Evening Star

By Simon Ott

He didn't know why he first began to look for it.  Maybe his father or his mother had pointed it out to him once, or maybe it was a babysitter.  Maybe he'd read about it in a book somewhere.  Maybe he'd read about it many times but just hadn't noticed until one time he did.  Or maybe it was something he'd known a long time ago and then forgot, and now he had to keep remembering and keep remembering until he didn't forget anymore.  He still forgot occasionally.  Days, weeks even, might go by, then one clear night just about dusk he'd suddenly remember, and he'd run outside, or at least run to the nearest window, searching the fading sky until he had found it.  The evening star – the first evening star.


He'd heard it said or maybe he'd read somewhere that you were supposed to make a wish when you saw that star, and he always did.  He did not wish for anything in particular; he just wished:  I wish, I wish, I wish, I wish . . .  He said it until he felt satisfied, he said it until his head had been soothed and his body relaxed; then he could let the wish go, the wish that was just a wish, like a bubble into the sky . . .


He didn't know when he started seeing the star even when he hadn't meant to look for it.  The evening star – the first evening star.  It would happen when he was lying in bed, eyes closed, letting sleep drift in.  A tiny pinprick of light in the swirling darkness behind his lids, shimmering in that space that exists just beyond physical sight, that slowly grew, at first being fixed in place but then, as it grew, glowing, pulsating, wavering and fluttering at its edges until, seeming to break loose somehow, it floated free.  It filled his field of vision; it changed shape; it changed colors; it looked now like an egg, now like a cloud; now it blossomed like a flower, now like a firework it faded and died.  That first light was followed by another, then another, each growing, spreading, splashing brilliantly on some invisible inner shore, then slipping away again as the next one emerged; and each light seemed somehow as if it were the first, each one being like no other.  Light Beings, he came to call them, though he didn't know why  They weren't like people.  Not like people at all, and yet they felt somehow alive.  They moved around him in the darkness, and as time slowed internally he began to move with them.  It was a sensation like swimming, only lighter; like floating, but in motion; and the Light Beings, bursting, glowing, fading, swam and floated with him.  It seemed to him (but he was falling backwards now, he was swooning into sleep) that they might be speaking to him, or trying to.  He was sure that if he only once heard them he would understand them:  They would speak his own tongue.  Only he couldn't quite make out what they were saying.  He only heard whisperings – almost audible, almost words, but not quite – whisperings . . .


He wondered about the Light Beings a lot for a time.  He wondered a lot about what they were trying to tell him.  After awhile he could imagine their whisperings when he closed his eyes anytime, in the middle of day even, but that wasn't the same as when he really heard them.  Talking sometimes maybe to each other; but sometimes, he thought, trying to say something to him . . .


The sky was clear.  Don't forget the evening star!  He ran to the window; he ran out into the yard.  He had remembered to look.  He had remembered – and there it was, it had appeared.


I wish, I wish, I wish, I wish . . . he whispered.
And then he listened.

THE ARRIVAL 
by 
Gerald Arthur Winter 
 
She sipped a cup of warm milk laced with a shot of twelve-year-old Macallans Sherry  
Oak as she sat up in bed and watched Spectrum News 9 for the morning weather report. Having heard her dad say it often enough, Sara knew it was a waste of a fine single malt scotch. But she needed a full night of sound sleep before the devil incarnate arrived at Tampa International from JFK in the morning.  
It was ten years ago, at their mom’s funeral, since she had last seen her younger brother, Mike. They had exchanged emails and texts on their birthdays, but Thanksgiving and Christmas reminded them too much of their shared painful childhood at a time when their parents had been younger than she and Mike were now. 
She kept their parents twenty-fifth wedding anniversary photo on the top of a 
bookcase beside the wide-screen TV. Their smiling faces, frozen in time, stared back at her every morning upon her waking. Tonight, too, before she took her last sip of scotch-laced milk. She blew a kiss to the framed photo before reclining, hopefully, for a restful slumber. 
Her mind drifted, feeling her limbs relax and her hands and feet unclench. She  
shifted her jaw back and forth to avoid grinding her teeth. All were fruitless efforts with Mike’s  smart-ass smirk floating aglow, like a poltergeist, in front of her in the dark. Unable to shut out his repulsive image from her fitful mind, she wept in anticipation of their mutually unwanted encounter. Or so she assumed, since no words had been spoken to each other in the past decade of their festering souls. She was only certain how she felt about his arrival. Mike’s true feelings remained a mystery. 
She let her negative thoughts of Mike’s arrival flow through her to purge herself  
of all their expectant nasty confrontations. Her bed seemed to spin, and the voices of her parents were on high speed, sounding like a flock of screeching birds, with intermittent bursts of “Mikey, this” and “Mikey that,” or “Isn’t it great to have a wonderful boy like  
Mikey?”   
She imagined him deplaning in Tampa, his white, neatly tailored linen suit, a  
Panama hat tilted at a provocative angle. His athletic gate, with expensive shoes, looked as if he could leap ten feet and land softly like Fred Astaire, then take her hand and twirl her like a toy.  
Be at your best, Sara, she thought: The incomparable “Mickey” has arrived. 
With her eyes closed to his image, Sara felt the back of Mike’s hand brush gently against her soft, warm cheek. She quickly grabbed his wrist and bit down hard on his thumb.  
He didn’t howl, as she anticipated he would, shouting, “Mom! Sara’s picking on me!”  
She fluttered her tongue, expecting the salty taste of blood but, alas, Mike had not 
yet arrived, and the peat-flavored, warm milk was settling her down. Her deep breathing was counterpointed by her heartbeat as she imagined the jet hitting the runway with Mike aboard. She watched him deplane and wave to her as he approached Baggage Claim. 
But he bypassed the baggage carousel and headed straight towards her. He had no  
carry-on, no attaché, or backpack. His hands grasped her shoulders, and he put his cheek against hers. His scent of fresh-baked cookies wafted to her flaring nostrils. 
His soothing baritone voice with his breath against her ear whispered, “I’ve arrived 
with no baggage, Sara. I love you, Sis. I always will.” 
Sara felt weightless, levitating above her bed with her Barbie doll resting on her pink, ruffled pillow below. 
The sound of a car pulling into the driveway shook her from the dream, but she  
made a soft landing beside Barbie. Her bedroom door swung open, as Mom and Dad came to her bedside, and her teenage babysitter stood in the open doorway. Sara’s mom put a bundle on the bed beside her. 
A gift, she thought. 
Melodically, her mom announced, “Your baby brother has arrived, Sara. Say  
hello to Mikey.” 
Sara sniffed at his rosy, scrunched up face as Mikey chortled and cooed. She  
shrugged, trying to remember what she had been dreaming, but warned her baby  
brother, “If you break Barbie’s dream house, Mom will send you back to the hospital.” 
                                                                   _________ 
 
   

The Life and Times of Voyager
 
Television Review by Charles E.J. Moulton
 
 
We could be watching Harrison Ford running through the wilderness hunted by U.S. Marshalls, we could be following Charlton Heston lost in the future hunted by apes or just following Thelma and Louise on their road toward crime and debauchery.
Then again, we might be travelling with Captain Kathryn Janeway and her crew lost 70 000 lightyears from home.
However we choose to experience our lust of joining mutual seekers of the journey, the result of that search is the same. The road is the way.
We all love seeing people travel, but why are we drawn to stories about seekers?
If we don’t travel ourselves, we do so through others. That conveys movement and there’s nothing we love so much as movement. Many people are lost, many people hope to find something real beyond that proverbial rainbow. Then, of course, there is the afterlife. We really belong somewhere else: in heaven with God. Every life we lead here on Earth really brings us back to work on some task or solve some problem.
“Star Trek: Voyager” ran for seven seasons and the reason for its success is the fact that it really is an extended road movie. So, here it is: a team of space explorers is sent out on an away mission, prepared to be away a couple of months at the most. Among them are talented prisoners on parole, fresh graduates and experienced veterans. The ship, however, gets catapulted through the galaxy 70 000 lightyears from home by mistake and so the crew has to find another way home.
On their way home, they encounter a hundred species, visit hundreds of distant planets and ultimately change the course of time.
The fascinating aspect in general is the eternal question we always ask ourselves every time we read a book or watch a film: what if? What would a world based on interstellar communication look like? What might aliens look like? What would their world be like? We know how it is to travel between New York and Rio, but what would a world look like that is based on travelling between planets on a regular basis. Roddenberry continues on a very old tradition that Homer, Voltaire, Melville and Verne dwelled in: the journey.
Captain Janeway is a future day Don Quixiote. Encountering barbarians and killers just as much as benevolent philosophers on her seven year odyssey, she perseveres in spite of incredible setbacks. Actress Kate Mulgrew’s uncanny resemblance to Katherine Hepburn got her the job portraying the famous thespian in a one-woman show. It is also Mulgrew’s almost painful and ruthless, Hepburnesque, honesty that keeps the spaceship going and eventually takes the weird and wonderful crew home to Earth, eventually happy, eventually joyous.
Robert Beltran’s extraordinary mixture of internal depth with an angry command, as First Officer Chakotay, gives Janeway’s Sherlock her conscience of an eternally wise Watson. In more ways than one, we here have a resiliant team that would not survive as a singular unit. Even when they are stranded alone on a lonely planet, their almost marital team inspires Chakotay’s Adam to create an unusually resistant Eve. Only toward the end of the episode, when Janeway gives in to her quiet seclusion, are they saved to return to Voyager. Adam and Eve again, willingly unwilling, become Bill and Hillary.
Robert Picardo breathes life into The Doctor in a role that couldn’t be more different than his most famous portrayal as the Cowboy in “Innerspace”. For those of us who followed Voyager through its journey, the holographic doctor’s love of opera he presents created episodes like “Virtuoso”, where Verdi could be introduced to viewers and aliens alike alongside simple songs like “Someone’s in the Kitchen with Dinah”. The Doctor also becomes an author, a husband, a commanding officer and an advocate of human rights. Wonderfully holographic.
I remember seeing Tom Paris-portrayer Robert Duncan McNeill in a Twilight Zone-episode named “A Message from Charity”. Since then, he has come a long way. His matter-of-fact-way and almost functional form of acting grew in time and became a real jewel of storytelling toward the sixth and seventh seasons of Voyager. McNeill’s very American truthfulness is sympathetic and his cute and constant reparté with Harry Kim in the Captain Proton episodes are worth while to say the least.
Jeri Ryan’s looks have been described as worthy of expressions like “Va-Va-Voom”. Although rather sterile a role, she manages to unify moments of tenderness with a cyborg’s hard battle for individuality as “Seven of Nine”. Tender episodes such as “Someone to Watch Over Me” give us that sweet sneak-peeks of viewing other talents emerge other than looks and strong acting. Her duet with Picardo makes the listener wonder what she would do as the vocalist of a big band. Maybe she already is one. If that is the case, a fellow big band vocalist like me would like to hear her perform songs like “Fly Me to the Moon”.
No Star Trek-ship is complete without a Vulcan. So it is actor and Blues-singer Tim Russ that gives us his constant concentration as Tuvok. The moments when Tuvok is allowed to step outside his own controlled boundaries, however, are the most memorable. Russ is allowed to become a tender and angry soul, happy and enthusiastic, and we find much more beneath that controlled enigma.
Shakespearian actor Ethan Phillips turned Talaxian tour-de-force and Janeway-Alter-Ego Neelix into a weirdly wonderful Pumbaa-like caleidoscope of alien and gastronomical wit. I know he has spent years doing Star Trek, but I also know he is a playwright and the owner of a Master’s Degree in Fine Arts from Cornell University.
UCLA-student Garrett Wang became everybody’s favourite little beginner as Ensign Harry Kim. His smart and honest portrayal was believable enough to inspire people to review the episodes in which he played the focal part. He is and remains Voyager’s charming conscience.
Roxann Dawson created a feisty, angry character with a sensitive core in B’Elanna Torres. As with many of the portrayals in Voyager, we see the development with the oncoming years. We, as actors, do grow with our assigments. Roxann presented superior theatrical skills even in her first episode in addition to being what you could label as versatile and supremely interesting.
Jennifer Lien’s work as Kes unified strength with tenderness. Of all the characters in Voyager, hers is the most feminine, the one with the most thespian introspection.
On the surface, Star Trek Voyager is a sitcom, a soap-opera set in space. At a closer glance, it is a deep and heartfelt plea to enjoy the knowledge the ride itself provides. It is the discoverer’s dream, the seafarer’s love for eternal wisdom.
As I said, we are all seekers and we all love to see that other enjoy seeking, as well.

Alpha One

By K. A. Williams


All types of wrecked ships cluttered the area around Alpha One.

Harold knew there was something salvageable on the abandoned space station if he could just find a safe path through them.

"How many derelicts are there?" he asked.

"Three hundred and forty," said Alex, the Merry Traveler's computer.

"Can you handle the navigation?" 

"Certainly."

"Hey, you're getting too close to that one on the left!"

The ships collided and ripped a large hole in the Merry Traveler's hull.

"You should have gotten me an upgrade," Alex said as Harold was sucked out into space. "It's three hundred forty one now."

A MOTHER’S PRAYER

By Patricia Farrell

​
P. A. Farrell is a psychologist and published author with McGraw-Hill, Springer Publishing, Cafe Lit, Ravens Perch, Humans of the World, Active Muse, Free Spirit Publishing, Scarlet Leaf Review, 100 Word Project, Woodcrest Magazine, Confetti, and LitBreak. She's a top health writer for Medium.com, has published self-help books, and is a board member of Clinics4Life. She lives on the East Coast of the US.


A piercing morning sun promised no relief but only more heat as the carefully tanned woman stood waiting with the little girl in her overly heavy dress and orthopedic shoes. The woman was sporting faux haute couture in crisp white shorts and a mind-blowing bright blue halter, her blonde hair carefully arranged in a silky ponytail. Delicate leather sandals with a troublesome strap were a bit loose, but she loved the look.
Sunglasses, not Bentley Platinum but knockoffs, shielded her eyes from the sun’s glare. The little girl, refusing to hold the woman’s hand, squinted in the painful light and squirmed, scraping the bottom of her brace on the cement. No attention was paid to her discomfort.
Behind them at the apartment building, the doorman’s heel crunched on tiny pebbles as he twisted to turn away, seeming not to notice the activity at the curb. He had done his duty. Now it was up to the new mother.
A bus would arrive within minutes, but to the woman at the curb it seemed an eternity. Looking down at the little girl, she flashed her carefully practiced non-Duchenne smile which had always so usefully connoted her feigned joy in the past. Mirrors had helped a lot. The smile was the key to her most recent success.
A short yellow bus slid up to the curb.
​The bus stopped, a large stop sign flipped out and two young women jumped to the sidewalk.
The bus was unmarked, but the yellow t-shirts the women wore had an emblem of a day camp.
Now the yellow-shirted women greeted the woman and the child and with great enthusiasm, began bending over and smiling, clapping their hands in unison in an excessive display of joy; frantic rather than heartfelt. The little girl looked at the three of them and kept her hands at her sides.
The blue-halter garbed woman became more animated as the little girl jumped up and down with effort in a show of dissatisfaction, her face distorted and now dappled with tears.
“No, no, no! I don’t want to go!” The pleading would gain her nothing. Her fate was sealed. The fees were paid, she was registered, and she’d get on the bus eventually. The woman had no doubt of it.
“Florence, honey, it’s going to be fun. You’ll meet other children who will play with you, and you’ll get to make friends. You want friends, don’t you?”
Forcing herself not to grit her teeth, the woman was wondering if she might order the camp workers to lift the little girl up into the bus. No, her husband wouldn’t like that. It’s too soon to upset him.
Concerned that she would be late for her Pilates class, the woman initiated a vigorous few minutes of coaxing in an effort to thaw the reluctance. Photos, photos are what were needed to memorialize the special occasion, and the woman began taking them with her phone.
One, two, ten photos taken next to the bus, several with the young women, and the little girl leaning against the bus. Excessive waving of goodbyes began now as the girl mounted the bus stairs with some assistance.
The stop sign retracts. The woman’s frantic waving continues as the bus wends its way from the curb. More smiles and waving from the curb. The bus enters traffic and slides slowly away, disappearing like a yellow bug in the crush of morning traffic.
The woman begins crossing the street, fingering her phone, and talking as she views herself in the video display. Her hair, eyebrows and make-up all look fine to her.
The traffic light turns red. She never looks up, as is her usual carefree way of crossing streets, busy or otherwise.
Traffic was supposed to stop for her, wasn’t it? Talking on her phone, she had begun to cross the next corner as that traffic light turned red. The leather sandal strap slips. She slows down to wiggle her foot.
“The doorman had to help me,” she fairly moans, “because she didn’t want to leave the building, and she was grabbing on to the door and everything she could find. Why, God, oh, God, why me? Oh, God, I’m so sick of her. Thank God she got on the bus!” The pesky sandal strap slips again but a quick hop will resecure it.
“You have no idea what I had to do with that kid. It was his week with her. He’s at work so I had to take her to the bus today. Can you beat that? Oh, my God, I …”
Hanging in mid-air, the sentence would never be completed as a screech of tire on asphalt ripped the muggy morning air. Blue collided with blue.
“Johanna? Johanna?” The voice fades as the phone begins an acrobatic swan dive in the air before it crashes to the roadway, shattering as it does.
The faux Bentley glasses follow the phone in short order.
Yes, the traffic stopped for her.

