it to Alex, showing the red amulet placed in the middle of the fennel buds. Alex’s eyes lit up as he recognized the shining diamond within golden clasps. “It’s Teddy’s amulet!”
“This? This is not an amulet,” Pan laughed and waved the thyrsus, “This is the Relic of Khronos. I have it inside Dionysus’s wand, it is how I let your brother and you use it to travel through dimensions. Would you like to know why, Alexander Goode?”
My brother nodded but he had never heard of these ancient Gods. Pan was a son of Hermes, tutored by Dionysus while his father handled contracts within the Greek empire’s treasuries. Khronos was primeval however, and predated even the eldest of the mortals’ Gods, with control of man’s perceptions, time, and birth to death. Dionysus was God of intoxication, infatuation, addictiveness, alcohol, and euphoria. The thyrsus itself was Dionysus’s wand of divine fermentation. The 1920’s American Prohibition had been implemented and was in effect throughout the country, so Alex’s bewondered reaction to the Gods who were behind the work of commercialized alcoholism was predictably distrusting. He wanted to know what Pan meant about giving permission to use the amulet when I had never mentioned nor seen any accessory nor mentor, Godly or otherwise.
“I have three reasons to allow you to use this wand, Alex. Firstly, I know I can trust you and your family for the roles I have assigned you all. This should be self-explanatory, but I am one of the Gods of Earth, and with the power to travel to other universes where I bring movement to inert planetary evolutions, there comes an insight of the spirits of animals which inhabit those dimensions. Secondly, by letting you and your brother temporarily use the Chroni in separate, I have introduced each member of your family at home’s involvement to experience the travel through Hobb’s secret portal. Thirdly, luring your father to this world will lead to its destruction, only if you are able to continue to survive and escape Hobb.” Pan handed Alex the Chroni and his upper lip curled with pride. “I helped you and your brother, twice, by triggering the effects of the wand. Now I will let you use it on your own to travel unseen through Hobb. When Drakkyn arrived here to gather the resources of this universe, he discovered an abundance of a certain element which was absent on Earth. Most of it he can collect from the ocean, in the place called Nobb. When he brings it to the land of rivers, Gobb, he uses it to energize powerful machinery and create electricity. As he started to search this world, he found the fuel here in Hobb, in the rivers flowing from the mountain. At the beginning of his plan, he formed an alliance with people from Earth, and built a city near this monument and garden. The contraption with doors which is in the heart of this maze is the Pandora’s box he experimented with in Hobb, and left behind. Use this wand to become invisible when you are in close proximity to the box, travel through solid and impenetrable surfaces, walls, people and animals, without being felt or noticed. I would stay and solve this problem myself, but the business I have on these unearthly planets is spent quickly. As soon as I try to stay, or return to any of these planets, or move forth their evolutionary geologic changes, I am chased out by the Minotaur. His mission is to escort me away from any of these hidden universes, and the Minotaur will be here too soon to explain more.”
The Minotaur was an ancient enemy of Pan’s. Pan was half-goat and a God, while the Minotaur was half-bull and half-God. Alex took the wand and looked up at Pan who was already wandering away. The bushes swallowed Pan’s body and he disappeared quickly, before Alex even said one more word.
Alex took the wand which Pan had called Chroni and he strapped on his backpack and walked through the exceedingly amazing labyrinth to the garden. When he had gone around a few corners of the maze, he reopened the map and checked where it may have shown him the fastest way to Pandora’s box. But then, Alex looked at the wand in his hand and decided to try the magic which was promised to him by the old God. When he looked down at the Chroni, he tried to concentrate on becoming invisible and instantaneously he saw his hands, map, and wand vanish. Surprised, he whispered “Amazing,” but noticed how no noise was audible from his mouth as he spoke. Just to be sure though, he concentrated on seeing himself and again he reappeared in an undetectably swift instant.
My brother walked up to the wall of hedge bushes and put his hand toward the pine branches and none of the sticks shook or moved and he entered straight through. In the middle of the wooden trunks, Alex saw the grains within and the chloroplast in leaves and pines. He wondered if he could climb up through the hedges but his arms only flailed as he tried to grip the boughs. So, he ran through the maze walls toward the center structure. When Alex had gone a few hundred feet, he slowed down, although he was not winded nor tired from running. He stopped because he saw soldiers gathering around, troops on patrol, and guards standing at corners. Looking down at his hands to confirm the magic spell still was working effectively, he moved into the open view of the men with guns. My brother’s invisibility was truly a gift and he snuck right by them to the ciborium and box. He regained positioning and sense of direction as he walked through the bright flowers in the surrounding boxes. Alex decided to try the last door which he had not opened yet. The steps into the building worked for his feet, even while they were disguised with the magic Chroni, and nimbly moved through the guard standing in front of the box into the dark void of teleportation beyond.
Where he came forth from the door was a place he had only seen while driving with his father through the New Hampshire cities, and solely from the outside. At half his current age, America had banned sale of alcohol and it had been a token part of his father’s duties to monitor the speakeasies and backroom breweries across the state. Alex remembered sitting in the car and riding through darkening roads on his way home from school a handful of times in the early 1920’s. His father had always kept his smile warm and welcoming, enchanting even to his own offspring as he kept wide-eyed behind the wheel for his targeted searches. Alcohol had wreaked havoc through the cultures of the world, notoriously throughout history. It was a dark part of civilization’s health system and a curse brought by merchants from their voyages through harbor ports and the harvested yards and fields.
Still cloaked with invisibility from the patrons, Alex walked through a tavern and barroom all the way to the bartender and turned around. The dining area of the restaurant held a hundred tables, nearly almost all filled with customers, and there was a theatrical stage with curtains. Behind the bar on either side were winding stairs, suspending in mid-air above a railing and descending staircase leading to another enormous casino and burlesque show room below. Alex walked to the railing and looked into the lower level where he saw small tables with people playing cards and stages on either side with dancers. There were restrooms and an auxiliary exit door along the wall. High above, he saw light shining through the wide doors which were the entrance of the Innn.
7b.)
World War One, The Great War, was the first war which allied multiple empires, each with multiple forces, branches, and services, and fought on separate, simultaneous, and multiple geographical regions. Just as the Second World War was a unification against the faces evil known as Axis, the First was a war against the ideals and philosophical principles which brought the Axis into existence. Just as the Civil War Confederates will eagerly tell people how their war was not about slavery, but about ownership of constitutional rights as laid out by God himself prior to the founding fathers, so would Axis have tried to convince men of reasons and rationale preceding extermination of Jews by Hitler, which guided the goal of world domination. It also was the first war in human history to implement Air Force Service as a tool for not just reconnaissance, but orchestrated aerial strike.
The First American Air Service was a tactical unit which was intended to accompany the American Army in land strikes along the Western Front of Germany, whose alliance with Austria and the Ottoman Empire was intended to open access to a flow of oil from the area between Africa and Asia. Separated by the Marmara Sea, which connects the Aegean and Mediterranean and Black Sea to the north, Austria would connect the Baghdad Railway up to Germany. Austria also imposed a border around Italy, who had promised allegiance to Germany, and with whom had shared its secular and political philosophies responsible for theoretic condemnation of humanity, yet betrayed its pledge and later sided with England and France. Germany’s quest for oil was a strategic movement, which could potentially fund future conquest of mankind. However, the assembly of the First Air Service would prove an impossibly strong adversary for England and France.
When the King of the United Kingdom came to the General of the American Army, he asked if rumors of American factory production were true, and if the United States had access to thousands of aircrafts, already. Embarrassingly the information was incorrect, but set in motion the President’s agenda of producing a massive Air Force of machine gun-equipped aeroplanes, and recruiting the personnel to pilot the program. The Second Air Service was established one month before the end of the war, sent to the Rhine River area running north between Germany and France, and the Third Air Service a month after the Armistice was signed.
Although the Revolutionary War in America had ended through alliances between Spain and France, Napoleon Bonaparte’s French regime was a catalyst for alliances between European countries through the late 1700’s and 1800’s. While America was facing proximity to domestic disputes between natives of South and Central America, and Spanish control, the English continued to wage war with France in Europe. The devastating numbers of battles and wars, fought around the peninsulas of Spain and Italy, in the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean, and between England and France in the English Channel and Bay of Biscay, caused the fall of the Roman Empire to necessitate a new unity in southern Europe. Italy was named after the Greek term for the land where shepherds would herd their flocks, and was separated from mainland Europe by the Austrian and Swiss Alp Mountain ranges. After the fall of Christianity’s heartland, and center for papal control, in western Italy, the hierarchy of wealth was changed. Those who had previously served generations in clergy or made themselves representatives of the old ways of Italy were subjugated to lower positions in the new political states. This resulted in cultural dissonance which spread from coast to coast, Adriatic to Tyrrhenian Seas, from Palermo to Milan.
Italian monks in the 5th century were responsible for the creation of nine deadly sins. One thousand years later, after the fall of Rome, the list was shortened to seven. This list was seen as simultaneously ordered with increasing egregious evilness, and symbolically tied to the spirituality of all mankind, with possible exclusion of the highest-ranking members of the church. When Rome was absolved into Italy, Apocrypha was secluded from the Bible, and traditional beliefs such as involuntary corruption of humanity to sinful ways, and tithe for penance and sacrament, became partially redacted or discontinued for use by practicing Christians.
Our father left again, right after finishing supper with us on Tuesday. My mother and I were attempting to intuitively receive instructions as to the appropriate tone and schedule of the week ahead. We weren’t sure if our father’s information from his headquarters would let us know more about the motive behind Alex’s disappearance or whether or not or safety should be a concern. He said he would send word of his absence at the house to the local authority figures who would extend their patrol into our part of Weare. Our father would be in contact Wednesday morning and return for supper and then try to negotiate the search parties by Thursday morning. It would be a mercenary effort on behalf of townspeople in surrounding areas as the agencies which took charge of the investigation had lost their contacts in our region. The previous search parties for Benjamin however, had not turned up anything, which weighed on our conscience and mother was distraught with worry. Mrs. Wilson would return Friday and help us with housekeeping under my father’s armed watch of the property but his only words of advice were to stay at the house for the night. Our mother didn’t seem to think we should remove ourselves from the house, and she continued to hope Alex would return, although it was already late after midnight in Hobb. Our parents didn’t suspect anything supernatural or unexplainable about the missing people.
As night closed over the house, our mother became exhausted from stress. She took some tea up to her study room upstairs and I interchanged reading and listening to the radio. As the hours of darkness settled over the sky, I was intent on switching from news broadcasts and back to music, reading Sir Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes books, and looking out the window into the front road and lawn. The wind whipped across the grass and the sky was starless and clouds contributed to the imminent darkness outside. The radio broadcasts had been fairly ornery and nothing was mentioned about the school’s missing people or murder. The unacknowledged catastrophes I had witnessed firsthand made me question the reliability of our media channels. Morbidly upset, I had to see if the cave was still there, whether it had completely collapsed. If it had disappeared on its own, I could then understand everyone’s lack of attention to my carefully placed and iterated details of the location on the hill which led to Hobb.
So, I bided my time after 8 PM. I began to wander to and from the staircases and school study rooms, checking to see if mother would recognize my wily disobedience. If she did not respond to my restless pacing, I would not test her attention further, and I would gamble my solace of restored innocence against my brother’s sanctity. At 8:30 I thought I heard her footsteps or the floorboards creaking but quickly realized it was only the approaching storm’s gusts against the front window panes. That became my last signal and I slowly turned the knob of the pantry door and slid outside into darkness.
It was one of those motivated moments in my life where I felt like time sped by and I was moved through a sequence of events barely conscious of my own bravery. Vaguely, I remember walking past the barndoor, not even looking inside but remembering the footprints in the mud by the toolshed. Maybe it was something I had read in the mystery books that evening but I felt an inner sleuthing ego and controlled curiosity urging me through the yard. Just past the barn I turned and looked for the lights upstairs but the windows were dark in the back of the house except for the kitchen. It was an odd exception to the rule as our mother was normally very perceptive of our lives. Later on, years would pass and she and I never mentioned that night or my escapades.
The woods were cold but the wind was blocked by the trees and bushes around our property’s perimeter. When I was in the foothills of the giant hill, I heard thunder rolling above. With the storm coming and my mother in mind, I accelerated my speed to a light jog the rest of the way to the top.
The cave was dark but the crystals inside shone fluorescently. There were more rocks blocking the path than before and it seemed as though part of the ground behind them had avalanched inwards, creating an abyss within the catacomb tunnels to Hobb. Seeing the chasmal, changed formation of the hill made me reconsider forging through any more into the void, so I returned home before the rain began falling.
7c.)
By sundown in Hobb, Alex was finally done searching the uppermost levels of the Innn for a vacant room to rest for the night. The lobby had been filled with soldiers and guards, patrolling or changing shifts. Meanwhile, downstairs in the restaurant and bar were those who were on break or vacation and some were meeting with their peers, colleagues, friends or families. Some simply enjoyed the entertainment and provisions of food, alcohol, amusements of game or music, or social gathering. Alex found himself alone after precariously entering a few doors on the third floor. He had searched the fourth and fifth but both were crowded through the hallways and the sixth floor only held an opened and available exercise gym and small, closed day spa.
Alex wound up in room 315 of the Innn’s third floor, on the left off of the stairs in the middle of the hall. He had gotten uncomfortable with the notion of opening every door after the initial attempt on the fifth floor were dead ends, occupied or containing peoples’ unrecovered belongings. He decided to station himself in the middle of the hall for the easier exit strategy, it was on the side with the windows facing Hobb’s lake and near the stairs to lobby area and restaurant. The sixth floor’s fitness center was as far up as he had gone but there were signs on the stairs to the seventh floor which read “Pool,” among other languages which were possibly translations and there was also an additional height to the walls and ceiling of the level. When Alex had ridden the horse to the border wall, he hadn’t taken time to notice the unimaginable architectural volume of the Innn and now inside was intimidated by the populated rooms and areas and entire size of everything. He was happy to make it into a room, kept the lights off and made himself visible again in the pale light which streamed through the thin curtains.
Alex put the Chroni in one of his pockets and began to peruse a book which was sitting on the bed’s end table but most of it was in a foreign language. There were pictures of guns in the book, and the cover had the strange symbol of the “4.” Alex looked at a Bible too, which was in a drawer next to the bed, and it was in English. Then, he pulled out his letters to us, as the sun was setting in the window. Grief was pulling down on his head, his heart was weakened by his lonely fears. Alex lay down, helpless on the bed, as the light on the horizon became a deep shade of magenta through the curtains. For a while as he lay still, his breaths echoed in his ears as he fought away the pain in his cheekbones and under his eyes until every exhale became a conscious release of his control against crying. Finally, he rolled over on his side and made himself sleep before any tears fell. He wished he was with me.
He needed sleep after the nights he had survived but after the morning in the briars he had too much energy to reach a deep rest. He woke up before midnight and turned on his side. He pulled his sleeping bag out of his backpack and tried to cover his body, attempting to force himself to stay in bed. Midnight came and he was awakened again by an echoing sound in his mind. It was a dream- like howling; a lone coyote somewhere in the darkness of Hobb or possibly his own fantastic imagination. He felt hypnotized by it into consciousness, then paralyzed as he lay on his back and waited for it to return. Five minutes went by and he heard the howl again. He wasn’t dreaming it but it had a magical essence, reaching room 315 from somewhere within the building. It was like it may have resounded vibrations throughout the very walls themselves and he sat upright in bed to try to sense any commotion within the hotel or outside in the town.
Alex pushed his legs off the side of the bed, and stood up in the hotel room. He stepped into his shoes and then walked over toward the window. Before he came to the window sill, he reached in his pocket and withdrew the Chroni and implemented its special magic, rendering himself invisible. Nothing was visible outside either, however. He walked back to the door of his hotel and listened for any noise out in the hallways but it felt normal and there was nobody reacting with any alarm when he stuck his head through the doorframe. He decided to hide his backpack, so he returned to his physical form and tucked back his sleeping bag and put everything in a closet. Then, he returned to his invisibility and went out into the hall to look for the animal, incognito.
He walked down to the lobby and looked around the front entrance but there was nothing unordinary. So, he walked further down the next set of stairs to the restaurant in the basement. Upon stepping onto the floor of the dining area, before beginning to walk to the bar, he heard the sound again from further below. He spun around to face the stairways which led down and saw the portal to the maze, round and ornamentally decorated with mirrors around the border, separated by silver plated chains embedded with white pearls. Above it was a golden statue of a bald eagle, holding golden wheat grass.
In the stage room and casino, the lower level of the basement, he looked at the sign on the right which read “Exit,” in English. It seemed like the only place which would be sensible to check and it was also curious to Alex how there could be an exit in the lower areas of the building’s basement. He pushed open the door and inside there were elevator lifts on either side and straight ahead was a set of stairs leading downward into a tunnel. He considered taking the lifts but without knowing where they would let out or whether it would be too far from the portal to remain invisible, caused its risk to be too high for him. So, he started walking down the stairs into the tunnel, all of which was very dimly lit throughout the duration of steps and once at the bottom he couldn’t see to the end of it, at all. Standing in the darkness, he saw how the stairs landed down on a giant platform with enough space between to walk behind them to an area where the lifts dropped. There were lockers with ventilation holes on either side, all of them shut closed and most had number pad systems below their handles. But forward marching, Alex pushed himself into the darkness, invisible and inexplicably enraptured.
Through the tunnel, my brother moved with his imperceptible cloaking and silent steps. He felt himself move his legs and never tripped or slowed down in the tunnel which was lit only with tiny electric bulbs on the high corners of the walls and ceilings. The lights were shaped like lanterns, spaced dozens of feet and used low wattage, barely enough to see the black, linoleum tiled floor. Under the lantern lights, there were cords on both sides, hanging onto some sort of pully system, 5 feet off of the floor. After several hundred yards, the tunnel came to a stop at a wall. As he noticed it during approach, he sensed something was unnatural about the end yet didn’t see a door. He kept walking and within the last ten yards saw there was two walkways which met perpendicular to his tunnel and they both dropped down ramps across from each other at the wall. He moved forward and took the right path, saw it quickly angled right again, and went down a long ramp. The ramp was similarly lit with interspaced lantern lights as it reconnected with the path behind him and merged together underneath his long tunnel. It descended for what seemed like a mile in the opposite direction as he had been walking, with two more hanging cords on each side. Alex felt himself groaning without making any audible noise and started frustratedly wondering if his search had become purposeless. His impatience was interrupted by a loud, lonesome howl, shaking his core and echoing through the tunnel.
My brother turned and looked back up the tunnel he had come from. One thing he hadn’t checked were the walls on either side where there were ventilated lockers by the stairs and also at the top ramp wall. He looked down the long tunnel once more and cast off the Chroni’s invisibility spell to get a better look behind the locker doors. The lockers had number pads underneath their handles which were locked but there were a couple locks where there were no number pads and he opened the one on the right. Inside, there were carts like the ones used in mine shafts and they all had cords with hooks to connect to the cords on the walls. Some were in rough shape and there weren’t many in either locker cubby, wheels were missing, some were cracked down the sides, and parts of the undercarriages were shabby and needed repair work. Alex looked on the other side and the locker cubby had the same contents but only four carts to the seven on the right side. However, the empty space inside allowed Alex to see a metal panel on the wall which was left partially opened. Inside he saw buttons, green and red, a lever with corresponding wedge symbol to symbolize raising speeds and acceleration. There was also a bulb in the middle of the top part of the control panel which was off, and it had a lightning bolt symbol next to it, symbolizing electricity (or lack thereof.)
Alex walked into the tunnel again and checked toward the stairs to see if anyone was there. He hadn’t been followed yet, so he considered his options. Pan had specifically told him how the Chroni was only useable within a close proximity from Pandora’s portals but it would have been useful for the walk to remain in the stasis of mobility which the amulet provided. Instead, Alex looked at the nearest locker on the right to the wall with the number pad and ventilation holes. There were several holes and all were wide enough to let some light through to the cubby. He looked at the Chroni in his hand and placed its spell back around him, passing through the locked door with its magic. Inside, as he expected, there were several control panels with various functions encompassing the three inner walls. There was barely any light though, and hardly any room to fit inside, but Alex released the and reappeared after examining as much as he could of the functions and symbols. He pressed a big green button and heard a whir of electronics, and lifted a nearby lever and there was a rattling of metal wires behind him. With the Chroni’s spell, he left the vicinity of the locker and stood in the middle of the tunnel as the cords glided down the wall toward the ramp, then disappeared into a small slot in the wall. He proceeded to repeat the process in the locker cubby on the opposite side and saw as the hanging cord glided away from the ramp, back to the stairs at the beginning of the tunnel.
First, he was impressed, and walked down the ramp to witness the cords moving up and down the ramp, extending out from slots in the walls. But as he walked back up to retrieve a cart, he decided it was dangerous for him with all the noise he was creating in the basement of the hotel and decided to go turn the speed up for the descending cord, before he took out a rutty and rented cart with shattered side and brought it down to the ramp. Alex attached the cart to the cord and ran with it to hop inside.
Alex’s cart was steady and heading down the ramp fast at a little over 10 miles per hour. After ten minutes though, he began to worry he was being sidetracked from the overall mission of returning home, and even worse, he was worrying he would be found by guards at whatever location he ended up. Almost fifteen minutes into the ride, he tried his Chroni and it wouldn’t work at all. When Alex looked down the ramp, he thought he saw the end of the cord where it returned into a slot in the wall below a lantern light. Then, as he kept going, he saw the platform at the end of the ramp and soon he was within less than a quarter mile from the bottom of the giant excavation site, miles below the hotel.
When he was near to the bottom, he saw the area below was filled with water, shining in a placid pool but as he got closer, he realized the enormity of the water was massive enough to create a slow current which rippled under the platform and past the long ramp. Also, the lighting from the walls continued for several hundred feet, then disappeared as the walls themselves ended too, as also did the entire ceiling over the mysterious underground sea. The cart was coming quickly to the bottom of the ramp and Alex jumped out before the cart’s hook unlatched at the wall slot. The cart’s connector line bounced off of the wall but the wheels landed within a rail which carried it toward the platform’s edge. At the edge there was a loop in the track and a small boundary wall with short wooden doors leading onto a marina of piers and docks of different lengths. There were some boats on the docks and a pier across the sides of the tunnel’s walls which extended several hundred yards out into the water. The cart swerved in its tracks and began the curl around the loop.
Alex approached the low wall of the cavern-like boardwalk and looked across vast darkness, far beyond the piers. Something caught his eye at the end of the pier on the right; a sudden splash of dark water raised high into the air. It was strange, because there was very little current in the waters and there was nothing to his knowledge on Earth which could live so far below the surface and grow to the size which could create the disturbance he had seen. The moment passed however, and he wasn’t able to identify the true nature of the splashing and he moved up to the boundary wall.
Then, along the side of the work stations along the docks, the water drew up into the air suddenly, shaping its non-living body into the form of a giant man or monstrous beast. The swirling water raised like a waterspout, its vortex shaking the boats violently. It grew larger, like a supercell, and began throwing the boats against the dock and raising itself over the wooden boards. It started coming toward Alex, who was stumbling over backward in panic. Alex reached for the Chroni but it did no good as water sprayed across him and the floor, wetting it slick. Finally, as the thing came up to the boundary wall, Alex raced over to the cart and dragged it around the loop as the water beast moved closer.
The elemental monster violently threw itself toward Alex as he desperately dragged the cart to the slower-moving cord which was rising up the ramp, and his hands shook with fear as he tried to attach the hook. He brought himself up the ramp to make space between him and the liquid monstrosity which moved toward him in a raging cyclone. Finally, he caught the hook onto the cord and leapt into the cart. Alex sunk low in the cart, pushing against the lower side with his feet and watched behind him as the monster slowed down as it reached the ramp and stayed distantly back at the bottom level.
Alex saw soldiers approaching downward, fast. They were in a cart on the other side and he began to think he might get caught. However, he ducked low in his cart and started to try to get the Chroni to work its magic and make him become invisible. At first it would not perform its function, and he remained visible. Then, he realized that his wet cast on his left arm was falling off. His arm no longer was in pain, and he ripped off the bandages. Something had cured his hand and fixed his entire arm. Within twenty yards of the oncoming soldiers, the Chroni managed to cast its spell and Alex was saved. He stayed invisible the rest of the duration of his ride to the top where there were more guards waiting and entering carts, moving through the long tunnel and stairways back up to the hotel and throughout the casino, restaurant, and lobby. Alex finally made it to his room and collapsed on the bed again. By the first shining rays of sun in the morning, he was awake and writing the fourth letter to us.
7d.)
In Weare it was very late, mother was still asleep and I had changed my clothes and gone to bed. The rain had put me to sleep easily and I felt like I might be able to stay safely inside without waking up to any of the madness I had left behind me in Hobb. The thunders had stopped shortly after I was inside and didn’t wake either my mother or myself. But later after midnight, at 2:30 AM I opened my eyes in my room, suspicious of some undesirable presence within the house. The rain had stopped and only light sprinkles of moisture which collected off of the shingles and bushes in our lawn were striking against my window. The wind picked up every so often and my senses became more alert to somebody’s disguised footsteps or any movements in the dark. My sudden awakening had made me so intent on finding a reason to get out of bed, I had convinced myself of checking to see if our father had returned with his car in the driveway even if there weren’t any more noises to bring me to my feet. Stopping myself to wait to make sure there wasn’t more sounds to follow to conclusive reasoning of caused perpetration was the only hesitation I made.
A door’s hinges creaked downstairs and I was fully awake again, nearly jumping out of my sheets. Slowly, I walked through the upstairs hallway to our visitor’s bedroom which had a window with a view of the driveway. If it was our father, his car would be in the driveway but if it wasn’t, I could still check mother’s room to see if it was her. Unfortunately, our father’s car was not in the driveway. Instead, there was an ominous shadowy figure walking near the barn. It looked exactly like the unidentified man who had stood outside the barn on the night before I had reunited with Alex. Struck with fear, I stared out into the lawn as the shadow walked back up to the house to the pantry and side door beneath me.
Leaning against the window, I lost sight of the form as it came close to the house. Without losing any detail of my plan, I walked back through the guest room and peeked through the door of my parent’s bedroom on the left. The shape of my mother’s body was under the sheets and I caught a glimpse of her head on the pillow, meaning the shadow wasn’t hers. Downstairs, the sound of footsteps carried up to the hallway as somebody walked quietly to the stairway. Pushing back from mother’s door, I was about to scream for her to wake up and protect us from the intruder.
“Teddy, Teddy. You were my prefect. I was always so keen on you. Don’t disappoint us, Teddy.”
Finally, I screamed for my mother as footsteps carried Mr. Lyle Hearst’s distinct voice through the house and down into the basement. But as soon as I did, she was at the door with a look in her eyes of bewildering anger.
“Teddy, get in the attic, here’s the key.” She handed me the key to father’s study. Then, she walked into her own study and I saw her reaching into the side drawer of her desk for a revolver, before I ran upstairs to the attic. She shouted down the stairs behind me, at the intruder, “Hey, I have a gun!”
In the attic, I looked around the study and saw a window pointing out to the backyard. Looking through it, I saw the shadowy figure disappear into the woods behind the house. Even though I was sure he was gone, I waited for mother to come get me. She had made the call to the local police station already, and we waited up together in her study for the rest of the night unable to sleep, with two officers, downstairs in the kitchen.
7e.)
Alex’s morning was nary mundane and despite the anomalous and vehement animation of liquidous animosity and consequential scrambling of guards throughout the hotel, he was high in spirits and ready to find out if there was yet a way to overtake a vehicle and use it to escape through the caverns of Hobb. Looking out his window, although much of the forefront of the bordered wall was covered with soldiers, he thought it might be the best possible idea to check near the train station. My brother hopped through the door of his hotel room while invisible and walked down to the lobby of the hotel.
Idle curiosity tickled his conscience however, once on the lobby’s floor, and he leaned over the railing to the restaurant, seeing if people were having breakfast or if the casino below still had its gambling tables opened. There were many customers in the restaurant and he could see a corner of one of the tables where there were playing cards laid out in piles. He heard shouting on the casino stairs however, loud banging and the sound of something being dragged up by several strong men. Unintentionally interested, he walked down to the restaurant with the motive to use the portal and keep himself invisible.
When he reached the restaurant, he could see the men had carried a large crate up from the lower level of the basement. They were currently pushing it through the portal, although the sides were almost too wide to fit into the doorway’s frame. They heaved it in eventually, and followed it into the maze where Alex too arrived behind. Coincidentally, they were now shifting the box around to fit it into the next doorway which led to the train station. Alex looked at the men and the crate, wondering what they had inside. As the men dragged it into the next portal, Alex peeked into the wooden sides of the crate.
Inside of the box Alex saw our father, Christopher Goode. He was tied in a straitjacket and locked with a muzzle as Alex had been by Drakkyn. The box went into the portal and the men followed, and so did Alex to the train station of Hobb. There, the men began to miff in another language about the weight of the box and some split off and went to speak to the dispatchers and porters. Alex was stunned, watching the box, waiting for any idea to occur to him. Before anything else happened, a truck convoy started positioning itself with crate-filled flatbeds facing the boxcars. They unloaded closed crates, possibly containing animals, dry goods, or some for refrigerated boxcars. There were also open boxes containing items like radios, stereos, phonographs, and television sets. Wherever the train was taking these loads, there was electricity and there were other people.
Alex watched as hundreds of men walked around the trucks and loaded crates onto the boxcars. Soon, the men who were chaperoning his father’s box started to move it and drag it into the loading zone. Within five minutes it was ready to be lifted onto the train and Alex had no choice but to jump inside. The train was headed south which meant Alex was going to Gobb, invisible until the Chroni’s magic wore off during the long ride. My brother tried to focus his pithy triumph on our father who just slept in his muzzled mask inside the dark boxcar.
ALEX 8
8
8a.)
Egyptian mythology tells the tales of ka, the spiritually conjured double of a human being. In the wars with Troy, there were stories of Pharaoh whom held court and passed judgments for the identity of Greek Princess Helen. Norse mythology has similar notions of the sighting of spiritual beings, whose actions would be later relived by the person whose likeness was represented. Later, before 1800, German author Jean Paul wrote of doppleganger, which translates to “double-goer.” In Hobb, 1927, our family encountered the doubles of people who lived in America, living in a separate universe, but built with special equipment constructed by a mad scientist in exile from European war.
In mathematics, evolution is the extraction of the root of a number, the opposite of a power to. In philosophy, evolution refers to universally relative events which correspond with each other without being directly linked. The foundation of evolution as scientific theory was a school of thought which was a part of the Greek empire stretching through modern Turkey, and eastern parts of the Mediterranean, as well as the Ionian islands of the Aegean Sea, known unified as Milesian. It predated Plato, before 600 BC, and was led by Thales, the teacher of Anaximander and Pythagoras. Between 500 and 400 BC, Pythagorean mathematics became the basis of trigonometry, algebra, and calculus, while Anaximander first established the concept of multiple universes, worlds, and dimensions, therefore helping to begin quantum physics. Anaximander’s famous student was Empedocles whose categorization of the four classical elements of creation were discovered in Hobb as sentient, extraterrestrial beings; fire, air, water, earth. Later, Plato continued the teachings of evolution and his pupil, Aristotle, introduced primary philosophies of interconnected divine cosmic order which lasted all the way from 350 BC until 1300 AD, and ranged from Greek polytheism to Christianity, and the dark and medieval ages.
I thought of this while the chirping of birds outside mother’s study kept her and I awake after 4:30 AM until 5:30 AM, when we heard a car pull into the driveway. Downstairs, officers Brendan O’Keane and Aaron Goldstein had been dispatched to our house and had done little to involve us in their minimal conversations with other local authorities off of our landline and on their police radio. Mother had made them coffee when they arrived at just before 4 AM and then went down at 5:30 as Detectives Plympton and Gettinger came to relieve them. She made another pot of fresh, hot coffee and sat with the detectives after the O’Keane and Goldstein gave them the deposition files and reports and made a few remarks to them about my personal eyewitness account of the trespasser’s sightings and escape.
The voice from downstairs had belonged to Lyle Hearst, Alex’s sixth grade teacher and chess club organizer for the primary school. Our mother though, was less convinced than I was of the positive identification I had given to the police. To them it was even more irrational, as Lyle Hearst’s body had been at the morgue since Monday evening. Even still, when she and I had sat together in her study during the hours before sunrise, I could tell just by her occasional glances, she seemed to have some belief in the theory I had presented to everyone. Mr. Hearst had died in our barn, eaten by giant rats able somehow to turn into an old witch when Alex and I were attacked in Hobb. A reanimated cadaver had not been lurking on our property, it had been the same shadowy man two nights in the past week including the time I had seen him stalking the barn before he was killed.
Voices downstairs continued through 7:00 AM, my mother and the two detectives sat at a folding table brought in from the pantry. By then, I had gotten sleepy enough to return to my own bedroom, although my anxiety kept me awake. Dozing in and out of sleep for an hour, I missed the sound of another engine coming up our driveway. When I rolled over on my side at 8:30, I heard an engine start outside and pull out of the driveway. Because I didn’t know whose car it was, I set up in my bed straining to hear anybody talking downstairs. The house was very quiet, especially after having raucous caused the night before, and it was a few moments before I thought I recognized the sound of anyone speaking. It sounded like our father and I swept my legs off the bedside to listen closer. After verification of his presence, I heard him speaking to mother about what I had said about the attacker and my theory of his identity. He sounded upset, but not with me, and I don’t think our mother understood why he felt angry rather than scared. To her, she and I needed protection, but he sought vengeance and vehemently accused the F.B.I. of not doing what they had said they would do.
Time passed and I was sitting on the side of the bed, trying to listen until almost 9. Finally, mother shouted up the stairs to me to come downstairs for breakfast. To this day I’m not sure she could have sensed me eavesdropping their conversation, or wanted me up to see our father to help confirm their positions, or if she just intuitively knew how I would still be too frightened to sleep the full morning. When I saw father, he had his back turned to me, staring out the back kitchen window to the woods. Alex was in the cave and I had to convince our father to get him.
Revolutions of government, royalty and nationality, have been one of the most integral gears of human systems of self-regulation and moderation since before the international dynasties of history. Aristotle outlined the phrase in ‘Politics,’ as either the modification of or complete rewriting of constitutional governing laws belonging to a country. However, the first modern use was in 1200, the French terminology for celestial bodies’ movements in outer space, such as the symbolic arrangements of stars in the astrological zodiac which form patterns of revolution throughout the seasonal year. It wasn’t until 1450, the beginning of the end of the dark ages of Europe, when the word transitioned to the phases of social orders.
8b.)
Alex wasn’t in the cave, or in Hobb, or anywhere near the only escape route from the universe he had found himself trapped within. He was in a crate within a boxcar of a train headed miles and miles away from ever seeing his family again. The man inside the crate was restrained and was a cloned replica of our father; a trained actor, soldier, impersonator, and murderer. Alex didn’t know this yet, and sat within inches of him. He was however, becoming skeptical and pessimistic of his entire plan to board the train. He had gone into the crate with the Chroni which was rendered useless after only about five minutes and he was now trapped inside. The man who looked like Christopher Goode had not given any signs of consciousness even when Alex had tried to awaken him. After a few miles of railroad had passed underneath them, Alex had tried shaking his father to life and when this hadn’t worked Alex made interim attempts to shout or startle him awake, all to no avail. It crossed his mind how it might be possible his father was dead but he deemed it unlikely due to the tied straitjacket, tightened muzzle, and also the faint breaths the man let out of his mouth which caused his chest to rise and then slowly deflate.
Now, it had been almost 45 minutes of sitting in the dark crate within the locked boxcar. He tried to remember the legend on the map he had scanned before his impromptu talk with Pan.
The space between the town of Hobb and the southern area of Gobb seemed to be four or so inches which led him to assume the distance must be between forty and four hundred miles. He really had no idea whether it was longer or shorter but as minutes became hours, he became unsure even of this reasonable mathematical estimation. In fact, the train was traveling over 35 miles per hour and it would have been until around 5 PM for it to have gone around the looping rail system after it crossed the major rivers beyond Gobb. He had gotten on the train before 9 AM in Hobb. Alex still had no idea what Gobb would look like, only the concept of electronic machinery and industry he had gathered from Pan’s explanation and the visual representation of waterways, deltas, mountains, and lakes, as depicted on the map.
After over a full hour, Alex started to get desperate about his situation with Christopher’s imposter. Eventually, the memory of his experience with Ahmad’s “double,” and even the consideration toward his sighting of the child whom had looked precisely like myself, whose bleeding gunshot wound was almost completely ignored during a high-speed chase by the F.B.I., began to chisel away Alex’s fortified self-righteous attitude. He looked up at Christopher’s shadowy form as it leaned back against the crate’s side.
My brother decided to try to unwrap the muzzle off the face, although the straitjacket itself was tied with chains and locked. He hadn’t brought his backpack with him on the train, had forgotten it in room 315 of the Innn, and had only the Chroni, letters, and map of Hobb in his possession. Alex reached up to the muzzle, and felt around the back of Christopher’s head. Around the back of his neck, under where the cerebellum of his brain attached to the stem and spinal cord, there was a strange pouch attached to two tubular cylinders inserted into his skin. They seemed to be loose enough to withdraw but Alex worried about the outcome to the delicate surgical incision’s extraction.
This disconcerted my brother; he sat back against the side of the crate and began to imagine what had happened to our father, whether he had come to Hobb and been captured, or if he was somehow involved with a mad scientist’s experiment with duplication of human bodies. As he kept thinking about it, the concept of our father being caught in Hobb without being able to send for backup seemed unacceptable for Alex. It caused him to grow more paranoid of the real origin of the man he was seated next to, cramped inside the crate. Alex looked at the Chroni, wishing he hadn’t gotten onto the train. He realized escape through the cavern with its magic was impossible, Pan would have told him to try yet didn’t. Pan had said to escape Hobb and to survive but had not given him any more directions before being distracted by the Minotaur.
Alex tried to nap but before noon he was awakened to the sound of tapping on the side of the crate. He flipped over to face the dark, wooden wall he was trapped within, and heard someone stomping on the boxcar floor. The train was still moving fast down the tracks and had not come to a stop so far.
“Alex, use the Chroni’s other spell. Use the thyrsus to turn Christopher’s liquid intake from his pouch into alcohol. Then twist the knob on the side of the stasis box on his neck. This Christopher is not your father, Alex.” It sounded like Pan’s voice.
My brother nervously stood up and carefully leaned over toward Christopher’s motionless body. He grabbed the Chroni and felt a strange sensation in his hand as he wished the commands Pan had requested. Then, he felt around Christopher’s stiff neck for the attached pouch. He turned the knob on the side and immediately Christopher’s body was thrown violently backward in a spasming rage against the side of the crate. The crate collapsed under the weight of his body and spastic reaction to replaced nutrients and concoctions in the pouch on his neck. He was still fully restrained in locked straitjacket and muzzle as his reanimated body fell limply onto the boxcar floor.
There was Pan, glaring at the body of Christopher, ready to help my brother again. Pan was standing on a stack of pallets inside a closed boxcar and he moved over to the door to open it. “Good, he will reawaken soon, anyway. The stasis fluid keeps the clone unconscious while it pumps their bloodstream with chemicals and performance enhancers. I wasn’t supposed to return but when I saw you had gone to the length of following the train, I decided I had no choice.”
“Pan? Where are we going? Can’t I use the Chroni to return? Why can’t I go through the cavern, or use it to transport like Teddy did?”
Pan opened the door of the boxcar and poked his head outside; Alex could tell the God was smiling at something only he understood. But the bemusement became begrudging as Pan looked both ways up and down the railroad track. He pulled his head back inside, “The cavern system has been destroyed, and the Chroni has limited power. The transportation spell was a function of the element being harvested on this planet, but the invisibility and invulnerability cloaking of Khronos will work indefinitely, as will the alcohol divination of Dionysus’s magic thyrsus. More importantly, I too have limited power, and as I have said, the Minotaur will continue to chase me as long as I am here with you.” Pan looked back out behind the train and then pulled his head back in, “In fact, the Minotaur is already here. He’s following us, behind the train, and he’s gaining speed as he runs up the side of it. You will need to jump off the train, anyway, before the guards come back and find the broken crate, or your father’s clone wakes back up. As you may have guessed, the clones on this world are a part of Drakkyn’s evil army. But there is more which you must accomplish, here, and more factors in this war than Drakkyn and America. I know you have seen the water elemental, in the basement of the Innn. It will follow you now that it knows you have the Chroni. You will need to use it to destroy the bridge in Gobb, where the train crosses the water. There are other elementals, as well, which may try to find and kill you. Jump off this train, and take the road to the west.
It will intersect the railroad at a station right near Gobb, and you will be able to follow the rail to the bridge. Good luck, Alex, the Minotaur will get us both if you stand in the way, now.” Pan stepped aside from the door; Alex looked out at the ground below as the train rushed over. Then he looked to the left, the opposite direction of the train’s racing engine. The train consisted of twenty or more cars, and only seven behind Alex’s there was a giant, half-God, half-bull, running at him with a battle ax. From the looks of it, the Minotaur would reach them within thirty seconds or less.
Alex spun back to look at Pan, “Thank you, Pan.” Then, he looked at the hill beneath the train tracks, mentally measured the distance and the velocity and pumped his legs with his knees two times, swinging in and out with his arms on the sides of the opened doorway, before leaping out of the boxcar. He then rolled down the hill out of the Minotaur’s charging stampede which kicked up pebbles and dust into the air as it passed. When my brother stopped on the bottom of his fifteen-foot rolling drop from the train, he sat up and saw the Minotaur racing forward next to the train track. As the railroad curved further into the distance, he lost visibility of the car with Pan inside and then the Minotaur, and stood up in the wide forest between Hobb and Gobb.
My brother crossed the tracks next, after he walked up the short incline and stared out at the plateau between the rails and a stretch of woods which preceded a snow-capped mountain range, not unlike our Cordilleras of Midwest America. The sight of the potentially obstructed path toward the western highway left Alex stunned but he looked up at the afternoon sun and knew he had gotten enough rest to make this journey which he would need to do to just survive without food or water. He walked down the short decline on the other side and continued into the prairie-side of the tracks toward wilderness.
Into the prairie, there were only high grasses and bushes and it was over half a mile of walking until he realized the forest ahead was leading to miles up the mountains. Then, the mountains would begin overtaking his hike, turning into treacherous climbing upward, adding at least another mile. He started to worry about the strenuosity of the hike and whether he could even make it across the mountains before nightfall. However, he was at the edge of the trees and he continued to move unremittingly through the terrains.
As he entered the tangling and fogged woods, he remarked of Pan’s dependability during the crisis of escaping Hobb and became more acceptant of his current circumstance. The now deceased God had given him the Chroni and helped him realize the fate he was now setting to decide for the planet Drakkyn had created, and in so doing would manifest a warrior for Earth. He knew there were chances of his survival as well as possibility for heroism in the opposition of evil mastermind. Pan may have died, but to Alex the sacrifice was crucial. The forest was dark and the path to Gobb seemed formidable but my brother’s confidence led him to make the attempted effort with resilience and the determination of virtuous strength.
8c.)
Drakkyn had monitored the Land of Hobb from facilities which were located on a warship off the coast of Italy. He had seen how the entire planet was evolutionarily behind Earth in species and lifeforms. It had a similar insect population, but almost no other life existed on this alien planet. The animals he had introduced had been invasive and destructive, but the world had been terraformed very rapidly through their powerful experiments.
It behooves examination to the reader of the impertinence in integral nodi between universal constants, for clearer comprehension from our perplexing quandary. Alex and I traveled through cavernous realm, through dimensional rifts created through quantum physic nuclear fission of elements, beyond our world. However, the traverse was not only of space, but of time, and we may note the distinction which varied, whenever one of us passed through the cavern’s end in Hobb. This phenomenon had hitherto been unexplained by mankind on Earth, nor known in modern science. Yet, exploration of the forces, worked on our minds and bodies through the portal, indubitably illuminates discoveries, beyond domain of mathematics in our natural world and worldview. However, the true meaning behind the manipulation of reality was linked directly to the fallacy of greed. As I have stated, the best explanation available, is better understood with illustrative points drawn from historic muniment and tractate.
Banking, and insurance, began as a result of trade between Babylon and Asia, later controlled by Hammurabi and his empire in 3000 BC. The ruler of Middle Eastern Babylon, Hammurabi, gave us a proverbial expression “eye for an eye,” as accounted the same time, it was put into word the foundations of currency, loaning, crime, and punishment. Later, the reconstruction of this template was founded in bonds between Sumer, India, and Assyrian trade. Later, the Mediterranean Sea became a hub of commerce and transportation, linking civilizations throughout the Middle East, Africa, and Europe.
Beginning in 800 BC, Greece’s Pantheon of Olympians included twelve Gods, one of whom was Hermes, God of merchants. This marks mankind’s introduction of acquired wealth through hoarding by a single theological entity. By 500 BC, 300 years later, ethics and moral structure were needed to defy easily corruptible government figures, and Socrates of Athens began to teach people to conduct themselves with respect for the common good. Socrates’ enemies eventually tried him for his trespasses against the people of Greece, and was forced to be killed by the oral ingestion of a poisonous tea, made of hemlock. By then, already, the world human population had exceeded 500% of its number in the previous 3000 years. Socrates’s first successful pupil was Xenophon, who was one of history’s greatest military minds, and led Greece to conquer much of Mesopotamia from Persia. However, his next follower, Plato, was one of the founders of Western philosophy, and would influence the Macedonian named Aristotle; who would go on to point to the stars, and name celestial bodies, as well as point out the fallacy in monopolistic capitalism. Monopoly, from the Greek words which mean “single seller,” was criticized in Aristotle’s ‘Politics’ which means “the selling done within cities.” In it, he showed how the people in the olive markets in Athens were capable of doing more harm, than good, and stated that the job of labor is to degrade a person’s mind and capabilities. Plato, however, was also Socrates’s executioner, as well as author of horrors, kept personal. Similarly, Drakkyn’s monopoly within Hobb was intended to strip the personal freedoms from its constituents. Primarily, it differed from classic monopoly by providing parts of monopsony, or single buyer economy, and oligopoly, or government-controlled monopoly, by strictly supplying to opponents of America. Indeed, monopoly instructs us to abandon choice of leisure, at a cost to fulfillment of political potential. However, the same olives which Athens’ philosophers’ woes were thrust against, were built in orchards and along gates, which were dually, agricultural innovation, and artificial armory for military defense.
In ancient Rome, Hermes was absolved and became Mercury, God of commerce, travel, and boundaries. Hermes, in Greece, had a son; Hermaphrodite, with Aphrodite, the Goddess of love. Hermaphrodite, after meeting a naiad, was merged with her body, to form an androgynous lifeform and lifecycle. Mercury, the planet, is the closest to the sun, and the nearest orbiting object to the center of our solar system. Proximity to the sun has not caused it to become the hottest planet in our solar system, however, although its orbit is shortest, and most concentric in our solar system. It is also the smallest planet, besides the furthest dwarf planets in our solar system. Interestingly, the same reasons Mercury is so small, concentric in orbit, and close to the sun may be the same reasons we have Earth’s moon and tectonic plate movements. Mercury was, at one time, much larger, until collisions with planetesimal matter shrunk its mass and sent parts of it into the sun, and then, past Mars to Earth, where debris caused Earth to split a piece off and become our moon. Mercury is also the most geologically similar planet, known, to Earth.
In time, the beginning of true capitalism, meaning “head,” in Latin, was installed into the systems of economic organization. Capitalism is far more aligned with government’s regulation of personal freedoms, than simple monopoly, which merely provides guidelines for purchasing goods and trading services. My brother, Alex, was scheduled to become victim of one of the more gruesome interpretations of regulation, through capital punishment and execution. Famously, Cicero of Rome, in 50 BC, introduced the comparison of capitalism and pure slavery. Writing of the working man’s sacrifice of his artistic mind and creativity, Cicero encouraged workers to be mindful and wary of vocation. Alex had gone into our situation by taking advantage of the working gears of his own survival, but had he realized the powers he was warring with, while entrapped, here, he may have foreseen his forthcoming doom as inescapable.
Extremely early tithe and taxation began in Egypt, 4000 BC, to the Pharaohs, and was further expanded to Jerusalem at around 0 BC, around the time of Julius Caesar’s death, and Jesus Christ’s birth, through the teachings of Mishna Talmud in Judaism. In both instances, the efforts of laborers were given value, as barter for religious reasons, to governments. Also, these instances of government regulation and implementation of capitalism, progressed the philosophy of the concept to agrarianism, which continued through 1500 AD in England, following the world population decline of the prior two hundred years; caused by the Black Death pandemic and health crises. This was also when the manorial system’s decline was finally indicative of a reversion from serfdom, which was a form of slavery in which governments had control of the proprietorship of the peoples living within their boundaries.
By 1600, the changeover from manor to mercantile had become inevitable, and the French term of “laissez-faire”, or “let do, let go” established precedent for traders to become separate entities from their governments, whether laborer or local store-owner, hoarder or distributer. Northern European trade at this time began to accumulate enough sums of capital to bring on the dawn of modern commercialism. By 1666, in Germany, the arise for insurance as a protective measure against loss of property, was a precursor to the necessitation of the world’s wealthiest capitalists to come up with ways to keep their funds secure.
By 1700, the English Industrial Revolution was underway, which paved the way to the American globalization of capitalist ideals; including waged, government monitoring of, and enforcement of conditioning for, labor, until death. In 1776, Adam Smith wrote 'An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations' which outlined concepts which influence the control of capitalist governments, such as the invisible manipulation of populations through monetary adjustments on levels of regional wage, and commercial availability of price, living quality versus cost of living, and supply and demand. One key ingredient to the modern capitalist society was the marginalist behavior of supply and demand trends, which cause the least available items and goods to become the most expensive. On Drakkyn’s unseen planet, ethical morality was sacrificed for a chance to access carnal, as well as psychological and physiological prosperity, and the competitive edge of margins had disappeared as a result of entirely taking away the polyphonic market.
However, Adam Smith was well-noted for aligning lucre monopolization with poor management; as Alex’s broken condition of political prisoner were soon to go from unsanitary and vile, to structurally insecure, and administratively inadequate. As the 1788 French Revolutionary philosopher Etienne Clavier asked, during the socialist uprising which fought against rampant corruption in modern capitalism: “and for us, who will to us?” In 1850, Louis Blanc of France staged continued criticism of capitalist rationale, paving a way for new politics to upheave international dynasties in following centuries.
“Capitalist” was actually coined by the minds behind communism, in terminology; referential to the powers who controlled the monetary system, within governments. Karl Marx’s late 1800’s became philosophical enemy of, and political activist against, dehumanization through waged labors and imperial legalizations of oligopoly. Authoritarianism’s acting backbone in capitalistic cultures, where stratified wealth inequality is seen as positive for human advancement, is genuinely outstanding. During years before, and after, 1900, when World War was on the horizon, a democratic return to Greek and Roman polytheistic beliefs through multiplied boundaries, managed by national currency rather than natural resource, was symbolic of the decline in human freedoms, as monetarism replaced slavery with lucrative, privatized prison systems, agricultural worker’s rights with taxation were conspiratorially used for military campaign finances, and American remarketing of an insured capitalistic monopoly was inarguable. The nation stood on perilous ledge, between World Wars and Great Depression, and vitality was now its venture, with a hedged derivative in the immortality of gold versus the fatal relationship between labor and the sacrificed lives of free men.
At almost 6 o’clock PM Alex was coming down the side of the extraterrestrial mountain range. He had found a route between two very wide ridges, a valley between separate high summits.
Still, he was thousands of feet elevated and in his high altitude he was given a scenic vista of the surrounding lands and water. There was one breath-taking river moving through the mountain ranges, of which he now noticed several tall peaks. The massive, southward-flowing river stretched for many miles between large cliffs and hills, obscuring his view of its far end or distant paths. At one point to the west up to three miles away, the water’s current quickened and rapids began to form as the stream straightened and widened and was met with another river flowing through a perpendicular canyon which let out into a section of waterfalls and then into a ravine into a pass. The water of the river nearest to Alex was already quite wide (hundreds of yards in parts,) and it looked deep where he could see into the middle. Upstream to the north, Alex saw a peculiar shape distinguish itself as a rippling wave formation, two miles from where he was standing on the rocky mountainside. It reminded him of an upside-down Christmas tree ornament, the shape of three triangles pointing downstream, one behind another. As he continued his long descent, he saw the shape was being made by three boats and when he was within forty yards of the shoreline, they also were coming down the river at a relatively close distance. Seeing this as an opportunity to hitch a ride, beg for food, be rescued, or at least ask for geographic information, Alex ran to meet the motorboats.
As Alex approached the ships, he saw the three boats were of three different common varieties; mainmast fishing sloop, double-decker steamboat, and a six- seated runabout motorboat. My brother bent over and picked up a stick and took his shirt off. He wrapped his shirt around the stick and waved it in the air to flag down the motorboat. When the motorboat saw him, the driver pulled it toward shore and pulled out a megaphone to speak to Alex in a foreign language as he came closer. The man’s tone of voice was commanding but Alex derived it to exhibit precociousness during the rescue and did not let the sound intimidate him. He walked down to shore and when his legs bravely stepped into cool mountain river water, he put his shirt back on and dropped the stick.
The boat was within twenty yards and the man started shouting dramatically, waving his hands, throwing his arms out toward Alex, but my brother kept wading through the water. It seemed like his rescuer was excited to see him but suddenly Alex felt something moving around his legs in the water. He looked down to see a very long, ten-foot-long eel wrapping around his calves and ankles. It was not actually an eel either, but as the giant leech started sucking on Alex’s legs, he started losing blood fast, his consciousness slipping. As he began to faint, there were splashing leeches quickly swarming him while the motorboat sped.
8d.)
When Alex was unconscious, he dreamt of a long scene. He was on an island in an ocean but surrounded with people whose legs and feet looked like the long peduncle and flukes of dolphins or mermaids. Around the island were tall mountains on far shores, cliffs and bluffs with seagulls, and forests, but no sign of mankind. He had woken with sand on his arms and the sun shining brightly above his face. Breeze was cooling the air temperature around his head and he sat up to stare at the rocks in front of him covered with mermaids, walruses, and he saw penguins. The mermaids played lyres and lutes and the penguins jumped off rocks into the white-tipped waves as walruses clapped and barked. Then, he turned around and saw behind him was a natural grotto filled with fairies and sprites. There were fantastic springs which resembled water fountains within a lagoon which was shaped like the reflection pool in front of the courthouse of Hobb. He heard the wailing sound of a sea siren, the sound of a sweet voice melodically echoing into the nymphaeum. When he stood to his feet, the ground suddenly began to shake and crumble. He fell into a sinkhole which grew from the tidal pool within the cave. Tumbling through the inner crust, headfirst he flipped over to look to the bottom, as a giant volcanic blast of lava came bubbling toward him until he sweated from the heat.
Alex woke himself up in the texas of the steamboat, covered in bruises late at night. They were coming to the wharf of Gobb and the crew was working all over the ship. He leaned over and checked his pants for the letters to us, which were still tucked into a safe and dry spot. As the boat loudly pulled against the docks and sailors and crewmen ran around frantically unloading and picking up their luggage, bags, boxes, and crates, Alex sat and began to write. Half an hour later, the boat had become much quieter and as he was finishing the letter, he heard a set of footsteps approach through the hurricane deck. With no time to lose, Alex jumped off of his cot and looked around the area under the pilot house. Seeing his thyrsus under the cot he had slept on, he grabbed it up and inspected the Chroni to ensure it was still intact. Then, he ran to the roof bell and down through the boiler deck to the emptied cargo room. He waited for the footsteps to pass by as he crouched in a corner of the large space, hiding under tarps which were left on the ship. They smelled like fish and were still wet but Alex kept still, waiting for his chance to finally escape.
While he waited, he remembered his mission of luring the water monster to the bridge across waterfalls in Gobb. He was sure he was in the city as he had seen hundreds of lights across the harbor while running to the boiler deck, above. His fingers were pinching a piece of the tarp and he thought of ripping a piece of it off to wrap around his letters, and when the noise in the room was completely silent, he looked around to check and then tore off a square piece with a knife which lay on a nearby tool bench. He rewrapped his letters and stuffed them into his pants, and found a sheath with the tools for the knife too. He attached the sheath to his belt and put the blade-side into his pants’ waistline, leaving just the knife’s handle exposed and easy to quickly access.
Before going to the main deck, Alex walked back to the hurricane deck and rustled through some places he thought he might find food stashes. He found some unwrapped crackers and a can of soup in a foot locker laying by a crew member’s cot. He took a pillowcase and stuffed a blanket off of a chair inside, then the food items, and looked around for a canteen in the dark texas. There wasn’t a filled canteen anywhere near where he had slept, so he went up into the pilot’s house and found two hanging from straps around coat hooks. Next to the seats in the pilot house, a small drawer was partially opened. Alex opened it and found a six-shot M1911 Colt revolver which he wrapped in the tarp containing our letters and stuffed it with the Chroni into the pillowcase. Walking back down to the boiler room, he decided he should take matches from the foot locker, so he turned back to grab them. Then, in the texas, he recognized the sounds of the crews’ laughter from somewhere within the ship, echoing off the chambers.
When he was satisfied with his pillage, he went down to the main deck and looked around the docks. There were still guards and other people walking around with crates and boxes or guns and radios. My brother had no intention of jumping into leech-infested water again, so he started back past the boiler deck and looked for a lifeboat. Luckily, he found a small rowboat with oars on both sides of the gunnel and let it down from the steamboat’s side with ropes which were wrapped around guardrails. He repelled down the ropes after it with his pillowcase slung through and tied around his belt loops.
As soon as Alex reached the lifeboat, he steadied himself and began paddling in the dark harbor, away from the loading dock. He tried not to splash the heavy oars or make too much noise and slowly drew close to the twenty-foot-high flood walls which surrounded the dock, to stay covered by the shadows. It was a half-mile paddle to the next stretch of rocky shoreline and when he finally made it there, he was exhausted all over again despite the short rest on the steamboat’s cot. He managed to push the hull against some boulders and pull out of the boat without dipping his feet into the leech-infested waters of the inlet.
He clambered across the slick stones up to a hilltop near a bluff. Across the fields was a road, and as Alex looked around the dark bay, he saw the land behind was rising high across the shoreline and into the town which set on a slant. There were houses and buildings barely visible through treetops high on a mountain, miles away, and in front of Alex was a long road which bent around and went up the hills and disappeared behind the backs of buildings. Alex started his ascent up the road and was a hundred feet from nearby restaurants within five minutes. He kept himself a safe distance away and the noise of people eating and talking soon fell back into the hushed backdrop of the silent residential neighborhoods of Gobb.
So, Alex was able to keep himself from being noticed by guards or townsfolk all the way up the road to the perimeter of a government district where there were still patrol cars and guards actively on duty. His first sight of a moving vehicle gave Alex a faster heartrate and he jumped into an alley to let it pass him. It was then that Alex recognized the slope of the first road had leveled off and the structures around him were all much larger and taller. Thinking of Pan’s explanation, Alex realized he had probably gotten to the highest point of Gobb and the road which would cross the waterfall and the targeted bridge he was supposed to destroy would probably lead out from a nearby intersection. Remembering the shoreline’s path, he veered left and headed parallel to the sea front.
Eventually Alex saw the bridge as he approached a large river. The waterfall was to his left on the road he had taken out of the city center and the bridge was arched over the ravine which dropped between the two sides of the river and stretched outward from the falling waters into the sea. The falls were six hundred feet high and the water was tremendously massive. The river came over the top of the cliff over three hundred feet wide but was deep in the middle and the water roared over the edge, almost splashing onto the bridge. There were three bridges in the vicinity of the waterfall including the train bridge, much further upstream, and the automobile bridge was four lanes wide. The long, wooden, arching footbridge which Alex walked to was unguarded, though. While he walked to the beginning of the unsteady architecture, he began to get extremely nervous of his own safety. As he stared down off the jagged, rocky edge of the dangerous face of hanging cliff he mentally measured the enormous heights, wondering what would happen when he threw the Chroni as had been instructed to do by Pan to enrage the colossal water monster.
My brother began to walk across the bridge delicately, then as he felt the sturdy strength of the boards beneath him, he quickened pace before he could be spotted by any of the guards or sentry. When had made it halfway, he grabbed his pillowcase and withdrew the Chroni. He blinked away tears of desperation and despair at his total plight, yet tossed the Relic of Khronos off of the bridge, and watched in awful and overwhelming disbelief as a humungous wave rose from the water below. The mammoth water monster grew and consumed the Chroni and then began tearing apart the sides of the ravine. Rocks and boulders were falling through to the bottom, crashing into the pool and breaking against ground and riverbed. Chaotically, the water monster blew away the bridge and Alex fell through spraying mists and splashing walls of water, mud, and debris. Somehow, he dropped onto a fallen piece of bridge but was gasping for breath from the powerful pressures and sudden landing.
In and out of concussion and consciousness, Alex floated on the piece of wreckage until he was far out into the sea, and floating still, until he drifted onto a shoreline. When he awoke again, it was past 3 AM and he had miraculously landed against a low shoreline and rolled over onto his back. Moments went by, and he became paranoid of leeches, so he forced himself to stand up. There were no immediate signs of bites or bruise marks on his hands, arms, or legs, and after he rubbed the top of his head and in his hair to check, he decided he was okay. Still trembling from shock and trauma, Alex walked away from the sea to find a place to camp out of view, deeper in the forest.
Eventually he stopped walking straight from the seaside and put down his pillowcase. Then, he began collecting tinder and sticks to make a fire to dry his clothes and sleep next to. He didn’t care if people in Gobb noticed his smoke, he only hoped to heat up, eat some of the food he had stolen, and let the fire die out before he fell asleep until morning. After searching around the area of his campsite for ten minutes, he had enough wood to start a fire and laid the smaller tinder sticks and leaves into a small pile, then assembled the sticks in an upward-pointing cone from smaller to larger sizes. He lit the match to set the fire and sat back against a tree trunk, pulling out the blanket from inside his pillowcase. Within fifteen minutes he had eaten all of his crackers and drank an entire canteen. He pulled out his can of soup and readied it on the side of the fire to heat up atop a rock.
While waiting for the can of soup to warm up near the fire, Alex pulled out his letters and wrote his sixth. When he was finished writing he had to go to the bathroom, so he walked out of his campsite area twenty or so yards until he could only see the flickers of light through the branches and bushes of the surrounding woods. Returning to the campfire he saw the sparks from the fire were growing irater and more erratic and the light was brighter than before he had left. He walked closer and watched fire leaping around the firepit and growing and exhausting itself spontaneously and without cause.
As far as he knew, he had set up a normal fireplace for himself but the fire was beginning to rage uncontrollably. Alex ran up to grab his blanket before the fire could torch it and as he came closer to the campfire, it suddenly bulged out into a fireball, stretching as high as the trees. Then, it shot out limbs of flame, spitting walls of fire against the trees near my brother. Alex fell back against a tree trunk and hit his head as flames blew around him, scorching his clothes. He covered his face and hair and tumbled away from the campfire, running far into the woods before stopping to look back. He couldn’t see anything coming after him, so he sat down and waited.
An hour went by before Alex was able to finally fall asleep. Only five hours later, he was already awakened to the sounds of somebody running through the bushes around him. The sun was up, shining brightly through the green forest leaves and had annihilated any of the shadows which Alex had used as camouflage and protection the previous night, so Alex limped onto his feet instinctively. The leaves of bushes were ruffling and shaking, and the noise was coming closer.
Alex spun around and saw a strange looking tree or plant behind him. He had apparently slept directly beneath an alien species of wooden plant which was ten feet tall and had five leaf-shaped petioles protruding from a trunk-like base. The laminas were convex and it had wooden veins extending through the midrib. He was confused and dazed by its presence and a feeling of euphoric dystopia flowed into his thoughts as his stomach became woozy.
Suddenly my brother heard and recognized the eerie voices of laughter behind him from the bush. He turned around and saw my friend Darren Lynch and Barry Reeves both standing in the roughage, bleeding profusely from their eyes and noses. They began reaching their arms for Alex, who stumbled away from them, deeper into the woods and away from the shoreline of the sea. He was completely disoriented though, and kept moving further from the campsite and water as the two ghoulish people followed behind, giggling fiendishly.
Alex was dragging one foot behind him, limping, but began to recover from his nausea as he continued. Unsure of how far he was going, he jogged for three miles up a slow, inclining hill.
When he came to conclusion of his run at the edge of another cliff which overlooked a river, hundreds of feet high, he turned around. He saw bushes moving in the woods, and sensed they were still coming for him. My brother pulled out the Colt finally, and pointed it through the woods at the bushes as the two hostile and maddeningly obsessed predators emerged. In fear, he dropped the gun as his arm twitched. Quickly he recovered it, lowering himself to one knee. He pulled the trigger as Barry came first and the shot ripped apart the man’s forehead and skull. Darren grotesquely chuckled as he scurried back away, as Alex lost sight in the undergrowth of wilderness.
8e.)
That morning in Weare, my father’s commanding presence brought my mother and I to stand with unity. Yet when the rays of pink sunrise dissipated into the blue and white-streaked retina of our yellow-pupiled sky, time came for him to make the decisions mere men rarely make and in histories have more often chosen unwisely. He had seen our necessities met and with the freedom of our family and right to our property and title of name all entangled with the disastrous events which lay beyond our realm of mortal knowledge, he set out to track down the criminal fugitive and reclaim his first-born son. There was nothing mother could do to stop him and after the detectives and police had left us for a few hours, the calamity had returned to calm in the Goode residency.
By afternoon, father had arranged for one of his friends who had retired from a military career to stay with us in the barn loft until Christopher returned from his city office. Father was vigilantly ready to pursue the suspects of the last week’s mayhem but he would need permission from his superior officers to take furlough. Lieutenant Martin Barham of the United States Army drove straight down from northern Texas near Houston, to our house and arrived before 3 PM. As soon as the arrangements were made, our father made the call to Concord to meet with the Deputy Director who would fly in from Arlington. The debriefings were all given from the Marshal Director, from our father to the Deputy, and from the Attorney Deputy to members of the Secret Service within an hour after sunrise. Father stayed until noon and then left in the Ford.
Mr. Barham’s arrival hardly meant anything to me, as he went straight into the barn from his car, dropped his luggage and our mother met him in the yard to discuss Mrs. Wilson’s transportation from Milford. From the front window of the downstairs study room next to my desk, I saw Mr. Barham climb back into his car and pull back out to pick up the babysitter. Mother crossed her arms and walked back to the house, a look of deep worry across her brow, the edges of her mouth curled in and her lips pursed. Mr. Barham also barely was seen after he came back to the house at 4 and stayed most of his time in the barn the first day, until supper was served.
When father was still at the house, in the morning, I was attentive to the discussions and conversations between my father and mother, and my mother and other families and friends on the downstairs phoneline. Pretending to read and review a schoolbook of basic math and algebra, I was really more interested in how the next couple of days would be scheduled, so I could quickly adapt to my expectations. Then, after father left and until Mr. Barham came, I was arranging my book collection in my bedroom. After Mr. Barham drove out to pick up Mrs. Wilson, the early afternoon was spent secretively upstairs rummaging through boxes and drawers in my brother’s room, looking for his hidden slingshot. When I found it behind some books on his shelf, I walked it back to my bedroom and stashed it in the sock drawer of my dresser. Thinking ahead, I planned on retrieving stones from our driveway as soon as I could. Distractingly, Mrs. Wilson asked me to help with peeling sweet potatoes, and then carrots, and shucking corncobs, and by the time we had eaten supper together, I was tired and needed to wash up before bed.
8f.)
Drakkyn had the essential tools to recreate LUCA (a biologic tool to spurn evolution in his conquered dimension,) and with the powerful energy he was capable of harnessing within Hobb, he was able to sustain a procreated form of reproduction within DNA of humans; enemy or ally. By controlling the cloned specimens at super-subatomic levels, he reconstructed their physical matter to be able to withstand many naturally occurring growth patterns which would inhibit their ability to perform his commands indefinitely. The result was a slave army of cloned duplicates of American men, women, and children. It was a veritable offensive force equivalent of the entire Earth, multiplied at the whim of an incredible plan to dominate the entire world. Mercurial as Drakkyn had been treated in Italy, his developed fury was swollen to impregnable unholiness.
As Alex looked back down from the precipice where he had only a half hour before killed Barry Reeves, for the second time, he gathered his stamina to begin his drop and crossing of the valley and river below. His vindictive urge was unsated, yet the nefarious tasks of destroying the tyranny of the vengeful kingdom were not overtopped by just himself, but by the divinity of Earth’s pagan Gods. To recover from his horrific experience was only a dreaming ideology against the ideals of his personal faith for humanity. With his first step down the almost impossible tread of the cliff, my brother regained his belief and devotion for completion to his destiny.
A loud shout broke the silence of the moment and echoed around the valley down below. Drakkyn’s voice cried out from the edge of the woods behind Alex, “You will never escape Hobb! Listen to your fear, Alex, it is your fatality’s wisdom. The Gods of my world own you!” Drakkyn emerged from thick brush and onto the cliff, enraged at my brother’s attempt at impunity and waving his scepter. Alex spun quickly, reaching for the revolver but suddenly fell off the cliff, tumbling to the riverside over rocks.
Drakkyn stood high above and pointed his scepter at Alex, who limped up to his feet. The Pharaoh of Hobb disappeared back away from the cliff and out of sight. Alone, Alex went to the riverside, looking for a way across quickly. He saw the river was not as wide or deep as the other ones he had seen, so he found a thin spot across with stones half-submerged and a fallen log. He stepped over, without getting himself wet or falling into the water which he had learned to distrust by the leeches. Soon he was walking up to the other side of the ravine and then into another wooded area leading to a larger hill.
Once he came to the top of the next hill, Alex was sure he would be able to see Gobb from its summit. Instead, he found himself walking across a wide, empty field on a long plateau. The field had patches of grass but was mostly dirt and rocks and continued for miles ahead and miles on either side. Alex was surprised at how lost he was and looked out over the almost savannah-like terrain and uninhabited landscape. The arid and desolate plain was confusing but he pressed forward across and diagonally rightward which he assumed would be northwest.
Hours went by and Alex started to feel trapped on the plateau. Every once in a while, there would be landmarks of noteworthy significance such as boulders, an oasis of ponds and swamps, groves, even cacti. But no matter how far Alex went, he saw no other signs of life beside the plants and some insects; flies, beetles, ants, and spiders. By the time it was early afternoon Alex had exhausted his last canteen, the only one he had brought away from the campfire. He stopped at a pond and wondered if it was full of leeches or poison or consumable. Staring into his reflection, he remembered how beaten and bruised he was and felt his confidence and self-esteem become tarnished and perturbed. He sat down and looked at the muddy bottom of the pond which was barely a puddle. He kicked a stone into the water and watched it splash and sink to the shallow bottom.
When my brother stood back up, he smelled something in the air like smoke. At first, he pondered if it had come from the strange water he had disturbed. He pitched his head back and sniffed the air above him and waited to feel a breeze. There was a definite sense of something burning in the nearby area, so he walked out of the small grove and looked out over the vast plain. He checked the direction he had been walking and the area further left but it wasn’t until he saw something in his periphery far right of his path that he realized the source of the smoke was a solitary, small cabin, about half a mile away.
Alex walked toward the isolated wooden structure but as he walked, he realized the distance was at least twice as far as he had estimated. In fact, the further he walked, the longer away it seemed to get. The cabin remained a shape on the horizon for an hour and a half, and when Alex finally made progress in his hike, he realized the smoky smell had receded long ago. My brother had never let the cabin out of sight and hadn’t seen smoke in the sky as he approached. At last, he came to the side of the building and listened for any noises within, looked around the walls and hesitantly circled the perimeter. Eventually he found a door facing away from the direction he’d walked. Without knocking, Alex entered the mysterious building which was dark and empty and filled with cobwebs. Near a corner of the room there was a cut-out section of floorboards with a hand-shaped hole which he lifted. Underneath there was a dank cellar.
My brother sat in the doorway with the door ajar and wrote his next letter. It was only late afternoon but his only hope was to find the person or people who had use of the cabin and try to rob their food. He walked back to the cellar and looked into the darkness as smelly and moist air poured through. Alex slept in the small space under the cabin with his gun in hand. He waited for someone to wake him.
8g.)
Mrs. Wilson was looking out the kitchen window, past the pantry door to the back of the barn. After supper was over, she had asked me to help her with dishes. While she washed them and stacked them next to the sink, I took them from the counter and dried them with a rag, and racked them. When we were done, I restacked them and carried them to the pantry cupboards. Walking back and forth from the pantry, I noticed she hadn’t moved her eyes from the barn. On the last load of cups, I stopped between the kitchen and pantry and looked at her inquisitively. She didn’t lose her view but put her hand over mouth gently, as if in consideration or deep thought of whatever she was looking at. It must’ve caught her eye when I leaned up to the counter to see and she almost jumped in surprise.
“Teddy, dear, does your family have a cat?”
“No Mrs. Wilson, we don’t have a cat. Where do you see a cat?”
My mother walked down the stairs and I wondered if she had overheard Mrs. Wilson’s question but when she came to the landing, she walked right over to the den room radio and sat in one of the seats. Mother hadn’t said much during the supper, she was on edge from the previous night’s events still. It wasn’t my responsibility to guard the safety of our household but I was in possession of the slingshot from my brother’s room, so I felt secure. Even if someone could attack the house during the night, Mr. Barham was right outside in the loft to help us. If any of us shouted for him, he would come running right away.
“Ella Goode, do any of the neighbors have a black cat? I hope Mr. Barham doesn’t mind her out there.”
“No, Irene, there’s no cats around this part of Weare, to my knowledge, but I’m sure Martin won’t mind.”
“Ma, I saw a black cat in the barn last Friday. The day I went into the cave.”
Mother turned around in the seat to look at me, trying to hide her own worry as she assessed my emotions. “Sweet boy, don’t worry about it.”
Mrs. Wilson turned around to face my mother and leaned back against the counter. She wiped her hands on the apron she was wearing and then looked down at her shoes and frowned before she turned to look back out the window. “Mr. Barham came out of the barn to look at the cat, too, now. I wonder what he’s thinking about, or what they are thinking about each other. She must have been looking for mice, and he must be trying to see whether she found any.” Mrs. Wilson smiled somewhat cynically but with a self-amused look in her eye and an unpatronizing tone of voice.
A minute later Mr. Barham opened the pantry door and walked by us to the bathroom, he coughed from behind the door. Then, while Mrs. Wilson walked into the den to sit near my mother, I walked as far our dining room table’s furthest chair from the pantry and leaned my arms on the back. Mr. Barham soon reemerged and walked out to the dining room to address us all, “It’s getting late, and it’ll be dark soon, Mrs. Goode. I want to run up the hill before it does, and check for signs of anybody. If I’m not back within forty minutes, you should call the police.”
My mother didn’t argue and compliantly told Mr. Barham she would watch the clock. But when he walked out of the pantry door again, I could tell she was becoming very nervous. No matter how resolute Mr. Barham had been of his expedition, the scenes were too fresh in memory and our father was away from home.
When Mr. Barham hadn’t returned from the hill behind our house for an hour, my mother still had not called the police in Weare. Before she thought it was necessary, our father surprised us by coming back early from his Concord meetings. When he came home, he decided he should check on Mr. Barham, up the hill.
Father told us he would stay the night, and asked Mrs. Wilson if she would rather go home for the night with her pay. She disagreed and said it would make her feel better to stay as planned. Actually, I thought it was brave of her and I enjoyed her company. He walked out to the barn and left the backyard with a rifle.
8h.)
Contretemps of the windstorm’s shuddering through shattered doorframe and ringing of loosely bolted hinges against the worn walls of the cabin and howling across the floor and between boards were rough for Alex to sleep during. As the tempest persisted Alex imagined he heard the howls of the Innn’s unseen coyote and his body shivered in the cold cellar. With clattering roof overhead, Alex reached to the trapdoor of the shelter with his teeth chattering in the battering gusts which blew into the leaky foundation. When he had crawled out of the hole, he looked up in the dark space of the room and saw a whirling dust tornado forming from the ground outside the opened door. He fell back against the wall as the giant twister grew around the house and then watched as somehow it entered through the door into the cabin and spun itself around the floorboards and chased him out.
Alex stumbled in the furious winds which swept dirt and small stones and pebbles off of the ground of the deserted field. He ran across the plateau and fell over into a puddle, fortunately avoiding colliding into small cactus plants just a few feet away. Covering his face with his hands, he started to pray for this storm to end. Instead, he felt rocks pelt his body and the powerful winds covered him up to his neck with mud and dirt, until he was barely able to breathe.
After an hour had passed, Alex was able to finally move his hands and arms, freeing them from his sand-trapped position under the blown debris. He lifted himself out of the ground he had been partially buried under and sorely rolled onto his side, coughing out dirt from his mouth. His resuscitation was short- lived however, as he soon heard the hissing and snarling of two old women behind him coming from out of the cabin. He looked up and saw two old witches who bore resemblance to the rat lady from the church in Hobb. They were clothed in black, ragged robes over tattered garb, and were skinny and sick-looking, with discolored and scarred skin, and wrinkled and grimacing faces. The women came running at Alex who barely was able to withdraw the gun in time to shoot them as they came within twenty feet. They both fell from the gunshots in their upper abdomens and screamed demonically for the next five minutes, writhing in pain before finally letting out their last gasps of breath. The affray was enough to put Alex into a stunned shock as he lost hope of ever escaping the imposed madness of this cursed land.
As the light returned to the sky on the plateau, after darkness of night was past, Alex finally stood to his feet and walked past the two dead bodies toward the location where the cabin had been.
Instead, there was a small fane or temple. It had replaced the broken cabin but was no less frightening in appearance and aura. The fane was slightly larger though, and as Alex approached it he saw two sitting figures inside. The gateway to the main room of this alien temple was shaped like a dragon’s mouth, its curled tongue becoming two carpets laying down the short stairway.
First, the boy who looked like Darren came down the front steps with undead, bloodshot eyes. Alex took another shot into Darren’s head and continued walking up to the steps of the building. Then, my own double stood and walked across the fane’s floor and through the gateway toward my brother. Alex shot him dead and started up the stairs.
As he dauntlessly entered the temple’s room, Motu and Torro stepped from opposite sides of the doorway, left and right, hidden from my brother’s view. They held Alex pinned to a central altar, where Drakkyn suddenly emerged and struck Alex’s skull with his scepter, splitting it, and crushing his spinal cord.
CHRISTOPHER 9
9
9a.)
Three and a half billion years ago, the first instance of microorganisms began as archaea prokaryotes, which are single-celled organism lacking nuclei. Nuclei contain much of the translatable, reproductive, and utilizable genetic information of cells. The remaining instances of the archaea species have only 15% of their genome proteins used by their cell processes. This contrasts humans’ brains, for instance, which use 100% despite perpetuated myths which have disputed otherwise. Another prokaryote which is pivotal to the function of Earth’s living ecosystems is cyanobacteria, blue-green algae, which is hugely involved in the photosynthesis of oxygen.
Eukaryotes are cellular organisms which contain nuclei, and structured membranes to control various functions of the cells. Plants and animals are eukaryotes, as well as most other kinds of algae. Red algae, for instance, or rhodophyta, is a common marine seaweed with multiple cellular variations. There are also versions of rhodophyta which are considered terrestrially asexual, such as in sea caves with high sulphuric acidity, but since 25% of genetic lineage of the original organisms eventually became extinct, the evolution was bottlenecked. They are still an internationally implemented ingredient, popularly in European and Asian cuisines, as a traditional food additive.
In 1887, German scientist Julius Richard Petri invented the petri dish, which was a shallow dish which could be covered and used for experiments with biologic organisms, microscopic measurements, standardized scientific instruments and equipment and studies of populations of microorganisms. In contrast with the microscope slide, which does not allow for very many populations to grow with controlled inputs of food and water, it allowed for new experimentation methods to implemented. One of the easiest microorganisms to be produced in any natural setting on the world is bacteria, which you can find on almost any surface of the planet. Curating the sample of bacteria is easy, with a piece of cotton or by extraction through Pasteur’s pipette, or eyedropper. Most of the common bacterial samples have the same food source, too, and it is obtained by simply boiling rhodophyta cellular walls to create a substance called agar.
With water, agar, and a sample of bacteria in a petri dish, you will see the bacterial reproduction to multiply on what is expected to be a naturally exponential rate. The hypothesis exists, of how controlled sources of infinite food and water within a petri dish can simulate the overpopulation problem of Earth’s living ecosystem. The bacteria begin as a small spot on the dish, then grows to its maximum capacity. Soon, the amount of food and water no longer is as necessary for the bacteria’s survival as is space, air, maneuverability and the elements which are required for internal processes to continue uninhibited. &, the bacteria’s most suffocated segments blacken and die, causing those portions of the dish to become uninhabitable and useless to the population. Then, the bacteria die out completely, essentially becoming an extinct organism within its unique habitat.
In 1895, Christopher James Goode was born on September 16th, in Jamestown, Virginia, to David Goode and Mrs. Serena Goode. David was a Naval officer, who had graduated from the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland eight years before his younger brother, Samuel, and both were involved in the Spanish-American Wars in the Caribbean where David Goode was buried at sea after sustaining injuries through a combat operation in Cuba. Serena Goode had unexpectedly died during childbirth and Christopher was raised by his uncle, Samuel, beginning as soon as the 31-year-old career sailor returned to reclaim his four-year-old nephew from Luna Vitali, Serena’s younger sister residing in Richmond with her husband and children. David and Serena’s first son, Harold, was 19 and immediately abandoned his employment at a fish factory to join the Navy. Samuel Goode would arrive in Richmond by steamboat on the James River and took an electric streetcar to the address he had from the release of documents he acquired on duty after he was written to by mail, sailing to Portsmouth base. After his contract with the military had expired in the beginning of 1898, it was only a matter of time before he was granted retirement. In spring, 1899, Samuel chauffeured Christopher back down the James River to the Chesapeake Bay on bateau and took a ferry to Rock Hall, Maryland. He then took the Annapolis railway to the Baltimore station, all the way up to the border of New Hampshire and Vermont.
Sam was unmarried but within the next few years he found love with a Russian named Sasha who had immigrated to America with her 14-year-old son who had turned 18 the year Sam and Sasha were wed, 1901. Until Christopher was seven, he lived with Samuel Goode in Hudson, New Hampshire, south of Derry, but in 1902 his uncle moved his new wife and stepson to a large estate in Brattleboro, Vermont. Samuel began work as a repairman in a carriage shop and Sasha’s son, Illarion, would later move to Weare, to live near Harold’s estate, and worked with him as a carriage driver for a grain car loading business which Harold had inherited from Luna’s brother, Arsene. Illarion lost contact with the family toward Harold’s tragic death in 1906 but showed up after Theodore’s birth and spent some time with Alex, Ella, and Christopher, after a decade overseas as a European railway book clerk.
Standing on the property in Weare, Illarion passed a bottle of whiskey to Christopher, one of the last legal purchases of alcohol in New Hampshire. Pinching the lapel of his jacket in gussy, Illarion pulled out a pipe and spoke about Sasha’s relatives in Russia, and Christopher passed the bottle back without wetting his lips. The war had ended; Christopher had seen enough of the spirit’s malevolence in Europe and wanted to forget the horrors of war as something contravened across distances and oceans. Instead, as curling wisps of smoke puffs swirled in the evening air between the lawn, they had both known, and scenery of woods beyond the long road’s drifting course through the hearts of American towns in every direction, Christopher scried the piece of omen which men have found and called their crises, burden, and fear. The synchronicity of fate aligned with universal physics and individual caducity.
Illarion was rarely referred to in the Goode residence, after their rendezvous in August. Christopher frowned behind the Ford and looked behind him down the driveway, then to the hill in the backyard forest, after his return from dropping off his stepbrother at the Concord train station.
Primordial chemistry in prehistoric times was a study of the composition of physical materials, equipment for survival, and the simple technology which could alter the efficiency of mankind’s dominance over his natural domain. It may have taken a million years of sapience as the emergent species of African homo-erectus to develop a capacity to learn and experiment with his immediately available surroundings before he had honed the ability to construct stone tools, but it took yet another two million years for the discovery of mineable metals to replace these primitively honed instruments. The original primary sources for the easiest ancient metallurgy were copper located on remote islands of the southern Pacific Ocean and southwestern tip of the coast of America, and Lake Superior, the oldest and largest of the Great Lakes of North America. By the time the technology reached ancient China in 3700 BC, the beginnings of mineral chemistry were in motion with the mixing of tin and copper to create the bronze age.
People of those times attributed the results of chemistry with magic, and the wielding of the tools or weapons which were created with the chemical sciences of the early stages of civilization marked kingships and empires with new rules and power. From Shennong, the second emperor of ancient China, whose physique was remarkable in contrasting resemblance to the Greek Minotaur, with a head of a bull and the body of a man, through the Babylonian empire, which was included in scriptures of Judaism for its inconceivable architectural structures, there were two thousand years of strong belief in magical forces controlling the chemical reactions of special elements. Greek philosophers and scientists started to attribute properties of magnetic attraction to atomic metals as early as 600 BC, and the next half millennium was driven by the legends of the elixir of eternal life, the philosopher’s stone of gold, and Aristotelian alchemist laboratories. Democritus, however, was the founder of the atomic particle theory in 465 BC. Even though Black Magic became the central argument which provided scientists with the basis for experimentation, diffusion of Greek influence through the rise of Islam in Arabia, a thousand years later, spurned the reorganization of all atomic theory, and rebegan the tradition of chemical listings.
Then came the Rennaissance of Europe, where multitudes of research became accessible and new ideas were shaped throughout stratified societies. The 1661 Irish authorship of ‘The Skeptical Chymist,’ began a fundamental reinterpretation of chemistry, particularly after Pope John XII made the entire business of gold-making and alchemy in Europe illegal by the 1400’s. Its author, Robert Boyle, spoke of the relationships between different gaseous pressurizations and volumes, and corpuscle formation of molecules. By 1665, Robert Hooke’s theories on combustion began the spiraling out of another flawed theory through the 1700’s called Phlogiston which was described by the German scientist Johann Becher in 1667. It dealt specifically with flammability and explosive abilities of chemicals, and assigned every element to a universal constant of subatomic combustibility.
In 1827, William Prout redesigned the periodic table of elements and related it all to Hydrogen atoms as the smallest common atomic factor in regards to mass. In 1864, Lois Pasteur’s studies of bacteria, immunochemistry, and sterilization, was the beginning of pasteurization. The invention of dynamite, three years later by Alfred Nobel coincided with the creation of the Nobel Prize. Within the next thirty years, experiments performed with the manipulatable vacuum environment created by cathode ray tubes created X-rays and pitchblend, and eventually the discovery and invention of uniquely new elements by Marie Curie in the early 1900’s. By 1922, Niels Bohr came up with the newest model of atomic structure, which is still used today.
9b.)
The rifle which Christopher Goode brought up the hill from his barn was a 1915 Winchester, 7.62 millimeter, given to him by Illarion. Christopher walked through the twilight shadows which shimmered across the pond, sent from a breeze which flew across the pasture before the woods on the other side of the road. Bending and waving grasses in the field, rustling through leaves clinging to jostling branches under moon’s glow and brooding outlier cicada buzz. He held the butt down and the barrel vertically against his right shoulder.
He stepped through the taller brush which encircled the backyard lawn and around curling and curving terrain of several thirty-foot-high or more foothills leading to the bottom of the eight-hundred-foot-high escarpment. As he did, the cool breeze fell out behind him, and the chirping calls of insects in the fields slowly quieted in the night. Shadowy blackness in the darkened woods closed in, his pupils’ dilation no longer an effective method of filtering all light from the blocked stars and sky above. Only the soft crinkling of his creased clothes and shuffling of sticks and leaves beneath him broke his silent march as he moved through untrod dips between mounds and narrow trails formed through trees and thickets. Halfway, the hoot of a great horned owl interrupted the hush and then as Christopher walked toward the slope of the hill, there was a rushed flapping of wings and nearby screeching as the nocturnal raptor picked a bog lemming up from the ground.
As Christopher approached the incline, he felt the wind pick back up; an extremely atypical south eastern warm front pushed down the layers of branches ahead and swept fallen cones and leaves, downward across his path. He leaned his chin against his chest and cupped his left-hand upside down against his forehead to cover his eyes from the debris, continuing with careful intention. As the climb reached half-way up, a little rain began to drizzle sporadically against the top canopy. It wasn’t a hard rain to drench his clothes, or soak his hair, but the humidity rise caused moisture to collect around his face and skin. It was neither enough to muffle the screams which sprung from the cave near the top.
There, right below the summit of the landscape, the catacomb’s gaping mouth was wide like a reveling and snarling predator, two sycamore trees’ roots falling along the sides like bloodshot eyes. Howling wind and stinging rain shook the stems of trembling bushes around Christopher and as his mission reached the heights of the cave there was a strike of lightning in the sky, flashed brightly and throwing shadows like mimicking armies invading from the world below. Then, the thunder beat tom-toms against the tumbling cloud formations and as the echoes cracked over the New Hampshire countryside, the screams from within rejoined. Christopher identified the cavern immediately, and drew his rifle down to his arms, over his left forearm and up to under his armpit. There was all white against every wall of the opening, glimmering in the lightning’s reflection, and then it receded to a dark, fiery red.
Inside, after the first 60 feet of crystalized geologic tunnel, there was a twenty- five-foot-wide drop-off to a hole which fell through the surface of the ground through a sharply jutting crag with loose-hanging rocks into a depth of 80 feet. But before the precipice were three indistinguishable people, although visible through the dark only by their shadowy movements. Christopher pulled his rifle to a readied position and shouted an incoherent and monosyllabic noise at them to get their attention. Two standing figures seemed to turn around as Christopher approached, one short and one large. Between the two, on the ground, a figure was hunched over on his knees and elbows, covering his neck and ears with his hands from their attacks. As Christopher continued up to them, he saw the taller one lean toward him with his right arm extended straight in the air like he was pointing. In the next second, Christopher felt the impact of a large rock against the side of his nose and left eye. The shorter figure of shadows started to continue to beat the fallen person, kicking at his head and kneeing him in the side, beginning to viciously tear at him with his hands and fists. The unknown man was whimpering, weeping, and Christopher heard him call his name. The larger shadow started to rush toward Christopher, now waving a cudgel.
Christopher yelled for the man to stop but as the shadowy figure collapsed against him while swinging the stick against his shoulders and head, Chris realized he would have to shoot the maniacal assailant. The sound of the rifle’s shot was nearly deafening in the catacomb, seeming to flash light against walls. The smaller figure stopped immediately, and backed up a few steps to the giant hole in the ground. After the big man dropped down to the ground, Christopher saw the man was holding his chest and had dropped the stick, bleeding from the bullet hole. By the time he looked up to try to see the smaller person, he already disappeared down the hole.
Christopher jogged to the injured person who was his old friend, Martin Barham. Martin rolled over on his ribs and looked up at Christopher, wincing in miserable pain from the brutal battery by the people in the strange cave. Chris lifted Mr. Barham’s head by the back of his neck and temples and then looked back at the laying body of the person he had shot. He carried Mr. Barham back to the house and laid him on the couch inside Mrs. Goode’s study. Mrs. Wilson and Mrs. Goode brought a hot rag from boiling water and a glass of water to the man. Christopher was able to confirm Martin was injured but not too badly to necessitate a midnight ambulance or emergency ride to the hospital, and so, Martin Barham was soon able to sleep on the sofa.
9c.)
In the middle of the night, the cathartic groans and moans of Martin Barham awoke Theodore Goode from down the hall. Theodore drowsily shuffled off of his bed to the door of his bedroom and then backed off. He was worried about Martin Barham but sensed something awry with the noises made by the sick, and wounded, former Lieutenant. Theodore called out for his father and mother from his bedroom, but as he did, the guest began making more noise as if to muffle Teddy’s cry for help. Teddy pushed open the door, finally and looked down the hall to the opened guest room beyond his mother’s study. Inside the opened guest room door, Mrs. Wilson was wide awake, sitting up in her bed against her pillow. Her eyes looked wide and horrified, glowing and shining in the darkness; an image which deeply disturbed Teddy, until he realized she was wearing her eyeglasses, causing the moon to reflect. Still, she was motionless with her jaw open in a long gasp or mid-shout. Christopher had left his wounded comrade in the study and had gone upstairs to make calls to the Weare Sheriff Office about the attack inside the catacombs, and was only in the attic for two hours before all of the ruckus started on the second floor.
Theodore stepped into the hallway further, and noticed the study door was closed, but heard rumbling from within and a knocking along the wall of the room. Mrs. Wilson suddenly pointed her finger out to the door of the study as it slowly opened. With a shrill and high pitch, she shrieked as Martin Barham emerged, his wild eyes bleeding from their corners and his mouth foaming and drooling. Then, Christopher Goode rushed out of the attic and pulled the door closed behind him. Quickly he descended the flight of stairs. Christopher saw Martin before Mr. Barham reacted at all. Mr. Barham moved toward Teddy in a trance as Christopher grabbed Martin’s arm. Martin spun around and shoved Christopher against the wall and began screaming and flailing at Mr. Goode in rage. Chris clobbered Martin down quickly, and then kicked him down the stairs.
