The Macabre and Eldritch Poems and Stories of: Dennis L. Siluk

2010-11-12T20:37:00.000-08:00

Cro-Magnon (A New Era, a New Story)

By Dennis L. Siluk, Ed.D.
Three Time Poet, Laureate

The Present:

Falling into a Dream
(Lee Maverick)

The Present
(2016-2020 AD)

The once beautiful starry sky, had merged with black strips mixed with blood red, his eyes were trying to adjust to it all, Lee Maverick (so he called himself)(looking in a broken mirror on the ground, at his appearance. He was middle aged, had been up this point, well kept, nearly all muscle, perhaps 7% fat, close to six foot tall, not as clean shaven as he’d prefer, his hair no longer trimmed, a bit disheveled yet he stood out, he was handsome, not intimidating), a professional tourist, he couldn’t make out much from all the debris scattered all about, and it was dark, dim-grey—yet it was early afternoon, a cloud had closed up the sun, pert near all of the sun’s rays, and there was bone chilling winds coming from the Anarchic, plants and fish from the ocean laying all about. As he had woken up from the rumble that flattened his hotel: an earthquake had taken place, the planet seemed to have wobbled off its axis for a moment also, the crust of the earth seemed to have shifted and recoiled back. He looked about, he could make out the Whitecap Mountains of Tierra del Fuego; he was visiting Ushuaia, a charming city at the end of South America when it happened. This stretch of the mountains, ended at Cape Horn. Everything, the world over, everything looked bleak and inhospitable—this past week, yet he kept to his travels. He had to find a place to stay now, to keep out of the snows, winds and chill, he remembered the old prison that was built in 1902, he had been to Ushuaia before, it was the only structure holding solid ground that he could see, on the upper part of the small city, everything else was demolished.
There was nothing that man could not imagine, that hadn’t taken place that week, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, warfare (with intercontinental missiles pointed at every city over one million population)—everyone knew the war was coming, they just didn’t know when, and nobody was spared its overall destruction. It was a global standoff that had a ripple effect that had taken place—nobody backed down this time—Some folks even talked of aliens being involved, and there were rumors of a new world leader on the rise: it was the new so called World Order, that caused 2.5 billion people to be killed, so he heard over the radio—and the threat was not over, another 600,000 were expected to die from disease, and cholera, starvation, and wounds, etc, all the after-effects of war, its trauma. Perhaps he survived only because he was a tourist, had he been home—back in Minnesota, he’d be dead; theoretically no joke.
Marino the Mayor of the city saw him wandering about and waved, he stood still while he approached. “Follow me,” he said. They walked to the prison (during the first half of the 20th Century, the prison was used for repeated offenders, hard criminals, likened to Devil’s Island, where escape was near impossible, and where would one go if one had? You were at the end of the world), down one of the corridors the two men went, in silence, to one of the side rooms; in the room were several young women, a fire in the middle of the room, a window allowing the smoke to escape, two women were drawing and writing on the wall, in one of the corners, they turned around to see who had entered, the tall one said, “Were just writing to let people know we were here in case—you know what I mean,” and she turned about and continued while the other shorter woman had a piece of white chalk, and she drew lines around her hand, leaving an imprint on the wall. The other four or five women, young women, sat around the fire in the centre, a mattress to one side with a rope tied from one side of the large prison enclosure (or room), used to hold several men at one time, and a blanket, was thrown over that, blocking the vision of the mattress; some fish was being cooked, it looked as if they had gone back to the days of Cro-Magnon, “It starts here,” he said, “wait a minute,” furthermore, he added, “You must impregnate all those you can, even if there is a genetic change because of the forthcoming fallout, who’s to say, what will become of us, if we don’t prepare? This is the only way we’ll survive, if they are all with child the strongest will survive, even if only one.”
The girl called Sandra kept her eye on Lee Maverick; she was wearing a Navy blue skirt, that went only to her knees, a white blouse, she looked seventeen, Lee thought, and moved about as if to attract him with her body, and smile, she was cute, a little pretty, “How does she look?” questioned the Mayor, handing Lee the key to the room…
“She looks fine,” said Lee.
She arranged everything as she knelt down by Lee, carefully taking one item of her close off at a time and placing her close neatly to the side. The last item she put under his pillow. Behind her in the room, the other girls were waiting, and they had selected Tamarind to be next.
“Do you have any idea how to do what we are going to do?” asked Lee Maverick.

Sandra, of Ushuaia

She lay down beside him, naked. “Where do these come from?” she asked; feeling the weight of it, measuring its enormous circumference with her fingers.
“Don’t ask me, Miss Sandra,” said Lee, staring at her rounded and hard breasts, as she stared at him, saying “It looks like it just can’t be helped.”
Sandra turned her back to Lee, looked around the blanket, she could see through the window, it was getting darker, it got dark quick these days, and she disliked the dark because—invariably because she cold no longer evade it.
When she opened her eyes, she held her eyelids open as long as she could—she wished she was asleep, she stretched out her legs, she wanted to curse the times, she shouted at Lee, “Is that all you can find to do!” She did not look at Lee. Lee slid down and over the mattress, the blanket over their legs, were hanging over the mattress on the cold floor. Perspiration began to trickle down her neck as soon as he stopped.
“I’m not going to tell a lie about this,” she said, “but I hate it,” she told Lee, and Lee just sat on his knees and merely looked, “The baby will be mine,” she said, “I am her mother,” she added, “There is no reason why you should pretend not to be sentient about his, continue please.” She didn’t want to say that, or think, but she wondered how such tings happened. She made him happy now, and thereafter Lee fell into a long sleep, and started dreaming, as Sandra got up…

Interlude

Neanderthals the Neanderthals (33,000 BC to 22,000 BC), brains one-fifth larger than humans, taller than the average human perhaps six feet five inches, and a lot stronger than the Cro-Magnons, actually, in comparison, quite intimidating, they were all muscle; perhaps smarter again than the Cro-Magnons, whom were puny in comparison, and had they not acquired their genetic makeup from the Neanderthals through interbreeding, they perhaps never would have been considered nor selected for a higher position in the: natural selection, category (it would seem in retrospect, something went wrong back there, back then, perhaps this story will shed some light on the matter—not always is the strongest looking and smartest acting, the chosen one).

Stone tools and weapons

(The Neanderthal roamed from Western and Central Europe, to the Balkans into Ukraine, and into Siberia, all the way back to Gibraltar, all across the Mediterranean to Israel, 100,000 BC, leaving behind his skulls, and jaw bones, grinding stone tools, and weapons, for man to find, when man emerged from whom he once was into full official homo sapiens. He was the brute of the bunch, interbreeding took place, with not only Cro-Magnons, but with humans, those of the higher race, at 8700 BC, thereafter appeared a third species of man, as there would appear in 4500 BC, a supernatural species of man. But the Neanderthal, as cruel and crude, as he was, he did not have the predisposition for homosexuality, nor was it a genetic factor, it is a leaned behavior, one that would be taught by the Watchers in due time. The Watchers (or aliens), would become quite infamous for their raw sex with animals, and men, and take the wives and daughters of men within their domain, and impregnate them at will. This new kind of species produced the legendary giants called the Titans. Ones the Greeks would immolate with their preference of sex take into interest men with men, and of course their homosexuality deserts, and within the Greek Isles, lesbianism would prosper likewise.)

Lee Maverick in a state of Dreaming

The Cave

The Neanderthal man

In a cave-walled room, two Cro-Magnons were drawing pictures on the cave wall, the room was packed with observing young people in their teens, all casually watching, as if they were attending something new, unusual, instead of the dry old looks from their predecessors (the Neanderthals) of not being able to adjust to change, resistant to change. The two teachers were now showing how to draw the action of the animals, in curved lines, even a tinge of perspective—that is: angles and vantage points, scribble lines on white. The young Cro-Magnons stood slumped with sagged shoulders, as they stood in a half circled group.
Squatting in the back of the room, the old ruler with a horde of aging and dying out male Neanderthals, a few young male Neanderthals, and several young females around them, all quite sexually active as was the nature of their kind, perhaps three fold compared to their successors (and behind them, a few old chimps staring silently, holding onto their toes with their fingers), the old leader was now pointing his finger in the air, implying to the younger Cro-Magnons, and his older horde, he didn’t like the changing of times. That he wanted to go back, if not remain in the old way of life—the old lifestyle they had all known—were familiar with, his brain not being able to be activated to accept this change of behavior, a closed and fearful mind to a new and opening future, an era at its beginning.
The youngest of the group, those were the half-breeds, the Neanderthals and the Cro-Magnons who had similar genes—these were the ones feeling surprised, that the older ones did not accept the new ways, or could not accept them—the new tools they invented and now the two Cro-Magnons drawing the pictures on the cave wall, concluded in a small way times had change, and perhaps more to come, but to two Cro-Magnons, allowed the old ones to remain isolated from the changing times—if that is what they wished, to promote social harmony, and group cohesion. They knew these knew controversial ideas, now to be conventional ideas, would be in a short while the whole group’s way of thinking, and familiar once the old generation died out.
The old generation perhaps didn’t agree with the people—not in particular because of the drawings, although they were part of the issue—nor even the new tools they made, but because they saw recklessness about the Cro-Magnons behavior, their ways: why did they drive herds of animals off cliffs, to kill many for a few to eat? And now their behavior was causing—seemingly causing—the extinction of a number of species.
They didn’t know, the Cro-Magnons did not know, and surely the Neanderthals, didn’t, the new gene that appeared to have fallen in place within the Cro-Magnons, was in essence creating stability and would lead to the making of civilizations, conventional, hence, like it or not, the conservative gene was now in place, yet the audience sat silent in the back of the cave, stunned by the art work, the changing of the times. Finally the leader—we shall call him—Nas Oinotna out of reason, he was the warrior, right or wrong, he would have rather been left in the wild, but said in his own way (and I shall modify it in plain English)
“You Tall One, all this is what?”
And this would start the first debate on change.
“We need to leave our handprints, so our kind will know we were!” said the tall one of the two teachers.
“Tall One, that’s terrible!”
“If we don’t, it is suicide for our kind!”
“I don’t remember it,” the old man said, he had forgotten what the issue was, but the Tall One, he replied, “It might be considered a reminder for your children what your hands looked like, and what the animals looked like when there were more kinds of animals—when you area long dead.”
Now there were groans in the book of the room.
“Argh!” said one of the people behind the Nas Oinotna.
“What’s wrong will telling those after us, we were?” said the Short One, standing by the tall one.
“Nobody really wants to trouble themselves with such foolishness; we’re all rugged individuals, who want to think of ourselves as part of nature, not separate from it,” said Nas. The old Neanderthal had a hard time trying to focus on the material at hand. It might have seemed, had anyone had knowledge of genetics, Nas’ frontal cortex, could not activate because it could not find within the brain, a gene to activate the action of straight and divisive ideas, new issues that might lead to future harmony, he did not have a warm flush to his appearance. Actually the young ones now standing about were showing a preference for the teachers thinking of becoming like him, like them. Not even given the respect of looking back at the elders; completely in agreement with the new thinking, a new stability for them—perhaps something leading to something bigger.
It was a fact, pert near all the host had been of one mind, until the integration—how this all came about they didn’t know, but in truth, everyone does want to fit in, and so the old ones, silently agreed, to stop their complaints for change, this all was something exciting and desirable for the young ones.
“All right,” said Nas “let it be as you wish, even if it is not so good.”
The one behind Nas, the one that said “Argh,” and we now shall call him ‘Agro’ for short, said frowning, holding up his right hand, “Back up, this is the way you want to live, no us,” embracing the shoulder of Nas, “You can’t make us belong to this new kind of thinking!” And although Nas wanted to agree and say that, he didn’t and for a good reason, he knew he was old, who would feed him, and Agro, was not young or old, and could feed himself for many years yet.
“I don’t want to fit in, I don’t want to be like everyone, I want to stand out, and I want to fight, argue…!” He felt safer by expressing his opinion, and Nas felt nearly everyone else didn’t agree with him, but he was still a good person, and he felt good by saying what he had to say, it made Nas uncomfortable not saying what he felt.
Agro, snapped his fingers, and pointed to the entrance of the cave, “I go, I think the way I think. No new surprises, no distress. In the world out there, nothing is changing, in here everything is. In here everyone wants to be comfortable, warm, happy, and friendly.” And his conversation babble on a while longer, just repeating in circles the same conversation (because of a limited vocabulary), until there were several others standing by him, a furious rebellion was taking place, in the end, Agro left with half the Neanderthals.

Only time would tell if this would turn out to be a genetic disorder, meaning, had all the Neanderthals left, perhaps there would not be a genetic anomaly in this scenario: it was this group that left, who no longer felt, desired to join the majority, conceivable this wasn’t a disorder, but the Neanderthals would die out, and this gene would be carried forward, and in future time have to be harnessed. These rebels were not of the like mined people, a potential genetic disorder, in time—so it would be called, from the people who felt independence from the surrounding majority, was in it, to be considered pathological behavior. Perhaps put into the category of compulsive behavior, surely not positive behavior. Of course this was a time sociability was not the norm, standards had not yet come into place, and although getting along was a necessity, it was not always the case, and surely in due time, extinction of the race would take place, in both species if one or the other didn’t change..
And so it became.

One Year Later

The old warrior died, a year later, after that meeting, no one knew what of, but he spiked a fever of over 105, and had there been a doctor on hand, he might have said there was a multiple organ system failure, he was sick for several days. This was in a way, a shattering experience for the group, he was the elder, and he had cared for the young ones, beloved by them, perhaps shown now more than before, as often it is. He was during those last months a little ray of sunshine, whenever he came into the cave. Somehow he felt he had to take the risk of being more a part of the group, than being head of the group, if that was what they wanted. They wanted a new life, how then could he deny them the chance, so he told himself, and he put his hands onto the wall, and the Tall One, painted around his fingers and hand, and they told the old man, “We are sending this handprint to the future, people will see it, what does that tell you?”
Nas, sighed. And soon after that event, his liver shut down, his body swelled, turned into a gray color. And he stopped breathing. It took him days to die. They gave him a moment of silence.
This was—for the most part—a most hazardous and pioneer stage for mankind, an era that had to be passed; an outrageous era indeed, but a courageous time in the undocumented scriptures of humankind, a time individuals had to take risks, like the Tall One, and all the rules from the past were broken. As the Tall One thought, ‘What greater punishment would his sons and daughters face, had he not drawn those first pictures on the cave walls,’ it now would lead into ethical rules. Perhaps he saw in the old man’s eyes, pain and hope; whatever the case, he would not stand in judgment of him that was for sure, not like Agro was. Agro had created the concept of: them and us. Although with the old man gone, the cave was now quiet.

The Cro-Magnon
The New Gene

The Tall One, something took place within his grandchild, a single strand of DNA, and with a more condensed structure, showed up, unavailable to the normal cell. Why did it change, or how did it come about. Perhaps the someway everything comes about. Had someone had access to inject new cells into him? Of course not, but it happened nonetheless, and it was bound to be important, and The Tall One, saw something in all this. We may fill in the gaps later, but from the standing point of the Tall One, mankind as he knew it, could smile on the future, “I, uh…” he commented to his little grandson, he had inherited his changes, plus, something had taken place within his grandchild’s system, it was as if a gene had switched off to enhance the working of another gene itself, that then separated itself from those genes around it.
How was all this possible? It was like there had been a hidden force above the clouds, struck with boredom and wanting mankind to reach a certain stage faster, so they could come down and play longer, a certain species, race perhaps, thinking early man was no more than pet. Thus, they were home-rearing the Neanderthal and Cro-Magnons, to a more intelligential species, to have a greater capacity to become more than a mere human primate, beyond the chimpanzee stage, they had now mastered one-hundred words, what was long in coming, was now coming faster and faster (perhaps something lost, now regained). Indeed, his grandchild would need more stimulation then he, and become the guardian, and heir of something grander in the scheme of things.
The grandchild had begun talking early on, taken out of that old solitary confinement state that lasted year after year after year and he quickly learned his one-hundred word vocabulary, and started naming others things, to build that vocabulary to 150-words.
At first it was an observation, now it was a reality. One of the things The Tall One had learned from his grandson was ‘self awareness’ he recognized himself, in the reflection of water, it was a mirror, as the boy had pointed out one early morning, splashing water and looking and splashing and then the Tall One wanted to see what exactly he was looking at, only to find out, he was looking at himself. And it seemed to him, that was exactly that. And now he gave him a specific name, Owl, for he stared into nothingness, like an owl on a branch, but the boy was always thinking.

Owl’s Manual

The Tall One had died, and Owl was now a full grown person, he had built his vocabulary to five-hundred words, he had trouble with verb tenses, but he had nobody to teach him, he repeated his new words—and his kind grew stronger in linguistics, and there was of course no one to say he was in error. Owl’s assistant, his helper in teaching his kind symbols and language, he called Rove, because he had found him wondering in the open plains, brought him home, he had been of the tribe that branched out from the long dead, Agro—he seemed to have a different dialect, but was aware of many things, as someone had taught him on the side, the things the Tall One, was teaching his horde, with it, one might have even thought, Rove, was a transgenic, a hybrid, from those aliens behind the clouds, he was sharper than Owl, and Owl was amazed at the promptness he could put things together. Would the teacher soon be taught by the student? Man was developing and his genetic pool was enlarging at the same time.
There were these splits that were taking place, and very rapidly, not over millions of year either as one might expect, these genetic differences were evolving rapidly, in hereditary terms, perhaps within a ten-thousand year period, realizing ordinary such changes would take longer, but sexual preference can and did produce rapid genetic change; that is to say, from one stage to the other for humanity’s sake; between the Chimps or apes, and the Neanderthal, and perhaps the same between the Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon (in a like manner, it would seem once looked at closely, and perhaps more sensed than understood: the world, the earth I mean and all living things on the earth and the earth itself or the planet, shares an fundamental agreement with all life around them, we are all more polarized—to one another than we think, genetically and nature wise. And this sharing goes back thousands of years. )

Interlude

If you could have talked to Rove, who would become in time the wise leader of both sects, his home had been near the Black Sea, and Owl’s from the French European side, and if you could read his symbolism on those cave walls, it all would have given you a familiar story, one they lived—but could not express fully, that their ancestors roamed these areas 24,000 BC, ten-thousand years before them, and lived a very long time in rock shelters, they might admit they were homo sapiens in the making and Neanderthals of the past; but they’d had preferred to be called, early humans, that it took a long while to get to this stage perhaps because of the infections and battles they had with one another, this, trouble with fused vertebrae in their necks, coming from traumatic injuries, and the adult females lived with skull fractures, and perhaps a little mental retardation. Owl, and Rove, was learning they would never live to tell their story, so they handed it down to their children, put it on the walls, and in creating tools and weapons. There structure was similar to Metazoans (animals in general), and if one was to push it, perhaps not much different than humans and aliens, you know, those beings behind the clouds—whatever, and whomever they were, and whatever they were doing, and maybe they were working on experiments, who’s to say, a little genetic narrowing in regions in addition to regions that explicitly code for protein, and if one could regulate these, modify them, use as a pattern in creating a smarter species—it would help evolution out—push it forward at an excessive speed.
The question comes up, or may come up, or perhaps did come up at this juncture if indeed there were these beings behind the clouds, if they really were trying to produce, or enhance the human species, could they hybridize to be made human-zee. In other words, could they put on the shell of the human body, to live in breathe-breathing, oxygen world like humans, especially, if they themselves could live thousands of years? Were they trying this? Trying to create a better human being and then insert their genes directly into them, or into an embryo, that would produce a child like them. Beings that could not have children: a dying race?

Rove’s Legacy

So now they had communication, and a tinge of language, the genes of speech were intact, and the voice box had been for a very long time, simply inactive. All this seemed to be happening over night, someone knew something, and Rove knew someone knew this something he didn’t know about him and his race, but he couldn’t put his finger on it, but he looked in the sky a lot, saw things that looked suspicious—what he didn’t know was that some genes are activated environmentally inside of humans, which activate other genes when activated, thus the worm remains a worm, yet is not all that different genetically than man; put a different way, there are multiple coding sequences involved. But he knew somebody was up yonder, looking down, but who could it be, and what were they up to?

Saber-tooth Tiger

Owl had grown very old, and all those before him had died, now walking outside his cave, a saber-toothed tiger, leaped—seemingly out of nowhere—leaped upon him, bit his head off, chewed his flesh as he kicked about, and Rove could hear the crunching of bones.
The natural world was still alive, hungry, although the attacks were less frequent and the large cats no longer roamed freely like they had at one time—some fifteen-thousand years prior (an end of another age), leaving in the memory of all (genetically perhaps) that they brought man to his knees, at which time, mankind came to the edge of extinction (perhaps 2000-of his species left)—long, long ago—but for the most part, they were normal attacks still.

The Legend &
Legacy (The Great Gap)

Advance: starlight: a man can see by starlight, just as well as by moonlight, if he takes the time and now man was about to experience this: that is, a change in light, a change, perhaps a transgenic change, the idea was to introduce a new trait, not that anyone in particular wanted it to happen, but now was the time for it to happen if indeed it was going to take place at all. Environmental conditions were changing. This was to be the new image for mankind, a richer one perhaps, and more critical, more reliable; consequently, new genes would flow through the new now generations, and into darkness this new intelligence would take this new opportunity, to advance: and with the old Neanderthal and new cultivated intellectual genes, a more crude and cultureless people came about, drifted deeper into the labyrinth of ruin. Evils became ingrained over time, saturated the earth’s environment.

Fortress and Citadel of the East

There was now to be, a great disturbance, a king from the east, had started a legend, of a man who talked to the clouds, and the man in the clouds, talked back, and rumor said, he was in the lands of where the roots of the old Sumerian kings once ruled, and he sent out men to find this place, yet he could not, this was King Dadasig, of the second dynasty of Kish, who ruled 201-years. The population during those far-off days, let’s say, at about 8700 BC, was perhaps close to one million, a thousand years more, at 7200 BC, Jordon would boast 120,000 population, and at the Great Flood between 4500 to 3600 BC, perhaps nine-million. But at this juncture what was taking place was this: a new form of human had been created, one that showed all the signs of a highly intellectual individual, one that walked in harmony with nature and its creator, talked to the animals. In a location (now, Iraq), no one could find, yet it would seem in their own backyard. And then it came to pass, this location became desolate, and the two who came out of it, the female and the male, split up for 130-years, and she gave birth to a new generation, and so did he, and so did their offspring, thus, a new hybrid of human was in the makings, what took place outside of that location, produced inside those early humans, a master gene, that would in time, enhance every embryo on earth. It would be, the legacy of those two humans, yet there was a pure bloodline also. This was the legend that the king was after, and its legacy, he could never quite put his finger on.

But as time went on:

The Watchers
And the Giants
(or those behind the Clouds)

There came also a time—thereafter, when this gene pool was again infected—a few more thousand years down the road, when those beings behind those clouds came down to earth, genetically put on flesh: how they did this is still in question, and mingled with earth’s inhabitants—cohabitating with the human females. This produced deformed beings, half human, and half supernatural, giants, and animalistic looking creatures, they even mingled with animals: aliens in flesh. If we were to look at historical documents, we could proceed to review the books of Enoch, read the old scriptures of Gilgamesh, go to the land known as the Plateau of Bashan, where King Og, once ruled the last of the Rephaim, and its Giants. To each legend, if one looks deep enough, he or she will find where the truth resides. Giant human bones have been found, so this is no mystery, and aliens seem not to be so far fetched nowadays, it’s all unfolding in front of us, no more of the hush, hush dilemma that it once was. We seemingly just can’t put the finger on anything, although our focus is getting better. But whatever the case, these beings infected again the inhabitants of earth, and the earth rejected this, and that fellow, who did all the talking from the clouds, was no longer talking to anymore to anybody other than a few select prior to His Great Flood, which was soon to take place, that wiped out nearly the whole human race, although there were those that were left—of what nature I don’t know, but left for what, to perhaps show those who came from the loins of Noah, and King Og, humanity was taking a new turn.

Pre Adamic
(They were who they were)

The split between the old Neanderthal and the new Neanderthal, came about 90,000 BC (which produced today’s modern homo sapiens), as the Cro-Magnons came into existence between 27, 000 to 23,000 BC, whereupon, another split took place. But if we were to go back to the Pre Adamic age, the age where another race came to its end, and at that point gave birth to the Neanderthal, that would put the face of man, back onto the earth—oh, not like it was, but similar, we must go back to perhaps 600,000 to 350,000 BC, who’s to really say. But something took place back then, something nobody has been able to explain completely, total. But had you talked to those walls, picked up those bones, listened to the legends, you might have come up with, the truth, and perhaps it went something like this: somewhere in the past man had built a kingdom, perhaps pleural, it was the Pre Adamic age, actually, it was just before that age, because after that age, is when a degeneration took place among the living beings on earth, a collapse, which produced the Neanderthal. Before this, the brain of man was much larger, as we see in the Neanderthal vs. modern man.

The Mask and the Sword

There were kings of the earth back in those long forgotten days, 241,198 BC, the first being Alulim, then Alagar, and Enmeenluanna, and there was a great flood in those days, and kingship was send down form on high, a being that was light, and controlled half the solar system, thus, he controlled earth, until he tried to take control of the Universe, and then all the kings that were before him, and after him were cursed, into morbid despondencies, to roam the earth in hopelessness. Death was not yet created, as we know it; and those who did die physically, lived in an invisible mist, and called ghosts, until, the great Gap, the legacy.

The Present:

Awakening from the Dream
(Lee Maverick)

Tamarind, of Ushuaia

When Lee Maverick woke up from his sleeping and dreaming mode, he stood up, Sandra had left, and he saw Tamarind coming around the corner of the blanket, swinging her purse, her cheeks were chilled from the outside winds, likened to red apples. Over her shoulder her girlfriend, Sandra stood and smiled, Tamarind said with a smile, “You’ve been sleeping for several hours,” her face was flushed, and a few of the other girls were pacing as if they were on a cow path in the large room. “I was afraid to wake you up,” she said, she even looked younger than Sandra. Now Sandra was walking slowly backwards. The whole world seemed to be caving in on Lee, and for that matter, everyone, and here he was having sex, and about to have more with everyone around the fire in the center of the room.
No one tried to stop Tamarind; you could hear the winds coming in from the west, for the Tierra Del Forgo Mountains, down into the Drake Passage, and Cape Horn. He didn’t know what Tamarind was going to do, she came to him slowly, as he laid back down, she jumped over him, he pushed the blanket aside, and she was certain she could hear his heart beating, she was a bit frightened, not quite knowing what to do, but trying to pretend she did.
His breath was becoming slower she noticed, as he rose and fell, her body trembling, as was her lips, but then it all stopped.
“Please don’t keep your body so rigid,” said Lee Maverick to her.
She continued looking at him wile he tried to make love to her, trying to think of something to tell her. “I’ve got to be with you,” she said, “I know that,” clutching the mattress tightly.”
“Should I stop?” he asked.
“No, I can’t let you do that,” she replied. She turned her head as if to look around the blanket covering both of them, hanging over a rope in the big room, to see if any of her girlfriends were watching, and said nothing as there was a deepening feeling inside of her.
“Actually, I have been waiting for several hours thinking about this,” she released her hands staring at Lee, into the darkness of the room, “I know this will be short, but I want to remember it, please kiss me.”
“Please,” she begged, “please,” but Lee Maverick had already been kissing her; she was lost into the ecstasy of the moment. She was running swiftly with her feelings. Lee could force her to stop, it was for humanity, this event was taking place, but why stop he told himself, if he didn’t he wouldn’t know what to say to her. And he did not mind so much the pleasure, even if it was simply immediate-gratification, and no more than that.

End

And God said to Enoch, “Write all this down, all you have seen in your visions, all human history, for a remembrance!” And Enoch did as he was told, he wrote this all down in 365 books, and told the story of mankind from his beginning to its end, in detail, and that was that. And these books are kept in a secret place, for future reference.

No: 712 (11-08, 9, & 10-2010)

2010-11-02T22:42:00.001-07:00

The Suicide Way-house ((or, “Going On!”)(Part I of III))

“You can’t go back, no way, therefore you must go on, go on with pathetic eagerness, if you must, if that’s what it takes! But go on you must…” said Old Miss Wayfarer, giving the young woman a helpless look, a forever look on her face.
“I want to go back,” she said. “I left my little girl in the car all alone.” Annabelle Hague had seemingly stumbled upon the wayside motel (the sign read although ‘Way-house’), how she came upon it, she didn’t know, and Old Miss Wayfarer boldly and frankly said, “Mercy, suicides can’t go back, you all seem to travel alone, and your little girl will be taken care of, don’t worry about her, she’ll be fine, they always are. They all want to go back when they get here. They’re all waiting to go back, how insane. So many of you folks stop here on your way, and I tell them like I’m telling you, you can’t go back, you can only go on, although sometimes the other ones commit suicide, to catch up with their loved ones, like you but that’s far and in-between, in all the time I’ve been here I’ve only seen a few like that. That’s the plain truth in a nutshell.”
Annabelle thought for a moment about what the old proprietress had said, “I can wait,” she told the old woman—“yes, that’s it, my daughter will catch up with me. I know she’ll want to join me, and when she comes she’ll have to know where I am, and if I go on, I’ll miss her, this is the first motel I’ve seen on the road. She’s just like me.”
“But you can see over by the hearth in the other room Mrs. Annabelle, I have a full house, please don’t ask to stay here and wait, just go on, that’s better for everybody.”
Annabelle had been looking over at the dozen or so guests, or perhaps by now they were residents, pacing to and fro from the hearth to the windows, looking into and out of the windows perhaps for their loved ones—their faces to appear, a glimpse into the future or beyond, and in the red hot flames of the fire—they looked. All having long hair, haggard looking, as if they’d been there for years. Annabelle had had a forlorn look on her face for a moment—when she had first arrive that is, but an all new expression had filled it now, hope!
“There, there now!” cried one of the voices by the hearth, she had looked into the fire, and thought she had seen a loved one.
“Perhaps now and then,” said the old lady, “they think they see a loved one, so they stick around the fire, or look out the windows, but I doubt they really do, but they all think they do, and they are afraid if they go on, they’ll never see them again. The seasons never change around here much, it’s seems always windy and cold.”
Truth or fiction, it didn’t matter to Annabelle what the old woman was saying, if there was hope, then that was better than nothing. Annabelle had formed a new composure, a new outlook, the old woman noticed, likened to all the others when they first heard someone say they saw some loved one from the past.
“Well,” said Annabelle, “it’s settled, I’m staying. If only for a little while, then I’ll go on, as you say I should, if you don’t mind.”
The old lady nodded her head ‘yes,’ knowing if she didn’t she’d be pestering her for eternity, although she was not please one bit, but once hope got a hold of the passerby’s, and they got to missing their loved ones, and regretted what they had done, there was no way of convincing them to go on, to go forward, they were in-between, and that is where most wanted to remain.
“Is there anything you’d like, Miss Annabelle?” she asked.
“Nah!” she said, as she hurriedly went to join the group pacing about the fireplace.

No 707/ (11-01-2010)

Old Miss Wayfarer
(Part II, to the “The Suicide Way-house”)

The old lady, Miss Wayfarer, dare not push Annabelle; she had been through a traumatic experience, and her existence would no longer be what she was accustomed to, this realization had to take place first, and sometimes it took baby steps with her fresh arrivals, sometimes it took years—meanwhile, you just wait for the adjustment…tell them to rest, especial for the child-like adults, who thought the sun followed them, or should. She knew this was different, that going on wasn’t necessary worse, but who’s to say it would ever get better for a person, for her, for Annabelle, I mean, she never talked about that, it wasn’t important for her—she didn’t know either, she always was careful to plan her words. Furthermore she know everybody, feared the unknown, and change was hard to adjust to. You know what I mean, people try to cling onto familiarity, and in the process create these new obsessions to linger about. But there she was, Annabelle, with the others now strolling about, scared of course, but she beamed, almost fatuously, as she looked deep around the fireplace. Then abruptly, Annabelle looked at the old lady, as the old lady was staring at her, just staring, feeling weightless, without force of any kind, no gravity to her body—it would have seemed to anyone else, the old woman was almost amused, that is, half in amusement, and half in disappointment, Annabelle accepted it as if she simply had too many guests, but the fact was, the old woman was not like her guests, and perhaps, if she could have, she would have, given an apology to Annabelle for that look, which was really a feebly laugh—no, not quite, perhaps something else, whatever, she broke off engagingly, that grin or feeble laugh—you see it all was a little upsetting for the old woman, there was something disarming about it all. And yet, obviously, she took on the responsibility—offering light, conversation, and shelter from the weather, to those passersby. You see they had been coming there for a long time, perhaps at first by accident, but now it was as if the once original road that went only one way, had a turnoff, at the Way-house. At first she hadn’t realized who these people were…what they were, the dead walking, looking, lost, the suicide-dead. By now, after all those years—stiffened by the reality of it all, and by the time they got to her place, having lost all their human substance, she just couldn’t say—“go on” and leave it at that, so that was how it came about, although she continued to tell them to “go on,” but she was one of those bleeding hearts you see, and just couldn’t slam the door in their faces. And since she lived alone, and no one else could see them, what harm would it do to lend a helping hand.

No 708/ (11-02-2010)

Going On!

(Part III, to the “The Suicide Way-house”)

Old Miss Wayfarer was never afraid of them, she knew they were harmless, why, they couldn’t move a thing, eat or sleep or for that matter, do much at all, and so to stick around was to her ridiculous! I suppose, that’s what bothered them the most, they were helpless to hurt themselves or anyone else, they were in essence no more than a puff of smoke, that sill held their past configuration of their bodies, but it was simple a picture, a loose form—that’s what she saw, that’s what they were, perhaps a little beyond a thought-form. She even came a few times to the conclusion, it was a lunacy of hers, but on the other hand, perhaps she was psychic…the other was too unbearable to live with, I mean, ill or feverish, that—was not something she wanted to come-in to play. People have a Sixth Sense, she told herself, and believed she had it. Anyhow, the rain and wind hit the windows, made a lot of noise, a wolf in the woods howled, the old lady started mumbling, uncanny like, “Poor things,” she said, “If only I could give them more information, they might up and leave.” She knew most had stayed—those over a year anyhow—stayed once they got over the shock of being dead—stayed because of the lack of information. The old lady smiled at her self, wondering if there were other Way-houses like hers. She looked complacently at the people by the fireplace, she was too old to keep this up she told herself. Between death and those haunting faces, and life on the other side of the coin, she often felt more dead than alive. Abruptly she opened up her door, glanced into the wild winds and snow that had started to fall onto the road, behind her looking at the assortment of people, hastily running from the window to the hearth, she started to walk out of the house and down the path, leaving her mansion, or the mansion, childlike, she turned looking back now and then, looking, saying to herself it was all an insane long, very long delusion, a mass psychodrama, by the ghosts—I mean, the suicide dead, she was for the most part exhausted from it all. She noticed that her guests, the guests, those folks in the assembly room, where the fireplace was, kept looking out the windows—not at her, only partially at her, but she had believed so firmly or perhaps she made herself believe, until it was natural, she was who she was. Her tone of voice turned to merriment, “What drew them all here?” she whispered to her second self, that hidden self deep in a person’s mind, then she giggled, she was no longer afraid of the cold, or the wind, or death, or anything, she was ‘going on…!’

No 709/ (11-03-2010)

2010-11-02T19:50:00.001-07:00

An Ominous Sunset
((or, “Eventide”) (Part one of II))

Chapter one
Eventide

“Fast falls the eventide—in the blood red twilight—the bleak night deepens, the demons creep closer—I go alone, no one to abide with me.”

—last spoken words of
Vargas the Seer

And so it was, this was the bleak weariness of the doomed man, bound for hopeless oblivion, in the underground continent called Amosodos—a land that come out of shrunken seas that had bound a forgotten race, for nearly ten-thousand years; the pre Adamic Race, that rebellious race that lived before and for a moment of time, alongside, that is: side by side with Adam’s Garden of Eden, so legend speculates, and in which it arises to this very day in select groups. And where time has little meaning, it is a land of nothingness, one of the 72-deaths, appointed to mankind, and the only one deemed for the sorcerer direct, where dishonor and abomination for him by the human race, is beyond understanding. Hence, this is the edge where the old man stood, and there after a short time, Amosodos appeared out of nowhere, and opened its crumbling gates for his departure, for eternal solitude, this was assigned him, this was the land of near total night, with only blood red twilights to entertain. A land of shadows and shapes, a land where just a few select went, a special group, the sorcerers, and necromancers. The most merciless and evil who practiced their art, which were incapable of not hurting mankind, obsessed, oppressed, with the art, addicted to its punishing whims. Vargas the Seer, devoted every God given minute to the practice of the art of magic, he had no peers, no equals. Here he could not hurt any human or earthly living thing—here he could use his art fully with no harness, his ebon wand could be used likened to loose cannons, here he would meet his equals, and those beings from before the advent of earthly time, the time.
These were not resurrected beings, nor quite demonic either, they had never died—death was not created until after the advent of Adam, and his expulsion from the Garden; nor were they ghosts, they were not of the same kind of soul of man; consequently, Vargas the Seer was assigned to a lawless land, a tomb in essence, a big tomb, that disappeared as mysteriously as it appeared, and there he stood on the edge of this platform, about to be pushed over onto this dark continent, with its ever swelling population. And then he used his magic wand…

Chapter two
Amosodos

As he took his first step onto the continent called Amosodos, his wand, turned into a snake that bit him, and he dropped it, then he looked at the pageant of faces, supposedly live captives like him, whom he had thought were dead emperors, and empresses, and war mongrels, and presidents and even holy men, did they survive their death to live among this immense judgment? The snake followed him like a pet dog.
The closer he got to these people, he could see their bodies looked more like plague-eaten corpses, evidently, their bodies dying, but they still had to live in them: their loose flesh, similar to rags piled one over the other, until another judgment of mankind came about; so he would soon discover. What little sun they had, it was pert near dead. Those who were fairest, were the newest, those most ravaged had lived here the longest, and perhaps overmuch necrophilia lust.

Chapter three
Vargas the Seer

By and large, it was a different kind of land; they all spoke one language, moved slow, ate and drank as in life, what they could find, even dirt, grass, and yes, insects and rats and all sorts of morbid looking creatures; it was that or starve to near death, endure the agonizing of hunger, but they could not die. They all looked water-drenched, sluggish, dreadfully so, from the rising and sinking of the continent, perhaps weekly. Everyone’s brain was enthralled with the possessiveness of magic, but it did them little good. What was evident, after a few days for Vargas the Seer, was that: people wished for eternal sleep, another of the 72-deaths assigned to mankind, or for their passion and desire and delight to be taken from them, their addiction, only to find out, no matter where you go after death, you carry with you your old habits and character, your nature. The other longing was to return to the wakening world, the earth mother, the surface. But Earth could no longer take them—deal with them, they were too destructive; nor could the human race, or the beastly species on her surface. Consequently, there was no other place for them.
He noticed among the spectators the spirits of: Updike, Monson, Van Gogh, C. Sibyl, and J. Smith. C.A. Smith, H.P.L., E.A. Poe., S. King, and Mrs. Oakes Smith, and Odin (among the others): somehow they had a window into this world, but where were they?
Vargas took resentment for whomever allowed these spirits into his new realm, to observe him like a rat, he was demanding his rights, of all things. His so called irretrievable rights he left beyond. For, nonetheless, he still had his pride. And he started to create a revolt, a ghostly one if anything, and created resentment against the observers. It was something new for the horde of seers. Perhaps it was a way to avoid the pain of his new earth-shattering state of affairs, to bring about mockery of those who allowed the spectators into the hidden window.
Day by day he watched those shadows behind this large window that allowed the observer to see all corners of the continent, “It is crudity,” proclaimed Vargas the Seer. He stood by the big window, and could hear them drinking, their drunkenness and gluttony, as he stumbled in his formidable spells that raised no more attention than a whisper among his comrades, or an eyebrow lift.

Then after his so called fit of protest and anger—and a month’s time, he went unheard—forward, with no glaring eyes, or clotted blood, forward, not looking back, he turned about into a tranquil silence, with no further need of words to his doom—he knew it, he went wearily to see the blood red sunset, it was the only entertainment left in this night labyrinth continent, except for its untarnished rising and sinking.

No 704 (10-31-2010)

The Virulent Vault
((or, “Zeedmev of Venus”) (Part II, to “An Ominous Sunset”))

Zeedmev of Venus, a great sorcerer who had been at Amosodos since the first Century A.D., who had claimed to have been abandoned on earth eons ago, had learned—remembered more like it, the foretold forbidden knowledge of the Old Ones, the angelic beings who were cast down from the clouds, in the time of Enoch, he learned of the 72-deaths, in particular, the 71st; he was now living in the seventy-second—Amosodos. The seventy-first, was that of eternal sleep. He had forgotten, but now remembered its formula, and that it had to be chanted during the orbital flight of Sedona, a comet—that circled two solar systems—while over Earth’s surface, adjoining the spell; it passed every twenty-years.
“Do not despair Vargas the Seer,” said Zeedmev, having seen him now for several months mopping about this hidden and ambiguous continent called Amosodos, “There is a way out for you.” Vargas’ eye-lids opened-up wide, stopped blinking, “With the aid of an old astrologer—friend of mine, Amanas of Glastonbury, I can estimate when the comet Sedona flight over the Earth and the Drake, where our submerged landmass resides, I will then promulgate my powers, to the 71st Death, with a spell so powerful, your body will release its soul, and it will go into eternal hibernation: an eternal sleep, it is called the Red Spell, although there is some ambiguities with my science, knowledge and spell enchantments that I may not be able to resolve, it is a chance for you, to have a new death—I prefer it here, but I know you don’t. And for this reason I give you the chance of death, I will request of you something although.”
“And what might that be?” asked Vargas.
“To be a devoted slave, servant to me, to use your magical art as I tell you to; in essence, I will be your ruler for twenty-years, when Sedona is upon us, I will release you and bestow my gift onto you.”

The deal was made, in the dark-ash colored oblong, Virulent Vault where all the poisonous snakes gathered, and where those who had secrets to tell, met, a meeting place of sorts.

