The Honesty of Pigs and Heroes

The kid’s hands were shaking, and not from the icy wind knifing through the reception. Oscar couldn’t be bothered with it at the moment. He was completely focused on sipping his bourbon in a way that didn’t look like he was trying to get drunk.

“Oh God,” Liam muttered, head in hands, legs jittering on the balls of his feet. “Oh God, oh God.”

Oscar looked around. The reception was going smoothly. But whoever’d decided to hold it on the roof at night during a Michigan autumn was a total nitwit. Damn near freezing outside. Good thing the open bar was stocked with Old Crow. Get that furnace in the belly going. Drink yourself a jacket, as Mary used to say.

The entire board– even the chairman– had come, if only to shamelessly establish a camp near the open bar. The CEO/President over by the stage chatting up a buxom brunette intern and a smiley silver-haired lookalike of the father from Leave it to Beaver. The Director of Marketing/Communications attacking the buffet’s fried chicken like myocardial infarctions weren’t real. The Accounting Associate stalking the waiter with the crabcakes around the crowd and polishing off his platter hors d’oeuvre by hors d’oeuvre. The perfect picture of what you expected office suits to be like when they weren’t on the clock.

All of them except for Liam, of course.

But no one knew that except Oscar. They were all too busy delighting in the freedom of shedding their professional masks while still at their nine-to-five. That, and Oscar had taken Liam to a table at the back of the reception. Over near the door to the fire exit. Not too far back to look suspicious, but far enough to be out of earshot.

“Oh God,” Liam echoed.

“Get it all out, son.” Oscar gave his bourbon a look, then tossed the rest of it back. Old Crow made his veins sing with fire just the way he liked.  No one was watching anyway. And if they were, it wouldn’t matter for long.

No, soon there be more to worry about than big-titted interns and crabcakes. And not just for the hard-working folk of A&M Assets here tonight. For all the sinners-turned-saints of Bluefield, Michigan. The emblem of such human rot and mold that America chose to forget it even existed.

Oscar Wilkes crushed a bourbon-laced ice cube between his teeth. He turned his attention back to Liam.

Liam was an Administrative Assistant working under some nameless balding blimp in Internal Affairs. Last name Medelson. Markson. Something like that. He’d barely had anything to do with the kid until tonight. Twenty-seven, hair a shock of ink, moon-faced, high cheekbones. Firm handshake. Looked you in the eye when he spoke to you. Oscar liked that. Even the splash of maroon under the boy’s jaw.

That splash of maroon. Whatever the boy had to tell him about it could change Oscar’s opinion of him. And if it did, things wouldn’t end well for Liam. It would be a shame, if things worked out like that. Oscar was feeling generous.

Generous. Oscar. On tonight of all nights.

Looked like the universe had a sense of humor after all.

Liam started rocking back and forth. That was the cue. Let the boy go any further and he’d start to fall apart at the seams. So Oscar leaned forward and shook his shoulder, hard.

“That’s enough, boy.”

Liam yelped and stared at him as if he’d forgotten Oscar was there.

Oscar pointed to the smiley Leave it to Beaver doppelganger. “Tell me who that man is.”

The boy’s breath came quick, shallow and heaving. Drenched in sweat, face void of all color. He looked back and forth between Oscar and the smiley silver-haired suit. “S… Senator McAdley.”

“And why is Senator McAdley on the roof of a financial services firm when it’s colder than a witch’s tit out?” He was actually feeling a little warmer now. Had drunk himself a fine and cozy bourbon jacket.

Liam gulped. “Campaigning. Mr. Wilkes, sir, I don’t–”

“What significance does this factory hold for Senator McAdley?”

Liam blinked. “I… this is a swing state?”

How to put it to a kid who only knew the city of Bluefield as the shining example of economic recovery it was now? Who hadn’t known it during its years as a cesspool of the human condition? The boy was too young to remember the war against the Axis Powers. Not Oscar. He’d been there as a kid to watch Bluefield’s automotive factories turn tanks and airplanes and battleships off their production lines for the war effort, riding the booming war economy all the way to the top.

Oscar had read a Variety magazine article in 1943 calling Bluefield “the hottest town in America.” A novelist named Erskine Caldwell had called it “the Wonder City of America.” There had been a New York Times article hailing Bluefield as “a miraculous city, a city forging thunderbolts” soon after America entered the war. There was even a rumor that Stalin himself confided to Roosevelt that “Bluefield was winning the war” only three months before the Krauts brought out the white flag.

Then the war ended and no one needed weapons any more. Bluefield crashed back to earth and shattered into a million ugly little pieces that no one in America wanted to stomach. So the city that ended the Second World War was left to marinate in the juices of its own despair and failed economy.

And it turned nasty.

Crime rates exploded. Women stopped going out at night. Murder became an everyday occurrence. More and more people were kicked out of their homes onto the streets.

What could be done?

You played the part of the people’s hero, you could only stick around for as long as there were villains to catch. Soon as the job was done and the cell door slammed shut on that last no-do-gooder, you became old and useless. Dead weight. The people held a rally for you. The mayor handed you the key to the city. Maybe some anonymous pair of breasts kissed you on the cheek. And then they left you to the crows and worms.

Oscar watched Bluefield fester for three decades before it began to see any vestige of light. But it would never again be what the war had made it. Never, that was, if not for a certain entrepreneur by the name of Richard McAdley. McAdley saw Bluefield’s stubbornly recovering economy as an investment opportunity. So he and three partners from the good old boy’s network took a risk and put up an asset management firm in one of the abandoned car factories.

Now, fifteen years later saw Bluefield not only recovering but with the promise of thriving. Crime dropped. Average household income rose. Every now and then a small business popped up like the occasional mushroom. Less people sleeping under newspapers. The success of A&M Assets promised to redefine Bluefield as a city. Hell, at the rate the city was recovering, it would potentially turn into its own hub of Americana in fifty or sixty years. A budding Boston of the Midwest.

The old and useless hero would become revitalized. Cast off its tennis-balled walker and find other villains to lock in the slammer. This time around, the sky was the limit.

But there was one thing people couldn’t stand more than watching a hero who’d outlived his use. And that was watching a hero full of promise fall to ruin.

How to relay all that to a kid?

“It’s an opportunity,” Oscar ended up saying. “There’s press here. In about an hour, our Senator will take the mic and remind everyone how hopeless the city used to be. How his company changed it. If he could save a city with a couple million dollars and a land grant, why, imagine what he could do for a country with the Oval Office.”

“Mr. Wilkes,” Liam said in a whisper, tears in his eyes. “Her body is still in there.”

Kids were so impatient these days.

Oscar leaned in, pulled Liam toward him, and whispered, “There’s no crueler hell on this Earth than being given hope, boy, only to have it taken away right before your eyes.”

Oscar looked around the reception before his eyes rested on Liam like deadly little bumblebees.

“The doctors told me it went into remission. They said my Mary would be okay.”

“Mr. Wilkes,” Liam pleaded through clenched teeth.

Oscar chuckled. “Terrifying, isn’t it? When you find out the things you’re capable of.”

“Mr. Wilkes.”

Now Liam looked around the reception, as if searching for someone besides Oscar to ask for help.

“Calm down, son. I don’t think you’ll receive as warm a reception from anyone else here.”

Liam whirled around. “Then stop yammering and being so fucking calm about it,” he snarled. Eyes wide, cheeks burning. This was not the timid young man Oscar was speaking with only moments ago. Something other than Liam Medelson (Markson?) sat before Oscar. Something else that had taken over.

Oscar raised his eyebrows and a furious moment passed between the two. Then Liam blinked. He raised a hand to his temple and sat back.

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“Quite all right.”  Firm handshake. Looked you in the eyes. And a healthy temper to boot. Oscar repressed a smile.

“I get these headaches. Migraines. All day there’s this whining in my head. Like microphone feedback. Usually stays quiet, but when it gets loud, it… ordinary lights and sounds turn into razor blades. I can’t think.”

“And that’s what happened in the broom closet with Miss England.”

Liam frowned and started picking at the plastic tablecloth.

“It’s never happened to me during… well, during. One moment it was nice. The next I couldn’t stand her. Her smell. Her voice. Especially her touching me. I couldn’t stand it. Any of it. So I shoved her away. She fell against the shelves and some bottles fell off and hit her. She started yelling and crying. That… that just made it worse.”

“So why tell me?” The furnace in his belly was dying. He’d need to stoke the embers and throw on another log soon.

Liam flushed. “I was there when the Shirokawa deal fell through.”

“You mean the crowd that gathered outside my door.”

“People from other floors came to watch, sir. When I got there you were shotputting your pioneer globe out the window.”

“Always liked that globe.”

“As I recall, it only took you ten minutes to finish off your office.”

“So you came to me because…”

“Because… well, because it was clear from the look on your face that you wanted to do to the Shirokawa rep on the phone what you were doing to your office.”

Oscar studied the boy in silence. Only the buzz of the reception in the background.

“I think I might have eaten some of her,” Liam said quietly. He looked at the floor, hands clasped between his knees like a schoolboy coming clean to teacher. The juxtaposition was so ridiculous Oscar had to fight himself not to laugh.

“What did she taste like?”

Liam looked up to see if he was poking fun at him. He relaxed when he saw the serious look on Oscar’s face. Still looked ashamed, though.

“A bit like pork. Raw pork.”

That did it. Oscar leaned back and exploded.

“Pork!” he howled, stomping the ground. “Oh, pork!”

A few people nearby at the buffet table turned to look but Oscar was shaking too hard to notice, slapping his knee.

“Just– just like pigs. We… pork!”

Liam eyed the people watching them. He broke into an awkward and apologetic smile. After close to a minute, Oscar finally calmed down.

“Oh god,” he said, fanning himself. “Pigs. Perfect. Too perfect.”

Liam looked at Oscar like he was a concentration camp. “How can you laugh at that?”

Oscar glanced at his glass and rattled the ice in it. “A favor, son. My knee’s been acting up. Tell the bartender to fill this to the top with Old Crow. No ice. It’s a meat locker out here.”

Liam got up and was back a moment later. He handed the bourbon to Oscar. Gingerly. For the first time, he looked scared of the man. Oscar looked at him over the top of his glass as he drained a quarter of it.

“You look like I’m going to sink my teeth into your eye,” Oscar said after swallowing. A second later the Old Crow hit the glowing coals of his stomach and brought them roaring to life again. His vision felt sharper. His ears more acute. It even blunted the knife of the freezing night air.

“You laughed. Sir.”

Oscar leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. Liam straightened in his chair, as if receding against the seat back. Oscar didn’t show that he noticed.

“There’s something in this world that I hate above all other things. Do you have an idea what that is, son?”

“Sir, I hesitate to ask.”

“Non-profit organizations.”

Liam blinked.

“Non-profits,” Oscar went on, sloshing the drink around his glass, “are operated by the most dishonest people on this planet. Everything they do is a lie.”

“Feeding the hungry?”

Oscar flapped his hand. “Clothing the poor. Sending relief to Africa. Researching cancer. You name it. They’re all liars.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Think about it. Do you believe for a second that they would help the needy if it didn’t give them the warm fuzzies? No sense of having done something right? If the only thing they came away with was the impersonal knowledge– nothing more– that they had helped someone in need, and that fact affected them as much as buying a pack of pencils.”

“But that’s not how it is. Helping the less fortunate feels good. It’s the right thing to do.”

“No, son. It feels good because after you take that bum to a McDonald’s and buy him a Happy Meal, you can walk out the door and down the street. Past everyone else who didn’t do anything and think what a special little snowflake you are. That’s not empathy. That’s self-righteousness.”

Oscar sat up and took to the glass again. When he lowered it, it was less than half full. His belly had turned into a volcano. His blood molten rock, forking off through his body like veins of magma. He felt he could crumble the roof they sat on with a single stomp if he wanted to.

“Altruism is nothing but another drug. Except this one is free and easy to find and not just legal but encouraged. It’s a feel-good drug and everyone’s an addict. Dealers, too.”

“That’s not true, sir. There are lots of stories about complete strangers running into burning buildings to save babies, or jumping off the pier to save someone’s dog. Soldiers risking their lives to protect their friends in combat.”

“Nothing new. A junkie will do anything to get his fix.”

“Sir, I didn’t have to come to you. But I did. Not for some chemical high. I did something wrong. It needs to be righted. I…” Liam broke off as if only then realizing what he was saying. “I need to be stopped.”

Oscar shook his head and rose from the chair, motioning for Liam to do the same. He led the boy over to the ledge of the roof, next to the empty stage where the Senator would soon deliver his flowery speech. Bluefield sprawled out far below them like Christmas lights in an oil spill. A light breeze stirred around them. Liam shivered. Oscar, full of bourbon, only frowned in discomfort.

“Why do you think we’re high up on the roof at night instead of in some heated conference room downstairs?” Oscar asked.

Liam shrugged. “Symbolism.”

“That’s part of it. Notice how the stage is on the side of the roof facing the hills and woods. Nothing to see over there. All the reception has to do to look out over Bluefield is turn their heads.”

“So the Senator can show off.”

Sharp as a tack, this kid. This night just might end well for him after all.

“McAdley scooped this city from the gutters and taught it to walk again.” Oscar buried his free hand in his pocket, hiding it from the chill. “He’s got the experience. A clear game plan. He’s the right man to win the election.”

“So you’re voting for him, then.”

Oscar gave Liam an appalled look. “He’s in politics.”

“Then why are we here, sir?”

Oscar didn’t answer right away. He sipped his bourbon. He shifted his feet. The magma had reached his brain and he had a pleasant buzz going. He’d always been a strong drinker, the strongest he knew. Mary had been the only one to ever outdrink him, God rest her soul. But Mary wasn’t here anymore. That made Oscar the undisputed strongest. A lonely king.

No one could hold a candle to him.

“Always wondered what it would be like to rob a bank,” Oscar said. A breeze knifed across his face, the bourbon high in his cheeks. He didn’t so much as flinch, but instead looked sidelong at Liam. “You know, kick the doors open, fire a Beretta into the ceiling, the whole everyone-on-the-floor thing. Maybe a security guard tries to be a hero. Maybe that’s the day I kill a man.” He took another sip. “I’ve wondered what that’s like, too.”

“Nothing good,” Liam said immediately. He wrapped his arms around himself, though there was no breeze, and glanced behind him at the reception. “I don’t want to walk by any mirrors. I’m afraid of what I might see.”

“Oh come off it, kid. You act like killing an overpaid secretary’s the worst thing in the world. We’ve been killing overpaid secretaries for thousands of years.”

“Sir, I ate–”

“Right, right. And I fantasize about what it’d be like to rob a bank and kill a man. Everyone does. Of course it’s one of those thing you never want to admit to yourself. We’re all secret homicidal maniacs, but no one will admit it. Look, a century ago it was inappropriate to show any sign of sexuality in public. Now, dance clubs and pop music are just the foreplay to foreplay. Strip clubs, prostitutes, miniskirts, red light districts, breast implants, Viagra. Child beauty pageants, for God’s sake. And gluttony. A hundred years ago it was unsightly to be caught overeating. Now we’ve got Super Size meals and an obesity epidemic. And today our teenagers simulate mass murder for entertainment. It’s all part of the process, son. Christ, how many terrorist attacks and university shootings happened just in the last decade?

“What process?”

“The process of stripping us all down to our bare bones,” said Oscar, punctuating the last two words by prodding the ledge. “Our most basic desires. Eat, fuck, kill or be killed. We’re already two for three. And we’re right in the middle of the third. We’ve tried to cover them up. Pretend like we’re something more than that.  But in the end we gave in. Just like we’re giving in now. Did you know there are kids broadcasting themselves committing suicide on internet chat rooms where the people watching just egg them on?”

Liam started to look a little impatient. “Sir, that’s an overly simplified way of putting it. What about art? Movies? Books? You’re making people out to be too simple.”

“It’s not. When it’s become part of the very fabric of the day-to-day, it’s not. Why do you think those shoot-em-and-beat-em-up video games have gotten so popular?”

Liam gulped. “But I killed someone. I ate her arm. If you don’t stop me, sir, I sure won’t.”

“Son, I could throw off this roof right now if I wanted to.” Liam recoiled and Oscar went on. “The only thing keeping me from doing that is my sense of right and wrong. And even that’s just a self-serving joke. Despite being raised to believe that it’s wrong to kill and steal, we still wonder what it would be like. Hell, we even try to bend the rules by doing it in simulation. What does that say about us?”

Neither of them spoke then. Oscar standing in the wind, sipping Old Crow and taking in Bluefield. Liam next to him, his face a telling blank. So blank Oscar could almost hear the gears in the kid’s head hard at work.

After a couple minutes, Liam spoke up. “But when the Shirokawa deal fell through–”

“The deal never fell through.”

“What?”

“The Shirokawa deal went ahead without a hitch.” He looked over at Liam. “That’s why I went postal.”

“I don’t understand.”

Oscar swirled the remaining bourbon in his glass. “Do you know what a Ponzi scheme is, boy?”

Liam looked at Oscar incredulously. “Yes, but that’s–”

“Shirokawa had full knowledge of it. Must’ve come across it when they were going over our returns and investors. McAdley is in some deep shit. They could’ve stuck our head on a pike. Could’ve reported us, saved a lot of people billions of dollars. Instead they wanted in.”

“I thought you said McAdley was the man to lead the country.”

“Doesn’t mean he’s a moral one.”

“So, A&M. A&M in a Ponzi scheme.”

“Not so loud. But yes.”

“And that’s why you destroyed your office.”

“Not exactly. Shirokawa founded the Katsuya Dreams Foundation.”

“The one that does all the cancer research.”

“Always liked Shirokawa for that. Until they made the deal with A&M. Used to really like them.”

“Is that because your wife…”

Oscar didn’t answer.

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“Nothing to be sorry for. Actually, today’s the one-year anniversary.” Oscar raised his glass to the nothingness out over Bluefield and killed the rest of it.

“So the same people who fund cancer research can also steal millions of dollars from others.”

“Just about.”

“Then how do you know who’s being honest and who’s not?”

Oscar cleared his throat. “Got something under your chin there, son.”

Liam rubbed under his jaw. His fingers came away dark red.

“Should probably go wash that off,” Oscar said.

Liam rubbed the liquid between his fingers, watching them.

“No,” he said slowly. “No, I think it’s okay.”

Oscar glanced at him and allowed the ghost of a smile. Then he tossed the empty glass over the ledge. He leaned over the edge to watch it fall.

Slowly, as if divulging a great secret, he asked, “What do you think would happen to this city if this company disappeared?”

The one thing people couldn’t stand more than watching a hero past its prime waiting around to die was watching a hero in its prime fall to ruin. Like a young man waylaid from a promising career by a migraine-fueled temper. Or the vice-president of an investment firm crippled by the death of his wife. Or a city that ended a war, once upon a time, dying and then being reborn.

And then dying again.

End over end, the glass tumbled like a dead comet until it struck the parking lot asphalt and exploded into a million dangerous little pieces.

Looking down at the corpse of the glass, Oscar spoke to Liam. “You know, I left my phone in my car. Need to make a call but my knee is acting up. Mind running down and getting it for me?”

Before Liam could answer, Oscar shoved his keys into the boy’s hands and patted him on the back.

“Thanks, son.”

Without another word, Oscar turned to wade through the crowd over to the open bar, leaving Liam standing there bewildered. The boy shrugged and headed for the fire escape.

Oscar sat at a table by himself. He was working on another glass of Old Crow. His bloodstream all magma now. You could cook an egg on his forehead.

He took his phone out of his pocket and checked the time. Liam had been gone about ten minutes. About five to find the elevator, ride it down, and leave the building. Another five to find Oscar’s car in the parking lot. Several more to look for his phone before he realized it wasn’t there.

Plenty of time before the fireworks began.

Oscar brought the glass to his lips. It didn’t even taste like bourbon anymore. More like water. He was, almost literally, entirely lit up. He couldn’t even feel the night chill anymore.

Oscar thought about Mary. The doctors saying she was going into remission. The doctors saying she was falling out of remission. The funeral.

Liam. The boy was honest. He’d come seeking punishment. If everyone tasted like pigs, the he was the most honest one. Probably the only one who didn’t deserve to be locked one. Aside from Mary.

Oscar thought about Bluefield in the years after the war. The country abandoning it. The shithole it turned into. McAdley arriving with A&M like a knight in shining armor and giving Bluefield a future to hope for again. The promise of rescuing them all from the hell of themselves.

But the cruelest hell on this earth? Well, that was to be given hope only to have it taken away.

A dull and massive thud that rocked the whole building. Sounded like it came from way down below, near the ground floor. The chatter of the reception stopped.

Another dull thud. This one much closer. Much higher up the building. Closer to the roof. The building shook so hard that several people fell to the floor.

Then another. Almost right beneath them. The fire jumped so far out the windows that Oscar could see it lick the empty night air beneath the ledge from where he sat. People screamed, dropped to the floor. The building spasmed and was still.

For a moment, there was only silence. The deafening kind that filled your ears, pregnant with anticipation. The kind that always comes right before something very loud or very bad happens. The Senator’s security were piled on top of him like blankets. Nobody moved. No one spoke. There was only the rising whisper of the night breeze. The clink of the ice in Oscar’s glass as he swirled it around.

Pork.

Oscar chuckled. Most of the reception stared at him, disbelieving.

And then the roof began to crumble.

Big chunks of the floor dropped out from underneath people. A slab carrying the CEO was the first to go. Then one containing the open bar. People screaming as they vanished, concrete dust choking the air. The stage sank down on one side, shuddered, then disappeared.

Oscar tipped his head back and finished the bourbon.

Everyone wanted to make an impact on the world. Cure cancer, end the Mid-East conflict, solve world hunger. Whatever. It was all bullshit. People didn’t really want to change the world. They wanted to be remembered. They were afraid of dying with a boring tombstone. Of their ashes being swept into the great dustbin of history where all the non-Einsteins, the non-Lincolns, the non-Hitlers went. Changing the world was just a vehicle for immortality, and that’s what they all really wanted. To carve their own initials into the tree trunk of life and let everyone know they had been there. That they were worth remembering.

Cracks and fissures spider-webbed out underneath Oscar’s table.

The Senator was gone. Probably dead already. Oscar hadn’t been watching him. Ironic. These days a politician couldn’t rub one out in a bathroom stall without the world finding out. Everyone was always watching. Well, they’d see this. Everyone. And they’d watch Bluefield fall to rot in the coming months. Watch the city’s people, even now sleeping in their beds, turn into goblins. Each of them evidence of the perseverance of the human spirit tonight; murderers and rapists and burglars and drug dealers and addicts and whores in less than a year. The world would watch the transition. It would shake its head, cluck its tongue. But just like the bum that sat on the street holding out a tin can with only a pathetic few coins in it, the world wouldn’t bother to help. The potential warm fuzzies to be had were great, oh sure, but who wanted to mire themselves in the mess that Bluefield would become, a reminder of the ugliness that sits inside all of us like a tumor?  The world would instead convince itself that it was different, that the people who lived in Bluefield simply had bad blood.

And then it would go to bed, and shut off the light, and lay awake in bed wondering exactly how it was any different.

The one thing people couldn’t stand more than watching a hero past its prime waiting around to die was watching a hero in its prime fall to ruin. Because if a promising hero could have a goblin lurking inside him all that time, well… what did that mean for the general citizenry? The less-than-heroes?

The roof under Oscar began to fall away and he fell sideways out of his chair. A slab of concrete crushed his leg against another one into ground hamburger. Just as he expected, he was so drunk he hardly felt it.

Pork.

Oscar couldn’t help but laugh, laugh, laugh all the way down into an oblivion of fire and stone.

And really, he thought as a continent of concrete plummeted towards him, really, what better place to carve your initials– to let people know you had been here, been around, seen things, man– than in the very cogs and gears of their own minds?

The post The Honesty of Pigs and Heroes appeared first on Fictionade Magazine.

It was not uncommon to hear the stories of lost spaceships, castoff and adrift from their original missions, their crews in stosa-doze in the chambers of the hibernaculum. Sometimes permanently asleep, for all time.

Giuseppe had never met a person woken from a period of astral slumber that lasted longer than a year. Past tales gave him some idea what to expect.

They failed in every way today.

When he walked into the medical chambers of the Chartres, an aluminum-blue robotix-man greeted him. Squeak and Squawk? The thing had a name, one of two on the spaceship. Thank Brigda and her backward technology, that the robot designers had designed it to be smaller than him. Even when used to a human world, and all its towering inventions, Minors cowered even at the mention of the giant robots of old.

The dumb-puter commanded robotix-man away rolled on three wheels, and Giuseppe wished (oh, for the moderns of old!) that the designers would have made it slower. He struggled to keep up. Left behind much too quickly, he was left alone in the pinkly-lit corridors. For a second he stopped, seeing the last tell-tale swing of the medical drapes. He smelled limon-wax disinfectant of the marbellium floors, he heard nothing stir, nothing peep.

The drapes separated at his touch as he walked into the clinic, feeling the warmth of the heat lamps. It was neither too hot nor too cold. Just right – and maybe the appropriate temperature for a traveler woken up from a 76 year sleep.

Three examination tables were separated by equal distance, the bay-walls decked with hard-copied x-rays, life-meter charts, and some strange algebraic language written on chalkboards. He saw a few statics of a stranger face on graphic-monitors, suspended from the ceiling on long-swiveled arms.

And the woman found adrift in outer space?

Juta was alone in the room. The cheery demeanor of the Lieutenant Chaplain had fallen away to a pensive look on her long face and narrow eyes. She looked sharper – sharpened somehow, by an imminent moment of revelation.

A figure sat on the central examination table with their back to Giuseppe and a blanket draped over them. Immersed and shielded from the worst, maybe. The figure sat hunched over. Upon Giuseppe’s entrance, cued by Juta’s silent greeting, the figure turned slowly around…

Juta broke in.

-Giuseppe, I want you to meet our guest. She’s had a very long…journey…-

That day Giuseppe met the young woman who went by the name she could remember.

Curse.

***

Curse could not remember anything about her trip, not why she had been on the spaceship, and really, all those other points worth filling up a person’s life, anyone’s life, really. When she stopped her demand about news from the Earth, she proved flexible, and started to complain about the chill. That permanent cold of outer space – she had failed to shrug off.

Giuseppe tried to ignore her, but failing that, he was forced to respond. He had tried to re-read the letter later for a clue to the woman’s identity, or why Juta had dumped this responsibility on him. Failing that, again, he tried to supply an answer.

-It’s cold because you’ve been asleep for…-

Curse swung the long gray hair out of her eyes. Very brown eyes. And that…face…

-Sleepingfor76yearsfreaksmeout!…I need to know what’s been going on?!…-

Her face really freaked him out. He was not alone. Everyone on the slingshot shuttle recoiled.

Curse lapsed into quiet for a few minutes, a record since their meeting. Then…

-I have this terrible taste in my mouth.-

Giuseppe wished he could read letter. One. More. Time.

-Again, these are the effects…-

-It tastes like dick.-

People seated around them turned to look. Giuseppe realized Curse had an amazing ability to shrug whenever she explained herself.

-At least I remember what dick tastes like.-

An improvement, Giuseppe did not really know. He went back to the letter Juta had given him. Trying – trying! – to make sense of this.

Curse began to spit.

***

Giuseppe tried again. Why he now flew on a slingshot shuttle, betwixt and between the asteroid and debris fields on Jupiter’s outer margins, must have had something – something! – to do with the strange woman at his side. Curse. She, who had managed to unnerve the other seated passengers, until no one sat next to her and Giuseppe.

He re-read the letter. It was handwritten. He read the letter. Four sentences.

It is very important that we leave Curse with you, loyal Overseer. Please take care of her. More news to follow. Thank you Giuseppe.

Cometta

That made no sense, no matter how many times he read it. As if reading it one more time would reveal the hidden message, he tried again.

Curse began to gag.

-…ugh…I can’t breathe…I can’t…ugh, guh…I can’t…-

Giuseppe threw the blanket off her head. She had worn it, not for the cold – for her complaints had finally met ears not deaf to her shrill demands, as the precious heat of from the shuttle’s vector-engines was now diverted into the passenger hold. No, she wore the blanket to cover her face, to save her from the reactions of the other passengers.

Curse looked like a shriveled up fruit. Pink and wet, not really dry, but wrinkled. Two brown eyes poked out of a face that had an overgrown shock of hair. Gray hair. Tussled and bunched up. Upon waking her, Juta had considered a quick shave of her head. But Curse had insisted they leave the tangled mass of hair on her head. And so it stayed. To scare the living.

-I look like a fucking grapefruit.-

Giuseppe agreed, fearful to tell her what she really looked like, as if popped out, into the world as a fully formed elderly woman, but babyish in her features.

Once the blanket was off Curse could begin to breathe. Then, she began to cry.

Giuseppe liked it better when she gagged.

***

Disembarkation for the crew of the Chartres had occurred at the closest transport node of the Lagrangian sling-shot shuttles. The Naxos group, a collection of space rubble, primordial ice and rocks barely worth the name of worldlets, composed the gravitational midpoint. The area stewed with traffic of local commercialists, with a thrust-barge parked just beyond the gravity well. The arrival of the Chartres, flagship of the Europan Matriarchate, must have stood as the news of the day.

While the rest of the crew – Minors all – had raced to pack and catch the first shuttle launch, Juta walked Giuseppe to the debarkation bay. It was a private one. Without a doubt, she intentionally sought privacy.

-Not only do we know nothing about her, but she can never know – at least not now – what has happened to the Earth. The shock…would be much too great.-

-Might she already know?-

Juta had grown silent with this question, her long form casting a deep reservation of thought. The mood of their farewell stood in that shadow. She would do this quite often during their last conversation.

-Is she a refugee?-

He remembered how the question had taken Juta aback.

-I never thought of that, but yes, more than likely, it would be wise to think of her like that. And appropriate. Someone fleeing…something…-

Her words had drifted off as they reached the big doors with the seal of the Matriarchate. The Labyrinth. On the other side lurked an airlock and a rocket zipline to take him away. Hurriedly and in secret. Juta meant for him to take her, and no one must know.

-Then she is truly a refugee, of the late, great Earth…-

***

Curse rolled in her buckie-seat, in the throes of a nightmare. Juta had warned Giuseppe about this too. Before the mind and its awakening, the dreaming mind would remember.

Juta had also given him a photograph. It was an old fashioned static. Analog. Real film stock. He had never seen anything quite like it, not even in the collection of a Latitudinarian archive-author. He touched it, ran his fingers on what remained of its glossy surface. The larger composition of the picture did not make sense. It looked like a piece of art, something of the moderns. Abstract and much too personal.    But he could pick out some recognizable details. A street. More streets. Streets on top of each other. On concrete pillars of some kind. Cement. More cement. Dust and cement. Steel. Lots of steel. Automobiles – and one more prominent than the rest. Motion flashes.

The more prominent car reflected gold. Motion careened off its surface. Paint colors of red and white. And there was a word, a name written on the car. Transoxnia.

Giuseppe put the photograph away and fell asleep.

He dreamt of racecars. He had never seen a racecar before. But he understood palindromes. They went forwards in time and backwards in time. Simultaneously. All the time. Time took him over and he slept for the entire rest of the hours it would take to get home to Patroclus.

***

617 Patroclus.

Scattered by the winds of war, chased away from their homes, hounded on the spaceways and the runs between the planets, the settlers of the Trojan and Greek Camps had found the loosely packed regolith and ice of Patroclus a suitable place to build their homes. They did not disturb the wilderness as much as they found the places where they could make a suitable living. Yes, there were changes in the land that forced nature to adjust its own way of seeing itself. But when they looked upon the virginal cometary fields of ice and rock, and described it as parklike, almost set aside for them by some divine creator, they knew that their own laws of ordering the land would also have to recognize the changes the land asked of them. So they too had to change their customs, to deal with the changes in the land, the changes that also changed them.

Colonization also transformed the colonizers.

***

Giuseppe walked slowly out of the trans-tunnel that connected the slingshot shuttle to the transport terminals of Piazzi. He reveled in the air of his home city. Starbrite danced off icy facet overhangs that covered the high ceilings, stars blinked through warmed gases and opaqued shields, wards against the airless cold vacuum; and he was fine.

Colonials walked around the transport terminal. Styles reminded him of things he had not worn in three tours. Almost a quarter of a full jove! He wished to wear the waistcoats, to don the red wooly mitre caps, to buckle his boots and polish his pewter buttons. He wanted to be home again, and until he got out of these…ship uniforms, he was that much further way.

Seeing his family waiting for him at the transport terminal more than made up for his deficiencies in local style.

-Papa-kin!-

Screaming, delirious. Tears, no shortage. Faces smiling and arms, too many to count. Giuseppe’s now-wife and kid-kins mobbed him, the conquering hero. He tried not to cry. Futile.

Then, it ended, and his family stared behind him, at the stranger who had accompanied him off the slingshot shuttle, and who now hung back. Her Earth height was almost triple that of his family—and of everyone in the transport terminal. Luckily her face began to take the look of a person.

Curse stepped forward. She pulled back her shawl. Gray hair spilled down to the middle of her neck. Two dark eyes took in the entire scene. Very slowly.

-Well we’re not in Kansas, anymore….-

***

The De Gan residence. Deep in the warm coddles of Patroclus. Built from an improvised batch of American cement, reinforced with supercooled rods of ice, the De Gan house sat in a fissure like all the other hovels in the phalanstaries. Since the fissure, ancient and worldforming—this was, after all, a world created by gravitational collisions—had been filled with water, then heated for biological supportive conditions, a wellspring of the water flowed up and into the De Gan residence. The open quarters, where the family ate and talked and entertained, had in its center a deep pond. Tied into the engineered ecosystem of the worldlet, the pond provided heat for the house and air for the larger community.

Giuseppe had attached lights to the cement bank that ringed the pond, and they shown through the water, illuminated the open quarters and cast shimmering rivulets of lights upon the American cement walls and billowing curtains supported by beams of panwood. They did not quite reach the center. Instead they left the middle open to the cavernous sky where more hovels of the phalanstary hung from the cliff sides.

The family sat around Curse. None of his eight children, who ranged in age from a quarter of a jove to nearly two full joves, could take their eyes off her. They had plenty of experience with non-Trojans, humans unaffected by Jupiter’s radiation bands, and not locked into the cycle of future generations with shorter growth cycles. But Curse spoke differently. She looked differently. She acted differently. And it had begun to make Giuseppe think that she was not an empress after all. Especially of the Earth! he thought, no matter its lowercased-state. He had imagined she would act like Cometta. Now she was royalty.

Curse still had not recovered her full memory, only bits and pieces that came and went. He watched her like an argus. He noticed her mannerisms and noted their un-ladylike characteristics. She sat on the floor, scrunched up really, her head nearly poked out of the hovel, and kept her legs open. More so, he had caught her on a few occasions try to…pick her nose? No, he must have been mistaken. But why every time she tried to commit the crime, did she look at him, then retreat her hand from her nose, only to replace it with one of her crooked smiles. And that was something else! Her smile, the same smirk in the old timey photograph. She just smirked.

Giuseppe’s kid-kins ooooohhhhhhhedddd and aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhheddd.

I bet she wanted to pick her nose! Giuseppe thought. Go for the gold!

-I don’t remember much about chemistry or history….But I do remember running away from home…and living in a…swamp….-

Oh good, great Brigda, best friends with Julian Buren the Second…good thing! Give my kid-kins bad ideas!

Giuseppe’s now-wife, Thea, got up

-Thank you, Curse…for allowing the children to quiz you all this night. They must go to bed now. Now.-

Whining ensued. They surrendered. The kid-kins hugged their papa-kin. All was right with the world.

-I am very lucky to be here. What a great family you have.-

Giuseppe’s wife took the children to their rooms. Alone, in silence, Giuseppe and Curse remained. She broke the awkward silence first.

-What happened to the mother of your oldest children?-

Giuseppe swung his head around.

-How…do you know…that?-

-The youngest ones look like Thea. The oldest, more like you.-

Giuseppe almost aaahhhheeddd at how obvious this seemed.

-My first wife died a jove and half ago.-

-I am sorry. From what?-

He paused. Pained.

-Women don’t live long out here. Especially in the rottenboroughs of Jovian space. The poorer moons don’t have the energy-reserves to dampen the radiation.-

She seemed to follow his every word.

-Errands into the wilderness have always been the harshest on my fair sex.-

Giuseppe had never thought of this. She had. The words of Juta came back to him. She had warned him that her memory would come back. But first would come her mind.

Silence.

Curse swung around to more fully face Giuseppe. She nearly banged her head doing so.

-Giuseppe. I wish you, or someone, would tell me about the Earth. What news do you have?-

He did not know what to say.

-What…do you remember…-

Great panic came over her face. A waking nightmare, such was her shudder.

-By Lucifer descending…will I never remember?-

She did not blink. Giuseppe tried to meet her gaze, failed to, and blinked. He remembered the first thing she had said upon their arrival in Piazzi.

-You said something, back there…-

She nodded, apparently not quite sure what he meant. He pressed on.

-This…Kansas, you mentioned. Is that where you’re from?-

-…I…it just sounded right…Sometimes I see pictures and remember words that go with them. I mean, when I saw all of you midgets…-

-Excuse me?-

-Oops, sorry. What I mean is all you little people. I saw the square full of your people, and I thought of something, but when I said it…the meaning changed…wow, associations are trippy.-

He grew silent. She waited for him, and he could sense it. He did want to help her. and got up in a hurry. For his side saddle-baggle. He took the old timey photograph out and showed it to her.

She looked at it barely for a second.

-I don’t know what the fuck I’m looking at. Hot wheels?-

-Sshh, please, my children…-

He realized with the sudden drop of her eyes towards the floor that she did, indeed, remember. She looked up. The light in her eyes reflected something far away.

-…Millions died…-

Giuseppe blinked. He did not know what to say. But he did know of holocausts, and he did know that the Earth currently endured the worst of them. What ever landscape of terror she had briefly visited, she departed just as quickly as she had arrived.

-Alright. I am sure you are tired of all this hyper-bull of mine.-

-Hyper-bull?…-

-Right. Hyper-bull.-

-I think you meant to say hy-per-bo-le.-

-Huh? Maybe my Creole has gotten bad. But sure, yeah, that too. Hy-per-bull-ee.-

Giuseppe got up. Enough loonie-tunes.

Curse acted as if she had not heard a single word he said. She seemed focused on some part inside of herself. Or apart from herself? She also was picking at one of the mysterious scabs on her arms. They looked like bite marks. Fang marks.

He left her in silence. But he barely slept through the night.

***

Curse was right.

Women did not live long in the Trojan and Greek Kamps. Not through the cause of their proximity to Jupiter and its deadly bands of radiation, but through their distance from the articulation of power.

The “gammar” challenged this, however. She held a high place in their society, because she had lived so long, and longer than most other women. She was the only power. Knowledge.

She knew when others forgot, did not care or allowed others to lie.

The people of the phalanstaries came to her and spoke about the First Martians. They asked about the settlers of the 42 Light-year Fleet, the Indispensable Builders, and the ones they left behind. When she recalled the blending of the children of migrations, the Asia-astical Clans of Moises, they dreamed. And when she described the day of the first waves of the Great Partition, and its secret shadow – the Secret Declension – they cried.

The gammar lived in a hovel by a creek that gushed hot steam, heated from the nearby source of power in this section of Patroclus. The thick air hung over the hovel like thick blankets of vapor, ready to collapse and fall to the ground. She sat on wooly-wool-wool blankets woven with the thick grasses that lined the creek. A loom stood next to her, and when people came to talk to her, they worked the loom during their audience.

Today Giuseppe brought his family to see the gammar. Since his absence for a quarter of a jove, he needed to reassure the gammar with the integrity of his family unit. They waited in line, and during that time, Giuseppe had attempted to find things to occupy Curse, so she would be absent from their meeting with the gammar.

-No, no, no…that is fine…no thanks…don’t need to…already did…seen it before….-

They arrived at the front of the line to meet the gammar. She sat in a Colonial Acorn Lane Rockingchair. She rocked back and forth, while Thea tended the loom and Giuseppe introduced his children. The gammar squinted as she met them. She was near a hundred years old.

-Who is that behind you, Master De Gan?-

Giuseppe did not look to see who she meant.

-Oh, just more visitors waiting in line, revered gammar.-

-I am old, not stupid. Who is the woman who came with you?!-

Giuseppe was afraid to think about who she meant.

-Hello…wise crone.-

Curse had walked forward and introduced herself.

-Oh…I have waited for you a long time Elishat. Do you mind if I call you that?-

-Oh no, wise crone, I’m honored.-

-It is I who am honored. Do you come from Carthage? What news do you bring us of Rome?-

Brigda, the times are interesting, Giuseppe thought. What are they talking about? Elishat? Carthage? Rome? He looked at Curse. She saw him and winked back.

-Rome? They…they called it…Texas. And Carthage?…Kansas…-

There was that name again. Juta told him to expect moments when Curse started to accept the first fleeting moments of memory. Giuseppe also realized the gammar nodded. She seemed to understand.

-So now you wander.-

-I am afraid so. I wish I could go home.-

-Maybe you can find us another home.-

-Another home?-

-Why yes. Everyone must leave their home.-

***

They left the gammar and went to a party. A party of people who had met the crone for the integrity of their families. The party was in a barn with stainglass windows in the shape of emperor chicklins. Talons and plumage assailed in the mighty courtship rituals of the Trojans.

Cider-esque flowed from a stump of panwood. The menfolk talked about river crops, the increase in teamster dues on the slingshot shuttles, and the new Medicean tax hikes that threatened to cripple profits for the next quarter-session of the present jove. Giuseppe had ingratiated himself with a group of river farmers who had just sent this season’s grassey-pods to the market, and so, celebrated with bongs of cider-esque. They wavered and see-sawed as they spoke to him, impressed by his tales of traveling though the Minors, worldlets most of them had never seen, least of all heard about.

Giuseppe noticed a fellow nearby who looked familiar, and after a second of checking him out, recognized him as one of the salvagites on board the Chartes. Giuseppe walked over to his old crewmember and made himself available.

-Overseer. Here you are, here I am.-

-No, no, I am no longer an Overseer…,- and Giuseppe pointed to his local clothes of pewter and buckles, -…what have you been up to, my old colleague?-

-Screws be loose, forget that biz…,- the salvagite appeared to have had too many of something,… -You are taking care of the woman we found on that ship, aren’t you? How did that happen? The Chaplain made you do it, yeah? Those Matriarchate meta-females. Very persuasive witches.-

So much for the secret…he nodded. The gig was up. Giuseppe briefly feared others in the barn might easedrop. Heavy into their libations, though, his fear proved unfounded.

-Something like that. It has been quite an ordeal, to be perfectly straight up. She is now beginning to get her memories back.-

-Well that must be good then. Maybe she can tell you what happened to her crew.-

-Crew?…-

This was most interesting, Giuseppe thought. He had no idea about the identity of Curse. Yet he was acting as if he was the one who knows something, and I do not. Which is true. What was he talking about?