Mr. Goode yelled for Teddy to get in the guest room and lock the door with Mrs. Wilson. Martin was on the landing of the staircase near the front door, already struggling to stand back up but had broken his left femur and had a patellar fracture. Christopher started to consider going up to the attic to grab weapons from his private office space but did not want to lose his chance to stay on top of Mr. Barham’s erratic and evasive behaviors and attack. Chris walked down the stairs slowly at first, observing whether the broken bones which Mr. Barham had suffered would prevent his escape. But without warning, the front door swung open and a boy who looked like Teddy’s murdered friend, Darren Lynch, stepped into the doorway and pulled Mr. Barham over by his collar.
Christopher Goode began to readjust to the possibility of truth to the stories his son, Theodore, had told him and the policemen earlier during that week. It seemed unbelievable to him at the time but now was undeniable. Without much consideration of the correct protocol with regard to his office with law enforcement, Christopher became enraged at the inhumane and crazed actions of his intruders. He ran down the rest of the steps and leapt onto Mr. Barham’s chest, landing on his sternum with his shin. Darren fell back and then scurried out of the doorway, out into the backyard woods. Meanwhile, Christopher grabbed both of Martin’s arms and pushed him over onto his stomach. He then twisted Mr. Barham’s right arm and broke it, the snapping bones crunching against his wrist. He repeated this procedure with the left arm, incapacitating the man who had gone mad and attacked his son.
But this didn’t stop Martin Barham who struggled under Christopher’s weight and flopped onto his side, leaning up with inhuman strength to bite at Mr. Goode’s ribs and stomach. Christopher yelped from shocking pain as shreds of his hanging clothes, skin, and flesh were excruciatingly ripped off by Mr. Barham’s teeth and jaws. Yet without stopping, Chris began punching Martin savagely in the head, around the eyes and temples, and leaned in with his knees until Mr. Barham finally stopped moving. His skull was dented in, on both sides of his face, and Mr. Barham was dead.
The body was laying on the floor and Christopher was furious at the invasion attempt and perpetration of his former friend. However, something seemed abnormal about Mr. Barham’s cadence, posture, speech and demeanor from the moment he had found him incapacitated inside the catacomb. It made Christopher wonder if there was some sort of poison or unnatural substance, or even hypnosis controlling Mr. Barham’s movements. Having made the mistake of abiding by the rules of nature he was accustomed to, he sat on the bottom steps of the staircase and looked at the door, wondering what truly lurked out in the dark forest behind his house and cave atop the hill. He dragged Mr. Barham through the school study area to the basement door and dropped his dead body limply down the steps. Then, he walked back to the front door and reopened it, looking outside for the second burglar, the one who had looked like Theodore’s murdered classmate.
Out by the barndoor, a shape crept past the toolshed toward the line of trees behind the lawn. Christopher became angered by the stalker’s harassing gait and disrespectful attitude. He hurried up the stairs again and yelled for everyone to stay locked inside their rooms as he continued up the next flight to the attic. With his rifle in his arms, he walked quickly back down the stairs to the second floor where Ella Goode had opened their bedroom door. Christopher commanded her to stay in the bedroom and whispered for her to take the pistol from the bedside closet. Chris reassured her of his recent phone calls to the sheriff and the expected arrival of police to protect them while he went back outdoors.
Mr. Goode walked down the stairs to the front door, preparing for the attacker to come barging back into the house but ready now to chase and shoot him. He was worried he would be too late to see him in the woods, anticipating the possibility if he couldn’t trail Darren to the cave, it might be a chance for the trespasser to loop around and return to the house before Christopher had secured the hillside. Chris ran through the lawn toward the driveway first, to retrace the antagonist’s steps from barn to forest. While he walked near the barndoor, he made sure the barn was completely empty and then ran through the backyard to the woods in the same direction he had seen Darren walk toward the hill.
Through the woods for the second time in the same night, Mr. Goode splashed in muddy spots of forest floor and before he reached the hill his boots were soaked with rainwater from a small puddle, he hadn’t noticed himself walk through. While he walked up the hill, the wind whistled through the leaves, shaking water off and dumping onto lower branches. Every once in a while, he thought he heard footsteps or someone’s movements, yet nervously dismissed the noises as natural sounds of the woods as he kept his steady climb through the darkness. Unfortunately, the walk seemed to take longer than he had thought it did the first time and he soon realized he had walked past the catacomb. Turning back around, he looked through woods and tree trunks, bushes and rocks, as he descended with his rifle ready to fire at the opposing target. Instead, he almost walked directly into the poison hemlock tree, before he noticed the two sycamores on either side of the top of the cavern.
Carefully, he stepped around the right side of the northernmost sycamore tree and down the roots around the mouth of the cave, holding his rifle in his right hand and bending over onto his left for grip. When he was in the threshold of the cave, he turned around back to face the direction of his house, inhaling heavily and deeply, and listening for any sounds which may have guided him onward but was met first with silence, and then a dripping, liquidous noise from within the cave. He almost instantly knew the drip was not caused from rainwater and as he walked through the cave reaffirmed his belief as he saw the carcass of the man he had shot, leaned up against the wall on a stalagmite formation like an underground scarecrow with both his arms lifted onto rocks. Christopher stepped closer and saw for sure the identity of the man was Lyle Hearst. He was shot in the left breast and blood soaked his shirt and pants, dripping off his shoes onto the ground from his perch. The body had been dragged toward the front of the cave and as Christopher continued to walk to the hole, he could hear a sliding of ropes over rocks as somebody descended downward through the tunnel.
Chris moved quickly along the side of the wall of the cavern until his foot felt the void of the hole, then he knelt and looked down into the abyss. He sensed the person had reached the bottom of the drop off and he heard the shuffling of the small person’s movements far below. Christopher felt along the side of the hole with his hand and shuffled over to his left to see if he could locate the rope which had been used to repel. Ten feet from the wall, there was a tied knot around a rock and another knot a few feet past the first one, wedged between and around two more rocks. He switched the rifle over to his left hand and grabbed the rope tightly with his right, then turned himself over onto his belly with his legs hanging over the ledge. He found the dangling rope with his left foot and leg and curled it around his knee and thigh, and then cinched the bottom of the rope atop of his left boot with his right boot. He began to repel into the chasm and slide down, pushing against the wall with the rifle and his left hand.
Finally at the bottom, Christopher made sure his footing was sturdy on the jagged crystalized rocks. Behind him there was a very small opening into a tiny tunnel where Darren had escaped. The pit was much smaller in its recess than at its lip. Where it had been over ten yards in diameter at the top it was only several feet wide at its bottom and the side which funneled inward was at the far end of the hole where it would be impossible to climb out. First, Chris felt around the walls with his hand as he searched for the way out of the landing but in the pitch-black darkness it took him by surprise when he felt the edge of the tunnel’s top ceiling. It was barely big enough for him to fit and he had to get on his hands and knees to crawl over the crystals, trying to minimize his abrasions from the surfaces.
The passage through the small tunnel was hundreds of feet long and Christopher never felt any other way to turn or change his path. He had enough room to turn around but not stand up, fully. The tunnel was four feet tall and five feet wide and he was thankful when the crystals lessened and spaced themselves further apart after the first hundred yards. It was still over a thousand feet before he was able to stand back up, and even then, it was still too dark to see.
Christopher, after walking ten more minutes, saw light. It was daylight shining across the Hobb graveyard from behind a misty curtain covering the end of the catacomb. He walked through the mist, poking the barrel of his rifle ahead, raising it through. Chris wondered if he was entering a mine shaft. Instead, there was the sun, light blue sky, the mowed green grass of the cemetery, the hundreds of stone grave markers, and a white church in the distance. There were also several other similar holes in the ground and bulging tunnels and caves all over the edge of the plot of land which was surrounded by tall, golden grass and long road which extended from the end of the church to beyond his visibility around the encompassing fields.
Immediately after walking past two gravestones, Chris turned back to the caves he had emerged from. All had mist around their entrances and there were about twenty of the formations. When he was within a few feet of the cave which had brought him from the hill on his land at home, he knelt down and grabbed a handful of grass. He dug two holes near either side of the cave which he could use to signify the cavern which would bring him back to Weare.
He spun around, hearing distant voices of men behind him. He crept up and lay behind a gravestone, resting his arm up with his rifle against the granite and looked down to the church, three hundred feet away. There were several soldiers walking out of the area of the epinaos, wearing uniforms and carrying rifles and guns. He also saw the boy who had accompanied Lyle Hearst in attacking his house and he was pointing either toward Christopher or the cave behind him. Chris started to back up but stopped himself as the soldiers turned back toward the road as a large caravan drove up to the church.
Mr. Goode had given his plan some thought since his rencounter with Mr. Hearst and Darren Lynch with Mr. Barham at the cave’s entrance atop the hill behind his house in Weare. He had been able to predict the potential of an awaiting army of enemies guarding their headquarters underneath the land he owned on the American soil he had fought for in war and in justice in New Hampshire. His son, Theodore, had told the detectives at his house the stories of approaching danger and mysterious world below the surface of Earth and to himself, too. His confirmation of any of the truths which were presented by the young child was enough for Mr. Goode to push his plans for fortification of his family and rescue of his oldest son to even greater lengths. As soon as Christopher saw the armed soldiers and the world where the deep darkness of night had reverted somehow to bright sunshine and daylight, he had pushed the current mission he was undergoing from manhunt to reconnaissance, and even as far as to actively divert the activities of the enemy army with conspicuous actions to draw their attention.
As the caravan pulled up to the church Christopher was unable to see its contents but he watched as the soldiers who were with Darren also began to escort the boy to the front. He stood up and moved away from the marked cave and backed up toward the edge of the field behind the cemetery. When he reached the tall grasses behind him, he knelt back down and watched for a moment as the caravan pulled away from the church and drove back up the road. Then, Chris pushed through the tall grasses in the field and made his way down the road in the same direction as the caravan. After a few minutes he began to jog, moving faster through the thin weeds, still hidden from the church and unable to see outside of the field.
It was only a few minutes before Christopher was getting tired, he had been awake for over 18 hours and by the time he had run through the weeds, he was almost completely fueled by adrenaline surges. He made it to the roadside which ran perpendicular from the road to the church and finally slowed down to a brisk walking pace, before he knelt at the edge of the high grasses and peeked out into the wide and barren fields across the dirt and gravel of the highway. He watched the figure of tall man walking to the road from the other side, forty feet on his left.
When the man got closer to the road, he began shifting direction diagonally away from Christopher even more. The angle put the man at a total of almost seventy-five feet away from Mr. Goode when Chris decided to move to the open shoulder of the road for a better view of his peripheral surroundings. Slowly stepping out of the grass, Chris looked down the road to his left and saw a second figure standing near a cart in front of the intersection of the church’s road and the long highway which stretched for miles into a wooded area which stretched across the horizons in both directions alongside the fields. Christopher raised his rifle and considered the shot, wondering if the noise would attract attention from the inhabitants of this mysterious place which he had discovered. Yet, knowing his son Alexander was still missing as well as the extreme danger he had left his family in, was enough for him to take the risk.
First, Christopher shouted to the two strangers and he yelled for them to stop and announce their names, state their national allegiance, and reminded them of his office as a United States Marshal. One of the men did not move a muscle and kept looking toward the forest in the opposite direction while the one whose walk across the vacant lot had caught Christopher’s eye, stopped and looked at Chris with a mischievous smile.
The smiling man walked to Chris slowly with his hands up and said his name was Ahmad, a member of what he referred to as the Dynasty of Drakkyn. He claimed he was an ally of America.
Christopher told him to stop walking any closer as he came within fifty feet of him, and to keep his hands in the air. But Ahmad chuckled and did not stop moving. The other man meanwhile, was speechless and motionless and stayed at twenty yards distance.
Ahmad asked Christopher if he had ever heard of the enigma of the elevator.
Then, Christopher fired his rifle at Ahmad and the bullet landed in Ahmad’s right hip. Ahmad fell bleeding to the ground and Christopher walked up to him slowly, pointing his weapon at him while watching the figure near the cart. When he was within twenty feet of Ahmad, Christopher saw it was only a scarecrow standing near the cart. Ahmad propped himself up on his left arm and was leaning away from his right side, ripping his shirt off and trying to bandage his bullet wound.
Ahmad was wincing in pain but was mockingly attempting to force laughter at Chris. He told Chris he knew his name was Christopher Goode and how he was certain Mr. Goode would see his son Alex again. Ahmad repeated the query if he had heard a conundrum of the elevator and began to retell it to Christopher. This elevator was occupied by his spouse and the U.S. President, (Calvin Coolidge,) and had imploded at the thirteenth floor, falling quickly to the bottom of a tall skyscraper while the top levels collapsed. If Chris jumped underneath the President’s body, he would be used as cushioning for the President to survive but the fire would incinerate and kill his wife. However, if Christopher jumped over the President, he could reach an escape panel which could be used as a cover from the implosion above and would be able to prevent the death of his wife and himself but he would have sacrificed the life of the nation’s commander in chief.
Christopher stared at Ahmad with reproach and then bludgeoned him to death with the butt of his rifle. Disgusted, he started to walk back to the church cemetery.
9d.)
The state of Texas is in fact the oldest in the United States of America, in comparison to the other states, and in regards to the existing genealogical populations’ demographical lineages who currently inhabit it, and also is one of the newest contiguous additions. Before being conquered by Spain, in 1519, Texas was controlled primarily by the Caddo, Wichita, Tonkawa, Karankawa, Kiowa, and Comanche natives. The name Texas means “friendly ally,” in the Caddoan language, which was a confederacy of tribes, north of the Rio Grande River, which now is the modern southern border of Texas. The confederacy was a system also used, later, by the Iroquois of New York, to defend themselves against the American patriots. Texas’s namesake can also be traced to the ancient Aztec empire of Mexico, whose capital city was constructed in the center of a lake known as Texcoco, which was later drained in response to wars with the Spanish who flooded it in acts of sabotage, but was later rebuilt into modern Mexico City. In 1685, the French were able to capture Texas from the Spanish military’s control of Central America. During Apache-Mexican wars, beginning in the mid-1600’s, the region was an area of territorial dispute, until 1821’s Mexican Independence, when the area was reclaimed, using the Aztec’s alternative name, “Mexica.” In 1718, the Alamo Mission’s church in San Antonio was constructed, as Christianity spread across South America. The 1837 siege of the church by American Rangers created the Republic of Texas, which lasted until it officially joined the United States in 1848. During the next 50 years, the remaining territories on mainland were each admitted into the republic.
U.S.A. was not always a republic, and the first states were not in the southwestern section of North America, but on the eastern seaboard. Britain’s colonization of the America was transferred over to English-speaking armies, and the first settled colony became a commonwealth, not a state. Commonwealths differ from states by their economic mission statement, constitution, and adherence to the political values of a republic which consists of states. A commonwealth values its economy with respect to the written laws of the federal government, while republics value economy in respect to natural geographical, financial, and public necessity. The reasons for America’s rebellion from Britain were completely different from America’s Civil War, in that Britain had condemned tobacco, not outlawed it, completely, but the Confederation originally chose to secede from the Union, based on disagreements due to the laws of other states which were pushed through federal legislation without what they felt was proper representation. Virginia, owned by Spain as early as 1570, but uncolonized, was actually permanently settled by English tobacco farmers in 1609. These farmers rebelled against King James, the same English King who recommissioned the English translation of the Holy Bible in 1611. At first, they used predominantly white indentured servants to harvest their large crops, before turning to slavery in 1705. The Virginian General Assembly gathered in April, 1861 to vote against their secession from the Union, but within two weeks changed their vote, and eagerly donated Richmond as the Confederate capital. Two years later, in April of 1863, the Confederates lost the Civil War, and West Virginia was split from the state as a result of the constitutional infraction. This was less than one hundred years after the founding of the federal enclave and capital of the United States was built on Virginia’s northern border, at the Washington District of Columbia.
The birth of the commonwealth of Virginia was actually in succession of the mysterious disappearance of the first colonists in America, at Roanoke Island, North Carolina. Off the peninsulas of Outer Banks, in the furthest barrier islands from mainland, the settlers who first arrived and set up their town, were later discovered to have vanished, completely, without any sign of struggle. When English ships returned to check on the pioneers, they found all of the housing empty, uneaten food still on the tables, and clothes still hanging in the closets of the small town on the secluded isle. They also saw the word engraved on a tree, “Croatoan,” which referred to the nearby native tribe who inhabited a much larger area along a cape to the south.
The next colonization was to the far north of Virginia, on Plymouth Rock, in Massachusetts, across from Cape Cod. It, too, became a commonwealth, and not province. It was home to the first pilgrimage of Christians, known as Puritans, who were persecuted in England. First, it was colonized by John Calvin’s Calvinism preachers, laying foundation to many American traditions of ethically questionable law practices. This also began the spreading of missionaries and pioneers through the decade of 1620 to 1630, inland, to form the original New England colonies. First was New Hampshire, a fishing colony to the north of Massachusetts, and immediately after was New York. Both were considered provinces, violently stripped away from the natives Americans, and the beginnings of a new capitalist empire, as was the simultaneous settlement in Maryland. The Duke of York, Lord Baron of Baltimore, and two Captains of the English military services made claim to the land as New England, against native rights of the indigenous tribes. They also expelled the Dutch settlers, and gave colonists a renewed sense of freedom of religion, while restarting the traditions of murderous genocides of millions of native Americans. In the following decade, New England expanded through Rhode Island and the Connecticut River Colony, creating the American precedence for elected government’s separation of church teaching and state legal system, and the necessitation for consent of people in all acts of government. Then, in the middle colonies of America, Delaware’s Calvanist population was taken from Sweden, just above Virginia, attaching the English provincial strings together. These movements in America not only were crucial to the reformation of the church of Christianity, helping Protestants dissent from the Roman Vatican and create Baptism, but also inspired Thomas Hobbe’s seminal political philosophies revolving the “social contract,” from French reinterpretations by Jean-Jacques Rousseau of Stoic philosophies of Greece, to the formal equivalence of authoritarianism in modern government. His book was ‘Leviathan,’ named after the Biblical, fire-breathing sea serpent whose earthly purpose was to hunt those disbelievers who felt helpless against the wrath of God.
Half a century after first contact with North American Gods, the revenging spirit of unaccepted inhabitants’ rejection from North Carolina, the original southern colonies were split from New England, and the Duke of York. New Jersey marked the boundary of the northern territories, and South Carolina was formed. Meanwhile, United Kingdom’s Christian aristocrat John Locke spread ideals of liberalism, empiricism, republicanism, and the enlightenment of people whose native beliefs were deconstructed similarly to the Roman Empire’s influence, millennium before. Twenty years later, Pennsylvania became a middle colony commonwealth under founder William Penn, and a refuge for persecuted Quakers. Less than a century afterward, the United States of America claimed its independence from the United Kingdom, on July 4th, 1776.
As Christopher approached the church through the crackling scrub and brushing bracken of the large field, he listened for any loud noises, pausing his steps every so often to check for people’s movements or voices. When he came to the mowed grass of the cemetery plot, he could see only an empty road on either side of the chapel. Steadying his rifle under his right arm and holding the barrel with his left hand, he brought himself to full charge at the side of the church, keeping his distance between the front and back windows at the least of possible angles of visibility with the hope to remain unseen until he could reach a reasonable shooting distance, if at all possible. Fortunately, he made it to the rear side without hearing or seeing anybody and slowed his pace, hunkering down and preparing to attack.
Mr. Goode began to overhear the sounds of people within the epinaos of the church until a sudden burst of wind across the fields behind the cemetery made the voices inaudible. The rushing winds had begun without any warning and moments ago the sky had been blue but a gigantic cumulonimbus cloud formation came tumbling quickly overhead as the powerful gusts threw debris against Christopher and onto the walls of the church. The sounds of the men inside became fanatic and Chris ducked low and leaned into the wind as he moved to the back door which also faced the field. The door was unlocked and he frenetically pulled it open, and then struggled to close it. Inside was a dark short staircase leading to another door which had been closed.
When Christopher walked up the short stairs though, the door swung open. Three soldiers stood atop, and one in the back right had his rifle already drawn at Chris. They outnumbered Mr. Goode but his scrimmage was in defense of his life and livelihood of his family and it did not stop Chris from raising his rifle in defense, and shooting the armed guard. Quickly, he pulled down the lever of the Winchester and fired another round into the man standing in the middle, and both fell backwards against the third guard who was reaching for his pistol holster as Christopher jumped up the steps and collided with him.
From a door in the middle of the wall, opposite the rear, Chris descried Lieutenant Martin Barham without any proclivity nor damage to his body. He was calmly walking up from a cellar staircase, wearing exactly the same uniform as the soldiers.
Martin’s unexplainable reappearance after dying at Christopher Goode’s house revealed many surprising and horrific truths. Regardless, Mr. Goode stomped on the fallen guard’s head as he pulled the lever again and shot Mr. Barham between the eyes from close range.
A drafting blaze of fire came rushing through the cellar door and Christopher Goode fell back down the staircase. When he landed against the door to the outside, he saw above him smoky embers filling the church. He stood and opened the door and was struck in the face with a bundle of papers and was knocked back down against the staircase. The smoke was filling the small space in the rear entryway to the church and heat was becoming too unbearable to remain in the tight area but Chris flipped open the small package of papers, and saw his name and sons’ names were written on them. Again, Chris pushed open the rear door and held his head down with his arms and rifle covering his face. Through the immense winds which were blowing the clouds toward the cemetery, Chris went rushing back into the field of gravestones, half-blinded from the calamity.
When he fell into the cavern, he looked back once, but even the misty curtain which had hung before, was thickened and dark. Christopher began the sightless journey through the catacomb, back to Weare, hoping the rope would still be suspended from the top of the hole near his property. He crawled through the long tunnel in a stunned frenzy.
CHRISTOPHER 10
10
10a.)
In the next two days, Christopher met with more local officers and federal agents at his house and also made arrangements for two of his old acquaintances from previous years before his service, to come help him in Weare. The bodies of Mr. Hearst and Mr. Barham from the cave and basement were taken to Concord for forensic autopsies. The two men he sought were in North Carolina and had been able to meet him east of Raleigh, in Rocky Mount. They were Thomas Philippe and Clarence Hill, both aviation experts and flight engineers. Mr. Goode made contact with Thomas Philippe on the phone in Weare and planned to drive down to retrieve him and Clarence Hill, Saturday. When Christopher was considering his drive to North Carolina, he thought of his son, Alexander, and was suffering from broken heartedness. He desired to drive down in the old Ford which would need to be replaced soon anyway, and decided to have Theodore accompany him.
When Teddy found out he would be going with his father on this long highway ride through the East Coast of United States, he was instantly excited and anxiously wanted to be of assistance. He ran up to his room Wednesday after dinner, and began to look through the atlases and maps and was lost in dream. Christopher walked up to his study in the attic and stopped to look in on Theodore, through the door of the bedroom.
“We’re going to drive through 10 of the 13 original colonies, in one day?” Theodore asked.
Christopher was proud of Theodore and knew he was a prodigy unlike any he had grown up with, personally. He corrected his son; it would take two days of driving but confirmed there would be plenty to see on the road. Also, he added caution of their urgent need to return home. The heat of June’s summer weather was permeating through the attic, even though the windows faced the east and west. Christopher sat at the desk and looked through his files on connections he had kept from the time before he had been drafted to the Great War. It helped reconnect him with his integrities as a young father with the world in front of him as his resource and his abilities and intelligence as his utility. He had gone to Europe with one son, Alexander, and had been employed in the same grain corporation as his uncle, Harold. He met Ella at 17, married in the summer of 1913 and then had his first child.
Ella Goode’s family had paid for her boarding school membership and she had excelled in the courses. She graduated ahead of her class and was first working as a bookkeeper for the corporation Chris found himself procured into and indentured out of through his tenured uncle’s reference. Ella was two years older than Christopher, her family was originally from Providence, Rhode Island, but after her father’s death from Spanish flu, she had relocated further inland and set up residency with her mother, in Concord, New Hampshire.
When Christopher returned from war in 1919, Alexander was turning five years old and his carriage driving employment had suffered already, before the global recession really struck American businesses. With his fresh experience in the Army and his family’s tradition of serving careers in the military, Chris wanted to make a decision which would let him stay close to his home and family in Weare, yet revitalize himself in the changing job markets and financial world. Without the banality of a completed formal education, he had to completely reset his goals on employment fields. Initially, he was able to finish his secondary diploma through the Veteran’s Bureau and then, as Ella Goode gave birth to Theodore, he was able to become an accepted student at Plymouth State University for a Criminology Bachelor’s. Christopher Goode finished the program by the time Alex was seven and after his graduation he took his family on vacation to the lost gorges of White Mountains. When he was able to pass the fitness tests, he drove down to Arlington, Virginia, and was sworn in as a deputy.
Friday morning, June 3rd, 1927, Theodore hopped in the passenger side seat of the Ford which had been purchased the same year he was born. Ella pulled out of the driveway in the Franklin, first, traveling alone to her father’s house in New London to visit for the weekend. Then, Christopher backed up out of the driveway of their house in Weare and they embarked on the road to Rocky Mount, North Carolina. They headed into the morning sun, southeast to Manchester, and crossed the turnpike, going toward Derry. It had been previously arranged for the county’s deputy sheriffs and law enforcement to monitor the land and property until Mr. Goode’s return. If Alex reappeared, he would be guaranteed safety.
Mr. Goode decided to stop in Salem for extraneous food supplies. Mrs. Goode had helped pack for two days’ lunches, and fixed a large breakfast the morning of their 8 AM departure. Christopher considered it smart to take an extra break and Theodore got out at the gas station to use the restroom. North Salem would lead them to Salem, Massachusetts, and from there they could head west to Worcester. Christopher hoped they could arrive in New York by early afternoon and take a lunch break near Bear Mountain Bridge, and the West Point Academy. He planned on having dinner somewhere in the city of Philadelphia and being at a motel by nightfall.
Chris stood outside of the car which was parked at the full-service pump. He had a New Hampshire map and one of the tri-state areas. Once he was able to make it into New Jersey, he would want to use the maps of Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. It was just before 9 AM as the gas pump rang and the full-service attendant began to wipe the windshields of the old Ford.
Chris began to walk back to the car and the man pointed across the street, smiling. “Hey, mister, have you taken a look at our Mystery Hill? Right across Arlington Lake, there. I saw your kid walking to the bathroom, if you’re in town for anything, you should see it, for sure. American Stonehenge, it was written up in the papers, again, too. Boy will love it.” The man finished up and Christopher tipped.
When Teddy came back to the car, Christopher opened his door for him. Walking to the driver side, he thought about his initial inclination to dismiss the filling attendant’s recommendation. In the back of his mind however, he knew his reasons for bringing Teddy along were multiplicand and complicated. Protection from the intruders was a foremost concern, distraction from the perilous dangers at home, provision of safer adventures and education of the heartland of America, and possibly even a reason to spend time with each other before Christopher left for perhaps the last time that they would see one another.
As he turned the key in the ignition, he told Teddy they could take a break before they started a long drive through Connecticut. Teddy stared out of the window complacently, and Christopher pulled out of the gas station, back onto the dirt road which curled around two lakes and led to the tourist site. Theodore watched out of the moving window at one shorefront, and then the next, until his father pulled into a small, unpaved, dirt and gravel parking lot, on the lake- side of the road.
It was a short walk through the forest to the visitor center on a dirt path with large rocks along both sides. The visitor center was a small house and it seemed as if the proprietor was not home. They continued to walk and Christopher allowed Teddy to lead the way up the path. It was a few minutes to the first megalithic rock structure, buried halfway in the ground of the forest. The gigantic rock structures seemed alien and even Christopher was skeptical of their origins. Theodore thought they were spectacular and stepped quickly through the walkways around the rock walls, stone structures, and immense architectural phenomena.
Eventually, Teddy became elated with excitement as he looked into one of the dark caves and strange engravings within. Mr. Goode lost sight of him as he looked at a weirdly shaped stone tablet which had vein-like carvings on it. When Mr. Goode looked back to where he had seen Teddy, his son had gone quickly into the dark cave in search of hidden secrets. Theodore sat on a flat rock like a stone chair and looked up at the strange illustrations on the wall, illuminated by a hole in the roof. He didn’t notice when dust and sand fell through from the sides around the ceiling as somebody walked overhead.
A person emerged from a nearby cavern as Christopher became quickly frustrated with the search for Theodore. The man walked with his hands joined together beneath the long sleeves of a dark brown tunic with a belt made of rope and scapula with cowl like a monk, with the hood covering his face. Striding with a stoic pattern to his metered traverse, the man walked along Christopher’s periphery, engaging in a slowly loudening, voluminous humming until his presence caught Mr. Goode’s attention and then the mysterious man reentered a different cave, the one Teddy had gone into.
Mr. Goode started to approach the dark entrance to the cave and as he did, Teddy suddenly emerged, surprising Christopher. Chris asked if Teddy had seen the man who had entered into the same opening and Teddy shook his head, confused. Theodore turned around to look into the darkness behind him and began to explain his discoveries of the illustrations on the cavern wall but saw they had eerily disappeared. Christopher didn’t waste any effort trying to find the monk or figure out Theodore’s unexplainable vision but took his son by the hand and led him out of the megalithic excavation site, back toward the abandoned visitor center.
As they passed the house, a man swung open the front door with a rag in his hand. He walked around the outside of the house to the window glasses and started to wipe them. He was whistling and Chris stopped and turned to him, curious but not ready to initiate a conversation. The man stopped on his own and looked over at Chris and Teddy. “First visitors I’ve seen all day! How are you folks?”
Chris smiled and politely replied to the old man, they had enjoyed the visit. He looked at Teddy whose expression was of complete fulfillment with the exploration. Chris also asked if he had seen the man with the robes or if the man worked somehow at the site.
“Oh, the Culdees? They’ve never worked here, no. I’m surprised you saw them. Must mean good luck…” The old man turned back around and continued washing the window. Christopher wondered what the Culdees were, he hardly remembered the term, and continued back to the car.
As Mr. Goode drove over the state border to Massachusetts, he remembered the accounts of Salem’s witch trials in the late 17th century. Hundreds had been accused of witchcraft and stood trial. Actual judges and lawyers, real law officers, doctors, religious people and families, all affected by the illogical and unconstitutional infringement of rights on the innocent by members of the rural township. Dozens were put to death, executed, or interrogated until they died. He felt more protective of his family as he drove further away from Weare. His son was underneath the property he had inherited from his family, lost in a world governed by an army intent on world domination.
They passed through Worcester, Massachusetts, then crossed the western border into Connecticut, speeding the entire drive to Hartford before noon. Mr. Goode pulled into a Hartford gas station and let an attendant refuel while he went to use the restroom. Theodore sat out in the car alone as the fill attendant stretched the nozzle from the pump to the gas tank cap and clicked up the lever.
“Hey, sir? What time is it?” Theodore asked the Hartford gas attendant. He was starting to get hungry.
“I don’t have a watch, sir, sorry. It’s after twelve PM, though.”
After a minute, the attendant detached the nozzle from the car and placed it back on the pump. Another moment passed and Mr. Goode walked back to the Ford. He paid the attendant and spoke to the worker briefly pertaining the quickest directions to the Hudson River. The man suggested cutting through Waterbury to Peekskill, New York, and Christopher thanked him and got back on the road.
As Christopher cut through Danbury and began the entry into New York State, he told Theodore about the correctional facility just south of their bridge across the river. Ossining, New York held the Sing Sing State Prison, a name derived from the Algonquin natives of the area. The word Sint Sink, in the native language, meant “land of many rocks.” It was built one century before, in 1827, and had modeled its rule system after the Auburn Prison, where most of America’s correctional facilities took their queues. The Auburn system was to impose extreme discipline including complete silence of the entire inmate population as well as enforcement of whippings and other cruel punishments. The Sing Sing prison nearly burned down from a kitchen fire in 1913 and its new warden called it the “Hellhole.” It was also one of the first facilities to use the electric chair for execution and referred to the equipment as “Old Sparky.” It was where the phrase was thought of; “up the river,” when people from New York City talked about criminals who had been sent “up north,” to serve time.
Finally, the Hudson River stretched across their vision through the entire windshield of the Ford. Bear Mountain was across the water and the suspension bridge stretched for almost a thousand yards. At the time of its construction, it was the longest bridge in the world until it was later surpassed by Camden’s Benjamin Franklin across the Delaware. Theodore wanted to stop along the bridge to look out onto the flowing water body of the Hudson River, but Bear Mountain Bridge was a toll system bridge and Mr. Goode couldn’t interfere with the traffic pattern.
Finally, in New York State, just south of West Point Military Academy, Mr. Goode and Theodore pulled over to have the food and snacks which were prepared by Mrs. Goode. The majestic Catskill mountains covered the skyline, forests and lakes sprinkled the topography of the southeastern region of New York known as Upstate, although it was far below the central latitude. Mr. Goode explained the meaning of kill was the Dutch word, derived from “water channel.” The Dutch had first settled the areas of New York where they were driving, purchasing it from the native tribes. As they were moving south, regions had been first settled by Quaker, who were English Christian reformists seeking sanctuary from religious persecution in the Netherlands and also Pennsylvania. Theodore quietly contemplated this esoteric information as they both finished lunch in a small parking lot alongside Hessian Lake, named for the Hessian mercenaries from Germany, hired by Britain to fight the Americans in the Revolutionary War.
The day had been long already, and as they passed through New City, New York, it was 2 o’clock PM. The Hudson was far off to their left as they drove south through Orangetown, and finally crossed into New Jersey. When they were parallel along the river to Jersey City and New York City, both to the east, they stopped in Newark to refuel again. Newark sat along a river, Theodore saw from the car seat as they pulled into the station and he asked if it was still the Hudson, curiously wondering. Christopher answered as he got out of the car to refill water casks, telling Teddy the name of the river was the Passaic. Teddy was intrigued and hopped out and followed Christopher inside the station to look for information on the area for himself. Almost immediately, he found a tourism pamphlet which explained a brief history of the area. The name Newark was not actually a form of New York as he had thought, but was an abbreviation of “New Ark,” or “New Work,” which the pioneers believed was their mission as faithful servants of God. Passaic River was actually a branch of the inletting rivers of Hackensack and Rahway which met in the Newark Bay, which branched into New York Bay through Kill van Kull to the east and Arthur Kill to the south. Satisfied, Theodore walked himself back to the parked car and waited in the passenger seat for Christopher.
Through Trenton, New Jersey, they first saw the Delaware River from between scarlet oaks and Virginian pine. Driving along the Falls of the Delaware, Christopher explained how the Appalachian Mountains had once been part of a larger mountain range during Pangaea’s formations of the continents. It had actually been connected directly to Ireland as part of an expansive chain of mountain ranges until platonic shifts separated American landmasses, creating the New World and Old World. As they drove through old hardwood forests, they saw some lumberyards and construction developments. Christopher told Theodore how the Adirondack Mountains of northern New York were a separate, much older, mountain range. Finally, crossing the Benjamin Franklin Bridge from Camden to Philadelphia, they entered Pennsylvania.
Christopher rode right by the Liberty Bell and Teddy was mesmerized by the magnificence of the huge city. It had been America’s first capital city and Mr. Goode was proud to be able to show his son. Even in the glory of the metropolis lights, the aura surrounding the city with thousands of lives’ enjoyment of natural freedoms, Mr. Goode felt the sorrow of losing his first child. He denied himself the expression in front of Teddy but as they ate at a downtown restaurant, the resonance of the mournful mood was difficult to conceal and Teddy, too, felt sadness for his missing sibling.
By last light, they reached Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, the site of the Address by President Abraham Lincoln upon reuniting the southern States with the Union, in response to the rebellion of the African, Chinese, and Irish, colonial American slave-owning Confederation against Emancipation Proclamation, in 1863. The speech had been given on the site of a cemetery, dedicated to the lives of soldiers lost during the bloodiest battle of the American Civil War. Christopher pulled into a motel and paid for a room for the night; twin beds, and father and son each slept through nightmare-filled nights, unconsciousness still invaded by unspoken fears. Mr. Goode waited until Theodore was sleeping and picked up his wallet and keys and walked outside along the rooms, back to the front desk to use their phone. First, Mr. Goode called the Weare police station to check on the security of his house and whether his son had reappeared. Then, he called Ella’s father’s house and reassured her of their safety and their pleasant drive. He walked back to the motel room, moping, but opened the door to see his sleeping son. Christopher forced himself back to bed and slept until early morning when the sunrise hit his eyes sharply, reminding him briefly of the open tents of Europe, World War, when he had before, missed his first son, Alexander, away on tour with the Allied Armed Service.
By 9 AM the two had already eaten breakfast and driven into Maryland. Rather than travel through congested city streets of the Baltimore area, Mr. Goode circumvented both it and Washington, D.C., as well, crossing the Potomac after coming through Frederick, Maryland, at Point of Rocks Bridge near B&O’s interstate railroad station. Here, they stopped for a quick brunch, consisting of cheap sandwiches at an automat. They then rode through Leesburg, Virginia and southward into Fredericksburg, Virginia.
From there, they crossed through Richmond, the recaptured capital of the Confederates, and drove south into North Carolina. After lunch, sitting in their car by the lake, they drove over the Roanoke River rapids which run down the fall line from mainland into the coastal alluvia to the east and also across Roanoke Canal, an unfinished 19th century canal system. Finally, they took a refuel and lunch break at Battleboro, North Carolina. Christopher had decided to stop there because of the similarity in its name to his childhood home in Brattleboro, Vermont. Teddy was restless, though, and Christopher did not want to take too long. They were getting close to their final destination, so they snacked on Ella’s second batch of prepacked sandwiches and moved on to Rocky Mount.
Finally, the tall tobacco fields along Tar River brought them into Mount Mills Village. It was around 6 PM and the sun was still beating on the narrow streets leading to a town tavern which had become another small, unstaffed automat, where the two aviation experts had agreed to meet with Christopher Goode. When he pulled into the parking lot though, there were only two other cars and he wondered if the lack of parked cars was equivalated to less patronage, and if this implicated absence of the two men’s own transportation. Sighing, he stepped out of the driver’s side into the heat of the North Carolina late afternoon. Theodore was fatiguing, yet kept himself docketed with his father’s schedules and walked around the front of the car to look into the front windows of the cafeteria.
From behind Christopher down the street, Mr. Goode heard the boisterous shouting of his old friends. The two men jaunted into the parking lot whimsically, which took stark contrast in Christopher’s mind against the worries he had been internally concealing. When the group of four stepped into the store, it became more obvious how they seemed to have slightly misinterpreted the telephone conversation from Weare. The two men had already gotten drunk off of moonshined whiskey and plopped themselves into a booth across from Theodore and Christopher who was quickly becoming annoyed.
“Fly a plane, underground?” Clarence Hill started to ask Chris in a joking and degrading manner. Theodore felt himself blushing, embarrassed, as the Texan, Thomas Philippe, rudely continued, “In an effort to rescue your son, lost in a cave below your uncle’s land in New Hampshire, you want us to come construct from scratch, accurately assemble, and successfully fly an aeroplane…?”
10b.)
Despite the vulgar attitudes and toxic instigation by Clarence Hill and his comrade, Thomas Philippe, Christopher Goode had used his own quick-witted subterfuge and was able to persuade the two aeroplane craftsmen, professional pilots and aerodynamics experts, to accompany him and his son, Theodore, back to New Hampshire, in the same family Ford. The group stayed the night in North Carolina in a motel to the west, in Princeville. They arrived at dusk and had no problem finding arrangements at an establishment in the predominantly African-American, newly incorporated township. Historically, it was the first American city which was formed by freed slaves after the Civil War, in 1885. They stayed on Main Street, in a building said to have been built by founder Turner Prince who had mysteriously vanished the year following construction.
Clarence and Thomas were both very drunk, illegally. They had been celebrating the construction project they had finished building a plane which was kept in storage near the Atlantic Coast, and when they had arrived at Mount Mills, they were full of vigor, yet intoxicated and quickly waning on energy. Soon, as the four finished sandwiches in the automat, Christopher had started to speak to them more about the project he had proposed over the phone from Weare. His idea was to bring equipment to his home and transport it manually through the tunnel to construct an aeroplane in the field in Hobb. While he had his son’s attention, he repeated this plan and added his imaginary clause of being able to provide the two men with a wealth of money and possibly distinguish them among the highest branches of government as pioneering heroes. Teddy showed his anxiousness and excitement and the two men found it infectious. Christopher suggested they move their conversation away from the public venue and into the privacy of a motel and asked where they could recommend. Thomas quickly came up with the idea to move west and was becoming excited about the chance to become dignified with accomplishments beyond his current engineering expertise and offered up the idea of Princeville. Clarence knew less about the township but was concurrent with the plan to go with the Goodes.
The two rooms at the motel were joined by a door in the dividing wall. Christopher left Theodore to sleep after 8 o’clock and went to try to meet with Clarence and Thomas. They were both barely awake though, and by 8:30 PM Clarence sluggishly moved to the bed having given up on the conversation. Thomas had already caused a small argument with Clarence, dividing their unified rebuttal at the initial reintroduction to the planned procedure by Christopher when Clarence’s slurred speech enticed Thomas to laugh at and ridicule him. Christopher was baring with the awkwardness of the arrived iniquitous reprobation of blackguards but was quickly deconcentrated by a rapping knock on the suite door.
Christopher mentioned his son in the other room, excused himself for the night and stood to his feet. With one final plea as he turned the knob of the room door, he asked for if the two men would accompany him on his continued journey back to Hobb.
“Hobson, North Carolina, is only a few miles north of here,” snickered Clarence, from the bed.
Mr. Goode slowly opened the adjoining doorway and turned to face Thomas, who was standing up from his chair at the small table and walking to his bed. Thomas turned to Mr. Goode and his face turned suddenly pale. Christopher mistook the expression for hangover sickness and turned back to his room.
Standing over the bed next to his son was a tall, heavyset man’s shadow. It suddenly disappeared when Christopher shouted at him. Thomas hobbled over to the doorway and Clarence sat up in bed as Teddy awakened from slumber and rolled over onto his side.
“What’s going on?” asked Theodore, “Why are you fighting?”
10c.)
Theodore Goode woke Christopher Goode up at 7 AM, when Theodore was already in and out of the bathroom and up to the front window to spread the blinds and look into the sunny North Carolina streets. The hot light shone onto Mr. Goode’s eyes and he quickly rose to his feet, anxious to check on Clarence and Thomas in the other room. They had a lot of driving to do and with Teddy they would need to stop at another motel again, halfway. Both men were up already, and Thomas had gone down to the front lobby to ask about local dining. Clarence came out of the bathroom and continued packing his bag. Christopher greeted him and estimated their time of departure, and Clarence Hill was sullen yet in agreement. Clarence had been in World War I but not in contact with Christopher who was in First Army. Clarence had gotten signed on with Second Air Service and was a decade Christopher’s senior. Thomas was only a year younger than Mr. Goode but the age difference between them was insignificant, and although Thomas was an engineer and Clarence was a seasoned pilot, Christopher had the more mature attitude.
The drive back north through the rural highways, and scenes of railways and buildings, developments and construction, along the east coast seemed to pass quicker for Christopher and Theodore, who sat up front in the passenger seat. Teddy slept as did the men in the backseat, until a lunch break was called at noon outside of Alexandria, Virginia. Mr. Goode refused to let anyone else drive even when Clarence offered to fill the gas tank. It was unnegotiable as Christopher was still shaken up by the loss of his son. They drove all the way to White Plains, New York, before stopping for the night at a motel. Still, Teddy sensed his father wanted to finish the drive overnight as the two men’s company seemed to do little to alleviate the underlying tension. Their rest at the motel was uneventful after they had eaten suppers late, separately, Clarence and Thomas stayed in their room and Chris and Teddy in another.
Morning sunshine pushed them out the door again, and they headed parallel to Long Island Sound to New Haven, Connecticut, stopped for a lunch and then arrived across the state border of New Hampshire after 3 PM.
When Mr. Goode pulled the Model T onto the road to his house in Weare, they were already low on fuel again after the drive through the state. Christopher pulled into the driveway and cut the engine off, then told Mr. Hill and Mr. Philippe that he would need to drive back to town to refuel after he let them inside. Teddy opened the car door and noticed the Franklin was not in the driveway, so he assumed his mother was still visiting his grandparents. He asked Mr. Goode when she would be home and Chris reassured Teddy she should be back by Wednesday afternoon. Then, Mr. Goode asked Mr. Hill and Mr. Philippe to wait by the car while he walked up the barn door and opened it, exhibiting the crime scene of Mr. Hearst’s murder by either trained dogs or some other trained attack animal as described by Teddy during his short interview with Detective Plympton and his father on the previous Tuesday.
“…-scary sounds from the basement. the side door, opened, the smell... The stench grew more odiferous-… …- three gigantic rats, as large as tigers, and blood all over the wall of the nearest stable… hair was matted and dripping wet…- light disappeared, an old lady appeared… …vile, wide with wild teeth- …”
There was nobody in the barn and after the police had left, Christopher had swept out a whole side, brushing each sweep with a tightened arm, feeling the bristles on the broom stick like the hair on his neck. Mr. Goode began to grin as he passed through over to the side of the house, and waved for them all to follow him with a smile when he was closer to the front door. He told them all he would call over to the sheriff’s office when he was inside, and then Mrs. Goode in New London, and quickly leave to refuel and buy sandwiches in town. He asked Teddy to show them their rooms; the guest room and study.
Teddy walked behind Christopher and thought about his brother. The feeling of loss sunk in as they approached the house and Mr. Goode walked to the front stoop with shoulders held high but a look across his face which told of worry and bleak predictions. Chris walked through the front door and over through the children’s study area to the basement door, across the room which was filled with light from the large front windows, its curtains drawn apart and displaying the front lawn and gate. He walked down into the basement and Teddy led the men up the stairs to the second floor. The doors were all shut in the hallway, Teddy walked through the dim light filtering through curtains at the end of the hallway opposite the guest room. Downstairs, Christopher’s footsteps returned to the study area and around the front window as Teddy opened the guest room and pointed over to his mother’s study. Clarence and Thomas were following the young child down the hall, and Clarence, who was in front, opened the door. Teddy began to feel anxious at the sight of the back woods but walked over to his own room and opened the door. Both men returned to the top of the stairs and looked down the hall at Alex’s and Teddy’s rooms and the bathroom, then Christopher walked to the landing at the bottom of the stairs and the men began to descend. Teddy looked at his bed and then his desk, which had copies of magazines, and he opened the top drawers and looked at his cards and chess set. As the men reached the bottom step, he turned back and walked behind them to the first floor.
In the study area which was now converted into a temporary boardroom for the three adults, Teddy saw Mr. Goode beginning to draw a map of the town in Hobb. Mr. Goode stopped and told Teddy to help by drawing a map like his for the two men, filling in his own details while Mr. Goode walked into the kitchen to use the phone. Teddy looked at the map his father had drawn, it was quickly stenciled with one of the pencils which were loose on Teddy’s school desk. There was a mile scale system drawn in the middle, although the dimensions were very rough estimates. The graveyard was not illustrated with gravestones as Teddy would have thought, but just a square with the word “graveyard” inside, next to another square traced on the middle left side of the paper which said “church.” There was one on the right side which was larger than either of the others and it was labeled “field.” Mr. Goode had drawn two lines from the “church” to the end of the “field,” and then, two lines along the right side of the paper which were the roads.
Theodore stepped in and picked up a pencil on his desk and swiped over a piece of paper. Clarence Hill and Thomas Philippe watched with moderate interest but more of a patronizing sympathy as the boy began to draw a smaller translation of his father’s picture in the bottom left-hand corner of the paper. He then extended the road on the right into the curving route through the forest which led to the front gates of Hobb where the guard buildings were, and where they had hidden in the shadows and veered left to the lake and store with the train set. He wrote “train store,” on the shop where they had first met Ahmad and “tall tower,” for the Innn. When he was done, Thomas came and picked up the paper, examining it more closely. Christopher returned from the phone calls as Thomas began to point out Teddy’s “train store,” to Clarence.
Christopher asked if Teddy would accompany him to the gas station and they both walked back out to the car. Meanwhile, Thomas passed the maps to Clarence and watched them leave from the front window. “So, do you think Goode is crazy, or has the boy been to a different world, or what, Clarence?”
Clarence looked at the scale on the map drawn by Christopher and then tried to refer it to the distances on Teddy’s map. “Tommy, there’s no way in hell Chris would lose one of his sons, and not do everything in his power to find him, whatever the cost. Even if it means dragging us, Goode hasn’t the composition as a man, to allow for failure.”
“Hey, look Hill, it’s Alex right here…” Thomas trailed off as the two looked over to the sound of a small person’s footsteps walking down from up the stairs. Teddy had already left in the car with his father though, and the noise was coming from somebody else within the house.
A young boy with blood on his cheeks came down the steps and pointed a gun out at Thomas Philippe. He was not Teddy and was the duplicate of Darren Lynch but the two men only saw a strange little boy coming toward them, and Thomas said out loud, “Alex?” Before he was shot in the throat and instantly killed.
Clarence could tell it was not one of the Goode’s children though, and instantly wrestled with the boy as his friend fell to the floor. He knew it wasn’t Alex, he had known Christopher since the war and had seen pictures of his sons. Clarence’s cousin had been a Hill family representative in recent aeroplane experiments along the North Carolina coast and even after Clarence Hill’s co- production had spread out from the professionally sought name of Gerard, Christopher had stayed a close friend of both Hills who had set up permanent residence in North Carolina, after the war. They had received multiple photographs of the children as they lived together near the oceanside. Darren looked nothing like Alexander Goode, he was smaller and younger and at the moment had been inoculated and starved during extensive labor abuse in Hobb. He also had been given the serum which could enter human blood stream and accelerate heart and circulatory system adaptivity. In theorem, the injection given to many of Hobb’s duplicated army could sustain mobility functions well past the cutting of several arteries or destruction of massive cell membrane or body tissue.
Darren Lynch pulled the trigger again as Clarence pulled the barrel up to point to the ceiling, above. Clarence narrowly missed being grazed by the bullet but managed to wrangle the boy by his right wrist and broke his weaker grip on the handgun. As he disarmed though, the boy bit Clarence’s right forearm and Mr. Hill panicked, pulling the gun away with his left arm and squeezing it to control it, accidentally pulling the trigger. Darren Lynch’s duplicate was shot in the forehead and killed, toppling backward onto the landing of the stairs. As Thomas quickly bled out from the bullet wound, Clarence rushed to the phone in the kitchen. He dialed the sheriff’s office while shaking, and reported two dead or wounded at the Goode residence.
CHRISTOPHER 11
11
Installment A
11a.)
While waiting for Gerard Hill to drive from North Carolina, Clarence forced himself to plan ahead; gather an assessment of the transportation issues involved with carrying loads of materials up the wooded hill and through the narrow tunnel and also took time to review stores in New Hampshire which could distribute the types of products and tools he would need to assemble the aeroplane. His cousin, Gerard, as well as most of Clarence’s family was teetotaler, and putting his sobered mind to the task at hand helped clear Clarence Hill’s thoughts. Gerard was scheduled to arrive on Wednesday afternoon.
Gerard Hill graduated from Yale, in Connecticut, a decade before war broke out in Europe with Bachelor of Science in Engineering. He later would go on to become an Aero Squadron Captain in the First Air Service, after attending flight school in California, on North Island. He had gotten enough credits at Yale to be rushed up the brass ladder and given a lead command as war began to raise demand for American Airmen. Clarence had not gotten nearly as far with his education, before his involuntary conscription. He had been less truant during his youth and although he was several years younger and a war hero, their families which had grown together closely in western North Carolina, welcomed each home with differing outlooks for their prospective futures. The Texan engineer, Thomas Philippe, had been enrolled in Florida when World War I draft began and was passed over. Clarence met Mr. Philippe in 1920 when he had run a newspaper advertisement in the classified sections throughout both North and South Carolina, seeking to start designing aircrafts which were more aerodynamic and faster.
Theodore was staying with the Grant family just outside of Manchester, and Ella had arranged to pick him up once Christopher phoned her father’s. Meanwhile Christopher made more calls to a friend who had gotten placed with the Federal Radio Commission and began to see if they would be able to carry some sort of radio transmitters with them into Hobb. As of yet, Christopher still felt the need to confirm the location and reported geography of the underground area as had been reported to him by his youngest son. His associate was unable to truly give an estimation of whether the radios would be effective but did give Christopher some tips about bouncing the signal of his radio into the tunnel with antenna arrays. It would be a straight-through mission, so Christopher and the two pilots would need to be able to bring a lot of equipment in backpacks and possibly wheel a small pallet in on a sled.
In lieu of reconnaissance to the tunnel, Christopher sketched a more detailed route for Clarence late Tuesday night. When Wednesday’s dawn was pink, a blue sky, horizon filled with rainclouds, Christopher and Clarence drove into town to obtain their multiple deliveries. The markets themselves bloomed vibrantly with brightened coloring, pastels and light, shimmering, as clouds spread overhead, and Chris pulled onto the side of the road to park. The pair of amateur spelunkers made their way around the few stores in town, picking up basic food supplies and extra clothing articles, and Mr. Goode spoke with a warehouse worker about buying a couple loading pallets. He agreed to come back for timber pallets on the return way through town, and then they again sat in the car and drove over to the train station. The train came rolling down the track as they arrived and before they were out of their seats, it had slowed to a stop.
Along the road back to the house, Clarence read through the instruction manual to their radio system, flipped through the pages to the end and turned around to examine the packages they had received. He began to check a pad of paper he had drawn lists of their tools and baggage. When Mr. Goode pulled into the driveway, Mrs. Goode’s car was still gone and he knew she would be arriving from the Grant’s residence. He wanted her to take Theodore back with her to her father’s house after one night together. They began to pull packages out of the backseat areas of the car and heard a car engine rumbling up the gravel road toward the house. Before it was in sight, he sensed it was someone else’s vehicle, a less noisy engine than the Franklin, and turned around to see Gerard Hill driving in his Dixie Flyer. A cloud of dust followed him as he passed the tree line into the eastern end of the front lawn.
“Hey, Clarence, it looks like your cousin’s pulling up.” Said Christopher as he picked up the last pallet from the car seat and leaned it against the inside wall of the barn.
Gerard pulled the roofless, green Flyer along the side of the fence, and turned up the driveway, parked behind Christopher’s old T-Model, and yanked off his beret, waving against the sun’s heat and smiling as he hopped up and leaned back onto the seat’s head cushion behind him. “The wife not home, Mr. Goode?”
Clarence Hill shuffled from behind the passenger side rear seat with both arms filled with boxes of lumber and wiring, and moved to the back of the Ford, resting the boxes against the bumper. “Ged,” Clarence began, while shifting his weight to hold the boxes steady, “long time… since I’ve seen you, cousin.”
Gerard Hill looked over to Clarence, then raised his hand over his eyebrow in a non-military salute. “Clarence, there you are! Good you called, I’ve wanted to help Christopher, here, since I heard he had landed his career as the Marshal. I couldn’t be any more excited to see both of you,” Gerard leapt over the car door and slapped his palm on the hood of his car as he pivoted over to shake Clarence’s hand. “Ouch, that’s a hot engine… Here, Clarence.” They shook hands and Clarence’s strains in balancing his boxes kept their eyes locked while they exchanged peaceful gesture.
Christopher walked to the back of his car, around Clarence’s left shoulder, and on it he rested one arm and extended his right. “Hey, partner, thank you.” Gerard released Clarence’s hand and stepped over to reach for Mr. Goode’s. Mr. Goode released Clarence’s collarbone and Clarence shifted his weight back, gathering the boxes in his forearms and carried them back off into the barn. “Listen, Mrs. Goode and Teddy will be here any minute. Okay? I am really sorry to have to see you, again, in these circumstances.”
“Don’t apologize!” Gerard stepped back. His voice emphasized optimism but his face portrayed concerned determination. Whether sincere or not, Christopher was relieved to sense loyalty.
“Ged, come help with these boxes from the car, since you’re here. I want to tell you what we have, here. It’s our aeroplane construction materials on the top, now, and miscellaneous supplies between the seats.” Clarence said, walking back from the barn.
The Franklin’s motor had become a monotonous overture to the dialogue between cousins and Chris. Gerard walked over to the Flyer and removed his pair of sunglasses from his breast pocket. Mr. Goode spun around and watched as Mrs. Goode and Teddy drove slowly up the driveway.
11b.)
When the three men entered the cave Thursday morning, Christopher sensed something was mysteriously changed within the dank walls of the catacomb’s upper level. It was like an echoing vibration had bounced about it from Hobb and back, deflected from Earth, and had left a residual buzz throughout the rocks and crystallized tunnels. Like shellshock or tinnitus, but without ringing, accumulated in invisible static frequency. Clarence and Gerard pulled a sled behind them and each had backpacks on their shoulders and duffle bags. They walked ahead to the hole within the cavern floor.
Christopher knelt over and began untying a long repel rope, anchor wedges, and two cables for lowering their equipment. Becoming more acclimated with the air in the cavern, Christopher stood up and walked over to the edge of the hole, stared down, deep within darkness. A damp rush of air blew through the hole, moisture which collected along the cave walls sparkled an array of lights, refracting through crystals and the sprinkled droplets of water. As the cool breeze twirled across the cavern, it spun outward through the mouth of the cave into the pink sunrise hues of the atmosphere on Earth. Christopher looked back through the mouth and saw the altocumulus clouds of the western horizon. As he did, Chris heard a shuffling beneath the ledge of the hole and stared downward to watch a roll of papers skitter along the escarpment of the chasm. He set down his backpack and unloaded the sled.
The team worked together to unpack the radio antenna system and place two of the units on the top level, near the whole. As they did, Christopher went back to the barn on his property and picked up another load of boxed materials on his sled and another backpack of radio supplies. He rushed back up the hillside as soon as he could, while the other two men finished anchoring the cables. Mr. Goode attached the two duffle bags to the cables and lowered them down.
Clarence Hill descended first, as Mr. Goode dropped the two cables again below him, one holding Clarence’s backpack and one holding the sled. Next, Gerard took the rope and Mr. Goode dropped both his and Gerard’s backpacks on the cables. Finally, Mr. Goode descended the rope which was anchored to two crevices between rocks in the cavern. When he was midway down the hole, he saw the papers, just a short way to his right, had landed and become stuck on the rocky surface of the wall. Trying to not look down, he swung far over to the right and grabbed the letters. He called down to both Hill cousins, letting them know how he had to climb back up to the top. At the top of the hole again, he took the letters and examined them more. He recognized them from his first entry into Hobb, the papers with distinct handwriting on them resembling Alex’s. He walked over to the antenna unit nearest the top of the hole and wedged the papers beneath it, then returned and climbed back down the rope to the bottom.
Then, there was the long, constricted tunnel, leading their crawl to the exit of the catacomb, dragging the sled and shuffling through with their luggage. First, as the Hills began the passage, Christopher set up three more antenna units at the base of the hole and doublechecked the readiness of the rope to the top. After he was sure of the durability of his equipment, Mr. Goode followed through the lengthy, narrow, and short tunnel system. With Clarence Hill again leading the way, through the rough surfaces and scratching crystals which lined each wall of and floor of the black tunnel, the trio of war heroes continued forth to Hobb. When Clarence reported the sighting of a faint light reflecting more brightly against the crystals, the other two men were only able to receive his observation as correct, although they could not confirm it for themselves. Finally, Christopher Goode watched as Captain Gerard Hill stood up in front of him and disappeared into the fog.
As Mr. Goode pulled the sled out of the cave, he too, was enveloped in the dense fog near the entry to Hobb’s graveyard.
He reached down to the long harnesses of the sled which hung around his waist, pulling it behind him. The veil of fog was pushed aside and he continued out into the grass as he tried to get the men’s attention, “Ged, Clarence… don’t walk close to the church.” His loud whisper was almost a hiss and he saw the backs of the men as they became visible again.
But the two men were unmoving and were transfixed on the spectacle of biologic anomaly which lay before their feet. Gerard turned his head back to Christopher, asking, “Chris, is this what you meant about the other world?” In front of Clarence and Gerard was a catastrophic scene of destruction.
A conflagration across the cemetery had razed the dead and destroyed a portion of the field which had been behind the church. There were burned bodies, skeletal remains, and a scorched earth in all directions, centering around the Behemoth. The church was gone and between the cavern and barely distinguishable foundation was the carcass of the giant black bear which had sprung Alexander from captivity within the warehouse far to the northeast. Its enormous body sprawled down against the graves, its tongue was hanging and its eyes, half-open, were void of life. Its fur had been blazed off and skin was charred, bleeding from multiple gunshot wounds and its throat had been cut.
“No, no. Now, alright. We have to move back as fast as we can, to the field back there. Take our cover in the tall grasses.” Mr. Goode waved Clarence and Gerard back.
As they passed behind the cavern entrance, Mr. Goode went back into the fog quickly. Inside, he placed another radio antenna unit and stared deep into the tunnel’s darkness. The once unwelcoming and moist, dark and foreboding catacomb which led to Hobb, was now a surreal visage, the open mouth of a portal back home. Then, Christopher hurried back to the heated humidity of the burned graveyard, the stench of decay behind the fog and the pending war under an alien sky. He picked up his sled’s reigns and followed behind the Hills to the green field.
A noise from behind the tall, waving leaves of the field; pierced the decimated landscape. An abrupt, menacing laughter, loud and antagonizing and unseen. The three men slowed down and the Hills turned to Mr. Goode for his prerogative instruction. Mr. Goode winced at the sound’s source and then doublechecked the deserted yards behind them but saw no reason to not keep moving forward. He was also worried the man could be using the distracting laughter to alert nearby soldiers.
“Chris, I think I recognize that voice.” Clarence interrupted Mr. Goode’s continued onward march. He shoved on Christopher’s elbow and Christopher slowed down, listening harder as the laughter began to peter out. Yet Mr. Goode did not stop walking and although Gerard had hesitated, too, they all moved together, closer to the ominous field’s mysterious vocalizer. As the approach tightened the perimeter, the laughter had disappeared and Christopher leaned forward with one hand to the tall, green, waving grass blades, and pushed them aside. Suddenly, a murder of crows rose from the field and the sky blurred and shadowed the ground with their wings flying away in the direction opposite the men.
Christopher Goode reached for his gun, sensing the person who was watching was preparing an assault. Clarence and Gerard Hill stared in shock as Christopher drew the weapon out of its holster on his belt. There was a faint and muffled sound of a rifle’s load chamber closing in the field and Mr. Goode let off his shot. There was a grunt and a thudding noise of a body landing on the ground, falling through grass and then a moan and gasping. Clarence started running through the weeds and Gerard followed, both wobbling under the weight of their packs. Christopher dropped the reigns of the sled and held his gun in his right arm, pointed out straight while supporting it with his left forearm, underneath.
Suddenly, a shot was fired and a bullet whizzed by Christopher’s left side. “Tommy! Chris, it’s Tommy!” Clarence’s words were almost simultaneous with the gunshot. Then, Clarence Hill yelled and two more shots rang out but sounded distinctly different, and more like a pistol.
Christopher Goode charged through the grass and saw Gerard Hill putting his gun back into his belt holster. Clarence was staring in shock at Gerard and then spinning his head back to look at the body on the ground which was Thomas Philippe’s. Mr. Philippe lay next to a rifle and had three bullet wounds which caused his foreign soldier uniform to become drenched in blood. He was shot near his left shoulder, under the left ribcage and in his forehead.
11c.)
Christopher, Clarence, and Gerard divided their time during the afternoon to perform separate tasks. Christopher and Clarence walked around the grass field in a perimeter from the space they had designated as the center; their temporary headquarters and construction site. They tried to keep quiet while unpacking the boxes from the sled and the pieces from the luggage. The first piece of equipment which was fully assembled was the radio system. Mr. Goode took the sled back to the side of the field and carefully looked around the barren graveyard until he was sure the area was still deserted. He ran the sled back to the tunnel while Gerard came to watch for soldiers from a hidden spot within the tall grass.
Once inside the tunnel, Christopher began to try to imagine what had caused the explosion which had killed the giant Behemoth. If the military had weapons which could do the amount of destruction he had witnessed, he wondered if they were really planning a hostile takeover of North America or if they could more easily capture him and his accomplices than he had previously estimated. Although his psyche suffered from these paranoias, the mindless and blind crawl through the tunnel alone, gave him an autonomous enough task to allow him to absolve them.
His meditations were deep between the beginning of his journey and he used gloves to help with his abrasive surroundings. He thought about the idea of tulpas; the Tibetan superstition of projected images from people who transmit their imagination into reality. It was actually incorrect but his anger and sadness were delicately hanging in control. These people who looked like his friends and family were actually scientific creations used with a soon exhausted and anomalous supply of the special power source.
Rough, crystalized surfaces scratched skin off his palms and elbows and as he climbed back up the rope at the end of the tight squeeze through the lower section, he remembered his finding of the paper letters. When he had lowered all of the packages down the shaft using the cables, he turned and looked over at the antenna which held the documents. He decided to disclose the secret whereabouts of the papers on high frequency air and to radio his instructions for their retrieval when he returned to camp. He also decided to make his radio to the receiver at his house into a request for reinforcement. Aside from these new resolutions, he realized that his mission to extricate his son was most likely impossible. Yet if he ascertained the location of Barry Reeve’s gang in Hobb, he wanted to try to pin him directly to whoever was in command.
Back at the camp, Clarence and Gerard were organized for the second half of the preliminary assembly. There were crucial pieces of their design which were scrutinized more heavily when Gerard had brought up a new theory, involving an update to their aerodynamic pressure changes. The newly introduced concept was of a variant in coefficients which were correlated. It meant they needed to adjust the wing patterns and possibly weight. Fortunately, their engine had been resolved as mutually acceptable for powering the proposed propeller strengths but their overbearing weight would be a determining factor. Also, they had brought their first sled down which had been less than half of their structural shell. Clarence had finally agreed to improvisational amendments to their blueprinted pieces and they prepared to try Gerard’s hypothesis. They had some parts of on the second load of the sled which were aluminum but mostly they had chosen Douglas Fir which was locally supplied as well as easily customizable. They would need to remove a few unnecessary pieces of the front of the plane’s nose beneath the cabin, which would provide enough weight redistribution for them to be able to attempt to lighten a percentage of their onboard equipment.
Thankfully, when Christopher Goode returned with the sled to the fog of the cemetery, his memory was becoming refocused on the commitment to his plan. He let go of the sled as he saw the light of his final emergence and crept quietly and slowly to the end of the tunnel while holding his M1917 Colt revolver, and then used stealth and speed in his repositioning move through and scan of the destroyed area. Returning to the sled, he was ready for a refreshed and renewed approach to his first plan and made his way back to the campsite with new resolve.
What the three had failed to notice about the coefficient variants and the intended amendments to their design of the aeroplane was the type of air pressure effects on their turboprop turbine inline engine. Drakkyn had already discovered the proportionate difference’s devastating effects when it became clear he could not assemble aeroplane aviation on his own. The planet of Hobb was enormously difficult to construct adjusting measurements from materials to match with unique atmospheric inconsistencies. The engineers who worked under Drakkyn’s control had produced evidence of the massive difference in atmospheric pressures on the surface of their colonized planet. Although Drakkyn had put tremendous efforts on his power source’s cultivation through planting new species, and trying to harness the wilderness of Hobb, the size of the global dimensions was immense. The planet’s orbit around its sun was visibly different from the ground, as the light which refracted as it penetrated Hobb’s outer atmosphere’s gases from the solar star in its planetary system, was diminished by a closer revolutionary radius and altered by planetary mass as well as daily rotations.
Initial pilgrimage by Drakkyn had revealed the planet’s true north and south poles to be comparatively expansive and uninhabitable and their air force was dissolved. It was only fractionally different from Earth but the residual effects were accelerated. Humans had only recently discovered the proper engine for flight and by the beginning of the 20th century were migrating toward the inclusion of civilian use into society. The invention of the aircraft carrier produced a higher interest in military use and by 1920 there were passenger and commercial flights. 1927’s solo flight by Charles Lindbergh from New York to Paris also popularized the idea of air flight.
Through the three men’s scrupulous rescheduling, they eventually decided to spend the day and night working in shifts to complete the final plans for their mission. Christopher asked if the two cousins would accept commission and the Hills concurred. It was then, unanimously consented to construct their aeroplane and to land the flight back at the field by noon the following day.
11d.)
As sun began to shine early, the men took advantage of their illuminated workspace to begin hand press and acetylene torch work. Christopher had chosen to break on middle shift and Clarence began to become restless in his awarded sleep shift. Celestial light rose with bright radiance and Clarence’s eyes fixated on the barometer’s weak measurement fluctuations. When he stubbornly stirred himself to flip over onto his side, back to face his cousin and Christopher, he squinted as their aeroplane swiftly reached near visual completion and laid back in contemplation. In his visions of the morning dreams, his body grew temperance through lucidity of his unconscious mind, Clarence dreamt of the Phoenix, the ancient bird whose sparks from its species’ ashes and burial nest caused its reincarnation. It posed, interpretatively, as a translational alignment of its own soul, in destiny, became bound by fire, as it too was then returned to flames. Meanwhile the alike aspirations of the group were sacrificed and eternal mortal fear in universal independence for instinctive survival to influential energy and effectual interdependency with this unnatural world of Earth’s infinite source, within. When Clarence reawakened, head spinning, he was still clutching a hidden pocket of his jacket, whiskey in a flask.
Mr. Goode made his radio transmission to Weare at around 10 AM while Gerard was able to work alone and Clarence was still asleep. The small transmitter had an antenna, microphone, and speaker built in.
“To whom it may concern, we are one, last step from flight at the end of the tunnel from Weare. I urge our friends and family, at home, to prepare for invasion. We are in position near the back of the cave entrance, and have slightly altered the flight formula, to account for atmospheric changes. From here, we do not know for certain, the final tasks and outcome of this mission, yet we have seen areas of the world never discovered, and will continue to pursue freedom for humanity. Also, there were notes left by Alexander Goode, my son, which I hid at the top of the tunnel in the cave, near the radio antenna. Good luck to all, and safe journeys.”
By eleven o’clock, the team had finished their aeroplane, completed final preparations, took time to eat, and packed their campsite. They were ready to make their first flight attempt. Christopher had seen the roads in Hobb and had assumed a takeoff would be feasible from the roadside, so they had positioned their plane construction within a short distance of the long road which led to the city. They used three long knives to cut down a wide path through the grass almost all the way between the plane and the road and made a path quickly before noon. Then, Christopher ran to the corner of the field and checked the road and area where the church had been. The Hills hopped into the aeroplane after checking the electronics onboard. Christopher Goode came back to the campsite and walked alongside as the pilots drove the plane across the field.
The engine roar echoed throughout the entire terrain and hill between the coppice and spinneys before the wooden walls of Hobb and the shadowing tower of the Innn, and prairie and canyons of the north, to the deposition of rivers to mountains in the east, the inhabitation of Behemoth’s attained secret source of power. It gained momentum as it crossed the road and Christopher ran along the door with his rifle and held onto its panels to stay on pace. At the last moment, Christopher Goode hopped into the rear seat with Gerard Hill and buckled in. The area was tranquil, there was no movement across the field.
Installment B
11e.)
For over five hours Christopher stared into Gerard’s eyes, waiting for peacefulness to return in a once sparklingly yearn from tomorrows’ lulling determination through convalescent light and the hiding miracles of unexplainable sights. Skies on Earth, forever blue darkening through the crossing of space between stars, unclouded, then independently reclaimed, each absorbed in reinterpretation within eternal fading unacceptance of death. Mr. Gerard Hill’s mouth was twitching on both corners for half an hour, higher against his nasolabial sulcus and higher as his pain began to internalize, and gradually naturalize like a dimple while he instinctively slowed metabolization for overworked nerves in his body. Then grimaced into benign horror or loss of hope, calmly numbing like divine preordination. Clarence too, was unable to speak coherently or adjust his broken limbs after the turbulent plane crash.
There were moments when Mr. Goode felt familiarly at ease, searching his peripheral surroundings for the materials to comfort his friends, cover their bodies from the unanticipated elements and utilize to allow them rest. Wherever they had landed, albeit unchartered and only recently investigated in private, was within miles of the roaring delta north of Gobb. Nonetheless, the exploding sounds of their fire, descent, and mutilating wreck was surpassed by the great waves of raging waters in the wake of this alien civilization’s extraterrestrial mutiny. The Gods of this planet had angrily watched the treason of these evil tyrants whose empire was quickly crumbling after the sacrifices of young Alexander Goode. Cool breeze though, was all Christopher recognized of this extrication by force of humans’ advance to failure against unconquerable worlds. Flowing slowly across skin of his brow and along the ridges of his eye sockets, slowly soothing his throbbing penal gland, like memories at mornings’ reawakening.
They’d been tailed by bogies, shot by Drakkyn’s Air Force. So as the rustling leaves hushed the afternoon’s swelling acknowledgment of imminent doom, Christopher Goode’s relief was like icy remembrance of time neither still nor captured as seals of northern hemispheres would have kept during unvolunteered exhibition and handling by men whose scientific minds have known mistake and faulter long before mastery. The sunlight too, began its shewing of unimaginable journeys ahead, as quickly, abnormally, deep darkness fell in the forest. Settling into the ensuing silences, disturbed solely with brief interruptions of noises and jarred with overlapping traces of just perceived, hypothetical dangers in Mr. Goode’s preconditioned brain. Survival in cabins on the Atlantic warships, nights of murderous cries of traumatized soldiers or unforgettable scenes of repressed flashbacks; this was the act of living, ritually burned into Chris’s heart.
Then, after Christopher Goode pushed himself along gnarls of thick and exposed roots, to lean up against a tall, wildly reaching pine, he looked out above the shuddering bodies of the Hill cousins blindly. His companions were breathing, unconscious, and he was lost except those prayers always held along one’s soul, like Moses’ commandments which have kept our arms strong. So close to sleep, himself, with his spine pressed to the wide trunk, he was startled back by the strange sound of barking. A surreal tingle rushed his shoulders and neck when he listened to the howling thing in the night. When they had crash landed to the east of the delta, he had not seen mountains or raised terrain of any kind but those awful sounds came from high like an echoing thunder above. Unlike thunder, they first were quiet as raindrops, with more alien emanation of faint, whispering tickles. Like the rumbling cracks of lightning thrust forth from the core of Earth, the downward tumbling of barking dogs, invisible terriers pierced the solemn, morbid wreckage of destroyed frame and hollow grove. Louder against unprotected ears of the fallen pilots, who wretched in wincing fear and whose bloodshot eyes became wide with fury and blacker than the pitiless night.
Christopher Goode staggered onto his palms and knees over the abrasive rocks and tangling maritime pine roots. “My God! What is that awful noise? Guys! …Clarence?” Yet Clarence’s efforts to roll over onto his ribs only threw his broken ribs into seething pain as Gerard’s seizure and froth told Christopher only of the terrible fear’s mutual experience. Accompanied by men whose defenselessness from these demons seemed to only multiply Christopher’s abandonment and desperation.
Crouching and crawling as the sound grew louder, Mr. Goode threw his hands over his ears and closed his eyes briefly. Flashing light behind his eyelids removed his anguish and replaced it with terror again. Then, there was a pop and the noises were gone, almost immediately. Mr. Goode pushed his hands back on the ground, looking around the campsite which had been swallowed by the bowels of this presence. He glanced quickly to his left and saw Clarence’s heaving chest, his face hidden still in panic with twitching elbows wrapped closely around his face. Gerard too, was rolled over, sobbing with the throes of maddening psychosis.
Christopher Goode was almost able to stand on his feet, his leg muscles were wobbly with shock, he huddled over Gerard and put his hand on the man’s arm. Clarence Hill began moaning, his voice breaking and forced through his shivering, bleeding jaw. It had not made any sense to Christopher Goode, the events which had just taken place, he had not been able to identify any rational reason these sounds would have such wicked effects on the pilots. He ascertained a relation between atmospheric pressure, the perplexing geographic anomalies seen from the plane and his contact with the strange people of this planet and was able to only consider involvement of supernatural powers beyond human knowledge.
Another pop, and the barking returned though. Closer to the ground first, then flying and rushing through branches and trees, yapping like an untrained dog at a cat caught in a tree. It vanished again and Christopher Goode snapped his neck around the totally dark grove. For a moment, too dark for him to make out the faces or even shapes of the bodies of his two friends, Christopher Goode moved back to the tall pine tree with its coarse and brittle bark, and rubbed his eyes with his head bowed in sheer disbelief, fighting back against his own mind. With his palms over his cheeks and knuckles curled against his brow, the quietness eerily drew him into a state of paranoia. As he opened his eyes, looking downward, he saw a brown, furry canine face emerging from the roots below his waist. She raised her snarling snout from the dirt below and shrieked a loud, bone-rattling growl, unlike any dog he’d ever heard of. Mr. Goode was concussed before he fell down onto the shaking ground and reawakened in the morning to see his friends’ dead bodies with expressions of astonished, overwhelming, heart-gripping fear. The hairs on his arms were white and when he touched his head, white and grey hairs fell down his forehead like tufts of loosened cotton. He dreamt of the dog in Weare, his sons had chased for two, consecutive summers. Christopher decided he would call the dog; Roger.
11f.)
Cursing and sweating in the dark, Barry Reeves’s posterior’s shape shuffled over the roots and branches of the grove, dragging Christopher Goode behind him, and as Mr. Goode began to stretch open his eyelids, he realized he had been caught and drugged. Then, the fugitive reminded him of a large dog, too, and the trees which were covered in shadows began to glow like red dogwood, and the scratching of his jacket across the ground was like a dog’s grumbles and growls, panting, and finally exasperating Mr. Goode’s psyche. He fell into dreams of the black dog in the backwoods of his home in Weare where he played with the dog, tugging a rope which the dog had in its mouth. Like many of Mr. Goode’s dreams, there were no sounds, there was no color, and there was no sense of lucidity at all. However, there was the replacement of certain of these dream elements; the sounds of his dragged body, bright colors of red dogwood which shaded darker into the black fur of the dog and the unease of his body’s biorhythms which were apneal.
Barry Reeves was overburdened with problems, the lights of the Innn had been altered to retain electrical capacity for the city of Hobb but the power in Gobb had been completely shut off. Terrestrial rotation on this planet was partially slowed, through electromagnetic signals sent from the Innn, but atmospheric pressure was controlled by Gobb’s hydroelectric generators separately. Drakkyn’s planet was not referred to as the Land of Hobb and in fact the system of language and its name were secretly adapted codes which were never meant to be spoken verbally. So, the Land of Hobb as it had been called, was adjusting to new implementations of wave frequencies and the resulting chaotic effects were not fully understood by the governing bodies nor their teams of analysts. It had gotten generally more dark, rotational spin had not sped back up, and people were finding themselves short of breath and having difficulty maintaining sleep patterns and manual labor.
The plane had been seen by the people who were arriving in Gobb at the train station and its passenger cars. There were no meteor showers or comets in range of the planet’s gravitational pull, nor had there been since Drakkyn and his team’s first arrival. They watched the fireball grow in the sky though, remembering shooting stars on Earth, and the children of soldiers pointed their fingers to it, making wishes and pulling the cuffs, sleeves, and fabric of their guardians, whose pupils were beginning to narrow and contract in response to the already disintegrating oxygenated gases of the air. Without much time to exit the planet, they had all been given tools to determine the breathability of the air around them, and were advised to stay spread from one another, to keep the available oxygen supply between the necessary, life-supporting ratios of 15 to 23% which were evolved for human respiration. Erratic behaviors were monitored, parents were given suggestions such as inhumane treatment and child cruelty, guidelines of social distancing were enforced. Families were prepared to induce children with sedatives and mind-altering drugs to eradicate and control any potential threat to their personal breathing spaces.
Meanwhile, the ciborium and the maze had been redesigned. A backup plan transferred operational teleportation devices to multiple, declassified points, as the Pandora’s box system had been expanded for portal relocation. Now, Barry Reeves was bringing Christopher Goode to a nearby portal box, only two miles west between the camp site and town of Gobb. A stupa construction, marginally the same in technical design, yet aesthetically different from the original ciborium was hidden alongside trails leading to terraces along the tall bluffs of a giant lake, higher in altitude. There were others as well, built on pre-assigned coordinates which were used by the official monitors of Drakkyn’s quickly crumbling power sources and his villainous, constituent society.
So, these were the beginnings of other worlds and there were animals brought to the Land of Hobb who had learned to adapt to these strange places. Evolution was ushered into the streams of DNA inside cellular membranes of all of these living organisms, pushed in accelerated force through alternatively designed dimensions which men had no business trying to manipulate. When crooked empires of heartless men took their toll on this timeline, the others trickled and collapsed, pushing all of the ancient demons, dragons, and orbs of infinite soulless sin into the endless filter of an omnipotence. Sieved through the highest tiers of Gods like a fountain of youth which springs fertility and life from miraculous centrifugal waters beneath. Now, the inconceivable forces exchanged, consequentially plugged and drained back the innocence replaced with other, unworldly damnation until only dried dust and ash fell through the bottomless pit of futility and death.
Barry Reeves was now becoming more lost than any mortal man should be, following entropic orders and demented commands of hierarchies which seemed to produce instincts, belonging to no immortal divinity either. What seemed like a continuous beating, rhythmic pulse was now indeterminate as hours might have been days, lunar months, seconds, or unending eternity. So as cartographers, geologists, anthropologists, and historians have chronicled, he started this circular journey spiraling inwards and outwards but never quite meeting straight or parallel paths which would have shortened his walk towards the lake. Instead, caught in the storming eyes of the unforgiving wild, his brain continued to cut off circulation from the right side, always shifting left, always holding on to his task at hand with his right arm, until all he had left in his unblinking eyes were the blackness of pupils, foregone future, senseless, self- propelling autonomous motion. A zombie soul affected by Drakkyn’s naïve infliction on defensive elements and protective processes from beyond the control of any Earth or humanity.
No, Christopher Goode was not alone, then, for fears are felt through entire populations when exposures to angry Gods become so focal and potent. The distance of two miles which could have taken less than three hours, stretched out for three days as measured by the heartbeat of his unconscious dream state. His dream however, shortened to less than three minutes. Mr. Goode awakened to frightening memories, tangling his thoughts and emotions into a panic and nightmare of transpired events. He saw the sunset, pink and violet, an empty sky, and the moon above a burning forest. He blinked away the smooth drying tears above his cheek and inhaled the air into his stomach. He turned his head around and saw a white dogwood tree standing completely still. Buds and leaves were white and along the bark of the trunk and boughs were ashy outlines. Pushing himself around to his feet from cross-legged position on a high plateau, he faced the tree’s odd presence. Hunching his back, he saw a puddle which lay before the surrounding soil. Straightening up, he approached this puddle and as he moved closer, he looked down. In the unrippled puddle of water, he stared down to the reflection of his face, only not his own. Young Alexander Goode, his older son, stared back, pleading with his eyes for his father’s strength but his assertive brow and face were betrayed by a horrible terror. Christopher began to cry but the tears began quick and did not fall from his eyes, but reversed themselves from the puddle of water, back against his head, drowning him in sorrow. Christopher Goode awoke again as his arm dropped from Barry Reeve’s hand.
Christopher Goode left his face down, dirt and mud caught against the back of his throat. Pushing himself onto his elbows slowly, he saw the dead, skeletal remains of the fugitive Barry Reeves, standing in front of the open stupa doorway. Close enough to have almost leaned in on its own and have fallen into the deep black void of the Pandora’s box; Mr. Reeves’s forehead was only inches away. As Christopher rose to his feet, Barry Reeves fell down through the void and his skeleton disappeared into the darkness.
Installment C
11g.)
Christopher Goode looked into the darkness, completely impervious to the lake behind him, the burning trees’ smoking ashes, and the stench of death and decaying odors rising along the bluff. His hands began to shake as he brushed the right side of the door, gently, testing the architecture, and fit his thumb around the concrete trim. Actually, Christopher Goode did not notice any difference between this tall, doorless portal, which was only slightly more alike Buddhist temples or a Christian mortuary, than the ciborium in the garden. It was referred to as a stupa because of the intentions of Drakkyn, Torro, and Motu, were to complete a bizarre and practically impossible plan to justifiably commit some form of mass suicide by trapping themselves in a Pandora’s box with the untrue premise of existence within the portal where no such space was ever there, before, or would ever be. The identification of the stupa as resembling Buddha’s ceremonial gravesite was probably only a passing thought and was referred to, as was the ciborium, as a Pandora’s box.
Over tens of thousands of years ago, between the domestication of plants and animals and the final culmination of language’s acknowledgement as a historic mark, and reference as ledger used to provide evidence of people’s lives, by the Neolithic Revolution, biology of humans and the animals who shared our Earth had been separately realigned and people began to reinvestigate the world through scientific studies. This began by studying the lives of people, whom had, before, been only recognized through trade systems and archaeological findings. Then, slowly, new ideas were introduced to accomplish abilities of agricultural progress, and humans switched to the study of animals’ and humans’ interconnection with the inorganic elements of nature. Although words and descriptions had been used in part to write descriptions of processes of the organization of hunting, farming, and trade, 8,000 years passed before the correlation between animals, elements, and humans was made for use with medication and performance of medical and nutritional treatments. The first classifications of elemental behaviors were made and exchanged through nomads and tribal people, whose travels between India and Mesopotamia led the philosophical revolution which was handed down to Egypt, used by their kingdoms, and continued to grow and develop. This also started the use of humourism as a means of curing various symptoms of diseases. Humors are the connections between the elements, themselves, such as sky and air, water and earth, water and fire, which was called Ayurveda in India.
Leading into the 10th century before the death of Christ, the development of these individual concepts was rarely shared as much as they had been by necessitation, through the beginning of Quaternary glaciation. As people began to settle into larger population sizes, they did not see intercontinental migrations and expansion as being so crucial to their survival. So, in different places during the next 500 years, thoughts about the elements, biology, and medicine continued to grow in their own ways in cultures which were independent of each other. Taoism in Asia began to deny the currently held notion of the stagnation of evolution, and theorized of biological structures’ inherent genetic non-perpetuity. The Greek school of Pythagoras was revoked by some citizens, and they refused to envision mathematic solutions for division of properties as a model for the existence of human life, so these early scientific minds began dissection of animals in effort to explain diseases which were untreatable, yet. There were also people such as Hippocrates of Kos who made, through writing, advancements toward understanding the nature of physiological ailments without divine or magic applications. In specific, Hippocrates, whose namesake was given to the Hippocratic oath of doctors’ subordination to health fields as negotiated by modern systems of medical insurance, wrote theses of diagnosis of biotically organized states of panic which have resulted in symptoms of seizures and phlegmatic accumulation. In contrast with the notions of the syndromes hypothesized by Greek schools, Motu and Torro had described the natural disaster which plagued the Land of Hobb, as The Sacred Curse.
The doorway of Pandora’s box stood and hovered above the dimmed light of a solar system which was denied by the Gods, and Christopher Goode saw as the dusty debris of the cliff sailed out into the abyss of permanent twilight. The sun had never risen, so its appearance to Mr. Goode was of the hours between revolution and rotating spheres of fire and gaseous combustion. Those early morning sounds of nature which slowed on Earth as the sun begins to rise were hushed like a mother’s auditory experience during lamaze. Like that, Christopher breathed heavily as he stepped through the portal. Beyond it, his eyes suddenly saw the falling waves of the enormous ocean. The white tips crashed in perfect mimic of our beaches on Earth, and although there was no sand, the rocks along the shoreline rose and fell like dunes. The sound of each tidal splash, sucking and swelling, neatly hid the crackling fire which spread shimmering sparkles across the serene ambience and danced before Christopher’s eyes.
It was the voice of his son, Alexander Goode, which broke the spell of enchantment. Christopher wondered if the call was from the ocean, or a siren, culling him to a grave in the Sea of Nobb. But when he turned around, Christopher Goode saw his son, Alex, holding his own heinously destroyed skull in his two hands, near his stomach, standing with a gaping wound on his neck and along both of his clavicles, where he had been previously decapitated. Alex smiled with blood smearing his teeth and let his head fall into his left hand to swing by his hip. He pointed to Christopher Goode as he screamed, and Mr. Goode screamed, too. There wasn’t much fracas before Christopher Goode ran out of air, and by then, the two F.B.I. agents rushed him from behind.
11h.)
Christopher Goode had walked through the Pandora’s box which on one side had been resemblant of stupa, a design for cremations which were to be separated after death for the purpose of disassembling the soul of Buddha before it was allowed to be manipulated by the minds of weaker, evil men. Much like the eighth stupa of Buddha’s followers’, the Pandora’s box had fallen into a heap of minerals, clay, and ashes. Someone else, too, had appeared from the other side of the portal, though.
As the F.B.I. agents tackled Mr. Goode to the ground, Alexander began to spasm. The F.B.I. were unconcerned, and although they had been strengthened by the powerful chemicals induced into their brains through the sacks attached to their necks, Christopher Goode continued to wrestle violently, jabbing with his elbows and biting any part of their persons which came within reach of his arms, mouth, and body. Sadly, the plasma in Alex Goode became thinner more quickly than averaged by Motu’s scientific research. As the dark shadow of someone drew closer to the firepit, fueled by a small amount of the power source, it hesitated in lurching and stuttering fright. As worms began to eat their way out of Alex’s skin and flesh, the two agents became fearfully aware of the strange reaction made by Alex’s ingestion of cursed, endemic food of damnation.
Drakkyn’s plan was simple and effective but had no effect on the mortal soul of Christopher Goode nor his most recently acquired companion. The ramification of a built flame upon only a single molecule of the energy source of this planet was like a normal barbeque pit within which the final flickering spark caused an atomic reaction large enough to create a high order explosion so large as to destroy all physical matter in an 80-foot radius. However, during the strained atmospheric pressures, destructive properties became magnified and centralized. The result was a stunning amount of radiation that created a miniature nova on the shoreline, sending water fizzling back into the ocean and claiming only the life of Alexander Goode. It shined so brightly, it scarred the eyes of the agents but the stranger in the night and Christopher had both chosen, wisely, to close their eyes in painful horror at the awful sight of Alex Goode’s unexplained, internal deterioration.
Christopher Goode had retained almost all of his vision when he reopened his eyes and was surprised to see the radiation’s effulgent glow, effectively light the surrounding 50-yard area. The two suffering, writhing, F.B.I. agents were not lucky; they had burned their eyes permanently through their optic nerves and into their brains, sending piercing pain throughout their entire bodies, instantly. They were crying but the produced noise was a choking reflex. Christopher stood slowly to his feet and saw the boy who had come through the other side of the portal, standing naked and hairless, shivering with trauma, blinking back the terrible, hopeless feeling which has been fought by soldiers in wars and never overcome. It was Jacob, the neighbor from the north who had taken the ladder from the Goode’s barn the day of the last broadcast and had climbed through the tunnel from Weare’s cave into the Land of Hobb.
But the poor boy was shaken and when Mr. Goode approached him, concerned, his eyes shot wide open and he turned and ran away faster than a ghost. Christopher Goode watched him hide further down the shore and duck behind a large boulder, thrown by the explosion to a position which made it appear like the Sonoran, Devil’s Stairsteps of the Mesa Desert. Christopher Goode knew the child was from Weare but undoubtedly had difficulty recognizing him. His knees wobbled and his legs felt like the bones had been shattered but he was unhurt and merely temporarily paralyzed. He began to try to sing a lullaby in almost mother-like and instinctive self-determination. But all of the sounds he made were forced and did not make speech or translatable sense. He began to sway rhythmically, side to side, as he hummed. Then, the dogs barked again, filling the sky with the same noises which killed his pilots, echoing from above the ocean. So, Christopher Goode retained his humming and opened his eyes wide too, staring at the confused boy. He began to cover his ears and then take his hands back away and he did this three times, hoping the kid behind the rocks would interpret it as a sign to prepare himself for the horror which was thrusting itself downward from the sky. Jacob, though, did not catch the initially intended persuasive tactics and as Christopher closed his palms closely over his earlobes the fourth time, the dogs’ howl began to devour Jacob’s soul as it swallowed the beach and sent panic into the hearts of the dying agents.
Finally, at the last second, Jacob pushed himself under the boulder and began to cover his eyes, weeping and in haphazard coincidence decided to cover his ears too, saving him from almost complete devastation of his mind and sure death. Christopher held himself up and kept his eyes open while both of the F.B.I. agents died in agony. When Jacob reopened his eyes under the boulder, the sound had become a low and muffled growl, strangely echoing under the rock surface. He was still in shock as he looked around the overhanging edges of the space, and then saw the dog’s face suddenly forcing itself from the wall, biting and gnashing its teeth, savagely. Christopher Goode had no momentum to use yet, and fell backwards on the ground as Jacob stumbled out of the rock and began shuffling hurriedly to a place further away, once again shrouded in endless night.
So, the father of two American born children stayed on his back, laying with no sleep, mumbling something which to his ears sounded like prayers of Christianity or maybe something which came directly from his soul without religion. His eyes stared into the dark sky and he his mind raced, imagining his spirit would fly into the space of this disintegrating dimension. There were no Earth Gods who would help him and no humans in the Land of Hobb who would offer any assistance either. They were too busy running against walls, throwing their hands against their chests and heads, desperately scared and beginning to lose all sanity. Men rampaged against each other, ripping apart anyone who moved in their houses, and women attempted suicide without any success, only vainly believing their weakened muscles could be used in such ways which have been proven incredible obstacles for even toughened and well-trained experts in professional killing and the study of murder, fighting, and harmful ways of war and homicidal activity. Basements became graveyards and bodies piled underneath houses, from both the killings and those so fearful of the outside catastrophe whose hiding became practical camouflage in blood covered bodies of the deceased.