It was with a sad heart Vargas accepted, and was quickly branded with Zeedmev’s initials on his forehead, to show one and all, he was purchased. And thus, he worked and waited anxiously those twenty-years: watching newly arriving seers and sorcerers making their homes into this realm-less, and sorrowful kingdom, of terrestrial lost souls. Too sorrowful for tears and constant mocking from the demonic beings, those idiotic wide nostril beasts from a time long lost to man’s memory.

Now the comet had set over Amosodos, over its submersion grave, in the deepwater’s of Antarctica— and as Zeedmev was midway into his chanting, and Vargas the Seer, was there spellbound awaiting his death to be, midway through the chanting, the essence, the soul of Zeedmev seeped slowly out of his fleshly frame, and what was left of his body, its corpse like body, had fallen like a rug on the ground, withered into a coil like form, and evaporated into nothingness. Who died? With mouth wide open Vargas was dumbfounded. Zeedmev had the last hurrah. And then slowly Vargas went on his way—knowing again, he was helpless.

Note: 10-31-2010 (No: 705)

2010-08-29T18:00:00.000-07:00

“King’s Afterlife!”

I didn’t know what he was up to; I didn’t even know who he was at first, until I got closer to him, it was King—I actually found him, that macabre writer, I asked “What the heck are you doing?” He had a Ran-McNally Road Atlas in his lap, sitting across the bar of his bike, himself on a skinny seat.
“Man I’m not making any process with this map,” he said, confusingly.
“Steven,” I said, “that’s a pretty old map you’ve got there, where you been?” (Knowing all the time, where he’s been, kind of known the area.)
“Old,” he said, “I just bought it at Boarders, cost me seven dollars. He gave me a galvanized look, you know, like with that closed mouth and staring eyes as if he was saying, but not saying, just thinking: yah, yah, yah, get lost—I’m busy. I doubted that thought was meant to push me away, knowing he was preoccupied if not irritated with the map, trying to find where his next stop was, not knowing his reality, which one he was in not knowing he was, now living in his death, after death, where he might have to stay remain in this post-death, status? The longer I stood there the more I felt I was getting warmer—and he was getting warmer.
Mr. King had died of some malfunction with one of his organs, something burst within, and it looked to me he didn’t know he was dead—he was riding that bike in circles for a very long time. I remember when he passed on, how sad his followers were, but he was quickly replaced, as we all are; and he was right about something: there is an afterlife. I do remember it happened so fast, he didn’t even know what took place, when it took place, here today, gone tomorrow, that’s how it was; surely he didn’t know this was it. He had for the most part lived a sort of a gasping life, now it was a long pause. “Shaaaah!” I told myself, don’t tell him—he needs to figure this out for himself, and then he noticed something in my wanting all of a sudden to leave, knowing I was the first person he saw in a long, long time.
“Just stay as you are buddy,” he told me. I knew now that new thoughts were blowing in and out of his mind, filling his brainpower: I think he had written so much on fantasy, he didn’t realize if he was sleeping or in some new reality.
“Focus,” I told Mr. King. He thought, shaking his head back and forth, stepping off his bike, setting it down alongside of the dirt road. “Where does this road go to?” he questioned.
“Where do you think it goes?” I asked. He thought on that for a moment, he looked at several blank signs on the road, unmarked signs, no white lines, not anything, just a skinny road, no, not even that, a wide path, then he looked at his map, “I wish this was more detailed,” he said.
“Settle on something, somewhere, anything will do…” I told him.
“Well who are you?” he asked, I think he knew now, somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew who I was, perhaps he thought he was alive, and he had a few screws loose for a moment, and I was his doctor and this background was some delusion. On the other hand that moment had past, and he was contemplating something else, perhaps from one of his horror stories, now his heart rate was beating faster, and faster—that told me something.
“If you were writing one of your short stories, how would you end this tale, or situation?” I asked.
And it occurred to him, and then came that little laugh: as if he had a can-opener and out popped the Jeanie
“You’re Dennis, and you’re here to tell me I’m dead, and have been for a very long time, in a place where one might not encounter new people or new adventures, or any people other than one’s self, ever again, just living and reliving the rudimentary controlled old life I had previously lived.” (He was correct, on all such insight; they often are once they focus.)
“Whoopee,” I said, “bingo,” I exclaimed. It didn’t take any Harvard graduate to figure that out, I told myself, just focus and backtrack, see where you’ve been and walk slowly up to today that usually will give you a good roadmap into your present reality. Then he asked for a clean shirt, “You don’t need one,” I said, “it never gets any dirtier here.”
“How do I get out of this little story of yours?” he remarked.
“Don’t get mad at the messenger,” I said, “I just deliver what I’m told to deliver—to inform you.”
“Okay,” he said, “let bygones be bygones, where can I go besides here?”
“Speaking of that,” I said, trying to be sympathetic towards his new world, his situation, “where would you go?” Knowing he never liked Jesus, so heaven was out of the question, and hell was too bleak, and the Muslim’s harem he didn’t believe in, and well—as he now knew, there was no towns—I mean, he had been here for a very long time; thus, I just stood there and waited for his answer, but he didn’t answer, he was in the best of all worlds, considering there wasn’t a big choice, and I simply said, “There is no purpose in you getting off your bike again, Mr. King, the path you’ve chosen is circular, without end, and in this world one never gets tired.” Although I knew it would be boring.

No: 673 (8-29-2010)

2010-08-28T21:37:00.000-07:00

The Macabre Short Story Collection (11-stories)

Synergy Group Recommended Reading (April 2010) pertaining to topics on Behavioral and
Emotional Health, the book: The Path to Sobriety…” by Dr. Dennis L. Siluk

Midnight Waters

The Macabre Short Story Collection
Volume IV
Dennis L. Siluk, Ed.D.
Andean Scholar and Three-Time Poet Laureate

Parts in English, Spanish, Illustrated

Midnight Waters ((The Macabre, Short Story Collection) (Volume IV))
Copyright by© Dennis L. Siluk, Ed.D.

Cover by Clark A. Smith (original picture owned by Dlsiluk)
All other pictures within this book by done by the Author

Index

1

The Westerly Winds off Cape Horn
((Or, “The Man with the Black Raincoat”) (1896)) Part one of two
…and
Dying: off Cape Horn
(A moment of still lethargy…) Part two of two

2

Old Solomon’s Fish
(A short story of Macabre Suspense)

3

Passage to Elephant Island
Hell-of-an-Island

4

Big Blow, off Maui
(12/2001)

5

Winter in the Wind’s Mouth
(The Inside Passage; Alaska)

6

The Wallace Plantation
(a six part short story)

7

Otis (in three parts)
Otis
Galloping Horses
“Amnon, Amnon!”

8

The Ebon Room

9

The Tiamat and the Demonic Stampede
((6820 BC) (part one of three))

10

Midnight Waters
(A night for Hell’s Gatekeeper)

11

Clotted by a Python
(Based on actual Events)

From the novelette: “Father Josephus”

The Westerly Winds
Off Cape Horn

((Or, “The Man with the Black Raincoat”) (1896))

Part one of two

The Forsaken Island
(Cape Horn)

One of the Great Places of the Earth, of myth and forsaken—is Cape Horn: as your ship plunges into the mountainous seas (tidal current waves moving from the Pacific to the Atlantic), one on each side, as the ramming and mighty westerly winds cross the Drake Passage, and crosses the face of the island landmass of Cape Horn (over its granite volcanic rock and peat moss), it lifts up its crashing waters from stern to bow—across the islands tender tundra, then lets it fall: nerve-racking, but fulfilling and unequalled. (No: 2780/8-22-2010)

The Captain of the forty-food sailing yacht—a right snappy vessel, with a good size cabin, gaff rigged—was in one of those ongoing, non-stopping, monologues which men can carry on and on when they realize someone is listening, and they know more than that someone about something, of the center of the stage: suddenly, within the Drake Passage, going east bound at 56 south latitude, the vessel absorbing the funneling effect of the Andes, going through one of the most hazardous ship routes in the world, a major challenge to anyone in any kind of ship—with its strong westerly winds off the Southern Hemisphere, making the waters off Cape Horne most dangerous—large waves the size of buildings—the wind giving rise to the strong waves—strong currents and icebergs, all lay in front of Captain Minor, and his wife Anna Mae Minor, of Columbus, Georgia, a yachtsman of the first kind, whose grandfather even once tried for—was involved with, back in the 1850s—with trying to win some Yachts Club Cup—was recounting the experience with actual pride, a sort of adolescent and remote vanity (his mind was not on what it should have been), it even sounded a bit like he was making half it up, thought Josephus Hightower I (on what one might call a vacation, with a business colleague), holding on the steel railing of the craft, looking at the small Island known as Cape Horn. The Captain took a quick darting to the sails, glancing at the large waves pushing the boat to and fro like a kite in the wind.
“I don’t see how anyone ever sleeps on such vessels,” said Josephus.
“No one ever gets used to it, that’s for sure…” said Anna Mae. She like Josephus, were breathing down, getting drunk on the shifting of the boat. And Josephus got to thinking, could he sink? That’s when the mountains of Cape Horn became larger and more visible, right to his side.
“What do you do, Anna Mae when you’re scared on such trips?” asked Josephus.
“I try to daydream, back when I was a young girl, and I was drowning and Herb (her husband), jumped in and saved me.” She exclaimed.
And it seemed like Josephus was thinking right hard on what she said, but he hadn’t been this scared before. And then he held his eyes tight and shut, the largest wave he had ever seen was coming, and he thought how much he had done for his son, Josephus II, and his daughter Ruth, and how would they ever do without him. And a voice in the back of his head said something as he was getting ready to look, and he counted inside his head: 1, 2, 3, 4—1, 2, 3, 4, over and over, and he opened his eyes and the biggest wave he had ever seen was upon him, and that voice had said, ‘They’ll be fine, they always are…” and there towards the stern (rear part) of the boat was a man with a black raincoat onboard the ship (Josephus also notice the helm was wild, no one steering the boat, and the jack fell into the water, and the masts feel into the water, and the poop broke open), and his name was: Nick, or Death—and he wore an iron belt, and he had chains on the belt perhaps for his captives to be, as if it kept him steady on the vessel too, and Anna Mae saw him also, the only one that didn’t see him was Herb, the captain who was holding onto something at the bow (front) of the ship, perhaps the anchor. And the wave hit the ship, and the ship toss liked to and fro a broken legged seagull, and then upside down, and then onto its side, and there were icebergs that hit the ship (or the ship hit the iceberg) like sharp spikes and no one would know it until later and it jabbed into the ship—broke its spine, like a shark into a human body. And the guts of the vessel fell open and emptied out.
“Oh, yes,” said Josephus as he sunk to the bottom of the passage, “this is something else I didn’t plan on.” And Anna Mae, looked at him, as she sunk alongside him, and Josephus was thinking— ‘Will Herb save her this time?” And it all became dark; he could almost hear the darkness full of movement, feeling, approaching, and the blood in his veins freezing like a statue in a museum. And that was all that was left of him, forever and ever on plant earth.

Dying: off Cape Horn
(A moment of still lethargy…)

Part two of two

So I thought I was dead—there was this moment of still lethargy—really dead, and Anna Mae, she was staring at me a few feet away, I’m not sure how many fathoms we sunk, but it was an awful lot, then I did an odd thing, I closed my eyes, and all I could see was myself in a coffin. I looked handsome though—you know, all dressed in white. And I was crying because I was dead, and unable to help my two grown children. “No,” the man with the black raincoat said, “there will be no coffin for you, or the lady, not where you are dead.” And all this time I could feel my nose and cheeks and toes and fingers going cold, and yet there was warmness still in my blood. And I looked at Anna Mae, and I said, ‘Don’t she look sweet,’ but I lied, she looked numb and waxy and cold and white. I think her lips said, “Touch me!” But I was a coward. And there we were, just waiting—I think for the man with the black raincoat. And we remained in place there, in the water, somehow balanced, not even jerking away from one another. And now when I looked at Anna Mae, it looked like she had iron gray hair, and she opened her eyes, looked around to see where Herb was, but he never came. Then I said to her—mentally—“He won’t!” Then I thought about being a human man again. And my ears or something made a kind of popping sound, like someone was blowing into a little rubber tube inside my ears, and head, it felt cold. And I told myself, I just want to go to sleep. And there was no longer any pain. And I read her, Anna Mae’s mind again, it said, “I wish Herb would get here, down here and not let me drown.” And I thought: if she’s not dead, she’ll be dead soon, and if she’s saved, she’ll be in an asylum for brain damage, and perhaps better off dead. I don’t think she was born for this kind of life; she simply had to put up with it because she loved a man who loved the sea. Better for her she were dead now, than endure a hundred more storms and then die alone, at least she has me, company. I think she was swearing now, unprintable words, surely not to be inscribed onto her gravestone. Perhaps this is the instant we come to realize, admit, that there is a logical pattern to everything, where we throw pretense to the side, she has seen in my eyes what perhaps I saw in hers, the eyes of the dead tell stories to the dead (for at this time the shocked despair was fading):
I was drowning or had drowned, suffocated—I had been taking in water not oxygen, as I should have been. I must have been unconscious for awhile. I figured, Anna Mae, must have figured, she was a high candidate for such a death, for me, it never occurred I’d die this way. I kind of wished at this point I had been born a whale or seal.
I found some light; I wondered who turned it on. Anna Mae was now off in the distance, by the man in black, the man with the black raincoat, almost palpable enough to be seen. And she had a small face that appeared to collapse in the sight of the demonic creature with the blurring still chains in his hands, more than an invitation to the secret Dark Promised Land—which was my conclusion; he horridly grabbed her by the hair and dragged her off. And I was left there to wait. Then someone opened a door, fumbled in the darkness beyond the light, said, as he plunged forward, his head lifted slightly, “You know about the crucifix, do you not?”
“Oh yes, yes, of course I do…” I said, and beyond the door there was a terrific uproar, and then faces—many I had known who had died in the past.

Note Written 1-13-2010/No: 568) Dlsiluk © 2010

Old Solomon’s Fish
(A short story of Macabre Suspense)

Within the Caribbean waters outside of Havana, in a depth of perhaps eighty fathoms, Solomon Parra Tapia was fishing off his new 1987, small twenty-five foot yacht, with his wife, Rosalina Nayelis, he was on deck near the bow (front), she was below towards the stern (back), he did a literary version of the event in Hemingway’s book: “The Old Man and the Sea,” meaning, he was in his sixties, she in her fifties, and he was well off as a restaurant owner (although the opposite of Hemingway’s Santiago), on the Caribbean island, Cuba, and having all the necessary fishing gear—such as hooks and rod and reel, deep dropping tackle for the most part, and there he was with a big fish on his line—likened to Santiago, which wasn’t all that dramatic for the moment, but it did matter; although he was not a great fisherman—again, perhaps more clumsy than most, and not as chancy as most, and quickly taken back if any great challenges appeared. Nor did he wish to be considered a great seaman, of the Caribbean or the Gulf of Mexico, or the Mediterranean. But he liked fishing and boating, and drinking, and so forth.
There was no magic in the moment (not Yet anyway)—the boat was drifting with the current in the bluish-green waters, its two-hundred horsepower Mercury engine, was shut down—and the sunburst over the old man’s rusty balled looking head: just a big tug on the fishing line, and the fish fathoms below, zoomed down to the bottom of the sea with a plunge, and then he knew it was a predatorily, it had to be, the pull the wildness, and to reach the bottom as fast as it did he assumed it was a swordfish—perhaps near size of the yacht, he knew they went up to sixty-miles per hour, fifteen feet in length. And when it hit the bottom, it was like a ripple effect all the way up the line to his hands, to the other end of his fishing rod—a quivering ripple. And did it matter now, gosh yes, now nothing mattered, but the fish, forgetting his wife was down below in the cabin, he took in several breaths like a race horse, at the end of the race, and this was just his beginning; whatever it was it was big and strong and fast. ‘Maybe it’s a shark,” he concluded, ‘no,’ he went on to say, ‘must be a Marlin, like in Hemingway’s book?’ of course he was guessing. Old Solomon might have drunk a beer too many this day, as he had been doing all morning into the afternoon, but he dare not reach over to get another out of the cooler, or even call his wife, he had several already—near intoxication, but not quite, not quite drunk, no, not yet—although he was sweating like a boxer in the tenth round race horse.
This was his fundamental problem—he was a coward, luckily, the fish stopped to ponder a moment; this allowed Old Solomon, to catch his breath—he was near hyperventilating—his line stiff as a board. Meanwhile, he thought: what kind of fish is this, I’ll make him into a trophy, certainly, this was God sent, and the old sixty-two year old man was now daydreaming. I mean, this had not been his idea to catch such a big fish; it had been his brother Harry Tapia, who had pointed out this spot, said there were some big swordfish out this way, and he liked the meat of the swordfish, it was tender, he had caught a few before, ones with sixteen inch swords on their nose, and perhaps several feet long, and four or five hundred pounds, but surely this one was bigger, if indeed it was a swordfish, and if it was bigger, well, if indeed it was, could he handle it? I mean, the two he had caught before, Harry was with him, helped him, clubbed the fish, held tight the rod and reel for him. This one had pulled him closer to the bow, forward a few feet. He looked to the port side of the boat, then to the starboard side, and the fish hadn’t gone either way, there was an awful lot of line loose, he could have.
“I’m going to go to sleep,” yelled his wife Rosalina, she had the lower berth, and lower of the bunk bed.
“Ye s, ye s, go oo to sl eep, I’ve g ot a big-g on e!” said Solomon, too erratic to respond any other way. She only heard “…go to sleep… (his voice was trembling, and low it was)” most of his message was gobbledygook, and what she could make out, suggested to her it was of no consequence, and consequently, she fell to sleep instantly. She was a heavy woman and the mattress sank near the floor, and she also had had several beers and so she slept soundly.
Above, the summer heat was getting to the old man, and he and the fish hadn’t progressed one iota in twenty-minutes, it was as if the fish had got his sword stuck in the sand below him, because if it was a swordfish, if in reality it really was one, he would have been irritated with him to no avail, and most likely had a vehement disposition towards him now, in its frustration and ill-temper the fish skyrocketed—at that very instant—out of the water, jumping several feet into the air, no, several yards into the air, with its long flat bill and rounded body. And it would have seen him even from a distance clearly, it had those select heated eyes and brain, that only a few species in the sea had, origins by the eyes thus allowing it edge on its pry—and when it hit the water its tail slapping and banging and body clubbing against the boat.
Ahead of him was another yacht, in the distance, reflecting from its mirrors, and it was to a high-intensity for the old man, the sun illuminating so brightly that he let go of his rod and reel slightly, just a moment, and it slipped halfway out of his grips, as the fish jumped out of the water even higher, split the water at fifty-miles per hour, zooming as high as a lower building, it was a dreary mental moment for him, whishing Harry was there, listening to the afternoon wind rustle by his ears, and his palms sweaty, and he exclaimed “Yes, oh yes, it’s a swordfish!” But it was humungous; perhaps sixteen-feet long, perchance, 1500-pounds of pure fish, with a forty-in plus, sword on the end of its nose—a huge cold blooded predator.
“You weren’t supposed to be so cleaver,” murmured old Solomon, out loud trying to grab his fishing rod, that is, clutch onto the part that had slipped down from his hands, “Don’t” he said to the fish “get away, let me have you! Don’t jump no more, I can’t handle you…!” But that was followed by another thump and jump, almost dragging the old man over the edge of the bow (a bow that was spoon like), bouncing him like a toy ball. The creature’s anger was like something combustible, the old man found it utterly terrifying—the creature had a lack of emotion for a kill, or perhaps too much for revenge—so it would seem, those warm eyes and brain, made him one-hundred and twenty percent faster than without it, he was apologizing to his second-self for letting go the grip he had once had on the fishing rod, that helped him win the first round with the fish, but now hanging over the bow, loosely on the fishing rod’s end, leisurely the fish came closer to the boat to get a better look at the old man, the old man’s heart rapidly beating, he wasn’t surprised to see the fish sizing him up, only that suspense that the fish all of a sudden sensed something beyond him and then quickly snapped the water with a solid blow moving slowly over to the port side of the boat, and to the old man’s dismay, he dropped the rod out of fright, into the water, surprisingly, actually almost delicate—and deliberately, as if he wanted to get rid of the pain and fear and the puffing of his heart the fish had created within him: ‘Where is Harry…? He murmured, as if he didn’t know.
He heard the swordfish shifting its sleek body under the boat, I think he’s going to defuse his rage; the old man conjured in his mind, and he sense the fish was closing in. Then there was the sound of a blow against the bottom of the boat, the fish was hitting it with its tail to see how strong it was—testing. There the old man stood, nearly in a daze, frighten of the fish, did he dare go down and wake his wife up? If he didn’t was it possible the fish could do harm to the belly of the boat? Was she in any danger? If he didn’t, Rosalina might wake up and panic and the fish hear her—and then what He asked himself. Perchance, he was trying to avoid, no interfere—
But if not…?
And he cried into the palms of his hands “Please don’t hurt my wife!” He clenched his fists and thought: wake up and run Rosalina, run, run… he was frozen with fear—he said what said but he said it in a whisper as if the fish might hear, and he couldn’t move, and now the fish was hitting the bottom of the boat harder and harder—his heart sank, and the boat rolled, rocked and rolled, sideways, and the door to the cabin locked, the latch outside of the door locked and Rosalina woke up, “Solomon!” she cried “what is going on?” And before he could answer her, he actually turned away, plugged his ears, before an idea could occur to him to go around the boot to the stern, and down into the cabin area and unlock the door, in fear the fish would get him.
It is not to say, these thoughts had any coherent or direct passage way to his brain—they just got there zigzagging: some people freeze, while others can face such dilemmas: some people cannot hold spiders or snakes, or look down fifty-story buildings, the mind closes, and the hands perspire, and fear grips them like nothing else, this was the case, this was it in a nutshell. He took three steps to the front, and stooped down low his head near touching his knees, and hid from the sounds of his wife, then the swordfish hit the boat—plunged into the boat with all its force, after it had submerged, 250-feet, driving its sword into the boat’s fiberglass body, all its forty-plus inches of hard bone extended out like a sword from its face, through the back spine of Rosalina, as she arched her back, her spine split in two, the fish unable to dislodge itself, and she screamed bloody murder.

No: 669 (8-24-2010)sk

Passage to
Elephant Island

Hell-of-an-Island

By morning Ernest Montgomery from Dothan, Alabama had decided to lay off the sightseeing onboard the cruise ship, last he remembered the ship was somewhere between the Falkland Islands, and the South Shetland Islands, to be exact, he’d soon find out, they were docked momentarily off the north shores of Elephant Island. Ernest had been getting tired of the trip, if not bored, from: Buenos Aires, Port Stanley, around Cape Horn, Chile, docking at Ushuaia, Argentina for eight hours, the principle reason for taking the cruise was to make his life more exciting, and he wanted to be around young women, he was forty-five years old, freshly divorced, and he was discovering, the longer the trip, the older the clientele—it was a fifteen-day trip, and there was only a few stray women, and they were bitchy and older than him by twenty-years plus.
With nothing to do but complain, Ernest decided to get as drunk as scotch whiskey would make him. He found a nice corner in the bar and by mid-morning two pints had been consumed. The remainder of the morning he spent on deck looking at an odd island, everyone called “Elephant,” and some called “Hell-of-an-Island.”
He went back into the bar bought another pint of scotch whiskey. And he went back out to the deck; the wind was white and raw. Then he heard a voice over the ship’s microphone system, it was the Captain, “Elephant Island,” said the Captain, “is 779-miles West-southwest of South Georgia, and 581-miles from the south of the Falkland Islands, and 550-miles southeast of Cape Horn, and we are now three miles in front of it.” Then he heard him say, “Excursions, those who want to go to the Island meet at…” and then he stopped hearing, and saw a blond, pathetically he followed her to where folks were signing up to take the excursion, he had missed her among the 1950-passengers, perhaps near thirtieth (he simply put an X for his name on the document—a manifest, for those intending to go to the island, he was too drunk to do otherwise). He wiped his hands over his face as if to wake himself up, “What’s the matter?” said the young woman, the very one he was attempting to pursue, his face wet and appearing as if he had been crying, but of course he hadn’t been; and now the ship was even closer to the Antarctic island.
She pulled the scarf out of the way from her face, standing in line waiting to board the small craft and getting her lifejacket, putting it on, and clamping the two clamps together, readying to go to the island, Ernest really not too aware of anything, just in heat over this young damsel, did likewise—a monkey see monkey do, kind of thing.
“Nothing’s wrong kid,” he said sharply, “why did something go wrong?” he questioned.
The girl turned her back, she was hurt, and seemingly one could hear a few sniffles, as if they were sighs.
“Say what’s the matter with you anyway?” he asked the girl, “you nuts or something? Let’s get out of here and go to my room instead of this stupid island! Say!” but she never turned around again, and so Ernest simply put on his lifejacket, as did the fifteen other people getting into the small zodiac-boat—although he hesitated, thinking, perhaps thinking why waste my time on this stuck-up chick and this stupid excursion, but before he could deliberate it any further—or completely, they were on their way to the area where Ernest Shackleton had made his campsite, in 1916, along with twenty-two of his companions—to Point Wild.
The closer the inflated zodiac vessel got to the island, the more inhospitable it looked to Earnest, “Say,” said the young lady, the very one Earnest had tried to pick up, “are you soused?”
“No, I’m as sober as a dead rat, what’s it to you lady?” said Earnest. It was as if she was trying to rekindle the candle—figuratively speaking, the one he had lit, and rudely blew out.
“That’s right,” he said, “hell, I’m sober enough to swim to the island,” and she laughed, and for once, Ernest took that serious look off his face and laughed with her. But the fact was, and the fact remained, he was nearly soused, and saw only blurs of her, and blurs of the island, but he hid most of those drunken mannerisms somehow.

(On the Antarctic Island called Elephant—at Point Wild, a plateau area residing next to a mountain on the northern coast) “Well,” said Earnest, he pulled out a cigarette, sucking deeply on it, walking a distance away from the group, to pull out his pint and have a drink—and he’d end up drinking the whole pint behind those dark wet granite walls; the young woman by the name of Pilar, took no notice in where he went, and the rest of the group, didn’t even know he existed—and on the official paper—the document or manifesto (program, indicating who was there, and who was who), the one he was supposed to sign getting into the vessel for the excursion, the very one he had simply placed a smeared X on, one that looked more like a mistake than a name, and there he sat on what might have been a hidden corner where Shackleton himself sat, smoking and drinking, and then he passed out.

“Well, I—say, folks let’s board the zodiac-craft and head on back to the ship,” said the young navigator, in charge of the excursion. As they neared the ship, Pilar began to look about for Ernest, said to the man sitting next to her, “Say, where’s that man that I was talking to before, do you know who I mean?” Not knowing his name. And the man pointed to someone at the other end of the vessel, who was seasick, and had his head in his palms and his elbows on his knees—who could have been anybody, and the young woman thinking he was still drunk, simply said “Oh, the stinking drunk. I started to take a liking for him.” And left well enough alone, thinking no more of it.

The ship now was at sea, heading for Paradise Bay, Earnest Montgomery, on the island, alone, just waking up. It was pretty cold, and he was having a hell of a time trying to focus his eyes, he dashed out from behind the rocks—unaware of how long he had been sleeping but knowing he had been, and hoping it wasn’t all that long, and noticed the ship was gone.
“How in hell can I get…!” he said. And there he stood thinking out loud, “She was so crazy about getting my attention, she’ll tell the captain and they’ll come back.” Then after a long while still standing waiting to see the ship return, he mumbled, “I reckon that cutie likes me, why didn’t she come across quicker, she perhaps…how in the hell can I get out of here!” (It really wasn’t a question, but a disparaging statement.)
He looked about—up and down the ice-covered mountainous island (its tallest peak, nearly three-thousand feet), elephant seals were observing him from afar; other than that, there was no significant flora or native fauna, just a few penguins and seals found moseying about Point Wild and its coast, and a fog and snow was coming in… he knew he didn’t have a high cold threshold nor an extreme weather tolerance, and there was no ship in sight, and his pint of whiskey was empty, and he lit his last cigarette staring out into the sea, waiting, just waiting, continuously waiting, bored to death, and nearly frozen to death—not believing he was marooned on an island no more than ten by two kilometers east to west in the Antarctic waters—waiting, just waiting for the ship to return—continuously waiting, and bored to death…

No: 609/3-28-201/EC

Big Blow, off Maui
(12/2001)

Rosa

It was dark and there was water in the streets and no lights on alongside of the road, and the trees were blown down everywhere. I had heard once we got off the plane at the Maui airport, heard tell, a storm was coming, it evidently had come—although not completely stretched out nor in its full bud. So I grabbed my wife’s hand and got into the escorted tourist van. And we were headed for our hotel within minutes; it was off the Western Harbor. The streets and everything was full of water, gutters filled to the rim, and cars splashing water as they drove by us— tossing water everywhichway, and just everywhere was water and the wind was picking up gradually—more and more, to who knows when it would reach its zenith. A moon was scarcely seen overhead with dark faded clouds around it, some through it, and plenty of rough weather seemed to be brewing all around us.
When we got to the hotel all the lights were out, no street lights no any kind of lights but car headlights and very few of them, and the wind was still picking up, “Man,” I said to Rosa, “this is some storm fermenting.” Like a hurricane in the makings.
It was just as dark as an empty barrel with a lid on top of it—; anyhow we couldn’t even recognize our hotel when we came ahead of it, the driver had to shine his headlights on the sign out near the street on the green area, and point to it, and when we got out, he was gone like a flying fish.
As we walked to the back of the hotel, where there was kind of a plaza area with a pool in the middle of it, trees and all types of greenery were blowing in the wind, along with water from the sea and branches from the nearby hotels. And a few trees, bulky tall trees, by the pool were ripped out of the ground, roots and all; some birds lay dead here and there in the grass, a few pelicans, all kinds of birds evidently were trying to escape the torrent winds and surge of flying water, some I saw being blown from out of the sky, back and forth to kingdomcome, a shrill and eerie night indeed. You had to look everywhichway, lest you get slapped with something, someplace on your body, and the vibrating thunder run through your body like ramparts being rapidly opened and closed, I could feel this heavy impulse from my heart to my throat.
Apparently, most everyone had gone inside one or the other parts of the doubled sectioned hotel we were at, the lower bottom floor of the first section was the one serving hot meals in a cafeteria style restaurant, Rosa and I were hungry, very hungry. The other part that was opened was next to the restaurant, where the hotel desk was, where a clerk remained on duty—by candle light.
We talked to the hotel clerk, got our keys to our rooms, and we went and put our luggage in it, but there were no lights. And it now was raining hard—there was a grim unrelenting blackness starting to seep into the sky covering earth like a cloak, a sinister and ominous darkness seeping out from the sea; we then walked back out into the plaza area, I started to look out towards the sea, and to where they were serving the hot food, on the other side of the pool, glancing back and forth, one side to the other: sea to café, the sea and then the cafe, thinking: should we go eat or run back to our rooms, eat or run back to our rooms.
“Let’s see what they got left to eat,” I told Rosa “we ought to eat something before morning,” we had flown directly from Minnesota, to San Francisco, and then onward to Maui, with very little to eat, my hunger was overtaking my mind, perhaps even to the point of overlooking safety measures.
We were quite a ways on the other side, across from the plaza, to where the café was, and we ran, getting slapped with the wet and sometimes thick watery air, heavy blows of water from the sea being carried by the winds striking us all over our soaked bodies, as if being bombarded with shapeless ghouls (the hotel having been only a hundred yards from the beach).
When we got to the café, the floor was under an inch of water, somehow they produced some artificial lighting from overhanging gas lanterns. “We haven’t had a storm like this in a decade,” said some voice serving food behind a long row of tables, to a guest in front of me. The food looked like it was mostly picked over—under incandescent light, perhaps electrified by some generator. And the sign read “$25.00!” And under the sign was a note that read “No exceptions,” meaning I would guess: Take it or Leave it! Meaning, it would cost you $25.00-dollars apiece, skimpy as it was; and where the nearest café was other than this one—only God knew, so we took it. It was a rip-off, but we had no choice, starve or pull out fifty big ones.
There we were standing up with our trays and dishes of food, bits and pieces of leftovers—so it appeared to me, looking out a glass window at the tall trees swaying, to and fro, looking as if they were going to be ripped out of the ground any minute, and a few smaller ones were already ripped up and out from its roots, laying here and there, around the pool. We looked about, there was no place to sit down, and so we continued to eat standing up. Another peeve I couldn’t do much about.
“If this storm would just take a break until we get settled in,” I commented to Rosa. She remained silent, there was really no response needed it was more a statement than a question.
As we finished our food and walked outside, I could see the tops of the trees rocking as if they were floating ships out at sea. And you could hear the hard twisting winds; whistling and clashing like titans at war—it was all deafening to your ears, branches breaking. I hung onto Rosa as if onto a little dinghy—took a couple of deep breaths then we ran like cabooses attached to a train, across the plaza to our hotel, and once through the doorway, to our room.
I could see Rosa’s hair was tied down somehow—towards the back of her head, close to her head and I had to carry my hat in hand. She was right up close to me when we ran into our apartment building; the hallway was dark, drenched. We went up one flight of stairs, and once in our apartment, I had to let go of Rosa, and I heard a great thump, looked out the window, thought a wall from a building had cracked or crashed, or something had gotten wrecked, but it was a large, very large towering tree that had been ripped in two, struck by lightening I guess, and had fallen by the pool, and then I noticed lighting and thunder and there was no longer a moon to be seen—and now an eldritch dark mist had filled all the light spaces the hotel had once emanated.
My head felt tired, my neck stiff and then I rested on the bed, fully clothed, in case I had to get up quick, for whatever reason, but I fell to sleep quicker than a rabbit can jump, after a short tossing and turning and thinking. It wasn’t any good staying up anyhow and just worrying about something you can do nothing about (the hotel staff was not going to vacate the hotel, and told us to simply lock ourselves in our rooms and outwait the storm).
As I initially laid there, I started drifting off into some dream sleep, as the wind was hammering against the window, I had shut the curtains in case the glass broke: the rains lashed out like whips, clear and sharp against the windows, and sand was being tossed about, I could hear the stones inside the sand hitting the building we were in.
This evening had been like witnessing a storm blowing right out of hell; Maui per se, had lost control, and the storm took charge. You couldn’t get out of the hotel—had you wanted to, until morning anyhow, and where would you go anyway. But it came out all right, in the morning, Maui was as if it had a nightmare, and had taken a sedative, and I woke up to sunshine.

No: 419/ 6-22-2009 (reedited, 8-22-2009)
Dedicated to my sidekick, Rosa

Winter in the Wind’s Mouth Flash Fiction
(The Inside Passage; Alaska)

Chapter One

He camped out along the Inside Passage (or, Inland Passage), somewhere between Juneau, Alaska and Petersburg, watching the bears climbing up and down the sandstone cliffs, his partner was crushed by a fallen tree a week ago or so, the water was cold—they had travelled up and through steeply, several hills and own through deed powdery snow to his ravine—and his wife stood by the dogs, then as he tested the water—taking off his short snow-shoes—testing it to see what he’d have to endure crossing the inlet—it was cold, near as cold an ice cube get without totally freezing solid that is and he knew putting back on his shoe, he’d have to fling himself into the water with all his might and haul himself brutally to the other side without thinking, looking back, with total focus on the other side lest he lose his pole and rope and strength, it required strong lungs and muscle, he jumped into the deep creek as he had just mentally versioned, he knew he’d die of exposure, or using up all his energy, and heat in his body most likely others had—if not doing it with a hissing push: but he felt he had no choice.
This was forsaken territory in 1910, and he was on a treasure hunt planning to find gold, or pan it or dig it—he was tempted to search for the Servia, which sank in 1905 near Kodiak—$35,000-dollars worth of gold was on that ship; then Ken Morgan changed his mind for the Aleutian, loaded with gold from the mines of Nome and Fairbanks which went down in a storm, between one and three million in gold; then it was Petersburg he was heading for—he had come up from Seattle to Juneau and was hoping to make it to Petersburg—a dropping off point for gold rush seekers, and find a claim, here or there or on the way—he had god fever; but in the process of looking for a new claim, he and his partner and wife had found pert near $10,000-dollars in gold nuggets, and dust, taken off it off of two dead bodies, who had evidently been toting those pouches to Petersburg or perhaps they were on their way to Sitka, or Skagway, who’s to say? In any case, they took the gold off of those two dead and frozen bodies—no, I mean, taken the gold from the saddlebags those heavy rounded pouches in those two saddle bags, there, which laid—nearly exposed, by the two dead and frozen bodies, other than that, an empty campsite.
They had to cross the creek now, and Ken Morgan, needed to tie a rope around the tree once he got across the creek—and they, Ken Morgan and his wife and the dogs were hungry—dogs standing in a stone like trance, Ken undoing the sled, the dogs with ice-rimmed muzzles: he knew they had stayed too long looking for the treasure of where those two men may have been mining, now on the other side of the creek his wife and several dogs could follow him, and thus, hoping once, once they all got across they all could make a new campsite quick, before one or the other caught their death, and find the food they had hidden, buried for just this occasion of returning back to Juneau should they wish to, and Juneau was closer than Petersburg—and the gold was heavy.
“Just tie the coffee-pot and cooking –pail onto the dogs, and the tent, we’ll never get the sled across,” he exclaimed. Then he took an axe and chopped off chucks of wood from the sled, and tied them around some of the dogs, solidly: the jaws of the dogs not seemingly working, half frozen, all gazing at one another, at Ken, yearning for food, Northland dogs, one half dog and grey wolf, the leader of the group.
And so he stretched out into the icy waters, up to his shoulders, he had fallen into a water pocket, then once out of that, and once in the middle, and then stepping forward he was on a upward slant and out of the icy waters within minutes ripping off his cloths, and making a fire quicker than a bird could have seize upon the next branch of a tree, underneath him. Then his wife followed suite, along with the dogs: the grey wolf had carried one dry piece of wood, covered with a cloth.
“I wish you’d not consider what you are considering,” said his wife, Samantha, as he starred into the creek once more—across the creek where they had been for two months, as if he was leaving his whole life behind him, leaving his treasure for someone else to take—a gold mine, they were out of food, used it up looking for that gold, staying two weeks too long, or longer than they had planned and hence, had eaten up the last of the food, extra food they had two days earlier—and the dogs were hungry.
“I’ll get the food, feed the dogs,” sand Ken, knowing that his going back to look for the gold mine was just a passing whim, it was not possible, unless he killed the dogs, ate them, and that was a hunch, she didn’t figure on, but the grey wolf did. The lead dog he bought in Juneau, he guessed it, and he was not mollified with the look on his master’s face.
“It’s okay,” answered Ken Morgan, “we’ll come back for the treasure, or at least try to find it in the summer,” contemplating that hunch. His eyes moved in a crawl like manner, as if they held a secret in life, and the grey wolf sensed it.

They had buried the two bodies and took the gold. He also had a map he had taken off one of the bodies, it showed a far-off location, and a cove: with a turtle sign that pointed to the words “Cold Treasure (leaving out the word Gold, and Ken assuming the sign of the turtle was perhaps carved into something, a tree or rock, something leading to the cave or gold mine)!”
Now they had searched high and low for their food, the hole they had placed three rocks above to point the spot where the food was hidden. And what they found was a torn out empty hole, as if a bear had dug it up.

The camp fire was flickering like leaping stars, as the sky was filling the night with a flaming aurora. His bed was that of a number of furs, mostly taken from the gold miners who had done some trapping, who evidently fallen upon the gold mine, and regretfully had gotten mauled by some bears during their sleep—Ken assumed they were bears, he was no expert in such matters, what else could it have been? He had questioned himself, saying nothing to his wife, and made a tent with the canvas they had brought along and had left hidden near that there campsite they had comeback to, where the food was missing, and Ken being too tired to find any food, or even kill a dog to eat, or find some food to feed the dogs, who had not eaten for a number of days, and his energy was down, weak as a snake chewed up by a mongoose. The creek was in front of them, the woods in back of them.

Chapter Two

“The dogs are hungry,” said Samantha, inside the tent, warm and cosy, and her husband lying to her side, “they’re pacing, I see them pacing all looking at the leading dog, and the leading dog is staring into the canvas here, I can’t see his eyes, but I feel them, I mean sense them, I see his shape out side.” Ken half asleep, “Where is it now?” he asked.
“Oh, he walked away.”
“He’s tied up to the tree, like the others, they’ll be fine until morning.”
“You’re not afraid, Ken—I’m afraid. Go talk to them like you do, the walk will do you good—the fresh air, this smoke isn’t leaving the tent so quick, even with the opening in the back and above us!” But Ken was sleeping now; he didn’t hear a word, deeply in an earnest sleep.
The dog, called Alamo, paced, passed alongside the tent, but couldn’t go but three feet to its entrance without being choked by the rope around its neck, not a tight rope.
“I tell you Ken, the dog has ideas, wake up!” said Samantha, a premonition, that the dog was contemplating something awful.
“Something’s going to happen before long,” she said in a louder voice and pulled on his arm.
She was no longer sceptically thinking, she knew danger was bearing down on her and Ken.
The brightness of the moon and the cloudless sky overhead, gave more light to the tent, and Alamo was half wolf, and Ken had skinned his knees and forearm while crossing the stream, and falling to his knees, blood could be smelled, and there was a mysterious cry, and as the fire inside the tent went out and it got darker and darker, and a cloud was covering the moon, Samantha’s mind went into a misty vagueness, and she stood up, and the wind grew stronger, blew out the rest of the fire, and the air became icy-cold as Alamo broke the rope around his neck, his eyes opened up wide—untellable eyes, hungry eyes, eyes that spilling over with sap boiled down into hunger and she shook her head knowing it was the moment; now looking an inch away from the tent as if into the tent, his nose nearly touching the tent sniffing, heavily coated with snow, smelling the scent of blood—as if it was opiate—Samantha staggered backwards towards the opening of the tent where the smoke was being funnelled out from, she ripped it open wider lifting herself slightly upward, to make her escape—then there was a sudden stillness, a storm was about to befall the tent, and those in it—it was only momentarily, for suddenly the wolf-dog broke completely through the tent, he was the fierce sign of the storm—Ken was woozy, intolerable woozy and starvation was on the face of Alamo—and then it occurred to Samantha, the dogs may have eaten the two miners—Samantha in near shock, impelled by some sort of fascination though, she did not make her escape, but instead, on her feet, she bent over, with bending knees, with the back of the tent opened for her escape, she didn’t move, she simply talked to the dog—the moment grotesque, horrible, famine unmistakable famine stricken, both of them, days without food, no, nearly a week, that’s right, they ate snow, and bark and snails, she forgot all that, “I understand,” she said to Alamo, “we’re all hungry, and someone has to die, and you’ve now made that decision for us,” now hemmed in by not moving, weird and uncanny the dog seemed to understand. And then there was moaning and wailing, cuts and slashes and blows and kicks, but regardless, the dog dragged it pry out of the tent, bodily and flung it back to his comrades.
In the morning, ken’s corpse was fleshless, and she buried her husband, and Samantha and the dogs were on their way back to Juneau, with the ten-thousand in gold, and that was a huge some in 1910 (equal to perhaps: $350,000-dollars in 2010).