-Do go on colleague.-

-Well, we found her deep in stosa-sleep. In the hibernaculum. But you know about hibernaculums, right? There never is just one crèche for people to space-sleep in.-

-Usually….-

-Well, in this case, yes. And there she was. Fast asleep. The hibernaculum held her, plus six other empty crèches.-

-That proves nothing.-

The salvagite grew quieter.

-Oh, no, but it does. The crèches looked empty. Like no one had been in them. But we could tell someone had.-

Giuseppe leaned forward. Very interested.

-How could you tell?-

-Because when a ship arrives at its destination the time-codes reset on each crèche in a hibernacalum. But in order to open, they have to match the master time-code..-

Giuseppe had never experienced stosa-sleep. Never wanted to. But he did have a basic idea how they worked. They used time-codes that ran with the master time-code of the onboard dumbputer. When they counted down to zero, the dumbputer master-code checked them for accuracy. If the time-code on the crèche was correct, the master-code would allow it to reset and the crèche would open.

-So did the master-time code match the crèche time-code?-

-We found no master time-code.-

Giuseppe was stumped.

-That is impossible. What about the crèche time-codes?-

-They were reset….but without a master time-code, that means there was another time-code that reset the crèche time-codes.-

-But where was the other master time-code?-

The salvagite looked at him. And looked at him. He waited.

-Not on the ship. That we were sure of sures of. Not on that ship.-

Giuseppe thought long and hard. The cider-esque made it difficult. But he realized the existence of another time-code mattered very little. There was another issue here.

-She’s made mentions of big troubles, of something, at least. A place, maybes. On the Earth. A place…a place she said she wasn’t in anymore – called Kansas.-

The salvagite took a burping pull from his bong of cideresque.

-Sounds like a fairy tale. Doesn’t ring this bell.-

He pointed to his head and walked away.

***

We found her.

Giuseppe reflected on the Chartres’s first contact with the Ariadne, and the word the salvagites soon whispered, thereafter, boarding Curse’s spaceship.

With his family and Curse in tow, Giuseppe brought them to a share-time meadow. Thea took the children to the wading pools and activity courses. Giuseppe made his way to a tent filled with a gathering of talking men. He knew the strong words from the crowd sprang from other sources, and not just from the influence of cider-esque. Or the earthen-baked pies. The tent meeting concerned the greater events of the Solar System, the issues of the day.

As usual, Cato stirred the crowd, a man Giuseppe only knew from events like this. He wore a red mitre cap of liberty. Such were the Trojans, Giuseppe thought. Freedom loving people. They also liked to prove it, usually by yelling long and hard about their cherished principles.

Cato raised his arms to get the attention of the crowd, then lowered them, to bring down their passions.

-Trojans! Lovers of democracy! We are threatened by a race who gave up their right to vote with the Takeover. Who gave up their right to representation from the Great Partition. Who accept the Emperor’s men, and allow their own to be dismissed by Incorporation. These are a people who idly sit by and watch as the invasion prepares to attack our shores. Just look at what they have let happen to their world!-

The crowd shouted yea, yeas. They raised their fists, not so high to spill their bongs of cider-esque, or to require them to put down their plates of pie. But just high enough to challenge tyrants everywhere.

They let the technocentrists boil off the oceans of the Earth!

            To fire the cauldrons of metal and iron, smelted from the destruction of their highest mountains!

            Where the oxygen they breathed now fan the fires of their war engines!

            Until no child or woman can breathe without a mask!

            Then they hollowed out their First Moon, and used it to harbor a war ensemble!

Cato threw his arms up into the air and, with a shrill voice, addressed the crowd.

-Men of Troy, Lovers of Freedom, Defenders of Democracy! It is up to us to resist the dreaded red-hulls of the Grand Armada!-

Giuseppe had heard this before, But there was someone who had not. And he turned around to see her.

Curse stood almost directly behind him.

He had made a big mistake.

She had heard the entire speech. A look of horror broke her face. She held a hand up to her mouth, ready to scream. He noticed for the first time her shoulders, their width. She possessed Altantaen shoulders, and now they could no longer hold up her world. The one she could no longer go back to.

-Oh, by the heavenly serpents….oh, how I failed.-

She took off. Out of the tent. A blur of gray. Down the meadow, through the share-time. Giuseppe chased after her. He tried to keep pace with her, but lost her in the canyon lands of moldy logs of panwood covered by the skeletal remains of coral grasses.

***

Giuseppe could not speak for his late father, nor did he ever want to speak for the dead, but he would have to so now – in a certain way of thinking.

Like his father, the Matriarchate had granted him the title of Overseer for his services on the Chartres. Privilege, then, granted him the knowledge of the one communication device that connected Patroclus to the outside Jovian worlds and worldlets. No one else knew of it. The Trojans were a boisterous race and, if they knew of the device, might announce their defiance loud and clear for the rest of the League to hear.

On a small world with smaller horizons, all things were within reach. Just as he knew that he would eventually find Curse, it took no time to travel from one end of his world to the other. The brightest stars and globular clusters guided his way to a desolate field of coral grass. When he finally reached the southern pole of Patroclus, tumbling off-center on its axis, he found a buried twine rope. It was meant to lay hidden. He pulled on it. His efforts covered him with calcium-rich dust, but he managed to pull up the panwood hatch and step down, into the bowels of Patroclus, nothing more than the cold cinders of a comet’s burned-out nucleus.

There was a room, a single door, and a place for just one person. Him. He turned the key and walked inside, where he knew a table waited for him, and on it, sat an old fashioned radio receiver. With 31^st-century technologies, ones that could bend and twist light for instantaneous communication, this little radio receiver was primitive. It was meant to be. How else to lay hidden, invisible to the pogroms of the Mad Duke?

Or in Giuseppe’s case, to make sure no one – not even Juta – knew of what he intended to do.

He powered on the receiver. Old tubes began to glow with power, an orange glow filled up the room. Soon came heat. Months had passed since his last visit, and the dull light from electronics lit up the bare walls. Except for one, decorated with the portrait of a person, lounging on a rock, bare-breasted and legs splayed open. A vulva exposed, and just above it, a very small cock. The person’s long golden hair spilled over their wide shoulders. With pouty lips, a Gnostic of Mars invited Giuseppe. But to what?

With his back to the Martian lord, he dialed in coordinates, turned on the microphone, and spoke. It would take hours for his message to reach the destination. After he said the message he imagined the sound of his voice. Alone in space. Waiting…waiting to reach his brother.

Brigda the Damned, on her death bed!

He had promised himself to never talk to his brother again. But he needed to know…why Curse thought she was no longer in Kansas anymore, and maybe, where she wanted to be again.

The post Dreaming of Ariadne (Chapter 2: The Curse) appeared first on Fictionade Magazine.

Michaels – Don’t Tread On Me

The only thing the boy remembered from his third grade teacher was the stories of the “fire salamanders.” They lived in the mountain creeks. The next morning the boy woke up before the rising of the sun. He planned to skip school and see these fire salamanders, once and for all.

Dawn’s light escorted him in his noble, but wayward errand. He climbed over wooden fences collapsing with rot, scurried across dusty roads, and generally avoided the rumbling sound of any truck. His father had taught him how to remain elusive.

This was the first time he’s tried to catch them. Success had eluded him in previous attempts. So he changed tactics. He sang church songs to the God of his father, the ones they sang in church. The words were always hard to remember. No one had ever written them down.

He stamped through the tall wet grass in a long meadow. Mist covered the ground, fog obscured the tops of the highest peaks in the distance. The morning sun warmed his face and soon, the ground. He only needed to make it across this last meadow, then walk below to the small little valley that separated the meadow from the last of the hills. There was a creek nearby. He tried to visualize the lair of the fire salamander…

The small boy continued to sing. He hoped this would make the God of his father happy. When he thought of his father, however, he hoped he wouldn’t be mad. He has in his hand a kitchen strainer, which he intends to use to catch a newt. He hoped his father wouldn’t get mad. Maybe only a brief beating would ensue by the hand of his mother.

He arrived at the valley and descended unto a well-worn path. It was used by hunters to enter the hills and mountains beyond. Large rocks lined both sides of the trail. They glowed in the warm light. The rays of the sun hit his face, he felt good in the warmth, and he looked up into the sky.

He never saw the snake warming itself on the rock. The singing stopped.

***

When Ian saw his son stagger across the fields he was reminded of a great many things. Nothing he wanted to admit. The scene before him was familiar, but different. This time it was his son. And knowing he was in trouble, yet still had the strength to carry on, gave Ian great pride. Yet before the fall, came pride, a lesson the people in his community knew all too well. He brushed off the feeling and ran to pick up his son.

The hurried minute went quickly and soon he was in the family house, built long ago by the Michaels family. He frantically looked for help, but soon remembered. No one was home. It was left up to him to save his son.

He lifted his son’s weakened form into the truck, and with a turn of the ignition, for he had no key, the diesel engine roared to life with a kind of reliability that Ian would never trade for the world. No matter what the state government would pay him to get it off the road, this was his truck. He bought it from his father as soon as he finished school.

He took the shortcut into town, intending to cross several private properties, along with the natural obstacles on the way. Since the families in the region shared the same communal property, he could get away with it. He just hoped he didn’t ruin someone’s lawn. Ian had a funny sense of things.

His truck splashed through a creek at low level and the engine sputtered just a little when water hit under its block. He was used to the performance of this truck, so he adjusted to the hiccups by throwing the truck into a higher gear, before downshifting and moving on.

***

The road. He flew by other drive driveways, each one nearly two or three miles long. No one lived close to the unpaved stretch of road. The county government continued to threaten to pave the road and bill the residents of the area. If not for the more-pressing issue of the county’s bankruptcy, and the more serious issue of local Dissentionists, the local government could probably get away with it. But Ian would refuse to render unto Caesar, even if they could marshal the State Guard. Not like the State Guard would even care. None of the veterans cared one squat.

He looked at his son in the passenger seat. Heavy breathing. Breaths. A purplish color spoiled the skin where he’d been bitten. Ian might be able to extract some of the venom, but without his wives medicinal knowledge, he was at a loss. He could have taken him to her. But time. He didn’t have much. Only the local clinic in town could help.

This decision gave Ian great pain. It’s where his money always seems to end up. In some ways the town threatened his independence. But at least it wasn’t Salem, worst of all, Eugene.

His truck hit torn up asphalt, the road barely hinted at the sign of the town. A few buildings nearly hidden in the foliage, almost as old as the forest. There was only one place to go. He found it, a concrete and plywood box, built when the government found jobs for people in the state. He parked in front and bundled up his son, taking him out of the car. His son felt heavier than usual. Ian shook off the memories of carrying a man. His son wasn’t dead.

A dull light shone through dusty windows and half-pulled blinds. Patients sat in every seat, standing room only. Everyone wore a mask over their mouths. Coughing, wheezing, muffled talking. The waiting room was a sick place. Someone sneezed and Ian god blessed them under his breath. All eyes turned towards him, eyes that say go away. Eyes that pleaded.

He immediately knew that he should not be here. The sickness from the cities still infected the area. Antibiotics were in short order.

He walked to the front desk. At first he was patient. That lasted a second. He then pounded on the counter. Seconds later – more like a minute to him – a woman arrived. She wore a mask over her mouth too. Glass separated the two of them, but she took no chances. She said something to him he couldn’t hear. He asked again, telling her what his son needed. Snake bite serum. He couldn’t understand her words, but he knew by the shake of her head….

My son, he pleaded. She asked him if he’d ever been here before? He said yes, yes I have. In the last six months? Her question silenced Ian. It might have been longer. A year. They have never needed to come here. The doctors of the hills could cure anything. Even snakebites. But not this one.

The nurse made a disapproving sound, and actually asked him – asked him! – to fill out a new form. She even told him to include how he’d pay for this visit.

Ian was frozen in place. He remembered why he hardly came into town. They always wanted his money.

A snake…

He showed the leg to the nurse. She recoiled as if her mask wouldn’t protect her, nor the glass, and her disinterest – it suddenly transformed into disgust. He felt it sting him.

Sir – and he felt the sting of her judgement – they didn’t have something like that. They barely have penicillin. He needed a hospital.

Everyone else in the waiting room stuck him with their eyes. For a split second Ian felt like the worst parent in the world. He felt like he wanted to slink away. But he didn’t. Not a Michaels.

While his outward demeanor was all thank you mams and have a nice day on the outside, inside be began to seethe with anger. Lately, he felt as if he’d lost control and his independence…No one should be beholden. Not to no one.

He had to drive to the city. The closest one…Eugene. He didn’t want to.

His son’s leg had turned purple.

He leaned over and told his son what he had to do. His son did not respond. He leaned closer, listened to his sons breathing, and became afraid. The breathing was slower, labored…

He kissed him on the forehead.

***

The I-5. A dagger through the heart of his beloved Oregon. His father had told him that once. He could’ve used his father now. He always knew what to do. But even his father couldn’t cheat time. Or death. And for once…he didn’t like the thought.

2 hours. A country highway, then the interstate. West, he had to drive. Then south.

He must save his son.

Eternity threatened him, so he turned to the AM dial. He scanned the stations. Nothing of interest. For a brief moment he listened to some Alabama Choir music. He heard the terrible Christian Revival. Popular crap. he even briefly listened to a speech by a man whose name escaped him. A free-statist leader, somewhere in Montana.

Eternity returned to him.

His son was dying. Ian knew the look. His father had died in his house. He once held dying men in his arms, young and taken too soon. Death stared at him now from the passenger seat. It no longer looked like his son.

Bright and intense flashing lights appeared in the tunnel of his rear view sight, until it filled the entire rear view mirror. State trooper. He looked at the truck’s speedometer. 100 mph. Thanks Cooter.

The only light he cared about belonged to that of the sun, and when it disappeared, he knew that Eugene was close.

More troopers’ lights appeared behind him. Right on his tail. He heard a voice over a loudspeaker. He would not pull over, not yet, at least. Not until they’d reached Eugene.

The troopers pulled beside him. Pointed at him. Motioned for him to pull over. They looked like nice boys. He hated to do this.

Eugene. The college town he hated so much. The forest opened up and tried to give the appearance of a town. It failed to convince him otherwise. This was the city. Country houses and dirt roads on either side. Gas stations and Filipino fast food. Then the lights burst through the cover of tall spruce and aspen, and there, just in front of the hills towards the coast, block houses and glass, and sprawling tracts of homes in different neighborhoods. Give him Portland, or give him death.

With only a vague idea of the off-ramp that took him to the city’s general hospital, he obliged the state troopers and headed off the highway.

It’d been a long time. He didn’t remember much. His only memories were unpleasant. After he was discharged from the army, he tried to go to the university here. He barely made it a month. He had found the experience alienating. He has never regretted the decision to leave college. The only good thing that came out of the experience was meeting his wife.

City police joined the state troopers. Things begin to go by in a flash. In his way of thinking, they had forced him to run a series of red lights, and maybe, to cause some minor accidents. But his son was dying. So he pressed on.

Finally, as if guided by voices, he found the general hospital like someone remembered their worst memory. Every detail suddenly came to life, every part seemingly lost for all time suddenly returned to him. He recalled taking his wife here when she was pregnant. That was college. She’d miscarried. He remembered the pain of that day…

…and pulled into the parking lot.

Police cars swirled around him. Officers jumped out with guns drawn. He grabbed his son and carried him out through the driver side door. He offered his only son to the police. Take him, take him. He’s dead.

***

The door of Ian’s jail cell opened and the guard – a high-school looking kid with a sidearm on his waist – told him the time had arrived. He could make his phone call. Ian followed him into the hallway, where a phone lay and a line of waiting inmates. Ian was last in line to make a call. He tried to still the anger that rose inside of him. He gave the escorting guard a withering look. Any other professional law enforcement officer would have questioned his attitude, and maybe, thrown him back in jail. Not this kid.

After a horrible ten minutes – more like an hour – he made his call home. He prayed that his wife was home – the phone continued to ring and he prepared his defense to the guard on why he should be allowed another call -when she suddenly picked up the phone.

- I love you.-

Silence. He heard his wife breathe.

-Ian…what’s…? Where are you?-

-Bryan was bitten by a snake. Cottonmouth. It’s bad. I’m in Eugene.-

His wife breathed heavy. For a second he thought she’d broken a brief sob. But she composed herself quickly. Every time. Not him. Upon hearing her emotion, he nearly broke down in tears. His eyes always held a note of sadness. Now he guessed if he could see himself, the wetness in his eyes would have a greater depth. He would most likely struggle with the rest of this conversation.

- I took him to the hospital – the general hospital. He’s there now. I don’t know how he’s doing…I…

-Ian? I don’t understand…what do you mean…-

It took Ian a second to compose himself. He needed her strength now. She gave it to him, through her patience. Without her, he was nothing.

- I’m in the county jail. I don’t have time to explain.-

Ian heard breathing, felt his own heart. There was silence.

-You don’t have to. Dear lord – you got Bryan to safety. We’ll…-

-Don’t worry about bailing me out. Get the kids, go to the hospital, see…-

-The cities are a hot mess because of the elections…-

Ian realized how out of touch he’d grown through the years. The restoration of national elections – or the promise of.

His wife interrupted his thoughts.

-I’m getting Luke.-

His wife hung up the phone and Ian realized for the first time about the seriousness of the situation. It was out of his control. He felt ashamed, but another feeling rose up, one that was stronger. Righteousness was a mighty stream and Ian felt in flow within him. Mighty and rising.

***

Ian was taken to another cell. A larger cell. There were other inmates in the cell with him. He could only reason that he would soon stand before a judge. The Diversionary companies were nothing if not quick in their processing of offenders. Then he would be taken to a larger jail.

He felt anger well up in him again. He couldn’t say why these people were here, but he knew he didn’t belong  Their clothes, their hair…college kids. They spoke about a protest.

Ian ignored them.

One of the guards soon placed himself by the door. Just another kid. Ian strained not to say something. Too late.

-Do you have a child, son?-

It took the guard a while to realize Ian was talking to him, but he eventually understood and moved closer to the cell door.

-No. Don’t have a kid.-

Such arrogance. Where did they get these private security soldiers? Ian moved closer to the door.

-Then you can’t understand why I’m here, can you?-

The guard said nothing. He looked at Ian, almost through him, as if he wondered what the other inmates might think.

-You know, we weren’t supposed to have another child – my wife and I. The doctors said I had late-stage cancer. Turns out they were wrong, but still, I didn’t have a chance for a child.-

The guard ignored him. Tried to, at least. Ian felt his voice swell with persistence.

-The damn green revolution – that’s what happened. I took part in the great cleanup of all the former coal plants in the state. The Great Dismantling they called it. It was supposed to be safe. The government doctors said nothing could possibly happen to us.

The guard nodded, maybe just a kid when this all went down. Ian wouldn’t let him get away so easily.

-Have you ever tried to take a piss but nothing came out?

The guard stood straighter for a minute. He shook his head.

-I can’t imagine where you’re going with this, sir.-

-Hold on – you know what I can’t imagine? What’s the worse kind of harm: being lied to or being manipulated. You see, when someone lies to you, you make decisions based on false information. My volunteering for hazardous waste disposal, for instance. I didn’t do it because I believed in the Green Revolution. I decided to wade up to my crotch in 50 years of coal dust sludge because I was told nothing would happen to me. I wasn’t manipulated into doing this. I was just lied to. Ah…but when someone manipulates you, they get you to believe something – and you no longer believe in something else. Sometimes it’s something important to you. For example, you – standing there – aren’t a police officer. You’re an employee of a corporation – not an employee who serves the public welfare.-

Ian waited for the guard to respond, his body now fully square to the door. The guard responded, in kind. Kindly.

- You’re wrong sir. I am a law enforcement officer. By law.-

-Oh, no one is doubting it’s by the law. We all voted for those laws. The people voted for it. And why?-

The guard folded his arms. Ian continued.

-I’m asking you.-

The guard unfolded his arms and put them on the bars of the door.

-I’m done talking about this.-

Ian approached the door. He saw the shaving pimples on the neck of the guard, and smell the pine scent aftershave he used to stop the bleeding. He also noticed something else. The other inmates – the one’s he never would have talked to – they’d begun to murmur. Ian heard approval. Kids sure could get excited. School must’ve done that.

-We, the people of the U.S, thought of money when we should have been thinking about people…And if you cared about anyone in your community –  you would be letting me out of this fucking cell so I can be with my son before he fucking dies!-

Ian was quick. He grabbed the guard’s hands, and before the guard could do anything, he pulled his arms completely inside the cell. The guard yelled for help. Ian thought he sounded like a boy. And he was, Ian reasoned.

Ian now rushed to grab the guard’s gun. He realized for a split second that he’d done something no one should do. Commotion and more yelling. Then the cell filled with a gas. The other inmates began to scream. Kids yelling fuck the police. He had a chance to cough once, until more guards showed up. The door of the cell automatically slid open. It nearly broke his and the guard’s arms. He fell down on his knees. Tear gas. It made him think of the end of the Eco Wars. He was gassed then. Now his own government gassed him. The one he’d voted for.

***

Luke, the pastor of his community, drove the car out of the jail’s parking lot. Ian bowed his head in deep thought – and deeper humility. He knew the bail money came from the community. The hidden meaning was the money came from the church. All the money in the community resided in the church.

Luke looked the same as Ian remembered him. Cherubic, like the angels from some text his ancestors might have railed against, but which Ian’s community just laughed at now. The years might’ve also weathered Luke, and Ian knew of the trials and tribulations before, but with just a little more flesh added through the years, Luke also showed that he’d enjoyed the bounties of the community.

-Your son is alive, Ian. God has given him your strength.-

Ian felt a sob begin to form in his throat, but he chased it down.

-He gets it from his mother, I swear. He only gets his crazy ideas from me.-

Ian thought back for a second, remembered the sight of his son stumbling home.

-He’s going to lose the leg, I’m afraid.-

Ian did not look at the preacher. He just thought of his son’s future. Already, Ian had begun to prepare himself – and his son – for a life with a disability.

They were silent in the car. It was an older car, one that did not fit in with the newer models, the driverless cars of the city. The flivvers. Ian saw more old models than expected in Eugene.

He realized he saw the city as he hadn’t previously, when he’d driven into Eugene in a flurry of panic, lucky that he hadn’t killed anyone. Now, at a slower pace, Luke drove him through modern thoroughfares overseen by lights that regulated the hum of automobile traffic. It was all so strange in its clustered neighborhood feel, with people walking about…going somewhere.

He heard Luke swear as only a man of the Lord could do – or get away with. The street traffic slowed to a crawl and people actually walked across the street, in throngs and masses. Busy and on their way. But where?

They carried signs.

For a second another thought pushed aside his inquiry, his observations were briefly accompanied by a far different thought that, as strange as Eugene might appear, it seemed familiar. The people, the sights of the old houses and things he never would have expected, such as the older model cars, all made him realize that this was home. There was something he felt strongly about – strongly protective to keep, just the way it was.

Luke swore again and Ian turned in that direction.

People were joining a protest. He could see that now. For a brief second they could see down one of the main streets. Far down the street Ian could see what looked like police cars. Stopped at a roadblock? Just maybe.

They drove out of sight. Ian realized for a second that people now made their way to an event. It had something to do with the elections. He hadn’t thought about them in months. He’d swore never to vote again after the last one. Four years ago, or four and some change. They’d been postponed after all.

-What would the prophet Amos have done about all this?-

-I don’t think the prophets of Israel voted.-

-No, I know. The prophets in the Old Testament were rebels.-

Luke nodded and Ian could almost see him behind the pew.

-They rebelled against the evils of their society, how their church had strayed to the wayside.-

-And they spoke out against the evils in their kingdom.-

-The Kingdom of Israel. For their’s was a fractious time. When even the Kingdom of Israel was divided. When there were rival kings. And brothers fought brothers.-

The old federal works General Hospital loomed with its brick and its crumbling mortar and the ancient pines around it, no one quite ready to cut them down. The car pulled into the parking lot, and Ian could not believe his eyes. A group – two dozen or so – of members of his community stood on the front steps of the hospital. They waited for him. He recognized them all. He stepped – hopped! – out of the car and approached them. He called them all by name, told them thank you – thank you – that they were here. They shook his hands, hugged him, asked him if he needed anything. One offered him a cup of coffee for him. He took a sip and it hit his gut like a bomb, but something about it – the gesture – warmed him, reinvigorated him.

He saw his wife and other children from a far difference. They ran at each other and embraced, all together now. Ian kissed his wife, they looked at each other, and Ian could almost swear said the same thing. Not again. They wouldn’t lose another child again.

-What’s the news?-

Ian was almost afraid to go into the room where they kept his son. He held his wife’s shoulders, slowly massaging her back. Rebecca…

-He’s losing the leg…nothing can stop that now. But there is a possibility of toxins…-

Ian looked confused. He rubbed her back, prodding her to continue. She did.

-There might be some brain damage.-

-How is that possible?-

-The doctors said…

-Where is he? The doctor? Where is he?-

-He should be around to answer more questions. I expected him a half hour ago…-

The whole thing confused Ian. His wife was usually very succinct with information. But even she sounded confused. There was very little information to go on, in order to understand what his son faced. He felt himself grow angrier, but for the moment he put those feelings away.

His wife pressed closer to Ian. Ian knew her look. She was preparing him for something. Now it was her time to massage his back. This all put Ian on edge.

-Becky?-

-They’ve been asking for insurance information.-

Ian took a deep breath. A very exasperated one.

-Oh hell, should have expected that one. What’d you tell them?-

-Said you were a war vet, that’s all. That settled it.

Ian rubbed her back affectionately. Inside he began an inner…the mighty and rising. It rose.

-I love you, Becky, you bought us some time. Damn…-

He looked over his shoulder suspiciously. He only saw the members of his community. Still…

Ian had feared the question about insurance. He always did. He looked around him at the members of his community. This was all the insurance he had ever had his entire life, the only insurance he would ever need.

Together, feeling like his wife lifted him, they glided soundlessly into the room, with his wife, the pastor, and the rest of his community. His son was unconscious, the leg in dressing and propped up. He heard beeps and other winding sounds. Compressed air made the only breathing sound. Other than being told the opposite was true, Ian would’ve thought his son was dead. He was attached to tubes, bottles and machines. Clear fluids, ones of different colors, entered and exited his body.

He felt his wife put her hand on his hand. He clasped it. Ian was quiet. He then felt the pastor walk up beside him, and lay a hand on his shoulder. Ian looked at his son.

He made up his mind what he was going to do.

***

The lights went out in the hospital. Nothing worked. Except for the occasional flashlight-wielding hospital staff person, darkness ruled the art deco corridors. Panicked mechanics brought the old generators online to run the hospital, but Ian had long left the hospital with his son and family and community.

It did not take much for Ian to convince his wife and pastor that Bryan was no longer safe in the hospital. The violence of the protest did Ian that favor.

They drove through a city where armed mobs roamed the streets. But the mobs were not the protesters, the ones, who, with their signs and the horns and their anger have turned out to condemn the continuation of suspended elections. They, Ian, would later think about, came here peacefully.

Mighty and rising…

No, the last thing Ian would see was the military hardware the Diversionaries brought to bear on the protesters. Low-intensity warfare. He saw kids from the local college, ones who might have been the same age as ones in his community. He saw the Front.

Swift cars and armed justice came down quickly in the form of truncheons and tear gas and rubber bullets.

Ian drove faster, and no one stopped him.

He looked in his rearview mirror. On last time. It looked as if the MZ had invaded Oregon. Helicopters roosted in mid-air, ready to pounce, their search beams flicked. Steady. Aim…For the very same armed force that Ian voted for four years ago, to deal with the violence in the cities, was now turned on American citizens. On no more than kids.

Ian looked at his son beside him, in the arms of Rebecca.

He wouldn’t vote this year.

***

Ian carried his son into his house and put him to bed. The rest of his family followed him. They kneeled at his bedside and begin to pray. Together, with the rest of his family, the pastor of the community church lead a prayer—a brief sermon from the Book of Amos, 5:21-24.

I hate, I despise your feasts.

And I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.

Yea, though ye offer me burnt offerings and your meal-offerings,

I will not accept them;

Neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts.

Take thou away from Me the noise of thy songs;

And let Me not hear the melody of the psalteries.

But let justice well up as waters,

And righteousness as a mighty stream.

The post Michaels – Don’t Tread On Me appeared first on Fictionade Magazine.

Your internship began at approximately 7:34 a.m. today and will end at 9:54 p.m. the day after the election. Five point seven weeks. I must remind you that this job is completely unpaid, you will be required to work a minimum of six fourteen hour days per week and there is no mileage reimbursement. However, you will receive a handsome form letter of recommendation signed by the Senator himself and the chance to get a free latte for yourself on every other coffee run you make. That’s approximately eighteen coffee runs per week, which equals nine lattes for you, which, if you purchase the most expensive of the seasonal lattes at the largest size, means you cost this campaign $5.95 per every other coffee run or $53.55 per week. Coffee runs may vary, and most likely will increase as we approach the election date.

No, you do not have the option to pocket the price of your hypothetical lattes in cash.

I must also remind you that you were chosen from a highly competitive group of candidates, most of whom are out of work campaign managers and law school graduates with immense student load debt. This does not make you particularly special. But I urge you to enjoy the moment while you can.

This is my office. If the door is shut, do not knock. If the door is open, please buzz me through the intercom phone first, wait ten seconds, and if I don’t answer, hang up and wait thirty minutes before trying again. If you see me in the hallways you may speak to me or ask questions, but if I am holding a blue folder I would think twice as to whether or not your question is particularly pertinent at that moment. If the folder is red, do not approach me.

This is your desk. This is your stapler. This is your computer. This is your pen holder. Pens are kept in the supply closet around the corner, as are legal pads, computer paper, highlighters and boxes of staples. Please only take one pen at a time. When you take supplies, please note what you take on the supply chart on the wall on the right. Senator Brooster gives a breakdown of all campaign expenses to his most valuable donors, and they are scrupulous questioners. They are retired. They have all the time in the world.

This is why your latte total at the end of the internship is particularly important. When possible, drink straight coffee. Or use the water fountain, which is not taxed.

That is Audrey. You will be sharing your desk and computer with Audrey for one point four weeks until her internship ends. Do not speak loudly into her left ear as she has a sensitive ear drum problem and has had to excuse herself from most of the rallies and debates. On days she cannot be excused, she has worn bright orange earmuffs. She sometimes wears these around the office. For comfort, I think. Don’t speak to her when she has the earmuffs on.

She was accepted into the internship program over more qualified candidates because of a bill the Senator signed that mandated a hiring percentage of eardrum sensitivity sufferers. Be glad you did not have to compete with an Audrey.

This is your phone. Do not answer the phone if the call is coming through on line two through seven. Line one you may answer, but only if it is a high pitched ring. If it is lower pitched, let Sandra answer it. Lower pitch means the call is coming from a wealthy home. You will have to get Sandra’s attention.

That is Sandra. Sandra handles all large phone donations and relations with wealthy benefactors. She may not be much to look at, but she has a certain way on the phone. Do not stare directly into Sandra’s eyes – direct eye contact makes her freeze up for the better part of six hours, which means that is six hours of phone donations we lose. If you look directly into her eyes, a committee will determine how much revenue was lost and that will come out of your paycheck. If you had a paycheck. Most likely you will get no more free lattes.

You will have to be creative to get Sandra’s attention without catching her eye. I’ve found that throwing single staples at the potted plant next to her computer usually gets her attention. But I have great aim. I pitched for the Senator’s softball team two years in a row. If you have never pitched softball before, I suggest you find a different method. Staples go rogue. And when they go rogue, they land on the floor near Oscar’s office.

That is Oscar. Oscar is the creative behind the television and web commercials you see for the Senator. Oscar does not create the negative campaigns against the Senator’s opponent. Tucker does that. At the beginning of the election, the Senator and Walt Davidson, the Campaign Director, whom you will never meet, had decided to run a strictly positive campaign. But when the Senator’s opponent leaked details about the Senator’s trip to Mexico last spring, they decided they had no choice. So they hired Tucker.

Oscar lights incense and walks around the office barefoot. If he steps on a staple, it may add days to his creative process. He was treated for rage issues for many years and only recently went off his meds on the condition he stick to a strict regime of meditation, yoga and praying, which also means he wears togas, linen pants and no shoes in order to achieve the most comfort and to inhale the purest spiritual air. Believe me, you do not want to see what happens when Oscar steps on a staple and does not get his required amount of spiritual air.

Tucker is Walt Davidson’s nephew. You will not meet Walt Davidson so please do not ask. Tucker rides a scooter and does most of his research using Wikipedia. He has created one commercial in nine weeks. The negative claims in the commercial could only be attributed to a wiki user named ThatDarnedCat87 and no supporting evidence could be found.

Tucker is in love with Suzanne, though they have never spoken. That is Suzanne, at the desk by the storage closet. Suzanne handles the email campaigns that mostly ask for donations. I say mostly because the Senator’s feelings on most things are rather on the fence, so she is not allowed to claim any specific stances in the emails. She is, however, able to ask for money, which she is very good at.

Suzanne is a lesbian, but we are not supposed to know that. We did not seat her by the closet on purpose for some cruel sense of irony. Since, officially, we do not know she is gay. Officially.

Suzanne is Walt Davidson’s illegitimate daughter. She does not know this. Tucker does not know this. For our purposes, neither do we.

The Senator has not made an official announcement as to his official feelings on homosexual marriage, officially. It is best to be able to claim ignorance of her lesbianism in case it turns out the Senator is against gay marriage or homosexuals in general, whatever happens to be the best argument at the time. If it turns out he supports gay marriage, then we will throw her a party or get her a gift basket or however you handle such things.

Diane handles such things.

That is Diane. She wears a wig to disguise her baldhead. Everyone knows it is a wig, so do not pretend like it is real hair. Do not compliment her on her hair. Many assumed she was bald because she had cancer and was going through chemotherapy. We had several office parties celebrating her return to work after stretches of absences we could only assume were due to exhaustion from fighting cancer all day. Chuck later told me that the baldness was hereditary, that Diane was undergoing experimental drug treatment to grow her hair back, drugs that made her sick and bedridden for days. It is Chuck’s job to discover these things. Chuck reports to me and me only. Do not speak to Chuck. He is over there, in the dark office in the corner near the portrait of the Senator with the war veterans.

The Senator has no official stance on the war or when we should evacuate the troops. He does, however, support the troops.

Diane never corrected us after our parties and I let her go on with the lie. The drugs aren’t working. She is still bald and still wearing wigs. When she is not bedridden, she plans the most exquisite dinner parties and fundraising auctions you’ll ever behold.

Chuck likes to attend the dinner parties for the opposition. He puts a hidden camera in the flag pin on his lapel, which records everything. He is always in wait for someone to say something stupid.

I advise you to just avoid saying anything around Chuck.

Here is a flag lapel pin just for you. It is in the same style as the pin the Senator wears, only smaller. No one on the Senator’s campaign should wear a larger lapel pin than him. He should appear to be the most patriotic. At all times.

Over there is the social media drum circle. Unofficially. They came up with the name.

Jonas is the tweeter and Daily is the facebooker. They are in charge of exciting the younger generation. They are sort of on their own with that one.

Daily used to date Sasha. Sasha does strategic planning with a team of her own making, preparing mostly for the debates the Senator will have to take part in sometime before the election. Sasha is over there, at the desk just across from the social media drum circle. When Sasha dated Daily, she was useless. Now she is on fire. Daily defriended her the day she dumped him.

Sasha dumped Daily in order to have an affair with the Senator. But we don’t know this.

Suzanne is in love with Sasha. I overheard her saying so to a friend on the phone while she was hiding out in a stall in the women’s bathroom.

But we don’t know this either since, officially, we don’t even know that Suzanne likes women. She goes into the women’s bathroom frequently to cry. If you see her leaving the restroom with bloodshot eyes, do not talk to her. Or offer her hard candy, if you have some available.

Daily and Jonas spend most of their day trying to make the Senator look approachable and determined and a decider. They are always on the search for cute, humanizing details about the Senator. So if you think of anything, they have a suggestion box by the fridge.

Sasha offered a few tidbits that Daily ignored. Something about how he likes his pancakes in the morning. How he sleeps with a teddy bear. How he reads Goodnight Moon every night. Instead, Daily posted several links about how the Senator loves God and His plan for humanity when the world ended in December 2012 Which did not go over well.

Not necessarily with the Senator. You can never quite tell how he feels about religion. And it is best not to ask.

And there he is, in the bright office with the view of the park. Isn’t he handsome, staring off into space like that, chewing on his pencil like a squirrel? He drinks lattes only made from American grown coffee. If you remember one thing, always remember that. It is the most useful thing for you to know.

There are many things you can say about the Senator, but the one thing no one disputes is that he is handsome and very American looking.

It just may win us the election.

The post Welcome to the Henry Brooster Campaign appeared first on Fictionade Magazine.

“Boom Boom Boom”

Janice was passing out flyers around the office for an office party. She walked up to Lilly’s desk and immediately noticed Lilly’s face. Lilly looked up and gave a polite closed mouth smile. Janice’s gaze was just a split second too long and Lilly started to feel uneasy.

“Good morning, how was your—“

“Good, hey, your husband growing a beard or something?” said Janice.

Lilly frowned.

“Your face, your mouth is all red.”

Lilly immediately cupped her mouth and looked around for her reflection. She picked up CD and flipped it over to the backside.

“Oh, my god. I had no idea. Does it look really bad?”

“Well, I noticed it. You allergic to something?”

“Greg is—“ Lilly started to say.

“I was right! He’s growing a beard, huh?” Janice said.

“Yeah, this is so embarrassing.” Lilly said cupping her mouth.

“You allergic to him or what?” Janice said laughing.

“He was all over me last night, I don’t know.” She said, absently, fishing around in her purse for her phone.

“Well, that can’t be all bad.” Janice said, trying to hide her surprise. Lilly was a nice girl, but it was hard to imagine a man—a man married to her, wanting to be “all over” her.  How hard was he sucking her face? Did she just have really sensitive skin?

Lilly was texting.

“He is—very, hmm, very affectionate.” Lilly said.

“Oh, you poor thing!” Janice said with a crackling laugh.

“I mean, who doesn’t like affection, what person would turn down attention from their partner, but it’s weird.” Lilly said, looking at her phone.

“What you mean?” Janice asked, curious she leaned in, lightly gripping the edge of Lilly’s desk.

“It’s like he has a thing for me. He really likes me. He is my biggest fan. We have been together six, almost seven years and his enthusiasm hasn’t slowed down. I’m a plain girl, I’m not particularly good at anything, and I am not, not, I don’t know, special.”

Janice nodded, all of these things were true. “It’s great he loves you so darn much, but that is a little weird, I gotta say.”

“Yeah. He thinks I’m crazy to think that. It makes me wonder sometimes, am I in the Truman Show? Will all this blow up in my face? I find myself prepping for a time when all of this might end. What if he wanted to move on, what if he died, what if the show was over? Who would love me that much, ever again? Is it love, if it makes me wonder like this? I do stuff to compensate, I donate more, I’m more polite to people. Making sure I stay on good terms with everything. So I don’t end up alone, which is pretty disgusting.” Lilly said all of this to Janice as if she wasn’t there.

“Oh, honey, you’re thinking about this way too much. So maybe he is a little off his rocker for you. Have him shave the beard.” She patted Lilly’s hand resting on her phone and left a flyer at her desk. She recommended splashing some cold water on her face and went down the rest of her route.

Imagine a fresh piece of paper and then imagine crumpling it up and imagine if that crumpled up piece of paper had a voice. That’s what Rosie sounded like when she talked, which sounded more like a shout, an effort by Rosie to try and speak over the gravelly part of her trampled voice box. A lot can be implied with this type of voice, but Rosie did not have a pushy, loud mouth persona. It was pure irony that this middle aged, slightly over weight woman received this voice after extensive surgery on a benign tumor in her throat. People assumed she was one of those people, who wielded their large bodies and then gave that last little push with their voices.  No, Rosie was mild mannered. Even her name had people scoffing. “Yeah, she is real rosie with that voice, huh?”

In just a few years Rosie had had enough. She decided to embody the person everyone thought she was. It started with cutting in line at the pharmacy. Next it was to fight an assistant store manager over a coupon. At first it was every now and then, then once a week. Before Rosie knew it, she realized, there was something that bothered her everyday and she could argue about those things everyday. Most of the time she got her way and it was only a small price to pay to be seen as rude. After all, everyone already thought she was unappealing.  She even made some friends, people who saw her as courageous, self-confident, and people wanted to be on her team, even if it is was out of fear of being on the wrong side of her. Rosie never looked back after that.

***

I had spent the better part of the day ruminating over the night before. Scratching at my cuticles.

Six days ago I broke my leg. The painkillers have left me a stupor, my body is in a vegetative state but my mind is alert. My broken leg has botched my daily routine and plans. I moved into my parents’ new house a month ago. I slipped on macaroni salad. When I look at my leg, I feel the white tile under my feet slam into my face, I see cubes of celery coated in mayonnaise and I taste it. I fight against the taste with my mind and bite my lip, clenching my jaw, and I am back to digging my nails into my cuticles and when I come out of this state I realize I just wasted another half hour—closer to 40 minute which feels closer to an hour and by the time I’m done thinking about it, an hour has passed. I would get up and find a snack or stare out the window, but standing up is not an option. Minutes later I am back to the cycle.

Today is much different and after what happened last night. My parents’ house has a giant window that overlooks a freeway ramp. Freeway signs are humongous and daunting when you’re not whizzing by them in a car. They’re also static and convey the one piece of information forever.

I was wrapping up my thoughts for the dozenth time, about to go to bed, when I saw a car fly off the ramp. I heard it slap down on the asphalt and one of the first things that came to mind was the thought that had I just gone to bed, I would not have witnessed this car flying.

It didn’t occur to me that I could have called 911 until many hours later after all of it passed. Using my crutches I got to the front door, which seemed so much further away. The whole time imagining another spill, feeling my leg slip, seeing myself splayed on the ground, more time at the hospital, crap upon crap. I shook my head and pressed on for the door.

People poured out of their cars in shock. Doors slowly pushed open, porch lights blinking on. I watched everyone else before I looked at the car. All of the wheels were flat on the ground, like broken legs, and the car was gurgling. The person inside had spilled over the ground, I couldn’t tell if the liquid pooling below the car was from the car or blood, but I assumed it was much of both. If I only I had gone to bed on time, all of this would have never happened.

The post Boom Boom Boom appeared first on Fictionade Magazine.

Blues

It seemed mathematically impossible that we should be alone in the universe. There is a beautiful work of art which explains it. “N” represents the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which communication might be possible. R* is the average rate of star formation per year in our galaxy. fp = the fraction of those stars that have planets. ne = the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets. fℓ = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop life at some point. fi = the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop intelligent life. fc = the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space. L = the length of time for which such civilizations release detectable signals into space.