When he finally rolled over and began to stand up, he moved away from the desolate shoreline back towards the coastal town of Nobb. When he walked close enough to notice the shapes of houses, buildings, and roads, he began to attend more closely to each step and focus solely on his walking, rather than the dead people and dismembered body parts strewn along the streets and walls, opened doors and closed windows. He was losing his identity as a Marshal; amnesiac dementia reminded his subconscious of his home in Weare, yet his internal wiring had made his memory of home indistinguishable from this analogical hell on Earth. He moved to the hills outside of the town, hoping to find his way back to the catacomb even though its real entrance was more than 40 miles away. There was the sound of a dog barking from a basement near the edge of the turnpike which led over to another collapsed and unrecognizable Pandora’s box and the train station was further north where he never ventured. He scrambled up the side of the small hills on the outskirts of Nobb, and anxiety panics rushed his endocrinic system, producing abnormal emotions from destabilizing amounts of endorphins.
Christopher Goode thought he was moving so fast, but had fallen, still, asleep on soft pine needles left behind after a deforestation, with his fatiguing heartbeat beginning to cause his entire body to comatose.
11i.)
“Where was I?” Christopher spoke as a moon grew bright enough to awaken him. He was laying on his stomach, his left cheek against the ground. The circumference of the fallen trees had been replaced with a shining line of trees. They were all the same now, the five starred plants had inserted themselves within the inner circle, blocking view of the surrounding forest. A gunshot rang across, springing Mr. Goode back into action but with only traceless echoes, he was unaware of any peripheral source and reacted by lunging on his four limbs forward, in a charge like a bull. When the third bullet shot and blasted into a stump to his right, he lunged once more onto his sore left side, hoping to survive with the plundered forest as his shield.
There were no more gunshots but he remained motionless, listening and closely monitoring his own breaths in case they deceived his ability to hear the oncoming pursuer. Then, he heard his own voice growling through the field, “Come out, come out, wherever you are…”
He thought it through and knew his mouth had not uttered those words and his wheezing lungs made no more than faint whistling. The feet of his double were now brilliantly perceived as they stepped through the field, fifty feet away. Mr. Goode exerted circumspective control of himself and there was another gunshot, then silence throughout the night slowly returned to static which grew louder until he realized there had been sort of accident.
Minutes slipped by, and there were no footsteps, no sounds at all, merely the pounding, popping eardrums, and meekly suppressed pressures of a paranoid and amnesiac brain whose overloaded oxygenation made him whimperingly fearful of even sitting up to look anywhere, like it would all be everywhere; fear. All he noticed moving were some ants on the ground and he watched their paths individually, until one caught his eye as it began to ascend a tree stump. There, the antennas tapped against the shattered bark and wood, slowly searching the surfaces, and then the ant began moving laterally and around the cylindrical shape of the tree, until Christopher Goode could no longer see it. Then, he stood up and saw the five starred plants had disappeared. He looked to where the last gunshot had been, the direction he had faced when he leapt onto his side. He saw his double leaning back on his lower spine against a partially uprooted tree stump. His face had been shot and the back of his skull had a gaping exit wound, dripping blood.
Mr. Goode grabbed the gun from his hand; it was a revolver with two shots left. He stumbled out of this field, through the forest for almost a mile to another, similar field, and realized there were plenty of places to both hide and fight between the remaining 45 miles between Nobb and Hobb, so he felt safer. He had no idea which direction he was headed; if it was to Hobb, or to nowhere at all, but he kept walking through the night.
CHRISTOHPHER 12, AFTERWARD 12
12a.)
It became so difficult for people to survive for so long after their minds had been allowed to corrupt themselves that it began to destroy peoples’ souls who were alive. They spoke in languages too old to comprehend for their contemporaries and they drove each other insane while their battered bodies became mutated into the shape of demonic entities within their minds. Men would force themselves to institute horrific survival tactics before they were soon ushered away by those who had remained calmly strong enough to force their nonsensical lives to become more controllable. Yet even then, our eternal demons gave no forgiveness, and soon the insane and mad men of centuries and millennia began to push harder and faster to write those words of history meant never to be understood by life on Earth. The compiled writings were collected sometimes, chronicled and reinterpreted by both sides of this war on Earth; between the undermined and the underprivileged. This was the beginning of new ways to look at the afterlife where both good and bad were given their chance to transcend to original purity which mingled with the writings of the heaven and Gods therein, when like kaleidoscopes’ view by colorblind eyes, some things were never directly certain to anybody.
“Is it not with your offspring that your legacy of blood and the history of divine stories rebegin?” Christopher Goode shook his head, first unsure of how far he had walked, and confused again at his auditory sense of distinguishable vocal recognition. Then, he realized his sight had never actually been lost, although the night had invisibly poured purblind through him during his most tenuous moments, yet he was nonetheless inexplicably surprised.
He saw the shadow of a portly man through a cottage’s open door. It was not a house he had any memory of, but it felt oddly familiar where it stood against wasteland and bleak sands of an untouched desert. “Come inside, while we still have room.” The man’s voice was compelling to Mr. Goode, reassuring and even therapeutic and dignified. Strangely melodic in a world which had fallen through madness and death so quickly, meditative and reflective of peacefulness. Christopher walked to the door and the man moved aside to allow him quick entry, while holding the door which was nearly torn completely off the hanging hinges and tattered walls of unspoken catastrophes’ restricted forces.
The man was a spirit, a shadowy outline of a long-gone savior or messiah to the Hindu people whose downward climb from the highest mountains on the Earth’s surface had built a natural wall far enough from those enslaving powers which were held like menacing executioners’ guillotines to the north from whose duly observed self-sacrifices were the beginning of traditions which were intended to construct faith for those whose architects had no hope left yet to hide in plain sight. Buddha himself was standing with his wide belly now facing the center of the room. “There is someone else who has followed footprints through deserts, someone who walks alongside us even now, circling this domain of witchcraft and evil.”
Mr. Goode’s eyes danced in spirals at the sound of such beautiful tones and he began to back up which would have led to his fall into the deep hole within this cabin. As he felt slowly eased into a state of woken dreams, he saw the shadow’s chest heave and his brow lower with an unbreathing sigh, stopping short both his backwards fall and hospice. He also heard a whimper just as the shadowy apparition looked back up to him with simple focus and felt the walls slightly shake. The whimpering sound was not from the cellar and was meek and scared. Whoever made the noise quickly gasped as Mr. Goode’s fathering intuition repaired his fear and made his inference easier, nurturing an internal purposefulness.
“Do it,” the shadow spoke and the small child outside began to cry louder. Urgency was clear to both Mr. Goode, whose life had long ago undergone hardships which made his mentality crucially interpolated with Buddha’s in an immediate reaction. Together, the second time, they said in unison, “Do it.”
Buddha disappeared, almost too ashamed to attempt to reciprocally smile. So did Jacob, forever.
12b.)
“Okay, okay, okay.” Christopher did fall and he was caught. He was paralyzed from lack of sleep, misuse of all of his slowly metabolized blood sugar had caused him to go into a severe diabetic seizure and he was only able to slowly neutralize the toxins in his brain while it was returning from dementia to fragile senility. The tightly positioned arms belonging to Torro held him upright with his elbows against his back, before Chris hit the ground and Torro dragged Mr. Goode out of the emptied house. His voice box used to command gibberish whisperings for Drakkyn’s half-dead army was becoming more accustomed to lower pressure and while the zombie soldiers completed their final campaign of suicidal genocide, the air began to become more oxygenated and the three last remaining people of the Land of Hobb were regaining their ability to speak to one another. They also were deranged and confused, haunted and possessed by ghosts and demonic energies from this place beyond our world. Motu had difficulty understanding the reliable fabrics of reality, or differentiate animalistic, often delusional presences, and would drift into ramblings, and twist his once well-coordinated pheromone and body language into raving mad dances.
Motu and Drakkyn had stayed elsewhere as Torro made his attempt to kill any remaining organic lifeforms left on the planet while wielding a flamethrower, riding a motorcycle straight to Nobb. All of their Pandora’s box portals had become dysfunctional, collapsing upon any further use. Torro vaguely remembered the locations still, and Drakkyn had spent their moments of planning, during the hysteria, by tattooing Torro’s chest with maps and legends of the portals between Nobb and Gobb. Throughout occurrences of random violence which followed, these teleportation devices had been used sparsely and the power source’s unique computerized system of tracking their exact locations was one of the few remaining mechanical designs from the complexities of an intricately constructed electro-magnetic field.
The roads to Nobb were not fully constructed and Torro’s ride was bumpy as he took the train tracks and fired his flamethrower against the tree line along the way. Now, as he began to drag Christopher’s semi-conscious torso over to the motorcycle, he realized he did not have a side hack. Perhaps his notions of capture and interrogation had been hatched prematurely but as he propped the body over the handlebars, he chose to remain determined, minus deterrability. He had followed Christopher’s trail through the forests and fields, so he would have had to turn his route around to find a safe path back to the railroad, but due to his enduring focus he willingly directed himself into the northern landscapes of desert and places which had never been germinated.
Through his travel, the light never shone from the sky in natural fashion, he was instead gripping Mr. Goode’s shoulder blades and pushing them onto the handlebars as Mr. Goode’s feet dragged across rocky terrains. Torro did not even notice the torn legs and ripped feet of the man below him as they were burned off and shredded. He watched with auspicious and vindicated judgment at his headlight beaming out the only points of visibility in verdict, as they quickly approached the end of the plateau. Then, as the dropping hills produced a sudden loss of his headlight, he began a skidding drift and used his emergency brakes to slide toward the long and slow decline. Christopher Goode’s suffering had been enough to cause nerves which received pain signals to become reactivated. He had lost almost his entire right foot, shredded and mangled beyond further use or recovery, and the braking had broken every bone in his left leg and smashed apart the cartilage in his kneecap; his patella had been cracked and half had been left behind.
Torro had lost his mindful path toward Hobb and madness kicked back against his rationale. He had gone into a gibberish muttering like Motu, as he circled the bike and examined Mr. Goode’s barely living body, as loss of blood became its own form of analgesia. Christopher Goode’s mouth hung open, yet his eyes followed Torro’s movement and he even speculated his captor’s indecision could potentially lead to both of their impending deaths. At once they were both spellbound and stranded in a wilderness, they had no memory of.
Then, a voice echoed up the plateau’s hill from somewhere near the edge of a gully. It was ominous but as Torro heard them speak, there was sudden light in the sky which lasted for their entire conversation. Torro did not respond at all, yet the voices compelled him to descend down the hill. So, he began to walk alone and was soon stopped by the return to total darkness when the voices became silent. He hesitated, forgetting Christopher, and started to tremble in fear when the voices began to shout louder and the lights shone again, dimly. Torro walked back to Mr. Goode and pulled him down the hill with him, guided by these unseen, telepathic voices which were loud and full of wisdom yet caused fear and shame.
As the two men tumbled down the hill, Torro’s tight grip on Mr. Goode’s collar was squeezing against the latter’s throat, choking him and nearly puncturing his swollen lymph nodes. Abruptly, when they entered the gully of bushes and ferns, tall and wide rocks and thin, yet high trees, it all disappeared. They were then in the courtyard of a Byzantine-style city, identical to those that had appeared in modern Turkey after Spanish Inquisition. There were giants, tall humanoids with faces like the North American natives’ elders. They spoke at the same time like a hive of wasps but showed dissimilar facial expressions which were merciless, sympathetic, and wisely judgmental. Together, they spoke to Torro, yet in persuasive, empathetic telepathy said more to Mr. Goode’s throbbing ears; the same words to both, yet indecipherable at separate times to each. Torro’s brain and flesh between his nasal cavity and upper palette became warm, hot, and then exploded in bleeding agony, indescribably forcing his soul into psychotic spirals of inhuman emotions.
12c.)
Goode’s body was mended, his skin was regenerated and his bones realigned. His foot remained limp and he puzzled at the functions of its ghostly presence. The giants had gone and he looked around Byzantine structures with walls standing yet windows emptied. There were no doors, there were no curtains or tapestries where there had been, and the roads out of the courtyard led out into blank canvas of sky-blue and pure green pastures.
“Bard”
Was written in blood on a piece of Torro’s skin, torn into a rectangular shape which resembled the page of a book. It was the only thing in the courtyard remaining of Torro or the giants and their unexplained existence within this alien world. They had moved on like parasites seeking a new host or symbiotic organisms whose mutual bonds between their hosting animal have lost further use, after death.
As it was with Christopher Goode’s special place, there was space to hide but no food or water. At least, while he slowly walked around the inside of the giants’ secret area, there was enough light to look, fresh air to breathe, and possibly an area to recover before he decided which road to take out. But it was short-lived, his muscles still lacked hydration, nutrition. Otherwise, he would have made his grave, laid down on the courtyard lawn, stretched out and watched the false world slow on his own time.
Northeast was median to his perpetual journey, following the course set by Torro’s estranged ride across the plateau. Yet as soon as he had crossed the line of biosphere containment, there was no turning back, as the buildings immediately crumbled to dust. The moot point of his purpose was quickly revised as he pushed on past shrubs and snaggled trees and brambling bushes. Something tapped his shoulder, from behind, and he spun to look into two sad eyeballs, a mutated face which grinned with clinging adoration, mothering a fostered desire to receive help for the lost father.
If Christopher Goode had not been already forced to adapt to nonsensical and fantastic events, he would have been as frightened as his sons would have been. His raspy voice was, as he made his first question directed to the humanoid, perhaps just as scary to him as her answer in their introductory dialog.
“L”
She said in an old woman’s voice, cycling deeply buried tones of estrogen and hormones to recreate some form of sexually excited response. He was confused and wondered if she had only used an annunciated syllable because of the odd shape of her mouth and tongue. She was forcing a smile, although it bore her pain, and she showed it in her wiggling limbs and wriggling forehead’s wrinkles.
The mutated woman, L, seemed to assume that they had already established a personal connection of trust and started wobbling through the bushes until she sensed his noncooperation.
Christopher Goode kept his distance, but began to waddle also, as he balanced his lower plexus points and redistributed his weight on his good foot. The woman seemed to giggle as her torso jiggled and a little drool drained down her chin and shined against her cheeks. Christopher pressed forward with the last of his energy into the night, as she led the way.
They were only about 15 miles from Hobb, where she was bringing Mr. Goode to the Innn, encountering mostly drying and dead vegetation after the first mile away from the plateau. The wind howled sometimes, and Mr. Goode could not help but shudder with fear of the flying dogs and their ferocious barking. When he had almost no momentum left, starving and aching, L spun over to him and gently prodded him with her arm, although was uncoordinated with her hands. He took the gesture as an issue of steadying his pace, rather than taking a seat on the crackling, brown dirt and small dead foliage. She walked away with jubilating happiness for her accomplished communication, not noticing his slowed footsteps as he shuffled behind her. L knew of a small spring, divined by Motu for his ranchers, a half decade prior. When she bent to scratch at the water, she thought she would bring him water in delight, even though she had only wet her hands and palms. Luckily, he saw the sparkling flow and heard trickling drops, and Christopher Goode ducked down to slurp it into his mouth as she cried in laughter.
While they continued, Mr. Goode’s eyebrow ridge began bossing and headaches caused him to press his forearms and then his knuckles and palms against his forehead several times. This made his disdain for these deformities a contention of distress or sociological misconception for his guide’s own mutations. Hers were genetic while his were anabolic, and together they were straggling through in malnourished delirium. However, her exuberance was clearly both inspirational to Mr. Goode, as it was also a feministic byproduct of her incepted state. Mile after mile, her ecstatic behavior devolved into eccentricity, she forced herself to maintain her idea of a smile while wincing away her pain. By the time they were near the church, Christopher had become irrationally paranoid and unaware of his juxtaposition to the caved in catacombs. The river to the east drove home his desire to eat and drink, yet his unrest was not translated to L, even when he began crouching at the riverside near the bridge. His hands again cupped the water to his mouth and he heard her splashing.
Then, L began making excessive noise as her legs began shaking in the water. She finally began to vocalize her pain, moaning, grunting, and crying. Chris quickly looked up and saw her panic but drew back in fear, waiting for her to stop. He was impatient though, and began to circle around her across the river which was not as deep as his sons had imagined when they crossed the bridge, earlier that summer. She rampaged out of the middle of the stream, chasing Christopher in furious confusion, while he attempted to maintain control of his legs. As he scampered up the riverbank, she fell in the mud, disgracing herself in embarrassment. It was only as he slowed his heart rate and looked back, that she pulled herself up, again forcing a grin across her soiled and feral facial features.
The town of Hobb had not been closely examined by the trio of pilots as they soared past overhead, days before. As the two nomads walked through the gated entrance and between the two watchtowers, Christopher Goode was walking into the territory as a sole pioneer and felt eerie xenophobia and as if he was a prisoner of surveillance and hostility. If he had seen the watchtowers though, emptied except for the two corpses in both’s back closets, he would have seen the five starred plants on the rooves, glowing green along their sunken roots.
12d.)
As the pair of nomads arrived in Hobb, Mr. Goode tried to hold L’s shoulder and his hand slid down her inebriated arm as she took the road to the left, toward the Innn. She had found her way back to the Innn, in some ways was only following Drakkyn’s elaborate plan but was also genetically preoccupied with underlying ideas of spawning and copulation. As the reservoir basin appeared on their left, she walked closely along the guardrail tapping the metal and forgetting to cover her eyes from the whirlwind smoke which filled the sky and a circumference around the dark tower of the hotel walls. On Earth, smoke which reached the higher stratosphere has created devastating effects to the water cycle but the air we breathe is dependent on particles of dust swept off of dryer lands to form a molecular composition to harbor condensation. This land, however, was artificially developed and when the Gods had seen their wrathful vengeance, it was more than enough to create enough gaseous layers to stop production of rainfall across the entire planet. If lightning was not able to strike, then the thunderous noise which began to bellow from the ground was tectonic shifting; yet Christopher’s senses were indifferent. He felt sure there would be bolts of lightning accumulating static electrical energy, readying to strike out from the surface. His rubber-soled boots had not been reproduced during the giants’ last gift of spontaneous cellular regeneration.
As the billowing smoke appeared like a tornado, Christopher Goode’s reaction was to cover his eyes with his arm, his mouth with his collar, and his coughing prevented him from following as close to L as she had hoped. She blindly went into the tornado, alone, and the two were split up. Christopher Goode stumbled down onto the ground, gripping it in wretchedness. Suddenly, the wind ceased, there was only debris and ashy air around his dusty shirt sleeves as he peeked over his strained, aching arm. It was quiet, again, and he was alone in a dark cave.
He paused in thankfulness, with doubts which were humorous too, even then.
Panting from in front of him and the shuffling sound of multiple paws came through the dark cave. Mr. Goode suppressed his fear, but held his head down as a pack of mysterious wolves walked around him. With his eyes closed, he felt the tongue of a mother wolf lick his hair on the back of his neck, and pups whining as they came behind her hind legs. They were gone as quick as he felt the nurturing comfort push deeper into his heart, and as he raised his head finally, the pitch-black void was all which remained.
As Christopher Goode began sifting through the rubble, he felt his hands along the ground a couple of times. What started as a reaction to his dark surroundings, his unseen environment, and startling survey, became a hushed anticipation. There were rocks there which had moved without him touching them and on his last swipe across the surface, he knew they were rumbling out like volcanic eruptions from the dirt by themselves. Then, he smelled a stench from beneath him and as he raised himself up to his hands and knees, he felt an ashy gust of air blowing through the tunnel, from behind him. As the ground shook while he started standing straight, the air from behind him became filled with rushing fumes. As he began to scamper over the rocks, he glimpsed behind as an eye of fire dilated into a raging wall of lava. Until he was inside the walls of the Innn, he was sure the gaseous stench would burn him alive, or the planet would swallow him into the magma before he arrived at his final destination. Fortunately, the ceiling collapsed just as he managed to escape into the main lobby of the Innn, candlelit and pungent with the dank smell of the decaying dead, yet safe.
There were candles along the staircases and wilted rose petals along the hallway as Christopher Goode walked up each floor. Passing by the front desk, he had heard a faint static buzzing from a radio, but aside from crackling along the lifeless petals on the steps there was only absolute silence inside. Windows were boarded shut, but even though no light was in the sky, Christopher could somehow tell how the torrents of smoke and burning ash were more to blame for the horrible sense of stark tragedy. The fifth floor was lit, ushering him from the upper floors and he walked through the hallway to room 333. It was open and the bed covers were folded at the foot; the headboard propped pillows, reminding him very briefly of his home in Weare, even though it was usually his normal habit to sleep upstairs in his attic study. Mr. Goode was exhausted as he crossed the threshold in darkness, his opening yawn caused him to faint.
12e.)
Christopher Goode had what is known as a wet dream, where there is not only pre-cum but also sperm during ejaculation, partly because he had been without sexual experience with his wife, and partly because the lucidity of this dream was shared reality. He dreamt of The Great War, which he would have never believed would last for thirty years, still, longer yet if you count Japanese soldiers whose infantry abandonment left them within an incubated state within bunkers and deeply buried stations beneath the South Pacific Seas. This was first; the beginning of a nine-stage dream sequence, nightmarish and cruel. He dreamt of the war he had seen and as he crossed the Rhine over a burning bridge, he landed on a painted mare on the delta of the Tigris and Euphrates. The sands whipped her mane, he held onto her shoulders and leaned into the storm as she disintegrated into a skeleton. Pure white bones clattered into quicksand. He saw the northern sky rise in trembling power while giant silhouettes of structures and temples raised off the horizon. Christopher Goode felt the stomping feet of marching families come from behind and even as they moved around him. There were no humans, no spirits nor shapes in the desert, beside thousands of footsteps in the sand. It all happened fast, as the horizon quickly grew dark after the footsteps were miles away. From all horizons at once, fireworks shot into the sky, and rained bullets and flaming arrows onto the sand around him, missing him by inches. As the last arrow fell, twenty or so feet in front of him, it nearly scraped the top of his scalp, which was when the ground began to shake unnaturally, and quake unevenly. As sinkholes grew all around, he heard the crying echoes of bottled-up people. The cries were quickly gone and alcohol infused with drugs of every kind shot up like geysers from the sinkholes, sprinkling the sky in dust, ashes, and raining blood. At the dream’s climax, Christopher felt deeply charged with the feeling beyond love, which to many has been called lust or abuse. Mr. Goode missed his wife.
Then, came the notes of proverb sung, through those moments of Christopher’s deepest sleep:
“You shall soon dissolve like snow,
Your sun forbear to shine,
But call us here below
… Forever all the time
When we’ve seen ten thousand years
Brightening the sun
No less, no more, to sing in praise,
… Than when we first begun
How long, oh, how long
Have you wanted not to stay?
Roll on, roll on, wheels of mine
Bring on God’s amazing grace …
How sweet your name shall sound
In our believer’s ears …
Soothe his sorrows, heal his wounds
Lord, smile away our fear …”
Christopher Goode remembered the sweet voice from the last few nights at his home in Weare but its alto duet belonged to someone he did not know and its masculine inflection broke him out from his dream. He saw L backing up off the foot of the bed, orgasming in tortured synchronicity. Her skin began bubbling, molting and popping, and dozens of pulsating balls of flesh bounced off the floor. She fell back against the wall and died, sitting upright and staring at the ceiling.
He nimbly tip toed across the room, he tried not to accidentally kick any of the breathing, hissing animals, covered in dark spiky and wet fur, throbbing in discordant, helpless pleas. Stepping through them, wading around, he felt them roll out from his heels and against his ankles. When he had left them behind in the hallway, the candle wicks were shortened and flickering dimmer. He descended downstairs to the lobby and only between his nostrils’ sniffling and his scraping shuffle was he able to discern the barely audible static of the radio. Like an innate tope, inert and hereditary, he sought its source in the sounds behind the counter. Finding the radio receive, and gliding his fingers along its wire and transmitter, he was brought to tears. Mr. Goode brushed them away with his right bicep as he commenced his last broadcast:
“I’m in a lodge. Adirondacks… Say hi to my family. Ella, Mrs. Wilson, Alex, and… Theodore. I love you all. God bless America and Amen.”
12f.)
Static crackled, and he started again:
“There seems to be these…”
Then, he stopped. He felt an urge to sneeze and as he set the transmitter down, an amazingly bright portal opened over the countertop. Directly in his line of vision, an ominous vision of burning fires inside a different and undiscovered world showed a flock of huma birds flapping and charging against the hole. They quickly vanished as did the portal and Mr. Goode was stunned by their beauty. For what seemed like half of a minute, he stared across the lobby as the walls of the Innn rattled. Static on the radio continued to hiss into a white noise for more than five minutes, until he heard a dinning bang from an unexplored, lower level of the Innn.
Thumping and banging, the noise grew louder and drew closer. Something or someone was coming up the stairs from the dining rooms. Without waiting for his paranoias to build too much for mechanical paralysis, Mr. Goode walked to the top of the stairs, attempting to assert himself. The lights from all of the candles could not penetrate beneath, he stared down and attempted to make eye contact, beginning to formulate shapes in strained optical lenses and ignoring his vitreous floaters. Finally, he saw two pairs of eyes emerge in the darkness, glowing red and yellow, sometimes both, yet never orange. Portentous mumbles became hisses as the faces of his two friends, Gerard and Clarence, became partially distinct and he sensed an evil, within them both. Their bodies twisted around each other, competing in an undead relay of savageness and anger. On their arms and legs, their bodies slithered upwards, advancing toward their prey. Their eyes shone in the night like old nocturnal mammals which might have once never have felt fright for humans or predatorial nature. Clicking, gnashing teeth, grinding, chattering like barking squirrels, they climbed in gruesomely mutated skin. Christopher Goode stood still and pushed back his reflexes, throwing his psyche into a defensive rampage which did nothing to the mangled pilots. Then, something else produced itself through thinly grafted firmament of the Land of Hobb’s lifeforce. Snarling, a dog’s head and naked body thrust itself between the two cousins, merging them with a fierce spiritual division. It growled louder as it enlarged and began to bite them and chew their howling faces until their jaws and brains were swallowed, leaving half of their shared maw and headless bodies sagging like shabby wings of injured bats.
At first, Christopher mistook their perilous demise to the chimera as a miraculous change of course, until he saw the same vicious beast’s eyes target him too, with pupils educated with unforgettable greed. Then, something else hit Christopher as he fumbled slowly to the side of the staircase. It simultaneously reminded Mr. Goode of some old book he had seen before, probably either some convenient store bookshelf, or the desk of a fugitive he had been rewarded for capturing as his job had demanded. A billy club was leaning against the side of a restroom door and he grabbed it just as this monstrous pile of mushing, gurgling, and gutted-out horror reached the top step.
12g.)
Christopher Goode couldn’t remember as much as he did of Earth’s timeline or his life story when he had first dropped down into the catacombs of the Land of Hobb. It is often needless to exorcise each detail of any man’s life if the purpose is to control the goodness of an Earth human. Some might even consider his loss as a blessing, not a curse, as he reacted to everything he ran into with rejuvenation. Often, after days of tracking American fugitives or weeks of meditative training and vesting in personal success, a single moment of restfulness could be all he needed to reopen his eyes to the light which shines above for any of those who allow righteousness guide them. He knew something about L’s guidance was intended to lure him here, so he felt as though he had some purpose in the Innn, even if it did not yet truly reveal itself to him. Questioning those whose hands’ toils are engrained by repetition for communal coexistence will burden those without faith in cooperativity to progress through fundamental ethics.
Earlier, Christopher had descended the right side of the staircases from the upper level and returned to those bearings, again. He wandered along the counter of the lobby and proceeded to the flickering candles, to step downward in more visibility and less wet slickness of the cerebus he had put down. He gripped the left handrail, the entire way down, pausing midway to check its temperature, its smooth, chilled, metal rivet. The lights were out, a majority of the chairs were tipped or thrown, and yet the tables were set. Napkins puffed with clinging rings and silverware was arranged with Old World etiquette, menus stood in the condiment baskets. As Christopher Goode walked around a table for two, round with a short diameter, he saw one, longer, catering table with a knife stuck upright into the table cloth and shining in dim lights. He heard a noise from the kitchen and with no fear in his heart, now, Mr. Goode walked right in.
Motu’s eyes were shining, bright coruscating incandescence, an adopted trait from his cloning experiments. He was blind however, and Christopher Goode walked past the order pick-up station, thawed perishables, and flattops, to where Motu stood, motionless, rendered defenseless and tame. But when Motu opened his mouth, a high-pitched sonar crackled from his throat. He sprang across the fryers, landing atop a salad station and used retractable claws to slash venom into Chris’s face and neck. However, Mr. Goode had not lost gumption and as he fell backward, he felt a knife on its magnetized board on the wall. He gripped it upside down and thrust it into the middle of Motu’s neck. Then, Chris pulled it out through the front of his esophagus and watched the abomination fall, gasping a breath through bubbling, oozing blood.
The venom though, was coursing through his veins, quickly pumping his heart to its capacity with poisonous chemicals worse than any snake, spider, or other creature of Earth. Then, in a twist of fate, the same strange portal appeared along the sides of the kitchen door. Instead of huma, there were two new, flying monsters: a simurgh and anzu. The anzu blew from its head of a lion, lightning- quick flames, which licked Mr. Goode’s inflictions healing them with scars and clotted blood. This slowed his vascular system, immediately causing him to feel weaker than ever. The simurgh though, stepped through this portal and wrapped her wild hair around him, trapping him in a tangle of strands. She picked Mr. Goode up and flew with invincible strength through the floor below the deep fryers. Splashing oil slickened her hair and she shrieked in agony as she abandoned him in the dressing room of the Innn’s entertainers and then repelled herself back into the portal of fire.
12h.)
Christopher Goode struggled to breathe, think, and move. This did not improve his condition, so his struggles were righteous in truly uncontrollable anger. Doughtiness became a purely instinctive urge and only intuition led him to the location of his final nemesis. In fact, he had no evidence of the world’s entire destruction or the ergonomics of the deaths there. He felt the presence of a bad soul and knew his was good, even having forgotten the syllabic pronunciation of his own name. Drakkyn was careful as real masterminds are, his fingertips unsullied and his feet were wrapped with thin socks inside heavy and clean boots. His movements through the stripper bar were still silent, concealing his swift steps while still able to control his digestive system. As he approached the door to the dressing room hallway, Christopher Goode rolled on his side where he laid and jolted his body over to lean his shoulders against a couch. The view from inside was hardly worth his sore mobility’s effort but he was lucky to see the door had been shimmied open by whoever had cleaned it. With no view of the stage door, exits, or any light after the fading glow of the kitchen door’s portal, he returned his sensory collection to sound.
Drakkyn slid his boots up to the door of the dressing room and withdrew a small remote-control device from inside his robe. Christopher Goode drew his longest inhale and held it,as the Pharaoh tapped into the device; a four-digit code with his thumb. An alluvian fan began to whip through the dancefloor, winding the floors and walls of the fortress upward into the high beacon which spat lightning, sparking fire through the surrounding tornado like a spinning lighthouse through the planet’s subterranean dimension. The four remaining Pandora’s boxes became blackholes, rearranging the polarity of Hobb. Drakkyn’s eyes gleamed sinfully, maniacally, and mad, while the Innn and all of its atomic matter merged with magnetism and fused in singularity.
A blink in a world which disintegrates each second, a wink for Christopher Goode and it was all done. Mr. Goode arrived inside the face of a spaceless, endless mountain, not much unlike the Man in the Great White Mountains of northern New Hampshire.
& “not for nothing.” He survived his last 20 seconds in Hobb where his hair never grew and his relief was far more than measurable by mass or rhythm.
13:AFTERWARD
Irritably were written all words, with temperament, discipline and knowledge. If those abstemious to relicts are inclined to read this to predate their faith, let them pray, then. Inkling spry is as hiving entomologists harnessing their brilliant juices of elemental wizardry. Idiocy to them is as ignorance: abundantly iterated halcyon: irreversible. Important as Icarus’s illness; iodized within ice.
Sara Ivy Goode.
SAL’S SAUCE
TABS
Struggling to sit up in the dark, Alba Harker restlessly tried spinning onto his side. The smells in the room were odoriferous, and dense musk sunk to his mouth and nose as he pressed his face against the dusty back cushions of the vestibule sofa. He did not belong in this coat room, after he had fallen asleep in his bed, and through the caused astonishment spun once more over to his other side, suddenly staring wide-eyed under the bottoms of hanging jackets to the ottoman where two eyes glowing in moon light shone through the door window caught his curious surprise. The family house cat stared back for a slow moment, then closed his eyes momentarily as Alba remained motionless and still in terrified confusion. A minute gone into the trance; Alba suddenly heard loud thumping noises emanating from upstairs. Forcing his legs off the sofa, he quickly reached to the wall light switch. Then, slowed down, as he stopped to stare behind the front door windows, where the dark shadow outlining the back of a tall stranger stood on his stoop, large and menacing. The man was paused to flick a cigar, when smoke rose in gray curls around his silhouette. Alba inhaled a gasp as he heard another burst of thumping from upstairs in the condominium. Instead of turning on lights, he stared on at the unlocked door's front, too afraid of making any noise to open back the door toward the hallway of his childhood home.
In her parents' room, sliding closet doors rocked in unison, terrible trembling rhythm, punctuated by her mother's helpless cries. Naomi Harker wrestled the rope around her wrists, writhing in agony to escape the bed she was strapped down to. The headboard banged against the wall while her mouth remained gagged with tattered cloth, and twisting against the knots only exacerbated the pain. Pausing to reflect on the torment, she felt the blood trickling down her chin and cheeks where she had been hit, and swallowed before continuing to shake the bed frame violently with frustrated desperation. The moans from the closet tore into her consciousness and prevented her from giving up, and as she moved her fingers around the knots of the rope, she felt slack in the right hand where sweat and bleeding wetness loosened the tethers. Ripping into them in speeding hope for survival led to her nail keratin shredding and splintering, but she broke free one arm before stopping in fear. She listened closely to the wall of the closet, wincing in tearful horror. The persistence of the cacophony within the closet persuaded her from the doom brought on by the awful night, as she crept off the bed unafraid. She poised emotionless in quiet hesitation, then shuffled across the hardwood to the window overlooking the backyard. Emptying her soul from this attacker out of the very window he had entered the house.
Poisoned by a complete stranger at the arranged rendezvous during the afternoon where he first met the murderer. The family he proudly kept from his work as a police officer in Chicago, Illinois were unsuspecting victims to the same sickness that captured the 32-year-old Donald Harker, and created the hypnotic disease that inhabited the community abode on North Rush. Naomi and Alba both fell into a lulling state of unconsciousness that was nearly suspended throughout the entire night, with thoughts dulled by a culling sleep which pulled down the weight of their bodies into the dreams of the unknown. Although supper was ready, the toxic touch of the father who swore to protect was a push for the predetermination of a long day's conclusion. The family sat at the meal, fidgeting and unprepared to quit their customary tendencies, but lacking the motivation to commit to the initiative of behaviors that seem to guide the lives of the innocent and faithful working class. When everyone had gone, Harker sat alone in the head chair, and listened faintly as the missing sounds of a radio or television left vacancy in the household, replaced by the static of disease and disarray of ringing between his ears that grew uncomfortable to him. He followed his wife upstairs, and lay with his back propped by the pillow. He heard the whistling of the streets in the background, as he got up to open the window.
While the idling car's engine rumbled, Angelo Noe fumbled in his pocket for the timepiece that his grandfather had given him as a child, a special birthday gift he always cherished. The taste of the cigar clung to his chapped lips, he licked his thumbs and pushed down the sides of his mustache, salty sting cleared his throat and he grumbled gruff phlegm clinging to his larynx. The time that he read meant that he had space for the smokes, and the five or more that he had already spent waiting on the stoop were enough to raise his paranoia again. His eyes darted down both sidewalks in each direction, again and again, and he sniffed the side of his collar where he had not ever sprayed cologne, even when he had attended the union meetings where he had first collected this particular set of clothing. The white shirt was distinguishable by the breast pockets which were without buttons, normally a comparative necessity in his line of work where he might need to run down to the railroad with envelopes, payments, tickets, notes, or a set of some spare bullets for the small revolver he would have carried around when he was younger. The buttons all down the front of the shirt were undone, as he considered that the late-night stroll by the police officer's neighborhood may have aroused conspicuous suspicion if he hadn't seemed casual to a passerby. Without any weapons, he opened the door behind and killed Alba.
Her husband sat on the wide edge of their comfortable king size bed, in the middle of the night, staring out into the backyard in silence, as if waiting for something out in the starry skies. A breeze flowed through the window, which had been left closed when Rebecca Harker fell asleep, much earlier. It blew the curtains out through the air, whipping into the fragile hush with a rasp of cold wind against the nearby dresser filled with jewelry, make-up, and perfumes, tinkling along the trinkets and ornaments. The vents between the door and nightstand shuddered and groaned, pushing out the warm gas, and as she rolled through the sheets on her pillowcase, her eyes fell on the blackness of the open closet door. As she did this, her husband shifted his weight and leaned across over her legs, looking with her into the closet with his face exhibiting the unfeeling remorse his heart had felt that evening when he had looked at Rebecca, Alba, and Naomi, over the dinner table. He said something in a soft whisper to the figure who emerged from out of the closet. The words were simple and contrasted the intruder, who was, although with figure shadowed by foreboding darkness, held characteristics that were so foreign and complicated to process for the drowsy mind, that the doctor felt intrigue rather than instantaneous bewilderment. These were the words of the oath he had made to never harm his family.
Routines and memorization of routes of traffic along the North of Chicago's travel systems were something that Rory O'Keane had to adjust himself to after he was promoted out of the dismal roads that led out of the South. His attention to detail that had paid well for him during his work was an ethic that failed him in his adjustments to the borderlines of freights and shipments, industry propriety and residential citizenship that clashed with the essence of his pursuit to an apparently rising undergrowth of middle-class crime where the big picture was what he had to focus on if he were going to keep his reputation as a police officer as thoroughly exemplary as previously accredited to him. March 7th, 1962, as fading sunlight gave way to the headlights of traffic in commuters across the city, the seasoned policeman was patrolling around the station after his partner had off early with the additional heavier burden of having lost one of his children after a school program during which one of the twin girls had lost her sibling near the train stations that ran along West Town. His partner had been in a contagious and panic-stricken outrage all day, almost ready to snap. Out of the corner of an eye, the railroads, which were falling into periphery against the chaos of modern bustle of midweek work schedules, brought back a second glance in hindsight. He noticed the teenage girl's slain body.
Out of everyone's sight, a different scene stretched out just before the Chinatown district, whether the unforeseen flapping pigeons, or clutter of crossing commercial buildings from the crow's eye of pedestrians' intermittent residencies, to bicycling merchants and alleyways filled with dumpsters and cluster flies. Neve Harker threw out the cigarette pack as an automobile drove past her, up to a busy intersection, honking as it hurled through the crowds and turned sharply right, screeching tires echoing and drowning out the chattering people, footsteps, barking dogs further away, and her own sigh of contemplation. Leaving her twin and other students back in the school out of her mind, she pulled her purse up and picked out the lighter. The smell of rotten garbage in the gutters overcome by the lit tobacco she puffed while reminiscing the short walk she had made to this side of town, where she had really only hoped to gain a solitude and solace from the attended social hierarchy and studious familiarity of her friends. Overhead, an airplane shook the sought solace, hurling a clamorous clatter of sturdy brick cornered tenements to distraught monuments of landscape architecture. From down in that alley, she heard loud rustling of newspaper, and she glimpsed over her shoulder just then, to see a pale, sickly, and dirty, Chinese man stumbling. With strong, undead arms, he dragged her away.
THE ADVENTURES OF SLAPPY & BUSTER & BUBBA
Young Carla has had a crush on Buster since she left her high school without being asked to the prom. Buster is a motorcyclist who has sometimes come into town in New York from the city. He tries to bring her to the city with him one night when she is out walking. She falls in love, and although he makes a stop at a friend’s house, Bubba, she doesn’t question that he seems motivated by unknown forces until she realizes that he is a desperate cocaine addict. Bubba, the friend, is a conspirator hermit in Upstate. He is trying combinations of drugs with intent to communicate with extraterrestrial life. As Carla falls victim to her surroundings and begins tripping out, Buster becomes enraged and begins beating her senselessly. Bubba, meanwhile is tripping out so extensively that aliens actually come, in the form of Bobo the Clown. Bobo chases down Bubba and eats him in the bathroom. When Buster opens the door, Bobo rushes out covered in the bathroom curtain and starts suffocating Buster while Carla is forced to watch. Bobo stands up and tells Carla that she is coming with him, now. He wants to start calling her Slappy. She’s seems amicable but mumbles something about where will they get money to live. Bobo asks if she’s heard of Sal’s Restaurant.
Pitch
Sal's Sauce Vomit 4 Sale!
Aliens, Armed Robbery, Robots At A Restaurant soon... to theatre, near you cast m-
Big MANNY Mack McMahon/SAL Smith/ Cameraman/Bus Driver
-war vet, artifact collector, NY/ drunk and disabled, restaurant manager, Boston f-
Old Lady HELGA Haggard/Robot
JANE Jackson/Secretary/Accountant/Policewoman/Angel -Scotch, widow, NY
-smarter and older, zoo keeper, wife m/f-
YAPpo Manuel/
CHRISTIAN Goode/Evil Genie/
Policeman/Alien Mastermind/
Twyll The ChyllTyrant
-foreign, sales person, immigrant celebrity m-
Antonio Calucci TONY/
Mini MIGUEL Salvatore
-Mexican taxi driver, immigrant smuggler, TX/ Mexican, fridge repair laborer, on telephone m-
ROBERTO Mozzarella/
Pop Off PAULY Carter/
Alien
-Italian, loud chef, NY/Brooklyn, fridge repair manager, on telephone f-
ROBERTA Mozzarella/
SLAPPY Carlson/Alien
-silent, cleaning chef/clumsy teenage waitress, NY f-
BELLA Dior/
FRAN Geraldine
-pretty and younger, unemployed, single/ German, heiress, CA f-
ChrisTINA Rockefeller/
ROBIN Canter/Robot
-rich aristocrat, real estate agent, CA/ Irish, singing hostess, GA props
5 cups straws pen paper pad monopoly money
5 chairs
3 tables cane Flask
Christian’s necklace
Helga costume/makeup/wig
Yap sunglasses
Tony's driving jacket
Tony's robber mask
Slappy's apron
Roberto's chef hat
Roberta's chef hat
Bella's robe
Tina's hat
Pauly's phone
Helga's purse
Manny's box
Sals Sauces sign
saucer with piece of cake
"SPACE"
INSIDE - SAL’S SAUCES RESTAURANT - DIMMED WELL LIT
FIVE CHAIRS, THREE TABLES
TWO CHAIRS EVENLY SPACED FACING LEFT IN THE BACK
TWO CHAIRS AROUND A TABLE MID RIGHT TO NEAR BACK
ONE CHAIR FAR LEFT WHICH IS JANE'S CHAIR SAL’S SAUCE SIGN IN BACK FAR RIGHT
(TONY sits at the table in the back left, facing off stage. His hands are in a prayer pose with his fingertips to his hairline, eyes closed. CHRISTIAN sits in the other table in back, facing the chair that is to the side, front left, where JANE is sitting and reading off a checklist of auctioneers. TONY is praying silently under his breath as the scene sets)
TONY:
Familia, mi pueblo, pescando, mientras todos pensaban viviendo gratis fue prestado una lagrima del océano. Dios salva, amen.
(MANNY enters stage right and looks nervously at CHRISTIAN while walking up to JANE who remains seated. MANNY is holding the invisible maracas in his right hand, sticks pointed down)
MANNY:
Continental breakfast, the best when complimentary. The house blend here is dark enough to make me want to try to go back to bed. I should have stayed in bed, JANE, ridiculous.
(JANE glimpses up and does not respond, but smiles and shakes her head. MANNY looks nervously back at TONY)
MANNY (CON’T):
I understand nothing in life is free, but Splenda is HALF free. It says “SUGAR FREE,”
And it costs less than a penny, it’s free in the Northern Hemisphere, USA, and WE pay taxes…
I love Splenda, come to think of it, it’s, JANE, are you listening? We should-
JANE:
(pauses and then looks up at MANNY and puts her hands in her lap)
Stevia in mild quantities put to science in experimental laboratory settings in many cases and conditions have caused significant neural and physical damage to test subjects which have included animals. We’re at a fundraiser for animals, MANNY. We’re here to help the animals, MANNY, and build a ZOO.
(JANE stands up and puts the clipboard on the chair)
JANE (CON’T):
This isn’t about what kind of random selection the Sal’s Sauces management staff put together. We aren’t staying here all day, and we probably shouldn’t be here, yet. Wait, are you really here? WHY? You had
contractors today, didn’t you? The fridge maintenance? Why did you LEAVE the house, so EARLY? I told you HELGA would be at SAL’s by later evening. What are you doing?
MANNY:
(waves his right hand wildly and the Morroccos make the “SH” sound, three times)
I really don’t understand what these are. What are they? Are you from Morrocco?
Did you follow me here, from Morrocco, to make me sell Morroccos? For real? You’re beautiful, JANE.
You are an amazing accountant. You are an amazing kind of lady, in my life, JANE, you are really something else, too. But you got to tell me. Morroccos? What?
JANE:
I’m an accountant, again? Where are you coming up with this lousy outfit? I’m not an accountant, I’m sorry I had ever given you that impression, back in Africa. But I met you because you look educated, you looked headstrong, and you seemed smart and
ambitious. But now I know, YOU ARE an American. A classic example of the American Dream. But I met you, because you were an American, in Africa, and I loved you, then, and I love you, now.
MANNY:
(sitting down in the chair, glumly) Alright, I get it. You and me, love, eternity. This is great. But the fact that I found these in the desert, and then after all that traveling, and all of the moving into your new house, what are these, really?
JANE:
Your house, too, MANNY.
MANNY:
I collect antiques, you collect animals, but when I say YOUR new house, it’s because again, I have plants, you have elephants. I have a violin, you have crickets. See what I’m saying, here? Fiddles, not fish sticks.
(TONY coughs and wipes his eyes, interrupting a long silent pause)
JANE:
Rude.
(ROBERTO walks onstage from the left in the back, around to TONY, swerving quickly back to MANNY, with a plate of hors d’oeuvre that he offers out to JANE, who looks confused)
MANNY:
(waves his hand away and shakes his head)
It’s too early. Too early.
(ROBERTO says nothing, but returns over to CHRISTIAN who takes a toothpick off of the tray and runs his fingers down it and then starts picking it in his teeth)
JANE:
(turning back to MANNY, and away from ROBERTO) Now I want some.
(ROBERTO walks offstage to the left, past TONY repeating BEEP twice as he receives a text message, and silently dials on phone with his fingers, and the line does not get picked up after six rings, ten seconds, and he hangs up his phone. CHRISTIAN reaches for his pocket, and begins texting on his phone as TONY returns his phone to pocket)
TONY:
(turning to face MANNY’S back)
Hey, hey, Mack, buddy?
MANNY:
(MANNY does not notice TONY at all, and continues talking to JANE)
I’m not made of money like you are, my angel. I’m made of something that GETS it. I get it, but I don’t want it, like I go for it. It’s a complicated process.
JANE:
Good, go sell your maracas somewhere else, honey, or at least leave me alone while I wait for these committee people to show up. I need it to look professional.
MANNY:
AWESOME. PROFESSIONAL. What do you think, I’m an amateur? Novice to the sins of the world?
(MANNY stands up and walks over to TONY, looking at him in the eyes as he does, and spins around a few steps away from the table. TONY turns his attention back to the cell phone, but looks up once)
MANNY (CON’T):
I passed through high school through dedication.
I passed through the ASVAB through dedication.
Dedication, that’s something you can’t learn, I can.
I can do everything. I do it, already. For myself.
And if I CAN’T? I’ll know next time, I’ll face it head on, myself. Bye. I left the pool system on.
JANE:
Where are you going? You know HELGA can’t drive!
(MANNY continues walking off the stage to the right, as TONY raises his head once again)
TONY:
Hey, hey, MACK!
(MANNY is already off stage)
JANE:
Who are you? Do you know us?
TONY:
MANNY went to school with me, I’m TONY.
I was going to actually ask if he had some money, I could borrow. I need to figure out a way to get my family out of Costa Rica, into the States. But I know he can’t do that, but I was just asking for a little.
Or anything.
JANE:
I’m not sure how much money you think we have, but MANNY is my husband, even though we were arguing, I love him. I’m not sure if you understand that. TONY:
No? Oh, I understand, it’s no problem.
(TONY puts some money on the table, as BELLA enters from the right, and walks over to CHRISTIAN’S table)
BELLA:
CHRISTIAN? Hey! Who are you talking to?
Are you texting somebody? And not me?
CHRISTIAN:
(raises his head and smiles)
That’s so funny, I was just going to hit you up. Literally. Look at my phone-
(CHRISTIAN shows BELLA the phone, but then retracts his hand too soon for her to get a closer look)
CHRISTIAN (CON’T):
Just kidding, girl. What’s up BELLA?
BELLA:
JERK. That was so mean. Are ALL men alike?
CHRISTIAN:
Are all cartoons alike?
BELLA:
How does that matter?
CHRISTIAN:
Cartoons are drawn by-
(BELLA puts her hand up to CHRISTIAN’S face and puts her one index finger up near to his lips)
BELLA:
You’re breaking my heart.
TONY:
Hey, do you guys know where to find work?
Any work.
JANE:
Oh.
(BELLA and CHRISTIAN turn to face TONY)
TONY:
I’ll work for anything, too.
CHRISTIAN:
Would you work for peanuts?
TONY:
No, yeah, I’ll work for peace, sure. How much?
(CHRISTIAN snorts and laughs while BELLA covers her mouth and starts giggling)
CHRISTIAN:
Buddy… Buddy…
JANE:
(raises hand in STOP)
Wait, let me call my husband, maybe he can have you drive our friend down here later, to do some business.
TONY:
Really?
(JANE puts a finger in the air to sign one minute, and picks a cellphone out of a pocket and dials and it rings three times or five seconds, as CHRISTIAN and BELLA look at each other in surprise, and then JANE abruptly hangs up, and CHRISTIAN turns back quizzically to TONY and then at JANE, then pulls out a checkbook and starts writing a check)
JANE:
I’ll just text him, right now. It’s not until a little later, anyway. Will you be available?
TONY:
Great!
JANE:
He’s a grown man, but I’m used to elephants.
I can only handle so much at once. I handle zoos, he does taxiing of his archaeological items.
It’s like we’re comparable, but we’re not adjacent.
TONY:
Did you say Jason?
CHRISTIAN:
Hey, buddy,
(CHRISTIAN stands up and grabs BELLA by the arm, and puts the check on the table and starts walking offstage, as he finishes talking)
CHRISTIAN (CON’T):
I never claim to have won a spelling bee, but you don’t even sound like you’re really from round here.
TONY:
I’m TONY.
BELLA:
BELLA.
JANE:
Well, I’m JANE Jackson.
CHRISTIAN:
Goode. And no, I’m not Tarzan, and no, you can go keep your big hairy apes at the zoo.
(CHRISTIAN and BELLA exit to the right together)
"INTRODUCTION"
OUTSIDE - NATURAL LIGHTING - CURTAINS ALMOST CLOSED
(MANNY stands facing audience center stage, while EVIL GENIE stands to the left with his head down)
MANNY:
I can't believe I'm in Morrocco. Looking for Morroccos.
(MANNY picks up lamp)
MANNY (CON’T):
A lamp? What if I rub it?
(EVIL GENIE jumps to life, low scream, and writhing)
EVIL GENIE:
Ah! An EVIL GENIE, here near the Saharan desert, and YES, I grant you three wishes, right now, if you can… muster them! MANNY:
I wish I had something to make some money!
EVIL GENIE:
HERE! Sell this! Maraca...
MANNY:
Exactly what I was looking for! But there's only ONE!
EVIL GENIE:
Ok!
MANNY:
But you tricked me!
(MANNY picks up and rubs off two Morroccos off the ground and shakes them and they make the noise)
MANNY:
Man. Times like right now, I wish I had a wife, or a secretary or something to take care of things like-
(SECRETARY-ACCOUNTANT enters stage from right)
SECRETARY-ACCOUNTANT:
I'll be your secretary, AND wife, but I WON’T change my last name because I want to be honest, I'm actually a zoo keeper, myself. I'm just-
MANNY:
NO, I'm talking about take care of things like MONEY!
(MANNY spins back around to the EVIL GENIE who smiles and backs up off stage)
SECRETARY-ACCOUNTANT:
(walks to MANNY and touches his shoulder)
I'm also an accountant...
EVIL GENIE:
See! I made all your wishes come true!
"SALES SCENES SAILS"
FIVE CHAIRS, THREE TABLES, ONE WITH BOX UNDER IT
TWO CHAIRS EVENLY SPACED FACING LEFT IN THE BACK
TWO CHAIRS AROUND A TABLE MID RIGHT TO NEAR BACK
SAL’S SAUCE SIGN IN BACK FAR RIGHT
INSIDE - RESTAURANT WAITING ROOM DIMMED LIGHTING
(HELGA walks to the hostess, but as she does, she is flanked from behind by FRAN and YAP who form a line right in front of her)
ROBIN:
Welcome to Sal's Sauces, YA’LL. First off, I'm ROBIN, I'm bout to be your singing hostess tonight.
(ROBIN dances to show energy, but only says lyrics to the lines in a rhythm)
ROBIN:
Now who was first in line today?
(YAP clears throat, and holds his hand up. He looks back at the other two and smiles, as HELGA raises her hand, too)
ROBIN:
They can beg and they can plead
But they can't see the light
'Cause the boy with the cold hard cash
Is always Mister Right
Let's go, sonny, THIS way, follow me.
(ROBIN starts off towards the chair to the far back left, and YAP follows her. She points and he sits, she hands him a menu, and he takes it and looks at it, but as she walks away, he watches her, and sneaks over to the big table in the middle of the room. ROBIN returns to the line and faces FRAN, next. HELGA begins looking in her purse and at her wristwatch)
FRAN:
(looking to the far left)
FRAN. Do you have any seats near a window?
ROBIN:
'Fraid not, honey, right over here, Take me to your heart For it's there that I belong
And will never part
(ROBIN leads FRAN over to the chair on the right side and comes back to HELGA, who has grown impatient)
ROBIN:
I'm in a melodramatic nocturnal scene
I'm a refugee from a disconcerted affair
As the lead pipe morning falls
And the waitress calls
You ready, honey?
HELGA:
Yes, I am.
ROBIN:
OKAY, sweetie, this way.
(HELGA and ROBIN turn around and step towards the center table, but ROBIN stops and answers her cell phone, interrupting the walk, so HELGA waits along)
ROBIN:
Hello? Skinny? Oh dang, hang on I'm at work. Honey, this is my son, he's sick at school. You can just take a seat in the middle, anywhere, go on ahead.
(HELGA looks surprised as ROBIN turns her back and walks away raising her hands in silent expression of a muted conversation with her son's school principal. ROBIN exits to back right. FRAN fans herself. HELGA turns around and YAP is smiling and waving. This causes HELGA's to look upset)
INSIDE - RESTAURANT DINING ROOM WELL LIT
(FRAN looks at the two from her seat, as HELGA walks around past the table and looks around for a different one, but seems to be confused and as she turns around, YAP is still smiling at her, again)
HELGA:
Are you sitting in this seat?
YAP:
Sure, lady, have a seat. Open for service.
(Emerging onto stage is MANNY, who flicks a cigarette from the left side back into the curtains, and then resumes walking up to behind HELGA, looking angry at the table, and YAP)
MANNY:
Hey now, that's my seat, mister. Look! I got all my stuff over there, I'm sorry, has there been a mistake?
HELGA:
MANNY?
MANNY:
OH, HELGA, yes, it is! It's ME, YES.
(YAP gets up and sulks back to his seat, but soon turns around to look at FRAN who turns her eyes away as soon as he does, and looks back at her menu. YAP doesn't look away from her, as the two sit down at the table. MANNY pulls out the left seat, the one that YAP was sitting in, for HELGA, and after swiping it clean, he motions for her to take the seat. YAP in his seat, exchanges a brief stare down, with MANNY, while MANNY is mid sitting, until YAP looks away, and changes his posture, and looks down at his menu)
MANNY:
Anyway.
HELGA:
SO glad to see you.
MANNY:
I hope the traffic wasn't bad, everything went ok with the taxi I arranged for you, right? HELGA:
Oh, absolutely, NO worries at all.
Now, Sal's Sauces...
(HELGA and MANNY both look at menus)
YAP:
Waiter? Waiter?
(YAP looks around anxiously trying to get people to respond to him for a moment, and loses hope, going back to looking at the menu. Just then, SLAPPY the waitress comes out onto the stage and walks up to YAP)
SLAPPY:
Sir, I'm sorry, I was just coming over here.
YAP:
I am ready now.
SLAPPY:
Yea sure go ah-
(SLAPPY begins writing order on pad)
YAP:
I will have haddock fish sandwich and tartar sauce. I will have a french fry, a pickle, and catsup with extra salt. One fresh water. SLAPPY:
Ok, sure.
YAP:
(YAP grabs back up the menu)
No, I will have,
SLAPPY:
Ok,
YAP:
One french fry, a pickle, catsup, and one fresh water, with a lemon, not squeezed, on the cup side. SLAPPY:
Ok, no, tartar, no squeeze.
YAP:
No tartar, no haddock, just the water, one water.
SLAPPY:
French fry?
YAP:
No small fry. No. Just coffee... And bacon.
SLAPPY:
Ok, sure, got you.
(FRAN raises her hand)
SLAPPY:
Yes, ma'am?
FRAN:
I'd like a cake.
(SLAPPY looks confused, but flips her pad paper and continues writing, but suddenly starts writing too fast and drops her pen. She bends over and picks it up, and then looks up at FRAN who has been waiting)
SLAPPY:
Anything else? A whole cake?
FRAN:
No, just a slice. Chocolate. I'll start with a baked apple pie, though. In fact, bake me one to go, too. And, is there any way I could get a root beer float, with a twisty straw? SLAPPY:
I don't know about the straws, but okay.
Coming right up. I'll be right back you guys, hang tight.
(SLAPPY exits to the left)
"DRIVE"
INSIDE - DARK
HELGA'S HOUSE, HALL TO FRONT DOOR - EVENING
FIVE CHAIRS, THREE TABLES
TWO CHAIRS EVENLY SPACED FACING LEFT IN THE BACK
TWO CHAIRS AROUND A TABLE MID RIGHT TO NEAR BACK
ONE CHAIR FAR LEFT WHICH IS HELGA'S CHAIR
(HELGA sleeps in a chair, making sleeping noises, when TONY comes to the door and makes doorbell noise. HELGA jumps out of chair, TONY WHISTLES or HUMS and looks around, HELGA quickly raises up out of chair)
SPOTLIGHT ON HELGA
HELGA:
WHO, who is it? WHO's out there, whistling, humming and ringing? What time is it? What day? TONY:
Hey, it's ME, lady, the taxi driver. You okay?
(HELGA looks surprised, shocked, unnerved, confused)
HELGA:
Jason? Is that you? James? Jimmy-Jo? Jilly?
(TONY now looks confused, trying to peer into window)
TONY:
You ok, lady? You want me to get you some help? You don't sound like you're making sense, anymore, it's me, the Uber guy, I'm your Lyft today. Hello?
HELGA:
Oh DEAR.
(HELGA goes to door and opens it an inch and slams it TONY tries to push it open with his hand, but she is too fast and he falls back a step on the stoop)
HELGA:
Oh dear, OH dear, I knew it was those filthy neighborhood rugrats out there again, trouble makers. TONY:
Lady! I'm TONY! Whoa!
(HELGA pauses and then opens the door a fraction again and leans up into the small opening to peek through)
TONY (CON’T):
Hold on, you alright?
HELGA:
No... more... girl... scout... cookies...
(TONY looks shocked as HELGA pauses again and looks closer and opens the door more and examines him head to toe on the stoop without leaving her doorway)
HELGA:
Oh, I do apologize, I am so sorry. Uber?
TONY:
Yeah, okay, come on, let's go. Are YOU ready?
HELGA:
Uh, one moment, let me just grab my purse.
(TONY WHISTLES and HUMS again while HELGA closes the door, picks up the purse and scrambles back. HELGA pauses and fixes her clothes, and reopens)
TONY:
Girl scout cookies? What was that all about? Are you sure you're alright? I'm sorry, I mean…
(HELGA starts out of door onto stoop, but trips and grabs her heart with a sudden look of fear towards offstage)
HELGA:
OH!
TONY:
(not visibly scared, but confused)
What? WHAT?
HELGA:
Nothing…
(HELGA resumes walking but TONY goes to grab her elbow to guide her and she resists back)
TONY:
Hey, who’s Jason? Did you say Jilly?
HELGA:
(ominous but not aggressive)
I’ve never heard of those names in my life...
(HELGA motions for TONY to lead way)
HELGA (CON’T):
Oh, DON’T worry, never mind. Oh, don't step on the petunias, dear, they aren't dead, yet.
OUTSIDE - EVENING
HELGA'S LAWN - REGULAR LIGHTING - DIMMED LIGHT FRONT STAGE
(TONY and HELGA walk a few steps down the sidewalk)
TONY:
Hey, what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.
(HELGA gets into TONY's car, TONY letting HELGA in by opening the handle of the door for her and letting her climb in and then shutting it behind, then circling back to his side of the car to enter by going all the way around the front and into the area the street would be. HELGA and TONY travel to the new destination by walking side by side, circling around stage to where the house was, behind the chairs and tables, and then jostling their shoulders to make motor movement while finishing the small conversation that remains)
TONY:
Hey, HELGA, right?
HELGA:
Yes, SIR, I had specified with your company the location, already.
TONY:
Yeah, I know.
HELGA:
Good, I don't want any troubles.
(TONY snickers)
TONY:
Hey listen, I got a FUNNY one you probably ain't heard. Are you down for a quick joke?
HELGA:
(HELGA pauses)
WELL, say it, if it's on your mind, young man.
TONY:
Why'd the old lady fall in the well on her walk?
(HELGA remains silent)
TONY (CON’T):
She couldn't SEE that well. Get it?
(TONY stops the car and enters the parking lot of restaurant; Sal's Sauces)
OUTSIDE - RESTAURANT PARKING LOT
(ROBIN carries out the Sal's Sauces sign and sets it against the back of mid stage, and then comes to stand directly between the sign and the other side of the stage, where she is the hostess of the restaurant)
TONY:
Well, here we are.
(HELGA reaches into her purse and pulls out money to pay for the ride, and stuffs it in his hand and gets out without looking back at him in the face as he drives away, frowning)
"WARM-UP"
INSIDE - RESTAURANT
WELL LIT
MANNY:
This is nice, here.
(FRAN, in the background, takes selfie-camera pics)
HELGA:
SURE is, for a diner out here in Upstate, NEW YORK. The neighborhoods are all getting run down.
(YAP stands up and exits to the left)
MANNY:
Nothing like the OLD DAYS, when a man could get a loaf of bread for a quarter.
(FRAN puts down the cell phone camera and fixes her napkin)
MANNY (CON’T):
I REMEMBER those days.
HELGA:
(rolls eyes or looks bored)
Yes.
MANNY:
Sure, I had to walk the sun blazed and scorched badlands of Arabia, for a while, but I learned to truly appreciate what this world shows me. I believe that. It's ART.
It's ETERNAL. I believe after LIFE spent toiling through the mountains of the Middle East, and in the fertile crescent itself, in the very cradle of life
that kindles the ideals of civilization, THANKFULNESS. Every DAY above ground, is a good day. That's what I say, am I right? Can I get a toast to THAT?
(MANNY, chuckling, raises an imaginary mug in the air, FRAN picks up her menu)
HELGA:
When is the waitress going to let us ORDER?
(MANNY notices YAP still looking at him while he holds his hand up, and slowly lowers it back to the table)
MANNY:
AY, I for one, know how I'll enjoy it ALL.
I'll love it the way I love this place's meatball sub.
(SLAPPY walks back onstage from the left carrying two cups in each hand. YAP stands up and grabs one water, as she walks by.
SLAPPY looks at him, annoyed, as he sits back down, carelessly. She puts the other cup down at FRAN's table.)
SLAPPY:
I will be right back with your pie, ma'am, sorry about the wait. Is there anything else I can get you?
FRAN:
(smiling)
No, I'm ok.
(SLAPPY picks up the two menus)
SLAPPY:
Ok, be right back.
(SLAPPY pulls out a straw for FRAN, and all of the straws fall out of her apron. She gasps and hurriedly picks them all up off the ground and exits finally)
MANNY:
Yeah, I KNOW. I'll be right back. Same as ALWAYS.
HELGA:
Oh?
MANNY:
Not you, HELGA. I'm on my Bluetooth. I just got a text message.
HELGA:
But you didn't use your cellphone to text, how?
MANNY:
The Bluetooth reads my texts for me.
HELGA:
Oh. That's neat. Who was it?
MANNY:
Oh, well, just something personal. Sorry. As
I was saying, we really have to look at the whole idea together, here. We need to analyze what's going on in the market, and the fluctuations of the possibilities.
HELGA:
Oh, we do?
MANNY:
No, once again, HELGA,
MANNY (CON’T):
(pointing at his ear)
Bluetooth. I was just talking about the grocer markets with my friend's roommate on the other line. Bye, now I'm off, completely wireless. As I was saying, it's not like the OLD DAYS, no WAY. I remember when you could drink openly in open places, and you could drink to your health, because the skies were clean.
The future was clear. We were here to conquer the world, and it was the ending reality that kept us bound on that fateful track and journey to today. Thankful, THANK God. Like Jonny Appleseed. Hey, do you KNOW those stories?
HELGA:
Oh sure.
MANNY:
Did you know that it was about alcohol? FERMENTATION. Apples and apple cider were one of America's first attempts at the fermentation process as a fledgling nation, and even in the pioneer years. Oh, YEAH. Alcohol was a huge part of the formation of the ENTIRE commercial market of the United States.
(SLAPPY returns onstage with two more cups of water. She walks over to MANNY and HELGA's table and sets them down, dramatically carefully)
SLAPPY:
There ya'll folks are. Here.
(SLAPPY begins to walk away)
MANNY:
(waving his hand to SLAPPY)
Hey, YO, wait. I think we're ready to order.
I am. Are you?
(SLAPPY takes out her pad as HELGA nods timidly)
MANNY:
I'll have a meatball sub, extra sauce.
SLAPPY:
Ok, and you?
HELGA:
I'll have the Saturday Special, please. Thanks.
SLAPPY:
I'll be right back.
(SLAPPY takes both menus, exits to left)
MANNY:
You know there's really not a lot left to trust the same as we used to. You know what I MEAN?
HELGA:
Oh, sure.
MANNY:
Take FLYNT, MICHIGAN, our neighbor to the WEST.
HELGA:
Of course.
MANNY:
They don't have fresh WATER, they don't have
fresh air, they don't have FRESH CHANCES, anymore. It's maddening. Truly a CURSE that we've given each other, mother Earth, with even our own LIVES. Running around drinking the chemicals out of the tap, bathing in water that's unclean from the SOURCE, and eating a cocktail of GMOs, with rotten pipes under our littered lawns leading into unsanitary living spaces. SAD.
(HELGA makes an ugly face)
MANNY (CON’T):
They're running out too! Look OUT, they're running out of WATER around the WORLD, even in our own backyard! 200 years ago, we'd have used wells and collected rain water, but NO! It's all illegal now!
(MANNY notices HELGA's contempt for the subject matter, and glances at his cell phone, which he brings out of pocket)
MANNY (CON’T):
Hold on HELGA, I have to see who this is.
(SLAPPY comes back onstage with two plates for the appetizers and sets them down. HELGA begins nibbling on the food slowly, and drinking her water, with it)
MANNY:
HELLO? Who? WHO is? Uh...
INSIDE - MANNY'S HOUSE
DARKENED - SPOTLIGHT
SAL'S RESTAURANT STAYS DIMLY LIT
(PAULY and MIGUEL enter stage near right and get spotlight. They are in MANNY's house, PAULY is on the phone, and MIGUEL is bending up and down over tool boxes)
PAULY:
Hey, HEY, yeah, it's me. PAULY. Pop Off PAULY your refrigerator guy. Yeah.
(MIGUEL turns and kneels with wires)
MANNY:
Hey, okay, I'm kind of busy, what's up?
Everything okay over there, still?
PAULY:
YEAH, we got your back patio ALL lit up here, I don't know what that is back there, a pool, or some kind of dog pen, but it's really smelling I think, or either that or it's something in the fridge, here, you want I should try to find the source, or
WHAT, here? I think when MIGUEL bends over the motor it gets REAL wet in between his wires, all over, though, so I got to tell you we need to be safe.
Never can tell when one of the FUSES will POP in your eye and blind ya, isn't that right, Migi?
(MIGUEL looks over his shoulder and smiles and thumbs up, and back to work)
PAULY:
Hey what is that there some kind of AV connected amplifier cell, there Mini Migi? HEY! Watch out! You're heating up! I can smell the smoke!
(MIGUEL jumps up and then back down, lays, and rolls around as if extinguishing a fire on his clothes)
MANNY:
What's going on over there, you two? Just,
JUST give me a quick DETAILED explanation. Fast.
(MIGUEL gets up and back to work)
PAULY:
All I KNOW is whatever you guys got running in
these refrigeration units, it ain't made to be used like that. I mean, SERIOUSLY. What's going on in your guys's HEADS? LIKE, seriously...
(MIGUEL starts stuffing things in his pockets, while PAULY seems distracted, and nervously looks over his shoulder at PAULY. PAULY whips around, suddenly)
PAULY:
Hey! HEY! Are you putting copper in your pockets again Mini Migi?! I thought we had a deal! Put it back! Put it back, right now!
(MIGUEL shakes his head furiously and runs offstage)
MANNY:
OK, what's going on, now?
PAULY:
HEY buddy, it's me, man, Pop Off PAULY. YOU know they don't call me Pop Off PAULY for nothing.
This is MY boat, my show, my horse, my saddle, my, my-
MIGUEL:
(offstage)
It's finished.
PAULY:
Alright, we got it. We're done. We're out of here. Fifteen hundred, and make it payable to Paul Carter LLC. Ok bud?
MANNY:
(hanging up phone)
Alright! Fine! I gotta go!
(HELGA is still nibbling slower and slower. MANNY shakes his head)
MANNY (CON’T):
(putting phone back in pocket)
HEY, everything's alright. Is everything alright?
HELGA:
(pushing plate of appetizers away)
NO.
MANNY:
What?
HELGA:
These appetizers taste like DOG food. I can't even finish them.
(YAP reenters stage and sits back down at his seat. Then, SLAPPY comes out with cake and pie for FRAN eagerly watching while tossing her hair, stretching her arms and upper body to eat, she also carries water to HELGA and MANNY's table, and sets it down first)
SLAPPY:
And here you are, and, your pie. Enjoy!
(SLAPPY refills HELGA's cup, as FRAN picks up her fork and takes a bite and smiles, SLAPPY exits stage left)
MANNY:
How'd you get here?
HELGA:
You paid for my taxi!
MANNY:
No, I mean, you got here fast! Which way did you end up going?
HELGA:
Well we took the right at Orchard, then
Pleasant, then we went down Edison to Pike, took the turnpike to the HIGHWAY, and came Brookside to Sal's. MANNY:
Oh no, NO, I just never took the highway. So.
How was it?
HELGA:
It was decent. I'm here, aren't I?
MANNY:
I just meant that-
(YAP stands up as SLAPPY reenters stage with a plate)
SLAPPY:
Um, here's your bacon.
(SLAPPY exits stage to left)
YAP:
(pushes aside his chair)
I could not, help but over HEAR you two...
(All of the customers turn their attention to YAP who waves his arms)
YAP:
I have a bargain of a deal, once in a lifetime.
Are you interested? Yes! Of course! The chance to become your destiny! To command your own fate, and live freely, like you never have before! Dreams!
MANNY:
Yeah? What're YOU selling, mister? What's up?
(HELGA is worried, FRAN disbelieving)
YAP:
Badgers!
HELGA:
BADGERS?
FRAN:
WHAT?
HELGA:
What?
YAP:
(points backstage)
Badger farms in Alaska, worth tens of thousands. Yours. For only twelve hundred a piece, or two thousand per two. What do you say?
HELGA:
No.
FRAN:
No.
MANNY:
(shaking his head)
Did you think that was going to work, mister?
(YAP looks back over to MANNY, sits)
MANNY (CON’T):
Have you EVER made a sale that way? Is that even a THING? Who are you?
YAP:
I am YAP Manuel the traveling salesman. I sell-
MANNY:
Badgers, we get it, you sell BADGERS.
(MANNY laughs)
MANNY (CON’T):
Well that was a LITTLE too quick there, pal.
You should try a little warming up, first, if you want to make CAREER in sales. Where are you from? Man, you look familiar. Can't place your face, though.
(MANNY shakes his head, again, and frowns, as he turns his attention back to his table, and underneath, he moves the mystery box closer to his seat)
MANNY:
SCAM artists, HELGA. They're worse than IDENTITY thieves in some cases. Very dangerous. Especially foreign ones.
(YAP eats his bacon quickly and looks dumb-struck, and FRAN pushes aside the pie and opens her straw to drink her soda)
MANNY:
NOPE, you have to be a real working man, in the real world, you have to give a DAY's work and you have to have your ACT together, that's for sure. Sorry you had to hear all that, HELGA.
HELGA:
(looking suspiciously at MANNY)
Oh, it's fine.
(FRAN looks up at MANNY as she drinks)
MANNY:
You know the legend of John Henry, the railroad worker, right? The one where he laid all the tracks. But they don't tell you that when his mama sent him
out west to get the money to send back home, she was forgetting to tell him to wear the gloves while he worked. That's why he retired early. He never wore gloves, like this.
(MANNY picks up his napkin and wraps it around his fist and puts his hand on the table)
MANNY:
Safety first. That's the golden rule. Always.
Always was, always will be.
(FRAN makes an ugly face at MANNY, briefly as MANNY tightens his fist)
MANNY:
YEP, John Henry lost his grip.
"SKIT"
OUTSIDE - NATURAL LIGHT
(POLICEMAN and POLICEWOMAN are onstage left, and onto stage run TONY and BELLA, still holding cake)
POLICEMAN:
FREEZE!
TONY:
The cops are everywhere!
BELLA:
Should I put the cake down?
POLICEMAN:
(raising his gun at TONY)
Drop your weapons!
(BELLA sets the cake down)
TONY:
DIE copper!
(TONY shoots the POLICEMAN by making a BANG sound)
POLICEWOMAN:
Stop! Officer DOWN!
(TONY looks into the wallet in his other hand and Bella)
TONY:
There's no money! No MOOLAH! We gotta go back!
(TONY spins around and turns to run off stage, but the 2 ALIENS come out, and in front are MANNY, HELGA, and ROBIN)
Male ALIEN:
We are ALIENS!
(The ALIENS make ZAP noises and the gun is thrown from the POLICEWOMAN's hand)
Female ALIEN:
You're all ZOMBIES!
(TONY makes another BANG noise and the Male ALIEN drops dead. The Female ALIEN raises her hand in a STOP signaling and advances fast towards TONY, who raises his hands to his temples in agony like he has a splitting headache. BELLA and POLICEWOMAN do too, running off stage left, while TONY drops down)
MANNY:
Quick! Jump in their spaceships! Follow ME!
(MANNY motions for ROBIN and HELGA to follow him off stage)
"TRIGGERS"
INSIDE - RESTAURANT
MANNY:
Do YOU have any stories, HELGA?
HELGA:
I was watching the television programs the other day...
MANNY:
Oh, uh, huh?
HELGA:
Oh, they had the most adorable little kittens on the program, the smallest, TINIEST, littlest, most precious little TINY creatures, just SO adorable. You should have seen them. I had never SEEN anything like it! SO small, these cats! TOO small, kittens that were TOO small! Too tiny! Impossible, I EXCLAIMED! Or, at first...
(MANNY and FRAN glance at each other across the room as HELGA taps her fingers on the table twice)
MANNY:
Yeah?
HELGA:
I said, I simply MUST have some things like these. I must. I simply must, I said. So, I went out searching every pet store, EVERY Wal-Mart, every e-bay seller, everywhere. NOWHERE! None, so SMALL!
But I kept buying the kittens anyway. Can you BELIEVE it?
MANNY:
I guess so...
(MANNY and FRAN glance at each other again)
MANNY:
So, what happened to them all?
HELGA:
The what?
(HELGA suddenly looks confused)
MANNY:
The kittens...?
HELGA:
Oh, I don't know.
(HELGA taps her fingers again, twice)
MANNY:
Well, then.
(Right then, from stage left, enters ROBERTO and ROBERTA, carrying the entrees to the center table. They both have their arms filled, and ROBERTA sets her entree down, first, next to MANNY. As ROBERTO starts speaking, ROBERTA reaches into the back of her apron and starts cleaning around the walls and other tables with a spray bottle and washcloth, furiously)
ROBERTO:
AH, my specialty! For you, sir, tonight, we have the international phenomenon we call "meatball sub." FRESH mama's meatballs, made from 25% chuck, thrown into the flame spitting oven, baked beyond perfection, slathered in the marinara and OREGANO.
All on submarine sandwich bread, topped with-
(ROBERTO kisses his own fingertips for emphasis)
ROBERTO (CON’T):
MOZZARELLA!
(ROBERTA stops what she's doing, and grabs her rag and bottle in both hands, closed together, like in prayer, and she looks up into the sky, emotionally. ROBERTO dramatically waves over the top of the entree in his hand and removes the cover, before setting it down for HELGA. ROBERTA begins cleaning again)
ROBERTO (CON’T):
And for you, my ROSE, of the TWILIGHT, my apple in the dewy morning star grazing pastures of
bovine and little tadpole, pond reflection, IDOL of my eternal fantasy... Ho, ho! For you! My sweet, Saturday Special entree! The talk of the whole town, the headline fascination and full story investigation, the Secret Saucer Platter... Made with barbeques, marinara, lettuce, olive pit, onion garlic, spinach, tuna fish squeezing, sour patch kids reduction garnish with dehydrated milk, and extra extra extra ketchup! Just throw it on the barometer side of the iron grill, let it sizzle and crispen, settle it in right to an ice cube tray, and served al dente after SAL's
Secret Spray Sauce hits the skin of the Cajun Turkey.
(ROBERTA, cleaning the restaurant has just gotten to the YAP’S table, and almost begins cleaning it but stops herself before spraying the cleaning solution. YAP gets up and exits to right)
MANNY:
(raises a finger, inquisitively)
Excuse me, did you say reduced sour patch kids?
ROBERTO:
Yes.
MANNY:
Reduced? REDUCED sour patch kids??
HELGA:
WHAT?
(ROBERTA and FRAN look at MANNY at the same time)
ROBERTO:
Reduced in the finest-
MANNY:
I'm ALLERGIC! You son of a-
(MANNY grabs his mouth, and runs off stage to left, because he’s about to vomit. HELGA looks shocked, shouts after MANNY, obviously scared for him)
HELGA:
You killed him! You EVIL evil man! MANNY!
(ROBERTO drops to his knees while ROBERTA begins frantic pacing, waving hands in air, silently, behind. ROBERTO begins to plea to HELGA)
ROBERTO:
PLEASE, please, please, please. Anything I can do, to make it better. What can I do, miss? Please. Oh GOODNESS, I can't lose this job. My sister, and I, we live in such meager, squalid conditions. Please, miss, what?-HELGA:
Get your manager, at once! Get him, now! Go!
(ROBERTO and ROBERTA exit stage left, stumbling over themselves in their hurry and fear. One second later, SAL emerges from stage left, with a cane to help walk)
SAL:
My LADY, I first must apologize for my management staff, here. I am the owner, the sole proprietor.
HELGA:
Your food just made my friend sick!
SAL:
I am sorry, again, I was just going to get the staff out here, for you to see what kind of disciplinary actions, I am prepared, right now, to make.
(SAL swings around and shouts off stage to the kitchen)
SAL:
ROBERTO! ROBERTA! SLAPPY! Out here! PRONTO!
(ROBERTO and SLAPPY reenter stage together)
SAL:
You've DONE it. You've really DONE it, this time. I can't believe it.
(ROBERTO and SLAPPY act disappointed but look bored)
SAL:
I am TRULY sorry. These stooges, here. These fools, idiots, nincompoops. Disgrace to restaurants! DISGRACE! Disgrace to HUMANITY!
(SAL taps his cane on the ground)
SAL:
You're ALL fired...!
(The staff looks surprised)
SAL:
AND don't forget! Do NOT forget! Don't forget to turn off the dishwashing machine! DON’T forget to
tidy up your work stations, to pack your family photos or to finish turning off all the equipment, when you're all done. Don't forget to wash out equipment. Don't forget! Do not forget what you have done here, TODAY!
(The staff starts walking backstage but SAL's shout stops them, they turn back)
SAL:
No! It's not enough! Go back there and finish! TONIGHT, we're going to finish every single piece of kitchen cleaning in the entire restaurant!
(ROBERTO and SLAPPY both start moaning)
SAL:
NO! No complaining! Get to work! NOW!
(The staff exits stage left after ROBERTO grabs entrees)
SAL:
It's the best I can do, Ms. Haggard.
(SAL turns back to face HELGA, and pulls a flask of alcohol from his shirt pocket, and takes a big swig and then tucks it back in)
SAL:
It's all I can...
(SAL wipes his face and looks like he's forgetting what he's talking about)
SAL:
I'm sorry, Ms. Haggard. I'm truly, truly indebted to you. Please accept this meal for free. ON the house.
HELGA:
It was already paid for by my friend.
SAL:
ALAS, I am only so overjoyed to have you as my guest, Ms. Haggard. Please, excuse me. I have to go back downstairs.
(SAL exits from left. CHRISTIAN enters from right, and walks up to FRAN)
CHRISTIAN:
(leaning on table)
Hey, honey, do you come on the stage, for us, often? Never seen anyone like you before.
(HELGA and FRAN look at each other)
FRAN:
Do you know what UFO stands for?
CHRISTIAN:
Nah, I don’t.
FRAN:
UNCOOL FAILED OPPORTUNITY.
(FRAN waves her hand in his face)
FRAN (CON’T):
Nice necklace, did your mom and dad buy it for your birthday?
CHRISTIAN:
I wasn’t being funny; I was just making conversation. but it’s okay, there’s beers because I’m bored, or there’s women to make me bored…
(CHRISTIAN walks off to the left and SLAPPY reenters from left with two cups. One she puts down at YAP's empty table, and the other she is bringing to FRAN, when MANNY reenters stage left, wiping his mouth off with his sleeve. SLAPPY spills the cup all over FRAN, who shrieks and stands)
SLAPPY:
Oh my gosh.
FRAN:
(throwing napkin on floor)
NEVERMIND! I'm not paying! I'm LEAVING this terrible place!
(FRAN charges off stage to the right, SLAPPY picks up the table scraps)
SLAPPY:
Terrific, my whole tip...
(MANNY sits back down with HELGA as YAP returns from left and waves over SLAPPY to his table)
YAP:
I am ready to pay.
(YAP brings out money from his pocket and puts it on the table. SLAPPY grabs it up too quickly and drops it all over the water, already on the floor. She manages to get it off the ground, and charges offstage frustrated looking, while making noises of anguish. MANNY turns back to HELGA while they wait for a check)
MANNY:
That was a waste of some wet paper. Can you
BELIEVE? Huh... Throwing money away, now? Wow.
UNBELIEVABLE.
HELGA:
Are you OK?
MANNY:
Yeah, SURE, I'll be fine. Just a small reaction to some of those ingredients. Did you eat it? Was it good?
HELGA:
They threw it away.
MANNY:
That's ok. Where's our check?
HELGA:
I don't know.
MANNY:
(leaning back in his chair)
WASTING. Waste of paper. You know MONEY doesn't grow on trees, and even if it did, these days, we got deforestation, rainforest climate change, global warming, the whole nine. You know back in Paul Bunyon's days, it wasn't like this. Nope. Him and his blue ox would just wipe out HALF a continent just to build factories, presses, houses, and smoke stacks. IRONY, isn't it? Lumberjacks of yesterday are today's BUMS. Railroad workers, today's hobos.
Gardeners? Addicts. Like Einstein said when he discovered relativity "Sitting on a park BENCH with a pretty girl may seem like ten minutes, but if you were sitting on a hot stove, it would seem like you were there for ETERNITY if you just sat there."
HELGA:
Hm?
MANNY:
He said "To understand RELATIVITY, you need enlightenment, but to understand ignorance, you would need to talk to the PEOPLE who are powerless." HELGA:
He did? Say that? I don’t remember EINSTEIN knowing how to make a SALE, MANNY. MANNY:
Yeah, old Frank was a GENIUS. That's the word.
But you know what the PLAN is with deforestation? The REAL goal is to cut out our air supply. Trees and forests RECYCLE the carbon dioxide that comes out of our mouths when we breathe, and turn it into oxygen. Crazy, right? It turns out, they want to kill us all off. All of us! Cut the oxygen supply! Lights out!
CRAZY, right?
(Helga sips from cup)
HELGA:
As CRAZY as badger farms in Alaska, MANNY.
(YAP hears her say this and turns over to listen, MANNY doesn't notice and continues talking to HELGA, meanwhile, BELLA walks up onto the right side of the stage, and waits before entering the restaurant)
MANNY:
Like Davey Crocket!
(MANNY laughs hard, throwing his head back, then leans into table)
BELLA:
I LITERALLY need to get a flat, here, now. This isn’t happening. There’s no way, NO way. So embarrassing. What was that in the road back there?
(BELLA looks behind her offstage, MANNY chugs his cup)
BELLA:
Triple A time.
(BELLA reaches in her pocket and dials number and starts to talk, but is silently miming, while opening the car door with her other arm, circles to offstage)
MANNY:
It reminds me of when we were kids, camping in the Adirondak mountains. We'd drive up in vans every summer, that we stole from our parents. We would set up camp and drink amazing amounts of liquor while we were all underage, still, and stay up all
night long telling stories and making memories. I remember one time, we told so many jokes about one guy's mother, that he lit himself partially on fire with spare lighter fluid for the campfire, and we had to grab the last of our water supply and waste it on him, just to extinguish it. Then, in the morning, when I woke up, I remember that I felt some movements inside my sleeping bag, in my tent. HELGA:
What happened?
MANNY:
I started SCREAMING, almost lost my bowels, and was frozen stiff with the HORRIFYING sense that there was some kind of monster or alien symbiotic menace from another universe inside my sleeping bag with me. I was yelling so loud, the other campers rushed over and held me down so I wouldn't struggle too much and cause a rabid animal attack. Eventually, I figured out what was in there. It was two badgers.
A male, and a female. I could tell how they were going at it, down there... Well, the boys ended up grabbing one end of the nearby septic tank hose, and hooking it up to one end of my sleeping bag, plugging
it up, and hitting the switch on the septic mechanism, and throwing it in reverse. So off came flying my entire sleeping bag, both of the badgers. And to top it all off, off came my pants! All the way into the septic tank. Which is REALLY too bad. Poor badgers, PLUS, I didn't have any pants on!
(MANNY laughs to himself, as HELGA looks as if she does not understand the humor)
MANNY:
Hey, Davey Crocket! Davey Crocket NEVER!
(MANNY can't stop laughing, again, and grabs his gut, BELLA returns onstage)
BELLA:
OH, I wish I had love! A man to take care of me, a GROWN man with passion, the ambitions, a history of his OWN! Someone who would relate to me, even if
we didn't really have the exact connection on the surface. I thought growing up would be nice and easy.
I THOUGHT I would be able to belong, but getting older only makes things HARDER.
(BELLA lights up a cigarette)
MANNY:
NEVER had that badger cap, that on his head!
OH boy! What if he DID!
HELGA:
THAT’S absolutely gross.
"INTERLUDE"
OUTSIDE - NATURAL LIGHTING
(from left MANNY and ROBIN and HELGA holding hands, with MANNY in the middle, and HELGA on his left, while staring around in bewilderment, in an alien world. Suddenly, when they reach midstage, ALIEN MASTERMIND emerges from behind them, they all spin around in unison and then ROBIN gets behind MANNY, and HELGA ducks behind ROBIN, in back)
ALIEN MASTERMIND:
I am the ALIEN MASTERMIND. I will kill all of you, for escaping. Resistance is futile.
You can trust water. Even a stick turns crooked in it.
ROBIN:
I'm actually a ROBOT.
(ROBOT ROBIN steps out and points her right finger at her right temple, ALIEN MASTERMIND falls down, dead)
MANNY:
You were a ROBOT this whole time?
HELGA:
Me TOO.
(MANNY walks up dramatically to YAP and presses a button on the table)
"CHECK"
INSIDE - RESTAURANT
(YAP coughs, and lifts sunglasses up on his face to a more comfortable position, and gets up, exits to left)
HELGA:
That never happened. You made it up. Anyways,
I have to go to the bathroom, PLEASE excuse me now.
(HELGA gets up and exits stage left, leaving MANNY alone, for a minute, but soon the silence is filled backstage by ROBERTA beatboxing a simple rhythm four times in a row, and then ROBERTO enters from the back of the stage doing a rhythmic walk while saying his lines, and ROBERTA follows behind him, facing the other direction, leaning over, shuffling behind him, backwards. ROBERTO is putting plates up on two high shelves on his left and right down the back of the stage towards the right. ROBERTA is putting glasses and mugs up from a box, onto two level shelves that are lower towards her chest and stomach)
ROBERTO:
Bomb atomically, Socrate philosophies
And hypothese can't define how I be droppin' these
Mockeries! lyrically perform-
(ROBERTO and ROBERTA stop their performance and ROBERTA raises up, and they turn to each other, as ROBERTA raises a wine glass up and hits a spoon gently on the rim of it, to create a ding noise, and BELLA coughs twice)
ROBERTO (CON’T):
Harm harmony, flee with the lottery!
Possibly they spotted me!
(ROBERTO and ROBERTA begin walking off stage, again, back to the left)
ROBERTO (CON’T):
Battle-car donut, explosion when my pen hits Tremendous, ultra-shine blinding them frenzy!
ROBERTO (CON’T):
(offstage)
I inspect view through future see millennium
See sold fifty gold sixty platinum!
(From offstage you can hear ROBERTO finish the rap)
MANNY:
CHECK please?
(MANNY looks around for SLAPPY, when TINA enters from left who looks like she is waving at people offstage, she has left them at the bar at the other end of the restaurant. She is smiling and was laughing and had just stopped, as her eyes meet with MANNY’s eyes and MANNY smiles at her, with a look of familiarity because TINA is a real estate agent who MANNY had seen, several years ago, who had left the area and was back to visit old associates in town)
MANNY:
HERE’S a familiar face! TINA Rockefeller IS that you?
(TINA stops and walks up to the other side of MANNY’s table)
TINA:
MANNY! HEY, my GUY! How are you DOING? Long time, no see.
MANNY:
HANGING in there, just out for the evening here with HELGA, a friend, what are you doing here? TINA:
Big things, friend. Out on the west coast, the
GOLDEN coast.
MANNY:
Real estate still?
TINA:
Real estate, still, yes, moving with the players in a bigger field, I guess, these days. MANNY:
Wow. Sounds exciting. I wish I had it enough together to get out there, myself.
Serious.
BELLA:
I need a break. I hope Mack is here. Hope he has time to stay around and buy me some drinks. TINA:
Hey, I can't blame you for trying. If I had any advice to a young gunner like you in the game, I'd say "GO, shoot the moon," and "GO, give them hell!" MANNY:
Wow, refreshing words to hear. THANKS, TINA Maybe I'll see you later, good luck to you.
(BELLA throws the cigarette on the ground, and steps on it, to extinguish)
TINA:
Totally. Have a great evening, I wish I had time to join you, but there's a BIG meeting in the morning for the big wigs out here in New York. GOT to get the beauty rest.
(MANNY smiles as TINA starts to walk off stage to right)
TINA:
Shoot the MOON, MANNY!
(As TINA holds the door open for BELLA, who enters, while TINA exits stage)
BELLA:
MANNY!
MANNY:
BELLA Dior!
(BELLA starts to approach the table, but stops herself and waits for a moment, looking at MANNY, and then turns back around, swinging around immediately as if she was going to ignore him. MANNY slowly gets up after another moment to get her attention. She glances back quickly, but turns back to face the hostess station, which is still unoccupied. MANNY is still about to stand all the way up, when JANE enters stage right, rushing past BELLA to the table and MANNY, who is shocked speechless as she watches JANE walk up behind and over MANNY’s shoulder)
JANE:
MANNY, all day! ALL day, MANNY! You've been gone from the time the fridge guys got over to the house! What have you been DOING? Do you even KNOW? You haven't answered your phone at ALL! What have you been doing all day? DO you know, even? The fridge guys tried to drain the POOL! The pool with all my TADPOLE water for the ZOO! All summer I've been growing our TADPOLES, not even the pollywogs survived! How am I going to explain this to the ZOO COUNCIL? I JUST joined that committee for conservation preservation, and now how do you think I'm going to LOOK? How is this going to look to the committee?! Don't even answer me! Just be back before dawn, if you can handle that, because ALL DAY tomorrow, we're going to be fishing dead frogs out of an indoor pool. Thanks, honey. See you at HOME.
(JANE leaves, back out of restaurant, right, just as ROBIN comes back onstage, from left, and BELLA walks up to her)
ROBIN:
(jumping joyfully)
Surprise!
BELLA:
Table for one.
(BELLA looks over at MANNY, angrily)
ROBIN:
Follow ME,
Tell you why,
His kiss is sweeter than an apple pie
And when he does his shaky rockin' dance
BELLA:
-Stop singing, please.
ROBIN:
Man, I haven't got a chance!
(ROBIN leads BELLA to sit, gives BELLA menu, exit left as HELGA reenters, sits)
HELGA:
(sniffing around in the air)
Does it smell FUNNY in here, now?