Note: This story, chapter one of two, was written in March of 2004 (“Eaten by your own Dogs”) and never finished. Found tucked away, in August of 20110, at which time, Chapter two was written, to complete the story; realizing the name had to follow what wasn’t written yet, in Chapter two call: “Winter in the Wind’s Mouth” (No: 672) Dlsiluk (PS: My trip to Juneau, Alaska, and down the Inside Passage was in 2002.) Perhaps the reason I did not finish the story and put it aside was because my mother had passed away in July of 2003, and I grieved hard for the first eighteen months, of which perhaps I started many things and never finished them, and many I misplaced during those trying days.

The Wallace Plantation

The Deal
Abby Wallace

Abby Wallace would take two days to make the trip from Ozark, Alabama, to drive down to New Orleans, and onto Fayetteville, to see her brother’s grave. She slept the night in New Orleans, at Betty Hightower’s home, a friend, and Thursday morning headed onto the plantation house, the Wallace Plantation.
There was only a hundred-acres left of the land out of over four-hundred they originally had, the over four-hundred that Old Man Wallace had purchased way back in 1780, or thereabouts, they had sold—the two brothers had sold most of it, Wally and Frank that is, sold over three-hundred acres, giving her ten-percent, keeping the rest of the money for themselves, as they always did, she was never quite equal with them, but it was better to take ten-percent of something, than no percent of nothing because knowing them, they’d had sign her name one way or the other anyhow, and a war would have started, and by the time the fighting would have stopped, her ten-percent of something would have been long gone, spent on whatever.
This journey was really more for seeing Burgundy, than anything else, to see where everything stood between her and Burgundy, she told folks back in Ozark, it was to see her brother’s graves, and in passing mentioned Burgundy and the plantation, but said no more about it, save, she had to tell them something, and she didn’t want to look as a ogre towards the dead brothers, the ones who cared less about her, and more about that damn 1950-Chevy they constantly worked on just to work on and have something to do, so they could talk eye to eye, shoulder to shoulder.

When Burgundy and Abby met, neither one turning and walking away, both dissolving the other for a moment, as if in a spell, as if each had to find a common moment to exhale and find the right face to put on, thus, standing in a little square spot, each in a their own little cube as if it was marked, three feet from one another, both finding their comfort zone with each other, they looked into each other’s eyes, like a fox to a hound.
“Come in,” said Burgundy, Abby at the door, she was but half dressed, as if she was in the finishing process of dressing, and they somehow both ended up cross-legged sitting down on the sofa chairs in the living room.
“I was just in the middle of doing some of my voodoo dancing,” she told Abby with a smile; Abby in return, giving a flat “Oh,” to the statement. She had noticed, Abby had noticed, Burgundy had a lower body frame that gave an impression of being short, a long torso, and pale thin arms, like a snake, an odd kind of body she deliberated. Then her eyes and neck seemed to bob about the house, just a minute or so her eyes took a tour, around the house, finding wooden masks, voodoo masks, and disarray, a messy house to say the least.
“I cleaned your room for you, since this will be our home, unless we can come up with a pack or deal, and I’d like to talk to you about that shortly,” remarked Burgundy, going on, “after Wally died, Frank took it pretty hard, It was physically and mentally costly for him, his heart, his whole being collapsed I do believe, and remained for a long time in a convalescent state. Minnie Mae and I have been keeping the plantation afloat, well, Minnie Mae, more than I, I suppose. But now you are here and we can all work together.” (This was really not what Burgundy wanted to do or say, but it was what she had to say, and wait to see what response would come from Abby.)
“To be quite frank,” said Abby, “I am more interested in selling the place, than living in it, or listening to your proposition, that is why I came.”
“Yes,” remarked Burgundy, “I fully understand that, and I knew from the very moment I laid eyes on you, from the very beginning you and I’d git along well, I jes’ knew that, and look, here we are now seeing eye to eye, don’t that beat all.”
Amos came in, “Should I feed the hogs miss Burgundy?” he asked, and she nodded her head yes.
“Frank has some prize, country fair type hogs out yonder, as big as horses, one over 900-pounds, that one, the big one got a prize for eating more food in a meal, faster in one meal that is, than any other hog at the fair, and got a ribbon, blue ribbon for it, with its name on it, “Big Hog Wally,” Frank named it that, kids were riding her, so youall got to be careful, when she gets hungry back there in the pigpen, she can eat a whole lamb in a matter of minutes, and who knows what else.”
“Thanks for the warning, when I go by there I’ll keep my distance, or make sure they’re feed, especially Big Hog Wally!” They both laughed.
“Okay, Miss Abby Wallace, here is the deal (she pulls out a check from her purse, for the sum of $500,000-dollars written to Abby Wallace, hands it over to Abby) take this check, cash it, I sold all but four acres of the one-hundred acres left to Mr. Ritt, the Ritt Fayetteville Bank, once you cash it, the deal is sealed, and the plantation house is mine, and everything on this four-acres will belong to me, and the money to you, it is more fair than your brothers would have been to you.”
It was a fair deal, and she was right, her brothers would not have given her much if even ten-percent on the last one hundred acres left, although the land was sold a little under its value, and should they have waited to sell, it would have increased in value, an investment that appeared not to please either party, Abby or Burgundy, for neither were of the plantation breed, neither one wanted to grow corn or cotton, and Abby knew this, plus, she had never had such a sum before, and this kind of a deal was more than she had expected from this cleaver fox, and therefore accepted the check with a big smile, saying, “Yes, perhaps we see eye to eye, my brothers and I never did.”
It was but a few days later when Abby left to go back to Ozark, Alabama, she was happy as a stuffed hog, and Burgundy was happy, as the saying goes: there were two winners.

The Sacrifice
The Child, Otis Pity Wallace

It has been said, and there is much truth to it I believe, what Christ has done on earth, Satan has tried to duplicated. Burgundy was around her plantation house doing her voodoo stuff with more of a dedication than she ever had, she put more vitality into it, perhaps because who could interfere now. The Child Otis Pity Wallace Washington was about eighteen-months old now.
The house was quiet, not many visitors came about anymore, since Frank and Wally had passed on now, dead and buried and quickly forgotten, and Abby in Ozark, Alabama, Old Josh, and Amos came around now and then, but besides them, not many other folks. Minnie Mae was still working on the farm, and Burgundy had money in the bank, around $40,000-dollars, Frank and Wally leaving each half of that sum to her personally, in their personal accounts at the Ritt Bank.
She worshipped, chanted, danced and prayed to Satan, and was said to do likewise to his demonic following, this was not new, it just become more noticeable, and actually a little old, it was on Halloween she got what she called a vision, an awakening, a messenger came to her in her bedroom, sat on her bed, told her the following (which she would repeat in court in times yet to come), “The Ten-Winged Master, wants you to make a sacrifice to him, your child, like Abram, so long ago did for God, this will prove your loyalty, and there will be a resurrection, if you follow this example.” The messenger was a henchman from hell, so she claimed.
About this time, the Abernathy family, and the Stanley family, the two families who owned the other two plantations, along the same side of the road the Wallace Plantation was on, now Burgundy’s plantation, was ostracized from their gatherings, the weekend get-togethers, where they’d play checkers or cards or chess with Wally and Frank, and even the Stanley’s came over. They could hear the yelping and screaming and voodoo drums at all hours of the night now. It was becoming vexing.
This sacrifice was all planned for October 31, 1962, midnight, she put the child on the living room table, Minnie Mae was in the kitchen, closed her eyes, wanted to stop her but there was no way, she was scared, and so she ran out of the house—perhaps thinking: out of sight, out of mind, cried, slipped, hit her head on a rock, fell to sleep, more like knocked herself out. And so the sacrifice proceeded as scheduled, nobody noticed. No kids came for candy, none were allowed to go near the plantation lest they get disciplined by their parents, and rightly so, and there really were no kids about in the countryside there anyhow. With no haggling, she lifted up a heavy double edged axe, and when she lowered it, the child was split into two pieces, and she danced, and danced, and tore her cloths to shreds—as if waiting for the resurrection. And of course there was no resurrection, what she had to learn the hard way, and she never did learn it, Satan is a liar, as well as a deceiver—that is what she learned. But if she got anything out of this, it was his blessings.

The Trial
Of Burgundy Washington
(1962-63)

There was a boiling trial, and we all thought, all us from the vicinity and countryside where the Wallace’s had lived, we thought she, Burgundy Washington was either insane or possessed, and therefore sent to River Mount Hospital, in Prescott, Wisconsin, under the care of Dr. Whitman. Her lawyer was none other than the famous Henry Thompson, who did murder trials, he himself once was up for murder, but it was dismissed for the lack of information, he acted as his own lawyer in his own case, they had said he killed his wife and dropped her off in a junkyard, in Fayetteville, North Carolina.
Minnie Mae had left the Wallace Plantation, we all knew she would, it was just too, way too much for her to endure that night, it still haunts her folks say; when she awoke from her fall, the night Burgundy killed her son, she ran to the Stanley plantation, that was how the police was notified, and in the morning found the dead child, and her passed out on the floor, and she testified that she saw, what she saw, which was up to the prior moment of the slaying of the child—but did not see that actual happening, the murder itself, she had run out of the house. But Burgundy was not denying the killing anyhow, so she was guilty by her own mouth.
Us folks at the trial, none of us ever had to consider such a mishap, I mean, she was guilty, but there was insanity involved. We kind of thought, any kind of murder would be a form of insanity, but I guess not. So there were technicalities involved.

The Hospital was quite expensive, and Thompson suggested she stay there, and in three to four years, she’d be out, actually after her money run out, she’d be out, but she needed to sell the plantation to pay the hospital bills, and lawyer bills, the hospital was costly, and Abby was there each day of the trial, and made a deal with the lawyer, to have Burgundy sign the deed of the plantation over to her for $150,000-dollars, and thus, she’d have $190,000 with the money in the bank, enough for at least two to three years expenses, hopefully for the hospital bills and lawyer bills. Hoping it was not much more. A private hospital, and not a burden on the state, and in time, folks might forget her, and so, it was the way Thompson wanted her to go and she did just that.
Burgundy signed it without a peep, and grabbed the Bible, and did as Thompson told her, started reading it from page one to the end of the last page of the whole New and Old Testaments, and would go to church on Sundays, to become un-possessed, and if she couldn’t, at least pretend to be.

It was now 1963. Abby did leave $2000 dollars in her account personal account, to buy things she might need in the hospital, and signed the other money over to the lawyer to pay her bills.
And now the plantation returned back to its old and rightful owners, and Whisky Charlie moved in, moved out of Ozark, Alabama, and moved in with his family member, his cousin Abby, first cousin, once and for all.

The Phantoms
Of the Wallace Plantation (Whiskey Charlie)
(1964)

Whiskey Charlie had went to the Wallace Plantation to be with and live with Abby Wallace for the summers, or at least that was the original plan, although I think deep down inside their minds, both Abby’s mind and Charlie’s, they had no intentions to limit it to summers, it was perhaps a smoke screen for the neighbors, and relatives in Ozark, Alabama were Charlie lived ((Whisky Charlie Codden) (a distinct cousin born 1935, relative to Frank, Wally, and Abby Wallace, of Ozark, Alabama; Charlie’s sister being sister Cindy Codden, born 1932; their mother was the sister to Gertrude Wallace.))

They now had only four acres of land, with a plantation house on that remaining four acres, only a patch compared to what they once had, and had sold the rest, which was 396- acres some time back, meaning her brothers, Frank and Wally, and thereafter, Burgundy, who owned the land for a short period, now in a mental facility, a hospital for the mentally deranged, in Prescott Wisconsin.
It is fair to say, Abby does not miss her two brothers who are now deceased, she hardly seen them when she was alive, and therefore the grieving process was next to nil. To be honest, I think the only one that grieved over Frank Wallace was Minnie Mae Walsh, the cook, now working for the Stanley’s, and as far as Wally goes, there is no human being left to grieve him, so they—the two brothers—parted this earth, with perhaps what they came with, nothing, although Wally got his brother’s Frank’s grieving, he had died a little before Frank.
Abby, on the other hand, not wanting to live alone, preferring company to no company —Whiskey Charlie Codden, is good enough she tells herself (Langdon Abernathy is now thirteen-years old, growing like a weed, works for Abby, and he also is good company now and then, along with Amos, who now and then comes around, more than, than now, since working for the Stanley’s; but still helps Abby, reluctantly).

A sudden phenomena looks as if to be entering Abby’s life though, disrupting it, engaging her mind, taxing her sleep, paranoia coupled with anxiety, not sure if I’d call it a disorder, perhaps there is some logic to this, some realism also, for she is seeing ghosts, pure and simple, ghosts, she says to Charlie (and babbles on, and on with it to Amos) she sees Frank and Wally talking by that old 1950-Chevy, every morning, just talking, that is all they do, and she is wondering what they got to talk about. She really doesn’t even want to get out of bed until the afternoon. If she looks out the window, down onto the car, down onto that old green Chevy they simply look up at her, pay her little to no attention, and then they go about their business as usual, as normal, as they always had, and talking about whatever they were originally talking about. Not much difference from when they were alive, but it frightens her, scares her some. She doesn’t know if there is any substance to this or not—she just knows it is.
In addition to these visual scenes into the invisible world, that Charlie Codden cannot see nor Amos, Abby is hearing voices, those of Wally and Frank, sitting by the hearth and they just talk and talk and talk the night away. It is becoming all too much for her to endure. She, Abby, is not a mentally strong woman, not in particular, no—never has been, and so this state of paranormal psychological occurrences, is becoming, or is beginning to become, beginning to takeover more of her life, consuming her you might say, taking up more hours everyday, in the day, likened to a bad habit, an alcoholic, or drug habit, one that slowly possesses you and then it grips you by the gut, and you got to see, listen, and you get more and more involved, then it controls you, your life, your very existence—a damn fixation develops, and this is what is happening to Abby.
Her family, and she knows her family tree pretty well, goes back to the tenth century, back into Scotland for the most part, where they were called, “Those Walsh Folk,” meaning those who migrated from Wales, to Scotland, and through time and events, the name was combed out to Wallace. And if you went back to several more generations, to her Great Grandmothers, one married a Judith, and she was a woman who not only had second insight, but a light blend of Haitian blood, who folks said she saw things, things not of this physical world, and those same folks debated over if she had a gift from God, or perhaps it was from the devil, or was it simply a form of insanity—who’s to say, those days are long gone now.
Be that as it may, Langdon Abernathy was working for Abby Wallace at the time which is only a hop-skip and a jump, from his family’s plantation (twenty-one miles outside of Fayetteville, North Carolina) and he would say when questioned, she and Charlie got along well, as well as any two folks could, and perhaps better, they respected one another, if not even a little more.
Well, here is what took place: the Ritt family (who owned the bank in Ozark, Alabama) had bought most of the plantation land up, and around the Wallace’s, and now had corn and cotton growing on it, it was the month of July, Amos and Langdon had quite working for the day on the Wallace Plantation, fed the hogs, and mended some fences, among other chores, and Langdon went home, and Amos went back to his regular employer the Stanley family. Now Charlie and Abby are alone. It was during this time, Abby overheard Frank and Wally talking, the ghosts during one of those long evenings I was talking about, when they’d sit by the fireplace, as they often did when they were alive, and what she remembers the most was that Frank, the meaner one of the brothers, was angry at her for accepting the $500,000-dollars for the plantation, the land Burgundy sold, then turned about and repurchased the plantation home back, with out even enough land to spit across. He was madder than a mass of hornets, and swore to get even. That was it, that was all she overheard, that was the top of the iceberg, I say top because what was underneath, only Frank and Wally knew, and Abby would never fully be allowed to know, be familiar with, for sure, but would blame them for, yet she’d not say it out loud, lest she be taken to the same place Burgundy was, the mental hospital; then they vanished, as usual, in this case the voices simply faded out.

In the morning, Langdon came over to see what work Miss Abby wanted him to do—had for him, he knew she would not come down those stairs until noon, she never did, but left a note on the dinning room table, under the chandelier, and when he came into see the note, to read it, he was shocked almost into a vomiting state. There was Charlie, Charlie Codden from Ozark, Alabama, hanging from the chandelier, old Charlie’s hands tied behind his back, hanging like a limp fish, tongue out like a dead bulls. He woke Abby up, and she fainted once she got a glimpse of Charlie, scant was the glimpse, but more than enough.
No one expected Abby to have been able to have done such a job as lifting a man in midair that weighed somewhere around one-hundred and eighty pounds, and besides, tied his hands behind him, and a rope around his neck, that was absurd. And Abby would never admit to ghosts, although Langdon knew the story behind her visions and voices, and mentioned them to the Chief of Police, it came to a point of leaving it as a mystery, there was even a suggestion that two bums came from the train nearby, that normally slows down as it nears the city and jumped off that evening, and they might have done the dirty deed, but that was manufactured by the police department, there really was no train, nor bums, but they now had suspects, which eliminated the ghost theory, although nothing was taken in the house, and in place of that, they said the bums were simply hungry, wanted to drink and got too drunk to rob the place, and so they hung Charlie as a stupid trick, and then the file was put into what they called “file thirteen,’ the dead file area, and left to grow mold.

Langdon of course was told never to go back to that haunted house by his parents, where one thing lead into another, and after the other, there was always another, and it just simply looked too much of a troubled spot. And for the most part, he came to be fine with that, he was in those early days, talking much about going into the Army, the Vietnam War I guess had started, and that really is what he was waiting for, a new war to start so he could join and be like his grandfather, and Amos.

The Monster Hog
((…of the Wallace Plantation) (August, 1964/and conclusion))

It was a bad summer, 1964, bad because the Wallace Plantation had buried, Charlie Codden, a relative of Abby Wallace, bad because she did not have the help she needed to take care of the place, Langdon Abernathy was told not to return to work for them anymore, it was all too much: first Burgundy, and the slaying of her child, and then the mysterious hanging of Old Whisky Charlie, and before that the deaths of Frank and Wally, although that was now a little over three years in the past since Wally had died. Even old Amos avoided the plantation as if it was plagued by God and Satan or both; Burgundy was still in the hospital in the Midwest, close to two years now. So, what next could happen, or go wrong, no one knew, and no one wanted to be acquainted with it, whatever it was going to be—meaning that plantation. The Ritt family, was making money off the land they bought, and although that did not worry Abby for the most part, she heard the ghosts—as she referred to them—talking at night how they hated Abby for selling the land to the Ritt Bank. Evidently, Wally and Frank hadn’t gotten over it yet, hadn’t gotten enough revenge, because he fought over who got to tie the hands of Whisky Charlie, and who got to swing the chandelier with Charlie hanging from it, that is what Abby told Amos anyhow, also mentioning in passing: “I don’t think the boys know they’ve died!”
But what was really on her mind, Abby’s mind, now was to sell the plantation, and so she had put it in the paper up for sale, and Frank, the mean one, the suggestive one, angry and more hateful than a horde of rattle snakes and more stubborn than a herd of mules, the more aggressive one of the two brothers, read the three line ad in the paper: “Lovely four acre plantation (or, hobby farm, because that was all that was left of it) outside of Fayetteville, for sale, any reasonable price.”
Frank and Wally knew there was no other plantations for sale, this was it, Abby was selling their souls now, so the brothers grimly said.

It was a warm August evening, in the year 1964, the end of August, Abby heard the hogs squealing, fighting with one another, biting at their tails, at their feet, the big one, the one they called “Big Wally the Hog,” the nine-hundred pound hog, the one that won a Blue Ribbon at the County Fair, was becoming nasty to one of the smaller hogs, the very small one, the smallest of the lot in the enclosure—or pigpen—and took a nibble out of its leg, it was a week since Amos had came around to feed the hogs, and she was always scared to get too close to the hog pen herself, although it was fenced in, with four by four poles, and two by four cross beams, to make a sturdy fence. Actually there were several hogs in the pigpen, nearly all over 400-pounds except a few smaller ones, and that one little one that got a bite taken out of its leg that had been yelping to get fed, and instead became in part, part of the Blue Ribbon hog’s meal. Abby at this point was quite frustrated, hearing those hogs yelping like wild dogs night and day, endlessly yelping, and so she called up the Stanley House for Amos to come on over and feed them—nearly begging him this time, but Amos refused to work for her, his mind unchanged, it was out of sympathy he had came the few times he did after her brothers had died, because of her constant mumbling about her seeing and hearing the brothers walking about the house and yard—especially by that old car of theirs that they worked on for ten-years straight, it was all too creepy for him, all too much, way too much for Amos to take, so he refused to come for the last time—with a straight emphatic and final: “NO!”

Mr. Ritt, the owner of the bank who purchased the land from Abby, through Burgundy, and in earlier times bought land from Frank and Wally Wallace, stopped by to see Abby, he did now and then, a kind gesture if anything, he knew she liked company; he figured he’d say hello, and she’d offer him coffee as usual and he’d have a little break, and be on his way. But she didn’t answer the door when he came, and the hogs were going wild in the back area, where the pig enclosure was. And he went back to see what was going on.
The evening by itself was most pleasant with its starry sky and gibbous moon, overlooking the Wallace Plantation, had not the hogs been yelping, moreover giving it an uneasy kind of eerie touch within its atmosphere it would have been a perfect end to a long day.
As he, Mr. Ritt walked slowly back to the pigpen, it seemed as if everything was unattended, he even got a cramp in his stomach, a nervous cramp, as if something strange had taken place, or was taking place, you get such feelings when something is wrong, deadly wrong—death reeks, and your body does something like a turnabout, a knotting up of muscles to protect you, to guard you from heart attacks and strokes and all those impending doom related occurrences that take a person by surprise, it signals the brain, beware…! And it was doing just that.
The hogs were fighting mad, squealing mad, jerking this and that way everywhichway, bumping everything, pulling with their teeth, bits and pieces of the wooden fence, gnawing on the thinner parts of the fence like rats, to free themselves: he got closer, they were limbs he was seeing, limbs his eyes scanned, indeed he confirmed they were limbs, red like roots hanging out of the limbs, muscles tissue, read knotted fleshly muscles hanging out like threads from a limp limb; hair hanging out of the pigs mouth—Big Wally’s mouth, and his associates, they were chewing Abby Wallace up, like pulp, as if she was in a wheat grinder, a saw mill, she evidently was trying to feed the hogs, fell in, or got pushed in, through the fence (because it would have been pretty hard to fall through those two-foot openings between the two wooden flat pieces of timber, one above the other, crossovers, and foolish to have gone to the top of the fence of the pen it would not have been necessary) and before she could get up, she was pined down by the monster hog—all nine-hundred pounds of pork. Her head was balled, they had ripped the hair out from its roots, and her torso was the main thing now the hogs were fighting over….
Her shawl lay over one of the fence two-by-fours wooden cross beams, and many of her bones—splintered—laid about, and the hogs licking the marrow out of them; everything was being caked with mud, as it surfaced here and there, as the livestock moved about, then sunk into the mud again, as if the hogs themselves were trying to hide the flesh from the other predators; Mr. Ritt had to turn about, look deep into the sky, hold his stomach, catch his breath and grab his heart, as it started to leap.

The Plantation
Conclusion

The plantation was up for sale thereafter, and the money was to be given to the boy’s farm, but in September of 1965, a little over a year later, it burnt down, another mystery, perhaps those two bums the police talked about who they said hung old Whisky Charlie came back; for the most part, it remains a mystery to this day (although it was known in the dark queues of Ozark, it was the town city folk). The Ritt Bank bought up the remaining four acres of land, and the money, before it could be sent to the boy’s farm, $25,000-dollars, a woman showed up by the name of Cindy Codden, from Ozark, Alabama, the sister to Charlie Codden, or old Whisky Charlie and claimed it, the Codden’s were relatives, the only ones known, of the Wallace’s.

Note: Chapters 10 thru 15, deleting chapter 13; written 6-2008; reedited, 10.-2009, and reedited 5-2010. From the unpublished work “The Last Plantation” (includes the chapters: the Deal, the Sacrifice, the Trial, the Phantoms, the Monster Hog, and the Plantation.

Two stories taken from the novel:

Tick on aClock
An Episodic Novel, taken from the Shannon O’Day, Independent Sketches

Otis (1977)

Otis Wilder Mather stood still within the deep cornfields on which one time he and Shannon O’Day drank. Flanked by the tall stocks of corn, as if walled in—the early morning sunlight fell lightly in faded thin like flashes, seeping through the gaps of the cornfield onto his exposed flesh, and upon the bamboo walking stick in his hand, and across the aging shape of his black face who paced to and fro, looking down— as if swimming in some unfathomable emotions, brooding and drooping eyes, childless, never married, Cantina’s new born child in Mabel’s house, Shannon’s brother Gus’ house, both long dead. Out of a window, of the neighbor’s house, peered old lady Stanley, Mrs. Alice Stanley (her husband now dead, died back around 1960, she now was in her mid 80s,her daughter Nadine now was near forty, Nadine’s daughter, pert near twenty-five), smothered with curiosity—she hadn’t seen Otis in nearly a year.
“Well, Cantina,” said Otis “too bad the baby isn’t white, you and the boy will be treated as if you belong in the stockyards.” And he chuckled.
She didn’t move any, just remained on the sofa with the newborn. Looking up at Otis, with a flat expression, with a youthful, no expression, a face gloomy, and sphinx-like, still worn, and tired looking, pale from giving birth but a few hours earlier.
Shannon was nearly a god to Otis, it now had been ten-years, ten long enduring years since his death in 1967, he was now himself, getting old, sixty-seven years old, he had been ten-years Shannon’s junior. He said loudly to Mabel, now owning several fish stores, between Minnesota and Alabama, “Sorry it wasn’t you.” He had always liked Mabel, although Gus never liked him.
“What kind of car is that?” asked Cantina.
“A car, just a car. A damned good car…why?” he remarked back to her, in a soft delicate way, his hand still holding the bamboo walking stick. “The car’s a Cadillac I guess,” he mentioned as if not wanting to mention it, or pretending he didn’t want to mention it.
“Oh,” said Cantina in a near un-hearable shallow whisper. “Yes, it looks like a brand-new car, a 1977 I bet?”
“Yes, that’s what it is.”
“Oh.” She said, as she glanced back out the window. No one could have guessed what she was thinking, but she watched him and watched him as he looked at the child, paced with his staff looked out the window into the cornfields—as if longing for those extended lost days, never to be rekindled.
“Here take this check, its $5000-dollars, do whatever you need to do to make your life better and your child’s, whatever his name is,” he said to Cantina, passing the check over to her in a frizzy like way, and walking out the doorway, as if in a trance, stepping down the few wooden steps onto the ground (leaning on his walking stick with more of his weight than he had before) with a crazy like look on his face, moving a lever in the bamboo upper part of the stick, which made a four inch blade extend outward from a hole in the end of the stick—a weapon as sharp as a razor, and took a bottle of whiskey out of the trunk of his car, and stood there holding the stick in one had and the bottle in the other, drinking and pushing the blade back into its little hidden compartment, its nest by way of the ground, looking into the cornfields: just waiting there, as the neighbor concluded it was who she thought it was, Otis Wilder Mather. The rich black man from Ozark, Alabama, that once was the bosom-buddy of Shannon O’Day, they were like white on rice, or one black pea and one white pea mixed together in a pod: and many a nights had they spent in the cornfields half cocked, and unable to walk. Otis remembered what Shannon had told him once, that life was no more than “A Tick on a clock,” that “to do what you’re going to do, or don’t do it at all, because waiting—if prepared is simply not worth the waste of the time thinking about it…” and then he added “and then life as we know it, is over” and so it was appearing to so, for him.

When Corporal Shannon O’Day was shipped over to France to fight the Germans, in those trenches, Otis then was only ten years old. Then when WWII, came along he didn’t go to that war either, he had something they called flat feet “I’m taking care of my family in Ozark looking after the things,” he’d tell folks who asked, and those who didn’t ask, but wanted to ask, and stared at Otis as if they were about to ask, Shannon O’Day would tell all of those “It aint none of your business why Otis is up here drinking with me in my brother’s cornfields and not in that stupid war those Europeans started over across the Atlantic again.” It’s how it was with Shannon O’Day, a thin, pale-ridden Irishman, with quizzical eyes, who looked about fifty when he was thirty, though it was known that he had married by the time he died a number of times, and only one daughter Catharine, born in 1947, two years after that war had ended and was never a grandfather as well, she was twenty-years old the time Shannon died, not thirty. Mrs. O’Day or Gus’ wife always knew better to stay out of Shannon’s drinking business, and he was just too lazy and idle, although Gus would try to help him out now and then, help him also with his drinking—a hopeless task at best, they said, everyone said knowing that his sole connection with life after the first war: that he didn’t give a hoot for much after that, but Gus’ farm that is where Shannon and Otis lay in the cornfields summer after summer, the first summer Otis was in St. Paul, he worked at the Hill Top Stables, and around 1945, Shannon borrowed him five-hundred dollars and Otis bought his first fish store down in Ozark, Alabama, that started him off, he never forgot it, fact that for years now Gus had allowed him to drink like crazy in the cornfields was due to Shannon getting mad if he’d not allow it, which Gus had purchased when Shannon was just ten years old, and raised him from then on, until the war that is. For a while in other years, Otis even lived with Shannon down in his apartment, the one he kept on Wabasha Street, away from Gertrude his wife at the time, who lived on Amenable Street, he had been living folks said—hearsay, in some caves, outer section of the sewer system, over by Rondo Street (a part, section made during the Civil War days, held up by old rotting timbers, wooden beams, some replaced with large stones and cement blocks, it kept him dry from the rainy days, and he could make a fire with no worrying about city code violations, or being spotted as a vagrant and put in jail, or being asphyxiate with smoke)—Rondo, being a street and district in St. Paul, know for the blacks; Otis, a bachelor in his decrepitude surroundings, no more than a open hole, less than a barn. So now it looked like he was doing fine in the financial area, aged somewhat, and seemingly a little sick, too much reminiscing, too many hardships to look back on, and that terrific ability to drink in the act of near dying.
Even the Stanley’s knew by observation, or heard by hearsay, much of what took place in those far-off days. That Gus and his kind, his crowd laughed at Shannon for taking Otis in as if he was a sparrow with a broken wing—and a nigger lover on top of it. And Otis knew it was not the first time they had laughed at him, calling Shannon: nigger lover, even Gus said that, I mean, he wasn’t called white trash, which would have been truer than nigger lover, I mean he just took a liking for Otis, and he did work: Shannon did work, once at a foundry and a few other places, just not steadily. They began to tell Shannon themselves down at the local downtown Conley Island Bar, the so called Group Gus hung out with, the likes Judge Finley,
“Tell that nigger friend of yours to stay down in Alabama where he belongs; you know which one, that war dodger!”
The drunker Shannon would get, the more redder his face got, the more angry he got, he then would look about the bar of white faces and bloodshot eyes and stained yellow teeth from smoking cigar after cigar, or cigarette after cigarette, behind the smoke, you could see where scorn prowled, and it was there from his extending square jaw bones to inside its marrow, and Gus knew Shannon’s blood was red hot, like a flaming sword ready to strike “I got to go on home now fellows, because I got a wife that wakes me up early to tend to those cornfields, I got to mosey on home now see you all later…” he’d say, and bring Shannon with him before he tore up the bar, bring him to his house on Albemarle Street if he could walk, or if not, to his apartment around the corner. Shannon usually got half cocked, but not all that drunk he was a professional drinker, I mean he could drink—seldom got sick like those armature drinkers—so he’d say, boast, pretending he was drunker, walking out of the bars, and if Judge Finley was there, he’d say to the old judge “Git out of my way fag, I like niggers better!” And Gus and the old Judge would just brush it off as if he was out of his mind.
“Niggers?” the judge would repeat; “You got a nigger lover for a brother Gus!” laughing now.
“Yes,” Gus would say. “I know, he looks after a big black one, but aint nothing I can do about it, he’s my brother.”
“Send them all back to the South, or to Africa!” the old judge always could be quoted as saying, as if it was his one and only phrase for the black race.
This was all true what Judge Finley said about Shannon O’Day, he did take care, watch over Otis like an older brother would, even when Gus tried to put him in jail for burning his fields, which he never burnt, and Shannon couldn’t say way, because had he told the truth, he would have exposed his brother’s wife to infidelity. So not knowing—even at the cost of belittlement, was better than telling him the truth, it was a matter of sorting out priorities, who got hurt the worse, or the levels of hurt, or where was the point of most damage.
But with Otis, there was this kind of devotion, not pride for prides sake, but devotion, for devotions sake, for Otis’ sake, it lifted him up from a depressing world that Shannon took his side—no matter what the cost was to him, he became much more than he ever expected to become because of Shannon’s outlook on him, not his own outlook—he couldn’t beat the white man to death physically, so he beat him to death with success. No one up in the Midwest in those early days would except him, permit him unabated to advance, it was an attitude among the whites: I aint going to give to no nigger—especially coming from down south, who avoided a war, the chance to settle down here among us good white folks, to seed money home to feed those little niggers back in Ozark, that was the way of thinking. “Aint no chance in hell, we’re going to do that,” old Judge Finley would confirm while half drunk in the bars, say it to himself or anyone listening, willing to listen—sober enough to decipher. Judge Finley had told Otis, a few decades back, nearly cussed him out in the courtroom, to head on out of town, and spend more time where he came from, than were he came to, meaning, Alabama and not Minnesota. Perhaps Finley’s mind—being a friend of Gus—knew nothing else would scare Otis away, yet the fact remained, Otis came back after years, and rekindled the friendship he once had with Shannon, oh, it wasn’t exactly as it was before, but between business and business he spent a whole lot of afternoons with Shannon drinking—of course no longer able to take drink after drink like he used to, and at this time he formed even a bond with Cantina, Shannon’s only daughter, otherwise known as Catherine. He watched her grow up, you could say. Even thought of himself as her uncle, for the time being, until she showed development, and after Shannon died, his heart would be quiet and proud he took such an interest in her, although after Mabel’s husband died, remembering her fling with him, he had never forgot it actually—he had a half lit flame for her, and she had a full lit flame for him. The only problem was, or so it seemed, was that humanity had created a curse for him, a black skinned curse, although times were changing, they were changing slowly in Minnesota.
“Your father was a fine proud man, a war hero,” he told Catherine, as if he was near god himself. And had he aimed to look like anyone white, it would have been Shannon O’Day.

“I know what they all say to one another,” he had told Cantina, a year later, after the child had been born. “I can just visualize it, live it all over for the boy: but I can fix it, not with money but I can fix it. Just like your father fixed things up for me. It has taken me thirty-five years, but I done it at last, I’m richer than a dog with a barn full of bones. Now that I think of it, I never did ask you, what did you named the boy?”
It had been a year since she had seen Otis, it was pert near the same month and day he had left, and now returned, but a year apart, the boy was walking, black as the ace of spades, and Cantina was as white as the empty space around the ace of spades.
While thinking, pacing between the kitchen and the living room, Mabel busy doing the dishes, and Cantina fumbling on the couch involved somehow with putting a new shirt on the boy, said “Otis Jr., his name is Otis Wilde O’Day Mather Jr.” In his head, in Otis’ head came a sound of screeching tires, until there was a sudden stop, “What?” he said.
He broke suddenly free, to think free. Thinking “How on God’s earth can this little boy grow up here, with a white woman, and how can Shannon O’Day’s daughter live with this scorn, a life time of scorn wherever they walk, this just wasn’t good enough for Shannon O’Day, not at all…” thoughts were galloping to and fro in his mind; and then Cantina look his way fumbled with the boy’s shirt, broke free of her attention span that she had on the boy: to ask, quite clearly ask, looking at Otis, lonely and droopy-eyed —ask explicable, beyond—and seemingly into his mind’s eye, “Just what is on your mind Otis?”
Suddenly she could see he was contemplating something, and the child knew something, he was looking at him with foresight, as if he realized that his father’s voice had entered a tomb.
“What’s the matter Otis,” she repeated; “The boy” he said, in a depressed, drunken astonishment, as if he had just figured it out. He seemed to watch an imaginary happening taking place—eyes towards the heavens, one he was going to duplicate.

Now it was getting toward twilight. His composure had completely changed, the boy was crying, and his mother was trying to breastfeed the boy, but he kept on crying no matter what. As it is often said, a child knows at six months old, knows his parent’s character to the point of controlling his parents, perhaps it is truer than fiction, but could it be controlled this evening was the unspoken question? Cantina’s face still puzzled on Otis’ previous behavior, and lack of candor: especially, his brooding, his sphinx-like face, now it was calm and collected “Do you want something to eat?” asked Mabel.
“I don’t want anything,” he remarked stern and straight, looking at the child, smiling at Catherine—but the child had some kind of foresight, intuition, something instinctive, as if its whole body knew what his brain couldn’t completely put together—a siren went off in his eyes—and it cried and cried, and moved and wanted to get away as if it was a little bird caught in the grips of a closing hand, closing fist.
“You should eat something,” she exclaimed.
This time he did not answer at all, staring down at the child—his walking stick in his hand, He turned the lever on the upper part of the bamboo, and the sun had completely been devoured by night now. “It wouldn’t be much longer, the child will be sleeping,” said Cantina, thinking the crying was driving Otis crazy. He couldn’t hear her, or the child’s cries, he couldn’t hear anything, or feel anything, no longer curious of what people might think now or then, but knowing how vengeful they could be in the future for his child. He could even hear what they were saying about him and his child and Shannon O’Day, his bosom-buddy, years in advance, the suggestion of believing afar into the fury man’s heart, their intent: Old Otis Wilde Mather with his hand tumbling at last he come to the conclusion, his child would not pay the same price for life he had paid: he screamed aloud like a madman, glancing at Cantina watching the child
“What are you thinking, going to do…!” she said.
“Nothing much! Nothing Much!” that’s what he screamed, as the four inch blade shot out of the end of his walking stick that no one seen—that he only felt it movement forward, thrust, its click into a solid and firm hold, and only he knew, could feel the extending weight at the end of his stick. His eyes were becoming indistinctly blurred, in the new born twilight. “Don’t worry any,” he said calmly, smoothly as everything became still, as if before a storm. He heard the galloping in his head again—“…horses: those damn horses again…” he complained, in a whisper, but he remained still. His hand firmly on the top of his walking stick, he stood up, faced the girl and child “Otis,” she said, as if thinking he was leaving.
“I’m here, I’m right here, don’t fret…” Otis said with a smile, a storm had started outside, and the lights went off. His left hand touched the child’s throat, “What are you doing?” asked Cantina in the dark.
Now he moved his right had swiftly with the end of the bamboo. He knew exactly in the dark where the child was, every inch of him, just as he knew every turn, every event in his life, every moment he and Shannon O’Day spent together. The room exploded with terror—but to Otis the horses in his head had now stopped galloping, and consequently, there was a wild relief.
“Otis!” the mother shouted; “Stop! Stop! Otis! Otis!”
But the tall thin, fuming figures crippled around the baboon couldn’t stop, against the frown and roar in the room, and the abrupt storm out side and Mabel frozen stiff in the archway of the kitchen. With the blade lifted, it opened up a wound around the neck of a glaring child’s eyes, without any cry, any sound, the mother passed out.

No: 660 (8-4-2010) Written: as a pre-story to “The Black Sedan”
Leading up to Otis demise••

Galloping Horses
(Part Two, to “Otis”)

To Otis, the shouts and screams were the loudest thing he had ever heard in his life, and they were now echoing in his head, and there were galloping horses in his head—again. The horses were pounding, and of course could not be heard outside of Otis’ head, and it continued to build, as he stood by his car, making not a sound. It was outrageous, unbelievable what he had just done. But it was too late to undo, to re-cross that bridge, to even re-build that bridge, the child, the infant was dead. He wanted to run. He figured he might. He had talked himself into doing so the night before. Thus, he expected to, and he expected everything to go as planned, and it did, except for the galloping horses inside his head. “Right after you do what you got to do to the infant, if it is born today, or tomorrow, you can run and escape back to Alabama,” he had told himself. “But you can’t run until you finish the plan.” He did that; he did all he had planned but run. His eyes were closed now, he was shaking, and he opened his trunk for a bottle of whiskey. He bent over to the outside foist, turned it on and washed his hands, and washed his hands, washed them for two hours straight. These were his vain attempts to calm down, clean that dirty sin. He knew the decaying corpse was still on the couch, he saw Mabel standing still in the kitchen doorway, her hands over her face, where Cantina was he didn’t know, he had been out by the car for a long time now, washing his hands for a long time, fell on the ground woke up (having had slept for four hours). He had prepared himself for the killing, and he knew he’d never forget this day, forget about what he did so if he was to be hung by the neck to die, so be it. His body and mind was empty, he was or had been waiting, thinking listening for the police, but they didn’t come. It was all too grotesque, nightmarish, and he wasn’t going to run.

