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)

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

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)

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

“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