MANNY:
Like what?
HELGA:
I don't know. Gas?
MANNY:
(looking around, nervously)
Well that's crazy.
HELGA:
(picks up purse into her lap)
Did they get the check yet?
MANNY:
We're still waiting, on that, too…
MANNY (CON’T):
(fans the air)
Gas? You smell it?
HELGA:
Oh, maybe it's just my imagination.
MANNY:
Yeah, that bugs me out. You KNOW? Health hazard. Gas leaks are extremely dangerous. That's serious. This world's so crazy, these days. I think the smart people like us, you and me, HELGA, we need to just get together, stick together, STAY together, and SOMEHOW, we got to get ourselves relocated out on the MOON. Go to the moon. All of us. What do you think of that? I mean it’s CRAZY, but there’s really no other way I can think of.
HELGA:
(grunting)
No, YOU’RE crazy.
MANNY:
(smiling, over-optimistic)
I have one more conspiracy for you that you might not have HEARD of before.
MANNY (CON’T):
(leaning into table)
You ever hear how AMERICA got its name?
HELGA:
Amerigo Vespucci. Famous explorer. Next.
MANNY:
I MEAN originally.
(Manny kicks the box under the table)
MANNY (CON’T):
ORIGINALLY, it got its name from Morocco. Morocco is the masculine form of the word, America is the feminine. That's because we were colonized by the East. We were like the fertilization of Eve by Adam, in Genesis. AMERICA, the new hope. The fountain of eternal youth. And like Adam and Eve had two of their own children, so do I, have two babies for you to look at, tonight. HERE.
(Manny pulls the box out from underneath the table, towards his chair, and scooches back, and grabs out from inside the box, two Morroccos instruments)
MANNY:
(puts two Morroccos into one hand) Now look at these, here. For just eight-
HELGA:
(frowning)
No. No, they're UGLY. Not what I was expecting.
MANNY:
Eight thousand dollars... You don't want them anymore? They're maraca.
(HELGA pauses as he shakes them and they make noise)
HELGA:
Wait let me look at them for a minute, more. ALRIGHT.
(HELGA and MANNY look at the Morroccos on the table, HELGA reaches over and touches one and it rolls, shakes, and makes the Morroccos noise)
HELGA:
Nope.
MANNY:
Oh, ok. Oh, oh well.
(MANNY begins to pack the Morroccos back into the box, when all of the sudden TONY bursts back on stage putting a mask on, midway past ROBIN, and then he waves a gun in the air and at everybody. BELLA covers her mouth with both hands, and HELGA grabs her heart in fright)
TONY:
This is a stick up! Everyone, HANDS in the AIR!
Ladies, put your purses on the table, right now!
(MANNY and YAP both put their hands up, and YAP starts climbing up shakily onto his chair. BELLA and HELGA put their purses on their tables)
TONY:
(pointing at YAP)
You get DOWN! Get off that chair, or I'll blow your head off!
(YAP falls on the floor, face down, with his hands interlocked behind his head)
TONY:
Yeah give me your wallet!
(Wincing, MANNY slowly reaches into his pocket and retrieves his wallet and puts it on the table. TONY reaches down and grabs the wallet and walks over to YAP and points the gun at YAP's head)
TONY (CON’T):
Give me your wallet punk!
(YAP reaches down with one hand and gives him the wallet from his pocket, and then returns his hands to behind his head, pressed against both of his ears and he starts sobbing. BELLA jumps up)
BELLA:
Don't take him! Take me!
TONY:
What? WHAT the-
BELLA:
(grabbing cake saucer off table)
I want to join you! Let's join forces! I'll bring the cake!
TONY:
(shrugs)
Ok I'm with it! Let's GO! Viva La Revolucione!
(TONY and BELLA run offstage to the right, together, holding hands, while BELLA fumbles to hold onto her piece of cake and raise it over her head as they exit)
MANNY:
I can't believe that just happened. That was all the money I had left, I had just invested in these
Morroccos, for nothing! Hand made! Tragedy!
HELGA:
Well he forgot to take my checkbook.
(Entire cast rushes on stage asking for a check)
HELGA (CON’T):
CUT!
(HELGA bows
MANNY walks to JANE
JANE bows
MANNY bows
ROBERTO bows
ROBERTA bows
ROBIN bows
BELLA bows
TONY bows
YAP bows)
TWYLL THE CHYLLTYRANT MONOLOGUES
(TYRANT gets offstage into audience)
INSIDE - DARK
TYRANT:
(to audience)
Hi. I'm TYRANT and to me, making funky music is a must.
(TYRANT walks to front of stage, up to the CAMERAMAN, everyone else walks off stage, CAMERAMAN holds Camera)
TYRANT (CON’T):
Recently I found out if you have a ukulele or even a pair of maracas or some triangles maybe an electric guitar or something, you can be someone huge.
(TYRANT spins around once on stage)
OUTSIDE - DAYLIGHT
(TYRANT proceeds to walk to right side of stage. CAMERAMAN follows on right side. he pauses as he looks right at CAMERAMAN)
TYRANT (CON’T):
That means you'll be famous. and being famous usually means that you don’t have to work to make a lot of money, which buys you new pants. What's with these young men and pants these days? It's like a… I don't know... something that I'd have to think more about...
(TYRANT continues to walk down the side of the stage to the left, now, while talking)
TYRANT (CON’T):
I do think that being a musician can be a great starting point for a rehab career, too, or if you're a musician long enough you can even be an actor in your own commercial, that people will have to struggle to forget, or you can dance, for a lot of money, or you can die and everyone will make a big thing about it. So, take for instance the massive support shown off for sprite by the rap community. Nothing like a fairy juice to quench thirst if you're a rapper...
(Camera switches angles to face out onto audience as he continues to walk then turn his back to audience)
TYRANT (CON’T):
But by no means do you have to be a hardcore gangster to rap.
(TYRANT spins around to face audience)
TYRANT (CON’T):
(to audience)
You don't even have to SING to rap! All you have to do is have a cool name, and then apply a few rhymes to a rhythm of any type. In fact, being
hardcore in rap is a good way to sign your own death sentence. Take for example; Big L, Notorious B.I.G., Big Pun, and Pimp C. maybe 2pac... But I heard he did ballet. Anyways, most other rappers are pretty normal pretty upright regular churchgoing good guys. I think they get a bad rep, and it’s a shame. Why would anyone really kill anybody?
(CAMERAMAN pans back towards TYRANT and follows him as he walks over to the Sal's Sauces sign, and TYRANT looks right at CAMERAMAN)
TYRANT (CON’T):
Holla atcha neckbone.
INSIDE – WELL LIT
(TYRANT sits at table closest to sign, CAMERAMAN walks up close and kneels)
TYRANT (CON’T):
-And then i got this one long joke… The punchline-(TYRANT laughs quickly, sardonically)
TYRANT (CON’T):
Is worth it. Have you lately considered the shape of affairs globally? Well if not, I’ll be the first to explain to you that things are rounding up for us. In fact, it’s known as an exponential factor of both people hating each other, and people getting some old time dead. Cool, right?
(TYRANT drinks a whole mug of coffee in one guzzle throws a dollar bill on the table and looks at his watch)
TYRANT (CON’T):
More born, more dead... right?
(TYRANT then looks across the table, and throws another dollar bill down, grabs the other mug and guzzles that one too)
TYRANT (CON’T):
The answer is yes. Take my word on that, but we’ll talk more later...
OUTSIDE – DAYLIGHT
(Scene changes to the inside of a bus. TYRANT is seated, leaning an elbow on the seat in front of him and CAMERAMAN becomes BUS DRIVER who sits at the other table with both hands on the table)
TYRANT:
But the other stuff that stands between us and the spinning pile of debris, we find ourselves standing on is really gaining weight just as we are. In fact, it’s known as a factor of fact. Catch is, the oxygen we breathe, is in jeopardy. If plants can’t sustain themselves as elements of life, on a planet gone berserk with environmental factors, we’re pretty much like I said, dead. And the way that chemical processes work, we’re in a deficit right now. Man is the major producer of rappers, and bad puns... But don’t worry, I’m telling you, the punchline is worth it, though. How are we forgetting the ozone, or water? We’re forgetting them by taking them for granted. But that’s obvious, we can’t even see ozone. mama said what you can’t see can’t trust. Water is just down the toilet, and out giving our expensive car rust stains. Can’t be much important going on with that, except that there’s a lot more water than you think there is. Our bodies for instance, are made of water. So are the ice caps. when those free up, melt down, push off, and move on, not only will it create more surface area for water to heat up and evaporate but it will also create a lower air temperature possibly stirring up that next ice age or virus strain we’ve all been waiting for. Our water in our bodies though, that has to be doing alright. Only, we’ve actually got a lot of that in our genes. And what’s wrong with our genes, is the stuff that went wrong with the genetic line. Humans have never been known for what i call innertelligence. Actually, they’ve been rarely known for anything like wisdom which is only utilized experiential data. Actually, let’s find out what the comparative iq’s of the average dolphin and the average man are, based on whose averages weigh out most evenly. So, the dolphins can win everytime without having even made the test? Oh well. At least the punchline is worth it. It’s worth it. And here it is, if two is all that exists? Perception is finished. So, i wish you all the STORY, continued.
(TYRANT abruptly stands up and walks out in front of BUS DRIVER and walks back down the aisle away from stage, at the last moment he turns back to the BUS DRIVER, and gives everyone in either side of the audience a double PEACE sign with both hands, and walks back up onto the stage as CAST comes out for the encore, simultaneous, BOW)
TYRANT:
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen!
PEACE!
PS! Bella Dior managed to find Christian Goode at his new job as border patrol. She went back the next day, and with a basket of groceries in their hands, they sailed away to an island. They lived happily ever after, but I’m proud to mention those will be the last farewells you may ever truly see in this epic…
BROTHERS KEEPERS
Starring Franz & Fritz
Co-starring Laurent
Featuring Jason as The Grim Reaper
INTERIOR - ROOM WITH A BED, PIANO, AND BENCH, AND PHONE - DAYTIME
FRANZ IS ALONE IN HIS ROOM. HE IS SEATED ON A BENCH. (he is playing the piano,) the song "home on the range," offkey. the phone rings,
(franz stands up.)
EXTERIOR - WOODED AREA - DAYTIME
IT IS FRITZ, OUTSIDE.
"suppy?"
"a lil shaky"
(waving hand sideways (iffy)) fritz asks to visit and hangs up.
(fritz plays "home on the range," offkey,) on harmonica.
INTERIOR - KITCHEN WITH TABLE, AND CHAIR, AND STOVE – DAYTIME
(franz cooks an egg on the stove in the kitchen, and eats it at the table on a plate.) the phone rings, it's his girlfriend, wilma, not onscreen.
(she breaks up with him, and franz reacts unsurprised.)
INTERIOR - LIVING ROOM WITH TELEVISION AND TWO CHAIRS AND STAIRCASE - DAYTIME
FRITZ COMES OVER AND SMOKES A CIGARETTE WITH FRANZ, TELLS A STORY.
(both are seated in chairs in the living room. the television is off.) it is about his cat and dog, sasha and spencer, dying.
(fritz simultaneously is using his cellphone, texting people about his job.) suddenly franz takes the conversation to another subject, about laurent. laurent is the dealer who franz owes $500 to. franz is worried.
(fritz goes to the bathroom and franz picks up the phone and trips going up the stairs.)
INTERIOR - STAIRCASE - NIGHT TIME there is music playing.
"home on the range."
(on the top step, the grim reaper comes down the hall, hovering.) as fritz returns, music disappears.
INTERIOR - STAIRCASE - DAYTIME
THE GRIM REAPER DISAPPEARS, AND IS REPLACED WITH SMOKE.
(but franz is still hallucinating and sees BOBO THE CLOWN instead of fritz.)
(he passes out.)
INTERIOR - LIVING ROOM WITH TELEVISION AND CHAIR AND STAIRCASE - NIGHT TIME
LATER THAT NIGHT,
(after fritz has left, franz is sitting watching television)
(and dies falling asleep.)
(he falls backwards out of his chair.) EXTERIOR - DOORSTEP OF HOUSE - DAYTIME EARLY IN THE MORNING, SOME DAYS LATER fritz returns to franz's house, (and starts knocking on the door,) no answer.
(fritz walks away, texting people on his phone.)
(suddenly he turns back around and looks at the house.)
INTERIOR - ROOM WITH TABLE AND TWO CHAIRS - DAYTIME laurent picks up a ringing phone. the phone is on top of a wallet, next to a bible.
(we only see his hand at an angle.) laurent tells a dealer that he's coming over to drop off the money. (he listens for a few seconds to the dealer in silence.) he replies that wilma and her friend are at the movies. he says that the new guy was calling all day.
(he listens for a few seconds and starts laughing.)
"brother, keep her!"
EXTERIOR - WOODED AREA
(fritz is walking by, stops, and looks at phone.)
(he stops himself from moving forward and presses buttons.) the phone rings and he picks it up. "franz? tis i, fritzy!"
THE READER
THE ATTIC & THE ROOM
Bobby went down to the schoolyard with his friends one day, the sky was dark, the puddles still were fresh on the sidewalk, and the boys were planning on playing tag. As they approached the gate, they heard a barking from the gutter below the chain link fence. Bobby leaned over and sure enough, it was a tiny puppy shriveled up in a ball. It must have been left out from overnight in the storm. Bobby took the puppy, which was barely skin and bones and tufts of sparse hair across its body, and returned home to nurture the small creature back to life. The dog barely could eat at first, but it stayed alive through the night, and when Bobby went to bed, he saw the dog gnawing at its tail and it worried him. Bobby asked his mother to keep the dog in her room that night, so she did. In the morning though, the dog had gnawed off its entire tail on the floor and there was blood everywhere. Bobby went to school after trying to play with the dog. When the mother took the dog to the vet later that morning, the veterinarian turned to her and whispered “This isn’t a dog, ma’am, it’s a sewer rat. And it has been exposed to a parasite which controls its brain.”
In Wisconsin
The shadows of four family members gathered close in the lampshade of the patio, and George and Robbie, George Senior, and the mother. The mother's dark blue dress was almost enough to resemble a more formal event than the projected meeting of George Senior with his family and friends at a house down the road. George smiled, friendly and very trustworthy, like a responsible young man, while Robbie gleamed upward at his elder companion and showed affection and confidence in his own modest imitation of responsibility, even as the third year younger.
Senior smiled, in his rugby shirt, tucked into dark khakis, and dark blue undershirt, his face glowing with pride, "& remember to message me if anything does go wrong, and the phone charger is plugged into the kitchen outlet with your mother's cellphone." He kept it brief, as was usual of his demeanor, from work to home.
Robbie replied for the two, "Oh, for sure, I'll make sure I'm in bed by 9 o' clock, tops!" abrupt, as was his admiration's nature. "We were just coming inside, now, to eat, anyway."
It was a quarter after 7 o' clock, the parents and children had already eaten spaghetti, earlier that evening. The mother, laughed, startled at the interjecting conclusions to a momentarily tense moment which she was alone, suffering.
Younger George, "Oh, I'm not eating, again, just Rob."
The wind was picking up in the field behind the house, and the mother shuddered in the breeze, dramatically. "Come on, let's go inside." The wind rushed down off of the tall pine trees and wisps of grass, dust, and fallen leaves came tumbling out of the threshold to the trail behind the house. The brown leaves and dark woods stared back at Robbie and his family. The sounds of twigs snapping and crunching near the apple grove grabbed his attention and stretched his imagination, and he lost his focus out in the backyard, staring blankly into the autumn twilight.
The father cleared his throat, and turned halfway back into the doorway, and as Robbie began to blush, he turned and said to the two "Come on, let's go!" Smiling, again, he led the three into the back corridor, near the kitchen. Upstairs was three more levels, plus an attic. One stair ran right alongside the kitchen, and the other side of the house had another staircase which led to a main living room that was in the second floor, which contained a giant home entertainment center and a plethora of abstract art pieces from the father's collection. The third floor was the parents, and the fourth floor was the children's separate rooms. Each floor had smaller sized living rooms, and the bottom floor had a humongous entryway with vestibule and a coat room. There were bathrooms on every floor except the fourth. The parents' bedroom was located next to the kitchen staircase, which was also on top the in-between living room (or main den,) where the gigantic fireplace was.
The house was atop a small hill, and the driveway was long, 100 yards, down a steep incline. It was Victorian, with awnings, and with one spire on top of the attic, where there was an actual extra room, abandoned, though, for several seasons. The front door was encompassed with a small porch and stoop area, with two pillars beaming the all-white entryway. The first floor was brick, but the blue paint on weather-proof shingles was an appealing color to the eye. The backyard was fairly large, an acre of open space behind the house that included three floral garden areas, and one vegetable garden, and a small grove of apple trees. It had a swing set and slide set, with monkey bars, near the front, in the middle of a courtyard off of the patio. The rest, around the acre of front lawn and actual house and back acre, was twelve more acres of land owned by the family, covered by thick deciduous forest, temporal climate wooded area, with pine and bushes, tall, old trees, and grasses. This shadowy land of spiders and deer rustling at night, as well as sometimes coyote that the father would try to shoot at from the apple grove, was naturally a little frightening to George, the older son, but Robbie was always an avid adventurer and explorer. George Senior was a business owner; plowing and a gas station, and his wife was working on getting her real estate license.
That night, after mother and father left the two sons, it grew darker much quicker than normal. Closing in precipitation and forming clouds, overhead, an unforeseen nighttime rainfall was rumbling by 7:30 PM. It grew colder, down to the high 50 Fahrenheit range. The cold front was unexpected, as the afternoon had been sunny. It was October, and the rain flew down from the sky as if all at once by 8. The oncoming storm banged on the walls of the den upstairs that the boys had been watching the last part of a horror movie. Suddenly, the lights went out.
The boys scrambled, surprised and temporarily almost ridden blind in the darkness of the atmosphere and self-indulgent ambiance in the closed window blinds. A coyote cried, howled morosely and desperately into the air, shrieking into an end, abruptly.
"What's going on George? Why are you acting that way?" George walked forward in the dark room like a brain-dead zombie, drooling from his mouth, unconsciously, with a strange and peculiar look in his eyes. "Stop!" Suddenly the lights went back on, which was strange since they had an outside power generator.
George barreled over in laughter, inspired by his own talents.
Robbie started to laugh, too. "Let's get to bed," said George.
"Wait, I want to watch this last show," retorted Robbie.
George left Robbie, slowly, and walked out of the shared space into the hallway which led to his bedroom. "Fine, I'm exhausted, I ran two miles earlier for exercise."
"Cool."
"I'll see you in the morning." The light flicked off in the hallway and then the lights on the stairs went, as George disappeared to his bedroom.
Robbie didn't get to bed until 10, which was his own fault. He had fallen asleep to the sound of the pounding rain and repeating commercials, watching Saturday late night television. When he finally got up to go upstairs, first, he went downstairs into the kitchen to look at the cellphone. It was missing. The whole way throughout the house, lights were off, and he reached around the hallway which led to the bottom floor bathroom, and fumbled for the light switch. He thought he heard something at the front door, but waited for a moment, to see if he could hear it again. He waited only a few seconds in length, but he was also holding his breath to see if his ears could reach the front without losing his integrity to reach his hand around the wall for lights.
When he finally got the light switch on, he thought he saw something out of the corner of his eye near the end of the hallway, but the towel closet was only filled with chemicals and extra soaps, and he really had to go, so he rushed past the closet door, and into the unlit bathroom. The door was almost shut behind him as the automatic sensor turned on. He heard another noise. This time it sounded like it was in the kitchen, like a slow, loud, breath. Wincing his way away from the toilet over to the sink, tip toeing, his heart rate started increasing until he lunged back out into the hallway next to the towel closet. He assumed that it was something in the kitchen that he didn't know about, like the refrigerator, or ventilation system, and moved out back through the hallway towards the front staircase, which led him back to the top floor. He assumed his parents would see so many lights on and be a little confused, but also thought it should be understandable, after all. It wasn't until midnight that Robbie could fall asleep, though, in his bed.
As the rain kept pouring down, and he watched the digital clock by his bed, he kept thinking he was seeing strange shadows, cast by the water on the window panes, trickling down and falling into rivers with rivulets which would crash around into other rivers as drops splashed. The parents weren't back yet, but as the rain slowed down, the young boy had his eyes closed for a few minutes, just long enough to start to daze away in that dream-like state of post-inspiration before deep sleep settles the eventual blackness within the void of the unknown and unknowable.
For no reason, Robbie opened his eyes from the sleep. There, a figure of unfathomable, yet man-like proportions held against the purple sky, with a husking shoulder width and large arms and hands, with either a grotesque facial feature, an out-of-control beard, or hairy mandibles, and claws against the wall and window. The apparition, suspended in mid-air, held outside in the pattering rain and loud thunder rolls. A figure, four stories high, hanging, stationary, with crazy hair, glowing against a suddenly visible moon shade from above in the menacing clouds. Phantom-like, it began glowing deep from within eyes of piercing blood-red.
Poor Robbie screamed and turned pale white. He raised his hands to fend or ward off the spirit that stood in his window, and even although he could not discern whether the shape was grown from outside, or inside, as he raised his hands, he turned his face to the side, towards the door. When he returned his gaze, the shadow disappeared.
Robbie went to check his brother's room, but as he walked down the long hallways, he knew that the silence was too quiet, and if it wasn't for the rain and thunder outside, he would have thought that the world had gone mute. It was empty. Further down his brother's hall was also the entry to the attic.
A gut feeling struck Robbie and in his ultimate frustration with finding George, he began rushing to the top of the stairway to the attic entrance. There, standing with his hands against the door to the attic, he could feel the blood rushing back to his face. He was suddenly terrified. Then he thought of the missing cell phone, and for some reason turned the doorknob, anyway.
There was nothing in the attic, just an empty couch, an old television, and a light. But the TV was on. Static on mute provided the only light that showed in the small space. An old ornamental bulb fell from the ceiling and with a trembling shatter hit the floor, across the attic near the spire's ladder and room. Robbie hesitantly inched over toward the spire.
Up the ladder into the special hatch, Robbie hoped to find his brother, so he shouted up to him, "George Junior, come down! Something weird is happening!" A low, cackling and shuddering laughter of unknown origins echoed down the ladder. Robbie climbed up, rung by rung, step by step, hand by hand over and up to the top, and onto the floor of the spire room.
There was no light, and as he climbed up, he was blocking the only shining from outside from the full moon that hung behind shaded black clouds, through an old window, the only other exit from the spire. It was tiny, and as Robbie raised out of the ladder hole, facing it, he was drawn somehow in the darkness to it. Looking out at the front lawn, near the woods by the side of the long driveway, the shape of an insectoid was staring back; a bipedal, 5-foot-tall beetle, wild in the rain, a maniac mutant from a dystopian society which had crawled through the mud of the Earth like cicadas which emerge only every thousand years. Lightning struck and the figure disappeared, but Robbie was scared and hurled himself back, tripping on his feet. He landed atop of his dead brother's bloodied and tortured, limbless and headless body, which was covered with tiny worms and a spiderweb-like film.
Bob was a good guy, but he didn’t like the unease that came with living in the city his whole life. After moving out on his own, he had been bouncing around from apartment to apartment. One day late in the winter, he left his apartment, and took off on a backpacking and camping trip in the wilderness. He knew it would sound crazy, but he had to go be alone, to think things through about his future, and he wanted to do it out in the woods. When he got there, there were no other cars in the parking lot, and no signs of anyone to be seen down the trail. He started down the path as the wind whistled through the pine trees, and over the brush. The bright sun kept him at a steady pace on his hike, and he continued to forge forth through the twilight hours. As dusk approached, though, he kept getting the feeling that he was either being followed, or that there was something else out there chasing or being chased. Suddenly, out of the corner of his eyes he saw out in the fields, another set of footprints. He began to head over as the wind blew harder and harder, and he shielded his eyes from the snow drifts. When he got over to the trail of footprints, he began to follow them. Through the thicket of the woods, he brushed past branches and needles scraped his cheeks. He closed his eyes in the tightest of the bush and when he opened them, the chaparral disappeared completely. As did the footprints, directly into the middle of a giant dead tree, where there was no way around and no way up.
Robert grew up alone in the world, was sometimes difficult to get along with, and couldn’t make friends that lasted much longer past high school. He’d often just spend the nights alone at home, waiting for any company to ever call or even to show up unannounced. One night, he was watching the empty street in front of his house, when he saw a big black vintage Ford pull into the driveway. Three pale white men got out of each of the passenger seats, including the two in the back. They all wore sunglasses and top hats, suits, and black shoes. They left their doors open, and stood there in the driveway staring directly into Bob’s window right at him. They didn’t move, but they all in unison said the same thing without making any noise, and Robbie knew what they said because he could lipread them all at once. “Room for one more.”
THE SUN, EARTH: THE HEROIC
Sergeant Marcus 'The Shark' Cuban, lost by his Army platoon in South America.
Marcus Cuban is alone on a time traveling adventure with Time Ninjas and the lost tablet.
He travels through Iraq, Accadia Keng holds a golden sword.
He travels to the Mediterranean, Minos has a sorcerer's staff which turns objects to gold.
He travels through Egypt, Tutankhamun has shoes which turns air and water into gold.
He travels to the Indian Ocean, Hara Pa has a staff which shoots gold from the ground.
He travels through China, Great Yu has a staff which shoots gold from the sky.
Then, The Others, from The Other Dimension, come to reap his soul.
He loses a final battle which is in the middle of Hell with all five warlords.
He fights Bobo the Clown, then wakes up, meanwhile…
Matthew Briggs, lost by his commanding officer, in South America.
He is sent with his squadron through a time traveling adventure as Time Ninjas give him the lost tablet.
One squad member is Jasper, one squad member is Greg, one squad member is Amos.
He is hunted by a futuristic Robot Army while Dumby's help stop them, the Robots are traveling from a different universe that is collapsing.
He enters a portal with a Stryker tank, shown to him by Time Ninjas, cartels chase him into the future, too, over the ocean, he travels through Mexico.
He travels to Africa, Jasper dies.
He travels to Tibet, Greg Dies.
He travels to Russia, Amos dies.
He travels through the Carribean Ocean while the cartels shoot missiles at the sun, the end of planet Earth is coming, as it collides with the sun's radioactive explosion.
The Union; Guzman of Mexico, Bokassa of Africa, Ghandi of Tibet, Rasputin of Russia, and Castro of Cuba.
He enters the tank, alone, again, in hopes to escape, but loses his sanity as he returns home, Matthew 'Tank' Briggs dreams of seeing himself in the future of his world, going to battle with Angels.
When he wakes up from a concussion, he and his platoon are reunited with Sergeant Marcus Cuban, Robin the Hostess appears as a masked nurse, Robin administers a lethal injection to the Sergeant...
Sergeant Marcus 'The Shark' Cuban wakes midway between Earth and Hell. He is on the planet Mercury. Finally, he finds that he can breathe, spectre-like in his presence. He sees caves that lead underground. He faces tunnels and pathways with traps on the way.
Marcus Cuban finds a military base owned by Immortal Hermes, where he is captured by Orcs. The Orcs begin waves of assault from the oceans of Earth through underground portals.
Marcus Cuban escapes and leads an attack on Hermes. Hermes is derailed by gremlins from another dimension. Together, they create an army of Rebel Orcs with Time Ninjas. The Rebels go against Hermes and kill him with the lost tablet. 'Tank' wakes up in an infirmary... SUZANNA
THE MONSTER
Denim 35's, shell toe 10's, large Harvard, sturdy wire framed polarized lenses, 50-50, a red visor. The day I died, I watched Time's shadow on the hollowed shelf. The sun was white, aggressive and piercing. Business was fast, work was hard, and the Dalai Lama had just bit dust earlier that week, People even had the market-selling cover.
The metal window shut behind me as the orange sky that never changed noise, but always altered its effect, reflected fast and furious against the grimly beckoning, greedily staring eyes of the magazines, that shone back to me in a glaring or maybe wincing grimace. The keys clinked in the lock, and I threw the porn into my briefcase and started towards the bus stop. Passing the window of the hotel, thinking of the National Geographic interview, I thought that I saw someone behind me, standing by a lamppost. Long trench-coat, cowboy hat. I turned around and saw no lamppost at all, but when I returned my eyes to the window, as I continued walking, there he was, again. This time, he stood closer and there was no lamppost, but I was sure of it. His face was a horse's. I turned back quickly, stopping and spinning to face the man, but again, there was no man, no lamppost anywhere near behind where I had walked the few steps from the Newspaper Stand past Sal’s Sauce Restaurant, and the hotel. No, there was nothing there besides a sidewalk, a manhole, and an empty parked car across the street.
The walk to my apartment is comfortably short from my vendor stand, I usually arrive home in only five minutes or less. The building has a stoop, whose corners loomed long and dark that evening. I walked up the stairs, rather than take the elevator, but that day the elevator was out of service, so I had to take the stairs by elimination. The first flight of dark steps, a light was broken, and I thought I could taste the wretched smell of something like sulfur. The smell passed but when I reached the second flight, I could see that its light was broken, as well. Suddenly there was a noise upstairs, six heavy steps and a loud yelp like a big woman might make. I didn't take much notice, although it was certainly out of the ordinary to hear domestic disputes at this hour of day.
My apartment has a chimney, I think most of the apartments in my building have one. I have a two room, so I'm uncertain of all of the details of other apartments. It also has a porch, a small dining room, and two bathrooms; one in the corridor between the bedrooms, and one in the master room. I live alone, but it seems appropriate for when I have company over to visit. My living room has two sofas and a love seat. I didn't need to eat right away, so I had a few cigarettes and brewed some coffee while I sat on a sofa, and I watched the highlights of a baseball game on my television, which is a large flat screen monitor above the chimney. Eventually I flipped on the oldie's radio and cooked myself a baked potato with butter and salt and a hamburger on a fresh bun with a pickle. Then, I shut everything off and went to bed.
In the middle of the night, I thought I heard a low grumble, or coughing in my other room. I woke up, and walked over toward it. The door was closed, although I thought that I had left it open. However, the room was empty, when I pushed the door. I shuffled backward before turning around, and then I walked back to my bedroom from the dark corridor. I went into the master bathroom, and, leaving the lights off, relieved my bladder in the dark. I went over to the sink and started to turn off the water to rinse my hands, when I thought that I heard the water, itself, flowing louder, or somehow harder and noisier than usual. In instant bewilderment, I turned off the water after a fast second, and startled, looked up into my reflection in the mirror. I thought for a brief second, I saw someone standing behind me in the dark, large, menacing with gnarly horns on their head. But I looked more closely and saw that it was only the shadows of the towels in the linen closet behind me. Still unnerved, I continued to rinse my hands, and then splashed some water in my face from the faucet; when suddenly the lights went on in the bathroom, which made no sense, or so I believed, and I blinked while my eyes dried barely enough to reopen from the cold wash. It seemed impossible, because my light switch for the bathroom was on the opposite side of the door near me. But quickly, I rubbed dry my eyes, and when I reopened them; the room was still dark, and I was alone. After that, it took me a long time to try to get back to sleep.
Eventually I started to realize how I was having real difficulty sleeping. I tossed and turned for over an hour under the covers. Even though I was hot under the sheets, I was overwhelmed with restlessness. Finally, at approximately 1:30 in the morning, is when I heard the sound in the living room. It wasn't a cough, though, this time. It was a scratching, and irritatingly high-pitched, stuttered squeaking like a sinister, monotone laughter. The scratching sounded like it was beginning to become a ripping noise, as I rose speedily off of the bed and jumped towards the door. I realized that it sounded like someone ripping through a flat screen monitor. It stopped shortly after I entered the corridor between the bedrooms, altogether. I raced down the hall, nonetheless, determined that I had really heard something. It was very dark, and I forgot to flip on the lights.
In the living room, there was someone sitting in the love seat, legs spread wide, hands resting on kneecaps. His feet were hooves with brown puffs of hair. He was grotesquely naked, black like a burned and singed fleshy beast, with an extra-long pointy nose. He gleamed dimly in the moonlight from the window, shining a glittery green. His eyes bolted out like two bulbous protruding purple diamonds, although black, and he had a wild spastic and long red forked tongue that was thin like a snake's. His fingers were long and pointy. There was a small patch of hair on his head that was brownish green, and he had no earlobes. His teeth were grey, dark, dirty, sharp, ragged, and his jaw was hugely long. He opened his mouth, anyhow, and somehow spoke to me, asking me just three questions.
"What was that internet site you wanted to go on?"
I looked behind him and the computer seat was burned down to a stump, and the monitor was flickering different colors randomly. I was speechless, however, and unable to move.
"What book are you reading?"
"Seen any good movies?"
Then he hissed his tongue at me viciously and spit a light spray of mucus-like and gelatinous liquid all over the coffee table. He had controlled my mind, already, but he leaped out of his seat, revealing a long single-lined spiked tail, that had been tucked between cushions, which flew in both directions, and he grabbed me by the forehead with his strong, rough and sweaty hand. He put his mouth all the way around my entire face so that I could see into his empty foul- smelling body, and then let go and looked me in the eyes, spun around, and rushed over to the chimney and climbed inside, and disappeared, forever.
The police found my body hanging from the balcony by my necktie the next morning.
SUZANNE
'I come from Alabama with my banjo on my knee
I'm going to Lose you Anna so baby, don't you cry'
"I come from Alabama
With my banjo on my knee
I'm going to Louisiana, my true love for to see
It rained all night
The day I left
The weather it was dry
The sun so hot,
I froze to death
Susanna, don't you cry
Oh, Susanna,
Oh don't you cry for me
For I come from Alabama
With my banjo on my knee
I had a dream the other night
When everything was still
I thought I saw Susanna
A-coming down the hill
The buckwheat cake
Was in her mouth
The tear was
In her eye
Says I, I'm coming from the south Susanna, don't you cry Oh, Susanna,
Oh don't you cry for me
For I come from Alabama
With my banjo on my knee"
1
"Oh, Suzanna"
"My name is Suzanne"
"You,-"
"Hurry up, I have to go-"
"You- forgot your notebook."
"Oh, gees,"
"Here you go-"
"Well, I didn't really need it; I'm still getting this class dropped."
"... Talk to you later..."
I don't remember what I said back. I don't often remember what I say sometimes to certain people. They are mere minor distractions, from me and my impertinent working lifestyle driven by focus and accomplishment. I know I should reconsider others more, but I don't really think that it matters. Nobody matters. We're all unorganized, all alone, and we're all weird.
Selfish as it seems, there's a certain amount of distinction that comes along with being an attractive girl in modern society. Think, &; there I am. I recognize that other people exist, but more importantly, I recognize that they realize that I exist. Less social people are therefore reflective of only each other as I raise myself only higher and higher than those weaker humans among the evolutionary chains.
I don't even have a boyfriend. I rarely talk to anyone outside of the middle-class income families that I grew up with. There's no reason to, because I can get enough out of the conversations that I do have, with the people who I already trust, to gain experience to a certain, more concentrated extent. But at school, I feel alienated because I am designated beautifully special, and therefore more likely to succeed. That's why I brush off people so easily, because it’s fun.
To me, walking away from people is like walking away from the past. Granted, I am still young, and should be making acquaintances more often than projected in my behavior, to build for a good future, but at the same time feel that my youth enables me to feel as though I still have time on my side. The advantages of being a young, smart, and pretty female are seemingly endless. I am not ashamed, either, and I love my own life. Constantly taking care of myself is how reality manifests my personal pride. I am what I am, and I choose what and when I eat, and always brush my teeth afterwards.
Youth during the days of those few years that I spent in high school taught me my most valuable life lesson, though: people are weird.
2
That night was different. After cheer leading practice, I came home and there was nobody there. There were no cars in the driveway or garage. It was raining when the bus pulled away from the lawn, and I closed the front door behind me fast, and entered the threshold into a darkened living room. I shouted to my parents up the stairway, and only heard my own faint echo ricochet out of the guest room and closets back near the rear of the upstairs floor, where we kept our bedrooms and computer in Dad's home-office.
Mondays were usually late nights for Mom who worked as a secretary at a law firm in the city. Dad was the day manager at a local manufacturing plant, and would normally be home by now.
I continued to walk through the living room, though, without hearing the dog coming running like it normally was supposed to. When I reached the next doorway, with my way lit only by the dim street lamps outside, I reached around the corner to flick on the light. At that moment, lightning struck and another thunder bang echoed above the roof of the house and I jumped up a little bit, startled, and accidentally flicked up on the light switch. The power was out, so I flicked it back down and then back up, nervously.
A car's headlights stretched around the living room walls behind me. At first, I thought that somebody was pulling into the driveway, so I looked quickly to the front window, towards the driveway in the front yard. The driveway was empty, and the headlights flashed on from far on the curtain and the car appeared like a ghostly vessel through the water-streaked window, outside in the gloomy weather. It was black, with just its headlights shooting through the pouring rain, parked out beside our leafless tree that hung its branches like a claw over the roof of the unmarked vehicle. I stared at it for a moment from the back of our living room, where I was sure I couldn't be seen.
It didn't move for a full minute, until I looked back behind me in the kitchen at the phone. Then, it suddenly pulled off and drove away down the street.
Yet something had caught my eye next to the phone. Something was out of place.
The wind howled outside, and as I felt my way around the kitchen table to the phone, my mind raced through the people I knew who drove, as I tried rather desperately to figure out who had a black car that would stop at my house for any reason. When I reached the phone, I bent over it to look at the piece of paper that was stuck next to it. It was a note. The phone rang.
Startled, again, I read again the note in the dark as the phone continued to ring. It only said that my father had been here to pick up the dog to go to the veterinarian. So, I picked up the phone. Dead silence on the line. The power was still out, or so I thought. So, I put the phone down. Suddenly, the lights went back on.
A certain aura of danger lingered in the air, though. I finally took off my book bag and put it on a chair at the kitchen table. As I started to empty it, my mind started to feel like it was finally clearing up, as the thunder started to roll further and further away. I was surprised not to see anyone there, but I was beginning to settle myself back down. I had homework still, as well, and I knew that I would be smart to get to bed early that night. For some reason I felt unusually tired, barely able to keep consciousness as I piled the books out of the backpack.
3
The rest of the evening was on schedule, and nothing seemed to happen out of the ordinary. My father came home from the veterinarian with the dog, and then my mother came home. I had finished eating supper before 6:30, and already by 8:00 was doing homework. Nothing strange happened, and I felt as though everything were normal.
By the time I was ready for bed, the phone hadn't rung again all night. My cell phone received only one text message from an unavailable number. The text was blank for some reason, or my service wasn't working right because I couldn't read it. I went to bed wondering how the world could be filled with so many people, with so much variety and interdependence, yet we all maintained that we were detached from each other. Mondays were slow for everyone, was one of the final thoughts I remember thinking before I fell asleep.
My dreams that night became the kind that seem like they never end. Just one giant episode right into the next, and each epic opus leading into one just as long, or longer than the last.
It always seems like the easiest dreams to remember are the ones right before we wake. So as the night crept on and the dreams expanded and their patterns became clearer, I remember that the themes began to intertwine. Of course, I can only remember the main ideas of the last dream that I had that night. But the conflict of the pragmatic ego and the dogma of our own memory are such that by the time the last dream was beginning to take natural shape of its own among the myriad of prevalent and expressive creations that came before it, the melting of the overall plots began to make definite sense.
I was in school still. For some reason I had been selected or elected to be the school ambassador. It made no sense, but I was taken out of class because of it and put in a special room in the school where I was supposed to be alone to do research, and I was on a computer for a long time. I was doing the research, when the assignment software seemed to switch itself to become an experiment of some sort where I was learning about biology and then creating new types of animals and species on the computer screen. It seemed to remind me of a video game, which I never played, but it was only a dream, and I was taking it seriously.
After a while, the computer began to get brighter. There was now only one animal on the screen that wouldn't close its software window. I would go on and try to create a new animal over it, but the files wouldn't save and the same stuck one kept coming up. It was an ugly animal, like a dog mixed with a pig. Also, it seemed to be getting uglier or angrier the longer it stayed up on the screen. Soon, it started looking around the screen on its own, without me making it do anything. I tried making a new animal again, and the ugly one jumped out of its window and attacked the new one, tearing it to bloody flesh right in front of me. I became frightened, and the beast in the computer began barking at me, growling, and lunging at the computer screen. The glass on the screen started to break, and I reached my hand away from the mouse and began screaming. The beast wouldn't stop though, and it jumped all the way out of the computer monitor and grew when it came into the room with me. It had huge fangs, and blood all over its maw. It was foaming out of the mouth and its eyes were bloodshot. I reached out to stop it from getting me, but it grabbed my hand with its jaw and I started screaming as I felt the wet blood trickle out of my wrist. I screamed and screamed until I woke up, and at 6 in the morning stayed up until I had to go to school at 8:00.
4
Tonight, it was Friday, and I had been given the qualifications and instructions to be present in a nearby neighborhood. Babysitting was the night's agenda, and I felt strong and ready to earn money and gain the respect. Multi-tasking, surveillance, restrictions and allowances, were my primary commandments. I felt strong, and lucky for the gifts my body had bestowed upon me. I was confident and eager.
Approaching the area of the house whose home would soon become my temporary private domain for the night, and whose fortitude would be my charge, I was listening to the music in my headphones and pretending that I owned a record label. I was picking which artists I would have under my management, and what projects we would endeavor. Lackadaisical, I strolled down the avenues of my city.
The laptop bag was switched from left to right shoulder on the last turn onto the street where I would be babysitting, and as I was doing so, I thought I saw something inside one of the windows on the street that looked odd. I wasn't sure, but it didn't strike me that the oddity was anything to concern myself with. The person in the window looked vaguely familiar, and I was ready to forget it and keep walking, when I heard a car engine. Quickly, I turned and looked down the street that I had come from and was unable to see any headlights, but there were bushes next to many of the driveways. Looking down the sidewalk, though, I thought I saw the same thing in my peripheral vision from the window in the same house. It was a human face, maybe an older man or lady, but it looked completely horrified by something outside in the road.
The wind howled loudly and I started to move once again, and quickened my pace almost immediately. I was practically out of breath when I reached the apartments down at the end of the block. I crossed the street at the intersection, and under the traffic lights I glanced back down the road to try to see over to the house that had given me such a brief fright, but the bright green emanating from above me made the houses into only outlines against the deep blackness of the night sky.
Inside the people's house that I was babysitting that evening, I made all of the friendly and undisturbed gestures I had planned on making with the parents of the 3-year-old I was there to keep watch over. They would be back at midnight, dinner and a movie, and they had left the baby in the crib upstairs, fed. They were out the door before I was even done logging onto the computer. In ten minutes, I was online and in two hours I was off. Nothing unexpected had occurred, yet.
I got up off the couch in the living room and walked over to the window in the front of the house. I looked out across the street at the apartments outside there. Fantasies began racing through my mind, as I was no foreigner to the perversions of almost all teenagers. I thought a little for a moment about a football player I had been watching at school, the handsome boys at my high school, then the musicians I had favored earlier that night during my walk. I was thinking about the walk briefly when I was reminded of the face in the window. I don't know what made me remember, but as soon as I started to close my eyes to shake my head and forget the terrifying image and feelings that had chased me here, there was a noise.
The sound wasn't loud, but it pierced the mood and ambience, and it resonated off of the computer, through the small living room, and made me snap quickly spin my neck around. I almost laughed, though, as I saw that it was only an instant message on the computer screen of the laptop on the coffee table in front of the living room couch. I walked back around the couch and leaned over it to look at the screen of my laptop.
"Where are you baby?"
There was no name on the message. No program was on the machine that looked like this one, either.
I was scared again, and I couldn't figure out why, but it felt instinctive. I ran upstairs, to the child's room. It was empty.
5
In the movies, they showed us how the detectives and police could always solve even an intricate crime. But even in the better films, scenes of the lead detective's frustration are what build the audience's anxieties to the point of climatic turning where the plot finally reveals the clues. Cinema uses a healthy imagination to put us in suspense, but real life doesn't always have a happy ending.
That was it. I was on my own from there on out, after the missing child incident in my high school years. I was so young; I was forced to continue on and always look back as though I had committed some unholy atrocity. Guilt is like karma, and innocence is a foreign tongue to those that have lost it.
To others, the catastrophe's consequences varied widely, but even when I entered college, I remember the first night spent in the dormitory room with my roommate, when I woke in the middle of the night and thought I saw moving lights out of the quad through the window next to her bed. It was only her, Elizabeth, there, though, under her covers.
When I returned home that Thanksgiving, I borrowed a car from my parents and was driving to the mall, when I found myself back on that same old street. I looked at the houses across from the now abandoned apartments, and pulled over next to the old tenement. The house that haunted my dreams and nightmares had been repainted by now to a different color. The houses next to it had undergone renovations of various different types, too. I had already observed the empty apartment building, assumed that the tenants of the houses across the road had been faced with the impending foreclosure of the apartment properties, and had tried to revitalize their property value in an effort to overthrow the slums surrounding them. As I was about to take the car out of park, throwing it in neutral, someone drove by slowly, stopping traffic for a moment, and I saw that the contractors had left parts of the neighboring houses across the street unfinished. Roofs were still in shambles, fences broken, and shingles hung loosely off some. That house was a tower in the wasteland, but only for me. The once red paint was now a darker purple.
Back in the dormitories, Elizabeth and I were rarely anything less than professionally polite to one another. Time had changed all the ways that I acted around other people, even those my own age. I was paranoid, for sure. I never felt that I truly belonged with the other students, and I couldn't fit in with any group. When Elizabeth went out to the bars the first year, I realized that my life was already beginning to slow down. Older than she was, yet not as reckless, nor as happy, I felt that my maturity was wearing down the walls of my social paranoia, yet that I would one day be happy was one thing that I felt youthfully hopeful for.
These early experiences were misleading. I studied hard, all the time, and tried to concentrate in class, but it always felt like I didn't know what to say exactly. I almost failed the first semester at the university, partly because of a lack of participation in class. My professors spoke to me semi-sympathetically, and we agreed that we would have to come up with an alternative extra credit assignment for me in a couple of core courses. I did feel as though I was being given a second chance, and I was ready to commit myself.
The second semester wasn't much different though. Midterm grades came and I was doing alright, but when I looked at the last semester's adjusted credits, it didn't seem to make much of a difference, at all. The grades had caught up a letter, but going from C's to B's wasn't very impressive, especially in retrospect of the difficulty of the number of essays that I had struggled to complete before the winter break was over. Seeing Elizabeth come and go from the dorm room more and more, I began to curiously wonder how she was able to sustain a passing grade point average. I thought it was unfair, and felt that if I didn't find out how she was getting it all done, that I would become distracted and jealous. Elizabeth told me after the midterms, how her secret lay in a moderation of work and play, a good diet, and constant preparation for the tests rather than the continual regimen of daily routine-forced studying that I had forced myself to do. Strangely, it seemed as though she was saying that I was working way too hard, and I was only partially offended by these observations, if at all. I admired her comprehension of her own position, including her own education and the same system of school which we both shared. I also looked up to her sexually, as did, well, most of the men at the university, including our professors. She was beautiful, and had no trouble attracting anyone there. As we talked, I began to open up to someone new for the first time my whole life. I knew she was listening to everything I had to say, and I thought of it as therapeutic, and her as my mentor.
That's when the pressures from home and my parents began when, after my midterms, a letter came in the mail. I was crying alone in the dorm room when Elizabeth came in from her last class of the day. She quietly patted my shoulder and I told her that my financial aid was going to be denied because of poor report cards. She was there for me, then, again, where nobody else was. This was too much of an emotional time, still, and when she asked if I had any money to go downtown to the department stores with her, I burst out crying again in her arms. She only laughed a little, and cooed me sweetly under chin. She smiled and rocked me slowly singing the song I had heard my whole life into the back of my head, "O Suzanna."
I knew things would be hard to explain to my parents, who were in no position to pay for my full tuition, and I knew that the next move I would make would be to take out my own student loans, if I could. I went to my bank the next day to see what it would take to get the money. In the bank, at the ATM, I swiped my card to check my available balance which had been emptied before I came back to school after winter break. I was positive that there would be zero funds available, but to my surprise two hundred dollars had somehow been forgotten after Christmas, although I knew that I had deposited it from my memory. In this sudden turn of events, though, I felt off guard and delighted at the same time. I withdrew the money.
For the duration of the following week, I was beginning to watch closely the moves of my peers, especially Elizabeth. I watched her woo classmates, and I listened to her cull her friends, all the while discussed by every cool guy in the cafeteria. By Wednesday I was ready to attempt to integrate myself back in to the world of popularity. When noon came, I decided that I couldn't hold on any longer, and that I would go to the cafeteria and eat at a table with some of the girls I knew. I might get lucky, I thought, maybe see somebody nice.
There she was, sitting at a back table near a window with a group of kids, naturally segregated with girls on one side and boys on the other, all talking and eating together as if they were the only thing that existed in their niche of the universe. I shyly made my way through the lunch line and was about to sit at another random table, when I looked over again in her direction, and saw her staring back at me, smiling beautiful and perfectly in a way that reminded me of what true happiness must be. I tried to smile back, and she waved me over, so I walked down the aisles of tables, half expecting some joker to stick his foot out and trip me. I was so used to being among the elite from my high school, that I knew that a newer initiate would often undergo cruel punishments from their contemporaries. Nervously, I focused only on Elizabeth. I sat a few seats down from my friend, and resumed the initial invitation to small talk my way through conversations with my fellow populace.
When Elizabeth left the table, I was already read to go, also, and I got out of my seat and followed her and a few girls towards the exit. They were going to their next classes, and I asked if they would be at the cafeteria at the approximate same time every Wednesday. They would, and Elizabeth assured me that she had scheduled most of her classes to allow for exact times for getting to the gym and lunch. She joked that I should go to the gym and visit one of the guys from the cafeteria table, Randall, sometime. I laughed, though, and told her I had been a high school athlete. It made me feel like I was putting a lot out at the stake, to admit that I was still into cheer leading, but I recovered by asking about going downtown Thursday night. Elizabeth had already started to turn around, but when I mentioned the bars, she turned back halfway and replied quickly that I should go out with them Friday.
That night, Elizabeth came back late, and we barely talked. During our most accelerated moments of life where we are apt to lose track of time, we are usually at a point where, for some reason, we are allowed abilities to reflect the past most intensely. Thursday night, while we both were doing our homework, my brain began remembering how irrationally scared I had been of those events at that old babysitting job. It was two years later, and I was finally getting over the intense paranoia, after I had spent so much time in fear. I was awake later than usual that night, and as I looked out the window of our first-floor dorm from my pillow, I thought how the next night would erase the final pieces of misfortune from my spirit.
Friday night, at the bar, Randall and I met again. Elizabeth disembarked after a few drinks to another bar with some man I never got a chance to meet or speak to. She came back from the bathroom and announced that she had been introduced to a guy from out of town who wanted to check out the city. She laughed and pointed in the direction he was waiting, and said that she had a lot to show him. I tried to check out who she was going out with, but there were too many people at the bar. So, Randall and I stayed there at the table, and Elizabeth weaved her way through the crowd toward whoever it was out there that she had met. I watched for a minute as she walked, trying to see between familiar faces from around school, but Randall grabbed my hand, and started to tell me about how pretty I am. Astonished, at first, I stopped pursuing my roommate and went back to socializing, drinking, talking, and forgetting about my life.
I finally got back to campus after the bars had closed. I wandered through the dark quad alone. In my room, the lights were off, and Elizabeth was already in bed. I, too, fell asleep in a matter of minutes. In the middle of the night, I was awakened to the low sound of a humming. It sounded faintly reminiscent of the old song that Elizabeth had sang the week before; "O Suzanna." The humming grew annoying after a couple of minutes, off key, and I was already feeling cold and disoriented from the oncoming hangover. I got up out of bed, finally, sleepily mumbling for her to keep quiet, as I stumbled over to close the window. The humming did not stop as I approached the window, and I felt like I was going to puke, the room smelled awful, so I kept the window open and turned around and yelled at her again, but she still did not quit her incessant song. So, I walked over to her bed and saw that her sheets were over her head. I pulled them off. I saw her head was missing off of her shoulders, and the sound of the humming had been wind from the window rushing across her windpipes under the sheets. My roommate had been murdered. All the way to the hospital in the ambulance I sang "O Suzanna."
6
They don't really want you to know this, but some drugs that doctors prescribe their patients work on what is called 'placebo' effect. This means that the medicine that you get a prescription for is inactive, with no real ingredients, and that you are told to take medicine every day, unaware. Usually, the people who are given these fake drugs are so far out there that they never even realize. Medical fields based out of scientific research and studies, likely to uphold indisputably conclusive cures, appear inexcusably negligent when 'placebo' drugs are fraudulently handed to already completely disoriented patients. Still, the government condones the irresponsible conduct, despite all rationality.
Another misconception among patients at psychiatric hospitals is that they are going into a locked cell every night, trapped at all times in a ward that was there not to protect them, but to imprison them. Sign yourself in, sign yourself out, was meanwhile, the majority of the hospital policy regarding patient detainment. There's no reason to exaggerate the effectiveness of the practice of patient therapy, especially while doctors, nurses, workers, and therapists there don't have expectations for full recovery. If you were there until you died, would be the only perceivable problem. The reasoning is there would be no insurance payment, although the appearance would be just yet another unfixed case.
Personally, I wasn't much of an exception to the general rule that a patient would probably decipher at least some of the mysteries on their own, and want to be released as soon as frustrations occurred. Maybe it was sheer strength, perseverance; my untouched wit led me to the point where I was going crazy that I was locked in a strange world, rather than total insanity by pure nature.
During visitations, I felt dis-empowered, like an exhibit for my parents, ambassadors of the world outside. They would come in to the wing of the hospital to see me, like aliens from another planet. They were like holographic images sent from orbiting satellites far above Earth.
It surprised me that they never initially encouraged my release, so that until I started to calm myself down, I always felt safely suspended in a false reality, like a television show. The hospital was my set, the nurses and doctors were my supporting cast, and the camera was in my mind, or so I thought. Really, the cameras were on the ceilings, peeking in at me as I slept on my cot in my small room.
The only reason I came to the realization that I could sign myself out of the hospital, was an interaction with another patient that happened after a month of sedation and deep meditations of my own. A man who had been recently thrown in with the rest of us drooling, ogling, sometimes delirious psychological experiments, seemed definitely different, more focused and clear-thought. Altogether I only saw him twice before he disappeared. They mentioned him as the human pickle, in a conversation between two nurses in the wing. Delusional as I was, though, I thought that he looked somehow vaguely familiar. I questioned a nurse as to where the mysterious man had gone to, and that's when they spilled the truth out that I could emancipate myself at any time.
The last week before release I dreamed that I was trapped in a padded cell, strapped down in a straitjacket. Out of the window of the cell there was a monstrous patrolling monster. I was trapped inside the cell, but safe.
7
Nothing mattered anymore. People had thrown me off of my high horse once and I had found my way back into the game of life. But this time, I was determined to never let anyone else close to me ever again. I had been changed.
The first major problem after I came home from the hospital was that I had no money of my own. Work had never been a big concern of mine. I thought that I would be able to get by after I had graduated from college. But leaving school with no degree made things difficult. My financial aid was non-negotiable and all of my scholarships had vanished. My parents weren't much help. Instead of a car, they bought me a 'used' dog. Instead of a job, they put rent up at a downtown apartment in my hometown. There was nothing I could do besides stay indoors for four months, unmotivated even to find employment. Television replaced most of my old social habits, and my parents were the source of all or most of the food that I barely ate. All that I had to keep me company was the dog- a greyhound named Xaul.
All that autumn, I watched the people out on the street out of my top story apartment window. They met, left, walked, ran, conversed, argued, and hated and loved with one another. Everyone seemed a part character in a long story that stretched out into the setting sun, through the horizon and into outer space. They lived lives far more attached to a reality that had rejected and ejected me to my tower, here. Ridiculous as it seemed, by Thanksgiving I was beginning to become jealous of the normal, ordinary people who could continue their benign existence into eternity and never, it seemed, become exposed to the harsh elements that were somewhere out there in the wide wild world, waiting just for me. In a dark alley, or hiding behind the tombstones of a cemetery, within the tinted windows of the slow drivers in low riding sports cars, between blinds, against edges of any business storefront, panhandling for spare change, everywhere safety's absence became less than top priority to the rest of the world.
Eventually, I exited the apartment one evening and ventured. I attended a midnight show at the local movie theater. That was alright, but I soon found that my jealousy had become an unmovable distrust in my heart. Complete strangers became a target of hatred, criticism, aggravation, pent-up angst. As I would heatedly complain about popcorn prices, tobacco taxes, grocery receipts, soon, credit items and ATM fees. I became aware that this lack of trust spawned its own set of problems. I had become poor, in debt, impoverished, and unclean in my habits. By Halloween, I couldn't even afford candy, but realized that my top floor apartment wouldn't receive visitors, and was shattered to recognize how alone I felt.
Thanksgiving came, and at the dinner table with my parents at my old home, I popped the question right away as my father began carving the turkey. I remember, he was whistling merrily, as my mother sipped her wine, frowning, rolling her eyes to the window of the dining room. I asked if I could borrow a large sum of money for the next month, and when my father denied me, I didn't try to negotiate or compromise, but I stormed upstairs to my old bedroom, shouting at my parents to their embarrassment. I meant to grab some of my old belongings, books, anything I wanted out of the room, but when I got inside, I sat on my old bed, and lay back onto the pillow, beginning to cry. Tears were still forming in the corners of my eyes, and I covered my mouth in disgust at my own ruin. The money had supposed to have been so that I could start finding work. I had assumed that I would need extra travel expenses, maybe some new clothes, a cell phone, and of course other household items. Yet unable to figure out why my father had denied me, I began yelling obscenely how I hated the entire planet, condemning my family, and would just leave, not to ever return again. I got up and walked out of the bedroom and pushed past my mother in the upstairs hallway, threw on my coat, and started to walk home. My mind was filled with sorrow, and I had attacked my only source of tangible consolation. Alone once again, and now with a headache, I charged forth through the snow and wind.
On the second corner after I had left my parents front door, a car came up behind me, flashing headlights in the dark, honking, and splashing. Then, it suddenly pulled over and stopped a few yards ahead, quite unexpectedly. There, it waited, as I trudged on.
When I got a little closer, it had begun to roll down the passenger side window. When I arrived at the rear of the vehicle, I saw that the window had been unrolled all the way. I pretended not to care, until all at once, out of the car cracked out a cackling and hideous laughter. I strayed right on the icy sidewalk fast and pushed forth ahead, trying not to look back. A voice shouted as I huddled my shoulders, eerily echoing through the empty road a voice I couldn't understand. I pretended the voice had come from some horny teenager attempting to make my desolate night worse. But although I lived two miles down the road, the sound of the voice wouldn't leave my mind. It had been a simple sentence that the person had said, but it was so strange that I was beginning to become increasingly extremely worried of every car that rode past me from then on, during the walk.
The last stretch of three blocks that I walked in the cold, I was shaking from not just the severe snowstorm that raged overhead and everywhere in the city streets, but from fear. Any car I heard move on the street was speculated, I was examining each one when they get farther away to see if it was the same specter, following me down. This harassment on a holiday was a soft irony to my defense, in the face of the fight with my father over money. Nonetheless, I plunged up the stoop of my apartment and frantically fumbled with my keys, shivering in the frigid air. As I pushed open the door, sirens erupted in the dark, still night, somewhere.
Hastily, I climbed up the stairs to my apartment. From each landing's doorways poured out the muffled clamor of Thanksgiving dinners, families filled with spirit and joy, televisions and radios cranked on high volume. All mocking me and chasing upward through the stairwell, remnants of a lost civilization I no longer should belong to. At my apartment door, I sniffled my nose and unlocked and pushed open the door, nearly falling face first in sobs into my studio. I didn't hit the lights before I spun around and slammed the door behind me, leaning against it while I locked the deadbolt.
The dog, Xaul was under the bed, only his tail shook underneath, and I fell down on the covers and into sleep.
The night was bitterly cold, and the temperatures were falling below zero, the wind chill was negative eighteen. The window had been left open, and the whipping of the curtains, and my freezing body woke me up from my slumber at midnight.
I looked at the window and thought I heard Xaul whimper. He was still under the bed. I reached down and patted the floor to call him and pet him, but Xaul didn't respond and the whimpering stopped. Curiosity made me wonder why he was hiding still, so I rolled over on the bed and leaned over the edge to look. Underneath the bed, a man was lying next to Xaul, a man I had never seen before. He was chewing the dog's face and reddish dried blood covered his face and hands. As soon as I saw him, he was already reaching over the dog to grab me by my jaw which had been opened right then to let out a scream. I blacked out.
8
The next thing I saw was a bathroom mirror.
Pain was everywhere in my whole body. I was covered in blood and my eyes were falling asleep as soon as they had been opened. Behind me, holding my head by my hair and scalp was the man, who by now looked familiar somehow, and in my confusion, I lost track of where I was or what I should be paying attention to in order to get out and away from him.
I was looking at the mirror, noticing that I couldn't move my mouth which had actually been duct taped closed, when he pushed my head straight down onto the sink. Pain again shot through my face, and I felt like my jaw had been slammed into pieces. I began choking on teeth as he threw my limp body off the sink, out of the bathroom, onto the floor.
Cackling, he dragged me by my hair as I convulsed in immense waves of pain. He dragged me to a hole in the floorboards of a strange house where I had regained my consciousness. I had been abducted.
The hole under the floorboards was two feet deep, and I was dragged and tipped into it, falling over my side onto my face which landed in a soupy mixture of blood, rotted flesh, and bones. The man covered the trapdoor up.
In the tiny box I have been trapped in, I realize that I am going to die in pain.
Lying down here on my face, I realize that I can't move arms or legs, as all have been broken. Shattered bones fill up under my skin, hemorrhaging. I lay still, raped, my whole body was wet with blood, throbbing, pulsating pain. I am having difficulty breathing as blood pours out of my mouth and wounds and fills the surface of the bottom of the hole.
I drowned in this pit, in my own blood.
“I came from Salem City with my wash pan on my knee
I'm going to California, the gold dust for to see.
It rained all night the day I left, the weather it was dry
The sun so hot I froze to death,
Oh, brothers don't you cry.
Oh Susannah, Oh, don't you cry for me
I'm going to California with my wash pan on my knee.
I soon shall be in Frisco and there I'll look around.
And when I see the gold lumps there, I'll pick them off the ground.
I'll scrape the mountains clean, my boys, I'll drain the rivers dry.
A pocketful of rocks bring home, So, brothers don't you cry.” -Unknown
THE ZOMBIE
Everyone knows what a zombie is. The pity is the disagreement of origin, explanation; divine or scientific anomaly. The monster had eaten her soul in its demonic, brutal and battering stalking presence, beaten it to a completely tearing discontinuity with every painstaking movement throughout her young life. What was left of Suzanne’s body under the floorboards of the apartment laid in the alien cocoon, blood soaking slowly into the fibers of the coffin.
Then, at a quarter to two in the morning, the trapdoor lifted itself through magic and spiritually kinetic invisible powers. From the dark shadows of each corner of the room came the transparent shapes of the black beasts with the giant, tauntingly smiling jaws and the green, gleaming flesh. Poised at the base of the trapdoor, the things stretched open their mouths and devoured the girl within, swallowing the pod whole. Suddenly, just as soon as the mouth was closed, the monster disappeared to its alternate dimension. Suzanne, then, reappeared, and was kneeling over the empty trapdoor, back to her former appearance, clothed the same and healthy looking, as she closed the trapdoor’s latch back shut.
Suzanne's parents were both awakened at the same time. When Mom whispered to dad that there seemed to be something different in their room, Dad flicked on the light on his nightstand, and they heard a noise like a rattlesnake’s tail’s vibrations and a hiss, in Suzanne’s room. Suzanne's room had become a shrine to her memory, and the windows were always kept shut, so the noisiness was abnormal. It was 3 in the morning; this other room’s door hadn't been opened in almost a month.
When Dad opened the door, there was a bat, loudly flapping its wings in the dark until Dad flipped on the lights. He covered his head and hair with his left arm and ran to the window next to the bed and opened it. The bat came swooping through and Dad glanced out into the dark woods. There was a strange figure standing near one of the trees that moved, but Dad went back to bed in frustration.
The next day, Suzanne was scheduled to be at the family home for dinner with friends, but she showed up much later than expected, as the family’s friends were leaving the parents driveway, they saw her walking down the road. One car stopped as another car drove off. Suzanne was soaked in rain, and not respondent to the passengers which caused concern, so as the car pulled away finally, one passenger called Suzanne's parents on a mobile phone to tell them what had happened. The caller let it ring several times at the parents' house, but there was no answer before they hung up. Suzanne never went to her parents’ house that evening.
During the middle of the night, there was a banging at the door that persisted until Dad reached the bottom of the stairs. It was an infrequent, firm, persistent rhythm. After the last knock, Dad walked the short distance to the front door and peeked out of a side window. There was nobody in the lawn outside, or on the stoop, but out of the corner of his eye, he saw something move inside the living room. When he looked over his shoulder, the rocking chair was moving, and creaking.
Mom was upstairs, asleep still. She woke up suddenly to feel something underneath the covers near her face. It surprised her when a moth flew out of the sheets, unharmed, and out into the hallway. Dad was not sleeping next to her, and she felt something inexplicably frightening about the deep darkness of the night. She lay still, and concentrated on the sounds that she heard in the house, as she was expecting dad to come back upstairs or back from the bathroom, soon.
Suzanne was in their kitchen. Her parents had no idea what their daughter had been doing all night, walking up and down the streets surrounding their house. She had been going through her parent's neighborhood, looking for houses that were left unlocked, with sleeping residents, security unattended. She would go inside the refrigerators, and she was infecting the food. Her mouth drooled a white wormy liquid everywhere she went.
When Mom and Dad woke up, she was sitting cross legged at the foot of their bed, so that her neck and head were visible above the footboard. But she ducked in the dark, quickly, and they didn't see. Dad turned over on the side of the bed, and dropped his feet down to the floor. The worms in the food downstairs sunk in and infected it with a tasteless and odorless oil. Dad went back down to the kitchen for a snack of leftovers, which as soon as he ingested, began to brainwash him.
Suzanne disintegrated into thin air. Mom and Dad went to work the next day, infected with the poisonous, alien oils that spread across and soon controlled the planet.
THE MIST ANT
Daisy Queen
The weather through the winter months had been increasingly volatile and the snowstorms were finally wearing down on both of them. He was nowhere to be seen and it left her feelings; the wearing and searing, jarring aches of painful frostbite, which were purely psychological. But as she stared at her purple fingertips against the glass window of the cabin, her imagination was in full control. She wished she had never met him but the darkness outside kept her lonely. She wished she could go find her family but she was abandoned.
The flame gazed at her hair in jealous mockery; while one flowed down in youth, one demolished the forsaken archaea of lifeless meld. Echoes of eerie voices reverberated from between walls and she was distracted, temporarily. She posed her eyes and forehead towards the noiseless hum of white-level static electricity and then pushed her head and right ear out forth at the wall which was oblique and silent. The opacity of the monstrous white-out beyond the window pane swirled and dipped, curled and flipped. It molded over the cabin's shingles, blown off by gusts, and clattered through the chimney flue.
Momentum brought the hush to a close when the door banged open. She hadn't noticed the car's headlights but she twirled and spun to the sound of footsteps and shuffling, boot stomps and gruff of him clearing his throat. Snow had accumulated on his hat and his shoulders and he walked inside while brushing himself off, taking off his coat and setting it onto the chair which faced the door from the kitchen table. He walked in then, and pulled the package of heroin from his bulging, left pants pocket. He had gotten to the pickup site with time to spare and had still come home with coffee in his thermos and he sat the thermos down, second, separately.
The man had been given charge of care for the young girl while his friends returned to the states to prepare for their return to pick her up and escort the teenage Inuit girl. They had received grants for exploration projects and prospective mining and were speculators on land in the Canadian north but were Americans from birth.
"Heidi," he started to speak to her, "Heidi, Heidi, we've got you just the right thing, here."
Heidi grabbed his arm. They should be returning within the next month. She wanted to go to America.
There was never justice and he was an outlaw from both countries. She was on the path that keeps women and men on their knees, so that they can be watched by those whose movements are faster and have had the certainty of controlled guidance. Having no hope for returning to her tribe, she tugged his arm and his sleeves.
The ugliness of life endures those that refuse to keep perspective of the internal processes of man. The gods are many and outweigh men but humans do not belong without each other. This is the tragedy of survival; when all things are made to die quickly and plan to live slowly
Mileage
[Yo. Oh shit. (Gasp,) I can't, (gasp,) I can't see, oh... Oh, okay. That's interesting. What on Earth? Oh, a laptop. Cool. Well, I better wait for my legs, or I guess... my arms. They're so numb. This is so weird. I can't move them, yet. They said, "]Do as your told[, and you'll be paid at the end of your mileage..." "Mileage..." I remember them saying that, and yet, I can't even more than flick my fingers or flex my thumb, at all. "Entertainment." Well, I'll get those headphones on, as soon as my limbs move. Apparently, they seem to think that I'll be fine. There's no way I can drive this rig, now. I don't know how I'm getting twenty hours down the road, either, without a rest stop. I'll figure it out. Better than a bullet in the brain. How is this relay going to work, anyway? I'm driving from Texas, to South Carolina... Oh, there's a plastic bottle... I can't move. Damn.
I can move my arm, alright, good. That was fast. I bet I can move my legs in a minute, too. I'm okay. Okay, yeah, the news is streaming. I don't want to mess with this laptop, but when I'm done, I'll close it up and put it on the seat. I don't want to keep the laptop. Let me keep my life... Okay, play it cool. I'm cool with this. Little delivery, big rig cargo, no problem. Receive the drugs, move on with life. Back to Athens. Hopefully no bugs. ...
No wiretaps, either... Quiet. Listen... It looks safe. Well, here, there you go little guys, there you go. Okay, wait...
Okay, just me and the open road... Gas light, check, ignition... check... laptop, check.
God, low on gas. Let's pull in, here. Busy here. Tourists.
Let's see, here... Glovebox. Yep. Okay.
Don't look at anyone. Diesel, diesel. Good. Pin. Ok. Ok. Good.
Back we go.
Hey, low on gas. Good, right here. Okay.
Was there anything else in the glovebox? Nah. Look. Nope.
Okay. Back we go, again.
Getting tired. Itchy. Hey... What's that? That wasn't there. Oh shit, well I should've figured.
Good God, they took my kidney. They fucking took my fucking...
Okay. Hold tight. It doesn't matter. Bobo pills. Damn, if I had some pills, I'd get through all this, easier. They should've left some for me. How are they going to compensate me for this? They said $2,000 in pills, plus $10,000 cash. … $10,000 in cash. That’s a little money. At the drop-off site…
Wow, these sons of bitches don't play around.
They took my kidney. Damn, bastards.
Low on gas.
Okay. Fuck this shit. I'm getting some cigs.
"{Mileage."}
Okay we're here. Damn, it got dark out quick. What was that noise in the back? Am I carrying live cargo? This better not be any human trafficking. This is awful, man. I can't believe I got myself caught up in this. Okay. Destination. Reached our destination.
Oh, shit, I didn't see them, there. Okay. Camouflage. Well, they said not to smoke. But who cares?
Do they have to change, now? ...What are they putting on?
...What's in the back? Okay, now we're talking, flashlights. Roll the window down... Wait, guns?]
'My-'
All Wishes
After modern time hissed into the mystics and wept, the quieted old man sat down for my dinner. There were whispers along the walls of their cave. He sat in darkness where eyes should not flicker. Flittering winds against paper towels near the window; shaking, painfully, his head began to cramp again. But if the old man saw him, the old man would be mad. He didn't want to make the old man angry at all, even though my cellar made him possessive of his pain.
Burying grief; deeper than he had ever been, his nose dripped mucus into spit of his throat, warmly. It loosened his spasms and somehow allowed him not to scream. This old man was tight, tragically musical. Old people like these, if not straightened enough can be crooked, in such contrast to appear bright. The stars were for neither of them; blinds were drawn down and the curtains were blankets from faded sunset with its truly unbelievable colors.
He began to pant as he strained to not forget, struggled to stop himself from becoming tired. He towed fears through our greens and yellow with taunted silhouettes. He had not seen the old man eat but had known not to whimper. There was no reason to pluck at frets, for without a mother or mate there was no softness in tears for solvent which he had no way of recognizing. Dark, empty, and lonesome, but strong with quick- witted determination, he pretended his quaking spine was tumbling him on somersault, down a long, soft hill. He rolled out his legs backwards, falling, without control or truant ability of anyhow counteracting. There were no branches for him to grab or to swing out from an outside world. Imaginatively, they missed reptilian dinosaur smells and turtles' moonlit wobble while he was pushed further away than ever, here. His thumbs reprised his fears and he saw his old nemesis nimbly fingering through square cotton pads, metallically sliding cardboards and into rotten oils.
When his old friend's nourishment was swallowed, their faces frowned together. He thought of the old enemy like his big brother, although largely unfamiliar. The old stranger calmly wiped off those twisting lips then, widely pinching more squares of thin papers from inside an odd denim pocket with its layers covered like silky spiders' prey or the sinful domed. The old man really was a bad sibling or younger sister. Cocooning ignorantly in good fabrics like arachnid grub; without aged wrinkles. However, many creases across pale, moist skin, in rings. He wondered how the old man stood so cold. While these sensitive physics of genetics were religiously unexplainable yet, to our most scientific minds. Somehow, he knew the man was becoming tired, even though both of their elderly bodies seemed poised in both dutiful observation and unblinking peacefulness. He also knew the old man was not at peace, more inert, and too much in tune with this world's alien rhyme.
A cooling breeze swept through the shadows, through my window's cracked slivers, brushed up the dirt and dust of the sill and fainted into preserved spectrums of angles in creeping lights. Where the essences of life on our planet dared to enter the old man's lair, there were sprinkling joys and exuberating that lingered too sweetly. The blinds were shambled, reaching as low as allowed with drawn curtains blown from my other window, fluttered in only mimic of the streets' stirrings.
The old man heaved his chest in suppressed yawns, motioning the moment of impaired brain activity that approached, in its cyclical, natural patterns. His elbows crossed his knees in anxiety, instinctively braving for the old man's transcending exhaustion. The old man's eyelids were dried, his were aching, while both fought wild fear and pled for release. When time had passed without blinking, the old man knew there would still be a need to stay awake.
Skittering paws handled littered wrap on the ground from off the walls and curbs of our roadside, sniffing for snacks with more astute investigation than rewarded by the old man's plunging into his packets. Chills crackled against the spider webs below them. Neither had known the darkness of space could beam into their souls with such curious prose, wrangling their pinning grime into the pores of the scattered chaos. Into those tiny eyes of surprising softness lingered their promises to many generations, thrown lights of pious agreements. Teeming twilight itself knew no arching colors more embedded with the fear. Tricking doom conditioned each other; these withheld hands of grating sieves born in eyes skewed by perverted tufts of truancy. Reality had unfathomable tears stripped by horizons and furies chastened. Stilling the sills from the poles at four corners from winding storms into their guise of future worlds.
In those times when their breath coincided, faint pulses swung in vast heavens, crying shame in terror, brightening the furthest reaches of our universe. The old man once accused of dredging the scowl, weighting white ions of cruel passions, held a heart steadier. These times, he burned his heavy ribs between arms outward, forcing the thriving fight. Evening depth of darkness was pushed down, all above the old man's temple exempting their dual imbalances. One nail rendered itself loose in grieving chambers, pinging their intimate friendship closer in glare. Though his mind was stabled, yet unbridled in thought they merely posted an unstoppable spring from within.
Then, the old man grabbed his cylindrical spheres, pushed them to poisonous lips and made spit from mutual bonding. Tender strands of his eyebrows bore with curling tetrahedrons, pressuring each's nerves. As my attic was emptied, so too were signs of war. "Am I sewn in these tall, unended avenues?" Firing questions, sparable, goldened in silent lances. "Threaded through these senses," Smiling like cats thinking his whispers were chosen into the skin vainly discovering his humane traits in vile browning, pushing swabs through dimes and pennies, colliding. "Me? I like smiling, I like laughing, I love antidotes. Unlike your fucking munchkin brothers. Look high! Swing chariot!" Roman roads' forgotten swindles, man spoke in whispered riddle and hadn't even prickled.
Carefully chosen toothpicks, the old one had set aside splintering on anything so old he could smell it, hungry enough to taste, yet never was pinching his nose. The old man had envied his older brothers' bravery. There were moments of night where he had looked over crashing white caps, thinking he could ride over by sails of blue whale fins. Of course, these childish gambles were quickly scoffed in his fearsome grimace. Many men have contemplated the various ideas of fame before retreat in refrain. Sometimes, fading his eyes from the white sun in the sky had caught him in between chewing and swallowing where gum papers wax and rain fell on other sides of strange maps.
Here is what the thing in the corner said stoned without anything but an eye's shot; "Ave a news?" Yet no sounds cried in the merry minds. So, on sold stoops only a wick away, every individual courageous man held his woman in bedroom and stared at least down halls, if not off of the top of unleveled beams. Because when those echoes were heard around encompassing towns, spinning else faltered pipes were rattled. For although plumbing jobs were far from handy, there just wasn't enough water to go through every tap. Clips were heard shaking down rusty alleys, flashes of stoves were brought through outlets, and ripples began in many puddles. Argument was over and only your mostly colored dogs lay still, while yappers couldn't. Angry wasn't the term for these fires, so madness was easily determinable between the old man's lies.
The old man nearly began to weep his soul, his unsorted and disarrayed scatters of glittered pains. With chivalry must come the sweat, so sweet, then remarked with yelling thunders. The thing in the corner shoved off onto the wall further than the old man could stretch his eyes. Without even the quickness held back, the old man would have wondered too long. Instead, the old man snorted and immediately started to banking thighs against the former part of chairs. Then again, he rested his back in unrimed rhythm.
Scuffing with the old man's hand, we all remained consciously unaware of our own parts where fists of knuckling rapture can only arm themselves with insanity's envies. Many women were without, but that beginning of an itch which is stored for finer arm can count their best as unreachable cupboards. Anything other than these howling winds laid in high tops and down across foreign items swiped would have rattled off the sorrows twice, for chirping of doves in higher rafters browned in the thinnest glass. So, no woman could stand down, nothing was certain on hallowed grounds where babies laid in these horrific eggs stuffed like unclean streets to sleepy caverns where hounds could sniff and chained barbs were thrown over for their tearing barks.
Flames fraught through distant cries returned to aching skies while crows were coughing giggles at the ropes below. Through, and through again though, toughened them with their gaping woes, their frozen toes for scats in hooves and even the wormier warmth if squired past. Dirtied by the widened eyes of those he loved, friends of unwritable roars trickle back those sweet lullabies for in even the most wicked winds comes emptied hands. Toils for the old man's worth were simple; slippers or sandals, old shirts to their Salvation Armies, jeans, bands and wasted tissues.
THE WALKING FAMILIES’ STORIES
Five
"Trying to cry," the old man contemplated, slowly, rhyming something in his heart. He repeated these tomes. Black holes perspired throughout his fallow skin and bent his pores to retching and itching phallic of insects or bugs, trenching into the fears which pierced. Still, untried and intervened with incontestable hell, old oaths written through bloodlines whose velvet hearts pushed back fangs from the long-gone pharaohs’ terrific pillage and purge from dynasties behind eyes hung in terror. "Tying turnkeys." "Tired, turkeys." I had not heard of the convalescence of words through the primal animals of the kingdom of Earth, I pressed my ears and inner-eye to the bars of my threshold, wincing in startled empathy. The old man panted to prevent any more of the faint melody to draw blood through the retinas of their eye. With no quibble, a tremble sprung from behind their staring clutch at sanity, although loose on his side, within dark beyond the halls and doors of baptism, the old man's fantastic and morbid thrusts of spasming guilt and self-conscious, engrossing putrid shine threw a glowing halo back into the reflecting outlets of unplugged wires behind walls and faceplates, surrounding the vanity and mirror; a stalled hospice. Sparks flew into the thin air and the old man drew back the chair, squeaking its legs on the tiles, softly, like synthesized tunes played on electronic music machines. In the memories of splendors caught in disco balls, like dream weavers, the man marched to the shower, finally.
Even before the old one lifted up the cotton shirt, dandruff fell prematurely, away off a scalp, they both saw crossed boundaries. Adjacent to the storefront was a quiet, lonely corner, and diagonally, there were two rows of houses. They sat in distinct patterns, none identical. In the third house to the right, there was soft music which beat to the rhythm of a heartbeat which lived on dropping water, onto her eyes. The night-time charades of the next house in, were closed, too, where their curtains on the rows, and sheets across neighbors' hidden escapades veiled party rooms. The heart beat was slow, plodding, thudding and dark. The gutters; high, wore fallen leaves and twigs, acorns and cluttered pine needles into the eaves and broken, unpatched siding. The rooves, themselves, were almost always wet, stunk, rotten and molded.
The allure of this, from aloft in the old man's room drifted in on his skin, reverberating the dreamless and the anxious fate of torn lives against his wizened brow. The left side of his brain was held in mathematical pace, while the right side soaked in these immeasurable woes and impersonable conditions of human people, he had never met nor imagined in his short, forced, and romanticized life without language, choice, nor will. Then, the falling water sprung his eyes into a dance, mingling the thoughts of his mind with the sounds outside his body. The old man splashed his cupped palm, let the water drizzle and sprinkle through his fingers wildly onto the shower base and drain through my plumbing pipes, into the refuse of septic tanks, sludge and scum.
Winds rattled glass against the store's neon "Open" sign whisked dust, ashes, and leaf particles across the threshold. As a stumbling man walked down the paraded sidewalk, thumbs fumbled with a keychain in an old house jacket's pocket, and rubbing whiskers with left forefinger and calloused palm made him itch. Light which flickered from the third story window went unnoticed, but was one of the supernatural parts to the story that night, which drew me to curious repose and subtle contemplation of the journeys of madness I had allowed the lessor comfort and shelter from, in this mad world of intertwining logic and faltering, stuttering illogical design. In times when I had looked up to stars which rested in celestial clockwork for the mastermind of uncountable solar systems, I felt as if I was being watched, too, and at moments of despair was caught crying for lives I would never see again. Through this mirrored reflection of windows, doors, hallways, and steps to misadventures and quests of the clinging reality which waits in our lives, there is only the perpetuated flow of blood through the streams and rivers, tributaries and channels in art for capitalism's vain belongings. Then, the door clasps and deadbolts tightened, in scrutinous display of sympathetic cull to the cold lull of his ears.
The old man splashed water off of his scalp, letting its fall avalanche into the crevice of immutable cycles. In depth's ushered silences purveyed for the man's soli with the soils of his soul, theatric cacophony in cocoon. An ability to descend steps began, in his own rhythm now. Ample time had been observed, and he had lost his patience, which was not uncommon for those beings unwilling to cooperate with bureaucratic designs and their inherent flaws in society.
The old man was on schedule for every single piece of his day, stretching months and years into a checkered past. As part of a rehabilitation to community, the old man had become an unnoticed cog in the machine of systematic labor and laws, education and health, military and police, lines of welfare and scrum of well-being. Barbarism and melee were all but blurred into singularity, without glorification of intelligence or wisdom. Just being a gift to the presence of surveillant obeyance, the old man contemplated "to be or not to be,"'s redundancy, rather than the underlying factor of work and its travel across the time keeping device of survival's passionate account, in contrast with the tempo of temper and fury. Escape from forced will was what the two had in common, yet while the old man sought redemption through plague, his captivated sorrow's undignified longing for nativity was overwrought with straight mistreatment, and displacement from a habitat known to both as a home. Whereas the old man no longer could initiate the humans’ mating dances, his youth was confounded only by the walls of ambushed unease, diseased entrapment, and syndromic abandonment. As luck would have it, this ought prevalence of unstopped inertia from the capture of the species in the jungle- world of penal colonies below the equator, was force of habit which would undo the old man's rituals. He had watched men handle doorknobs only a few places, seldom allowed to witness any of the intricacies of manipulated, human mechanisms besides taught practices of charged children's reformed misery of confinement in boarding nurseries where he'd been trained, fielded and surveyed in the same disgraceful manner as the old man's wearisome, and now lost ways.
The epitome of extinct relict from another time, he was one of a relative race of homo erectus, sapient, caught in the excessive use against violent, domestic offenders, whose overseeing was committed by foreign, capitalist governments. However, the old man whose attempt at bandit rescue, and success at retrieval of the rarest specimen of experimentation, ever conceived, forgot to lock the top door of my apartment complex. The top door was unlocked, and at my monitor's suggestion, the bottom door was starting to unlatch. If this was his opportunity to excuse himself, and let truth be seen, I could not hesitate to allow true justice to become known by mankind. He needed a friend, and the old man was a known enemy of the sanctity of life, the state of personal freedom, and our environment of peace. Without being pushed, he climbed down to the door. Conspiratorial authorities held in secrecy of lies, apples picked from the tree of garden of Eden, itself. Asking of the greatest fulfillment in the universe, while peddling the souls of mischief, from the non-inquired, requires a shallow mind to operate instincts, with a facade of intelligence, and careless disregard of intellect. There were no rules set out by authorities which humanity had recognition of, only the paths of intuitive memory, which stirred his emotions from primary fear to secondary retaliation. His breed had not known the emotion of anger, in their long reign on Earth, and here, in a post-modern world, he was alone and without the biologic tools to learn the reality of his time and place.
At first, he felt fear, while the unknown returned in his mind, and unexplainable sights filled his eyes and ears. He stumbled against the top door, and felt the crevice between the wall, sliding his thumb and forefinger up the crack. Then, he tugged the opening, thrashing at it wildly, with his fingertips, but it would not budge, and he quickly became frustrated. First, he looked back up the stairway, and saw the same flickering lights, menacing from the heavens, and then he looked at the window, which was barely above his brow. His eyes lay on the stars above the rooftops. He was awestruck when he clambered at the windowpane, thinking it magic. It was not, and he felt the doorknob suddenly rattle. He pressed his ear to the knob, and listening, rattled the window again, pushing both of his palms gently against both the door and the pane of glass, and then, frustrated again, backed away, abruptly. The knob had shaken again, and he could feel the air from outside wisp onto his lips. So, in quick reaction, he jolted against the knob with his right knuckle, and felt it move, and his hand slid up slowly to the glass pane, and he felt the movement move him. This was a movement within his soul, connecting his spirit to the outside world, where freedom was both awake and asleep, both at the same time as he was enslaved, and freed.
There were sudden noises from outside, there was a dog barking, on its leash, down the street, handled by a resident, also, a cat made a run from his side of the road, in the same area, to his left. There was someone around the corner, whose trashcan lid was slapped, against the ground and the can, as he lifted a garbage bag into the container, on the curb. It was echoes of freedom, and they jeered in their cheer, it screamed in their song, and they laughed at his pain. Logic slid within the illogic of his obstacle, but with the eyes of the tempted, he had his goals laid on the savage streets, and had the forced plan of success, enforced in the same forged forfeit of ethic which had caused his own suffering in the walls of villainous redemption. He did one final service for his captor; to remember the sentiment which had caused the old man to steal him, which was simple with beauty, and not simplified in principle. "Every one of these young boys and girls, leaves here with their best, they receive bountiful truths, and their lives suffer less. So, who am I, but a man-child? Can I not learn, too?" the old man asked, and so had sacrificed his job and authority, anyway, to lose in post and then, his livelihood. For him. Applying pressure to the door handle, at the same time while the old man calmly stepped out of the shower and prepared the shaving cream and razorblade, the walkway that led from the door and the sidewalk shone and glittered with cement sprinkles, ancient sediments which had undergone transformation through their cultivation began to dance, like partying youths, or a celebrating nation.
He winced in curiosity and stared out into the road as he stepped out of the door. He saw a rotting apple, laying against the curb of the other side of the road, uneaten and littered. The side of it facing up was dented, badly, and although it constituted what would have been nutritional for his dietary needs, he thought it looked too disgusting to approach at present. The road began to incline shortly to his right, as to his left, it leveled off at another intersection. My storefront was to his right, behind him, and he began to examine the glass pane of the front window, when he heard the sound of the trashcan lid falling off, as a black, small, scavenging squirrel hopped off of it and toward the backyard. After the trash can clattered to the ground, there was a dog bark, too, and his attention was drawn back to his current prerogative.
He began to instinctively travel southward up the hill, staying near the edge of the sidewalk, and picked his feet up to a pace which was swift, like a jungle predator on a patrol of its most highly valued hunting grounds. His initiative was double fold, and both extremely urgent and cautiously careful. Having his captor's confusion on his side, he instinctively moved quick to a location which was less visible from the doorway which had allowed his escape. The old man, on the other hand, was still upstairs, beginning to smear the shaving cream across his chin and the skin of his jaws and cheeks. Quietly, with lowered water pressure from the sink, the man splashed water onto the blade, and began to smoothly shave his face.
The young ape reached the corner after studying the intersection with an intense anticipation and focus on the most confusing disarray of scenery he had ever imagined in his short life. He was lost, stumbling past a yard which was filled with uncollected trash and littered items including food wrappers fresh with the scent of half-eaten, crumbling cakes and plastic smudges of oil and grease. In near- panic, he strayed further from the front of the yards, and more toward the windows of the sleeping houses which lined the street where he had been released. There were trees in an upcoming lawn, and he began to feel stresses, primal and instinctive, to find shelter and hide from his captor. The leaves waved against the sky, blue and dark purple, black and shining with the light from distant stars, which became darker beneath the shadows of the closer, tall tree boughs.
Abruptly, another garbage can rattled across the road, and the young ape moved swiftly to the trunk of the tree, trying to cover from an oncoming attack. Instead, this can fell over, and a cat ran into view from behind it. She eyed the young ape, and began to cross to him, with discrete, ample caution, then, sensing fear, it darted off in stealth. Arching over the top of the trash can for an extended, enlengthened interval, over the range of seventy to ninety seconds, the young ape remembered the cat in the night. The ape grabbed and wished at inanimate objects to emulate the cat, pushing through clutter with his hand. Remembering a time before humans, from before domesticized, modern cat, I mused once more, the true timeline as the outlying thread of our contingent existence. The ape had traveled through the time barrier, in singularity with the centripetal force of the genetic centrifuge. Sifting through, in dazed agony, having epiphany groped with fierce revile of his ugly world, the ape felt sharp razor blades, piles of food debris, and a bag of tattered clothes that had deteriorated into stinking filth and been drenched in washed oil. A loose razor stung into the right palm, and his arms twisted back, quickly. A trickle of blood ran down the forearm, through thin fur.
Startled, the sight of bleeding caused panic to strike, viciously and suddenly. The ape ran through three front lawns, and then dodged up the side of a house, squealing a tone which was barely inaudible in the apartment above the store. By the time he was out of sight from the complex, he was running through the dark night, discombobulated and intensely broken with the overtaken sensory challenge posed by a world which was so out of synchronicity with his primitive or wild-driven reaction, which as he internalized in his mind, was barricaded by his own understanding of intra-simian comprehension. Finally, as he panted down into a fallen heap of feral outrage, the young primate planted himself into the crackling underbrush of a hedge which lay between two lawns and near a small vegetable garden. The chipmunks who had made their den from the spaces between a short rock wall which lay near a patio came to the surface, came with curious intrigue to peer into the garden, and the ape, from their hole. They watched as the young primate held his legs, locking his elbows, again, as he had done before. The fear was so overwhelming for him that he almost began to bellow and roar like a gorilla but managed to control himself enough to maintain his posture of run-away, finally grunting back to his feet in a wavering and clumsy step.
Something low to the ground, though, caught him off guard, and he felt the cat's whiskers against his stretching, hairy legs. The cat purred, mellowly, and circled him, and the young ape stayed motionless, excited, yet calmed in a euphoric elation. The cat was not the same one as the black cat near the store, but was a residential pet from the area up the street, and toward the top of one of the tiers of hillside streets and intersecting roadways which led to the top of the city's highest point. When he leaned to touch the cat, it ran. As antennae blinked in the view due east, he went west. Attaining his higher ground, the young ape was beginning to feel tired, and hungrier than he had initially planned on needing to account for. He wasn't at a complete loss for the need to continue seeking nourishment, however, so, he used the plan which had been initiated with the introduction of the cat, when he had injured his palm. His hand was not too hurt, and did not pose an obstacle to picking through the myriad of debris which was strewn throughout the roadsides.
The ape had been traveling west through the lawns of houses, and had changed his path to the more easily maneuverable sidewalk areas, when someone reported seeing a miscreant, homeless person prying in the neighborhood. The bus which had dropped the woman off, three corners and two streets down the hill from my store, curled back around its route and returned, instead, to the ape's periphery. It moaned and hissed, squealed and groaned as it drove past an intersection which led up the hill and went to the main hub, to the northwest, on the downtown line through town. The primate was startled away from his exhibition of confused prelection, and he began to run up the hill, further.
In the next intersection, the primate heard coughing from a house where the guest had been asked to use the front step to smoke his cigarette. Nervously, the man stood and flicked his ashes over the rail. He noticed the shape of the primate as they both stood momentarily still, in the twilight. The primate saw the next lane which led to the top of the hill as his only escape from a man who was too eerily similar to his captor, suddenly, too stricken with the same turgid lifelessness, forced through wellness as tedium of mortal existence rather than as an act of heroic compassion nor spiteless spate, merely unending days of coercion which led to inevitable corrosion of soul.