The sound of the horse’s hoofs came steadily. He followed the sound as if it was in the air, and he was sweating. Then the galloping ceased. He stepped forward, his teeth grinding one on top of the other, nearly all of them. His lips dry, his hands sweaty half blind, a faint phosphorescent glare into the eyes of heaven—it was a dark heaven, it was 2:00 a.m., in the morning, he looked at the shape of the corn stalks—shadowy shapes like creatures of the night, perhaps it was just a possum, because there was an infant like cry, and he knew it couldn’t be the infant; after a time, he started slashing at his fingers, fingers to fingers, he found some silence. He walked backwards to the field. He was a large man, bumping everything on his way to the cornfield, drinking the bottle of whiskey gulp after gulf. At last he threw his bamboo walking stick over by a hollow stump, and fell suddenly beneath the corn stalks, crawling on his knuckles, faint in his head, the ground was damp; he snuffed at the dirt with his nostrils. Now he lay back glaring at the sky. He had never been so tired, so spent, so dark inside, he hooted like an owl, and passed out (Mabel, ended up looking for Otis—thinking, everything had gotten out of hand).
You can mark it, he never run.
“You can never tell what a man will do when in a pinch,” said Mabel, “what would Shannon do?” She sat on the top of her step that evening, in old trousers, and a collarless white blouse, smoking a cigarette. “He had no reason to run off,” she commented, “to run into those cornfields as if it was his sanctuary, as it was for Shannon.”
Cantina, her face lowered, beaten and worn, stained, shabby hair, “I got to say something,” she said, “but I just don’t know what!” And she wished she had not even spoken that.
“You’re better off without the child,” said Mabel, as if trying to protect Otis, “drinking makes you do strange things,” she added.

No: 661 (8-5-2010)

“Amnon, Amnon!”
((A Shannon O’Day Story) (Late 1984 to1988))

Chapter One
(Homecoming)

It was the morning after Amnon had returned home from college; he had spent six-years away at Harvard gotten his law degree (now twenty-four years old, handsome, tall, dark eyes and square jaw, and broad shoulders, five foot eleven), and was hoping to get an early judge’s seat in Ramsey County, likened to his father—now deceased, Judge Albert Finley, the elder, and he was out on the town with his younger sister Tamar—who had just turned eighteen (prom queen from Washington High School, a beauty and well developed since last he saw her), and was preparing for school, and Mrs. Finley, their mother—Eleanor Finley (madden name Hill, from a well to do family, from Summit Hill in St. Paul, nearby where she once lived in a large mansion—nearly connecting to her parents’ house, now a museum) all three had gone out celebrating his Law Degree, to the Blue Horse Restaurant and Bar, out on University Avenue. In a way, this was for Eleanor, a climacteric year, one son returns and one child leaves, but Tamar would not be far away, she’d be living on campus, at the University of Minnesota, but a few miles away, studying Psychology. The elder boy, G.N. Finley, or often just called Nathan for his middle name—leaving the George out because it was too close to George Washington’s name, he was already a judge in Minnesota, twenty-eight years old, who had gotten into some trouble a few years back, called “The Black Sedan Case” in Minnesota, dealing with the death of Otis Wilde Mather, a rich negro from Ozark, Alabama, a friend to the O’Day family, in particular to a deceased man once known in the city as Shannon O’Day, a war hero of the Great War, so legend says. The case was on hold between Joe Quinn and Sheriff Donavan’s statement, and Truman Quinn, had said it was a false statement, his son was tricked into saying what he said. But Banister Samuel Jackson Mather, Otis’ brother was pushing the government to act on this case—to reopen it, because it was closed so quickly and oddly, and then the sheriff had a turn of heart and stated Joe said he killed Otis, and now his father said, “My sons a little daffy as you all know, and he can be tricked easily, as the Sheriff had done.”
Anyhow, during the whole evening, Tamar had hardly looked at her brother, had said only a few words to him, especially when he had demanded they dance together and him crushing his body against hers, like slamming a door into her face, and trying to persuade her to go out and have a night-cap after they took their mother home. He had smelled the heavy perfume she used, he liked it, but she remained quiet, pert near still, and she walked off the dance floor, not waiting for his approval. Amnon made no reply, and slacken his pace as she increased hers.
When they had gotten home, he kept her up for three hours talking of his affairs at Harvard, drinking glass after glass of wine, red dry wine, and how she had blossomed into a beauty, as they walked on through the mansion in the darkness, down the corridor to their bedrooms—he kept close to her like a puppy to its mother.
“Oh Amnon, Amnon stop!” she said, “stop thinking I’m one of your girlfriends at school, I’m your sister, everybody seems to know that but you.” He slid his arm around her neck, sliding it on and over her shoulder, pinned her against the wall, the light was dim above them, “It’s true,” he said to her, “I’m your brother,” and her quick reply was, “You’re dirty! Step back!”

It was now well into early hours of the morning, and the scent of her was still on him, transplanted into his pores, drifted steadily into his bedroom from hers, as if it was waves of flowers following him; he had rapped her, kind of rapped her, without much resistance beyond the shady side of “Amnon, Amnon, stop, please don’t”; whereupon, after it was over he retreated himself to tiptoe back to his bedroom, not necessary back, since he had not been there that evening—yet, but down to his room, around the corridor. From his bedroom window, he could see her bedroom—and there he stared for a moment looking at her laying there naked, as he had pulled her covers off of her for that very reason, in her bed still sleeping.
Tamer, messed about the kitchen nervously in the morning with her mother, as the servant waxed the living room table and chairs, dusting this and that, and the cook was making breakfast for Tamer and Eleanor, Amnon was still sleeping, it was 9:00 a.m., Saturday, they had slept in some.

Chapter Two
(The Deal)

In the meantime, Amnon, dashed about the city, talking to his father’s old friends, making connections, harassed the younger lawyers at the courthouse, in his old cold arrogant Finley fashion, and took a liking for Catherine O’Day, now thirty-seven years old, she owned Gus O’Day’s old Farm—farmhouse and cornfield and all, had also inherited $10,000-dollars from her father’s will, and Otis Wilde Mather left her a fish store down on Wabasha Street in the city, now dead, all those from the last generation now were dead, all those I’ve just mentioned, I just mentioned were dead to include Mabel, she had quite a sum after adding it all up. And Catherine had known of Amnon from the parties Gus had in what she’d now call the old days, and when he had invited Old Judge Finley over, and his sons and wife for dinner. Shannon was seldom about. So it was an updated reunion for them both.
Tamer had went off to the University, but had made a deal with Amnon, that he should ask mother for a $5,000-dollars advance, of his inherence, lest she tell her what he had done, raped her, kind of rapped her, but she’d make it sound more like ‘Raped’ not the second one. She gave him until the end of the semester, three months—this of course would ruin his career, and as cold as he was, so was she—it was a Finley to Finley genetic thing, I think. And Amnon had known the bad reputation his bother had gotten from the “Black Sedan Incident,” he nearly lost his judgeship: where the brute of a boxer had killed Otis—when in essence he was just supposed to have scare him, which the case was still fermenting between the Courthouse and the Police Station, looking to get a second and more clearer statement from the accused, now out on bail on $10,000-dollars. And should the Finley’s name come up again, come out in anymore derogatory cases, it would for sure, stop his being appointed to any critical position, and do his brother harm—not to mention his family name. But he dare not go to his mother, lest he wanted to be taken completely out of the will—she was not of course an original Finley, rather a Hill, but being married to one for over fifty-years made her cold as ice or could be, and as for his brother, if he knew, he’d surely not assist him in a judgeship or job or anything, wanting to keep his distance.

He spent a lot of time with Catherine O’Day now, and at the Courthouse as an assistant for his bother, checking out cases, occasionally now and then going out with the guys for a drink—not his usual self, and spending more time courting Catherine, over ten years his senior. Actually, his mother was growing a little concerned, un-preventative in the sense of she was used to being, just the opposite—over protective.
“Mark my words mother, I have my reasons, I need to make my mark while I can, I’m nearly twenty-five,” as if he would store up the devilment in the mean time, only to display it sometime afterwards, whereupon once he got what he wanted, and got to where he wanted to go, he’d hold loose of it, and let his inners burst wherever it may. And then, anyone in the way would have hell to pay.
“Why, what is it that is driving you,” she asked him, knowing the first few days back he was so carefree, but that gay kind of look was gone, that happy go lucky look had disappeared for a serious one. And then worse turned to worse, Tamer was pregnant, and she wanted $10,000 to shut up.
“Well,” said Amnon in agreement “If you want it, it will take longer,” and he got a reprieve out of that; meaning, five-thousand as agreed on before, which was in a week, and the other five in three more months, thereafter. Amnon leaned over the sofa at their mansion, and touched her arm “All this for one night’s pleasure?” he remarked.
“I don’t see why you are so upset over it, it’s your child. I mean, it really is.”
“Oh,” he said “then I’ll just wait to see the birth certificate, before I give you the second $5000-dollars and if my name is on it, I won’t pay.”
She sat there rigidly, “You’ll pay until that child is eighteen years old, or until I get married.” She said indomitable.
“Is that so,” Amnon said, walking over to the piano, sitting down on the stool and starting to play, ‘Old Man River,’ then commented, “Those psychology courses are really doing you justice!”

Chapter Three
(The Doormat)

The Child was born out of wedlock, and named Erskine Finley, in lack of knowing the father’s name, she told her mother she had gotten drunk and got Pregnant from some stranger at a college party. She ended up enjoying the grandchild nonetheless—that is to say, without knowing the name of the father, for the following two years, during those days Amnon filled his destiny, and became a judge, and discovered pride once more, but not to any wild extent. And he made his payments as she had demanded $5000 every three months. Between his salary and playing the horses, living at home, it had worked out. Those days he drove a lesser valued car also, as he drove into town, and had less expensive habits, and gave up courting Miss O’Day, whom he was only courting anyhow for an escape route should he need one.
Mrs. Finley, her growing belief, what at last her youngest son had settled down, but something told her, it wouldn’t last. That he’d outwear this time and that old violent temper of his would flare up. Mrs. Finley having a true lack of optimistic outlook for young Amnon: Who even was quite fond of Erskine? She seemingly disillusioned herself by assisting him in every way she could to get him the best position at the courthouse, and in line for a future state legislative position. Yet in all, Amnon himself improved in his own ways, without perhaps even knowing, or wanting to, but through the snare he had created with Tamer, He had been so cleverly tricked, so he felt—now into this clandestine fatherhood dilemma. Tamer, herself was wondering how long before he’d grow out of wanting success at the price he was paying for it—monitory, and position. Mother Finley felt he needed a wife, but Tamer felt different, there went her support: perhaps Eleanor forgot: they both bled the same blood.

Then sowing-time over the following year—1988, Ronald Reagan was still president, Tamer had raised her support payments to $7000-per month. And she found herself with nothing to do, she had one year of college left, a free summer, and she was bored, and Amnon was taking interest in Miss O’Day again, and that bothered her. The summer was warm and hot, and she had gone into some kind of savage gloom over being a single mother. It was that summer, Mrs. Eleanor Finley pass on, had a heart attack. The family split up the $600,000-dollars equally, and only the mansion was left, and that had a 1.6 million dollar price tag on it. And Amnon was now engaged to Cantina O’Day. It was a sweet and sour summer for Tamer.

Chapter Four
(Impact)

Samuel Ingway a young lad of twelve years old, son to a foreman who works at a foundry on the East Side of town called Malibu Iron, had been down by the Mississippi River playing, somewhat playing, more at waking up tramps and hobos sleeping inside of the cave within the cliffs, right above the Robert Street Bridge, that crossed the River from St. Paul—he’d run up to as they were still sleeping, kick them here or there and run like hell; a car had been driven onto the first part of the bridge, going southwest, towards West St. Paul that is, and the car went out of control and had skidded and jumped over the side railing, and crashed, rolled and crashed, halfway into the Mississippi River, and the man in the car was groaning, he was still alive—but painful groaning, and he lay with his head on Samuel’s knees cussing, struggling to move his body, but he was pinned, and the boy just let him do as he wished, with half opened eyes; the boy waiting for someone, anyone to appear to help him. The man looked up to the boy “Something busted in the brake line,” he mumbled—still half in a daze, “I’m not drunk or anything, I think it was… (and he went silent, as if he had a hunch….)” The boy held his knee up higher so his head would not drop back into the shallow water; he was liable to drawn otherwise.
“I hear the ambulance coming sir,” the boy said.
“You, who are you?” asked Amnon.
“Samuel, Samuel Ingway, I was just checking out the caves down here and I heard a crash and here I am. I can’t pull you out, you’re too heavy, I already tired,” said the boy, “but I’ll stay with you,” he said with a calm face, looking at the wet face from what had been in the water prior to his arrival.

“We better get him out of here,” said the first arriving police officer to the boy.
“Aint nobody else coming?” asked the boy.
“He you’re pa?” asked the police officer, as they both struggled to pull Amnon out and would have but couldn’t slide him completely out, his feet were crushed under a tone of iron and steel. So they both stopped, having him half way out: as both man and boy caught their breaths.
“No,” said the boy, “He’s not my pa; he looks like a dead man to me though,” added the boy.
“He sure does act like one,” said the police officer; and then he was.

Outline: 8-16-2010/No: 668

The Ebon Room

Judson Macomb

“Long and dark eldritch evenings, I lived and listened and slept, in this wind howling deep lustrous black room of gloom—no electric bulbs embedded in the ceiling, flattened by boredom, covered by a load of stone, no birthdays, choked with idleness, as a urine pungent smell drifted throughout my cell daily, as if it was stuck in limbo like me. No stray birds, a few stray mice, while in a deep, frenzied fantasy. And never once did I blaspheme God, nor seek his invisible shield. And in the process became an absurdist, and believed that it all was meaningless, irrational but consequently, we must go on with our existence, this strained conceit in us demands we do so, thinking that we are more than what we are, or hoping we are— And waited, and I waited for shapes in the shadows to form, and sensed things of darkness near me, and after awhile, saw shrill looking cadaverous faces lingering and lurking in the air, and smelt putrid odors as it lingered likewise in invisible clouds overhead—beings, dragging their flimsy corpse like bodies to and fro, malodorously from corner to corner.
“I was young back then, filled with irony and the wonder of life. Dark rooms are not silent, doctor. All those days I watched and listened and I knew they were there. The creatures were like ebon manna falling from the sky while living those four-years in a silent panic. And with their yellow eyes I could see them clearer; they grew friendlier as time passed— in the amber twilights of my cell, created by some kind of sorcery, I do suppose, in this titan built prison, with no horizons, only a bleak and eldritch twilight, with anon wings to the eerie darkness it so dearly loved, and they even spoke to me—as they separated from one point in the room to another in their ongoing ashy like transfigurations, all these dark things: shadows, and shapes and strange things out of other worlds, out of space and time, out of a vapor like haze.
“I only got glimpses of them of course—when they talked and howled, lurked, moved about stealthily until they simply disappeared—this awful lone, that always was so still in my room, was a blessing when they came to visit me, even if they were who they were—whoever they were, as I stood the first few times—weirdly stood in a hysterical posture, and frantic—stood in an upright, pure vertical position until I got to know them better, and became at ease—became familiar with seeing them, they sounded like rushing water, far-off at sea when they spoke, as if halfway in our world, and halfway in theirs—they were, by and large, ebony shadows, with cadaverous glimpses: beings more ancient than the mountains, more diabolic than the creatures of the deep, and some were reptilian. ‘Huh!’ I said to myself, ‘it is better to mingle with the dead or half dead, since I am not allowed to mingle with the living.’ ”
I tried often to sit up erect; it was most a most difficult task at times, after an extraordinary effort, I managed to do so, I did realize at that time I was very weak, my thoughts were confused, but my curiosity wasn’t, although I found it most difficult to orient myself in any manner, being light-headed, living in an enfeeble state of existence—dazed. But these abruptions—of what you call, unreality, allowed me to live on. You see doctor, it really wasn’t starvation that was going to kill me—I knew that from day one, but rather an extreme thirst for other life, contact; boredom you know, kills all living things faster than any disease. Thus, the roar of life is like protein to the flesh, not the complete peril of silence that would be a bitter death. You might say, during my captivity, I was in uncharted space, within the darkest reefs. Many of times I felt I died, and was revived by one or more of these creatures.
Only having a Shawl…
“One night—in the corner of my room, this yellow-eyed thing, reptilian thing, creature, with watermelon seeds for eyes, with a long purple shawl, or cape, something on that order—very long, you know the one, I saw him many times after this night, this first visit, he appeared to be beckoning me to come to him, in his little corner of the room, originally my room my corner, not always did I see him but on many occasions thereafter he shared my room with me without knocking. He filled the room many a night with his chanting; it soothed me. Matter-of-fact, many of times I felt I had died, and was revived by one or more of these creatures.”

“How was your room?” questioned the doctor.
“It was long and narrow, with a tall ceiling, it was a trifle taller than I. and I’m pert near six-foot tall. This much I distinctly recall, but for the most part—for the life of me, it seems unreal and remote, and somehow belongs to another person other than me. In those days, now seemingly eerie and far off days, I often felt very dreamy and detached from everything and in particular, everybody. I found bugs very edible, after a while and I even pretended they were fruit. I can’t identify the bugs, but its portion was mouth-watering after a while—their residue adding to the putrid odor.”
“You have given me a heap of weird impressions,” said the doctor, “some of which could not exist in our everyday reality. I do hope you see this more clearly now that you are out of your old environment, rest and proper nutrition intake is of course required before your abnormal reality completely disappears, and the oddity of it all. They differ from anything reasonable, through worlds unknown to us, who live in a world of matter-of-factness, or at least from anything I’ve ever encountered. I don’t want to send you to an asylum, you’ve been through enough, but you must acknowledge, that your long stay in that room contributed to these bizarre impressions.”
Consequently, in an effort to surmount his agitation, Judson Macomb started pacing the floor with vehement briskness from wall to wall in the doctor’s office.
“We are not in Germany anymore,” remarked the doctor, to his client, “you can let me know who gave you the cape now, or is it a robe or was it a shawl? no one will tell the SS where you got it? And what wing were you on?” Then Doctor R. J. Sharp saw Judson Macomb, his patient, start to tremble, he wouldn’t stop. Then Judson rolled around on his back right there in the middle of his office floor—as if in some cyclopean cave, stretching out flat, his arms entangled—a groaning from a shrill voice with some dysphonic noises came out of his mouth—indiscernible words, his eyes became a malignant red, as he tried to suppress the unpleasant moment, but he couldn’t. A sinister, ominous aching in his head prevailed; the inmost fibers of his body illumed to a purple and yellow heat, creating a near unearthly form to him, as his body vibrated like a thunder storm right then and there on the woodened varnished floor. He held onto his head, he held onto it as if it might fall off his neck, and closed his eyes. “The room was like an alpine cliff sometimes,” he murmured, “if it wasn’t for those trans-dimensional pilgrims, I’d not be here today doctor,” he exclaimed, looking up at him. “Yes, they invaded my room, had overtaken my room but, but there I lived in a stupor, without a friend, what did the SS expect. In that room the granite walls were often being pinched immeasurably nearer to me, as if to squeeze the life out of me like a python. I couldn’t stop them.” Then he cried out in silence with his convex and reddened eyes and looked towards the ceiling as if it was some great somber sky.

To try to break the moment, the doctor asked his patient a frivolous question, “You were known as number 545, is this correct?”
Judson breathed with difficulty. He glanced at the doctor—as he sat up, no longer a cosmic menace— soothe and exalt: “I never really liked falling to sleep back then, nor do I nowadays, because I often thought I’d never wake up.”
“They were SS men, right?” asked the doctor.
Judson was now sitting upright, and in a chair, he let his head droop, it seemed heavy for him, the muscles in his neck were disturbing to look at by the doctor, trusting out from the surrounding surface on a semi rounded mass of flesh. He turned to look out the window, there was a mild sun.
“They, the creatures and I had an obscure kind of telepathy between us, I felt assured they knew what I was thinking, what I was saying when I wasn’t saying anything out loud, and I knew what they were thinking, but not saying, out loud. We both had ramparts to each others brains.”
“Did you ever go over to help in the crematorium?” asked the doctor.
His client didn’t answer, but the doctor knew he most likely didn’t, or couldn’t, he was eighty-pounds when he was found in his room, and was near six foot tall.
“The creatures were dancing, dragging the dead like a heap of cobwebs, to and fro throughout the room, peering at me oddly, and after a few years, I got redeeming glimpses of a clear blue sky, they allowed me to see.”
“You do realize you were having hallucinations in that room, Mr. Macomb, don’t you?” remarked the doctor, knowing there were no windows in the room. And Judson closed his eyes again, remembering the stench, it was of a latrine, it floated in the air, everywhere.
“I just know this world was not my own,” replied Judson.
“Perhaps these hallucinations, and this strange-dimensional world, or worlds, with nameless beings, simple grew stranger from day to day, was created by your mind, a mad and long flash of fears, running through your mind so as to survive” said the doctor.
“Why do you say that?” asked Judson.
“Describe your guard that paced the hallway,” asked the doctor.
“I seldom seen him, but the few times I did, he had voracious eyes and a jaw long-drawn-out, and wide. And he mumbled and fumbled all the time, I heard him do so.”
“Well, first of all, you had that long cape or was it a robe wrapped around you, I mean that was the only thing you had on, when they found you, and you never saw a guard, but the first day, and that was four years before your release, and you never saw the sky, because they never took you out of the one room, and you say…” then the doctor hesitated to finish his sentence.
“The cape my friend gave it to me, is that what you wanted to say?” asked Judson, “that my friend with the yellow irises, and black pupils the size of watermelon seeds was not really in my room, that I got it from a guard or someone else? But you said I never seen the guard?”
“Well,” said the doctor, “isn’t that more believable than that reptilian creature in your room?” Although that was problematic also, usually political prisoners or criminals never got such things, matter of fact the only one that could have given him the long purple type robe, was the Commandant, and he never had one, so that was most unlikely, and out of the question. But the good doctor wanted Judson to face reality, not make up stories to his fancy. On the other hand, he had been too weak to work and was seldom brought out for exercising from his one man cell. He was actually dying. Had they had a gas chamber, he might have had a quicker death than being starved to death slowly.
“Why,” asked Judson Macomb, “why do you insist by implying it was not my friend in the room?” Then he got up, quite like, he had closed his eyes again, and was hardly breathing, scratching himself here and there, his eyes then opened, but now vacant, then turned towards the doctor, looking at his egg-shaped head, “Why?” he asked a second time.
“Because it’s not possible,” said the doctor, “you see, when they found you, you were in a cell as big as a stone coffin, in which one could neither stand nor lie—”

Written: 6-14 & 15-2010; No: 623

The Tiamat,
And the Demonic Stampede

((6820 BC) (part one of three))

The Tiamat of the Underworld

Tiamat's Equatorial Stars

Beneath the equatorial starsWhere once, warriorsTurned their eyes, to the deep, deepInto the deep green sea:
Lays a hovering legend—calledThe Tiamat, wicked and terrifying.
Waiting—frightfully waitingAre these ancient eyesFor the gigantic bulk—Of a demigod, to reappear.

Prelude

The author has written three books and several tales on the adventures of the Tiamat, and Sinned. Published in 2002, this being the first published story since. The story here takes place around 6,820 BC (the Chakolithic Period—10,000 to 4300 BC), with her antagonist being Sinned, a man close to the One God. The Tiamat’s cohort, being the demigods of Yort, and her sons: Untameable, the First Born, and her rivals Marduk, Seth, the Tiger Woman, the Ram demigod, and the White Brute Gorillas; Lucifer who had his dealings with both the Tiamat and Marduk, was at this time, at his forest temple, outside the city, thus, not involved with this happening, but he was well known throughout the city and had his own temple in Yort, a city fortress. It was the ‘The Age of Pride’ where men and demigods lived in the visible world next to each other.

The Story

Yort, harbour

Her hands were very quietly nervous. Sinned, understood why she didn’t care to talk about it, but she wanted to talk, had to talk about it. But she had come from the Great City fortress, Yort, to see him in Pergamum, to report what took place, was still taking place, at the harbour, in the city, near the woods, she came hoping he could be of assistance. She was here to report what took place by the demigods in particular, the Tiamat and her two sons: Untameable, and the First Born, and her cohort, Marduk, Seth, the Ram, tiger Woman, the White Brute Gorillas. King Thesas III, ruler of Yort was in a deep underground vault within the city, hidden away from the demonic battle and stampede.

Princess Fatemeh

Princess Fatemeh, the daughter of King Thesas III, and her mother, the Queen, Ellen sat by her side as they told Sinned the story you are about to hear:

“The boat was already to sail,” said the daughter, “had we not been down at the dock, I doubt we would have escaped; or had been able to get ready to escape.”
“Yes,” said the mother, “the queen’s boats always sail at forenoon on Friday.”
“Just prior to this time was a great upheaval that took place, a great rumbling sound, and then everything started to rock to and fro, even the dock rolled and started to buckle. My mother and I were on board the boat, leaning on the rail. It had lasted about a minute,” said the daughter.
“We both fell flat onto and into the water and had to swim to the dock,” said the mother (exasperated.)
“It is, as you know Sinned, a big wooden dock, but it nonetheless rolled back and forth, what was left of it. My daughter and I hung onto each other for dear life. I remember seeing several of our navy men clambering back up out of the water. We remained for the moment right alongside of the statue of King Thesas the I (near the harbour), the first Thesas of Yort, the one your father fought with so many years ago and captured the Great Macedonian Stone, that had the rules and the name of the One True God, on it, taking it from the Tiamat, and bringing it to Yort, and of course giving up his life for it. How proud we were of him.”
“What did you do when the shock was over?” asked Sinned.
“We were now ashore. We had to climb the hill to Yort, no one to carry us up, no horses or wheeled means of transport to take us. The dock was crumbled in places and great portions of the wood were afloat in the harbour. We wanted to have our King saved from this horrid disaster, only to find out he was hidden in the underground vault.
“As I was about to say, we got as far as the One God Temple, and it was caved-in.

The City and the
Stampede

“All the walls in the city had fallen down, in on themselves like a crushed and open dam…just demolished, crumbled, everything crumbled to the ground. The demigods were fighting one another, the Tiamat with Marduk, Seth with the Tiger Woman, Untameable with the Ram demigod, the First Born with some angelic force called Hawk (eye of the sun, a leader from the dark angels of the person house for angels, someplace hidden in the cosmos). The White Gorillas, among themselves,” said the princess.
Said the mother, a little airless, “There was nothing we could do, there was a big cloud of dust all over everything from the buildings that had caved in. Much of the city could hardly been seen, nothing clear, visible, and fires were breaking out everywhere, all over.”
“What were the people doing, how were they reacting? Did they pray to the One God? Run into any of the temples?” asked Sinned.
“There didn’t’ seem to be any panic. That was the strange thing. I didn’t see anyone hysterical at all. There was a family, by the Tiamat’s temple and it caved in all around them, and they were badly shaken, and the little girl came out crying, and there were a horde of others, actually drinking wine standing and watching from the great walls of Yort, but they just stood there, they didn’t move much. They looked as if they couldn’t move, as if they were in a semi state of shock, and of course nobody helped anybody, everyone looking out for themselves,” remarked the Queen.

The Escape

“How did you get back to the boat?” asked Sinned.

“There was a horse, military horse tied to a post nearby us, and finally the commander of the military took notice of who we were, said he knew you since he was a boy, gave us his horse, so we could get to the dock area and come and see you. We got to the dock finally, found some of our dedicated sailors and we come here. The fire from the city was going so badly, then the wind came off shore towards us, and we sailed away, an awful wind, hot wind for a while. We got to the dock here, and of course they couldn’t get a gangplank out, so we had to swim again to the shore,” said the daughter.
“We had to leave many of our servants in the palace as it was burning, alive with the fire coming on!” said the Queen Mother, with tears now coming from her eyes, “and of course all our treasures.”
“Yes,” said the daughter, “we had to leave the cooks, and housemaids, and just everything.”
“There was a woman on the dock area looking for her husband, had lost him. I didn’t recognize her; she said he was an officer in the Army. There was a young couple also, that lost a child, they had just gotten married, I briefly talked to them, to comfort them,” said the mother. When we got on the boat, we could no longer even see the shore for the reason that of the smoke. The captain had three boats launched on the far side of us, from the smoke and fires. It blocked some of the heat. It kept coming on though;” said the Queen, “we slept in the open air; it was all like a volcanic eruption.”
“Did the demigods cause a tidal wave?” asked Sinned.
“No.” said the princess, “there wasn’t any at all.”

Reverberations

(The Queen Mother, she was thinking about the Captain of the navy, and the four boats that had made it to safety with her, and her husband that was in hidden in the palace underground vault, her mind went back and forth to them, as she sat there explaining it all to the old Soldier of Yort, Sinned.)

“Some of our sailors had stayed up all night and day, fighting the Sea to get here, they are very tired,” the Queen Mother offered.
“Yes,” said Sinned, “to save their Queen and Princess, but I see nobody else, not one old woman, or child, there were lots of people in the dock area, in the crumbling city, by its inland waterways, too, Yort, has a big population.”
“We were all confused in the demonic stampede,” said the Queen, “you have a voice with the One God, He listens to you, speak to Him on our behalf to stop these demonic beasts, please; lest there be nothing of our city to return to.”
“What did you think when it all started?” Asked Sinned (inquisitively).
“Oh,” said the princess “we knew it was the demigods, but it was just that nobody knew it was going to be so bad. There have been lots of fights among them in the city, over who would be ahead of all the temples in the city, who would have the number one temple, since you left, or was ostracized by them, and of course the King could do nothing about it, for you had not obeyed them. His hands were tied.”
“It would seem that you and the King have a lot of work to do now, reorganizing,” remarked Sinned.

Just then a disciple of Sinned came out from a cavern, asked, “When will you be finished here, we’re retranslating a few of the complex words on the Mesopotamian Stone, your friends are waiting?”
The Queen and Princess listened, their ears odd for a moment. The Queen was very tired. Sinned got up, the daughter got up.
“You understand,” said Sinned (now a very old man).”
The disciple had started to walk back to the entrance of the cave; they had been sitting outside by the old ruins, where once the She-Ocean, one of Satan’s lovers and mates, had held up, where she tried to seduce him. And in time they actually became friends.
Sinned took a long look at the jewels and fancy dress the Queen had on, although drenched from her swim, and the many rings the Princess had on her fingers, several, then started to meet his disciple who was waiting by the entrance for him…

“Well,” said the Queen, “what can we do?” (Near desperation.)
“You just don’t get it, you and the king and the people of Yort, have rebelled against the One God, now he is trying to get your attention and I guess he still didn’t get it…maybe you need more pain, before He straightens things out for you…some people need to get hit between the eyes to get their attention. You come to me, yet do evil against the name of the One God.”

Then the disciple and Sinned started to walk into the cave, said the disciple, “Who’s going to write this story, you or me?”
“I don’t know,” said Sinned.

Short Story: No: 422 (6-24-2009).

The Tiamat, in:
King Thesas’ Weakness
((Part two of Three, to ‘The Tiamat, and the Demonic Stampede’) (6820 BC))

Oblivion - and the Tiamat

[Sonnet of the Tiamat]
Her mouth sunken with undying black blood The same, King Belphegor in Hell sips. Silently at night about the halls of Scheol Unnoticed, she walks dribbling the cursed blood; The Tiamat has found her pacing-place, divine Where she sneers in jest, at Belphegor’s whims. O Hades and your relentless cryptic sides! The fallen demigod has mockery eyes! Ah! I hear her echoes from walls of stone From pre-history and to dawn’s eternal. She bellows as from Arch kingdoms, far below, As I stand here in wonderment and stare A sad gaze, who feels his soul eternal I hear her blind echoes, echoes, echoes! #512 [3/1/05]

King Thesas I, was a soldier, warrior, and ruler, as was his son, King Thesas II, both now dead, both worthy of their thrones. Why was King Thesas the III, not like his grandfather, or father? Thus, a weakness to the great city of Yort, which he allowed demonic temples to be built, in fear of his life, not raising a finger when confronted by the demonic forces of the Tiamat, and her sons, Untamable and the First Born, Lucifer, the Ram,
and even Marduk.

The Queen of Yort had now left Pergamum where the Queen and Princes had asked Sinned for intervention, to stomp the onslaught of the demonic stampede, killing and wreckage, they were doing in the city of Yort, that was taking place, for demonic domination of the city, its people, and temples…

Nimrod, Sinned’s scribe, has just asked this question of Sinned, hoping he could explain it…

“King Thesas the III, comes from a noble family, as you know Nimrod; he has a reddish and dark brown beard, a low forehead, and walks with a slump like an older man, like a near dead man you might say, and he mumbles more than talks, with the accent of a hissing snake, an annoying whisper. He has thin, cold hands; perhaps his veins are too thin for him, although he can talk several languages.
“His grandfather was an old tyrant, but a good diplomat, and when the demonic underworld tried to make a dictatorship out of Yort, a revolution started throughout the land, and his cries were heard in the great heaves by the One God. The Tiamat was refused refuge by both, the underworld, and Yort, she and his sons were in exile, in the great woods beyond the gates of Yort, Ura’el the angelic being sent to tie the Tiamat and those with her, escaped.
“King Thesas the II said to me one afternoon, back when I was a soldier, ‘The straits, both the Dardanelles and Bosporus, must remain open to our ships.’
“He spoke with the belief and hardness of a warrior king, fifty, if not a hundred times on this, to the point of becoming wearied from not being understood. You see it had to do with trade, the livelihood of Yort, ‘and once the straits are closed to our ships,’ he went on ‘Yort is at the mercy of any and all the demonic beasts or demigods in the land, in particular in the Black Sea, were the Tiamat lives. We therefore, can have no safety, no freedom to develop, no security from her and her kind from invasion as long as our ships and dreadnoughts cannot enter the black sea, there is only one thing for Yort to do, not allow the demonic beasts to blockade it, and therefore to arm. She must build a fleet and carry the Great Mesopotamian Stone, with its sacred writings on it in the lead ship, the sacred words of the One God. Other than that, it means crippling of our productive power, by diverting it to build a navy, and we simply must do it.’
“So you see, Nimrod, the second Thesas, was as his father, a man of faith, military cleverness, and a leader. When he died, Thesas the III, was not invited to the demonic conference, outside of Yort, the Tiamat shrugged her shoulders.”
“And what came of that conference?” asked Nimrod.
“We are dealing with facts, with conditions that existed then, and because of them, now. Thesas the III was no diplomat did not have any national aims for Yort. He sees the problems, as they were under his grandfather and father’s realms, but did not produce a revolution to come off against the demigods; he knew the rivalry between his predecessors, and he tried to gain by treaties some advantages and securities, that later would have to be gained or lost by wars. But no wars ever developed, and the sacred stone was given to the Tiamat to keep, until I retrieved it, he never used its power, or prayed to the One God. During this time, the demigods invaded parts of Italy, and Greece, and India, and other empires around the Black Sea, but they wanted Yort, and they took it like cutting up whole salami, piece by piece, until they had the whole thing.”
“Yes,” said Nimrod, “the Tiamat and its horde were awful; I couldn’t believe the stampede they produced in Yort, when I heard it.”
“Isn’t it horrible?” Sinned said his chin in his palm, his elbow on his knew.
“But what produced such a coward?” asked Nimrod.
“Whose to say,” said Sinned, “but a fair guess might be, he was not from the same blood stock of his forefathers, and when he was a boy he was kept in dresses until he was thirteen years old, his father being in battle after battle, seldom at Yort to insure he’d be a great soldier some day, because his father always wanted him to be a great soldier. And soldiers make kings and kings make peace and wars.”
“So, whose fault is it?” asked Nimrod.
“It is not always the fault of the ax, but of the tree as well.”

No: 423/ 6-27-2009

Midnight Waters
(A night for Hell’s Gatekeeper)

The fog has shifted, risen from Hades’ Sea, and the once dark mist has become unthreaded along the pier; the Gatekeeper’s voice now roams the Midnight Waters, amongst the ripples, and echoes in the charcoal air, along the midnight sea—; vibrations in the earth’s crust, shifts the rowboats, to and fro, up and down Hades Coast, out into, and through the deep, to let the oarsman’s know, the gate’s of Hell are closed, but will be opened once they reappear, over the midnight waters.
The Gatekeeper chants from the heavy-iron-lidded gates, mouth opened, tongue hanging out like a thirsty bull, in the shape of a snake, loyal to the archangel of ten-wings, who calls to the darkness and the midnight light, to bring in the incarnate ghouls to be—amongst the midnight waters, for eternity, for time has been incalculable for him, and the ghouls have been waiting, waiting, holding their breaths, for this momentous moment, when they (phantoms of the earth) will be sanctified into Hell’s gray-dark mirage, thus, given their third birth.
Henceforward, on they go, as the Gatekeeper waits for this earth-shattering once flash, now of a ghostly mass, to appear in the Midnight Waters.
“Nay!” he cries, “nay…a few more moments…” he exclaims to himself, he does not know hours or days, for time is scattered among ashes of long past infamous names. Now he hears the roaring of Hades Sea, the whirling dusts of Hell, and much too much grinding of teeth, yelping, and tears: the ghouls have appeared.
#2169 1-21-2008 (here is Part one of two Parts)

Clotted by a Python
(Based on actual Events)

(Intro :) His body was swollen, a bulk of lumped flesh, inflamed looking, bruised, and his last feelings were that he was deserted, clotted by a python, and this was going to be how he died, what people would read in the morning paper the following day.

He was the only worker present at this bazaar happening, moving among the doubtless reality that lingered ahead—with what he would have to face, a violent involvement, indefinite, the unimaginative, the python rubbing off a layer of skin on the abrasive cell floor where it was kept in the Zoo area, it was restless, and the lack of restrictions made it more restless day after day after day, strong and healthy it was, youthful, placed in a cubical with bars, and supported by the public for entertainment—just out of the wild, from South America.
Henceforward, it is fair to say, no one knows what the python was thinking, perhaps don’t care, but I feel the python needs its say-so because it was cleaver enough in what it did, and evidently, it took some thinking, and since it cannot communicate as man would like it to and ask for understand, I shall play the devils advocate in this story, that has more truth then fiction to it.

Maybe he was thinking, ‘…these feeders, onlookers, they are really just bits and pieces of matter chucked together to form a cleaver species—’ being seen constantly, day after day, night after night (in addition, perhaps they seen man simply as an enemy, slayer, to be slayer). Depending on who had the upper hand and having the upper hand is everything—even in man’s world with man.

‘I am behind this enclosure (bars),’ thinks the python, ‘somehow I got here. They articulate funny, I can’t understand why I’m here in the first place when I was some other place not long ago, some of their gestures I’m learning, but that is expected. Where’s their weakness that is the real way out of this dilemma (the question?)’
Everyone looks for the weakness. ‘They get tired just like me, they look more like tall weeds that fling in the wind when they walk on those tree stumps, more like branches, surely I can break one in two, if only I had the chance. They like passiveness maybe that is there weak spot!’

They don’t know the Devil, but the Devil knows them, and he knows man, he knows their weaknesses, vanity, pride, power, control for man, and the python, perhaps has a shared portion of this unwavering behavior, with better instincts, and soullessness.

Life is boring for the python, this indigenous slave; beyond the bars the python stares day after day, after day. Looking at forms walking by, human forms, who is the more inextricable form? It would seem ‘I’ the python guesses. It waits and waits, as the day and night zoo workers clean his cage and feed him, never quite getting the chance to wrap himself around anyone, and he is learning, to play possum—dead, ‘…they like that better…’ the creature has contemplates. Everybody: beast, creature, bird, man, fish, we all learn after a while, trial and error, what doesn’t work, and we invent, learn to read masters of the world, and in time, slowly, one becomes—if given the time—the master, or learns where the best hiding places are.
And now we shall kind of stagger away from the thinking of the python, get away from him, he is a trouble maker—as all pythons are to mankind who want to enslave them, as any wild creature would be, or person whose desire is not to be enslaved, would be.

The young man was only twenty-three-years old, working at the Como Park Zoo (in the summer of 1957), he had let an eleven-foot python out of its glass and steel bar cage, in the little stone zoo building, built sometime in the 1930s. He was an intern from Chicago, living in St. Paul, Minnesota, a Zoologist. He worked the night shift, cleaned the cages, fed the animals, and insured all was well within that designated area—working on his Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota. There was a security guard also who walked the grounds, in particular, over in the Midway area where they had all the rides for the kids, perhaps a hundred yards away. It was now 2:00 a.m. All was well and quiet.
The Intern, took the eleven-foot python from its habitat, and carried him out into the zoo atrium area, where in the morning visitors would come through to see the twelve cages, that held lions, and tigers, and large snakes, and monkeys, and two wolves.
He, the Intern, was playing with the snake, put him around his shoulders, held him by the back of the head, but came the moment the python got irritated, had rolled upward a tinge, from his shoulders to his neck, it was no longer playing possum, or passive. The Intern drew in his breath, tried to, it was difficult, as the monstrous brute of a snake had already crept downward towards his left wrist, and sunk its teeth into it, holding on with a solid grip. The python had already lowered its body which had previously risen from underneath his light coat, it had already circled upward and doubled around his neck, forming a lump, a knot like loop around his collar (and neckline), he tried to draw in his breath again, and found out it was next to gone, and he went to shout for help—the security guard had already circled the Midway area—and was on his way to check the zoo area, where he was, but all you could hear was a whimpering sound, by the intern.
With his powerful arms and shoulders, the young intern couldn’t pull the bend of the python loose. He heard the whistle of the Security Guard, which indicated all was well outside of the Zoo area, and the intern knew he was close by; so close, yet it might just had been a thousand-miles away, the python had the Zoologist helpless like his pry in the jungle. With urgent eyes moving, he was now looking for help, understanding there was no way out; battered overalls, in a world now that was deaf and dumb—the snake mute, to his whimpering petition.
The viper, now head to head, stared at his victim—his once: feeder, janitor, his master, prison guard, the once obedient creature was nearly back home, doing what was natural, ‘…if only he could find where they took him from…’ pondered the python.