We began sending radio messages to a select number of yellow dwarf stars, like our own. The messages included text, music, art, images of famous people and places and our alphabet. Of course we got no immediate answer as the messages took decades to reach these stars, and many people thought it was foolhardy to even try. But then one day…we got an answer.
There was a debate as to whether or not we should inform the general public; but it was decided that since the news would eventually leak out anyway, it would be better to have it come in the form of confidence instead of the uncertainty of rumor.
The remarkable thing was, despite our apprehension, the people seemed genuinely pleased at the news. All of the information we received was shared and learning to speak the language of our new “friends” became fashionable. Some of their words were too odd sounding, and were replaced with slang: the name of their planet, for example, sounded to our ears like a belch, and so the people “re-named” their planet after its color, blue, and subsequently, our new “friends” became generally known as “blues”.
Years after the initial contact, the topic of actual visitation came up. We couldn’t go to them, but they could get to us. In fact, they were already on their way.
An official delegation was chosen to great them, seven of us in all, dressed in colored robes denoting our professions and status. We had selected a remote area for them to land, feeling that they may need time to acclimate to our atmosphere, gravity and culture before they were thrust into an alien society anxious and excited to see and interact with them.
We chose the Windwalker Mountains as the landing site and by the time we got there, workers had already set up a system of lights on the flat summit to guide their ship down. It was about three hours before dawn when we saw a star growing brighter and getting closer. It dropped out of the sky noiselessly, and when we could make out the metal of the ship, six jets of air began exiting from the bottom of it; haphazardly it seemed to us, slowing its descent. Our delegation moved back beyond the blue lights en masse. The ship came to rest on three stiff, spindly legs and spat out a final burst of air. I looked around at the others. Some were staring with nervous apprehension, some were mouthing their welcoming speeches and some were just very, very still. I felt moisture running down my cheeks.
A hiss emanated from the ship and then a loud click. Most backed away at these noises, but I started towards the ship. A front panel was dislodged and began slowly lowering itself to the ground. Nine Blues began to leave the ship. They were all dressed alike in an off-white colored suit with a black belt, upon which, hung several small black objects. In fact, the only things that weren’t black or white on their clothes were two rectangular patches, one on each shoulder, which had thirteen alternating red and white stripes with a patch of blue in the left hand corner, dotted with fifty white stars…

Jack Arthur stepped down onto Ono soil…no, he wasn’t supposed to call it that. Hell, he’d been briefed 1,500 times about it. Tw’Min Onos soil. He saw a female in a bright blue full-length robe step out of the blue light and approach him. This, he did not like. He would have rather set up a perimeter, sent out a scouting party, set up an arms cache; had the ship ready for an immediate emergency take off. Six more figures stepped out of the blue light beside the towering twin kimberlitic mounds and the facial features of the aliens became discernable in the light of the twin moons. All of them were dressed in vivid full-length robes. “Captain Hernandez! Prepare the men!”
Hernandez barked a masculine, “Company! Atten-tion!” Almost as good as a man. He heard the snap of the men rigidly form in line behind him. He was starting to like Hernandez. He cleared his throat and slowly started towards the blue coat when he saw Professor Singh walk past him, his hand out-stretched, wearing a foolish grin. Fucking civilians.

“Hello! My name is George Singh.” I looked down at his out-stretched right arm. I hesitantly brought my own right arm up parallel to his. His grin grew larger and a small laugh escaped. He reached over and placed his hand in mine and began moving it up and down. “It means ‘hello’,” he explained.
My tongue rolled hard in my mouth. “George,” I said.
He let go of my hand and turned to the man approaching us. “This is Commander Arthur.” I reached my right arm out and began moving it up and down. He reacted by bending his arm and the elbow and stiffly held his fingers in a row, with his index finger against his forehead.
“Commander Lt. Colonel Jamaal “Jack’ Arthur, U.S.M.C.”
“That is a very long name,” I said, and, unsure of what to do with my hands, I put my arm back down by my side.
“Call him Jack,” George said, smiling.
‘Jack’ didn’t smile.
“Hello. Hello. Tw’M-Sin Onos.”
As the other six in my party approached me the blue guiding lights went out. The caused a sudden stir among the Blues. Jack led us to the line of assembled Blues. He gave George a dirty look. “You’ve already met Professor Singh. He’s our anthropologist.”
“Hello. Hello,” I said.
“You don’t have to say it two times,” he said, smiling.
“Only when raising and lowering the hands,” Tw’M-Tin said.
We stopped in front of the line of Blues.
“This is Tw’M-Tin Onos,” I said. “He’s a sort of…record keeper.”
One at a time, the Blues stepped forward, bent their arms at the elbow and stiffly held their fingers in a row, with their index fingers against their foreheads.
“Pilot and co-commander Janie Anderson.”
“Mission specialist Geoffrey Smith.”
“Mission specialist John Wilson.”
“Jude King, geologist.”
“Captain Jennifer Hernandez, U.S.M.C.”
“First Lt. and electronic specialist Gerald Hollis, U.S.M.C.”
“Staff Sgt. Kenneth Parker, munitions and weapons expert, U.S.M.C.”

The female in the blue robe smiled at us.
“I can see just from introductions that this is going to be a little difficult. The name of our planet is Tw’Min Onos. Min Onos means ‘the world’ and Tw’M is ‘from’ or ‘of’…”
She furrowed her brow.
“Belonging to.”
She looked back at her be-robbed compatriots.
“Part of.”
She turned to face us.
“We all have Tw’Min Onos in our name. My name is Tw’M-Sin Onos, so maybe…”
She stepped forward and shook everyone’s hand.
“My name is Sin.”
She motioned for her compatriots to step forward. She pointed towards a male in a red robe. “This is our record keeper…Tin?”
The record keeper shrugged his shoulders and nodded. “Tin,” he said, trying it out.
She pointed to a female in green. “A…uh…specialist in…form. Fin.”
A man in yellow stepped forward. “I am…Vin. A master of…” he looked over at Sin.
“Surfaces,” she said.
“Yes, surfaces,” Vin said and turned back towards us. “A master!”
We all took a step back as a female in orange did a somersault at us. She leapt to her feet. “Lin, motion.”
A male in black stood where he was. “I am the light. You may call me Rin.”
A male in white at the end of the line, a few paces behind the others, eyed us warily. “I am Tw’M-Bin Onos.”
“Bin,” Sin corrected him.
“Tw’M-Bin Onos,” he said, eyeing us sharply. He then turned and walked away. “The wind is coming.”

Sgt. Kenneth Parker wasn’t the only one to watch the man in the white robe walk away, but he was the only one to speak.
“Sin, tin, fin, vin…how the hell we s’possed to tell them apart when their names all sound the same?”
Tin pointed a finger at each of the Blues.
“Jack, Janie, Geoffrey, John, Jude, Jennifer, Gerald and George,” he said, turning to Sgt. Parker. “Your name, Kenneth, is the only one that sounds different to us.”
“People call me ‘Junior’,” Sgt. Parker replied.
Sin turned back to the blues and addressed Commander Arthur. “Please forgive Bin’s abruptness, but we have a long journey back to the city and if the wind is coming, we should get ready.”

Commander Arthur turned towards his men.
“Commander Anderson, you’re in charge of the ship. Wilson, I want a total inventory of available water and fuel. Lt. Hollis, I want this area sealed and a scouting report of the area for possible defensive positions. Professor King, you and Captain Hernandez are to prepare the instruments for a survey of kimberlitic mounds upon my return. They rest of you…let’s go.”

Tw’M-Bin walked to a six-foot-high tall flat rock that stood alone on the high desert floor. He clamored up to the summit and sat down. All of the others lifted their robes from their ankles and followed suit. Commander Arthur, Wilson, Parker and Singh followed after them, all sitting between a robed Onos. Tw’M-Bin turned back away from the others. “It’s coming,’ he said.
Everyone in robes put their hands flat on the rock and moved their feet so that they were held firmly against it, some six inches further out than their hips. They all turned and looked at the Blues, smiling, and motioning towards their feet with their heads for them to do the same. Dust began shooting out through cracks in the rock, every three feet or so as the wind suddenly gained strength and blew hot against their necks. The rock began vibrating. This seemed to startle Sgt. Parker the most, and as Fin lifted the hood of his green robe against the wind, he smiled at him in order to pacify him. The rock shuddered, and eighteen inch chunks lurched forward from the rest of the rock; starting at the eastern-most end and uniformly running down the length of the rock every six feet. As all nine pieces lurched away in unison, then the stationary spaces in the rock that hadn’t broken away did so as well. They lurched three feet ahead of the others, stopped, and the original pieces, which had initially lurched forward, did so again, three feet out in front of them.
Sgt. Parker leapt off the walking rock. “Aw, hell no!”
Sin looked down at him, patting the rock. “This will be much more comfortable. We have a fair distance to cover.”
Sgt. Parker pointed straight ahead. “That’s fine. I’ll walk.”
Singh turned to Sin. “What is this?”
“He calls them ‘Animaris Rhinoceros’,” she replied, lifting her hand towards Fin.
Singh raised his eyebrows in confusion.
“It’s a kinetic wind sculpture,” Fin said. “I’ve placed hundreds of them all over the desert.”
“Why don’t you use animals for transport? Wouldn’t that be cheaper?” asked Commander Arthur.
“In a windy area with little food or water, these creatures of mine are more efficient,” replied Fin.
“And they are cheaper,” Sin added.
Commander Arthur’s eyebrows grew closer together. “Hundreds of these scattered all over the desert is cheaper? The cost of material alone to make them…you must have something like horses, right?” he said, turning towards Singh for conformation.
“Hundreds of live animals, who need hundreds of pounds of food and water and tens of men to care for them, heal them when they are sick…no. These creatures need only the wind to survive. Besides, it’s morally correct.”
“Morally correct?” Singh asked.
“Absolutely. I create inanimate objects, place them here and they are born free to live their lives roaming the desert without being exploited,” Fin explained, turning to face Commander Arthur. “Whether alive or dead, everything wants to be free.”

They made camp as the moon began to rise. The rock was standing still in the middle of the desert floor, and Fin had removed his green hood and was examining the back part of it with Wilson. Tw’M-Bin was tending a fire, while Rin and Vin were handing steaming mugs to each of the Blues. Sgt. Parker was rubbing his lower back and Lin came up behind him and slid her arms under his armpits.
“Hey wait…no…” he began.
She lifted him up off the ground and several loud cracks came from his back. She let him down gently and he slowly turned back to her. “That was awesome,” he said. Lin then sat on the other side of the fire, dramatically stretching her back and legs and Sgt. Parker joined her.
Commander Arthur took a cup from Vin, sniffed it and then looked down at Tin.
“So…you’re a record keeper.”
“That is correct.”
“What ‘records” do you keep?”
“All that have happened, or should have happened.”
Sin approached Singh.
“Are you tired…George?”
“No, no,” Singh replied. “We were lights out until about three hours before we landed.”
“Oh…May I ask questions?”
“By all means, Sin.”
“This clothe around your waist…”
“It’s a tool belt.”
“The black objects would therefore be tools,” she said.
“Yes.”
“And what are some of their functions?”
“These are infrared goggles,” he said. “We put them over our eyes and it allows us to see in the dark.”
“And that?”
“Flares, it makes a light so in case we get lost or separated in the dark, we can find one another.”
“Your people do not like the night, do they?”
Singh laughed. “No…I guess we don’t much.”
“And that one?”
“It’s a gun.”
“Guhnh…” she said. “Is its purpose also to counter-act the night?”
“Uh, no. It’s uh…protection.”
“Protection?”
“Well, it’s a tool which enables us…” George began, removing the pistol from his belt and pointing to various parts of it. “You see, if you squeeze this part, it causes the hammer to fall here, which creates a spark, forcing a slug of lead to exit here with great velocity.”
“And what purpose does the slug fulfill?”
“Well…when it comes out…it…it goes through things.”
“What types of things?”
“Almost anything. Metal, wood, rocks, windows, walls, people…”
“People?!” Sin exclaimed, taking a step backwards.
“Yes, if you aim it at them.”
“What would you aim it at someone?” Sin asked, very confused.
“Well…they might have a gun too.”
Sin looked slowly up from the gun to George’s face.
“Is there something wrong with you?”
Tw’M-Bin began throwing dirt on the fire.
“Last wind of the night. It should get us home in two cycles.”
Vin and Rin threw the contents of their mugs onto the smoldering, smoky fire.
“We should arrive at the best time,” Vin said, climbing the rock and raising his yellow hood. “The black of night changing into a symphony of colors.”
“After twenty six cycles, when the sun descends, that is the best time for viewing, its golden colors are perfection,” Rin replied.
“You know nothing of color.”
Rin snorted at Vin. “Oh no, nothing. That’s why my lights are viewed by more than yours are.”
“Your lights are nothing but stories, twenty-four per second. Any fool can make lights with a machine.”
Sin climbed the rock and sat between them. “Gentlemen, please.”

The second moon was beginning its final descent as the sun began to rise. The wind had stopped, so the entire group made the last of the distance separating the desert from the city on foot. Commander Archer shook his head as they approached the city. The buildings were either all slanted at impossible, distorted angles or were of extreme inverted geometric shapes; upside down triangles on top of giant circles. George was staring at the streetlights of the city, which were, it seemed, haphazardly dotted about on the ground. The only thing each one had in common was that they were all fifteen-feet high and rested on their sides. The one nearest had dozens of crystal-like glass appendages hanging off the top perimeter of it, which clinked against the streetlight in the waning breeze of the night wind.
“They look like chandeliers dropped from heaven,” George said.
Tin looked over at George quickly. “I’d never thought of describing such an ordinary thing that way,” he said, looking back at the lights more closely than he ever had done so before.
The group entered the large city square and stopped at the sound of drums.
“What’s that?” Commander Archer asked.
“Your welcoming,” replied Sin, as the other Onos removed their hoods and all moved quickly to separate parts of the city square. The drumming grew louder as Rin removed an object from his black robe and handed it to two other Onos, also dressed in black. Vin rolled up his yellow sleeves as two groups of six little girls dressed in yellow approached him from his right and left, knelt down on the ground and each held aloft large, flat trays. Dipping brushes into the trays on either side of him, Vin began painting on the white square to his right and his left simultaneously.
Fin had removed her green robe and was furiously punching and removing bits of a large clump of soft material, which was rapidly taking the form of a spaceship.
Tin had climbed stairs to step on top of a platform, which Rin and his associates had covered the base of with a large print of two giant kimberlitic mounds rising in stark contrast against the valley below, the sky awash dramatically in stars and the descending approach of their spaceship.
Lin had removed her orange robe; had in fact removed all of her clothes, as Tw’M-Bin Onos began loudly issuing a series of six blasts from his mouth. Dancers began running out of every street leading to the square and began twisting, reaching and stretching their bodies in time with the six blasts emanating from Tw’M-Bin Onos’ mouth, sometimes rhythmically and gracefully, sometimes stiffly and mechanically, while, without looking behind her, Lin reproduced all of the dancer’s moves exactly, while simultaneously violently smashing balls of blue paint against her nude body.
Sin gripped George’s arm. “The song of your ship! It’s marvelous, isn’t it?”
“That’s one way to describe it,” replied Wilson.
As if on cue, everyone in the square stopped, and Tin addressed the crowd loudly.
“A speckle of dust, a scratching of land, a voice goes out to the void, solitary, hopeless. Neighbors from across a night sky azure, quiets our ages-old lament; we have indeed brothers, not just a cry, alone.”
Every face in the square turned happily, anxiously, to see the reaction of the aliens; three of them stood expressionless, while one beamed and started into the crowd.
“That was wonderful!” George said, extending his hand out to Fin, marveling at the exact replica of their spaceship she had made.
Fin took his hand. “Hello.”
Sgt. Parker approached the nude Lin, watching splotches of blue paint drip from her body. “Nice moves,” he said, trying very hard to look at only her face. “What’s with the blue paint?”
“It was for you…it is you.”
“We call your planet ‘blue’ and you are therefore, ‘Blues’,” said Sin, approaching him from behind.
“We’re from earth.”
Lin giggled. “It sounds like a burp.”
Wilson had approached Vin and the photograph at the base of the platform. “It’s the damnedest thing…it looks like a photograph of a painting by Van Gogh…”
George and Commander Parker approached Vin, who, with his left hand, and his right hand, was putting the final brush strokes on his two paintings. George looked at the painting on the right. “It looks just like me,” he said.
“Sure,” Commander Arthur said, “If you were on a spaceship of melting clocks…and what’s that supposed to be?” he asked, pointing to the painting on the left.
“Why…that’s you,” Vin said.
Commander Arthur stared at the blob of a face, with an ear where the nose should be, an eye where the hair should be, a mouth where the ear should be…
“Oh yeah? From which angle?”
Vin turned to face Arthur.
“All of them.”
“Well,” sighed Arthur, “They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
Vin raised a surprised eyebrow and nodded in agreement.
“That’s true…though ugliness is not.”
Tin had descended the platform and George put an enthusiastic arm on his shoulder. “That was a fine speech, Tin.”
Tin looked nervously on the ground. “Well,” he stammered, “In my language, it rhymes.”
Sin and Tw’M-Bin Onos approach the group. “I didn’t know you were a conductor…” began George as Sin suddenly, angrily, cut him off.
“Hey! You kids! Get away from there!”
A group of teenagers, all dressed exactly alike in black clothes had smashed Fin’s sculpture back into its original shape and were painting over Vin’s two paintings with white paint. The teenagers dropped their brushes and ran.
“Who are they?” George asked.
Tw’M-Bin Onos snorted disapprovingly. “Conformists. They think destruction is art.”
A young woman approached the group. “I’ve been asked by Tw’M-Sin…” she began.
“Just ‘Sin’.”
The young woman’s face took on an ironic smile. “Sin?”
“It’s easier for them.”
“Okay…My name is…” she said looking over at Sin, “…Gin…and I have been selected to help with your cultural education. Ready?” she asked, hurrying off without waiting for a reply. The four Blues followed after her.

Arthur, Singh, Wilson, Parker and Sin stood in the lobby of a museum. Gin stood at the head of a group of boisterous children. A young boy approached her.
“If life was created from either a cosmic spark or the touch of God, why don’t we worship either of them, like the Blues do?”
Gin smiled at him and stroked his hair.
“Tw’M-Nin Onos…why would you pray to something that was only concerned or involved with us for less than one billionth of a nanosecond?”
She tried to corral the children into order.
“Quiet. Quiet!” Gin said, holding up her hands, as the children grew silent. “Last week we covered pre-history up to and through the black times. Can anyone tell me…what were the major themes of this era?”
A little girl raised her hand and the teacher pointed at her. “An emphasis on vase making, two dimensional perspective surfaces, three act plays, linear story telling and a civilization built on heteronomativity.”
“That’s right. Now what is interesting here is that we see a great leap forward out of the black times and the birth of early stage modernity through the discovery of linear perspective.”
A mumble of disbelief raced through the children. A little boy raised his hand. “But civilization is based on the rejection of the myopic narcissism of subjugation to the perspective of the viewer!”
The teacher smiled and motioned towards the gallery. “This is where it gets interesting. C’mon, children.”
The group headed towards the gallery. Arthur leaned in towards Singh.
“What the hell is she talking about?”
“Remarkable…Leon Alberti wrote down the rules for linear perspective in the 1400’s in Florence…”
“I don’t want an art history lesson, Singh…”
“But don’t you see? The Renaissance started in the 1400’s…it was the end of the Dark Ages…‘the black times’. It was an explosion of ideas; arts and science. On our planet, art was for the rich, or tucked away in Churches, Mosques; holy buildings,” he said turning towards Arthur. “And science was used to further the technologies of war. We were able to leave the Earth because the theory of terminal velocity was discovered watching cannon balls in flight.” He turned back to the children. “But here…science was tucked away in museums. This is what would have happened if art had become the every-day…”

Captain Hernandez left the spaceship, walked past the stack of rifles and climbed to the summit of the kimberlitic mound. She watched Jude King put fragments of a small black lump he had extracted from the mound into a small silver machine. The machine hummed and whirred and then spat out an answer that was unintelligible; unless you were a geologist, Hernandez supposed. Jude smiled, looking up at Hernandez in obvious delight.
“Jackpot,” he said.

The post Blues appeared first on Fictionade Magazine.

“I say, Poe! It’s me, Nathaniel Willis.”

Poe, still miles away in thought, looks at Willis blankly.

“You reviewed my play ‘Tortesa, the Usurer’?” continued Nathaniel. “I’m co-editor at the Evening Mirror now. We’ve published quite a few of your articles.”

Poe gives a faint smile of recognition; one that barely moves a hair on his black mustache.

“Oh yes. Hello Nathaniel.”

“Well then, how are you Poe?”

“I’ve been in poor health and am miserably depressed.”

“Oh…well…I see…”

“Listen Willis,” Poe says, cutting the stammering man off,  “You couldn’t loan me some money could you? It’s quite urgent.”

“Are you sober, Edgar?”

Poe looks at his shoes.

“I haven’t had a drink since I’ve arrived in New York.”

“Look here, old man, why don’t you come down to the Mirror tomorrow? I’ve got a proposition for you. Say, 10 O’clock?”

Poe nods non-committedly.

“Capital!” Willis exclaims. “See you tomorrow morning old man.”

Poe and Willis enter a large brightly sun-lit room filled with large wooden desks and stacks of papers and various wooden boxes filled with typeset. Willis puts his arm around Poe’s shoulder and points at a desk in the corner of the room.

“Glad you came down. Now here’s what I’m thinking. That would be your desk there. You’d be a mechanical paragraphist and assistant editor.”

“…Assistant…” Poe mumbles.

“You’ll do whatever miscellaneous work there is, announcing news, condensing statements, answering correspondents, noticing amusements…

“But not actually writing…”

“You’ll do everything but write leaders or constructing articles upon which your…uh…let’s say, your particular idiosyncrasy of mind would be impressed.”

Poe glances over the room with a dubious expression. Willis turns Poe to face him.

“Look Edgar, I know after being an editor at several prominent national monthlies, this must seem like a humble…”

“Degrading.”

“…humble position,” Willis continued, “But your free time can be used to critique and write poetry and prose and sell it to whomever you chose.”

Poe gives the room a melancholic glance.

“I’ll give you a salary of $750 a year,” Willis says, smiling.

Poe gives a final, dejected, once-over to the room.

“I’ll take it.”

Poe sits at his desk, pouring over tens of newspapers, finally leaning back in his chair and sighing out of boredom.  He gets up to stretch and walks along a bookshelf, disinterestedly looking over the titles as he slowly walks. He hesitates, then picks out “THOMAS MONCK MASON’S ACCOUNT OF THE LATE AERONAUTICAL EXPIDITION FROM LONDON TO WEILBURG”. Poe returns to his desk, sits down and begins to thumb through the book. His eyes flash and a wry smile crosses his face. He grabs a sheet of paper, a pen, and begins writing.

Poe quickly walks down the street, and ascends the steps, three at a time, of the Sun Newspaper Building. He enters and walks up to the front desk and raps his knuckles on the counter. A clerk walks over and Poe lifts his jaw and addresses him.

“I wish to see Mr. Richard Adams Locke. I have an appointment.”

“Who shall I say is calling?”

“Edgar. Allan. Poe.”

The clerk hesitates, and then holds up a finger as he walks away. “Just a moment.” The clerk walks to a door marked “Editor”, knocks, then enters. He comes back out and motions towards Poe. “Right in here Mister Poe.”

The portly forty-year-old Editor of The Sun, Richard Locke, sits behind his desk, and is going over numerous papers, while smoking a cigar. He doesn’t look up when Poe enters, stops in front of his desk and sizes him up.

“Locke.”

“Poe.”

“You’ve had time to go over my article?”

“Oh yes, the one about the trans-Atlantic balloon trip.”

Poe nods, though Locke doesn’t look up.

“What about it?” Locke asks.

“Are you prepared to buy it?”

“Now why would I want to buy an article about a fake story involving some European crossing the Atlantic in a balloon in only 75 hours? It’s preposterous. No one could cross the ocean that fast.”

“The Great Astronomical Discoveries Lately Made By Sir John Herschel at the Cape of Good Hope.”

Locke looks up at Poe. “Excuse me?”

“A six-part series published nine years ago in this very newspaper about the discovery of life on the Moon, written by you…”

“I did not write that…”

“…which was stolen from me…” Poe says, growing more animated.

“…now hold on…” Locke says, placing his hands flat on his desk.

“…PLAGERIZED by you, from my very own Moon Hoax, written TWO MONTHS BEFORE YOURS, in the Southern Literary Messenger under the title ‘The unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall’…

“…now see here, Poe…” Locke says, raising a finger.

“…to which your circulation doubled and I was not paid a single cent!!!”

Locke sighs and throws his papers on his desk. “No one is going to believe the Balloon Hoax.”

“Well, they certainly believed with an immense telescope that bison, unicorns and temple-building winged humanoids were discovered to live on the moon.”

“What’s the angle, Poe?”

“You’ve read ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue’?”

“Who hasn’t?”

“Well, this is another tale of ratiocination, only this time in reverse. Rather than solving a problem by taking it apart, I make this trip seem true by building up the fiction; highly detailed descriptions of the lighter than air balloon and it’s propulsion system, piloted by Monck Mason, who the public will confuse the real balloonist Thomas Monck Mason…”

Locke chews on his cigar thoughtfully. “Hmmm.”

“…and tapping into man’s insatiable curiosity with progress,” Poe continues. “Everywhere you go you hear about Morse’s telegraph. They’ve almost finished that line and within a month or so we’re going to have instantaneous communication between Washington and Baltimore. Instantaneous! This story will cause more of a sensation than you’re Moon Hoax did, and sell twice as many papers for two reasons.”

“Which are?” Locke asks, glancing over Poe’s story.

“The newspaper reading public is entirely gullible, and I wrote it.”

Locke looks up at Poe, then back down at the article. “Jackson!”

The clerk enters the office. Locke returns to his papers. “Write out a check for $25 and give it to Mr. Poe.”

Crowds of young boys wait in the pre-dawn light for the bundled copies of the morning edition to slide down the chute of The Sun Newspaper to the street. Games of thrown pennies against the side of the brick building come to a halt as the newspapers come sliding down.  The boys scramble for the papers, give a quick read to the headline, then scatter across the city, barking the headlines.

“ASTOUNDING NEWS!”

“BY EXPRESS VIA NORFOLK!”

“THE ATLANTIC CROSSED IN THREE DAYS!”

Numerous men flip coins to the children and grab at the newspapers. A Gentleman in his sixties opens the paper and begins reading. “Good Heavens!”

“SIGNAL TRIUMPH OF MR. MONCK MASON’S FLYING MACHINE!”

A middle-aged man turns to another in the growing crowd.

“Mason? He’s that European Balloonist, isn’t he?”

“Hey boy, give me one of those!”

“Sorry Mister, sold out.” A ten-year-old newsie explains.

The sixty-year-old Gentleman begins reading aloud. “Listen to this…’Mason was accompanied by William Harrison Ainsworth’!”

“The historical novelist?”

“He’s not writing about history, he’s making it now!” comes a voice from the crowd.

“Boy! Boy! Give me one of those papers!”

“I’ve only got one left, and it’s for this gentleman.”

“I’ll give you 50 cents for that paper!”

“Now hold on!”

“Sixty cents!”

“Seventy-Five!”

A mob has begun to grow around the boys and a fury of bidding wars for the remaining newspapers erupts.

The afternoon sees thousands of people surround the newspaper building and fill the adjoining square, all shouting and demanding a copy of The Sun. Poe stands with a copy of the newspaper in hand at the edge of the crowd with his friend, Dr. Thomas Chivers.

Chivers gives the crowd a bemused smirk. “Seems you did it again.”

“Thomas, Man is not advancing towards perfection. He is only more active, not wiser, nor more happy, then he was 6,000 years ago.”

Poe gives the assembled crowd a disdainful sneer and throws the newspaper in the trash.

Poe sits at his desk at the Evening Mirror, furiously writing. Beside him is a book of poetry, ELIZABETH BARRETT’S “THE DRAMA OF EXILE AND OTHER POEMS.”

“ ‘My sire is of a noble line, and my name is Geraldine.’ Elizabeth Barrett’s poetic inspiration is the highest. We can conceive of nothing more august. Her sense of Art is pure in itself. Though some of the poems in ‘The Drama of Exile’ are unoriginal and repetitive, with the exception of Tennyson’s ‘Locksley Hall’, I have never read a poem combining so much of the delicate imagination, as the ‘Lady Geraldine’s Courtship’ of Miss Barrett.”

Poe puts down his pen, reaches over, and re-opens the book.

“With a murmurous stir uncertain, in the air the purple curtain.”

Poe squints straight ahead at nothing, and then starts counting out a rhythm on his hand.

“With a murmurous stir uncertain, in the air the purple curtain.”

Poe walks quickly down the wintry New York Street  in the darkening gloom and is ‘helloed’ by two acquaintances, Thomas Dunn-English, and Fitz-Greene Halleck; both of whom he ignores.

“With a murmurous stir uncertain, in the air the purple curtain.”

Halleck cups his right ear as Poe passes. “What’s he on about?”

Dunn-English gives Poe’s retreating back a dismissive sneer. “God knows.”

Poe approaches 84^th and Broadway and his darkened, rural two-story house.

“ ‘With a murmurous stir uncertain, in the air the purple curtain.’ AA,B,CC,CB,BB…”

Poe enters the house, bangs the snow from his feet, removes his grey West Point overcoat, shivers and rubs his hands together. He picks up a lit candle from a side table and walks into the downstairs bedroom and kneels next to the bed, straightening his sleeping, wheezing, fifteen-year-old consumptive wife’s black hair. She stirs and faintly smiles at him.

“Virginia…I’m going to do some writing tonight,” he says.

She attempts to stifle a cough.

“I’ll make my own supper,” he says, smiling.

“There’s nothing to eat,” she whispers. Virginia then barks out a wet cough.

“Shhh. Shhh. You just lie quiet.” Poe looks at her tenderly. “Can I get you anything?”

Virginia shakes her head no, holds back a cough, and then dislodges four successive violent coughs. The last one shoots a stream of blood across Poe’s face. His eyes begin to well and his mouth breaks into a curious, demented half-smile. He leans in and intensely whispers into his wife’s ear, “I love you so…much!”

Virginia places her hand upon his, closes her eyes, and turns her head away from him. Poe stands, kisses his wife’s head, and shakily leaves the room.

Poe enters the living room, removes a handkerchief from his jacket and wipes the blood off his face and then from his eyes. He sits down at his desk quite still for a few seconds, staring at the multitudes of books surrounding his desk and then grabs pen and paper.

“ ‘With a murmurous stir uncertain, in the air the purple curtain’…AA,B,CC,CB,BB…”

He places the pen on the desk and stares out at the window, listening to the wind. A frozen bush outside lightly taps at the frost-covered window. He suddenly sits upright, and using the same meter he has been repeating, says,  “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary…”

Poe picks up his pen and begins to write.

“Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. ‘Tis some visitor,’ I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door  Only this, and nothing more.’”

Virginia’s head turns towards the living room. Silent tears begin to stream down her cheek as she listens to her husband.

“Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought to borrow, From my books surcease of sorrow – sorrow for the lost Lenore, For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore, Nameless here for evermore.”

Poe removes his jacket quickly and continues to write furiously.

“And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain, Thrilled me – filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before; So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating `’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door, Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; This it is, and nothing more,’”

Poe sits near a window in a southbound train, looking at the passing scenery.

“Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer, `Sir,’ said I, `or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore; But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,”

Poe walks quickly down the Philadelphia Street and enters a brick building with a sign that says “GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE”.

George Rex Graham sits at his desk, reading over the poem as Poe watches.

“That I scarce was sure I heard you’ – here I opened wide the door; darkness there, and nothing more.”

Graham lays the paper down.

“I’m sorry Poe, I can’t use it.”

“But it’s a fine poem. Nothing ever remotely approaching this stanzaic combination has ever been attempted. It will appeal to both popular and critical tastes…”

“Edgar, Edgar. I can’t use it.”

“I came to you first George. I thought you of all people…”

Graham hands the poem back to Poe. “I’m sorry.”

Poe tries to maintain his composure.

“Virginia’s very sick. We have no money for food, and…and…It’s a fine poem George, a great poem…”

Graham reaches into his jacket pocket. “Here. That’s $15. Take it.”

Poe takes the money and storms out of the building.

Poe stares intently out the window of a northbound train into the gloom.

“Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before, But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token, And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, `Lenore!’ This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, `Lenore!’ Merely this and nothing more.”

Poe walks quickly down the New York street and enters the American Review Building.

The portly GEORGE H. COLTON reads over Poe’s poem as Poe watches.

“Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning, Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before. `Surely,’ said I, `surely that is something at my window lattice; Let me see then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore, Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; ‘Tis the wind and nothing more!’”

Colton puts the poem down, purses his lips, and reaches into his coin purse.

“I’ll give you $9 for it.”

Poe hesitates, then takes the money.

Poe walks quickly down the Manhattan street, wild-eyed, noticing nothing in front of him.

“Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter, In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore. Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he; But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door, Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door, Perched, and sat, and nothing more.”

William Wallace, walking in the opposite direction, stops him with a hand to Poe’s chest.

“Edgar! Look at you! You’re miles away!”

“Wallace! I have just written the greatest poem that was ever written.”

“Have you?” Wallace asks, smiling. “That is a fine achievement.”

“Would you like to hear it?”

“Most certainly.”

Poe glares at Wallace.

“Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling, By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,’ I said, ‘art sure no craven. Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore, Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!’ Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.’”

Wallace’s mouth opens.

“Poe…they are fine…uncommonly fine.”

“Fine!? Is that all you can say for this poem? I tell you it’s the greatest poem ever written!”

Nathaniel Willis stands next to an editor who holds open a copy of the Evening Mirror, and reads aloud to a group of enthralled employees.

“Much I marveled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly, Though its answer little meaning – little relevancy bore; For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being, Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door, Bird or beast above the sculptured bust above his chamber door, With such name as `Nevermore.’ But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only, That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour, Nothing further then he uttered – not a feather then he fluttered Till I scarcely more than muttered `Other friends have flown before -On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.’ Then the bird said, `Nevermore.’”

The Editor lowers the paper to his waist and looks out at his astonished employees.

Willis whistles, shaking his head. “That’ll stick in the memory of anybody who reads it.”

A group of well-off portly men in evening clothes sit in luxurious leather chairs smoking cigars and drinking brandy in front of a roaring fire. A man sitting next to a highly polished oak table topped with an elaborate table lamp and potted fern is holding aloft THE AMERICAN REVIEW: A WHIG JOURNAL and reads aloud to the other seated men of the wood-paneled Gentlemen’s Club.

“Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken, `Doubtless,’ said I, `what it utters is its only stock and store, Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful disaster, Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore, Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore Of ‘Never-nevermore.’”

A man gets up from his chair and throws his cigar into the fireplace.

“Heard the man’s got a brain fever. I don’t doubt it now, after hearing this!”

A man sits with his wife in his modest home, holding a copy of THE NEW YORK TRIBUNE.

“But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling, Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door; Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore, What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore, Meant in croaking `Nevermore.’”

A man with a Southern accent looks at the guests in his sitting room as he holds aloft a copy of the SOUTHERN LITERARY MESSENGER and reads aloud.

“This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing, To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core; This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining, On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o’er, But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o’er, She shall press, ah, nevermore!”

A man with a refined English accent paces a drawing room holding aloft a copy of the book THE RAVEN AND OTHER POEMS and reads aloud.

“Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer, Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor. `Wretch,’ I cried, `thy God hath lent thee – by these angels he has sent thee Respite – respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore! Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!’ Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.’”

A forty-year-old English woman sits at a desk and writes a letter.

“Dear Mr. Poe, Your ‘Raven’ has produced a sensation, a ‘fit horror’ here in England. Some of my friends are taken by the fear of it and some by the music. I hear of persons haunted by the ‘Nevermore’ and one acquaintance of mine who has the misfortune of possessing a bust of Pallas never can bear to look at it in the twilight. Elizabeth Barrett.”

A group of 50 people dressed in bright evening clothes, male and female, sit in near darkness in a New York Salon, transfixed, staring straight ahead. Poe stands at the front of the room, a wild expression on his face, his eyes ablaze. He is more than reciting, not quite singing, the end of his poem.

“Prophet!’ said I, `thing of evil! – prophet still, if bird or devil! Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore, Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted, On this home by horror haunted – tell me truly, I implore, Is there – is there balm in Gilead? – tell me – tell me, I implore!’

Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.’

`Prophet!’ said I, `thing of evil! – prophet still, if bird or devil! By that Heaven that bends above us – by that God we both adore, Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels named Lenore, Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels named Lenore?’

Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.’

`Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!’ I shrieked upstarting `Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore! Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! Leave my loneliness unbroken! – quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!’

Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.’

And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting, On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that Is dreaming, And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor; And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor, Shall be lifted –

Nevermore!”

The room is silent for a few seconds, and then breaks into excited applause; numerous women clutch handkerchiefs to their bosoms or fan their faces. Men begin to turn the gas lamps up and raise glasses towards Poe. Poe’s thirty-five year-old childhood sweetheart, Elmira Royster, leaves her husband and runs up and clasps Poe’s arm.

“Oh, Edgar! You’ve bewitched half of us and terrified the other! When you were reciting it…your eyes were so wild, it frightened me!”

“I can’t help it, Elmira. The Raven sets my brain on fire.”

Other Halloween Fiction Stories:

The Disappearance of Henry Kensington, by Aaron Elias

“Nightmare With Beans,” by Chelsea Sutton

The post Once Upon a Midnight Dreary appeared first on Fictionade Magazine.

The spirits settle down like crazy when the weather cools down. It’s like that sticky summer air ain’t creeping up everyone’s asses no more so the ghosts chill out too. They know. Things get spooky though, ya feel it darkening up and shit but I don’t know to put it, it’s like they’re in their element and they relax a bit. Not all ghosts are scary things or whatever like in books and movies and shit. They got personalities, let me tell ya and they just know how to rattle cages for fun.

It’s the best season because it seems like other people feel it too that spirits are everywhere. I mean, they always do feel it, but they’re not conscious of it. Fall has that spooky vibe for a reason, fairy tales had to come from somewhere.

It’s more than all that though, it’s also just cozy as shit. I like to pull out my sweatpants when I’m lounging in my house. I cut off the elasticy ankle part, that shit always feels like it’s going to cut off the circulation to my calves, lol. It’d drive my granny nuts when I did that. I’d use the elasticy part to tie around my hair and be like look granny it’s a scrunchie and she’d throw whatever was close to her, usually the TV remote, and told me to act like a lady. Anyway, another reason I gotta cut off them elastic cuffs is because my legs get hella hot. Sweatpants live up to their name most of the time. Granny used to ask me what’d I’d do if it got cold as hell. I told her I’d just throw on some long socks. She didn’t like that answer.

It’s funny as hell when I’m rolling around town or whatever and people got their Halloween decorations up, ghosts billowing on porches and shit. That’s my whole life and it feels good to pretend everyone sees them, they get to be real for a few weeks. You can tell hella ghosts stories and people think you’re just telling stories even if mine are real, lol. I gotta change names around and shit but otherwise people eat that shit up. Around this time of a year people go nuts for that shit. People think I’m really into Halloween like crazy but it ain’t about Halloween, like I said it’s hiding in all the pretending and feeling less alone with the ghosts. I get to think everyone sees them. I can’t say enough how nice that is.

Granny wasn’t much for holidays, she was too damn serious about everything. Except one crazy year, I don’t know what got into her, she decided it was a good idea to dress my mom up while she was in a coma. Wrap your head around that shit all you can do is laugh, lol. She found an old clown wig and bought some make-up and made my mom a clown. She looked like a sleepy ass clown, motionless with a white face, big red nose, and big crazy ass red lips. I laughed like nobody’s business and my granny chuckled too until she realized I was flat out laughing and then she told me to not be so damn disrespectful of her wanting to make my mom feel as normal as possible. I asked her how a person in a coma dressed as a clown would make anyone imagine feeling normal? She chuckled a little more, thinking about it but then got mad all over again at me for laughing. Granny was like that, she could never make up her mind to laugh because she was always so concerned about respect and being proper.

Nurses came in screaming when they’d see my mom all done up like a sleepy ass clown. Granny decided to draw dots on her eyelids so it looked like she was awake. That little touch made it even funnier and granny didn’t like that one bit. Poor mom was staring up at the ceiling without blinking with her new eyeballs and it scared all the nurses every time, even the ones that were in and out all day. I never laughed so much, granny was so mad, nurses were screaming, and mom was laying there as a clown. She asked me how I could laugh at my poor mother while was all laid up. I told granny clowns are supposed to be laughed at not taken seriously. She considered that and cooled her jets for a little bit before getting wound up about something else.

Granny was so funny, she still don’t visit me though. She been dead for a while, it’s about time her ghost rumbles through the house but noting yet. She too busy being proper on the other side. If granny ever shows up I know it’ll be in the fall. I can’t decide if I’m gonna dress up like a clown this year or throw on a white sheet so I can wear my cut off sweats and laugh my ass off.

The post Fall is a Pretty Nice Ass Season appeared first on Fictionade Magazine.

All we got is a couple cans of kidney beans.

For days it’s just been me and Wendy. Wendy and I. Somehow we got through the first big mess of it, got across town, away from where it all seemed to be springing from, and hunkered down in this strip mall in the suburbs – specifically an empty deli between a pet supply store and a manicure place.

I say empty deli because the people are long gone – and whatever survivors came through here before us took nearly everything that’s any good. Just left these couple cans of beans.

There are still some slabs of meat in the display case. It’s been nearly nine days since this part of town had power, so you can imagine the smell.

Well, if you’ve run into these freaks, these dead walking freaks that used to be people, then I suppose you could imagine it. That’s what they smell like. Like this deli Wendy and are calling home. For now.

We were working together down town when the first mob hit. This crowd of things, these things that looked like people but weren’t, were something else, something more terrible somehow. Some walked, some stumbled, some ran – however they got there they were suddenly just, well, there. Spitting and biting and chewing on everyone they found with these sharp fangs and peeling flesh and these cold, clouded eyes.

Me and Wendy – Wendy and I – we’d been working at the Gap over on Twelfth for a couple years. Me just until I could pay the bills with my comics and Wendy while she going to nursing school. I used to never get many shifts with her, I’d quietly wait for weeks until we finally had an opening shift together or our transitions overlapped. With a bunch of lay-offs last year though we started getting assigned together more often. We were on the same shift the day it started.

We were in the back, pretending to look for size 12 jean jackets with lace collars, and she was crying about her boyfriend Gil, this no-good type she’d been seeing for close to eight months. A real Alpha, if you know what I mean. She was crying and complaining so much that we didn’t hear the screaming until those things were already in the store.

We barricaded the door and didn’t move for hours. She cried and let me hold her. I can still feel her shaking if I think hard enough about it.

It took a while, but we managed to get this far. To this deli. And its everything we can do not to gobble down the beans right away.

There’s a group of them, the monsters, whatever they are, hovering around the strip mall. They’re moaning and barking at each other or at us, it’s hard to tell. They’re almost saying words – it’s like they’re part animal, part human, part something else.

There’s a pounding at the door. We’ve barricaded it – we’ve become experts at barricading – but we can’t trust it enough to eat.