INTERVIEW WITH MR. WERNER HAAS
ABOUT JOHN LENNON
 
My friend Uncas Rydén and I were the leading members of a club. It was The B.S.F.C. – The Beatles Special Fan Club. We had stickers, a board of executives, a cashier and a club magazine. Even when I moved to Vienna in 1984, I kept writing articles for the club’s pamphlet that was sold at local parties.
When I found out that our family friend Mr. Werner Haas had been a neighbor of John Lennon’s and experienced his assassination at close range at the time of his death at 10:50 p.m. on December 8th 1980, I realized that this was a scoop I couldn’t miss.
The following interview was held on May 20th 1985 and published in that year’s second issue. It was a warm spring evening and the interview location was the open terrace of the Park Avenue Hotel Restaurant in Vienna, Austria.
         This is the conversation as it was recorded on cassette tape that day. This copy is an August 3rd 2011 re-transcription of the original from 1985.
         This interview has been lying untouched in the vaults since then.
 
         CM – CHARLES MOULTON                       
         WH – WERNER HAAS
 
 CM –What was your impression of John Lennon by any personal contact?
 
WH – Well, my contact with him was as a neighbor. When his baby was very, very young, he used to have a harness he’d put him in, to walk in the park. I think the reason he was friendly was that we didn’t talk about anything in particular. I never treated him as John Lennon or felt that he was due any great respect or any ooh’s or aah’s. I think he got tired of everybody just looking at him. I guess it is the price you pay. I think the fact that I just said hello or that we talked about nothing important at all ever, certainly not about The Beatles or about music or anything like that, made him grateful not to have to worry about who he was or who he was pretending to be.
 
CM – And how did you find his wife, Yoko Ono?
 
WH – Their love was real and very deep. That much was clear. I think she might’ve been very protective of him. Maybe it was the fact that it was his fame. She was an artist in her own right when they got married. She was still Yoko Ono, albeit Mrs. John Lennon. I think that she was either trying to “protect her turf”, as it were, or merely the fact that she didn’t want to share him with a lot of people, particularly with people she didn’t know or who didn’t know her or who were not her professional peers. When you get to that level of stardom, it is quite understandable.
 
CM – Did you ever hear John sing in person?
 
WH – No, no, never did. I had one chance to do it when they performed in New York City and were still The Beatles, but I never went and, of course, now in retrospect I wish I had gone.
 
CM – But he never talked about his singing or composing or anything like that?
 
WH – Not to me. And I don’t know if I would really have encouraged him to do that, because I think it would have spoiled a good rapport, just two people who happened to live a few feet apart. And all of a sudden if I had become just another Beatle-worshiper or another celebrity-clown, I think that would’ve destroyed the adult, or whatever, relationship there was. You know: “How are you?”, “Good to see you”, “How’s your son?” I’m not sure if he would’ve remembered my name, although I’d mentioned it to him. It was just one of those things that was purely neighbor-to-neighbor, person-to-person. Not adult-body VS. superstar John Lennon.
 
CM – How was his son? How did you find his son?
 
WH – Julian? Or the little one?
 
CM – No, the little one.
 
WH – When I knew them he was just a baby, and as all babies do or did, he screamed and wet his pants and did everything fairly normal. I haven’t seen him now, although I know that they still live next-door, but I haven’t seen him. So when I was there, he was just a couple of years old.
 
CM – The big question: what happened on the day he was shot? How did you react when you heard about what had happened?
 
WH – Well, I had come home just about ten minutes before. I was out-of-town myself and I had come back late by plane and by taxi from the airport. I went into the apartment and decided to get into the shower. A friend of mine, who was living with me at the time, was watching television and a friend of ours phoned and said, “My God, what’s going on over there?” I was still dripping wet from the shower and said, “What are you talking about?” She had the news on: John Lennon was shot and they rushed him to the hospital. That was the first that I had heard of it. Other people, I guess neighbors of ours, said or at least claimed, to have heard the shots. Then, almost within minutes, people started to gather. I guess he was really dead on arrival at the hospital, so when the news flashed out, by then hundreds of people came and the crowd just grew. The streets were blocked. There were probably thousands of people getting as close as they could. I even sent my friend out with a tape recorder to try to get some on-the-spot interviews. The people were really quite angry about that and said: “How can you commercialize at a time like this?” It wasn’t that, it was just the idea of gathering some off-the-cuff reminders of their impressions. I was going to send them home to Casey Kasem in California. As a matter of fact, the station had phoned me because they knew I lived next door to John and they wanted the recordings for their show the next day on their Los Angeles radio station. Nevertheless, we were really so inundated with people and police that we could not even get out of the apartment building and go to the store. Of course, from where we were, we could look into the side entrance of the Dakota building at all the celebrities that went in and were herded around. We would just look out the window and see Ringo Starr and the other people coming by.
 
CM – How did you feel about all of this happening around you?
 
WH – I don’t think it sank in right away. With some people, when something like this happens, you feel an immediate sadness or sense of loss. This took some time. What probably made it finally sink in was the fact that these people of all ages, colors, creeds, whatever, came to pray together. Usually when you have big crowds you have some problems, but these were just very quiet. Some of them had candles. Some of them left flowers at the entrance to the building. It was a very subdued and a very orderly crowd. I don’t know, I think it was probably the only crowd of its type that I have ever seen and it was really that restrained feeling. It was not really sadness, although it was sad and it was not really anger, although there was anger. It was just a situation they didn’t know how to deal with. There were a lot of people who seemed to feel that something like that was coming, that either John or – well, they felt that the whole era of the Beatles was officially dead. You know, they had talked about getting together for one last concert, but then all denied it. There were all these rumors that they hated one another and that the problem with Brian Epstein, the accusations for Paul marrying Linda and John marrying Yoko had escalated. I think now the great shock was that this was the end of an era and that something that people had hoped for would never come again. A group like that probably never existed before and never will exist again. They just changed so many things from hairstyles to clothes to the type of singing to the type of entertainment. The variety of musical talent was endless. It wasn’t just pop music. It was timeless.
 
CM – When did you first meet Lennon?
 
WH – I couldn’t tell you the year, but I guess it was just shortly after they moved in. I talked to the man with this little baby and I didn’t know who he was. But to me that wasn’t rare. I spent a half an hour once talking to someone who turned out to be Red Skelton. I walked my dog with somebody who turned out to be Elliot Gould, so I’m not a good celebrity-recognizer, I guess. Just one day I was walking with the dog in the park and along came this guy with a harness and a little baby in it. We started to talk about the dog. He went on his way and I went mine. A friend of mine saw me and he said: “What did you and John Lennon have to talk about?” And that was the first time I knew it was John Lennon.
 
CM – (laughing) Oh, my God…
 
WH – You just see all these posters of someone who has changed somewhat and he doesn’t look like you remembered John Lennon from all the album covers and all the publicity stills. He just looked different. Well, I guess the time of the Beatles was over.
 
CM – Let’s talk about his solo career.
 
WH – He was writing songs and recording them, but I don’t exactly know what he was releasing at that time. According to rumor, there is still a lot of unreleased stuff. Mrs. Lennon may eventually release it.
 
CM – Was he a good neighbor? Did you find him a good neighbor?
 
WH – That’s the wrong thing to ask any New Yorker, because there are no such things in New York. Neighborhoods don’t exist in a big city like New York. Every building is its own neighborhood. He is reputed to have owned six or seven apartments in the Dakota, which is the oldest apartment building in that part of the world. It is also one of the most expensive buildings to live in in New York. All the celebrities live or have lived in it. Lauren Bacall, Leonard Bernstein, Boris Karloff, when he was alive, Basil Rathbone lived there, a number of well-known writers and actors and musicians. So, it wasn’t really a neighborhood-thing. When you have buildings where you are guarded by X-number of doormen and guards, it isn’t a neighborhood. It’s just a building where people just happen to nod their heads and say: “Isn’t it terrible about so-and-so?” No, there is no such thing as being able to make judgment about anybody possibly being a good neighbor.
 
CM – What was the reaction in the house to his death?
 
WH – Well, I think the greatest reaction was the terrible inconvenience of not being able to get through huge crowds and of being asked by police as to why you are here and why you are trying to get across the police barrier.  I think particularly the older people in his building and in our building next door were terribly inconvenienced, because they couldn’t get their groceries or the medicines delivered. The pizzas and Chinese food from down on the corner couldn’t come in, because there were just thousands of people there. And then the fact that it went on around the clock. The people were quiet, but when you get three or four thousand people in a small area, you just can’t have complete quiet. Along about 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning it can get a bit disconcerting.
 
CM – Has popular music changed the last few years? What about since the Beatles split up?
 
WH – Let me rephrase that by asking you a question. Since you are trying to do something involving what was, why are people’s interests today still in something that was and never can happen again? Why not concentrate a lot of that energy in trying to develop something new and exciting and different and interesting today? I, frankly, find that most of what’s around today is – well, you know, can’t last the way a lot of the Beatles-stuff has lasted. Yet nobody seems to be doing very much about trying to come up with something or get behind or boost a group that has something to say and does it well. When you look at who’s number one and number three and number four, it’s a little frightening, the lack of talent and ingenuity. It’s just a lot of promotion. Who do you like today? Springsteen?
 
CM – John Lennon.
 
WH – (Laughs) Of course. Good choice.
 
CM – And I am the son of opera singers, so it does tend to get classical. Besides that, The Beatles, Elvis, ABBA. If it’s good music, it appeals to me.
 
WH – One of the interesting things is that a lot of the Beatles’ songs were recorded by other people as well. When I was growing up, whether it was Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald, you know, what we call middle-of-the-road-artists, would all record the same songs. If
you liked the one artist better than the other then you bought that version of the song. The Beatles songs were also recorded by many of the greats. (Comment from editor: Sinatra called George Harrison’s Something his favorite love song). Today, usually a number is so closely identified with a particular group or an artist that nobody else records it.
 
CM – What about Julian Lennon? Did you ever see him when you knew John?
 
WH – I think he was living in England back then. I’m not sure that he came over or how much contact was there between him and John’s new family. Of course, now Julian is another “promotion-piece”. He sounds like his father, but I don’t really know how extensive his talents are.
 
CM – How much did John talk about his children, Julian and Sean? I’ve read that John wanted to give Sean a nice childhood and that he looked forward to seeing Sean grow up. That was just a few days before the assassination. That was really tragic. Did you hear anything like that from John?
 
WH – No, except that he really doted on that child. I would think that 80 % of the time that I saw him, he had the child with him, usually in that harness.  He took Sean everywhere, because he was still a baby. During the time Sean was not able to walk very much, he just had him in that harness and took him everywhere.  I think it was great thing. Well, the fact that John was rich enough to be able to do it. He didn’t have to leave for the office at 8 o’clock in the morning and be away all day or off on tour for a year or two. He could spend some quality time with the child.
 
CM – Do you think he ever had the feeling that he would die soon?
 
WH – I think that anybody in the public eye, I mean particularly after the Kennedy assassination, was afraid. There wasn’t anybody who didn’t have the fear that when you heard a car backfire that it wasn’t gunshot. There is so much violence. It isn’t envy. It’s making the 8 o’clock news, making the headlines. It’s that kind of mentality.
 
CM – Your closing comments?
 
WH – Well, I’ve been so much on the periphery that you are getting a lot of conjecture and opinion instead of fact. Basically, I just knew him as a human being and not as John Lennon. I knew him as somebody who lived next door, a human being who was a good father to his son. I didn’t know him as a celebrity, a singer or a Beatle. Basically, this teaches that we are human beings and souls first. Celebrity is only a close second.
 
CM – Thank you for your time!
 
WH – You’re welcome! And welcome to New York City!
 
CM – Thank you!

Christoforos' Travels
Temple Of The Greek Gods of North Central Illinois


Chris Aldridge

www.caldridge.net


In the Polis of Machesney Park, Illinois, in the northern central of the State, stands a beautiful temple called Temple Of The Greek Gods, where the locals worship, love and serve all the Gods, Spirits, Heroes and Deified Mortals of ancient Greece. It is the only one of its kind to have ever been built in the entire region, and is owned and operated by one Head Priest and Head Priestess. But all the people are among the most religious and devout worshipers I have ever seen. They are most active in the Spring, Summer and early Fall. Winter is inhospitable here.
The temple stands about center with the living quarters of the clergy surrounding it. Upon approaching the temple doors, you find they are painted gold, both of them, with blue lining throughout their frames. Above the doors is a bronze face of Medusa to protect the entrance, and flanking the head are two white Greek Gryphons painted on the wall, which is the patron animal and protector of the temple, its treasury and worshipers. Behind each Gryphon is the temple's official flower, the yellow sunflower. To the right of the temple doors is a bronze frieze of the Hero Ajax, the temple's Patron. To the left of the doors is another blue and golden door which houses the temple's library, containing historical and religious texts from prehistoric to modern times. Finally, to the far left, is a blue and golden door that leads to the office of the Head Priest.
Upon entering the temple you are met with an amazing shrine upon the front wall. Near the ceiling is a shining painted mountain and in the center is a colorful stone relief of the Twelve Olympian Gods. The mountain is flanked on one side by a brightly painted sun, and a glowing moon on the other. White pillars supported by bronze niches stand on either side of the relief. Below the mountain is a window for natural light, which is surrounded by more sunflowers. Under the window is the altar, also the color of gold, standing four feet high with a white stone block in the center for placing sacrifice. Two statues of Greek youth (Kouros) stand on either side of it, and upon the altar is everything one needs to give prayer and gifts to the Gods, such as incense, an incense burner, a golden plate, and a libation vessel.
To the right of the altar is a beautiful statue of Apollon of Piraeus, standing about five feet tall, with a metal bow in its left hand, and a lovely and vivid oil painting of Delphi behind it, which is Apollon's scared City. To the left of the painting is a bronze statue of Apollon's oracle, the Pythia. To the left of the altar is a solid bronze statue of Athena, also standing five feet in height, and is used in the temple's yearly Panathenaia celebrations. Behind it is a heavily framed picture of the Parthenon. Both statues are beautifully adorned with robes and jewels.
The right wall is gold and called the “Hero Wall.” It is dedicated to all ancient Greek Heroes. Statues of gold, silver, bronze and alabaster stand to represent Herakles, Ajax, Theseus, Jason, Achilles, Leonidas, Perseus and Odysseus. Descending around them is the laurel crown of victory, and a bust of Pegasos, the horse of heaven, overlooks the area. Standing center height above the statues is a frieze of the Oympian torch and Eos, Goddess of the dawn, carrying the young sun into flight.
The left wall is also gold, and is dedicated to the cult objects or relics, symbols and artifacts that represent the ancient Greek past. There is the Mask of Agamemnon, an iron helmet dubbed the Helmet of Ajax, and decorated pottery from Athens. Upon this wall is also the door that leads to the temple's treasury, which houses many valuables brought by devotees over the years to give to the Gods and Heroes, and also to the support of the temple itself. From statues to charms, clothing and even waters from the rivers of the cities that have visited the location.
The back wall is bronze, and upon it are golden reliefs of prehistoric events that changed the Greek world, such as Zeus defeating the Titans and Athena destroying the Giants.
The floor of the temple is solid wood and holds a throne in the corner, normally for the Head Priest, but anyone can sit there who likes.
​Finally, the ceiling of the temple is sky blue.
Outside the temple to the southwest is its sanctuary, sitting upon about an acre of land. Throughout the natural landscape, millions of dandelions bloom in the spring, and there are shrines and altars to all of the Twelve Olympain Gods, some standing to a height of seven feet, such as the central one to Zeus, but there are also grand ones to Gods like Artemis, Athena, Aphrodite, Poseidon, Dionysos, Hephaistos, Hermes and Hekate. The shrines normally have plants or flowers which are sacred to that particular Deity, such as the Hyacinth in Apollon's precinct, or the Amaranth flower in that of Artemis. Although natural sunflowers have been known to mysteriously bloom around Apollon's shrine. The center of the sanctuary holds a fountain that shoots water from its center and lights up at night. The fountain contains several gallons. And when it is time to change the water, provided it is still suitable for irrigation, it is used to water the land and sacred plants of the Gods. Nothing is wasted, nor is anything allowed to die if it can be helped, until Persephone once again returns to the Underworld.