The Python wasn’t a murderer, nor in need of a psychologist, or even seeking revenge, nor even a lawyer, he lived to kill to survive, he had never gotten food free before, thus, it was odd to be fed, perhaps even humiliating, he wasn’t doing what he was born to do—he knew that, then he’d die—he knew that also, and be replaced, but he had no idea the human lost the most precious thing anyone could have—life, he just wanted to do what he was meant to do, but he learned, from the human, like the human, he got his entertainment.

Now it was rapid whimpering, then the intern fell purposely to the floor, there the scuffle continued, to no avail.
In the morning, the janitor found the snake outside of the building, the intern on the floor, inside. His overalls half torn off, as if the snake and intern had a great battle—and the intern lost.

Written 8-26-2008 (Reedited, 10-6-2008 and again in 8-2010)

2010-08-14T09:22:00.000-07:00

Obama: the Anti John the Baptist

I think it might have been wise for Obama to have let this issue alone, let it be settled with those who have died in 911 instead of siding with the Muslims who blew up the two Towers in New York City, now they’re going to own the land they’ve cultivated that the two American made Jets plum full of Americans got blown up on taking down those two towers up so they can make a mosque on it—how ironic can you get, I’m sure Bin Laden is laughing all over Pakistan on this one (use American free enterprise, and a pro Muslim President, and let’s mock the United States right in front of them in the center of the Greatest City on Earth), it’s the joke of the decade. He didn’t need to say anything, but why did he? Perhaps because he isn’t a Christian, or isn’t all he proclaims to be. His Hussein middle name is showing, the very one he doesn’t use so he doesn’t have to remind us American who he really is, where his heart’s desire is.
I can’t think of a worse slap in the American face than this, but I’m not surprised. And “No!” the Muslims, or anybody, nobody has a right to put a mosque up where so many Americans died. That is like Japan putting up a Japanese Flag on top of one of those sunken ships at Peal Harbor, but he wouldn’t understand that because he never shed an once of blood in a war for this country, or put on an American Uniform, he’s from Kenya, how could he understand. But we Americans got what we deserve—a President that lulled us to sleep (lulled you to sleep, not me), that doesn’t care about public opinion and this is just the beginning, wait until he gets warmed up. He’s celebrating Islamic holy month with the Muslims, of Ramadan, I haven’t seen him celebrating anything Christian, or Jesus Christ to be his Lord and Savior; since he took office he has only taken from them.

Funny, the Mayer of New York is for the Muslims—how ennoble can you be! But the Governor agreed to give them State land if they’d moved to a new location (keep that guy in office), but the Muslims said “No!” Thus, trying to provoke, and increase American anger. By the same token, this all could have been avoided had the New York City Landmark’s Preservation Commission granted it landmark status, they must have gotten paid off by the Muslims: perhaps Bin Laden.

What is next on his long and hidden agenda, perhaps to tare down the Jewish Wailing Wall for the Islam? It might be wise for Israel to think ahead, Obama is not going to stop the Russians and Iran from building their nuclear bombs; they’ll have to act on their own, lest they want to be sitting ducks.

2010-04-12T12:28:00.000-07:00

A Virulent Death in Buenos Aires (Revised, 4-2010)

(Suspense, Eldritch Horror) Written August, 2008 (Historical Fiction
Based on actual events)

Death Alignment

(July, 2007) “All right,” he said, his eyes slanted towards the floor, emotions zigzagging across his mind, looking downward—emotionally downward towards his chest to the floor, bowed head, neck out of alignment, arms crossed—held inwardly tight and so he took one less sight of her—“All right, all right!” he said then the frustrating dialogue stopped, the dusty chatter ended, her eyes crystal clear, her protest to him had been sterling, authentic, but meaningless, only words that shot through him like bullets, pellets from a muzzle, an inch from his brain, knocking down doors inside his cerebellum, he wasn’t coherent, he wasn’t anything, not even human, near empty, not sensible, with stagnant thinking, and even as it was, as trying as it was, enduring as it was, instead of walking away, he came out with a bellowing burst—like a guerilla, it echoed like a thundering roar, it was as if somebody, or something unnatural inside his brain had beaten it to pulp, pounded his fleshy tissue until it turned into paste, his brain was inwardly under a meat cleaver, ready to be chopped up, and hung on a hook like a dead hog ready to be cutup on an assemble line at a slaughterhouse—he wasn’t himself.
He held his head as if it was too heavy with both hands one on each side of it, as if it was going to fall off its stem called a neck, then a second burst came out of his mouth, he stood up, tried to balance himself—he wobbled a bit as if drunk as if in some foreign state, as if he was under some post traumatic stress, visualizing something, he felt like falling—the studio apartment was but one room and a bathroom, that was it, there was no more to it—but he didn’t fall, he rested his two hands on a wooden chair, caught his breath, but it didn’t clear his mind, it didn’t release whatever pressure was on his brain, or whatever intentions his subconscious was directing him, the demon inside of him was now in near full control.
Out the window he noticed the obelisk he saw it many times before, countless times, saw its towering peak, its smooth seemingly endless grayish flow trying to reach the clouds, its rustic iron gate the surrounded it, but today, this very day, it had different shapes to it, the tall famous obelisk on the widest street in the world—the 9th of July Street—in downtown Buenos Aires, was like a rocket to him—likened to his brain, ready to burst open at its seams, then he turned to his girlfriend from North America, from some New England state up near Main, himself being a resident of Argentina, with frantic maddening eyes—frozen eyes, eyes appearing as if in a trance (they were having a week long drug fiesta, in his apartment).
He looked at her, and looked at her, and looked at her (blinked—it was a long closing of the eyes, a prolonged blink), he loved her deep blue eyes, milky white skin, and she had been attracted to his bronze Latin color, his dark thick black hair, his youthful and pleasant personality, his mystic look, final, somewhere along the path she had told herself when she first caught sight of him—‘Wow! why not?’ a question that remained in her mind less than a minute: now his looks would have stopped a police dog in its tracks, had he been outside walking with her, his bitterness on his face reeked all the way to kingdomcome, and with a sudden undefined madness, a spark of fury—
‘Wallop! Clout…! Whack!... thump! …thump! thwack-thwack!’ … a fully eight-inch German grade carbon stainless steel carving knife— extremely sharp, perfectly balanced, wide blade, full tang —sunk into her chest—and out came a virulent smell of burning death.
“Get it out,” she shouted, “get it out, you can’t kill me!” In shock but still protesting, as she was dying, the smell of death reeking from her pores; this was not a television horror, this was her, real.
I cannot hope to furnish the reader with a more rational and interesting description or facts about this dying person, and for the most part I’m grateful. But at one point of course she was fainting in this vast wilderness of nothing appearing for her to remain, to keep her alive, nothing but to lie down and die, and at this moment, the extraordinary beauty of her death to be, her dying, caught his eye.
He looked at her, pulled the knife out slowly, ripping the knife sideways as he pulled it out, so as to puncture all he might inside of her in the process, trying to find the heart, in particular the heart—while the whole planet of earth was a clap of an eye away from her ascending or descending it, then it was no longer there. To him at this moment she was just a thing that appeared, of some small importance, and he was not disappointed, when he heard her last sigh, her last exhale.

He had taken drugs, smoldering, stinking with them, the same ones she had taken, they both had there share, but not to the point she didn’t know what was happening, or free from pain. The interesting fact for him was that: seldom does one get the opportunity to observe a dead in progress, and especially one that causes the dying to die like a mule, heehawing, fighting for air and wide-eyed. He looked at her and started to entertain doubts if she really was dead; I mean did he really kill her—dead-dead? He saw on television on occasions the dead came alive, somehow resurrected them self with one last hurrah—as if to say, you couldn’t kill me. Although speaking literally, no one could have withstood his massacre. Goya could not have drawn a better picture of total death—or at least I’m extremely doubtful he could.

But as she had said “…get it out, you can’t kill me!” he said, “No thanks I want you to die,” and he wanted to watch himself do it, “it’s alright he told her,” as if to comfort her on his second plunge into her chest with the knife. (I must admit frankly, being in a war, the distress of death, or its impending doom that circles you during a bombardment of rockets, can become appalling, and the most disturbing thing or things a human being is unaccustomed to, is watching someone else die or pert near die, but this killer, he was collecting the moments of death like one collects pieces of a puzzle to make sure they all would fit.)
By one leg, he pulled her into the bathroom by her two legs, grabbed her by her hair, stretched out her thin neck, across her shoulder he put the knife, rested it, and with a thrust and whack, beheaded her. The fact that her body was so awkward to pull and carry, after a short time he lay the rest of her body chest down, her two arms stretched out and chopped around them at the shoulder. The heat, and the flies and the position of the body, and the smell brought him to a musing state of affairs, highly indecorous, she was ugly, and he told himself: regardless of how pretty you are, at the end, at the very end of life, this kind of end, you are only good enough for worms, this is the natural state of everyone’s end.

“Wait,” he told himself, “I better take her down to the incinerator,” looking now at the head he ha placed it on the toilet seat, as he pulled the body over to the bathtub—what was left of the body that is, like a sack of potatoes, with his two hands by her two legs, and his German made knife, laying on the side of the bathtub.
This is where those writers are mistaken who write screen plays, and the hero comes in at the last minute to catch the robber in the act, or save the day, because this girl died in a decent apartment in a Capital City in South America, and on the outside of that apartment a few floors below, people were walking and talking and sightseeing, by the apartment building as if nothing was taking place above them, they had not a clue of what was happening inside that apartment.
“Alright, alright…” he said to whomever he was talking to, perhaps his second self, perhaps the demon in him, who’s to say, “the incinerator, oh yes the incinerator, I’ll bring her down to the incinerator” knowing now he’d have to chop up the body the rest of the body, the remaining parts that were still attached, its last two limbs and torso for the most part, find a suitcase and bring it down to the cellar, tossing the body into the incinerator. “Of course,” he said, he had to undress the rest of her body, and he did. Then after cutting it all up, the suitcase nearby, he put the head back onto the torso, to see how it looked, fit, as he had placed it on the toilet seat for that purpose.
“Perfectly balanced,” he commented, “hurry up,” he told himself, “I’m hungry, I want breakfast.” He looked at the body all tucked away in the suitcase, admired his work, he told himself: I’m a damned fine cutter, fitter. And it would have appeared to an onlooker, he was, that he had some sort of accuracy in such things, perhaps someone or something inside of him, that had been dug out of the dead world, had come unfrozen from times end, guided him, so it would have seemed, with such skillfully applied techniques.

He grabbed the heavy suitcase, rushed down to the basement with it, the door was locked, he looked through the peephole, there was a fire in the furnace, it was July, and it had lightly snowed, it was cold.
Now he was on the sidewalk that paralleled the ‘9th of July Street,’ claimed to be the widest street in the world, he was pulling the suitcase now, his arms, the muscles in his arms were getting knotted up. He knew the police wouldn’t bother him, they never did, they were too busy taking bribes from those they handed out tickets to, or looking the other way if a crime was happening so they didn’t have to do all that paperwork—and to be quite honest, they were part of the problem in the city, not the solution: yes indeed, part of the crime wave, getting paid to look the other way, having young unemployed men robe for them, collecting their payoffs for looking the other way. And so he dragged the suitcase down the street unhampered, past several buildings and several policemen, and a few restaurants, in which he wanted to, eat, it was time for brunch, no longer breakfast. And so he stopped, left the suitcase outside, sat in the restaurant, had ham and eggs, coffee, and a young thief came up to the suitcase, paced a bit to see if anyone was looking, saw that it was clear, grabbed it, ran with it, but it was so heavy he fell, and it opened, and everything unraveled, everything inside rolled out, and the police did stop for once to turnabout to see what the commotion was, and for once they chased the young thief down the street, he, himself still in shock, and lo and behold, he was caught and accused of the crime; oh he swore up and down it was not his crime, but whose then, asked he police? And the real assailant finished his breakfast, went back to the Casa Rosada, where tourists often come, found himself a new gringo girlfriend, English, from England, and they started dating. He told himself it was the drugs that made him do that horrific crime—it wasn’t him, surely not the real him, and as a result, he’d never use them again, but he lied…

Notes: Written 8-5-2008; The author was in Buenos Aires three times: October, 2002/April, 2007 and March 2010; this happening took place three months after his second visit, near the same area his hotel was located.

2009-05-22T21:54:00.001-07:00

“Angels and Demons”((Movie Review)(A dud))

(5-23-2009) Let me say this in as few words I can, the movie “Angels and Demon,” to me was a dud, failure as a motion picture, and I would imagine as a book (I haven’t read the book but if it is anything like the move, it is a dud also). It had nothing new under the sun. I am not sure who the angels were, other than the statues throughout Rome and the Vatican, and Tom Hanks, who is emotionless in this movie runs around Rome, and in particular the Vatican grounds looking at them, in and out of Catholic churches, St. Peters Square, as the new Pope is being elected. What we have here is a murder sequence, as old as the hills. One of the members of a so called cult—I guess he’s the demon, is murdering cardinals, and has planted a bomb in the grotto of St. Peter. And we see cars races from church to church and Tom trying to get there in time to save the day, and the cardinals, and which does, one save one out of four. And so we got this murderer, killing guards and Cardinals, and another demon priest behind the scenes; incidentally, these are human demons, because the murder got shot and like any human with a bullet hole in him, he had his moment of agony.
Mr. Dan Brown uses the Church again, as a backdrop for his unending adventure, to get people angry, with faithless Hanks. I think he thought the Vatican was going to fall into his same old trap and give him free publicity, for an old theme. There is not much imagination, or originality in this movie, and I was hoping it would end about in the middle, when I started to figure out what was going on. I was thinking of putting “The Creature from the Black Lagoon,” in my DVD set, and watching it, instead of “Angels and Demons.” The Creature is more a demon than the demons in Brown’s movie. And there is some girl who is tagging along with Hanks, not sure what her purpose is, she can’t dismantle the bomb, although she can rip a page out of an old manuscript.
There is a bomb and it does go off, but only after the priest who seems to have the run of the house at the Vatican and whom has killed the first Pope, and is hoping to be elected a Pope, take the bomb and his helicopter and zooms in the air to let it go off, and parachutes out to safety in the nick of time. He is the new messiah on the block for about five minutes of the movie. The move is a dud, dull, and kind of harebrain; Dan Brown has written nothing new, and Tom Hanks who I like, should stop playing these kind of movies, he doesn’t do well in them.

2009-05-22T17:46:00.000-07:00

Devil Condors and Witches of Ica

When we started our morning trip to Ica, from Lima, the sun was bright, and shiny, and the air was fresh and cool. Just as I liked it, and as I was about to leave the hotel to meet the chaffier of the private car I rented, and depart, Manuel LLosa (the maitre de’hotel of the Americana, where I was staying) rushed to greet me, said to the chaffier to drive carefully, holding the door open for me:
“It is spring here sir, and it is nice and sunny today, but try and be back before twilight, the roads get a glistening on them.”
I assured him I’d be back for dinner. He gave his Peruvian grin with a half smile. Then added, “Remember it’s the day of the dead, and in Ica, you know what that is.”

Chick Evens answered with in a vigorous manner, “No problem!” And nodding his head drove off sharply. Outside of Lima, he motioned for the driver to stop:
“Tell me Jose, what is twilight in Ica like on the Day of the Dead?”
He made the sign of the cross, across his heart, as he replied brief but intensity: “Witches!” he said, “witches and devils and condors, come out at twilight in Ica and on the road into Ica!” Then he looked at the time on the clock embedded into the automobile’s dash, and stared at it, with his forehead raised up, along with his shoulders quivering, as if he had just gotten a chill. He had seemed a little impatient with the stopping of the car, it wasted time.

I kind of felt he was protesting my stop, so he made his little story up, Peruvians are often in a hurry when on the road, but once they get to their destination, try and get them back to work, they like long siestas, and extended holidays, and if the earth was falling in on them, they’d not change their routine. But also I understood they could be very superstitious. And so I sat back into the seat of the car, in the back seat of the car that is, and motioned for him to go on. And he drove out of that parked area, like a man who just had gotten bitten by a piranha.
As he drove down the highway, off and on, Jose would look in his rearview mirror at me in the back seat, almost suspiciously, and looked in the sky as he drove, sniffed the air, as if he was trying to find something foul, made the sign of the cross a few times, and there were no churches about.
The road was pretty straight and smooth for the most part, the Pan-American Highway south, kind of like a wind-swept area of little variation, we got some gushes of wind against the car, and Jose would start to shiver again. The road looked like it was used, but it was almost vacant today, it looked very inviting for a traveler, but I didn’t want to say that to Jose, lest I offend him, and I’d have to drive. But to be honest, all this Ica and witch stuff did crossed my mind, but only because of curiosity, so I asked Jose a few questions. He answered offensively, again looking at the dashboard clock, said:
“Well, Mr. Evens, I want to tell you up front, I didn’t want to take you to Ica today, no one does, but my boss said if I didn’t he’d fire me, so yes, I’m not happy about this.”
“Fine,” I said, “stop the car at the gas station, up ahead,” we were near a hamlet of sorts, with three attached buildings, the gas station was the main one. Then I told him, “I can’t ask you to go on like this, you’re too nervous, you’ll kill both of us, and I’m sure a bus comes by, here is ten soles catch one and go back to Lima, have a restful and peaceful holiday.” He stopped the car, jumped out of the car faster than a kangaroo, and with hands wide open, said in a pleading manner, “I beg you not to go on by yourself, señior, go back to Lima with me, go to Ica tomorrow, but if you must, I will pray for you!”
It seemed to me, he was about to tell of some experience he had, but really could not get it out of his little framed body to speak it, it was too frightening, or simply too difficult, saying as he walked away from the car, “Gracious, gracious…!” (Making the sign of the cross again.)
I knew arguing with a man under such horrid stress was of no use, there would be no advantage in it, and I’d not get to Ica, and back in time for my Cuy dinner (baked Guinea Pig).

Before Sunset

“Okay,” Jose said, “I’ll drive a little further, but drop me off at the nearest town before sunset.” And I agreed, and I had my driver back.
As we drove down the highway, eighty-miles per hour, the car seemed to become over heated, ever time he tried to go past sixty, he sniffed the air again, and grew very whitish, and, looking every-which-way, he was taking deep breathes. Then he pointed to a spot near the highway, a gravestone kind of, it was a little white house, with a cross in it, and flowers, and said, first in Spanish, then in English:
“I buried her—she killed herself.”
“Oh!” I remarked, “A suicide? Interesting…” I was hoping he’d shed some light on his statement. But for the life of me, he just stared and sniffed, and looked out the side window and made the sign of the cross, and when he’d reach eighty-miles an hour and the car would start to steam up, he’d reduce the speed. He was frightened.
As we continued, we saw several condors, large bodies, stretched out wings, black with white spots in the wings. They circled over the car, and made sounds, yelping like barking dogs.
“They sound like dogs,” I said to Jose.
“No?” he answered, “I’ll explain about the voice box in a condor later.”
“Isn’t it strange the condors are out in this area?” I asked, and then I noticed dark clouds drifting and crossing over our path. The beautiful sun was quickly fading the closer we got to Ica, even a cold chill set into the weather, the condors flew off. Who had at first seemed to encircle the car?
“Mr. Evens?” said Jose, “they were only a breath away, they were giving us a warning, they will come again, and it will be a horrid reality,” and as he said that, and the condors now left, the sun came back out. Jose looked in the mirror at me:
“This Amigo is the calm before the storm!” he said.
Now he looked at the dashboard clock again, holding the steering wheel firm, with a grip that could have strangled a bear to death, his palms were sweating. I was becoming restless with all his tension, and noticed myself shaking my head, automatically. I was starting to feel a little adamant about taking over the driving.
“Explain to me,” I said, “just where is the spot where the witches embodied into the condors, expose themselves to a person?”
He looked in the mirror at me, made the sign of the cross, and said some kind of a prayer, in Spanish to Mary, “At twilight, everything in the air is unholy,” he expressed.
“You mean witches?” I enquired.
“I mean the highway, the sky, the city of Ica; this car will be circled with the unholy.”
“No, no, I mean will I be able to see them, talk to them.” My curiosity was really being fed now.
“Yes, you will see them, in what form I do not know, and they will speak, in what language I do not know; some say before men had a language, animals and men could talk to one another, in their way of speaking or understanding, they may talk to you like that, if they talk to you at all, but I’ve only heard of a few folks that have witnessed this.”

Jose hesitated, looked in the mirror at Evens, and burst into a legend, saying:
“It is in several areas in Ica, where many ugly souls are buried under the ground—and in places outside of Ica, in graveyards, deep in hidden graves, under the deep clay of the earth, these men and women, come out in the form of animals, their souls, we call them witches, they embody animals, in particular the giant condors because they have speed and agility, and black hearts, and are quite fitting for these dead, and they circle the area they were killed in by some angelic being ten-thousand years ago, and come out for blood revenge, their souls! Many have fled to other places, to islands in the pacific, and the dead that were dead, are not during this time.” He had stopped his narration of the legend, to check the time of the clock again, now pale faced and sweating like a pig. Vacillating and gasping for air. Unable to hold it back any longer he exclaimed, “Oh cursed twilight! Don’t come so quick!”

Ica

And it was that we made it to Ica, and I saw my way around the city, did the tourist thing, and at four o’clock headed back.
“Are you still afraid?” I asked Jose.
“Yes sir and I fear you will have to return to Lima alone, I will remain here until tomorrow.”
He had opened the door to the car for me, and I laid down my Cain (or walking stick), I often use in case I get gout on the trip, I laid it along the floor extending onto the front seat, I had purchased it in the Black Hills, several years ago.
I started the car up, it seemed to overhead even quicker than before, the car had been check out, and was found to have no mechanical problems, it would seem the car had Jose’s disposition. I felt sorry for Jose, in that he was deeply sincere of his concern for me, but how foolish can a person be I thought, I dare not laugh in his face though. He did try to make me understand in my own language, and I suppose that was limiting, if not tedious. But now I was in a hurry to get on back to Lima, and drove out of the city, at fifty-miles an hour.

The road I now drove over seemed much more picturesque, more pleasant, in that I had no one to distract me; for the most part, there were no outstanding bits and pieces, items, that the eye might single out, but in all there was a allure of splendor. I took no notice of the time, and not until dusk fall upon me did it dawn on me, that it came to mind, could I find my way all the way back to Lima.
The night was cooler than the day, and it was getting inky dark like outside my car, around my automobile, drifting gray clouds circling the gibbous moon, and I could hear in the air a far-off sound, a rushing sound, wings, heavy wings, through which appeared to come at intervals, a mysterious cry that Jose said the witches of Ica had, and I heard come out of those huge Andean Condors, those that usually inhabit the mountains, but are found at times flying over Lima, and along its cost, here along the highway from Ica to Lima, or the other way around.
I continued to drive, but I hesitated in my mind, I had said I would go faster and even though I knew I shouldn’t, in case the car would overheat again, my foot seemed to be out of control, and I pressed hard on the accelerator. And I covered a wide stretch of the open country. As I looked out my side windows everything was dots.
The air was getting colder, and rain began to fall. I thought of the miles and miles had to go yet to get to Lima. And the darker it got, the faster I went. Then the wind grew stronger, and more forceful, and the rain was icy, and whirling abut me, and those wings, I could hear those wings, wings, hard rapid wings, asunder and vivid wings now passed over my car, my headlights spotted them.
My car was getting coated with ice, and it was swaying to each side of the road, I saw an adobe ruins ahead, a shelter, with trees around it, no roof, just four walls, and trees. I had to stop the car lest I let it overheat; the heat gage was on red, so I stopped the car and listed to the weird sounds of the Vulture gryphus, the Giant Condor. Their voices were like echoes around the car. By and by, the storm seemed to be passing as the night went on, and I put a blanket around me, feeling my body shiver some. I got out of the car, checked the radiator, the water left in it only filled half it up, with my flash light I looked in the trunk for water, found none. The walked over to the adobe house to see if there was an outside well. I had stopped half way, there was a sudden stillness in the storm, and no sound of wings, silence, my heart seemed to ease a bit, and the clouds gone, and the moon’s light, was indeed a gift, I had left my headlights on in the car.
As I got next to the adobe house, it was really an old ruin of a church, a chapel of sorts, and alongside it was a graveyard, and before me was huge massive condors, sanding over gravestones, with the moonlight overhead, came a loud howl from all of them, as if they were dogs and wolves. I was near frozen in shock, and felt the warm flood of my blood freeze in my heart, trying to renew my breath, and I told myself to run, run like hell to the car, but some sort of fascination, impelled me to stay, I actually approached the creatures, these old world vultures, very large broad-winged soaring birds, I started to walk around them, the watched me, a few more flew in, one flew out, their wing spans were ten-feet from tip to tip, and they weighted near thirty to thirty-five pounds. They were mostly black with the exception of a frill of white feathers nearly surrounding the base of the neck, their heads looked flattened. They had some kind of an emotional state between one another, as if communicating. There were a few smaller condors, I accepted them as the females, and their necks were a cream color, a few yellow, and one orange.
I said out loud, “The dead travel fast!”
Some of them looked old, real old, I knew they could live to be fifty or even at times eighty, and I would have expected most of these were beyond that. And I knew by the talk I had with Jose, they had a territory of perhaps 150-miles radius.

As I leaned against a tree, it moved slightly and a flash of forked-lightening that lit up the sky, seemed to have woke up all the condors. Then I saw a beautiful woman come out of a tomb, grasped the foot of the condor, hurled her body into it like a storm, her whole being. I looked towards her tombstone; the dead now in the condor rose for a moment as if in agony, trying to fit herself into the bird, making a mingling of dreadful sounds. The condor cooled by the night storm, spread out it wings to regenerate heat that it needed, for energy.
The last thing I remember was a vague, black winged moving mass, as if all the condor-phantoms were closing in on me and blacking out the inky sky, and the moons light.
For a time I remember not a thing, not one iota of what took place, but slowly I returned to my sense, my arms and feet, racked in agony. There was a shape and tight feeling around my nick, the sounds of wings flapping, as I had noticed the condor doing before to regain energy, or conserve it. Something was tormenting me. I knew not what, but whatever could it be other than the scavengers. There was breathing as of some bird close or over me, a warm scratching at my throat, and then came a realization of the dreadful truth, which sicken my inners and made me want to vomit, and tightened the muscles around my heart, and brought a surge of unpleasantness to my brain, I had a hard time breathing, the beast was on my chest, and its bald had and beak, lying on my throat. Eyes barley open, this brute, with flaming red eyes, with squinty little eyes, gleamed with a reddish mouth. It sharp talons it had ripped open my arms and legs (but because there was no warm air currents, I would guess I was still alive, they count on them for energy). I new these were not normal condors, because normal ones do not have a voice box, silent for the most part, that is why Jose knew who they were, and I knew who followed me.
I heard a sounds by my car, voices drew closer and closer, I feared to make a sound, lest this bird rip my throat open— then this red eyed female condor, flew away at the nearing sounds, and the others followed, it was Jose, he had a revolver, a 38-special.
“Señior,” he said, “I brought some brandy with me, and iodine in the car for your throat.” Eagerly I jumped up, “Well, how did you find me?”
My joy rang out hurriedly: “Get me out of here please!”
“Yes, yes, come quickly—quick! Before they come back all energized.”
“It—yes—oh yes indeed,” I exclaimed.
“No use trying to explain, or talk, I can figure it out by looking at you,” said Jose, “but you know it serves you right for not believing me.”
I didn’t argue.

Written between 17 & 21 of May, 2008 (No: 401)

2009-04-26T18:41:00.000-07:00

Onoskelis ((Female Demon of Black Heaven) (a Pseudepigrapha poem))

(Often I have choked within my dreams, to awaken just in time to regenerate, and I asked God to reveal its source, and he did :)

Onoskelis, of beautiful form, female demon, concubine to Beelzebub; her body of a woman, fair complexion, legs of a mule, I caught her knitting knots within my dreams and commanded her to yield, and she obeyed, with the seal of God, within my being, and I commanded her to speak: “I am a spirit,” she said, “that has been made into a body. I make my home in caves, and have multi-personalities that lead me into fits of rage wanting to strangle men, at times perverting them from their true nature. I prefer, honey-colour skin, for we are of the same constellation. Many deceive themselves, in thinking I am more than what I am, and excite me to be an evildoer, beyond revenge: I come from the Black Heaven, by way of an echo, emitted from an unexpected voice—I came out of its matter. The moon is my time to travel, when it is full.”
Then I asked, “What angel thwarts you?”
And she said, “The king.”
And I addressed this a second time, by saying “Tell me the truth, and for your offence I shall bind you in chins!”
And she cried to the High Heavens, “I do not lie, it is the King of Kings!”
So I called out the name of the Messiah to bind her might, night and day, to make her powerless to enter my dreams, to smash her spinning hemp to numb my fate within her hands, as not to strangle me, or any other man.

No: 2600 (4-26-2006) Note: when I went to the Easter Islands (6/2002), the spirits were after me, thinking I was going to bind them in chains, and they made it rain, and thunder, they were restless, and sent a crazy woman to my cabin to spy one me, to find out what my intentions were: I ended up confronting them, and they confronted me. They live in the caves and the rock dwellings, the volcanoes throughout the island. The spirits are very much alive between the three heavens, earth, and the underworld.

2009-02-02T17:24:00.000-08:00

The Earth Dethroned (poetic prose)

The earth, like the people on it, are like a train, Sebastian, told himself as he was traveling from St. Paul, Minnesota, to Seattle, Washington, and it is going in one direction, he noticed, and they think all is smooth he conclude (and so was earth going in the same direction): “Yes,” he said, “they think all is going well,” then he murmured to himself: “The thing is, it is not so, it just seems so, because they, like me, can’t tell one way or the other, if they are moving on this train or not.” Further, he said, “There are only a few folks who look out the window, now and then, if there were more, they’d all know we are headed towards a blockade.
Now, the earth moves the opposite way (it was originally moving in the first place), and the train is still moving in the old same (from its previous unaltered state), but the push against the train is now felt from the opposing force, something is moving against it instead of with it, the train accelerates, to fight the force.
Sebastian now agrees with his second self, (that person inside of us we seem to talk to, but never acknowledge to anyone but ourselves, and we never give it, or him or her a name) and he hears (listens to) the man in the seat behind him say: “…we have two forces and two systems, in progress here, Lord in Heaven what can we do. Because of its iron mass, the train doesn’t feel the opposing force that much, nor the folks inside the train. Nonetheless, it is there.”
The conductor tells the people, “…it is just a matter of time, and we’ll be to our destination, don’t worry.”
Sebastian, is worried though, and seemingly, it appears the man behind him is worried, in that, perchance, the train will not stop in time, hit the blockade before it stops at its destination, the train station that being, rather hit the blockade just beyond it, the train is going too fast, fighting the forces around it.
Sebastian, He sees out the window a black ray of light, ghostly and haunting, it seems to stop and plant itself right then and there, as if his window was a hole in space for it to seep through, and then as the train moves on, it shows up on the other side, so he notices (the opposite side of the train that is) the other end. He tells himself at this point, “I’ve learned something because of this, perhaps man can bend fate, or stop it for a moment, and that there is a gap between this and that, a gravitational gap some folks might call it, he calls it “hope” he feels someone, or something, has to curve man’s mind, like light, and speed, and you will find peace.
“Is this possible?” he whispers.
In any case, he concludes there was a gravitational field, that deflected light, this was his big break to creating peace, a lasting world peace, his so called stepping stone to his new theory.
As he sat back down in his seat in his cubical, he had to rethink what he had figured out, what was all this dependent on, for it surely was dependent on something? “Oh yes,” says the man behind him, “one person was really and solely dependent on the other,” so they both now concluded. “Yes,” said Sebastian, “we are in essence, one entity, and without God, we would not exist, God being the glue.”
Then Sebastian got rethinking his rethinking:
“What went wrong that caused God to create the flood?” In a way a rhetorical question, because he was questioning himself. That is, a question he had to answer for himself, at best it would be conjecture.
“It was not the situation, which was the flood,” he murmurs out loud, the man behind him hears, “but the problem, it was the problem no one looked at, which is always under the surface of the situation. It was perhaps the folks back then lived longer, and thus could build trains that had the maximum velocity of light, the speed of light that is (figuratively speaking), which is the total momentum of anything in the universe. That they were moving so fast, faster than the second-hands on the moving clock, faster than time, for example, the clock decreased to a standstill, accordingly, one was increasing as the other decreasing, as a result, there appeared simultaneously, unmeasured sin.
Next, He assumed, God might have—whom feel knows all— evidently didn’t take this into consideration, or if he had, he deduced from his hypotheses, and reformulated a living system, family members and so forth, would fellow what he observed, so he gave mankind good examples to go by, social comparison—if you will, yet he did not see, nor witness that mankind had obtained identical behaviors, consequently, irrespective of those he sent to set an example, therefore, he had to shorten life, because they didn’t follow the good example, matter of fact, he even said (referring to mankind’s sinful heart), “I never even imagined this…” so now, he limited man to 120-years of life, not 960, as it had previously been. He even developed a new theory, to slow man down, because he was going at such a rapid velocity, or pace, from good to bad to hatred of his own kind, to evil, and beyond, he broke the magnetic phenomena, known as one language, into propagation, or spread man’s tongue out, to a thousand different languages, that accelerated around the world.
Then God said, so Sebastian, concluded, “The faster you go, the quicker you come, to Armageddon, or in the case of this train, to the blockade.”
He knew it could be postponed—just as the train might be able to be stopped at the transition, if indeed he could lower the speed (in God’s case, or humankinds, that amounted to sin) and that was his theory, that being, the Earth Dethroned from mankind, and given back to Christ, to the point of man repenting.

2-2-2009 (No: 2561)

2009-02-01T20:07:00.000-08:00

Poetic Review on: Phillip Ellis, Macabre Poet of Australia

Although best known in Australia, for his eldritch style poetic voice, Phillip Ellis (whom now is becoming international), is by nature and choice, a true young poet; he shows us the transcendent world, as did Edgar Allen Poe, in his poetry, and uses imagery like George Sterling. Some of his poetry, superb verse, is in line with Robert E. Howard, whom to me was a better poet than a novelist. I have read in these past three or four years much of his poetry, and the omnibus collection he has recently published “The Flayed Man,” I am waiting eagerly to receive in the mail to read: which I’m sure will become in time a classic in its genre, and sought after for its First Edition series. He might be considered a parallel to Clark A. Smith, Samuel Loveman, or H.P. Lovecraft (or all three), in that, he steps into the science fiction and fantasy world of verse, to metaphysical and psychological depths. Here he mixes the world of the hopeless with the world on its way to hopelessness. He shows us what is left to be exposed, graphed and investigated. Once read, ultimate beauty can be found, along with haunting, and profoundly pessimism dragged to the dark side of the conqueror. Much of his poetry lingers in the macabre: thus, here one can find the timeless gift of restless poetic moments. He is not for everyone, but surely is for the selected readers of this class, that has an immortal romantic path.

Perhaps the end product of Mr. Ellis’ poetry might be put this way: he offers the reader compelling thoughts on his world, society, and philosophy, and once read they are hard to be dismissed.

2009-01-25T23:03:00.000-08:00

Deep Image (the Poem)

Deep, deep, deep—deep down in the mind in its many chambers, and corridors is an image crying, and trying to escape; it is a picture of the room your mind sleeps in (in part).

Between the psyche and the spirit, within your being, a leaf of energy, radiates from this one particular room, a room, you do not have its number to…and it only moves, and flows within that room, and it, unfortunately, never sees the day of light, until all three parts of the soul, recognizes God…

Thus, it reminds the hidden man he is, or was (once it is released) you were the one, once upon a time, under the umbrella of un- divine pretence, and you need not wait to be on your deathbed to
adjust your thinking, and reasoning, and to allow your mind to be unguarded for once, to be naked—sort of speaking, and to wipe away those deletions, generalizations, and distortions, to face God shoulder to shoulder, and look him in the eye, to tell your being, there is nothing to hide. So the mind and the deep, deep image, is now free, to bury what needs to be buried, under the sun.

Beware, it leaps and floats and assaults, in its hidden chamber (before it dies and goes to hell, but that’s the reason it fights so hard, it hopes it will awaken you) your subconscious, to wake up your conspicuous conscious, so it can jump over the gap, it does this by creating little earthquakes inside of you, disturbances to off set your system’s balance, and so it remains until God, Himself, puts a stop to it.

1-25-2009 (No: 2558)

2009-01-24T20:36:00.000-08:00

Venice in the Desert (a poem)
(Odyssey of a Great King—Gilgamesh)

He was buried under the Euphrates,
In a tomb constructed when the waters
Of the ancient rivers parted, following his death.
One third human, two thirds demon
The one who said, “I am the king!”

Thus, this he boasted, under the Sumerian sun,
((he who sought out Dilmun) (Land of the Living))
For immortality, from a magic reef,
Only to have a serpent, steal it,
When he wasn’t looking…!

Warlike and domineering, he found
His mate and friend, Enkidu, whom when
He died, informed the living king,
Death had a real sting, a gloomy future:
This was awaited his death…part of his
Odyssey…!

1-23-2009 No: 2557

2008-12-29T08:17:00.001-08:00

That Morning Rain
(The Mountain Girl from Villa Rica)

In the Valley of Villa Rica, there is a small Hamlet, a township of some 10,000-inhabitants, located in the Andes of Peru, the central region, on the edge of a Jungle. It is Coffee country, and there are a lot of plantations there. Mercedes, lives in the hill area, with her husband, Adelmo, they have a small adobe house, perhaps no more than three-hundred square feet. It rains there a lot, and the township is surrounded by mountains, and the mountains are green, full of foliage. The town has only one paved road, Main Street, all the rest are dirt roads, and Mercedes works for a plantation owner by the name of Herbert Sandoval, in the outer part of town by a stream, he lives with his wife Sara: the town’s priest is Father Sarmiento. Mercedes works in the household of Herbert, and sometimes accompanies him to the hillsides where his plantation is. There they also have a cottage for the caretaker.
Herbert, has three children, the oldest is twelve, Enrique, whom often seems to put self-interest before, compassion. The girl, Claudia, she is ten-years old, thinking and acting as if she’s going on fifteen; she is a tomboy, spoiled, and a little reckless. The younger child, is Daniel, a typical young squirt, always wanting his way, but perhaps the more tranquil of the three, the one who listens the most, and blackmails the other two older siblings, by threatening to tell their parents, this or that, if indeed he does not get his way, he gathers all the typical gossip kids like, and don’t know what to do with, because it is normally misunderstood.

(August, 2008) Mercedes, she is working in the yard, at the plantation’s cottage, Daniel is there, she’s watching him, babysitting in a way, for Sara; Mercedes husband is in Huancayo, and if she could have her way, that is where he’d have him stay—Oh, she loves him beyond reproach, beyond good senses, and he is abusive to her, perhaps because she drinks a lot, as he does, and when they are together, it is like two fires blowing in the wind, at each other.

She was just released from jail, for disorderly conduct, and was seen hanging around with the only black man in town, Patrick Lopez, a mixture of black, Mexican, and Peruvian blood.
They had painted the town red—as the old expression goes, and after her yelling and laughing and making all kinds of noise, Herbert Sandoval, came to her rescue, and bailed her out of jail, as he often has, matter-of-fact, Herbert’s wife, Sara, is a little upset because he seems to give her more consideration than her, and for a thirty-year old drunk, shapely and vicious, it is not appealing to her.
But as I was saying, Mercedes is at the cottage, with Daniel, she is a little tipsy, at the moment, had a bottle of whisky hidden in her underclothes, and every so often has went behind the cottage to have a snort.
“Mercedes,” calls Daniel, “a car is coming up the road, it looks like Father Sarmiento, and he’s with that poet and journalist, Apolinario,” but she simply continues drinking as if she didn’t hear but of course she did, Daniel is but a few feet away from here, Daniel adds, “Didn’t you hear me?”
“Of course I heard you,” says Mercedes, “can’t you see I’m busy?” (she takes the bottle of whisky, and swallows a big swallow, then grabs Daniel by the hand) “Ok boy, let’s go see what they want!”
A red truck pulls up to the edge of the road, the house is about three hundred feet from the dirt road, and Father Sarmiento can see Mercedes swaying in the morning wind, he knows she’s drunk, and he sees Daniel.
“You just never learn, do you Mercedes,” says the priest, then pushes her away from Daniel, as if to protect him from her drunken behavior, and she pushes him back, and he kicks her, and she falls down, and he kicks her in the face, and three teeth are broken, “I don’t know if it’s drugs or alcohol, or both, but you are a vegetable in the making, and you shouldn’t be in care of that young boy in your condition.” (He goes to kick her again, but Apolinario grabs the angry priest, says, “I think she got the message Father!”)
Life has not been fair with her, and she has up to now, tried three suicide attempts: once she tried to drawn herself in a lake, but it wasn’t deep enough, Wetland Lake, it was almost all dried up. The second attempt, she tried to hang herself on a banner tree, up in Herbert’s coffee plantation, on the upper plateau area, the branch was too weak to hold her, it broke, only to break the branch, and come tumbling back down, she did although have a headache for a spell. The third attempt, she ran in front of a car, it stopped in time, to be quite honest, not many folks have cars in Villa Rica, and most all streets are gravel roads, as I mentioned before, and to get the car over twenty-five miles an hour on any given street, is a task in itself.

♦

It is now September, 2008, and it is raining cats and dogs, and Mercedes’ belly is getting larger, everyone thinks it’s the black man, who got her pregnant, or at least that is the gossip in Villa Rica. She is at the household of her employer at this very moment, helping Sara with the dishes.
“Mrs. Sara,” says Mercedes, “have you heard anything about Adelmo being back in town, I heard he was this morning when I was cleaning up the backyard, your neighbor said he saw him at the bar last night?”
“I don’t drink, Mercedes, so I wouldn’t know.”
“But if he is, and me having this belly he’ll cut my throat!”
“Well,” said Sara, looking at her boy Daniel “we couldn’t have that, can we!” (Giving her a smirk.)
“Yaw mama, who’ll do all the work then, I hope not me!” says Daniel and runs out into the backroom.