Wendy holds a butcher knife, shakily, in the direction of the door, and I hold a shovel like a baseball bat only a few feet away. The blinds are down on the windows and I’m hoping they’re bullet proof or something. But it’s the suburbs, so it’s not likely.

Once or twice it looks like they might get through. There’s moaning and yelling and a few screams from a few unlucky people who don’t have a deli to hide in.

And then there’s quiet. We hold our positions for a while. I’m the first to move. I go for a can of beans.

“I can still hear ‘em breathin’,” says Wendy.

“Wendy –“

“Shhh. Listen.”

I stand still and do just that. There’s nothing. I open the can of beans, find a spoon on the floor, clean it off on my shirt, yank the knife out of Wendy’s hands and replace it with the beans and spoon.

“Why don’t you eat something?” I say, pretending the little moaning dance at the door didn’t bother me at all.

Wendy sits and slowly eats. I can tell she’s trying real hard not to inhale the whole can. There’s blood and dirt smeared down her face, and her Gap work shirt is torn and untucked. She’s rather beautiful, to be honest. Bright green eyes and this soft brown hair that is greasy and tangled and twisted right now but usually lovely.

She’s shaking and I’m wondering if she might let me hold her again. I don’t know if that’s something I should ask or if it’s just something that should happen. All we do is wait for things to happen.

“I never liked beans. A week ago you wouldn’t have gotten me near them,” Wendy says. She laughs at herself or maybe something else, something in her head that I can’t see. But I want to see. I want to see more than anything.

“I never liked them either,” I say. “Except in chili fries.”

“Mmmm, chili fries.” Wendy licks the spoon.

“I know, right?” I have no energy for articulation or wit.

“Never thought I’d be longing for chili fries.”

I can almost smell the fries now. My stomach is churning and it’s everything I can do to try to taste them in my memory. It’s been just over a week, and they still seem like a thing of legend. I watch maggots squirm over a few choice beef steaks in the display case and realize that legend may be the best we can hope for.

“Funny how things work out, huh? Chili fries become the symbol for civilization,” I say.

“And steak burritos.”

“Oh stop – you’re killing me.” I’m almost telling the truth – my stomach is going nuts.

“Nutella,” Wendy says.

“Stop it.”

“Cookie dough ice cream,” she says.

“Is it bad that the thing I miss most about last week is the food?”

“No, me too,” Wendy says. She stops eating, staring into the can. “Gil ate beans all the time.”

“Oh,” I say.

“All the time. It was gross,” she says. Then there’s silence before: “Do you think he’ll find us?”

“I don’t know…I doubt it…I wouldn’t count on him still being alive, but…sorry, that was…I mean…”

“Good,” Wendy says. “It’s good if he doesn’t. I don’t want to share the beans. He’ll eat them all.”

We laugh. And there’s silence. I move closer, until our shoulders touch.

“What about me? Would you share with me?”

Wendy smiles. “Of course. Sorry, I’ve been hogging them, huh?” She hands the beans to me. There’s more than half still there. I say thanks.

Then I say: “Do you really mean that?”

“Mean what?”

“That you don’t want Gil to show up?”

She pauses. “Yes. Does that make me sound like a terrible person?”

“No.” And I mean it. He was a bully and a drinker and violent…well, no good. “I could never think you’re a terrible person,” I say.

“Never? You really mean never?”

“Well, sure.”

“You should never say never. It’s a dangerous word.”

“I don’t think you got a terrible bone in your body,” I say, with a mouthful of beans.

“You don’t know me that well.”

I swallow the beans. “Sure I do,” I say, with a deep breath. I can hear the maggots squirming on the meat, and the dust in the air is coating the inside of my lungs. “With everything that has happened, in this new, whatever, time we’re in, you only seem to get a real small window to get to know someone before there are gun shots or monsters or things biting you or you get buried alive – “

“Buried alive?” Wendy laughs.

“I heard that happened to some people – anyway, it doesn’t matter. I trust you is all.”

“I guess we’ll always have the Gap.” Wendy smiles smoothes out her soiled work shirt.

I laugh and take another bite of beans. And it’s a good moment. Until pounding and screaming starts at the door again. Wendy grabs the knife, and I grab the shovel. And we watch the door.

“Are they getting through?” Wendy’s voice is unsteady, her eyes are watering from the dust thrown in the air by all the shuffling around.

Then there are gun shots. Then a man’s voice.

“Let me in there! Open up goddamnit!”

Wendy stops shaking. I waste no time asking what she thinks – if it’s another one of us, another one running from these things, these monsters, I got to let him in.

Wendy remains still as I pull back the chairs and boxes covering the door. The moment I unlock it, a man in Gap jeans and jacket (I’d know those styles anywhere) comes barreling through the opening, gun in hand. He helps me barricade the door again. We catch our breath, listening as the moans and barking from the things fade away again.

“Jesus, you’re a life-saver my man,” he says, slapping me on the back.

Wendy has backed away from us, her knife still in her hand.

“Wendy. Good to see you,” he says. The bleach blonde hair, the tan freckled cheeks, the scar over his right eye. Wendy had described this guy to me before.

Wendy doesn’t drop the knife.

“Are you…are you Gil?” I know the answer.

“You must be Doug.”

I nod and glance at Wendy. She’s backed away almost to the farthest wall.

“She’s…she’s a bit on edge. Wendy, you can relax now.” I say it, but don’t believe it.

“Didn’t you miss me, doll?” Gil says.

“She didn’t think she would see you again,” I say. Explaining nothing, really. In our trek out to the suburbs, I’ve seen the smoke rising from trampled neighborhoods, seen the military fighters and helicopters circling, seen bodies lying in trash heaps. It gets so dark at night now. I thought I’d never see the stars again, but now I’m cursed with them.

“You her translator now?” Gil says. “Wendy, snap outta it please.”

I go to Wendy and try to take the knife out of her hand. I whisper something reassuring in her ear. I forget what I say as soon as I say it. It means nothing. Just a transfer of sound.

“Maybe if you put your gun away,” I say to Gil.

Gil shoves his gun into his belt behind his back.

“Why don’t you put it out where we can all see it?” I say.

“What’s wrong? Don’t trust me?”

“It’s been a while since…it just might be more useful where we can all get to it. In case something happens.”

“Right.” Gil lays the gun down on the display case and sees the beans. He grabs the can and shovels the remaining bits into his mouth. Of course.

“How are you…you’re still…” Wendy is stammering and shaking and I take the knife from her before she stabs herself.

“Alive?” Gil mumbles through beans. “How am I still alive?”

“If that’s what you want to call it.” Wendy takes a few steps closer to Gil.

“I eluded them,” Gil says.

“Big word for you,” Wendy says.

“Aren’t you happy to see me? No kiss? No running slow motion at me? Smiling all big and sappy?”

“A few days ago I might have had the energy to pretend like I was. No sense in doing that now, I think.”

“You know how many of these walking rotting things I fought through to find you guys? And this is the welcome I receive?”

Gil tosses the now empty can of beans in my direction. My exhaustion is setting in. I barely move my head out of the way in time. The can bounces against the wall behind me and clatters to the floor.

“You know, I started getting nightmares. Like all the other people who are still…around. Alive. Whatever. It’s like they’re contagious,” Gil says, spitting onto the floor.

The nightmares. The few people we’ve run into, the few like us, still alive and around, they mentioned them. Terrible, vivid nightmares – possibly it’s the atmosphere of monsters we’re all living in. Who wouldn’t have nightmares now? But these were something more. Almost like a virus itself. Contagious nightmares.

I’ve had a few. So I haven’t slept much. I’m more afraid of the nightmares than the real life things trying to kill me.

“They say it’s a good sign,” I say. Lying.

“I’ve had nightmares my whole life,” Wendy says. “I never saw it as any good sign.”

“Those nightmares couldn’t have been about me, now could they? I don’t know if I could take that kind of flattery,” Gil says.

“It’s a sign of life. That’s what it is,” I say. “When you’re scared of things. Of losing things.”

“Or not losing things,” Wendy says.

“Maybe you could show us a few tricks,” I say to Gil. “I mean, if you eluded the things so well.”

“Would love to.”

“Actually,” Wendy perks up suddenly and steps close to Gil. For a moment, it’s almost as if she might kiss him. “I have some survival techniques I’d like to talk to you about. But we’ll need some privacy.”

“Sounds hot,” Gil says, putting his arm around her waist.

The smell in the room grows thicker somehow. It’s boiling hot. I have a sudden urge to break through the window just so I can look at the stars.

“Doug, you know that iceberg nightmare you had the other night?” Wendy is looking at me. She seems so far away. “Why don’t you tell me about that again? Turn your back, cover your ears and tell us about it. I don’t need much time. You trust me right.”

I don’t know if I do.

But I turn my back. I face toward the window and peer through the blinds. I watch a few of the things, monstrous and lumbering and rotting attacking a woman in the parking lot. I’m not helping her. I haven’t helped anyone since it started. That’s the person I’ve become. Or the person I always was.

I cover my ears and start talking about the dream.

“I was alone on a glacier – or you know, just a big chunk of ice. I was…I was freezing, shivering, goosebumps were all over my skin and I could feel the hair on my arms reaching for the sky, pulling at its own roots. There was this awful howling of wind. I felt a rain drop on my face, but it froze right away and then the downpour started. And all the drops froze to me until I was a cube. And I slid off the glacier into the water and the water turned to sand. And I sat there, frozen in a dune, not melting, not moving, not breathing, and I kept waitin’ for a monster to come eat me or someone to thaw me out so they could chase me down since that’s usually how my dreams go.”

There’s a loud grunting, a few thuds. I stop talking for a second.

“Keep going,” Wendy says.

“But nothing happened,” I say. “I just sat there in the sand until I woke up. Out of breath. I couldn’t feel the tips of my fingers. It was more frightening than those dreams where…where you’re running and can’t get away, you know? No matter how hard you run? This one…it was just waiting for the terrifying part to come that made it so…well shit, you know? Waiting for your death when you know it’s sitting somewhere watching you – that it’s close but won’t show itself. You ever have a dream like that?”

A gun shot. Then another. And one more.

I turn to see Wendy standing over Gil with the gun. Gil doesn’t move and Wendy looks like she might put one more bullet in him. Instead, she grabs the other can of beans, opens it, and starts gulping down handfuls.

“I used to have dreams like that all the time,” Wendy finally says.

I haven’t moved from the window. I take note of where I put the knife and shovel, just in case.

She’s still beautiful, sitting there, with the beans. But her eyes are fierce, Gil’s blood is spattered on her pants, there’s juice from the can across her mouth. She kicks the body. I lurch as if she’s kicked me.

Wendy eats. And I breathe.

And I wait. Because that’s what I know how to do.

Other Halloween Fiction Stories:

The Disappearance of Henry Kensington, by Aaron Elias

The post Nightmare with Beans appeared first on Fictionade Magazine.

-I can take you there if you’d like and show you.-

After hours of perusing the newest models of defense-drones, Garza welcomed the break. A weapons convention was nothing more than a supermarket – it should’ve been sponsored by energy drinks and fast food places. One more cardboard cutout of one more device threatened to destroy more than the worse insurgents. She might lose the rest of her patience. She’s cruised on nearly 15 hours, now. The best-on-the-market Sleep-Nos had produced the worst feeling in her head. Pretty soon she’d go just as ballistic as some of the models on display. But with more precision. Anyone who knew her understood that.

She’d met the man between the Raptor THX-5000 and the Centi-Impeder Mark II – just in case their kids ever wanted to know how they’d met. She always thought that far ahead. Would her kids ask why’d she come to the convention? If they did, she’d say work. She’d come by way of her assignment for Small Wars Journal. She still had yet to learn his story.

That was not all that intrigued her. Maybe it’d been his eyelashes. They were long. His eyes, speckled, lightly hazel. And gray?

But it’d been his words that grabbed her attention. His display hadn’t at first, until she thought about it. His wares did attract some looks. At a convention for private weapons contractors seeing a sign that read “U.S. Geological Service” was a rarity. Like a good rain in the Colorado River Basin – rarer even. Most of the scientific governmental agencies lived on borrowed time, or depending how you looked at things, borrowed Han funds.

She’d walked up just as he’d been in a middle of a conversation. Something about human migration flows. How to approach the problem from a hydrological perspective. Odd, but maybe not really. She welcomed any solution for the causes of the MZ. The two corporate-gray suits he’d spoken to seemed less interested by the minute. With a polite goodbye they excused themselves, just as she’d picked up his business card.

Harry S. Helstrom

Hydrogeologist

U.S. Geological Service

-Can I help you with something?-

Yes, she’d thought, and introduced herself. Ana Marina Garza. It’d felt weird to say her full name. She usually went by Garza. A leftover from her college soccer-playing days.

He told her about his project with a firm he worked for, and their plan to interdict human traffic through diversions. She wondered at his choice of words. It sounded so much like the Diversionary Acts.

She forgot all about her assignment for Re/publica, as the floor of the convention cleared out, and he showed her maps with motion-graphics of arrows that represented migration patterns on the U.S.-Mexico border, tactics to box the “illegals” between the urban polities, and actually use the worse of the low-intensity “firestorms” to detain them. When she’d asked if this was what the U.S. Geological Survey hired him to do, he said no – he was also a consultant for a private firm. The John Quincy Adams Society. As a member of a well-connected think-tank in the District of Columbia, the name surprised her. She’d never heard of them before.

-Of course, there’s all sorts of crossover between the human diversion and waterworks, hence why the JQA hired me. The border is riddled with tunnels that people have used for generations – centuries even! In fact, there’s one such place that’s close to here. The Indians in the region say it’s older than them…older than the First People. They say it goes straight through the earth and has no bottom.-

With that they packed up their stuff and left the nearly deserted convention with the few hanger-ons and hawkers of death-tools for the urban battlefield.

Garza just wanted to get laid.

***

Tucson’s night sky shed off the light from the city, a second skin sloughed off, dying, red and raw from the thick clouds of smoke that made their way from the fiery south.

Garza drove by way of Dr. Helstrom’s directions straight into the direction of the worst of the smoke, until they got off the highway and headed into the desert basin. He pointed out the landscape to her, saying the place was an ancient sea. Garza took her eyes off the straight line of the highway that disappeared over the horizon. A few points of mountains poked up in the Sonoran desert. It was almost hard to believe a political line ran through here. The land was indivisible.

Very soon the highway began to gradually turn, and just as Garza felt they spiraled to the bottom of the sandy sink, Dr. Helstrom pointed to a service road to their left.

-Just drive over the median and cross the other lanes. You can get on the road, anywhere.-

Garza didn’t worry about the terrain. She drove a rented 4×4 Hindustan Thar-Trekker. Second thoughts only came to her when the car’s headlights shined on a sign.

No Entry by Order of the Diversionary Act.

The Front.

Dr. Helstrom reassured her with a smile and they barreled over sand until the wheels of the cars sounded upon asphalt. The service road’s smooth surface ended quickly. Very soon the first of the potholes emerged and where they looked worse, Dr. Helstrom pointed out another road. There were a series of hills in the far distance and very soon, Garza bounced along a path that entered those hills. At first she guessed she’d entered a canyon. But when the car’s headlights shined against the side of the walls, she realized the land had dried up and split in half. They drove now through a crack in the earth.

-Where are we?-

Dr. Helstrom had taken a flask out of his sports jacket and took a quick swig. He handed it to her. She took it blindly out of his hand, not daring to take her eyes off the road. She smelled the mezcal before she took it. The worm.

Dr. Helstrom spoke with his hands.

-You are in one of the last vestiges of the late, great Thalassa Sea, an ancient and primordial ocean of the early Earth, the very first place where….-

Garza felt the mezcal warm her insides and for a second she couldn’t concentrate on his words. She tried to imagine this…Thalassa Sea and the first ocean of the Earth. But she wiped the distractions from her mind. Just in time. The headlights of the car came to a chain link fence and gate. A faded sign barely hung.

NAWAPA

She stopped the car and Dr. Helstrom jumped out. Stumbled out, more like it. Garza watched him rummage through the pocket of his jacket and, after a very long minute, take out a jumble of keys on a ring. When he’d gone through every single key, he came back to the one he’d started with and opened the gate.

He also had a bag in his hand.

Beyond the dark gates the lights lit up a deserted work area. Garza rolled through the gate and saw earthmoving equipment with giant wheels and tall cranes neatly parked in rows. A few trailers served as construction offices, and Dr. Helstrom told her to keep driving. For the first time Garza wondered if they should be here – if she’d done the right thing. But he seemed indifferent, a silvery flask in his hand, gesturing to the lit-up spots on both sides of the road.

-94 million years…many of these rocks haven’t seen the light of day since this place was underwater. Its not even the most impressive rocks weve seen! Subducted for all that time… That’s all much of the terrane out in the West really is. The buckled terrane of a tectonic plate, actually, sinking into the mantle. Hundreds of millions of years ago.-

Garza realized the side of a cliff wall now blocked out the sky. The car drove under it, to their right, a desolation of darkness that the carlights intermittently alighted. All she saw was narrow-gauge rails for some kind of cart. With that path, the road descended deeper into the crack. The cliff wall seemed to spreads its wings over them.

A perfectly symmetrical hole the size of a car yawned before them. Letters spelled out a word above the narrow tunnel.

Test Bore #6:

“Farallon Plate”

Garza’s hidden Tejana past translated the word. Farallon. Pillar. She had to stop the car. Dr. Helstrom handed her the flask after taking a hungry one first. When she took the warm mezcal for herself, he took another one. Larger than the first.

-When the oceanic crust was subducted into the Earth’s mantle, the sea in the area – what was left of the Thalassa Sea, anyways – was closed up. But some of it survived, barely, under the crust. Not much of it, but it was. Trapped underground for millions of years. Until now.-

They got out of the car. Garza with her survo-kit. Whenever she traveled near – or in – the MZ she carried a kit. She turned on the lamp. Dr. Helstrom had his own, which he used to guide himself to a shape.

A blue plastic tarp, covering something nearly the size of their car, but not as tall. He withdrew the tarp and she shined her lamp upon it. A rock. A giant slab of rock with the chalk outline of something. She got closer, examining the shapes. It looked long, like slender fingers, as wide as her body. They stretched the length of the rock slab. And inside each one, ovals the size of her head.

It looked the outline of tentacles of a squid or an octopus. The suckers…the size of her head. The pieces looked broken off in midsection. Incomplete sections. There must have been more of the incomplete sections. She did the math. Fifty feet long tentacles…

Dr. Helstrom laughed and covered the rock slab. As if not to wake it.

-Just some of the things we’ve found of the animals that swam in the Thalassa Sea. Just imprints in the mud, their bodies were much too squishy for fossilization. Nevertheless…our scientists call it ‘the Kraken.’-

He pointed his lamp at the cliff wall above them. She didn’t see anything until he pointed it out, and when she did, spirals of lines covered seemed to radiate out from black spots. It was a bizarre pictograph of striated lines. Something was written here that Garza could not read. He might have tried to help for all Garza knew, mumbling about underwater volcanoes. She couldn’t be sure.

She traced the narrow-gauge tracks into the tunnel with the beam of her light, and followed. Dr. Helstrom walked quickly into the tunnel and she quickened her pace. The path rapidly descended. She felt her shoes begin to slide in the dirt. At first she could see her breath in the air, but that changed with their descent, until she began to feel warm and wanted to take off her coat.

A sign was ahead.

333 feet.

That made little sense. They’d traveled so far, so quick. The tunnel’s nondescript surface finely ground dust and loose rocks pried from the walls never changed, and Garza guessed there was something here to see. She finally took off her jacket.

-What’s down here?-

Dr. Helstrom had not taken the flask out of his jacket in a long time. He’d seemed to have sobered up.

-What’s left of the Thalassa Sea.-

-How much farther do we have to travel?-

-About 2 miles.-

-We can’t walk two miles.-

-We won’t have to. That’s not where we’re going.-

-Where are we going?-

Dr. Helstrom turned around. She thought he looked absolutely dashing with his sports jacket and slacks dusted by a million year old terrane.

-When my clients from the JQA hired me, they did so with the knowledge of my work in the rock formations here. They talked about the possibility of using my data to help them build a pipeline.-

-A pipeline? Oil? Gas?-

-People.-

He turned around and disappeared into the shadows, calling to her as his feet scrunched on ground up rocks.

-Follow me. I want to show you the Pit.-

She followed him down into the muggy bank of heat that seemed just beyond the reach of her light. Finally she caught up with him, thinking of things. She felt something on her. Wet. She swatted at it, felt it on her hand, pointed her light at it…

Water. The roof of the tunnel dripped water. The rocks perspired. She felt a great weight above her.

Their descent steepened even more. She struggled to maintain traction. Very soon, she began to feel herself slide and loosed control. Only great efforts of leaning back slowed her downward momentum. Very soon she needed to put her hands on the ground, nearly sitting down, as she slid deeper and deeper…she had no idea how they’d get back up.

She thought she heard Dr. Helstrom ahead. Not that she could shine the light his way. Her hands had other things to do.

The ground felt muddy beneath her feet, and when she finally had enough traction to balance herself, she stood up. Her face was wet. From water maybe. Or sweat.

She searched around with her flashlight. Nothing at first. Then she saw the beam of Dr. Helstrom’s light. He must have looked at something far in the distance. She struggled to get over to him. The ground still felt uneven.

To her left she felt something…warm. Warm air seemed to rise.

She took a few steps.

Something under her foot tripped her.

When she landed on her hands and knees panic gripped her. For a second she thought she would start to tumble down the incline. She didn’t and wobbled up, with her light ready to see what’d tripped her.

-This way. Hurry.-

She turned back in the direction of Dr. Helstrom’s voice. He still kept his light frozen on something in the distance. Far across the blackness. Nothing.

-I don’t like this. I don’t know how we’re going to get back up. Please. Let’s go.-

-You need to see this. You need to.-

She wobbled over to where he stood. The beam of light didn’t move. She pointed the light at him.

And tripped again.

-Goddamnit!-

This time she hit the ground more prepared not to slide. Now she wanted to see what tripped her again. Carefully, she sat on her haunches and turned around. Slowly. The beam of light caught something.

A plastic bag. With clothes spilled out halfway.

She heard footsteps.

-For generations this place has been used by people to walk across the border. They would crawl up from here, and…-

She turned around towards Dr. Helstrom. What “border?” There was only the MZ.

His light stayed in the same place. She aimed her light at him.

Nothing. The lamp lay suspended on a ledge of rock.

Footsteps to her right, and she turned.

A plastic mask of a wrinkled, old man stared back at her. When she realized the identity of the mask (President Harrison?!) the person took a step forward.

With a knife.

-I. Am. The. Borderlander.-

Dr. Helstrom must have been dead. The thing wearing the President Harrison mask took another step, then swung the knife.

She ducked – slid more like it, and lost her balance. Meaning to land on her elbow, so she could hold onto the light, she failed at both. The light fell from her hands, her face hit the wet dirt, and she rolled onto her back – just in time to watch the flashlight roll down the incline, then suddenly disappear without a sound.

The Borderlander…

She scrambled on hands and knees towards the light Dr. Helstrom had left on the rock shelf. Between her and the light, a gulf of darkness…

She tripped over something again. Clothes?

A swipe of air touched her cheek and a drop of water ran down her face. More drops came. She put her hand to her face. The ceiling started to gush water. Her face felt warm and tingly.

Another brush of air, and she struggled to get up and reach the light. Only a few feet now.

More drops of water ran down her face. A great warm stream.

Another waft of air breathed by her face. She struggled on all fours, scrambling across the ground, just up the incline, trying as much as she could to ignore the water that ran across her face. Some dripped into the corner of her mouth.

It tasted like blood.

For the first time she made a sound, just as she felt another whiff of air, then…

She felt something in her hand. Clothes, her mind said, then told her something else. She obeyed, picked up the bag, and swung. When she did, the momentum took her off balance.

She yelled as she tumbled down the incline. Headfirst. Towards the dark maw. The closer she got – desperate to grab a handhold – the warmer it became.

A hand grabbed her leg by the ankle and stopped her decline.

She yelled for help. The cave’s echo mocked her.

Then she heard heavy breathing.

She hadn’t dropped the unknown bag of what she guessed were clothes. Nor had she forgotten about her brother, the police officer, in the District of Columbia and his wicked tales of 101 ways to kill a hooker.

Garza knew some things.

So, she began to empty what was left in the plastic bag.

Whoever meant to take one final swing of the knife began to pull her by her leg. Up the hill. Towards them.

Sit-ups and other abdominals had given her the strength, which she used – sitting up suddenly. She simultaneously opened the bag and emptied out the clothes. The great desperate lunged to put the bag over the terror’s head. Just like her brother had said…

A waft of air signaled the blow from an unseen knife that cut through the bag. Another backslash went right through her hand. She imagined cords of muscle opening up, to maybe match her attacker’s cruel smile in the dark.

She could see the grin in her mind.

Her brother also used to wrestle with her, and always win. It’d been a good experience.

This was the perfect time.

She yanked her body over, planted her face on the ground and, for a split second, tasted the damp dirt and maybe some mold from a million years without sunlight.

She thought of seeing the sun again and completed her move. Her attacker still had her other leg and, she hoped would reach over to swipe at her. He had better to do what she expected. Because she’d spent way too much time making her arms big and manly at the gym, and she planned with all her strength to push off with her arms and her thighs. Nearly impossible with the slope of the pit…with gravity’s laws to fight…Ana Marina Garza rebelled and leapt backwards. Into her attacker, into the knife.

She felt a stabbing pain, heard a grunt, and yelled with all her might. She tumbled back to the ground on her back and screamed again.

The knife was stuck in her back.

With her last chance, she crawled up the incline, punching her fingers into wet earth, meeting rocks and other debris, feeling her nails bend back. But she began to gain traction and ascended.

Briefly. She felt strong hands grab her from behind.

So she kicked with her legs and felt one foot land. Crunch. Her brother – the big, bad police officer  - he’d said you always knew when you’d broken a nose. Today was truly a day of firsts.

She heard a body began to slide down the pit, the hands grabbing frantically at the dirt. She gave one more kick just to be safe, simultaneously scrambling up the hill.

Screaming. It might have been her. But she was sure it was her attacker. A frantic desperate wail was sounded, and a man screamed in terror as he plunged into the pit.

Dr. Helstrom was right. There was no bottom.

***

The stormfront grew largest as the sun appeared and uncoiled its orange tendrils into a brightening sky. Each section of the clouds undulated with the warmth. The earth burned hot, but not from the day. The fires of the night stoked the flames. The MZ burned with terrorizing delight.

The weather reports from the MZ always had a sense of drama about them. Even the people most obsessed with the news were forced to admit. It was not called the Hyper-bull or the Zoo for nothing. But all belonged to the captivated, and all stood transfixed by the latest of that twilight struggle. The golds and the oranges and the reds were locked in a battle since midnight, and more at 6 o’clock with the worst of the news.

The stormchasers and the firemen – the minutemen of the Front – raced into the purge. Their sirens preceded their charge into the fighting. Then the Doppler effect snuffed out the swirls of red and green and yellow, until the headlong charge vanished.

The great surge continued, hidden behind the clouds. On the other side lurked engines… horrible engines…and their energies? All which drove the storms were halted. For the time. Any development could have happened. It was left to the merciful news to report.

Nothing.

***

Garza put the rented car into park and threw the keys at the attendant. They immediately began to scan the car, looking for explosives. The GPS on the car had, after all, announced her travel into the Front. No one wanted the responsibility of another Pearl Harbor. Not workers at a car rental getting minimum wage.

No one asked about the cuts on her face, still bandaged up. No one asked to carry her bags, not until she’d left the lot and hailed a shuttle. She waited there. Behind her, footsteps in the fallen ash. It had stopped for the moment. The winds must have shifted from the fires in the MZ. Somewhere else, she guessed, fresh ash would fall and children might play in the strange snow, maybe in the basin of some vanished sea.

She looked back at her footsteps.

Not until she stepped on the bus and sat down did her mind finally unwind, her thoughts unspooling from her last moments in the hospital.

The investigator had sat by her hospital bed, writing down everything she said. On a pad of paper, no less. She had wondered where he came from.

Garza played with the tape that held her IV in place, the sticky underside of the tape accompanying her thoughts of the bags of clothes, and other belongings, investigators had found – and which she’d stumbled over – in the bottomless pit.

Most of clothes were faded coveralls, some jeans. Workshirts. Some had names stitched on them. Investigators then looked into the names. All were women, all were missing. Workers from the mobile combine companies in the region, la maquiladoras not inflamed by the infectious MZ.

Garza’s throat still felt raw from screaming.

-How many? How many do you think he killed?-

The investigator worked for some undisclosed border bureau in the MZ. He had a big bushy black mustache. Maybe a former security soldier, she thought, waiting for him to give up something. Some answers.

-It’s impossible to know. We haven’t found any bodies.-

Because he’d been throwing the bodies into the pit.

-But from all the bag of clothes, you might be able to…-

-Impossible to know. But from that, we’d say….-

And Garza thought she heard hundreds. But he hadn’t. She just knew that Dr. Helstrom – The Borderlander – had killed women workers for a long time, now.

The investigator coughed. Garza heard a roughness in that cough. Once, he’d injured his lungs, maybe. All the makings of a stormchaser. The firemen of the MZ.

-The Diversionaries in the district want to talk to you some more. About why you were down there with him.-

She nodded. Her story would remain the same. She wouldn’t quite admit that lust had led to the pit. But what else could she say? It was his eyes? The same ones that looked behind that plastic President Harrison mask. Then those eyes had really twinkled.

Garza got off the shuttle. Still thinking of the last thing the investigator said to her. They’d looked into the firm Dr. Helstrom said he’d consulted for. The John Quincy Adams Society. They’d never heard of him, asking at the end why a hydrogeologist would work for them. And an underground sea? Their project in the MZ concerned the construction of a vast water diversion project, to reroute rivers and replenish the dying West.

Garza imagined making snow angels in the falling ash.

One of Dr. Helstrom’s last words stuck with her. She thought of the women he’d killed. She wondered on the cruel way they’d immigrated here, then been thrown away. There must be countless holes here that swallowed them up without a trace.

The post The Bottomless Pit appeared first on Fictionade Magazine.

It’s a perfect day for a funeral.

The sexton loads the casket onto the lowering device. Bruce Kensington watches his father slowly disappear into the earth. Even as he fights the tears, his mind is decades away. That autumn in Maywood so long ago. The one when all those people went missing and never came back. Henry among them.

Bruce glances at his surroundings. It really is a perfect day for a funeral. Dismal, gray, not quite raining but misting. The flat Nebraska countryside offers nothing but the occasional oak tree to break the monotony of the scenery. The cemetery has grown fat and wide on York County’s corpses and there is nothing but an all-surrounding eternity of gravestones, mausoleums, and tombs. The faint but pungent scent of rain and moss on the air. The soft prickle of mist alighting on the face. The deafening silence of the countryside.

Bruce watches as his father’s casket is lowered into its grave, where it will stay and rot over millenia until Judgment Day. An uplifting thought.

The family has gathered for the procession and is carrying out their funereal roles with gusto. Uncle Earl looks on stoically while the earth swallows his brother. Cousin Maggie is boo-hooing, nutty Auntie Heather is uh-huh-huh-huuuh­ing, and the pastor is quoting the Bible. Very clean performance. Very Hollywood.

Bruce, though. Bruce watches the casket sink and is thinking. His eyes are watering, and there is a massive pit in his stomach, but underneath all that he is thinking of the choice he made forty-two years ago. Back when the country had just finished cooling its heels after the First World War, when Congress had passed Prohibition into effect, and when his brother had gone missing two summers ago. After a whole mess of kids from Maywood had gone missing. He thinks of how he’s stuck to that choice ever since. And he wonders, as most of us do whenever we make a decision of great magnitude, whether the choice he made was the right one.

Wonder? No, worse. After over four decades of being sure about his decision, he is beginning to doubt himself.

He is beginning to doubt himself because of crazy Auntie Heather’s unadulterated grief. The woman is not holding back. Just plain ripping her chest open and baring her heart to the sky. Really getting into the rhythm of that loud, shameless sobbing that is truly and naturally one long, single wail of despair

uuuuuhhhhhhh

that only gets more intense the longer it goes on, but because the body needs to eventually exhale, or maybe to break that heightening crescendo before the mind can taste the first fatal sparks of insanity, it soon tapers down into short bursts

huh-huh-huuuuuuuh

And impossibly, the whole thing starts over at an even greater volume and level of grief. The kind of crying you just don’t want to be associated with in public.

This makes Bruce doubt himself because he never saw nor heard this kind of grief emanating from his parents, who loved him and his brother more than their own existence, as many parents do. Their minds were never given the opportunity. Always hanging on to some feeble, wilted hope a year after Henry’s disappearance, five years, ten, twenty, more.  They had said they had come to accept it, sure, but Bruce had come to visit a couple years back when Ma was still alive and accompanied his parents to the Maywood Church spring potluck, years and years after the county had officially called off the search party, and Mr. Waters had talked about that soldier in rags who’d been found in the Bavarian Forest just outside Munich fifteen years after the First World War was over, gibbering and animal-like in behavior from a decade of isolation, still convinced that the war was going on and that it was his mission to defeat the Axis Powers. So you see, Mr. Waters told them, the man was thought to be MIA years after the war, but he was still around. Bruce’s parents had listened to this with an air of serenity, gone home after the potluck, and never spoke to Mr. Waters again.

On the walk back, Bruce’s father mentioned, as casually as if he were commenting on the weather, how if he ever heard Mr. Waters speak like that again, he’d hit him full in the face.

Had Bruce chosen differently, that night forty-two years ago when his knowledge of the world was stretched beyond its limits, his parents might have actually cried like Auntie Heather is. And maybe now he wouldn’t be doubting himself. Who knows.

The way Auntie Heather is crying, the way it stutters and stops and nearly sounds as if she’s laughing. It also reminds him of the screaming that same night.

Bruce thinks this, and he has this feeling of dread, like he’s burying his father’s body and it still has an animating restlessness in it. A restlessness that, thanks to Bruce, he was never able to assuage. Same with his mother. If Henry had dropped dead on the front porch, or his body been found– or if Bruce had told them the truth– then even in their abyss of grief they’d be able to know without question what had happened to their boy. Have that sense of closure. But instead Henry had gone around to the rear of the house to fetch some firewood for the stove one night and never came back. And thanks to Bruce, there was no closure in that. Not for his parents.

The sexton and his staff are taking a good long while to lower the casket. His father was not a small man. Bruce watches this, and before he knows it his mind is traveling back in time.

It is 1923 again. The world is a living, breathing, changing thing. Women had voted for the first time ever in the last election between Harding and Cox (though Bruce’s father has sworn off the drink, he will go down to Smith’s Restaurant the night the newspapers report that Harding has won and drink with the men of the town until he stumbles home laughing and roaring and red in the face; Bruce’s mother will put him to bed with hands not unfamiliar to the task). The Ku Klux Klan is rampaging across the South and Midwest. Louis Armstrong reigns in the kingdom of jazz, Charlie Chaplin is just becoming a household name, and after a good harvest Henry’s father one day brings home a battery-powered radio. For almost a year, they are the only family in the tiny rural town of Maywood to own one.

Bruce is again twelve. He can’t wait to grow up and stay up as late as he likes and take joyrides through country like he sees the rich university kids doing on the weekends. He is still young enough to see the magic in the world, and only when the stealthy hands of the Reaper rip this special filter from his eyes will he realize that it’s gone. But of course he has no mind for such things because for now he is twelve, he will always be twelve, his father will always be halfway through balding, and the biggest problem in the world right now is finding out how to get in good with the big kids from school so maybe Myra Fleming will finally look at him the way she looks at Adam Colson, because Adam is one of the big kids, the big kids are always breaking the rules, Adam is the one constantly goading them into doing it, and that makes Myra Fleming look at Adam Colson.

It is also two autumns after Henry went out to the wood box to fetch some logs for the stove and never returned. Henry was not the only one to go missing from Maywood during that time. Seven children his age and two adults went missing as well. This led to the birth of many rumors among the children in town– those not related to any of the missing people, anyway. Those children, including Bruce, even if normally given to gossiping, did not and still do not have the stomach for these particular rumors.

It is late August and school has just begun. Bruce’s father has fallen ill from a bad snake bite he received from a wayward rattler while walking back from the chicken coop.

Bruce cannot tend to the animals and the garden all on his own in addition to attending school.  His father believes in the value of education and so has hired on a farm hand, a silent fellow from over in Curtis who mainly keeps to himself, to help with the work until he recovers. In the meantime, Bruce continues performing his chores before and after school, and drives the horse and wagon out to Curtis on the weekends to the farmer’s market.

On the morning of the last farmers market of the season, before Bruce heads out to load the wagon, his mother pulls him aside as she does every morning. It is still dark outside.

“Straight to town and straight back,” she tells him, fixing his hair.

“Yes’m,” Bruce says and fidgets away from his mother’s hands.

“Keep the money in the wallet, and no detours. Be back before dark.” She licks her finger and fixes a cowlick at the back of his head. There is a distant look in her eyes. Bruce can’t help but feel that she is not here, not talking to him at all but that she is two years ago, talking to Henry. Warning him with the kind of gut-wrenchingly perfect hindsight that comes after a tragedy. She of course has no way of knowing if there is anything out there bearing ill will towards her last and only son. And yet she knows it anyway, as all mothers do. Even more so, now that she hasn’t heard the noise of her eldest son practicing his fiddle for over two years.

There is irony in this.  Because unlike other days, her usual motherly concerns– which Bruce so often disregards as baseless, as children do– are actually very reasonable on this particular morning. Very reasonable, considering what is waiting for her son on his trip back home that evening.

“Be back before dark,” his mother repeats, squeezes his hand, and kisses his forehead.

“Yes’m. I will.” As soon as he is outside and hears the door close behind him, he musses his hair up the way he likes it. Then he runs around to the barn out back to ready the horse.

Bruce is on the road to Curtis before the sun is up. Nine miles ahead of him, most of it nothing but tall grass on his right and Coon Brook on his left. Pa usually keeps the radio by the bed so he can listen to The Happiness Boys and those uproarious Negros, Amos ‘n Andy (he doesn’t tell the other men in town about the latter). But on the weekends, when Bruce has to go into town, he lets the boy take the radio along with him. Now, four miles out of Maywood, Bruce has the Crosley Harko nestled in his lap and tuned to The Clicquot Club Eskimos.

For some reason, the horse is whinnying, snorting and shaking its head. It has been doing this since they left Maywood. Clearly it is nervous about something, but Bruce can’t imagine what. It is still dark and the two of them are alone in the world except for the gurgle of Coon Brook on their left. The road between Curtis and Maywood is a lonely one, nearly always deserted.

It is here that three things happen simultaneously. Out of nowhere, Bruce is struck by an overwhelming grief for his lost brother and misses him intensely as if he had disappeared the night before. He feels like falling apart

uh huh huh huuuuuh

and wishes his mother was next to him in the wagon. Almost at the same time, something moves in the tall grass, but Bruce is so enveloped by this sudden emotion that by the time he becomes aware of it, it is too deep in the grass to distinguish and disappears. Also at the same time, the horse begins weaving its head back and forth, as if looking for something. Its whinnying grows more intense. Bruce is worried it will spook and clenches his thighs around the radio.

After continuing down the road another minute, the horse settles down. Bruce relaxes and notices that the intense spell of sadness has passed. He wipes his eyes and soon goes back to singing along with the Harko.

He will not think to correlate this incident with the events of that evening until weeks later.

The streets are still mostly empty by the time he gets to Curtis. It is just beginning to grow light. Bruce drives the horse to the market street where all the local farmers come to sell their crops, finds a spot, and fashions a display out of old milk boxes.

The day goes by rather slowly. He spends most of his time daydreaming about Myra Fleming and how swell it would be to swagger into the schoolyard during Monday’s recess at the side of Adam Colson. They march to the back of the schoolhouse, roll their own cigarettes, and pass a bottle of Early Times between them –don’t ask how they got it, not if you don’t want your teeth knocked in– taking long slugs from the neck without making faces the way the grown-ups do (and since not even the grown-ups are allowed to drink anymore, this really makes them the cat’s pajamas). This is, of course, when a group of flabbergasted girls happens upon them just as Bruce is taking a swig of whiskey. And who should be among them but Myra Fleming. Bruce swallows and lowers the Early Times and looks at her smoothly, unconcerned, and he sees that she is for the first time looking not at Adam but at him. Just him in that slightly demure way, head down, eyes up, only a ghost of a smile. At the time he would not understand the expression, but this is exactly what his older self would call “Very Hollywood.”

Even if this heat-drunk daydream were to become reality, Bruce of course has absolutely no idea what in the blue hell he is supposed to do after Myra Fleming looks at him. But that look is all he wants right now. He is not even thinking about what-ifs or what-thens. The idea of failure or embarrassment, in this scenario, doesn’t even cross his mind. This is his trump card, his ace in the hole. It will succeed as naturally as Coon Brook freezes in the winter and thaws in early spring. He unconsciously trusts in the energy of the universe that everything will work out as it should. Trusts in it the same way he trusts– from an area far in the back of his mind he is not even aware exists yet, an area he will only much later come to know as “fear”– that he will always, always be twelve years old. And don’t question it. Not if you don’t want your teeth knocked in.

The sun floats across the sky. Bruce sells most of the vegetables and dairy he has brought and the wallet his mother gave him grows fat with coin. Soon he is back on the road to Maywood an hour before the town starts to shadow up. The A&P Gypsies rollick out of the Crosley Harko and he is bouncing and swaying along to them.

He is still five miles from Maywood when he sees a strange, greenish hulk in the distance ahead. As he draws closer, it comes into focus. What looks to be an overturned truck just off the road in the grass, by the embankment and trees leading down to Coon Brook.

Without warning, the horse screams, rears up, and takes off down the road at full gallop. Bruce is so surprised he loses his grip on the reins. The wagon hits a pothole in the dirt, dips down, and bucks Bruce into the air. He shouts as the world spins into nonsense and both gravity and his equilibrium lose meaning. Then the back of his head strikes something hard. He tries to get up but everything is fuzzy, too fuzzy. He falls into darkness.

It’s dark when Bruce wakes up. Moon-dark. The sky is clear and everything is coated in a faint and other-worldly white-bluish glow. The air is much colder now. The Crosley Harko sits on its back in the grass. Vegetables and broken milk bottles litter the road around him. He looks at the jagged glass bottom of a bottle next to him and cringes. Had he landed just a foot to his right…

His head throbs angrily. He rubs the side of it and his hand comes away slick with something dark that shines in the moonlight.

Bruce is worried now, but not scared. Not yet. He is his father’s son, and his father is a pragmatic man. He has no idea what time it is, but it is well past nightfall. His parents must be worrying something terrible, haunted by the last time they saw their oldest son. They might even rallied the neighbors into a search party by now. Bruce groans at the thought. He walks over to the radio, picks it up, inspects the damage. Miraculously, it has only suffered a few dings and scratches. The battery compartment has popped open and is now empty, but things could have wound up a lot worse. With the radio now in tow, Bruce turns and takes off at a run down the road, ignoring the pain in his head.