The Handsome Gravedigger 
By  
John Vander 
 
 
She’s here! 
For once they spoke in unison, their voices filled with a warm, almost childlike exuberance that was utterly at odds with the cold severity of the grey October morning 
‘I know,’ the gravedigger said softly. 
He leaned against the old willow tree by the gate and looked downhill to where the funeral procession was coming to a halt on the narrow road that ran past the cemetery on its north side. Moments later, the distant thuds of car doors could be heard as the mourners disembarked and began congregating behind the hearse.  
It’s so exsoitin when we get somebody new! 
That was Mrs Murphy in plot seventy-six. She had an irritating tendency to gush, but no one, least of all the gravedigger, would have denied that her heart was in the right place. 
It is rather exciting, agreed Major MacPherson. 
MacPherson was an ex-officer of the Black Watch regiment and one of only a small group of residents to have the luxury of their own mausoleum. It wasn’t often that he agreed with Mrs Murphy. Mostly they spent their time arguing about religion, he being a staunch Presbyterian and she a devout Roman Catholic. But today was a special day and they had obviously decided to call a truce. 
Not for the first time, the gravedigger found himself wondering why, in bygone days, the townspeople of Lashcroft had opted for a multi-denominational cemetery. In principle, he supposed, it was a good idea. Very egalitarian. But in reality it was the cause of a great deal of friction. 
He watched as the coffin was taken from the back of the hearse and mounted on the shoulders of the pallbearers. 
‘Now remember,’ he said: ‘not a sound when they get here.’ 
A murmur of assent ran around the cemetery. Then a small voiced piped up. Madeleine Crosby in plot one hundred and twenty-one. She had been killed in a house fire in nineteen eighty-two. 
Was she really very pretty? 
For a long moment, the gravedigger merely stared silently at the funeral procession as it started moving slowly up the hill. There were a great many mourners, he noted. He had never seen so many mourners. 
At last he said, ‘She was the most beautiful girl I ever saw.’ 
Aye, she was a real stunner all right, said Mrs Lennox in plot sixty-three. She used to come into my shop to buy chocolate sometimes when she was still wee. Chocolate and penny caramels. Last time I saw her she was only about twelve, but even at that age you could tell she was going to grow into a fine looking woman. 
The cortege moved closer. Marching at its head, armed with prayer book and holy water, his vestments billowing majestically in the breeze, was Father James Doyle. The gravedigger had received a phone call from the old priest the previous week. The conversation had been brief and extremely polite but the message had been clear: this one is important; make sure you don’t mess up. 
The open grave was near the cemetery gate. After checking for the final time that everything was as it should be, the gravedigger retreated the thirty or so yards to Major MacPherson’s mausoleum and did his best to blend in with his surroundings. 
Fine work, my boy, the major whispered with obvious pride. Fine work, indeed. 
The gravedigger nodded but said nothing. The procession had reached the entrance to the cemetery. He watched as the coffin was carried to the plot and lowered onto the wooden thwarts spanning the grave. When the flowers had been laid to one side and all of the mourners had gathered round, Father Doyle recited the traditional Invitation followed by one of the usual passages from the Bible. 
Jesus Christ is the first-born of the dead; 
glory and kingship be his for ever and ever. 
As he listened to the words, the gravedigger’s mind drifted back to the past. 
# 
Although he had attended the same school as the girl for almost a year, her social background could not have been more different from his own. She had been the child of a local family, a family that had lived in Lashcroft long enough to have the names of its ancestors engraved on the town’s monuments to the fallen of both wars. He, by contrast, had only started attending Saint Margaret’s High after a panel of stony-faced social workers had decided to send him to the nearby children’s home – Beaumont. Before Beaumont, he had spent six years living with a string of foster families up and down the country, an unwanted, parentless waif whose only roots consisted of a tangle of painful childhood memories garnered in a run-down housing estate in the north east of Glasgow. 
It was normal for the Beaumont kids who had a Catholic background to attend Saint Margaret’s – the custom went back for decades – but they had never really been welcomed at the school, either by the local parents or the teachers, and it was quite easy to believe the rumour that the only reason they were tolerated at all was because of the substantial government subsidy that rolled into the school coffers at the beginning of each academic year. Perhaps taking an unconscious lead from the adults, the majority of the local children treated the outsiders with a disdain bordering on outright hostility.  
The majority, but not all, the gravedigger reminded himself. In his own time there, some of the pupils had shown themselves to be capable of tolerance. A few had even been friendly.  
The girl had been one such. 
The gravedigger was not sure as to exactly when he had fallen in love with the girl, but looking back, he suspected that he had always loved her. Even before he had laid eyes on her for the first time. It was a strange idea, maybe. But only if you didn’t believe in fate. If you believed in fate, it made an odd kind of sense. 
He had never acted on his feelings, however. He had been far too shy and self conscious to even consider that. Rather, he had contented himself with loving her ‘from afar’. 
Loving someone ‘from afar’ was an expression he’d first heard in an O-level English class. The subject of the lesson had been the poetry of Dante and the medieval troubadours, some of whom had apparently pledged their undying devotion to women in the full knowledge that their love would remain forever unacknowledged and unconsummated. The teacher that had taught them about the troubadours had been Mrs Henderson, a wistful, middle-aged, highland woman with long, greying hair and a lisp, and the gravedigger could still remember the passionate way that she’d spoken on the subject, and the way she’d pronounced the word ‘unconsummated’ as if the third syllable was a perfect homonym of ‘thumb’. 
On his way out of the class that day he had been filled with a deep and powerful sense of inner purpose bordering on religious revelation. He had found his path, he knew. He would be like Dante and the troubadours. He would love the girl from afar. 
# 
Rain began to fall, slanting down into the graveyard from a sky the colour of wet concrete. The gravedigger pulled up the hood of his anorak. Over by the graveside, black umbrellas sprouted like black toadstools from the dark mass of mourners. A man stepped forward from the ranks and held one over the head of Father Doyle. The old priest nodded his appreciation, his eyes never leaving his open prayer book. 
God of endless ages, 
through disobedience to your law 
we fell from grace 
and death entered the world … 
# 
In the beginning, loving the girl from afar had not been difficult. They attended the same school, after all, and although she was in the year above him, it was easy to steal a sly glance at her in the quadrangle or the lunch queue, or in the library where she spent so much of her spare time studying books on history and literature. In the evenings, back at Beaumont, he wrote poetry for her in a little leather-bound notebook that he bought especially for the purpose, filling the thick, cream-coloured pages with words of gentle praise and promises of unending devotion. Lost in this tender world of fancy, there were times when he was able to forget entirely the long train of misery that had brought him to his present set of circumstances; times, even, when he believed he might actually have discovered the meaning of the word happiness. 
It was not long, however, before reality once more bulldozed its way over the beatific landscape of his imagination. 
His latest round of troubles began shortly after the end of the school year – on the day that his exam results arrived at Beaumont. Given that he suffered from a mild form of dyslexia and had never attended the same school for a period of more than a few months, his expectations were not high; but two passes from a possible seven came as a real slap in the face, both for his fragile ego and his frail career prospects. In order to get the qualifications he needed for college or university, he knew, he would now have to spend at least another two years at Saint Margaret’s; and, although this wasn’t an insurmountable problem in itself, another two years at the school would mean another two years living at Beaumont.  
For the gravedigger, the idea of spending another twenty-four months in the cold austerity of the old home was simply unbearable. 
And so, at the tender age of sixteen, parentless, penniless and armed only with a couple of qualifications that were barely worth the paper they were written on, he decided to exercise his legal right to leave Saint Margaret’s and Beaumont behind him and to make an attempt to forge his own place in the world. It was, without doubt, a rash decision, and one that would almost certainly have proved entirely disastrous if not for the fact that, against all the odds, someone made the decision to help him. 
His unlikely benefactor was Frank MacNickel, a local man in his fifties who worked for the town council. Frank’s main job consisted of digging graves and attending to the general maintenance of the Lashcroft cemetery, but during the summer months he was also responsible for the upkeep of the government-owned grounds around Beaumont, and it was here that the gravedigger first made his acquaintance, sharing a cigarette with him one Saturday morning when the older man had taken a break from mowing the enormous swathes of lawn that bordered the old home on every side. 
‘So you live here?’ Frank asked as they lit up. 
‘Fraid so.’ 
‘You don’t like it?’ 
‘It’s like being in jail.’ 
Frank looked at Beaumont’s stern Victorian facade and nodded. ‘It was a loony bin at one time. Did you know that?’ 
‘Still is.’ 
That made Frank laugh. 
Over the next few weeks, Saturday morning cigarettes with Frank became something of a ritual, as did the good-humoured conversations that accompanied them. The subjects of discussion seldom moved outside the realms of accepted small talk – the top forty, Scottish football, the latest film releases – but on the day his exam results came through, almost to his surprise, the gravedigger found himself opening up about his personal predicament. 
Frank was sympathetic, but urged a practical approach. ‘Well, I can understand why you’d want to get the fuck out of this place, but you should really go back to school, son, get some more qualifications.’ 
‘I can’t do that. I have to get out. Really. I’ve had enough.’ 
Frank nodded but let the subject drop, and afterwards the gravedigger forgot all about the conversation. Then, about a week later, someone knocked on the door of his bedroom and told him there was a call for him at the main desk. 
It was Frank. 
‘Listen, the boy who’s been working with me at the graveyard packed it in yesterday. Little prick says he wants to go travelling in India or some shit. Anyway, to cut a long story short, there’s a job going. It doesn’t pay much, but I think I can sort you out with a place to live. Rent free. Nothing fancy, but it’ll be a roof. What do you say?’ 
The gravedigger said yes. 
The roof in question was attached to a family-sized caravan that stood on a half-deserted campsite on the outskirts of town. Frank hadn’t been lying when he’d said it was nothing fancy, but to the gravedigger the threadbare carpet and flaking paint were unimportant. What was important was that, after years of being shunted from one place to another and having to continually answer to strangers, he finally had a place where he could spend time on his own, a place where he could do as he pleased and where he would receive orders from no one. 
When he reported for his first shift at the cemetery, Frank led him immediately to a shed and started loading digging tools into two large wheelbarrows. 
‘I’m afraid you’re in at the deep end. We’re planting one tomorrow.’ 
‘We have to dig a grave?’ 
‘That’s the job description. And a word of warning: round here we do things the old fashioned way. I’ve been trying for the use of a JCB digger for years, but as you’ll soon discover, Lashcroft town council is tighter than the proverbial camel’s arse in a sand storm.’ 
So they dug the grave by hand, carefully removing the surface turf then attacking the damp, dark earth with picks and spades and mattocks until they had a neat rectangular hole that met all of the specified dimensions. Afterwards, Frank demonstrated how planks of wood and big swathes of tarpaulin and plastic turf could be used ‘to tart things up’. 
‘The idea is to do what you can to help the family forget that their loved one is about to become a Happy Meal for the creepy crawlies. Fucking pointless if you ask me, but its traditional.’ 
‘You don’t believe in life after death, Frank?’ 
‘Life after death? It’s a contradiction in terms, son.’ 
That made the gravedigger laugh. Frank could be a blunt instrument at times, but occasionally he really hit the philosophical nail square on the head. 
At least that was what the gravedigger had believed. 
# 
Over by the graveside Father Doyle had begun the words of committal. 
we commit her body to its resting place: 
earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. 
The Lord bless her and keep her, 
the Lord make his face to shine upon her 
and be gracious to her, 
the Lord lift up his countenance upon her 
and give her peace. 
When the priest was finished speaking, several men stepped forward and began lowering the coffin into the grave.  
# 
In the months after he started his new job, the gravedigger was no longer able to see the girl on a regular basis, but he continued to write poetry for her, and on Sunday mornings he started going to Saint Margaret’s parish church, where he knew her family sometimes attended mass and where he hoped he might catch a glimpse of her, either during the service or directly afterwards, when groups of the faithful gathered in front of the church doors to swap pleasantries and local gossip. More often than not, he was disappointed, but on a few occasions his efforts were rewarded, and once the girl even noticed him where he was loitering near the church gates and gave him a little smile and a wave, almost as though they were old friends.  
This episode gave the gravedigger’s spirits a wonderful lift, but they were dragged back to earth only a few days later, when he discovered that the girl would soon be leaving town. He heard the news after a chance meeting with a boy he had known at school, the information sandwiched between otherwise uninteresting pieces of gossip concerning a variety of his old classmates. She had been accepted by Edinburgh University, the boy said, and would be quitting Lashcroft for the capital at the beginning of the autumn. 
The news fell like a hammer blow, but the gravedigger refused to despair. He had committed himself to loving the girl from afar, after all. That had not changed. And it never would. Loving her was his destiny. 
In the weeks following her departure for Edinburgh, the gravedigger had no news of the girl; but thoughts of her still filled his mind and his love did not wane. Sometimes at night when he had trouble sleeping, he would sit on the steps of his old caravan and gaze up at the moon, wondering if perhaps, many miles away in the capital, her eyes were fixed on the very same celestial sphere. Such thoughts caused him no little melancholy, but he accepted the sadness into his heart without complaint. The emotion was a product of his love, after all, and, as such, it was something to be cherished as sacred. 
All through the autumn and on into the months of winter he nursed these bittersweet feelings of love and longing. Then, on a day near the end of December, everything changed. 
It was a Saturday – the day before Christmas Eve – and he was walking through the centre of Lashcroft looking for a gift for Frank. The weather was cold but sunny and the streets were crowded with last minute shoppers. When he reached the pedestrian thoroughfare at the heart of the old town, he paused to listen to a young man who was strumming on a battered guitar and singing an old folk song. The gravedigger recognised it as one that his mother had sometimes sung to him in his childhood. 
She stepped away from me 
And she moved through the fair 
And fondly I watched her 
Move here and move there 
Then she made her way homeward 
With one star awake 
As the swan in the evening 
Moves over the lake 
The busker had a fine voice and had gathered a good-sized crowd around him. When the song was done, people came forward to drop money into his open guitar case. The gravedigger was preparing to do the same when he noticed the girl. She had been standing just a few feet away all the time, hidden by the intervening bodies. She was holding hands with a young man. As the gravedigger looked on, the two of them turned their smiling faces towards each other and kissed. 
To this day, he had no clear memories of the period of time directly following that fateful kiss. There were some vague recollections of walking aimlessly through the streets of Lashcroft, of sitting in a cafe, of standing on the old bridge that overlooked the canal, but these events seemed hazy and insubstantial, like the strange happenings of a childhood dream. The only thing he remembered with any real clarity was the fire he had kindled in the yard beside his caravan as soon as he had arrived back there in the evening.  
The fire in which he had burned his poems. 
# 
The funeral service was coming to and end now. As Father Doyle recited the final prayer, his voice was louder than at any other time during the ceremony.  
God, our creator and redeemer 
by your power Christ conquered death 
and returned to you in Glory. 
May all your people who have gone  
before us in faith 
share his victory 
and enjoy the vision of your glory 
forever, 
where Christ lives and reigns with  
you and the Holy Spirit, 
one God, forever and ever. 
Some of the mourners joined in for the last couple of lines, their voices low and sombre and respectful. 
Eternal rest grant to her, O Lord. 
And let perpetual light shine upon her. 
The old priest blessed everyone and formally ended the service. One by one, the mourners stepped forward to drop a handful of earth into the grave. 
# 
The gravedigger had not destroyed his poems because of any ill feeling towards the girl. Rather, he had burned the verses in a fit of self-loathing that had relegated them to the status of objects deserving of nothing but contempt. As he had ripped the sheets from his notebook and fed them one by one into the flames, he had cursed himself repeatedly, not for having loved the girl – that was beyond his control – but for having broken his promise to himself; for having had the audacity to hope. 
When all of the pages were reduced to ashes, he entered the old caravan, undressed and climbed into bed. At first, sleep would not come, but when it did he dreamed for the first time in years of the day he had discovered the body of his dead mother. The dream impressions were horribly vivid. The sunlight pouring in through the dusty slats of the ramshackle blinds; the sound of static from the old bakelite radio in the tiny kitchen; the cloying smells of mould and alcohol that pervaded the apartment constantly – all of these things presented themselves with a nauseating authenticity that was entirely indistinguishable from the original experience. But when he pushed the bedroom door open as he had done all those years ago, when he saw his mother’s body hanging limply from the light fixture, when he gaped at her blackened, twisted features and her clouded, yellow eyes, her corpse did not remain mute as it had done when he was a nine-year-old boy. Instead, the purple lips began to move and a hoarse, guttural voice spoke to him from beyond the bottomless chasm of death. 
This is your fault. Your father left because of you, and now you’ve done this to me. This is your fault! YOUR FAULT!!! 
# 
Suddenly the gravedigger became aware that someone was screaming. 
It was the girl’s mother. The sight of the long line of mourners dropping handfuls of dirt on her daughter’s coffin had finally driven her to hysteria.  
You can’t cover her up! she shrieked. You can’t cover her up! How will she see the sun!!? How will she be able to see the sun!!? 
Several men stepped forward to restrain her as she tried to force her way to the edge of the open grave. At first she struggled violently, but then, quite suddenly, her strength deserted her and she fell to her knees sobbing uncontrollably. 
The gravedigger watched as she was helped to her feet and escorted gently towards the cemetery gate. She had lost a shoe during her exertions. A teenage girl picked it up and, seemingly unsure of what to do next, merely stood there staring at the thing with an expression of abject bewilderment.  
# 
Following the dream of his mother, the gravedigger was beset by a depression surpassing anything he had experienced since the dark days directly following her suicide. The whole of Christmas Eve he spent in bed, engulfed in misery, barely able to move. When Christmas morning arrived, he managed to drag himself to the stove to heat some tinned soup, which he ate with slices of stale bread before climbing back under the covers with a novel he had recently borrowed from the town library. He read a few paragraphs, then laid the book aside, somewhat confounded as to how characters who had seemed so interesting and real to him only a couple of days earlier could now seem so banal and utterly implausible. After the book, he tried listening to the radio, but the sound of the thing only made him think of the radio in the dream, so in the end he gave up trying to occupy his mind altogether and merely lay there staring blankly at the ceiling until he was once more overcome by sleep. 
When he reported back to work on the twenty-seventh, Frank was visibly shocked by his appearance. 
‘Jesus, son, you look fucking terrible.’ 
‘Thanks, Frank.’ 
‘Nah, seriously; you’ve lost weight. Are you sick?’ 
The gravedigger shook his head. ‘I had a virus over Christmas, but I’m on the mend.’ 
‘Maybe you should head back to the old homestead.’ 
‘I’m okay, Frank. Really.’ 
‘Well you don’t look okay. You look like death.’ 
Neither of them had any way of knowing it then, but in six months time, Frank himself would be dead. 
# 
The gravedigger became aware that two men were walking towards him across the graveyard. One – the shorter of the pair – he recognised as the girl’s father. The other, who was holding an umbrella aloft to protect them both from the rain, was most likely an uncle. As they drew close, the father produced a wallet and took out a couple of bank notes. He held them out for the gravedigger to take. 
‘Thanks for your help,’ he said. 
The words sounded strangely flat and were accompanied by the powerful odour of alcohol. 
The gravedigger did not want to take the money, but he reached out and accepted it anyway. As Frank had once explained to him, such gestures were part of long-standing, deeply-ingrained traditions that should always be honoured humbly and without objection. 
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ he said, putting the notes into the pocket of his anorak. ‘I knew her from school. She was a special girl.’ 
Both men nodded in sad, heartbroken agreement. The man with the umbrella gestured towards the grave. ‘You did a good job, son.’ 
‘Thanks.’ 
There was a moment’s silence, then both men turned and headed back across the cemetery. Most of the mourners had left the grounds now, but Father Doyle and his umbrella bearer were still hovering at the threshold, conversing with a group of stragglers. When the priest saw the girl’s father approach, he went over and placed a conciliatory hand on the man’s shoulder, then leaned in close and said something in his ear. 
The gravedigger watched and wondered what possible words of comfort the old priest might offer to such a man. 
# 
It was the end of May when Frank told the gravedigger he’d been diagnosed with cancer. 
‘They’re going to try to treat it, but it’s spread to both lungs, so I won’t be holding my breath. So to speak.’ 
‘Jesus, Frank.’ 
‘Jesus, indeed. I’ll be stopping work at the end of the week. I’ll recommend to the council that you take over my job, but I don’t think they’ll wear it. You might get it interim, but in the long run they’ll want somebody older. I’ll do my best to make sure you keep the position you’re in now, though. I think I can probably manage that.’ 
‘Don’t worry about me, Frank. Just take care of yourself.’ 
Frank smiled ruefully. ‘I think it’s a bit late for that now, son. Take a word of advice from an old man. Quit the old coffin nails while you’re still young.’ 
As Frank had predicted, the council agreed to let the gravedigger take over the post of senior caretaker on a temporary basis – until such times, they said, as they were able to advertise the job on the general market. When that day arrived, he would, they assured him, be welcome to apply for the permanent position, and, not withstanding the outcome of his application, his post as assistant caretaker was guaranteed.  
The meeting with the council had taken place in early June. Now, halfway through October, he was still waiting for the job ad to appear. Nor had there been any sign of the upgraded contract and attendant pay rise that his new position as senior caretaker merited. 
Frank died at the end of July. According to his wishes not to become a ‘Happy Meal for the creepy crawlies’, his body was burned in the town crematorium. The gravedigger attended the funeral but managed to avoid the after-service reception by pleading illness. Nobody questioned his excuse, most probably because by the time of Frank’s death the depression that had been plaguing him since Christmas had begun to take a noticeable toll on his physical appearance. 
After leaving the crematorium he started back to the caravan, then changed direction and walked instead to the graveyard. When he arrived there, he went straight to the shed and took out a large wooden crate and a length of rope. He carried the box over to the willow tree near the gate, reversed it and planted it under one of the sturdier branches. Tying the hangman’s knot was easy enough. He had been practicing. When it was done, he climbed up on the box, secured the loose end of the rope to the branch and tightened the noose around his neck. 
He stood there breathing deeply. Before him, the old cemetery lay still and silent in the late morning sunshine. A bee flew close to his head, droning past with unhurried ease. Then, entirely unexpectedly, he heard a man’s voice. 
Don’t do it, my boy. 
The voice was followed by another. A woman’s. 
He’s right. Don’t do it. It’d be such a waste. Such a terrible, terrible waste. 
Her tone was warm and sympathetic, her accent unmistakeably Irish. 
‘But I can’t take anymore. I’m so alone. So horribly alone.’ 
But you’re not alone, said the woman’s voice. You have us. 
The statement was met by a general chorus of agreement, dozens of voices melding together in a warm expression of concern and compassion. 
You see, said the man. Now, how about you show a little gumption, my boy – a bit of the old Spirit of the Blitz. We can get all of this sorted out. All it’ll take is a bit of planning and some old-fashioned get-up-and-go. 
‘I don’t know what you mean.’ 
Oh, I think you do, my boy. I think you do. Now get down from your perch there and we can talk things over – come up with a strategy. 
For a long time the gravedigger did not move. Then, with a feeling like he was awakening from a strange dream, he lifted the noose over his head and stepped down from the box. 
# 
Father Doyle and the last of the mourners were gone now, and, save for the whispering voice of the rain, the cemetery was entirely silent. 
As was often the case, the Major spoke first. 
You’ll need your tools, my boy. 
The gravedigger nodded and started towards the shed. As he walked, the inevitable post-funeral analysis began. 
Shocking display by the mother, Mrs Murphy said, her voice full of disapproval. Absolutely shocking. 
She just lost a child, said Mrs Simpson in plot fourteen. Is it any wonder she was upset? 
Upset? I lost three during my lifetime and I never threw a tantrum like that. 
Not everyone is as special as you, Mrs Murphy, the Major said, his voice thick with irony. 
Mrs Murphy was indignant. Sarcasm is it!!? Well, you know what they say about sarcasm … 
The gravedigger reached the shed, stepped inside and closed the door behind him. On the opposite wall was a large wooden panel arrayed with tools, each of them suspended from a metal hook. He went over, took down the ones that he thought he would need and placed them on the large work desk that stood at the centre of the room. 
Stacked on one side of the desk was a pile of newspapers. He took a minute to look through them, pausing to read several of the headlines. 
STUDENT’S BODY DISCOVERED IN EDINBURGH’S OLD TOWN 
MURDER ON THE ROYAL MILE 
YOUNG WOMAN FOUND DEAD IN EDINBURGH CLOSE 
POLICE INVESTIGATION INTO CANONGATE MURDER CONTINUES 
Under the last of these – which was the most recent in date – was an article in which a witness gave a description of a youth spotted on the Royal Mile around the time of the murder. The witness described the young man as tall, of slight build, with dark shoulder length hair and a face that might have been referred to as ‘traditionally handsome’. 
Laying the newspapers aside, the gravedigger lifted his tools and walked to the door. 
# 
Outside, as if by some small miracle, the rain had stopped and sunlight had broken through the layers of bloated grey cloud to bathe the cemetery in a beautiful golden light. The arguing had also stopped, and as he walked slowly across the close-cut grass, the only perceptible sounds were the soft breathing of the autumn wind and the small voices of birds in the surrounding trees. As he drew close to the grave, however, something else was added – the low, harmonious resonance of human voices. 
They were singing. All of them. The old tune. The one that his mother had sung to him as a child. 
She stepped away from me 
And she moved through the fair 
And fondly I watched her 
Move here and move there 
Then she made her way homeward 
With one star awake 
As the swan in the evening 
Moves over the lake 
# 
Last night she came to me 
She came softly in 
So softly she came 
That her feet made no din 
Then she laid her hand on me 
And this she did say 
“It will not be long, love 
Till our wedding day” 
The last line of the song tailed off just as he reached the grave. Placing his tools carefully to one side, he knelt down on one knee and took a small red box from his pocket. Inside, resting on a tiny bed of white satin, was his mother’s wedding ring. 
He closed his eyes.  
‘I know I don’t deserve you. But if you think you can forgive me. If you think you can love me. Please tell me. Please let me know.’ 
For what seemed like a long time, he waited for an answer. But none came. 
Tears filled his eyes – burning, salt-filled drops of shame and despair. 
Then, rising up from the grave like cool water from the depths of a deep well, came the sound of her voice. 
Don’t cry, my love. 
I forgive you. 
I forgive you and I love you. 
A great communal sigh washed over the cemetery, and in its wake even the birds were silent in the trees. 
Opening the coffin was not difficult with the tools he had brought along. As he pulled back the lid, he saw that she was even more beautiful than he could have imagined. They had dressed her in a robe of white satin, her small delicate hands clasped across her breast in an attitude of beatific prayer. Carefully coiffured locks of shining hair fell around a face more sublime than that of any Renaissance Madonna.  
‘You’re home now,’ he said, his voice still choked with tears. ‘I brought you home.’ 
With hands trembling with love and reverence, he reached out and placed the ring on her cold, stiff finger. 
He was not surprised to find that it was a perfect fit. 
 