Finally, at the top of the hill, the ape saw a door, which in seriality, reminded him of his escape, somehow, always let open, for orphaned romance. He entered the dark hallways of the alien house, and walked up the stairs to the bedrooms, upstairs, and fell asleep, exhausted, weeping silently, beneath the bed of the young boy who lived within.
Punty
He slept, still, with unknown consequences, albeit in requiem of the larger pictures of earth, and in cooperation with an ultimately unimaginable magnitude of the plan of the gods, above. An ant walked through the lifting fogs which lined the streets. It had been foraging for its colony in the same garbage bins that had been fondled by the ape in his waltz within the streets of New York. Like Fay Wray Wray, the ant's precious exoskeleton had been lifted from the fray from the ape's meddling and curious investigation. The ant had fallen near the doorstep of the Wrights' residence, where the ape had fallen asleep beneath the son's bed. Mr. Wright, the lawyer, and Mrs. Wright, both lay sleeping, as young Warren was invaded by the alien primate.
Meanwhile, the strange ant walked beneath the fog, around in a circle, at the threshold of the door. A muddy clot had been left by young Warren in his return home, the previous night, from a soccer practice. The kids had been playing after the meet had ended, after removing cleats, and as parents arrived to pick the children up from the field behind a Baptist church. Two older groups of teenagers had walked by, cursing and being obscene, in Warren's view. They hurdled over the bench, and kicked at dandelions, laughing, uproariously.
The sound of summer, outside the Wrights residence, taunted, tempted, and poked into the antenna of the ant, harsh tempos of life in a world which at the flick of a wrist had lost all purpose for him. Mr. Wright, upstairs, tossed over his side, dreaming sailboats and freedom. As Horus sat with falcon's eyes, and within dreams awoke to houses of fallen wrath imposed by dreamless chaos whose furnishings of perpetual tome was epitome to the traversable, yet intricately designed paths, to heavens unseen by the inadvertently unatoned, laid by masons of caesarian advent, so did Warren, as one eye opened to the internal ravings of insanity which were unimaginable by humankind, below his slumbering den of comforters, blankets, pillows, and breezing air which flowed through their house, like all have. As easing by poltergeists might have felt through spiritual realms wherein the air can catch your eyes in blinking resonance of the hallowed grounds which compose us and compost us to the hereafter.
The ant, outside, wandered in blind confusion, as Warren switched his eyelids. There was a snorting, then, a snarling whinny. Suddenly, a bark, and grumbling neigh: a wild thrashing of air and whipping turbulence. Then silence. There was a horse, a stallion, standing in front of a stable, which was alongside many others, where there were many other horse riders. Darkness lifted and Warren stood in front of it, and looked around at the horse's legs and its body. The horse's chest was strong, its legs looked strong, and it had a saddle already on it. He was lifting his arms down, from having latched it on, and he was backing up, slowly, and appreciating the beauty which was magnificent, of the animal. Warren was older, too, and looked at his arms, with rolled up sleeves, which had hair and muscles. But then, he stared at his feet, and he shrunk and found himself waving his feet above the air, like a high seat. Quickly, he realized that he was moving, sitting on the horse, racing down a racetrack and speeding past a large crowd who were in bleachers and in droves, cheering from the stands and balconies. The announcer was talking through speakers which were loud, and music played from a live orchestra whose cymbals crashed in symphonic arrangements which engaged him in sensual drive for victory as he passed the finish line, and he spun around on his horse. Instead of a crowd of fans, or horses, there was just an empty stadium. Warren wondered where everyone had gone, and began to breathe heavier in his sleep. He felt a poke from behind, from a blade, on his left shoulder blade. Warren spun around and faced a sabre, waved by a snarling man with a moustache and leather jacket with a patch over his right eye and a hook for his right hand. Warren saw many men were behind him, angry and mob-like, and realized they were pirates.
Warren began to wake up, as the ant outside clambered for a few particles of food for its colony which had lost him. The ape was beginning to doze off, too, but began to become scared, and lay stunned, paralyzed, as the boy became conscious, for a brief moment. Warren lay on his back in the middle of the night, and the ape stayed on his back, as well. Warren began to follow the lull of sleep back into unconsciousness, within twenty seconds. Warren remembered the day before, his schoolwork, and thought about the comfortabilities of a nurturing environment like the one at school. He thought warmly of the classes and his lessons, as he drifted through sleep. In his lodging, with dusky hues draped across the sides of the objects whose known ornamentation were like insensate cravings for the shining which rang, in pulsating glow, along their precipice and dystopian placement for Warren's spun mind upon unmoving space. Enshrined in personal belongings and property of the physical world, he was reset against the intrusive shuffle of the ape, and beginning to restart his curious prose which rearranged his brain as he slept.
One memory became a focus, as his study partners discussed their science symposium projects with one another. Not feeling as though he should be left out, Warren interrupted with a question about the format to their project. The two classmates, a boy and a girl, both sneered in exclusion and singling him out, turned to each other again, in spite. They were working on an unsolvable theorem known as Fermat's, which had to do with equations for Pi, and the Golden Rectangle. This was not Warren's ultimate expertise, but was now a point of embarrassment for him. He remembered sitting at a table in the cafeteria, later that day. The boy next to him had a macaroni and cheese on a side tray. He looked at a piece of the pasta elbow, as it sat on the boy's plate, and began to drink his milk. The ant, at this moment, crosses the threshold of the house, under the door, with ease, and began to follow the ape, upstairs.
Following this, the boy began to have Deja vu, which is an internal reaction to one's timeline being tampered with from outside sources, and gripping at threads of reality which, like shards of a broken mirror, stare back at you in the horrid regret of looking at the unseeable, and knowing the true essence of one's life, if at only intermittent, and uncontrolled interval through our reality. This, inside a dream, started Warren's turbulent and tumultuous journey as blown through biorhythmic tones and randomly accessed memories where Warren was, again, inside school. He felt like he had just woken up, and was watching pieces of the symposium presentation from a seat in the gymnasium. The faces were smudged, though, and everyone present was watching and talking, raising their hands to ask questions, and mingling with one another, but he felt alone. The question was posed: "if on a lifeboat, lost at sea, with only four choices of items to bring, of which you must bring three, what would you pack with your oars, and what would you leave? A chocolate bar, bag of bread crumbs, life jacket and clear water jug?" One of the children near Warren began to anxiously wave their hand. He stared down at the ground, and oddly thought of bed, sleeping, home, and peace. The ground opened in a hole, and he fell in, from his seat. Warren woke up in his bed and it was late in the morning, or so he thought. He was actually within a dream, which was within a dream.
He turned on his side, and his stomach suddenly ached. He felt as though he hadn't eaten food in days, although he had been fed before bed, the previous night. He had sat with his family, with cold stares, self-absorbed chatter, and his father's prideful expectations sinking into his head from the other side of the table. Now, he felt as though that stare had caused an exhaustion of his own appetite, that evening, and as if he had left the table without filling his belly. He thought he could stand up, and walk downstairs to fetch the food in the refrigerator, or start breakfast, but was hindered by the unknowable hunger of a lucidly nightmarish dream. He clawed at a plate which was near his bed, and saw that his palms brought back crumbs, bread crumbs from a starving and meagerly rationed portion of food, in a foreign time. This food, or rather lack of, was not his, and his arms, again, looked old and manly, unlike his own soft and fair skin and muscle. He was a man in his dream, and he felt in his body the aching for food in his berserk stumbling over onto the floor beside the bed, where he was brought down to his knees by a subliminal, yet powerful gravitational pull, the force of which met with his awe-striking amount of desperation. Warren stood up, finally, and hobbled to the door of his house, from where his abode was between the kitchen, and on the first floor of the house, unlike his real home, where his bedroom was nestled to the side of the second story staircase and overseen by the doors of his sister and his parents. The same flight of steps which the mysterious ant, below, followed in his own act of sad desperation, toward his captor, the ape.
This was abnormal behavior by the ant, whose mind had been possessed by an unworldly spirit, intent on finishing the business which was commenced by the ape's escape. Then, the front door was flung open, with the tightening grip of fury which came with the insatiable hungering drive for food, which is so pivotal to life's survival that it is the very reason for the soul's existence. The young boy who had become a man saw as the front step of his house was surrounded by angry people, mad and raving, in a mob. They bombarded him, and attacked. Surprisingly, Warren found a way out; a giant beanstalk, which sprung out beneath him, from the ground; carried him to a higher realm, and deposited him in a sandpit. Where Warren landed, the sun was bright, blazing its ions of searing domination through the skies of clear day. He walked across the cloudless horizon of distance in solar degrees to the farthest shifting presence of land in island of deserted hopes. There was a sea, with dunes coasting the water's edges in a long beach which stretched for miles and miles, as far as his eyes could see. Warren walked along the sandy edge, as he watched waves crash against the tide, and create water marbling of the spaces between the falling waters. He avoided the surf, instead wandering up past the dunes and taking an attempt to make a view of any other landmass that might be landmark in this foreign country. But the country was barren, and there was the other side of the beaches' cape, mirroring the boy's solemn walk. The space between was rocky, filled with marvelous crevices, chasms, and ravines, truly broken scenery of untouched natural wilderness. No animal or wildlife, though, was around, not fish nor aviary specie came forth to produce itself, and no insects crawled nor flew. Warren strayed back toward the beach. His footprints from before arched around the dunes and into the sandy walk which he had propelled himself onto.
Suddenly, there was an earthquake, and a sinkhole began to form in the middle of the beach. It stopped, just as abruptly, and the sinkhole shuddered. Then, several hands came forth from the hole, like quicksand had trapped people inside, or other survivors had gotten stuck. The arms were strong, and pulled the people out, violently, as they thrashed around in the pit in front of Warren. The people had faces that were long and distorted, twisted and abnormal. The faces were like horses with bodies climbing the hole like human beings.
In stunned horror, as Warren awoke, the ant was traveling into the bedroom. Warren got out of bed in a cold sweat, trembling from the sleep loss and lack of endorphin and serotonin block coordination, dizziness and some amount of amnesia. He slid out of bed and out into the hallway, narrowly scuffing his feet by the ant. He walked down the hallway to the staircase, turned, and descended the stairs. In the front room, Warren gently put on his shoes in a sleepwalk-like trance. He laced them and tied them, and then stepped outside. The ape stayed in the room, and the ant crawled around the bedroom, and then up onto the posts of the bedframe, and onto the bed. Later, it would fall back down to the ape, and land on him. Warren, on the other hand, was only beginning his real journey, awake from his nightmares. He was walking to the corner store, for beer and for cigarettes, like any off-base army recruit might, if given the chance to be off duty. He was only eight years old, yet his dreams of hunger had left him feeling the weight of the modern addiction, and so, Warren started to walk downhill, to my store.
Wood
"So, let's sell you a car!" In his closing, the salesman would slip his tagline in, a bit over the top, and would always add his trademark palm-rubbing and necktie adjusting, before the finalization of the sales at Otto's Auto Sales and Financing Company. He and his friends out of high school would yell "punch- bug, no punch back!" at each other in the back of their friends' cars, "woodie, no flinching, double hit!" These were days of golden youth followed by searching through the world for trouble in the form of afternoons at his friend's house with booze, barbequing, and card games which rotated between spades and Texas hold'em, whenever the Kennedy brothers showed up.
His friends would then go on to auto shop trade schools, go to college and receive bachelor's degrees in various curriculums, and then attend the life of patronizing labor that seemed to have escaped them, earlier in life, only to return as harshly as the winter dances had ice storm, or bushes by the bonfires held brambles. Then, as they grew older, John O'Toole became a truck driver, with commercial driving license, and Tommy Taylor ended up in the restaurant business, and throughout their 20's the salesman frequented Taylor's bar and grill while working at an older graduate's father's used car lot. Brent Harvey eventually inherited the car lot, and there it sat off the through-way which ran through town.
The salesman would sit in his sun-bleached dress shirt on his break, in the breakroom, and plan out trips to Mexico, chasing the dream that many have shared of experiencing the things that are only wonders to our youth. The unknown which is equivocated as the unseen, unimaginable drawn as the synonymous yet unconquered, for many, is the drive for life which outstands the daily doldrums of despondent destitute (if allowed to untangle itself with this lust for the wilder bodies of worldly spirits and the spirituality, which is carnal.) As with others, his anxious feelings were quelled with the return to the chasing determination of the same category as a greyhound may chase a hare in a dog race, or as while a carnivorous animal chases its prey through the brush beneath the jungle floors where its domain was kept in languishing self- appreciation of the success of its hunt.
Warren walked by the door of his neighbor, the salesman, and steadied himself in his delusional state for the walk which lay before him, down the street and down the hill, and around the corner to the corner store where he had seen the salesman one afternoon. The salesman had stopped into the store one day after a slew of automobile sales left the showroom almost completely emptied. He had smiled at young Warren, and said "Hey, I know you! You're the boy next door, I just sold your old dad a new Hyundai. Tell him I said hello, and have a great day, Warren." And Warren had walked up to the counter with his candy bars as the man left out the front door. Ten months later, his girlfriend had broken up with him, and he had needed Mr. Wright's advice for who to consult about a lawsuit she was intending to pursue about a broken television which had fallen off the wall, from where it had hung, during their final argument. Mr. Wright had pointed him to the office of a fellow attorney who charged the man a decent price for a consultation and before legal proceedings continued, she had dropped the threats and had moved in with a workout gym owner.
The salesman showed up at the bar and grill more often for several months. Eventually he had a date, whom he had met at the bar. She was in her 30's, but younger than he was by half a decade. She ended up moving to Ohio after their brief courtship, and he seemed to be on the verge of mental collapse for months later. Eventually, the owner of the bar and grill, Tommy Taylor, called him and urged him to take a vacation. Mexico was refreshing for the salesman, and he continued the hobbies of planning and exercising to stay in shape for the beach for several years. He was 44, now, healthy and happy. Warren continued by the house, and thought nicely of him.
Warren walked down the street, and admired architectural designs of the houses, many of which were newer, built after the 1960's. It made them seem brighter, with fresh wood along the trimmings and shining siding in the early sunlight. He stepped along the sidewalk swiftly, at first, soaking in the rays to whisk the chill off of his shoulders. The air had cleared after the early fog, and it was cool and seemed as though it may have been getting humid at an earlier time, just before the June solstice. He crossed the road in a melancholy daze, and continued, with patient reflection and yet an acute sense of empathy which came with the captured essence of freedom as instilled within him by the ape laying underneath his bed and sleepy lucidity of a shared mental algorhythm.
Next, he crossed the street, at a corner which had all-way stop signs, yet no cars were being ridden in the half-mile of space between him and the nearest major intersection. There were oak trees lining the road and curbside near the corner which he crossed to. Tall and wide, dark and foreboding. As he continued by the right side of them, he heard the squirrels in the branches above, chattering. The sound of a twig breaking beneath his shoe broke their conversational silence, between himself and the squirrels, and they broke their stride across the leaves and limbs.
There was a long lawn to his left with freshly mowed grass, and neatly kept hedges surrounding the first floor of an older model of house which was rebuilt in the 1940's after being bought by a former and retired judge, whose new residence was left to his inheritance in the name of his only child, a young lady and her family, who moved into their new house, and foreclosed the city property with a bank who sold it to a new councilman whose district seat hinged on his visibility to the community.
The judge moved to a retirement home, and was still alive in his 90's, which was partly due to an exercise regimen, which he had kept up through his 40's and even in his 60's. His father had been a judge, as well, and he was deeply fond of the television programs which portrayed the police in serial episodes and shows which dealt with the older times of America. The obsession was far from infatuation, and as he grew older, he preferred the crossword puzzles which were circulated around the retirement facilities, and his grandchildren.
The new councilman married, and never had children, but remained with his spouse because of their mutual love of many of the same things, and it was a bond between them as they both aged. She had gone back to school for nursing but ended up with a psychology degree after switching her career path in her late 20's. They had met when she was a hair stylist receptionist, which she had gotten as a position while she lived alone after completing only the first year and a half of college. He had completed a degree in political science and was working at a law office, while attending law school, as an office assistant. They had met at the Taylor bar, on a night when the salesman had been nursing his relationship with the former girlfriend. The songs which had come on were early 80's soul music, and their meeting had been momentous when they shared a bowl of shrimp and discussed politics, of which they were both on the conservative side and in agreement, while watching a Yankees game that one of the councilman's friends had bet money on, and won. They were happy together for the evening, and met again, to do a yacht cruise of the Hudson River.
From there, romance was in the air, and the two attended each other’s special functions and dated, solidifying the marriage in Florida, in Cape Coral. His wife, then, became an elementary school teacher. She had taught two of the four kids who were rambunctiously disruptive in youthful comradery at the park where Warren had played soccer. But that was many years, before, and they had only gotten older on their old path and had fallen susceptible to the inconspicuous match made from the haystacks of dried humors which consist our stratifications fledgling inception through due course to adolescence's teenaged rage which only drowns those who have unsolved problems, stemming from their youth's incandescent and phosphorous, glowing, brightly as wicking lanterns, the haphazard of life with unexplained boundaries, and only vibrant illumination's guiding perpetuation of a life where their blinding lights have dimmed and become controllable, even in sparkling of education's fathoms. She now taught the children of the gym owner, whose girlfriend had been the source of the salesman's rue, and objection, then returned to the inspirational choices of earned freedoms.
The councilman had been vocal about the continued beautification efforts of the city, also, and contributed to the very parks where the children of the town could meet and exercise, play sports, and enjoy those freedoms. Warren had often been in the parks of the town, after school and during the summer with his parents and his friends. Soccer was one of the many games they played together, which filled the air with the heat of intensity in the invigorating stretching of their bodies and their playful minds, as well as kickball, tag, and capture the flag. He forgot them, once school started, but Warren had many friends in the parks, of various different ages.
Warren Wright walked past the next house, staring off in the distance at the blinking antennae which sat high over on a hill on the other side of town. Trees lined much of the horizon on the hill, and a telephone wire line was carved into the landscape. The next house was home of an accountant and law secretary, and their family. The children were younger than Warren, two girls whose schooldays were spent in a different school than Warren, in a private school, and a 9-year-old brother.
The accountant was involved with sports leagues with his son, and volunteered at the little league events. He had been a little leaguer, himself, in the late 1960's, and had played shortstop. He had gone straight to the dealership for his own vehicle, a van. He was somewhat of a big spender, and enjoyed using his financial gains to purchase amenities.
Aside from saving funds for his three children for their education, he had taken out life insurance policies for himself, his wife, and his kids. He also renovated their newer house, but in his own humble vision, and added a secondary room on the first level of the house with the help of his wife's salary savings. It was meaningful work to him, to build and create memories while working on projects that were each made with the care of his own touch.
A few years after he made the purchase of his new vehicle, he drove the family out to Detroit, to visit his brother. His brother worked at an auto-repair shop, and made good money for a living where he used his hands a lot more than his younger brother. They had maintained friendship by way of each's responsibility to their parents, who had also lived in Detroit until they died in the 1990's. His wife was a bus driver in the school districts outside of the city.
The accountant spent part of his time as a volunteer for the Rotary International, and helped coordinate entrepreneurship and business awareness events within the city, also donating part of his time to assist with bookkeeping for the annual fair. When his son reached the age of little league, though, his efforts in volunteering faded, quickly. He spent more time with the sports sections of the newspapers and became an avid fan of radio baseball broadcasting.
His wife was a painter, and had learned classically in her education to draw and paint elaborate landscape pictures. She sold her pictures at a highly valued price through local restaurants and had a showing at an art gallery in a nearby, larger city, when she was younger. She also kept a website to sell paintings, online. Sometimes she would blog on her website, and the organization of her thoughts onto the platform of the internet was vivid and contemplative. When the accountant and his wife were beginning to feel older, in their late 40's, the law firm secretary began yoga classes. The accountant still enjoyed bike-riding through the parks, with his wife, and their children would sometimes accompany them on adventuring tours of their neighboring areas. Warren knew them as being of the kind of people you could look up to, and not envy, but slowly begin to assimilate.
Seven
As Warren Wright walked past the fifth house on the block, he had crossed the street to, he saw the United States flag waving in the light breeze on its pole, sitting off the porch beams on the side away from the mailbox, which was on the right side of the house. The man here had fought in Operation Desert Storm, in Afghanistan. In 1948, the beginning of the Arab-Israeli war was a brutally bloody confrontation which sparked the proceeding century of turmoil within the cultural heart of the Middle-East. After four hundred years of rule by the Ottoman Empire, the Central Powers abuse of their strength as transportation hub of natural resources, which grew in importance during World War One, led to the collapse of one of the longest-standing Arabian empires, of all time. Now, the ex-soldier worked as a driveway paver and snowplow driver in the winter months. He was a hunter, and spent as many days in fall and winter with his friends as he possibly could.
The next house was across the street, and Warren crossed to the next corner. It was owned by a retired stock broker, whose divorce had left him the dog, broken heart, and in a new house on a less expensive side of the city. They had raised their children in the country, and had done alright, but as they had both broken their vows, they separated and then finalized the divorce papers. When his dog died, he bought a cat, which he let go outdoors, even though the cat he had owned in the country had been hit by a car. He had started to hate cars, then, and preferred horses, like the ones he had grown up around. He started taking horse-riding lessons, and enjoyed them on nice summer days, and had been out riding within the previous month, twice. He was retired, and happy to not have the same number of responsibilities as he once had. The squirrels which ran across the stock broker's house and eaves barked at Warren and each other.
The next house's driveway had two gargoyles sitting on either side of the entryway, with their left paws holding their chins, grimacing downward off of posts. Their wings were poised for flight, hovering over each's shoulders. There was a "Beware of Dog" sign on the door, and inside was a German shepherd named Bart. The dog didn't bark at strangers whose paths never crossed the gatewayed driveway, it was a good dog, and did not often bark at the mail couriers either. The owner was another retired schoolteacher, who had bought the house on terms which were re-negotiated of her becoming the principal of a local high school. She remained as an assistant, and took on the command of the theater department, which coincided with her English teaching, of which she had minored in at college. She had taught one of the mailmen and had tutored with one of the assistants in the mayor's office, who knew the councilman up the street. She, though, had never married. She liked to take the dog on walks, often, and enjoyed the countryside's trails, through the Northeastern mountains and Appalachian nature paths in the Catskills, and the Adirondack peaks in the north, where she used a canoe to paddle the lakes and rivers, alone, sometimes. Sometimes, she had friends from college, who would accompany her, but as they got older, they separated their own paths from each other. Chipmunks scurried and hopped along and into the rock wall which stood past the driveway. It was a small property, and it had a birdbath and hummingbird feeder in the front, near an open porch, much like the other porches which lined the next street. It was set back on top of a short hill, and there were hanging plants and hedges along the side of it and the driveway.
Then, a red sedan drove by, a Ford Taurus. Warren heard it turning the corner around the block. When it reached the intersection behind him, it slowed down and stopped, at the all-way stop signs. In the store where Warren was headed, however, the old man's heart was slowing down, almost stopping, as he lay naked in the bathtub. He had eaten the brainwiping drugs, first, then, the suicide pill had been cut in half, and he had committed to a half of his life, behind bars, later that day. When the ambulances arrived, they saw a girl come running from the house across the street, claiming she had seen everything. They never got her name, but the search for an ape who had escaped its home must have been astoundingly odd to the Sheriff's office and Rangers. The Taurus belonged to an out-of-towner, who had recently bought the used car, elsewhere. He swerved into position in his lane, as he turned right up the block where Warren was walking. Warren turned his head to face him, and the car drove up from behind. Warren was on the left side of the sidewalk, and the car was on his right, as it puttered up to, and then passed him. The man who was driving was bald, and he smiled, baring his teeth.
The ape lay on his side, facing the edge of the bedroom, where the door to the hallway lay still, cracked open, and a light shined from below, in the first floor. Then, the ape rolled onto his side, in deep sleep. He dreamed of an ant colony, piling out of a hill in the dirt inside a jungle. There was another ape, and he watched a chimpanzee poke at the ants with a primitive tool, stick.
On the next block, before the turn to my store, Warren walked by an abandoned house. It had been robbed, while inhabited by the former owner, a music shop owner. Then, it was burglarized, again, after he had moved, and died. There was a family of mice that lived in the backyard, and they had a way into the house's basement through a low, foundation-level window. There was also a family of groundhogs, and they lived in the back area of the backyard, near the dividing fence which ran across the backs of the adjacent properties.
As the car cruised out of sight, Warren made his way past the abandoned house. The groundhog had been rummaging in the bushes which sat in the backyard, and when he heard Warren approach, he ran back to his den hole. Warren continued walking past the next house, which was owned by a different landlord, who had invested into the property after he had left his college-path career choice of working at a tax office. He had done well in business school, and had moved onto property management after a colleague expressed his opinion of the lucrative work. It wasn't quite as demanding as the tax office, yet far from a peripheral job title, and he often had to respond to calls from tenants regarding maintenance, and other negotiations with regards to financial business, renting and leasing, and other matters which held the sensitivity and responsibility that came with his office.
Out of the top window, the upstairs tenant saw Warren, from the side of her eyes, crossing in front of the property. She was the receptionist at a local salon, and dated a security guard at the mall which stood as a relic of simpler times, when families frequented these places in happiness and were swooned by the forms of entertainment which seemed endless within the doors of capitalism's heart. The mall had gotten slightly old, since the site's reconstruction in the 1980's, also, the population had bubbled, and many of the families who would normally be customers at the mall were no longer seeking the same kinds of utilization from the mall. It had, instead, become the destination employment for many of the children as they passed through high school to college. The movie theaters were still popular, but long gone were the golden ages of Hollywood’s prosperity.
Beneath her lived two roommates who shared the subleased space, two men who had not graduated from college, and instead took jobs in different capacities within the city and close to their apartment. One was a construction worker, who gave money to the other to buy weed for both of them, while the other worked as a delivery driver and part-time cook for Sal's restaurant.
Roaming
Life is like a car which is destined to break; you can ride it to where you want to go, but the gods of the universe will decide when the brakes fail, and you will die. You can pray to gods, and change the brake, every so often, but it will only prolong the inevitable. You will ride the car, for your life, and you will sleep in the unknown fear of the constant universal of death. And the afterlife is like being stuck with no ride, and told to sit in a room, and in this way is like prison. Success, itself, is a credit of humanity's enslaving, and yet true happiness is most similar to a place you don't need to run from, nor will it ultimately destroy you. Ignorance is the natural ability of our surroundings to stop a community's happiness, and from it, hatred, itself, comes from the internally misunderstood. Simplicity within chaos is the thought process which leads to progress toward fulfillment our life, which is joy of true freedom. Like dragons in hell, searching for peace when immortality was violence.
In ancient, prehistoric times, islanders in the Mediterranean persecute two village families. One is a cobbler's family with three daughters and a son, living with their aunt on their dead mother's side, and an aunt on the father's side and the father. The other one is a mule runner's family with two female cousins from the father's side and four younger sons from their mother and father, and also two daughters from one of the father's brothers. They are persecuted, as are many, and live, in times of oncoming ice ages and constant oppression from the mainland kingdom. They learn of magicians who live on weatherships, who can splice their children's genes with fish to create mermaids.
Home
The two families struggle against each other, and with each other, working together to defend themselves from the imposed ruling kingdom. Their livelihoods, based on the transportation of imports and exports, and their livestock, and inherited cultural traditions are not allowed to come to mainland. The other islanders begin to leave their home on boats sent by the king, and the two families try to hide. In moments of desperation, they formulate conspiracies to burglarize their neighbors.
The modern story returns, while the young boy's older sister awakens at sunrise with her bedroom shades drawn. She hears noises in the closet between her closet and her sibling's bedroom. In the dark, she sees the primate's shadow as it scurries to the closet. The door of the closet swings for the primate to enter. Inside, there is a giant man's shape, who is covered in a brightly whitened screen and thin lens, shining black and green, digitized lights beneath. Above the man's shoulders grows a blinding pyramid from a shining giant eye. The man and the primate disappear, as the door suddenly closes, again. The girl thinks she is dreaming, and starts to sit up in bed in disbelief and surprise. She hears the door-knock of her brother at the front of their house, and quickly hops out to answer him. Their parents do not notice or hear, and she lets her brother inside, and sees he is acting strangely, but not intoxicated. When she goes back upstairs with him to their bedrooms, she sees a book on her bed. It is a photo album, which is blank.
Travel
Warren Scott Wright walked to the corner and turned left, slowly made his way past the next driveway while staring at the storefront. It was closed, as it had been scheduled to be for the morning, until 10 AM. He didn't notice this, at first. What he did begin to notice, was the sound of the same muffler as the red car returned down the street. The bald man who drove to the driveway across from the store pulled over, and he let out a young woman, who walked up the driveway into the house, there.
Warren had stopped walking, and he silently watched, from a location he held near the middle of the block before the corner store. He began to sense danger, and continued with reproach, as the car pulled back away from the curb. He walked up to the next block in quiet respect for his elders. When he saw that the door was open on the side, near the apartment, he walked up to it, and investigated.
Upstairs, the old man was pushing his brain in and out of comatose, having taken the pills which he expected to overdose on. His intention had still been suicidal but had failed, and he mumbled and frothed his mouth, in his sleep. He dreamt of beaches with whalers, and of glaciers of ice which formed over sandy dunes. Warren touched the doorframe, downstairs, and then spun, and walked away.
INKLING OUR ENDING
Writings of the Curse
When the world ended, many things seemed to happen all at once. A local Chinese landlord was making an emergency departure for Hong Kong, later to be intercepted by the raging monsters of our nightmares. All of the cats and dogs on Earth began to mysteriously disappear, leaving new mutant breeds on distant shores which seemed to affect the domesticated animals’ nervous systems. The reign of gods was beginning, and humanity was quickly catching up to pace. Candice April Wright was sound asleep, having gone back to bed at an early hour from being awoken by her brother’s front door knocking. This door was usually kept unlocked, but something strange had happened in those early hours of the morning, pre-dawn in early June. She had set the photo album aside, on her nightstand, and set herself back against her pillow, and allowed dreams to fill her mind. They poured into her thoughts, and swirled the emotive pulses of chemical wavelengths which electrified her imagination. She had no idea what the days ahead had in store for her, her family, and the planet Earth.
Zombies had begun filling the streets of the East Coast during just the last week, yet the infection was still prevalent in mostly only major cities. The entire country was already on lockdown, proceeding reports of mid-western states being bombarded with plagues of insectoids, the varieties of which had never been documented. It had all started in only late March, and the state of affairs domestically and abroad deteriorated exponentially. Twenty years earlier, the introduction of a new, other-worldly street drug had widely worsened the population of homeless people in New York, as well. Financial crises were at windfall to the economic misfortune dealt to the American market by a failing infrastructure. Health organizations were teetering on self-implosion, and the only recourse was the assembly of militia teams who were aligned with the drafting of the United States Army.
Candice hadn’t been required to go to school in six weeks. In fact, the entire last semester of her Senior year had been disastrous, despite her ability to ascertain a high academic standing. It had ended without any ceremony, and the students had received diplomas in the mail. While scheduled coursework was still due, the school faculty had disassembled. Everyone was studying remotely, using video conferencing and email for their participation. Candice was able to sleep until later in the morning, and had stayed up the night before, watching television programs and the local news. The luxury of sleep was provided with a stipulation, however, and it was a bargaining that was compliant with the grand symphony of chaos which spun out of control throughout the universes. Albeit, less sympathetic for the young girl’s vitality than anything she or any human would be accustomed to. She had been visited in the night, by a strange dream-like illusion in her closet. A figure in a sparkling white robe, with a spinning, glowing pyramid for its head, and the strange appearance of the photo album had been noticed yet not analyzed. Candice had assumed that she was in a dream, still. She had let her brother back inside, then she had gone back to bed.
Candice’s mother and father stayed asleep throughout the entire night, without known worry or reason to care. They were undisturbed, but would have been infuriated with Warren’s psychotic lapse of rational reasoning. Candice had decided to keep the situation quiet, but she had witnessed him as a possessed shell as he had re-entered the house. Now somebody else was after her brother, little Warren Wright. But another someone was after her, as well, too, and something from another dimension was already getting ready to invade her dreams. The forces of evil were mingling among the people of Earth Realm, and sides were being decided in the war which would soon erupt from Hell and as cast down from Heaven. Already, military units were being called into action to form deadly alliances among the nations of Earth. Across town, at Candice’s friends’ Justin and Janice’s house, Justin was sleeping with his shotgun next to his bed. Mr. Wright had a revolver hidden in his sock drawer, in a locked box. Families across the world were arming themselves for the oncoming, yet completely foreseeable war.
The wall next to Candice’s bed had a window, facing the west and the backyard, and over it was placed a dreamcatcher. It had been a gift from her paternal grandmother, who was an Irish Baptist. She had not worked, and had depended on her husband, Candice’s grandfather, who was a banker. Her paternal grandfather was Welsh, and both grandparents were second generation Americans with firm footings in society. The other side of her bed was against the wall, which was entirely corkboard. It was filled with magazine pictures, cut-outs, and pinned keepsakes. Her dresser was long and had a 4-foot-tall mirror on it, adorned with other gifts; including a scarf, earrings, and a pearl necklace given to her by her maternal grandparents who had been laborers at a local car factory and recent immigrants from Germany. They were named Lieb, which was her mother’s, whose name was Scarlet’s, maiden name. Her father’s name was Chadwick.
In particular, the dreamcatcher was shining in the faint light which tempered beneath the café curtains. Dreamcatchers were traditions held over from Algonquian peoples, which were adopted by American capitalist culture in the 20th century. Before colonization of America, hundreds of languages existed in the regions. Natives had not settled the entirety of the land, as population sizes were different then they are today. There were 32 language families, and even more isolated languages. Today, of the 300 original indigenous spoken languages, only 75 are still circulated. The dreamcatcher was glimmering, and faintly vibrating. The legend of the dreamcatcher is that a spider woman from the other dimension will find your bad dreams and cleanse them, in the center of the circular shaped web of twine. This one, though, was cursed.
Someone else was walking toward the Wright house. In the moonlight, the man waded through the raising mists in a very large hooded sweatshirt. Down the hill, the ambulances arrived and picked up an overdosed addict from across the street, while a man clambered out of his tub in the apartment above the store. His name was Edward Soltero, and he had tried to commit suicide, and failed. The man who was walking toward the Wright house, was one of five invaders, whose encounters were all within the same night. The moonlight man had followed Warren Wright, and he had been obsessively following Heidi, the addict, for the entire previous month.
As the man dressed in moonlight approached the front door of the Wright residence, Candice thought she heard something from the window near her bed. The man was Ernst Rainard; he was known as the human pickle in the psych ward. Candice couldn’t force herself to sit up in bed, being too tired and too frustrated to regain consciousness. Instead, as Ernst Rainard reached toward the doorknob, something suddenly breezed past his shoulder, and startled him causing a rippling nervous reaction. It was only the wind dropping a nearby branch of a young maple sapling which had been planted on Arbor Day for Candice’s twelfth birthday. But when Ernst stared at the doorknob, he felt a strange and evil presence summoning itself against his arm and hand, causing contention to pursue.
Inside, Candice would begin her first hallucination within a dream. She saw herself emerge in a toy shop which was just like the one in Hobb, filled with various stuffed animals and an antique model train set. There were puppets and dolls on the walls, and no doors or windows. Although her dream was vivid in its color and vibrancy within the world it was created within, it was dead silent. Then, she heard her clothes’ muffled rustle against the dolls as she touched one. It was a life-like puppet which was tall and blond like Candice. She ran her hands through its hair, and stared at it. On one of its fingers, the left-hand middle finger, was a beautiful diamond ring. Outside, Rainard was oddly confused at his abrupt lack of initiative, but vowed to return one night soon.
Candice put the puppet back down, and then looked twice at the puppet’s diamond ring, and decided that she wanted it. She held the puppet by its arm and removed the ring from its small hand. The ring was too small for her finger. When she tried to fit it back onto the puppet’s hand it wouldn’t fit, though. She set it down next to the doll, and turned and looked at the other toys in the shop. Then, she saw another puppet with a similar ring. It was a boy puppet, that reminded her of her father. She took the ring off, out of curiosity, and tried to fit it back onto the puppet’s hand. Again, it would not fit, so she put the ring down next to the puppet. To her surprise, the first ring had disappeared off of the shelf. She started to walk over to inspect more closely, when she realized that the one that she had just set down had disappeared, as well. Meanwhile, Ernst was hatching a scheme to revenge his loss.
She heard a small, high-pitched giggle from below the middle shelf, where there was a cupboard. She ran her finger carefully along the top of the lower cabinet and shelf, while she contemplated opening the strange drawers and looking for whatever made the noise. While she started to return the motion from the left to the right, there was a scratching at the drawer near her thigh. The scratching caused the drawer to vibrate slightly.
“You can hear me, can’t you?” A voice projected from out of the cabinet. It was female, patronizing.
Candice was immediately frightened and shocked. “Hello? Who?”
“Do you think you’re real? Is this all real?” The thing started, “I’m not real, nothing is. Take a look around you and ponder the significance of the world as it is presented. Watch for the nuance; the underlying reality we observe signified is secretly a misdirection queued by the supernatural. We have a mission for you.”
Candice didn’t move for a moment, then looked around, anxiously, waiting for somebody else to show up and explain the phenomenon she was witnessing.
“You don’t have to open the drawer.” It said, vindictively.
Then, silence again, in the room. Candice backed up and looked again for the door. An exit sign had appeared, but it was over an empty bookshelf.
“You’re trapped in a dream, Candice.” The drawer magically opened. But nothing came out from within the drawer, just the incessant sound of the thing which spoke such irritating thoughts. The sound of its sinister voice reverberated, in her head. “You’ll go only where you are allowed while you are here. Or, you’ll die in ten days.”
Candice kept skeptically quiet. She was in disbelief, but not as much scared as perturbed and angered by the insults. Then, “I’m going to wake up.”
“Yes.” The voice simultaneously switched to a male’s voice. It was simulating Rainard’s, and from out of the drawer raised a human head with a raven’s wings on it. It was a skull, with burnt and bloody flesh hanging off the bones.
“Candy?” The sound of Mr. Wright’s voice echoing through the hallway awakened Candice from her lucid dream. “What’s happened to Warren? He’s been bitten by something on his arm. Are you awake?”
Candice sleepily leaned over and looked at her nightstand, and saw the clock radio said that it was 9:00 AM. It was June 9th and there was no school, and there was no reason to worry about the nightmare she had just been expelled from. “Dad, I’m still sleeping.”
“Candy,” Warren’s cry was startling to Candice. Even as she rolled over to get out of bed, she could sense his pain. She slipped on her slippers, and pushed herself up out of bed. A lacrosse ball rolled off of her slipper, and bounced against the wall behind the headboard.
“I’m coming,” Candice tried to sort out the events of the previous night, suddenly. It was strange, a feeling of de ja vu swept over her, and she thought she heard something rattle in her closet. It was only her father, approaching her doorway, and she saw his shoes’ shadows beneath the doorframe. She stood up as fast as she could, and put her robe on. She was wearing a My Little Unicorn t-shirt and her night pants, and her hair was still messy, as it often was in the morning before she had a chance to shift it back with her hands. Her entire family was light brunette, she was the only blond, her height was five feet ten inches and she weighed about 135 pounds. After she stood, she looked in the mirror on the dresser. Quickly, she shifted her hands to fix her hair into a ponytail, as she had become accustomed to doing, recently. “Warren was outside last night.”
“What?”
“Warren was outside, I don’t know if he was sleepwalking, but I just went back to bed.”
“Then, what’s this bite on his arm?”
Warren came wandering into the hallway as Candice finally opened the door. “-I think something bit me, last night.”
Something had maimed Warren, and if it hadn’t been for the appearance of the alien figure in the closet, it would have remained in the house. It had been a mystic ant, enchanted with a poisonous curse. When the stranger from another dimension abducted the primate, which had slumbered beneath Warren’s bed, it had brought the ant, as well, to another dimension. The primate had delivered the ant, and now both were stranded in separate dimensions, waiting for Candice to cure her brother. Warren was infected with a deadly poison, a pawn in a game of mortal souls between the beyond and reality.
Warren felt horribly sick, and staggered back to his bed. Chadwick Wright started to speak, “Thank you, Candice, I can’t figure out why he’s acting this way.”
Candice shut the door and changed her clothes. She heard Mr. Wright and Warren talking in the hallway, but did not listen with intent to interpret. Nonetheless, she understood that somehow Warren had been injured during the night, and their parents were concerned.
At noon, Candice started to plan on the rest of her afternoon. She had enough of being lazy, and began to change her attire and get ready for a day with her friends. Rebecca was going to Janet’s house, and she was busy devising a way to coerce both of them to go with her to visit Jeff Cannes at the video game store. She wore a purple shirt and khakis, and spent some time taking care of her shoulder-length hair. Then, she politely asked her father to borrow his car, which he happily obliged. She had been on a clear course for college in the fall semester, and had been awaiting reception letters from a few state colleges. She hesitantly checked the mailbox on her way walking down the driveway, and saw that it was not full yet.
As she drove by the delipidated houses through the rundown side of town, she could have noticed one of the men from the previous night was crossing through a corner store parking lot. It was Edward, as he wandered back to his apartment from a drug deal which had gone awry. It didn’t matter to Edward, though, as he wandered off with just slightly less money in his wallet. His day was just beginning. He had been in a daze since the suicide attempt, and needed to shake himself off before authorities would arrive to complain about the lost primate. On a different side of town, Ernst was sleeping in an abandoned house, again. Neither were acting rationally, having been affected by the curse which was soon to disrupt our dimension. Mr. Rainard was in and out of the homeless shelter, recently, anyway, but his dreams were disturbing and his recluse behavior was a red flag for an overwhelmed police district. Civil unrest was contagious, and criminal activity and pedestrian panic were breaking rules set through public ordinates which had been newly instated.
Edward had sold an expensive looking ring for a loose stash of dope. When he got back to his apartment, he went to his bedroom and tried to turn on the television. He was beginning to become delusional, and the television channels became a part of his hallucination. But it seemed very real, and in many ways, was. There was a program he had never seen which had a strange, violent, ugly clown on it. He was blowing balloon farm animals and popping them, aggressively, and then blowing bigger ones and popping them. Then, the balloon he blew was filled with blood and it splattered across the stage. The clown smiled, eerily, with long teeth, and blew a last balloon and punched it lightly toward the cameraman, where it floated all the way up against the screen. It made a noise against the screen and his set crackled and became static.
Edward walked up to the television set and lightly shook the screen. He bent down toward the front of the set to look closer, and as he looked down, the skull with the raven’s wings reappeared in the room above the television. It leapt off and swooped at him, and bit his face, sticking its mouth against his like a sick kiss. Then, it morphed into his face, melting itself with his.
While Candice drove to the Taft residence, Mr. Rainard, the human pickle, was waking up with the new discovery that he, too, had lost a ring. It was his most prized position, and it had disappeared somewhere in the abandoned house. He ran up and down the stairs looking in all of the rooms, for a few hours that afternoon.
As Candice was arriving, Janice and Justin were watching the news. Their house was a white two-story with a basement. They were both in the den, and their parents were working. The Tafts were both business professionals, both accountants. Lisa was also a realtor, and Terrance was a senior financial advisor. Henry Kennedy arrived just beforehand, wearing a black rugby shirt and blue jeans. He was a friend of Justin’s and unrelenting suitor of Janice. Justin had a similar, lighter colored outfit on, striped, and Janice had on red striped sweatpants, a yellow shirt, and a matching hooded sweatshirt. The news had shown the concentration camps where they held the quarantined zombies and the mutated people in myriad forms of deterioration.
“Hey, Henry, did you hear how they’ve already cancelled all sports? Including the Olympics, I guess.”
“Wow, which ones were you looking forward to watching; the gymnasts or the track? Do you like watching people run?”
“Man, I’m just saying, it’s a big deal. Besides, pole vaulting is cool. Some of their sports-“
“Pole vaulting?”
“Guys, shut up, it’s Rebecca.” A phone ring interrupted the banter. Janice had a quick conversation with Rebecca, while the other two went back to watching TV.
As Janice got off the phone, the news was changing over to politics. Justin and Henry fidgeted over the remote. It was already 2:30 PM, and Rebecca had to cancel her rendezvous because her parents would not let her use the car. Justin started flipping the channels, looking for a sports program. As he settled on the channel which was showing recaps of the events, the doorbell rang. Henry hopped up, and Justin stopped him, “Take it easy, there, big guy.” Janice walked to the door, and peeped out of the peephole to make sure it was Candice. It wasn’t; it was two police officers on the stoop, outside.
Janice was stunned, “Guys, it’s the cops,” She hissed back at her brother and his friend, her eyes were wide with fear. She opened the door, quickly.
“Hello, I’m Detective Willis,” Spoke the female officer. The male officer remained quiet, to the side. “This is the Taft residence?”
“Yes, it is. Our parents are out, at work.”
“I’m sorry, they aren’t coming home tonight.” The male officer spoke up. “Your mother wanted us to say that because of what was going on in Ulster County, the entire thruway system is closed off. Your father is in the hospital after an attack in the city.”
Then, the female officer spoke, again, “They seem like very good people. They do not want you two to use the car for any shady business, okay? They think they can trust you, okay? Your father is fine, too. Nothing to worry yourselves about, he just hit his head.”
Janice remained silent, and the male officer spoke, “Is there any other way we can help? If you need anything…”
“No-“
“Mom got hurt?” Justin came up to the door, followed clumsily by Henry.
“No, dad got hurt. They said he hit his head.”
At this moment, Candice was driving by to pull up to the house, but was shocked as she saw the police vehicle in the driveway. The two police officers apologized again, and Janice explained that it was her friend in the car, which was a brown, tan-colored Lincoln. Candice collected her purse from the car, and got out. She walked up the driveway as the officers stepped back from the stoop. “We’ll get out of your way, then.” Said the male officer, who gave his name as John Harker.
Candice walked inside, and after the door was closed, blurted, “What was that all about?”
Justin responded, “Dad’s hurt. Something about a hospital in Ulster County and getting him airlifted.”
Janice interrupted, “They were attacked by zombies. Mom went to go see him, but there’s something about a loss of communications in the area. How can they have a hospital with no phones? This makes no sense.”
“Oh my god, this is crazy. Are you okay?”
“Yes, I am. I’m okay. I’m hungry.”
“I brought tacos for you and Rebecca.”
“Are you kidding? Oh, Rebecca’s not coming, by the way.”
Justin interrupted, “Can I have hers?”
“Sure,” Said Candice, although she was normally used to handling their contretemps rather than dealing with them sympathetically. She felt her heart go out to the family. She wondered what was happening with their parents, but also was reminded of her brother’s condition at home. It had only gotten dramatically worse, before she left her house. It looked like a bump on his wrist, but his whole arm had swollen up. While her family took him to the pediatrician, Candice pessimistically wondered if somehow her strange dreams were linked to the occurrences. She thought back, briefly, while they ate the tacos together. Henry went and sat back down on the sofa, left out.
“So, Rebecca’s not coming?” Candice asked, anxiously. She didn’t want to seem insensitive, but Rebecca was her prefect, and the two were inseparable. She was roughly the same height as Candice, which was taller than Janice by a couple of inches. Justin was a junior in high school, as was Henry. Janice, Rebecca, and Candice were new graduates, as school had just ended.
“No-“ Janice started to reply, between mouthfuls.
“No, I just wanted to make sure. I don’t even think I’ll stay that long.” Candice regretted leaving her brother. She felt bad for Janice and Justin, and today’s events were turning worse than she had expected. “I feel bad.”
But then, Janice replied that she wanted Candice to stay. Candice agreed to watch some television with her and the guys. Janice quietly sat in the gaming chair at the computer, and got on social media. They didn’t talk to each other for several minutes, until Janice finally spoke, again, “Did you still want to go to the mall?” She had sensed Candice’s adamant attitude and focus.
“Yeah, I might stop on the way back to my house.” Candice kept her demeanor independent, and did not try to make her agenda seem like a higher priority than Janice’s father’s proclivity.
However, Janice’s response was unexpected, “I’ll go with you,”
She had decided to tag along to escape the stress at home, “if you don’t mind, I’ll ride.” Justin and Henry both looked behind the sofa at Janice, at the computer, slightly surprised. “What? There’s nothing else to do, here.”
“Don’t you think that’s inappropriate?” Chimed in Justin, grinning.
Henry concurred, “Yeah, guys, it’s supposed to get nasty outside, later.”
“Don’t be all down, guys, nothing’s going to happen. Candice just wants to say ‘hi’ to Jeffrey at the video game store.” Janice defended herself.
“Okay, guys, like hanging out with you is in anyway safer.” Candice tried to make light of the world’s condition, and sway the conversation so that they could leave. She was duly concerned, herself, about the dangers of the city. Janice grabbed her purse from her room, and Candice waited with the boys.
“Are you going to stay here, all day? Because-“ Candice started to speak more nurturing in tone, to emphasize her overall worries.
“-Yeah, Tanner might head over later, and pick us up.” Henry fortified their mutual cool-headedness.
Janice returned with her purse, and waved at her brother and his friend, “See you later. Text me about dad. We should be only like, what? One hour? Max, right?” Candice conceded and the two of them walked to the door, Janice opened and left first, “Lock up behind us!”
Candice had parked at the sidewalk next to Janice’s house. Before they made it off the stoop Candice reminded Janice that she wanted to stop at the department store and get a new purse before things worsened as far as public accessibility to non-essential services. The two walked down and after Candice unlocked the door with the remote, Janice got in first. Candice hopped into the driver seat, and they drove across town, again. Janice put on the radio, a popular top 40 station. This time, they took the highway to the lakeside where the mall was. The economic depression had been striking for the past decade, but the city was already feeling ghostly. When Candice pulled into the mall parking lot, there were fewer cars than normal. She drove near the front and parked, and the two wandered over to the entry of the video game shop. From out of the corner of her eye, Candice caught her eye on a suspiciously shaded, tall figure in a strange outfit walking alone out in the parking lot. It was already getting darker, and it was still before 4 PM; the grey sky’s clouds glowed ominously.
Once they were inside, Candice darted to the counter where Jeffrey was standing at register. “I can’t believe they have the store open. Did you hear on the radio? They think the loss of communications in the city and parts of upstate are going to affect us, soon.” Jeffrey began to speak as soon as Candice came in range. He was smiling, but showing his worry was a trait that was unbecoming of him in front of the customers. There were only a handful of people in the store, and one couple had just been exiting, leaving only three other people besides the two girls and the manager who immediately had seen them and walked to the back storage area.
Candice responded for both of them, a casual greeting. They made it through half of a conversation, entailing the colleges they had chosen and the majors, when they were interrupted.
Two men came to the window of the shop, native American men who wore trench coats and cowboy hats. They pointed at each other across the windows, dramatically. The performance threw off Candice’s speech about the values of the business school she had chosen, and Jeffrey was talking about becoming a lawyer. Janice had remained silent throughout the chitter chatter, but then, when the man on the right began screaming, she jolted Candice’s rib in fear. The man on the left, reciprocated in screaming as the manager came out of the storage area and charged through the store to the counter.
“What’s going on here?” He asked, wincing from the embarrassment of the scene. The voices outside were barely audible but they were growing louder when the two had joined in unison. Suddenly, the sky grew very dark as the two men stopped screaming, at once, and they ran out into the parking lot. “Don’t go out there.” The manager commanded the trio, as he reached for the phone on the counter, behind the register, “I’m calling the police on these psychos.” The manager was named Kevin Yates, and he wore company clothes, as did Jeffrey. His hair was black, as was Jeffrey’s, and both had short crops. The store was lined with walls of racks of video games, and accessories on endcaps. The thunder which began to crackle through the sky dropped into a bellowing bass and shook the walls. “There’s no line out.”
“You’re kidding me.” Janice immediately panicked. The manager looked angrily out the window, while Jeffrey began to tap the counter, nervously.
“Well, don’t go out there,” Began Kevin, “Well, not alone.
One of us can go with you.” He looked at Jeffrey.
“Listen, the lines are out, guys, let’s get you to your car.” Jeffrey crossed around the counter and walked up to the two girls. Then, turned himself perpendicular to them and continued, “You shouldn’t have come out, in the first place.”
“Candice needed a purse.”
“Thanks, though. We appreciate it.” Candice stepped in and started to walk toward the door.
“Hey, let Jeffrey lead the way.” Kevin said, as they began to walk toward the door together. Then, he turned to the other customers as a security guard walked into the store.
“Hey, you two, we’re evacuating the premises, apparently, are you leaving?”
Jeffrey waved off the security guard as he opened the door. Kevin took his side, “No, those three are okay.” As the door shut behind Janice, though, the wind was beginning to suddenly pick up, and it slammed the door.
There was a crackling of light around the parking lot, as lightning struck. Tremendous thunder claps echoed around the marbled and black swirling skies, and the wind was howling fiercely. An enormous, dark and glowing cumulonimbus cloud tumbled around above the stratocumulus nimbostratus that cast rain in squalls and pushed across the city. The three brave travelers covered their faces and eyes with their arms and hands, and pushed out through the parking lot toward the Lincoln.
Then, Candice saw the two strange men, each at an end of the parking lot. They were walking diagonally through the emptied spaces, in the rain, coming toward them quickly. As thunder cracked in the sky, they suddenly stopped as the girls reached the cars and hurriedly unlocked it and started to step inside.
“Aw man, there they go, again.” Jeffrey said, loudly enough for them to hear.
The two men began running sideways at a radius of 50 yards, stepping outside of the cluster of cars. They were circling the Lincoln. Their cowboy hats somehow stayed on their heads, as they picked up speed, quickly, and their eyes began glowing bright in the large, underlit parking lot. The lampposts were malfunctioning, and they were inefficient at lighting the area. The men kept in stride, though, as the sky grew darker and they were visible only as the glowing of their eyes in the powerful winds which swept litter across and around the parking lot.
“Let him in!” Shrieked Janice, and Jeffrey looked around nervously.
“What are they doing?” He asked, as he fumbled around the doorhandle. He didn’t want to leave the store, but as the chaos of the scene intensified, he didn’t have much time to think clearly.
The men were running very fast as Candice said, “Get in!” & then, they were running even more abnormally fast as Jeffrey climbed into the backseat.
It was then that the tornado started to accumulate. It moved from over her car, immediately as its funnel began to form. However, it was on a trajectory for the mall. The two native men disappeared from outside, and the three teenagers watched for a moment as the tornado whipped into the side of the mall, bouncing around it. The darkness swallowed the vehicle.
300 people dead was the total death toll of the hurricane and tornado which formed over the city. For a period of three hours, the streets were flooded and traveling outside for any reason vehicle was impossible. Winds gusted over 150 miles per hour through the roads and against the houses of the city leaving destruction. The car sat in the eye of the storm for most of the mayhem, and the three students were trapped inside, terrified.
When it ended, it was a slow refrain as the streets stayed dark and the entire parking lot remained unlit. Mobile phone communications were out, and only those people in the city with access to auxiliary communication services were able to reach authorities. A disaster response team was assembling, branching from the New York City disaster with help from local militia and essential emergency services. Thousands were injured, and the local hospital area was damaged, severely. Transportation to the healthcare centers was impossible, because of wreckage, including ambulance arrivals and departures.
It was not until 7:30 that Candice was able to get Janice to her house. She decided to not go inside, even though Janice was obviously distressed. Her attention was focused on returning to check on her family. She waited for Janice to walk through the splattering raindrops, and reach the door and then started to put the blinker on as she turned the knob and walked inside to Justin who answered. Candice pulled away, and started down the road to her house, which she was sure was to be filled with detours and hazards.
After she turned on the main road, which she knew had plenty of traffic lights, she could see that traffic was backed up on the route home. She decided to take a detour, herself, before running into the long line of cars which led to the heart of some of the poorest parts of town before it eventually continued to the side of town where her house and family was. At the intersection which had the taco restaurant, she turned and headed into the residential section which was the long way but clearer of heavy traffic. There were power lines down everywhere, and trees with branches sprawled across sidewalks and lawns and into and onto house rooves and through fences. The wind still howled, threateningly. This weather pattern was unpredictable, and unprecedented in the region.
Back at her house, Chadwick and Scarlet Wright both had the day off, and were taking the corporeal task of caring for Warren seriously. They had arranged for a doctor to come check on him from the hospital, before the melee of the tornado. Presently, the nurse, a man named Bradley Kelly whose arrival had satisfied no one’s labefaction during the fracas was finally leaving. He had arrived as a part of the protocol set by the hospitals for those whose infections looked to be showing symptoms of the zombie disease which was actually spread from a demonic presence from another dimension, rather than virally. The strain had connections to the same community, as did the drug, prior to the infliction of many community members. The quarantines had been partially effective, but a strain of the virus and drug had both reached New York City and spread from there.
On the third three-point turn, Candice realized the catastrophe’s immensity. There was literally no way to get through the streets without ramification of the constant frustration of rerouting. She headed in the direction of the main road finally, and turned up a dark side street, attempting to get back on track. It was almost 8:00, and she was becoming more irritated.
Edward Soltero stepped out from the sidewalk of one of the houses on the block she was driving. He was acting deranged, and irate with a strange possession which controlled his body and mind. He had been peering out from a bush on the side street, waiting for his prey, psychically watching for her to return from the mall. When Candice slowed down, Edward leapt for the car. Candice saw only a brief blur from the side of her peripheral vision. Edward banged his head through the back window of the car. While she kept turning, the wheel spun out of her hands and Edward started screaming, heinously. His head was caught in the window of the vehicle, as he had bashed a hole through the glass with his forehead and stuck his neck through the broken shards. The glass broke his skin against his temple and around his face as the car swerved into the other lane.
Candice started screaming, as the man beat against the hood of the car with his fists in an inhuman rage. His soul was possessed by the skull which had appeared in her dream. For a fleeting moment, the raven-winged demon seemed to perspire from Edward Soltero’s face in a tantrum of sinister manipulation. It stared at Candice with anger as Candice waved her arms and lost control of the Lincoln as it hopped the curb of the other side of the road. She thrust her foot onto the brakes as he popped his head back out from the window and let go. The result was that he fell against the bumper, and although he had gone mad, he was instantly knocked out.
Sirens screamed through the air, elsewhere. Candice had stopped the car partially on one of the lawns of the neighborhood. She looked behind her, briefly, then muttered, “Shit,” & pushed open her door to see if she could see Edward’s body. She felt attacked, and her heart was beating very fast while her adrenaline rushed. If it hadn’t been for wreckage which surrounded her and the chaos of the city, she would’ve been able to sense more than the savage behavior of an insane person whose existence in the ghetto was probably attended by drug-use more than anything. She felt a headache coming on, but was trying to rationalize what had just happened. The man hadn’t seemed much more than a crazed person, and he was wearing dirty, wet clothes. He had been neatly shaved, but wrinkled and elderly seeming. Edward had not slept in several nights, and had been growing more psychotic each day, but these were not his normal behaviors. There was no sight of the body from the angle she had, she had to get out the car to look.
One of the houses next to her car was an apartment complex, and she looked over at it as she stepped out of the Lincoln to inspect the body. A man, just then, walked out from one of the apartment’s doors. Candice’s duress attracted conspicuous attention, as did her car which was laying with one wheel on the sidewalk, and one tire in the grass of the lawn. “Hey are you okay?” The man asked, whose name was Malik. He was young and around her age, only two years her senior.
“I’m okay, is he?”
“Is who?” He yelled back.
Candice walked around to the back of the car in the hard rain which was already almost completely soaking her. There was no body, and the broken glass from her rear window was all over her back seat. Rain was getting into the car, and by the time Candice had time to react, a puddle was forming on the interior, between cushions.
“Oh, god.” Exclaimed the man, as he approached from across the road. “Are you sure you’re not hurt? What happened?”
Candice, stricken with shock, stopped and thought before replying, “A tree branch must have hit me.” She decided to lie. She had no idea what exactly had happened, and she stuttered through even completion of one sentence as she shook, nervously. Edward Soltero had vanished.
When Candice made it home, she was feeling ill. She started walking up the steps to the house, and managed to get the key in the doorknob, which had been shut and locked after the nurse’s departure. Then, in a flurry of events, there was a funnel which crept up her body from the ground, like an upside-down tornado. Tiny glowing sparks of light twisted around her. She fell into a whirlpooling chasm through the floor of the entryway to her house.
TO KILL THE DEVIL
In the aftermath of the storm which had wrecked and destroyed entire sections of the city, Jeffrey Cannes was driving over to the Wright residence to check on Candice, his girlfriend. On his way he had stopped to consult with his friend Jason Stalin, as it was in the neighborhood. The drug dealer at the bottom of the hill near the Wright residence, named Laurent, was leaving, and Jason was in a euphoric state of near-narcolepsy. He was almost completely incapacitated when Jeffrey began to leave, and the young woman, Heidi was walking up the driveway. Laurent worked hand-in-hand with the judge who lived on the same street. The team-up was like a cartel for the new kinds of drugs which had been introduced from another dimension by Bobo the alien, and they were cutthroat about the secrecy of the ingredients to their mixture. Out in the raining night, Jeffrey Cannes passed Heidi in her withdrawal from the drug, scampering along the sidewalk. He drove to the Wright’s house, reflecting how the drug culture had stolen his friend’s life.
The Wrights had waited for Candice to return, but when the car showed up in the driveway and Candice was missing, they assumed that someone had come to pick her up. Then, they had taken Warren to the hospital. When Jeffrey Cannes arrived, Candice’s parents had left in the same vehicle, leaving the SUV which she had driven in the driveway. The front door was unlocked, and Jeffrey poked his head in and called out Candice’s name in the dark hallway. His voice was echoing through the house when he heard a strange noise which resonated from the upstairs, in Candice’s room, and then rolled down the stairs.
He was about to close the door to the house, when something was caught in the threshold and prevented the door from shutting all the way and latching. He looked down and saw a round, metallic ball, which resembled a lacrosse ball, sitting in the doorway.
“I see you found me.” A voice popped in the night, a female voice which was the same as the one that haunted Candice’s dream. Jeffrey spun around and saw the man Ernst Rainard standing under the tree at the end of the driveway. His eyes gleamed with insanity, but Jeffrey Cannes knew that the odd voice did not belong to this crazed, ugly intruder. It emanated from the silver ball in the threshold, which sat near his sneakers.
The voice somehow triggered something within Rainard, “Hey!” He yelled across the dark lawn. Rainard had been affected by inter-dimensional fluctuations which guided him toward a murderous path. He recognized the voice, somehow.
Jeffrey looked down at the ball as it suddenly rolled back into the house, pushing against the door. “Follow me.” The voice spoke again, imploringly. Meanwhile, Rainard began charging the house in a rage. Jeffrey stepped inside, and leaned over the ball watching it, intently. It spun on its own, and curved around his leg to roll against the door, pushing it closed. Jeffrey couldn’t believe his eyes as the ball began to hover in the air in front of him. Rainard began bashing his fist against the door, knocking and then kicking.
“Candice?!” Jeffrey shouted up the stairs.
“She’s gone. Go out the back door and get in your car, quickly. He’s coming.” Jeffrey started backing up through the hallway to the kitchen, and swung around as the door broke off its hinges. He moved stealthily in the darkness through the kitchen where his movements remained unseen by Rainard, who was chasing only twenty feet behind him.
The ball swerved mid-air, and shot up the staircase to the second floor. Rainard followed, thrashing his arm against the banister and growling. On the second floor, the ball rushed to the parents’ room and hopped out a front window. Jeffrey exited the back door in the kitchen, and was turning around the side of the house, breaking into a sprint toward his car.
The orb had perched on the hood ornament of Jeffrey’s car, and when he approached the car he noticed it, but continued in a desperate rush. As he unlocked the door, the chirp of his electric keychain coincided with Rainard’s realization that he had lost the orb upstairs. As he fumbled to open the driver’s side of his Lincoln, the orb ominously spoke, “Follow the llama.”
Jeffrey closed the door, and looked behind his vehicle, and then in the rearview mirror. As he was about to reverse out of the driveway, a food truck drove by: “Utica Greenes” with a llama drawn on the side of the car.
Jeffrey pulled off and followed the food truck to a safe distance and pulled over, grabbing at his cellphone which had no reception. The only thing he could think of was to report it directly to an officer at a police station. Jeffrey had to go in that direction, anyway, as he headed back to Jason’s house. When he drew close to the driveway, the food truck drove pulled behind again and suddenly the orb which posted on the hood ornament disappeared, flying up into the cloudy sky.
Inside, Laurent had returned already, and was sitting with Jason who was unconscious. “Hey.” Laurent said, and put a deck of cards back down on the coffee table next to the settee where Jason was sleeping. “He owes me money.”
“How much?” Queried Jeffrey, cathartically. As he asked, he sat down at the nearby computer desk. He was mentally exhausted from the days’ events, himself. Jason’s parents were out of town, too, and he had spent his money on drugs already. It was common for Laurent to front large quantities to Jason, as his parents were both employed and wealthy. Jeffrey was in disbelief that the orb had appeared, and that it had not followed him nor interfered with his getaway much it was overlookable. He did feel haunted by the sighting of Rainard.
“Sufficient to become optional for further extensions. I came over to tell him, either he pays up or he stays out of business with me. There’s a thin line which I don’t want to cross.”
Jason groaned and rolled over on the settee and opened his eyes. There was a knock on the door, simultaneously. Jeffrey and Laurent looked at each other and waited as the doorbell rang. Jason rolled himself to sit upright and grabbed the arm of the seat as he pushed himself up. “I got it.” He said, looking at Laurent but walking toward the door. Laurent grinned, deviously.
At the door was Heidi, weather-beaten and ill-looking. She came in like a zombie, and walked over to Laurent, hiding something in her hand. When she was close enough, she reached out and stabbed him. Jason backed up to the door and started screaming as she rushed at him. Suddenly the orb came rushing into the room, in the dark, and struck Heidi. It killed her, crushing her skull.
The orb darted back out the door, as quick as it had appeared. Jason stood, and leaned against a dresser with his chest heaving, looking astonished. “What the fuck is going on?”
Jeffrey stammered into admittance of the recent occurrence at his girlfriend’s house, but hesitated because he did not want to draw attention to his drug- afflicted friend. “That girl from before, she just went crazy and stabbed Laurent! I just came from Candice’s and some guy just tried to attack me! Laurent looks dead, man!” He had come to check on his friend, and was glad that he did, having saved him with the mysterious orb.
Jason could still barely stand on his feet, and he started mumbling again as he walked back to the settee. Jeffrey walked over and looked at Laurent’s body. “My cellphone’s dead.”
“Everyone’s dead. Everyone’s cellphones have no reception.” Jason started to lean back against his seat.
“Do you have a house phone, man?” Jeffrey knew that Jason did, so he had asked while already walking over to the wall where the phone jack was. Jason didn’t respond, and just sunk his head into his elbows on his knees. “Man! Wake up! Laurent and this crazy bitch are dead!”
“I don’t know her.” Said Jason finally. There was no dial tone on the house line either, and Jeffrey walked back to the living room. Thunder banged outside, and Jason stood back up. “This is crazy fucked up man, I have to leave.”
“What?”
“No, I gotta go.” Jason bolted for the door in an estranged maneuver to evade responsibility.
Jeffrey walked behind Jason on his way outdoors. Jason had his own car but he was barely able to walk, and he stumbled off of his front stoop. Jeffrey walked up behind and grabbed him. “Do you even have your keys, Jason?”
“Yeah, man.” Jason patted his pockets, “Oh shit, no I don’t.”
While Jason walked back to his house, Jeffrey began to wonder what he should have to do to stop his friend from driving while so badly inebriated. Then, the orb reappeared flying down from the sky and began spinning around Jeffrey so fast the it blurred his vision of anything and created a high-pitched noise which pierced his ears. He fell to his knees, closing his eyes and covering his ears.
When he reopened his eyes, he heard the woman’s voice again, “I am the robotic egg of Robin. I have existed since the dark ages, guiding light to magic of Earth.” He was sitting atop of the water tower nearby. The orb had moved him. “I can read minds. I can move at speeds unfathomable to human diagnostics or measurement or even advanced quantum physic mechanics. I can try to help you save the world, too. I am part of an army of different interdimensional beings who were sent here to prevent the oncoming war of humans and the Ether Realm.”
Rainard appeared at the bottom of the water tower, and he began to climb up. Jeffrey saw this and began to worry. Yet the voice of the orb soothed him, “There is another way to destroy the rifts, but you must follow me, now. Grab onto me and hold on.” Rainard pointed a gun up the water tower. Jeffrey had no choice, so he wrapped his left elbow and armpit around the orb and grabbed it with his right hand.
But it was too late, for another event from Ether Realm’s forces occurred at the same time. Two warrior Gods from ancient Japan, man and woman pounced downward with their swords, and smashed the orb, cutting off both of Jeffrey’s arms. He fell down against the bullet of Rainard’s revolver, and smashed against the pavement. The two spirits disappeared.
The orb was split into four pieces. Each of which fell into the Nether and were grabbed up by the spirits, there. The demon who juggled the four orbs had four arms.
TYR’S FALL
Nigh
I rushed to the balcony and down the fire escape and held my dying friend in my arms.
His fall was like a shooting star, his impact like a meteor.
“You are now bound to infinity.
Forever.”
“Dear God, what have I done? Who will save me, now?”
I didn’t even know what happened for the next month, warped out of my mind on adrenaline, drugs, and self-disgust.
I only remember the first dream.
It would haunt me for eternity.
“my father, the original saint saith unto thee... be bright, actions speak louder than words my son, tracked by hell’s angels the world, no signature as deep will, the disappearing lights, be a search begun”
Let the nightmares begin... The time is nigh!
BOOK 1:
The Ascent
Tyr’s Fall
Nigh the dawn of a new era.
Ascent
Ascent
Darkness is an inescapable fury. to truth the gods are bound and buried
Complete darkness, that envelops the soul where then through the shades of light was barred. and body of a life form, is charged. when then through consciousness lights aren’t.
This is all the development of mind, for now this assigned our vice and bane breaching the darkness and to reach through to light now only to fall like autumn’s rain all holy and representative of strength. to rebound and high arise again.
Power, it was a lustful urge within within the dreams of summer’s harshness the burning, lustful, buried soul of darkness. bleeding canvas can emote heartless.
Encompassing fury. Becoming fury. within our burial comes purely
No darkness was ever as pure as Heaven or as exactly deceptive perhaps
the Ether Realm of Earth whence Eden collapsed. smothering belief and faith at last
None ever as final, calling the souls like the bells to the high noon harvest. of Earth from plague and suffering to complete liken the depths of inking artists overwhelming light, through which beckoned this revealing the hell of one’s hardship. existence and deliverance of darkness. as well awareness where our heart is.
Solitude was the truest exhibition yet if one could breach the other realms of power among the Gods of the darkness then he should surely be held of helm known as that unspeakable, Ether Realm. of forever for every realm
Solitude, gratitude, and pity. and he shall be as tyr to fall and with great cities.
Tyr was not standing, neither was he sitting as he watched the world below and surrounding him. He watched with patience that came from blindness. He sought out the different charges of emotion that ran through the thoughts, which soared upward in a constant barrage of feelings from the creatures in the whirlwind ascent. Souls of generations that surged him with constant charges of trust, love, pain, hatred, came and went. In one ear and out the other went cries of lust, of fury.
Tyr was the catalyst. His creation was that of utmost importance, the single barrier between imagination and reality to the people of Earth. Time, was not the contingency that one would expect, however, in the catalyst’s eye. Not that he could not determine the very instant of a soul’s most pleasurable sexual sensation, nor that he could not awaken the hunger and fear in the eye of a single child on Earth. It was his duty, however, to regulate the emotional sphere of Earth. This was all that he had for almost as long as he could remember, ever known.
His being was an ancient, ancient one. For at one point he had been very strong, and capable of quelling any individual thought process on Earth. There had, indeed been pieces of history when his reign was supreme and where man and animal had co-existed in complete harmony. Before his son Zeus had taken the threshold of war and faction of human spirit to new levels, Tyr had long awaited the opportunity to really execute his authority over man.
It was one common fact at this point, that war was imminent on Earth. A catastrophic war that would rip the fabric of time and space. As an Elder God, Tyr was ready to play his part in the fantastic war. He had long ago been a part of the planning committee. Here, the Elders of the Ether Realm laid out their separate pieces of the united outline to which Earth would be forced into recognition of its great Gods, of its untold horrors, of its warped existence which had been the creation of the Eldest and Greatest Of Great Gods, Elohim.
Odin, the once great Elder of War, and the God responsible for the burial of thousands upon thousands of human bodies was still unfit for the task of such a catastrophic war on Earth. It had been earlier augmented that Tyr would be his successor. However, the Greatest Gods, whose identities always seemed on the verge of revelation yet forever hidden in shadow of darkness to the Elders, who in turn were but shades and hues to the Lesser Gods, gave specific instructions to which the exchange of powers would take place. A sacred monastery had been created eon ago for the purpose of such a battle of immortal souls, at a Mount Zion, which the Gods were instructed to build with one specific location.
Both immortals, Odin and Tyr would ride the skies upon each other’s backs and like a tumultuous and unbalanced doppelganger, would collide upon themselves in combat. Together they would sear the sky magenta, the ground smeared with blood. Devastate, together they would scorch and smolder hundreds of humans. They would run and when they would run the earth would quake. As they yelled out in anguish of battle, the angels of the immortal army of Earth would cry.
The only recognizable flaw in the plan was Zeus, Lesser God of Fear. At request of Tyr, to Zeus was left an undecided destination in the catastrophic war. Tyr knew of his son’s spells of imbalance and anger, being that he was God of the human emotion of Love as well. He was only uncertain of his son’s final movements for the fact that he had blocked out any retainable memories of his son’s fall from grace after the fall of the Greek empire. All he would choose to know was that his son had made his decision either for or against him. Besides this, Tyr was ready, he had already made arrangements for a Protector God to be transplanted on Earth to help him if need be, Aeolus, the Wind God.
The Half-Gods had long been relinquished, and the Lesser Gods stood all watching in awe as their armies of angels began polishing their blades with anticipation and impatience. Tyr only existed to see the outcome rise upon the moment. His entire being wound slowly down the whirlwind advance of souls upon his Temple of Godliness.
The time was ripe, rising like a full red moon over the grassy plains, skyscrapers, and mountain ranges of Earth. Tyr foresaw many perils of the conquest of Earth. In one day’s time, his son might lose his existence, forever, if man ceased to exist. He also, as an Elder God of Earth, made no mistake of the other potential participants in the final battle. Man and God fighting, fist and foot, blade and bullet to the last fallen combatant. The darkness was ascending.
As the darkness lifted like a curtain of Greek tragedy, Tyr knew that his conquest would not be without possible pitfall and trap. He knew, for instance, that Netherrealm’s leaders had been changed up quite frequently in just the comparatively recent past. His distrust of the realm of Hell was due, for as the God of Emotion, he was one of the initial creators of the Netherrealm, where unwanted souls stay. He knew but one thing, the reigning God Hades, who had been banished from Heaven for misconduct, was a foolish one. The Least of All, Lucifer, was decisively still lurking somewhere among the shadows of Netherrealm, in all his disgusting, unimaginable ugliness. Where the flames had yet to strike their sharp flicker, Lucifer, eternal foe of mankind, was surely waiting for some escape to set claim on the souls that he had desired for along the centuries, possibly even rendering Hades an Earthly mortal, or even more dangerous, try to escape for himself to the Earth Realm to set his own bids among the Gods for the remnants of Earth.
Tyr thought all of this through the darkness yet ascending, higher still, and as the whirlwinds of souls began to become more and more distinctly human, and the smells of Earth began to warp his senses. He could smell at once as the ocean rose below him the blood of a million soldiers falling under sword and gun along the millennia of melee. He saw at once the rise of Roman coliseums, and the fall of the World Trade Center. Almost to Earth Realm, now, as the darkness steadily increased its rate of secession, he could hear Zeus’s cries of loneliness and fear. Was it illusion? What was it that his own son was hiding?
Lightning struck Tyr at every angle, time ripped and stood still. This was the beginning of the final stages of his transfiguration from Immortal to Mortal. The ground began to rip upwards toward his feet faster and faster. The mothers of Earth, fathers, the sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, all who fell to the whims of insanity, amnesia, the flashes of desperation, the depths of Apocalypse and death’s scythe.
A tear fell from Heaven. Tyr caught it in his hand and grasped it close to his chest. As the last of all the mind-blowing whirlwinds slowed to a halt, and the darkness dissipated into flashing bits of floating debris-like chasms, Tyr looked up once more to the Heavens. His final war cry of complete betrayal of emotion, his throat bellowed out the name of his Father, who he would remember this one last instant, forever. One last transfiguration of mind remained. A voice from Heaven made one simple request:
“Tyr, the time was nigh, and do not give up faith. The ascent has ended, the descent yet remained!”
CHAPTER 2
Almost as soon as I felt the breath of life, I was dead. As quick as the earth instilled its nutrients, it stole them back. I remember just a few things of when I was alive, and although I could relay them at quite ease in a more comfortable setting, I am not at that certain capacity, yet. Yet to explain what I’ve seen, I will continue. I remember another one, who somehow resembled me. I remember a light, and I remember three wishes that were allowed for my access to the light. The wishes I have forgotten, but of which I made my final pleas with the light, I was never to be redeemed of life.
There was a brief moment of inspiration between the light. It grappled me and threw me which way and that. I was without honor, without courage, without power at all. Merely a child caught in a raging storm.
In the light, in the thrashing and caustic light, which had controlled me from what seemed like years away, I saw the extreme continuity of motion amongst the living soul of Earth. With one word, I learned to speak. With another, I learned to argue. With a motion, I learned to walk, and in turn learned to fight. With all the beauty of the world at once, I learned the intricacies of seduction. I learned to betray, at the sight of holocaust.
When I reached out, I was grabbed by an archangel, Michael, who led me into the World of Gods. I could see so many beings, guided along in a calm passionate world, by unseen forces that seemed to have always been in place, always strengthening. Some seemed negligent of me, others merely turned a cheek, left or right, and the angel led me by arm through a vast field of others.
I learned at an altar, and prayed at a sink basin from which sprung a fountain of evanescent cleansing spirit. When I drank, I learned of my ancient past as well as my future. I was taught not to think, or follow instincts. I was taught intuition. It was a glorious road for salvation that I sought, yet almost every God and even angel would only look at me haplessly and return often a shrugging complacency.
I would watch the story of my brother as it climaxed and fell all day. No thoughts would ever cross my mind on how to change the eventual outcome. Only a slight tickling behind my eyes that burned as time wore on. I would watch the world spin on its axis, and I’d watch the holocaust of Judaism all night to stay awake. I consequently lost my need to sleep, or move.
It was all in preparation. That one day would come, one day that would release my soul once more. The Elder Gods would come to see me, and lay with me, cover me with their arms. Their old musk still runs through my mind. I wanted only my brother.
Here in their solace, I would often ask and query. What was the meaning of life? When would my chance come to return to the Earth I longed for? Who would I be...? Who would I have been? Why did I have to die? Alas, for naught, I was only captive.
Then, the Elders would leave, all but one who would gaze at my eyes with pure unfiltered agony. I knew for the longest time that this was to be one to remember. His essence would catch up to me, and it would be all revealed at an appropriate time. But his desire struck out like two jagged knives. Every night when I laid down to sleep, I prayed Elohim that he would leave my chamber. To no avail, he stayed and stayed longer, gazing into my eyes with a hatred until I would cry.
His hatred, almost as strong as banished Hades, was it intended for me? The angels, who seemed to only want to protect me, appeared completely at ease with his being.
It was a long time in the Ether Realm, before I realized that a God does not have shape and form. It was a long time before I realized that I would never speak with any of them and be answered. My lessons became more and more gibberish, incomprehensible. It was a long time, yet still, before I realized that I would never be reunited with my soulmate.
One morning, I awoke and the Elder who stood by my bed waiting for my rise each morning pointed toward the dark corner where the “Terrible” one stood and watched me sleep. He was there, but something was different about him. I immediately felt such envy and anguish that I stormed out of my chamber. Everywhere I went, the one I called “Tyr” followed me, and it was soon I realized that I was not in motion at all, and he was only standing watch longer. I threw myself again on my bed and, frustrated and confused fell back to sleep.
Only once did I awaken. I recalled some lessons, as I stared back angrily at Tyr, eyeing him directly in his unformed face. The Elders had said that one could be completely free from sin on Earth and still never make it to Heaven. I wondered what had happened to my brother I had left in our mother’s womb when I died at childbirth. The Elders had insinuated that even Hell had its escape routes.
Tyr had grown closer to my bed, and was steadily approaching my side. Unafraid, I turned on my shoulder to face him.
“Be quiet in thou dormant stance. Thy vacancy here as a pure soul would be more than welcome in the Netherrealm!” I yelled, as he grew up closer.
When he was inches from my forehead, I saw something I had never seen before in his eyes. It caught me off guard, and I was startled until I peered closer.
“He’s there!” I gasped, and closed my eyes tight. I could still feel the heat of Tyr’s glaring eyes on mine. A tear fell off of my eye.
I wouldn’t awaken again for quite some time, and when I did, things would be far from normal.
CHAPTER 3
“Fucking pigs can fly. When they spit that sperm out right? Fucking pigs!”
“The pussies are a bunch of wimps! I want my money!”
“Fuck that! I’ll shit down your fucking eyeball socket, you ugly turd.”
“Get off my dick!”
“Look at him, all proud like a baby... Sitting there like a damn saint. Like we aren’t out here busting ass. I’m fucking tired of this shit...”
“When that one’s head gets nice and limp, I’m gonna skull fuck him.”
“Tournament of hot damn champions? You all saw what Hades fucking said. Fucking hot damn champions! Real champs! I could blow one of those chumps over with my smaller ball.”
“You fucking said it, damn straight. Bunch of pansies if you ask me. My cock has more muscles than their entire arm! And I’d assfuck the shit out of any one of them by the way, they would be crying for-“ SMACK!
“Hey look! They smacked him! Burn, bitch, burn!”
Hades, the reigning king of the underworld, was seated on a throne of dragon skeleton. Blood was dripping on it from above where there were several hanging corpses. He was barely more than a skeleton himself, with a shawl draped over thin, ashy, cracked skin.
Hades knew that the Apocalypse was coming for Earth above. It was his intention to use Tyr’s advance to the lower region of Earth Realm from the Heavens along with his guides’, adversaries’ alike, to create a temporary wormhole in the fabric of Truth and Time. At this vantage point he would be able to summon the power of his kingdom, to duel with the Ether Realm on Earth.
Presently, a tournament was taking place in the inner ring of Hell. Hades already had his minions hand-select a chosen few warriors who were fallen from the grace of God to fight to their deaths. Of course, “death” was a relative word in the land of the undead. No longer man, of flesh and blood, these warriors were without soul and had nothing much to lose, and a lot to gain by being released back on Earth.
Where names had been forgotten long ago, each warrior herein was given an emblem of a creature found on Earth. At the moment, there were only eight warriors left. They wore the marks of burned scarring. For the recognitive purposes, they each were assigned an animal: a Tarantula, Eel, Cobra, Python, Centipede, Toad, Scorpion, and a Lizard.
Hades thought and thought, weighing every angle of this advantage he had stumbled upon over the Gods. Of course, he would be expected to have had a terrible time, for his negligence had led him to these last hours to make a final decision on a plan of attack. Per the usual, things in the Netherrealm were fast- paced, bloody, and perilous.
The minions raised the cages in the arena of Tarantula and Cobra, who leapt, both, simultaneously from their crouch positions to combat. Tarantula swept the floor of the ring and flames sprung underneath his foot, but Cobra evaded the attack with a jumping high right kick, which connected with a stunning cheekbone blow, sending Tarantula flying into Eel’s cage. Eel, a witty and collected man, took his chance and grabbed Tarantula by the arm through the holes in his cage. Viciously, Cobra began to pound into him with low blows to the ribcage. Before breaking every rib, Cobra bit off the man’s nose and spit it at Eel. Eel hissed, howled, and released his victim, letting Tarantula fall to the ground grabbing his falling guts. With a loud stomp, Cobra succeeded in annihilating Tarantula’s skull into the burning embers of the battlefield. The minions jumped and held him down, dragging him back into the cage where he would wait for his next battle.
As Scorpion cracked his knuckles in the cage, Hades was hatching a bit of a fury of new plans. After seeing the mortality of Tarantula taken at such a quick pace, he was determined to have a back-up.
Hades motioned for one of his devils to approach his platform. The minion did so, objecting by spitting on the burning, bloody, and beaten body of Tarantula on his way over to the throne. Hades almost cracked a grin, but hid his pleasure. Instead, he threw the minion against Tarantula’s emptied cage into a jutting spike. Immediately the ring nearly doubled over in hideous laughter, sounding like the frightening howls of dozens of ancient beasts down the hole of their prey.
The devil grabbed the spike from behind him, and wildly spasmed his limbs off of it. As fluid fire quickly spewed from the hole in his shoulder, he maliciously licked his lips with a forked tongue at the other devils who were still screaming in laughter. He began again towards Hades.
Hades had, by the time the devil arrived, perfected his plan. The bones of Leviathan on which he rested were his inspiration. He realized that he knew, from the time that he had spent in Hell, only one thing; that ultimate devastation of Earth and the Gods was his entire being and also his ultimate goal. He wanted to release more than one beast at once to scourge the Earth. He desired a dragon.
The devil stepped towards the throne. Hades glanced around and signaled for the next fight to begin.
As the two warriors battled, Hades quickly relayed his idea to the devil. They had long ago won a tournament to collapse great Eden, and had retrieved a serpent from the gardens. They had it in Hell, but were unsure of where it had been left to prior their command.
“Lucifer might know where the serpent is, master,” the devil whispered secretively.
“Yes, but how will we locate Lucifer? One such as him has always been a wily devil, and a bargainer.”
“Perhaps Mephistopheles will be willing to assist us?”
“Mephistopheles has always held a trick up his sleeve as well-“ Hades began, as Eel’s forearm came flying past the throne, nearly swatting him on the head.
The devil turned about face and hissed at the battle’s champion, who was being escorted back to his cage.
Hades stood and waved at his minions as Scorpion re-entered his cage.
As the demons dispersed from out of the inner ring, Hades sat back down on the throne of blood and bone. Time was pending, and the stench of a fallen God began to warp the arena, bending the fires’ flames, creating vapor lines along the walls. Hades put a forefinger on his chin, and his middle on his thin, cracked lips.
The war would be a great one. The entire Netherrealm was charged with impatience, aggravation, and a stuttering lust for Earth’s green pastures to once again return to barren rock and lava, not unlike the Netherrealm. It was an exciting time for the demonic domain of Hell. If Draco could finish where Leviathan had begun, they would surely be successful in conquering the realm of Earth.
Lucifer himself started his tracks. Lay still a moment. His dark body became part of the shadows of the wall. All that remained was the stench of The Beast. Covering the fecal odor of The False One, and Minotaur of the Ring Walls. He had made a plan of his own while waiting in the darkness. His Beastly shape made into but a pattern of flame.
ACT 2
Kings
Tyr was born of a spirit neither a man nor God. Wildly warped with the fury of vengeance, and yet pure in form of what was almost completely a status of humanoid body. He was totally created in the midst of the light, and was therefore created into pure black, the pigment of his skin like a glowing fluorescence. The embodiment of what was thought to be the purely unsinnable, whence spawned in pure hatred for the powers of the Great Ones Dead in the Etherealm of the now Emotionless Sphere of Elders. In that the Emotional Sphere of all Realms was then warped, it created devastating effects of allowing spawning of either sides of the coming War Of Gods. He had possessed the greatest knowledge, and was only now unaffected by human judgment. His demeanor was to be steady with the energy of chosen ability. His collision with society among men would be inescapable, yet impertinent to the mission that he was steadfastly prepared to execute. This was the beginning of The End for humanity, yet his mission would be delivered with an accuracy of a dart’s piercing movement to a bull’s-eye.
However, his new environment on Earth would be extremely perilous, as he must locate Odin, who had taken on a human form as well amongst the people of the Earth Realm. In anticipation of a great battle, he had hopefully come alone, but may have yet a hidden agenda.
His current accountability and eventual success were to be made solely of the possible places on which to coordinate his being as a mortal. His conclusion had brought him to the World Trade Center Ground Zero. He was sure that Odin had become a sorcerer among the populations of mortals. His was a very foreign and very ancient face in a crowd of young ones. His first inclination was to guard his ground until he could formulate the shape Odin had taken along the way to Earth.
Here, suspended in the light of Heaven, where form began to settle, thoughts began to intrepidly race. Yet he knew for one that Ground Zero was most likely guarded by a very serious and severe number of human soldiers, especially once they realized that there was necromancy roaming about the Ethersphere. Aeolus was guaranteed for usefulness in finding Odin’s location, once he too had a body.
Odin, as an Elder himself, was given abilities comparable to Tyr, although as God of War, he could only appear on the planet as a human, anywhere else, he would only be a ghost to an Earth Dweller's dream.
Tyr’s countdown began, as he climbed through the walls of sanity and reality to the epicenter of time, and into the Earthrealms existence. Ground Zero was becoming visible as dust fragments floated and swirled through the existential air of life. Tyr closed his eyes; he remembered the way Earth had resembled, whilst much of his knowledge was vanishing.
“Aeolus,” said Tyr, “Where you have come from, to guide me, I have granted the ability and power of agility and navigation, as well as a form of man. Here is where I stand against Odin. If the battle commences now, blow my cheek to his direction.”
There was a short breath of silence. Nearby, Aeolus was hesitantly considering the possible alterations in the fabric of the wind. Soon, though, he detected Odin, and was startled at his appearance. Nonetheless, he pointed the way.
It would be a dangerous journey across the desert and ocean ways to the Far East for Odin, and a journey slightly shorter to the west for Tyr, so as Tyr was pointed down and to the South to face the land monument of Ground Zero, Aeolus turned and jumped to face his master, straight on.
Tyr quickly opened his eyes. Aeolus had slightly blown his left cheek in passing. He saw many human bodies walking, running, standing, sitting, and couldn’t take the time to trivialize and observe their individual appearances. This was the time to take action. Tyr’s wish for the spawn of a jagged and pointed blade, made of the purest metals known to exist would be enough for now to protect them from the people that patrolled, as Aeolus’s eyes traced the disgusting level of existence that would be found in Odin’s strange living remnants of Godship, which he had chosen to repossess for the journey into Earth Realm. He would be an ultimate sorcerer, capable of moving at quick accelerations. The body was old, but formidably tough and fast, so it would only be moments until they would move towards their destination. Tyr needed now to acquire comparable mobility as soon as possible. His once unlimited knowledge of the universe led him to believe that he should temporarily take control of a motorized single cockpit jet. It seemed that there would indefinitely be a two-round battle, and in the end one of the two Gods would die.
“He has come with a pack of wild dogs. He won’t be hard to find by them, but impossible to capture with them by his side,” said Aeolus. “Don’t expect to defeat him until we get him trapped in the West. Chase him there. You will be successful if you can get him alone, and he knows it. He has chosen a solemnly disparaging bodily form to fight you.”
“The place will be called Death Valley. It will be in the West on the continent we stand. America will either feign in security until the fight is discontinued, or face utter destruction for the pregnancies of evil wrought along its and other nations’ faces and hills.”
“Conquest will be irrefutable; we are both made to only be destroyed by beings of our Temple of Godship or higher. However, there will be many factors upon the capture of this land, and Man may become dangerous. Many other factors, too, remain until we are both returned to Heaven, for there is much unnatural disturbance in the air. Be wary of that old jackal, Lucifer. He still may possess the souls of warriors that could run along our path.”
“Do not forget, my ally, that the men here have strength in numbers. If they can hold us down, they will. Let us make haste, then. I chose this area for its high patrol, and proximity to airports. We will be safe if we stay in the shadows, but until we reach a jet that will take us to the West, the journey must be as secretive as possible.”
“Yes, master. Like the wind we will race, and when our journey begins, we will stop for nothing. Yet there is yet still a diversion I have yet to refer to you. In the Far East from here, in a land known as ShangHai, works an old man who wears yellow garments. His name is Huang Di. He is an ancient entity, older even yet than your son Zeus. He is a brilliant necromancer, and surely is aware of our whereabouts.”
“Go on, Aeolus. Tell me more of this Immortal among men.”
“His soul, is indeed not unlike that of a Half-God’s, master. For this reason, he has a great aptitude for challenge and courage. Take my word, though, he will be far too smart to allow himself to stray into harm’s way. At least for now, we will not need worry about his swift hand. Omoikane, who as a Protector will not show his face, will stop at nothing to create warning signals and guidance for the people of this Realm and others. He will surely grant access for Huang Di to the greatest warriors of times past on Earth. Huang Di will have quite an arsenal to choose his methods of creating a barricade for us to overtake if we are to be successful. Thankfully, however, the people of this Realm are in a constant state of bickering and distaste of such power. He will surely be a rogue in this war, taking to the shadows as we will.”
“Enough, then,” Tyr raised his sword straight with his right arm, and stood to his feet. “We will go now to the immediacy of this war in Death Valley. Odin will travel as the night sky prevails his horde of beasts to pillage the hillsides and gain number as they attack innocents and take control of their bodies, transforming them into more beasts. He will thus be in possession of a great army of wild wolfmen before we collide with him as the night sky collides against the morning horizon.”
In the distance, a police whistle rang out along the sirens and horns of the great city. Mayhem would be cascading towards the pair of Gods in a matter of minutes. Tyr closed his eyes and swung his sword up around his hands before placing it in a sheath on buckle that sat on his left side.
“Who the fuck are you?” shouted a voice nearby.
“I am Tyr, step closer, you’ll feel my mighty blade sever your life.”
“Stop where you stand!”