Consumed by a sense of urgency, he only notices the overturned truck in the grass when he almost passes it.

He slows to a stop by the hood. A Ford Model T, resting on the passenger side. He recognizes it from the catalogues his family gets in the mail, has even seen his fair share in town and when the university kids go joyriding through Maywood. But he has never seen an automobile up close, and that makes the Tin Lizzie a whole different monster.

The wheels are thin, almost spindly, and the cab is nothing but metal doors, plate glass for the windshield, and a thin vinyl canopy. The truck bed is walled by four planks of good wood. The interior is black, plush with leather. It is new, virtually unscathed, and gleams in the moonlight. Bruce is transported and can only gawk.

He is about to look at the interior when he notices the body face-down in the grass under the guts of the truck.

There is blood everywhere, as if the man had fallen from the driver seat and stumbled around before collapsing. Bruce inches closer and peers at the body, afraid to get too close. A good chunk of the man’s neck is missing where the jugular should be. Just torn off. The blood and sinew beneath gleam the way the Tin Lizzie does. Bruce fights the urge to vomit.

There is also something peculiar about the undergrowth on the embankment, where it slopes down to the brook. A line of flattened brush runs down the slope through the trees, runs into a tree trunk, and then veers off before continuing down to the shore. As if something slid down and bounced off the tree. This lane of flattened brush is streaked with blood as well as chunks of something Bruce does not want to inspect. There is the sickly sweet smell of rot in the air.

Bruce knows he has more reason than ever to hurry back to Maywood, but wants to take one last look at the automobile. After all, there’s no help for the driver anymore. He walks back to the front and peers through the windshield.

A cache of liquor bottles cluttered on the passenger side door. Bruce has some idea how the accident came about. They are all broken save one. The label on the sole surviving bottle is full of an amber liquid and reads “Early Times.” Bruce gapes.

This is it. This is the energy of the universe, speaking to him right here.

He needs that bottle.

The windshield is cracked from the collision, but not broken. Bruce clambers up the hood onto the front left wheel jutting into the air. He lowers himself into the cab, balancing on the steering wheel, then eases himself onto the mess of broken glass. He picks up his prize and uses his shirt to wipe off the spilled liquor and broken glass. He is so enveloped in his victory that at first he doesn’t hear anything happening outside the truck until something drips onto his shoulder.

He looks up at the driver’s side door.

His eyes go wide.

The driver is crawling over the bottom of the truck into the cab. He is old, with a full snow-white moustache. It is Brick House Semple, so named by the children of Maywood not because he lives in a brick house but is built like one. Brick House lost his wife in the disappearances two summers ago. He is not a wealthy man; the automobile must have cost him a fortune. Must have cost him everything he had, in fact.

Something in the back of Bruce’s head clicks. Missing

dead

wife. All that liquor. The new automobile.

Poor Brick House.

Either way it doesn’t matter, because it is very clear that whatever Bruce is looking at right now is not at all Brick House, but something else entirely. Brick House is there, and yet he’s gone, long gone. The old man’s eyes have gone milky white, but not so much that Bruce can’t see them flitting and rolling aimlessly in their sockets. He emits a low groan that at first rises, then falls. He pulls his mouth open in a humorless yellow-toothed grin and another tendril of saliva drips onto Bruce’s shirt. The boy is crystallized. A sort of whimpering escapes him. He can only look at his eyes, those translucent moons spinning in their sockets, first here, then there, than at Bruce, then behind him.

Brick House opens his mouth, and what comes out is a sound Bruce never thought the human throat capable of producing.

It starts out as a hiss, like a cat’s or a snake’s. Then it rises and turns into a kind of groaning shriek, which is when Bruce falls back into himself with a thud and starts screaming himself.

He falls on his behind and scrambles against the vinyl of the cab roof in an unthinking effort to get away. That sickly sweet smell of rot is back, not as strong as before but definitely there, and Bruce understands that Brick House is actively decaying even as he tries to climb over the threshold into the cab. Brick House starts reaching in, his fingers opening and closing, groping past the steering wheel and Bruce’s scream rises now, reaches the intensity where it starts sounding halfway like crazed laughter, his mouth dancing and producing pure nonsense, because he has nowhere to run and now his mind is reaching its limits, and he feel can himself disappearing, being replaced by this red haze of mindless fright, taking control of his limbs (and dropping control of his bladder, no need for that right now) to get him from point A (here) to point B (anywhere but here) as fast as goddamned possible, and that means in one straight line but it doesn’t register obstacles in the way and ends up making Bruce only pound and claw at the interior of the vinyl roof, using his mouth to voice its primary concerns which come out as nothing but partly-laughing, mostly-screaming gibberish and the only word that occasionally makes it through this haze of madness is “no” over and over and over. And through it all, reaching for him, Brick House groans that terrible, shrieking groan.

The Crosley Harko begins to sing the scratch of static.

In a burst of clarity, the suffocating insanity dancing Bruce’s mind on strings like a puppet draws his fist back and puts it through the vinyl roof. Starlight hits him in the face. Crisp night air cuts through the suffocating stench of human decay and slaps him awake. He grabs the edges of the hole, tears it open, and tumbles out of the cab just as Brick House clears the threshold, falls into the cab, and hits the passenger door behind him. There is an explosive crack that only be the sound of Brick House’s neck breaking, and Bruce dares to hope this will somehow really kill him. But when he turns around the old man is still groaning, in a heap with his head canted at a very wrong angle, still reaching for him. Bruce yelps but doesn’t scream, because now he has space to get away, he has the whole world to get away, and that is exactly what he does. He scuttles backwards and turns, stumbling, to his feet and runs. He doesn’t pay the radio cradled in his arm any mind, has in fact completely forgotten both it and the bottle of Early Times clenched in his other hand.

“…ruce.”

He falters.

“Bruce.”

He slows to a stop and looks down. The voice is coming from the radio, faraway-sounding, roughed-up by the static. Bruce checks the battery compartment again. Still empty. His breath quickens.

“Br… ait up.”

Bruce knows this voice. Without turning around, he knows he and Brick House are not alone. But he doesn’t want to turn around. He is afraid of what is waiting for him. And before he can stop himself, he feels his body turning anyway, knowing what he’ll find and hoping he’s wrong.

It’s pulling itself out of the undergrowth on the embankment. Crawling on its belly, only a dozen feet away. It gets to its feet, but it’s so far gone it’s a wonder it can even stand. Mindless meat, grinning meat.

It stands there a moment, as if looking at Bruce. Then it shambles towards him.

“…gry.”

Bruce feels tears well up in his eyes.

“Henry?”

The radio doesn’t answer.

“Henry, it’s time to come home. Ma and Pop, they…” His voices dies in a whisper. His stomach has turned to liquid and his legs are in real danger of giving out on him. Step by dragging step, it approaches him. That sweet smell of human decay hits him full in the face now, much worse than with Brick House, and he can hardly breathe. It doesn’t groan like Brick House. The night is dead around them, not even the buzz of cicadas. The rotted thing would be invisible in the dark save for the shuffing sound of it moving its rotted body through the grass.

It’s almost in front of him now, and still moving. Bruce’s mind screams at his legs to run but they have checked out for the time being.

“Bruce.”

It takes hold of the flesh of his arm. The bone is cold. The rot is warm. Tears spill down Bruce’s face. His knees waver, threatening to buckle. He tries to call his brother’s name and it comes out silent as a breeze in an abandoned house.

“Please.”

It comes in close and the smell of it is everywhere now, in his nose, in his throat, in him. He is suffocating. His heartbeat in his ears like a runaway locomotive. It opens its maw. Only a handful of teeth remain.

“So hungry.”

It moves in to his face, as if for a kiss, when the stench from inside it hits him. Like weeks-old chicken meat left in the sun sprayed with perfume. He throws up all over it. This does nothing to dissuade it and it’s about to close its festering sewer of a mouth around Bruce’s jaw.

It does bring Bruce around, though, and he does the first thing he can think of, the only thing he can think of.  He jams the fat end of the bottle of Early Times into its mouth just before it takes a bite out of him, rips his arm free from its grasp, and shoves it back.

It stumbles, catches its footing. Then a high-pitched shriek erupts from the radio in Bruce’s arms.

For a moment it doesn’t move and struggles with the glass lodged in its tattered throat, seemingly trying to bite through it. Then the bottle explodes, throwing liquor and glass everywhere.

It comes at Bruce again. Faster this time.

That’s all Bruce can take. He turns and runs. He runs and runs and runs, and the whole time the radio in his arm is shrieking in rage, shrieking so loud it hurts his ears, until he finally hucks it into the tall grass.

He keeps on running under the stars, that wrathful shrieking dying in the distance behind him.

Bruce’s mother is so overwhelmed with tears and joy at his late-night return she takes him out of school for three days because she refuses to allow him to travel the mile-and-a-half to school alone. His father is too relieved to argue.

Bruce ends up telling them a raccoon ran across the road and spooked the horse, causing it to take off and dump him on his head along the way. It is not a total lie. His father gives him a peculiar look when Bruce tells them he could not find the radio, but doesn’t push the matter. Bruce suspects he doesn’t want to.

Two days later, notice of Brick House’s death appears in the newspaper. His body had been found down by the creek, his head dashed open on the rocks as if it had fallen. The authorities see all the liquor in the Tin Lizzie’s cab and close the case.

There is no mention of a second body.

It is the funeral again. Bruce’s father’s coffin has reached the bottom of its grave, and the sexton and his aides begin filling it in.

Bruce will skip the three-thirty post-funeral engagement at cousin Alfred’s place. He will go straight to the airport and board his three-o’-clock back to California. He will take a taxi home and arrive at his apartment just after seven in the evening. He will skip dinner. Instead he will sit on the couch and stare at the blank television, slowly drinking his way to the bottom of a fifth of vodka. He will consider whiskey and then realize the very thought of it makes his stomach turn.

Sometime just before ten-fifteen, he will look up and see its rotted countenance in the reflection of the television.

He will then kill the rest of the vodka, leave on all the lights, and pass on out on his bed in his dress clothes.

He cannot wait to run back West, to drink, to sleep, to forget. But for the time being he is still at the funeral. He is in fact a mere fifteen miles from where the whole thing happened.

But what was he supposed to do? What version of the truth could he have possibly given to them that would not rip open the freshly sutured wounds in their hearts? That would not make them wonder at the dark fantasies that have clearly possessed their only remaining child?

And there are times. Oh God, there are times. Times when he is getting ready to go to work in the morning, or preparing for bed. Usually when he awakes in the middle of the night and shuffles to the kitchen for a glass of water and the thought of Henry flits across his mind unbidden like a moth to a lamp. When it does, he hears it. He’s quite sure he hears it. It could just be nothing.

Calling to him, ever so quietly. Coming from the living room where the radio is.

“Bruce.”

More Halloween Fiction:

“Nightmare With Beans,” by Chelsea Sutton

The post The Disappearance of Henry Kensington appeared first on Fictionade Magazine.

He looked over the stacks of papers, the bills, the notices collectors have served him. He no longer thought about what they said. He knew, as he knew what he had to do.

He cannot help but look over the accomplishments of his life. There, he hung them on his walls. An art degree he never followed, another life. An old dream. The more prominent signatories show his later accomplishments. An MBA from some midwestern city. More local certificates. A homeowners association. Some pictures of himself. Looking younger, then older, but all the same. Shaking the hand of someone. Smiles all around.

He looked one last time at the mess on his desk. A mass of letterheads, unopened mail, pens and pencils. The state of stress. They represented the last attempt to find success, to stave off the disaster. To fix a mistake he made, and now buried him, he needed a face from the ancient galley, the optimism he had used so many times before. But the confidence was gone. He could no longer manage it. And when he came to this conclusion, he came to another. His admission had brought him to this point.

The gun is a trophy. It represented days with older friends, now dead. When he would hunt, or give the semblance of pretend. When the wilderness still had that regenerative appeal. When like other myths, ideas owned real power.

No longer. With scared hands he held the gun to his head. He fumbled his index finger through the loophole. Before he could lose the nerve, he put it on the trigger, and the defect of the gun showed up again. The premature shot scared him. But he didn’t have to worry about anything. If he had, he might have seen the faces of the living that looked back upon him, the faces he would leave behind to inherit the kingdom, not of bone and brain and blood, but of family. The ruin of the family.

A picture of a young boy stared back at him. On the cusp of manhood, the father had given the keys to the son. The keys to the kingdom.

***

The kid sweated underneath a plastic mask that depicted a gray haired, wrinkled thing. With little discomfort, even barely able to see anything, he drummed with a passion and didn’t miss a beat.

He’d always had a knack for the beat. His sister told him a story once, said he used to bang on the side of his crib and always in perfect time. He never believed it. But he somehow knew it was true. He’s always had a beat, could keep the beat, and could be counted on to keep the beat when others could not, nor wanted to.

His band swirled around him with electric passion. They were a blur to him. He could just make out their shapes, if at all. They moved too fast, he moved too fast – it was all frenetic now.

Polyphonic noise shattered the air. There were moments when the sounds came together, then ended in a shriek of feedback and guttural voices. Silence, until a transformation into human voices and the band in a mighty chorus. The abeyance to melody.

It was all just controlled chaos, anyways. The two boys with guitars and the singer with all-eyes upon them – they were merely the moths to the flame, zigging this way and that. The drums held the chaos together.

The kid in the plastic mask held the song in his hands. Always content to sit in the background, yet always in the thick of the action. He had never really thought about his importance. He just wanted to keep the beat because the beat had to be kept. Someone had to do it. If not him, then who?

***

He didn’t look at the crowd. Even if he had, he still wouldn’t have seen beyond the slamming and crowding that always engulfed these culter shows. The kids wrestled and jumped and collided with one another in a frantic attempt to keep pace with the beats-per-minute.

On the edge of human maelstrom a girl stood, dark hair tied back in a ponytail. In her hands were flyers that she handed to kids in the club. If she’d worn identical plumage, she would’ve blended into this scene. But she didn’t belong, neither did the friends beside her. Flyers passed from their hands. They went out of their way to make themselves seen.

At first no one noticed or cared.

Experts on youth culture would’ve had a field day here. Amidst the pageantry and peacocks with colored hair, some wearing president masks like the one Andrew wore now, more representatives of the era arrived. Two youths in bomber jackets and razor-cut hair. They swaggered. And when they collided with others, they jostled with pride. Others were quick not to bother. The two youths wore identical boots laced to the tops. Their fists stood clenched, and metal glinted in the dark.

After a few shouts from angry youths who resisted their advances, the two toughs moved towards the edge of the dance floor. They shook their heads at the kids who danced, they laughed at the music and the band on stage. Something on the gummed-up floor caught one of their eyes. A flyer. Upon retrieval, he showed it to the other. Alarm looks went across their faces. They searched the crowd to locate the source of the flyers. When successful, they descended upon the girls.

***

A lull in the music awakened Andrew to the tumult on the floor. He pulled the President Harrison mask halfway up his head to get a better look. A murmur disapproval pulsed through the crowd, and he, like the rest of his band, couldn’t help but notice. Trouble on the dance floor. They didn’t launch into the next song. With their instruments at their sides, members of Andrew’s band moved towards the edge of a stage that was not really a stage at all. For nothing separated them from the audience.

Andrew got up from his stool and left the enclave of his drum kit. He was the last of the band to walk towards the edge of the stage. He peered into the crowd, next to him, stood the bass player. Tall and lanky, unlike Andrew.

-Pretty mellow music to be fighting in the pit? Someone handing out crank?-

The bass player, Colin, shrugged.

-Skinz, it looks like. They’re giving some girls a tough time.-

When he knew what to look for, Andrew could see clearly now. Indeed. Skin-Secters in the club. It’d been a while. Fuck the truce.

-When are these people ever going to take ‘no’ for an answer?-

Andrew stared into the crowd. It was one of the smallest clubs in Los Robles and Andrew could see everything. The crowd moved to encircle the two Skin-Secters. They yelled at the toughs. But no one went beyond that.

He could also see a girl next to a tough. She had long brown hair tied behind her head. Andrew cocked his head and squinted his eyes for a better look. He tilted his head again. Something about the girl reminded him of school. It was his time to go this week.

Two other band members approached. The lead singer strutted over. Ty, an older kid from New Robles. The incorporated east side. He wandered over with an eye on the crowd, his guitarist fast on his heels. Ty pointed at the toughs.

-Hey, I saw those motherfuckers eating ice cream outside, right before the show.-

The guitarist laughed, Andrew did too. He looked for a second at the guitarist’s tattoo. A fly. They’d gotten their’s together.

-Ice cream eating motherfuckers.-

Andrew saw what he hoped to see. His dirty secret. A few boys with jean jackets just arrived and surrounded the Skin-Secters. On the sleeves and backs of their jackets, the identical images of the Fly.

Andrew knew if a fight went down between the Cult of the Fly and the Skin-Secters, everyone could say goodbye to music shows. At least not here. Yet there was barely a “here” anywhere, anymore.

Ty turned on the mic in his hand. Andrew knew he never went far without it. Someone would’ve had to pry it out of his cold, dead hands…

-Hey! What’s up with all this punk rock violence?!-

The audience gave him some of their attention, much of which took the form of laughter. Suddenly a chant went out, first weakly, but soon with strength.

You all got minds this big—THIS BIG!

You all got minds this big—THIS BIG!

You all got minds this big—THIS BIG!

You all got minds this big—THIS BIG!

Andrew watched his boys from the Cult of the Fly approach the Skin-Secters. The toughs no longer cared about the three girls. Their dispute now was with the punk-rock culters – and the Skin-Secters couldn’t have looked happier than with the thought of violence. Andrew took a step to join his boys. The guitarist grabbed his arm, shook his head. Andrew remembered. No gang bullshit. He stood back on his heels, knowing a fight would soon erupt. He waited…for his chance to jump down there and bust some white supremacist skulls.

Feedback from Ty’s mic forced everyone to look on stage.

-You boys look lost.-

The Skin-Secters looked up at the stage. The crowd murmured. The shorter of the two – and isn’t it always the smaller one? – Andrew thought – made eye contact with Ty.

-You should talk, boy!-

The crowd immediately booed. The boys from the Cult of the Fly shoved one of the Skin-Secters. Andrew tensed, thought…he didn’t really like to talk to a crowd. But he felt a strong impulse to do something he normally didn’t like. Before he had a chance to think otherwise, he found the mic in his hands.

Andrew’s voice cracked a little. He felt uncomfortable, and bet he looked that way too. Composure came to him though. Is this how his father felt?

-Tell you what. You – whatevers – know the score. The truce stands in the clubs. If one of you can beat me at a nice game of arm wrestling, we might play some of your battle hymns for the race war. But if you lose, you leave the girls alone. You leave the club.-

The rest of the band looked on. Mostly in disbelief. Andrew swallowed. He looked at the girls in the crowd, mostly at the girl with the dark brown hair. He was pretty sure he knew her. School. This week he had to return for his assigned block of school.

The larger of the Skin-Secters began to make his big move. The tough sauntered towards the stage like one of those stormtroopers of old. Wasn’t it always the bigger one? Andrew thought.

-No ones losing, no ones leaving.-

Andrew felt his bad attitude grow fierce.

-Someone has to lose…-

The Skin-Secter sneered. Andrew felt time slow, forced to wait forever. He amused himself with the tough’s tattoos. One on his neck. An iron cross. Andrew always has a hard time telling one Skin-Secter from the next.

Andrew knelt down on the edge of the stage, and as he did so, he must have purposely made sure this enemy culter could see his own tattoo. The one on his forearm. The Fly.

The tough flared his nostrils and Andrew knew, the first shot had been fired. Fuck the truce.

The Skin-Secter went through his ritual to discard his bomber jacket. This huff-and-puff-up took forever. When it was mercifully over, Andrew saw more tattoos. Swastikas. American flags. More Iron Crosses. If he had any more he’d be wearing the corporate-corps grey of some Diversionary company.

Andrew puts out his hand. The Skin-Secter looked once more at his fly tattoo. These Skin-Secters were a strange bunch.

He made sure to look once more at the scene in the club.

Maybe a hundred kids with hungry eyes with hair to match the colors of their eyes and general depositions stood underneath a tattered U.S. flag that read in spray-painted letters Fuck you very much, Mr. Harrison! His home away from home.

***

They clasped hands and began. There was no real signal. Not here. This wasn’t Ameri-ball, or whatever the nationalists called later-day North American football. For the culters of the clubs and the streets – every house a den of infamy, as the press junkies called these poli-charged times – street-games took on an air of seriousness that wiped the adolescence off a joker’s face and replaced it with the ski-mask and bandana of the urban warrior.

A form of low-intensity combat had begun, each side ready to be done with the other. This animosity was replayed anywhere in the city right now. It could take many forms. But right here, this battle between mystery youth-cults, had taken this form. And for Andrew it was good, it was all he needed. The Great Game, the press junkies called it on the Feed.

Because for all the brawn and…that’s really all these toughs had…Andrew beat him soundly.

Yet Andrew didn’t hear the crowd erupt with applause, nor sing the anthem of this club’s affiliated cults (Nazi Punks Fuck Off!) as the Skin-Secters left the club and waved goodbye with middle fingers and Sieg Heils raised high at the top of their voices.

Andrew picked himself up, as Ty said into the microphone – never challenge a drummer to arm wrestling.

Andrew Liam Clare smiled, felt good, looked out into the mysteries of the crowd. He saw the girl with the long dark brown hair. She saw him. He imagined what she looked like when she wore it down. He then remembered. School. He had to go to the school this week, or his father would get fined.

***

A night’s ride home in a car Andrew never wanted, but which his father wanted him to drive. If not for drugged out evenings of using BIC lighters to burn designs into the inner roof of the car, the car would’ve looked brand new. That, and the band stickers. The best one that Andrew liked, which matched the shirt he now wore – I Pledge Allegiance to Shit.

He listened to a song he would never listen to in front of his friends. He might lose some PR points. Emotive, the song went. Something about being back eating, or fucking, or something. The window of his car was open, the song bellowed loudly out into the night, and Andrew sang along. He would definitely lose some points for this drivel. He noticed the volume of the song just before he pulled into the driveway of his house. He stopped long before he turned off the music. Couldn’t be too careful with parents.

It was early morning in America, and the masters of the suburbs slept in their keeps.

He slammed the door much too loud, grimaced at the thought of his father – he could already hear the old man yell at him. Stop slamming doors. He also didn’t want to wake the dog. The dog could bark but Andrew couldn’t make a sound. Like the cartoons, that was the law of the west. The family pet – not the wild dog – was the Man’s best friend.

There was something wrong. He smelled something burning. A closer, hesitant step turned into a quicker series of steps. The headlamps of a passing car shone through the window. The light illuminated a layer of smoke in the house. Something was really wrong. He took another hesitant step. Where was his father’s outlaw-gun now?

-Mom? Dad?-

Nothing. Worse, he thought. The dog would’ve barked at the sound of his voice. For once he wished it had.

There was a light on in the kitchen. He nearly ran towards a possible answer to his question. Upon entry, nothing. There was no one in the kitchen. But he did he see the source of smoke. A thick sheet billowed out of the sides of the oven door. He quickly shut it off, opened the door – which he quickly regretted – smoke gets in your eyes his father would have crooned. Blinded, he groped for the object on fire. He found a cooking sheet, and stupidly burned his hand. He reached in the oven again with an oven mitt this time. Smart, Andy. He was just in time to save his favorites. Burnt cookies. Better yet, he instantly smelled marijuana. My mom the stoner, and he put the cookie sheet in the sink. Quickly turning on the water, he opened the window and turned away from the last puffs of smoke. Stoned, bro.

He stumbles out of the kitchen and looked down the long hallway that connected the kitchen with the bedrooms. Something was crouched at the foot of his father’s office door. It was the dog. He called its name. The dog looked at him, whimpered, and looked back at the door.

Andrew took a step towards the office. His hand touched the doorknob. He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned around. It was his mother. Crazy eyes.

-Mom…-

-You…ruined the cookies…-

-…Mom…? You could’ve burned down the house. Where’s dad?-

He didn’t have time for this. His hand had never left the door handle and he turned it. His mother grabbed him by the shoulder, and he spun around again and faced his mother. She looked out of her mind. Not this shit again.

-Where are they? I need them to go to sleep!-

Andrew briefly let go of the door handle.

-Mom…talk to me.-

-Where are my cookies?-

She stormed off. One problem at a time. He lingered on her, watched her, as she went back to the kitchen. The last wisps of smoke died. Smoke gets in your eyes, the song went. He couldn’t get it out of his head.

He turned around and stepped on the tail of the dog. The dog snapped at him. He got out of the way quickly – the beast was crazy – then opened the door of the office. There was a light on in the office. He could see his father on the floor doing something. His mouth was open and ready to speak. Andrew readied his answer. His father answered it for him. The top of his father’s head was gone and a wake of gore covered the floor and a wall. Andrew knew now where his father’s outlaw-gun was, but he didn’t take the time to look any longer. He saw the ruined head of his father and never looked back again.

Out of the office. As quickly as he could go. The dog whimpered again. For the first time he felt bad for the thing. He saw his father’s lamp. Andrew knew how his father loved that lamp. Supposedly it cost $300. Andrew hit the lamp with a wild swing of his forearm. It shattered in a plume of brief light, then gone forever. Good. Never challenge a drummer to arm wrestle.

His mother came out of the kitchen holding the cookie tray full of wet, burned cookies. Andrew recognized the look on her face. She looked angry, and for the first time in a very long time, he felt fear, as he waited for her to speak.

-You want to be angry! Huh?! You want to break things?!-

She looked at the pieces of the shattered lamp on the floor. She flew at him. In a rage, she clawed at him, grabbed his hair, and he had to duck. Frustrated, he gripped her by the hands. She was always much stronger when angry.

Sounds came from outside. Colored lights came through the windows and whirled spectacularly on the walls. A car had pulled into the driveway. A cop car. Andrew heard the doors close. Footsteps, then knocks on the door.

He fought off his mother and went to the door. Funny. He wanted nothing more than to see the police right now. Hate the Police, he laughed, just as he opened the door.

Two police officers – he couldn’t tell if they were municipal or private or diversionary – held flashlights up to his face. He put his hands up, noticed that blood covered one of them….

-My father is dead.-

The post Clare – Keys to the Kingdom appeared first on Fictionade Magazine.

Immediately after Avondale’s incorporation as a borough of Cape May County in 1892, real estate tycoons began buying up property and advertising it as the Atlantic Coast’s premier beachfront resort. Just prior to the turn of the century, a bridge built by the Langdon Railroad Company connected Avondale to the mainland and allowed easy rail access to the island, further encouraging tourism from southern New Jersey and Philadelphia.

As the rest of the New Jersey shore grew around it, Avondale remained a significant resort hub. The 2010 census calculated a population of just over 1,300 permanent residents. Between the months of June and September, however, more than four times that many people can be found packed into just a short segment of Avondale’s four and a half miles of pristine white beaches. More than one hundred years before the 2010 census, this distinction between the year round population and the seasonal occupiers began to show.

Prior to Avondale’s establishment as a summer resort town, the island was occupied entirely by wealthy persons seeking a quiet, isolated life by the ocean. As soon as the development began, so did the bitterness among the community’s original elite. For each new resort constructed and each new block of houses erected, excessive noise, crowding and inconvenience increased for the wealthy citizens

As the hotels and resorts sprung and began to fill the five-mile island, more and more people moved to Avondale to stake their claim in the tourist trade. Before the twentieth century arrived, those who enjoyed a coastal life of relaxation and privacy found their streets clogged with just as many vendors as vacationers. Though many of the vendors eventually established themselves as full time residents of the island, a clear rift remained between those who called Avondale home before and after the tourism boom.

As the summer invasion became a permanent part of life for residents of the island, their common hatred of seasonal crowding drew them together. The original elite began to hold small gatherings, where they discussed the problems that came with the vacationers. The social gatherings soon morphed into informal meetings, until someone decided the group of elitists needed a formal title.

In the first ten years of the twentieth century, a tropical storm swept up the eastern seaboard and took a catastrophic toll on Avondale’s north end. The storm was so severe, it wiped the northern portion of the island off the map, permanently sinking 1st through 6th Street. The northern border of the island shifted from 1st to 7th Street in less than a week.

The loss of Avondale’s north end became a symbol of the island’s former glory and simplicity. The group of original elites found themselves often comparing the loss of former, peaceful beach life to the result of the storm. The comparison became such a popular topic, that when one man decided they group should call themselves the Sixth Street Association, no one objected. The man who suggested the name was Mr. Theodore Bartlett.

Not long after the historic storm that prompted the naming of the Sixth Street Association, another kind of natural disaster struck the Jersey Shore. In July of 1916, over the span of less than two weeks, a series of unprecedented shark attacks terrorized the coast. These attacks took place in the seaside towns of Beach Haven and Spring Lake, and also Matawan, an inland town located approximately sixteen miles from the Atlantic Ocean.

In these three locations, what is believed to be one rogue shark attacked five swimmers. Four of the five victims perished, including two young men just over the age of twenty and an eleven-year-old boy named Lester Stillwell.

During the media frenzy that surrounded the attacks, newspapers from New York to San Francisco ran cover stories featuring detailed accounts. Local, State and Federal agencies offered rewards to anyone bringing in dead sharks. Media coverage prompted large-scale panic, resulting in a dramatic decrease of vacationers at New Jersey’s normally popular beach resorts. An estimated seventy-five percent decrease in swimmers contributed to a quarter million dollar loss in tourism earnings, which would be almost $3.5 million today.

The tourism economy did not recover for the rest of the 1916 summer season. Resorts responded by shutting down early and sending their seasonal staff away. By mid-August, the boardwalks, restaurants and white beaches took on the appearance of early November. Those residents of Avondale whose livelihood came from tourism despaired, while the members of the Sixth Street Association rejoiced in their good fortune.

Though the resorts and seasonal business bounced back the year after the shark attacks rattled their bottom lines, the early fall became a joyous milestone for the SSA. The members celebrated the coming of the sharks as if they had brought them on through their own actions. Before the attacks became a distant memory, the Sixth Street faithful began referring to 1916 as the “Time Machine Summer”, after the beaches that summer resembled the years before the tourism boom.

Nearly a century disappeared after the Time Machine Summer, and the freak shark attacks had long been forgotten by almost everyone except the dwindling members of the SSA. Ninety-six years had been good to the tourism economy in Avondale, but not the members of the now endangered collection of the communities’ former elite.

A Great Depression, two World Wars and years of middle class growth had equalized the classes of the New Jersey Shore. Many of the original SSA families lost their fortunes and moved away. Some accepted the painful fate of joining the tourism industry they so harshly chastised over cocktails years before.

The original members of the SSA required the use of a banquet room for full-scale gatherings. A hundred years later, though, for the meetings that took place on the first Sunday of each month, the entirety of the SSA fit comfortably in Stanley and Jennifer Bartlett’s living room.

Theodore Bartlett, the gentleman who gave the SSA its name more than a century before, had three sons. Two left the beach for the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School and never returned to Avondale. Only Thomas, the youngest son, remained. When the Bartlett fortune began to evaporate in the early 1960’s, Thomas opened up a small insurance firm in Vineland, where his son, Stanley, still commuted to work each day.

Though Stanley and Jennifer lacked the wealth that had been commonplace for his grandparents, their family name still allowed them elite status amongst the SSA. Along with that status within the group, the members considered Stanley their de facto president. With the dwindling membership and lack of purpose over the last several years, this title did not mean much more than managing an email list and overseeing their casual monthly meetings.

The glory and importance of SSA meetings had slowly dissipated as potato salad replaced caviar on the menu. Years before, the members would have discussed the stock market and techniques to ensure a few tourist free hours at the beach or in a public park, or ways to scare off significant numbers of seasonal invaders. Now, meetings were basically an excuse for a few friends to get together and gossip over whether or not is was worth leaving the island to hunt a better price on paper towels.

The humdrum SSA meetings served as a constant source of frustration for Stanley, who still dwelled on the former glory of his family and the SSA. He spent countless slow hours at work obsessing over ways to make their cause matter again, or just to make meetings a little more interesting.

Several days before the February meeting, Stanley received an email from his cousin, Matthew, who was the son of Theodore Bartlett Jr. Mattie, as the whole family called him, maintained the Bartlett wealth through a series of stock holdings that he obtained before the original fortune ran out. In his email, he asked if Stanley still “ran that silly group of nostalgic losers.”

Stanley held a lot of jealousy and bitterness toward Mattie for his success. That, combined with his sensitivity toward anyone pointing out what he already knew about the SSA’s remaining brethren, was enough to rattle him. They definitely were “nostalgic losers” but that did not make it okay for anyone, especially a nonmember, to point that out in a goddamned email. The remark was enough to push Stanley into a chasm over the edge of which he had teetered for years.

After receiving Mattie’s email and finally falling into that rage-filled abyss,

Stanley’s tone at that month’s meeting changed considerably. Where he had once been pleasant and brief at SSA gatherings, he was suddenly wild-eyed and fiery. He raved about the glory days of the SSA, in his grandfather’s day, when any Avondale residents would have been proud to be a member.

“Do you just want to sit around and stuff your faces with deviled eggs and potato salad?” he screamed on that first Sunday in February, “Because I am completely sick of it! I think about what the SSA used to be and what we could be again and it makes me cringe!”

His eruption of enthusiasm snatched the attention of the small crowd in his living room.

“Don’t you all want to do something? Don’t you want to matter?” he asked them.

“Isn’t it time we really took a stand against these goddamned invaders? Why can’t we do what our grandparents only talked about doing? I look in this room and I see nothing but smart, capable people. We can do anything we want, my friends. It will just take a change of attitude.”

Stanley truly fired up the small crowd with his talk of restoration and recommitment. They responded to his words with enthusiastic cheers and chants of “Amen,” and his closing words really seemed to fuel their fire.

“My friends, I think the time for some real action has arrived,” he said. “I invite you all to think hard over this coming month and decide whether you want this to be a social club or a group of people that takes a stand. The summer season is only months away and, if we truly wanted to, we could actually make a difference this year.”

The members of the SSA responded to his final words at the February meeting with a standing ovation. For the rest of month and for the first time in years. Stanley Bartlett felt energized. The time for action had truly come, and he knew that the members felt it, too.

Stanley spent the rest of that month with a renewed sense of purpose. He sent group emails restating his conviction and urging communication and the flow of ideas, receiving nothing but support. The SSA was hooked on his excitement.

The March meeting brought greater numbers, with nearly full attendance. Only those in charge of babysitting everyone’s children abstained from the gathering.

Stanley came prepared with minutes from old SSA meetings, from the glory days. The members drank up his words greedily and the potato salad sat untouched along with all the other food on the buffet.

When the first Sunday in April came, Stanley transformed into a preacher, spitting his radiant gospel from a living room pulpit. Excitement filled the room more than the standing room only crowd. For the first time in years, fresh faces filled in the spaces between members. Stanley’s enthusiasm rubbed off on everyone, including Jennifer, who, in anticipation of hearing her husband’s words, completely forgot to prepare any refreshments.

Just before May, weekend visitors had already begun to occupy Avondale’s beaches, a moment Stanley anxiously awaited to strengthen the conviction of his followers. For that month’s meeting, Jennifer had to recruit help to empty the Bartlett’s garage, anticipating record attendance. In the beginning of his monthly address, which he delivered from the top of an overturned milk crate, Stanley realized that he no longer had to pump up the crowd before making his most important points. The members now arrived at meetings with excitement to spare.

Finally, on the first Sunday in June and a week after Avondale’s streets and beaches swelled with vacationing invaders for Memorial Day weekend, Stanley stood in his den, the door to the garage before him, poised to deliver the speech he had been writing for months. That morning, Jennifer had spread large, industrial strength fans in the corners of the empty garage, but the temperature still climbed with the sheer number of members, crammed in the space like sheep.

Excitement overcame the power of sweat as the SSA anxiously awaited their leader’s arrival. When the second hand on his watch reached ten seconds before five o’clock, Stanley opened the door and began his walk through the crowded room. The members did not clap, though many climbed on tip toes hoping to make eye contact or receive a smile. He paused occasionally to greet his most loyal friends but kept his eyes focused on the spot on the wall beneath which his milk crate waited.

Upon arriving at his makeshift pulpit, Stanley raised both hands in the air and listened as the soft murmur of the SSA immediately hushed. As he lowered his arms, he took a deep breath and let his gaze pass over the sea of friendly faces.

There could not be more than a hundred in his garage but, with their resolve and excitement, they may as well have been thousands.

“I want to thank you, the dedicated few, for your presence here tonight,” he began. “It is through your conviction that we have grown strong.”

He paused to let the crowd absorb what had quickly become his trademark opening line.

“I think back to six months ago, when we had more deviled eggs than attendees.” He waited for the laughter to dissipate before continuing.

“Thank you to Stephen and Leslie Ryerson for printing up this month’s newsletter. I see they splurged for color this week. What a treat.” Again, quiet laughter rippled through the garage. Stanley shut his eyes tightly and counted ‘one-thousand-five’ in his head.

“I am standing before you tonight,” he said, opening his eyes and crossing his arms to place his palms over his heart, “humbled by your commitment.

“I am honored with the position of President only because you want me here. And

it is not allegiance I demand, but conviction. I offer myself to each of you as a servant, and my greatest hope is to live up to the expectations I see on each of your faces.”

Stanley took his hands off his heart and opened them to the crowd as he went on.

“I promise you all, there is nothing that cannot be accomplished by a competent, dedicated group with a common goal. And tonight, when I look out amongst you, I see nothing but competency and dedication.”

Heads in the crowd started to nod in agreement. Stanley thought he heard “Amen” whispered to his left.

“Summer has arrived again, my friends. This is a time when we should be free to spend more time with our families, as our children enjoy their summer recess from school.”

Stanley was careful not to use the word ‘vacation’ when referring to the academic schedule of Avondale’s youth.

“But Memorial Day came and went, my friends” he continued. “I walk through the streets and on the beaches of our beautiful community, and I see scores of invaders. These people come to take pleasure in clogging our neighborhoods, polluting our sand and violating the peaceful lifestyle that we enjoy the rest of the year.”

The nodding heads spread like a virus through the crowd and short grunts of approval began to accompany them.

“Can anyone guess my favorite day of the year?” Stanley asked. “Does anybody have any idea what that might be?”

He knew that nobody would break the order of the meeting by shouting out an answer.

“I’ll tell you what it is, my friends. It’s not Thanksgiving. It’s not the first day of spring. It’s not even my anniversary.”

He turned toward Jennifer and smiled.

“Sorry, Jenny,” Stanley said to the laughter of the crowd. He turned back to the attentive faces and went on.

“Those days are all wonderful, but they don’t even come close to another day of the year.

He paused for effect, letting the tension grow.

“The Tuesday after Labor Day!” he shouted, looking up to the ceiling.

Some of the members smiled knowingly, while others silently awaited an explanation.

“I can see on some of your faces that you know exactly why I anxiously await that day. For the rest of you, I ask you, what does Labor Day symbolize? What does Labor Day mean for our community?

“For the almost every school in the tri-state area, this is the day when the fall term begins. That Tuesday marks the day when the invaders disperse and vacate our streets and shores.

Upon hearing his reasoning, every head in the crowd bounced with understanding.

“Granted, a few weekend vacationers will return to enjoy the September weather,” he continued, “But the majority don’t come back until next year, and we can count on nearly eight months of life as it should be.”

Stanley held up his hands as he did when quieting the crowd.

“Tell me, friends, what is better than sharing our community with its true members? With the people who really care about it?

The grunts of agreement gained strength throughout the garage.

“I challenge any of you to think of something more wonderful than strolling on the beach on a brisk October morning, with only your friends and neighbors to greet you as you walk.”

If the crowd did not belong to Stanley before, they did now. Every set of eyes in the room was glued to his face. Heads nodded violently as he made his points.

“I wait for that feeling all summer!” he bellowed. “When late August comes, and I know we’ll soon have deliverance from the scads of tourists, I get goose bumps when I look out at the ocean.

“I wait for that serene autumn all summer, while I fight that awful tourist traffic going to and from work. I yearn for it when I can’t let my children leave my side at the beach, because I’m worried about losing them in the huge crowds.”

A few SSA members with small children offered their agreement with brief applause.

“Imagine, my friends. Imagine what it would be like if we could enjoy our own beaches during the summer, when the sun is warmest and the water feels the best.

Can any of you remember a summer when we had our community to ourselves?”

Stanley waited and watched the members’ puzzled faces.

“This is not a trick question, everyone. The answer is no. None of you can remember a summer when the beaches belonged to the residents of Avondale, because such a summer has not existed in our lifetime.”

Stanley took a deep breath, thinking hard about his next words.

“We cannot remember a summer like that, but I guarantee you have all heard of one. It’s been a memory of the SSA for nearly a century. Ninety-six years to be precise.”

One by one, faces in the crowd began to illuminate with recognition.

“The Time Machine Summer. That was the last time the residents of Avondale, and the members of the Sixth Street Association were able to enjoy their own beaches in peace.”

Stanley smiled as he watched his words sink in.

“It took an act of nature to deliver our beaches and our streets back to us; a deliverance from the ocean. How fitting that a wolf from the sea attacked the sheep that did not belong in it’s world. How fitting that the sharks saw these tourists as a perversion of their sea, just as we see them as a perversion of our community.

“Do you all realize that not one local resident fell victim to the attacks on the shoreline? And do you think that our SSA predecessors kept out of the water as the tourists fled. They went out and enjoyed the rest of the summer, free of congestion and crowds.

“But it’s been ninety-six years, my friends. It’s been ninety… six… years. That is a long time to fight the crowds in our supermarkets. It’s a long time to call days ahead for a seat at a table in our local restaurants. It’s a long time to keep your kids from going to play mini-golf for fear of them overhearing the conversations of drunken college students cursing their way through the course.”

Once again, Stanley put both of his palms over his heart and bowed his head.

“We could make phone calls,” he said. “We could put together a petition. We could even try a series of boycotts.”

Pairs of eyes shot looks back and forth amongst the crowd.

“Anyone amongst you who thinks these political tactics might work, oblige me with a show of hands,” Stanley requested. “Anyone who thinks that small scale civil action will do the trick, I beg you, offer his or her hand as evidence.”

Stanley looked out over the crowd, waiting patiently for hands to rise.

“You see,” he continued, “this is no longer a matter of simple politics, and everyone knows it.”

Stanley brought his hands together before his chest, grasping them together as if in prayer.

“The time has come for us to make each other a promise,” he continued. “This has just stopped being a time for cheap talk. It is now a time for simple and bold action.

“I challenge you to look to your neighbors. I challenge you to find a faltering face among them.”

Stanley waited patiently, waiting for the confirmed looks of the members to turn back to him.

“I see you looking at each other, and I see the same question on each of your faces.

You ask each other ‘what can I do?’ Am I wrong, my friends?”

Only silence answered his question.

“Well I’ll tell you something. There is something we can do, and we can all do it together. We cannot expect to duplicate the power of nature in hopes of reliving that Time Machine Summer, but we can offer a piece of ourselves in hopes of bringing its power back to our shores.