- END - 
 

The Rolling Stop
by
Gerald Arthur Winter


Marilyn hadn’t bought a new garment in the past three years. Her height had
diminished by several inches, and her dresses hung on her boney shoulders like those
on wire hangers in her walk-in closet. She had to supplement her diet with protein
shakes sold at the pharmacy. The flavors were limited, reminding her of Bonomo’s
Turkish Taffy advertised on Saturday morning TV when she was a child. Her mind
reverted to the past more frequently.
The taffy bars were promoted by “Bonomo the Magic Clown”. Vanilla,
chocolate, strawberry, and banana, only four flavors to vary weekly, so she broke
up the monotony by interspersing the other three with banana. Rumors of a proposed
almond shake gave her new hope for future diversity to entice her waning appetite
from perpetual dormancy.
Marilyn had stopped looking at her calendar since the new year. The only way
she kept track of time was garbage collection and recycling days. If her neighbors’
receptacles were at the curb, tomorrow was Thursday. Didn’t matter if she missed
collection day. Living alone since her parents passed away made little refuse to fill
a trash can in one week. Sometimes she put the can out at the curb with one small
plastic bag in it, so no one would come knocking on her door just to see if she were
dead.
That was her mother’s idea. She’d been conferring with Mom more often of
late. Dad was within shouting distance in the garage, but he was always too busy
working on his Studebaker to answer to anything other than, “Dinner’s ready!”
Dinner? Ready? She pondered, recalling a date marked on her calendar.
Forsythia was in bloom outside her kitchen window. Must be April. The
calendar was still open to January as if time had stopped. She admired the pine trees
that bordered her yard. They remained green, regardless of the season or extreme
weather. In the dead of winter, their green needles pierced the snow, and in a summer
drought, with all the other trees’ leaves brown and crumbling, from spruce to scrub
pine, they proudly stood erect, remaining forever green.
Ripping away the first three months from her calendar, she wished, she too,
could remain green forever, just like the pine trees. The she saw April 6th, circled
with a pink Magic Marker—her birthday—her 80th.
As she stared at the pink circle on the calendar, the phone rang, reminding
her of special plans for her birthday. The voice on the phone grounded Marilyn with
assurance that she had reached her milestone birthday unscathed without a glitch.
The familiar voice of her sister-in-law said, “I made our reservation at The
Lobster Shanty for one o’clock. If it’s crowded, we’ll have a scotch and shrimp
cocktail until our table is ready. Are you there, Marilyn?”
“Yes, Jeanette. How wonderful.”
Jeanette, was eighty-five, widowed twice, but Marilyn had never married.
Both were independent women long retired from their professions, Jeanette a
school nurse, and Marilyn a local retailer’s bookkeeper. Practical women, a scotch
and an occasional fine dinner were their only vices. Their minds were still sharp
and both drove separately to The Lobster Shanty giving their keys to the parking
valet. They hugged, pecked each other on the cheek, and went right to the bar
until their table was ready.
“Do you trust the valet with your keys,” Marilyn asked Jeanette, always a
reliable source for guidance and wisdom.
“My car is less than three years old, yours is eight. I’m not worried, so why
should you be? We’re insured,” Jeanette said with a wink.
Marilyn still drove her old Chevy to the bank, the post office, and the grocery
store. Though she’d neglected herself in recent years, her father had shown her how
to maintain her vehicle since she turned seventeen. Her car was her proudest possession,
so she cared for it meticulously.
They clicked their tumblers of scotch and the ice crackled as they harmonized:
“Cheers!”
“Happy Birthday, Marilyn, and welcome to the Octogenarian Club.”
“Do you think we’ll make ninety, Jennie?”
“I will. Too stubborn to kick the bucket. Places to see. Things to do. You’ve
become too settled, Marilyn. While nothing’s broken, and we still have our minds,
we should take a cruise around the world, ride on the Orient Express. If I were a man--
maybe I’d run with the bulls.”
“Now you’re being silly, Jennie?”
“Maybe tomorrow we won’t wake up. Little time left. Ought to do something
rash. Make our final moments a thrill.”
“Mom and Dad wouldn’t approve.”
“Why do you care?”
“They look at me strangely as if they know what I’m thinking. I was going to buy
a new shoulder bag I saw at Macy’s, but Mom scowled.”
“Your parents have been dead for almost twenty years, Marilyn. Just because you
let them run your life when they were here, you shouldn’t let them do it anymore, even
in your mind. Take their photographs down. Put them away in a drawer and live your
own life—what’s left of it.”
“I’ve imagined they’re sitting at my table having dinner with me recently.
Sometimes I feel as if they are there, not just in my imagination, like I could touch
them. One morning, the bathroom smelled like Aqua Velva as if Dad had just shaved.”
“We definitely need to book a cruise together and get you out of that house.
Look, our table’s ready.”


At a window seat overlooking the bay, they ordered the lobster special.
They put on their lobster bibs. Teary-eyed from laughter over shared memories,
they vowed to take a summer cruise together.
“We’ve got to disrupt the stagnation of our lives if we hope to make it to
ninety, Marilyn. Ah! Here comes your cake.”
A team of servers brought out two slices of chocolate layer cake, Marilyn’s
with a lit candle and a plastic “80” on the icing. The serving team sang Happy
Birthday, and surrounding dinner patrons applauded.
Across the dining room was an oval bar where wide-screen TVs showed
sporting events with the sound muted, but there was a bulletin across the bottom of
the screen saying there had been an armed robbery in a town nearby. One robber
had been shot, but another escaped. Apprehended a mile from The Lobster Shanty,
the second alleged robber claimed innocence and had no firearm in his possession.
Upon leaving to get their cars from the valet, they saw the muted coverage
of the bank robbery as the bar patrons exchanged comments about how shocked
they were that such a crime could ever happen in their quiet little town.
“See, Marilyn. If we don’t go out to find some excitement, it could come knock-
ing at our door when we least expect it. I’ll call you tomorrow about making our cruise
arrangements.”
They tittered and hugged good-bye as the valets opened their car doors and they
each got in. Jeanette waved and drove off. Marilyn fastened her seatbelt and checked her
hair in the sun-visor’s vanity mirror. Something felt odd about her car. She shrugged off
her suspicion and drove away but wrestled with her discomfort about the valet.
She neared home when it struck her. She kept a close watch on her odometer to
keep track of her gas milage. It was less than five miles from home to the restaurant, but
there were more miles on her odometer than the distance she had driven from home.
Marilyn’s mind raced with this discovery as she came to a familiar stop sign
to get onto the main road towards home, less than two miles away. She braked to check
her side-view mirror and ease into any oncoming traffic. Her car crawled forward with
a light foot on the brake pedal. No traffic was coming, so she slid her foot off the brake
onto the gas pedal and accelerated gradually to 25 mph where speed limit signs read
50 mph.
A siren blared, and flashing lights filled her rear-view mirror like an electric
Christmas decoration. She thought it must be an ambulance or a fire truck, but a
speaker from a local police car said: “Pull over onto the shoulder, mam.”
Her arthritically gnarled fingers shook on the steering wheel, and the sound
of her pulse in her ears kept in cadence with the pounding of her heart. She felt
light-headed, perhaps after drinking the scotch, but more so from the sudden
anxiety of the moment. Se had never been pulled over by the police, not in
sixty-three years of driving. Her parents would be disappointed.
She felt short of breath as she watched the police officer in her side-view
mirror, sidling up to her window. Young and sharp in his uniform, he tapped on
her window and motioned for her to open it.
With the peak of his hat pulled down to his sunglasses, she saw his nose
scrunch, most likely smelling the scotch from her breath.
Trying to clear her mind, Marilyn said, “I wasn’t speeding, officer. I
barely hit twenty-five miles an hour, half the speed limit.”
“You made a rolling stop, mam.”
“A what?”
“A rolling stop. You didn’t come to a full stop before entering the highway.
That’s a fifty-dollar fine. I must give you a summons, mam. Give me your license,
registration, and insurance card so I can write you up.”
“I just came from celebrating my eightieth birthday, officer. Must you
give me a ticket for such a minor offense? No other cars were involved.”
She saw in his firmly clenched jaw that her mercy plea perturbed him
even more.
“IDs, mam. Now!”
Her hands shook as she unfastened her seatbelt and leaned achingly to
her right to open her glove compartment for her registration. Her quivering
hands fumbled with a flashlight, the auto manual, a packet of Kleenex, and
something unfamiliar, perhaps long forgotten. She cradled everything to her
chest with her back to the officer then nervously dropped everything onto the
floor. From the shadows, her trembling hands took the unfamiliar object in
one hand and faced the officer.
She recalled what her mother had said at breakfast that morning:
“Always have your license and registration ready to show when a police
officer pulls you over. Fumbling makes them nervous. That can be dangerous.”
The sound of the police officer’s firearm blurred images of an endless
cruise with Jeanette, rippling on a turquoise sea into utter blackness.
Video from the police officer’s body-cam showed Marilyn’s
encounter with him at the traffic stop in constant replay on every news
network. Marilyn’s still-frame photo was blown up on every newspaper’s
front page showing her aiming a pistol at the officer before he shot her
between the eyes.
In the aftermath, Jeanette, was speechless for months. Tears ran down
her cheeks as she remained sequestered in a nursing home after Marilyn’s
untimely passing. Though she regretted losing the chance to cruise around
the world with Marilyn in their final days, she envied her dramatic exit. The
notoriety of her connection to the bank robbery and ensuing fate of her
pistol-packing sister-in-law, gave Jeanette a primary seat at dinner hour.
She wondered what Marilyn’s parents might be saying now as she
read the latest article about Marilyn’s 80th birthday celebration:
SENIOR GETS DEATH PENALTY FOR A ROLLING STOP

 The Practical Joker


by K. A. Williams



The music carried me to a world where worries and deadlines did not exist. What was that pounding noise? I didn't recall a heavy drum sound in that particular section of the song. There it was again. I turned off the stereo just in time to hear a loud voice command, "Police! Open up!"