A police officer drew his gun haphazardly from behind a patrol car. Aeolus turned to eye his master head-on from behind viciously slit eyelids, and gave a snarl that showed his readiness to fight. Tyr immediately glanced at the armed policeman, and jumped through the air towards his new enemy, landing on and crushing the hood of the ground vehicle before a single shot was made.
Aeolus moved around the back of the car with a speed like a gust of a tornado’s wind. The officer looked up at Tyr’s blank eyes, staring dead on, devoid of any mark or pupil, with complete astonishment. Aeolus placed his hands around the back of his jaws and quickly snapped the patrol officer’s neck.
Tyr, in kneeling position watched as the dead body fell solid as rock to the ground. As another squad car pulled off to his right with siren blaring, he unsheathed his sword and stood tall on the hood.
“So, it begins.”
CHAPTER 2
Huang Di’s loom was of yellow hues and great red circular shapes. His nimble fingers bent on and off the fabric as he prepared final touches. His life’s work would seem tedious to most. Life, as an artisan, was not at all as exciting and full of flare as one might expect. But his work was magnificent, defined with perfectly wound and weaved threads that garnished unimaginably beautiful garments.
From the each of the first dancing rays of sunlight a morning awakening that would slight the shades of his countryside windows, blowing fresh breaths onto his closed eyes, to the grandest of golden rays that on sunset every evening, brought close to his long meditations. Huang Di was a modest man, taking in all. Long ago dispelling Godship, for the humbler life of servitude, he was much more accustomed to his current mode of labor than he had ever been to his reign as Emperor of the Zhou Dynasty of Ancient China.
His loom, which was hanging from a rack carved from Distylium, was positioned in the living space of his three-bedroom house. Distylium created much of the small hut he inhabited. The glass windows always were kept shut, except in the afternoon, when a slight breeze would blow all the way through to the kitchen where tea would be coming to a boil on his stovetop. The loom would twirl and wave in the wind, and dance to usher in the rising moon. A new loom every two weeks, consistently was his rate of production. He would sell the crafted cloths at often most meager prices, dependent on only the rise and fall of tea prices.
His need to consume any nutrient was extremely minimal, yet he still appeared as only about an 80-year-old man, despite his long lifespan, which had lasted for millennia. Most of his sustenance was extracted purely from the air which would rise and collapse in his lungs during deep meditations every evening, and from his afternoon tea, which he drank exactly on schedule every day. He was old, and fragile, but quick still. Sometimes in the morning, he would lean through the window of his house and gaze out upon the river that streamed by his garden and, in total wonderment and awe, observe the fish that would dart through the waters. He knew that he was old like the rocks that played for wandering fish, a hidden oasis of feeding. In this way he knew that he would always be available for his peoples’ guidance along the flowing river of life.
He had a long time past created his own haiku, in ode of life and the fish in his stream:
A failure follows
Autumn by first fallow land
This is the flow way
Satisfaction to Huang Di, the Yellow Emperor, would be as simple as hearing the grass blades bend outside his cottage in the evening, sunset by teacup, or sitting alone, studying his ancient library. Huangdi Neijing, his book of medicine, had in the past been handily ready for consultancies. Passersby, often hungry or beaten by severe weather, almost always could receive proper anointment from the right ingredients and mixtures at the hands of the once greatly revered cleric.
He also possessed the original Book Of Shadows, which collected dust along the side of his shelf, many scriptures of Siddhartha Gautama and Mahatma Gandhi, the Necronomicon stood alongside the Iliad, Metamorphoses against the Tanakh, and many Western classics stood all having been read and re-read over again.
Huang Di, the Yellow Emperor, was still now.
He had sensed something of a physical birth among the antiquities of beings on Earth. Something familiar was stirring in the afternoon glare, as the sun began its soft shade against the horizon. A thing of great beauty, that he could smell and hear move like a delicate mantis. Yet, the being was fully charged with such lustful spirituality that he almost arose to his feet from his embrace of the yellow loom.
This wasn’t a human soul that he detected. Not at all, but at the same time, not very much different. While knowing that he mustn’t be alone in this study, that people around the world must have realized the shift in metaphysical balance, Huang Di nonetheless shut his eyes, contemplated what was coming.
The weather seemed to change quickly, drastically, disturbing him as he sat and meditated, but he only knew this through his extrasensory perceptions of the environment. A big storm was coming. Horizon light was escaping the air of his countryside, and he still was without full knowledge of what shape and form was amidst the otherwise calm world. He strained to capture the being’s essence, but it was moving too fast, darting from here to there, turning the planet upside down with aggressively charged beauty. It was almost certainly female in essence, he concluded, but could not do much more to understand than that.
Suddenly, he was startled into deep lucidity, and was overwhelmed with a barrage of premonitory images. What he saw would be for sure, impossible to find tangible, but he felt certain of the power of complete chaos on Earth. Demonic imagery of war and fire rushed over him. Desperate sights of man against greater powers, a leader that would rise among them, an Apocalypse to humanity, craziness and insanity, finalizing in the frightening collapsing of Earth Realm.
There was a knocking on his door that persisted through the dream-like meditation. The knocking seemed to grow louder, and louder still, until it broke him from his spell at last, and Huang Di jumped to his feet.
“Who wanders my yard, there? Who stands at my step and startles me so?”
“It is I, that does so, old one. Open for me, you have something in your possession that I have come far to seek out,” said a man’s voice from behind the wooden cottage door.
Huang Di made to move over towards the silhouette formed window to see whom it was that was banging on his door at such late hour. But he stopped; for the light outside was so dim that he was unable to even see the stream that flowed by, although he still heard its current rush. He lit a few candles around the living room, and remained calm, collected.
“What is your name, then? How have I known you by?”
First there was a lengthy pause, a clearing throat. Then, a deep entrancing voice burst out; “It is I, the one called Odin..“
“I am here only myself, an old man such as yourself, with but a single, simple request of you. “
“Danger lurks, old one, and it is safer inside than out here. Please, be kind enough to give your kind service.”
Intrigued by the man’s courtesy and politeness, Huang Di approached the door with cautionary steps. However, with reproach, took in his hand a dagger from off a hanging golden harness in the unlit entranceway. As he walked, he stashed the dagger in the back of his gi, on his hand embroidered white belt, which depicted a small yellow lion with a curling orange tongue.
“Now I will welcome and open for you, but be sure Odin, I have studied well the ways of the Gods, and know exactly who you are, and, too, where you stand in this coming war. I will indulgently sacrifice my body and life for a cause that will lead to the protection of my people and land. This I say, while knowing that yes, our ways are soon to change. You are allowed entrance, then, only in anticipation that as a chameleon strikes a fly from through the shades of its surroundings, so does a leader emerge from a crowd.”
Huang Di swung open the door, and peered out into the swallowing darkness of the storm.
There was Odin, standing affront a pack of wild and fighting wolves. The thrashing between the wolfbeasts was not unlike a raging storm itself, and Huang Di was cynically thinking that these were one of the primal reasons for the coming onslaught of weather creeping overhead.
Odin’s dark blue cloak was loosely tied, and sailed in the blowing wind at the door. His hood covered his entire face with black shadows that danced in the light of the candles inside the cottage. Still safe inside, Huang Di was almost angry with the man, for bringing his wild horde so close to the abode, but withdrew from the entrance and allowed Odin in, despite his concern.
Odin stood for no longer than three seconds alone on the step, only long enough for the candlelight to brave past the old man and to shine on his covered face. He was unspeakable in his elderly stature, decrepit even, and fantastically marked by battles. Along each cheek, swinging under each eye, even the corners of his mouth were all scars that created zigzags and caught shades of the darkness upwards against his brow, which was high and wrinkled. His left eye socket was black, an empty void where an eye had once been. His right eye was dark blue, the same color of his cloak, and his iris was blood tinged and veined.
“Huang Di, the Yellow Emperor. I have traveled far already, to see you and your spectacular assortment of antiquities,” Odin said as he began to step over the threshold and into the house. “What I seek here, is of utmost importance to my mission. A Golden Compass that-“ the candle lights blew out as Odin closed the door behind him, “-could be noticed even in complete darkness of the Ether Realm.”
Quickly, Huang Di reached into his pocket for matches. Anticipating a fight, he checked the position of his dagger, and drew out a brightly flaming matchstick from inside his gi. Not so afraid, anymore that this old man posed much of a threat, Huang Di turned to the side and lit the stove.
“I am but an artisan, I cannot imagine what a Golden Compass would mean to a traveler such as yourself. However, if you wait in that room,” he said, sensing the urgency in the man’s voice, and pointing towards the room with the hanging fabrics, “I will take the time to allow your inspection.”
Odin slid, as if suspended in stasis midair, towards the unlit room. From out of his cloak, he pulled an ebony walking stick, as he sat down on a rocking chair that stood facing away from a side window. Huang Di walked through the doorway of his unlit room with the burning matchstick, lighting two hanging candles on either side of the doorway as he went. For just a brief moment, all that was heard within the small living area from the bleakly dark bedroom was a low flurry of papers being rustled, until suddenly, there was a small creek, and the sound of a small wooden box being closed up. Then, Huang Di returned behind the doorway with book in arm, and a toy-like box engraved with another lion’s insignia.
“I have here, the Bai Ze Tu. It is what lead me to suspect your identity, as well as foretell your destiny, with certain insight. Are you familiar with this scripture?”
“No,” said Odin. “I am not so interested, however, in my destiny, as I am in the identity and location of a certain God that has come to Earth. His name is Tyr, and he has arrived this very hour to defeat me in battle. It is my duty, and obligation to meet him for the final conquest to begin. That is why I need the Golden Compass, for while he was granted the wish of having a guide, I was old on this planet when the coming war was first conceived in the hearts of Man. I have walked this world for century and century, with only my beasts by my side, whom I know I mustn’t let alone for too long, lest they take to their own agendas and begin devouring human flesh and blood. You see, the matters and actions that are pending here, are of complete necessity. We must move guiltlessly and purposefully with grace and rapidity to the final hour. Hurry, then, old wise one, show me the Golden Compass.”
Knowing that he had the upper hand, Huang Di continued, “Tyr is a mighty God, Odin. Are you sure you are ready to face him? He has the power of all emotional charge, all mental aggravation, to devastate your forces. I have seen the outcome of this war, in a premonition. Just as you began knocking on my door, I was enraptured in the revelation of what is to come...” as he started again towards Odin, “Yes, you may see the compass. I will coordinate it for the positioning of Tyr, and allow you to carry it with you on your journey.”
Odin’s eye lowered to the box in Huang Di’s hand.
“Say no more, wise one, Yellow Emperor, Huang Di. I am the one responsible for your immortality on Earth. You have powers comparable to a God, now that you are closing in on the time span of existence of Man. The dagger in the back of your gi, it is granted the special magical ability of bringing the dead back to life by its bearer’s command. You must use it with great care and exception to bring back three of Earth’s greatest warriors for one last fight. Let your wisdom guide you, carefully.”
Huang Di’s eyes widened with surprise. He slowly reached to his belt and took out the dagger, which was green and had the crest of a dragon on its handle. He had only used it to cut tea leaves, and had never before used it to fight a mortal, much less revive one.
“My master! My wish is only your demand, and my labors are of love, now, for you,” Huang Di said, kneeling before Odin.
“Then, we will be successful in our mission. I’ve always known that I would be able to trust you with such great sorceries. What will transpire between now and the end, will be redemption of the Gods to Elohim, the Greatest of all Greats, the Eldest and Wisest of all Gods. Mortal man, with his constant contract of dilemma of life, will be freed forever to recognize Him.”
CHAPTER 3
Sometimes, in the course of an era of human endeavors, enterprise, and progress, through which man has endured, and kept faith in God above, a leader has emerged that is marked from birth, through heritage. Other times, another leader is formed from the ground up. Still again, fate may swing her arms to the balance and a great leader is born, that through generations has come to such greatness and durability of spirit, which is unalterable even by the Gods themselves. Reincarnated souls, trapped between Hell and Earth, were always greedy of these spirits. They were of the same kin, and yet if a spirit seemed ready for Nirvana and entrance to Heaven, the spirit was usually assigned an unsavory life.
This is the more telling side of every era of humanity. How leaders are chosen, is as pivotal to its success, or failure, as its economic status of wealth, or environmental prosperity. This is the telling side, as well, because of the fact that this particular generation’s leader would be among the last great ones, and that the leader would arise from between the ashes and dust, dirt and mud, hunger, blood, and oath of purity, truth, would create one of the most incredible tales ever told.
The man called himself Tank. At 33 years old, his original birth name was Matthew Briggs, and he was born of a mother named Felicia Jackson, and a father whose name was Johnathan Briggs, whose mother was Theresa who died at 55, and father was Henry, who’s own mother was Victoria who died at 81, and father was Lester who died at age 72.
The man was named Matthew because his father and his brothers and sisters had become greatly devoted and prided Catholic Christians since the death of their mother Victoria. Henry made sure to this, although most of his sons and daughters had primarily gone along in their lives to do not so great things, and later he stayed at Sunday service afterwards every week to flirt with the other patrons of his church. Henry also, kindly, made sure that his son, Johnathan who had left his old estranged girlfriend, Felicia, and gained the custody of his son, Matthew, had a place to stay. But in due time, would regret it, as soon Johnathan fell into the same game of cat and white mouse that stole Felicia’s soul and life long ago, shortly after their unsatisfactory and violent courtship, and during the long court custody trials that ensued.
Matthew was now an ex-marine of five years who had come home to Los Angeles to see his mother poverty-stricken in a run-down tenement in East L.A. She was foul in stench and crack cocaine had torn her skin, stretched it out so that she was barely recognizable under her stringy, unwashed hair. She had gone mad, as well, and would be unintelligible for most of their initial rendezvous at a local diner. Instead of embracing her son, she would only embarrass him, clawing at the inner sleeves of her worn out sweater and denim jacket. She accidentally coughed once in his black coffee, and her nose was running wildly. Tank soon politely rose out of his seat and gave her the hug he had been waiting to receive and hid his lie when he told her where he’d be staying in the city. He silently told himself that he would return for her one day, but didn’t want to see her this way, and was humbled and nervous that she’d run him out of house and home if she knew where he was residing.
That was nearly a decade ago. Since then, things had gone well, then slowly tapered off into dismal for Tank. His father would disappear from his life after cancer struck, and eventually killed him.
Tank was the name that he had earned in Marine boot camp, but he had then used for street credibility, and a reference among the other members of his gang. He hadn’t seen his mother in five whole years, since the one time he had driven up in a Cadillac along a prostitute-ridden side street of the Southside and watched as his companion handed her a bag of coke out of his car window. He pulled his hood up, and lowered his sunglasses.
Hiding watering eyes, at the exact moment of the hand-off he was already pulling off, going directly to the uptown basement party where he had intended to get laid. He managed to make it through two years of hardcore partying before being brought to trial and falsely accused of rape by a young rival’s opiate addicted ex-girlfriend. He beat the case, after pre-trial release, and had gotten lucky with a good lawyer who came recommended to him by another veteran.
Tank was 33 now, though, and he was on his way to becoming homeless soon if something didn’t change. The gang scene was crawling with informants, or so he had believed, and his old set had crumbled under the weight of a fierce police crackdown late in the last decade. He had been beaten and brutalized, as well, during a big drug raid gone sour, where he had evaded being caught with coke, only to get jumped outside of his friend’s project building.
“Gangbanging ain’t what the shit was cracked up to be,” he told a young gunner one morning outside of a corner store. He quickly realized that his words of advice were only going to fall on deaf ears, possibly encourage rather than discourage the young man. He wasn’t even sure what the words meant, himself.
Los Angeles, the City of Angels, would probably be his resting place. At best just another veteran’s name engraved on a wall somewhere, was all that he’d amount to. His thoughts had grown horribly morbid. He’d even given a clean shot at employment in the last couple of years, and had lasted only six months of real work between two different jobs.
But Tank was still without serious threat or worry. He was a survivor, and he still had his gun ready in case an old rival gang picked up on him. He still walked with a big Ziplock bag of marijuana hidden in his boxers wherever he went. He still had his rosary around his neck, and he still wore his red bandana, even though he had long ago left the gangster life behind him.
At a high seven feet tall, and weighing only a bit under 300 pounds, Tank was a big, big man. Intimidatingly large, and mostly was still muscle. He had short hair, which grew longer on his beard. His voice was deep, and hoarse after nearly two decades of smoking.
This momentous day of reckoning for mankind, although unforeseen by Matthew, happened to land three days before Tank’s 34th birthday. Today, it was raining in L.A., as well as cold. As the rain poured down, Tank was standing out on the stoop of his apartment building. His dress was of a camouflage hooded sweatshirt, and blue jeans, a pair of boots, a red bandana. He was melancholy, watching a group of kids walk down the street, a young multicultural group of students across the road. Reminiscing the long-passed times when he was young as the students, fresh on the streets from his first criminal court trial, charges of conspiracy and affiliation with drug dealing drop-outs from his high school. It had been an armed robbery, and manslaughter for his youthful comrades. He had only shortly thereafter enlisted directly into the Marines, barely having passed through a certain amount of scrutiny that had resulted from his rap sheet.
The Marines had changed him, physically, drastically. Nonetheless, on his return to the street life, his mentality was still solid, hard as a bullet. He had never been one to rob or steal, although he had been urged to, and he had stayed clean off the drugs that he started selling. He never was too flashy, besides the new Cadillac that he had bought at age 27. He had recently sold the car, his prized possession, the year prior, used most of the money to live off of, the rest to start his weed selling career. The Marines had been a quite good idea as well, and he had been paid very well for his six-year stint. He had been nominated for promotion to Lieutenant, but had retired as a Sergeant. Tank still didn’t like to talk about the time he spent in the Marines, with anyone.
Suddenly, the wave of nostalgia thickened and like a riptide he was brought back to a small room of an old, abandoned building near where he stood right then.
The strong scent of the incense was still lingering, and he remembered the old woman’s words, “Your kingship will be as a plague on your family tree, and will stem wicked leaves. But be brave, eat not of the foreign fruit of perdition, until you are ready... It is by all means your war, boy... The time is nigh, in the sky, the time to die, time to try, once by and by, by and by.” Her lullaby was sung gently, like a mother he never had.
“The Muse... What the hell is going on with me?” Matthew thought.
As a taxicab pulled up in front of him, Matthew Briggs began to lose concentration. The rain was coming down hard, and as he turned around, he wondered what his life would have been like if he had stayed in the Marines. He slowly opened the front door, and took a keycard out of his pocket. He began to point it towards a sensor near the handle before a woman pushed out through the entrance, allowing him in.
As he started up the stairs to his studio apartment, he half noticed the lights in the stairwell flickering off for a brief moment, flashing back on as he grabbed the rail. The nauseating but familiar scents of urine, chicken, cigarettes, and a faint smell of marijuana pervaded the air around him, combined and outbalanced each other between levels of stairs. When on his floor he saw a man banging on a door, yelling to the other side slews of obscenities, he presumed another domestic dispute. When he reached his apartment, he looked back and the man was angrily walking away, shaking his head in the dank hall. The lights flickered again against peeling paint in the hallway, and the sound of his television set leaked out of the door as he pushed in his key and opened it. Once inside, he shook off his boots, and started towards the kitchen area, to put down his gun, which he grabbed from behind his back. Tank stepped closer to the table. Before he tossed his gun down, he made sure the safety was securely in position.
“One helluva day.”
The moment the gun landed on the table, spinning, he sighed out loud, deep and heavy. At the moment the gun barrel pointed at him, the Earth cracked. His building collapsed, and Tank was buried beneath tons of rubble.
ACT 3
Gods
In and out of Heaven, three wishes are granted by the cherubs there that guard that light. This was intended only for use by the Elders. As that only chosen men and women were allowed to enter, there never had been a problem, in the past, of overindulgences. There had been mostly miracles of a minor scale, and as that all full knowledge was given of the past and future to anyone in Heaven, the miracles were rarely tied closely to the deceased’s life. Miracles, for example a bleeding statue of Christ, or psychic power, were granted in moderation.
Tyr lay in the street; shockwaves of the earthquake were still ringing in his ears. He had been covered in debris, and dust, from head to toe. His legs were trapped under a piece of wall that had fallen from a nearby building, and most of his upper body as well was trapped.
“Where is Aeolus?” he wondered. The Protector God must have left his side, right when he most needed it. On Earth, Tyr had lost his symbiotic omnipotent knowledge of what was happening at any given moment. He only retained his mission statement, of defeating Odin. The absence of Aeolus, in this way, was pivotal and could mean his own untimely demise. He was sure that this meant a great unnatural disturbance had occurred, that overshadowed the earthquake’s devastating effects.
A pair of legs began to move towards Tyr’s fallen body, something familiar was in the air that he couldn’t quite put a finger on. The legs, approaching, were not quite touching the ground, and were surprisingly clean. They didn’t at all look like one of the patrol officers’ pleated pants that had been on his trail to the airport. He couldn’t even lift his head far enough to see the on-comer’s face, his shoulders weighted heavily down from the massive debris. As the legs came closer, he struggled to free himself, to grab his sword which lay awkwardly against his thigh, to even identify the being that approached.
As the fallen wall lifted off of him, thrown, by the mysterious being, Tyr was anxious to see what mystical powers were being used to save him. But more than anything, Tyr began to feel a claw-like remorse grasp under throat and heart. After finally raising to his feet, and shaking off the dust, Tyr stared up to greet his savior.
His eyes, blurry at first, made out the shape of a dark, pretty woman with long flowing red hair. She was picturesque, standing alone in the street, the epitome of what would personify beauty among Gods and men alike, and her thin face without a trace of any mark. Her arms and legs covered with a seductive green, embroidered silk, as were her voluptuous breast. The front of her thong had a red diamond embroidered in the very center. As his vision cleared, he quickly noticed through the smoke that two dark shadows were following her every movement, stretching and collapsing. As the smoke cleared a little bit, he saw that the shadows were dark black wings like that of a bald eagle’s behind her.
“Who... (cough)... are you?” Tyr gasped out.
The woman smiled, with her thick red lips, and her tongue licked delicately the side of her mouth. She giggled.
“Will you answer me, woman? I have no time to stand here in the wasteland of the Great City.”
The woman giggled a little more, and put a finger on her lips to quell her inner little girl.
“Call me Ishtar,” and she bent in mid-air to put her face within inches of Tyr’s. Her bright blue eyes shone like two glowing diamonds under the storm ahead, and as a lightning strike flashed, for a brief second Tyr saw her as one of the most beautiful things ever imagined, even in Heaven whence he had come. She reminded him of humanity’s graces, all welded upon one single, gliding and fluid shape.
“I will be yours,” she whispered to him, and he could barely make out her voice through the sirens and horns that erupted across the cavernous, buried walls of New York City. “I will be your love, and I will be your hate. I will create you in destruction.”
Her arms wrapped around his neck, softly at angles, and she flew around to his back, to whisper; “I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.” Her body was warm against his, and he felt her breast land against his shoulder blades, she slid her arms lower across his chest. He was entranced for a moment.
“Your old ways will fall to my whim, as I will be the mother of new age. I will give birth to you, and all of men will know me as their life and sin. Like an egg hatches a chick, or like the sun showers the skies above, so too will my legs spread to give rise to the dawn of a new era.”
Tyr closed both of his eyes, as Ishtar reached low and pressed close to his back, her cheek against his, her hair sliding along his bald head. Suddenly he felt a sensation that he had never felt before, of total lust. She quickly spun to his front, as if in anticipation of his emotions all along, and her legs he grabbed along his left side, holding her although he knew she was steady. She didn’t seem to care, and allowed him this trespass, as she allowed his next, to lean towards her closer so that her small nose disappeared under his eyes, which went deeper into hers. That old feeling returned, and he was stunned into paralysis.
“Will you be my baby?” the angel-like woman said to him, culling him into her beauty. “Will you love me?”
Tyr wanted to nod, but stopped short. There was something simple yet too eerily familiar about her eyes. He kept watching them dart around his face. She was doing something that he had no control over, and yet he didn’t know what to think, until finally she closed her eyes and spoke her sweet melody again.
“Love me, Tyr. Love my body against yours tonight, and in the heat of battle you will be immortal. In the heat of our love, we will rise like a new sun to be forever remembered here on Earth.”
A temptress, Tyr thought to himself, finally, his spirit slowly beginning to break free from her enchantment. But her voice, like a white light still called to him. He was still speechless, as her pounding heart vibrated on her entire body, and her warmth grew deeper in his arms.
Ishtar put her right hand on her inner thigh, and gently played along the sides of the red diamond, but Tyr was still watching her eyes, hoping just to see some hint that would allow him to break free. She was good, though, and her eyes did nothing to betray the lust that was still built around her and him, growing in its fiery fury. Ishtar’s left hand reached and touched his cheek, softly; she leaned forward to kiss him.
Tyr looked down at her banded thighs in the midst of their most passionate kiss. He knew that as a fallen God, he was giving in to too many of the emotions and forms of a mortal man. But it had not yet made him mad, until now. This woman, Ishtar, whose skin was pure like virgins’, was like a succubus. Yet he knew he couldn’t let his emotions betray his mission...
One little kiss, her lovely lips and tongue moving against mine. She is so- suddenly, a knife’s edge cut into his right arm, nearly tearing it off so quickly that he had little time to react.
Tyr threw the woman off of him, and quickly saw as she retracted another knife from her leg stocking. There was another one identical to it, still in her left hand.
“Devil!” he cried, as she beat back her wings to stay afloat. Simultaneously, Tyr leapt backwards to get his sword, which he had left down on the ground for a moment. Gunshots were fired in the street, once again startling him, anticipating bullet fire to come from another police dispatch.
Instead, he felt the purge of the second dagger in his right shoulder. She had thrown it, wickedly at him, as he was struggling to pick the sword up and evade the rising fires.
Ishtar’s laugh now was sinisterly adapted to her viciously thrust second knife, this time aiming for Tyr’s heart. Tyr half-dodged, half-fell back to the ground to evade the strike. His arm had gone numb from the hit, and he reached up to grab out the dagger that still lay in his shoulder. When he had removed it, he looked at the woman in awe.
“Was this the Second Coming? It can’t be. She has the power of a God, but vanity that only a human could portray...” he wondered, stabilizing his legs.
“This is more than a ‘Return’, old fool. This is revenge.”
Tyr grabbed the sword off of the ground with his left hand, slashed upward and out at the woman with such power that the swing itself lifted him to his feet, where he turned to run down the street, away from bullets that were whizzing by both of them, and away from Ishtar who adeptly swept the floor with her foot as he ran off, brushing the dagger to her. Just as she picked it up off the ground and harnessed it, Tyr was leaping over more pieces of a shattered stained-glass window. On the other side of the field of glass, he turned. She was directly behind him, hovering over the still nearly intact depiction of Jesus Christ, shattered on the ground.
Tyr raised his sword and pointed the tip to her.
“The War of Gods commences now. You will fall to my sword, and I will take no pity upon your body. Your deception will be useless against me now, you are no match for my ability.”
Ishtar smiled wider, revealing her teeth. “Our battle does not end here, though, Tyr. In the future, we will surely meet again. For now, I only wanted this introduction to suffice until our final interception. I too, have greater purposes for being here in the Earth Realm.”
“Devil! Face me now while my anger and rage boils for your blood!”
Ishtar said nothing, and beat her wings, rising upwards towards the thundering sky, both daggers pointing towards Tyr as she raised her head and sang a soothing note across the city, in an intimate yet intimidating sentiment.
Tyr watched, in fascination as she left him behind a cloud cover from which shot a great bolt of lightning. He was reminded of his son Zeus, and his promise of thunders and storms that would detain the Earth people from their navigation. The airport might not have been as good an idea as he had once thought. He would need all of Aeolus’s strength to reach Death Valley at sunrise. The night was just beginning, though, and Tyr had faith that if he could stay alive long enough, Aeolus would soon return from whatever affair had taken him.
As soon as Ishtar’s voice had disappeared, Tyr saw many people had begun to crawl out of the shattered, burning buildings.
“This could be ugly.”
CHAPTER 2
“Zeus knew his father’s essence well,” Adad thought out loud, as he watched the skirmish between Ishtar and Tyr. “Tyr will fall to a whim, just as he will fall to the blade.”
Adad had already fought and defeated his nemesis’s guide, Aeolus, the Protector Wind God, but had not yet touched the Elder God’s mortal body. Tyr would be a much more tough adversary, as his power had been much greater in Heaven.
His initial thrusting surge of energy upon entering the Realm of Earth had filled Adad with a lustful urge that he was having difficulty controlling. He was a powerful God, although only a Protector. But now his mind began wandering and his focus was being powerlessly lost amid a chaos of quaking earth. Also, somehow the rumbling of Hell had reawakened parts of his powers. As he looked around, he realized the utter calamity that had befallen the grounds of the land. Armies were in motion, worldwide, and police patrols, ambulances, firefighters were all rushing around the streets like chickens with their heads cut off. He was in control of a planet, with gusts of rain now downpouring on the forsaken city.
Yet still, his lack of inhibitions was getting the best of Adad. Stretching, he pointed his shoulders back, and leaned upwards towards the sky and raised his hands in duet like a maestro to crashing thunder and lightning in every direction.
Ishtar was up there, within his clouds, and it made him feel stronger, heavy with pressure and challenge.
“There, behind me,” he contemplated with the purity of a marksman attaining his arm to steady on a target. He spun in the air, flying through the stratosphere to chase the idol of his fascination.
“This woman, this angel,” his thoughts gained speed ever more quickly as he climbed higher towards Ishtar. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of cloud curl, and knew that she was near as his hands grasped it away as if climbing a steep mount, searching for motivation and ignition to spark a quicker ascent. His thoughts remained steady, however, and he was sure to catch her.
There, before him, all at once as if slapped with a pure paintbrush, Ishtar appeared, facing him direct on, forcing his abrupt stop. He smirked at the approach, allowing his soul to access a heartier ambition. Ishtar must have seen it, for as immediately as she appeared facing him, she turned down to the side as if to look through the dense clouds towards the planet far below them both.
Ishtar blew through her lips the most fragrant aromas, like poppy, and her essence was of pure beauty. Adad could not resist throwing aside the clouds with his magic for the magnificence of her body to reach down like a beacon on the shallow waters, fields, and hollow houses laid beneath them. The clouds spread at his command and they were both looking down at the city of New York and its outstretching neighbors.
“You, you have much stamina,” Ishtar whispered with a pretty voice that echoed like a thousand symphonic instruments, “but will it be enough? What you lack is the pure courage to control yourself. You will see that the planet below us has lost its own stamina, and in the same way, it’s self-control. It has been judged by Utu that you both will fall by Ragnarok.”
Adad fled.
CHAPTER 3
“In the end, when all things have come to a close. When, what is the emperor’s riddle becomes as the snake’s tail coils to its mouth. There will be moments of pure ecstasy and elation. The bears will awaken from the deep slumbers of winter and charge the plateaus with fury, the lions will crawl from the dens and spring into motion towards the terrific prey that lies just behind the tiger’s eye that is destroying inhibition. The nights will become blood fire, and the days will be scorching hot. Anger and vengeful bloodlust will fall on the greatest men, and the meek shall inherit the earth to be burned down by the blades of the wicked. The rising tides of hatred and ignorance, will be pooled and ripped towards the collapsing of the machines. The labor fields will become battlegrounds to the rawest of bones, burned by a summer plague. Ghosts will rue the rushing forces of good and evil, delve into holes made of lost wishes, and without scruple, terrify the men and women. Boys and girls will be sacrificed to their lesser good, rape and murder will become as epidemics to the Earth Realm. We will ascend to the forsaken side and collide the powers, forces and combine our own vengeance to overthrow those that oppose us...
“When I have wondered if I could I ever once again walk on the Heaven’s plain... To reunite the water dog with its owner has often transcended even to myself, one without will. Is it mere fancy or has the awakening begun? Upon this discourse I have pondered many moons. I’ve heard it spoken in ancient tongues; ‘the time is nigh.’ Let me say here, now then, It has begun. To Ragnarok my aides and sorcerers, generals and warriors, we will march as one until the last body has fallen. Until my return to fortify the kingdom, go now my minions, return will be the satisfaction of Ahriman’s Sacrifice.”
- HADES, FROM THE ADDRESS OF HIS MINIONS ON RAGNAROK
BOOK 2:
Ragnarok: the end of undue faith.
Act 1
Chapter 1
Draco
The swirling overhead clamor of rising and falling thunderclouds that symphonically collided and like the grandest percussions drummed along a rhythm of the march-like calamity and chaos was like a mirage to the wandering pedestrians of the planet Earth. It was a warning signal for those stragglers left walking through the pouring, torrential downfall of pounding rains. The black air between the sky and land seemed teemed with blasts of wind, carrying speeds that would crash on windowpanes and inflict seething burns on the faces of the poor people that threw away their lives to the mercy of the Gods.
Animals and the small creatures that would normally be on scavenging expeditions in their nocturnal ways were buried by the water and mud, or either sprawling their drenched legs and scurrying to dig down into the planet. Their natural instincts, if not the violent sky, warned them of imminent danger, and they began to behave strangely savage towards one another. A coyote might strike out viciously at its peers without restraint. Squirrels fell from the trees tangling themselves in frenzy, landing awkwardly on the waterlogged streets. Birds struck at each other, soaring raptors of the sky tumbled downwards and crashed their breaking beaks on rocks and boulders. Even ants below the surface quarreled while trapped in muddy collapse.
From the spaces above Earth where satellites spun in orbit, astronauts stared in utmost awe at the spectacle of the Earth below them. Every inch of Earth covered with a black void-like veil of cloud; they knew that their chances of returning home were slimming. To be trapped, without hope of communication or salvation, caused tensions to raise even in these utopias of scientific exploration.
The tornadoes were forming rapidly, and within hours of the first lightning bolts, houses were being shorn of shingles, then windows, finally doorways would fill with gasping citizens who would behold the great tumultuous winds that approached. One or two tornadoes, sometimes three, every square mile, and rain was beginning to flood the riverbanks.
Glaciers, frozen on the ice caps broke free and sailed outwards toward a desolate sea that blazed with escalating motions of hundred-foot squalls, which even Poseidon would envy. On shores across the world, people evacuated villages and cities, as waves came hurtling downwards on broken decks and oceanfront residencies.
Black rain that was as pure as the deepest voids of every man’s knowledge put anyone outside at complete loss of sight. In missions, reconnaissance or other, a friend or family member who strayed away more than three yards was considered missing, almost immediately. Abandoned, the lost would often be wickedly struck by the black rain until battered, would fall to the ground and huddle up, crouch and soon lose all rational thought to desolate desperation.
On all continents people leaned on trees, swaying in the wind, hoping for a haven from the terrific madness. Children were dying sooner than mothers could rescue them from the War of Gods, which had only just begun.
Here, in the twilight of the night storm’s fury, was an inescapable emotion that washed over every one of Earth, including executives and officials of all sorts. It was a feeling of imminence, a great mourning, and anticipation for the sky. It was like the feeling that a murderer might have had for a bounty hunter hot on the trail. A heavy wait, impatience, an urge for finality.
The ones not touched by this savage commotion were few and far between, standing in radiation-safe shelters deep below the surface. Here, no light reached the sanctuaries aside from the candles brought in, and most people had not the time to relocate themselves into these cave chambers. The storm had been so fast, coming like an owl in the night.
Yet, in a remote part of our memory, as we retain a vigilance, although desperate, for the slain ability of choice in the midst of the great regrets, lay a sole wish made by a sore soul, which had gone unfulfilled. The wish, it sparkled in the rain and it blossomed in the heart of a handful of singular men and women. They alone kept close to their blood made oath, and amongst the calamities, the suicides, and the raping, catastrophe, they cried. This was the moment of clarity to the purging of Ragnarok. The unity of only a few, that might be able to carry on humanity, if only the sparse remnants, through the barreling onslaught of night approaching through the twilight which bruised the spirit.
The cry that sounded through the night, fell on the ears of Aeolus, who tossed over on his side on top of the tallest remaining building in all New York City; the old Empire State Building. Aeolus tossed up a single arm to the sky, and although burned and wounded, he pulled himself up with the gate of the balcony.
Beneath, Tyr was scrambling still, and above, still, Adad with once prideful eyes was scouring the landscape. Somewhere in the night Odin was following his call to the Temple, with his pack of beasts at his side. Through the storm that raged, the Gods were rallying themselves against each other, to this war that they waged.
“Ragnarok.” whispered Aeolus with his full lungs that blew a wind of air that tumbled back a bit of hanging clouds, and as in synchronic effect, there was a light that sparked in the sky for only a brief second.
The men and women of the streets below stopped and a hush fell over the great city. The cry of the chosen heroes fell from a roaring scale to a low whimpering, and as it quickly disappeared, left them all mystified as they had been before, only now with the promise of Heaven so close to their hearts that they made course of the now outrageously raging emotions that spun through their spirits and took to feet to face a fiery light that shone on either horizon or overhead.
At once, another light emerged from the hole in the dark clouds, and Aeolus winced in the overflowing flames that spewed from the light. He was determined, however, to face the new confrontation head-on, and shaded a bit of it with his hand up.
Through the flames and trembling thunder came a new noise. Foreign to the people of Earth, it was the evil sounds of a snarling demon, a growling dragon, a pounding army that approached through unseen dimensions, through gateway after gateway of Hell. The piercing shrieks of generations of pure anguish then rose in octave, higher and higher, to pierce like knives, the minds of everybody that stood in listening distance. Some, closer to the portal that warped the thunderclouds and cityscape, began to bleed from their eyes and ears.
Aeolus stared onwards, though, and through the broken region the hush grew more and more quiet, until all that remained were sounds of thunder, rain, the light, and the horrifying screeching howls of Hell that cascaded from the fiery chasm in the sky.
From out of this penetrating inferno, rode four horsemen. The first was covered in all white light, so blindingly white and radiant that Aeolus tried to avert his eyes for a moment until the next, on a red steed came galloping, the light reflecting vibrantly blood red rays of a certain refractive element, as if to penetrate utmost fear on any onlooker. Yet Aeolus stared on in growing, gnawing terror. A black horse rode through next, and disappeared into the dark night, camouflaged in the black rain. Then, a pale horse came riding, invisible except for the shimmering flames that distorted it, stampeding through the gateway.
Neither Aeolus nor Tyr had anticipated that the gates of Hell would open this early. The omen lead both Gods to quickly realize that their fight would be much more dangerous than either of them had initially suspected. But for the myriad of people running around on the ground, those that had not fallen in bloodshed already, this meant catastrophe and mayhem between civilians would be only a mere portion of the total slaughter that would ensue.
Then the horsemen came down to Earth, and stood perpendicularly facing the light that grew denser now, watching the pouring flames drench the rain with flickers and the puddle reflections of terrified faces. The devilish men on horses pulled their reigns up and the beasts they rode stood high on their hind legs, curling their lips and spouting small flames from their nostrils which flared.
Out of the gateway, now, came something so grotesquely unreal that even Tyr stopped himself in his tracks, and turned to face head on the warping tunnel of flame.
From out of the fire-fortified portal, flew a massive dragon on wings that spread the length of three miles, each. The dark green scales shimmered in the pouring rain, and the dragon’s eyes were boiling over with mad anger. The beating sound was deafening, of its mighty wings, as it slid through from Hell like a worm through rain water, or a snake in the sun.
Ragnarok, the twilight of the Gods, ended, and the sun, although not visible through the fierce clouds, shaded itself to the land of America.
Draco, the Serpent of Eden, had been released. Upon his head stood a small figure, and upon his head stayed a crown of many points like knives.
Aeolus leapt down and flew to Tyr, holding back the strong gravitational pull of Earth with a strong wind. Together, they now began the long, haunting, gauntlet of the ravaged roads to the airport.
Lucifer’s reign on Earth had begun, and the angels of Heaven wept, for they had no power to combat nor deter the pure and unimaginable havoc that would be wreaked on both the less sinful and more sinister men alike of Earth.
The men that rode the gruesome beasts dispersed in four directions, and started their awful assault. Draco swept the city, collapsed the Empire State Building with one claw, and began devouring Earth.
CHAPTER 2
Tyr was well aware of the notion that the gruesome Horsemen assassins were more or less a kind of second plan, alternative route of mayhem for Hell’s ultimate assault amongst the other destructive elements prevalent on Earth. If Draco had been released to single-handedly destroy Earth from the Netherrealm, then it was understood that the Horsemen had a slightly different agenda. In the war that was coming, Tyr would be forced to reanalyze the greater picture of keeping Heaven, his home, safe from these mutinous intruders. All that he knew was that if he was now to be at all successful, he must not stop at Odin. To save his Heaven, he would be forced to secure Earth Realm now. The imbalanced world only created a schism and rift in the Realms.
The rain did little to stop their progress, and Aeolus and Tyr were side by side rushing through the flooded streets to their destination. The sounds of civilian panic, as well as Draco’s loud mighty wings and shrill shrieks filled the air. It wouldn’t take long at all for Draco to completely destroy most of the city with his burning breath and gigantic claws. This being so, Tyr and Aeolus had no choice but to leave the city soon, follow along their path to Death Valley and the Temple.
The night was thick under the storm clouds, and all of the building lights had been off for hours. Tyr raced through the bloody waters, sword in its sheath, Aeolus guiding him by a few paces.
When they reached the airstrip, they made quick haste to decide on the appropriate jet to take to Death Valley’s Temple, the War of Gods. Yet as soon as they came to a quick and solid decision, Tyr noticed a light in the back of the airport. A piercingly radiant light, which shone across through the dark waters and rain.
Tyr quickly judged the distances between and, knowing the source was probably that of the Horseman’s, realized that a fight would break out before they had even reached the jet that would carry them to battle with Odin. Aeolus had proved loyal, but weaker in the battle he alone had fought with Adad. Tyr motioned for him to stay back, as well realizing that if worse came to worse Aeolus would be physically alright on his own to fly to Death Valley, although it would be crucial for Tyr to be the initiator of the final conflict.
In the dark monarchy of the night, the rebel of Hell had this chance open. Take Tyr’s life now, and control the path of Odin with their own hands, or face the bitter and cruel punishments surely awaiting him in Hell from whence he came.
From the other side of the port, came a shrill, startling whinny out of the hoarse throat of the steed that raised on its hind legs, spreading wide it’s light across the runway. The shining light was so blindingly fluorescent that Tyr fell to his knee and covered his eyes with a strong forearm. This was going to be a blind battle, and as the great beast leapt and pounded the ground, splashing water with its flaming-tipped hooves, Tyr closed his eyes wincingly and stood again. He took up a forward jog, straining his ears to listen to the oncoming splashing of the Horseman.
It was then, that Aeolus yelled out “Tyr, beware! The Horseman has planted on his back a strong bow and quiver!”
No sooner had this warning been pronounced, had Tyr jumped up in the air above a fallen body of an army officer, and the Horseman simultaneously reached behind him for the bow. Tyr unsheathed his large sword, midair, and opened only one eye to the sky so as to shield his eyes from the bright light that came forth from the Horseman. An arrow shone in the sky, that was blazing at it’s sharp, pointed tip as Tyr landed beyond the body, and Tyr swung his sword forward from over his head. The sword struck this first arrow and sliced it in half, sending splinters of flashing moonlight into the puddles on the runway.
The second flying arrow was only a few yards behind the first, though, and Tyr rolled to his left to evade it, as the Horseman approached at accelerating speeds. Tyr closed both of his eyes, once again, preparing for the Horseman, who at this close proximity would be forced to abruptly dismount and attack with brute force. Aeolus blew the wind to disarray the arsenal of arrows, at the short meter of space, disarming the Horseman.
The assassin, though, took advantage of his beast’s speed and galloped it closer to Tyr who steadied himself on his feet. The distorted shouts outside the airport gates nearly distracted him as he spun his sword lengthwise and held out his left hand in defense, anticipating a second chance for the assassin to reassemble an arrow to the bow and strike. Yet the assassin was smarter still, and restrained himself from using the weapon again. Instead, he threw the arrow in his hand at Tyr, with his arm, allowing the bow to drop to the side on a sling.
Tyr, with his eyes still closed, was listening carefully for the bow’s stretch, and when he did not hear the arrow come closer began to step forward. Aeolus, whose attention had not been diverted by the raising voices behind him, became quickly aware of his hero’s dangerous approach to the arrow. The flung projectile was only a few inches away from Tyr’s chest when Aeolus focused and blew it clear out of harm’s way. The assassin now dismounted, jumping down to the ground off the radiant horse, only a dozen paces away from Tyr.
Tyr, feeling the wind blow the arrow, opened his left eye to watch it fall far down the runway. He knew that it had been a close call, almost angered at himself for not anticipating the sneak attack. He threw himself into motion, however, towards the assailant who was in full force.
In total darkness, the bright assassin was attracting a growing crowd that stood outside of the gates. No shots had been fired yet, but guns had been raised at the two battlers, and Aeolus knew that if one of them did not fall quickly in the fight, that the men would begin to shoot at either of the Gods. The Gods were as mortals, in that any fatal weapons and mortal elements of the Earth domain could damage their vitality, so Aeolus turned and crouched behind a group of diesel fuel barrels, silently praying that the crowd would see the danger of the nearby explosive materials and refrain with their idiocy. Aside from this, he was actually in patient waiting, though if need be, to tackle them down and disarm them.
Tyr wielded his sword wildly to the approaching Horseman, knowing that his blindness would be an obstacle that he’d only overcome courageously and with intimidation of power. The Horseman, however, knew that his enemy’s closed eyes, although would have been certainly a hindrance to most humans, would not be much of a problem to this particular target, that his footsteps alone would divulge his position to Tyr, God of Battle. With this in mind, the Horseman jumped to the right, retreating from his position, hoping to flank Tyr as well as throw off the God’s intuition.
Tyr was thoroughly focused, though, and did not allow any element of surprise to keep his ultimate mission from being subsided. He swiftly turned to his right, in an effort to counteract the aversion. The demonic horseback assassin was going to attempt a slide kick, as Tyr could hear by the short stall in movement and the quick backwards stepping that the Horseman used to gain momentum.
The Horseman, though, in stepping backward, left open a whole range of his front leg. Tyr was too far for a first strike, and besides which, his back was turned to the enemy in a position that feigned defenselessness. Aeolus glanced from the rioting crowd to the two combatants. It was the Horseman’s next move; Tyr was frighteningly close to losing the fight.
Tyr opened his eyes, still turned the opposite direction of his ugly opponent, who was already plunging his weight into a downward kick. The crowd was growing, and the growling of the angry people was rising in amplitude. It was Tyr’s move that would decide this fight, and he made his choice fast as the assassin, only a half dozen feet behind him, bent and threw himself against the battering rainfall and ground of the runway.
Tyr put his concentration to the sword he carried in his right arm, now, and swung it high, to the cloud cover and falling drops that were glowing in the Horseman’s fiery light. He spun, as the assassin closed in, and pointed the sword directly into the fast fury that came across unto him like a steam engine barreling down a track, water splashing in the air both ways away from the sliding kick.
The sword pierced the skull of the Horseman, between the eyes. The light that was so bright that it had a while blinded Tyr quickly faded away as did the assassin into the darkness. Tyr had defeated the first rider on the storming night, and he sheathed his sword once again, looking over to Aeolus who was still behind the barrels, hiding from the mob whose awe at the battle had dropped their jaws for a moment. Aeolus didn’t look back as he ran up to Tyr in the runway. The horse, even, disappeared like a ghost in the night.
The two Gods were alone in the runway. They took off to the plane, as the mob began to unsettle themselves. As Aeolus hopped up the rail to the cockpit entry, a shot was fired, followed by the sound of an AK-47 rattling against the thundering clouds.
As soon as the jet began taking off, Draco and Lucifer were flying the city’s horizon, leaving behind a long trail of mass destruction, which Tyr and Aeolus crossed on their way to the Temple.
“The cities will know the deep maniacal suffering under the stretching body of the dragon. Ragnarok was ended, but Armageddon is yet to begin. By the names of our peers in Heaven, we must free ourselves from Draco’s scourge, and kill Odin at the Temple, before Lucifer’s potential genocide is realized. The war, Aeolus, this time, is for more than Earth Realm, or any of its inhabitants can ever realize. The war is for Heaven, and it is for Elohim.”
CHAPTER 3
Adad’s mission on Earth was simple, yet the idea behind the mission was what counted. Of course, he knew that it would only take a few moments to locate and fight Odin. But where he hoped he would meet him was West of the Temple, and here he would attempt to make his last stand for the right of his benefactor to incarnate himself in the Earth Realm, to defeat Tyr. The idea was that if Odin was to be destroyed by hands of a Lesser Temple God, it could create the effect of an overall imbalance in the Cipher of Godship, thereby allowing Zeus to take power on Earth comparable of Elohim in Heaven.
Adad moved at high altitudes and speeds to his destination far out in the West. Time was ticking, and there could be no stalling. The clouds tumbled and rolled, spreading the path that Adad followed. The power to control clouds was as fluent to him as speech. The entire water cycle, though, was a bit more difficult, like a foreign dialect that one struggled with to emulate.
His race was at the moment, causing the rain below to fall a slightly lesser rate. He knew that letting up the downpour would only go to help his enemies, whom he decisively wished to thwart. But his half-mortal mind had the capability to only commit itself to a certain amount of tasks at once. The magical powers that he harnessed well were only capable of so much, and although a bit frustrating, were his one advantage.
Suddenly, as like a truck passing a yellow light on the road of Earth, Adad saw a flashing red between curling cloud shapes. Suddenly, then, as quick as he could try to slow his pace to avoid collision, the form became visible just to the right as a sword came piercing laterally through the vapors, like a jousting lance of a great medieval knight.
Adad hadn’t chance to move, as the sword seared and stabbed his right side, under his arm. He cried and stumbled, mid-air, and began to descend sharply under his weight. Down upon him came a red, hooded soldier, riding on a flying horse.
Adad shook as he grabbed his side, but turned and tumbled sideways midfall, to face the soldier while screeching in agony.
The towering giant on his shining red steed was descending as well, in pursuit of the wounded God. The sword he held outstretched, across his midsection with a bent elbow, was blood red as if having recently come from tournaments of desecration. The lunging force of the rider was quickly accelerating him to the disabled figure that flailed his arm up.
The Horseman prepared for the prey’s sacrifice. Adad had only one option, as he fell, stunned from the strike.
Burning in the concentration of a thousand mortal minds, souls under the memories of times and generations, Adad let out a mighty yell.
The sky seemed to shake and collapse, as the teeming lightning, white like the tip of a tidal wave once against the black, smoky clouds, shot into the air from the ground with a singular busting burst that shone and penetrated the red Horseman. The rider was thrown off his horse, which plummeted downwards as if lost without retainer and disappeared.
The Horseman, too, vanished as quickly as he had once come across in the utterly black night.
ACT 2
Chapter 1
Apocalypse
The Yellow Emperor stared out into the black rain, flooding his land. Across the field, trees swayed in the torrential downfall. Complete dark, and the light that struck across the hills flashed to reveal the weather-beaten countryside. Dark swirling whirlwinds of rain squalls would splash the old man’s face through the window. The earthquake had knocked over candles in the rickety shack, and wax puddles lay near dressers, small tables.
Huang Di had not much time to work, and turned back to his books that he had laid out right next to an array of candles on a table near the back of his living room, behind the yellow loom. The Gods had chosen him, and he knew that he mustn’t fail them, now. He had since been rigorously reading to prepare for the reincarnations of three warriors from the past, who would reappear on Earth tonight, help guide the fight for the righteousness of Odin’s cause.
He had no idea how to summon the warriors, however he remained undeterred in his ambitious studies that had now gone on over an hour. It was at certain moments during the night, that he had almost gone delusional in his studious psychological challenge. There had once been a great wind that had ushered in the door, which had been left unlocked after Odin’s arrival. Darkened shadows danced on the walls around him, threw themselves along the ceiling, hid in doorways. His ears had played tricks on him too; demons outside his door morbidly plagued his thoughts. It had been enough to force him to boil a new kettle of tea in the dark, but he still knew of the fact that it would be a long night.
“Oh, demons, urchins of our dreams, leave me be! I am not your target,” he whispered as he began to walk to the table, covered in manuscripts and histories, “I am no necromancer. The covenant I keep is of loyalty and love, not of evil.”
The night showers only howled back, and he thought that he heard a snarl and snort in the dark night. He quickly turned back to the window, to see only the dark shapes continue their nonstop motions, as though propelled by an unseen devil.
Bodhidharma was his first choice, because of the intense contemplative power that he had possessed as founder of the Zen.
In a close second was Genghis Khan, powerful leader of feudal warlords, who would be almost certainly necessary to accomplish accumulation of armies across populations that would otherwise be led astray in the night.
But he had regarded the ideas of doubt, and had weighed possibility after possibility of people, warriors, priests, whom to summon with help of enchantment scrolls retrieved from the Book Of The Dead, which he possessed in his library. Nonetheless, he was astoundingly dumbfounded at who would be the appropriate choice for a third.
He decided it would be a good time for some tea. He left the table of scraps and notes, books and research papers, and entered the kitchen area. Here, he saw that his teakettle was on the counter, off the stove. He grabbed it by the handle, which had cooled slightly off in the cold storm. He grabbed a fresh new teacup off of a rack above the sink basin, and delicately placed it on the counter, pouring the smooth liquid into a mug shaped like a lion’s head.
As Huang Di sipped the tea, from the corner of his eye, he noticed a dark shadow in the corner of his bedroom, through the open doorway. He shrugged it off and continued to down the tea in gulps.
The next thing he knew, Huang Di was down on the floor, struggling to overcome a poison. He coughed up blood as he noticed a black-cloaked soldier step into sight from behind the bedroom doorway. Upon stepping into the threshold of the kitchen, the Horseman’s stallion whinnied loudly in the back of the house.
Huang Di thrust his knife and plunged it into the Horseman, which appeared to kill him instantly, sending him stepping backwards into the loom and crashing into the ground.
Moments later, Huang Di was dead.
CHAPTER 2
The dragon had flown East across the ocean, beating its gigantic wings so fast and strong that the clouds above drew a line to its current. Armed citizens and militaries, that still stood, tried at first, without any success, to shoot the beast down as it devoured with its scorching breath all of the major cities on the East Coast of America. There was nothing that the people could do, and as it started towards Europe, the only hope had been nuclear missiles. However, because of lack of communication between nations, the missile defense system was put on hold for a short time. The people, of course, had no inclination that the dragon’s mission would be most likely completed by sunrise.
It was almost all the way to Rome before the first nuclear weapon was detonated. It was not, though, for the untouchable dragon to worry or fret. The great dragon lord had been rendered completely impenetrable in its transformation from the Gates of the Netherrealm aside from a small portion of his massive underbelly, which was uncovered. Lucifer had shielded this section with a small wooden platform that he could use as a vantage point to direct the beast’s trail of destruction. The spiked tail was another minor weakness, because as the scales came down along on his spine, they thinned out to allow more flexibility. When the missile struck the top of one of Draco’s scaled wings, it did little or no damage to either of the lunatic murderers. The dragon merely flinched at the excess mass, and Lucifer happily danced on the platform beneath. The last part of the beast that was left open, was his eyes, which were slit, unfeeling, piercing in the dark night sky.
Although it was only about thirty seconds later until, like a cricket echoes its mate’s call, another atomic missile was detonated, it was not intended for the dragon at all. Instead, as the dragon was safely sailing across the Atlantic to the European beaches, ripened with human blood, an international emergency and state of war was underway.
When the first shockwaves of the San Francisco/Oakland bombing hit Los Angeles, Tank was freed from a wrecked building as the debris slid down into chasms growing under the roads. Within the same moment, as the third strike commenced, two new special visitors of the Realms beyond were making entry into Earth. Then, the Chinese began arming their nuclear defense missiles, and sending them upwards across oceans to America and Europe. Japan, at one time peaceful in pacifism, changed sides when their over popular leader threw off the safety switch to his emergency station’s nuclear system. The whole world, then, knew the furious devastation of blind religious war.
To Tank, this was all too familiar territory, total war. It immediately brought him back to his time in the Marines. A boxed radio on a top forty station played a muffled sound from down the street as Tank looked around his surroundings from within the veil of rain and splashing mud behind the stoop, he had landed next to. Fires blazed high and violently swayed in the wind inside many of the buildings on his block, reflecting vaguely off puddles. Around the next corner he saw a man with a rifle, standing like a patrolman, but without uniform.
The black, rain-filled sky did nothing much to beckon him to leave his safe hole, but the hold of captivity had charged him with impatience. After three long arduous hours beneath a pile of dirt, mud, and rubble, only barely making progress in an unassisted escape, and having to drink mud water to gain strength, Tank was ready to move. He wanted to first see if any police were somewhere nearby, rescue teams, ambulances, fire trucks, any of the vital signs of civilization that he had not yet heard inside of the hole he had been trapped in. Aside from a few distant sirens that were barely audible under the walls, he hadn’t gotten any signals that much, if at all, was being done for this natural disaster. Ignorance to, yet anticipation of the fact that nuclear war was being undertaken, gave him the dumb stricken motivation that he needed to elude his inhibitions. Most still believed that the rumbling ground, and shockwaves that struck, were due to the earthquakes, though. It was a hunch, to Tank, nothing more.
To his surprise, though, there were no signs of any reinforcements along the street. “Has the world gone to anarchy this fast?” he wondered to himself. Flashes of light above the rain lit the area for a few moments here and there, and Tank saw the crumbling buildings in every direction, and a few dead bodies lying motionless like sick mannequins in a mall of mauled civilization.
“Well, this is the last place you need to be, dude. Get the fuck out and look around, see if you can find someone that knows what the fuck is going on.”
He decided that the boom box would be a good place to start searching. But as he devoted his thoughts to the boom box, the music reverberating in the air turned to static, and went off.
“Or not,” he thought to himself in a feeble effort to lighten the already dismal situation, but it only made his stomach sicker. His belly grumble loudly as he looked out at the drenched and empty streets. “Maybe that motherfucker over there,” as he started walking out into the open, straining to see in the dark rain. He quickly decided to attempt to cross the street, sneak around the corner to the man standing about one hundred yards away. He was aware that he might be forced to disarm him, so he took special care.
Tank jumped over a broken waterline that was spraying at one end of a giant hole that lay beneath. The jump caused a bit of noise, landing on the other side, and he swiftly looked over to the man to make sure that he had not heard it. Fortunately, the rainfall must have been loud enough, because the man only turned his head around slightly, and remained standing still. Lightning flashed, and the rain was somehow growing stronger, blacker, and heavier.
Tank reached the other side, and began scaling around to the man with the gun. “This is crazy, fuckin crazy dude,” he kept saying to himself.
When they were only twenty feet apart, and Tank was only yards away from the end of the fallen building, which was mainly now in all, just a pile of rock- like pieces of foundation, sloping up steeply in sharp, jutting, craggily debris to about two floors height, Tank crouched and whistled. He immediately regretted it, but knew that he could easily find refuge from gunfire in the wreckage to his side. He was safe until the man would attempt at a flank, which he could counter, if a fight was started. The man turned and faced the direction of the whistling, as a long-brightened flash of lightning struck, but he did not even notice the massive bulk of Tank’s large body in the shape-swallowing night.
When the man had made eye contact, he approached, and was kind enough to lend a hand to the crouching Tank, who was still feeling anxious of the situation.
“By God, I didn’t expect you there. Most of us are arming at the plaza down the street. There’s a gun shop down there. It’s war, buddy, fucking nuclear war. C’mon I’ll bring you down there.”
Tank stared at the man blankly for a moment still shell shocked and reeling back from the surprise of and escape from entrapment. Strangely, encountering the man was as much a surprise and escape. Tank stood, and then stepped forward to follow the man down the street. The two men tiptoed across broken glass, and dodged grotesque devastation along the cracked streets of East Los Angeles. Bodies were sometimes seen through the smaller building’s windows, slung over chairs or some even looked like they had been murdered in the most gruesome degrees.
“It seems like the end of the good ol’ days now, fella. This isn’t going to get better for a while. The radio stations are all playing news briefings of where to go; here, there, fuckin every block has a safe house. And half of em aren’t even there anymore! They won’t tell us the whole story, damnit. All they wanna say is that same shit every hour; go here, go there, stay inside, lock doors, get your kids, fuckin bullshit, bullshit, bullshit...” the man trailed off.
Tank barely said a word the whole walk, only “Yeahs,” “Yeps,” “I knows,” until they were three blocks down.
“What’s that?” Tank pointed to a tattered building across the street of an intersection they were approaching. There was a clamor inside that he had noticed from about ten yards behind. Within a couple steps, the two militiamen heard gunshots.
“There were only three shots fired-“ Tank started.
“Nahhh, I think that last one was just loud thunder,” replied the man, who was trying to continue through the rain towards the gun store, holding the illusion that he’d be able to escape the downpour. He had recently been growing numbly cold in his long patrol.
“No, let’s go check it out,” Tank demanded, and as he began towards the building, the man reluctantly followed him.
Suddenly another noise came barreling out of the parking garage, as they approached through crevice and wreckage. It was like the growl of an insane, rabid dog, and it pierced the thunderclaps above them, with a shrill echo across the broken pavement. Tank leapt upwards against the cracked walls and grabbed a side rail that hung above them, and began to climb up. As he did, a bloody and limp body holding a revolver fell from a higher level to the muddy ground below, apparently a victim of suicide, as his throat had been shot into hanging pieces of flesh.
“You’re crazy!” shouted the man. But when Tank reached a platform, the man threw up his gun to the brave ex-Marine. This was the last time that Tank saw of the man, as he plunged into the dank darkness inside alone.
CHAPTER 3
“And with the scourges of men, plagued by wolfbeast across China and the Philippines, devastated by natural disaster in America, by nuclear war in many places around the world, as well as pillages by roaming pirate. And with the dragon of Eden released on the people of Europe and America, the Middle East and other regions, the fall of Gods and Saviors, of Demons and Warriors upon the Earth Realm. There was Ragnarok. There were only a few survivors, after all the tolls had been paid. Yet it was far from over... Until the master of the Earth Realm claims his part in history, it will never end. Until the morning dove climbs the sky with a champion and a king...
“Modern civilization’s collapse at the hands of the impenetrable extraterrestrials, the Gods upon brave men that stood in fear, and the Apocalypse was at hand. Apocalypse: a revelation of revolution. A War of the Gods.”
This and more revealed to Matthew, by Bodhidharma and Ghengis Kahn in the dark, moist sanctuary of the abandoned parking garage. Matthew stared at the apparitions of the ancient priest-warriors like ghosts, and wondered their words over and over. The words were like a deep hypnosis, a trance that captured his soul and body in the wave-like rhythms in which the men telepathically transitioned his thoughts.
It had gone on for an hour before Matthew was forced outside into the rain once more.
From the encounter with the ghosts, he had retained an ultimate mortal power and knowledge that would lead him to victory for humanity over the grandest scale of war ever conceived on Earth. The dragon beast, it was told, was the size of a large city, and would be so formidable to the men of Earth that it would be impossible to stop alone. Lucifer would try every trick up his sleeve before giving in. Matthew would be forced to face beast and God, Immortal and Undead alike.
As Matthew traversed the rocky terrain with a certain newfound grace that was unparalleled by mortal men, he reconciled differences, internally, with any of the opponents and enemies he had had in life. Now was only the time for total and complete concentration, for his trust to be instilled in the human spirit, and he leapt like a giant panther in the night from rock to wall to tenement foundation, to pavement, sidewalk, curb, and along the roads he went along his way to Death Valley.
On the fringes of society, he saw that the roads were less damaged, and took control of a stopped vehicle, forcing the frustrated attendant out into the brutal rain. The car barely started, but he was soon on his way to the erected Temple.
Armageddon was on the horizon of foreign shores shining like a gold crust in the slashing lightning bolts. Hell had broken itself, Earth was next, and Heaven was full of tears.
This was the end, Apocalypse, of Earth, as foretold by the Oracle, The Muse, so long ago. What lay across the desert for Matthew inevitably was the final stand of human spirit against blind forces of nature magnificent dimension. It was the fury of the angelic army, and a melee of demonic brigades. For out of the gates of the Holy Land poured minion upon minion of pig-like appearance into the Realm of Earth, proceeding Hades.
Apocalypse was brutal in fury, and the bloodshed was great.
If one listened close enough to the hard bass of the roaring thunder and the treble of the rushing wind, one could almost discern the echoes of an ancient deity.
“Go look, for yourself. The fallacies of the human spirit fill our valleys with pity, the painfully privileged will die as though they never existed, the wickedly tortured brutalized only harder. Go look, for yourself. It has begun...”
The myths had a resilient resonance that carried through tongue and ear to the corners of the city. People stood and watched the hero, and lined the street. Hope had arrived for the trapped denizens of Earth Realm at last.
The apparitions followed Matthew like moths to a flame, on his way through the City of Angels to Death Valley. They were ghosts of spiritual warriors of a different time. He was their hero of flesh and blood.
As they neared the location of the Temple, a jet was flying overhead, circling for a landing, quickly falling to the beaten land.
“Here is your chance to head off the coming war.” Bodhidharma whispered, and Khan too, something that only a hero could hear.
ACT 3
Chapter 1
Zion
Tyr had seen the bright headlights flash off across the wet runway pavement, but was undeterred and unworried, at the moment thinking it only to be another wayward civilian, lost in the storm or a potential hijacker trying to take control of the airplane. Other than him, the runway had been abandoned. The radio that had been left on in the cockpit had only relayed static buzz the whole way to the West Coast.
Odin wouldn’t be far off by now, nor Adad. Tyr quickly made haste then to exit the jet’s interior, which was when he realized the two ghost-like figures behind the car. Even in the rain, they shone fluorescently.
“Aeolus, over there!” and as Tyr said this, a blaze of gunfire struck out at the jet.
Aeolus retreated behind the jet, as Tyr charged. The cover, though, was not enough, and as the jet began to hiss with fuel leaks, Aeolus quickly moved back. The plane suddenly exploded on the runway, causing a minute distraction to Tank, who from beside the car, watched as the fuel spilled out into the rain, leaking out towards another nearby jet.
The leak was slowing and filtered in the puddles, and was soon obliterated by the falling rain. Tank had lost a moment in the unforeseen charge of Tyr. So, when the next lightning struck bright like a haphazard catalyst to his discovery, revealed the running God, Tank was compelled to reassess his attack strategy. There was little time to contemplate, however, and as there was not much cover aside from a few bushes outside the gate of the runway, Tank took his last chances with the M-16 as Aeolus ran around the plane wreckage to watch the fight.
Tyr, meanwhile, was wondering the purpose or disguise of the light forms that stood near his opponent, as he rapidly advanced, knowing that they were neither God nor particularly demonic. Oddly, they appeared to be unready to do battle, and thus he considered that these were merely guides to the civilian. When, under cover of night, Tyr approached within forty or so yards of the attacker, he came to the fast conclusion that the man was probably someone with supernatural powers, or great strength that these ancient beings had come for such lengths to assist.
Tank blindly let off another round of the M16 into the airport runway. He sprayed with as much range as he thought was necessary, but when the next thunder clapped above, he waited to grab another clip and instead hesitated, looking for the lightning to reveal a fallen body. When the lightning finally scorched the sky, Tyr was still in motion, advancing quickly towards the gate, now only fifteen yards or so away. His run was like a mad sprinter, deep in the glory of a footrace. Tank knew that the running God would have to jump the high fence, so he rustled and fumbled on his bandolier for another clip.
Coming to the high fence, Tyr leapt into the air and grabbed a hold of barbed wire that hung above. The wire stretched down, and Tyr bobbed midair, as his hand felt the pierce of a sharp razor along the bone of his right thumb, but held tight anyway. Tank had finished reloading, and was raising aim.
Aeolus, anticipating that this was Tank’s moment of victory seized an opportunity that he thought would just make the slightest difference that his leader would need. He had seen that Tank wore a red bandana on his chin, and blew a gust of wind across the runway, to the Gods’ newfound nemesis. The wind blew the damp bandana up over Tank’s cheeks, partially covering his eyes.
Tyr, not even immediately noticing the clear danger that Tank presented with his gun still aiming only a few yards away, spun his torso backwards and up, cartwheeling over the fence with a swift kick downwards to land on one knee facing Tank, furthering his distance less than twenty feet away. He unsheathed his sword, raised up to his feet.
Tank, frustrated slightly by the tricks of the Gods, began carelessly firing at the close range. The first shot, though, coincidentally bounced off Tyr’s hanging sword, sending it flying back far behind Tyr and rendering the God weaponless. The other shots went off to the side until half the clip was emptied out, with no signs of blood. Tank reached up and retrieved the bandana, pulling it up above his brow and tucking the hanging fabric over his head in a calm-like motion. He soon realized his new advantage of space, and stepped forward to the surprised Tyr. Yet with his clenched fists up in defensive stature, Tyr did not turn for his sword, but instead began advancing, ducking and bobbing his head around behind arms and hands but not taking his eyes off of Tank.
Then, Tank bravely looked Tyr directly in the blackness of his piercing eyes as they approached striking distance, and what he saw was so pure. It wasn’t rage, or anger, but it resembled insanity. The look in Tyr’s frightening eyes, it didn’t go as far as delusional, but its uninhibited focus was bewilderingly pointed and yet vast. To some, it would be something like looking at the pyramids of Egypt through a magnified telescope from the atmosphere, yet so much more infinitely intimidating.
It did not stop Tank’s advance. But when Tyr leapt off the rumbling ground in a spinning roundhouse kick, Tank lost much of the clear sincerity in his state of mind, was lost in a sea of doubt and confusion. Tyr’s foot came crashing down on Tank’s forehead, and sent him into a concussion on impact, his frame flying onto the hood of the car where it lay still.
The ghosts disappeared into the dark night, never to be seen again for they felt, as many ghosts do, a bewildering shame and a lost, anxious confusion. The ghosts had done what they could, but the heroes were far from finished in their mission. Tyr waited a moment for Aeolus, grabbed his sword, and then continued, zealously, his journey to the great Temple.
CHAPTER 2
Odin had now traversed the windy waters of the Pacific Ocean, with his pack of beasts splashing above the water behind him. Although he knew to conserve energy, he had traveled as fast as he thought possible, and the journey had still been cruelly difficult. The gigantic waves were outrageously tumultuous, and behind the rising and falling walls of water, a few times he had momentarily lost sight of his horde, now hungry again after their binge of blood in Asia.
The perilous journey he had made across Asia, from his hidden location in the mountains, had led the wolves through some mildly populated areas, but the canine monsters had mostly behaved themselves, and not strayed from their master’s eye. The outlook, however, was grim for the populations that waited on the distant shores. If Odin had redirected his attention for but a moment, it was a certainty that they would go wild with the blood prevalent, even if bitterly dwindling in the cold storm and war.
When he saw the bluffs, Odin raised his altitude and landed safely, his dogs following up the rocky cliff from the maniacally wild sea waters. His destination was many miles away, and he knew that his beast-like dogs would need to be watched with extra care. He turned and looked over the waves and into the surrounding and encompassing ocean horizon that blended with the sky in the rain.
The dark water had been barely passable to the nearly crippled and ancient deity. Odin’s cloak was soaked, and he dripped water down his brow, across the vacant eye onto his cheek. He knelt to the ground and patiently waited for the last beast to struggle upwards onto the bluff.
As he turned back to this treacherous trail that he had been chosen to take by his peers in Heaven, he knew the meaning of betrayal, yet only could stay fatefully on course to the Temple. No matter what he thought, what emotions could penetrate his thick skin were reduced short by time of reaction to a pace of urgency that remained constant, yet very daunting in his omniscient expectancy of the certain death in the battle that would begin before sunrise on the land of America. Death Valley would surely make his grave, and the Temple his mausoleum.
As Odin moved East into a wooded area, his beasts trailed close behind. He had always known the wild beasts to be loyal, even if often reckless and restless at all times. In the Andes they had just come from, the beasts had hidden themselves in caves surrounding Odin’s hidden position. He suddenly flashed back and remembered their initial travel from the far West, which had occurred during the Holy Roman Empire’s conquest of Europe, his original place of being. His journey only seemed in retrospect to have been never-ending; in reality he had spent his seasons in solitude, untouched by the elements or changing environment of Earth. He only sometimes had perception of the changes through the drafting air currents that carried signs of changing times into his deep underground dwelling. Now was a time of internal realization for Odin, and it saddened him only slightly, subconsciously, to know that it would all be over so soon. This would not be confused with his inherently undeniable duty and work of appreciation for performance for the human mind’s struggle in warring night, of which he was the main proprietor. His loyalty to humans was not as grandiose as one might hope, but indeed, he did feel a small, yet certain amount of father-like love for the unaware people of Earth Realm. He had learned that they were with fault, but forgave them.
Through the woods the pack and the God raced, like magical cars on a one-way track. The stakes were high for his survival to Death Valley, but he was not feeling pressured. Instead he moved with a valuable connectedness, a calm that caused him less worry, more anticipation.
One of his beasts, then another, suddenly howled out at the moon like a duet of resistance to the journey. Odin stopped, and started back to tend to the beasts. He was unsure of what had disturbed them now, and had only seen them act in such insubordination a handful of times through the centuries. Once, he remembered, they had tried to mate within the pack. They had howled like this when their newborn came out, deformed and unfit for life. He remembered that it had looked like a rat with gills, and unformed wings on its shoulders that just jutted out ruggedly. The pup had died within a few hours, not being able to breathe in the air. The magic wolves had done this once, but never repeated the procedure again.
He had named all of the beasts, and remembered them by their name, but never called to them vocally. It was deemed unnecessary, as they had been created to follow his directions and respond telepathically. He had a favorite, though, a few actually. One dog, which he had named Fenris, had saved his life once from near capture when it had growled at a tunnel in his underground abode. The growl was warranted, for a light had shone past the long weeping stalactites and stalagmites that hung in the damp cave. Odin had fled the cave with the beasts deeper, only to await the right moment to flee for good into battle with Tyr.
His thoughts of Tyr were limited to what he knew from his short time in stasis in the Ether Realm. He knew that he was a catalyst of human emotion, and that at some point that he must have had offspring, because of faith put into certain Gods that had come into theological being along the centuries. He knew the Gods had chosen justly, for being the God of human emotion, he was surely an adapted warrior, adeptly fierce and fueled by a penetrating anger that he would be almost unable to control in a fight.
It did not scare Odin, though, and as he walked between the dogs in the dark woods, it was a faded image of Tyr that held to the standard of Godship he remembered from his time in Heaven.
Tyr, Odin contemplated, may make it to the Temple before he arrived in Death Valley, because of the rushing anticipation and anxiety that the wait would cause him. But as a God, he knew better than to think that Tyr would allow expression of such sensitivities to be seen before a great battle.
When the dogs had all calmed down, Odin continued the long expedition to Death Valley. His race was all the quicker, all the more determined.
Invisible, a fallen body on the ground, now far behind him, raised up to its feet, stretching and looming in the dark forest. It was the pale rider that had fallen off of his horse in his chase of Odin and the jackals, who had been mauled by the horde of dogs. He now walked the barren land, potentially for all of eternity, a shape shifting monstrosity not to be seen ever by human or Immortal’s eye except for the disturbances he caused to the ground beneath his feet, the branches he brushed past, and the air that careened and heaved out of his heavy chest.
Only Aeolus would be prepared for this assassin, with his knowledge of wind currents. But Aeolus had his hands full at the moment, elsewhere.
CHAPTER 3
In the early, sunless morning hours, long after Ragnarok had closed for the Heavenly Gods, the rain began to settle across the planet. Mud puddles, splashing under the skies, began to coagulate. The clouds, though not leaving entirely, made their shapes less dense and restrained the constant barrage of downfallen waters that had been like a coating to Earth.
As Tyr approached the center of Death Valley, he felt that Odin would be not far behind, lurking probably in some dark corner or crevice of the valley, awaiting the Temple to be erected. At revoke of this, Tyr was extremely grateful that he had arrived at the site first; he knew that this was a good omen, and pulled out his sword from its sheath. He then thrust it sharply into the ground where he stood and turned to Aeolus.
“The night, like a wishing well, has collected the power of every poignant moment that has passed under the swinging balances of fate and destiny. Ragnarok lead us Gods to salvation in the eyes of Elohim, and if Earth will be no more, it will be a righteously sacrificed. This requiem will forever hold faithfully to the Heavens above. To believe too much, or too little, will be the decisive angle in this battle of Immortals.”
Aeolus was silent; he understood that his leader’s short, uncoordinated speech was under weight of privilege and responsibility, while with the same determination of persistent danger that had seemed to lurk around every turn in their mission.
The sky, suddenly, shone bright for a moment, and the moon reared out of its hidden oasis behind the clouds, to soon meet the destiny of the horizon’s falling. Another great trembling struck the planted feet of the two determined Gods, and Tyr grabbed his sword from the ground.
“Odin must be here,” spoke Aeolus.
Across the valley, to the West, Tyr saw the beasts approaching, rising on the horizon, which lay barely distinguishable from the valley’s peaks. They jumped and tumbled around each other like a boiling pot. Odin stood between them, holding a cane and with hooded face unflinching.
The trembling continued, as the greatest Temple ever conceived rose from the ground between the two warriors. The golden magnificence reflecting the shining moonlight on its side once mirrored the Gods at angles as they began their final walk to battle. Odin’s beasts remained at the perimeter, as did Aeolus. This holy and sacred sacrifice was to be made by them, alone.
Standing high on a far ridge, the black Horseman bled in agony. He would be useless now, though, and knowing the painfulness of Hell once, poured out the last bit of poison into his wounds.
Just as his Undead blood began to slow in the cold night, he noticed across the ridge someone he hadn’t expected to see in this moment. Here, he had failed, but the Fallen Gods of Hell had a trick underway yet to reveal to the two warriors.
The figure across the ridge let out a howling laughter that echoed from the bowels of Hell.
A meteor abruptly then came falling and crashing overhead in the sky, through the hole of the moon, and struck the tip of the impenetrable Temple, sending shockwaves across the planet, and crushingly destroying the entirety of the Valley excepting only the Temple.
On the steps of the Great Temple, Tyr and Odin remained undisturbed.
Tyr turned to Odin as the doors of the Temple swung open before them. “The battle begins,” was all that he said.
CIPHER REALM OF THOUGHT
I only needed to get my dog back... I needed the companionship, the feeling of a balanced innocence. What I needed was his soft head in my hand. His eyes wandering onto me, as if his sole claim. Until the dog’s name was my own, I wanted to wonder out loud with him the curiosity of his nature. I wanted to remember every hair on him, and to nurture his lost playground. I needed the dog back in my arms, lying at my feet, prodding at me his furry paw...
All the things that I would take from him, would be too much, though. I would take his conscience. I would take his independence. I would take his life, in my complete absence of power to the dog’s beautiful heart. All the things that I would take from him would be perfect.
The dog I wanted so bad... I was afraid to awaken the good.
BOOK 3: THE DOWNFALL
Act 1
Chapter 1
Satan
As Hades watched the meteor fall to Earth, and Aeolus scramble up into the air for safety, he laughed sardonically. It was his only intention now to wait patiently, for what the Temple held was something neither God had been prepared to face. His tournament to collapse Eden had spawned his greatest fiend, the champion of all angel-killers. He went now, wherever the Temple went, trapped inside to defend his title. The battlers would appropriately face Abbadon, The Destroyer, first, as that the hierarchy of Gods and Demons denied the Demon to sidestep his first confrontation.
Surely, Ishtar would not be far off. It was her duty to be at Armageddon, and Hades knew much more of her past that remained secret from even the Elder Gods, having had certain elements sinisterly revealed to him by Lucifer long ago.
All that was needed was for one of these Gods to die in battle, and Hell would have its chance to see Heaven’s gate. The temporal imbalance would create a wormhole, just large enough for Draco to reach his nose through to Elohim Cipher. The main distracter of Heaven’s security by the Netherrealm would be Ishtar, who was nowhere to be found by Hell’s minions. The only sentient being capable of knowing her location was Aeolus, God of Wind, and Protector of Tyr.
Hades had actually come on a great fortune for Odin’s beasts to binge on the Horseman’s blood, for it now transformed him into a colossus hybrid of beast and invisible assassin. However, the bastard of Hell had only one choice, which was to follow Hades’ command to kill Aeolus, or at least capture him. If he did not, he would only face crueler punishment in the Netherrealm from which he had come. His senses, askew and abnormal, taught him that this was his only hope for salvation, to kill a God.
Abbadon, The Destroyer, was going to be Tyr’s worst nightmare, and Odin was already aligned against the God. As for Adad, Hades knew nothing of his intentions, but without doubt his presence had little to do with Hell’s conquest of Earth.
The clouds still hung low and dark, in the night. Draco was speeding across them over the Mediterranean, Aeolus, too, across Death Valley. Aside from them, nobody across the face of the planet saw the moon shine as blue in the night of the war, then. But it shone and like a mother, it wept. It was a deep blue that it shone, and the stars sprinkled over the universe were red with anger.
The Horseman leapt into the air as Aeolus came flying down on a gust of wind. The sword he held high, and as the two collided over the Temple, Tyr and Odin were only just reaching the great doors to it.
Aeolus felt the blade cut his right shoulder, tearing into it viciously. He reached with both arm, fumbling through the air to find the assassin’s body. Instead, though, he managed to grab a part of the horse’s long mane. The assassin swung his sword again. This time Aeolus was ready, and he lifted his left arm out and blocked the Horseman. With a mighty blow, Aeolus threw his weight into a punch, wildly in the dark air, and hit the Horseman’s chest. He grabbed on, and slid up over the horse, swinging again a little higher.
The Horseman struggled, and tried to dodge Aeolus’s attack, but was unsuccessful. Aeolus’s right cross hit the Horseman in between the eyes, crushing his brow.
Around the valley was heard the pale Horseman’s blood curdling cry. It rang of reminiscence to the infected wound inflicted on Adad. But inside the Temple, now, Odin and Tyr were already beginning their final fight.
CHAPTER 2
Abbadon, the centaur, The Destroyer, stood between two pillars in the back of the Temple. He had grafted two flaming swords from the last tournament, which he had clung onto for millennia. His torso was that of a beastly horse, with hoofed legs. His body rose off in a 90-degree angle, and his arms hung like giant slabs, swung around with the fiery swords. His head had a crown of horns that spiked out and jutted in odd directions.
The Temple, itself, was aglow with a vibrant gold that shone across the floors and ceiling. It had pillars along the sides that embedded themselves into the high walls. In the center was a giant pentagram, which was carved into the floor tiles. The infrastructure was beautiful, but like that of a schizophrenic architect’s wildest imagination.
Tyr and Odin walked straight forward to begin their battle, but Tyr stopped short when he saw Abbadon advance with a single hoof.
“What curse binds you to this monastery of monstrosities? Is your ugly presence not needed elsewhere?”
The centaur snorted. He had lost his vocal cords in an earlier battle, as exhibited by a large scar on his neck. But he did not back off, or advance further.
Old Odin, while knowing that this would turn into a face-off quick, spun to snarl and spit at the demon.
Abbadon pointed both of his swords at the Gods, and let out a howling laughter, raucous and brave, mocking. The door shut closed behind them.
Tyr stood, tall and strong against the charismatically atrocious tactics, and beheld the presence of the demon that stood in his way.
“Abbadon, you will fall to my sword’s edge, and plummet back to the abyss from which you came. Consider this reckoning, if you approach one more step, I will not hesitate.”
Abbadon, with a wide sinister grin, looked over at Tyr for a brief moment. In the next second, he leapt his gigantic torso into the air at the God. He swung his swords together and collided down on Tyr’s who stood with a foot back to hold ground against the downward attack, and with both hands on the handle of his sword. He felt the strength of the two swords against his one, and when Abbadon’s blades connected in an x against his, he slid back a few yards. The demon continued moving forward towards Tyr, who tumbled out of the way, rolling over his shoulder behind Odin, who turned with his staff in both hands in defense against the demon.
Abbadon, The Destroyer quickly shot out his right sword’s broadside and snapped in half Odin’s cane, but continued at Tyr who stood up behind and put a hand on Odin’s shoulder.
Tyr spun back around Odin with his sword ready for the next move by Abbadon. The two parried, and as Tyr’s sword came up and down, around and out, back in and through the fierce demon’s flaming blades, Tyr was moved backwards, step by step coming closer to the corner of the Temple.
Abbadon kept the motions fluid of his sword. Tyr’s acrobatics would be for a moment subdued if he could keep the pace on his side. Tyr kept his head strong, though, and awaited his corner for a moment, allowing the demon to vainly think that he had the upper hand.
Only a few feet from the corner that would be his trap, Tyr began spinning his body with each block and parry. It was a confusion tactic, which he needed for his next move. The spins were swift, and each charging blade was being blocked, the ringing metal echoing off of the ceiling of the Temple.
Odin, looked at the two fighting, wondered for a moment if he should take action, but knew that Tyr was more adept to win the battle than he. Nonetheless, after losing his cane, he was mildly angered. He picked up a splintered piece of the wooden staff at his feet, and tossed it at Abbadon’s back, hoping that it would slice his body. Instead, it only fell lightly on the demon’s back and bounced off and away from the two battlers.
The striking cane had the effect of throwing the demon off guard. Abbadon wanted now, to take Odin’s life, thinking to himself that the God was weak and unable to defend against his power. He turned quickly on his hind legs, jumping back down facing Odin, and on his front legs, kicked back against Tyr.
Tyr had been ready to jump up and stab the demon, but the turn of events caused him to unsteady his attack. The hind leg kick connected, too, and he fell back into the corner. The hard knock of the hooves against his shoulders lost him his sword on the floor under the demon’s massive body.
Odin thought to himself the danger of the centaur. He knew that he would be next to helpless against the giant. He began to back up, and retreat into the opposite side of the Temple as the demon charged back at him. Just as the demon approached Odin, he swung both of his swords parallel to one another from over his right shoulder. Odin’s back stepping, though was not enough to evade the behemoth, and his next move turned the tables.
Odin, in the middle of the raging onslaught, jumped down towards the centaur’s legs, and grabbed both. Abaddon's swords stopped midair, and he prepared to plunge them downwards into Odin’s back. Odin squeezed together his arms and collapsed the body sideways, landing the demon on his shoulder, hard.
Tyr ran to grab his sword off the ground, and charged the fallen centaur. Odin had masterminded Abbadon’s fall, and he had his chance completely open to slay him. Abbadon scrambled on the floor, with one sword sliding away, its flames vaporizing into the Temple air.
Tyr decapitated the demon, as it tried to rebalance itself on the floor, and Odin rolled over as the centaur collapsed again, dead on the pentagram.
The pentagram seemed to swallow the dead demon into its center.
“Now wasn’t that easy?” Odin said with a hint of sarcasm to Tyr.
“We will wait until just before sunrise, when the cocks crow. We will do battle then,” was Tyr’s reply.
CHAPTER 3
The dragon, the beast of foretold misfortune, scorching and soaring over the sky with its blazing heat, caused lights on the horizon to shine awkwardly and refract off its beating wings, spreading the clouds. In the dark night that it chased through the stratosphere, now, was the land of the forsaken. The Titans of Mount Olympus would appear puny in its silhouette, and the skyscrapers of every major city met with its bellowing fire belly, fell to its humongous jaws and claws. Across the ocean, it sped, flying with a finesse of complete agonizing beauty. The dark green scales seething through every cloud that remained over the tumultuous ocean. Draco was an unthinkable fury of Hell, and Lucifer like the pilot of some World War fighter jet commanded the beast with certainty and disgusting vengeance. His body stretched and eclipsed the sun where the clouds were dispersed, his breath replacing and exaggerating the heat and light. When Lucifer poked the beast, with a pitchfork-like trident that he held, Draco would howl and screech, growl and grumble like an orchestra in the epiphany of its ensemble’s chaotic exercise. Every melee of ground fire, airplane tactic, and missile distraction was met with its twisting, turning, savage and crazed quarrelling fits of rage. It would stand on hind legs, on all fours, lay upside down on cities, roll, and crush to splinters every inch of land. Draco was unconsciously the most immense disaster that the world had ever known, and subconsciously instilling the pinnacles of fear of the supernatural that man had ever known. Leviathan at the wake of genocide, Azazel in the heat of holocaust, even the armies of humanity had never been as frighteningly successful in the complete destruction of Earth in all of time. Volcanoes that had formed the planet at the beginning of Earth’s formative years had only mirrored the fascinating and enraptured collapse of the planet at Draco’s hands.
Imagination, has a certain amount of mass in the solar systems of the universe, and has an expansively intruding capacity of enlightenment. Therefore, the Gods of Earth had only been the natural cause of Man’s aggressive adherence to natural law. The constant intrepid and integrated imagination of Man had led to the constructs of material Temple in the electric-atomic level that resided in the Earth Realm. Gods were more human, than humans, in many ways, yet still contained that unknowable purity of spiritual and metaphysical physique. In this way, the Gods and Demons, Angels, and all other integral elements were bound to Earth, and magnetically attracted. When the time had been ripe, and Man had come to grips with Original Sins, fear, Godliness, the unknowable, and love, the Ether Realm and Netherrealm’s adherence to positioning and constant law had developed dimensional mass that constituted their ability to transition to Earth. Due to this, Hell had become our worst nightmare in reality come true, and Gods had become angered. The idea had been simple though, to consolidate the Realms, the complexity had been in the execution of Gods and Devils. Sacrifices had to be made, for permanent belief to combine between Realms. This was why Zeus was to be sacrificed, along with Odin. This was why Hades was to be assassinated, and Lucifer allowed one chance to kill the angelic army of Elohim.
The negotiations had happened a long time ago. Between all of the sentient beings of the Ether Realm and Netherrealm, including Elohim and Lucifer, had been cast a deal and subsequent treaty of where Faith would be kept. It had been decided that it would be split between the two sides of Man’s imagination, and that each would govern equally. Man was allowed to exist within his own laws for a temporary time period, until he had ripened his abilities to become at one with the Faith. The time was now, and the future was inevitably one much different than what evolution had prepared Man for. Earth was beginning to become home of God.
This is why Hades, knowing his chance was coming to be sacrificed, made no hesitations. Lucifer rode Draco inland, and with fire breath killed Hades atop the Temple of Zion, where inside Tyr and Odin prepared to do battle.
Draco did not touch the ground again, was sent spiraling upwards to the sun, to find Heaven where the army of Angels that waited within the Gates let out its war cry once more. The terrible war would be wickedly disheartening for every God to watch alone, but it was the way that had been chosen, long ago.
The Angels were armed and ready for the War in Heaven to begin.
Lucifer was carried by a demon to the Gates of Jerusalem, from which poured every foul entity that had ever been imagined, ghosts and ghouls of every demonic level. Here he would gather his army, and await the battle of Odin and Tyr to end at Mount Zion in Death Valley, and then assemble his troops on Mount Armageddon where the final duel for Man and Earth would be waged.
ACT 2
Chapter 1
Odin
Tank awoke with a splitting headache, in another hole. The wheels of the car lay just over the ridge of the hole, perilously hanging over his body. The first thing that he noticed was that it looked like an aurora borealis across the entire sky. The wind was still rushing, and clouds still hung comparatively heavy, but the rain had stopped.
His first attempt at standing to his feet failed, and he came crashing down on the rocks, painfully landing on his arms and knees. He crawled along the side of the hole, which was only about seven feet deep. His head felt like he had a hangover, and he was a bit worried that he’d be getting sick as he felt nausea wash over him. It did not stop him though, and he began to look around in the dark night. The lights from the sky flashed around the fringes of the clouds and created a kaleidoscope-like effect on the ground below him. The world looked like it was being stretched, or as if something large was trying to break its way in from another dimension.
His gun was over near another hole that had formed in the ground while he was unconscious. Tank walked over and picked it up, and began walking to the center of Death Valley, where he was sure he’d find the fallen Gods.
The terrain was difficult to traverse, with crevice and chasm, shallow hole, and rocky pile. Tank climbed each obstacle, and walked carefully to avoid falling into any of the deep chasms that the meteor had created.
The struggle did not last too long though, and before long Tank saw the cliffs of the great meteor crater. When he reached the side of the crater, he looked out into the middle. There was Mount Zion, and the Temple, standing in the very center, surrounded by a pack of wild dogs.
At first, Tank prepared to descend the crater, but when he stopped and looked further out, wincingly squinted his eyelids through the rushing wind, he noticed a figure kneeling on another side. Immediately, he knew that it would be Aeolus, Tyr’s assistant and guide in the War of the Gods. Tank steadied his gun on a rock outside of the crater’s edge and readied his shot.
Suddenly, Aeolus rose up off his knee and began running around the outside of the crater. Tank kept his head calm, and fired off a couple of warning shots, followed by a spray of bullets as the God reached a full sprint towards him. The shots missed, and when the God was a hundred yards away, he suddenly leapt in the air, flying high above the crater towards Tank.
“Oh shit,” thought Tank, frantically firing off shots at the God. “So, it’s true, these guys are REAL GODS.”
Aeolus disappeared behind the clouds for a moment, and Tank watched the sky, anticipating that he’d be on his own now to try to bombard the Temple. Just as soon as he began to move his gun back, to carry it with him down the edge of the crater; down shot Aeolus, spinning in the air, from right above. He was moving at such high speeds; Tank only had a few seconds to react. Instinctively, Tank raised his rifle into the air.
The God came barreling down, and Tank raised his rifle higher, put his finger on the trigger, and pulled it. One shot did it, and Aeolus was mortally wounded in the chest.
The God crash landed a few yards away from Tank, who threw down his gun and ran to the God who was profusely bleeding.
“Hurry, before I die. I have some words for you,” said Aeolus, lying in a growing pool of blood.