“Blood. Blood is the key, my friends.” Stanley reached into his pocket as he continued. “A pledge in blood, both symbolic and literal, is the solution we seek.

Sharks have not come to our shores in years, and the mindless sheep that occupy our community each summer have had nothing to fear. But with our blood we will show our true conviction and with our blood we can call those sea wolves back to our shores to help us in our cause.”

Every set of eyes focused on Stanley’s hands as he pulled his small penknife from his pocket and unfolded it in front of them.

“I would never ask anything of you that I would not give myself,” Stanley said, grasping the hilt sturdily in his right hand and showing his left palm to the members. “I ask each of you to offer a piece of yourselves, and I will set the example today.”

As he placed the thin blade against his palm, he raised his gaze to the ceiling of the small garage.

“I draw my own blood as an offering to each of you,” he said. “I do this in hope that you will respond with a donation of your own.”

Stanley pressed the blade into his flesh and clinched his teeth against the pain. He pulled the blade down his palm until he felt a warm trickle reach his wrist.

“With our blood as our pledge, our conviction is strong,” continued Stanley, letting the first few drops of blood fall to the floor in front of the milk crate. “And with our conviction strong, our success is certain.

“I offer my blood to you today as a gesture. But soon, a pledge of all of our blood will fill the sea, and deliverance will come to our beaches.

To be continued.

[author] [author_image timthumb='on']http://www.fictionade.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/James-Blanchet.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Jim Blanchet is a freelance writer of fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry and satire living in San Diego, CA. He is originally from Philadelphia, and made his way to the West Coast via Tulane University, in New Orleans, where he received a BA in Political Science and a commission as a Naval Officer, serving on active duty until 2012. Jim’s military experience and atypical path to writing grant him a unique perspective, which he happily shares through his work. His favorite writers are Kurt Vonnegut, Jack Kerouac, Chuck Palahniuk, Oscar Wilde and Genevieve Schatz.[/author_info] [/author]

The post Blood in the Water: Part 1 appeared first on Fictionade Magazine.

Her office sat in a far corner of the house she bought with her ex-husband. The house served as collateral for child support costs. He’d received the best deal. The house was built in a post-war boom, and since then, really needed to be torn down. She’d lost money keeping it afloat.

The friends that know her – really know her – gave her office nicknames. With its voluminous history books that Garza liked to show she’d read from cover to cover, her friends had smartly culled a few nicknames from history. Valley Forge. The Wolfs Lair. The Rubicon.

They didn’t know this was the same name Republicans used for the Plan.

The lights in her office were dim. The only light came from her electronic tablets and peripherals. Quite a number stood open now. Each one had scanned images from archives around the world. Luckily her SoS clearance allowed her to by-pass the limitations of the world’s warring intra-nets.

Portraits and pictures hung on her walls. She’d collected many over the years, but only a few were displayed. Many were bound in gold leaf frames, built from kits she’d used with her daughter. Many portrayed battles from history – and the moment after the fighting. After the dying. When a war had been decided by one decision, one final cataclysm. Men laid wounded, colleagues hung on their last words. On some far-flung end of the earth, it always came to this. Some died alone to never know the world they’d wrought.

The picture that Garza hung over her desk dated from some global war. The Goddess of Liberty. Columbia. She wore a Grecian robe with the colors and designs of the U.S. flag. On her head, the mitre cap of liberty. She strode among a garden, and with a hand, distributed seeds to be sown. The title asked, What part will YOU have in victory?

Garza worked until the voice of her daughter could no longer be ignored.

-What?!-

Her daughter continued to scream bloody murder.

-Bri…I can’t…I can’t hold a conversation like this. Come in my office.-

Her daughter screamed again.

-Brianna! Come into my office if you want to talk to me!-

A great storm of energy entered the room before her daughter stepped in. When the eye of the storm arrived, it came in the form of a 13 year old daughter. Garza didn’t look up. If she did she might’ve been reminded. Fact. Her daughter looked nothing like her. More like her ex-husband, and sometimes, exactly like her mother.

Brianna looked around and snarled.

-Eeewww. How can you see anything? You need to…-

Garza turned around. She looked at her daughter. For one second she saw the resemblance between daughter and mother. The same dark brown hair and brown hair with long eyelashes that batted beneath the thick eyebrows of the first colonists of Nuevo Santander. Then the similarities disappeared, but not the pain.

-I keep the lights like this because this is how the war room of a ship is lit. So the operators can see the controls. You know…sometimes I think I’m commanding a spaceship…-

Brianna rolled her eyes, shook her head.

-SMH. Star Trek! Helno…-

Garza reached around to grab her.

-OMG! You. Did. Not.-

Garza grabbed Brianna and pulled her closer. There were teenage sounds of disgust, an attempt to resist, but all for naught. She gave up rather easily. Her father’s daughter, and no Anzaldua.

-Tractor beam locked on! Resistance is futile!-

-Lolz!-

Garza gave her a kiss on her cheek. Brianna made an eewww sound. When the adolescent whine faded into resignation, Garza resumed the interrogation.

-And what rebellion are you planning tonight?-

-Nini is having a sleepover. But I want to meet everyone at TapEx. Get a bubble drink.-

Garza gave her a skeptical look. Was this how her mother once looked at her? In search of el sedicioso?

-You mobbing?-

Brianna made a sound of disgust.

-Mom! Of course not! Like you even know. Besides…I don’t feel like hanging out here if you’re going to ignore me. Bored AF.-

Garza let go of Brianna, so she could look her in the face.

-I’m not ignoring you.-

When she said it, she could hear the shallowness of those words.

Brianna twisted around.

-Well unless you think I’m going to play Star Trek…Wars…whatever…with you tonight, then you’re ignoring me.-

Garza stroked her head. She had such nice hair. An Anzaldua.

-Can’t we negotiate?-

Brianna shook her head, hopped off of her lap and folded her arms.

-I’m not negotiating with a tyrant.-

Garza laughed, Brianna didn’t.

Garza swiveled around in her chair, looked at one of her electronic tablets.

-Then you’ve forced my hand. I don’t negotiate with forces who are in open rebellion to this government.-

Garza looked at the images on the device. She had punched into Brianna’s computer to see her school work.

-I see you haven’t honored the terms of the last treaty. Your readings aren’t finished.-

Brianna protested by looking at her own device.

-Oooohhh! Like you even care! That’s from Origins and Cultures Class. And you don’t even teach me Spanish! Whenever Granma talks to me, I can’t…-

Garza silenced her with a look. This…was Nuevo Santander. All four hundred years.

-Silencio! See…you know enough. The terms stand – or you will force me to decide this matter by force of arms. Then I will dictate the terms as the victor.-

Brianna cooed.

-Finna do the readings tomorrow. Promise.-

-I will make this concession. Now give your mother a kiss and tell her you love her.-

Brianna quickly leaned over and gives her a kiss. But in place of a kiss, she made a heart symbol by putting her hands together.

Garza laughed, and watched her daughter run out of the room as fast she could. You can run…the cowboy president once said.

-Call me if you need…-

Garza was alone again.

She listened to her daughter grab some things, then leave the house. Garza went back to work, her world. She looked at the main screen. There was a scanned image from an old New York Times. A burned out building dominated the screen. Half-tone flames leapt out of the top of a neo-classical building. The caption read Reichstag Fire, Nazis Blame Reds. She continued to open up screens on the peripheral devices and read the manifesto.

***

“The New Dominate”

by

Ana Marina Garza, Ph.D. (ABD)

A crisis gripped 3rd Century Rome with such severity that it threatened to dismantle the very prosperity of the empire and reveal, once and for all, the cracks in the post-constitutional Republic of the later day Principate. War on the imperial frontier, and the Roman Army’s inability to stop the invasions by the Germanic peoples, left the empire besieged. And not just from without. The rule by strongman military generals on the militarized borders led to the inequitable seizure of private property, the funds used by Roman generals to buy the loyalty of their soldiers, who supported their seizure of the emperorship and their donning of the imperial purple. This political trend – emperors chosen on the violent hinterlands – not only led to 22 emperors in 33 years; the selection process led to an unequal tax system that was nothing more than kleptocracy. With the citizenry ready to rebel against the unceremonious Barracks Emperors—their fortunes dashed, their money inflated to worthless depreciations—and the frontiers of the empire dominated by a near-constant military conflagration, the Empire was restored by the reorganization of the empire, whereupon the size, and in turn the strength, of the government was enhanced by an enlarged bureaucratic corps that obeyed an even more absolutist Roman emperor.

This was the Dominate.

The United States faces these same challenges in the 21st Century, albeit the lexicon of world imperial hegemon has changed. Too much power is now concentrated in the hands of a military elite who rule by proxy of their command over the embattled armies on the far-flung front lines of today’s War on Terror. As of late, and ever since the Troubles, the war has entered the very heart of America’s cities. Recent violence has lead even some of today’s best thinkers to contemplate the possibility of the US’s re-territorialization. The esteemed Americanist Warden Wood has even said that the Troubles exist as extant examples of wild frontiers, characteristic of the borders between modern nation-states, yet having none of the characteristics of geographic peripheries. Instead these walls within walls, like Rome’s own Aurelian Wall to stave off the German invasions, are much like the wars in the Middle East and Eastern Africa. So too are the commanders powerful.

Yet America is faced with a momentous opportunity, one that can draw from the same sources that influenced cutting-edge Americanism of the past, when the institutions of democracy, individualism, and free enterprise came into existence. The origin of these qualities and, for the point of this research, serves as this research’s methodological point of analysis, is the wild frontier, both as a place and an idea that allows these aforementioned qualities to flourish. These places just need to be “won” again, these very places within our own nation. The key point is the process by which these American qualities form. In not so simple terms, the key word is violence. That is how to regenerate our national fortunes.

Ironically, America greatness can only be restored through the enlargement of the government. Unlike Diocletian, the Roman Emperor who ended the rule of the Barracks Emperors and ushered in the era of the Dominate, any call to give more power to the government will be greeted with the hoots and hollers of a dissatisfied and cynical public. While Diocletian could enjoy the pomp and circumstance of royal absolutism to persuade the Roman public, America can rely upon the theme of the values of progress to assuage it of any doubts in a more powerful government, yet only if it trumps up the value of the things which America values best and promises to restore. Democracy, individualism, and free enterprise. Previous generations touted these qualities and later academics pinpointed the genesis of them on the wild frontier. By any other name it is called conquest. In the psyche of America that is triumphalist in its national celebration, this genesis of progress is called the “Winning of the West.”

How to do this?

The best hope for America lies in the support for total privatization of every sector of American life, which will not only replace the former offices and services controlled by the federal and state governments, but the enlargement of services for the public under the suzerainty of private organizations.

One field that bears mentioning are private security contractors created by the Mandate Acts and the Diversionary Acts. Until now only used overseas, these private organizations bear mentioning because they can serve the goals of privatization, and in the long run, the expansion of the federal government, yet all under the guise of American values. More so with these private military contractors. They can be justified to the American public through the mention of the things that made America great—and so can again. Through the open recruitment of a mythos-infected public, they will do what Americans of past years did before: win a continent and make a nation through hard work and sacrifice. Progress will continue, the nation will endure, and move forward….

[author] [author_image timthumb='on']http://www.fictionade.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/J.D.-Mitchell.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Born in Boston, MA, the self-glorified genesis of America, J.D. Mitchell has spent the last 38 years as a noise-artist, public access videographer, a meat cutter, and a student and teacher of history. He spends a great deal of his time as a competitive trail runner, and has begun work on repairing an old coffee table his late-father made when he first met J.D.s mother. He has written, and published, papers about the U.S.-Mexico border, and continues to read Conan the Barbarian comic books—the new ones by Kurt Busiek and Cary Nord are really quite good! For a view of the collage-movies he made, please visit: http://www.youtube.com/user/jeffreydavidmitchell?feature=mhee He has given up making videos for the time being. His work on a collection of short stories continues…[/author_info] [/author]

The post “The New Dominate” by Ana Marina Garza appeared first on Fictionade Magazine.

That week was the most exciting moment of those seven years. The rest of the time Albert spent waiting tables at the one café on the island, snapping pictures with his used camera, and reading.

Albert remained in his childhood bedroom in his parents’ home until the age of 29, at which time his father lost all patience for the lack of progression in his son’s life, his impatience fueled most likely by his own loneliness and desperation to invite the few divorced or widowed women on the island over for a night cap in an empty house, rather than one inhabited by his grown son. The college loan bills he was still paying on the fifth of every month did not help either.

Albert managed to pack all of his belongings in five suitcases and duffle bags and drag them on the ferry one hopeful afternoon of his 29th year. His father refused to let him take any furniture, insisting that Albert fork out his own money for such foolish things as a bed and couch.

Albert found a bachelor apartment near Imprints – the art gallery he frequented, still hoping to run into Alice, the green-eyed photographer he had obsessed over since his teenage years, even though he knew she had been flying around the world taking photos of Russian ballerinas, safari animals and Indian weddings. Her pictures still showed up in the photography magazines he subscribed to (which took a heck of a time to update his address, sending him into spirals of depression when they didn’t arrive on the days they were supposed to). Since he kept every back issue of every magazine, and he couldn’t very well lug all of those issues across town to his new apartment, he spent nearly five days painstakingly cutting out each photograph of Alice’s and housing them in empty shoeboxes stolen from his mother’s side of the closet – which is father still left intact, just in case she snapped out of it one day.

Albert piled the shoeboxes in one corner of his one room apartment. Against the opposite wall were a mini fridge and a hot plate. In another corner was a small door leading to a combination shower and toilet – the showerhead wedged onto the back of the sink, where Albert would also need to wash his dishes – the one plate, two mugs and two forks and two spoons and three bowls in his possession.

Albert was able to find a thin double mattress online for $50, which now resided in the other corner of the apartment – smelling of curry and serving as bed, desk, couch and dinner table, all rolled into one. He placed a small TV with an antenna on top of the refrigerator, piled his few books by his bed, and hung his clothes on a few nails in the wall by the bathroom.

All in all, it was one of the best homes Albert had ever had.

So at the age of 29, less than a year away from turning 30, Albert got a part-time job as a bar hand at Sparky’s Coffee Café and another clearing tables at The Rudolph Inn, a fancy restaurant just off the boardwalk, where Jasper was now a sues chef.

Jasper had taken up cooking in the last years of college, enrolling in a cooking academy at the same time he was finishing his four year degree. He had been trying to get Albert to move to the city ever since getting a job in town himself, but Albert never budged – until his father decided to become an eligible bachelor again.

Jasper had recently married a woman named Cindy with curly brown hair down to her chin who worked as a nurse at the same asylum where Albert’s mother was now a resident. Despite this, and their obvious differing places in life, Jasper and Albert made a point to spend one afternoon or evening together per week – catching a flick at the unnamed movie theater by the water, wandering the halls of Imprints, drinking coffee at Sparky’s on Albert’s employee discount, or bar hopping along the boardwalk.

One particular night, not eight days before Albert’s 30th birthday, he and Jasper were at a particularly dark bar with a floor covered in sawdust. Jasper had blown through eight beers already.

“You gotta come to work tomorrow,” Jasper said. He slurred with a special sort of authority, which made Albert almost want to bow to him.

“It’s my day off,” Albert said. “It’s my fucking birthday week.”

“Birthday week, fuck,” said Jasper. “What are you, twelve? You gotta come to work. Believe me, just show up.”

“What if I don’t?”

“You’ll regret it the rest of your life.”

“What, are you going to make me regret it or something? That a threat?”

“No man, really. Just come to work.” Jasper downed the last of his ninth beer.

“Slow down Jasper, you gotta be able to walk through your front door or Cindy won’t let you go out with me anymore. Seriously man.” Albert slapped Jasper on the back, making him lurch and almost gag.

“She’s pregnant man.”

“What?”

“Shit yeah. She’s pregnant. I’m going to be a father. Imagine that huh? Imagine me in charge of another human being.”

“You got your shit together man. Not that far fetched.” Albert sipped his third beer, feeling the walls around him collapsing, making it hard to breathe.

“It seems like that huh?” Jasper laughed into a fresh beer. “This is what you’re supposed to do though huh? Get married, get a job, have kids. Shit. You ever think of it?”

“Of you having kids?”

“No, man, you. You settling down.”

“How do you settle down if you’ve never, I don’t know, settle up? Unsettle? Whatever. The opposite.”

Albert had thought of very little but Alice and the next book he would read over the past few years. He had dated four girls in that time, only three of which he had actually slept with. The first one, who he had lost his virginity to, he dated over two years and about marrying her at only three distinct moments – moments that were usually precluded by his mother’s insistence that she help him pick out a ring. But he couldn’t imagine marrying her, for reasons unknown to Albert, and she had a particularly acute jealousy of Alice, a woman neither she nor Albert had ever actually met and could be, for all Albert knew, simply a made up entity rather than a real human photographer. The second and third girls lasted four months each; they were girls he had met right in this bar and ended up moving out of town for bigger and better things. The third one, Susie, had actually invited him to move with her to Chicago, but Albert always imagined he would hate the snow, and he didn’t seen the point of finding out for himself. The fourth girl lasted two weeks – but when she insisted that they have sex with his parents awake in the other room, Albert had broken up with her before she could get his pants off.

Albert ran through those girls in his head and admitted that no, he had not thought much about love or marriage or children. Ever.

“Well, settle up then. Become a photographer or something.”

“I’m no good.”

“Shit. I can’t do this on my own. I need you to do it with me.”

“What? You’re not doing it alone. I’m pretty sure Cindy is doing most of the work.”

“I mean, this whole being an adult thing. Responsibility.”

Albert sipped his drink and didn’t reply.

“I’m scared man.” Jasper took a big swig of his beer.

“Let’s get you home, huh?” Albert handed some money to the bartender and lifted Jasper up off the stool.

“Promise me you’ll come to work tomorrow. 3pm sharp huh? Just be there.”

“Yeah yeah. I’ll be there.”

When Albert arrived at the restaurant the next afternoon, he was surprised to see the dining room arranged with crisp white table cloths and fresh colorful signature dishes from the restaurant’s menu laid out under photography lights. Jasper, his eyes bloodshot from the night before, stood beside the chef and the manager who were huddled together talking to a middle aged woman with long, flowing silver hair.

Jasper winked at Albert with one of his red eyes and nodded his head toward the woman. “So glad you’re here, Albert,” Jasper said loudly, disturbing the conversation between the three and pulling Albert into the group. “You’ll be a big help today, I’m sure.”

The chef and manager looked confused and grumbled, but the woman smiled and held out her hand. Albert stared at her green eyes, the shade of limes, and let his mouth hanging open.

“Hello, Albert. I’m Alice. I’ll be photographing the food here today. You here to lend a hand?” Albert nodded.

The rest of the day was a blur for Albert. He held lights, adjusted and refreshed the food, and made coffee for the chef, manager, Jasper and, especially, Alice. But Albert never said a word. He watched her closely, the way her eyes moved over the food, the way she held her camera, the way she gave directions to Albert in a clear, smooth voice. She was, perhaps, 49 or 50 years old, with small wrinkles around the corners of her eyes and mouth and along her hands. Her grey hair went down to her waist and was the perfect shade of silver – so you couldn’t rightfully tell what color her hair had been previously. Albert could not take his eyes off of her.

At the end of the day, as Alice packed up the remains of her equipment before the restaurant opened for dinner, Jasper pushed Albert toward her and he was finally able to utter the words, “I love your work.”

“What was that?” Alice looked up at Albert, having been distracted by her equipment and other thoughts. The green eyes were piercing and the words caught in Albert’s throat again.

“I… I said, I…I love your work.” Albert let out a deep breath.

“My work? You know my work Albert?”

“Oh, well, yes…yes of course you’re in all the magazines and you had an art show here at Imprints seven years ago and I wanted to meet you then but I didn’t know what you looked like and then I fell asleep in the street so that whole night was a bust.” Albert let the words run out of him like a rushing river.

“Albert! We need your help setting up dinner – let Alice finish packing up.” The manager scrubbed frantically at the tables they had been using for the shoot, then took a ruler out of his pocket and measured the distances between the salt and pepper shakers, exactly three quarter inch apart.

“It’s my day off. I just came in to…”

“Not anymore, Devin called in. Get your apron on.”

Albert turned back to Alice. “I have to uh… but I just wanted to tell you that…well, you heard me. Thanks.”

Albert rushed off to the kitchen, not looking behind him.

And then it was the night before Albert’s 30th birthday.

Albert was alone at Sparky’s counting down the hours with thoughts of unsettlement and Alice’s eyes. As the last few customers lounged in the corners and sipped at the dregs of their coffee, Alice walked through the door.

The night continued in an almost misty haze – Alice waited for Albert to close up the shop, then took him to a bar down the street, something more classy than the sawdust bar he and Jasper went to only a few nights before. There, Alice bought Albert a birthday drink, and they talked – Albert loosened up after a while, and was able to speak without stammering or speaking in run on sentences. They talked late into the night, too late for Alice to catch the bus back to her short term rented flat deeper in the city, where she was staying until she figured out where her next job might be. So Albert offered his place up – with the appropriate warnings beforehand.

Alice wasn’t as appalled by Albert’s apartment as he expected. She sighed and nudged a few books against the wall and talked about her first apartment, how it had felt even smaller than this, that she didn’t have a fridge for a long time even and how that had caused many a creative cooking situation. They huddled on Albert’s mattress and sipped a couple root beers Albert had in his mini fridge and talked of photography and their passions and their past. Albert talked about his mother and how he felt about her commitment and his father’s reactions – something he had never really even spoken to Jasper about – and sometime around 3am Albert found the courage to bring her the shoeboxes.

Alice was flattered, and even if running out the door had occurred to her, she stayed, and went through each photograph and answered Albert’s questions. She had a story for each one – she remembered each person’s name and their back-story and what they had been doing in the photograph. Albert realized that he couldn’t remember half the details in the few family portraits he had that Alice could remember in the most obscure photograph of hers. Alice talked on and Albert listened and around 6am Albert reached out his hand, touched Alice’s chin, and kissed her.

They made love on the cut out photographs and fell asleep around 8am.

Alice was gone when Albert woke up, but she had left a note with her number and address and expected a call from him that week.

Albert was now 30 years old.

After many dinners and drinks and talks and late nights in Albert’s bed, Alice left three weeks later, off to South America to photograph the rain forest. On the last night they spent together, Alice kissed Albert on the check and hummed a bit of
Stravinsky in his ear, sending images of ballerinas dancing across Albert’s mind, ending on the first image of Alice’s that he had loved – the single ballerina in black and white, stretching by herself, her face distant, sad and longing.

In Alice’s absence, Albert felt unsettled. Everything seemed beautiful and nothing seemed quite good enough anymore. His photography magazines stacked up in the corner and Albert cut photos from travel magazines instead; the books he read were about ballerinas and rain forests and traveling short cuts and love the most beautiful places on Earth.

Albert saved his money for several months, enough to buy a ticket to Europe and an extra battery for his camera and a large backpack. It was time to be settled up.

Before catching the plane, Albert dropped by the asylum where his mother was staying. Cindy was there, her stomach nearly bursting with Jasper’s child, her facing beaming and warm. She hugged him and walked Albert to his mother’s room, where he watched her sewing the quilt and mumbling to herself.

Albert slipped the shoeboxes of photos under his mother’s bed.

“Take a look at those any time you like, Mom,” he said. He kissed her on the forehead. “It’s time I go see some of those for myself. Don’t you think? I’ll take lots of pictures for you.”

“I’d like that,” his mother said, the first coherent thing she had said in a long long time. “I’d like that a lot.”

[author] [author_image timthumb='on']http://www.fictionade.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Chelsea-Sutton.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Chelsea Sutton is a freelance fiction writer, playwright, theater director and producer. Kurt Vonnegut is her hero. In both her plays and fiction, she likes playing with reality and genre, blending elements of magical realism and sometimes horror or science fiction when she’s feeling inclined that way, sometimes using them in silly or abstract ways. As an example, she produced her first full-length play in January 2011, which featured a Sea Monkey as a character. Currently, she’s working on a novel that takes place in a porn-screening movie theater called The Amazing. She earns her living doing marketing for theater companies – and this is not particularly glamorous in any way. In her spare time she bakes pies, attempts to train for half marathons, travels, reads and pretends to teach herself all the things she wishes she could do.[/author_info] [/author]

The post For Alice – Part 2 appeared first on Fictionade Magazine.

“I’ve gotta run, but stay here as long as you want.” Suddenly a woman is kissing me. My mouth moves around it and whatever words I”m forming. She rushes down the wooden hall on heels, click clacking her way out the door. I push myself up on my elbows and take stock of things. I’m on a full mattress with half a blanket bunched around me. My toes are ice and there’s a crystal ashtray on the side of the bed that contains a lot of failed cigarettes. Some have lipstick, some don’t. Their bent white bodies are crammed up alongside each other. I pull the blanket up around me and my thin ivory legs look blue in the morning.

There’s a single bulb on in the bathroom that hangs from the ceiling. The floors are dusty and there’s a smell like old books reeking up the place. I fall back down. I stare up at the ceiling. The whole room is pulsing and throbbing. The chandelier above me, I swear to god it shakes like a perpetual earthquake.

I whip the covers off my body. I’m naked. There’s a condom cinched around the base of my dick. I peel it off delicately and hold it pinched in my fingers. There’s nothing inside. I tuck it under a corner of the mattress. My clothes are nowhere in sight. Unless I was dressed in lacy bras and a garter last night, I can’t find a single item.

I wrap the blanket around me. Looking like a bloated larva made of down I start down the hall. The dust clings to my toes. By the time I sleuth out the bathroom, located in a closet in the middle of the apartment, I’m kicking dust bunnies around with my feet. There’s a crust at the corner of my mouth and lips and I scrape it away with my teeth. I break it up with my teeth a bit before swallowing. It makes my stomach rumble.

I turn on the faucet. It vomits out a burst of dirty water after the pipes stop creaking. It makes me nauseous. I close the tap and cinch the blanket around me. Down the hall there’s a bank of windows shoving sunlight in my face. It’s overcast and the brightness diffuses acutely. I hadn’t taken my sunglasses with me.

The windows must be in the kitchen is what I gather after opening the door to a closet in the dim living room. I squint and brace against the pulsing stimulae and walk down the hall. I am swaddled like a little papoose.
The kitchen is half built. There are brand new cabinets on half the wall and brackets nailed into studs on the other half. I open the fridge. It’s got half a bag of potato chips and some butter in it. It looks brand new and has that plasticy just-been-manufactured smell. I turn to the sink and, maybe praying, open the handle. The water comes out clean and gentle. I sigh in relief and turn my head under the tap, lapping at the water, filling my mouth up with it and spitting it out, swishing it around my mouth, wincing when it hits a cavity, and gargling. There’s a taste in my mouth like burnt wood, vomit, and rot and, jesus, it tastes like I swallowed a prison camp.

When I can bear it I stare out the window. I can’t recognize a single building. There’s no river or mountains or landmarks. It’s terra cotta roof tiles and dingy windows and spindly TV antennas all jutting out at strange angles overlapping and intersecting.

A woman in a window across the courtyard and down one floor looks up from doing the dishes and cocks her head at me. I’m still wrapped in my down chador and her staring startles me back from the windows.

I realize now that I am stark naked in the apartment of a woman I don’t know with no way to lock up, no way to contact anybody, no idea what I may have done, and a vague notion that I may not be in the city I assumed, let alone the country.

I want a cigarette but I need to find my pants and jacket. I walk back down the hall and there, hanging from another door to the bathroom, is my shirt. I pick it up and turn it over and back. There’s not a single stain or smudge that tells me what has happened. I drop the blanket to the floor and dive into my shirt. I’m still naked from the waist down. My balls are shriveled as well as my dick which, I notice now, is feeling particularly raw and abused. But it’s unscathed, the fortunate little thing.

There’s a couch down the hall and crumpled up on on top of the backrest is a black shape. I can see the rivets of my jeans. I hustle over, my ankles rigid, and pick them up by the waistband. When I fish through the legs and crotch I can’t find my underwear. I look around, pants in one hand, blanket edge bunched up in the other. The undies can wait. I let the blanket hang off my shoulders and through the small igloo entrance between my legs I put them on one leg at a time. The denim rubs against my crotch and I wince. I zip them up like ripping off a band-aid and when they’re on I notice broad white streaks down the material covering the zipper. I scratch at it and a fine dandruffy residue flakes down to join the dust. This woman, I think, whoever she is, was at some point very wet and sitting on my lap. That’s all my jeans can tell me.

I remember my point and pat down my pockets. My cigarettes aren’t there, but my lighter is. I drop the blanket but it’s still freezing. If I can find my socks, shoes, and jacket I may be able to make it out and get my bearings.

I walk back into the bedroom and sit down on the mattress, my knees drawn up into my chest. I pull one of the cigarettes from the ashtray, one without lipstick, and straighten it out. I light it, but there’s a crack near the filter. I put it out and grab another. This one is a winner. It was hot and dry in my mouth and kind of acidic. But I smoke and smoke and my head stops pounding for one glorious moment before the arid sahara of my tongue stretches out in chalky dunes.

I pick up one of the lipsticked cigarettes. The lip marks on the filter are bright red and thick and greasy. Did I go home with a hooker? It’d explain the run down state of the place. My dick is burning. But how many hookers let their clients hang around their apartments while they go out? And what does a hooker have to run out of the house to attend to early in the morning? I abandon this theory.

If I had an idea of who this woman is, what she’s doing and for how long, I can ride out the waiting. But I don’t know this woman’s name even. I used to, I think, and the drive that made me seek out my clothes is now going toward remembering. I saw her name. On something. It was vertical. A piece of mail? I walk to the kitchen, still smoking, and scanned the table. I look a few times and then scour it with my hands because I wasn’t really looking. No mail. Confirmed.

Was it Janet? Jenny? Jessi– no Jennif–, no, fuck.It’s something to do with the mail maybe. Mailbox? Maybe.
The door to the outside is in the hall near the kitchen. I open it a crack. There’s no lock that doesn’t need a key. I poke my head out and look side to side down the hall. I step out and peer around the door. The mailbox, with its name placard right in the center, shines out like neon.

Jill! Christ! I remember that! Jill! But Jill from where? Jill from the bar? Jill the Jill I shared a cab with when, just like that, love struck? Jill the jaded hooker with some crotch burning ailment? At least there was Jill. Jill, that name starting with a loaded tongue explosion that lulled to a murky end somewhere. Jill L.
I pull my head back in and have to close one eye to steady myself. My heart is pounding, fresh with clues to unravel. I close the door and with it, close out the sound of barking dogs and trams. I steady myself, hands on my hips, swaying as I look at the walls. No posters or photos. Not even a fridge magnet. Just Jill. Jill L. The post man knows more than that. I’m not even sure what magazines she subscribes to.

Why did she have to wake me? The though pulses through my head the way a squid swims. If I’d woken up alone in a dusty bare white apartment I could’ve believed it was a squat or a kidnapping gone wrong. Something with a little danger. Instead, I’m stuck with my irritated crotch rubbed raw by denim in a house with a woman who hasn’t removed her mail in several days.

I walk to the back room, sizing up anything that can straighten me out. There’s a stack of paintings against a wall. I peel them back one by one. Wood engravings of ships, a coastal scene, two figures walking through a light dappled garden trail.

I don’t know what I expected, but disappointment piles on me. I want to leave, but theres a dread in my gut that compels me to find some closure. I head to the bedroom and pluck the last unstained cigarette out. Smoke follows me, a static cloud hovering in a think strata where I stand. It drifted and diffused out and the motion made me sick. My feet and hands are a bit swollen and the edges of wood floor slats press into my soles. I forgot to look for my socks and shoes. There are a hundred small tasks separating me and egress and I’m too overwhelmed to begin.

There’s a thunderous knocking from down the hallway. This must be a squat. A squat getting their eviction papers when I’m the only one in the house. But hell, the police wouldn’t keep knocking this long. Maybe Jill had locked herself out. I walk delicately to the door, putting my weight on the balls of my feet and then moving my heels down. It’s soundless this way. There’s a small window right next to the door. A black shape fills up the space making a pointed figures as he shields the glass and peers in.

It must be her pimp. Her boyfriend. Somebody who’d been stiffed by her. I back away slowly, but where? It’s a thirty foot drop if I jump out of the window. More knocking. The shape tests the knob and rattles the door. I back off anyway. Hes shouting something, but I can’t make it out. I think of the old woman across the hall. Has she called the cops? They wouldn’t keep knocking like that. If I can just explain my situation maybe they’d have some pity. They could lend me a jacket and a pair of shoes. Tell me who this woman is. One of them may even have an extra pair of sunglasses. Cops always have sunglasses.

The knocking stops but the shape is still there, still peering. I breathe into my hand and cup it to my nose. My breath smells terrible. Maybe it’ll hold him back a bit. The door resists my first pull. Only when I tug on it with as much force as I can does it send me stumbling back a bit. The shape, a man half a foot taller than me and tightly cropped crew cut, folds his arms. His forearms are stacked on one another. The thick slabs of muscle are hard layers of limestone towering over me like a beach cliff.

When simians want to display their submissiveness, they curl their lips in. That’s how the smile developed. As a sign of submission to a certain circumstance. There is nothing in my mind except this fact. I stand there, philtrum nearly touching my chin. Neither of us know who should speak first.

“Heya, how’s it goin’,” I say, but the words tumble out breathless. He cocks his head as if he’s misheard. “Er jo napot,” good day, “kivanok,” I wish you. Is this too formal? If a man came to the door inquiring after a near-naked man with no shoes on, who much civil pomp is required in this language?

I gyrate my hands and shoulders, showing the both of us that I’m out of my depth here. He cocks his head again, but this time furrows his eyebrows. I wave bye to him as if this will make a cordial end to this. As I ease the door shut the man braces a splayed open hand against it. My breath is shallow, barely filling the top of my chest. My pulse quickens. With his other hand the man points from ceiling to floor, not shouting, but speaking forcefully. The thing about Hungarian is that it sounds like a Frenchman choking. At once flowing and fricative, it goes the way of otherwise gently sex that includes the occasional nail gash across the back. I’ve lost my ability to formulate words like this. I try to speak rationally, calmly even, but I break into hysterics and have to fight through the laughter to say Sorry, I have no idea who or where you are. I’m sorry! I just can’t solve this one!

The man puts his hand on his hip and pinches the bridge of his nose. I ease the door shut, but he doesn’t react. I stand there, looking at one side of the door while the man looks at the other side. We stand there, basically maintaining eye contact through the wood slab. Footsteps start and end with him closing the door. He does live here. In fact, he’s this woman’s, whoever she is, neighbor. If he’s shocked that means she doesn’t do this often. But then, maybe she does it too often. Maybe he’s sick of it. Or hell, they’re running a scheme to dupe stupid horny Americans. Take me to the ATM at gunpoint or something.

A siren rushes down the street. It’d be stupid of me to worry, but then, here I am. I’m stuck without my shoes, let alone glasses. I remember a cautionary tale about a Berkeley girl who walked around barefoot and contracted hepatitis by stepping on a needle. I remember another cautionary tale about a student who was still sitting in a prison after doing whatever it is he did to get arrested. I walk as quick as I can to the bedroom without making noise. My feet are unmarred. I must’ve worn shoes here last night.

I whip off the covers, toss the pillows back and forth. The bedside clutter comes into focus. There’s a nightstand made from a plastic beer crate. On it is a sprig of fake lavender, a couple pieces of ribbon, and a handful of bobby pins. There’s a picture there too. It’s black and white and there’s a woman in it. She’s sitting on the wooden steps of a wooden building. Her forearm supports her chin, elbow on her knee. She’s gazing far off at something. I look in the direction of her eyes. Against the door, shoved in a corner, is a jumble of black cloth. My hand shoots into the mess. I rub my fingers on the cloth. It’s loosely knit in polyester. It makes a sound that digs into my jaw like a fork scratching a plate of chewing tin foil. I separate the items. There’s a thud as I do. I hold up a slip and a jacket with big brass buttons and epaulets and a little bowed sash round the waist. I’m so puzzled by this it takes me a few seconds to look down between the clothes. The toe of a shoe, my shoe, pokes out from beneath a pair of sweatpants. I snatch them to me, almost kissing them, and dig inside for socks. Nothing, but it’s okay. I slip them on. My feet feel cold and out of place. I imagine my feet in their own abandoned cathedrals, top sole vaulted high above my frigid digits. I wiggle my toes around, but the blood and warmth is still catching up.

Jacket be damned and the cigarettes too. To hell with locking up for that matter, and the sea cliff with a crew cut. I think about leaving a note, but then this woman could’ve done the same. I pick the condom up. It’s the least tidying up I can muster. I figure there’s a trash can in the kitchen and from there it’s a couple steps to the door and avery ambiguous yet surmountable number of steps back home. I feel something like normalcy now that my shoes are on and it gives me a sense of capability white the city sounds drift in and the hallway stretches out in a frigid wooden escape path. For some reason I hold the condom with as little finger contact as possible, pinched between my thumb and finger, holding it out at half an arm’s length.

Home free, I think, or just about. My footsteps are echoing out of sync. It makes me pause and when I do I notice its not my footsteps, but someone outside. I freeze. The cops are going to burst down the door on some errant sex offender who gets his kicks from leaving used condoms in strangers’ trash cans. Do the cops here carry guns? Is this how it ends for me? Like a Sundance Kid freeze frame of me rushing into conflict brandishing a floppy and mostly unfilled condom, dust kicking up around my feet? The door opens. I’ve wasted the chance to jump out the window. I close my eyes and flinch.

“I didn’t think you’d be here.” There’s a woman, a worryingly attractive one, setting her bags down near the door. No explosions or gunshots. Not handcuffs. Maybe handcuffs, but not unwelcome ones. I toss the condom aside out of reflex. She walks down the hall, slouching and rubbing her arm.

“Sorry to run out this morning. That seminar was punishing.”

I don’t realize I’m shaking my head, but it loosens some words.

“Not,” I say, but start chuckling, “a problem.” I’m still unsure this woman or I are in the right place. She’s not overwhelmingly beautiful, but damn attractive. It seems unreal that I would be here when the thought of a one night stand originating in a bar isn’t something I thought I was capable of or comfortable with.

She’s right in front of me now. She balks a couple times, but finally kisses me. I put my arms around her. She’s giggling coyly and it drives me wild. It gives me a sense of comfort at the same time. She smiles and turns away bashfully.

“Did Janni bother you this morning?”

I purse my lips and shake my head.

“He was supposed to fix the cabinets. Doesn’t look as if he’s gotten to it yet.”

I nod.

“I really wasn’t expecting I’d see you again.”

I feel my nerves rush back in.

“Oh,” I say, “sorry.”

“No, no.” She lays a hand on my chest. “I’m glad.” We kiss again. Some memories creep back. We’re on a street corner. There’s a bar that’s closed. I’ve been drinking whiskey but there’s a taste of beer too. “You know, I’m really sorry.” I cock my head. “What’s your name again?

“Arthur,” I say. “Don’t worry about it,” I pause, gulp, “Jill.” She recoils and palms her face.

“Oh god,” she says. My heart flutters. “I’m so embarrassed.”

“Don’t worry,” I say, “I’ve got a gift for remembering things.” She smiles. It’s gorgeous. We embrace again.

The sun is peeking out from the clouds over the city. The rooftops don’t pile up anymore. They lay out in a broad sea of orange and tan like fields of wheat on some strange frontier.

[author] [author_image timthumb='on']http://www.fictionade.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Alex-Scholnick.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]While studying Creative Writing at UC Santa Cruz, Alex Scholnick participated in the Prague Summer Writing Program which provided his first taste of wanderlust. He studied abroad in Budapest, Hungary where he worked as an editor for the New Hungarian Quarterly and was published in ELTE University’s student magazine TátKontúr. Upon returning to America, Alex assembled his first self-published collection of short stories, “Commuting”. After graduating Alex taught SAT prep material and provided story creation and daily financial journalist services to Facebook’s Wall Street Game.[/author_info] [/author]

The post Desert of the Real appeared first on Fictionade Magazine.

i dreamt i spent most of the day at a copy place down-

town. after finishing with my copies, i walked the long way

home, closing my bank account and buying tacks and

scotch at the corner store. i spent my evening sipping from

the bottle, and tacking my one hundred photocopies of guns

all over every room of my apartment.

He loved the way she bit. It was the feeling of skin just being broken on his shoulders that made him squirm in the most delicious way possible. He enjoyed it so much that he thought the blindfold she made him wear superfluous; his eyes would be shut tight anyway. But, if this is what he had to do to make her do that…

She liked him on his back. “And wrapped up as tight as a bug,” she would intently whisper in his ear, simultaneously caressing him so feverishly over the restrictive clothe she wrapped him in that he would have sworn she possessed more than two arms. When her teeth went into his shoulders the jerks of ecstasy he made drove her into a frenzy, and she would deftly spin him around until she was fully satiated.

Usually she would gently unwrap him, remove the blind-fold and fall asleep with her arms and legs wrapped around him. But tonight was different. Not only had she added a gag but had fallen asleep immediately afterward; such was the force of her release. He lay there listening to her even breathing, bathed in that glow of knowing the joy of having your happiness and desires being her happiness and desires.

Only, he couldn’t fall asleep. The ball was becoming dry in his mouth. His arms were pressing into his ribs, and though he knew it wasn’t true, he felt that this combined with the especially tight way she had wrapped him this evening, that he couldn’t catch enough air. She was so deep in sleep that neither his groans through the ball or even his clumsy rolling onto his stomach awoke her. However, this movement did partially remove his blindfold, and so he lay there watching the hours tick off on the clock.

She roused herself around daybreak. Her voice was raspy behind him. “Look what you’ve done, coming all unwrapped.” She must be joking; he could barely breathe. “Let me fix that for you,” she said, wrapping him even more tightly. He groaned through the ball, trying to let her know she should stop. “Mmm, I know,” she purred, and the frenzy of arms began again. She wanted him on his back. Now. She flipped him over, and in spite of himself, he closed his eyes as her teeth sunk into his shoulder. But enough was enough. He looked up at her, trying to wordlessly convey that he needed to be released. The tears streamed out of his eyes, and he shook his head in frightened disbelief. Her eyes were red and were staring intently at his writhing with a predatory gleam he hoped never to see again.  All eight of them. She removed her teeth from his shoulder and ran a hairy arm across her mouth. Then another, and another and another. “Don’t you like this?” she asked. A guttural scream sprang from deep in his throat as she wrapped all eight of her legs around him tightly. She opened her hairy mouth, exposing two large fangs. “Maybe you’ll like this better,” she said, and bit deeply into his neck.

dear diary,

i dreamt i spent the day alone in my room. i sat on the

edge of my bed, naked, thinking about my life so far.

i spent the morning thinking about my failures since

adolescence. i turned on the radio and tuned into a

game. i hadn’t listened to or watched a baseball game

since i was a kid. my late afternoon and early evening

was spent musing about my mistakes since childhood.