Police?! I scrambled to my feet and stumbled over some scattered books on my way to the door. I flipped on the front door's porch light and peered out the peephole to a black nothingness. The bulb must have burned out. I had my hand on the doorknob and hesitated. "Are you sure you have the right address, officer?"

"We've received an anonymous tip that you're harboring a fugitive."

"A fugitive?!" I opened the door and a figure brushed by me on the way inside. I closed the door and turned. "Bob!" I regarded the blond-haired, blue-eyed man who was laughing as he thrust the porch light bulb into my hand. I set it down on the table amid several cardboard pizza boxes and empty beer cans while Bob, my nearest neighbor on this stretch of Carolina coastline, continued to laugh.

"You should have seen your face," he gasped between guffaws. "This was even better than the time I had your car towed away at the supermarket."

When Bob's laughter subsided, he helped himself to a can of beer from my refrigerator before reclining in my favorite chair and placing his feet on the ottoman after tossing some magazines off it to the floor. "You need a maid, Todd, you're such a slob."

"Thanks a lot." I moved some magazines from my second favorite chair and sat down.

"How's the new book coming?" he asked after taking a large swallow of beer. 

"Fine. I returned last night from interviewing Kyle Buchanan. He claimed to have been abducted by humanoid aliens and taken back to their planet. He said it was similar to Earth with regard to atmosphere and plant and animal life. My new book will center on his alleged experiences."

Bob blinked a few times. "Alleged. The way you said that sounds like you don't believe him. I thought you believed in all that stuff. I mean, isn't that the main reason you write books about human encounters with aliens?"

My fans automatically assumed I actually believed in the alien encounters I wrote about. So did my editor. I normally just went along with the idea, but I had wanted to tell someone the truth for a long time. Why not Bob? 

"No, their stories are crazy. I do it for the money. How else could I afford a house on the beach?"

"Huh. I always thought you believed." He finished off his beer and added his empty can to the rest of the clutter. "Let's go outside, I need some air. You should open a few windows and let the ocean breeze in once in awhile." I caught a glimpse of a small black box in his hand before he shoved it back into his pocket and opened the back door.

Bob led the way down the wooden stairs onto the sand and we walked to the water's edge. I had often wondered how he could afford a beach house. When I asked him one day what he did for a living, he only said he was a private consultant, but he never said what kind.

I sunk my bare toes into the soft sand, listened to the crashing surf, breathed the salty breeze, and gazed at the shimmering golden path the full moon cast upon the darkened sea.

"I've got something to tell you," Bob said.

I could feel the coming of another practical joke. "So tell me."

"I had surgery to look human and studied Earth's culture so I could blend in. I've been on this planet for five years. Because of your books, we thought you were a believer and would be a good ally for us when the time came to reveal ourselves to the world. But now I see you are a disbeliever and must be dealt with in the proper manner. I've signaled my ship and it's coming for you."

"I suppose you called it on that black box you made sure I saw."

"Yes, I did."

"I don't believe you. After we met for the first time, you called the power company, pretended to be me and had my electricity turned off. And you've been playing practical jokes on me ever since." 

Lights appeared on the horizon far out over the ocean. "Good timing, but it's just a plane." And it was. I laughed when it passed by and headed inland.

I stopped laughing when something suddenly materialized overhead, bright lights revolving along its circular frame. A green beam extended from the ship and danced along the sand at my feet.

Bob said, "Now you will know what we do to disbelievers," and pulled me into the beam with him. Green light circled us and we moved upward. I struggled and bumped against the light. Then I was falling. 

I managed to take a deep breath before slamming hard into the ocean. Water closed over my head as I sank lower, a red haze forming before my eyes. Finally I surfaced and gulped in the fresh air. A green light moved along the water searching for me. I dove back under. When I surfaced again, it was gone.

I swam toward the shore, thankful for swimming lessons and the full moon. When I was close enough to touch bottom, a huge wave knocked me down under it. Strong hands pulled me out of the surf and deposited me onto the shore where I coughed up the burning salt water.

I brushed the wet hair from my eyes and looked up to see my rescuer. "You had me worried." Bob grinned as he pulled me to my feet. "I just wanted you to see inside my ship."



 The End


First published in The Ultimate Unknown in 1997. Later published in 2021 in Altered Reality. 

Bitter Fruits
Of Worlds Past


by
Gerald Arthur Winter




Trina’s favorite treat was an exotic fruit with a sweet red core but a tart skin
the fluffy blue of a red-legged honey creeper’s downy breast. Her friends ate only the
succulent core, leaving their stuffed faces streaked with red lines down to their neckless
shoulders. Trina told them they looked like bleeding bestial offspring of an extinct
cannibalistic predator. Everyone had a strong opinion about the fruit, but its ubiquitous
presence on the planet Tibullus made all forget its name or origin. Eating the nameless
fruit was like breathing air, a life-giving force that all took for granted, except Trina.
To make herself unique in the eyes of suitors for her hand in marriage, Trina ate
the entire fruit to prove her bravery and to assert that she was better than her common
friends who knew only the sweetness of life. Chomping on the blue husks of the fruit,
she never grimaced from its commonly accepted bitterness. None other than Trina
ever dared test its assumed unsavory tang for fear the results of such madness would
be deadly.
“One day, if Fate brings ill winds to Tibullus, only I shall be prepared to embrace
its cruel consequences, while you chubby-cheeked core suckers, who know only the
sweet, privileged spoils at the core of bitter fruits, will perish. With only my pursed
lips to kiss a future king, the sour husks of my harvest will make me Queen of Tibullus.
The King shall choose me above all others, not for fleeting beauty or sexual ecstasy,
but for my unyielding strength and grit. Harsh encounters build strength to endure.”
One day a new girl in the commune, younger and alluring, challenged Trina’s
assertion that only she was brave enough to eat the blue husk of the nameless fruit.
“I declare that you are bluffing, Trina, a childless, disgruntled witch, whose
claims of the fruit’s danger is a lie you fill our ears with to carry yourself above us.
I’m more attractive than you will ever be, and I am as sweet at my core as the
nameless fruits of Tibullus. No would-be king would ever choose you over me
unless he were a fool.”
Trina took the fruit in one hand, tossed it up and down then flipped it to
the challenging usurper, Renatta.
“Show us your courage, silly girl, but I’ll not be responsible for your demise.”
Renatta looked at the oval-shaped fruit, the size of a goose egg in the palm
of her hand. The other girls began to chant her name to give her courage. They all
resented Trina’s bullying reign over their lives. They all thought of themselves as
sweet as the red core of the fruit that gave them daily sustenance and stained
their lips red, and so ripe for aspiring young men to kiss their sugary, puckered
mouths.
“I’ll prove you a liar,” Renatta proclaimed. “If I survive, you must promise
to depart from our commune forever, leaving yourself bare in the icy mountains that
surround our valley. You will be our sacrifice to the gods that keep this ill wind you
claim will harm us from ever blowing in our direction.”
“And if you die from partaking of the nameless fruit’s entirety, from pit to
husk, your corpse shall be chopped into pieces then scattered as carrion for the
pterosaurs’ annual migration to the nearby blue planet we dare not recognize,
but rather address in futile blabber as if it had some significance to life as we
know it on Tibullus.”
“Agreed, liar. Prepare for your naked journey into hell!” Renatta shouted,
chomping voraciously into the nameless fruit. The sweet, juicy, red core rained
from her lips and trickled in scarlet streams down her breast cleavage to her
exposed navel. The gnashing of her teeth through the blue husk turned the
oozing flow into visceral purple globs until all was consumed to the last lap of
Renatta’s lavender tongue to clean her sticky fingers. She winked at the other
girls encircled for the challenge then gasped with a clutch of her throat constricted
with blue veins as if about to burst.
The gaggle of wide-eyed girls cooed with sympathy for Renatta, certain
she would soon be afflicted with a cruel and sudden death. Then she let out an
extended belch that made all aghast, covering their faces with raised arms.
Slowly they lowered their protective limbs to peek above a forearm to see
Renatta smiling and turning with a victorious glare at Trina.
“Tear her tunic from her wretched limbs, and I’ll escort her naked,
shamefully dishonest presence from our valley commune to the base of
the glacier. I’ll take her into the mountains where the gods will partake of her
flesh as she would have had mine consumed by pterosaurs in their brief pause
on Tibullus during their annual migration from the red planet to the blue planet
we merely imagine in our dreams,” Renatta proclaimed, already expounding
with words of self-assurance that flowed like an unending spring.
Trina spread her arms in surrender to the girls ripping away her tunic
then gave Renatta a defying stare.
“Will you cut me into bite-sized pieces for the gods to consume my
flesh, Renatta, or would you have them devour me alive in shrieking horror?”
“I have no wish to see you suffer, only to be gone. I’ll leave that choice
to you.”
“Accompany me to the great ice flow then cut my throat. I prefer the flow of
blood from my body to numb me from the bitter cold and the gnashing teeth of the
gods at my limbs. They will save my heart till my last dying breath. When it comes to
our consumption, gods are no less voracious than Pteranodon. They gnaw at the
bones of truth to make us obedient to lies told so long ago they become assumed.”
“You are guilty of such lies yourself, Trina, and just to make you feared and
respected above the other girls, a selfish act, unworthy of good character.”
“In order to have good character, one must live. Sometimes a white lie,
or half-truth is the greater good for all.”
“Your lie about the deadly danger of eating the blue husk of the nameless
fruit was self-serving.”
“Then how could I, and no other, be the one granted by Fate to know the
fruit by its rightful name?”
“You lie again, even at Death’s door?”
Trina grinned. “You were right to call me a witch, Renatta, for I am the
offspring of a great sorcerer known as Nebula. He lived one hundred and fifty
years and was keeper of all the treasured secrets of Tibullus. I am his great-great-
great-granddaughter to whom he granted lock and key to those treasures of
knowledge. He cast a spell over Tibullus so none would know the name of the
succulent fruits of scarlet with harsh blue husks. It is that rigid, undigestible,
blue shell that shields its sweet red center from its name, Veritas, after the
goddess of truth.”
“What truth?”
“That consuming all of the Veritas fruit will make you die, but some
quicker than others. The great Nebula gave me an innate immunity to the
poison husks of Veritas, but not forever. Perhaps for a hundred and fifty
years like him. You, however, may still die before you return to our valley.
One can’t be certain.”
“I can be certain of one thing,” Renatta hissed. “I’ll cut your throat!”
Skilled with her knife, she slashed Trina’s throat and watched the brilliant
stream of red gush down her naked body. As Trina’s eyes dilated, her skin turned
blue like the husk of a Veritas fruit. She wiped Trina’s blood off her knife and
returned it to the sheath on her tunic’s waistband. She turned back only once
to see that Trina’s blood had saturated the ice around her corpse and her skin
was as blue as the distant blue planet she’d been taught to ignore since she’d
been weened and learned to walk.
Reaching the gates to the commune, she turned back towards the mountains
and saw against the setting sun, the flapping wings of pterosaurs silhouetted against
the orange glow. The chill winds off the glacier carried their squawking shrieks to
the valley, making Renatta shudder with visions of Trina’s consumption by the
sharp claws and beaks of the merciless, insatiable predators.
The effect of digesting the entire Veritas startled Renatta. She saw the
winged Pteranodon as the gods they prayed to daily as truth in its raw entirety,
that she, as all inhabitants of Tibullus, would perish from such total knowledge.
Entering the gates to the commune, she was startled to see all her friends,
her new followers who would replace Trina with her as their exalted leader, lying
prone in a circle of their own blood. Their mouths looked like rubies and their
skin glowed with a bluish hue. The daily basket filled with Veritas was empty,
and just a few husks of the once nameless fruit remained clutched, half-eaten
in the young girls’ clenched fists.
Renatta felt her own life slipping away as the cackling flock of pterosaurs
blackened the sky above her. They swooped down to feed on the remains of the
carrion left by their Veritas consumption. Still aware, Renatta felt the sharp pain
from one of her eyes plucked out by a sharp beak. Myopically, she watch the
carnivorous flock heading towards the blue planet, suddenly more real and
tangible than Tibullus, which was most likely, just the vaporous effect of
a bad dream after the unwise partaking of forbidden fruit rooted in an
unearthly sphere.

A Haunted House

By Virginia Woolf

WHATEVER HOUR you woke there was a door shutting. From room to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure, ­a ghostly couple.

"Here we left it," she said. And he added, "Oh, but here too!" "It's upstairs," she murmured. "And in the garden," he whispered. "Quietly," they said, "or we shall wake them."

But it wasn't that you woke us. Oh, no. "They're looking for it; they're drawing the curtain," one might say, and so read on a page or two. "Now they've found it," one would be certain, stopping the pencil on the margin. And then, tired of reading, one might rise and see for oneself, the house all empty, the doors standing open, only the wood pigeons bubbling with content and the hum of the threshing machine sounding from the farm. "What did I come in here for? What did I want to find?" My hands were empty. "Perhaps it's upstairs then?" The apples were in the loft. And so down again, the garden still as ever, only the book had slipped into the grass.

But they had found it in the drawing room. Not that one could ever see them. The window panes reflected apples, reflected roses; all the leaves were green in the glass. If they moved in the drawing room, the apple only turned its yellow side. Yet, the moment after, if the door was opened, spread about the floor, hung upon the walls, pendant from the ceiling­, what? My hands were empty. The shadow of a thrush crossed the carpet; from the deepest wells of silence the wood pigeon drew its bubble of sound. "Safe, safe, safe" the pulse of the house beat softly. "The treasure buried; the room . . ." the pulse stopped short. Oh, was that the buried treasure?

A moment later the light had faded. Out in the garden then? But the trees spun darkness for a wandering beam of sun. So fine, so rare, coolly sunk beneath the surface the beam I sought always burnt behind the glass. Death was the glass; death was between us; coming to the woman first, hundreds of years ago, leaving the house, sealing all the windows; the rooms were darkened. He left it, left her, went North, went East, saw the stars turned in the Southern sky; sought the house, found it dropped beneath the Downs. "Safe, safe, safe," the pulse of the house beat gladly. "The Treasure yours."

The wind roars up the avenue. Trees stoop and bend this way and that. Moonbeams splash and spill wildly in the rain. But the beam of the lamp falls straight from the window. The candle burns stiff and still. Wandering through the house, opening the windows, whispering not to wake us, the ghostly couple seek their joy.

"Here we slept," she says. And he adds, "Kisses without number." "Waking in the morning­" "Silver between the trees­" "Upstairs­" "In the garden­" "When summer came­" "In winter snowtime­" "The doors go shutting far in the distance, gently knocking like the pulse of a heart.

Nearer they come, cease at the doorway. The wind falls, the rain slides silver down the glass. Our eyes darken, we hear no steps beside us; we see no lady spread her ghostly cloak. His hands shield the lantern. "Look," he breathes. "Sound asleep. Love upon their lips."

Stooping, holding their silver lamp above us, long they look and deeply. Long they pause. The wind drives straightly; the flame stoops slightly. Wild beams of moonlight cross both floor and wall, and, meeting, stain the faces bent; the faces pondering; the faces that search the sleepers and seek their hidden joy.

"Safe, safe, safe," the heart of the house beats proudly. "Long years­" he sighs. "Again you found me." "Here," she murmurs, "sleeping; in the garden reading; laughing, rolling apples in the loft. Here we left our treasure­." Stooping, their light lifts the lids upon my eyes. "Safe! safe! safe!" the pulse of the house beats wildly. Waking, I cry "Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart."