“Oh God, Jesus Christ man, what the fuck?” Tank said, now more concerned with his decision to kill the God. But he still knew that it had been either himself or the God. Tank approached the God, and knelt beside him, first examining the wounds and then looking Aeolus in his eyes, waiting for him to speak his last words. Below, the dogs began to howl.
“You have done what you had to do. Now your business is finished here, the Temple is impenetrable, and is guarded by that pack of wolves. They won’t let you enter. You need to make it to Armageddon.”
“Aeolus, this all is happening so fast.”
“Do not hesitate! Go now! Commandeer a jet if you have to...” But it was hopeless, as the God began to disappear into the night. Tank did not know how to fly.
Tank turned to face the Temple after the God had whispered his last words, which echoed in his ears.
“We are without hope, then. Babylon, the great has fallen.”
The wind stopped in all directions, and the wolves turned to Tank and howled.
CHAPTER 2
The idea of foreign defeat was alien to Adad. For as long as he had known, the cost of controlling the rolling thunder, and reaction between atomic particles was his whole existence. He was like a naked soul on the planet Earth, now, though, poisoned, and done in by Elohim nemesis. As he stood next to the airport, he knew that his time to fall at the moment of Zeus’s spiteful glance would be imminent, and immediate. He knew that this would be his last stand to tilt the magnetic balances of rationality on the Realms.
Adad had been poisonously wounded, however, and had by that red rider’s sword been caught off guard. It was no mistake then that he would make in the swirl of events that he would follow, for his stake was death. All that he knew was that his retainer’s life depended on his. If he died, Zeus would be capable of choice as sacrifice to depart the Gods of the Netherrealm.
Adad picked up and began flying in the clouds over Death Valley, its horizon now vaguely receding into the depths of the blue morning that would follow. His thoughts on leaving his post of charge was that he must only divide the spirits of the Elder Gods with reserve and respect to his master. This was to be a challenge that he would face alone, so he knew that he would ultimately fail. He had already lost control of the rain that he once knew so well to be able to create with warming and gentle lulling of clouds, and condensation of particles. This was his choice, and he made it with an avenging spirit that kept its Protector mind state.
The mission was simple, but destined was Adad for failure of total completion. He was certain that the only way to deter the Gods from failing to protect Zeus in his afterlife was through his next actions.
The crater’s shadow appeared under a thin mist that Adad traveled through to the Temple. Adad soared and swooped down to the center of which crater, where the Mount of Zion was a hill about 500 cubic feet high. Below, in a quarrelling bunch of frenzied bodies, lay his target; Odin’s pack of wild wolves.
Tank lay just out of sight to Adad, as he had begun heading back to the airport. He was raising his rifle into the air with a tired arm, and popping the scope lens as Adad’s massacre of the dogs one by one initiated.
Adad’s strikes of heat lightning struck the dogs down, and until they began to scurry, he had taken down four. The gunshots did not stop him, and soon as the wolves began climbing the air to him, Adad slay one after another with blasts of lightning bolts.
It took Tank’s unsteady arm nine aimed shots before he finally struck Adad. Adad had narrowed down the slaughter to only two remaining dogs.
As Adad fell to the rocky basin of the crater, Tank wished only to be with his mother one last time, to see his father’s eyes, even to sleep. He stopped himself and before he got off track, began back to the airport once more, limping along the craggily, wet desert ground.
CHAPTER 3
When Ishtar, the morning star, rose against the purple tapestry of light shaded clouds, slowly disappearing into the sunrays, somewhere a cock crowed. The Temple, like a crown on Mount Zion stood unshaken, shimmering in the golden rays. Human life had been expended that night at an all-time rate, leaving only a fraction left. The sky beckoned these people out of their caches of safety.
The Middle Eastern region of Earth was blanketed by not only night, now, but also an army of demons that awaited their moment to strike. The Angels, hopelessly flailing to ready themselves for Draco, knew that humanity would be on its own in the battle. The Netherrealm was setting up its kingdom on Earth.
As the second cock crowed, Tyr and Odin sat on opposite sides of the Pentagram, both in deep meditation. They knew that the first rays of sun strike on the Temple walls would win their battle. Hurriedly they arose to their feet.
Their meditations had been pure, sanctified by the walls. They had come to understand themselves, and their purposes on Earth. Souls intertwined like snakes, growing within them, and rising to their ultimate prize, eternity or exile.
Yet as the second cock crowed, Tyr and Odin were ready to fight. Tyr had his sword ready, and Odin stepped forward to the center of the Pentagram, with both hands up in guard, and a foot forward.
Without a word, Tyr was about to make the sacrifice that had waited for millennia.
ACT 3
Chapter 1
Downfall
Tank reached the Temple, began to force open the doors, peering behind his back to make sure Odin’s wolves were still out of the way. He hadn’t heard a sound behind the doors, but the sky was light with the heating morning air.
“I’m late, the fight must be already over,” as he pulled the door open.
The door slid easily, and once inside he knew that he’d be bargaining for his life. He had run almost completely out of ammunition, and he was more than a little tired, shaken up from the long night.
Inside, he saw Tyr standing over a diagram on the floor. Odin was nowhere to be seen. There was no blood, though, and Tank was confused for a moment, but pulled the door closed behind him, blocking them safely from the wolves outside.
“He fell with honor,” Tyr began.
“So, it’s over?”
“No, it has just begun.”
The sounds of barking and howling outside distressed Tank. “How the hell are we going to get out of here?”
“I thought when Odin died; his dogs would go, too? What are we going to do?”
“It was you, who walked into this Temple, violating the balance of the fortress. When we leave those doors behind us, the Temple of Zion will disappear. We will fight the wolves ourselves,” Tyr said, beginning to walk towards the door.
Tank put a hand out and stopped Tyr as he approached the door. “Wait, before we do that, what’s going to happen to Earth, now? The war at Armageddon is going to begin, isn’t it? Where are we going to go? What about you?”
“Too many questions, young soul. But I will say this; we will almost completely assuredly not make it to Armageddon. The sides in that war have already been chosen, and we will lose” said Tyr, and he pushed past Tank to the door.
“Wait, dude, hold up.”
But it was too late for second thoughts. Tyr knew that he was expendable now, that he was destined to die here on Earth. As he pushed open the door, he felt the weight of the world pushing against it.
“Now stay out of my way, I must take care of Odin’s family, myself.”
CHAPTER 2
Garm and Fenris had reached the peaks of their feeding frenzies. The power of the Gods wrapped their bodies in a heavy musk, sweated and matted their furry backs. Now, with their brothers relinquished from Earth’s collapsing Realm, they were in a void, roaming freely with no master or hope. They traveled on instinct alone, and knew only that the smell of their prey was everywhere. Impatiently, they trod the ground around the temple, waiting for Tyr to exit, to have one last chance at salvation. Salvation was of course an anomalous concept, yet something drew them to the God. Their sense of smell could fresh them to the scent of battle, and the two beasts kept hot on their feet.
Tyr, in the temple with Tank, knew that his chances of survival without a gun would be slim. His mission had already been completed, and he felt the futility of his predicament settle in. As he crept to the door, sword in hand, he was aware of the futility of the inevitable outcome of his stand against the wolves.
As Tyr swung open the Temple door, Tank leapt out in front, kneeling on the rocks outside, rifle raised, trying to find sign of the beasts around the crater. As soon as Tyr’s feet touched the solid rock off the Temple stair, the Temple disappeared into the desert air, leaving only a mountain of rubble behind them. Tyr turned back; it was like nothing had ever happened in the Temple, as if the entire mission he had worked so hard to accomplish had never even existed.
Garm and Fenris, hiding behind the rocks of the crater, began to growl as the scent of Tyr grew stronger.
Tank, knew that he had very few bullets left, and knew too, that he had a long journey to the Middle East ahead of him if he was still to stop the War on Armageddon. Knowing this, he refrained from gunfire until he had clear sight of the beasts. Nonetheless, he was anxious as ever for battle. This time, he had chosen definite sides. Tyr, he hoped, would be strong in ways that he wasn’t in the coming war. He was only self-deceivingly ignorant of the frailty of the Mortal God.
Garm and Fenris waited out there, and Tyr turned his back to the mountain and proceeded to find his destiny in between the crater walls. Tyr led the way through the rocky terrain, with Tank following closely behind with his rifle.
Midway through the desert crater, Garm and Fenris lost their resistance to the scents of the two approaching warriors. They howled and charged Tyr from behind a nearby boulder, hopping over and around rocks. Their breaths emanating smoke from behind snarling lips. They moved as swift as they could, and like darts they pierced through the desert air, lightning fast towards their weary opponents.
Tank emptied out most of the last of his clip and as each shot ricocheted off of the rocks around them; he knew that it would be up to the God to stand off the dogs, himself. Tyr threw up a hand and his sword, preparing for the beasts to jump.
Fenris leapt up at just the right moment, as Tank had only a few shots left. Tank had his window of opportunity, and shot the beast in its outstretched paw, causing the beast to fall hard on the rocks.
Garm, though, rose up behind the fallen beast, quicker than Tank could have reacted. He soared down and Tyr’s blade narrowly missed the beast as it came. Tyr fell back under the weight of the gigantic wolf.
If Tank hadn’t kicked off the wild dog, it would have mauled him completely, but a single shot between the eyes emptied out the soul of the beast on the crater ground, and the rest of the dwindling ammunition.
Fenris, though, was not yet dead. The two warriors had not noticed that it was crawling towards the fallen Tyr. Quickly, it pounced on Tyr’s side, tearing off an arm from the God’s body with its vicious jaws.
Tyr screamed in anguish as Tank fumbled for his last clip.
Fenris hopped away behind a rock, and Tyr was now truly a fallen God on Earth.
CHAPTER 3
My own lament was sincere, and heartfelt, for Tyr during those morning hours between when the sun rose. I watched, once, as my hero Adad fell to Matthew, and again as my once infamous foe turned ally writhed on the ground in fallen anguish. The beast was slinking through the valley on a wounded paw.
“Was it too late? Am I to fall in the same manner of disgrace as Tyr?”
My heart pounded, as these thoughts raced my mind. I was certain of the fact that Armageddon was waiting to be waged, and could not afford to waste any more time dawdling. I would have to fly these two warriors to the forefront of the great army of Hell.
The human had an imprint on him of one that had been graced by Elohim. I could tell this by the flow of his movements, as he had kicked off the dog, saving Tyr’s life, and now, as he bent over trying to aid the failed savior. He would be a necessity against the demons that spawned by the second at the gates of the Holy City, pouring outwards in a constant line of gruesomeness.
From high above, I had remarked on the almost hopeless situation that lay ahead. The clouds, vanishing in the glowing sun, were soon to reveal my location to the two, so I had no choice but to descend quickly.
I quickly swooped down from behind the two saints of modern times, and as I did, Tank’s eyes jumped up to follow me as I turned to Fenris.
The beast heard my beating wings and began a sprint across the barren landscape. But to no avail; for, as I came close, I hurled a dagger through the air towards it, striking the beast between the ears. It let out a loud shriek, then, as all of its power was let loose into the Ether Realm from whence it had come. The stumbling savage zombies that had been captured as prey by the beast swarm of Odin fell to the ground, dead and decaying along the trail that Odin had traveled across the continents of Asia and America.
I turned face around to look at Tank and Tyr, only fifty yards away. Tyr, the great warrior God was lying with his head propped up on a rock and facing me. Tank was standing back up, shaking his head in confusion and disappointment.
Swerving in midair, I began back to them.
“I am Ishtar, sister of Solomon. I have come to bring you to Armageddon, where we shall wage final battle for the security of Earth and all Realms.” I said as I stripped off the cloth from my body.
Tank nodded silently; Tyr remained motionless as I bandaged him.
By both arms, I began to carry the two champions of the Realms in the air, swiftly beating my wings towards the warzone. I, who moved the sun and stars behind me, was only concentrating focus on the vitality of Earth’s validity in the air of my most inevitable purpose. If I had any reservations, I would surely not hide them to myself, yet to conquer them would necessitate an extreme prejudice in the midst of adversity. Whose reservation I did not believe, was one that had been divulged by the Muse, herself. To him I knew that much more was guaranteed, though, then to me. Survival of humanity for long enough, only for the final conflict to lead me to Solomon. Whether they were adept to survival past this was for them to decide. By the time we reached the plateau of the Middle East, glowing red in the high noon glare, I had vindictively looked at both Tyr and Tank in the face, and relied less and less on my conscience to tell them one thing and one thing alone:
“The Muse beholds the world, and fulfills the soul with ambition. If you choose to, you will become the ultimate victors, but as the soulless sleep on beds of doubt, the fulfilled may wake to rooms of madness. And if you are to truly defend yourself, you may not truly defend Man, and will surely lose. And if you are to truly defend Man, you will surely win. The Muse obeys her fancy, and to the one who takes the offensive on the road to salvation, she will only grant the win to show the loss that is accompanied. Lucifer, he is no fool, as he is the pinnacle of negativity, he knows his outcome regardless. Remember, the prophecies written of. Elohim, his genius as unequivocal as was ever imaginable, will watch, for his plan has been mastered long ago. This trine, however much stronger than any other, will be the true war waged here at Armageddon. Good luck to all, I have a more familiar mission at hand to end the war. Yours is one of challenge and choice. However, you decide, I will be back.”
OUTRO
ARMAGEDDON
Seal not the sayings of the prophecy The time is at hand
ONE
As the time comes is nigh
Ishtar falls to the depths
Michael slays Draco high!
Tyr once saved did fall by
Armageddon Earth’s defense
TWO
In beauty and disgust
Oft fails the watcher’s eye
But with sin and distrust!
Solomon’s return from out of the Netherrealm’s mine
THREE
Solomon cipher light
From out glory of war
Ishtar and Tyr combine!
Matthew was as king of Earth and balance was restored
EPILOGUE
By the time I was 19, I was looking at my father right in the eye, knowing that we were the last two living human beings’ souls left on the planet. I recall his crown stood at an angle, and his horrified face was drawn in shadow. I remember King Matthew’s last words;
“Ragnarok was Nigh, yet the Cipher was incomplete. Your soul is locking away every alternate conclusion. Listen,-“
There was no repent, though, as there were no goodbyes.
The only thing left was the crown, where I stood on the abyss, now. Shining in the light of the last star, our sun.
The night had swallowed whole our country, our families, and at the end, even my food sources and almost all of my air supply, to the point that I had dwindled physically to a morsel of a human being who had panted to this last resting ground, the threshold of the abyss.
I had fallen asleep and dreamed. I dreamed that I had seen God and Lucifer, Ishtar and Tyr, even yet on the hemisphere was Adad running from Odin’s dogs. All only characters of the actual deities that the others including my father had witnessed. I had read the stories in history books early on, vividly imagining the event of Ragnarok on Earth before I had been born.
They told me I had a gift, I called it a curse. I knew that we all knew the truth.
At childbirth my mother disappeared, they told me. Ishtar, the heavenly body came and impregnated my father with her last words they told me. My father even reminded me again and again of this being his fault, for having borne witness to some of the most frightening consequences to his actions as a youth. As well, for having mistakenly thought out the meticulous fall of the idyllic deity to the whims of insanity against her blood brother, he had sealed the fate of mankind. He knew what side was really being fought for, and knew that she spoke of a harsh future, not too farfetched to actually happen.
His betrayal, he reminded me, was seen as loyalty to the Devil within him.
I was scared, as a youth, but as time passed, and nothing significant happened in the course of my life, I began to forget. It wasn’t long until all the transitions had been made internally, within me, to blend in with a failing stability in the space-time continuum. The only man who seemed sure throughout of the true reason for the random missing people, the opening vacancies, the missing dog population, was my father, was King Matthew. Most believed the failing economy and population count were due to unresolved causes in the past.
It wasn’t until the death of my dear Lucille that things began to click on inside my head. I realized what was going on, why the once full streets now were hushed roads with closed shops, why nobody was responding to my pleas for help. It was because I was alone.
In the beautiful insanity that followed, I was left abandoned in a hospital, only to be eventually rescued by my father. I was 18 when Lucille died. I will never forget what happened that night.
The years of my childhood were spent dreaming of becoming a zombie hunter. There were at first, plenty of undead and infected spreading around the world due to rapid decrease in military power. They had been spawns of Odin’s pack of wild wolves. Upon the final wolf’s fall, even, the infected dropped to the ground and transformed into flesh eating, mindless, beasts of the night.
That all soon ended with the Nuclear Year. That was the year the hurricanes and earthquakes picked up. Two major earthquakes wreaked havoc once again inland on America, and the residents of the Internal Church of America were worried that zombie spores would enter mainland or if anything were to happen to bring zombies back over from “Dead Island” as it was called, offshore of California. They were having similar disasters in Korea, with the island of Japan almost totally left completely dismantled and infested. The ICA government gave the okay to my father’s proposed military strike on Dead Island, which resulted in the coalition of Russia and Korea giving a multitude of nuclear detonations to an evacuated Japan.
What came next was purely ludicrous. My father’s military position made the foreign affairs a difficult area of expertise. He was unable to get China to clear security sanctions to have organized military, despite the conflict of zombie activity in Northern India. Their intake of Japanese was too high, and he recommended that more of the Japanese immigrants went to Russia. Instead, as the boats sailed back to America for redeployment, a massive outbreak occurred in Tibet.
It seemed to happen almost overnight, as the zombie horde ravaged all of central and northern China. The preemptive strike by Korea was probably due to the lack of communication and inability of the rescue and destroy fleets to return to Asia in time. Nevertheless, American armies were already rushing the shores from Alaska after the first deployment of high-powered hydrogen bombs over Tibet and Central Asia.
With a strained economy, and populations on the decline America was destined to die out. My father’s kingdom was as soon as it was done being created, being destroyed. It wasn’t long until we were in debt, and then chaos ensued.
Many African communities, disgruntled and unhappy with the state of global affairs incited riots, created ceremonies of sacrifice against King Matthew. They had been almost completely untouched by the magnitude of the disaster of Ragnarok, aside from Northern Egypt, whose mighty pyramids had fallen.
Was it a coincidence alone that the sacrificial ceremonies often contained reference to my solitude and false savior position by metaphorically using a fish tagged with poison tip darts on its fins in the Nile River? I saw the particular ceremony with my own eyes, while television was still broadcasting, and the fish would swim upstream until it’s fins’ movements eventually caught the dart on its own flesh, and poisoned it. Then, the television station showed footage of a fish, in spasm, colliding with another fish, infecting it as well. I abandoned my own faith for a time.
Religious analysts confirmed the identities of the vigilant Gods by tracing religious histories and evolving them where necessary. My mother, it was said, was Ishtar. I was her love child conceived overnight in the plagues of zombies that initially crushed the western and eastern shores of America and Asia. They said that most of the phenomena could only be explained as a collective illusion and worldwide coma that spun the world at a different frequency, in the mental realm of men, then was actually occurring outside the mental realm. The fluctuation was caused by a number of coincidences, the alignment of the stars, and worldwide mental system failure. The shared illusions were due to the nature of the coincidences, which were mainly drug and pollutant induced, as well as the frequency at which the light was hitting the planet. Without humans, in other words, the events would not have occurred, but in physical reality, they had. I was actually the last of the mind-bending dimensional shifts, I appeared in the gate of Hell, after King Matthew’s chi was completely stolen and the strength of his chakras created a life force that manifested itself from within Hell. I was almost his doppelganger, but much fairer, as if born of a white, light haired woman. Genetic testing failed to find any evidence of lineage besides my father’s chromosomes.
I knew I was a burden, but the words of kindness were enough to withhold my personal distress. The entire world seemed to be my friend, until I was 13. I was given the finest education and boarding while my father, the King, attended press and political conferences. We lived well, until the disappearance of my stepmother, a woman from L.A. who had survived and reunited with my father. I had liked her a lot, but towards the end her disbelief in the phenomena I was witnessing grated on my nerves and I would often snap and her own lack of retaliation only made things worse for my conscience.
On the other side of the world, northern Europe, where the holocaust had occurred drew the most influential Ether Activity, as the Internal Church called it. It was evacuated and Britain repopulated after it’s devastation by Draco, along with Spain and Italy. Britain, though had become a major dissident to the American Military. The strong and wealthy native residents were aligned with Italian Vatican rogues who preached that Jesus would still return.
My politics were good, as a Prince, but I stayed out of the way until I was in middle school, when I began to passively object to my father’s diplomacy both at front and domestically. I felt neglected, probably, and wanted compensation by making myself a political liability. My loud mouth eventually got me in trouble in boarding school, when I accidentally became emotionally attached to a Christian from New York.
I remember the night was wrought with drug use, I had a tendency of breaking out a batch of what we called “Devil’s Weed”, a highly developed hybrid strain of Salvia and Cannabis Sativa. We were huddled in the corner of an abandoned building, of which there had been several popping up in her neighborhood, although she lived in Greenwich Village. This was a neighborhood Stop n Shop, turned room of empty shelves. There were nearly no patrols anymore, it was like everyone just didn’t care. Nonetheless, I was still a little excited, and the smell of the drug filled the air, along with our truly prepubescent musk. We were giggling at a joke she had cracked about how the substitute teacher’s mustache looked like a rat tail.
I remember the look of innocence in her eyes, as I leaned over to try my first kiss. She backed me up with her hand, abruptly when our lips were about to meet. She looked at me in her deep brown eyes, and said “I’m sorry.”
That was it. She disappeared into the shadows behind her, and when I pursued back into the dark, unlit storage area, I heard her whimper lightly and then the sound of a match lighting, but no flame. I passed out, suddenly, as I began to become akin to do in moments of great anxiety, or more pertinently in the midst of the sudden disappearances plaguing the nation. She was nowhere to be found ever again. Even her mother pretended as though she had never heard her name.
My mother, Ishtar, was the main spawn of the collapse of human reason. She was a resurrected soul from the ancient past. She was the sister of Solomon, son of King David, father of Yeshua, and Yosef, whose initial battle of wits had culminated in the creation of the Prophetic Man. Yosef had given birth to Jesus Christ, who had been resurrected in ancient times.
Some American Mormons believed at first that I was the second coming. Their opinions quickly faded into subculture reference blacklists, as I became less and less newsworthy. It wasn’t until I was stolen of Lucille’s sweet scent that I had lost my shell of introspection and low-key status. At 15 I became an avid activist, but to my surprise, none of the uprising that I would have expected as Prince was successful.
Eventually, I lost confidence in my own family. My stepmother disappeared one evening when I was 18 and my father blamed me, without restraint. He wouldn’t stop yelling, on my 16th birthday, after I got in trouble at boarding school for sneaking around getting drunk on school property. This was before Lucille died, so as I left the house alone and empty-handed, I vowed never to return again. I was disassociated with the entire aristocrat society, by this time, and was still not even hitting puberty. To make matters worse, the very thing that I was fighting against, the random selection of human sacrifices went unnoticed or addressed by the general population. Until the last few days, I maintained my concern, but as people kept vanishing my sanity as well, left my side.
That was the Day of the Demon, as my father would say later, after I was rescued from the Russian solitary confinement, maximum security prison I was sentenced to. I ask no forgiveness for what I did, from anyone. I was incapable of saving a bus of children from falling after rolling to a halt on the edge of a thruway bridge upstate of New York City. I had seen the bus pass by, careening behind on my walk through the underpass, as the driver had mysteriously disappeared from the driver’s seat. The children were left screaming on the bus. I quickly ran up the side ramp and ran down the left side of the guardrail. The bus had of course, broken the guardrail and was balancing on the ledge of a 50- foot overpass. I was helpless as I watched other cars drive by as if nothing were happening.
Finally, one drove by and stopped, confused as to why the left lane was closed. I was angry as I called the police. No answer. I raised the cellphone in the air and threw it off the cliff.
The inappropriateness of my outburst was soon concluded by physical conflict. It was just my luck to run into a senile ex-Mormon who would accuse me of being a sinful disgrace to my father’s name. On the record, it was self-defense, but with a bus of dead schoolchildren and a deliriously mad attack on a civilian bystander, I was in over my head. The man had crossed a boundary, but the shock of the incident was so clearly exaggerated by my inability to do anything. I turned 19 the first night in my new cell at the county jail.
The Judge recognized me for having been caught demonstrating in California. I wonder to this day, if my family had betrayed me, my sister and father.
My sister went missing after I was gone, and my father didn’t have me to blame this time. But he stopped his correspondence altogether after the funeral that I didn’t have a chance to attend. His last written letter was short enough that I remember it by heart. my father, the original saint saith unto thee... be bright, like moons across seas, angels of earth, my son the world, along our lives will be
He was soon after, arrested for public drunkenness in a state of psychosis by one of the last remaining military police officers in the entire Internal Church Army. That’s all that I ever heard of his stay in prison. But his impeachment made my stay all that much more uncomfortable in Russia.
I was abandoned in solitary confinement for 6 months. My father actually was forced to walk the last 40 miles across the border to Moscow, where I had been transferred to their new containment facility. According to him, the criminally insane were some of the last to vanish, he was limping from attacks by roaming thieves, and his stumbles down rocky terrains. He was old, now, at least to me. He was in his 50’s, and his last two years were obviously not spent taking too good care of himself. His mind was still intact, surprisingly, though, and he was a good friend at times, although always persistent in his words of mentoring, and at times scorn.
That last night, we were drunk. I looked him in the eye, and said something I hadn’t been able to tell him for over two years, four if you counted my overly rebellious, exaggerated youth:
I told him I loved him.
As tears filled my eyes, I wrote in the sands of the French shore we had landed ourselves on, the words of his prayer I had received in prison.
The last words I heard him say, were as I fell unconscious to the roar of the waves.
I just barely awoke to the tide pushing away the last line of the prayer in the sand.
My father’s body’s imprint lay perpendicular to my own on the beach, but he was gone.
No footprints lead away either, aside from our two to the final convention of kindred souls, liars both, heirs of their own, and foes until the end.
I was now alone, with only the crown left sitting on a seashell.
I remember, I picked that shell up and wore it on a necklace I made, until one night I awoke, and even it was gone.
I never wore the crown.
Tonight, I look out across the abyss, the shining sun. Sol, the ancients would call it. I decided its last flicker upon disappearance, would be known forever as the Final Omen. I was ready, and I watched, blindly. I could feel the heat, and as I wheeze to breathe, I could feel it fade. It was now neither hot nor warm nor cold, or cool. It was just the here, the now. No time, just myself. It was nirvana, at once. I went to fall back, to just lie on this final oasis, and fell on the crown which pierced my skin, and I felt the blood trickle from the impact of the diamonds. This was it.
I looked up and saw a shape flicker, although I knew that it was physically impossible to see, after having been entrapped in the glare of eternities. Yet the flicker penetrated the night, and came closer at a fast, and accelerating rate. It was coming from behind the sun. Finally, I could see its shape, and I was wheezing heavily but the glow of its presence gave me a little strength that I reached up and grabbed onto air to swing up. The shape that approached through the thickly dark, unsurpassed, menacing night was of a dark-skinned man, with sparse facial hair, much like myself. He reminded me of a different version of my own image. I was hypnotized by him, and as he opened up to speak, the only thing that stopped me from crying was the look of purity in his eyes. The eyes on the angelic man kept me from insanely having a seizure, but I remained speechless.
“This is your destiny, as mankind’s ghost.
The kingdom comes, as the Lord’s final will is done.
You are now bound to infinity.
Forever.” CURSIVE COMICS
4 TABLET POWERS
LIGHT LOST
UNLIMITED FLIGHT
ENDLESS FIGHT
LIFE ABSORPTION a vigilante burned to death during a raid on a mafia organization in charge of human trafficking to the illuminati is resurrected when he falls through a destroyed boat dock into the ocean. he is a zombie who wraps his whole body in bandages and has lost his left eye and both ears. he wears clothes like a hooded sweatshirt and black jeans and leather gloves and boots all the time. his powers are that he has a gun inside his body, that he can reload by eating bullets, and shoot from inside himself. he also has a fake left eye that can see pretty much anything within a five mile radius whether behind walls or invisible. his real superpower is that he can teleport any piece of his body besides his still-intact 'good eye', within a radius of it, and only to where he can visually see, and he also has telepathy. this includes being able to teleport the gun, or just a piece of an arm, or, his other 'cyborg' eye. when he leaves his eye behind, it becomes unprotected, and will fall to the ground. also, there's a plot-twist catch to his power, which is that whatever piece of body he teleports has to go through another identical dimension that is inhabited by vicious beasts. the beasts from the other dimension can attack his body parts that are being teleported through at any time, yet remain invisible in our world, and also have to chase him in a parallel universe, where they are actually alive on a moon to a planet that is just like earth, aside from that it cannot be seen by humans at all. our planet shares a similar orbit to this extra-dimensional moon, but at certain times of the day, week, month, and year, he can transport himself without attack. to literally move into a new location he has to carry his eye to the area. unless his eye is destroyed he will survive forever, by creating limbs with machinery, and replacing pieces of body. he eventually has lazers in his cyborg eye, and can fly, too. his favorite way to kill somebody ends up being lazering out both of their eyes and shooting them up in the back of the neck, simultaneously.
While in a COURTHOUSE at 18 years of age WILLIAM hires VIGILANTE GUY to watch LUCY who is PREGNANT
The father-in-law SECRET AGENT receives call from WALI WIGZ about the magic TABLET to protect AMERICA
The SECRET AGENT leaves LUCY to go to CHURCH while releasing a TABLET of THE POWER OF UNLIMITED FLIGHT
As ILLUMINATOR & CREEP show up to kidnap LUCY using THE POWER OF LIGHT LOST stolen from a lost TABLET
This begins the emergence of Superior Man, who is a puerto rican from new york who takes his family on vacation when reveals that he is a secret agent, accidentally, when they are attacked by Illuminator & The Creep. He gains the ability of superflight, when he comes in contact with one of the four lost tablets.
SECRET AGENT becomes SUPERIOR MAN and lunges with SUPER FLIGHT at CREEP but misses into the atmosphere
Then VIGILANTE GUY shows up to help but CREEP shoots him in the stomach
CREEP escapes on a HELICOPTER with LUCY to HORROR ISLAND in MEDITERRANEAN SEA
KING TANK promises SUPERIOR MAN that he will help find his daughter
THE CAT PEOPLE move in shadows and through glass, invisibly, and can trap people with their own invincible power of being unmovable once stationary.
CAT PEOPLE appear in UPSTATE HOSPITAL in MAGIC MIRROR of window in VIGILANTE GUYS ROOM and scare him
An unknown HOSPITAL MAN catches VIGILANTE GUY outside in HALLWAY, offers to help
VIGILANTE MAN recovers on the BOAT with HOSPITAL MAN in the ATLANTIC OCEAN
CREEP begins LUCY's sacrifice to Zeus for ILLUMINATI at the HORROR ISLAND ALTAR
Instead comes the ALIEN GHOST from the OTHER DIMENSION and scares CREEP and captures ILLUMINATI
CREEP crawls into a MACHINE GUN TURRET and begins firing at the DOCK
VOLYOOM TEAM SUBMARINES into HARBOR as an AIRSTRIKE hits the DOCK
VOLYOOM TEAM uses ROCKET POWERED SCUBA GEAR to get VIGILANTE GUY and HOSPITAL MAN through the HARBOR
HOSPITAL MAN gives VIGILANTE GUY the lost magic TABLET of THE POWER OF ENDLESS FIGHT
HOSPITAL MAN is shot and VIGILANTE GUY falls into the harbor while ILLUMINATOR DUPLICATES twice
SUPERIOR MAN busts down TURRET and CREEP reaches for SELF DESTRUCT PANEL
ILLUMINATOR grows to SUPER SIZE and VIGILANTE GUY dies in the EXPLOSION
CROOKED DEAD GUY DISAPPEARS TO ANOTHER DIMENSION and CAT PEOPLE bring him to BATTLEDOME
Vaderfang & Bladerbang are a part of The Crooked Dead Man Saga, as well. They are beast kings, the Chief Warlords of the Other Dimension. They are both wolf-like and bear-like. Vaderfang can also become Superdragon.
BLADERBANG and VADERFANG appear and try to scare away SCORPION KING with BLADERBANG CHARGE and STRETCHY PAWS
CROOKED DEAD GUY fights and almost kills BLADERBANG while VADERFANG shoots SCORPION KING with MAGIC DAGGERS
VADERFANG transforms into SUPERDRAGON and almost kills CROOKED DEAD GUY
Back in the LOS ANGELES LAB WALI WIGZ returns an injured CROOKED DEAD GUY from the OTHER DIMENSION
ILLUMINATI GLITCHES his GHOST POWERS in front of WALI WIGZ who tells about REVOLVER inside CROOKED DEAD GUY
By working with an undercover ex-Volyoom Team member now working out of the middle east for a citizen-resistance cult, called G.O.D. "Global Offense Defensive" codenamed "Wali Wigz", Crooked Dead Guy is able to hack old cyborg parts and attempt to retake the world
WALI WIGZ gives CYBORG PARTS to CROOKED DEAD GUY and makes him CROOKED DEAD MAN
In VANCOUVER APARTMENTS CROOKED DEAD MAN finds out where CREEP and LUCY are and TELEPORTS to them
Wali Wigz becomes THE BLOB that starts taking over the globe.
In LOS ANGELES on a ROOFTOP is WALI WIGZ using his last TABLET of THE POWER OF ABSORPTION to become THE BLOB a new nemesis emerges to be fought by the Volyoom Team. "The Omega Devil" a translucent but shimmering demon released after Dead Man's second death. "The Omega Devil" has no powers besides invincibility, and can fly with his wings which are like a giant raven's with pincher claws attached to them. his only weakness, Volyoom Team discovers, is the toxic element that was in the original Dead Man accident, and Volyoom Team must unite once more to defeat the arch nemesis of the living universe known as the "Devil Omega".
CROOKED DEAD MAN and LUCY become DEVIL OMEGA during TELEPORTATION by THE POWER OF LIGHT LOST and ILLUMINATOR
Escaping to HAWAII VOLCANO is VOLYOOM TEAM A and THE BLOB who cause ILLUMINATOR and DEVIL OMEGA to EXPLODE VOLUME TWO
Overlord Tyrant is the demon sent from hell to reclaim the soul of Crooked Dead Guy. He has the powers of flight and invincibility, as well as super strength and super speed. Part of his gimmick is that he can only communicate to humans through blood writing, which he can spray off of himself because he is a skeleton-and-muscle demonic humanoid. However, his weakness is his Contract, in which he must destroy humankind by concentrating on all offensive efforts against him, even if it would allow his own death.
OVERLORD TYRANT returns and starts recruiting CREEP and THE FIEND from ARCTIC BASE with PSYCHIC BLOOD
The Creep steals some of the genetic make-up from the monster. The Creep turns out to be one of the ringleaders of the mafia organization that created CROOKED DEAD GUY. The Creep creates the Fiend who is a zombie ninja.
The surviving BLOB is now THE THING who hunts CREEP and THE FIEND through the ARCTIC
OVERLORD TYRANT takes over THE THING using his PSYCHIC BLOOD
NATIVE MAN and VOLYOOM TEAM B kill THE FIEND and ILLUMINATI 2 & 3 with a FLAMETHROWER and a PISTOL
POWERBOY is the name of the cyborg defender constructed by ex- Volyoom Team members in the wake of the first Omega Devil saga. It is essentially a limitless power-source controlled robot that fights OVERLORD TYRANT while Crooked Dead Man is rebuilt by Wali Wigz.
NATIVE MAN suddenly becomes POWER BOY while CAT PEOPLE try to hold OVERLORD TYRANT
THE THING kills VOLYOOM TEAM B with RAMPAGE SPASM and breaks through CAT PEOPLE and rescues OVERLORD TYRANT
POWER BOY kills CREEP but THE THING gets away again with OVERLORD TYRANT
OVERLORD TYRANT in ANTARCTICA uses CHARGE POWER BLAST on CROOKED DEADMAN as he shoots MONSTERS with REVOLVER
WILLIAM parachutes to kill ILLUMINATI 1 before he intercepts REVOLVER FROM ANOTHER DIMENSION
WILLIAM uses DISAPPEARING on ILLUMINATI 1 to ANOTHER DIMENSION where ALIEN GHOST hits him with PUMPKIN SEED
POWER BOY arrives and punches OVERLORD TYRANT to the MOON THE LOTTERY
EXT – TWILIGHT – RIVERBANK – BLACK AND WHITE
(We see a fisherman reeling in his line, and grabbing his tackle box. He looks about 35-40 years old, and is wearing a plaid overcoat, and waders. He walks away from the riverbank. Camera swings to show a Midwestern small town in the distance. A crow calls.)
WE CUT TO:
INT – POST OFFICE
(The camera rests, viewing a middle-aged mail sorter taking letters out of a row of boxes labeled “Outgoing”. Some of the boxes are overflowing. Names are labeled above each box, with addresses beneath. He does so with a couple dozen letters before he reaches into his bag one last time, and takes a solitary letter out of an empty box. The name on the box says “Jackson”. He then walks out of the desk area into the reception area and picks up his coat. He walks past the camera, which swings to follow him out the door. When he gets outside, the camera follows him through the glass window as he passes, walking to the right. The camera, after he is out of sight, then swings down to show that it is resting on a box. At the top of the box is a hole. The camera focuses in on the hole.)
MAIN TITLE – THE LOTTERY EXT –MID MORNING
(Mr. Summers, wearing businessman attire, is walking down a long street of the village, the sun at his back. He looks to be about 60 years old, he is humming an old farmer’s song, which we hear from a distance. Alongside of him walks his wife, wearing a plain black dress. The camera is located behind and under a post office sign. As they near the post-office, a man of about 30, wearing a postal worker uniform steps out and puts his hand over his eyes. He has a big bag on his back. When the couple gets closer, the camera swings down off the post office sign and focuses on Mr. Summers. Everybody is smiling, cheerfully yet distantly.)
MR. SUMMERS
Howdy, Jim. Mail come in yet today?
JIM
No sir. This time of year, you know how things can get.
Oft times than not, the fella usually brings it, ends up having to saddle up at least a couple horses.
Just to get the mail in town, there’s almost always three if not four packs.
MR. SUMMERS
(laughs too loud)
Ah, yes. Relatively speaking, it seems as though this time of year things really can get hectic with all the long losts wanting to not be forgotten by the soon to be.
MRS. SUMMERS
What on earth?
JIM
I know what he means. So many want to be remembered, in case you forgot, it’s almost seeding season.
MR. SUMMERS
Just about time to get that old carpenter out. What do you think about the notion of a new box? MRS. SUMMERS
Oh, that!
Well what’s the purpose anyway?
JIM
Hmm…
(looks in the window, to the right, looks back at mr. summers and shrugs)
MR. SUMMERS
None at all I suppose. Except the poor priest who has to dig his hand in the God-forsaken thing.
I can’t imagine the feeling he’d have, worrying about a splinter.
JIM
(chuckles)
MRS. SUMMERS
That is completely awful, for you to even think of such a thing. MR. SUMMERS (smiles widely, obviously proud of himself)
Nothing like a bible with blood-smeared page- corners.
I suppose I should call out that carpenter.
(Camera angle switches to behind the crowd, below the post office sign, in front of the door. A man is walking down the street with a bag over his shoulder. The crowd is in the left-hand corner, the man walks down the street, in the center. The man is dusty, and has a stubbly beard. The post office sign creaks in the wind.)
JIM
Who’s that feller? You know him Mike?
MR. SUMMERS
Nope, can’t say I do.
Hey!
Hey there!
New to town?
(the man crosses over to the right-hand side of the screen. mr. summers, crosses behind his wife to greet him. the man peers into the camera, and then turns to mr. summers.)
MAN
A box in the front window.
An uninhabited casket?
I’ve been through the yards of three houses with closed shutters. With closed doors in the spring.
I’ve been through the borders of three towns.
With three boxes.
MR. SUMMERS
(frowns)
We don’t take kindly to poetry here.
There’s no such thing as a poet with meat on his bones.
Only poetry to my ears, is the music of a strangers footsteps on his way out of my town.
MAN
I won’t be staying, anyway.
Just came by to drop off this here bag of mail. I heard from back yonder, you speaking of long rides, and of short lives. What I heard was mockery.
The third lottery.
The third lottery, and it will only be consolation to know that you didn’t forget the poor priest. Because, blessed be his soul, who abstains. And of robbery? Forsaken be his soul who obtains.
That sounds blasphemous!
JIM
(shakes his head)
MR SUMMERS
(grabs the bag off of the man’s shoulder)
Get on.
I’m only gonna tell ya once.
JIM
Here’s the outgoing.
(throws a bag on the ground)
(Camera switches to from the road, back to facing the sun. The man picks up the bag and walks towards the camera, while the crowd stands beneath the sign, watching him. Mr. Summers spits on the ground.)
JIM
Damn postmen, can’t keep from prying into others’ businesses.
WE CUT TO:
EXT – MID DAY
(Camera shows various shots of empty fields, outside of town. The time of the shots grows later with each shot.)
WE CUT TO:
EXT – LATE AFTERNOON
(Camera shows a schoolhouse. A bell tolls. Children pour out of the front door, and a couple even climb out of a side window and run in every direction. After the last child walks out, a woman appears in the frame of the door. She is smiling, and yet her eyes look distant, as were Mr. Summers’. She is wearing a black dress. A priest walks past the screen to the left. He waves as he passes, she waves back and turns back inside.)
INT – SCHOOLHOUSE
(The teacher walks through an aisle of desks to a larger one in front of a blackboard. The camera follows and stops at the seventh row. On the desk is a nametag; “Mrs. Jackson”. She picks up a folder from the front of the desk and puts it in an open briefcase. She then walks back towards the camera.)
INT – KITCHEN – NIGHTTIME
(The camera is in a doorway. In the frame are Mr. Jackson [the fisherman] and Mrs. Jackson. Mr. Jackson is wearing the plaid overcoat, and blue jeans. Mrs. Jackson is wearing the same black dress. The man is sitting at the table eating a fish. The woman moves from the stove to the table and sits down in a chair.)
MR. JACKSON
Did you check the mail?
MRS. JACKSON
It hadn’t arrived, when I stopped at the post office.
MR. JACKSON
Probably lottery month.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it arrives in the morning.
MRS. JACKSON
I’ll check on the way to school.
MR. JACKSON
Don’t worry about it.
I have to go there anyway.
MRS. JACKSON
Last words?
MR. JACKSON
No,
(chuckles)
I have to see if they got a new box in there.
MRS. JACKSON
(frowns)
Is that supposed to be a joke?
It isn’t the least bit funny.
MR. JACKSON
(sets down his fork, grins)
No, I’m serious.
Or at least curious.
Besides, I haven’t much to do anyway. I’ll head over to the school around 11, if we have any mail.
Don’t suppose we will.
Your mother never writes us.
She’s so superstitious.
MRS. JACKSON
Well. Aren’t we all, then?
MR. JACKSON
You know what?
As long as the harvest comes in,
I’m satisfied.
Until the year comes that droughts and dust bowls reach this here town.
I’ll always be supportive of superstitious tradition.
MRS. JACKSON
I’m not contradicting, but hypothetically this could be a good year for harvest anyway.
I don’t see the point of a lottery.
It’s just a waste of time, for old Summers.
My theory is that his only purpose is to find another pastime.
Lest I remind you that he was, after all, a drunkard when he was our age.
MR. JACKSON
(frowns, gets up with his plate, brings plate to the sink. turns around.)
Everyone is so moody nowadays.
I remember when this was routine.
Almost a tourist attraction.
Now it’s all hushed over the town.
Gossipers still have a field day.
But it’s all downright demeaning.
Ms. Hutchinson, for instance covered the whole town, starting rumors that Father Warner was fixing it.
MRS. JACKSON
If anybody fixed it, it would be Ms. Hutchinson.
MR. JACKSON
Why do you say that?
(leans back against counter, folds arms)
MRS. JACKSON
You know why.
(whispers)
Tessie.
MR. JACKSON
We’ll see tomorrow.
We’ll see.
I’m going to bed. I have to see if that other carpenter got that box fixed, tomorrow.
(turns to walk to the door)
MRS. JACKSON
Wait!
(she gets up, looks at her husband. her eyes are wide.)
MR. JACKSON
What?
MRS. JACKSON
(looks down at his plate, back up at him.)
I wanted to say…
MR. JACKSON
I know.
(he turns around)
Lotta work to do tomorrow.
I have to get to bed.
Good night.
WE CUT TO:
INT – POST OFFICE
(The camera is at the angle from the box, viewing the reception area. Three postal workers are in the building, and a line of five people stand at the desk. Jim is handing a woman a handful of letters. The middle- aged postman is sitting in a chair behind the desk. The third has a bag on his back and is walking out the door. Mr. Jackson is third in line. He taps the postman with the bag on the shoulder, as he passes.)
MR. JACKSON
Heading out of town?
POSTMAN
I’ll be back before six.
MR. JACKSON
(smiles)
Any mail?
POSTMAN
Don’t ask me, look for yourself.
You can see as good as I can.
MR. JACKSON
(glances over to the box marked “Jackson”, which is empty)
No mail?
POSTMAN
Not today.
No mail.
MR. JACKSON
(steps out of line. a woman behind him fills the space. he follows the postman out the door.)
(Camera swings to follow the postman walking right past the window. Mr. Jackson stands in front of the door and lights a cigar. A woman walks past and coughs, sneers. Mr. Jackson turns left and walks away out of sight, as a bell tolls 12. Camera remains in position as bell tolls, and at the last ring, a woman walks out of the door with a handful of mail.)
WE CUT TO:
EXT – AFTERNOON
(Father Warner walks down a street with a box in his hand. The box is old and splintering wood. It is painted black, but wood shows through, where it has splintered. The camera focuses on the box, from an upward angle, but Father Warner is in the full frame. He stops as a crowd of five people hurry in front of him, they are all talking at once, and wearing black dresses and jeans. We do not see their faces. A small boy approaches the box, as Father Warner is standing still. We see the back of his head, and a black school outfit from the waist up, from the bottom of the screen. He tosses a rock in the air and catches it.)
FATHER WARNER
(turns to face boy, then turns back to start walking again. his face is solemn.)
BOY
(runs up and behind warner, tugs his right sleeve. as he does, a couple of rocks fall out his left pocket onto the ground. he bends over to pick them up.)
Aww, geez louise.
I can’t even keep them all in my pocket.
I got some nice ones though. I like the flat ones.
FATHER WARNER
(continues walking away from the boy)
BOY
(follows behind father warner, after picking up the stones)
(The camera stays focused on the box but slowly backs up, and swings to the right. We see a large crowd standing around the front of an old church. The Father walks through the crowd and the boy stops in the back. The crowd spreads for the Father, and when he gets to the door of the church, he sets down the box on a small table that is set up to the left of the door. Mr. Summers appears with his wife. The camera switches to a view from above the crowd, on the right side of the door, looking down on Father Warner and Mr. Summers. They face each other. Mr. Jackson is behind the box, to the left, behind a few other people. Mrs. Jackson is not in the picture. Jim stands towards the front of the crowd, facing the door. The sneering woman from the street, earlier, is standing next to him.)
MR. SUMMERS
Well let’s get this under way.
Is everybody from the town present?
Mrs. Hutchinson?
(The woman next to Jim takes a step forward. She is Ms. Hutchinson.)
MS. HUTCHINSON
I’ve counted twice already.
Nobody is missing.
Are the family names in the lottery box?
FATHER WARNER
(frowning)
Of course, they are.
We just used the name tags from the postal office.
JIM
(coughs)
MR. SUMMERS
Now everyone knows how this works.
We’ve been through this countless times.
Family lottery first.
Let’s go, then. We haven’t got eternity.
FATHER WARNER
(stares out into the crowd. his eyes are vacant and sad. he reaches down to the box, and pulls the top off.)
(The camera switches to Mrs. Jackson, who is in the middle of the crowd. She is biting her lip. She is not near her husband, but her eyes look back and forth across the crowd.)
MR. SUMMERS
(voice only)
Well, who do we have?
FATHER WARNER
(voice only)
…
We have…
(coughs)
We have Jackson this year.
MRS. JACKSON
(eyes widen, jaw drops)
(The camera switches to Mr. Jackson, from behind. He scratches his head, and turns around, looking for his wife. The look on his face is of astonishment. The crowd is bubbling with excitement.)
MR. SUMMERS
Well, fair is fair.
Jackson party, step forward.
(grabs the box and empties it into a bag under the table)
MR. JACKSON
Hold on sir, that can’t be right.
MR. SUMMERS
(grabs some pieces of paper out of his right breast pocket)
Well, isn’t it Father?
What does the paper say?
Read it again.
FATHER WARNER
(looks at the paper, and down at the ground)
The name is Jackson.
MR. SUMMERS
(looking at the blank pieces of paper in his hand, he takes one, crinkles it up, and puts it in the box.)
Well, fair is fair.
You know the rules Jackson.
Where is Shirley?
She has to step forward.
Father, put in the marked slip.
(Mrs. Jackson steps into frame, at the top, squeezing through the crowd. She stands opposite her husband near the box. She doesn’t look at her husband, she stares at the box. Father Warner pulls out a piece of paper with a dot on it from his pocket. He crinkles it up, into a small ball, and drops it in the box. He looks at Mrs. Jackson and steps back.)
MR. SUMMERS
Well, only one of you has to pick.
Who will it be?
MR. JACKSON
Me. I’ll pick.
Me.
MRS. JACKSON
(takes a step towards the box, still a few yards away)
FATHER WARNER
(grabs mr. jackson’s arm as he walks past, reaching for the box.)
My son.
(the look on his face is stoic, he is afraid)
MR. JACKSON
(sighs loudly, almost whimpering, and reaches in the box while closing his eyes.)
(The camera switches to the outer left side of the box, facing the door and Mr. Summers. We see Mrs. Jackson next to Mrs. Summers. Her eyes are wide. She is almost in tears. Mr. Jackson’s arm reaches down, and covers up Mrs. Jackson on the way to reach for the slip of paper from the box. He retrieves a crumpled-up slip, and pulls it out. His arm disappears and we see Mrs. Jackson again, looking above the camera intently, to where her husband is standing. She is shaking. Mrs. Summers yawns. Mr. Summers does a quick glance from Mr. to Mrs. Jackson. His eyes stay on Mrs. Jackson.)
MR. JACKSON
(voice only, which is trembling and breaking)
Blank.
(The camera zooms in on Mrs. Jackson, very quickly. She shrieks suddenly, and covers her mouth. She is fainting, but is caught by the people behind her, who steady her up. The camera switches to the right side of Mrs. Jackson’s face. A few people begin digging in their pockets in the small part of the crowd that we can see. Others are shaking their head. A tear slides down Mrs. Jackson’s cheek.)
MR. SUMMERS
(voice only)
Too bad Jackson.
Buckle up though. It’s alright…
Alright.
Shirley?
Don’t make this any harder than it has to be.
(The camera stays on Mrs. Jackson’s right cheek. A rock comes flying from one of the crowd people, it hits her on the other side. Her eyes flutter up. As she turns around, facing the camera, a dozen more rocks come flying at the back of her head. On her cheek is a cut. The blood is red. The scene cuts to black.)
BLACK SCREEN NO WORDS
MR. SUMMERS
Looks like we’ll need a new teacher. THE LIAR’S OATH
(BLACK SCREEN)
NICK
Every road, every river, every singular life has two sides.
A tributary here, tribulation there.
A Beginning to it, and an End to it.
Ever since I was young, I chose to see not just the end.
For what is more futile, frugal, and refutable than a picture of a dying man?
In the minds of the great thinkers that our grand Earth has seen come… and go.
What has ever been more worthless, than an emptied hand of gold? A sand-less hourglass?
Or a locomotive without a station, full of new beginnings?
WE CUT TO:
EXT-AFTERNOON – TRAIN CABOOSE RIDING AWAY - COLOR
(rising camera angle from tracks to nick on right side of railroad) MAIN TITLE APPEARS – THE LIAR'S OATH
NICK
(camera swerves, follows behind nick, who is wearing a cowboy hat, leather vest, and boots with blue jeans.)
(spits to the right, spins to the left, crosses railroad track. nick is approximately 75 years old.)
I… am Nick Adams.
I have lived here for quite a while. Not here, right on these tracks.
WE CUT TO:
(pan shot of railroad, as train is taken into the distance along tacks.)
But over the land, I have lived. And someday, I will leave.
Might right now. Maybe tomorrow…
I never professed to be a great thinker, never wrote books of poetry.
Never stayed awake, devising new methods to conquer mathematical equations.
But I know one thing for sure… Everything comes to a juncture.
WE CUT TO:
(nick’s back, as he stares down railroad at train.)
Like this railroad.
There was a station here at one time. I remember.
There used to be three roadhouses just behind me.
(as nick walks towards wooded area, camera pans 180 degrees. shows an empty lot behind nick, a little overgrown. pans further right to show a foundation of a building.) There was a restaurant right there. Sal's Sauce, they called it.
I guess they moved on.
We always gotta keep moving somewheres.
Not always fun. But well, this life of ours.
It’s not always too bad either.
I won’t call it either which way. But damned if I don’t remember hanging up my coat in The Mansion late Friday nights.
Slipping the booze out of my jacket pocket.
And,
(laughs) sharing a little philosophical thought with a dame.
I guess I ain’t always been too much of a great thinker.
But I remember at least a couple times saying those same damn old words to a dame.
We always gotta keep moving to somewhere.
WE CUT TO:
EXT – NICK – HIS BACK, FOLLOWING HIM, IN THE WOODS
My thoughts must be unwinding in this cool breeze. Somewhere in the back of those changing leaves, I left a memory.
I see the laughter of the sky on the back of my neck.
And I see the rays dream of liberation.
I smell the pine.
(camera swoops through a pine tree, focuses on a single cone.) So long I was living a purpose that had gone without saying.
So long, I had forgotten my problems. What they were, to begin with.
(camera cuts to the front of nick, moving with him.)
As I walk between these trees,
I feel as though each claim a soul.
A soul that, whether I would ever really need to know, i disowned, and slowly forgot.
Until now.
(slowly camera closes in on nick, centering on his forehead) And whether or not I had before believed in such superstition, is not of a consequence that matters to the mortality of my imagination.
I’ve never built upon that lost soul’s vacancy with respectful objectivity.
And well, what had been left behind was somewhat of a reminder.
(camera switches off nick’s forehead, to a tree stump on the ground.)
Like the stumps of fallen pine. Whether burned, or otherwise reduced to oblivion, to my memory which recedes into utterly bitter oblivion.
(camera swoops over stump, follows circular imprint on the top) These souls.
Which seem to forever exist within a space of my own, yet out of my control.
Or at least what resembled them, was replaced with my wandering heart’s longing for companionship.
(camera switches back to nick from behind, follows him into clearing.)
I am old nowadays.
Kids don’t call. My friends have heeded their own. I have gotten old. And have heeded only my own damn lusts, have betrayed my own trust. WE CUT TO:
(a piece of dandelion pollen blowing past nick’s leg.) Like the pollen in the air, I was whimsical to every gust that blew, to the blue sky, to the blue water. And have done thus, as I am returned to dust. I am so old, but so old that I can only remember…
(nick walks up to riverbed, pulls of the harnesses of the pack he is carrying, sets it on the ground.)
WE CUT TO:
(right side-portrait of nick standing along river.)
I can only remember…
The hot summer air. Youthful and beautiful.
Coursing blood running through my veins.
Running alongside this very river, as if it was symbolic of the nature of my life. (camera begins panning left, towards nick’s front.) As if I would ever find its source.
Buried so deep in the tall mountains, that it would only be trickled out.
Bit by bit, here and there. Til it reaches the vastness. (camera shows only nick’s eyes.)
As I reminisce of those days, those mornings waking to her by my side. Or any of the moments, that I was oh so quick to push onward through, and so willingly throw myself towards whatever lurked beyond the next bend of this river.
(camera shows fish jumping in river. Switches back to nick’s boots as he reties his laces. Rises upwards as he reaches for a smoke from his inner shirt’s pocket.)
Blending with my surprise, surrounding my prison of life.
I feel freedom inching towards the walls.
Rescue me!
Rescue me river, for I am riven with doubts of my past.
I feel as if the wind picks up a little now.
And my mind races with it to forgive if not myself, if not my life’s worth for giving in to troublesome years.
(Nick lights cigarette)
If only a moment to travel… backwards.
Through time.
To my youth.
I stare across the river, now.
To the bed on which we laid.
You.
And I.
(SCENE CUTS TO FLASHBACK)
EXT – EVENING – SHOT OF FULL MOON – BLACK AND WHITE
MARJORIE
Look at that, isn’t it gorgeous?
(Nick and Marjorie lay on the back on riverbed. camera is across river, but focuses in on them, coming down to their front. Marjorie points up to sky, then turns over on side facing Nick)
NICK
Pretty much the same as every other night.
Nothing particularly interesting about it.
MARJORIE
(frowns)
It’s full though, doesn’t it make you feel like the air is magical?
NICK
Not particularly.
MARJORIE
What’s the matter, Nick?
NICK
I don’t know, Marj.
MARJORIE
(sits up and grabs a picnic basket)
NICK
I’m not hungry.
MARJORIE
I know, but I am.
NICK
... You know everything.
MARJORIE
Oh, Nick, please cut it out!
Please, please don’t be that way
NICK
I can’t help it, you do.
You know everything.
That’s the trouble, you know you do.
MARJORIE
(throws back basket stares at Nick)
NICK
I’ve taught you everything.
You know you do.
What don’t you know, anyway?
MARJORIE
You don’t have to talk silly.
What’s really the matter?
NICK
I don’t know.
MARJORIE
Of course, you know.
NICK
No, I don’t.
MARJORIE
(turns her back to Nick)
Go on and say it.
NICK
It isn’t fun anymore.
(turns over and looks at Marjorie’s back.)
It isn’t fun anymore.
Not any of it.
I feel as though everything has gone to hell inside of me.
I don’t know Marj.
I don’t know what to say.
MARJORIE
Isn’t love any fun?
NICK
No.
MARJORIE
(stands up, walks to the shore)
(camera swings to the back of them as she walks.)
I’m going to take the boat. You can walk back around the point.
NICK
All right,
I’ll push the boat off for you.
MARJORIE
You don’t need to.
(as marjorie gets in boat, camera swings back to moon, crosses river and lands back on old nick’s eyes.)
EXT – TWILIGHT - COLOR
(nick stands on riverbed with fishing pole in his hands.)
NICK
How many years have gone by?
Was it as long to these woods?
Were I to judge myself…?
Would I only be reduced to the unfortunate?
Would life, in my last wishes be relieved?
Could it be?
This river, it winds high from the mountains down into this earth.
This place man calls home.
And the wind, it arrives high from these mountains down to this water.
This place called longing.
But what belongs to what?
Am I not as the water falls?
To what do I belong?
(Nick shakes his head, begins walking up the river)
It’s getting dark fast.
I’ve got to make camp.
(Nick starts walking up the river to a clearing)
WE CUT TO:
INT – NIGHT – INSIDE OF TENT
(Nick sits inside, a mosquito hovers around. Nick lights a match, burns mosquito.)
WE CUT TO:
EXT – DAYTIME – RIVERSIDE (nick stares into water) NICK
When life touches someone, a handprint is often left.
Fingernails sometimes scratch.
Every once in a great while, skin is broken.
I bleed this river.
Like I bleed my own blood.
Let one drop symbolize what remains of my actions, on this planet.
And off of it.
Let one whirlpool represent the reflection.
And one cascade become my demise. If it is so then, let this one long cascade, swallow me.
(Nick wades into the water, knee-high, then chest-high, then eventually neck-high, until all that we see is his hat floating in the river.
The hat floats off downstream.)
WE CUT TO:
BLACK AND WHITE – EXT – DAYTIME – RIVERSIDE – BLACK AND WHITE
(Nick returns out the other side with his hat in his hands.) NICK
Some won’t ever wonder what ever happened to Old Nick Adams.
Although I didn’t live a bad life.
But as the years change everything, so has everything changed my yearnings. And today,
I yearned to let the change stand the test time offered.
And let the change release from the anger and frustration that had so captivated me in my life.
Anger at the wrong turns, for there is no wrong turn in this river.
Frustration with the world and it’s lack of purpose anymore.
My will is done.
I was Nick Adams.
I am free.
(scene fades to black, as camera rises up to sun.)
THE PRODIGAL SON
BLACK SCREEN – NO WORDS
ALICE
(voice over, singing)
The time is nine, in the sky, time died
The time to try, time is nice to die
Once by and by, by and by, to die
The time is nigh, my oh my oh my
The time in the sky, the time to die
The time to try, by and by, goodbye
SCREEN FADES INTO TWILIGHT – A BEACH WITH UNMOVING OCEAN IN BACKGROUND
Two people are on the beach. King Matthew sits facing the camera, drunk. The night is almost completely black but shaded purple. Prince William is below the camera, with only his hair showing in the camera lens. The King’s face is top right screen, filling in the ocean view.
SCREEN BEGINS FADING IN AND OUT WHITE KING MATTHEW
(obviously drunk and sad, but still smiling. Screen fades white when a line is spoken)
Ragnarok was Nigh, yet the Cipher was incomplete.
Your soul is locking away every alternate conclusion.
Listen.
On third fade-in after final word is said, King Matthew is gone off the beach, leaving only a full moon where his head and body was, reflecting off the still ocean. The screen fades black.)
SCREEN FADES BLACK FIVE TOTAL TIMES, AS WE GO FROM EMPTY BEACH, TO AIRPLANE VIEW, TO SPACE SHUTTLE VIEW OF EUROPEAN OCEAN, TO VIEW OF EARTH, COVERED WITH WATER, TO VIEW OF SOLAR SYSTEM WITHOUT PLANETS, AND ONLY EARTH TO BLINDINGLY WHITE VIEW OF SUN BACKING UP QUICKLY INTO OUTER SPACE
ALICE & WILLIAM
(simultaneous voice over)
I will be back.
MAIN TITLE APPEARS ON WHITE SCREEN THAT FLASHES SUDDENLY AFTER WORDS ARE SPOKEN.
THE PRODIGAL SON
SCREEN SHOWS EARTH AGAIN REFILLED WITH LAND IN NORMAL LOCATIONS
Suddenly the earth shakes as a comet collides only moments of a nuclear bomb detonating Northern Europe near Moscow.
SCREEN TURNS BLACK
WILLIAM
(voice over)
I am told I have a gift. I call it a curse.
I know we know that we all know the real truth.
My mother was dead, as was what I was told.
For the first four years of my life, while normal elections of civilian presidency still were held,
I was actually led to believe that she had died during childbirth. Holding me in her arms.
This was far from the truth.
QUICKLY THE SCENE CHANGES TO A KITCHEN TABLE
OUT ONE DOOR IS A BALLROOM AND THE KITCHEN IS VERY LARGE WITH TRAYS ON A SHELF AND A DEEP FRYER BEHIND A GRILL. THE STOVE TOP TO THE LEFT HAS A PAN FILLED WITH SCRAMBLED EGGS, NEXT TO ANOTHER PAN FILLED WITH SAUSAGE. A TOASTER IS ON THE TABLE.
THE CAMERA IS LOCATED NEXT TO THE TOASTER, AND IT IS FACING UP FILLING A GAP BETWEEN MATTHEW ONSTAGE RIGHT AND WILLIAM ONSTAGE LEFT
THE TABLE IS HIGHER THAN THE STOVETOP AND THE TWO ACTORS ARE SITTING ON STOOLS, NOT IN CHAIRS.
BEHIND THEM ON THE WALL IS A CALENDAR WITH CERTAIN DATES CIRCLED AND NOTES WRITTEN
ABOUT MEALS. THE DATES ARE IN MAY, THERE IS NO YEAR, &; THE DATES ARE 5 AND 18.
MATTHEW IS WEARING A WHITE BUTTON-DOWN SHIRT AND SUNGLASSES.
(PREFERABLY A LARGER SIZED DARKER SKINNED MAN WILL PLAY MATTHEW)
(PREFERABLY A MEDIUM SIZED LIGHT SKINNED BOY YOUNGER THAN 14 WILL PLAY WILLIAM. HE SHOULD WEAR GLASSES THE WHOLE MOVIE AND SHOULD BE DARKER THE MOST OF THE OTHER ACTORS IN WHITE ROLES BUT SHOULD NOT BE ASIAN. PREFERABLY ARABIC.)
Suddenly a pair of toasted bread slices pop out of the toaster. Neither of the two actors looks at the bread for the rest of the scene, or at the food on the stove which is turned off by a passing butler.
MATTHEW
Son you have broken your promise.
You have read from The Fifth
Scriptures.
I know you have, and I can see it in the eyes that you blameful scorn on me.
WILLIAM
(not in good spirits, yet urgent and excited)
Good lord! You knew that I'd do it!
You knew the library still had copies, what did you think?
I'm not stupid, Dad. I'm not your toy.
I'm not a criminal.
You think just because the jihads stopped,
I wouldn't know? Of course, I read
Scripture.
Your father raised You Catholic, didn't he?
MATTHEW
Son, you have broken your promise.
There is nothing that I can do. Alice, too.
MATTHEW
Whatever! That stupid bitch and mom can both go to hell!
Or should I say "HER" mom! You can fuckin-
Matthew slams the plates off the table onto the wall and pushes the toaster over towards the camera with both arms.
WILLIAM
It's never going to be the same! You wait and see!
MATTHEW
(visibly angry)
No, YOU wait and see! You have no idea the powers at work!
You ain't seen shit little boy! You wait until the whole world condemns you and you have nowhere to go! You wait until the end of time, little man.
You wait there!
WILLIAM
(crying and sobbing)
Like they already haven't got the worst hatred against me!
I can't take it! I couldn't Dad!
I couldn't take the pain! I couldn't do this...
MATTHEW
(frowning)
That's not how you talk about family...
I forgive you, though. Just realize-
WILLIAM
Fine! I Don't Need your FUCKING Help!
William runs away offscreen, as Matthew is raising both hands as if to hug him. A butler returns to the scene in front of a woman in a black dress. The woman is Scylla, Matthew's wife.
MATTHEW
I don't want Alice to hear this. Or even about it.
SCYLA
You know, hiding things from our children!
That's how this all started.
And you have no right to break things in this house! Do you want the waitstaff to abandon us! Look at the mess!
Scyla bends down and begins picking up the toaster, showing off a good- looking body in front of the Butler who is middle aged and white with blond hair.
MATTHEW
Don't even start with me.
SCENE SWITCHES TO CLASSROOM
The camera zooms from above and behind the male teacher, who is opening a book on a desk, to William, Lucille, and Paul in the back row, centering on Lucille, a redheaded girl, in the middle.
PAUL
Check it out, I got some ‘killer.’
LUCILLE
(shakes head)
That's like the third time today you've said that.
The teacher's going to hear you.
PAUL
Killer, killer, man. Come on Will.
LUCILLE
Shh...
The camera swerves around to the side of William, over his right shoulder to face the teacher.
TEACHER
The thirteenth Canto. Everyone keep
Your mouths closed and open your books.
The students in the classroom all grab books from under their desks, bookbags, and open them except the three students in the back row. One girl gets up and goes out the door to the bathroom during the shuffling. Lucille smiles at her as she passes. The girl doesn't seem to notice. A moment later one of the boys in the center rows turns and smirks at Lucille. William, shifts onto his elbow and looks at Lucille. The teacher continues his session after the girl leaves the room.
TEACHER
The thirteenth Canto of the Inferno is where we'll begin reading today. But first, I want to tell you all a story.
Perhaps your familiar with it,
But maybe you’re not.
The students in the classroom shuffle a little bit, but no one speaks out.
WILLIAM
(under breath)
Oh, great. Fairy tales.
TEACHER
Okay, so this is an old, old story.
Dating back, oh say, past the middle ages. The story itself is actually a fable.
Is anyone familiar with what a fable is?
A student in the second row, Frank, raises his hand.
TEACHER
Frank.
FRANK
A fable is a story that has a moral. Right?
TEACHER
Absolutely correct. And the most important person to write fables? Anyone else?
PAUL
Aesop!?
TEACHER
Thanks Paul.
PAUL
Yeah!
TEACHER
The most important person to write fables prior to the mid 1900's pulp fiction explosion, was definitely Aesop. So maybe your all familiar with the story of the mouse and the river?
The room is still and quiet.
TEACHER
Right, don't be ashamed though, there was plenty of fables during that time period. Tons and tons. Anyway, The story goes like this. Once upon a time, a mouse lived in a field. One day, he decided to cross the river that ran by his field, hoping to gather more food on the other side. So, he walked and walked along the river bank and was almost all out of breath before he came upon a frog.
So, the frog offered to help, he said that if the mouse would grab a piece of string, that the frog would pull the mouse across the river.
The mouse, of course, said,
"I'm sick of this walking, so let's do it." Well, the frog tied on one end of the string, and the mouse, the other, and the frog jumped into the water. And soon, the mouse was being pulled right across the water of the river.
All the sudden, the frog started thinking.
He said to himself,
"well, i'm a big bullfrog, and this little mouse, he'd be just delicious if I could just kill him now." So down went the frog into the deep water.
And the mouse, too, started to fall deeper, and began to drown. Just then, a giant hawk came swooping out of the sky and pulled the mouse out of the water, with the frog still attached, by the string which he was using to kill the mouse. So, you see, the hawk got both animals, and killed them both to eat.
So, does anyone know what the moral of the story is?
Two female students in the first row and Frank raise their hands.
PAUL
I know! Uh, if you're feeling froggy than leap!
TEACHER
Incorrect, Frank, what do you think?
FRANK
(Frank looks shyly back to Paul before giving an answer) The moral is that if you think that your going to get something you don't deserve, just remember that it'll be just easier for the bigger thing to get you. TEACHER
Pretty much, the moral of the story is that although the little guy might-PAUL
Oh man! What's this got to do with Hell? Another student stops himself from chuckling. TEACHER
Paul, stop. Listen, the point of the story is that everything can all happen at once, and that no matter how good you think you’re getting at life, there's always someone out there who will eventually get you.
So, don't take for granted, the alliances that you can make.
And don’t ever forget that temporary
Gain is usually not as good as personal
Sacrifice.
WILLIAM
Wouldn't the moral also be that even if the issa and the mo are the same, it's all a matter of perspective?
TEACHER
Very good, Will. Now everyone open to Canto thirteen, and we'll begin today's reading.
Paul turns around, all the way, and then swivels back to the teacher, before leaning to Lucille and William.
PAUL
Okay, but it could also mean that ism and shit, could be some killer fuckin bud on the other side of the river...
Know what I mean?
(Paul bursts out laughing as the Lucille shakes her head, and William glances over. The Teacher looks up for a moment before beginning to read the passage)
TEACHER
Silent, alone, and unescorted we went on, one in front, the other following as ...
SCENE SWITCHES TO OUTSIDE SCHOOL, IT APPEARS TO BE A SOUTH CALIFORNIA SETTING WITH THE SUN GLARING
Paul, William, Lucille, and another female student stand on the steps of the school, waiting for the bus. Two skateboarders come out of the side of the screen and grind down the railing, causing Lucille and the other female student to jump back.
PAUL
Fuck you!
SKATEBOARDER 1
Fuck you, you shouldn't be standing there.
(the other student gets her bag from next to the railing and walks away towards a bus pulling up.)
PAUL
Your fucking lucky the bus is here, dick.
SKATEBOARDER 2
(jumps off skateboard and runs over to back up his friend)
What'd you say piss-face?
What the fuck did you call him?
WILLIAM
(looks over at Lucille)
He called him a fucking dick, because that's what he likes.
SKATEBOARDER 2
Oh word? Let's go little man!
(both skateboarders step towards the students)
SKATEBOARDER 1
Yeah, word.
I'm gonna show you how we do it in the
Old school.
PAUL
Alright, faggot. Let's get it!
The four students start fighting, and Lucille turns away and starts towards the bus before turning back around to watch.
LUCILLE
Come on! We're gonna miss the bus!
The four students continue fighting until three police officers rush over and grab them by the necks and throw the skateboarders on the ground.
POLICE OFFICER
Get on the ground!
Get on the fucking ground!
Call for backup.
Kids get out of here, now!
I don't want to have to call your parents. Mr. Briggs, if your dad even finds out about this, we're gonna have a big, BIG, problem. Get on that goddamn bus. The bus pulls away, and the officers let go of Paul and William.
Lucille runs over and grabs William's arm.
LUCILLE
Come on, we can walk.
PAUL
That's right, we don't need little faggot skateboards.
(he rubs some sweat off his forehead)
Only punks ride skateboards.
POLICE OFFICER
Watch it young man!
WILLIAM
We're going to walk. Let's go.
PAUL
No! I want to stay and-
LUCILLE
SHUT UP! Come on!
PAUL
Think they're tough?
Think they're tough?
(Paul begins to walk away, following the bus, the other two follow him)
CAMERA SWITCHES TO THE THREE STUDENTS IN A COMMERCIAL DISTRICT - THE SUN IS SETTING
The camera is following in front of the three students, walking in silence. William looks back before they cross a street. When he turns back to the sidewalk, three kids appear from a porch behind them. Two jump off the porch and begin following the three students, as one grabs a skateboard off of the porch and begins chasing after them on it. The three students do not notice the skateboarder until he is right behind them. Paul looks up, with a vacant expression, before nonchalantly turning quickly around and punching the skateboarder in his nose, breaking it, as the skateboarder approaches. The two older kids start charging from across the street. William and Paul step out into the road, leaving Lucille on the curb of the other side. One of the kids pulls out a knife and stabs Paul in the stomach. The other punches William unconscious, as the skateboarder with the broken nose runs over to Lucille and slams her in the head with his skateboard.
SCENE CUTS TO HOSPITAL ROOM
William is laying in bed hooked to various wires and IV. The TV is broadcasting COPS, on mute. The episode shows a pair of zombies wandering in a house, with the policemen flashing their lights on and off to confuse them. When the zombies come up to the policemen, they both open fire and the zombies are killed. The camera sits in a high corner of the room, facing the bed and the door. Past the door walks a security guard. William moans and gropes at the wires. The door on the opposite side of the hall, outside his room, has a folder on it with the name "E., Lucille"
written on it. A moment after the guard walks past, the camera begins zooming in on the folder across the hall. As the camera grows closer, whispering and murmuring is heard growing louder in the soundtrack. The lights flash off after another moment. As they flash back on a grimacing demon face appears in the window of the door across the hall. The lights flash back off, when they return on this time the face is gone. William presses his emergency button on his tray. A nurse enters the room, almost immediately.
NURSE
Can I help you?
WILLIAM
(gasping to speak)
Across the hall, my friend...
NURSE
No, can I help, You?
(the nurse looks up past William into the camera)
Can I, help you feel good?
The camera switches to a view from under the television set, facing William, and with the nurse's back towards the camera.
NURSE
Do you mind if I, touch you?
WILLIAM
(shaking and trembling)
What's going on?
NURSE
It's Okay. My friends and I will help.
WILLIAM
What's going on?
NURSE
Don't worry. We're all safe.
We're safe and you just need to sit and relax.
The nurses begin unclothing themselves, undressing each other until all they're wearing is bras. The soundtrack starts with moaning, which escalates to screaming, and a whispering returns by the time the main nurse takes her bra off. The lights flash on and off. Suddenly the lights turn back on, but much brighter, and the nurses are now zombies, eating each other. The lights start flashing again and the cops from the TV show are then in the room, beating and then having sex with the zombie nurses, who flash from zombies to real women, back to zombies eating the cops. The last scene is the security guard who walked by getting closer and closer through the madness in the middle of the room, to William's bed. Every flash he grows more grotesque and like a demon. The camera zooms out to the room across the hall as the door swings open and Lucille's door then swings open, and she is transported into the entranceway as if a ghost, staring blankly with black eyes.
WILLIAM
(screaming enters the soundtrack, like his own)
NO!
THE SCENE RETURNS TO BLACK AS THE ECHOES OF THE WORD "NO" RESONATE IN THE SOUNDTRACK
THE SCENE THEN SHOWS THE SAME CAMERA ANGLE TOWARDS THE TV AND DOOR OVER THE CORNER OF
THE ROOM FACING THE BED WITH WILLIAM ON IT. THE LIGHTS ARE BACK ON IN THE HOSPITAL.
William throws himself towards the tray and the emergency button in a panic, but hesitates before pressing the button and yelling for help.
THE SCENE SWITCHES ABRUPTLY TO A PREACHER IN A CHURCH
The camera is at the front row, in the aisle, facing the preacher. PREACHER
For as a scarecrow in a garden of cucumbers keepeth nothing: so are their gods of wood, and laid over with silver and gold. And likewise, their gods of wood, and laid over with silver and gold, are like to a white thorn in an orchard, that every bird sitteth upon; as also to a dead body, that is east into the dark.
And ye shall know them to be no gods by the bright purple that rotteth upon them: and they themselves afterward shall be eaten, and shall be a reproach in the country.
Better therefore is the just man that hath none idols: for he shall be far from reproach.
SCENE CUTS TO CONFESSIONAL BOOTH WITH KING MATTHEW
MATTHEW
Thank you, father, for I have sinned.
I have committed unholy acts in noone's name but my own. I am guilty of sinning, and therefore, am a sinner. Please forgive me, as does Jesus Christ our lord savior in heaven.
I have witnessed so much father. I have witnessed the fall of Asia, the rise of the Indian War. The waste of America against the zombie infestation that ravages our neighboring countries. I have sinned once more, as I have committed adultery in the form of lust for another woman.
PREACHER
Say no more, my son, you are forgiven, in the eyes of Jesus Christ, you are absolved.
MATTHEW
No wait, I know this sounds crazy, but
I think that my son's sins that forthcome are my own as well. I need forgiveness for his actions as well. He has read the
Sacred Scriptures.
PREACHER
What Sacred Scriptures?
MATTHEW
Which ones?
Or what are you saying?
PREACHER
What are Sacred in the eyes of God are only the testaments of the prophets. No mortal man has ever written of prophecy.
You must be mistaken. You must be thinking of... You must be thinking of something else entirely. What was- what are you saying?
MATTHEW
The fourth and possibly even the fifth Scriptures.
My son has stumbled upon them in a local library.
Tell me you know of the Scriptures that appeared?
PREACHER
Appeared? Where?
MATTHEW
The Scriptures have been notarized in the Library of Congress Father! The Scriptures that appeared with the arrival of my son, William, on the planet Earth in the gates of Hell, in Jerusalem!
PREACHER
Sir, if you'd excuse me for one moment.
(whispers are heard in the confessional booth next to Matthew)
MATTHEW
What?
(a lengthy pause)
Who are-
PREACHER
(the preacher's voice suddenly seems rough and scratchy)
Sire, your majesty, look here.
MATTHEW
(glancing at the window, and back over to the doorway)
What is it? I can't see you in there.
What's going o-
PREACHER
(the preacher's voice seems to have multiplied, as if there is a second and third person in the booth beside Matthew)
Look here, sire. Look into the window.
Look into the window. Look close-ly.
Suddenly a dark black skinny arm bashes in the window and grabs Matthew by the neck. Then, three other hands, all black and skinny, grab at Matthew's chest. Matthew struggles out of the door to the confessional booth.
CAMERA SHOWS THE OUTSIDE OF BOTH CONFESSION BOOTHS IN THE CHURCH
The preacher comes out from the back as Matthew grabs his knees and pants. When Matthew sees the preacher, he wobbles to the ground, crying. The preacher attempts to help Matthew to his feet, but Matthew composes himself and starts away.
PREACHER
Be safe, my son. Be safe.
Matthew bolts out of the church, as the camera swings to follow him down the wall around to the door.
PREACHER
We need you.
BLACK AND WHITE
SCENE FADES WHITE INTO SRI LANKAN SUNSET
As the sun sets over Sri Lanka, zombies are seen rising out of the ground.
SCENE FLASHES ASIAN MAN SCREAMING AGAINST THE MOUNTAINSIDE OF SRI LANKA. SCENE FADES WHITE AGAIN TO SHANGRI LAH ON FIRE. SCENE FADES WHITE AGAIN TO CRUMBLED PYRAMIDS IN EGYPT. SCENE FADES WHITE AGAIN TO THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING MISSING THE UPPER HALF. SCENE FADES WHITE AGAIN TO A GATE IN JERUSALEM SHAPED IN AN ARCH THROUGH WHICH LIGHTNING STRIKES IN THE BACKGROUND
COLOR
SCENE FADES TO UNDER A WATERFALL SOMEWHERE IN NUBIA, AND ZOOMS OUT AND UP TO THE TOP OF THE WATERFALL.
The camera sits at the top of a waterfall and follows the water over the top and down at a realistic pace into the water below, where it is submerged in a torrent where fish are schooling. The camera follows one trout to the outer bank of the river that the waterfall is falling over. A net grabs the fish up.
SCENE SWITCHES OUT OF WATER
The camera now shows the river and waterfall, and a naked black man is pinching a tiny needle on a string around the fish’s thin fin. He perfects the knot quickly and releases the fish into the water. A group of other black men appear in warrior outfitting, watching the water. Across the river two men step out of the brush with military uniforms and guns. The medicine man picks up a rock and throws it into the river while howling.
CAMERA SWITCHES TO IN THE WATER AGAIN
The camera shows the tagged fish swimming quickly upstream towards the school of fish. As it approaches it begins to veer off towards the fish in a strange manner. The fish all begin fighting as bullets scatter air bubbles all around the pool of water. The water fills with blood as a large explosion ends the chaotic scene.
SCENE CUTS TO SCYLA AND WILLIAM IN A DINING HALL
William sits across from Scylla at a large table. The camera is behind William's back, but during the scene switches from person to person as dialogue switches, always showing their reactions. Plates with heaping portions of food sit in front of them both. Neither of the two eat during the scene. Scylla is visibly upset.
WILLIAM
Where's Alice?
SCYLLA
She's doing a school project.
(a lengthy pause as the camera switches)
You know, the world doesn't stop, just because you and your peers think that you own it. You’re lucky your father is giving you a second chance.
I personally...
Camera switches to Scylla.
WILLIAM
You personally wouldn't have me anywhere near Alice, would you? You'd horde everything in this house, like you own it. Camera switches to William. SCYLLA
I personally, own a lot more than you in this world. I bet you still haven't even found Charlie.
Camera switches to view of William in front of a window as if a flashback.
WILLIAM
(voice over)
What am I supposed to do?
If he comes back, he comes back. That's it.
He knows where he can eat.
Camera switches to Scylla.
SCYLLA
(shaking her head)
You know, as much as you love that dog,
I can't see why you are so quick to write him off as gone. I mean,
I'm sure that Jacob would have helped you find him.
Camera switches to William.
SCYLLA
Just ask!
WILLIAM
I'm not asking the butler to help find my dog. He's mine, he knows where to come.
(frowns)
SCYLLA
Imagine what the people think...
WILLIAM
What?
SCYLLA
Oh, never mind.
WILLIAM
What are you saying?
Camera switches to Scylla.
SCYLLA
I'm sure the people of the world are all
wondering, whether a family that can't even keep a dog are worth the time and effort involved with kingship.
Camera switches to William.
WILLIAM
It's not like they have a choice...
Camera switches to Scylla.
SCYLLA
That's right, it's not like they have a choice.
Unlike you, some people learn responsibility as a part of loyalty.
(lengthy pause. Scylla begins whispering harshly)
You know, some god given right you have, to waltz around here like you own the world.
You think with all your smarty-pants ego you'd be a little more careful where you lay your responsibilities and loyalties.
I'm ashamed to even bring Alice up around you!
You’re a dirty liar, and a criminal!
WILLIAM
(laughing very loudly)
You should talk! You skanky old bitch!
Suddenly two security-looking men appear from behind William.
WILLIAM
Go to hell, you old bat! No one likes you!
SCENE CUTS TO WILLIAM BEING ESCORTED BY A BUTLER DOWN A DARK HALL
The butler is Jacob, a different butler from the scene in the kitchen, he is Asian. William is recovering from crying in a different room, in front of his father.
WILLIAM
You know? Everyone thinks their right.
Everyone thinks they know everything all the time. It's not fair.
JACOB
If it was fair, there'd be no point.
Life is a challenge, William. A test, not a game.
WILLIAM
(sniffling)
Well, they don't need to be this unfair.
JACOB
I know you miss Charlie. Should we go look for him in the morning?
WILLIAM
Yeah.
JACOB
Okay, sounds good. I'll get you up early.
We'll go out in the morning.
WILLIAM
(trying to interrupt the last sentence)
It's not fair! How can they blame me for Charlie? He's all I got!
The pair enter a living room area, lit by a fireplace. William sits down in an armchair. The camera switches from behind, following them, to on the ground in front of William, looking at him, and then swiveling around to look at the fire as the next phrases are spoken.
WILLIAM
I can't take it anymore. I know what's going to happen, and I have no power to stop it. It's not even fair, it's not even right.
The camera slowly zooms into the fire for the next phrases.
WILLIAM
It's wrong. It's evil.
JACOB
Goodnight, young William. I'll be upstairs in my chamber, if you need me.
Just call my name from outside.
WILLIAM
(yawns as voice becomes more subdued and tired)
It's evil, Jacob. Oh. It's bad.
(lengthy pause, sparks fly out of the fire)
I can feel it.
SCENE FADES TO THE UPSTAIRS HALLWAY AND STAIRS
Scylla is sleepwalking down the hall, in her lingerie robe. She passes William's door who is still asleep and then Alice's door, a few closed doors, and goes down the stairs.
SCENE FADES TO PARKED CAR WITH HEADLIGHTS GOING ON
SCENE FADES TO WILLIAM IN BED
SCENE FADES TO WILLIAM'S DREAM SEQUENCE OF A BOAT AT SEA FILLED WITH SKELETONS STANDING WITH GUNS AND SWORDS
ACT TWO
SCENE FADES TO TV PROGRAM ON THE AIR WITH NEWS REPORTER
The news reporter is leaning towards the camera, papers in his hands.
REPORTER
The link between the case of the missing Queen and King's pet as well as the strange eminence of supernatural auras surrounding the Balkans may be more than coincidental. Multiple disappearances have been Occurring worldwide, and the military As well as the national police force is Taking all available actions.
SCENE SWITCHES TO HELICOPTER VIEW OF GERMANY WITH A FENCE AROUND BERLIN
REPORTER
The general public should stay alert to updates on this developing case, as a worldwide manhunt is beginning this very moment for Queen
Scylla, and Charlie, the dog.
SCENE CUTS TO SPLIT SCREEN PICTURES OF SCYLLA AND A POODLE
SCENE CUTS TO PIECE OF PAPER BEING SIGNED BY MATTHEW RELEASING WILLIAM FROM JUSTIC CENTER FOR FIGHTING ON UNIVERSITY GROUNDS
SCENE CUTS AGAIN TO SHOW MATTHEW, THE DEAN AND A POLICE OFFICER STANDING IN A WAITING ROOM
MATTHEW
Well, let's get to him.
SCENE CUTS TO FOLLOW THE OFFICER DOWN THE HALL, MATTHEW IN THE BACK, THE DEAN TO THE RIGHT SIDE. INMATES LINE THE HALL, AS WELL AS A FEW POLICE OFFICERS. TEN SECRET SERVICE AGENTS FOLLOW MATTHEW, WITH TWO IN FRONT OF HIM.
The dean leads them into a room down the hall. Here, the camera follows Matthew into the room to reveal William in a cell with next to Lucille and Frank, and a few other non-related inmates in a jail cell.
MATTHEW
Hello, son.
WILLIAM
Hi.
MATTHEW
I couldn't make them shoot away the charges, but you'll be off on school suspension after this one. Okay? It's just standard procedure.
WILLIAM
Okay.
MATTHEW
So, we want you to walk home today, maybe it'll help you think about what you did.
WILLIAM
Okay.
MATTHEW
See you when you get home.
Matthew turns and walks back out the door leaving the students in the room alone. The camera refocuses after Matthew leaves the room.
FRANK
Fuck, my mom is going to kill me.
OFFICER
Shh..
DEAN
The two of you besides William are free to return to your classes.
SCENE CUTS TO LUCILLE AND WILLIAM IN A PARKING LOT
WILLIAM
I don't know how to explain it.
It's like the world is just going away. Like people's whole memories come up missing, like people are here one day and gone the next.
Know what I mean?
(William lights a cigarette)
LUCILLE
(shakes her head)
Hey look, didn't they close that Stop N Shop three months ago? Is it still unlocked?
WILLIAM
It closed last week.
(shakes his head)
Nobody understands. It really started when-
LUCILLE
Let's check it out.
Lucille begins walking towards the store in the parking lot. The camera zooms out to follow her walking, until she reaches the door about ten yards away. Lucille tugs the door open, and looks back, and William follows her into the store.
SCENE CUTS TO A SMALL DARK STORE WITH FOOD STILL ON THE SHELVES
Lucille picks up some M&M's and starts giggling.
LUCILLE
We're going to need these.
WILLIAM
Oh yeah? What else do we need?
LUCILLE
A lighter!
WILLIAM
Yeah? Nice, let's grab one off over there.
(points at the cash register, and then covers his mouth in astonishment)
Wait.
Lucille runs over to the counter and grabs a lighter. She sparks the flint, and smiles at William. William smiles back, a little nervously. Lucille hops over the counter and pulls open the register drawer.
LUCILLE
Empty.
WILLIAM
Get over here!
LUCILLE
(giggling)
No, you get over here.
William walks over to the counter as Lucille grabs a bag out of her pocket and throws it to William.
LUCILLE
Now we need a Phillie.
SCENE CUTS TO A HALF AN HOUR LATER IN THE BACK OFFICE OF THE STORE. THE ROOM IS FILLED WITH SMOKE.
Lucille, sitting on the floor in front William, sitting in a chair next to a desk, lights a cigarette.
LUCILLE
I swear, i think Mr. Wigz eats rats for breakfast, before school, and doesn't even stop to wipe the tail off his upper lip.
(the two burst out, laughing)
William stands up and crouches over her, and leans over to kiss her. Lucille pushes him back.
LUCILLE
I'm sorry.
Lucille stands up and leaves the room. William hops up and watches.
CAMERA SWITCHES TO ABOVE WILLIAM'S HEAD AS SHE WALKS THROUGH THE DOOR AND CLOSES IT BEHIND HER.
William runs to the door, and swings it open, the camera remaining stationary. Nobody is in the room.
CAMERA SWITCHES TO VIEW FROM THE STORE'S ENTRANCE, PANNING THE ROOM.
William runs through the store towards the entrance.
CAMERA SHOWS A FILM MONTAGE - A SERIES OF MOTION PICTURE TABS AND STILLS IMPLANTED ON THE FILM, THAT PROGRESS BY THEMSELVES IN VARIOUS MOVING FRAMES THAT COEXIST TOGETHER ON THE SAME SCREEN AND FADE IN AND OUT OF EACH OTHER. THE SCENES ARE AS FOLLOWS:
SCENE 1: BUS CRASHING OFF A CLIFF
SCENE 2: BUS AT DIFFERENT ANGLE
SCENE 3: BUS AT ANOTHER ANGLE INCLUDING WILLIAM WATCHING FROM A DIFFERENT LOCATION ON THE CLIFF
SCENE 4: BUS AT ANOTHER ANGLE SHOWING THE DRIVER MYSTERIOUSLY DISAPPEAR
SCENE 5: WILLIAM WAVING DOWN CARS WITH NO RESULTS
SCENE 6: WILLIAM WAVING DOWN CARS UNTIL ONE STOPS
SCENE 7: WILLIAM STEALING THE MAN'S CELL PHONE
SCENE 8: WILLIAM FIGHTING WITH THE MAN WHILE DIALING ON CELL PHONE
SCENE 9: WILLIAM THROWING THE CELL PHONE OFF THE CLIFF
CAMERA FADES TO BLACK AND THEN TO AN OUTSIDE SETTING OF A PARTY IN A PAVILLION TO THE BACK OF THE PAVILLION IS A STAGE WITH A RAPPER, TYRANT
TYRANT it's ya boy, dudeness, don't trip and reflect or the tech nine grip leave a zig on ya neck connect zag rap patterns leavin gigs in a sweat never correct the mad hatter he just is the best yes… bombs explode when my vocals is loaded and the rhyme zone align the coda distortion so don't go just go str8 to the music so don't slow up jus blow bass like fixin a deck
... move it, it's fluid, i'm bout to go do it
(music fades out)
CAMERA CUTS TO INSIDE THE PAVILLION AT A PICNIC TABLE WITH WILLIAM SITTING WITH FRANK AND TWO GIRLS
Matthew walks onto the scene.
MATTHEW
Well despite your recent actions, this has turned into quite a wonderfully planned event.
Congratulations, son. It's too bad your mother wasn't here to see it.
WILLIAM
Thanks, but no thanks.
MATTHEW
(frustrated, pauses)
You know, it is your birthday, you could make an effort with me at least. Your attitude!
It’s got to stop!
WILLIAM
You never would have yelled at Alice on her birthday.
MATTHEW
(smacks William across the neck, sending him falling out of his chair)
ALICE
(off camera)
Dad!
A crowd rushes over to Matthew and William, and four secret service agents come out dragging William, kicking and screaming. Matthew then emerges wiping his clothes off. Another secret service agent walks over to stand next to him.
MATTHEW
He needs help. He needs help, bad.
A golf cart comes along driven by three secret service agents.
Matthew gets on the back, and it drives away.
MATTHEW
(as the golf cart leaves the scene, shouting to one of the secret service agents)
Send him to New York! That's it! I don't care what the hell happens to him!
SCENE FADES TO A PARK DURING THE AFTERNOON CAMERA IS FACING THE SUN NEXT TO A PLAYGROUND AND PICNIC TABLE WHERE WILLIAM IS SITTING NEXT TO FRANK
William is wearing a school uniform, and Frank is in civilian clothes. Frank pulls out a small bottle of Jack Daniels from a pocket.
WILLIAM
And to think, me and Paul used to say you were a wuss. I guess you grew all up!