I awoke under the shade of a linden tree. Though I was fully rested, I lay with eyes closed, listening to the murmur of the tall grass, feeling the warm sun hitting me in intervals. I could detect the clamor of people not far off, and I opened my eyes. Down by the lakeshore there was a man standing on a soapbox, some thirty people surrounding him. Some were laughing, others gasping. As I approached the scene, I saw the man was dressed in old-fashioned clothing. It was over eighty degrees, yet here he was dressed in tweed pants, wing tip shoes, a starched white shirt and a vest, which looked to be made of burlap. In his left hand he had a straw hat, which he used to stress certain words by pointing at the crowd with it. He had a contraption strapped to his back, which appeared to be a lawnmower motor and a small fan. He had two boards made of Styrofoam attached to each arm. I was now close enough to hear his speech.

“…only one dollar, that’s right my friends! Now that may seem a steep price, but really nothing at all to pay for the gift of flight. With the simple machine I have here, I have taken this gift to mankind, and given it to the common people!”

“Then give it,” a man shouted. The crowd laughed nervously, hoping, in fact, that the man wouldn’t give it. The high price of a dollar kept them from going up.

“Once aloft, the price will seem negligible. Now who among you will be the first?”

The men stared above or to the side of the man’s head. This gave the impression they were not scared, but by doing this, didn’t have to confront the man’s eyes. The woman all pushed their floppy hats even tighter against the sides of their faces, heads bowed. They all had short hair, bobbed, but just long enough to peek through the bottom of their hats. All of their dresses were just below their knees…

“You sir!” the man called pointing at me. “You’re not from around here are you?”

I shook my head no.

“Well, from where to do hail?”

All eyes where upon me. I could feel them studying my strange clothes and haircut. “San Francisco.” I heard a wave of whispered understanding. Only someone from a big city would dress this way. The men, who had held interest in me, lost it. The women, first startled by my appearance, now began sending coy looks my direction. Seeing that my mere presence was robbing him of his crowd, the salesman addressed them in a loud voice.

“Now folks, as we all know, the great city of San Francisco suffered a terrible earthquake a few years back. The courage of the survivors was an inspiration to us all. Now young fella, how about a demonstration of that very courage for the good people of this town here today? Show these good people what San Franciscans are all about!”

He had me.

The crowd was hollering and clapping. A few of the stronger men, wanting a way to show off their muscle, and still NOT fly that thing, pushed me towards the stage. Once upon it, the men, and some of the friskier women, kept their hands on my feet, ankles and shins to ensure I didn’t leave, as the salesman strapped his contraption on my shoulders. He moved my arms to fit the straps, and the crowd noise died off, as they became aware of what exactly they had done to me.

“Now I shall reward the bravery of this young man with a nullification of the fee!”
The crowd groaned with protest, yet not a single person would have traded places with me. The man flipped switches, and pulled levers on the machine, and it belched a cloud of black smoke, which drove the crowd back ten feet. He shouted more of his sales pitch to the good people, but all was lost in the claptrap of his machine. He tried to give me instruction, but as I was unable to make out a single word, he just mimed the appropriate actions. I mimicked him, and soon found myself aloft. There was not a single mouth closed, including that of the salesman. I hovered off the soapbox, about three feet above the ground. I was unsure of how to control the machine, and I drifted towards the horrified crowd. Some broke and ran. Others again grabbed my lower legs and pushed me in the opposite direction. I gained altitude. The crowd followed me across the pasture, the salesman leading the way, yelling indecipherable instructions. I soon found myself at tree top level, and by using my arms as stiff wings, could clumsily direct myself in the vague area I wished to go. The crowd had stopped chasing after me and had clustered around each other in the middle of the field.

I grew more confident with each circular pass, and I attempted several spinning aerial maneuvers, each one lessening my altitude. When I was but six feet from the ground, I tried to buzz the crowd by stretching myself parallel to the ground. I was now top heavy, and the crowd either ducked, or sprinted away in every direction as I came slamming to the ground. The impact was nearly totally taken by the machine, and except for a few bruises on my legs, I was unharmed. I was exhilarated, feeling inexorably liberated. I lay amongst the tall grasses, laughing hysterically. A slim woman in a tan summer dress, wearing the ubiquitous floppy hat pulled tight around her face led the rescue brigade. She fell upon me, clasped my hand and started slapping the top of it. Other men from the crowd circled me. They watched me nervously. “He’s been knocked nonsensical.” The owner of the flying machine pushed through the crowd and grabbed me, or rather his machine, as I was simply in the way. Seeing that it was only dented he turned his attention to me.

“Are you okay?”

“Never better,” I forced out between laughs.

I was helped to my feet, the woman refusing to let go of my hand. The more mechanically inclined of the group walked behind me, examining the inner workings of the flying machine. The men who had scattered during my descent now gathered around, slapping my back and shaking my one free hand. As soon as the salesman announced that the machine couldn’t be repaired for another flight until the following day, at least ten persons from the crowd hissed their dissention at the fact that they would be denied a chance at flight, now that it was safely assured that they would not have to go up.

I was led back to the shade of the linden tree, and as people had originally gathered by the lake for their Sunday picnics, blankets and baskets were laid forth. Everyone was enjoying themselves; laughter and ever-exaggerated stories of the morning’s flight wafted through the warm early autumn air. The sight of an approaching horse driven wagon caused a stir among the picnickers, and several of the groups ran towards it with calls of “George!” and “Gidge!” and “Gidgy!” The man, who looked to be seventeen or eighteen at best, was one of the bigger men I had ever seen. He had a large head with full lips, flaring nostrils, and an expression of mirth ready to explode just beneath the surface. His shoulders were huge, his muscles hard packed, his chest full, and stuck out for the world to see. His hips were in proportion to the rest of his body, though his legs seemed to dwindle down to effeminate ankles. He joined us at the tree and said hello to most everyone, though spoke aloud not a single person’s name. When introduce to George, my name was instantly forgotten by him.

“How ya doin’ kid?” he said, crushing my hands with his brawny paws. He seemed most pleased to see the salesman sitting next to me. “What are you up to, you ‘ol rattlesnake-oil con man?” he asked with glee.

“G.H., I have just today proved my inventive skill with the successful application of my flying machine.”

George looked at the dented and hissing apparatus leaning against the tree with a sarcastic expression, saying, “The only thing of mine I’ll put in the air, are the balls I hit.” As soon as he said this, nearly everyone produced hand sized baseball gloves, as if only waiting for George to arrive and utter this phrase. Most of the men ran off through the lightly forested trail to the baseball diamond. The woman who was first to my rescue was no longer pressing my hand, but was still on my arm. We walked together slowly, kicking at the orange and red leaves littering the trail, bringing up the rear. She had yet to say more than three words to me, but her gaze had never left me.

“What is your name?” I asked her.

“Nellie Festbecker,” she answered, staring at her ankle length brown boots. She seemed pleased the courtship had begun. The men who ran ahead of us had started yelling, and Nellie gave me a playful look, once again grabbing my hand, and sprinted off towards the field.

Though there were more than enough people to field two teams, there were but two people in the outfield, and one eight-year-old kid directly behind second base. A man in his early fifties was on the mound. There was no catcher. And then there was George. He filled the batter’s box, feet close together, head slightly cocked, gently waving his bat down by his knees. The man on the mound had a black cap on, with two interlocked block letters; H and ‘B. George was taunting him, the crowd was giggling, pregnant with expectancy, waiting for George to swing his mammoth black bat.

“C’mon Amos, sling one in here!”

Amos took his time in the delivery, but the lopsided, earth colored ball raced in. George arched his back to escape being struck by the ball, but his feet remained where they were. The ball lodged itself in the moist raised ground behind him.

“Ball one!” George yelled to the delight of the crowd.

Amos picked up another ball. This one was delivered wide, too far to the right.

“Ball two!” George cheerfully told Amos.

Amos lost his grip on the third pitched ball, and it bounced in front of George.

“Ball three!”

The crowd was now on Amos, “C’mon, throw a STRIKE!”

“Ya USED to be able to pitch, let’s see it!”

This was only egging on an already excited George. He cast a stern glance at Amos, saying,

“Give me one, you ol’ Hoosier Thunderbolt…emphasis on the OLD!”

Foregoing all trickery, Amos let loose a wicked fastball, perfectly thrown down the middle. George stepped forward in the box to meet it, and a terrible crack emitted from his bat. The ball was sent on a line drive, four feet over the pitcher’s head, yet as it approached the two outfielders, it suddenly began to rise. It left the field of play, and was stopped from gaining further height, and distance, only by the top branches of a giant Elm tree bordering the town’s central square. George had a face full of jocularity, though he was not satiated.

“One more like that Rusie!” he told Amos.

Amos, I thought.

Rusie…

Amos…Rusie?

The Hoosier Thunderbolt?

It couldn’t be. The man who had been replaced by Christy Mathewson, the Christian Gentleman? I watched with deeper interest. Amos let loose another fastball, and this time it shot straight up off George’s bat. Every other time I had seen a ball hit that way it was a pop up, travelling no farther than ninety feet. This time, however, the ball went as far as it went high. It cleared the Elm tree. It cleared the square. It cleared the house on the other side of the square.

AND THE NEXT ONE.

My mind was racing. It was impossible. The clothes, the machines, the lack of cars, and unless it was a coincidence, Amos Rusie, the Hoosier Thunderbolt. Nellie was clapping and jumping with excitement. She noticed me watching her, studying her clothes. She was a little shocked by the forwardness of my gaze, but was glad I was interested. This had been quite a day for her.

“Isn’t Gidgy something? We all think he’s going to be a big star someday.”

Her eyes grew wide as she grabbed my forearm.

“Maybe even in the Major Leagues!”

She then shook her head in amazement at the thought.

I looked back at George who had missed one of Amos’ slow curveballs, and had spun around and landed on his backside. The crowd was shocked, and Amos was grinning wildly.

“Nellie?”

She slowly turned her head to face me. Her head was cocked away from mine; her lips were in a tight smile.

“Do you know a Nellie Chester?”

“Nellie Chester? The only Chesters I know own the dry goods store over on the square.”

Where Chester’s Supermarket should be, I thought.

“What year is this?”

Her smile broke into a laugh.

“I think you had too much punch earlier,” she giggled. She turned away, but soon turned back when I didn’t move. Her eyes squinted into confusion. “It’s 19 aught eight, silly.”

She studied me quizzically as I watched George flatten two consecutive balls out of sight with his prodigious swing. She could sense I was adding something up, but couldn’t tell what.

Nineteen O Eight. The salesman wasn’t referring to Loma Prieta; he was talking about the ’06 quake!

And…and that WAS Amos Rusie, … that must mean that ‘Gidge was……..

I couldn’t take my eyes off the youthful Nellie Festbecker, ancient matriarch of the Chester’s Supermarket chain.

“Okay, that’s enough for today,” George said, stepping out of the batter’s box, and shaking hands with Amos. The crowd wanted more, but George had given them show enough for one afternoon. He raised his hands to silence the crowd, “Who else feels like giving it a whirl?”

I stepped forward.

“I do.”

George sized me up, nodded, and handed me his twelve-pound bat. “Okay, kid.”

I took a chance.

“Nice hittin’, Babe.”

George spun around angrily. “Who you calling a BABY, mister?”

Several of his friends started laughing. “Hey getta load of that! BABE Ruth!” Everyone started laughing and chanting

“BABE” Ruth,

“BABE” Ruth,

“BABE” Ruth.

His anger broke into a sly grin. Kinda had a nice ring to it.

“Okay, okay,” George said, “We needs ourselves a pitcher, any volunteers?”

Hands shot up, but Nellie had already taken the mound.

“Watch out mister, she’s got the nastiest spitball YOU ever seen,” someone yelled.

“And shine ball,” someone else warned me.

“Emeryball.”

Ruth had a crowd around him, but most people were watching the field, ready to enjoy the embarrassment of this flying stranger delivered by one Nellie Festbecker.

Nellie kept the ball behind her back, and was working feverishly on it. I strode into the batter’s box, and lifted the heavy, giant black bat to my shoulders. Nellie started her wind up, paused, then resumed it. The ball danced at me in an uneven, halting path. I swung.

The bat was nearly twice the weight I was accustomed to, and I met the ball late. It emitted a fine spray as it glanced off foul, behind me.

“Nice hittin’, GRANDPA!” the Babe yelled.

I looked down the barrel of the bat, inspecting its majesty. Nellie had another ball, and was waiting for me.

Normally I hold the knob of the bat in my right palm, as a thirty-four inch bat isn’t quite long enough for me. This monster was plenty long, so I choked up on it, three inches from the bottom. Nellie’s pitch came in low, then started to rise. Choking up had given me enough speed on the bat to adjust, and I placed the ball far into left field. She threw a reverse curve. Straight through the box, skimming between her legs.

She pitched me high, she pitched me low. She pitched me inside, she pitched me wide. Fade-aways, screwballs, spitballs, knuckleballs, forkballs, curves and three-finger fastballs. I hit them all.

Clean, hard, satisfying cracks. I could – not – miss. I had Babe Ruth’s bat.

I stood in the box. I could smell the autumn approaching in full force. I could smell the death of the summer grasses, the mud behind me. The sun was setting, it’s light filtering through the Elms surrounding the field. I dug my right foot into the dirt, raised the bat to my shoulders with a swing, and turned my body to face Nellie.

dear diary,

the dreams are making less and less sense. they are filled with

fighting, long spells of silences, and walking. endless hours of

walking. then fighting again, but with no one i recognize. the

gun magazine seems to be taking the place of the work dreams,

it’s like it’s the centerpiece of the dream. i’m taking it everywhere

with me, looking at the pictures over and over again. the dream

ended with me being in a shower until long after the hot water had

ceased, screaming and crying.

The moon hung sheepishly over the horizon, jealously guarding it’s light. The rolling hills pressed black into indigo sky. The tall pine trees stood stoically, holding secrets terrible and sweet. The uneven, tattered asphalt hissed, unwilling to give up its heat without a struggle. The black flies and deer ticks had long since retired to slumber, but the mosquitoes lay thickly in wait for any creature who was foolhardy enough to pass through their midst. Wild dogs growled, bobcats prowled, and a lone black bear hesitated in its tracks. The monarch of the forest, covered in leaves, twigs and pitch, rose up on its hind legs and drank in the lusty scents, finally deciding on north as the direction to hold court that night.

And through all of this his boots clicked, alarming some at first, then giving quiet comfort in its even measured time, finally, becoming a distant echo.

For the first hour, he had tried to keep track of time. Sometimes counting five minutes in the space of two. Sometimes, stalking footsteps in the gnarled underbrush, just to the left and behind, distracted him, letting twenty minutes go by unmeasured.

He had crested yet another hill, and was going down the grade into the valley when he heard the far off rumbling of a motor. RRRRrrrr. He couldn’t tell how far he would have to go until the automobile would meet him, but he hoped not much more than a mile. Blisters had begun forming over an hour ago, he reckoned, and now they covered nearly the entire fore and aft of his sweat-drenched feet.

RRRRrrrr went the motor, not seeming to draw any closer. He tilted his head back and forth, then turned it to the side, trying to gauge its distance better. RRRRRRRRrrrrrrrr. Closer, but not by much.

The dark hung heavily on him now that clouds had enveloped the moon. He strained his eyes trying to make out the automobile. RRRRRRrrrrrrRRRRRRrrr. He could not make out shapes in front of him with any clarity. He kept his gait constant, but tried to soften his footfall. RRRRRRRrrrrRRRRRrrrrrr. It was getting closer.

No, he thought, I’m getting closer. RRRRRRrrrrrrRRRRRRrrr. The engine was revving, and at times he thought he could make out the automobile, but it always turned out to be his imagination. Some of the blisters had cracked, and he had to walk on the ball of one foot, the heel of the other.

RRRRRRRrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrRRRRRRRrrrrr. Maybe the automobile is just now starting up from some driveway I can’t see, he thought. RRRRRRR rrrrrrrrr RRRRRRRRRrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrRRR RR. He could swear that he saw the intermittent moonlight reflecting off metal at the top of the next hill. RRRRRrrrrr. RRRRRrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRrrrrrr. Or maybe it’s just a tree, RRRRRrrrrr. He wondered what the hell the driver was doing, sitting there with his lights off, revving that goddamn motor. RRRRrrrrR RRRRrrrrrRRRR. Those old V-8’s do need some time getting the idle right. RRRRRRRR RRRRrrrrrrr rrr RRRRRRRR rrrr. Cold starting bitches, every last one of them. RRRRRRRrrrrrrr. RRRRRRRrrrRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrRRrrrRrrrrRRRRrrrrRrrrrrrRRRrrrr but I’m drenched in sweat, it can’t be cold. RRrrrrrRRRr RrrrrrrRRRrrr RRRRRRRR RRRrrrrrrRrrrrRr.

He was approaching the top of the hill. A twisted, barren tree was all he could make out. RRrrrrRRrrrrrRrr. The driver was still revving his engine. Christ! He thought, it sounds like I’m right on top of it! RRRRRrrrr RrrrRRRRRRRrrrr, the driver was now gunning the engine, EEIARRRRRRRRrrrrrrrRRRRRRR.

After such a long time in near silence rrr the motorrrrwas gettingrrrr to him. He placed his hands overrrrr his earrrs, so fucking loudrrrr sounds like it’s in my headrrr. Rrrr rr rrrrr rrrr rr rr rrrrr. Rrrr, rr rrr rrr r, Rrrrr rrr rrrr rr r rrrr, rrrrr rrrr rr rrrr. Rr rrrr rrrr rr rrrr rrrr’r rrrr rr rrr; rrr. RRR! Rrrrr rrr rrrr rrrrrr.

“Rrr rr rrrr rrrrrrr. Rr rr rrr rrrr rrrr,” Rrrr rrrr’r? Rr rrr rrrrrrr rrrr r rrr rr. Rrrr rr R rr rrr.

Rrr rr rrrr rrr rrrrr’r rr the lights rrr rrr, rrr. Rrrr’r, rrr Rrrr rrswitchedrr rr rrr on rr. RrRrr: rrr rr rrrr r R rrr rrr. Rangrilly. Rrr rrrr rr Rrrrrrr, rr. Rrr rrrr rr R rrrrr, rr. Rr rrrr rrr rrrrr rrrr’r rratruck rrr. Rrrr rr R trrrrriplepainted rr rrrr. Rrblack rr R rrasthe rrrr. Rrrbottomofrr rralake rrr. Rrrr rnt rrr rtwenty  R rrr rrrr rr rrrfeetinrr  rrr. Rrfrrront rrof rrrr’r RRR. Rrr rhim rrr Rwhat’sr   rrr rrrrr r rhe rrrr r. Rrrdoingrr? Rrr r R rr.

Rr rrchrist rrr (Rrr rr R!) rrr r rrr rmove, Rrrr rr. RRrrRr rtheclutch rr Rrrr rrpoppedr rrr rr rrandfellrr rrintogear.

dear diary,

it was like i’d run a marathon. every muscle tense. i had picked

out the shiniest, most handsome gun i’d seen in the magazine.

the man at the pawnshop looked like he didn’t want to sell me

the thing. i brought it home and sat in my room with the lights

off, looking at it. eventually i picked it up, put one bullet in the

chamber, and shoved the barrel in my mouth. i pulled the trigger.

I woke up.

[author] [author_image timthumb='on']http://www.fictionade.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Sven-Anarki.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Sven Anarki was born in Maine in 1967 and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. His first book, 2002’s “Driving with Shannon” dealt with the early-1980’s American hardcore punk scene, and was described by Maximum RockNRoll magazine as, “stunning in his ingenuity and insight…(often with disgusting painfulness).” In addition to writing works of short fiction, he is also a screenwriter; with projects as diverse as Edgar Allan Poe, the Blitz on London, Sitting Bull and Bette Davis. His Oakland-based band, “Ani DiFranco’s Dick” was reviewed as the “10th-Best Performance” at Houston’s 2011 “Free Press Summerfest” music festival.[/author_info] [/author]

The post Dream Diaries of the Subconscious #5 appeared first on Fictionade Magazine.

Flynn looked over the edge of the rowboat into the lapping waves. A silhouette the size of a motor car floated by beneath them. It wasn’t terribly big. Small, really. But small the way a mile or two of distance can make a mountain look small.

There was a squealing, creaking sort of rumble, like the slow and intentional opening of one rusted door after another. Then the silhouette vanished.

“Bastard,” Flynn said. “Just doin it for show. Or to scare us.” He sat back in the rowboat’s stern and huddled up a bit. The boy sitting in the bow said nothing and only looked at him. His eyes flicked here and there over Flynn’s features, as if studying him. He muttered something inaudible.

Up high, seagulls wailed under the sun. A cloudless day, and there was nothing around, absolutely nothing, but seawater. The shipwrecks, the splintered wood, the crates, the torn sails and rope scattered around them on the water. All that remained of Flynn’s ship was the bow, now poking out of the water. The mast had broken off at the base and floated nearby like a bloated, face-down corpse. The boy’s ship was almost completely decimated. A piece of its starboard bobbed in the waves, baring its skeleton and innards to the sky. It was taking on water fast and wouldn’t last long.

Aside from that, there was nothing. Just an unending field of waves in every direction.

Flynn watched the boy from his peripheral and grimaced. He hadn’t spoken a word since they’d both climbed aboard the rowboat. First Flynn, then the boy some ten minutes later. He’d looked up into Flynn’s face as Flynn was heaving him aboard and gone pale. Once on the boat, he ignored all of Flynn’s questions and only stared at him or off into the horizon. Mumbled a lot, as if to some invisible presence. Two whole hours of this nonsense.

“Look here,” Flynn said, slapping both hands on either edge of the boat. “Quit with the blarney and shut it.  Or look off.  Lookin for an agro or a shag? Cause this ain’t the time for the first but you’ll get one if you try the second.”

The boy stopped mumbling and blinked.

“Eamon,” he said, and pushed a tendril of hair out of his face. “Eamon Blake.” A moment of silence passed between them. Then the boy started as if remembering and extended his hand to Flynn. Flynn, for his part, stared first at the hand and then at the boy and then sighed. Stranded on a rowboat with a kiddie off his nut. Sure, okay.

“Flynn Macleese,” he said uneasily, but didn’t take Eamon’s hand. It looked clammy. His  face was startling in its ruined youth; it was gaunt, his eyes ringed and sunken, and his hair hung in his face in greasy clumps. The kind of face you expected to see on a drunkard or hophead drained by years of opium. He wore an ever-present tiny grin, as if unable to contain a private elation at some secret. When he spoke, this grin appeared to turn into a sort of nervous tick, fluctuating in size in such an erratic and unstable way that the lips often parted before closing again, always threatening to erupt into a smile of yellowing teeth.

Eamon’s hand hung in the silence between them. When Flynn made no move to take it, he lowered it slowly.

“Do you know what happened, Mr. Flynn?”

Flynn stopped and gave him a queer look. Are you daft? it said.

Eamon saw it, read it.

“Stop looking at me like that, Mr. Flynn,” Eamon whispered, and though he nearly broke into a wide grin, his voice was tight, strained. “Stop it. Right now.”

The hair on the back of Flynn’s neck prickled. He’d heard that kind of whisper plenty of times during his days as a roustabout on the docks. It was the way someone spoke when they were beyond shouting, beyond even anger. He’d watch many a man lose themselves shortly after uttering a whisper like that, and it was always some kind of tragedy that followed.

He’d heard it come from men of violence, men of peaceful demeanors, and every kind of man in between. There was one thing they had all shared, though; they all had a big red line– an unforgiving father, a crippling addiction to the drink– that was not to be crossed, never, never, ever to be crossed. And woe to the sorry bastard who toed it just a little too far.

Or, Flynn thought, who got stuck in a dinghy with him.

“Okay, okay,” Flynn said. “But don’t tell me you never heard of The Bitter Duke. No one’s that off.”

Eamon looked confused.

“The Bitter Duke, lad. Parents use him to scare their muzzy kiddies into bein good. You don’t have parents?”

Eamon looked down between his feet. Flynn opened his mouth to go on. Then he stopped, realizing.

It was one thing after another with this kid. Something about his face now. No longer muddled and unstable. Instead it was something hateful. Something black and dangerous in the way his lips pressed thin and his eyes widened just so. As if his general aloofness had fallen away to be replaced by some kind of intense, dangerous focus. His nostrils flared.

This he had never seen in the men at the docks, the men whose whispers should be taken as warnings of personal apocalypse. And that unnerved him. Unnerved the hell out of him.

“Sorry.”

Eamon looked up, and whatever malevolence was there before had dissipated. Flynn relaxed a little.

“A whale,” Flynn continued, feeling awkward. “A real mean one. Diabolically big. He eats ships like they’re snacks.”

Eamon wrinkled his nose. The kid wasn’t buying it.

“Was anyone on your ship bleeding?”

Eamon gave him a puzzled look.

“They say he’s blind. Not in the eyes. Blind like he can’t hear what’s around him. But he can smell blood. Even from below the water.”

“That’s stupid.”

“That’s the truth. And shut your trap, you little wanker.” Flynn leveled a finger at him. “The Duke might be an arse hole but he ain’t stupid.”

Lots of folk back in Brells took The Bitter Duke for nothing but a nightmare to scare naughty children straight. Only a smattering of whalers and fishers and merchants from the docks knew better. They had seen him. Some had seen him breach but most were survivors.

Once, while working as a roustabout unloading a cotton bale from a steamboat, Flynn overheard a nearby merchant professing to a friend how just last week, pirates had attacked his windjammer out on the Celtic Sea not far from Brells.

“Stowed away in a barrel what fell overboard, me,” the man said, and cleared a half-bottle of whiskey in three swallows. “Then I feels this rumblin and hears them pirates start barkin. Feckin tossers. So’s I peek out, and what does I see?” He opened his arms wide above and below him, sloshing some whiskey on his head. “Two o’ the goddamnedest jaws I ever seen pop out o’ the water and swallow me ship whole, pirates an’ all. Took the stern’a their lugger with it, too.”

Up until that afternoon, Flynn had never seen The Duke, though he’d always wanted the beast to be real. It was the promise of something more than what the world thought it knew. And even when the whale breached and his ship– twenty years of his life– had exploded around him, Flynn couldn’t help but feel a lifting sense of exhilaration. Because Bitter Duke was real after all.

“Tale goes that whalers killed his mate two centuries back, and after that he went mad,” Flynn said now. “Refused to die and just kept gettin bigger as he got older. Attackin ships, buildin a sens’tivity for blood, always lookin for more. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he does it now just for the sake of it. Anger has a way of doin that, getting into your head and takin hold of the reins. Replacin who you are.” But Eamon had gone back to muttering to himself and glancing around the wreckage.

Flynn drummed his fingers on the edge of the boat. “Right. Good talk.” When Eamon showed no signs of coming out of his reverie, Flynn settled against the stern and tried to think of what to do next.

They had no food. No water. Even the oars had been lost in the chaos. They would have to huddle together at night to keep warm or freeze to death.

There wasn’t much they could do but hope a passing schooner or smack would spot the wreckage.

It looked like he and the boy had some time to kill. Flynn began counting seagulls.

An hour passed without much happening. Flynn had counted fifty-two seagulls and if he counted one more he was going to vomit from boredom. Eamon had fixated on the wreckage and seemed to be involved in an intense internal conversation.

Flynn watched him, then said, “You’re a weird one.”

Eamon turned around.

“You’ve been starin and talkin to yourself since I pulled you on board.” Flynn raised his hands in a what-can-you-do gesture. “You’re weird.”

He thought that might bring back the dark look. He worried about that look, but there was something enticing about it. He barely knew the boy and could see he became different– different not just in behavior but on a fundamental level, almost like a different person– when that look crossed his face.

“Yeah,” Eamon said, and looked down. “That’s what everyone tells me.”

Flynn frowned. He wasn’t going to hold the kid’s hand, pat his back, walk him through his problems. Didn’t have the patience for it, especially not in this situation. He grunted and instead turned to watch the last of his ship slipping under the water some hundred yards away, ending the conversation before it began.

Twenty years of his life spent scrapping, saving, gambling, sacrificing, stealing, running, hiding. Whatever he’d done for the money to purchase that ship– the actions he took, the choices he’d made– stained every single plank of wood on it. Many of those planks, he wasn’t proud of. Many of those planks, he’d bought with the blood and broken dreams of other men.

Twenty whole years of his life. Undone in thirty seconds of teeth and blubber. All that remained now was the point of the bow.

“I grew up in the streets,” Eamon offered, and it brought Flynn tumbling out of the past back to the present, back into himself with a thud. The words sounded timid, anxious, hopeful for a human response. The words of someone who wasn’t used to a willing ear or a kind tongue. Flynn recognized that. He didn’t care. He was in no mood to play the bonding game.

There was something else there, though. Behind the timidity and fear of rejection. Almost a reluctance. As if he both wanted Flynn to answer and didn’t. As if he hated himself for wanting so badly a response.

Or maybe Flynn was just tired.

“Right, right,” he answered. “No parents.”

He and Eamon stared at each other. An empty barrel from the wreckage bumped into the boat. Neither of them looked at it. Something flickered in the kid’s face, something like murder, and for a second Flynn thought he had his prize. Then it fizzled out. Like Eamon had quashed it himself. Just like that, Flynn was bored again.

“My mother. She died in the spring when I was four.” And that nervous, fluctuating smile.

Christ’s sake. He wasn’t taking the hint. Flynn grunted again and turned back to his sinking boat.

“She took on a lover. He did some bad things and one day just disappeared. Left her consumptive. She was a widow and really put what was left of her heart into him.” He tried to draw his lips to a thin line, yet seemed unable to keep them from smiling. The effort left him breathing heavily through his nose. “The magistrate reclaimed our house when we couldn’t pay the bills. That last bit did her in.”

Eamon trembled a little. Not hard. It was very faint. But trembled all the same.

“Last thing she said to me…” Eamon licked the tops of his teeth, going back to that secret grin. “Last thing she said, it was, ‘Find him. Tie him up. Break his fingers until the skin is gone. Take him to a hole. A deep one, not too deep. So you can hear him when he wakes up. So you can hear him when he claws at the ceiling of his grave.’”

Flynn shifted uncomfortably, trying to just hear the boy instead of listen but listening anyway. The boy was talking, but he’d gone back to talking to himself. Just louder now. That malevolence was back in his face, and Flynn had his prize but realized it was a dangerous trophy. It had looked like innocent kiddie anger the first time– like a schoolboy’s when a bully pushes him over. But really, there was a thin line between an anger that was harmless and one fatal. Oftentimes a kiddie’s virginal fury was so much more in danger of crossing that line than a grown man’s. And that was likely what Flynn was seeing now– an innocent outrage that had crossed that line of no-going-back, had swelled from a single licking flame to a mindless and howling all-consuming inferno.

It was as incredible as it felt dangerous.

“So you grew up in the streets,” Flynn said. The boy had earned a response.

Eamon blinked, and a little bit of awareness came back into his face. “Fifteen years with the other urchins. Never could get my mum’s words out of my head. Guess it made me a little queer. The other boys made fun of me. Girls just avoided me.”

“Well, yeah. That hair an’ your mannerisms. You’re a warped bucket of snots.”

Eamon licked his teeth again. “Thought you weren’t looking for a scrap.”

“I ain’t. Just tellin you what I see.”

“You know we’re going to have to huddle together tonight if we don’t want to freeze, Mr. Flynn.”

“Nothin a good midnight ride can’t fix. Just you be gentle with me tenders, boyo.”

Eamon’s grin died. He glared at him and turned away.

“Really, I’m an easy shag. Get just one gargle in me and I’ll let you lay a hand on me diddies.”

Eamon didn’t move. Flynn sat back in the stern.

“You’re not just a weirdo, you’re a bore, too.” He looked to the sky. The sun was setting.

Fifty-three seagulls.

The moon was high and full when something big hit the boat from underneath. Flynn’s first thought upon jolting awake was that it was Bitter Duke. He and Eamon shared a single terrified glance before the something slammed into the boat again, rocking it so hard it dipped into the water. The kid managed to hold on, but Flynn lost his grip and fell into the waves. A veil of bubbles clouded his vision and when they dissipated there was a shape turning around in the murk below.

The shark launched forward with a terrifying speed, spreading its jaws wide.

Oh, this is it, Flynn had time to think. This is what gets me. What bollocks.

In the second before the shark was on him, something fell into the water and the beast was enveloped in a mist of bubbles.

A thud, dulled by the watery environment.

And then the tail of the shark backing out of the bubbles, tilting to one side listlessly. The bubbles disappeared and there was Eamon, his hair a Gorgon’s nova and his eyes saturated with that same black malevolence Flynn had seen before. The boy drew his fist, twisting backwards, and smashed the shark’s nose once more.

The animal had had enough. It turned tail and took off, weaving this way and that as if in a daze.

Then arms. Pulling Flynn to the surface and out of the water. He and Eamon collapsed into the boat and lay there gasping and coughing and spitting water.

“Are you,” Flynn asked between breaths, “off your nut?”

Eamon glared at him and coughed once more.

“Are you lookin to get your mickey nipped off?” Flynn craned his head to look at him.

“Why didn’t you stay in the boat?”

The boy muttered something and coughed up a bit of seawater. It sounded like a curse.

Flynn let his head fall back. “You mental ball-bag. You brilliant, mental ball-bag.”

They spent the rest of that night awake. Falling back asleep in wet clothes, even huddled together for warmth, would have been asking to freeze in their sleep. Instead, they agreed that one of them would keep watch while the other dropped off soon as the sun was up and warded off the chill. Flynn, who in his encounter with the shark had tasted a bite of what it felt like to be ready to die, saw no sleep in the near future and volunteered to stand first watch. Eamon dropped off soon after the sun was full over the horizon.

Flynn had wanted to search the containers floating around them for food or (God willing) materials to fashion a crude sail, but the shadow of what he thought was the Duke yesterday had kept him firmly seated in the boat. Blind whale or not, he felt much safer with solid wood between them than flailing around in the water right overhead.

Now, he steeled himself and took to searching the nearby barrels and crates, though not for too long. Swimming in deep water had always unnerved him since he was young, and the show with the shark not a few hours ago drove him to constantly duck his head under water and look around. What was left of his ship had long sunk, as had Eamon’s, and after an hour of scavenging, Flynn called it in. He was too nervous to swim around out there anymore.

The waves had carried many of the crates and barrels beyond the distance Flynn felt comfortable traveling from the boat. Of those left, some were empty. In the end, Flynn brought back several apples, a soaked loaf of bread, a wet lantern, and a dry book of matches. It was no feast, but it was something. The lantern’s wick was soaked, but would be usable enough once it dried.

Eamon woke when the sun was high overhead. Flynn tossed him an apple.

“Tell me about the streets.”

Eamon caught it against his chest. He eyed Flynn as if he himself was a dog and Flynn the abusive owner offering him a steak.

“Don’t give yourself a headache over it, lad. Open the ol north an’ south and rabbit on.”

At first Eamon didn’t say anything and remained hunched over the apple, watching Flynn from behind it. Then that small, secret grin came back, and he started. Wasn’t much to tell, as it turned out. The boy didn’t make many friends and spent most of his time trying to find his step-father, but no luck. When he was eighteen, he caught a bad bit of pneumonia. A monk found him near death in an alley, took pity on him, and brought him to the local priory. After a lengthy recovery, the monks hired him to keep their vestry nice and neat.

When Eamon saw Flynn was listening with a genuine ear, he straightened up and took a bite from the apple. The boy seemed pleased to have finally found someone willing to listen to him. Yet it also appeared to pain him to go on. Why, Flynn could only guess.

“Worked there a good two years. Never once in that holy place did I stop thinking about finding my step-father. One night I was leaving the vestry when I overheard a whaler confessing with one of the monks, blaming his nonsense all on a former captain who pushed him and the crew too hard.” He spoke through mouthfuls, with that puzzling begrudging tone. “His description of the captain matched my step-father bang on. So the next day I shipped to sea with a privateer. To find him.” He pursed his lips, as if barely containing some kind of mirth, and looked out over the debris floating around them. “That was our boat.”

Flynn observed him, tapping the edge of the dinghy. “Don’t get to talkin much, do you? With other folk, I mean.”

A look of surprise came over Eamon with such suddenness it wiped away all traces of his smile.

“I’m willin to wager most folk just get to slaggin on you cause they think you’re good and mental.”

“Well.” That pleading tone was back, timid, asking for some kind of acceptance. “Well, don’t you?”

“Oh, course I do.” Flynn picked up an apple and took a bite. “But the lot of us have all gone off our rockers. One way or another. Look at me. Out here huntin a whale from a bedtime story.”

Eamon looked at him as if he’d never seen him before.

“It’s the tools what slag on you that are the real mentals. They’re just tryin to hide it. And that’s the mutt’s nuts, lad, believe me.”

It might have just been a trick of the light, but it looked like the boy’s eyes were getting wet. Which was strange, because lonely as the boy seemed, it was only a couple friendly words. Nothing to get choked up over.

What else could he be crying about?

That night they lit the lantern and perched it on the bench by the bow, just in case a ship happened to pass by while they slept.

The dawn brought clouds, as many as there were waves around them. By mid-morning, a light wind had started up. As the afternoon approached, the wind had only increased and the ocean began to froth.

When the waves began spilling into the boat, they secured the food within their clothes. Flynn hooked his arm through the lantern’s ring. Eamon took the matchbook and hid it away in his mouth. Flynn was struck by the simple genius of the idea. Of course, it rendered Eamon mute, but the pair of them were too disturbed by their increasingly-agitated environment to hold any sort of discussion.

The storm only grew worse. Rain began to fall and the ocean began knocking the boat around. Several times waves leapt up and spilled over them, forcing them scoop the water out.

Finally, the storm became so intense that a behemoth of a wave welled up behind them, rising well above their heads. They could only sit and watch, horrified, as it continued to rise like a harbinger of doom until it reached its peak, paused, and then plummeted downward.

The ensuing explosion flung both the dinghy and its occupants into the air, and then the world was nothing but a chaos of bubbles, of water, unseen forces pulling and shoving this way and that, the terrifying scramble to find direction, to find the surface, the occasional and beautiful glimpse of the dark and raging ocean above water, madly sucking in air before being knocked back under again, and all the while a frightening burning in the lungs that only intensified in its suffocating heat.

There was no time to think any final thought. No time to reflect on the unfairness of it all. Just a mindless and scrabbling panic for the surface.

Oh, but his insides burned.

It was getting so hard to find the surface. And it burned.

Maybe it would be better to just stop. Stop and drift with the waves.

Yes, that sounded much easier. It was so quiet down here.

Flynn opened his mouth and released the last of his breath.

The burning grew from his lungs until it filled his veins and beat from inside his head, and everything felt tight.

It was a full world of pain. But it wouldn’t be much longer.

At least it was quiet.

He could even feel himself moving upwards.

Up.

Up.

And then, incredibly, the explosion of air in his lungs and the fire in his body washed away in a miracle of ice and silk. His world erupted into a cacophony of sound and something heaved him onto a solid surface.

Eamon. Right.

He turned his head and there he was on all fours, wet tendrils of hair hanging around his face, bulging mouth held firmly shut and taking in big sucks of air through his nose. They were on a large plank of wood, what looked like a piece of debris from the earlier wreckage, rolling and tossing in the waves and spray.

Even then, all Flynn could think was, Why?

The storm died down after that and they drifted in relative peace, disturbed only by the occasional rolling wave.

Through some act of God, Flynn had managed to keep the lamp secure around his arm, Eamon the matchbook dry in his mouth. The storm had taken what little food they had hidden away in their clothes. The clouds eventually dispersed and the moon was already out. By then, the lantern’s wick had dried.

Trembling, Flynn struck a match and touched it to the wick. He and Eamon watched in a disbelieving silence as the flame expanded from the match head, enveloped the braided cotton, and swelled.

They sat staring at the lantern a good long while, and tried not to jump when they heard the sloshing of a wave against the wood.

Before Flynn dropped off, he heard Eamon muttering to himself.

“You’ll not have him,” it sounded like he was saying. “God damn it, you won’t.”

The following day passed without event.

They said little and slept much in turns. The specter of hunger had already latched its claws into Flynn’s stomach, dragging itself up into a louder, more malicious existence minute by minute.

They put the lamp out each sunrise in order to preserve the wick. Thirteen matches remained in the matchbook. Thirteen nights remained. If no one came by after the thirteenth match was struck and its flame burned the last of the wick away, Flynn would cut himself to draw The Bitter Duke up from the depths and end it.

Assuming, of course, he didn’t starve to death by then. Or lose his wits. And he really couldn’t say which of the three he preferred. The Duke had already taken twenty years of his life and smashed it to driftwood. It seemed fitting for him to finish the job.

He wondered how Eamon would handle it. He thought about the shark, and Eamon jumping on top of it, and the storm, and Eamon jumping into it. Both times to save the ass of a man he hardly knew.

A quiet death didn’t suit a person like that, Flynn decided.

And upon thinking that, he realized then that even if he wasn’t ready to die, he didn’t regret his choices. He’d gone out to sea in search of the stuff of children’s stories and found it to be real. He may not have brought it down, that nightmare beast– and how he had ever expected to do so with anything short of the Spanish armada, he now hadn’t a clue after actually seeing it– may not have been able return home as a conqueror of dreams, but he had found it.

And that knowing of instead of merely hoping for The Duke’s existence was a powerful validation of the last twenty years of his life. To know that he had not just been chasing some fool’s dream but embarked on a journey– one that took him through not just the Celtic Sea but the wonderland of childhood imagination and the ever-present sense of the overpowering wonder and mystery of the surrounding world that so defined it, as well as the possibility of bringing that sense of magic in the world back to those who had grown up in their hearts back home– to have at least made an attempt at that where countless men before him had lived and died without ever even trying to discover some secret pocket of the world.

Well, that was something worth dying for.

The sun began to set and Eamon woke up. Flynn stared out over the water.

“You know, lad,” Flynn said and turned to face him. “Whether or not a boat comes along and picks us up…”

He trailed off, looked down a moment, and when he raised his head he held out his hand. Eamon looked at it, bewildered. Then, slowly, he took Flynn’s hand in his. The boy had the grip of a wet cloth. Flynn gave it a single, solid pump and clapped him on the shoulder. Then he lied down and tried to fall asleep.

Before he dropped off, he could feel Eamon’s eyes on him. There was sniffling and curses under the breath.

The drowsy fog in his head expanded, pushing away all conscious thought, and Flynn slept.

When Flynn first saw the light of a ship in the far-off dark, he registered that he was still asleep and closed his eyes again. Then Eamon whooped, startling him, and upon realizing he was awake he scrambled to his feet, doing his best not to rock the board.

“Jesus,” he breathed. He snatched up the lamp, held it high, and threw his free arm back and forth, he and Eamon shouting so loud their voices soon became ragged.

After a minute or two, the figure of the ship– a bilander, likely a merchant vessel on its way back from Penzance– began to slowly turn in their direction, and Flynn began to weep.

“Oh,” he cried, falling to his knees. “Oh, look at that.”

A sort of elation welled up within him and before Flynn could stop it, he was laughing.

“Eamon,” he called, even though the boy was right next to him. “Boyo, do you see this?”