(Evening) “I’ll take Mercedes home, Sara,” said Herbert.
“I suppose it’s because Adelmo might be in town?” replied Sara.
“Yes, that’s it in a nutshell, and he is in town, I saw him myself today walking aimlessly, half drunk down the sidewalks of town,” answered Herbert (Mercedes now trembling, thinking he’ll be lurking someplace around the house, come 3:00 a.m., with a butcher’ knife.
Now Sara had finished her dishes, and Herbert, left with Mercedes, taking her home. The rain was coming down lightly now, fog dropping in the township, and covering the nearby hills. It cooled the hot day making the evening comfortable for sleeping.

The Children want to go with their father, and so they at the last minute jump in the back of his truck, and now Mercedes and Herbert are in the front seat, says Mercedes to Herbert, “You best just drop me off, and get out of sight, I’m afraid once he sees my belly, and I suppose, gossip has told him it was Patrick Lopez, he’ll be coming to cut my throat for sure.
Herbert couldn’t control his tongue, his curiosity, said with a hoarse throat, “Is he the father?”
“I wish he was,” she said then looked out the window, “I suppose it’ll rain all night, and in the morning again, your coffee plants are getting it’s full of rainwater.” She commented.

“I don’t think Adelmo ever cheated on you, did he?” asked Herbert.
“No, and if he did I’d cut his throat, so I can’t blame him any, can I?” replied Mercedes.
Herbert didn’t know what to say, matter-of-fact, he wished he had never said what he did say, he never expected such an answer, then said; I mean, she was near, if not almost ready for him to do her in.
By the time they got to Mercedes’ shack, it was dark, and she quickly went into the hut, lit a kerosene lamp, started to cook hot water for coffee, she knew Herbert like coffee hot, black and with lots of sugar, especially his coffee beans from his coffee plants, and she had some.

“I hope Adelmo don’t kill her,” said Daniel to his brother and sister, I mean, I like her, and whose going to watch me when…” before he could finish his statement, Claudia spoke, “Who wants to raise a black child anyway?”
Said Enrique, indifferent, “Does it really matter, I mean, we all just goin’ to do what we normally do with or without her.”
There wasn’t an ounce of anxiety, in the children, perhaps some ignorance, in what was happening, taking place.
“It’s kind of dark here Enrique, isn’t it,” says Claudia, a tinge scared, a foggy gibbous moon overhead, as she walked by the side of the shanty, and Enrique and Daniel behind her.

Mercedes has left the door open, and Claudia can hear her talking to her father, she’s drinking down shot after shot of whisky, as Herbert listens to her yell about how she’d kill the child of any woman whoever would dare to give birth to a child of her husband’s, and kill him likewise, because he got her pregnant in the first place. Perhaps justifying what she was feeling would happen to her once Herbert left and Adelmo come to the house. At this point, Herbert is unsure of what to do or say, it is out of his hands he feels, as she feels also.
Herbert and the children leave, and in the morning rain, Mercedes walks to work, and as time goes by, several days, Herbert drives her home each night, and Sara is forming some hidden anger on this matter.

On and about the tenth day, that Adelmo has been in town, Mercedes at about 3: 00 a.m., hears sounds outside her hut, and she goes to investigate, she is never seen of again, thereafter. Three days passes and Adelmo is spotted walking the streets of Villa Rica, and is picked up for questioning on the disappearance of his wife.
The following morning, during a light rain—the forth day—Adelmo is picked up for the second time, now for suspicion of murder, Herbert assuming it was a dirty deed, evil he did, and thus called the police and was jailed.
Adelmo agrees he has been out to the hut each night, ready to kill her but he didn’t and although he might have, she wasn’t there the evening before, for him to kill her anyhow. But no one believes him, until his lawyer, Joseph Dudley, an American-Peruvian living in Villa Rica, brings up the question, “Where is Father Sarmiento?” indicating he and Mercedes must have ran off, that she was his mistress. True or not he found the needle in the haystack that cleared Adelmo’s name.

Several months later, Father Sarmiento, was found dead, and buried in a small town called Huacrapuquio, buried in a shallow grave, alongside a new street the townsfolk’s were excavating, Adelmo’s hometown matter-of-fact, of 3600-inhabitants, a township where at one time, it was a terrorist haven, but Adelmo was no where to be found to answer the police inquire into this mysterious investigation. Incidentally, they never found Mercedes, but they found her shoe, it was alongside Sarmiento, in his gravesite.

Written 12-28-2008 (Written in Lima, Peru)

2008-11-19T13:29:00.001-08:00

The Merced Cthulhu
(A horror out of the Merced Jungle)

(Forward) Only in ancient manuscripts can the word Cthulhu be found, meaning ‘horror of the horrors.’ A horror that numbs you, one that defies even God and His mercy; the decipherment of the word can entangle both the pawn and the prey, it reduces human existence to a weak and stale plight. Thus, in this following story, one that is based on fact (and considered by the author as historical fiction, since he has added his own descriptiveness to the account, and his own adjectives, that in which he feels belong to the story), that took place in November, of 2008; we will see a jealous mindless monster in motion, and the pawn will be devoured (names have been changed).

(Andahuaylas)

I will tell you of Naomi, She left Andahuaylas, Peru, in the Andes crossing into the Mantaro Valley and Huancayo, on the 3rd of November, 2008, on her way to La Merced. You have heard such stories of horror in bits and pieces, I am sure, as you are about to hear now, where demonic things crawl in the night to do hideous works for hell, but man and woman have their own hell, besides hell chasing them with hell’s demons, but here is man’s own evil substance at work, no need for Satan to interfere, of what truth is or isn’t, for it will not matter, especially when lost—and in this story it gets lost, it passes by, dwells in limbo, forgotten, as jealousy takes over, this was Naomi’s fate, and peril.
As she reached her destination (having taken a bus), in the local called La Merced, in the central jungle of Peru, near Satipo, she went to live with her half sister and brother in law.
She stood at the door knocked, as a man slowly opened the door, and with long parade glimpses stared at her, eyeing her up from heel to the top of her head. She stood back, shadow-like against the sky. “I am Naomi,” she said, thinking maybe Laura’s husband, Cesar had forgotten what she looked like (they had not seen one another in a number of years, and she had come down to the rain forest area to work the fields).
He then asked her in, as glittering visions and the pageantry of glory filled his inners. In his mind, it was not of the drab day to day life he had expected life would be in the now near future, that was going to end, and a gleaming one set into motion, in the next few weeks, he had new intentions.

After the greetings were said and done, and Naomi got her private room, Laura noticed at the dinner table the first night, her husband had faint like glimpses toward her half sister (half sister meaning, both Laura, the elder and Naomi, had the same mother, although different fathers); as I was about to say, these glimpses were not unnoticed.
And so during the following week, Laura put on an invisible mask, to hide her jealousy, not that her sister was feeding into her husband’s scheme, but jealous manifestations of that illusion entangled her imagination to think so (but fundamentally it was not true).

It was during the second week, towards the end of it, that Laura could not bridge the gulf of evil she had created towards Naomi, awful blackness numbed her heart, unstable mind, and her spirit, soul and ego, all spinning, shaking her every bone, behind the shape of her fleshly body, to once and for all settle this account with the black winged creature who came to subdue her husband—Naomi.
She, Laura, was lovingly foolish, insecure with fear of losing her husband, burning like lit firewood in a heath throughout her being, pulling at her hair when alone in a private room, until the roots gave in, and dropped out. It would have seemed she was not a product of today’s ultimate civilization, soon to have a dim and un-guessed future.

Oh, far, far and far off was her mind this night, when she woke up in the wee hours, took a slug hammer, red-eyed, with a slayers heart, drifting she crept into Naomi’s room, in causal reality, she bent over, the bed, lurked with her distorted mind onto the face of her sister, and here is where the story unfolds: she produced in her cerebellum a pointless chaos, horrifically primordial and beast-haunted, recognized the mark she was going to strike, and like a great wind, she struck her younger sister in the head, forehead, temple, nose, she struck several times, bone breaking blows, and sent her into a dark form of existence.

The following day she died, driven only by some restless whim, to show her she did not die instantly, against all cosmic laws, she left this world, not like a crushed worm, but rather, spawning for new life.

Written 11-16-2008, after reading a report in the Correo Newspaper, Huancayo, Peru, the author was inspired to write in part, of its actual events… considered historical fiction—of the account, and murder of ?

2008-11-16T12:49:00.000-08:00

Wolf Hunt in the Boundary Waters

(The Beasts of the Woods, and the Empty Barn)

The Beasts of the Woods

It was near daylight, out of the darkness came two glary-eyes, spread apart like an owls; scared, looking everywhichway. Then they’d vanish. He could see—had caught a glimpse of—and now was refocusing, could see, a barn in the far-distance, between the naked trees and his shivering body, under naked branches, where he was huddled, and now over him was an emerging dim-whitish blue sky, rising; he was slightly blinded by the pure white snow that surrounded him, and night turning into day (he was in a wooded area, called the Boundary Waters, in upper Minnesota, it was the winter of 1990.)
In the darkness of the night, he walked like an ape, hands hanging along his sides, half arched, like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, a million shadows creeping off from the trees, surrounding him, and sounds, the sounds he was forced to listen to, meaningless cries of the woods.
But now at daybreak he saw a barn, he squatted down, resting on his bare knees, to get a better view. He spat out blood and yellowish slime from his mouth, onto the pure white snow. He looked at it, puzzled.

One little meager barn in the middle of the woods, in the Boundary Waters, sleeping like a mangy mutt, under an empty sky,
‘That’s something else,’ he told himself, as if he never saw it before (in a zoning like stare).
As he moved closer to the barn, he saw an axe, from the distance he was at, it was small yet, and by the axe was a dead wolf, it was chopped up—so it appeared, now frozen in the cold February winter snows. The barn door was slightly wedged open, held open by frozen snow, tucked under it. He got a better look at the wolf, as he drew nearer, “That’s something else…” he said aloud, no one around to hear him.

In front of him, there were raw patches of dirt, earth-patches, that seeped out of the snow, crept through the snow, thus, he was seeing footprints, the snow did not cover up, twelve-hours prior, along with wolf-tracks (or wolf embedded naked paw marks), along side shoe imprints (‘…an attack that took place,’ his subconscious whispered to his awakening soul), perhaps trampled over by wolves, and other wild sources, within those twelve-hours: these shoe imprints, he noticed, that is to say, the marks of soles from shoes, indented into the hard snow against the dirt, the imprints, he was examining, looked like his shoe-soles, his steps, leading into the woods, not out.

The Empty Barn

The path led up to the barn; and along side that path, leading up to those two heavy doors, belonging to the barn, being kept open by the frozen snow, wedged under it—slightly he could now see torn up overalls, shredded pieces, large pieces of the fabric, frozen blood on those pieces, thrown on top of the snow as if a beast had, spin and twirled about wildly, and in the process, whirled it into the air, after tarring it off its prey.
As he looked down into the pathway, still baffled, and profoundly so, full of unknown emotions—slowly nearing the barn, glancing over his shoulder at those shredded trousers—a last look, he got thinking, and thinking deeper, trying to put the puzzle together.

“They are not going to catch me,” he said aloud, and was now wondering why indeed he said what he said, he thought deeper,
“Who is not going to catch me?”
The only living things at this living moment that surrounded him were the tress, those haunting looking branches that looked more like thin arms reaching everywhichway.
He could smell out the dead flesh of the dog, he could see a face of a woman crying, although he couldn’t untangle the riddle in his head, not yet anyhow.

Now he stood, knee deep in snow, crossing over from the path to the barn, some twenty-feet in front of him. He made a sound in his throat, and nostrils, as if to clear them, then listened for any sounds but only the winds came to his ears. He looked in all directions as if he was part of a hunt, and he was the one being hunted, had been the one hunted all night long.
Motionless he stood looking at two thick almost completely closed doors, doors kept open by wedged frozen snow, doors leading into the barn. He felt like one lone lost beast: he remembered now (staring at those doors), a woman had been with him, in her hand, right hand, she held a rose— he had given it to her, it was her eighth anniversary, and he had given it to her; he remembered her fur-like hat.
He looked up at the sky, the sun was slanted, the clouds had a tinge, a tint of red fire in them, red like the blood he saw sprinkled about the entrance of the barn doors (for now he was but ten feet in front of them).

She, the woman with the rose, had been feeding a young dog (wolf) in the barn (perhaps the wind carried her sent—to and fro within the barn, and outside the barn—as the wind seeped through the crevasses of the old wood, and seeped out of those two barn doors, one wedged open by frozen snow, and down hill), a delicate woman, she was waiting for her husband to return with firewood, they had been warming themselves up, along with the barn, that is previously to this lone moment, warming it up with splinters of wood found here and there within the barn, then by surprise ‘Attack!’ came (her husband outside of the barn looking for branches he could dry out for burning wood later), consequently, during this interval period, a pack of wolves, hungry, starving wolves, with yellowish eyes, doted with a black marble iris’, and saber like teeth, growling, snarling, paralyzed the twenty-eight year old woman, as they kept circling her.

The Attack

They, her and her husband, came to the barn accidental like, they had gotten lost in the woods, upon noticing it, were warming up in the empty, abandoned barn, perhaps a hundred-years old: away from the elements of the winter snows, and cold; they were not suppose to have been in the park, the Boundary Waters, a geological wonder of the world, but they couldn’t help themselves, it was an adventure, an eight anniversary adventure. They had snuck in.
And then, the wolves came, he now remembered, and he heard her screams, and he came running, he was gathering wood, branches to feed a fire in the barn, it was all awkward to him, but it was now being absorbed into his body like osmosis, as if his subconscious broke down some walls to inform him, all and everything, perhaps for self preservation, for his subconscious knew something he did not know, not clearly anyhow, and he was not yet putting the dotes together, and to his subconscious, time was of the essence.

He remembered now—much more clearly than he had a moment ago, it was his wife, when he arrived, several of those wolves were dragging her around the barn like a rag doll, as if they all were trying to let the others know whose property she was, or was going to be, and he took the axe lying on the side of the barn, one lone wolf to its side, as if it was a guard, and he killed it, bloody like, insanely chopping and chopping almost forgetting his wife was being dragged about, and then refocusing, seeing she was dead, and her limbs half chewed apart, he had ran, and they ran after him, tore his pants off him, he was half naked—(now he looked down at his shivering legs, yet he hand long underwear on, keeping him from complete lower body frost bite). And they hunted him. Had he not dug a hole in the snow, like an igloo, having the snow become his insulation, he’d have died of exposure, it covered his scent likewise.
‘Yes, yes…yes, yes..? it has to be,’ he was talking out loud (standing in front of those big barn doors), perhaps to his subconscious, ‘they were hunting me all night!’
Now tears poured down his face, he had had no time to grieve his wife, and they came automatically, like Nigeria Falls. But his subconscious was trying to tell him something else: ‘…grieve later.’
But why, he asked himself, the tears were still coming, it would only be a few minutes to give homage to his dead wife, who was no more than bone and marrow, and separated, thrown about like the bones at the Killing Fields of Cambodia; don’t my subconscious know I got to grieve! So he told himself as the tears came, pushing his intuition, his instinct, the things the subconscious uses to warn back further into his cerebellum.

He remembered his wife now, as he had peered through the barn doors, her screams—(tears now coming along with the darkness he enclosed with the palms of his hands around his face and eyes)—he remembered now, her trying to get up, and once getting up, she ended up running from the wolves in circles, them chasing her, like ten-cats after a little mouse, but they outpaced her, pulled her down slowly, steadily, until she drew near the floor of the barn and collapsed.

Now he opened up his eyes, drew his palms away, and wiped his tears on his shirt sleeve, and took in a deep breath, let out a sigh, and was about to tell his subconscious ‘…see, it only took a moment (but the moment was more like five minutes),’ and then he shook his head, started looking automatically in all directions, an instinct told him do. He listened to it, and he saw in the far-distance, a wolf, just staring, then he looked to the opposite side, another one had popped his head out of the woods, and then two were creeping down the path to the barn. His heart pumped up the words, “The hunt…” it was not over for the wolves, that was what his subconscious was trying to tell him.

He stood there looking, and the more he looked, and the longer he looked, the more wolves that appeared…and closer and closer they came, as if testing the water, he even noticed one wolf, a lone wolf, his subconscious told him, ‘This one, this wolf you are looking at, the one staring you in the face some ten feet away, this wolf is also looking at the dead wolf behind you, the one you killed yesterday, they are related,’ and now he noticed the wolf had revengeful eyes, and he noticed the several other wolves, were surrounding him, combing out a perimeter…!

Notes: written in the evening of 11-14-2008

2008-11-16T12:44:00.000-08:00

'The Black Zone Horror'

Index

Part One: The Seatmate
Part Two: The Court Case
Part Three: The Dirge (Or poetic Justice)
Part Four: The Priest and Entity

Part One

The Seatmate

(September, 2007) Juan Carlos Perez left Huancayo, Peru, high up in the Andes, in the Mantaro Valley, after spending several days at a booth (stall) which his aunt had set up at the San Jeronimo festival of the Avelinos. The twenty-two year old boy caught a bus, with some forty-passengers, heading down the Andes, a seven hour night ride to Lima. He put his head phones on, found a window seat in the front of the bus, and fell to sleep.
In La Oroya (about one third of the way to Lima, the bus' destination), a miner's town, Manuel Pablo Silva, had purchased a ticket to Lima, and became a passenger; he sat in the back of the bus, put his baggage under the seat, and sat back. Ricardo Vila and his wife Maria, sat by him, he was calm, but his reactions seemed somewhat robotic.

The bus' journey had started at 1:00 PM, and got to La Oroya, at around 3:15 PM, where it had stopped for ten-minutes, and now was at Casapalca, a small village of miners high up in the Andes, almost at the highest point in the region. There the bus stopped to pick up more passengers, and most everyone got off the bus to stretch, buy bread and other things for the long trip. Matter of fact, Manuel had departed the bus, and was talking to one of the young woman he had seen on the bus, Ricardo and Maria nearby watching, but not assuming anything was awkward, or going to be awkward. Juan Carlos remained on the bus, tired from his long days of making and selling trout at the fiesta, one of the areas renowned foods. For the most part, the young man remained, or continued to remain obvious to his surroundings, and made no noise, consequently most of the passengers figured he was sleeping, and he was to the best of Manuel's knowledge.

From outside, leaning against an adobe (mud brick) building, waiting for the driver to give the ok to board, Silva noticed the calm reserved lad, peacefully in slumber, and upon embarking onto the bus, he, Silva, went back to his original seat, and pulled out his sack-looking as if it was filled with cloths and travel items, and went to sit in the seat by the young man, put the sack this time above in the overhead luggage area: and waited for the bus to go.

Someone had taken Ricardo's seat, and so he and his wife found one across from Manuel Pablo, thinking nothing of it, that it was just a seat change. In front of Perez and Silva, was a young woman, in her early twenties, she turned about looked at the two, smiled, she had talked to Silva a moment before, as they waited outside the bus, her name being, Ana Maria Zevallos, she had actually taken a liking for the so called minor.
((Interlude)(There was some kind of force that took over Silva, even his body seemed to shape change, acting more like a robot than a human, like something from outer space; nothing nature made on earth anyhow, he was made into a devil at that moment, at this juncture, a precocious monster, about to give out a terrible sight, in a way he was going to drag all those folks passengers, nameless passengers on the bus to his purpose, to inflict his doings, his gore, into their memories forever, they to him were the outsiders.))
Silva got up from his seat, no one really took notice, but then he opened up his bag, and pulled out a large butcher's knife, one used often for cutting up lambs and pigs and so forth, especial at festivals. Ricardo Vila, saw something metallic from his peripheral vision, and as he went to turn his head to get a better view, Manuel Pablo Silva, had stabbed Juan Carlos in the chest, he moved back hard in his seat, put his arm across his wife, woke her up, then Manuel stabbed the young man again, and again, rapidly (and swiftly Ricardo jumped up, pulled his wife out of harms way), as the man continued to stab Juan Carlos Perez.

Ana Maria, heard a bloodcurdling sound behind her; from the assailant came a hissing like sound as if from a snake or rat, from Juan Carlos, a shallow and thin cry, like a whimpering, and dying cat; then louder sounds came from the young man, sounds like a child's cry to the agony of a howling dog (the boy never knowing what really had happened, what was taking place, his murder in essence, at hand, at its most raw form; Ana Maria had turned about, choked on the scene and had made her back steps a noticeable distance from the assailant, toward the bus' driver.

The bus stopped, people started moving rapidly off the bus, not really knowing where they were, someplace between where they were and their previous last stop, about an hour from Lima, someone said Morococha, a small village close by; it was 7: 00 PM, and dark, and as one person after the other calmly disembarked the bus, Manuel dug his knife deeper into and around the neck, the collarbone, cutting through flesh and spine that linked to the neck and brain, cutting through its nervous system, and soft tissue, decapitating the young man right there and then.

The bus driver tried to get close to the assailant, but he swung swiftly the knife his way, he was now a madman looking for an escape route.

((Interlude)(We don't know what is in the brain of the one person next to us, the stranger that is; is it filled with superstitions perhaps, transcripts of some eternal evil spirit, who at a time and place will hum to the brain to wake it up and inflict pain at its will, these terrors are of an older standing, they date beyond ones own remains, the soul is covered up in these individuals, it can't even peep out to see the shadow's pre-existence, before it enters the core of the brain, hidden in some vault not even he can enter. And so it would seem this was the case here, as strange and misguided as it seemed, and senseless.))

Now everyone was outside of the bus, everyone but the corpse and Manuel, who was pacing back and forth on the bus, while a truck driver gave the passengers wrenches and crowbars, to protect themselves, as well as to keep the killer at bay, and on the bus. Within the hour, several police cars were at the scene, and the media came in by helicopter. Manuel tried an attempt at escaping out of a broken window he broke, which was to his dismay, for then he was subdued by several police officers.

((Afterward)(He, Manuel, paused exhausted before he tried to make his escape, breaking the bus window; fatigued, he saw the whole group of cars, and familiar passengers outside of the bus, the media, almost in bewilderment: he knew what he did, what he had done, he was holding the young man's head in his hands, then placed it back onto the open cavity called once a neck, onto its torso, it was actually pre meditated, he planned it, found the weakest link in the chain, Juan Carlos, and crystallized his mission with the exact moment, with no hesitation, by anointing him to be the sacrifice, he would produce fresh terror, he did do that, he who had been silent heretofore, spoke only in painful cries, while the murderer rambled on, hissed like a snake, interrupted the whole bus. There was no twin brother here to say 'I did it, not him.' That face, now with red eyes, that half face, the other half belonged to someone else, not man. Strange gestures, incantation culminated in his pacing back and forth on the bus, in obscure consciousness, he was in an ultimate frenzy. No one dared get too close to him. But that was all, except, not a syllable could anyone understand that he said, it was as if he was uttering another language, not Spanish, nor English, and those deafening hisses, a shattering ringing seemed to be in his head, he held it several times.))

Part Two

The Court Case of: Manuel Pablo Silva

Manuel is acting as his own lawyer, spokesman, and addressing the Jury, on a retrial of his case.

(Two years later) "It is true, I put six stab wounds into my seatmate's chest on the bus, and beheaded Him, yet I wish to show you in the following statements I am not the murderer. You have called me a madman, but the jury never looked at the whole picture two years ago, now I hope they will. You need to look at the horror that was inside of me, the one Father Bruni has now expelled out of me, and this is the murderer.

"Of the two years I spent at the sanitarium, weekly the priest, Father Bruni saw me, and worked with me on ridding me of this ghastly creature whom I was servant to, and now I am freed of his infinity or credible doom.

"Therefore I plead to you, during this retrial, not to look so much at Juan Carlos Perez, who was the victim, he has been revenged, twice over, because I have served two years in jail, and now this demonic force that was in me, cannot enslave me again.

The priest has in actuality, expelled, this demonic force, and sentenced him to go back into a black zone, where he came from. I repeat, I personally was the tool for the murder of Juan Carlos, but the force in me was the murderer. In so saying, I purged myself of this horror that used me to avenge mankind.

"You must understand there are black zones and shadows, close to all our daily activities, where evil spirits lurk and seep into, searching for bodies to operate in, thus the evil spirit has now a passage once he enters his victim, and through man, he operates in the physical. In such cases man becomes possessed and has little to do with the reckoning, or consequence thereafter. He must follow and strike like a robot, lest he himself becomes consumed by the diabolical phenomenal within him.

"Yes, it is morbid, but this evil spirit that is reclusive within a person, produces an ongoing weakness within him, which creates, in time, a secret life between him and you. At times you dismiss him as simply your imagination, because of your noticeable bizarre behavior and thoughts, despite the greater sense of right and wrong, you fall victim to him again, and march to his tune, the one who came out of the black zone, I am talking about, found an opening for him to enter and he did, namely me. He may at this point, even call you kindred, and think that he actually is. But he really is just an ancient subduer, who crumbled eons ago with his kind.

"His breath, goes into the deepest and darkest zones within your mind, spirit and soul, deceptive he is, and has in essence homesteaded your body, half-yours and half his, and he takes your half when aroused. He has become retarded from his long existence in an uncoddled world, in the black zones, which parallel ours.

"He knows the veritable code that you are made up of, and he has used it to his advantage with me: to the people of the Jury, I say with this dubious conduct he used on me, place guilt where it belongs, Judge me not for this murder, and give it to him, for you have punished me, because you cannot capture him."

The Juries deliberated for eleven hours, in as much as they wanted to keep Manuel incarcerated, they believed his story, and Father Bruni backed it up. As a result, his case was somewhat dismissed, he was left in the care of Father Bruni, and the probation department for the following five-years, and should any criminal charges be filed against him in the meantime, he would be subject to a third trial, and most likely, be subject to the full crime of murder and its consequences, but this time with no insanity plea.

Part Three

Poetic Justice or the Dirge

Manuel Pablo Silva, firmly believed he was dealing with an individual that had once inhabited the world long before mankind, a race you might say, of another era, who in having pseudomemories (and secrets given him from a supernatural race, even more powerful than his), who at one time inhabited the earth, and lost it, by being ostracized from it, and cast into this so called black zone.

With this entity within Manuel, it is obvious he wanted control, a priority that shows power, as all demonic imps or devils, evil spirits, want; but during the interim, they go searching window to window, creeping to see who is the most vulnerable, the weakest ling in the chain, this was how they discovered Manuel.

It is often funny I think but for every man alive, there seems to be an available woman, no matter how strange, ugly or bloodthirsty the man may be. And Manuel found this lovely Argentine girl to keep him company, down in Miraflores, a section in Lima. And they saw a lot of each other for several months. But something did take place, she got pregnant, and she got scared Manuel might go tell her parents. Not a real good reason to do what she was going to do, but often times our selections are like to like, meaning, you don't necessary pick out a mate that would be good for you, but one to suite your fancy, and that is what Manual did, picked one to his fancy, like two peas in pod. And when he was sleeping, he was stabbed to death by his new girlfriend, she cut up his body, put the parts into a suitcase, and went downtown Lima, to the Rimac River, and left the suitcase there, until it stunk to the high heavens.

Part Four

The Priest and the Entity

He, Manuel had told the priest during one of their sessions, before he was killed, told him, Bruni, of his weird dreams, more on the order of pseudomemories of his entity. These dreams were extracted by the entity within him, who told him, he had come from the Paleozoic Age, and had hid in the underground chambers throughout the world, for 125,000-years; here he lived amongst the cyclopean masonry, and megalithic walls that had sunken with the many earthquakes throughout history.

Through his dreams, the entity, explored his path with Manual, he was taken into the same objective reality, deeper and deeper into the crust of the earth.

Around this time, the entity got curious, and Manual's sleeplessness prevailed, inflicted by the demon, and next came impulses in his brain, the entity knew how to shut it down, almost like having a renter vacating the premises, and the black zone, with its horrors took over.

Written August 1, 2008© Dlsiluk

2008-10-19T10:15:00.000-07:00

Four Short Suspense Stories (Macabre to Eldritch)

1) Belly of the Abyss

A gray form stood beside him.
"Angus?" it said.
"Delaying me will not help you, I am the only way to death, and perhaps for you peace, follow me!" Said the grass mass.

And by outcome he followed him, across the deep dark city of Caracas, and he looked about as he followed, at last it was full night, and they were on a plane, or at least he was, to the jungles near Angel Falls; night, it had closed in all over the land, and there was a great noise a water, before the plane landed, it was the great falls, and within the following day, he found himself, standing on top of its cliff, Angel Falls, peering below it, it covered all other sounds. Then the gray mass led appeared again to Angus, it was as if-up to this point, he was in a trance. And Angus, stood on the edge of the cliff, a foot away from the wild winds grinding like teeth.

"Angus, it is I," said the gray mass, that had eyes and ears and a wolf-like configuration,
"I love death, a man can love many things, but I dreaded life as a physical human being, it made me shiver, I guess I was always wondering when, and where it would be, death, now I am in its scheme, its substance, its existence, nights are no longer chilled, nor do I get drenched with rain, and if the abyss, or the caves or any pathway within them, get narrow too narrow for a physical being to walk, and if it grows darker, I simple go forward nonetheless, I am not smoldered by it," and the gray mass snarled, and Angus, wondered who and what it was.

Then in the Venezuelan sun, on the top of Angel Falls, Angus fumbled a way, and he fell, his head dizzy beneath this reeking spirit, he got back up, slipped, and clambered, trying to cling onto the airless being, that could only be seen, whose strength was waning to no avail.

"Come down to the abyss with me, if you can find your way out, I will give you anything you ask, die there and let me resurrect you, I have permission from a Hell Lord, to use your soul as I wish. Truly, you are a man whose dark ravine, is kept inside your mind, your dreams, I will rip out a faint strip from the sky, and make all your dreams possible. We will be brothers, as we once were."

Then it occurred to him, it was his brother, who had died several years before, committed suicide, but he would not disclose this any further.

At that moment, the great walls of the falls quivered and echoed,
"Grab the moment," he said to Angus, Satan has his tongue on fire."

And Angus, saw strange things in the sky, shadows were flying all about the rocks, and waterfall, beneath it, and a trail of smoke followed them, and stones crashed down into the waterway below the falls, and the gray mass, hurled himself over the cliff, and with its mighty paws, he climbed slowly back up the falls, in physical form, he had shape changed, turned into a Manta core.

Now there was need for Angus to be bold if not swift, and both would be to his advantage, the gray mass, had turned into a Manta core, the head of a wild man, and body of a lion, and a tail with spikes in it, and it was physical, and he peered over the edge of the falls, heedless, he came forward, Angus, lost all hope: he should not have followed him in the first place, now before him was a deadly creature, the heat and stench of hell followed him.

The creature, mentally summoned him to jump, lest he be torn apart by his paws. At that point, Angus found a strength in his heart, and body, and jumped down the side of the cliff, onto a slender tree, a tree that grew out of the side of the mountain, the very one that harbored the falls, but the body of the great Manta core, towered over him, and with his stretched out paw, swayed the top of the tree, pale was Angus' face, and then the beast heaved the tree as he fell and transformed his shape back into the grey slime he was, and Angus fell to his death, stabbed a hundred times as he fell 3000-feet to the floor of the gully, stabbed by sharp stones and branches from trees and bushes, and he sank into the mud below to his death, and he went into the belly of the abyss, and when he woke up there was his brother, waiting.

Written 10-18-2008, at home, in the evening

2) In a Birdless Sky (WWI, France)

Chapter One

Facing Death

When dying becomes easier than living, it is easier to face your enemy, thus, peacefulness with repose, even under the harshest conditions, prevails, everything else, means very little.
With a mud covered face gasping, beguiled of being three years in a war, one he never understood, in a country which was foreign to him, in a trench, he never dug out, only lived in, ate in, paced in, sweating from foot to brow in, soot covered him from waist down, creatures, and spiders and disease seeped along the trenches-trenches he never imagined he'd call home.
He thought, now at a corner of the trench, in a hollow by himself, on guard duty to secure the silent and lonely spot, until morning, he thought, looking at a standing German, erect, looking eye to eye with him as he peered over its edge-he thought, facing death at that instant (twilight seeping in-between the waning day): said, to himself, looking into the eyes of the German, perhaps one or two minutes,
"Look here, we are both armed, a few feet apart (thereabouts) you have a rifle, and I got a pistol, both aiming it at one another-somewhere, does it matter where, one must die. But it doesn't necessarily have to be here and now."

Chapter Two

Just one Bullet

It would take just one bullet to finish what he was being paid to do-trained by the British to do, sent overseas by the Americans to Europe to do, and above all, given orders by a French Colonel, and an American Command Sergeant-Major to do, to kill Germans. Just one bullet would put him out of the doughboy war, out of the war business for good.
He, Corporal Anton, didn't even have his helmet on; he dismissed it long ago, hours ago that is, long ago for him: it got in his way, while lying against the wet, damp muddy walls of the trench.
An hour ago he thought,
"I wonder what the colonel would say if he found me without my helmet on, or perhaps the Sergeant-Major," then his second thought was,
"The Colonel and Sergeant-Major, and their entourage, would never be caught in such a position-as in this dirty, muddy and smelly trench, it is like saying, Satan would never be found in the pits of hell, what for, even if it is of his own makings, he has his puppets, they can do the dirty work. Most likely, they, the Colonel and his clan are drinking rum and coke, smoking cigars and eyeing up young French girls, in their cathedral-like, underground den, so secure, a thousand bombs would not penetrate it (he saw it once, and only once, earth and clay and thick broad wooden beams, with six-feet of cement, encased around it, to absorb the shocks)."

"No...!" he told himself, "you'd never find them out here," and in three long years, he never did-one exception, when there was a photo shoot, and then they stood tall and brave with the other cleaned up soldiers, the doughboys, and a week later you read about their feats in the international papers, all with pictures and beautiful phrased sentences, that told about victory at hand, the glory of it, the medals to be handed out after the last great battle.

Chapter Three

In a Bird less Sky

There the German peered overhead, erect as a crane, looking down, rifle in hand, aimed: it must had been a minute or two, they stared into each others eyes (somewhere, one may have thought, had a thought; they were indubitable brothers, at first glance, had they been given a chance to have met under different circumstances that is: had neither one of them been foolish enough to have listened to the drums of war, and followed for glory or whatever treasures they sought, perhaps they both deserved to die for it, for war, it is all part of anarchist-youth).
The German, perhaps the same age of Corporal Anton, the same rank, perhaps even the same ancestry, looked frightened as he stood there rigidly looking into the other's face (Anton lurking into his face), both openly, the German in a frenzy, thoughts vanishing, vanishing...in a birdless sky, vanishing, gone...two bullets hitting their targets, an echo as if in an auditorium.

Chapter Four

Death

Downward sedately-without haste he, Corporal Anton, fell back into his mud like grave, his dirt dugout, now encased in death.

Off balance, the German aimlessly tried to hold his legs straight, in fury he tried to pull his body back up from falling backwards, with one last thrust, to pull himself up, then he zoomed backwards, immobile; now he watched the birdless sky, what he would have thought, was already too late, save, a fading prayer.

When the Colonel saw him, saw, Corporal Anton, the following morning, he was all cleaned up (the body was brought to him), there he stood along side Corporal Anton, a photo shoot took place, the Colonel's face was empty of expression, yet angry words came out, when the movie camera was in motion, "He will get a metal for his bravery," he said to the media, several standing about. There was no exhaustion in his face, not like the same that covered Anton's, not even anguish, just old recognized sentences that came out of a tongue with no hair, words that provoked revenge and steadfastness. Then he went to join the Sergeant-Major, in the Cathedral-room.

Written 10-18-2008, inv Huancayo, Peru, at the Mia Mamma Café, in El Tambo: somewhat inspirited by my Grandfather, who was in WWI, Anton Siluk, born 1891, died, 1974, dedicated to his memory, and his war.

3) Shooting Painted Horses

(A Short Story on Betrayal-1820, along the Mississippi)

Chapter One

Along the Mississippi

The cliffs were all painted with horses, so they looked for Nelly de la Cruz; there was no trace of neither her, nor no sign of her husband, those who had been with them two were dead, shot dead, by smugglers.

By and by, she'd be found, but for now she had escaped the pirates who scanned the upper (northern part, to the central region) of the Mississippi waiting in hollows and crevasses, and caves, and then like sharks, by way of canoes, or rowboats, even barges, they'd, if not by land and horse (gallop to their prey), they'd quickly overpower the innocent, shanghaiing anyone and everyone, for rape, sale, blackmailing, or whate're profit they'd bring, it was treasure they were after; they called themselves the Drake Clan or Gang, after their leader Adam Terrance Drake and there were twenty of them (pirates of the Mississippi, operating in the years of 1810 to 1824).

But today was different, upon their approach two escaped their grips, seldom done, and the chances of getting off in secret, as they did were seldom accomplished, but the patches of the morning fog had allowed just this- the shores were difficult to see, becoming misty, as was the houseboat, a source of inconvenience for the pirates, thick patches of white fog, drifting from one side of the river to the other. But soon abandonment would prevail.

They, the family group with Nelly de la Cruz and her husband Mauricio, who came down on a houseboat all eight of them, were told by Sam Nelson, of the upper Minnesota:
"Don't dare go anywhere beyond Pig's Eye Point, along the shores you could be cut off by pirates, make sure you hire some guns, good shooters somewhere along the way, lest you want to be taken captive for ransom by the pirates."

But hired guns cost money, and they didn't listen of course to Sam, preferred to beat out the river, and kept their cargo aboard, and slowly went down her, "Sam, was right," Nelly's husband would say, just before they jumped into the river to escape; find a place just such as they would wish, and hide until the danger was over.

Seven canoes, with painted faces to cover their identity, white men portraying Indians (the pirates), in canoes had surrounded them, shooting, not taking prisoners, hence, all would die but the two.

They, the pirates had set a watch in the cliffs by what was called, the 'Cliffs by Painted Horses'. The ancient Indians had painted the horses onto the cliffs hundreds of years before, and you could see them with the naked eye while approaching them going down the Mississippi, if indeed one knew the spot and were looking for it. There are dozens of places between the Cliffs of Painted Horses, and others, meaning rock art, on cliffs and rocks, along the Mississippi, but most were hidden from where folks on a boat could see them safely enough.

Chapter Two

The Cave by, Painted Horses

There was a narrow opening between two cliffs, near Painted Horses, and Mauricio crept between them, hiding from the pirates, coming in from off the shore with the booty they had taken from the houseboat, looking for him and his wife, especially his wife, for their personal pleasures, for they had gotten a glimpse of her beauty, and adoring shape, and that immediately sat down deep into their lustful brains, like flags waving in the wind (especially for, Keystone, a young lustful, and bloodthirsty pirate who kept her every inch embedded into his ceremonial mental vaults of what he'd do to her once captured), as I was about to say, they, the pirates had seen her, before she jumped into the river behind her husband, who had jumped off the boat, without even telling her to follow, she simple followed his footsteps nonetheless.

Behind the angle of the well he could see the entrance of the cave called "Painted Horses," the pirates were shooting at his wife, who had entered the cave, and Keystone who had follower her.
By and large, as we can see at this point, he had let her fend for herself, abandoned her. She had looked for him, had lowered her eyes, her brow, her head just a moment, as she ran from the pirates, and when she brought it up to the level where she saw the cave she would enter, he disappeared, she thinking he went inside the cave, where else could he have gone-she instantly pondered, he said not word, not one single solitary word to distract her from going into that legendary cave, the cave known as the maze, the labyrinth of all caves along the Mississippi, that is why the Clan shot at Nelly, and let be bygones thereafter, and let Keystone chase her into a habitat where screaming wildfowl would not dare enter, eminently suited the pirates with less lustful intentions; for the most part, the smuggling had accomplished what they set out to, as for the husband they felt he had drowned.

Chapter Three

Inside the cave of Painted Horses

She had run inside the cave, the mist kept coming, in frequent belts, seeping along the floor of the cave to where Keystone the Pirate could not follow her, he took one forked entrance, Nelly another, as she called in echoes for her husband, whom never answered, and then came sunset, one she did not see, but felt it must be for she had run, then walked and then held her hand against the damp walls of the cave to assist her in her next to crawling erect.

Everything was near to indistinguishable inside the cave, her eyes somewhat adjusted, but she was beyond light, and one entrance let into another, and she could hear the echoes of the pirates voice, not her husband's, and then she knew he had abandoned her, she wanted to believe, had second thoughts even, that out of the confusion, he did what he did, but she knew now, wherever he was, at one point they were both earshot-within a audible range of hearing one another and he did not call out to her, but here the lustful, young pirate, did what a substitute she felt. The trumpeting of his eager voice had dangerously went to a pleading for them to get-together to find a way out, she figured sooner or later they'd bump into one another, then what? was the question: lest they die beforehand, and that would be settled.

The paths were endless, and the young man's voice was always either behind her, in front of her or on the sides of her, but not far from her. Her instincts becoming keener, she knew they'd meet at some crosswalk.

Chapter Four

Mauricio's Escape

Mauricio looked into the cave, the following morning, dark it was, the mist lifted, the pirates gone. He saw Nelly enter it, and he saw the pirate enter it as well, his long knife tucked into his belt, a woodened looking pistol in his hands, a bandana around his forehead, paint on his cheeks, chin and around his eyes. He was frightened of the image he had just formed, and said not a word into the mother cave; elaborate care he took in stepping back from the entrance, satisfied he would not go into it, he felt there was no sense in sticking around-she was not insight, he had done his duty as best he could, his attitude during the dominance of this previous crisis was found to be unconsciously more desirable in saving himself, not getting shot, than saving his wife, and himself, and perhaps getting shot in the process: in which, that would not do anyone any good, so he convinced himself, and thus, she would have to do the same, and so not an evil tough overhung his conscious for wrong doing, nor did he build a rude wall of shame for abandoning his wife-at lest not at this juncture, it was a parallel he felt, saying, "...she ran one way, I ran another..." but of course it wasn't that way, was it?

He found himself climbing up the cliff then once over the edge of the cliff, cautiously throwing himself forward he peered over it once and for all, then ran into the woods, all in fair weather, he ran until his head got dizzy, an old woman fund him on the ground, took him into her home, as though he was her child, or better, a stray cat, in a small town-let deep in the woods.