The Lost Book of Annabella

© 2000

An excerpt from an apocryphal tale by

Gerald Arthur Winter

  
Ellen awoke to the touch of a damp cloth to her sore lips, cracked and scabby from the lack of water. They were all suffering from dehydration, but it seemed to be taking its worst toll on her, perhaps because she was using her voice so much and her mouth could not draw enough saliva to let her swallow without pain. As she sucked on the cloth held in Ted's hand, she wondered if their end was drawing near, or if by some miracle they might be found before it was too late.
"No, Ellen, it's only me, just Ted. I imagine you were expecting Jesus." He winked. "You're not well, kiddo, but far from dead. We're getting another steady trickle of water from our new dig. Hang tough, kid."
“I’m sorry I couldn't read anymore," she said loud enough for Eli to hear from behind Ted, where he was using cloths to soak up water from the cave’s floor for them to drink. "I know how it all turns out now. Let me tell you about the horse race," she said, compelled to keep reading.
"Ellen, relax. We know all about the race. You read that part to us just before you collapsed."
"I did? I don't remember," she said with a glazed stare. "You're just humoring me. How does it turn out?"
Ted looked concerned as he said, "Annabella had the race won. She would have beaten Caligula, but she slowed down at the finish to let Sebastian mount Raven with her."
"Then they escaped into the wilderness on horseback," Eli added. "With Sadaq not far behind, and after him, a dozen Romans led by Justin, who was
commanded by Caligula to bring back Raven and Annabella to Samaria."
"You do know the story, but I thought I merely dreamt it. Do you think they'll escape?"
"Perhaps from the Romans," Eli said. "But I wouldn't bet against Sadaq catching up with them. He's shrewd and knows the wilderness. He reminds me of myself."
"Oh, really," Ted smirked. "You remind me more of Jozabad."
"What? That disgusting horse trader. He acts more like your kind than mine."
"Please, don't," Ellen whispered hoarsely. "Next thing you'll be saying I'm more like Amanda than Annabella.”
“Oh, no, Ellen, you remind me very much of that stubborn wench, Ted joked to get a smile out of her. “Of course, if Sebastian were a Jew, instead of a Greek
gentile, I might identify with that boy’s shrewdness.
"Hah!" Eli laughed. "I don't know, Ted. You have some tendencies that I'd readily compare to the Hellenistic Jews of that time. The educated Jews of
wealthy families set many traditions aside in favor of worldly knowledge. The laws of Moses were secondary to their intellectual appreciation of the arts and
philosophy. When is the last time you had a BLT from the local deli at home?"
"I liked it better when you lost your voice,    Ellen," Ted grumbled. "That'll be enough water for you for now."
They suddenly realized that they had survived another crisis for the time being. As Ted had said before, the water came like manna to the Jews wandering in the wilderness in search of the Promised Land. It would last just long enough to revive them, allowing them to go on, but there was never enough to store. They could not maintain any sense of security or well-being. Death hung over them every hour. Hope wavered and rallied with peaks and valleys that led them to no solution. They remained trapped with no knowledge if anyone above had noticed their absence. By the time someone did, it might be too late.

Days seemed an eternity, but they had about a week's worth of food left, if they just kept their heads. Water was always in question. They maintained the theory that a larger supply of water was soon within their reach, but within a week, the lack of food might end their plight in starvation anyway.
They continued to keep their sanity with the words from the ancient scroll and the story Ellen read to them aloud about Annabella as she fled into the wilderness with Sebastian. Much like themselves, these two teenagers from those ancient times had no apparent objective, other than to survive from one day to the next.
While thirst and starvation challenged Ellen, Ted and Eli, the elements in the wilderness seemed a minor menace to Annabella and Sebastian as they peered from a high cliff above the northwest bank of the Dead Sea.
  
They saw Sadaq below following their trail two
miles away. And another five miles behind him was a cloud of dust made by a dozen Roman horses led by
 Justin to bring them back to Samaria to face the  adolescent tyrant, Caligula.
"This was your idea, Sebastian," Annabella
grumbled crossly. "This conniving has put us in a worse position than before. Do you realize that I had to strike that hateful brat to keep him from beating me with his whipping crop. Look at my tunic! See my torn flesh! With no clean water and herbs, my wounds will become infected. I'll catch the fever and probably die because of this stupid plan of yours!"
"Have you finished complaining?" Sebastian said calmly.
"No! If Sadaq finds us, he'll just take you back as his slave. What's the harm?”
“But he vowed to cut out my heart if I didn't win that race," she said.
"Perhaps he'll die of old age before he'll find a heart to cut out of you," he volleyed sarcastically.
"Oh, you!" She struck him with the back of her fist. "And Caligula will surely make my end slow and   painful for striking him. What has this world come to, Sebastian? Would Rome truly conceive of letting such a horrid demon ascend the throne of Caesar?"
"He's just a kid. Wait till he comes of age. May the spirit of all goodness help us then."
"So, wise sorcerer, what plan have you now for us to escape those who are in pursuit of us?"
"From this vantage point I see a unique opportunity. "We must get you to the Dead Sea where the salt will clean your wound before it's too late."
"At least you recognize my true peril."
"Yes. Those festering wounds must be cured."
"No magic potions?"
"Sorry, everything I do is just a trick."
"How nice to know now that I must depend solely on your good judgment to spare me."
"Enough of your bitterness, girl. It serves us not. There below, see if my plan is within reason. Notice the steady pace at which Sadaq pursues our trail. He will soon follow us up these cliffs and share our vantage point, but we shall be gone."
"Where shall we go?
"We must climb straight down from here and leave Raven behind."
"But, Sebastian, with no horse we shall be trapped in this wilderness on foot. Surely we shall die."
"There are some inhabitants of this territory, those who keep to themselves and stay hidden from the Romans as if the Empire did not exist. They are hermits of a sort, religious men of piety who will not harm us, and may provide temporary shelter. I can see no further than that at the moment."
"At least you are honest with me for a change."
"The other reason for leaving Raven is to quell Sadaq's fury over losing him. If he could at least have Raven back, he might give up on us if the chase seems otherwise fruitless."
"That sounds reasonable, but I'm not sure that Sadaq is a reasonable man. He said he would cut out my heart."
"Don't you agree that for us to relinquish Raven to him is worth the chance to diminish some of his anger?"
"Yes."
"Good. Our task is a question of timing. You see we must descend this cliff and get to the sea before Sadaq gains this vantage point to see us as we see him now."
"Yes, I understand. But what about Justin and his troops?"
"That is the other matter. We must pass well before them, or preferably, after them, as they follow Sadaq's tracks down there. The trail is quite clear, so it would be best to cut across it to the sea after they've passed. But their visibility below on the flat sand is far, perhaps ten furlongs. These Romans are strategically clever. They did not conquer the world by luck. They will have eyes in the backs of their heads."
Annabella assessed the situation from their viewpoint. Sadaq was just a distant speck directly below, between them and the shoreline. His horse's gait seemed labored, but from so far a distance there was no way of telling why. It appeared as if the Romans were gradually gaining ground on Sadaq, but their pace was more deliberate, just as Sebastian had predicted.
"I wonder if Sadaq's horse is injured," she said. "He rides awkwardly, but I can't tell why. You don't suppose he has Jozabad on the horse with him slowing him down?"
"No, Sadaq would have looked out for himself. I'm sure he left the horse trader to fend for himself with the Romans. I can't tell what the problem is either. His
horse might be lame. In that case, he'll be even more grateful to have Raven back, and may leave us well alone to return to Arabia where no one rules over him."
She peered over the precipice and closed her eyes with an affirmative shake of her head then asked him, “Do you hear that voice again?
"Not as I did before. But I feel we are not alone. That if we are not meant to climb down from this cliff, something will stop us from doing so."
She stared at him curiously, wondering why such reasoning was so absurd to her, yet made perfect sense in light of what they had shared thus far. Sebastian assessed the progress of their pursuers once more before leading Annabella down the craggy cliffs toward the Salt Sea where she hoped to heal her wounds.
 
Ellen stopped reading and set the scroll down in her lap. "They were here," she said to Ted and Eli.
"Who was?" Ted shrugged as he set the pick aside and dampened his lips with a moist cloth.
"Those children," Eli offered. "Yes, we are near the cliffs described in the scroll."
"Of course. Sebastian and Annabella escaped from Sadaq and the Romans in these caves," she said with a glow of  revelation. "This is where they recorded their story."
"Wait a minute, Ellen," Ted reminded her. "You said that the scroll was written in three different languages throughout. Who could've written it?"
"I don't know for sure yet, but my opinion is that it was all written by one person."
"One person, but three languages?" Ted looked doubtful. "Isn't that a little like your - - what is it? Father, Son, and Holy Ghost routine. I think you're getting carried away."
"Now you're really being cynical again, Ted. Don't infer that from what I said. I'm implying that Sebastian could be the author. He was a scribe to an Eastern prince, and if you recall, when he announced the race to the Samaritans, Sadaq valued Sebastian's linguistic skills."
"She's right, Ted," Eli agreed.
Ted gave him a strange look, surprised to hear Eli being familiar enough with him to call him Ted.
"Same handwriting, huh?" Ted asked pensively.
"I can't be certain yet, but I have no reason to think it isn't. But isn't this neat?"
"Oh, sure. Really neat, huh, Eli?"
"What is neat?"
"You know, cool or . . . never mind," Ted said with frustration. "Actually, it really would be neat under other circumstances, such as we discovered the scroll before Eli decided to eradicate Israel with his cute little SCUD. Fact is, nobody will ever know about this scroll even if it is gospel. Face it, Ellen. We're beaten."
"How can you say that, Ted? Did Sebastian and Annabella give up? No. And what do they have to look forward to in their lifetimes? Roman occupation of their country. Enslavement. Another four hundred years of Roman tyranny, only to be conquered by barbarians. Look what we have to look forward to Ted, Eli. We've got two thousand years on these kids. A lot of mistakes and hard lessons from history. We're in a position to know better," she turned her argument to Eli. "There's no need for war. We can all live together in harmony. We have our differences and there have been confrontations here, major disagreements. But aren't we pulling together for the survival of all of us, now that we have put all that garbage behind us?"
"I dunno," Ted shrugged with a half-hearted grumble.
"You would like to make things black and white, right and wrong, Ellen," Eli said. "The world is not that way. It does not allow us to be that way."
"Eli, don't you try to make it black and white yourself with those who are of Islam and those who are not?" she said. "You wonder why Arabs are regarded as terrorists by Western culture. Just look at you and how your religious war has backfired in your face."
"We did not start this," he argued. "You cannot plant these Jews in a land that has become ours with time. Would you return your best lands to your native Americans? Would you send your former black slaves back to Africa to create havoc with the new black nations? Certainly not. You have simply used the Torah to claim land to which these Jews no longer have a claim. Since the U.S. Government would not take in these Jewish refugees after World War II, you've given them our land just to appease the financially influential Jews in your country. You should have taken the refugees yourself in 1945. Then you would understand."
"Without the Jews in Israel," Ted said. "Israel would be a poor flea-ridden desert just like the Arab nations. If we had oil to suck from the land, so that just a few of the oppressive militants could live like kings while the masses starved, then we could call ourselves Arabs like you."
"You see, Ellen," Eli said. "We have not come so far as you would like to think from those ancient days. The United States is just like Rome, setting up its token, puppet leaders of governments in foreign lands. At least the Romans were honest about that. They did not try to camouflage their tyranny as something else. The Israeli Government is no different from the way an ethnarch, like Herod, was at the time of your Jesus. They catered to Caesar then, and America now."
"Fine. All I'm doing is seeking the truth about events of the past. I don't know how they will effect the present. But I'm trained to interpret these findings. I'll do it to the best of my ability till we run out of water and food and air. As a Christian, I'll maintain my faith that we shall be delivered, all of us. No doubt, you'll both do what you want in any case. We'll hear the same story from this scroll and interpret it differently to suit ourselves. That's not my concern. I only want to bring it to light, to make it available for consideration, when before, it was not. Who knows what we might learn from this reading? If Sebastian and Annabella were hiding in this area, we might get some insight about these caves. After all, we  found the scrolls here. They must have survived to write them. Sebastian, Annabella, or someone else kept a literary account of their story." 
"What if it's just that, a story?" Ted said. "Like The Iliad and The Odyssey, pure entertainment."
"It still gives us elements of the past to which we can relate. Did The Grapes of Wrath bear no truth about the Great Depression? Was War and Peace, or The Tale of Two Cities of no historical significance to us today?" Ellen said, continuing to read:
 
The cliff was steep and their descent was precarious with loose rocks sliding under their sandals making them fall and slip close to the edge where any plunge would be fatal. They had to be wary of every step, yet move without drawing at­ tention to themselves from the clever Roman troop led by Justin to bring them back to Samaria. Sadaq was their least concern for the moment, since he would not be turning back to face the Romans, but would be more attentive to their trail leading upward through the mountain.
'Tm frightened, Sebastian," Annabella said, clutching his hand for dear life. "This height makes me dizzy. I don't think this was a good idea."
"Too late to turn back. It would be harder to return than to continue to climb down. There can be no turning back now. The choice was made and we are stuck with it. Don't look down. Just look into my eyes," he said, leading her down to the next ledge still fifty cubits above the Dead Sea below.
She fell into his arms and they both stumbled, losing their balance and rolling a dozen cubits towards the very edge of the cliff before Sebastian managed to grab the thick root of a young terebinth which, alone among the jagged cliffs, gave him the support to hold onto Annabella with the other hand to keep her from falling to her certain death.
"Thank God for that tree," Annabella noted the straggly branches of the undernourished scrub with more vines imbedded in the cliff than there were branches to bloom.
Sebastian stared at the tree as if it were a person who had extended him a hand. He thought he heard Annabe1la say something to him again. "What? What did you say?"
"Thank God for that tree."
"No, after that?"
"I said nothing, nothing else."
"I think so. Yes, you are right. We do. We certainly do thank God. Praise your God for this tree. Praise and many thanks to Yahweh, your mother's god. For none of this could be the work of any god I've known before. He speaks to me. What god would speak to me?"
"What is wrong with you, Sebastian? You look so strange."     
"You did not hear?"
"Hear what?"
"The voice. You did not hear it. That's what I was afraid of. Perhaps I am out of my wits. Maybe we should turn back. I'm hearing no reply. Let's do it. I'm sorry, Annabe1la. I've made a blunder. Come. We'll take our chances with Sadaq. At least we'll have Raven to appease him."
"Are you sure? Your plan had some merit."
“I’m sure of nothing. Let's turn back.”
 
She took his hand, and he pulled her up to the level from which they had just painfully descended. Then a stone rattled just above their heads and bounced past them and over the edge of the cliff all the way to the bottom, so they presumed, for no sound followed. They stared blankly at each other with puzzlement. When they stretched to see above the next ledge the dark face of Sadaq's giant eunuch glared at them close enough for them to each feel the warmth of the African's breath in their faces.
They both screamed in terror, stumbling backwards and ro11ing back to their former position of clinging to the branch which saved them again from going over the edge.
Sadaq's angry voice echoed down the precipice, "Get them, Radu! The Romans come rapidly!"
Obeying his master's command, the seven-foot African got up from the ledge where he had been lying on his stomach to sneak up on Sadaq's prey. He leaped down to the next ledge where Sebastian and Annabella clung in desperation to the terebinth root. As Radu lunged toward them, his foot was ensnared by another root and he fell forward. His long sinewy frame twitched awkwardly like a fish thrown up on shore. He could not cry out. His tongue had been cut out in his adolescence, in addition to his manhood, when Persians had made him their property. His chest heaved in pain as he dangled by one ankle over the cliff. His would-be captives watched in terror as the giant writhed in pain. The root of the tree did not weaken despite Radu's awesome size and powerful struggle.
  