He went on sitting and crying and giggling and watching the boat crawl towards them. He would never see a happier sight in his life, he knew then. He was at the pinnacle of joy.

It was right around then that he noticed something cold and hard pressed to his throat.

Confused, he tried to look down at it. The cold, hard something was also sharp, and it cut into the flesh of his neck and drew blood.

“What–”

There was the hiss of a match and then a glow on his left. He craned his eyes and was just able to make out Eamon’s face.

“You may not remember me,” the boy panted, “but I remember you.”

If the boy’s appearance was unsettling in the day, the matchlight threw his features into shadow and transformed him into a nightmarish fright. He was sweating– profusely, actually. His face was beaded in it and it dripped from his hair, much of which plastered over his face.  His smell was putrid this close up, a ripe perfume of sweat and decay and old food and weeks or months that had not seen a single bath, and Flynn had to keep from gagging. His everlasting and twitching grin had bloomed horribly into a full smile of decaying teeth, so wide that its lines seemed to reach his eyes. His lips curled back into non-existence, and in the warp of shadow and matchlight his mouth was nothing but a stretching wall of gums and needles, and it could have been a smile or a grimace either way.

And his eyes. His blood-shot eyes, sunken though they were, quivered and shone beady and miniature in the light from their pathetic hollows as if from the ends of long, midnight hallways.  In them was that malevolence Flynn had seen so many times, but he realized now all he had seen was a fraction of the monster that had him by the throat now, a mere vapor that had risen up from the depths within the boy and stirred his mind before dissipating. It was there now, in his tiny, flashing eyes, festering like an untreated wound.

“I was only three years old. You, eighteen. My mother found you charming, so debonair.”

Oh.

Oh hell.

“She took you in when my father was still warm in the dirt.”

He’d almost forgotten. She had been so sweet to him. Long, curly hair, and the light scent of lavender.

“But you were a mess of drink and debt. Soon she fell consumptive. And then you went and disappeared.”

It had been the gambling. When he was just starting out on saving up for a ship. He’d owed a fair amount of money. He couldn’t pay up and had heard stories of broken legs and splintered hands. So he fled, and not just for his life but for his dream as well.

“Fifteen years, Mr. Flynn. And oh, oh, what Providence.” Flynn didn’t think it possible, but the smile of the thing that was Eamon in the matchlight grew. “What divine intelligence that you survived as well as me.”

Flynn took in a shuddering breath. A gaping pit opened in his stomach and he licked his lips. Eamon laughed, but it came as a single, long, grating moaning noise.

“Just do it,” Flynn whispered. “Get it done with.”

Eamon’s smile twitched and Flynn saw in it his death. He closed his eyes and began the short agony of waiting. He felt Eamon’s arm jerk and prepared for whatever sensation would follow.

Nothing came.

Eamon jerked his arm again, but it stopped once more, as if something was firmly holding it in place. So Flynn opened his eyes and looked at the boy just as the match went out and they both were temporarily blinded by the sudden darkness.

It had been brief, but Flynn had gotten a good look at the boy’s face.

He’d been crying. The same tears he’d seen before, but now spilling from those black and festering eyes, and Flynn then understood there was a loneliness and fundamental self-hatred in those tears. Hatred not for what Flynn had done to him and his mother, but for making Eamon feel kindly towards him, perhaps even friendly. Companionship must have been an alien concept to a boy like him. Flynn dared to hope he could talk the boy down.

Then Eamon bellowed, as if ripping himself free of something. In one swift motion he threw the knife down, spun Flynn to face him, and wrapped his hands around his throat.

The boy was uncommonly strong. Flynn, no giant but certainly no weakling, pounded and pulled at his wrists without result. He tried to gasp, couldn’t. His head took on a swelling feeling and his mind grew fuzzy. He staggered, fell onto his back, and Eamon went with him, stopped when they were nose to nose, squeezing and snarling and screaming into his face as a tendril of drool stretched from his open, howling mouth. The world soon blossomed into black and colored splotches. Above him, that hideous face and pinprick eyes, the distorted sneer of needles and gums, tangles of hair hanging around them like walls.

From somewhere, Bitter Duke raised a cry.

He kicked at Eamon’s legs, thighs, his groin, but nothing would move the boy. He was squeezing so hard his hands shook, and with it Flynn’s rapidly-fuzzing head, knocking against the wooden board.

Soon the world had faded into a thick fog. He was too weak to raise his arms anymore.

Then Flynn was falling, falling through the haunting echo of whalesong, and knew no more.

Someone on board shouted something, and a rope ladder fell from the deck. Then they shouted something again. But Eamon wasn’t listening.

Instead he watched Flynn’s body bob in the water. An emptiness he’d never known began to wash over him, and it was frightening in its vastness. It was as if he’d been following a single dirt road all his life only to find that it ended and opened up into a flat and featureless wasteland of snow, a great plains of nothing that ran on past the horizon in every direction. No trees. No rocks. No animals. Just blank and virginal powder, and the possibilities of what waited underneath it, the uncertain promise of other worlds over the horizon.

Eamon saw this before him, and where one might have felt invigorated or hopeful at that vast plain of potentiality, he instead felt the instinctual fear of some wild animal taken out of its natural habitat and placed somewhere foreign and threatening. All he had ever known, all he had ever eaten, breathed, slept, and dreamed of now floated face-down in the waves before him, little scarlet eddies forming around it.

The coppery-smelling slickness dripping from the knife hanging in his hand had gotten all over his palms, and at that point in time he felt it might as well have been his own.

Someone on the ship shouted at him again. It reached his ears, but from a different plane of existence. He looked at the rope ladder and wasn’t all that sure he wanted to climb it now.

He tried to imagine stepping off that dirt. Away from that structure and guidance and into that uncertain snowy expansion. He tried to picture himself traveling over the horizon, or digging through the snow and eventually finding something, anything. But he couldn’t. He ran it through his head– had run it through his head many times before, if in a less focused manner– and he only ended up digging and walking and walking and digging until he grew gaunt and died of exposure.

He had become vaguely aware that the wooden board– no, the ocean– had started to shake. Somewhere, on the ship, probably, more people were shouting, but in more of a panicked, fearful way.

What was there left?  For someone like him, who had only known pain and fury, isolation and rejection since toddlerhood– what was left for him now? He was empty. Hollowed out. As he had let loose that scarlet waterfall from Macleese’s throat, so had the marrow of his being been sucked out with it.

The water around began to froth and roil. It became hard to keep his footing, so he dropped to his knees. The men on the boat were running all over the deck, unfurling the sails and hoisting the anchor.

Hadn’t Macleese mentioned something about a whale? A nightmare monster in these seas that sniffed out blood?

And the damned thing was, the anger hadn’t left him.

Oh, that scared him much, much more than anything. The fury was still there, dull and thudding in the back of his head again after that grisly show, but it was still there all the same and he had already done the only thing in the world that could have– should have– abated it. It was still there, in him. And as Macleese’s death had ripped his own self out of him, so had that fury already begun seeping into the vacuum, dripping out, trickling down from his diseased head and filling those empty, crucial crevices within himself. Sooner or later, it would become him.

A squealing, creaking noise echoed up from the depths below and shook the very board he stood on. The ship began to turn away from him.

Was it that he had never learned anything about the world outside that safe and familiar dirt path that had guided him since he was little? Or was it the sheer size of that winter expanse that cowed him, offering up so many possibilities, so many new and different paths, that he felt immobilized just in trying to decide where to go?

Something breached the water around him, and for the first time Eamon snapped out of his reverie.

The lower portion of some impossible jaw rose out of the water beneath him, so wide that even in his shock Eamon had the impression of standing on the beach of a cavernous cove. Something blocked out the moon and Eamon fell into shadow. He looked up. There, of course, was the upper portion of this world-ending mouth. Carpets of fine, silk-like white hair hung from its edges. That groaning clicking sound came again, but this time it erupted all around him. It got into his skin, into his blood, his bones, his skull, rattling him from the inside out and multiplying his vision. Eamon clapped his hands to his ears and screamed. A moment later the world plunged into a dead silence, though his entire being still vibrated painfully.

Then there had been that moment when he had Macleese under the knife. Like some kind of foreign entity inside of him had tried to stay his hand. Out of what emotion, he wasn’t able to tell. But it hadn’t been the consist and beating anger he was used to. It had almost felt like the warmth he remember feeling for his mother, once upon a time. But thank God, he’d come to his senses.

And in that first moment where his ears fell blind, when the world stopped speaking to him and its chatter died away, he again felt that ugly emptiness. But he realized, then, that the emptiness, along with the vast snowy expanse and its horizons of promising futures, only elicited such an animalistic fear from him because he felt no desire to fulfill it.

Oh, Mother. Mother.

He was done. He no longer had any reason to trudge through the snow. He could lie down and sleep in it instead.

The jaws began to close around him and the last of the moonlight faded away. Macleese’s body was long gone, and he couldn’t tell if the ship of his would-be rescuers had made it out. He didn’t care.

The jaws closed completely and he fell into total darkness. The tongue-continent beneath him began to push the water forward, toward what could only be that towering wall of hair, but Eamon had floated well past its jurisdiction.

Floating on into the abyss of The Bitter Duke, he smiled. Just as a man who had achieved all he’d ever meant to in his life, he smiled.

[author] [author_image timthumb='on']http://www.fictionade.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Aaron-Elias.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Aaron Elias graduated from the University of California Irvine with a BA in English and Creative Writing Emphasis in 2011. His fiction has been published in magazines like New Forum, p o p, and Matchbox. If he ever found a magic lamp, he would use his first wish to have Congress declare bacon as a vegetable, and the other two wishes for lifetime supplies of said vegetable. He enjoys old-world literature like The Invisible Man and Jacques the Fatalist, yet has read an appalling amount of Stephen King novels and refuses to stop. Someone once coined his style as “turn-of-the-century dramatic American gothic.” When he isn’t recuperating from the gym or writing, he’s teaching himself to sing and melt faces with the guitar. He also plans on learning to surf, meditate properly, and survive a full session of bikram yoga without wussing out. Nothing cheers him up like his dog, Shiloh.[/author_info] [/author]

The post In the Jaws of The Bitter Duke appeared first on Fictionade Magazine.

Brandi Frye absolutely loathes the idea of going to jury duty. She does not have the time. She has a spa business to run and it’s certainly not going to run itself! Not even today. She was texting away on her Blackberry.

Leland Byrd wasn’t looking forward to reporting for jury duty because the last two times he got picked. The upside was he could put off that prostrate exam. It beat listening to his wife tell him to get a hobby now that he was retired and should be having the time of his life.

Patti was thrilled to report for jury duty and crossed her fingers, hoping she would be a juror. She loved court shows and crime shows, she wanted to be a part of the action! She read in the newspaper it was John Walsh’s birthday who she adored for his work.

Dr. Obasecki, a mathematics professor, normally wore khakis, but to serve his adopted country he put on trousers. He woke up with a sore throat and was afraid it would mar his chances of being selected. On his way over he stepped in some gum and wondered if this was an omen.

Dozens of people crowded the lobby. Men in suits, men in sagging pants, women click clacking in black pumps and skirt suits dragging roller bags, people with tattoos on their necks talking on speaker phone, groups of these people huddled together with stacks of files in their hands. People were packing into the elevators and it was by chance Marty, Brandi, Leland, Patti, and Dr. Obasecki all got into the same lift.

The elevator shot up half a floor and gurgled to a stop. Brandi impatiently tapped her foot and said out loud: “Can this thing take any longer? I knew I should’ve taken the stairs.”

“I don’t think we’re moving,” Marty said looking up at the number indicating what floor they were on. He frowned and nervously adjusted his scarf.

“Oh, no. Oh, I have a cell phone!” Patti said holding it up in the air.

“There’s no reception in this building,” Brandi said, her eyes darting around, starting to feel uneasy.

“Let’s try the emergency phone. Stand back ladies,” Leland said and swung his elbow into the box.

“It is a handle on front, you must pull,” Dr. Obasecki offered.

Leland swung the little door open and picked up the red receiver.

“No dial tone,” he said.

“I knew this would be a bad day,” Dr. Obasecki said with his hands in his pockets looking down at his shoes.

“Oh, no, I’ve got work to do and I gotta tell them I’m mentally unstable or whatever it is you tell and get my ass out of here,” Brandi said, shaking her head frantically.

“Jury duty is your civic–” Marty started to say.

“Cut it out, we need to work as a team and fix this phone!” Leland interrupted with a booming voice.

“I can take a look, perhaps?” Dr. Obasecki asked.

“You and I can’t do it, kid, get over here and push that panel off the ceiling,” Leland said to Marty.

“I don’t know anything about phones or wires!” Marty said.

“Look I’ll guide you, you’ve got the slimmest body here,” Leland said. Brandi shot him an insulted look and looked Marty up and down.

Pushing himself against the wall Marty asked Leland: “Can I get a lift?”

Leland helped up Marty and he was able to stand on the handrail to pop the ceiling panel off.

“Do you see a green wire son?” Leland asked holding Marty steady.

There was silence.

“Son?”

“I probably should’ve mentioned this before, but I’m color blind.”

“Christ!” Leland said and let go of Marty’s legs.

Dr. Obasecki stepped in and braced Marty from falling.

“Perhaps, we can devise a plan to code the colors of the wires, he is colorblind but he can certainly decipher the different shades,” Dr. Obasecki said to no one in particular.

“What’s the other wire’s color supposed to be?” Marty asked.

“Red,” Leland yelled up.

“Green and red look the same to me,” Marty said.

“What if we’re stuck here forever, what if we have to go to the bathroom?” Patti shrieked.

“You’re gonna jinx us, honey!” Brandi said, still pecking at her useless Blackberry.

“Do you see anything unusual up there, anything at all?” Leland asked.

“I don’t like this at all!” Patti said, sinking to the floor.

“Um, a lot of wires and dust, lots and lots of dust,” Marty said.

“Son, you need to focus, forget about the dust,” Leland said.

“I don’t like small spaces! I’m clauzo-claustro-castro-whatever, phobic!” Patti said.

“Let me up there, get this joker down and let me up there, you think I don’t know how to tie some wires together? You think my can’s too big?” Brandi said to Leland.

“Please, hysteria is not helping,” Dr. Obasecki said.

“Who are you calling hysterical, you some kind of racist towards women?” Brandi asked, looking over at Patti to back her up.

Patti was hiding her face behind her purse, chewing.

“What are you doing?” Brandi swatted aside Patti’s purse.

“What are you eating?” Leland asked.

Brandi grabbed it from Patti’s hand. “It’s a Luna Bar! You’re holding out you sneaky little devil!”

“I have low blood sugar! I can faint!”

“This is possibly true, for one with low blood sugar,” Dr. Obasecki offered.

Brandi handed the bar back, but remained suspicious.

“Well, don’t go and eat it all up in case we are here for hours,” she said.

“I see two separated wires!” Marty yelled out.

“Roughly the same color, at least of course, to you, with your blindness of color?” Dr. Obasecki asked.

“Yes!” Marty said.

“I need you to twist those together son,” Leland yelled up, putting a hand on Marty’s leg.

“I did!” Marty said.

Leland tried the phone.

“I hear a tone!”

Everyone cheered. Dr. Obasecki helped Marty down. All of them high fived and hugged each other. They talked about how they could sell the story to be adapted into a movie, how they were so scared, but knew together they could make this work even with Marty being handicapped.

Just then the elevator started moving. It went down the half a floor it went up and the doors jerked open.

Two firefighters stood smiling.

“Sorry about that folks,” one of the firefighters said.

[author] [author_image timthumb='on']http://www.fictionade.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Cindy-Adrian.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]CW Adrian is a freelance writer mostly interested in writing short stories. She has written a handful of how-to articles and has a short story published in the Chicago Quarterly Review. She graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz with a BA in psychology. She taught English in South Korea and has worked with people with autism. Her late mother was a Korean immigrant and her father is a first generation Anglo American. She lives in California with her best friend, two dogs, and cat.[/author_info] [/author]

The post Can I Get A Lift? appeared first on Fictionade Magazine.

He remembered All-Hallows Eve.

Texas. Godstate. Lone Star Empire.

Silence lurked in the shadows of the crypt they kept him in. Maybe if they kept here long enough, he would be forgotten. Meta-ologists would dig him up with their sonic tools and say, ‘here lay the former David of the Godstate, charged with treason.’ His skeleton would still be chained to the wall, and they might think ‘well, we can’t very well paint a picture of his skeletons in chains, can we?’

He would though. They’d remember him for his treason, he’d make sure of that. He would make sure they captured him in his state of subjugation and, now, he finally understood the mission of his cousin, why she had killed the King of Texas, and what he must do—even in this hour of defeat.

That’s what Shiloh Mackenzie did. That’s why he drove his captors crazy. That’s why they’d tried to break his will, and instead, settled on his knees—but in the end wanted to break him as the ancestral cowboys of the old republic had done to those archaeo-horses so in fashion as statuary, or for the Original 300, offered as robots to ride wherever they pleased.

They meant to break him and ride him. He would be their charger for the even-greater-race in the future.

His captors’ intentions merely inspired him. That day, he began to write his movie. The purpose was twofold. He would show the dixiecrats why they needed him. Behind his rationale, he could make a stronger case. Self-preservation. The act served, in his hands, as a matter self-worth, worth doing. For the wrong things would help make things right again.

***

Shiloh nearly tripped on the artificial turf. The hunting horns were loudspeaker announcements for an unseen predator. His head should have been in the game but it wasn’t, even if he and everyone else heard his name. Loud and clear.

Shiloh Mackenzie, please report to the backyard!

Shiloh knew today was the most important day of his life.

The Great Lawn. That seemed like the better thing to call it. Rolling hills and trees as far as the eye could see. All pre-fab of course, lifted in from the technocentrist re-designers of Texas and installed at the good graces of the centenarians of Vegas.

Yee haw.

Lord Justinian Thorogood had it all. It was a pasture really. The tall brown grass had all the reality of a 2D TV screen. The trees should have perfumed themselves in the fake smell of plastic. Even the piped-in air from ducts far above his head failed to move him to believe that any of this was real nature. Not now, not ever. Not in this bleak technocentrist dawn.

It was enough for the military dictator of the Godstate of Texas and the Lone Star Empire. A dome covered his personal acreage of plains and small groves of trees. They sky looked real, and Shiloh guessed it was. Magnified maybe by some unseen projections. But real enough for anyone to think they stood on the contested plains of the middle Americas, with nothing but them and wild nature. A whole lot of nothing. Except where the deer and the antelope played.

Shiloh heard the gunshot before he saw the party. It was an antique, by the sound of it, a real explosion of…he couldn’t remember what the moderns (did he use that term right?) had used to ignite one end of a gun, spark a fire, and propel some infernal cylinder across a distance to strike some poor object, usually with disastrous results.

Another gun went POW! and Shiloh heard it louder this time. He walked in that direction. Towards a low hill. A group sat on the bluff. He could see lawn chairs and umbrellas. The smoke from another whiff of grapeshot announced the spot of the Waterloo-capital in absentia, where the thermidorean sun betrayed the location of the old southwest, which all Texians called part of Big Texas, anyways. The near abroad.

Shiloh walked up to the party, as men in cowboy hats threw death at a distance. A standard bearer stood off to the side. Shiloh would have thought of him as an after thought. Except he held the Ancient Lone Star.

-Took you long enough to get over here, boy. Didn’t hear your name on the loudspeaker?-

Everyone did idiot.

It was Jefferson Davis. Good friends. He looked as if some deus ex machina had lifted him up and dipped him in a can of scumbag. Everyone was crazy about a sharp dressed man.

Some kind of dress code seemed in effect, and no one had told Shiloh. He was lucky to even make it inside, privy to the private party, where the entourage all stood around and leaned on their big antique rifles.

A very long man lay on the ground with a picnic blanket under him. He wore the same outfit as everyone else. A white suit with a matching white hat. He pointed a rifle towards the long horizon of painted rocks and winded mountains. He looked through the scope on the top. Shiloh guessed he squinted and looked to see what lay on the horizon. For a second, nothing. Then, against the technicolor horizon, a shape rose from the ground. Its head was barely above the long grasses. A wind had begun to move them and they swayed. Shiloh almost saw the appeal to this activity.

The man pulled the trigger and Shiloh watched as the object on the horizon exploded in a cloud of red mist. The noise made him jump and he smelled gun smoke. Everyone else in the entourage clapped politely, none more so than Jefferson Davis.

-Damned if that aint varmint vapor, milord!-

Shiloh saw the titular Vaquero of the Plains turn over on his side. The man held his rifle for an attendant to grab, which they did, and satisfied, the play-pretend cowboy looked up at Shiloh. He had the same face Shiloh remembered. Long and straight. A good knife. With two beady eyes on either side of the sharp edge and a long moustache that drooped down his face. His mouth curled upward.

It was hard to tell what sounds might come out of the mouth of this porn-star looking fucker. But he looked the same as Shiloh remembered him. Justinian Thorogood. Imperator of the Godstate of Texas, Autarch of the Lone Star Empire, heir to the William Robert Kings, self-proclaimed Emperor of the Americans.

-You’re late, Shiloh. Late. And dressed inappropriately. Someone get this boy a good bolo tie. He’s a Texian of the Esta-cado, for chistsakes.-

They changed his outfit like a rock star. Around his body, Shiloh was supposed to feel as if a miraculous change was going on to his wardrobe. A great humanitarian mission was afoot to change his appearance. Attendants slipped a coat on the man. A big heavy coat for a sharp dressed man on the plains. You had to look good. On the lapel, the lone star standard. Visigoth Spain was redeemed.

He tied his own bolo. Looked at Justinian. The southwest skyline had begun to bruise with purple and Shiloh could not bear to watch the beating he knew must happen.

Justinian rolled over on his back.

-You forget that I’ve known you for a long time. You forget that your family hunted with mine. Just like this.-

Shiloh remembered that Justinian, upon his coup, had ordered someone to hit his shins and knees with a tire iron. He’d always been a bully.

-A little early in the day for this. You know, you’re going to hurt someone. It’s in your case history.-

But Justinian was right. Justinian’s words fell against Shiloh’s defenses and scored deep hits. He almost believed Justinian.

-I’m not going to hurt anyone, Shiloh Jacinto.-

This line was new to him. Some things weren’t. Not the guns, not the target practice. Shiloh could almost imagine Kirsten’s head on one of them rodents…there might be little change in her attitude.

-You wish it was her, huh? You wish you were putting a bullet right between her eyes.-

All seven feet of Justinian got off the ground. Pieces of the turf from the Great Lawn clung from his slacks and jacket.

-I haven’t enjoyed the things you’ve been saying about me, Mackenzie.-

Justinian acted much better than Shiloh’s premonitions of blood and guts that he’d imagined would commence once Lord Thorogood stood in the same room with his wayward, rebellious ex-David.

-I had to say those things.-

Shiloh recognized that upon realization of the word’s meanings, Justinian went dark. Pained.

-I have a picture of you somewhere. Just like this….-

This. Justinian showed him…this. Free land. Games with children, and their cruel weapons. Shiloh had grown out of those games. Justinian once pretended, not he intended to rule the Earth. He gave Shiloh a severe look.

-And I don’t know if I can trust you.-

Shiloh knew if any moment existed to get back to where they’d started from, this was it.

-We talked about what you expected of me. And I was able to do that because I trusted you. I knew that I could do the things I’d always wanted to do.-

Shiloh recognized his voice’s plaintive tones. Real desperation seized the moment. Justinian knew it too, and to increase the tension, he did not take his eyes off Shiloh.

-How’s that movie of your’s going?-

Shiloh had to lie. Not much. There was a bit of truth.

-It’s almost done. It just needs the last part. I suspect there’ll be some editing. But I know what it’s about now.-

Justinian nodded to the members of his entourage.

-Our Lady of TexArkany has set up a meeting with Salanasio and us. The end of this movie—is at hand.-

Shiloh tried to conceal his excitement. Thorogood would help him finish his movie after all.

He looked out at the panorama. For a second a certain dimensionality to the scenery. Unnoticed. One where if you looked at the projections of what the middle of the country was supposed to emulate, you realized those projections were merely an idea. The viewer was never supposed to see this good. It was too real. And for that Shiloh realized he inhabited a place that never existed. And of them who inhabited it? They never existed either.

Thorogood ruled this desert of the unreal, and said as much.

-Why should I shoot her if I can get you to do it right?-

Ready to give himself some congratulations, Jefferson beat Shiloh to it, and came up behind him and beat him over the head. It felt like the tire iron he had used before.

Making things right didn’t feel right.

***

Why Jefferson beating him over the head reminded Shiloh of the days when the Godstate was in near revolution, went back to the first time Shiloh disappointed that old friend of the Mackenzies, Justinian Thorogood.

Shiloh’s family, as one of the Original 300, the families who paid the bills and assumed patronage over the martial families in the Liminal Zones of the Godstate. Like the Goodes, who had served the Mackenzies after the Takeover. Justinian came from that line, in both name and a man of action, as the last of the Rangers of the Trans-Nueces.

Thoughts such as these incited a fear in Shiloh, and he half expected to wake up and really experience the One Hundred Days. The Barricades would be up, and so too…

Shiloh sprang out of bed. Immense pain awaited him. The first thing he did was cry out. Scream.

Baroness Von Evangelion stood beside the bed he was strapped to. She was prettier than usual. A petite catlike thing, and a doll with hidden claws.

-I can get you drugs.-

Yes!

-…no…got the…straight…edge…but why?…why did….-

He passed out, woke up, wretched by the side of his bed. The Baroness passed him a cup of cold water.

A shadowy form moved fanned out behind her. Big. It looked like Elvis Presley.

Shiloh really thought he was dancing on the ceiling. It was a terrible feeling.

-Why…this was…?-

The Baroness waved towards the door, whereupon a medicinalist in sky-blue robes ran through a bank of light that had suddenly erupted through the doorway. She brought drugs to Shiloh. The big fat hose going into his heart felt the first of the surge she administered. It quickly faded into a sense of awe at the little things in life.

The Baroness curtsied to his bedside, and to his sleeping ear her lips whispered.

-It was the only way the Chief would agree to meet with you. They need you Shiloh. The Chief has Lord Thorogood convinced. That’s what you need. You need the games in your favor.-

Elvis moved back into the shadows.

-I want to talk to him first. Before he meets with Thorogood. Until then, let him sleep.-

***

Days went by and the same dream visited Shiloh. The bodies of men swung from the gaslight poles that lined the side of the old republic boulevards. Most were dressed in the red bandanas of the Jacobins, and Shiloh stood beneath them—with Jefferson pushing him in a wheelchair—as Shiloh resumed his responsibility as the David, rebel or not, and painted portraits of the dead rebels. The command had come down from the new ruler of the Godstate and Empire. The Destroyer had come, saw, and conquered. Long live the autarchy of the Imperator. The chaos had been abated.

***

Shiloh spent an increased amount of time every morning in bed. Demi-serfs, sent by the Baroness, served him the best kills from the bureaus of land management. The learn/ed-machines out to pasture. Synthetic-meat grown around carbon-tritium endoskeletons. Robots, to use the ancient tongue. Red-blooded Americans called it the Harvest. If you could bribe a land-manager you had the chance to shoot some buffalo.

-Your food good?-

Shiloh felt almost like a land manager in this Pliocene landscape. The long sunsets made right with him. There was the appeal of the scenery, the long dash towards a horizon line that never came—he understood the appeal of the place now. The near abroad of old Texan imperialism.

-Great.-

It was the drugs, however. They made Shiloh much better. He could finally do drugs….

He almost believed he had concocted this whole adventure—running away to the Sea of Kansas to be with the Empress—just to wean himself off the junk she he could get his tolerance low again. And getting caught by Justinian was just an excuse to do drugs once more.

-The people are sick of El! Pepsi! my interests are to the chorus and its entertainarchy. That’s why you can help out, Shiloh Mackenzie-

The room spun just a little, the white light of his body suspended in a shaft of the suns rays.

-That’s what everyone else seems to think.-

Shiloh went down the long list of so-called well-wishers, since shortened lately to Jefferson Davis, who’d led him along the burning, partisan choked streets of Kansas, only to pluck him out of the fire. To bring him here.

A big man walked out of the glare of the angry sun. Big. He had double chins, a big, thick neck, and gold-linked chains hanging tightly around the cowl of flesh just under the mutton-chops on both sides of his face. He had more of that to go around. Around his waist, his white jumpsuit bulged in his midsection, ready to erupt, too tight in the shoulders and thighs. He was almost a walking sausage, way more fat than meat.

But there was plenty of beef to make some big sandwiches. Hammurab de Salanasio stood on two hind legs, more a bull than anything, though long ago his horns had been sanded down by his Nipponese master. If he missed the former holder of his leash, Shiloh could not tell. For big wrap-around shades reflected gold but hid his eyes, and with it, any glimpse of the interior mood of the Chief of Ancien’ Vegas.

-All my promises mean nothing if there isn’t a race.-

Shiloh had seen the sky-traffic over the city and already knew rumor-threadz buzzed around the hive of the Eye-NC with news. Apparently, the entertainarchy would grant an event not seen since the days of the assassins, when only a bright star hinted at the delivery of Ceres.

-You have a funny way of playing, O’ Grand Chief and Father…,-

…and Shiloh used the old honorific, knowing there wouldn’t be much room for it later…

-…the programz are lit up with your condotierri shooting up the town. Chasing some scared little girls. You big bully.-

Shiloh meant to add insult to the injury of time that had inflicted Salanasio. Most would agree. The Chief had seen better days. A lifetime duchy over Vegas, a reward for services for the then-Nipponese crown prince, had taken the steel out of the Blade of Hirohito. All that was left was soft from the comforts of the centenarians’ creatures.

Yet Shiloh knew. Behind the gold tinted shades and sequined jumpsuit of wide white lapels stood a man who only fools would doubt. Beneath the grotesque, puffed up thing that had once murdered hundreds, the heart of a killer still pumped red, red blood—ready to spill even more if he must.

Just the man Shiloh needed to tease out his plan to perfection. If Shiloh could survive one predator, in order to evade another, it was this man. The Blade of Hirohito. Sheathed for a few generations, sure. But, if like his freedom, ready to be worn out from taking his sword out. Once more—if he had to.

-Let me explain things, Shiloh Mackenzie. Eat up while I tell you, because you’re not going to have another chance when you’re strapped to a nuclear bomb, with the rest of Lo Magnifico’s stirrup-artillery on your tail.-

That…was exactly what Shiloh did not want to think about now. Better that he could get the whole enchilada cooking, then realize he’d be served along with dinner. Shiloh stuffed a piece of vat-grown/range-hunted steak into his mouth, chewed slowly, and listened.

-I had to attack those girls back in Vegas….-

…and here Shiloh knew Salanasio told the truth. That much was known on Shiloh’s end- of-things-in-perpetual motion, a great place to be…

-…I not only had to convince that bitch from Ohio about my intentions, I couldn’t let the rockarolla mistress relax and think I’d just let her send her girls into my city…not after her behavior….-

Shiloh still had to justify to everyone his place in this. Why he was here. Bad enough Justinian didn’t trust him. Shiloh now had to figure out a way to get back into this game. Salanasio provided him an opportunity. He was, after all, the Games Commissioner. And what games they were, or had been, and might be again…if only Shiloh could get people not act so tense and lose the passive out of their voices. The time called for action.

-I think I can help you O’ Great Captain of the Straits…-

…and Shiloh liked to call Salanasio by this title, most of all. What else connected Ancien’ Vegas to the riches of the orient, but the Straits of Anian? There was the sky, but the busy spaceport served little more than a token gesture. The worlds beyond lowercased-earth, closed forever by the restriction on migration…

-…and for this, you got to get me out of that front seat. If the beast is going to ride for the Empress, I need to be in a nice booth somewhere diagraming plays up with one of those maddenesque-lites. People love the smash mouth. And I am the color analyst. After all, they used to call me a Texan. So, I’m a motherfucking modern…-

Salanasio jiggled towards him. Big man bounced, ready to pounce. Shiloh felt himself mentally high-tale it outta there.

-Watch the tone, rococo-n-roll…-

…and with that remark, Shiloh felt fully chastised, just one more reason he couldn’t ride shotgun next to Hessia. It would look bad on the Eye-NC. The authorshipz would never relent and immortalize him with a sponsorshipz that would serve as him epitaph. He couldn’t die just yet. Too much to do. Too many minds to impress. And there was his movie after all. A director’s title card that elicited laugher from the viewers wasn’t even worth the trouble of getting his name in the credits…

-…you gotta get more than the snake-girl to concede to the whole deal. If she throws herself on the fire, so what? I know people want to see her burn, die, take the hemlock. But no one is going to play a game if they know they’re going to die. No one is definitely going to watch it. What chance will the others take? What will the winners get?-

Shiloh inwardly acknowledged Salanasio’s point, and a vital one at that. There had to be more to the plot. Sure, victory might provide the Terms of Redemption for Kirsten and save her neck from the execution’s blow. But she had to willingly leave her neck on the block—or American gods forbid—the whole exercise would fall apart. Sure, Shiloh knew it would only end in tears, but not yet. Not so soon.

Something else needed to compel Kirsten to choose her horrific destiny. Americans could care less, unless they could be given  one more thing to cheer.

It was time to go big or go home. And as much as Shiloh hated sports analogies, he was always willing to play in them. He knew the game they might now play, if they did, in fact, win the championship would only accelerate the Empress’s downfall. But he knew that would happen in the end.

He took his last bite of bison steak and chewed, as Salanasio told him what he could do to rig the game in Shiloh’s favor. While he listened, he plotted about the best way to end his movie and bring down the house on everyone’s heads. The only problem was he would not get off looking good.

***

Since his first moment with a brush, a pen, or a vector-tool, Shiloh’s family had expected great things from him. Each member of the Mackenzies who viewed his art reminded him of destiny, how he might fulfill his potential, and illustrate the ancestral home in the baroque flourishes of the divine, the coercive power of government, and the land of the seven rivers of the Nueces to the Red.

His grandfather had, after all, dominated the visuals of the messages from out of the mouth of the community, and the public sphere, which danced around, never was the same after the art of the Master David of the Texans.

The academies schooled him—prepared him—to finish what his grandfather started. To fill the shoes of the man who once filled the canvases, and the parks, and the city squares, both ancient and revived, with images of heroism on the great plains of heritage, the muddy waters of eastern capital and poverty, where reckless men immune to pain once drove beasts over the trails, and shot six-shot revolvers into the sides of the savage dryads who hunted with spear, knife, and rope.

That was Texas. Born to rule the plains and unite the lands under one god, one nation, invisible, and only for a select all.

The Americans of Americans.

Shiloh’s grandfather had illustrated the foundation story of the disappeared moderns for the Texian descendants. And, before Shiloh first showed his gifts of stage, song, and ritual, the Godstate and its Hegelian Ultras had thought they would never this kind of talent to breathe life into myth, again.

They had expected great things from Shiloh Jacinto Mackenzie.

The goal, surpass his grandfather, old Mirabeau Lyndon Baines Jacinto Mackenzie, the Master David of the Texans. Shiloh fretted to escape the shadow of his ten-gallon hat…

Shiloh’s leadership over the communismo revolt against the Godstate, his erection of the barricades, the Jacobin street-fighting men he’d inspired with electric songs—it had been for liberty, or so he told himself, why he’d raised his hand against his home.

Now, he was not so sure. Now he had begun to think he only meant to help others so he could feel better about himself.

***

Octopi Incorporated bestowed gifts to the Waterloo-court ever since the immortalized year-zero of 2882 and the inaugural Years of the Incorporated Lords. Even though Texas had fought on the losing side at Elvis Downs, their William Robert Kings proved compatible to the Von Strauven Imperium through their embrace of American Revivalism.

In the orbital Lagranges, the 8Fold Lords stocked their zero-gee stockyards with retro-cloned re/animals and sent the best to the Godstate of Texas, who could do as they wish—and did quite often. The creatures of the past, culled back from extinction, made it to the family dinner tables of the Original 300. Those that did not become steaks and roasts and cutlets and ribs and thrown into stews had another use. The families gave them as presents to the William Robert Kings to hunt for sport on the Great Lawn.

That’s what Shiloh was doing now.

Born an American, but a Texian by the grace of god.

The head of a rodent geysered near the line of site Shiloh sighted him. Her. For a second the crimson spray made a rainbow in a sun that attempted for the better part of an hour to rest in the spine of the Nevadan plateaus and its captured seas.

-Damn shot, you’re a killer Shiloh! It’s time someone signed you up for the StarSoldiers.-

While people laughed behind him, coming from the robots in some lost-to-time reichstag, Justinian smiled the bully smile. The one Shiloh remembered from the trips into Hill Country and the random chance that they’d gas a hive of fire locusts in the Springs-lands. When Shiloh had first found out that Justinian Thorogood—“the Destroyer”—possessed an army ready to pass through the Staked Walls of the Esta-cado and enter the Waterloo-capital, he failed to think of it as serious, because the young Comancheria warlord didn’t seem the type to massacre an entire city. No, not hard at all to put that insect-torturer kid with the man who now ruled the Godstate and Empire.

Shiloh felt the drugs cascade through his system, pulled the bolt-action rifle down from his shoulder, and was glad that he still had a relationship with Justinian where he could get beat up one moment and be best friends the next. Like nothing happened. Friends.

It would keep Shiloh alive longer than without privilege he could have been expected to survive.

He looked back through the sight. Waiting for another unfortunate varmint. He heard Justinian breathe. Deep thoughts.

-So what’s going to happen with your cousin, poor Kirsten? Our star-struck empress.-

Shiloh looked down the gun line towards the waves of grass. The grasses of the Great Lawn. The mountain of the far-away matte painting seemed so far away. So did his connection to any part of this conversation. Since he had practiced for this conversation his entire life, auto-pilot would do.

-What’s going to happen is you’re going to get her to grab for it all. She is going to put her neck out there with the expectation that she won’t only get to keep her head—she’ll have even more power than ever. That’s what she wants. She’s a power -

A rodent the size of an Arkansas 40-year old waddled into Shiloh’s sight. He readied and pressed his fingers down, as his veins flushed with opioids. Vapor…brains…came downwind. He felt better.

-And for this?-

The bullet casing dropped to the ground. Chu-chek. Shiloh reloaded.

-My cousine is sick—to use the ancient tongue—and not right in the head. But she gets it…that no government is worth a Comanche, if it won’t submit itself to the fantasies of being a willing sacrifice to the people…prepared to water the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants…time after time….-

Shiloh sang that last part while he looked at Justinian. Long enough to see Lord Justinian Thorogood loom, and there beside him, an entourage of the sharp-dressed state. Besides the Waterloo-court lackeys and the military attendants of the Thorogood private army—that regular constituents of the robots in the Reichstag—Hammurab de Salanasio smiled with a mouth full of golden teeth. He looked good today. He was a bit of neo-cola classicist himself, so Shiloh had heard. Dr. Pepper, he went by, along with that other crap. “The Chief of Land and Sea, Over Ancien’ Vegas, Gate of the Straits of Anian.”

Jefferson Davis attended the traditional outing of varmint vapor too. But no one cared, even when he complained.

-If she gets the corporate world-state and the global imperium…what’s that mean, for us…?-

-Total evaporation of the constitution. No more electors. She will eject the…nominalist rule and enter the higher sovereignty of being. It’s the natural evolution of democracy, the Founders will be spinning in their graves, though, but I don’t think I’m the first one to tell you that America didn’t invent freedom.

Justinian looked stoked. Shiloh worried that the son of a llanero boss planned to beat the plowshares of John Brown Ferry’s back into swords.

-You can expect that the worst thing that might happen is, with her death, that…her protectors will rise up.-

Justinian ejaculated.

-That right there…that is what I want to happen. With the Empress dead, I expect resistance. First from Janus Southcross, her Pagani Engineers, and this illegal army she is building, as well as…-

Justinian mumbled something about ‘the rest of the rabble,’ then looked across the Great Lawn. Shiloh knew the bully looked beyond. Into the American desert. The near abroad. He couldn’t stop dreaming aloud.

-I hope there is a war. I’m counting on it. What better for my coronation as Emperor of the Americans: an invasion of the Sea of Kansas and occupation of the Palace of Kir-sten’ya? No—its destruction, justified by Writs of Non-compliance.-

Shiloh was well aware of the terms of the Regency that forbade the presence of a standing army on the place-of-the-most-hardest-rock—where the Palace of the empress’ name stood—in Kansas, all 82,282 squareamericanmiles of radioactive desert, impact crater walls, and a vast inland sea.

The Sergeant-at-Arms of the Palace should have considered herself a success. The work to secretly build an army, the Demi-corps—by her orders—now threatened the Lone Star Empire. Warriors would get their war. The rest…Shiloh stared into that same desert too.

Impending war made it important that Hessia get out of harm’s way, so Shiloh could take advantage of the one-time-in-a-million chance of the whole corporate world-state to undo itself. That would be the final scene in his movie. So many things to look forward to.

Justinian balled on.

-And if Hessia does actually survive the race then, there is the issue of her horde, and that…will be the end of those western savages, once and for all!-

Speaking of evaporation, Shiloh turned back around. He had more stuffed animals to evaporate. There was no better chance for them to dry up, blow away, disappear. The sun was a harsh mistress. It reminded him of his ride in a Trans-Am Pontiac Firebird. And the smile of a killer. Hessia…how to put this?

-Janus will break in the end. But Hessia…you better hope you kill her. That should really be your first priority. The longer she survives during the race, the better her chance is to win.-

Justinian gave a heavy breath and Shiloh could smell it.

-That’s not entirely in my control. Besides, I have a good source that says the race will conclude in our favor.-

Shiloh inwardly chuckled. And I have a source that says you have no idea who and what favors you. Shiloh hoped Justinian could deal with aliens. His aching head returned through the forgetfulness of drugs. More drugs.

-Maybe El! Pepsi! will forget he thinks your Texian scum. Maybe he will kill Hessia out of pure ennui.-

-Don’t get French on me, buddy!-

A whole lotta love made its way on court. The brick house. Man, Elvis had gotten fat! Salanasio, he meant…

-Gentlemen, my role in this is pretty legit. There is a good chance that we might stamp out—once and for all—this neo-cola classists scourge. And I mean them all, I don’t plan on El! Pepsi! surviving.-

Shiloh got off at shot from his rifle in honor of Salanasio. Hard to hear him with his full grill in his mouth, but so what? Gold teeth, man! Dr. Pepper!

Justinian must have been pretty stoked to hear one of the key finer points reiterated by the Games Commissioner. Shiloh’s old childhood bully cum friend would get his war. And Shiloh—he could finish his movie.

He just had to sell it to the chorus. He just had to have a straight face and convince everyone he was willing to watch his cousin die. It failed to bother him that she was the Empress of Incorporated. It did bother him that she was the funniest person he had ever met and, with her death, the last of the Mohicans would pass from the world, the wild and wooly woods—even the plains, would never hear her call again. Big game hunters die hard, yo.

He thought back to the blood-soaked streets of his failed revolution and knew…he knew…his last wrong would make things right.

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