In time, he would hear after every sunset, wake up, if sleeping, startled by a voice behind him, it was always Nelly's voice calling out: he never said a word on this matter, he lived with the old lady, for eight-years, and thought the matter would be over with his wife, never mentioning her name. But if ever there was a need to talk, he was the one, but never did. So after the old lady's death, he tried to master his purpose, one he never found, and died two years later of alcoholism, at the age of thirty-nine: a bloated body, with a liver that was likened be being frostbitten.

Chapter Five

Nelly and Keystone

There was no end to the cave, its paths, its corners, its entrances, no light, it was now the third day, she heard footsteps, it was his, the pirate's, from silence came a towering body over her's, she was at wits end, laying down against the damp walls of the cave, coughing, dying slowly.
She had thought the matter over for her, death was eminent, and he would not find her, but he did fine her, tired and no longer hiding, just laying where she was, dirty, turned into a prisoner of the mother cave.

She felt his dark human hand on her leg, it was the least likely thing she expected, she said with a bellow-at this stage of the hunt anyway, "What is the matter with you, we are dying, we will be dead soon, and you are thinking of sex?"

He had a sack of rum that was attached to his side belt, oh, just enough to make a person more thirsty, it held perhaps a pint, no more, he had drank most of it, but gave her the last drops of it, saying, "This is my contribution," then received her unwillingly, as if he was entitled to his booty, and she was it. There they lay for two more days, him taking her several times, right up to her death. Then he, died twenty feet down that cold damp passageway from her, and wouldn't be found, until 1902, when a child would be playing above them, falling through a weak spot in the upper crust of the earth, a hole formed by perhaps animals, and thereafter, discovering their bodies.

Parts written 10-15-2008, and 10-17-2008, Huancayo, Peru.

4) Uamak's Demonic Escape

((Part two of: 'Uamak's Aquatic') (The Demon's Sea, over Iceland))

As the evening progressed, I could see there was no peace in the sea below me, the boat was barely in view. I had returned after a year, to see if Uamak was still where I left him, this demonic being, from some ancient culture of the past; this monstrous figure was still on the rock where I had left him (forty miles out of Reykjavik, Iceland), gazing over the cliff into the sea. Thus, I took provision with myself for the night.

The weather was becoming misty, with patches of white fog, drifting towards the shore, with a rising wind, this all made me quite anxious, especially with fading observations.
From the boat, lights from the eyes of its skipper Hela (one of the Hell Lords, under the bondage of Satanae, the lord of eternal night, darkness and no hope) had made a pack with death, to capture by wit, or force all souls, if not half souls, as was Uamak, to his personal realm, for his personal pleasures if not play.

Thus, the lights from his eyes could be seen, they appeared to strike the figure sitting on the rock, Uamak, strike him as if, wrapping him-this half demonic beast, with a penetrating light that paralyzed him, it closed in on every side of the demonic being, from where I could see, and I was on the edge of the cliff, I could see the vessel below me, the inlet, along with the narrow rock that extended out into midair, where the demon was sitting, this titanic being on this great rock.

Uamak, saw me, and of course knew me, from our last visit, a year prior, when he sought my second-insight, to tell him how his death would be, which was at that time in the hands of Hela, it looked like.

The inlet looked almost as if it was a smuggler's den. I could hear the waters below drawn forward and back, banging against the hardness of the rocks like a galloping horse; within a few minutes, I witnessed the vessel swing up onto the shore and rocks of the cliff below, it perhaps remembered me from a year ago, neither one of us seeing the other close up, but both of us being curious.

Under some need to see this being, I lowered myself by rope, desperate and reckless down to the sea's surface, the vessel, determined to see this devilish creature in the flesh, if in fact he had flesh. Once upon the surface, it was rough at best, I stood behind a corner, a wall, stone and clay under my feet, the cliff to by back, I had come down by sheer nerve and guts, not sure where I got them, but they appeared out of nowhere, and here I was.

I now peered into the boat, the blanket of fog had shifted somewhat, and spread back into the sea, leaving me and the boat, and the granite rocks about-staring at one another, clear, visible to the naked eye. Out into the sea I could hear, the thundering sounds of waves, as if there were monster demons waiting for a new soul to be plucked from earth's soil: when one is face to face with the peculiar, and dark side of one's mind imagines the unthinkable. Now this creature in the boat, started spouting black smoke from its mouth, then came out of the smoke, a hand, it reached out to me, it reached beyond its definable limits, my heart beat as I scanned this being and his haunting hand, along with his glass like eyes, there was little chance indeed, I would leave this location, if I was put under his spell, and he was waiting.

He took no shelter from the storm; obstacles were of little offence to him, as to his surroundings, as they were trying for me. My heart now was pulsating wildly. I had been a fact of many strange incidents in my life, of early and later years, but nothing like this had ever crossed my brow.

I moved forward to the creature with imperceptible slowness, I took a very short study of his movements, it showed me he was no longer watching the demonic being he had put into a trance (the one who begged me a year ago, in his somber pleading, to find a way to set him free, to tell him of his death, after death). I noticed Uamak, was out of his trance, I could see him partly peering over the cliff, putting his head forward, I kept the Hell Lord's attention, and he saw that, then Uamak, was no longer looking-unconsciously, like a bullet, imitating one anyhow, he dashed off, I knew he would.

Stiff and still as if incased in stone I stood with both ears listening to the sharp winds building up, the anger of the Hell Lord, I expect. He tried to make a deal with me, saying, he'd give me his power, for my soul, just name the time, a year, ten years, even twenty. But who knows one's time on earth, perhaps I only really had less to live; thus, he'd have gotten the better of the deal. In any case: why would I seek power out of control, it is what he was offering. For once one loses his soul, if indeed he has power, why would he not use it to its limit, no restraints. I said no, and he was again enraged, the first time when he noticed Uamak was gone, now he was losing me.
I knew one thing and perhaps one thing only, being a Christian, and upon him learning I was a Christian, his intent on binding me, decreased, and he became cautious, allowing me to re-climb the rope to safety.

Once on top, I did not see Uamak, and surely there is good reason for that, he escaped the clutches of Hela: once and for all.

2008-10-15T13:18:00.000-07:00

A Branch from the Devil
(A Murder Mystery, along the Thames)

Chapter One
Katita’s Formative Years

Katita whose Christian family name will not be mentioned here, for it would at once, draw attention, unneeded and uncalled-for attention to the family, her father had abandoned her mother at a very young age; the period of his death, which forms the initial subject of my heretofore, narrative to be. At this exact point, Katita’s mother received a pension—for the most part, on behalf of her daughter, to care for her and her education, until she would turn twenty-five years of age. At the age of twelve years old, her mother died, in a like manner of her husband, drowned, and found along the hard rock and cemented shores of London’s Thames River, and so we see the inheritance of Katita’s father goes to her, and her guardian (whom is of little significance in this narrative, but nonetheless, I shall mention her name, Claudia Belmont, a small structured woman, of a very old age, a relative, Godmother, to the child).
She, Katita’s alluring and great beauty, was accepted by the young spirited, charming and at times folly of her personality, even at an anticipative angle, she become awake to the latter part of it, and while at the edge of it, acquire a profound terror.
There was no serious investigation into the drowning of her father and mother (that took place over a seven year period), in London’s Thames, River—that is, up to one fine morning when the policeman came knocking on her door, she replied to all his questions—the investigation officer being Thomas Harding—with a perfect alibi to the death of Juan Parra de Roule, her Latin lover from the Andes of Peru (drowning in the Thames): thus, the offence died away, even forgotten by Miss Katita.
His corpse, Juan Parra’s was found; along those cement walls of London’s Thames River, at the point not far from Cleopatra’s Needle, the ancient structure that over looks the river, brought to London in the 1880s. Matter of fact, this is where all three bodies were found, if not next to it, nearby it. Evidently, and according to Harding’s’ theory, the bodies either floated away from the needle, or remained by it because of the debris the tourist threw in the river, and it collected on the banks underneath the needle, whatever the case, he was convinced the murders—yes indeed, he referred to them as murders, took place right there.
Katita now was twenty-two years old, and thus far, the murders would have spanned a 17-year period. And to his theory, they all connected to the same murderer, the atrocity of all three marched to the same beat, and so it was at this juncture Thomas Harding came to view these murders and its victims connecting to Katita herself, but absent was a clue to the mystery, yet Mr. Harding was sure there was an assassin, that these were not simply coincidences. No one doubted it was a devilish mystery, but as described and the murders being in a seventeen year span, nothing was brought forth to light.

Chapter Two
Mr. Harding’s Investigation

To Mr. Harding, it was obvious, the three corpses did not drawn, positively so, they had too many bruses to indicated otherwise. Strange as it appeared to everyone, Harding kept the case open, although having—reluctantly—to discharge the only suspect he had, Katita, for she had passed and passed before his and, but the wise inspector simply could never procure a perfect scenario for her murdering the father, and he knew without a doubt, the assailant was linked to all three.

Chapter Three
Concluding Facts

In respect for the supposition of Mr. Harding, who died not knowing the facts, the complete facts to his case that is, or not taking them into to account, if indeed he knew them, and overlooked them, this explanation, to the facts, that took place, at its latest date being, his death in the Thames River in the summer of 1974, when Mr. Harding was found drawn, a few years into the investigation. I shall give him the credit, for his everlasting endeavors.
Had Mr. Harding taken the time, or kept an open mind, and not overlooked certain things in his overview of the case important miscalculations, —henceforward, he might have found his error, which produces at length the results only a loving father like he might have missed. For in regard to youth at its briefest point, it has its most variance for evil or good. Perhaps a branch from the devil can sway it, and in this case I think it did.
While visiting her father along the Thames, in 1952, at the age of five years old, Katita seemingly appeared to have embedded thoughts altogether apart from her own, to be fully entertained, pushed her father, gently, and he fell to his death, there on the cemented gradated bank, rolling the rest of the way into the river, as he had turned away from the needle, to enjoy the tranquility of the water, the motive, the rupturing of the family, he was guilty of many sins, and among them, threatening his wife, Katita’s mother.
In a like manner, and again at the same location, in the same way, in 1959, Katita’s mother died, the motive was, she, was to bring her daughter to an orphanage, convinced the young girl was consuming too much of her life, to a point she had no free time for herself—perhaps dating was included. In any case, by the shake of the dice, and a new voice in her head, and reflection, which appeared obvious, she had committed her second murder, exactly the same way.
Exposed within these limits of murder, she marched forward and killed her boyfriend, for adultery, so she claimed, and killed him in her old style of execution, but this time with the help of a small baseball bat she kept under her car seat.
And I suppose at this point, you readers can guess how she killed her last antagonist, Mr. Harding.

Note: “A Branch from the Devil,” written after lunch at “Mia Mamma’s” restaurant, the afternoon of, 10-14-2008, in El Tambo, in Huancayo, Peru (I had a nice Steak, with bone and fat, and Split Pea soup for lunch, three bowls, coffee and coke, and the wind came and blew the umbrellas wildly about as my wife and I sat outside in the open part of the Café, and perhaps all this food and wind and then the sun inspired me to write this story, and thus, came a branch into my mind, and of course, who else could do such evil deeds as drowning so many, but the devil himself. The name Katita, came from the little girl who was eating over by me under another umbrella with her mother, the previous day, I had met her before, she came and kissed me goodbye, and thus, the little angel got into my story, I do hope if she ever reads it, she not take offence. And so I shall dedicate this story to her, the little beauty, so she pardons me for using her name.)

2008-08-29T08:24:00.000-07:00

See Dennis Siluk's new book: "The Jumping Serpents of Bosnia" out November, 2008

“Along the coast of the Adriatic Sea lives what now is called the “poskok,’ better known as the ‘Jumping Serpent’. These creatures are some five-feet long and…can jump some three feet in the air and leap some five-feet in any direction …, simply by aiming…. But this didn’t happen by chance….” (See Intro page)

“The Tale of the Jumping Serpents of Bosnia,” was written in 12/18/02 at the Barnes and Noble, bookstore, in Roseville, Minnesota, in the deli; around, 8/2003 the tale was picked up and used by the Croatian Education System in Europe, what now is considered the short version. Next, it was picked up by several internet sites between 2004 and 2006. This is the first time in print, and with its longer version. In 2006, the author reedited, the story, and in July of 2008, revised parts of it, adding only slightly to the description, details, and explanatory elements of the tale. The back picture is of Garrison Keillor, and the author (both poets and storytellers).

Also in back of the book (interview from the Magazine :) “Lost Sanctum,” No: 2 (Wild Cat Books) Ron Hanna, Editor October, 2006 Interview with Dennis L. Siluk by Benjamin Szumskyj

Dennis L. Siluk, Ed.D., is the author of 37-books, several in English and Spanish, eleven in Poetry. This is his seventh book on myths, tales, and the supernatural. He lives with his wife Rosa, in Minnesota and Peru; he presently is working on, “Old Josh…” and “Cradled by the Devil.”

2008-08-15T17:13:00.001-07:00

545 in the Universe
(Poetic Prose)

And I heard, the voice say, “I created a long time ago creation, the living beyond me, other than me, when I did so, I said to me myself, there would be no wiping out of creation, its existence, the living things that know of me, for better or worse, and it started long before man, and the universe has its own life, as does man, and all that I have put around man, whom is really the grasshopper in the Universe. Although I have created all this and there has been many beginnings, there will only be one end, and that will be the Great Last Judgment Day, and those who fight by my side, those who go ahead of me, my scouts, your faith will be your strength, should you need it or use it, be wise enough to know what you have, court the cost. He with little strength, when the adversary comes—stand aside for he who has much. He who doesn’t know listen for my voice, I am everywhere, all the time, in every place, ever crack, nook. Those in hell I do not hear, I only see them when and if they come out of that abyss; the ghosts of the earth, tremble when they hear my voice, or hear my name, they halt their footsteps and return to their hidden places, so do not worry, lest I put them under my heel, and they would refer to be left alone within the dark places of the earth, and elsewhere, so I do not give them much attention. They are the residue of the lost. Go and live, it is my gift to you, I never promised eternal life on earth, that is your second gift, and that as you should know, comes later: for life on earth, as you know it, is but an once, in a big ocean you’ve yet to understand, but this ounce I have given you now, treat it like a treasure, for without it as a stepping stone, there would be nothing for you, no hope, no anything, you wouldn’t even be a grasshopper. And when the final days come remember, a day in one part of the universe does not measure out to be the same in another part, it is no different than when you look in the sky, and see one star brighter than another, things are bigger and smaller for reasons, that same reason applies to earth: time belongs to earth, as does air and water and dirt, and my time belongs to me, and the universe’s time belongs to it, you see, I have put balance in all, so when you count, know what you are counting before you calculate the sum. These are my thoughts, things you already know, but have thought little of. Some times he who has a lot to lose, has no time to think of such things, who has few things has time to listen. And there are few, but they do exist, those who have much, and push it aside for my words, not sunken into their own shadow world. If you build a fire, build a firewall, or the outside world will consume you, it is the same thing things.”

8-12-2008

2008-08-15T17:11:00.001-07:00

The Weakening of America
(America in Prophecy, a poem)

Twice put high (WWI & “WWII)
Twice put low (Dec 7, and 9/11)
What is happening to you, America?
The Orient is weakening you!
You have conflicts everywhere,
And when the time of need comes
You’ll have no fruit to bear…”
Yes, of yes, Alas! But you will fail
At the time of real need—your
Adversary will make you wail.
Long wars, seldom fun, never won
Those you now call friend,
Will end, a short marriage at best,
And evil has an iron breast
It will double in your time, with
Death and dissention; rulers
Incapable will rise, ride the tide
Chased by the sea, out of the
Pacific, looking for peace—the
Adversary watche; there
In the Middle East, in
Palestine, in old Yugoslavia too…
Terror, and trembles, with
Huge fires and blood—ambition,
Pestilence, and all their kings,
Condemn in secret, America!
But it will all be soon, she
America comes too late, to save
The day, and so the land becomes
Desolate and divided, and the
Unwise, kings bring death
To the Great Nations..:!

No: 4350/8-15-2008

Note: Here is what I see on the horizon, between Russia, China, Iran Egypt, North Korea, America, the EU, Cuba, Syria, Iraq, Venezuela, the club of nations that seem to be at odds with America, to mention just a few, and a few not mentioned nations, the fate or man’s destiny rides just in front of it. I do believe, living through the 1980s, God gave may a reprieve, in that it pardoned its sins because some nations bent their knees, and thus, allowed the ones tht didn’t along with them more life to fixes thing up. And it did for a spell, now it has becomes whose than ever. So you see wea re back on first base, again.

2008-08-15T17:11:00.000-07:00

2008-08-10T14:27:00.000-07:00

Mount of the Moon (The Gypsy from Czechoslovakia)

Palmist) (Czech)

It was told her at a young age, by her gypsy mother, she had the strongest looking mount of the moon near her wrist any psychic ever had, meaning in terms of a palmist hand, her abilities could be quite developed, and at an early age, she could read hands and faces, and fingers, in an instant,

One dollar and five cents; that was all they had. All of it was in pennies. Pennies saved after paying the heat bill, the gas invoice, it sucked all the money up, that implied he was next to broke, he was going to go buy hotdogs with it; he had a wife and two kids, stuck in Erie, Pennsylvania after visiting his sister, and then he and his family thrown out of his sister’s house because they were tired of their company, yet they had invited the foursome from Minnesota to Pennsylvania to live with them, so Monica would have company. Roman had to find a job quick, and did, but this week’s check only left one-dollar and five cents, and tomorrow was Thanks Giving.

There was clearly not a thing he could do but lay back in his living room chair and wallow silently over his misery. So his wife, Delia got involved; which might tell the reader women when they are wronged seem to get their revenge in a subtle way, and often in the process can be deadly, in the world of human hearts, that is.
Her plan did not exactly beg for an elaborate description, but it certainly had that finger of doom attached to it.
Joy Li, was the landlady, who had in the summer told Roman and his wife, to pay an extra $20-dollars a month (it was 1972, twenty-dollars was a lot), so when the winter months come, the heat would be paid, and so they did willingly without signing an addendum to the rental agreement. And now winter was present, and Roman got his first heat bill, inexpediently, and after the rent, there was only that one-dollar and five cents left.
Roman now had finished his cry, and blew his nose thru a hanky, threw it at the cat, who ran out into the back kitchen, and out the door, which was slightly opened, he didn’t care for cats they were too sneaky, but his wife did so he put up with them, all fifteen of them.
Tomorrow was the holiday, ‘Thanks Giving,’ and Delia knew they had to pay the invoice today—their gas, or heat would have been turned off (in 1972, they were not required back then to provide heat, if indeed, the bill was not paid), and therefore, this left her family with only hotdog money for one day, and she knew this should have been a happy day preparing for tomorrow: and usually they had plans, but none were arranged this season.
In a nutshell, had Roman known this in advance, the gas bill was forth coming; he could have cumulated this into the expenses. Although I must add to his, he did his fair share of drinking, and smoking cigarettes that might have helped save some money, but again I emphasize, that would have been needed to have been carved out in advance, Joy had surprised them with the additional bill, and like many people, Roman and his family lived from pay check to pay check.
Oh yes, Joy was sterling with her cleverness, a little near worthy of being outright shrewd, especially at another’s expense. But by and by Delia who was of East European origins, from old Czechoslovakia (from a township called Visegrad), a palmist Gypsy, had married Roman in 1971, he was twenty-seven years old, she only nineteen, they had two boys, twins, now were a year and a half old moved from Minnesota to Erie, Delia had been visiting Minnesota and when they first met, they got acquainted, married and now were here. She had met Joy, outside her apartment, a redbrick building with four apartments in it. She insisted she should read her, palm Joy’s palm: Joy feeling, Delia already knew something was there, allowed it, for she was reading not only the palm, but the shape of her hands, fingers and nails, mounts, other formations in the palms, she had read within a moments glass, her enemies, her strong sex drive, her clear thinking ability, and that she liked to work alone, perhaps that is why she had apartments, and she had small hands, indicating she did things on big levels, or tried, and it was hard for her to forgive injustices, a high vitality, and energy level, and told her to call immediately a certain number, she had an inheritance waiting.
Joy feeling this gypsy had her peculiarities, but it would do no harm in investigating, and when she did, it was at a bank, and she had a large sum of money coming. So cheerful, and thankful, was Joy, she called Delia up on the phone, telling her of her good fortune, and asked if her and her family would come over for Thank’s Giving Dinner. Exactly what Delia was hoping for.

“Here is my humble home,” said Joy Li, with on Thank’s Giving Day smile, opening up the door to her home, as the Delia’s family entered one by one, she gave way and greeted each one with a kiss, and the greatest of hospitality and immediately gave out reasonable refreshment. The sum of her inheritance was so great, she had intentions later on to see if she could persuade Delia into giving her another reading to see what other riches were in store for her, and perhaps even a Tarot readings .
And so the dinner was set, and they were served with the greatest of care by Joy’s cook, and often time’s, comforter. She saw the Negress waving her hands as she walked by her side, she had two fate lines, two careers; from her mount of Jupiter, she was not generous, her thumb told her she had courage, and fighting spirit. Joy saw Delia reading her hands almost in detail, big hands, that done intricate things, that is what Delia thought, and she knew what they were up to. Here was a person who liked to lead, but was being lead, who could not, an injustice she would not forgive. Who had a heavy sex drive, like Joy, like to like; two lesbians, whispered Delia, two strong sex drives, two unforgiving persons—and now she knew, what her intuition told her before she even entered the house, she something, but not the whole of it, and now she put two and two together.

And so the dinner went forward, refreshments and some hosted ham, a bottle of wine.
“Eat, drink and be merry, I am indebted to you,” she told her guest, having inherited a fortune. One that she would not have known about had not Delia not told her, but Joy was wondering also if there was anything else, more money laying about that is.
Delia knew every foreign woman living in another country needed to be shrewder if they wanted to compete with those in their environment, and so not to spoil the dinner she did not tell Joy everything.

She had taken the future of Joy, in her hands—her personality was embedded into those fingers and palm, and she knew what was to happen should she respond a certain way, saw the money stored away in a bank vault, and had created a long conversation in-between, called a diversion to get her senses correct, and now the invitation, a bazaar situation, that she got a free meal out of.
The earth, solar system, even the universe seemed to flow through her palms, always feeding her, and now she and her family were finished at the dinner table, and she wanted to leave quickly. And Joy was a bit surprised, not quite putting two and two together, but sensing something was wrong.
And so Delia and her family left, and Joy sat back at the long dinner table doing a manicure on herself, her hands.

Now before I go on with this story, it is worth a sentence or two to say that, this incident about to take place this scene could not have been witnessed and perhaps for the better of the reader, and the characters, only Delia could see it, and it is best left that way, but it is not insolvable, I will piece this part together for you.

As I have said, the family, Delia’s family had left, and she, Joy started to give herself a manicure, her long dark hair glowed and reflected in the chandelier, lights duplicating it a hundred times over, she must had been thinking I would guess, of the great sum of money she had gotten, or would get, it was already verified it belonged to her, it was just a simply task now to go pick it up. She was, as we often all do—starting to spend the money inside her head before she got it within her grips. Her feet were even tapping a joyful tune on the floor nervously, automatically. And as she looked out the widow beyond the table, she noticed night had fallen upon the house in a deep dark hush.
Now everything quiet in the house—her maid cleaning up the kitchen, her thoughts started wandering into a different arena, not once did her maid come out after Delia had looked her in the eyes, read her swaying palms. She picked up the phone, her maid, whom she did not see, was watching from the crack of the door. Delia answered the phone, surprised to hear Joy’s voice,
“You left so quickly,” she began, “thought I’d give you a call, I never did get to ask you if there might be some bad news in my life, near or far?”
“Why yes, there was, but everybody has bad news, I try to avoid that area, people get so panicky, and don’t enjoy the moment,” said Delia.
“Oh, but you must tell me dear, it is most important to me, I will make it worth your while,” she commented.
Said Delia, with an apprehensive voice, “I’m not sure if that is possible.”
“Why, of course my dear that is,” said Joy, almost with a chuckle as if it was silly.
“Well, if you insist, please take a piece of paper now, and write down, you owe me $2000-dollars, and put it underneath the doily of the table, so no one can find it.”
“Oh, how silly that is, it must be great news, good or bad” commented Joy, but she did it, and then said, “ok, it is done,” and somehow, Delia knew it had been done, said, “Now sit back and listen and do not get too excited: between the red cabbage and the stuffed green peppers was the item, odorless and tasteless poison was injection into those foods, that is why your cook only brought out enough for you, and of course that is your favorite dish, and the cabbage that was left, I told the kids and my husband not to eat it before we came to the table, I told them it was too spicy for them, and they’d get sick stomachs.”
“Oh my gosh,” she screamed, “What can I do! Who did this?”
“Look in the crack of the kitchen door, you will see your maid’s eyeballs watching you (and she turned to see, and she was watching, and staring right at her), oh yes, yes she is…!”
“I see you dead in the next five or six minutes, she killed you, you know, and she is hoping the poison takes effect quick, so you can not retaliate, you have willed her everything you know. So I’m sorry to tell you the bad news, you will not be inheriting that money, but your maid will.”
“But why did you not tell me this before?” asked Joy.
“Simple things to some folks are major things to others, had you not billed the heat bill to us, we would not have needed your dinner, we would have had enough money to buy our own turkey. And you would have been poisoned anyhow, and I would not have known it, to tell you because I would not have found the need to read your palm, and feed my family…” and Delia went on explaining to her how she felt, but Joy never heard the all of it, she was already dead.

It was a week later, Delia received a phone call from the police, saying there was an IOU, under the doily, and that the maid, would be paying her the sum on the note, as soon as she collected the money from Joy’s will.

8-4-2008

2008-08-09T16:06:00.000-07:00

Iron Vampire Bates of Haiti (Or, the Ape men’s Bludgeons)

(A Science-fiction short story on—mutations)

The Haitian Citadel, in Haiti

Vampire Bates:

The so called Revered Master Gordon, who lived in the Citadel (1986) in the hill country of Haiti, some three-thousand feet on top of a mountain was gone, it was an the usual hour, and George Huntington was deep into the bowels of the fortress, the night tingling with eldritch shadows, movements in quest all around me, like bats, and stretched out arms, I hid around one of the many pillars surrounding me, stared at the beasts, thinking how I might handle these ape like men, with their iron bludgeons in hand, they saw me hiding, they must had seen my shadow from the brightness of the torches within their iron sheathes and metal clasps nailed into the walls. They looked wild as they swung those clubs recklessly about, coming towards me, I looked for an exit, then a gate, then I saw those bat shadows again, but this time they were not shadows, they were bats, and they came in swarms, and bit me here and there all over my body, as I tried to beckon them off (vampire bats, and my body started to pain me, a tingling sensation in the feet followed, and the beginning of paralysis, and I felt a few drips of water on me leaking from the roof, and it seemed to draw a fear into my cerebrum, and my body was starting to get rigid, I knew this was the preliminary diagnosis for rabies, but what could I do, they had iron like teeth and jaws, when they bit, like a piranha, pulling out flesh.

Anything would do I felt at this juncture, and so I rushed forward at them, those ape brutes, I knew there was an entrance behind them, if only I could get to it before these symptoms killed me, thus, I ran through the twenty apemen—and they snagged me like a bug in a web, that was the last avenue I had to my liberation.
I did tell myself silently, we simply don’t listen to our little voices inside our head, it’s there warns you, like a second part of your soul, or perhaps an element of residue inside the soul, it warns you, and my warning was do not go into the fortress at all, the monetary as it was being called while the Master Gordon of this scientist cult, ended his stay, he was working on a mutation experiment, and I was interested what it was, I worked for a small newspaper out of Minnesota, and I had been in Haiti before, to this very location, and in Port of Prince, and Cap Haitian, and Rankette, a village up and deeper into the mountains.
This fortress was built in the time of Napoleon, a time of stress for Haiti, built in fear his navy would try to enslave Haiti, and this fortress high on the mountain top was ideal, yet it took 20,000-slaves to build it, and something like four-years, and thousands of deaths. Some have called it the 8th Wonder of the World, but Master Gordon has called it his experiential lavatory, and has paid a good sum for privacy of the fortress, for several months. This is where I come into all this.

And as I was saying, instantly I was snagged like a fly caught in a web, I suppose I was surprised of the wild scene I never would have expected of myself, that before my own eyes as I sized up a moment ago, and in shock I did the insane act; next, the largest of the apemen, grabbed my shroud, the cloths that covered me now covered with blood and bite holes from the Vampire Bates, they were naked and as hairy as any ape in the Congo, might be, but here I was in the deep dungeons of the Haitian Fortress, next to the Caribbean Sea, it was blistering hot outside, but cool in these dungeons.
And the large apemen named Maraud, I had heard his followers call him that in their grunts and groans, I dimly stood my ground in front of him, as he looked at me restored to some kind of happy ignorance, and wound his hand up like a baseball pitcher, and whapped me in the face with that iron club, and bashed it again against my thigh, back and I caught it the fourth time with my first, then figured I had to reply disjunctively to him, that without a doubt, I was comparatively more knowing than he.

He itch his head as if trying to figure out my unusual smile, after he astoundingly pounded on me like a kid might with a toy he wanted to wreck out of anger it wouldn’t work properly, and I ran to the Monastery garden. I was dying I knew, from the bate bites, and the severe blows of the apemen; it was just a matter of time.
Then the so called Master came in, a high priest of some sort, and scientist of another nature, “Thank God you’re alive,” he commented, adding “these apemen are really unworthy to be among us, they are confused half the time trying to figure out if we are a man-seraph, or a man-god, or just a weak man in general, and perhaps a man-bat. I keep them fooled.” And he laughed.
The man called Master Gordon was carrying an embryo, an animal organism in the early stages of growth, looked related to the apemen.
“Come with me he said!” and I followed him to a cell in the dungeon, the apemen watching carefully, nearby.
“Trust me,” said the Master, “they will no longer harm you. This embryo is the fruit of my long enduring work, I am trying to create a dispensation, a miracle you might say, and plant it into those apemen, this conquest with enable or bestow upon man and ape alike, one of higher intelligence, the other with higher in strength. Thus making one new human being with two intertwined matures.
“It all comes under unthought-of new faculties for the new human race. This will neither be the first, or neither second, nor even the third hypothesis in this case, for man is really an experiment, individually, abstractedly and more potent than he knows.”
The Master now was unavailing to my mind, he was not convincing me of his good intentions for mankind, or the universe, then behind me an iron club hit my head, and I passed out.

(Three days later) When I woke the mysterious providence of who I was, was told to me, that being, the Masters quest, was part of it, I looked in the mirror, and I was inside of Maraud (the ape-man), we were a team now, connected for life, I remodeled, in my thoughts, and I was flooded with Maraud’s thoughts, I had to learn how to decipher between his and mine, and tell him to shut up, and let me try to form words, since his mind did not have the capability. I found out I could dominate him, at times, and when his brute team came into play, when they were guarding at their posts inside the fortress, he would approach them, hit them in the head, and start a fight, that is when I went silent, I did not know how to handle such tides of anger, he went like a rocket in high gear, and my strength was (or his strength, now part of mine) twenty-fold from what it used to be. He took a lot of blows and so I taught him (which was part of me now) to duck, and kick, and jump away, in this process of fighting, he became even more dangerous because of that.

I had walked back into the operating room, I paced the room, I noticed there was a fire in a heath, my body was in it, burning up, thus, there was no future escape, if I did, it would be in my new body and that was too monstrous to walk freely on any streets in the world without finding someone’s bullet to put me back into some zoo cage. The Master had his triumph.

Written: 8-8-2008, modified 8-9-2008

2008-08-06T13:52:00.000-07:00

The Ghost Stalkers (Part two to"The Hermit's Ghostly Dilemma")

I stayed there that night, in Josh O’Hara’s hut, in the Minnesota wild (Hibbing), thinking perhaps I could come to some conclusion what took place, and I felt as the uncanny night went on, death stalked it, I mean the ghosts that he so readily feared stalked it, so, he had a good reason to fear, I was not believing in his story at first, I am no detective, nor need I be, but they were out there, in the darkness breeding as I was breathing, and pacing within his timber hut, such insights, come too late too often. And then I heard footsteps, especially with the light footsteps outside, my ears trained to hear such things from war, I could hear the grass being bent, as if trampled through, reminding me they were there, they the stalking ghosts, and maybe they were even dragging Josh’s residue spirit through it, for I heard his voice in agony, him being dead meant nothing at this moment to me, I was shivering in the over heated hut, my veins like ice, step by step, I heard the stalkers laughing, like spies, trapping a mouse, that is how I felt, I being the mouse, they heard my breathing it seemed, I walked to the right side of the hut, the footsteps outside the hut walked around the hut to my side, a vicious network of intrigue for them, for me a desperate, and dangerous game I wanted to get out of. Why they simply did not come into the hut, was beyond me, perhaps they were forbidden to desecrate, or violated with their malicious hearts, the place of the dead, code perhaps among them, because they didn’t want their death beds dishonored, like to like I always say.
The burring logs in the house the dead feet, I simply wanted it all to end this terror that came loose on this cabin, getting on out of it, out of this night, this never to be forgotten night, it all was trying on my system, it was as if my immune system could no longer hold itself in place, it was cascading from the inside out, my mind blank, then I passed out.

(Twenty-years later) Suddenly at 2:00 AM, it happened again, like it happens every night, has happened every night, since that long night in the cabin in the woods in Hibbing Minnesota, at different times of course, since I spent that evening in Josh O’Hara’s hut, those voices in the woods came back to me, come back to me, out like wild boors through my head, it was an eerie gripping horror again, I cannot tell you the full story of this supernatural happening, no more than what you already know, fantastic as it is, but I lost my hearing that night, I think the ghosts, slowly, very slowly during that evening murdered something inside of me. It is as I said, 2:00 AM, and I hear those eerie gripping voices, and that was twenty-years ago, I was in O’Hara’s hut, but I must stop writing down these notes, I’m tired, I need to sleep—; it’s 3:00 AM now… yes, it starts all over again!...

Part one of the two part story (The Hermit) was written 4-18-2007; part two, was written (The Ghost Stalkers) on August 8, 2008.

2008-08-05T22:30:00.000-07:00

A Virulent Death in Buenos Aires (a short eldritch story)

(December, 2007) “All right,” he said his eyes slanted towards the floor, emotions zigzagging across his chest, bowed head, neck out of alignment, arms crossed, and so he took one less sight of her—“All right!” Then the frustrating dialogue stopped, the dusty chatter ended, her eyes crystal clear, her protest to him had been sterling, authentic, but meaningless, only words that shot through him like bullets, pellets from a muzzle an inch from his brain, knocking down doors inside his cerebellum, he wasn’t coherent, he wasn’t anything, not human, not sensible, stagnant thinking, and even as it was, instead of walking away, he came out with a burst—like a guerilla, it was as if somebody, or thing inside his brain had beaten it to pulp, pounded it to mush, his brain was under a meat cleaver, ready to be chopped up, and hung on a hook, like a dead hog ready to be cut up on an assemble line. He held his head, then a second burst came out of his mouth, he stood up, tried to balance himself, he felt like falling, the studio apartment was but one room, and a bathroom, that was it, but he didn’t fall, he rested his two hands on a wooden chair. Out the window he noticed the obelisk he saw it many times but today it had different shapes, the tall famous obelisk on the widest street in the world, in Buenos Aires, was like a rocket to him, then he turned to his girlfriend from North America, some New England state, he a resident of Argentina. They were having a week long drug fiesta, in his apartment.
He looked at her, loved her deep blue eyes, milky white skin, and she had been attracted to his bronze skin, and dark hair, some mysticism in it, one from the North the other from the South, but now his looks would have stopped a police dog in its tracks, had he been outside walking with her, his bitterness on his face reeked all the way to kingdom come, and with a sudden undefined malice to it—
‘Wallop! Clout…! Whack!... thump …thump, thwack-thwack!” … a fully eight-inch German grade carbon stainless steel carving knife, extremely sharp, perfectly balanced, wide blade, full tang—sunk into her chest—out came a virulent smell of burning death.
“Get it out,” she shouted, “you can’t kill me!”
He looked at her, pulled the knife out slowly, ripping the knife sideways so he could puncture all he might inside of her, trying to find the heart, in particular.

He had taken drugs, smoldering, stinking with them, she had her share also, but not to the point she didn’t know what was happening, or free from pain.
“No thanks I want you to die,” he said, and he wanted to watch himself do it, “it’s alright he told her,” as if to comfort her on his second plunge into her chest with the knife.
By one leg, he pulled her into the bathroom, grabbed her by her hair, stretched out her thin neck, across her shoulder he put the knife, rested it, and with a thrust and whack, beheaded her.

“Wait,” he told himself, “I better take her down to the incinerator,” looking now at the head, he placed it on the toilet seat, as he pulled the body over the bath tub, like a sack of potatoes, with two hands and two legs, and his German made knife, laying on the side of the bathtub.
“Alright,” he said, “the incinerator” knowing now he’d have to chop up the body, its limbs and all, find a suitcase and bring it down to the cellar, and toss it into the incinerator.
“Of course,” he said, he had to undress the rest of her body, and he did. Then after cutting it all up, suitcase nearby, he put the head back onto the torso, to see how it looked, fit, as he had placed it on the toilet seat for that purpose.
“Perfectly balanced,” he said, “hurry up,” he told himself, “I’m hungry, I want breakfast.”
He grabbed the heavy suitcase, rushed down to the basement with it, the door was locked, he looked through the peephole, there was a fire in the furnace, it was December, and it had snowed, it was cold.
Now he was on the sidewalk that paralleled the ‘9th of July Street,’ claimed to be the widest street in the world, he was pulling the suitcase now, his arms, the muscles were getting knotted up. He knew the police wouldn’t bother him, they never did, they were too busy taking bribes from those they handed out tickets to, or looking the other way if a crime was happening so they didn’t have to do all that paperwork, or getting paid off for looking the other way by teenage thrives. And so he dragged the suitcase down the street unhampered, past several buildings and several policemen, and a few restaurants, in which he wanted to eat, but it was time for brunch, no longer breakfast. And so he stopped, left the suitcase outside, sat in the restaurant, had ham and eggs, coffee, and a young thief came up to the suitcase, paced a bit to see if anyone was looking, saw that it was clear, grabbed it, ran with it, but it was so heavy he fell, and it opened, and everything unraveled, everything inside rolled out, and the police did stop for once, and for once they chased him down the street, he, himself still in shock, this young thief, and lo and behold, he was caught the robber caught and accused of the crime; oh he swore up and down it was not his crime, but whose then, asked he police? And the real assailant finished his breakfast, went back to the Casa Rosada, where tourist often came, found himself a new gringo girl from England this time, and they started dating. He told himself it was the drugs that made him do that horrific crime, and thus, he’d never use them again, but he lied, as all drug addicts and alcoholics do.

Written 8-5-2008

2008-08-03T23:24:00.000-07:00

A Stranger in Augsburg (A short paranormal story)

It was 1970 now, I was lost in the beautiful city of Augsburg, the streets I was not familiar with yet; I was assigned to Reese Compound, US Military stock, the 1/36 Artillery, to a Battery unit, of some forty-four men, I was twenty-two years old then, a Private First Class, and it was a weekend, and I was moseying about.
Being lost in this city, was not a big thing to me back then; I could simply jump in a taxi and be back at my unit in fifteen to twenty minutes at any location in Augsburg.
Accordingly, it was early afternoon, on a Saturday, and I was standing nearby this shanty of sorts, which was in-between two stores, and a small park, not sure exactly where I was as far as identifying the streets, but there in front of me come into view a small creek, in a park close by, with a bridge that crossed it, perhaps it was more on the order of a canal that found its way throughout the city and park system. In any case, I wanted, or intended to anyways—to cross it, but got interested in a view of an old man however, so I ventured closer to the old man’s shanty, nearer the park and onto the bridge, elbows on the bridge’s wooded railing, looking over towards the old man again, the old German war veteran I presupposed, or so I invented he was. He appeared to be doing something intimate when I looked his way I just did not concentrate on what, but had intentions to.
The old shanty had but three walls to it—if you looked through the front window, to its back you could see there was no back, the only reason I could figure he had the back tore off was because he had intentions of rebuilding the whole place, the front door being opened. In any case, I didn’t venture across the bridge, I walked to the edge of the park, his shanty across the street, sat on a tree stump, and pondered his business, like a peeping tom, I suppose you could say. I watched him doing whatever he was doing; I simply could not get a clear picture of what he was doing. He mumbled to himself in some language, it didn’t sound like German to me, and it wasn’t English for sure, or any kind of Spanish I was familiar with, and I knew all three languages quite well, and I reconfirmed, he was not speaking them—period.
He looked as if he had lived a long life, a hard lived life, and now, in a word, an awaken drunk, so I thought because of his behavior, he was clumsy, awkward—slow moving. He had a haggard look to his bone structure, kind of droopy, as if he was inside another person’s body trying to stretch it out because he was too huge to be in it, in the first place.
He had charcoal and olive colored skin, some sore like blotches here and there, huge shoulders, and tall, perhaps close to seven feet; an unsavory look, a villainous composure, eyes hard—steel hard. Curiosity to him—so it appeared—was a thing of the past, he paid little to no attention to me, or the people walking by, or standing about waiting for buses, taxis and so forth: ‘…an old warrior,’ I said to myself, indeed he must be; WWI, yes, what else.
As I had now gotten closer to the shanty, and the old man, his cloths was like a scarecrows; he must had been all of ninety-years old, or at least that is my guess, not sure why I say ninety, but that is what came to mind, him being wrinkled up like a cooked tomato and so forth, but he was agile, and strong looking, he could have been younger or older I assume.
He then pulled these old looking rags out from behind a stove, from a hole in the wall it looked to be, where he kept them evidently, and then he chopped them up, and I got a better look by taking a few more steps towards him, gazing over the edge of the sidewalk, I was in the street, and he nailed them to the wall as if to dry, and he had some already drying, and now the rages, that I thought were rages, were not rags at all, but some kind of substance, bird, wings, that is what I saw, funny I thought, I was now more curious.
Fine, I told myself, then looking sternly at his operation and now on the sidewalk, I noticed he was boiling something, it was that substance, the wings, the birds, whatever, because he pulled some of them out of his pot, a cooking pot, those chopped up, whatever things he hand, and a few he swallowed whole.
After about thirty more minutes of stretching my neck, it got to me, and I was as close to him now as any neighbor could be, what he was boiling on that small gas stove still remained a mystery. My instinct or sentries said they were something eatable that was not supposed to be eatable, and therefore, somewhere in all of this, resides a mystery, so I took a few more steps closer, looked closer and began to bethink —this was none of my business, or was it? I was no perchance, ten-feet from him.
Anyhow, my observations quickened as I approached, the old man’s eyes, five feet from him, had a yellowish crust look to them, one I had never came into observing before, not at at least in any human.
There seemed to be no danger as I now stood in front of the shanty. Accordingly I began to look at the wall, what was in the boiling pan, the hole behind the table that held the little gas stove on top of it, in the corner, and on the table where he was doing the chopping, where there were droppings of blood. He really paid no attention to me, as if I was not even there. Then seizing the moment, I asked the old man if he knew what he was doing? Not sure why I asked it in such a blunt and rude manner, but I seemed to have taken charge of the moment, and somehow expected him to adhere to my request, and somehow I figured he would.
“Yes,” he echoed, as if the sound came from his feet, not his head, adding, “cooking leftover meat from the butcher shop across from my place.” I think in essence, he meant, he had friends like him, anyhow, I looked closer, into the boiling water, then on the wall, on the table, and what was hidden behind his coffee cup, perhaps not hidden, but laying there.
I held my mouth, as if to vomit, for a moment closed my eyes hoping when I opened them I’d not confirm what I had just validated to be, indeed I was seeing right. An unholy sense came upon me, and I said as nonchalantly as I could,
“Sir, I hate to tell you, but you are cooking some species of bat.” (a species I had never seen before, a thick head like a rat, and long wings, the whole bat perhaps being a few pounds.)
He looked deep into my eyes, as if holding me in a trance,
“I’m eating my food from my planet, it’s traditional, ice-bats…!” so he said, his eyes deep dark as the bats wings—the center yellow like a wolf’s. I next took a moments rest, there on the floor behind him was a heap of bats, reeking with a foulness of death, I mean to say, a pile, twenty or thirty.
“Take a look around if you wish,” he said, as if he was harmless and so was his abode and way of life. And I did, I took a quick scanty view, of the small shack.
The bed, his bed, the only bed I saw, was of rags and straw. Other than that, it was a pig’s haven, messy and stunk to high heaven.