"Get up from there, Radu! Now! Seize that disloyal servant and the thankless concubine!" Sadaq shouted, but the harder Radu struggled the more hopeless his situation became.
"Come down yourself!" Annabella shouted back at him with a voice unfamiliar even to herself.
Sadaq did not have to give the notion any thought. He had his favorite horse again. The Romans could never catch him, even if they suddenly appeared and tried to take him. Sadaq still had what he valued most, yet could not bear to give to others, his freedom. The Romans, after all, would soon be upon them, and would probably punish both Sebastian and Annabella beyond his own expectations.
"I leave you all to the Romans!" Sadaq cried out, rearing
Raven up on his hind legs and shrilling a battle cry before vanishing in a cloud of dust from Raven's hooves. Sebastian and Annabella stared face to face, each hoping for some clue from the other. Radu's long arm reached painfully back behind him for help. His dark hand shook with the strain and pain of his effort
just within Sebastian's grasp. He stared blankly at the quivering hand.
"What?" Sebastian said to Annabella? "Did you say something, or was it the voice again?"
"Save him," she said. "He was a slave just as we were. With Sadaq gone, he has no quarrel with us, and we have none with him."
"Are you serious?" 
'Tm not as strong as you, Sebastian. But if you won't give                                                                              
him a hand, I will."
He sighed wearily and clasped the giant hand in his own as Annabella offered some leverage and verbal support.
"Radu, there's another root to your right. It looks as if it will hold your weight," she guided him. "Grab it now, tightly and I'll pull you by your other hand."
With support and guidance from both, Radu regained a leveraged position on the ledge. His sore ankle slipped from the loop of the root, which seemed to release him with the gentleness of a flower opening its petals to the morning sun. Sebastian pointed to the seashore still far below. Radu nodded affirmatively. The threesome continued the descent away from the troop of a dozen Romans who would soon gain the vantage point to view them from above.
Radu was a great help to them with his height and great strength. The African eunuch used the sign language of Sadaq's harem to communicate with Sebastian. He told him that he had been the child-prince of a great tribe in the land south of Egypt known as Cush between the River Nile and the Red Sea. His tribe was known for its great height and strength. Every boy at the age of twelve had to kill a male lion with his spear to prove his manhood to the tribe.
Radu lamented that he had been robbed of proving himself because Persians had attacked his father's tribe on horseback by crossing from the land of Sheba into the land of Cush at the southern narrows of the Red Sea. His mother, Zanibu, was the youngest wife of his father, the king of his tribe. She had been captured by the Persians when she was just fifteen and already several months pregnant with Radu.
As was the custom of the Persians, they kept his beautiful mother as one of the spoils of their conquest to present her as a                               
concubine for their own king in the land east of Elam beyond the River Tigris. There Radu was born, castrated and made mute to be trained as a eunuch slave in the king's service. The only other alternative left to his mother was Radu's death. She chose life, altered as it was, for her only child, who was forbidden to be nursed by Zanibu.
The separation from Radu broke her heart and she died giving birth before the age of twenty. Her other child lived. Radu's half-brother, Tobat, was the other eunuch slave left behind in Samaria when Sadaq fled from the Romans. Tobat was half Persian and half African. When Sadaq attacked the Persian prince, the eunuch half-brothers were taken with the Persian's harem. Sadaq admired all purebred chattel, so in his mind, Radu was the thoroughbred of his favor over the mongrel, Tobat. Though the African blood dominated Tobat, and to most they would pass for twins, Sadaq felt that the blood flowing in Radu's veins was superior to Tobat's in every fiber of his being. Thus, Sadaq chose Radu, above all others, to take with him in pursuit of his favorite horse, Raven. 
"It appears that our master's plan has turned against  him," Sebastian responded to Radu's story. "But at least he has his horse. Look there, below and toward the shoreline, Sadaq has made a bold move." Annabella and Radu paused in their climb to see Sadaq in the distance south of them. Rather than trying to avoid the Roman troop by hiding, the Arab bolted across their path at great speed. Their surprise left them flat-footed. They had no hope of ever catching up to Raven, but neither did they wish to pursue Sadaq to the south into desolate Arabia.
Giving up on returning Raven to Caligula, Justin concentrated on his pursuit of Sebastian and Annabella who would now suffer dearly for Caligula's other loss. The three of them watched as the Romans disappeared at the base of the distant cliffs and followed the trail they had left, just as Sadaq had done before them.
"With Sadaq gone, we have a better chance," Sebastian surmised. "We still need to clean Annabella's wounds in the sea. We have another fifty cubits to descend. Let's go."
Radu used his great height to lower himself to each ledge then offered the support of his long arms to the other two as they clung to the cliff and balanced their weight against the African. The afternoon sun was rapidly descending. Sebastian suggested that they wait until dark before trying to get to the sea.
"Less chance of the Romans seeing us at night, especially from that vantage point above," he reasoned. "If we could just get to the ground below and wait till dark, we'll have a good chance to make it to the sea without being seen. Then we can return to the cliffs to hide."
"What then?" Annabella asked.
"Isn't that enough for now?"
Radu used his hands to tell them they would need to get at least one of the Romans' horses if they hoped to survive. Annabella was terrified of deliberately encountering the Romans. The image of the horrid Caligula burned in her mind.
"I thought we were escaping," she stammered. "I don't want to go back to Samaria. There are a dozen Romans against us.
Radu gave her a sympathetic smile but communicated to Sebastian that this land was too harsh, especially for Annabella. He indicated that he could by instinct and that Sebastian would most likely survive in any hostile environment by his wits, but Annabella was soft and unused to doing without the comforts of a home--
Ted interrupted Ellen's reading with his chortling.
"They should've had you along for the ride, Ellen," he said. "You'd probably be biting off the heads of snakes by now if you were there back then with those kids."
"Oh, shut up," she said, throwing a loose stone at him.
Eli grinned, then his whole face lit up and he broke into laughter. They were all pent up with frustration over their entrapment for so long. All three began to laugh near tears, so that their voices boomed off the close quarters of the cave.
Suddenly, there was a tremor which shook them from all sides. They fell silent. Their eyes widened and ears perked. Their minds questioned the source of these tremors and, of course, if it would be good or bad for them. They had no idea how stable the ceiling of the cave was above them. They might be crushed. Then again, the vibrations could have been from something external, some machinery, maybe even a rescue party. The cave was still as they sat motionless, waiting for another tremor, an after-shock, anything that would give them some hope.
Finally, Ellen broke the silence saying, "What was that? Is the cave shifting or is someone trying to find us?"
Eli and Ted exchanged concerned looks, aware of the amount of rock they had removed from the wall in the past week. There was a lot of rock above them and water that had shifted from their digging. Something had to give. They all knew it and had tried to ignore that eventuality. Now it loomed at their doorstep, like a great bear waking from hibernation and finding his lair invaded. Hungry and cranky, the bear would explode in a fury.
Instinctively, Ellen pulled the scroll close to her chest as if she were protecting her child. She was very close to the end of the one scroll she had been reading, but there was another she had not yet unwrapped from the copper casing. She held her breath and rushed to finish the scroll to the end where she saw the mark X.
 
                                        X

Annabella conceded that Radu was right about their need of at least one horse if not two, for she and Sebastian had gotten this far on one horse already.
"Still, we shall get you to the sea after dark," Sebastian assured her. "Horses can wait."
When it was dark, they reached the very bottom of the precipice. They crawled on the sand very cautiously toward the water. The moonlight sparkled on the rippling surface of the sea in the night breeze.
"We shall stand lookout while you go into the sea," Sebastian said to her. "Take your time. The longer those wounds are bathed in the curing salts of the sea, the faster they will be cleaned and healed. You must remove your clothing."
"What?" she protested.
"Not here. At the water's edge. The salt water will rot your garments. You will need them to protect you from the sun in case we must flee into Arabia from the Romans. Your fair skin is already burnt," he said, touching the back of his cool hand to her fevered cheek. "Do as I say, Annabella. Radu and I have no more lust for you than these stones. Go now."
Reluctantly, she obeyed. Warmer than the night air, the sea was soothing to her skin. It was a strange sensation to her mind, as much as to her body. She thought that she would feel lonely and frightened away from the protection of the other two. She felt safe though not alone. As she stroked her flesh and swashed the curing water over her wounds, she sensed a presence that she thought was familiar, yet she could not identify it. She lay her head back, so her long hair spread, like a fisherman's net, around her countenance. 
"What has brought me to this place in life?" she asked herself with innocence in a whisper. "What purpose do I serve in light of this myriad of stars above me and all reflected on the crest of this calm sea?"
You are my creation born out of unconditional love.

"What? Who is there?" she instinctively squatted in the water and covered her bosom.
Fear not for I am with you as I have been from the beginning. Do as Sebastian says. He will deliver you from bondage into eternal peace.
"I know you. Show yourself," she said loud enough for Sebastian to hear her.
"Annabella, be silent," he whispered to her loud enough for her to hear.
She had had enough of this supposed cure and headed back to the water's edge. Her eyes looked up at the great precipice from  which they had spent the day descending. She saw the point where they had left Raven, not because she was perceptive or had any instinctive  sense of direction, but rather because there was a fire glowing from that ledge. She made haste to dress and rejoin Sebastian and Radu.
"Look above," she pointed to the high cliff as she met the others. “The Romans make camp for the night."
"Good, that gives us time to make a plan for tomorrow.   We must seek high ground again tonight."
"No, Sebastian. I can't go another step," she whined. 'Tm tired  to the bone."
Radu nodded to Sebastian. He understood.
"Climb on Radu's shoulders. He will carry you."
She was embarrassed at this kind gesture. She was unaccustomed to slavery, as much from a master's perspective as from a slave's. It made her uncomfortable to use another human being as a beast of burden. Some values from her mother's blood had spilled over into her veins, perhaps by some inexplicable law of nature created by this superior being Amanda called Yahweh. Though her mother had abandoned Yahweh for the life of a Roman, her Jewish fiber was nurtured by the Laws of Moses handed down to her by her priestly Levite family who placed great value on all humankind.
She wanted to argue with them on this point, but the words echoed in her mind:  Do as Sebastian says.
So she climbed upon Radu's broad shoulders. He carried her along the shoreline then back up into the cliffs. There they found a cave where a spring fed cool, refreshing water along a tunnel which descended into what seemed to be a bottomless crevasse.
 
                                                                                                                                  X
 
"This is it!" Ellen scrambled to her feet with excitement. "This is the very same cave where they fled from the Romans. We're actually there. Right here must be the place where the story about them was written and stored for nearly two thousand years."
"She could be right," Ted conceded with little emotion, stigmatized as he was, and with little hope of ever sharing this find with the rest of the world.
"This is good news," Eli agreed and got to his knees and bowed his head with a mumbled chant in praise of Allah. He looked up to see Ellen and Ted staring curiously at him. "This is cause for joy," he explained. "It is the way the scroll described this cave with the spring water flowing down a long tunnel into the bowels of the earth. Yes, you are right, Ellen. This must be the same cave. But if there is still a spring, then its source is obtainable as is our hope to survive until we are found."
"We suspected that before," Ted shrugged.
"But this confirms it," Ellen said enthusiastically.
"Humph," Ted grunted, unimpressed.
"Oh, don't be that way, Ted," she scolded. "This is important news."
"Yes, Ted," Eli agreed. "Before, I wasn't sure if the water coming through the wall was merely from a pool trapped between strata of rock. Water such as that could be tainted and also exhaustible. Now, we can be sure that as long as we keep trying, there is a source of fresh water that will keep us alive indefinitely."  
Ted looked at the ration case with a depressed sigh.
"We've got less than a week's supply of food," Ted reminded them. "And that's stretching it."
"Didn't these three: Annabella, Sebastian, and Radu, survive the same conditions?" Ellen argued.
"Well, not exactly," Ted countered. "They had access to the surface."
"True," Eli concurred. "And until we finish the scroll, we will not know if they survived or not. This may have been written after their death as a memorial to them. Perhaps by the society who dwelled in this area, the Essenes. Maybe they are the ones to whom Sebastian referred when he said they might seek shelter from the hermit society nearby."
"That might be," Ted said. "But I give more credence to your theory that this scroll could well have been written about them after their death, perhaps long  after. As a Christian, Ellen, you're well aware that the Gospels were written long after Jesus died, perhaps a hundred years later. What if we learn, after rousing our hopes, that they died tragically here. This whole story could have been hearsay like the story of Jesus. Facts have a way of becoming distorted with time. And we might be talking about a lot of time here."
"You know that no matter how humanly distorted any facts might be," Ellen challenged Ted, "that as a Christian, I have the faith that God overshadowed any human errors in the Bible with the grace of His truth."
"Obviously that's where we differ, Ellen," Ted said with self-satisfaction. "Truth is tangible, something I can hold in my hand to analyze."
"We have the scrolls, Ted. Even without the thorough testing, I know you instinctively believe the authenticity of the tangible materials they were written on."
''I'll concede that."
"Will you also concede that, with time, we probably know more today than we ever could about the Kennedy or Lincoln assassinations, thanks to more mod­ ern techniques of analysis and the cooling down of the situations surrounding those events?" Eli interjected, "You don't analyze a volcanic eruption as it occurs. You wait until the fire cools down and the lava flow halts."
"O.K., just like a plane crash, we wait till it's all over, bodies strewn in open fields, before we check the black box," Ted said, heatedly. "Is that the kind of analogy you'd prefer, Eli? One you terrorists could understand."
"Ted, my fight with Israel is as a soldier of Islam. I fight in uniform and stand my ground. I am not a terrorist as you want to believe. I fight my battles in plain sight. I am no coward. I would never use a bomb on civilians though obviously there are groups of Arabs who do. Such groups are not limited to Arabs. You would like to believe that to justify your anger. I understand. But it is not the truth. Pick up my words in your hands, Ted, and examine  what I've said very closely."
 Suddenly, there was another tremor as before.
"The earth is shifting," Eli said anxiously, steadying himself against the cave wall. "This is not good, she said as she continued to read.
As she did, Ted and Eli cleared the fallen debris from the wall where they had been digging for water. Their attention was distracted from the far corner which they had arbitrarily chosen as their latrine, because it was the farthest point away from where they had been drinking water. In that dark comer where they had sought privacy and modesty, the cave wall had begun to glisten with moisture from the building pressure of the underground spring they sought to find.
"The language is Greek, but the voice is the same," Ellen told them. Then she read aloud:
In the cool darkness of night in the wilderness near the Salt Sea, Annabella slept while Sebastian and Radu kept guard. They did not know what to expect fr m the Ro­ mans though they knew they were clever. The young magician and the mute eunuch from a defeated African tribe watched from the opposite ends of the cave.
Sebastian guarded the rear of the upper tunnel facing west while Radu watched eastward, where he saw the distant glow from the Romans' campfire to the north above their position.
Radu kept his eyes alert in all directions, but he was attracted to the flickering glow of the distant fire. It had been so many years since he had moments to think, to regard himself as a human being. From the age of nine he had been put into service for one master or another. Now, the only thing that stood
between him and his homeland were a dozen Roman soldiers, the vast desert, and the wide sea. He hoped to avoid these Romans then deal with the elements of nature as they came, one at a time. He was determined about this. It was as if he had just been born and a new world lay before him. He was indebted to
these two young people for saving his life, but he could not let that obligation stand in the way of his freedom. He breathed confidently with that resolution, but was unaware of another concealed factor with glowing eyes observing him from a ledge above.
The eyes were greenish yellow and absorbed all the reflected light from the stars and their shimmer on the calm sea below. The breathing was deep, but shallow enough to go unheard by the African whose hearing had become more acute to compensate his own silence. He might even have smelled the scent of this intruder to their cave, but Radu was suddenly distracted by Sebastian's cry for help.
Radu moved swiftly from his position down the cavernous tunnel to the western exit of the cave. It took only one strong Roman to hold Sebastian as five others gathered around him to make sport of the squirming boy. The noise awakened Annabella. She ran to the boy’s defense and futilely flailed her arms at two of the Romans roaring with glee over their prize. But without warning, as one Roman taunted Annabella, the tip of a spear burst through his armored chest from the back. The other Romans stared quizzically at the bloodied protrusion, but it was withdrawn just as quickly when Radu put his enormous foot to the Roman's back and jerked his weapon out of the dead man. The other five drew their swords. Sebastian and Annabella cowered in the corner. Their fears of their newfound friend's demise were soon quelled when Radu spun his long spear like a wheel and charged his attackers with the two-headed spear perfectly balanced with death at either end.
Radu made short work of the Romans who were never able to get within striking distance with their swords against the seven-foot height and long reach of the giant African warrior. Annabella was horrified by this violence. Except for her mother's death and the destruction of a horse, she had known no bloodshed. It made her woozy. Sebastian let her lean on him as they retreated back into the cave. The boy turned back to see Radu's expression of anxiety as he held up one hand and his index finger of the other to indicate there were only six dead.
Sebastian was relieved that the odds had been changed to 2 to 1, if they counted on Annabella for any help. He knew it was more like six to one because he was of little help himself against a Roman soldier with a sword. Worse yet, Justin was among the others. This calculating man had a purpose and would be re­ lentless against them. Still, Sebastian was satisfied that they still had a chance.
Annabella returned to sleep by the dwindling fire in the cave.   
In his sign language, Radu told Sebastian that he would take the rear where the Romans still had the easiest access to the cave, opposed to the steep cliffs facing the sea, which gave less opportunity for an assault. Sebastian agreed with some relief, believing that his chances of being attacked again that night were
small. But when he reached the edge of the cave, he saw a curious thing in the sand near the entrance. A Roman helmet lay there beside a trail of blood.

There were tracks left in the sand which looked as if the soldier had been dragged away. The trail was obscured by the drag marks of the Roman's legs which left a swishing trail right up to the edge of the steep cliff above Sebastian. There he saw a large pool of blood and a Roman sword. He picked it up to test its weight. He did not know what to make of it but was confident to have a sword. It made him feel worthy as an opponent for the first time against their pursuers. Sebastian played with the sword. He assumed Radu had killed this Roman sent to this entrance of the cave. After dragging the Roman to the edge of the cliff, Radu must have thrown him over the edge before he had come to Sebastian's res­ cue. He decided to confirm that scenario with Radu in the morning.
As Sebastian rested his eyes, he did not realize that fifty feet above his head the Roman, whose sword he now held, had already been devoured. The greenish yellow eyes above him became thin crescents in the night. With contentment for the moment, those eyes shut in deep slumber.
 