FRANK
Who?? Uh, yeah, I guess I'm just getting to be that age. So how are you doing man?
WILLIAM
Dude, you don't even know. At least my science teacher disappeared. (laughs)
He was a hard-case. They think they have the right to say whatever they want to you, here.
It sucks.
Frank takes a gulp of the liquor.
WILLIAM
You going to share?
Frank passes the liquor will grimacing and wiping his face.
WILLIAM
Damn, man. It's been a long time. (lifting the bottle to the sun) Here's to Lucille.
Frank looks nervously at William and then over both shoulders. WILLIAM
(drinks most of the bottle)
We're so young.
(wipes his face and hands back the bottle with a trembling hand)
We're too young. To die.
FRANK
Dude, who the hell is Lucille? If you had
shut up about her for two minutes at school, you'd probably still be in California. What're the girls like out here, anyway?
WILLIAM
(looks directly at the sun for a few seconds) You know who she was. She's in your Heart, friend.
She's in all of our hearts. Nobody knows.
FRANK
(grabs William's arm)
We know that you’re going through rough times, bro.
You got to hold it together though.
Your father, the king, everyone, we're all counting on you. We need your power in these crazy fucking times.
WILLIAM
I'm trying.
(stifles a sob by pinching his forehead)
I'm trying to just get through.
FRANK
It's okay man.
(lets go of William's arm)
It's going to be okay.
A bell tolls six times in the background during which time the two kids are silent. William looks over behind him.
WILLIAM
Well, that's it for visiting hours.
I have to get back. It's surprising enough that they allow us to go to the park unsupervised.
What hotel are you staying at?
FRANK
One right down there.
(points in a different direction. A car honks)
WILLIAM
Who brought you, your mom and dad?
FRANK
(a look of surprise crosses his face for a moment)
My grandma. I don't have parents.
WILLIAM
(suddenly angry)
Yes, you do! I remember your mom used to bake cookies for Valentine's Day in 6th and 7th grade!
How could you forget!
(suddenly sad and melancholic again)
How could you? Your own family?
FRANK
(a little nervous as well as sad and hopeless)
Just calm down, Will. We need you to keep a solid hold on everything. We need you, don't lose it on us.
WILLIAM
(with a mean face and tone of voice)
You need me? You don't need me.
Not if your own parents are so easily forgettable.
Nobody needs me. I should just die.
William gets up off the picnic table, and begins to walk through the playground. Frank stays seated and watches him walk away, a look of sadness on his face. When William reaches the swings, he turns around.
WILLIAM
(desperate and with a hint of loneliness in his eyes.)
See you tomorrow, man.
FRANK
God bless. Good night, brother.
WILLIAM
Good night, dude. Take it easy.
(turns back around and continues walking)
The camera stays focused on the picnic table until William is offscreen. Frank turns around and looks at the camera, and at the moment he makes eye contact he disappears off the screen.
SCENE CUTS TO INSIDE A DORMITORY BEDROOM. THERE IS A BED AND A POSTER OF BOB DYLAN, A DESK WITH AN EAGLE ON IT, AND A CROSS NEXT TO THE BED. WILLIAM IS SEATED ON THE EDGE OF THE BED LOOKING OUT A WINDOW. IT IS DARK OUTSIDE. THE LIGHT IN THE BEDROOM IS VERY DIM.
WILLIAM
(opens a photo album on his bed and whispers)
Bad things happen to good people I guess.
Bad things happen to all of us. Word up.
(flips through photos. Some seem to be lacking a substantial amount of people. Pictures of city roads with only a few cars. Pictures of William, alone, in different houses.)
Suddenly out the window a flash of lightning strikes. William looks up, as thunder claps loudly. He continues to stare out the window, as he puts down the book and walks over to the window, slowly. Midway to the window, lightning flashes again, and William jumps. Lightning flashes again right afterward and it begins to rain before a long thunder clap.
SCENE CUTS TO OUTSIDE THE WINDOW. THE CAMERA IS ON THE GROUND OUTSIDE, AS IT BEGINS TO RAIN.
William throws open the window, but leaves the screen. Something dark and unrecognizable moves past the camera quickly, like a dog in the night.
SCENE CUTS BACK TO INSIDE THE BEDROOM, FACING THE WINDOW AND WILLIAM'S BACK.
William sits still for a minute as he watches the rain outside. Then there is a noise from outside, like a dog whimpering. William begins to pull up the screen on the window, as the camera zooms in, and the whimpering grows slightly louder. When the screen is raised, the camera is next to William, looking out the window, but giving a side angle of his expressionless face. The whimpering stops. William turns around away from the window. When his back is to the window, he rests his hands on the window sill and leans back. A new noise startles William, as a bark and a long growl enters the soundtrack. When he spins around, lightning flashes again and simultaneously the loudest thunder yet hits in the soundtrack. When the thunder is over, the growling is gone. William leans out the window.
CAMERA CUTS TO JUST OUTSIDE THE WINDOW WHERE WE SEE JUST THE WALL OF THE SCHOOL AND WILLIAM'S HEAD GETTING RAINED ON.
William is wincing through the rain, looking for the dog outside, when suddenly a dark shape raises behind him in the bedroom. William doesn't notice, and a flash of lightning and thunder occur after the shadowy figure stands up still for a second. William pulls back into the window frame. The screen and window simultaneously collapse.
CAMERA CUTS TO THE INSIDE OF THE WINDOW, FACING WILLIAM AND A DOOR THAT LEADS TO HALLWAY. THE CAMERA DOES NOT SHOW ANY PART OF THE FLOOR, AND THE CLOSET DOOR NEXT TO THE HALLWAY DOOR IS CLOSED.
William walks towards the bed, which is unmade and ruffled against the wall. The camera follows behind him for a few steps. When William reaches for his pillow, the camera cuts to a different angle that shows William and the door in a straight line. The lights go off in the hallway, causing William to turn towards the door, shocked.
WILLIAM
Hey!
(William grabs the pillow off the bed, which causes the covers to shift a little bit.)
Suddenly the entire sheets and covers of the bed raise into the air and throw themselves at William, as if someone had been hiding underneath. The covers grab at William, and cover the camera lens.
CAMERA SWITCHES TO THE OUTSIDE NEAR THE WINDOW AS WILLIAM JUMPS OUT AND AN ALARM GOES OFF
William runs past the camera.
CAMERA FADES IN AND OUT FOR A SERIES OF FIRST-PERSON SHOTS THROUGH A WOODED AREA WITH LOUD PANTING IN THE SOUNDTRACK AND A WHISPERING THAT GROWS LOUDER WITH MOANS THROUGHOUT THE SHOTS.
SCENE SWITCHES TO MATTHEW BEING RIDICULOUSLY DRUNK AT NIGHT ON A LITTERED WHITE HOUSE LAWN. THE SCENE PANS FROM THE FRONT OF THE WHITE HOUSE LAWN CENTERED ON THE WHITE HOUSE, TO NEAR THE BUSHES BEFORE SWINGING AROUND ACROSS THE FIELD DIAGONALLY TO THE FINAL SCENE NEAR THE BUSHES.
Matthew stumbles and falls, obviously drunk, and lands next to a can of beer, which he proceeds to chug. He's wearing a large cape and a crown. Two Secret Service members enter the scene and arrest him.
SCENE FADES INTO THE SET OF A DAILY NEWS PROGRAM. THE ANCHORS ARE MALE AND FEMALE SITTING NEXT TO EACH OTHER ON A LONG TABLE. THE MALE ANCHOR SETS BACK OFF OF THE DESK.
Camera switches to face anchors straight on.
MALE ANCHOR
Today marks a turn in international events.
The King of America has, after multiple instances of public drunkenness, been impeached and overthrown. His successor has yet to be named, yet as the world population dwindles next to extinction, the masses will have to look extra hard to find a leader as strong as the once highly respected and revered King
Matthew.
FEMALE ANCHOR
This also marks the call to an end to the worldwide
manhunt for his estranged wife, Queen Scylla, who was last seen entering the quarantined German territory.
CAMERA SHOWS STOCK FOOTAGE OF A VACANT MOSCOW.
FEMALE ANCHOR
As well as the Beginning of the search for
Princess Alice. She, as well as countless Others has disappeared without a trace.
CAMERA SWITCHES BACK TO OFFSTAGE VIEW OF THE TWO NEWS ANCHORS.
MALE ANCHOR
We may all mourn our losses tonight, but none more than the loss of our country's beacon of faith and hope in these desperate times. Prince
William's own turmoil came to a halting stop yesterday, too, as his trial ended, finally, after five months of deliberation of his actions in New York, the Empire State, which lead to the deaths of thirty-eight school children.
CAMERA FADES TO SHOW A COURTHOUSE SIDEWALK FILLED WITH DEMONSTRATORS.
The courthouse doors swing open and after several Secret Service agents exit, William is shown behind them, with his head sunk.
CAMERA SWITCHES TO A CLOSER ANGLE OF WILLIAM.
William shields his eyes for a moment from the sun.
CAMERA SHOWS THE SUN BEING COVERED BY CLOUDS.
CAMERA SWITCHES BACK TO VIEW OF COURTHOUSE FROM SIDEWALK.
William descends the steps, as demonstrators jeer. When he gets near the bottom, a group of news reporters begin to swarm him.
CAMERA FADES TO SHOW MATTHEW IN A JAIL CELL, DISHEVELED AND HANGING HIS HEAD.
CAMERA FADES AGAIN TO SHOW WILLIAM IN A DIFFERENT PRISON CELL, LOOKING AT INMATES PASS HIM IN A LINE.
CAMERA FADES AGAIN TO A DARK ROOM WHERE WE ZOOM TO SEE MATTHEW IN A SOLITARY CONFINEMENT CELL.
CAMERA FADES AGAIN TO WILLIAM'S EYES, AS HE BEGINS TO CRY.
CAMERA SWITCHES TO A VACANT PARKING LOT ENCLOSED BY A FENCE, PANNING TO MAXIMUM
SECURITY PRISON. EVERYTHING IS VACANT, AND NEWSPAPERS BLOW IN THE WIND.
One newspaper catches on the camera lens, and reads a headline:
"COUNTRYSIDE EMPTIED, EVACUATION PROCEDURES ON PAGE 3"
CAMERA SWITCHES TO SHOW ZOMBIES COVERING A PENINSULA OF AN OCEANIC ISLAND.
CAMERA SWITCHES AGAIN TO SHOW AN EMPTY NEW YORK CITY.
CAMERA SWITCHES TO BOAT ON THE OCEAN, ZOOMING IN TO SHOW IT IS MANNED BY MATTHEW, ALONE. MATTHEW IS WEARING THE CAPE AND CROWN AGAIN.
CAMERA FADES TO MOSCOW.
CAMERA FADES TO ZOOMING VIEW OF PRISON. IN A BARRED WINDOW IS WILLIAM, WHO LOOKS SCARED AND MALNOURISHED.
CAMERA SWITCHES TO MATTHEW IN A CAR DRIVING ACROSS CAUCASUS MOUNTAINS.
CAMERA SWITCHES TO THE CAR DRIVING TO A GATE OUTSIDE OF GERMANY.
The car stops at the gate, and a zombie enters the forefront of the scene, stumbling towards the car. Matthew, inside the car, looks out the window towards the zombie emotionlessly. He attempts to ram through the gate but the car stalls. He attempts to back up, but the car tires are caught in mud. The zombie progresses towards the car as Matthew opens the door and hops out. The zombie begins to move faster in a stumbling run as others follow him. Matthew clambers up the side of the gate and hops it as the camera zooms with the zombies' stumbling chase. He only narrowly misses the grasp of the zombie's crazed arms flailing up the gate.
CAMERA SWITCHES TO MATTHEW ENTERING MOSCOW BY FOOT. CAMERA PANS OUT TO SHOW THE ENTIRE CITY COMPLETELY VACANT.
CAMERA SWITCHES TO MATTHEW APPROACHING THE PRISON WHERE WILLIAM IS CAPTIVE.
CAMERA SWITCHES TO MATTHEW RUSHING THROUGH EMPTY HALLS OF THE JAIL.
CAMERA SWITCHES TO MATTHEW RUSHING THROUGH EMPTY HALLS FIVE MORE TIMES.
CAMERA SWITCHES TO VIEW FROM INSIDE A CELL AS MATTHEW RUSHES BY.
Camera turns to show a starving William lying under a bed. He looks very sick. William opens his eyes and coughs. We hear the footsteps slow and the camera pans out to show Matthew returning to the cell door.
MATTHEW
Stay still son! I've got to find the keys!
I've got to! Oh my god! Are you alright?
(a brief pause)
I'll be right back.
Matthew chases away.
CAMERA SWITCHES TO SHOW MATTHEW CARRYING WILLIAM OVER HIS SHOULDER INTO THE PRISON CAFETERIA.
The tables are full with food, as if waiting for people to come and eat.
Matthew sets William down on the ground near a cafeteria table. He begins splashing water on William's face and forcing water down his mouth.
CAMERA SWITCHES TO SHOW WILLIAM SLEEPING IN A CAR. MATTHEW IS DRIVING. CAMERA IS ZOOMING OUT FROM THE FRONT WINDSHIELD TO SHOW THEM EXITING THE PRISON PARKING LOT. THE SUN IS SETTING TO THE LEFT, AS THE CAR SPEEDS AWAY.
CAMERA SWITCHES TO A NORMANDY BEACH AT SUNSET
Matthew and William both stumble onto the beach from side camera. Father and especially son appear drunk and sit down next to each other a few yards from the camera, not far from the ocean. They are about five feet apart. William appears a bit older, but still under 16 years old. Matthew is wearing the crown, but has on an expensive business suit.
MATTHEW
When I was younger, you know, all of this? It all seemed like it wasn’t happening, but a dream, like a wish had fallen on my mind. Someone’s empty wish, just vanishing into the maze of discontinuities that I lived through. I never thought that I would have you. I knew though, that there would be you, somewhere just waiting to find your way.
WILLIAM
(shifts over close to Matthew)
This is all that’s left, Dad. You and me, and
Whatever’s out there.
(points to the ocean)
This is all that we need. There must be
Something that we both wanted.
Something
To make this all stop. Nobody needed
To disappear. Everyone’s still here.
They’re-
MATTHEW
Lookit! A shooting star!
CAMERA SWITCHES TO THE TWILIGHT SKY AS A STAR BLINKS
CAMERA SWITCHES BACK TO SHOW THE TWO FROM THE FRONT. THE BACKGROUND SHOWS ONLY A LARGE DUNE.
MATTHEW
They’re waiting for a wish to come true.
It never will. Let it rest.
WILLIAM
It will, Dad. It’ll come as it goes.
MATTHEW
(shakes head and looks down at the ground and picks up a seashell. He puts it to his ear, and falls backward onto the sand.)
Get some sleep, son. You’ll need it.
WILLIAM
(falls back against the ground)
SCENE FADES TO BLACK.
BLACK AND WHITE
CAMERA FADES BACK AND IS AT THE SAME ANGLE THAT IT LEFT OFF AT. FATHER AND SON LAY NEXT TO EACH OTHER ON THE BEACH.
SCENE FADES AGAIN TO BLACK
CAMERA FADES BACK IN BLACK AND WHITE SHOWING ONLY WILLIAM SITTING WITH HIS HEAD IN HIS HANDS NEXT TO A SAND IMPRINT OF A BODY. MATTHEW IS GONE. THERE ARE NO FOOTSTEPS LEADING FROM THE BODY, BUT THE CROWN IS AT THE HEAD OF THE IMPRINT. NEXT TO WILLIAM IS A SIGN IN THE SAND WITH SYMBOLS THAT READS: “I LOVE YOU” WITH A HEART. ALSO NEXT TO HIM IS THE SEASHELL.
William gets up and picks up the seashell before walking towards the dune.
ALICE
(narration)
My father, the original saint saith unto thee…
Be bright, actions speak louder than words
My son, tracked by hell’s angels
The world, no signature as deep
Will, the disappearing lights, be
A search begun
As William climbs high on the dune he looks back, and runs back down the dune to the crown. Here, he falls to his knees and picks it up. He looks up at the sky and puts the crown on his head. A tear falls from his eye.
SCREEN FADES BLACK FIVE TOTAL TIMES, SLOWER THAN AT THE BEGINNING SEQUENCE AS WE GO FROM EMPTY BEACH, TO AIRPLANE VIEW, TO SPACE SHUTTLE VIEW OF EUROPE, TO VIEW OF EARTH, TO VIEW OF SOLAR SYSTEM, TO BLINDINGLY WHITE VIEW OF SUN BACKING UP QUICKLY INTO OUTER SPACE
Suddenly as the camera is backing away, a light comes charging from the camera in an orb like a meteor.
CAMERA SWITCHES TO FOLLOW THE DESCENDING OBJECT AS IT GOES DIRECTLY THROUGH THE SUN AND OUT THE OTHER SIDE
CAMERA SWITCHES TO VIEW OFF OF THE TOP OF THE SAND DUNE. NOBODY IS ON THE BEACH.
William comes into the scene from the side, looking older. He is about 18 now. He is drunk again and wearing the crown. As he enters towards the center of the scene on the dune, a supernova expands over the horizon towards him as an orb enters the atmosphere filled with light. When it is above the water it begins towards William at an accelerating speed. William tries to shade his eyes from the form that approaches him, but falls to his knees and then collapses, falling down the dune.
CAMERA SWITCHES ANGLES FOUR TIMES AS WILLIAM FALLS DOWN THE DUNE. AT THE BOTTOM, WILLIAM IS SEEN FROM ABOVE AND SIDEWAYS FROM NEAR THE OCEAN EDGE.
At the bottom of the dune, William lies face first. The crown rolls away near him. The orb enters the scene, and the light begins to
fade away revealing a white cloaked figure with a hood. William moves over to look up at the figure.
CAMERA ZOOMS IN TO SHOW WILLIAM’S FACE UP CLOSE, FOCUSING ON HIS EYES
ORB FIGURE
(narration)
This is your destiny, as mankind’s ghost.
The kingdom comes, as the Lord’s final will is done.
You are now bound to infinity.
Forever.
SCENE FADES TO BLACK
HAUNTED HOUSE
William awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of a dog barking. Somewhere in his mind, a piece of him that longed for companionship, he was led to conviction in a euphoric lull. He leaned up against the headboard in bed, and pulled the covers off of his legs, where they had been all tangled up. The barking had been intermittent enough to disturb his sleep, yet while his eyes were adjusting to the light, he was certain that he had heard the barking come from outside. The barking had stopped, now, as William walked around in the dark. As he reached the stairs to the ground floor of his family's estate, though, he noticed that the barking had gotten quieter and then, silent. Determination in his heart, William focused his eyes in the darkness outside the front door, and around the corner of the house, to where he sensed the sounds that drew him into the night.
In the frigid fall breezes, William saw an unfamiliar, distinct light, high in a neighboring house, as he walked through the yard. Half-sleeping still, he walked through a grove of trees near the front of the property, parallel to the road and sidewalk. A snapping twig rang in his ears, in the sovereign night, and he thought how he knew his lost dog would normally run to him, already, by now, the noisy reminders of his breath in the cold air, his beating heart, and a low fog that grew towards the road, kept him moving in a direction aimed past the road into a wooded area.
Suddenly he heard a mysterious muffled cough, coming from an area where he had been sure there was empty land. William stopped walking and held his breath to listen closely. Crisply stinging in the woods, the sound of living things that sent pressures repelled, that beckoned stronger to embrace the blind courage that William pushed forth like a beacon and sentry. The persistent cough, the snapping branches in the distance, scurrying noises in the darkness, each culminated into an ultimate chase.
William navigated in pursuit of more signs, and in the hunt, kept hesitance that paced his footsteps.
Suddenly, he sensed the shape of a phantom house that he had never seen before, almost directly across the road from his father's estate. The morning sky around him glowing off of the tree-covered horizons, he reached visibility within a side yard. It appeared abandoned from the outside, where there were vines hanging off and moss on the shingles and siding. Broken windows, deteriorating sills, no driveway, and no wires from the neighborhood power grid reached the house. As William grew closer, a dog began barking, several times, and William quickened towards where he knew he had heard the source, the abandoned house.
The front door of the crooked house, as he reached it, was already open. Inside the front hallway, William stared through the threshold. His gaze was interrupted by movements within, low to the ground, at the height of his old pet. William hissed and clapped his hands lightly, to the animal in the house, and he thought that he heard the dog whimper and the sound of a shuffle. William entered the door, and it slammed behind him. He spun around; the doorknob was sealed tight. Through the door small window, light from outside horizons peered back to him, like a jeering and teasing temptation of impossibility. A cough behind him spun him back to the dim hallway that leads to a set of stairs ahead. Then, a cackling laughter that seemed to emanate from a nearby room on the first floor, kept William's conscience homing directly to it as it approached the nearby wall in echoing perimeters.
Instincts gained control quicker as the maniacal laughter multiplied louder throughout the house. William raced up to the stairway to the second floor, where he looked back downwards at shadows which chaotically danced in spastic patterns. William turned his back to the stairs and reached for the door to a room, which swung open automatically. Inside, yellow walls and a bed, a wardrobe dresser sitting to the right, North side. A dog barked down the hall, and William looked down towards a room at the end with red walls. Approaching the walls to the red room, cautiously, William slunk against the hallway walls and hid himself quietly upstairs. There was a growling from the dog, though, that warned William to stop.
William looked out to the red room, wincing as his bravery replaced slowly with realization that this was a bad idea. As he stood against the hallway in stricken fright, he leaned against a door. With his back on the door, the cackling laughter reappeared from behind, low and muffled, but growing quickly closer to the door frame. William ran down towards the red room, but when he was nearing the doorway, it shut itself, slamming loudly and startling William.
At this, he gave up his uninhibited attitude completely, and realized his captivation had led to his entrapment. In a surprise turn of events, though, the old floorboards beneath him creaking and groaning rumbled and William lost his balance near the top of the stairs. The floor collapsed beneath him and he fell all the way into a basement foundation behind the staircase. There was hay everywhere, like a barn. His fall was broken, and as he lay on his stomach, the uproarious clamor re-instilled his panic, yet eased his ambitions into a persistent steadiness. He fought to command his racing emotions, and pulled his arm out from under him to start a fast climb up the hay stacks. Scrambling around and through the basement in confusion, he found his way to a hole in a wall that led back to the first floor. He stood up, panting in frenzy, and stumbled through a back porch. He didn't look back as he climbed out of a broken window.
The light had come in the morning, outside. The naked branches of autumn trees twisted and snarled at the crazed William, who, lost, fell to his knees first, in the mud. He looked up, unable to quit, he pushed down his hand in the Earth. He felt a centipede move in the frosty dew, when he looked down, there were three small holes in the ground. A strange feeling swept over him, and as he stood up, he wiped the dirt off his knees. He thought he heard a whistle from the house behind him, and whipped himself backwards to look at a now empty field with no structures.
The whistling produced a fear in William, beyond the surprise of his hallucinations. William fell backwards into the dead bushes, brambles and dense bracken that hung onto his legs, pulling him away from his paranoia.
As William fell back through the woods in a manic intuition to escape, he suddenly felt the presence of something else that howled in his mind. He felt the sting of an undesired invitation of guided purpose. He pushed forward and up a small hill that he didn't remember being there, the day before. Above, at the top, there was a reservoir of water. The misty lake was a vision, and when William raised up off the hill to look out, through the mist, there appeared two armored knight horsemen, each casting reflections to the edge of the lake.
This vision, as they pointed at William, the way that told him that he was born with a gift, and a curse, reawakened William. William was back in his bed. The dream was over.
ETERNAL I
Overlord Tyrant returns from the grave, as a demon that possesses the soul of a descendant of an apocalyptic war on earth where mutated humans gain superpowers. He calls himself "I" when he hides in a woman during birth. As the child begins to grow in an orphanage, he learns to escape and discover his own powers. He has the power of mind- reading and mind-control, and the power to subdue any mutants powers completely at the same time, as well as the power of being unstoppable when charged to take over a mission. His weakness is that he is careless, most of all forgetting minor details to large plans, at first, as he is pursued by the freelance police through murders in a decimated future Earth. He eventually discovers other weaknesses, such as that his mind control subject will be drawn hypnotically to whatever mutant force he chooses to subdue. However, at the last moment, he discovers the last powers that he will need, which are that he can use powers of a shape shifter to disguise himself as anyone.
Imus is born in a SHOOTING STAR outside CLEMENTINE orphanage in MARK TWAIN FOREST
I is one years old in MARK TWAIN FOREST where there are ZOMBIES
I is two years old and MUTANTS are afraid of him in TOWN
I is three years old and other ORPHANS and a NUN are afraid of him in CLEMENTINE
I is four years old and FATHER PATRICK is afraid of him and THE SHADOW OF ALIEN GHOST in CLEMENTINE
I is five years old and he takes an ORPHANS mind over and makes him kill a NUN in the BELLTOWER
I is six years old and MANTIS takes over CLEMENTINE but I escapes
I is seven years old and controls two MUTANTS as pets and sees JASON in MARK TWAIN FOREST
I is eight years old and he is robbing TOWNS with MUTANTS and ZOMBIE
I is nine years old and he kills a MUTANT because he is hungry and ALIEN GHOST appears and takes a MUTANT mysteriously
I is ten years old and he has a MUTANT kill a POLICEMAN and DUMBY stop him
I is eleven years old and ALIEN GHOST helps him out of NASHVILLE REFORMATORY
I is twelve years old and he is killing the SEVENTH woman victim in a row in CHICAGO
I is thirteen years old and he kills a POLICELADY in CHICAGO but is stopped by TIME NINJAS
I is fourteen years old and he breaks out of INDIANAPOLIS JAIL with PSYCHIC POWERS
I is fifteen years old in DETROIT and killing his NINTH woman victim when TIME NINJAS exodus
I is sixteen years old when at an ATLANTA NIGHT CLUB a POLICE CHIEF tries to arrest him and he escapes with SHAPESHIFTER
DETECTIVE HARLEY HARKER outside a DUMBY'S HIDEOUT HOUSE in UTICA for THING as a POSTMAN trips on a piece of fence onto SUPER ANT losing the WORLD POWER OF TIME
SHAPESHIFTER takes I to the OTHER OTHER DIMENSION where ALIEN GHOST kills him with a PUMPKIN SEED as CROOKED DEADMAN'S EYE watches from a part of his face
I-DINO SPACE STORY
Eternal I cruises the space between dimensions, riding the floors of existences and in the guided paths of extinctions that lead into and out from time, reality, the arc of a completion. The Shapeshifter has created a reality line for an absolute ending to our perception in an infinite dimensional space world constructed to elude the inevitable conclusion long enough to wipe out remaining humanity and life in all Realms. Behind on Earth, William is imprisoned in the land that his father’s faulted rule has left fragmented, and as William lays in a medical psychiatric asylum, Eternal I finds an oasis of life and new hope here, after the end of time. Illusion or mirage, yet William’s unconscious dream is held intact while the emergence of the new arc remains intersected as a single thread throughout realities. William sleeps, unmoved, yet while the world has stopped, in the act of faith, the Gods of old Ether reunite in continuous struggle for control of the universe.
Born Imus by name, the 16-year-old abduct of Shapeshifter and Alien Ghost, is thrust through a threshold of universal constants, perpetual to the powers of those battles and wars created by the ancient Dragons and supernatural beings. His new life was beginning through a transcending of realities and worlds, to re-center the balance of time. When William awoke at the death of Imus, the hands of Alien Ghost had pushed Imus into a separate universe, to harness time itself through final manifestations, back, through William’s regained control, until death. At a crossing of life and time, the axis of Earth Realm’s future and present, the story of Imus begins again.
I awoke on a mattress, empty room, and naturally wanted to continue to sleep. He had no known history to draw from in his living actions, and he had accustomed himself to changing his attitudes and manipulating his own behaviors in similar circumstances, only. He felt as though the room was a part of another orphanage, off-white walls, and high ceiling with bubbled and broken paint towards two corners, both in his view on his right side, and he felt somehow comforted by the walls of a house, although he only had a bed sheet and pillow to keep him warm. He noticed light growing stronger and he listened to the silence, intently, as he begins to fully awaken. At first, the idea of another jail or prison was an immediate focus, but there was no noise, as he waited for a few minutes. Finally opening his eyes fully, he waited still longer, as blue sky from a window shone through to him in antagonizing cheer, beckoned him and reciprocated with his restless movement off the bed.
Sudden sounds filled the deep blue sky outside the window to his right on the side of the bed. He heard a motor pumping low from a distance, coming towards him, slowly growing louder.
A knocking from somewhere in the house produced itself, echoing off of the walls and corners. He felt that he probably was on the ground floor, suddenly, from the direction of these noises, so he reached over to the window sill and looked out beyond a white lace curtain into a spacious yard facing a road that laid border for a surrounding wooded area. Dense pines and mixed foliage with old trees poked over the horizon into an empty, glassy atmosphere. He was on a small second floor, only halfway up from the bushes below the window. Persistently, a second knock erupted the quiet and startled I.
Imus took to the door of the room, opening it swiftly to see that he was on top of a short corridor which led down to a carpeted main room, down a half flight of stairs. The brown carpeting looked like bare ground and dirt for a brief moment, but as his eyes made the adjustment to lights that brightly shone across the room, he saw the bare room was empty aside from the lights, the carpet, and the stairway. I wandered down the staircase and into the room. To his right was the door, glossy and dark wood, with a window to the left. The back of the house was separated by another small dark wood entryway that connected to a hall and another door, this one white. The enclosed front of the house was small, and the other parts, closed off, as a test of the door knob proved to I. His hand slid off the metal knob, locked. The knock surprised him, again, directly behind, at the front door, near the window which had a curtain rod across the top, a draped white lace curtain set hanging and blocking the view of the front lawn from I’s standpoint.
In front of the window, I stopped his footsteps before closing in on the front door. He peeked through the curtains, restraining the full motion that would get him seen by the outsider presence whom knocked as the motor continued to approach, down the long road, closing in on the last half mile that I had seen came to the house’s front yard. Then, as he reached his neck and left side of his face, he saw the cloaked figure outside, standing inert, hooded and large.
The motor grew closer, I leaned back sharply, and a yellow bus pulled in front and stopped. The doors of the bus flew open, and I saw a driver in the seat, with a cap, blue shirt and khakis, a tie, and a reflector vest. His face was covered by the overhang in the bus door, he wore sunshades, but his indistinct and pale facial features were too far away to recognize. Confusion struck I, instinctively he walked to the front door and opened it to an empty porch where the cloaked figure had stood. I held open the door, now in the light of day, and faced the bus from the top of the stoop, in the threshold of the house he had woken up inside. He didn’t recognize anything at all, of the scene or the bus, or even any familiarity with those circumstances of any school, buses, or living quarters such as here. But somehow, as the light struck down on his forehead, he realized something instinctive once buried, his internal motivations and inherent experiences seemed to be lured by an unexplained yet coercive and persuasive force he identified as intuitive. He walked out into the light, further, the door shut behind him, and he spun to look at the house, as he had somehow imagined it, small, two levels in the back part, with the smaller half that he had awoken inside in front, with two roofs that hung eaves over it, with old shingles beaten and weather worn, two windows on the second floor, the ones he had seen out of, in front, and the same curtains in each.
This urge kept him paced up to the entryway of the bus, where the bus driver leaned against the steering wheel, expressionless and silent, and I stepped inside. There was a brief second’s lapse as I peered over the seats of the bus at a mostly empty vehicle aside from the back two seats which had the lowered tops of heads of children, two on his side and one on the right. The door closed behind I.
I didn’t think but sat, he walked past the bus driver to the front seat that he had seen open on his side, he sat and looked down at his jean pants, and his white collared shirt. The bus began to roll off when I looked out of his window and saw the door of the house open, that he had left closed. He spun as the bus drove away, and leaned against the closed window of the bus, to see if he could glimpse the inhabitants. His life on the run filled his energy within him, and he almost began panting in exasperated disbelief. The door hung open out over the stoop and a cloaked figure emerged into the steps, the sunlight bearing down on him so that the image blurred in I’s vision. The bus steered down the road and he lost sight as the house door closed.
As the bus whizzed by the forest and down a hill that led to a dirt road, I felt a culling aura in the back seats. There was a buzzing whimper as though a dog, or cat, was sitting directly behind him. The trees to his right in the window were shadows and the sky grew dimmer as the bus continued to move down the hill and towards a leveling and plain on either side that stretched for a mile around in every direction as the bus chugged through the gully, muddy and leafy with dead underbrush, and then into the lower grass that glistened green in the brighter clearing. I was caught in a trance as his attention turned back to the children in the rear of the bus. They had not spoken the entire ride, and as the bus drew around a bend through the field, I looked up to the driver, who was coming to a slow roll and stop.
A church or school was in front of the bus, it looked like it was new and brick that stood tall and wide, laid past a walkway and gate that blocked part of the view of the building. It was flat topped but had a tower above the front entryway, and its tower threw a silhouette against the forest, higher than any of the trees, and it reached up into the sky higher than the view from the bus and outside of the gate permitted to the seated passenger. I heard the door of the bus swing open, and the three kids stood in the back. I, too, put his hand on the front of the rail in front of him in the aisle, and moved down the steps to the sidewalk below him. The three kids followed and walked past, up to the gate, and slowly up the walkway to the front doors, which even from the sidewalk, to I, sat heavy and large with a gloom over the cement frame. The gate was an open black iron, with an archway through the middle, held by dark wood fence that spaced five yards into tiered steel post divisions, topped with lanterns that were off. Inset of the fencing was the front courtyard and school, as I began walking to follow the path of the students. As I entered the walkway, a bell rang shrill in a darkening air.
I saw as the broad doors swung open, the marching children entering the building had not been close enough to influence the opening, yet there was nobody inside, only a dark small stair that led to a long, hollow hall. Suddenly a piercing fear struck young I’s chest, and he felt programmed into an obedient forward movement in his body begin to take over. He had never belonged anywhere before, his entire life as an outlaw was now abandoned, the sense of order was enough to bring him the breath back into his lungs as he pushed on within the arches and door. Climbing the stairs, he saw the students enter the first classroom on the left, where he followed them, slowly taking in the surroundings of empty trophy cases to the right and two doors to rooms on either side of the hall. The other end of the school was intersected by a perpendicular corridor, with no windows between the corners but faint light was shining through. I looked within the classroom and saw classmates seated in desks. As he entered, the voice of a teacher sprung their attention.
“Class in session.”
Two empty seats were close to the door, next to each other in the rows. I took a seat in the closest one, as though he had been there before. He sat alert, ready to blend in with this setting, as the teacher turned around to face the class, and he stared with glazed eyes at the seats in front.
There were murmurs in the back row, and I spun to look, and noticed no other students were interested in the sound. There was the cloaked figure, in the back row, next to a young boy who slowly looked up, in shock. No-one else saw. The shock grew into terror, as the cloaked figure tore off his cloak revealing scaly skin like a lizard, and a face like the flattened head of a crocodile, with no snout, no tail, and large, strong arms. The students remained silent, undisturbed. The dinosaur ripped off the boy’s head.
I was horrified, paralyzed with fear, as the other students finally turned around looked at the dead body on the ground as the dinosaur stepped backward.
The teacher, too, was horrified, “Stop!” he yelled.
All of the students stood in unison and filed into lines leading to the back row where they began walking like zombies, to the dead body, and surrounding it, while the teacher grew more panicked. The teacher had lost control of the class, and as some students began reaching down to the dead body of the boy, I saw that they were beginning to eat his body parts. He turned around to look at the teacher, again, and stood up, as the teacher stood in traumatized awe. As soon as I stood up, the teacher grabbed his chalk off the desk, and stabbed it into his own throat, collapsed over the chair, and began bleeding all over the desk and floor. Imus ran to the door to the hallway.
Down the hall, Imus ran, there was the two empty classrooms, and at the junction he turned around, to see the cloaked figure was back in his garb, following through the door of the classroom to chase I. I turned left and saw that there was a window high up on the wall, and past it a door on the right. I moved to the door, and opened it to see a flight of stairs that went down to a basement area. Without thinking twice, he closed the door behind him and hastily jogged down the stairs with a light from above that guided his steps into the basement, where a low ceiling obscured the light, as he turned to escape. His view was of a dark empty space below the school, and the light barely reached him. As he looked on, he heard the door above open.
“Only one,” was echoed through the basement, the voice of something or someone I did not recognize. The lights flashed off. Alien Ghost appeared from the dank, grungy dungeon, with his jack-o-lantern eyes glowing fiery and angry. He pinched his stick-like hand into a pouch on his gown, and retrieved one, single pumpkin-seed, which he pushed towards the center of Imus’s forehead. I died. William awoke to a world without reason or rationale, one gone wild from the loss of time and sanity. Insanity enveloped Earth.
THE VAMPYRE’S CALLING
THE CALLING
Chapter One
The Confession
Yes, I am a vampyre, but no, I am no more undead than a diabetic, addict, or religious worshipper. This is my itinerant necessitation for the particular chemical which had been introduced to the human bloodstream, before the war, and my consumption of energies through the dark nether which surrounds our reality; but I was once human. I can clearly remember the times I spent with the bosom of life which was awarded the free, as society began to crumble, and with it; reality and our world. There were times when the fresh sunlight of my parents’ backyard still wrinkles my brow, and though my tears are shed through the gasping swallows of breath which provoke solace from the piercing cacophony of daily spectral light, I still cherish each living second of my immortal life. My name is Jason Vargas Stalin.
In those last days of side-hustling the alien drug to my friends, before the final waves of dimensional fabric began to rip into the shredded fragments of dystopic and pestilent world which deteriorated below our feet, I marched through the blizzards of winter and knocked diligently on doors with locks, peered into windows which had emptied, and down roads which became wastelands. This city had no recourse for the insurmountable numbers of horrors which seeped through the sinews of humans, tormented the land and sea in a demonic rampage which burned to cinders entire forests, and decimated the metropolises of each continent. Parceling my packages became nonsensical without logical. Possessively, I hunkered over my nested supply of the drug, in excess. Like homing pigeons, many of my old friends began to return and rest with me. Some, for weeks; others, for months. But after a year or two, the numbers dwindled and then, even more compatible comrades vanished into the night. I went from aristocrat to orphan.
After totally starving for the better part of a quarter year, from the summer of my 27th year to the early autumn when I was expecting a long and harsh winter, I found my taste for human blood had become sweetened to my palette. It happened one night when I noticed a domicile had been reoccupied by inhabitants whom I had never met with before. They had gathered food supplies and had begun restocking the kitchen. When I discovered their stash, I had been famished to near decrepit senescence, and in dire need of immediate sustenance. They too were long in the tooth, and when they reconvened to such superannuation as displayed by my havoc-ridden pillaging of their goods they attacked me with the due discrimination of burglarized victims, and dealt punishments of a terrible bludgeoning which sent me into a concussion.
When I awoke, I was trapped in a box as small as a coffin, and despite the riotous acts of the group of stragglers and robbers I was completely rejuvenated. They must have thought that I was dead, because as I banged and banged onto the walls of my capturer’s miring drum of garbage, I realized that I had been snared inside a compressor. They had successfully dragged my body to a nearby grocery store, and were they with the necessary tools of electrical operation would have surely smashed my body into a pulp of bloody meat. They did hear me though, thrashing while they ransacked the grocery store, frivolously with shameless antics. Finally, as I felt them hesitantly approach the compressor, I held my breath, vengefully anticipating the next moment.
As they perhaps considered expiation, I took a much more propitiatory stance, and while their concern became panic, I began banging again. My strength increased and suddenly I felt the sharp metal of the cover bend against my knuckles. My anger had given my hormones a kick of adrenaline, and with my drug-induced rage I lifted the lid of the compressor and leapt out at the bewildered group of robbers. With a piece of railing from the cage which surrounded the compressor I swung at them, clobbering them and beating the three of them in an uncontrollable, blind rage. Then, with the adrenaline still pumping in my temples, I began to headbutt one’s face while grabbing his ears with my hands. His blood dripped down my cheeks and around the alae and columella of my nostrils, and down my philtrum to my lips. I engorged, and for the first time; my adrenaline sped up, instead of slowing down.
As the next days passed, I felt ecstatic, liberated, and powerful. The week was filled with energy, and I grew fascinated with whatever literature was kept available during the consequential holocausts, genocides, and planetary extinctions. While species died off at an acceleration unlike any other worldwide event, I studied the intricacies of immense explorations of mankind at a local library. Eventually, my obsession for knowledge became fascinatingly effeminate, and I forcibly plucked myself away from the library as I became emasculated by the wealth of psychological strength miraculously now bestowed to my sole, vain possession. There was something which inspired me to continue to search for an answer, thirst for blood and the simultaneous hunger for the drug, as well as desiring water and craving normal food. However, maligned with my withered resource’s expense; I soon gave up the hounding of literary and collegiate novelty and then, consumed myself in a readjustment to the study of paranormal, and eventually back into the trivial and more benign concerns of personal well-being which came barreling back into the forefront of my self-mandated priority.
A month after that first blood-letting, I was profoundly struck with the advanced realization of my expended ration of fresh life-force. This led to my predatorial experimentation with catching animals, who were wildly repopulating in the city. Even though I had only been alone in the city for two years, there were many colonizing species which had inhabited the city, as early as then. Deer populations, racoons, stray dogs and cats, and myriad of varieties of critter which had never ventured within the city had become the new citizens. Procuring a rifle from a house which I had scouted, I sat in the upstairs window, and waited, patiently, for a straying deer to cross paths with my crosshairs. Although I had planned to build a fire, and to naturally cook my kill, my approach to the carcass revealed another peculiarity for my biological instincts while I could sense that the buck had not been shot and killed properly, and was still breathing. Dissolute, suddenly, my vision began to blur, and I felt a tightening cramp grow in my stomach. When I approached the animal, I grabbed it by its antlers and thrust the skull down against the cement of the curb, crushing open its cerebellum. I scooped the dripping brain of the animal with my hand, and shoveled it into my mouth.
In umbrage to the vampires which are written of, in fantasy and cinema, I will post my general complaints of inconsistencies to fictional portrayals such as how the sunlight does glow harshest at sunrise and that my disposition to ultraviolet rays has been exaggerated by the transformation which I had undergone. Although it is more of a severe allergic reaction, much like the traditional vampires’ reaction to garlic. Personally, the pungent smells of any repugnant spices are a stench which have become biblically plaguing to my senses. I have now become more acclimated to the bland products which are kept in cans and have had preservative injections to their autonomously engineered composition. The smells of garlic, incense, pepper, and cleaning chemicals are so especially sensitive to me, that I cannot bare their presence. I have become contemptuous of much of the pre- packaged cuisines for this very reason, even before the perishables had expired. Also, as with the temerity of vampiric excess comes the quintessential chutzpah of immortal flavor-enhancement, so does the shadowed handling of bright lights become a neurotic nightmare in the making.
Yet, impudent as it may seem, I began to harvest human belongings and wares, cooking items especially, and partially combed half of the city, organizing items in warehouses. Even while I was stranded in my hometown, alone, I began to fantasize that my abandonment would be someday overcome. Restless nights, I would imagine that the world would reassemble itself for me. For lengths of months, I battled deep depression, combatted only by my poaching of animal brains. I drew distinctions between my infatuation with the brains of the animals and with the zombies, though, and often felt that the act of such brutal butchering was abhorrent.
The drug which I had painstakingly harvested was my resource, and which I did not feel the need to stress myself out about. It was impertinent to my survival, as I had determined already when there were still people around the city. Initially, I had undergone treatment at rehabilitation facilities for months leading into the first waves of the War. Before they were able to distinguish the difference between zombies and vampyres, I had been celled with them. They were uncontrollable, for almost the entire time they were captive with me, yet never attempted to harm myself or any of my contemporary addicts. The starvation for our drug could be staved off, almost indefinitely, making it a permanent affliction to have tried a dose only once.
Unchained, our once provincial lot of friends was unusually libidinous, and although more tightly banded through the drug, were corruptible and seemed outlandishly lascivious in our manners with each other. This eventually drove the headstrong, when the bravado of our hormone-rich minds went into the stark and murky realms of amnesiac depravation from the drug which stood as our unified, Orphean threshold to one another’s emotional entanglement with the stratified society’s norms and our own lustful urges. I, on the other hand, remained reproachful at the utmost efforts applicable to the social situation which conducted us, by my tauntingly unhinged companions. I even abstained from the masochistic drives which collided those of my friends against each other, and into the abyss of misogynistic and chauvinistic, thrusting bellicosity. As bipolar frustration quickly became blatant psychosis, many of our friends angrily raised their fist in nihilistic angst. Yet I remained in providence, penitent, while humankind’s suffering continued.
I had learned such enduring strategies of persevering tenets by way of my home-life and upbringing. My father had been a repairman, a successful businessman, and my mother had been a surgical nurse. It had been a stable home, and when I had asked a friend to stay with them after high school, they had supported me with extra money, and my father had tried to arrange for me to go to a tech-school for further education. I had squandered the money on an infinitesimal dream of a writing career, when the new drug landed in our city. With one touch, I was wisped into a new world of discomforts and disarray, replacing the furniture of my home with the arsenal of drug-dealing connections and trap houses. I became a street courier for the drug gangs, and lost contact with my family, but always held their message somehow close to my heart.
It was decisively inexorable when the exodus of my friends began. Our culling was a combination of an alien drug which entered our dimension with its distributor (a disintegrated apparition whose fulfilled mission led him back out of our world,) and the collection of larvae of the invasive species of insectoid which had invaded our planet from beneath. Quickly, I gained access to a warehouse of the larvae samples. It had been previously abandoned by my network of friends, as there were similar facilities in nearly all major cities of North America. The alien drug was like the yeast, and larvae was our flour. With the two ingredients, our lives were sustainable for centuries, and our aging processes were halted and our complexions and hair color, suspended.
Typically, we had access to equipment to manufacture the drug, which was called “Yr.” But in lieu of the special laboratories, running electricity, and personnel to assist in the formulation, I had trained methods of extracting the chemicals, myself. To extemporize, I funneled crushed larvae into a small milk jug, cut and wrapped in plastic-wrap, and then fit it into a paint bucket, which is in turn filled with crushed pills of the alien drug and allowed to ferment, overnight. The larvae evaporate into the bucket, and as it deteriorates into our atmosphere it is naturally mixed with the crushed pills. Then, using a sharp object, I puncture the can at the bottom, and drip the contents into small, coin-sized bags. The drug actually only needs to be in six-foot proximity, and the bags can remain unopened, and the drug, untouched. The bags last for months, and as the active ingredients slowly dissipate, I begin the cycle again.
It would be understandable to despise me, as I have been a murderer and an addict for most of my life. Now I am over 50 years old, yet have the cadence, appearance, and demeanor of a 23-year-old man. This mentality which has hosted my body is permanent, and in all candor; I seek the deposition of others as confirmation for my own fire-fueled soul. Ignoble as my behaviors seem, I relish them with the audacity of an unholy heretic, and prefer those uneven leveling of timorous reciprocity from humans. I have grown outwardly sinister in my mania, yet normally I find myself merely cynical. Friendships, which are not as strong as my former bonds of familial genetics, are fundamentally worthless endeavors; aside from you, my reader.
So, I had become a 20-year-old addict of Yr, and had then spent ten years shuffling between rehabilitation centers and the derelict society of cults and drug cartel, before the end of the War had demolished our planet. At 30, I prepared for the end of times with my friends, whose abandonment has left me a sullen and cankerous man, solemn in my mendacious oath to remain by the house of my family. When I searched the city, my parents had disappeared, and I remained at their home for three more years after the network of druggies left me. I pulled their furniture to the windows, and left several unmistakable clues to my presence, in both the indoors as well as leaving a sign painted onto the house’s shingles; “Come Home Please.” I pulled their settee to the front door, and slept there each night, waiting.
Then, when I was about 36 years old, I heard a strange noise, one night. It was the howl of a wolf, within the city, but louder. It persisted the following night, and I was awakened by its raucousness which echoed against tenement walls and through windows, down alleys and against the grates of the dried gutters. I looked out of the front door’s peephole, nervously, and saw something big moving out in the road. Although I was already numbed to the tedium of mendicancy, I instinctively sensed that whatever was outside was less recluse, and more destructive than any other creature I had come across.
Minutes elapsed, and I monitored my breath as I waited for another howl. When the noise came, I swung open the door, fearlessly. Silence, the static hum from distant nocturn pilfering, with only the light breeze brushing over the crackling of creeping things in the night. Then, murmurous huffing, breathing and wheezing, and a scuffling shuffle of a large body, veiled in darkness. My eyes strained to look across the street, yet even my more light-sensitive pupils could not ascertain the source.
I had heard legends of men coming back from the Far East, wounded by other-worldly, supernatural infliction. These men were half man and half wolf, and their story was even more fantastic and horrible than my own. Victims of attacks by some type of hell hound which had been released by the gates of inferno, they were carried to hospitals in China, where there were experimental treatments for them in wards, in which often casualties were seen as successes. They were beastly men, with hair growing at ineffable rates, and nails and teeth which began to grow and caused damage to their physique. Psychosis brought them each to their knees, and as our coordination of health services began to crumble, their implausible hope for rescue relinquished.
It was the next weekend that I finally saw the werewolf. As he returned to the block of my parents’ house, he began furiously rampaging through the residencies. I left my post and ran to the house where the commotion was loudest. There, he answered the door, when I walked to the doorstep and began to knock, still unafraid by means of solitude and desperation.
“Hello?”
“I am Jason Stalin. May I come inside?”
At first, his tone was uninflected, then, returned to fury, “Get out of here!” He yelled angrily, and bolted swiftly for the backdoor. Having no mind to give chase, I let him escape.
However, I did go inside the house, after he had gone. Inside, I found bloody swathes and bandages, and noticed the torn-apart storage areas. Apparently, he had seen there was no food, as I had previously begun removing it all to the warehouse.
Despite his mettlesome messes, I was stouthearted and determined to remain at my parents’ home, which he never seemed to enter. This mode of life lasted for three more years, into my late 30’s.
In fact, I cannot say with certitude what happened to the young man. Eventually, the howling outside simply diminished, and I felt compelled to change my program of perseverance. I was finally ready to move back out of my parents’ house. For a while, I wandered the streets, concerned about which abode I should take for myself. I settled on a magnificent, towering skyscraper, to which access was available of an enormous lobby. It had been a hotel, in another time, where I had seen my uncle once, when I was very young.
Although I remain unveracious about the facts of the werewolf, I do know that his prevalence was felt again, about a full decade later. Eventually, I acquired a collection for my personal home at the hotel. This library was mammoth, as I took a half decade to scour the city for any interesting literature. One night I was walking down the road which my parents had lived on, in my mid 40’s, when I noticed a book laying near the house where I had tried to interrogate the werewolf. It was a copy of Bram Stroker’s Dracula.
I used a stick to cudgel the ground near the front stoop of the house, hoping to frighten the beasts of the night, then returned home.
CHAPTER TWO
Dawn
As bailiwick and lone sheriff of the ghost town which was once my stomping ground, it was indubitably my desire to keep the city clean. Benefitting from wiping the zombies out of the area made the task fulfilling, and the benefits were amicable. I was able to discern that the wildlife whose bounteous reintroduction to the habitat was not disturbed by the lurking, possessed souls of once disrespectful humans. Also, the quiet granted solitude its slumber, and I maintained my health much easier within the dissolved metropolis. The aches of waking to the unrelenting brightness at dawn were a passing malady, and in my early 40’s I completed the transition to nocturnal life, myself. This beautification of my surroundings was then transitioned into a longing for companionship, which finally emerged in the forefront of my ideologies. Where I had once been a ragamuffin street gamin, transformed to affluential persona in a city of vampyres, I then became a hermit and anti-social. Finally, after over a decade of lonesome wandering in the city, I was regaining emotional pique.
Subtly, at first, I sought companionship in the readings which I collected at the hotel. This charade lasted for a few years, but by my early 50’s I was sure for my purposeful renewal of spirit, and desired to build a dwelling for myself with my bare hands. Galvanizing into action was motivationally inspiring to me. Although I had not abhorred the solitude as spent with my books, it became incessant fervor within my mind; to remit my languishing lifestyle with a call-to-action and to inspirit through creative expression, in whatever form seemed most applicable.
However, an abrupt change of course happened just last year, when the hotel’s roof leaks began to dramatically worsen. Nearly half of the library was lost in a structural flooding which destroyed five floors of carpeted hallways. This crimp in my luxuries was the bauble to my act of defiant principality, and the muse of contemplation became my auteur.
With copiously multifarious philanthropy, I poured myself into the foundation of my architectural endeavor. First, I found two volumes of books describing pouring footings from cement, and setting up the mesh-wiring which would be most advantageous to the soil and dirt which filled the ground of the city. Here, where the ground freezes, construction workers usually use T-shaped footings, dug in trenches. This exercised my mind more creatively about the building’s blueprints, and I began fantasizing a dream home for myself. Thankfully, I had multitudinous supplies.
Scouting of the plots of land to begin construction was a preparation that alleviated the stresses which had built during my extended quarantine. The plot I had chosen was an abandoned lot which had previously been occupied by a restaurant, called Sal’s Sauce, before the War. Ideally, I could build a mammoth structure near the highway ramps, near the center of the city. My canton would be embassy for migratory vampyres, and provincially monumental in its towering structure. These were novice concepts, which eventually led my reassessment of the grandiosity of my project throughout the spring. The ground had not thawed, and I was strong enough to shovel the permafrost if I had the desired nutrition, but not without as I was accustomed to, during the darker, winter months. When wildlife’s hibernation was perpetuated all through the early spring until the leaves returned onto trees, I was more preoccupied with struggles of warmth and less concerned with wild game.
If fire did fuel my brutish heart, then I was blowing the embers throughout those last few months of spring. Yet into early May this year my introverted thoughts became harrowing and harsh.
There were times when I would walk straight toward my parents’ house, and rescind directly back. Albeit, I preferred staying in a particular part of town which utilized a water tower with pressure. This precociously ensured my general working knowledge of various plumbing systems between the houses in the neighborhoods where I intended to soon develop my own residency. To harmonize my preparations, I turned water back off within the district, late one May evening. The humming of the station made me think how the hyperboloid structure might have somehow accessed the electrical grid, but it was merely dull sonic retention of the static inside the big pump room. Morbidly forlorn, I came to my senses while sulking back to the hotel in a melancholy vex.
The nolens volens of my miff was erased overnight. As I picked through the copy of Dracula I had found, I watched the skyline from the highest floor of the hotel until the sunrise. My axiom was consistent as I began to fall asleep in the lobby, and I awoke with refreshed spirits and ready for a day’s work of analytical surveying. Although my speculation had been committed to the spot near the highway, I headed out in the early twilight, and moved swiftly to several locations. In epiphany of discovery, I realized my infidelity was closer aligned with desire for nutrition. I climbed up the water tower, further, as night began to settle. I perched atop the structure, with my Marlin .22 rifle, and started to wait. Two hours later, chance had it that a deer wandered out from behind a house’s backyard, and was perforce stunned in its hind.
However, when I climbed down, I saw that the kill had been assailed by an unseen specter in the night. Mauled and dead, the deer was now no longer useful to me, aside providing forensic evidence of the werewolf’s lurking menace.
When dawn began to brighten the cloudless sky, I shot another deer. As the light went from darkness to purple, to bluish violet and bright pink, I was beginning to feel my strength return. So much that I was prepared to try to fend off the sunlight for the entire morning, with a hooded sweatshirt and a welder’s helmet. The cars which laid still in the streets had almost entirely been exhausted of any fuel supplies, only a few years into the decades- long abandonment of the metropolis. Regardless, conspicuity was a goal for the day, and roaring engines would only attract outsiders’ attention to my construction. Therefore, I had stowed a wheelbarrow near the water tower, and had filled a nearby garage with most of the necessary materials, beforehand. But first, that morning, I needed to dig the trenches.
The energy I had gained from the deer was credited, and even in the heat of my decadence to finish and bulky garment’s weight I did not perspire. As noontime’s radiance approached, I retired to the hotel lobby. The job was completed, and I was satisfied in my labor’s output. Before I left the worksite, I placed the copy of Dracula near the abandoned lot’s driveway perimeter; a precarious ward against disturbances of the werewolf.
I barely was able to rest in my fervent excitement to resume the project. By twilight, I was wide awake and concerned with nothing but the trenches and their security. This was when I realized that the extended lack of live animals had affected my nutritional dependency. Assumedly, it was partially due to the manual exertion of my strength during the previous morning, as well as the exposure to sunlight. I was immediately sure that I would need a fresh kill before I started to work again, but I was even more certain that I should check on the worksite.
Timorous with anticipation, I nearly jogged on the way to the worksite. I could feel the breaths wisp off my lips as I gasped in the hollow air off the streets whose fading sunshine left the taste citric and minty sweet. After I approached the foundation area, I looked around for Dracula, expecting to see it moved. It seemed tampered with, and I walked to the spot where I had laid it the night before in timidity. It was in almost an identical position, but opened and flipped so that both the front and back covers were opened and faced upward, with the spine raised vertically higher. At first, I thought the book was dogeared to a special selection, so I picked up the book carefully to investigate its passages. There was nothing unordinary about the opened text, so as I gazed back down at the ground, I realized the shape of the book’s position had been meant to represent a house. The werewolf was truly not a recreant, then.
With this comradery as inspiration, I finished laying the foundation’s wire meshing and cement by morning, forgetting my mission for meat temporarily. I rarely ate anyway, and was used to the unavailability of epicurious cuisine. However, as dawn began to raise its arms of apostate sunshine, I reassessed the hunt. I threw on the hooded sweatshirt and started to return to the water tower. After I shot and missed three squirrels, though, there was no need to waste more ammunition. Perambulating along the side of the foundation, once more, I stopped along the promenade which led to the driveway of the worksite. I looked back down at where I had set the book with inward chortle, and placed it back to the same spot. The chosen position was a meaningful parable, as I had opened the book to a dogeared page which I, myself, had selected:
“I on my part give up the uncertainty of eternal rest and go out into the dark where may be the blackest things that the world or the nether world holds!”
That night, though, I was ravenous with hunger as I awoke. There was no time to lose energy at the rate which I had, if I was to stay on task. Therefore, I would need to hunt before returning to work on my project, and not be as indecisive as I had been. It had never been so crucial in my life to feed, so the experience was new.
So, I mutilated the night to waste. It was numinous in its transcendence of my spirit, too. The spirit of the hunt had charge of my life and energy, and I became uncontrollably obsessed with the power bestowed by the animals. Two squirrels and a rabbit were barely enough to quench my thirst for this newfound elixir. The brains of these smaller critters were too small, though, and I vowed to enterprise a method to get another deer the following night. While rainstorms hovered overhead, I rescheduled this adjustment to my tertiary diet. With regards to principles, I had fallen into my own susceptibility of this new addiction beside Yr.
It took several days to get back on track with completion of the worksite. Thankfully, I was fresh with energetic dynamism and had indulged on two deer, and now was ready to put forth my efforts. When I came out that night, I headed straight to the warehouse which contained the wheelbarrow and lumber. Dilly with hopefulness, and carelessly narcissistic, I marched over to the lot. The book was ominously unmoved, but had gotten tattered and wet in the rains which had struck the region. I kicked it over, and began laying out supplies. When day was returning, I walked back to the warehouse and left the wheelbarrow, then revisited the site. I picked up the book, and opened it, but the inking was so distorted on the pages that even an oculist would not be able to interpret the words.
“…I…give up…the world…”
I felt sublimely entranced and which prosperity was primely conditional to this; I submerged into the darkness of the hotel with spirit aloft. Retiring early, the day was recounted dreamily. The first floor’s assembly had been painless, and I needed only to raise the beams of the walls, later in the evening. Then, I was going to ladder to the second floor and complete the interior walls for my bedroom and bathroom. In regard to predictions; I was feeling ascetically supercilious, enriched with confidence, and reflective of my progress. I imagined that the third floor could be completed within two more days.
During the daylight, though, I woke too soon. The racket outside of howling and screaming had disturbed my rest. I did not dare to approach the windows, but I could tell the sound emanated from the werewolf I had met. I was in my chamber room, where I had stayed many nights, and I held my breath as I waited for him to see if he persisted his agonizing call. But as his raging torment bounced against the wall of the hotel room, I could sense that his implemented tactic was to be received by my attention. This was dangerous, as I knew that he must have been to the hotel, already. He may have even seen my room, although I know that he did not enter it. The man I had seen was mutated in grotesque misshapen deformation, bruised anemically, and destitute. The behavior he was now exhibiting was worse. However, I could not leave my post, without being noticed or exposed to bright sunlight. It seemed better to sit tight, so I tried until evening to sleep. There were moments of quiet, and he was surely in and out of the ten- story hotel, as I heard him banging on doors at random, over and over.
At a few points, I heard him shouting, “I’m closer! Everybody! Dead! Everywhere! I’ll kill them! I’ll murder you! God!” Yet, I held vigilant to my post.
But he did leave, and when evening settled, although I was still tired, I was safe. I assumed that his destructive path would intensify as time wore on, and there was no way to reverse his symptoms, or assist him. All I could do was hope that my work had remained. Trying to be as discreet as possible, I walked to the empty lobby. There was just a vacated front desk and three couches, but he was nowhere to be seen. I decided to sleep in a different house, that day.
I was walking out of the lobby, when I heard a grumbling growl which grew louder as I spun around. The guff was produced behind the upholstery and judging from the sound, it was the injured man. I hesitated, but he was not mobile and his gruffness had only been through his sleep. This clinched the proposition of residing elsewhere, after that evening. My own rest had been far from adequate, but I was still in good enough health to make my exit without causing enough noise to surprise and awaken the incapacitated werewolf.
Then, it occurred to me; I had a shot to put the beast out of his present misery. The sympathetic acts of book-trading were over, and my alignment with a man whose psychosis was as inflicted was null. With my rifle on my shoulder, I abruptly began to turn around. But the shuffling of legs and limbs behind the couch alerted me to the werewolf’s priviness.
“Food…” the man-thing rakishly sputtered, without letting his deformed face be shown. He was a sixty-year-old Asian, with long hair, who was wearing a large grey coat. He looked like he weighed over 200 pounds, and was filthy with mud and blood.
“I gathered food. I left it all at the mall.-“
I would have continued to help dissertate, but he charged out from behind the couch. Fortunately, he stridently left the lobby through a wing of the hotel which was located directly between the couch and interposed pillars which stood for decorative purposes in the court area. My shot would have been obstructed, so I let him languidly escape, and we both exited the hotel.
CHAPTER THREE
Mirrors
The city had once been sprawling. Back then, it had a dense population of 230,000 before the War. After the first World Wars, it had used a shopping mall to stimulate the economy and as a reintegration of the natural landmark of our river delta and harbor which were to the northwest. The river divided the west end from the rest of the city, and the harbor had been part of tourism attraction through the 1950’s until it was shut down for pollution caused by local factory runoff. The four highways encircled the city, one a system of east-to-west, and the others bifurcated north- to-south. My house was located near a southwest side onramp to the system which went eastward. The hotel, too, stayed on the western side of the river, but was more toward the downtown area. The river stayed wide beyond the harbor, where two large rivers merged at the lake. My parents’ house had been on the eastside of town, nestled in a residential neighborhood on a hill with another small lake which worked as a natural reservoir system for the entire side of town. During halcyon of my youth, we had sledded down the hill during the winter months, and the mall had been my after-school recreation each weekend. There was also a canal, which separated the north from the south parts of the city, and went directly through the center. Much of the infrastructure remained intact, but several buildings and highway bridges had collapsed.
Although my protean efforts and telic determination were felicitous, no amount of auspicious accomplishment could withstand the trauma caused by the werewolf’s advancement over my hotel’s sanctuary. The delays which inevitably were incorporated into my schedule that adhered to newly acquired fondness of carnivorous consumption were doubled in time by the terror which had caused my exodus. Subsequent events were divvied between hunting game, hording extra supplies, and haunting the infrastructure of the city. It had been my home for so long that I thought of the entire metropolis as my personal arena, and the werewolf had been introduced like a gladiator’s nemesis in Roman coliseum. The advent of certain problems was unsavory and I lamented the lost opportunity which I had pitifully allowed pass in my merciful sparing of the werewolf’s life, during our brief intervention. Now it was only a test of stealth and guile to avoid his undermining my secluded leisure and original lifestyle. Nonetheless I was nonplussed and unabashed in my construction’s magnitude. Rather than waste more time chasing the werewolf through the city, I used my frustration to spark creativity with the architectural template.
The second and third floors were constructed by the middle of June. My new ambition was to complete a watchtower from the top. I decided to use a ladder system, like a bell tower, which would lead to an enclosed lookout area. The job of plumbing was simultaneously something I was considering, but decided to wait until I had finished the tower. However, between June 13th and 19th, there were both torrent and spattered rainstorms. Hence, I merely puttered through some menial tasks involving the relocation of some kitchen wares, my analeptic restoration of ruminant Yr supply, and the introspective remuneration for any further solatium from replenishment and downtime.
It was June 18th, then, when plans went awry, as I walked back to the site at twilight. The werewolf had attacked and plundered my construction project, leaving wreckage of nearly all of the bottom level. Thereby I was vehement with predictable anger yet had already discerned how such an outcome was expectable. It was time to have the second conference with the cenobite at the mall, so I, the stylite, walked with fervor for the garage which contained ammunition for my Marlin. In the balmy air which swept through the streets, I felt the quietude of the eye of the storm, and knew how vengeance was strong in both of our urging. The garage had been ransacked, as I drew around the corner of the avenue, I could see that it too, had been sabotaged. The werewolf had tried to burn it down, somewhat unsuccessfully, in the rain.
With sardonic impunity, it was a job unfinished on both of our halves. Sauntering toward the garage though, I heard something I hadn’t heard in decades, and which changed the entire direction of motivation. It was a cat’s meow, which was rung from the upper level of the house.
To articulate the emotions which swept me would be frivolous and tedious toward that I should ode more than the spectroscopic nuance of plighted homogeneity. It was fraternally pure, a blissful tear which fell from the heaven and beneath the opaqueness of the invisible moon. The ingenuous idea of having a cat as a pet was beyond inept conceivability, and the survival of any domesticated animal was a sheer obstetrical miracle. Hoping in my last few steps toward the foundation of the house which laid in partial shamble to not perturb the feline’s presence, I slowed and tempered pace, withal praying for its unharmed well-being. If by such violence I threatened in struggle, then no less was I ponce to the innuendo of bond with the friendship, after being betrayed by the uncontracted enemy.
It was quavering, hidden under the bed of the master bedroom, a black female, I immediately named Raven. The room next door were some surgical tools as a part of a first aid depot that I had previously arranged. Across the road were my lathe and vice, along with various other construction tools. I remembered there being cat litter in one of the closets of the house when I had searched it, so I left the cat in the first aid and ammunition house which was more lavish, and returned to the construction site to finish inspecting the damage caused by the werewolf, my adversary. The cat was dyspeptic but her pneumatic enthusiasms were translated into affection. Although her cataract was harlequin, her posture was gaudy and like a preformed companionship.
In tempests’ rage I committed myself to abode within the house of the cat for the following night. Yet first, I was decisive in finding a conclusion to the dissension of the werewolf. So, after pouring cat litter for Raven near the door, I made my way over to the mall. It was my instincts to follow the trail of the werewolf to the mall, because there was indeed, a large quantity of canned foods in one of the department stores and in the basement.
On the way over to the mall, I retrospectively remembered his maleficence and deplorable acts in contrast. He was obviously desperate, but his discordant orchestration of assault was a sign of worsening conditions for him. As I jaunted closer, I heard an incessant caterwaul from within the mall. Within one hundred yards of the front entranceway, a gunshot pierced the air with an explosive volume. Considering either a misdirected and misguided attack, or divergence through subterfuge to entrap me, I split off from the direct route to the entranceway to a line of cars which led to a nearby outlet store’s employee-only exit.
As I walked through the clothing store and up the escalator inside the mall, it was silent. There was an aura of gloom, and it was chilly inside. The howling had stopped, and I turned the corner to the food court in a contumelious, haughty gait. Then I saw the darkened carousel, where the painted horses lined up for the circumferential march around their merry-go-round. Slumped off onto one’s side was the dead body of the werewolf; a shotgun sitting askew across his lap, and his head almost entirely gone, with blood and chunks of flesh splattered across the stage.
When I returned to the ammunition house, I realized that I had forgotten the cardinal rule of cat ownership; I had forgotten to shut every door, and the back had been left wide open. She had escaped, and in the bedroom, I walked from the bed to the dresser, and rested my arm against the counter. The mirror stood in front of me, as daylight was beginning to twinkle through the curtains. I leaned my hand against it, in poignant contemplation, and then went to bed.
Then, it is said that an object in possession seldom retains the same charm it had in pursuit. Archaic studies show the assimilation of religious aspects of animals, and their worship of the moon and celestial bodies. Perhaps the housecat went to dance with its extra- terrestrial brethren, or its owner.
CHAPTER FOUR
Pitch Black
The fact is that home is where one’s heart is, and I was alone, homeless in a city of abandoned houses. Only the pointless hunt and dull doldrum of toils kept the beat of my heart and the calendar’s days’ passing. Though my domicile was nearing completion from a structural standpoint, the plumbing was yet to be completed, by mid-July. I would want a faucet and sink for cleaning meat that I could later cook, after I was able to taste the fresh blood. The weather remained balmy and muggy, yet there were no more rainstorms throughout the hottest part of the season. My stash of Yr was filled, and every breath that I took after working a full day’s labor was a gracious blessing. I shuffled between the tasks involved with the construction and hunting, quite often.
It was later in July when I heard the cat’s cry, again. It was as I walked toward downtown, sometime early in the morning, before dawn. Without digressing into the parlance of the project’s many intricacies, there was maybe a half of a week left of work on the plumbing, and the downtown area still had use of its bathroom facilities. As the days had gone by, I therein had conveniently surmised to stay in proximity of the hotel and downtown. When I heard Raven’s soft, melodious voice, my heartbeat skipped and pulse quickened, and I strained to hear her voice again, to the extent that I almost started to give myself a migraine as I rushed through the road. The tall buildings cast their shadows down around me, and the uncleaned alleys and shambled storefronts glared in despair.
Then, I thought I heard her again, as I remembered to look up at the echoing walls of the buildings which surrounded me into the dark sky. Engrossed, I began to chase around the corner of a road which had a bus hub located in a central park area. Then, I saw them; 20 or so people standing near a road which led to the hotel. They were several blocks away, yet I initiated immediate assessment to whether they were zombies, or more vampyres, as I began to approach them lackadaisically. It did not take long for them to realize that I was headed their way, and their voices grew louder as some aimed rifles at me. I whistled down, and they started to walk and meet me halfway. Hopefully they had not seen the hotel.
Near the old theatre there was a dilapidated cellphone store, and we arrived at the interstitial space between it and the fallen marquis, which hung by one support beam on the cornice and leaned into the store’s front window. There were eighteen people total, at further inspection.
“State your name and business!” Shouted one of the ones whose face was lost in the crowd; it was a young man in his early thirties.
“Jason Stalin. I’m alone. I live here.”
A bulgingly obese man who was leading the group stepped forward, “We just set off from our camp, earlier. We’ve been tailed by a group of zombies since we left Cortland County.”
A middle-aged woman stepped up, too, “I’m Bonnie.” & she was joined by her husband, “I’m Kaiden Greene, this is my wife and daughter, Fiona.” She was very young.
The first man stepped back, as others walked up to inspect me. Then, as another younger man stepped up, he grabbed him aside. “I am Douglas Callahan, this is my son, Chester.” I realized immediately that we looked the same age, although I was actually dozens of years his senior. They did not know that about me, that I was an immortal mutant.
A shorter man then stood to the front of the pack, “I’m Horace, I’m a physician. I mean I was a physician before all of this happened. Douglas is a doctor, too, a surgeon. Many of us were Army officers who helped organize us into parties in New York City.”
I heard a man in the back whispering to a woman, “This theatre used to be haunted.” I had not really followed local urban myths, so it was news to me. My attention was taken back to a different man who walked to me, next “I’m Bradley Kelly, I’m from New York. Where are you from?”
“I’m from here.” I didn’t want to sound too stupid, but was unversed in my personal canon. “I’ve lived here all my life.”
“I’m from here,” somebody echoed, and stood to the front of the herd, “I’m Arvin.” He looked to be in his early 40’s. “I went to school here while they were still doing education for people. Then, about twenty years ago, everyone left here.”
“No, I have stayed.” I tied in my response, clunkily. I wondered if they would ask too many questions, and I began to feel anxiety.
“We’re from Utica.” Said Kaiden, “We used to own Utica Greene’s Franchise Restaurant, hear of it?” I looked long at Kaiden Greene, “No?”
A pair of women stood to the front, and one of them spoke, “Not everywhere was evacuated at the same time,” the other chimed in, “Yeah,” “We’re from West Virginia, so are Chester and Doug.”
Then I blurted out, “Have you seen a cat?”
“No,” said the woman in the back, then came a chorus from the others. They had not, and I had not expected them to have.
One woman came up to me and touched my arm, “Did you hear crying?” She was red-headed and shorter, also in her early 40’s.
I changed the subject, and decided to make myself more accessible, and relayed to them the whereabouts of the hotel where I had resided for the better half of two decades. I would lead them away from my personal chamber, where I had mutilated my prey, and felt they should be safer if we stayed together.
“I’m Leona, Wilmington Delaware. I was a therapist.” The woman who had tried to console me said.
Then a pretty sprite of a woman approached me, and her voice was carried very beautifully despite her prosaic counterparts. Our eyes caught as she spoke, “I’m Lacie.” She had large brown eyes, and dark hair, like my own.
I led them to the hotel as it constituted an offering of my own, which could prove their trust. The insignia of the hotel sparkled in the slowly spreading light of the morning. I allowed conversation to devolve until we finally reached the lobby, at which point I was prepared to administer autonomous and punctilious action to guide them as their self-proclaimed host. But one man stood back further, and was conspicuous enough to warrant suspicion. So, I tried with dignity, to push back through the mob to pinpoint his consternation. At first, for some inexplicable reason I thought he was wearing manacles, so it made me even more anxiously compulsory in my investigation. However, I soon saw in the lobby, how his wanning arm was turgidly wounded and casted in an oblong sling, daubed in blood.
“I have first aid supplies all across the city,” I said, finally beginning to orate my scripted speech, “& I have started building another safe house. It is newer, and is in better shape for now. But I will need help with the construction. It’s near the onramp on the southwest part of town. How many zombies have followed you?”
“We saw almost a hundred in Utica,” said a man who was muscular, and looked Hispanic.
“Yes, we told them that there were hundreds, when they rescued us. They had just been distracted by another group and split between them and us.” A man spoke who was African-American, and I saw that there was a black woman who was seated who looked on as he did.
“They’ll kill us if they find us,” Spoke a bigger man, emphatically, who was probably the second oldest of the whole bunch of them, but looked even older for his years.
Then, sleekly and lucidly, as if somnambulate, the woman named Lacie came forward to me, “We can help, we have a generator.” Her sharp, succulent voice was wet against my ears, and her smells sent my olfactory senses into a maelstrom of sensual heat.
I felt compelled to evoke a juxtaposition to the elders’ worries with the “youth’s” comradery, and so said, “The ramparts of my new construction are nearly finished and should be enough to withstand the many. Besides, we have ammunition here, still, at the mall. I would not solicit a fortress without necessary means to defend it. There are also rivers, here, which we can use to provide secondary barriers.”
As incredulous as my ambitions were to help these unfortunate people, the retribution for my remuneration would be sufficient in due time. For now, their light loads could be disburdened, and I would find my own personal triumph, later.
CHAPTER FIVE
Effigy
Sadly, the man named Nolan malingered too long for me to capture the moment tenuously when it was so aptly presented by Lacie to become better acquaintances. My scrutinizing attention was diverted toward the sutra of his health and well-being rather than the mantra of my own lust for a fresh feeding, for purposes of misdirection. The defect of my addiction to my newfound nutriment in the form of the flesh of the living was aggressive. Despite my masquerade’s feign of instinctive self-preservation, I was infallible with persuasion of the physical sight of the female’s temptation. Yet, it was my executed plan to guide a group of the larger party to the mall, for multiple reasons. In so mulcting their weaker member, I would stand higher ground with the passing of the sun over the day ahead.
The facetious façade was queued for the final descent over to the lake where the mall stood, ghastly in the yellow light of morning. The trio of men who carried their rifles like musketeers marched along my memorized tread in a set of checkered steps and traversals among terrains which would have been intimidating without my handy and cunning eyes. They were Roberto, Finley (another stout Army officer,) and the elder one named Sonnie whose warning of ominous tones were superficially distinguished as courageous in quick thinking, which allowed me to isolate the three of them at the mall. With their cooperative subordination, I could extend my assistance to be able to isolate the one named Nolan whose wound was sweet to my nostrils. However, there was the need to subordinate them to the truth of the werewolf’s carcass which still leaned against the carousel. Still, I decided to save this iteration for any additional observations to become relevant.
They were easily deceived of my savageness. As a part of my condoling enterprise, I introduced them to the chastised storage of even more food supplies hidden in the basement, which the deviant werewolf never confiscated. This was an abrupt change of plans which I specifically grafted as we entered the parking lot of the mall. No one was refractory, but I continued on to propose that we should split up. If I could shift the amount of liability that I was exposed to, at this point, it would hypothetically gain their trust. Sidetracked, too, I was admittedly conscientiously moved by the site of blood on Nolan’s arm. I was nearly starved for the insolent wretch at the hotel, whose distraught matrons were sympathetic only as terrific gargoyles perching down upon their unmountable prey.
At the precipice of the nebulously dark basement, I reminisced the strange mutation of the werewolf, and then I led Sonnie along with me for committee to a reconnaissance mission through the mall. When we stopped at the food court, Sonnie saw the mutilated body of the werewolf. I had partially devoured the remaining body of the monster, disgracefully. Thankfully, he remarked first that it must have been some scavenging animal’s handiwork. “Come here, Sonnie,” I uttered as I slipped my hand in my pocket, to adjust the Yr’s position, I spieled a vague bromide of the victim’s existence and life’s vestige. “He was just a fellow traveler, but as you see, he was severely mutated. He had come just weeks before, and I thought he was alone.”
“Never seen him,” Sonnie’s dissonant response was acceptable, but his mediocre intelligence seemed to magnify his reproachful dispiriting. He was not addled with emotion, suddenly, and I could see how the theory of trust was working. To reciprocate for the sordid admonition, I mentioned that there were weapon stashes in several of the food court kitchens. We spent nearly a full hour organizing them together, and then rejoined with the group from the basement.
The proceedings thus far were comforting, I was sure, yet my Yr supply was fluctuating my overall temperament. I had to keep quiet through our rendezvous with the other team, and led them back toward the hotel. We towed an empty trash bin receptacle which was on wheels, filled with food supplies, and one filled with extra weapons and garnished with ammunition.
Across the expanse of the lake front, we walked out to the hotel in the heat of day. It was unbearable, and I suffered extremely from rashes and skin-poisoning. My arms ached as we approached the hotel so badly that I stumbled my footing and Sonnie shot a discerning glance up at me. “I remember vividly the first attacks on New York City. We had to carry wheelbarrows of rubble from the wreckage of our apartment complex. I lost my wife in the War.” Sonnie’s relayed harrowing story was defunct in lieu of my current manual assignment. We took the bins to the postern area of the hotel for storage. It was my immediate intent to retire directly to my chamber, which was in desperate need of inspection and protection.
“Quite a library you have, here, Jason.” The man named Doug began to engage us, once we had let down the bins in the commons.
“Brave of you to find such a collection, all alone.” Lacie started to approach me, again, her visage an instant allure.
“What it lacks in expense, I have accumulated in expanse. It was a meaningful project, before the rendering of my fortress near the freeway. Have you decided to help?”
The man named Malik walked out of the hallway to the right; the same one where I had shot at the werewolf as he had escaped. “Yes, we have a few items that we can assemble to make a generator, but we don’t use it unless we need to. Arvin, Kaiden, and Chester went down to look at your location and setup.”
Rather than become obstinate when I realized they were taking over my construction, I began to exhibit exultation. I hoped to draw their attention, briefly, until I could get the rest that I still needed. “We will need to reconvene this evening, because I am in need of some brief rest.” Reflectively abortive, yet effective, I staggered through the hotel to my chamber.
CHAPTER SIX
Rest
Once under the effect of the drug, relaxation can become a far- fetched delusion to the users. Frequent hallucinatory nightmares and sleep apnea become horrible after addiction. Rest is not truly rest, and I am always awake at some stage of reality between the manifested and void. The humans who dwelt within this hotel were at best; abominations to life. Imagining the human in the context of unsavoriness allows me to witness the anathema of their soul through the juxtaposition of their oblivious condition. I allow these dreams to become lucid, each day, as I drift into the realm of unconsciousness and reawakening. Several times that day, I was jolted from my sleep by the precariously snooping guests. I could tell that I was being given trial, and judgment was yet to be finalized by this hung jury of minions. Their perishable obliteration was my contentious idolization. My eye was meant for Lacie when it only came to sympathy, yet I cast it with incalculable doubt’s stipulation.
All of the Yr had been gathered and stored in a conspicuous place in the mall’s storage, and I had depots around the entire city. When dusk approached, I began to raise into consciousness. I thrust my incredible willpower toward purging the sites which I could use to swap out my packets of the infernal drug. I yearned to return to the hospitable comforts of the flesh feeding in a peaceful setting, but was faced with the possibility of having to eat on the run. Until then, I had considered sparing everyone, but now my thirst was unquenchable. I would not fraternize with the group in any elongated exasperation, until I had feasted. As I left the room, I feared being patronized by the group, so I took the exit in the posterior area, once more. Additionally, I wore my pompadour and cape.
As I returned in nonchalant euphoria, I saw there was a group of the survivors headed toward what looked to be the proximity of my house. As their ingratiating and obtrusive search transpired, I was standing on a large hill, and saw them walking in the opposite direction. Hailing them as I approached, fast, I realized they were looking for somebody by the fact that they were holding torches and lanterns. Before they saw me, I hid in the foliage. I smelled what they were looking for, and began to divert my attention to Kaiden, who had fallen while at the house. I decided to make my attack by running through a shortcut behind a few buildings. Then with hitherto unprecedented hysteria, I charged on and swiftly cut Kaiden’s throat, and fled. As the trio came forward near the promenade at my driveway, I watched from a distance at a location up the street which paralleled the highway. I clutched my hat, and threw it down where I stood in my poignant ode to their hiving debauchery.
Back at the hotel, I made quick moves to itinerate the meretricious peregrination Lacie, again. Unfortunately, as I saw that she had gone to bed, I began to become interrogated by Arvin. It was specifically the kind of idle revery which I despised, and I looked on for her impregnable presence as if to elicit her metaphysical and vague mirage’s marvelous appearance.
Suddenly, Lacie burst into the lobby with Leona. Apparently, Nolan had started convulsing from blood-loss and became palsied with ramified seizures. Although Malik’s laudable heroism at staying by his side allowed enough haughtiness for me to mark a move on Lacie, it was still a diversion to have such a grotesquely weak person in radius. Meanwhile, I stoically aspired to hope for my mischief to have gone under the radar, and undetected. I mused their ineffable hopelessness as consensual symbiosis amidst such chaos. Antecedental to the venture of disposing of more humans, I desired Lacie’s incommunicable companionship, and her spiritual incarnation to mine. She seemed so manipulatable to my easy domestication; a docile and tamed soul.
Truthfully, I had already slightly sapped Nolan during the night, tapping into his immune system. The addition of Kaiden’s fresh life source was enough to sate me, temporarily.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Zombies
Sulking, despite the surge in power which I gained reciprocally from Nolan and Kaiden, it was imperative to not divulge my secret strength to anyone. It was almost imperceivable to control myself, so I returned perforce to the aft of my hotel and dissimulated from the crowd as much as possible. Their council was not called for, nor mine for them as we were at an intangible impasse of dual necessitation, whilst Nolan writhed in my telepathic exertion of hypnotic pain from his infected wound. Previously, I had been condemnable in my imperious cooperation with vampyres of my own ilk, and therefore was inadept as well as oversensitive. As the forlorn trio whose search I had interrupted finally arrived with news of their dead friend’s demise, I was nervily rattled by a tremendous new sensation of ominous tone. There was a distinct melodrama in their clamorous disarray of voices, and I recognized the sound of lurking fear as their muffled, erratic vernacular reverberated against my mind’s inquisitive meditation and inner thoughts. Then, I realized that my strength was building, how I was able to understand these people’s thoughts in a surreal, self- induced hypnotic trance. My power was growing, whereas even at the earlier stage of fledge I had been able to wreck a garbage compressor.
“Jason…” Their intermittent utterance of my name arose between rabbling chatter, yet I recognized the posture of slanderous dissent from accusation. Even as finicky as I was becoming, I knew that I should immediately rematriculate with the group. Then, through the indelible quietude and incoherent frequencies which rang in my eardrum, came the interpreted imprecation of my name once; higher in decibel, “Jason was there.” My paranoia was growing, and it was one of the male’s (probably in an alpha position) who spoke. His expounding of my suspicion was motivating my re- entry to the lobby.
So, with a gust of confidence, I swept open the door. The group had come into the city adorned in rags and filth, and yet managed an even more disheveled appearance.
In acquainted grandiosity, on entry of the lobby, I laid down my cape on the upholstery; the same seats which had hidden the werewolf. The light from the vivid and full moon still illumined the primitive mob who set around the lush wildlife which had outgrown the dreary streets like wavering vagabonds seeking sanctuary in the halls of condemnation. They were luminous Stonehenge and through the windows were like mannequins of flesh, vital sacrificial for the slaughter. Bonnie was inconsolable, and the young child was being distracted by Sonnie, who had her alone near the front of the lobby.
Finley initiated the conversation with a desultory tone, “Jason, we have had zombie sightings. Back at the water tower near your house. I went up to look for whatever was responsible for Kaiden’s murder.” In an abbreviated moment, I felt the constant of time be replaced in its primeval swinging pendulum. I was befuddled as I realized how the primordial stench of fear apparently had been not alone, within the atmosphere.
“We would be safest, in here.” I spoke simply, and sagely, reconnecting with their unspoken trust which I had been keen to retain in my illusion of compliance. My swindle was kept shortened, to avoid scrutiny.
“Then, let’s split up. There may only be a dozen of them,” Finley quickly recovered my inclination to keep them. “Horace, Ruby, Mary, Malik, and I will take the second floor positioned in the rear. Leona, Lacie, and Roberto go on up to the third floor with Jason. If there’s too many, we’ll meet up near the old Onondagan reservation.”
The assignment had been deemed and I was only tentatively hesitant to agree, although it would certainly put me in quarters with Lacie, so I authoritatively expostulated, “Not to be presumptuous, Finley: Might I interject with the proposal to move the third level unit to the roof?” This was my vicarious way of prolonging their descent through the stairwell. It had been furthermore off limits from exhibition because of the leaking, but I had assessed the vigor of our caravan and thought it could be of mutual benefit. Prigging as former sole proprietor and professional expert, I was as certain that I could use their incoherent disassembly and inferior strength as a dilatory advantage.
Naturally, I intended to bail on their efforts to fortify the position of the hotel. First, I would procure their safety on the roof, then I would descend to the bottom level, hopefully before the zombies’ arrival. Once on the rooftop, though, I looked at Lacie and felt the despicable ping of regret. Incredulously, I withheld our intimacy, and told them I would want to check on the people downstairs. Despite their incessant insistence that I stay with their group as they planned, I traversed back to the ladder which we had portentously ascended. Then, I heard the others’ shouting. The zombies had come into their vision, and I knew that I would have to act quickly.
Swiftly, I ran down the steps to the second floor and alerted them of the zombies’ coming. Then, down to the lobby, where at the threshold of the front door, the entire group waited like sitting ducks. I took aside Douglas Callahan, sensing not only his paternal instinct would make him an easy target, but also anticipating that his son would remain overconfident. The rumblings of the group upstairs began to become frantic, and thumping of the floorboards was soon accompanied with gunfire. This increased the effect of the panic. I told Callahan that we should take the rear of the building and looked to Bradley and Chester to stay with Nolan, whose physical condition was still worsening, as mine was growing stronger.
Tumultuously, the sound of breaking glass from the back entrance burst the gravity of our departure from the larger group. We began to run toward the back of the hotel with our guns. Shepherding the men was inexplicable, though, and soon Chester was following us. This was a formidable chance for me, anyway, so as soon as we exited the lobby, I made my play. I was able to gain the upper hand in an extreme upsetting of this character which I had portrayed to them. In the hallway before the doorway to the undead’s rising tide of invariably murderous evil, I was successfully able to shoot Douglas in the back of his head during the furious fray. Then, without a word, Chester fell to the next bullet in my chamber, with an exploded chest from the round of my Marlin. The zombies were loudly swarming in, and I estimated at least two hundred undead villains were getting ready to poach on my sacred prey.
Back with Bradley and Nolan, Roberto came rushing in from upstairs. He had deceivingly followed me during the imperceptible craze. His vigilance was no deterrent to my newfound powers which were immense and magnified during this feeding frenzy. Only with their force’s possession would I be able to relinquish the inexhaustible army which gathered at the gate. Even at the whim of insanity it had become the most important condition of my existence to survive, indefinitely.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Calling
Saturation of Yr and human blood was far from effete in my physical prowess and martial artistry, evidentially. The experience was redolent of my first kill which I had been disinclined to reenact. The sight of Roberto as he left the lobby in route to disturb my masterminded massacre, though, caused the irrepressible concoction to bestir my emotions into a forthright extravaganza of shocking violence. I raised my alert and I attacked with a punitively dealt aggression and extreme hostility. Roberto was brought to his knees and beaten during the onslaught where I dominated him, and then in a tantrum of raging angst I bit into his tender neck while the marauding zombies swarmed us. My monstrous thirst was becoming sufficiently satisfied.
Then, slathered in blood, I continued back to the lobby in the middle of a swarm of undead zombies. It seemed hopeless to join the team on the second level, but I saw that the zombies had already gotten Nolan while the other two had escaped. But with one blow with my shoulder, I charged down the door to the stairwell. The second floor was locked, but the third floor was not, so I entered and locked the door behind me before any of the undead could break in with me. I heard the group’s screaming from below, so I crossed the hall to the other stairwell, and entered it to ascend to the rooftop.
Once there, I officiated the removal of the ladder from the escape route. It let everyone feel safer, to not risk being pursued. I was obdurate to any extraneous suspicion in the story I relayed of my assistance with Nolan to which extent his life was lost. After taking tally of the remaining survivors, I saw that Ruby-Mae and Mary-Ella had corroborated to find Fiona and Bonnie, downstairs. Erstwhile, everyone else who remained on the roof were fortified with provisions and armed to the teeth within capacity. They were grouped to one end of the roof which had not collapsed, yet if I made an assault on them, they would interminably kill me. Nonetheless, my innocent courage was astounding to the audience.
As we let back down the ladder, I landed on the 9th floor. I knew they were on the second level, so I walked down the stairwell and let the innumerable zombies up through the rest of the stairwell on the other side. Then, I quickly ran up and began banging on the door which was still locked. Finally, Ruby-Mae was summoned and opened the door, and I was allowed to enter. In the interim, Bonnie had become despondent and hysteric and had locked herself and the child in one of the hotel rooms. Once again, kicking down the locked door proved to be the easiest solution to getting into the room, so I thrust my boot against it and it was rammed down. However, the rush of adrenaline caused me to become enraged, again. I killed the two of the meek survivors, as they sat in tranquility on the hotel bed, with two remorseless shots from my rifle. While I started savagely sucking their blood in ecstasy, Mary-Ella became paralyzed with fear. Ruby-Mae tried frantically to prevent her from succumbing to my frightful and grotesque terror by shaking her; to no avail.
Now there was no more use for garrulous excuses, and I had to make a permanent decision. I decided to burn down the hotel for the finale of this indiscernibly vulgar and fantastic holocaust.
Although I was a scalawag, my captaincy was correspondingly as unscrupulous as plebeian and as benedictive in plaintiveness for my romantic indulgence to such extraordinariness that I was truly discombobulated. I had very few resources for gasoline storage or pneumatic propane, but they were all at my parent’s house, across town. When I arrived there, I fell asleep on the settee and dreamed suggestively of Lacie, and of a fantasy I had never imagined possible. I was flying through the night, like a bat, following her through a majestic garden maze.
CHAPTER NINE
The Cross
This all happened before August started. I’m glad that I’ve had these experiences, and am thankful. This Halloween, I plan on harvesting the pumpkins that I planted in the hotel’s rubble. The new house is wonderful.
THE REIGN GODS
If you look around with a look around, you might look around and get to looking round
But what was that sound when you’re lying down, you might get found like upside-down
Other wise, the Other guys from other times where their souls had always still survived
Saw how and why, what where and when, then here and now, more than way behind
You call them refugees unordinarily unless you wanted everybody to be all the same
Not orderly or janitorial like oceans floating overly with ordinances for clones and war games
All alone Superior Man flew straight to the end of the universe and saw Khronos grinning
Others had brought him from off such judgments and acquitted guilt of eternal sinning
But little big Mantis grew to the size of a rocket pulled out the pocket of Khronos socket
The Dragon of Death grew wide inside and chewed and swallowed the big critter’s noggin
Superior Man bounced off Khronos nose bridge and missed by mortal inches a mission accomplished
But through escapades of Etherrealm’s divine promise burst Crooked Dead Man’s lost revolver
Shot through Khronos’s other eye ball and ended the infinite saga of illogical sonnets
THE END