I had been to Bali, and other places where there is bats galore, and seemingly sacred to certain groups, even stood under a bat temple, which was an open large cave, with over a hundred thousand bats above my head, but never, ever have I seen them boiled as to be used for a stew, or so huge.

—One thing never left my mind those ten months I spent in Augsburg, Germany, which was the name of the butcher shop next to the old man’s shanty, it was called, “The Moiromma Special Cuts.”
I would later on in life put two and two together, it was discovered (yet untold to the general public at the time) the adjacent solar system to Earth’s, that there was a peculiar planet, among the so called ‘Cadaverous Planets,’ which formed this new solar system, called Moiromma, a strange planet indeed. And perhaps I should add, I was fortunate enough to have met a visitor from another local such as Moiromma.

Written: 4-19-2007 ((Part two, not provided here, “No Eyes to Weep With”) (there are 26-stories to the Cadaverous Plants series, along with three long novelettes.))

2008-08-03T18:57:00.000-07:00

Phantasmal ((or, ‘The Bulbous Peril’)(a short Eldritch Story))

‘Dangerous illusions within a sphere,’ they called it!

It was 1997, Sulla had fragments coming into his mind, disjointed fragments, in dream and illusionary form, and so he conjectured, presupposed, he was losing his mind, he was living at the time in Roseville, Minnesota, on Larpenteur Street, in a two bedroom apartment, or at least that is what he would have told anyone had they asked him, because it is what he believed. He lived there with his mother. He had talked to a psychologist about this, and they simply told him, in time it would all pass, thus, he took a different approach, he sought within his dream world, to talk to a psychological seer, to get to his problem.

“I wasn’t motivated at first to figure out my situation until the frequency of this illness of mine, mental illness in this case vastly increased to the point I seemed to float like a ghost within my dreams, or visions or nightmares, whatever they are. My mother didn’t either know what to call them, she said very little about it. But I needed to have some control over both worlds, and I was losing that.
“How strange—so I thought at the time Henry, for me to try to cling onto these so called acquired wandering ghostly imaginings, the ones I am in now; I mean to say, it is by far another whole world here, that appears so real, and I must have tried, because I am still living within it. But let me go on, I sought you out within this dream because the human psychologists all classifying me as a psychological fruitcake; was too much.
“During the day I remain in our apartment quite a lot, a building apartment, which I live on the third floor in, there I remain almost fearful of leaving, even if I wanted to go, I couldn’t simply get up and go because my legs will not allow, as for now I am talking to you in my dream world because you seem to understand more than the doctors in the real world, and my neurological disease confines me in a wheelchair. So you see Henry, it is nothing but an ongoing nightmare. I prefer this dream world to reality.
“I tried to exercise when I first acquired this disarming illusionary disease, of drifting back and forth into this dream world without any control, but it didn’t go away, my nervous system broke down even more, and my legs gave into the disease leaving me a vegetable, and so I was even hoping I’d stay in the dream world longer. In the process I somehow created mental barriers between the real world and this marginal outline of a world, and you, you even seem real to me but I know you are a ghost in this imaginary world. This new world, the one I fall halfway asleep into, and fall out of, but like because there are less restrictions, limits.
“And so you see Henry, circumstances tell me the real horror is coming back to this wheelchair in the real world. I’d rather stay in my dreams, floating about, in this unworldly world with folks like you who listen.”

Said Henry the ghostly seer, in his own paranormal ecstatic voice and mannerisms,
“When did the real horror begin?”
“A few months ago,” said Sulla, “I beheld great masses of vapor as it seeped through my body as if I was all residue and not flesh, steadily I became less and less solid, less distinct until at last I somehow could project myself into this new flexible world, without that wheelchair, does that make sense Henry?”
“What world are we talking about, Sulla?” asked Henry, staring into his unblinking eyes.
“The worlds I live in, and the world I dream in, those two worlds are what we are talking about, are we not Henry?” said Sulla.
Henry’s eyes lit up big as headlights on a car, to a yellowish thick mist, “I think,” remarked Henry, “your residue, substance has expanded to create inside your psyche an intrusion, a virus given to you by another source, another alien,”
“In simple laymen terms, what does that mean, Henry?” asked Sulla.
“Well it depends. In the world of the so called living, it would mean you are having nightmares, but in the ghostly world, or your world, because I think you have forgotten you are a ghoul, it means you’ve escaped through a nightmare—that there wheelchair you are talking about, is the nightmare, your reality is in the here and now, the so called free floating world, here with me.”
Sulla looked about, said with almost fright, “How can this be?”
“There is,” said Henry, “an individual difference here, that you have not looked at, a primal corridor, all ghosts live in, it is natural, and like anyone else we ghosts have a code, a genetic code built within our residue, and this code looks—when you draw it on paper—like a primal corridor, with rooms here and there: in essence, someone planted a plague in you, more on the order of a virus in one of those rooms, found within your corridor, sort of speaking, this disembarrass the mind, to make it think whatever the code of the virus is programmed for, in your case it would seem to have made you think you are human, when in essence you are who you are, a ghoul, like me, you have for sure went down a bizarre avenue, purely abstract.”
“So I am not human?” responded Sulla.
“What a hideous question,” said Henry, “if you were, you’d be in that wheelchair now.”
“Who gave me the virus?” asked Sulla.
“I can take a wild guess, and if I did, it would be those monstrous trouble makers from the Planet Moiromma, outside of Earth’s solar system, it is a planet they transfer such virus from: an orderable peril of a game, of the mind, to see if they can control it from afar. They call it, ‘Dangerous illusions within a sphere,’”

Written at Starbucks in Surco, in Lima, Peru, 8-3-2008

2008-08-01T11:23:00.000-07:00

The Black Zone Horror (In Four Parts)

Part One

(to ‘The Black Zone Horror’)

The Seatmate

(September, 2007) Juan Carlos Perez left Huancayo, Peru, high up in the Andes, in the Mantaro Valley, after spending several days at a booth (stall) which his aunt had set up at the San Jeronimo festival of the Avelinos. The twenty-two year old boy caught a bus, with some forty-passengers, heading down the Andes, a seven hour night ride to Lima. He put his head phones on, found a window seat in the front of the bus, and fell to sleep.
In La Oroya (about one third of the way to Lima, the bus’ destination), a miner’s town, Manuel Pablo Silva, had purchased a ticket to Lima, and became a passenger; he sat in the back of the bus, put his baggage under the seat, and sat back. Ricardo Vila and his wife Maria, sat by him, he was calm, but his reactions seemed somewhat robotic.
The bus’ journey had started at 1:00 PM, and got to La Oroya, at around 3:15 PM, where it had stopped for ten-minutes, and now was at Casapalca, a small village of miners high up in the Andes, almost at the highest point in the region. There the bus stopped to pick up more passengers, and most everyone got off the bus to stretch, buy bread and other things for the long trip. Matter of fact, Manuel had departed the bus, and was talking to one of the young woman he had seen on the bus, Ricardo and Maria nearby watching, but not assuming anything was awkward, or going to be awkward. Juan Carlos remained on the bus, tired from his long days of making and selling trout at the fiesta, one of the areas renowned foods. For the most part, the young man remained, or continued to remain obvious to his surroundings, and made no noise, consequently most of the passengers figured he was sleeping, and he was to the best of Manuel’s knowledge.
From outside, leaning against an adobe (mud brick) building, waiting for the driver to give the ok to board, Silva noticed the calm reserved lad, peacefully in slumber, and upon embarking onto the bus, he, Silva, went back to his original seat, and pulled out his sack—looking as if it was filled with cloths and travel items, and went to sit in the seat by the young man, put the sack this time above in the overhead luggage area: and waited for the bus to go.
Someone had taken Ricardo’s seat, and so he and his wife found one across from Manuel Pablo, thinking nothing of it, that it was just a seat change. In front of Perez and Silva, was a young woman, in her early twenties, she turned about looked at the two, smiled, she had talked to Silva a moment before, as they waited outside the bus, her name being, Ana Maria Zevallos, she had actually taken a liking for the so called minor.

((Interlude)(There was some kind of force that took over Silva, even his body seemed to shape change, acting more like a robot than a human, like something from outer space; nothing nature made on earth anyhow, he was made into a devil at that moment, at this juncture, a precocious monster, about to give out a terrible sight, in a way he was going to drag all those folks passengers, nameless passengers on the bus to his purpose, to inflict his doings, his gore, into their memories forever, they to him were the outsiders.))

Silva got up from his seat, no one really took notice, but then he opened up his bag, and pulled out a large butcher’s knife, one used often for cutting up lambs and pigs and so forth, especial at festivals. Ricardo Vila, saw something metallic from his peripheral vision, and as he went to turn his head to get a better view, Manuel Pablo Silva, had stabbed Juan Carlos in the chest, he moved back hard in his seat, put his arm across his wife, woke her up, then Manuel stabbed the young man again, and again, rapidly (and swiftly Ricardo jumped up, pulled his wife out of harms way), as the man continued to stab Juan Carlos Perez.
Ana Maria, heard a bloodcurdling sound behind her; from the assailant came a hissing like sound as if from a snake or rat, from Juan Carlos, a shallow and thin cry, like a whimpering, and dying cat; then louder sounds came from the young man, sounds like a child’s cry to the agony of a howling dog (the boy never knowing what really had happened, what was taking place, his murder in essence, at hand, at its most raw form; Ana Maria had turned about, choked on the scene and had made her back steps a noticeable distance from the assailant, toward the bus’ driver.

The bus stopped, people started moving rapidly off the bus, not really knowing where they were, someplace between where they were and their previous last stop, about an hour from Lima, someone said Morococha, a small village close by; it was 7: 00 PM, and dark, and as one person after the other calmly disembarked the bus, Manuel dug his knife deeper into and around the neck, the collarbone, cutting through flesh and spine that linked to the neck and brain, cutting through its nervous system, and soft tissue, decapitating the young man right there and then.
The bus driver tried to get close to the assailant, but he swung swiftly the knife his way, he was now a madman looking for an escape route.

((Interlude)(We don’t know what is in the brain of the one person next to us, the stranger that is; is it filled with superstitions perhaps, transcripts of some eternal evil spirit, who at a time and place will hum to the brain to wake it up and inflict pain at its will, these terrors are of an older standing, they date beyond ones own remains, the soul is covered up in these individuals, it can’t even peep out to see the shadow’s pre-existence, before it enters the core of the brain, hidden in some vault not even he can enter. And so it would seem this was the case here, as strange and misguided as it seemed, and senseless.))

Now everyone was outside of the bus, everyone but the corpse and Manuel, who was pacing back and forth on the bus, while a truck driver gave the passengers wrenches and crowbars, to protect themselves, as well as to keep the killer at bay, and on the bus. Within the hour, several police cars were at the scene, and the media came in by helicopter. Manuel tried an attempt at escaping out of a broken window he broke, which was to his dismay, for then he was subdued by several police officers.

((Afterward)(He, Manuel, paused exhausted before he tried to make his escape, breaking the bus window; fatigued, he saw the whole group of cars, and familiar passengers outside of the bus, the media, almost in bewilderment: he knew what he did, what he had done, he was holding the young man’s head in his hands, then placed it back onto the open cavity called once a neck, onto its torso, it was actually pre meditated, he planned it, found the weakest link in the chain, Juan Carlos, and crystallized his mission with the exact moment, with no hesitation, by anointing him to be the sacrifice, he would produce fresh terror, he did do that, he who had been silent heretofore, spoke only in painful cries, while the murderer rambled on, hissed like a snake, interrupted the whole bus. There was no twin brother here to say ‘I did it, not him.’ That face, now with red eyes, that half face, the other half belonged to someone else, not man. Strange gestures, incantation culminated in his pacing back and forth on the bus, in obscure consciousness, he was in an ultimate frenzy. No one dared get too close to him. But that was all, except, not a syllable could anyone understand that he said, it was as if he was uttering another language, not Spanish, nor English, and those deafening hisses, a shattering ringing seemed to be in his head, he held it several times.))

Part Two

(to ‘The Black Zone Horror’)

The Court Case of:
Manuel Pablo Silva

Manuel is acting as his own lawyer, spokesman, and addressing the Jury, on a retrial of his case.

(Two years later) “It is true, I put six stab wounds into my seatmate’s chest on the bus, and beheaded Him, yet I wish to show you in the following statements I am not the murderer. You have called me a madman, but the jury never looked at the whole picture two years ago, now I hope they will. You need to look at the horror that was inside of me, the one Father Bruni has now expelled out of me, and this is the murderer.
“Of the two years I spent at the sanitarium, weekly the priest, Father Bruni saw me, and worked with me on ridding me of this ghastly creature whom I was servant to, and now I am freed of his infinity or credible doom.
“Therefore I plead to you, during this retrial, not to look so much at Juan Carlos Perez, who was the victim, he has been revenged, twice over, because I have served two years in jail, and now this demonic force that was in me, cannot enslave me again.
The priest has in actuality, expelled, this demonic force, and sentenced him to go back into a black zone, where he came from. I repeat, I personally was the tool for the murder of Juan Carlos, but the force in me was the murderer. In so saying, I purged myself of this horror that used me to avenge mankind.
“You must understand there are black zones and shadows, close to all our daily activities, where evil spirits lurk and seep into, searching for bodies to operate in, thus the evil spirit has now a passage once he enters his victim, and through man, he operates in the physical. In such cases man becomes possessed and has little to do with the reckoning, or consequence thereafter. He must follow and strike like a robot, lest he himself becomes consumed by the diabolical phenomenal within him.
“Yes, it is morbid, but this evil spirit that is reclusive within a person, produces an ongoing weakness within him, which creates, in time, a secret life between him and you. At times you dismiss him as simply your imagination, because of your noticeable bizarre behavior and thoughts, despite the greater sense of right and wrong, you fall victim to him again, and march to his tune, the one who came out of the black zone, I am talking about, found an opening for him to enter and he did, namely me. He may at this point, even call you kindred, and think that he actually is. But he really is just an ancient subduer, who crumbled eons ago with his kind.
“His breath, goes into the deepest and darkest zones within your mind, spirit and soul, deceptive he is, and has in essence homesteaded your body, half-yours and half his, and he takes your half when aroused. He has become retarded from his long existence in an uncoddled world, in the black zones, which parallel ours.
“He knows the veritable code that you are made up of, and he has used it to his advantage with me: to the people of the Jury, I say with this dubious conduct he used on me, place guilt where it belongs, Judge me not for this murder, and give it to him, for you have punished me, because you cannot capture him.”

The Juries deliberated for eleven hours, in as much as they wanted to keep Manuel incarcerated, they believed his story, and Father Bruni backed it up. As a result, his case was somewhat dismissed, he was left in the care of Father Bruni, and the probation department for the following five-years, and should any criminal charges be filed against him in the meantime, he would be subject to a third trial, and most likely, be subject to the full crime of murder and its consequences, but this time with no insanity plea.

Part Three

(to ‘The Black Zone Horror’)

Poetic Justice or the Dirge

Manuel Pablo Silva, firmly believed he was dealing with an individual that had once inhabited the world long before mankind, a race you might say, of another era, who in having pseudomemories (and secrets given him from a supernatural race, even more powerful than his), who at one time inhabited the earth, and lost it, by being ostracized from it, and cast into this so called black zone.
With this entity within Manuel, it is obvious he wanted control, a priority that shows power, as all demonic imps or devils, evil spirits, want; but during the interim, they go searching window to window, creeping to see who is the most vulnerable, the weakest ling in the chain, this was how they discovered Manuel.

It is often funny I think but for every man alive, there seems to be an available woman, no matter how strange, ugly or bloodthirsty the man may be. And Manuel found this lovely Argentine girl to keep him company, down in Miraflores, a section in Lima. And they saw a lot of each other for several months. But something did take place, she got pregnant, and she got scared Manuel might go tell her parents. Not a real good reason to do what she was going to do, but often times our selections are like to like, meaning, you don’t necessary pick out a mate that would be good for you, but one to suite your fancy, and that is what Manual did, picked one to his fancy, like two peas in pod. And when he was sleeping, he was stabbed to death by his new girlfriend, she cut up his body, put the parts into a suitcase, and went downtown Lima, to the Rimac River, and left the suitcase there, until it stunk to the high heavens.

Part Four

(to ‘The Black Zone Horror’)

The Priest and the Entity

He, Manual had told the priest during one of their sessions, before he was killed, told him, Bruni, of his weird dreams, more on the order of pseudomemories of his entity. These dreams were extracted by the entity within him, who told him, he had come from the Paleozoic Age, and had hid in the underground chambers throughout the world, for 125,000-years; here he lived amongst the cyclopean masonry, and megalithic walls that had sunken with the many earthquakes throughout history.
Through his dreams, the entity, explored his path with Manual, he was taken into the same objective reality, deeper and deeper into the crust of the earth.
Around this time, the entity got curious, and Manual’s sleeplessness prevailed, inflicted by the demon, and next came impulses in his brain, the entity knew how to shut it down, almost like having a renter vacating the premises, and the black zone, with its horrors took over.

Part One: The Seatmate
Part Two: The Court Case
Part Three: The Dirge (Or poetic Justice)
Part Four: The Priest and Entity

Written August 1, 2008© Dlsiluk

2008-07-31T23:21:00.000-07:00

“The Man on the Locks” (An Account at the Panama Canal)

This story you are about to read has more truth to its twists, than you may want to believe, and let me add to that, the main character, George W.G., would have said: there was a time that every American could be proud of the construction of the Panama Canal, if for anything beyond that, since America has given that away, such pride must ferment in the knowledge and information, by which the original object and purpose was attained. This story, “The Man on the Locks,” is rather simple and to the point. But first for those folks that are not all that familiar with the Panama Canal, I must give you a quick overview, and quick it will be.

The Panama Canal is a waterway connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, cut through the narrow necks of land connecting the two continents of North and South America. It’s history, the land area goes back to AD 1452, and you will have to search out for your Encyclopedia to get the rest of its in-depth ancient history, but let me say, the French tried to build the Canal, and couldn’t, and then the Americans purchased the rights thereafter to do it, and completed it; it is perhaps the greatest Engineering feat in the world, surpassing even the Great Wall of China, for I have been to both, the Canal and the Great Wall.
And, as we all know, President Carter gave it away for a handshake and a smile (or a song and a dance, as they say), and hoping that would produce warm feelings between neighbors, and when I was there in May of 2006, of all the presidents America has had, he is the most worshiped, and perhaps the only one, for such a token given them free of charge; not that America per se is that well liked, but the gift is. Again I must stress these were the thoughts of the main character you are about to meet, so you will gain a kind of insight knowledge of why he did want he did, or what was done with his assistance.

We also can get political into the political arena here with past events, but I shall just say them in a flat manner, and get on with the story—; President Johnson did not carry out the policies of President Kennedy when he took office, he put many of them on hold, and that caused the city and folks of Panama to united and start an error of hostility with America over flying their flag with Americas, and lives lost on both sides because of this, to include three American soldiers in 1964, and a number of lost souls on the Panamanian side. And we will justify our own opinions and actions, until dooms day with whatever rhetoric we can gather to make our souls feel better, it all depends on what side of the fence you’re sanding on, so I am not going to get into that here, if you don’t like the story, you will have write your own to the contrary, and most like if you hate it you have already; you just don’t like this side of the fence. And I could get into prices and so forth I have them at hand, but that will simply take away from the suspense and Macabre climax you are about to read. But do not walk away and pretend there is no truth to this, because you’d only fool yourself.

(Time and Location: 12: 15 AM, May, 2006, the Panama Canal; Miraflores Lock, facts have been disturbed, otherwise there is a breath of historical fiction in the following account.)

The Account

And then dawn he bent, looking one-sided dynamically across the Canal, at the Miraflores, Locks— from the café,
“A famous bourgeois quality here on the Canal,” the security guard said to the tourist looking down and across; the canal lights from the Café could be seen from the other side.
He looked closer, a ship was coming in, and shadows flung reeling into gray corners all about. The water was rising in one canal, while lowering in the other, and with all the lights shinning, there was a golden mist, infinitely thin and transient, and fading.

For a moment, the old Panamanian security guard noticed the middle aged tourist, an American, standing to his side, close to his side he was taking in a breathless view he concluded—so often seeing that very same awe in other tourist’s faces, he thought nothing of it,
“I like the pinkness to the lights, George W. G.’s the name,” said the tourist.
What he, the Guard, didn’t see was a rowboat, and a swish of oars, and the man inside of the boat. George said to the guard, “How big is that gate?” referring to the gates of the locks which were two and in the shape of a V.
“Between 47 to 82 feet sir, depending,” said the plump and astute guard, named Carlos?
Carlos added to that without asking, “Each leaf is between 300 to 600 tons dependent upon the varying heights. They divide each lock chamber into two smaller chambers also…”
During this ongoing conversation, the man in the rowboat, with ungraceful fingers, palms and hands, rowed within those shadows, and corners that melt into the environments, grayness.
Whatever was on the mind of this rower, only he and George knew, and he was not about to tell the guard, but said in passing:
“It’s a sort of glory thing,” but he didn’t even murmur that, it was such a whisper, the guard didn’t even pick up on it.
A few other tourists came up to the window, smiled upward at the tall Carlos, and asked a question, foolish almost she thought, but she asked it nonetheless, perhaps trying to stump the guard; she was Abigail from England, and she said said, “How many rivets were put into this massive project, which to my understanding is over fifty miles long, and took ten years or so to build?”
Old Carlos was proud of his astuteness, and happy was he to give her information, “You tell me why you want to know, and I’ll give you the answer!”
“My husband works on the docks in Shipeton, New Yorkshire,” Abigail Wallace, “and rivets his main duty to inspect on the ships.”
“It required Miss, six-million for the whole operation, and I should say the gates or the locks have buoyancy, as heavy as they are, and there is no leakage, because the space between the gate and the miter sill on the floor of the lock, prevented by a seal,” said Carlos.

As Abigail Wallace, looked down into the Canal, at the locks, George knew if she looked hard enough, it would be a sigh, a benediction with an ecstatic yelp, from this youthful beauty. For another instant, George W.G., tried to sway the young girl into a conversation, by saying,
“How was your dinner?” in lack of anything else, I mean even his voice was scrambled, this gray-haired man, and even the officer now touched his revolver, not even sure why he did, but what a question for the moment.
“So,” said the young woman, dismissing George and nodding her head to the guard, slowly,
“What is the first thing a ship encounters when it approaches the locks,” this covered up George’s stupid question, and with a sigh his arms, which he expressed with, fell unwound to his sides, his neck and eyes transfigured as if far away, fell upon the rowboat in the corner of the lock. The guard glanced at him, then said,
“Good question Miss, when a ship approaches the locks there is this giant chain stretched across its path. That chain is made of links of three inches in diameter; this will stop the ship that does not want to stop. It actually rams its nose into this chain, and then course such we have such things as hydraulics …” and he stopped right there, didn’t finish his sentence—
Now he repeated back what George W.G., had said, but did it savagely, as he was looking into the canal,
“Dinner you want to know what Miss Wallace had for dinner, so this is your idea of pirates, is that your friend down there?” a man was climbing on a rope up the leaf, with an American Flag. Carlos pulled his revolver out, carelessly, said,
“What an old fool I am!” and said it quietly, and called his commander, pointing the gun at George,
“Is that the best you can say: what did you have for dinner?” and he laughed, as his commander came running up, he was the Captain Juan Palma.
George was about to say something, and Carlos said, “Shut up!” and with that he turned to the man in the Canal, he was now scaling the gates, the lock, one leaf at a time, and an alarm went off, and the two men, the Captain and Carlos looked, took an abrupt glance pulling George with them, out of the café, and down to the platform where several security personal now cornered the gate in the Canal, guns pointed at the American, now holding the American flag for all the folks in the Café to see. Evidently he was trying to make a point; he had no weapons, just a flag, and his two hands holding it.
Had George W.G., Carlos and the Captain waited an instant longer they would have seen a killing, but only heard a sound, a not so unfamiliar sound to the security guard, Carlos, that brought an almost whole-hearted amused chuck into the arm waving folks in the café, who were cheering the soldiers on, giving vent to the moment.
“Well,” said Carlos, bringing George to a lower level section to be questioned, about his so called alleged friend, now dead, the one with the boat, he said genially, “You incurable half-wit, did you think you could dishonor us so,” and he smiled confidently.

“Why— obviously,” said George adding, “I was perfectly sure you would do what you did, and that is why Abigail has taken a movie of your killing of my friend, whom you just shot, gravely for the same reasons you complained, establishing your right over the canal. I’m glad you did shoot him, I thought you would. And so many folks thought you might be put into a compromising position! How foolish they were, and how right I was.”
But this didn’t seem to faze the Captain, or Carlos, or the few soldiers now guarding the entrance into this little underground cell.
The Captain answered George, with a step forward, unsteadily manner, saying, “Mr. George W.G., our purpose was always there, to steal, or appropriate the canal from you, and the American people, you just simple invented the means for us to do it by; your arrogance we all knew one day would ignite a cause and it did, which we used. You all live in a dollhouse up there in the north, it no longer matters anymore, how we did it, got it, now does it senor? pride, honor, or glory, we have it, it’s OURS.”
George’s eyes were blue, steel, to him a black-angel was stuffing nylon down his throat, he was thinking: was this all for nothing.

(Afterward) Many have come to such a crossroads only to find an iron bed waiting for them as did George and Miss Wallace, and of course a grave for the man on the locks, in the name of pride, honor and loyalty, in the name of a flag, the American flag in this case; only to find out that people pretend with one another, seeking warmth to be your friend, often turns out to be the spring door to disorder, ruin.

Written 7-31-2008

2008-07-31T22:22:00.000-07:00

The Fiends of Yogyakarta (Revised and Reedited 7-2008)

City of Yogyakarta, 1999, Bustling at the Market

This story takes place in Central Java [1999]; the city of Yogyakarta, while visiting the archeological sites [old ruins] of Borobudur and Pramanan nearby.

I, Dennis have very little hope that you will understand, still less, hope you will or can believe my incredible journey, the expedition I went on, and the trial and tabulations, I went through some five-years ago, or is it now six (how time does fly, writing this account down, which is in the year of 2004 now). Time soars between living the experience, then writing and rewriting, and somewhere in-between— recounting, as I am about to do in my journal notes, and its aging face—and revising it, in the process this story can become a tinge baffling (today being 31 July, 2008).
These words, this story, what happened during those days—much was written down in my hotel room, bringing home the notes thereafter, never much leaving my side since I was the only one with the inner facts to this case. Although I have an understanding—as unusual as it is, or was, it does still enlighten people that read it, because those who know, at least in Java by oral tradition, are more convincing a picture; where those who are not from Java, have a more confused tongue, in trying to convey they believe in this account, or happening. Very few suitable comments did I receive from outside visitors of Java.
It might be wise to read this account, and reread it, at your leisure, then investigated if you wish to see if it is as far fetched as you once thought it to be, one thinks best when they check out all corners of the revelation, or background. My name is Dennis, and if you check into this strange happening, you will discover with similar details, this very thing happened in the 1840s and 1880s, within the madness of Java’s jungles, and be it witchcraft, or demons playing, will be your sinister bones working out, if indeed you find out, drop me a line.

In any account, I wrote it all down on paper for I knew my memory would haunt me and I’d distort it later, had I not. For it did fade somewhat from my jittered nerves—shortly after the story took place. The events to follow being, may be considered centuries old, in that the old dark brooding foes, live in the wilds of the crumbling jungle area I was in, with its whisper-haunted shadows, which brought upon me and my friend their own ancestry and background evil deeds, from evil spirits. I often thought, being licensed in abnormal psychology, and having a large amount of information on occultism, this case should have been an open and shut case, until I lived through it. But it all happened quite suddenly, with hours of chaotic disturbance. I am getting too far into the story and leaving out the plot. But just thinking about writing the rest of this story out, my head starts aching, the same head someone was trying to bash in not so long ago.

Some say I’m quite eccentric with this story, to the point of fleeing reality, and replacing it with too much subjectivity; and when it did happen, and it did happen: I thought such myself; it was madness, for it is hard to believe this true and frightful story from any corner of the world. In any case, to those none believers who confronted me shortly after these events, namely the media, ugliness is not imprisoned, it is free like us to roam wherever it please, and it did this one day, this day I’m about to share with you.
For the sake of the story I will use my middle name, Lee: somehow it seems less out of character that way. I had gone to visit a friend in Japan, in the summer of 1999; I had met her in Istanbul, Turkey in l996. I stayed there—in Japan—for about a week, seeing most of the sites, such as a tourist would do: going to the top of the Tokyo Tower, and taking a train ride to Kyoto where nearby there was an international sumo wrestling tournament going on, to which I attended and met some of the world famous wrestlers. And of course, going to the top of Mount Fuji thereafter; all in all it was a most wondrous trip, to say the least, and perhaps the most sane: although, having MS, a disease of the nerves, my spine collapsed a few times in Japan, and I needed to seek out some physical therapy, a massage and some acupuncture, the acupuncture made it worse, and I collapsed again right on the tram. It was so bad, I slumped down, almost unconscious, until I found a chair across from me, where a young woman arose and gave it up.
From there I went to the island of Guam, stayed two days and one full night there, and getting a little more medical attention, in the form of a massage, which circulates my blood, and exercises my muscles automatically, where I do less of he work, and get all of the benefits.
At 3 p.m. the next day, I flew to Bali, my eyes wide open, my body rested, and my vision clear, for those with Multiple Sclerosis, vision can be a changing thing, my advise to those folks is keep moving, and find the sun; in any case, where I stayed another three nights, and then on to Central Java, to the city of Yogyakarta. In most place I travel, I conceal this medical issue, it seems to dominate the people around me if I do, though once removed, life goes on normal, and my eyes gazed upon this busy city with a bustling market place; everything really quite unfamiliar.

There I visited two sites, Borobudur, which is the largest Buddhist Shrine in the world (so I was told) made of somewhere around three million dark volcanic black bricks, over a natural mound. It is a marvel of ingenuity, for the world at large. And then I visited the temples at Pramanan, another breathtaking site. After two days of visiting these sites, I had three more days left. And this is where doubtful-reality may come into place for the reader—but the story cannot be changed, nonetheless; no not one iota, not to appease the media, or another’s speculative witty and aphoristic scientific mind; really is what I will produce, not science, and be it a mystery of mysteries or not, so it shall be—even if it leads away from the practical world to the unbelievable.
Thus, it was on the second free day in Yogyakarta I received a letter down in the lobby, at the main desk, in my hotel, it read:

“For god’s sake, come out to this peculiar and beastly, haunting hotel [more like a motel]. Another night like this, in this wilderness, will make me snarl, if not go nutty.”
Frank Gunderson

That was enough for me. I was known to be a traveler of mysteries, or one looking for them, or so my reputation had preceded me often times. And Frank Gunderson also from the Midwest, was a writer like David Childress, whom I talked to once over the phone concerning some books and my house in Lima, which I was considering selling—and was considering going to Easter Island with his team, but could not at the time, I had to wait because of business, but went the following month with just my wife, and there met the renowned Archeologist, Charlie Love, whom sat with my wife and I at a cozy outdoor café, and had a drink while discussing the moving of the huge statues on the island. Well, Frank was like Charlie in the sense he was always looking for the unusual, and often times found it. To be honest, I didn’t even know Frank was in country until I got the letter.
Even his speech, in the form of his awkward words, in his note, which was clumsily written in pencil, but it, had a curiously stilted quality to it, an expression (archaism) wholly unfathomable, but a seed planted with the request. Of the latter, is what motivated me though?

On the back of the note, was where I was to go, and so I grabbed my small suitcase, some shaving gear, and took a train about one hundred miles south, there at the station was Frank with a jeep, waiting, and no sooner had I disembarked the train we were both off to this hotel, a hotel I’d bestow an eldritch and macabre title to—soon. In my head as we traveled through the wild jungle, much complexity and indisputable newness was reproduced in every word Frank did not say, he was too quiet.
As we rode into the tropical forest deeper, harsh it was, like a picture of a lost world: then Frank, he babbled on about something: ghosts, fiends—devils, the macabre world, and the eldritch shadows, I dare say, what was on his mind, mystifying words for a strange abbreviation of something petrifiedly recalled. Then within forty-five minutes we were at a strange looking structure, he called, ‘The Hotel,’ a new phrase would soon begin; it looked more like a black volcanic brick low-built house, with four main rooms to it. The roof was that of wooden beams supporting some kind of jungle shrubbery and bamboo shoots covering the whole top. The stones to the building were that of the stones used at Borobudur I noticed.
Just his presence here, seemed to pull eat his physical strength, he was not by far as young as I, perhaps 60-years old, myself being 42 at the time. His hands, legs, bodily equipment in common seemed to become stiffer, alert.

(I can’t describe this story as I’d like, the horror of it is somewhat placed deep in my mind, and not as vivid as I’d like it to be. But I will write calmly, but try to patient with me as I unfold the following!)

“You noticed it yet?”
Frank said a few minutes into our walk to the an imposing edifice, more on the order of structure that might have once been a motel or club house in the jungle: parking the jeep somewhat in the woods, not sure why; then he took me around to the back of this edifice, this one story building and into each room (apartment-section that is, so it looked).
I must admit, now at least openly, I became eager for information of all sorts into this mystery, I lost interest in my personal likening for the archeological sites I had seen the post few days, as I found this case of tremendously abstruse to my mind, almost childishly, but very oddly he did not explain much, was actually somewhat casual, not specific of events to come.

I had noticed gravesites in the back of the building, some of them, they looked fresh, others had dates on them going back as far as 1840, and others marked 1880, two historical events evidently, along with a most recent one, this brought some kind of actual fright to my bones. This uncanny cemetery, in back of this stone structure, had some kind of link to their vanishment I thought, and Frank, with me along side of him walked cautiously, by the stones.
After the tour around the building and its surrounding area, we went back to the back of the building again. I kind of laughed with some embarrassment and mumbled something like,
‘What kind of a rat trap did you bring me to?’ I mean he said it was a motel of sorts, and I wanted to be permitted to know the whole story of why I was here; I really did not suffer from a lack of curiosity that was for sure.
Frank then pointed towards the window panes, two of them on the right side of the building. They were smashed, destroyed as if something had hit them, broke them into pieces: matter of fact, it had just dawned on me, that none of the windows had glass in them, not one single one, the structure itself could have been older than Frank, and rebuilt a few times, from the way it looked. And there were holes in the roof, as if an earthquake had taken place; and of course, I knew better.
“You will soon be able to take home with you information for your colleagues, the psychologists, of your time, and gain a little mild celebrity among them, and even puzzle them with your bizarre symptoms. (What Lee didn’t know, and what Frank was talking about was of course real aversions to soon take place.)
“What in god’s name happened here,” I began.
“No,” he replied, adding, “it has nothing to do with god my friend,” he said with a cool friendliness, however, I encountered some tone in his speech, that was vague with fears unresolved since we had entered this area, where resided some kind of black, hidden horror, all connected with an incalculable oddity I yet to experience.

He would not tell me completely what took place as to not spoil his pleasure, and mystery I do believe. I was dumbfounded, and curious, as he could tell in my voice, no exception, these feelings shared by Frank himself, and if it was terror and repulsion on the menu, evidently he, Frank wanted to conquer it, so it appeared. I indeed at that time felt that he was a stranger to me, for I had known him for eight years, but did not know this side of him maybe his proper self would return, but for the moment, it was glancing over this and that, in the so called ‘hotel.’
“You don’t know, you just won’t understand, you got to stay until it happens again,” he told me—repeatedly. I didn’t see in the least what he meant, and followed him dumbly into his edifice, into a room. There we sat for three hours in the mucky heat, just sat and waited for whatever was supposed to happen, not a word said. Sat in the hole in the wall, sort of room: dirt on the floor, walls discolored with mud and blood and all kinds of debris; glass all over the place, and the roof—if you could call it that, and what was left of it—had the sun shining through it in several locations. I watched Frank, and wondered over the horror on his face, what was in his mind, voice, and his expressions.

(I will not attempt to tell much of what took place this day, and the readers may glean all the outward essentials, check out the scientific journals, and you will find me not so ridiculous.)

He, Frank jumped up—it caught me off guard and shook me up a bit.
“Come on Lee, it’s starting,” he grabbed my right arm and somewhat pulled me over to the door, then opened it slightly—just enough to look out—it was as if his secondary personality was alerted—and then had me look out, standing alongside of him, but I didn’t see anything, and I was getting this endless irritation coupled with suspicion, that I wasn’t going to. And out of the sky, just like that, suddenly came a rock, then several followed right in a row: small, big, medium size boulders, all bombarding the building, one after the other. Then they came faster and faster, more and more, larger and larger. I had to duck, as he shut the door, and bolted it. I gasped.
My sojourn was disrupted, what kind of human action was taking place, my body became abnormally rapid, said to Frank:
“What kind of trick is this?”
“No tricks,” he said, adding, “the fiends [devils], the fiends, they are throwing them from out of the sky.”
“What!” I replied, feeling this was a bunch of malarkey, for I had never read any solitary study on such a phenomenal.
“The Ghoul’s are mad at me, the devils themselves, I’ve made fun of them, to get them to show their faces and this is what they do,” said Frank, now with his tangible proof—in the form of magical rocks being tossed onto a doubtless, but stimulated me.
I shook my head, but they were coming from the sky nonetheless, what could I say, seeing is believing, and I did not want to get hit by one of those boulders to minimize my disbelief, I did believe in this ugly occurrence--period.
“I, I insulted them, I did,” he repeated; “Oh yes, I was mighty good at that too.” Said Frank, with an ongoing world-weariness and unabating interest,
Then all of a sudden a huge boulder came through the roof, it must had been two-hundred pounds, then half the roof caved in, I began to display signs of anxiety, and Frank saw this.
“We got to get out of here,” I told Frank.
“What!” he questioned me, “out of here, why—we can learn from this happening, reopen the devils door, they must be huge beings to toss two hundred pound rocks through the air at such speeds, analyze it Lee, what kind of human action could this be, none, none at all, anyone with any intelligence can see the fiends are giants borne out of such makers as the fallen angelic beings of the time before the Great Flood, or perhaps those who built Solomon’s temple, or perhaps, those giants on those islands in the Mediterranean, such as on Malta, or Crete.”
Next, he started to cuss them loudly, calling them every name under the sun, and shaking his defiant fists at them from out of the window. He then threw his keys to the jeep at me, and told me to run for it, and he’d stop for a minute his cussing and that would puzzle the fiends: consequently, allowing me time to get to the jeep, so I ran like the dickens out into the bombarding environment to the Jeep, thinking as I was running, how right he was, this was not related to humans at all, hitherto mask like faces , shadows, giant shadows began the show sings of expression, in the foliage, in the deep, overhead, nothing completely visible, and I vigorously jumped into my jeep, muttered a few words as I started it up, and went like hell. In the meanwhile, I heard the rocks and boulders pounding on the building structure behind me.

I had made it back to the train station and eventually back to the city. Alas! Frank never wrote me again, I never heard of him or seen him from that day on. No one ever heard of him again to be exact. Pityingly the folks went out looking for him for a number of days, but could find no trace of him, nothing but his shoes, which he was wearing on that day. And the building was almost totally demolished; the whole structure looked like they were bombarded by heavy artillery. The inhabitants of that area say it took two weeks clearing up everything.
I do know one thing for certain; there is a grave stone behind that Hotel, among other grave stones with his name on it that says “Buried here are the Shoes of Frank Gunderson, died 1999, the only thing found of him.”

Written in July, 2004 (The Author visited this location during the summer of 1999) Revised and reedited 7-2008