X
 
"It has to be this cave," Ellen insisted. "The way the scroll describes it is just the way it had been before the cave-in."
"Yes, but what good does it do us now?" Ted said, sitting down to rest from his digging. "I'm all turned around down here and nothing is as it was. This digging is pointless. Damn! Why doesn't anyone come for us?"
"We must humble ourselves to Allah, all of us," Eli said with conviction. "We must set aside our personal goals to allow Allah to show the way."
"I agree," Ellen said, turning to Ted. "Your negativity gains us nothing. If the very best you can do is to be neutral, then do so. Will you both join me by holding hands in prayer for our deliverance from this cave?"
"If there is a god, there can be only one," Ted said. "If he were so powerful as to create the heavens, he would not be bothered with our three insignificant lives." 'That's your human nan-ow concept of power," Ellen returned. "Sometimes it takes a greater power to be small, gentle, and meek. That's the essence of
Christianity."
"If he didn't hear the prayers of six million Jews in Europe fifty years ago, why would he care about us today?"
"If I were God, perhaps I would have an answer. But I'm not and I don't. Whether you believe Jesus and God are one and the same doesn't matter at the moment. Jesus gave us one message from God that was clear: Ask and you will receive, seek and you will find. Pray in your own manner, but let's do it together."
"I shall do this also," Eli said thoughtfully. "My mind wants revenge and victory against the infidels, but my heart conflicts with my basic human instinct to survive at all cost. The desert makes one think that way. It is a harsh environment in which to grow. We fear humility because it would mean our extinction. But since my death could be very near now, and the harsh desert is something I would welcome if I were delivered from this tomb, I shall join you in this prayer to Allah."
"Perhaps joined as one, we'll see our God as one in the same for all of us," Ellen said as they joined hands. After a long silence, Ellen prayed aloud in a narrative to which the two men had become accustomed: "I don't know why this has happened to us, Lord. You keep us alive, but our hope of surviving and escaping
continually wavers. Give us some direction, Lord. We thank you for what has transformed into friendship. And we especially thank you for the blessing of these scrolls which have helped us to pass the time and to take our minds off our immediate peril. If it is your intention that this ancient story remain untold, I accept that. But if you want us to bring this story of Annabella to light, please, guide  us, and show us the way out."
As Ellen completed her prayer and hoped that the men would share their prayers with her, the cave shook.
'The scroll," Ted said, as Ellen opened her eyes, hoping to hear a prayer from him. "The way the nan-ative described the underground spring in the tunnel. We're digging in the wrong direction. We've merely been tapping into the smaller streams of water created by the shifting rock."
Eli looked around the cave as it shook and small rocks fell from the ceiling. The strong grip they shared in joining hands in prayer suddenly released.
"He's right," Eli said. "The mass of water must be ... there!" He pointed to the far wall.
As the cave shook, Ellen looked at her boots where the lantern stood by her feet. A sudden stream of water flowed between her boots. The stream came from the dark corner of the cave which they had avoided except to relieve themselves and bury their excrement. A foul smell wafted toward them from that dark corner. Instinctively, they backed away toward the opposite wall. Ellen clutched the second scroll she had been reading. She realized that the first scroll she had completed lay beside the lantern. She turned back to retrieve it. Ted grabbed her hand and yanked her back against the side of the cave. He shoved the second scroll into the clay jar where they had found it. He pressed it to Ellen's chest as if he were a quarterback handing off the ball to a running back.
"The other scroll," she whimpered, but her protest was drowned out by the roar of gushing water as the far wall burst open, flooding the cave.
The gush of cool water into the cave was a shock to the threesome trapped there for so long. Their immediate emotion was terror, but the force of the water seeking its former course blew out the opposite wall in its path toward the descending tunnel described in the ancient scroll as what seemed to be a bottomless crevasse.

Ellen choked from the water blasting into her face. She could hardly breath from the jolt of the water carrying her through the collapsing cave wall. The current dragged her down the tunnel it carved through the sandstone. Yet, as her heart pounded in her chest, she clung to the clay jar. She was determined to preserve this scroll, especially after the first scroll had perished in the sudden flood.
Though they were bruised and drenched by the strong current of the spring, the cool water eased and receded to a calm flow leaving Ellen, Ted, and Eli exhausted, but otherwise unharmed in the dark tunnel. He found one of the lanterns and lit it, then
called out to the other two. Ted waded out of the darkness toward the light. It was not until the splashing of Ted's steps through the stream subsided that the men heard Ellen.
The sudden reality that the first scroll was gone forever took Ellen's breath away. Destroyed by the initial impact of the water, all that remained of the first part of Annabella's story was the threesome's combined memory of it.
"Ellen! Are you hurt?" Ted called to her.
They heard her gasping as if in pain or about to have an asthmatic seizure. But once her lungs were filled with as much air as they could hold, Ellen burst into tears and wailed in lament of their loss, of the world's loss. She cried for fifteen minutes before collapsing with exhaustion. When she awakened, Eli and Ted com­ forted her with sad expressions of empathy, aware that this loss to Ellen was like a mother's loss of a child.
Her eyes glared with alarm when Ted tried to take the clay jar from her tight grasp.
"It's O.K., Ellen," Ted assured her. "You need to relax. The other scroll is safe in­ side that jar. We'll leave it there until we get out of here where it won't be destroyed.
She laughed with near hysteria. "I'll rest for a little while, but I have to keep reading. At least we know what the first scroll said. It would be far worse if this jar were destroyed without our having had the chance to read it. Don't let me sleep too long. Wake me when you're going to eat."
They all looked grimly at one another realizing that thirst would no longer be a problem to them, but their food rations, the little that remained, had washed away into the abyss that had swallowed the origins of this lost book of Annabella.
When Ellen awoke, she dipped her hand into the cool spring and brought her cupped hand to her lips. Her stomach growled as she took the second scroll from the jar and carefully, caressingly unrolled it. Still stunned by the last misfortune, both men drew toward their solitary lantern to listen as Ellen read aloud:
Anxious about the other Romans who might attack them, Sebastian woke in the middle of the night and went to Radu at his watch post.
"Where do you suppose the other five Romans are?" Sebastian asked Radu.
Annabella was awakened by Sebastian's voice and interjected before the African could reply. "Five? Aren't there six more?" she asked. Radu concurred with a nod.
"You forgot the one you killed at your post, Radu. The one they sent to attack from the rear," Sebastian said. "You must have thrown him over the cliff. Remember, Radu?" Radu shook his head with negative vehemence. Sebastian showed them the sword and helmet he found. Radu was perplexed. He reiterated with sign language: only six dead Romans. Then he indicated that there would be six, if not seven, horses without riders. He would attempt to find one for them to eat before sunrise, but was careful to avoid stating his purpose in a manner that Annabella would literally comprehend. Few women would willingly eat horse flesh, but especially a horse trader's daughter.
When Radu departed stoically, Annabella asked, "Sebastian, where is he going? He is leaving us unprotected?"
"He'll bring back food."
"Food? I've hardly thought of it. No wonder I feel so weak. What food could he find in this godforsaken place?"
"Leave that to Radu. He will provide for us," Sebastian assured her. "Besides, I have a sword now. I'll protect you."
"You? By trickery perhaps, but hardly with that sword," she mocked. "You can barely lift it yet wield it with any skill."
"Quiet. I heard something," he alerted her. "Radu?"
"No. Quick, we must hide. It's the Romans coming. We'll go to higher ground by the entrance facing the sea."
"What about Radu?"
"They may already have killed or captured him. We haven't time to find out. Let's go, now, while it's still night."
Sebastian grabbed Annabella's hand and led her to the other end of the cave facing eastward and looking down at the Salt Sea. Though he carried the sword in one hand, its unwieldy weight made him drag it, rather than carry it, as they struggled to climb higher on the cliff to avoid the Romans led by Justin. The cool night wind of the wilderness kicked up the sand in their faces which they tried to protect from the biting sting while climbing. When they reached the next plateau, they stopped  upon hearing someone's voice.
“What is it?" she asked.
"You hear it, too?"
"Yes. Is it the voice we both heard before, or is it our minds deceiving us from our starvation?"
"I'm not sure, but if it's our minds playing tricks on us, then so are our eyes. Look, there's someone there. Not a Roman."
 
Annabella peered cautiously over the rock to see the man.
 
He hunched his back against the cold, piercing wind. From a crevice between the jagged rocks, sand kicked up in his grimacing face. Only a wooden staff sup­ ported his lithe, emaciated body. His flimsy, hooded shawl was all he owned to shield him from the harsh elements. He cringed, shuddering in the stark loneliness of the desert night.

With a faint whisper, he sought comfort from Yahweh I n prayer. He thanked the living God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses, for this opportunity to con­ firm his faith in Yahweh, Who had delivered Israel out of bondage in Egypt into the land of Canaan. The test, however, was a covenant of starvation, pain, and humility before his Lord.
"I am thankful, Adonai, that it is midnight, " he prayed aloud, though his voice seemed lost beneath the wind's lamenting howl. "I've no physical assurance to confirm what precise hour it is within the dark void of tonight's new moon. Yet, Elohim, the glow within my bosom assures my heart of Your presence. It serves as a sign to me that my current suffering is behind me. Even now, the pain of it wanes in the west. This morning's sun burgeons with hope from the east. Though out of sight, it comforts me with the break of a new day, during which I pledge to serve You. For this assurance of Your watchful presence, Jiveh, I am truly thankful. El Shaddai be praised.
 
"Hallelujah! Amen"

                                            X
  
"This is it!" Ellen shouted.
"This is what?" Ted said, he and Eli both startled by her sudden outburst. "The very first words that I began to read when we found the scrolls. It's what
drew my attention to their importance. These are the prayers of a holy man from this era. He may be one of the Essenes."
"O.K., Ellen. Just calm down and read some more." She took a deep breath and continued to read the scroll: "To whom is he talking?" Annabella said to Sebastian. "To himself, so it seems. No one else is there."
"Do you suppose he's dangerous, perhaps mad? His shawl and hood cover his face. Dare we approach him?"
The man with the hooded shawl addressed them as if he had heard their every word. "My Father has answered my prayer. Come. You've nothing to fear. My cave will shelter you from the wind."
He kept his face covered as he extended his hand to Annabella. She hesitated, recalling how Jozabad had deceived her before with a masquerade. But her reluctance was set aside when his hand came within her grasp and attracted her like a magnet with instant familiar warmth.
Sebastian followed, dragging his sword to the sheltered cave where the cut­ ting wind faded to a distant whistle.
"Where's your fire?" Sebastian asked, stumbling in the dark.
"I have none," the man's voice cut through the darkness of the cave. "The warmth of Yahweh's constant presence lights my path to do His will."
"I have flints and kindling in my pocket," Sebastian said. "I could make a fire, but I have only a little oil. How would I keep it burning?"
"Simply by lighting it, Sebastian," the man said.
"How do you know my name?" Sebastian panicked. "We've been tricked. Is it you, Justin?"
"Light your oil," the voice said calmly.
With shaking hands, Sebastian complied. He lifted the glowing bowl toward the man who knew his name. Annabella cringed with anxiety wondering if this were the trick. Could it be Justin, Jozabad, or even Sadaq? All three would relish their revenge on them. The image of those three vanished as the light from the bowl revealed the man's face. Annabella had the sense of relief, then confusion.
"You've come to me after all, Hannah," the man said.
Sebastian was baffled. This face was new to him, yet the presence was familiar. He looked to Annabella for a clue.
With mixed feelings, Annabella lashed out at the young man, saying, "It is you who has caused me all this grief, ever since you crossed my path in Samaria. My horse got me home safely as you promised, then died, as did my dear mother as well. What foul curse have you placed on me? And why are you here, Yosh?"
 
                                           X
 
"It's the boy who was going to live with the Essenes!" Ellen said with glee. She was oblivious to her growling stomach and the sudden, unexpected loss of all their food rations. "It's Yosh. You remember, the boy who caused Zoar to stumble on the road to Samaria. He healed her broken ankle, foresaw Zoar's death, and pre­ dicted a bitter end for Amanda."
Ted and Eli stared at Ellen as if she were possessed. Her obsession with the ancient scrolls seemed to be taking a turn for the worse. The confinement, dehydration, and the immediate threat of starvation had eroded Ellen's former pillar of exuberance into a hollow facade of uncertain foundation which, to her two companions, seemed about to crumble.
"Yes, Ellen, we remember," Ted assured her. "But while you continue reading to us, Eli and I must search for something that we can eat. Anything that will sustain us."
"But how will you see?" she asked. "I need the lantern."
"We'll just feel about in the current of the spring," Eli offered with a concur­ ring nod to Ted. "Springs in the wilderness are the only source of life. Whatever we find, you must promise to eat. Your life depends upon it."
She stared blankly as if she did not hear him, then shook herself from her trance and continued to read aloud:

"Do you believe that I am capable of cursing you, Hannah?" Yosh asked.
 
"My name is Annabella!"
"A name given to you by your grandfather, a man of this material Roman world, a man who would break the Laws of Moses by defiling the flesh of his own blood with incest," Yosh said without emotion. His expression was reflective, as if recalling a page of history. He was stating a fact, but without exercising any judgment.
"How does this boy know so much about you?" Sebastian stepped between them in a protective gesture.
"He knows only the surface, otherwise he would know the truth about me," she challenged. I know all there is, or ever will be, to know about you, Hannah," Yosh said with a smile. "You are a treasure that still remains unspoiled. Your mother sac­ rificed herself to keep it thus. For that selflessness, her name, though locked away, will upon Yahweh's discretion become revered for aJI eternity."
"Who are you to make such proclamations about my mother when you never even knew her?" Annabella confronted Yosh eye to eye. Though he said nothing, the flickering of the flaming oil reflected in his eyes made her step back in fear.
"What are you doing here?" Sebastian challenged him again. "Are you living with the Essenes on the high plateau above us? Are you one of them? Will they give us food?"
"Is it food you seek or sustenance, Sebastian?" Yosh asked with nonchalance, as if he were offering selections from a menu.
"It's Justin. He's using these hermit Jews to turn us in. That's how you know our names. What reward have the Romans offered your sect to lead them to us?" "The Grace of Yahweh is the only reward both here and in the life eternal to come," Yosh said with conviction. "It is true that five Romans came to the Teacher of Righteousness to seek information about you. But I have known your names from the beginning."
"From the beginning?" Annabella frowned. "The beginning  of what?"
Before Yosh could reply, Sebastian interjected, "Then you admit to being a lookout for the Romans? You're stalling till they come for us?"
"Your will to stay or go is your own, but you will stay of your own choosing as surely as the sun will rise this morning."
"We need food before we go anywhere?" Annabella sighed, slumping to the ground with exhaustion. "What are you eating in this cave? And why are you here if you are not a lookout for your sect?"
"When the Teacher of Righteousness heard the Romans approaching, he told me it was time."
"Time for what?"
"Time to separate my soul from my earthly needs for the first time by fasting in the wilderness," Yosh said as a matter of fact.
"Fasting? You mean going without food?" she huffed.
"And without water," he said. "Though my flesh is at risk, my soul is not, when sustained by Yahweh. My flesh is my sacrifice, unspoiled by worldly temptations." "How long must you fast for this Teacher of Righteousness?" Sebastian asked. "For as long as it takes for Yahweh to reveal himself to me. Time is of no con­sequence. The choice is Yahweh's."
"But you could die," Annabella said from her position seated on the cave floor.
"If Yahweh wills it, but He does not. He wiJI intercede for me. He knows what is best for me and for you."
"What's best for me is some food. You don't seem to have any to offer, so I think we'll be going," Sebastian said, nodding for Annabella to get up, but she stayed where she was. He sighed and joined her on the floor. Yosh did the same.
"If you're not a lookout for the Romans, why are you here alone?" Sebastian asked. "Aren't you in training as a rabbi with the other boys of your sect? I heard in my travels that the hermit sects of the Hebrews took oaths of silence, and celibacy, along with fasting while serving as scribes for the Torah, which formerly had been passed from generation to generation only by word of mouth."
"I am here alone because it is Yahweh's will. I am not a scribe, like yourself, Sebastian, skilled in several languages, but every word from my lips is comprehensible to all since I precede Babel."
"You speak in riddles," Sebastian said, shaking his head with befuddlement. "He is a puzzle himself," Annabella agreed. "Perhaps we are related by blood, Yosh. That's why you know so much about me and my mother. My mother was a Levite, so all of our male children are groomed for the priesthood. Are you a Levite?"
"I am not. I descend from Judah," Yosh said. "Judah? And Pharez?"
"Yes."
"You are the bastard son of the Roman soldier Panthera,"
she said with accusation and satisfaction. "My mother told me that there was only one other person in all of Judea held in greater contempt than she. As shameless as my mother could be, another Hebrew girl, rather than admit that she had been seduced by the charming Roman soldier, Panthera, proclaimed her child to be a miracle from Yahweh. Had it not been for her gentle-minded fiancé, who married her for fear she would be publicly stoned, you would not be here, let alone be able to lay false claim to this noble bloodline. Are you not this bastard?"
"Who do you believe I am, Hannah?"
"Someone, at long last, who is lower than myself. For my Roman blood was never denied. My mother was proud of it, as I am. If she were smart, your mother would have made the Roman marry her so that you, like me, might have laid claim to Roman citizenship. Then you would not be starving yourself alone in a cave to seek this Yahweh who has forsaken you."
"Do you believe that I am illegitimate?"
 
Ellen stopped her reading for a moment to reflect on the usage of the words which could be translated several ways including fake, false, and counterfeit. Yosh implied with his phrasing: Do you believe that I am a liar?
 
Ellen continued:
 
"I know what I don't believe," Annabella assured Yosh. "I don't believe in miracles. I believe in tricks, sorcery, and magic. But as my friend Sebastian has shown me, all are measures of deceit. Sometimes we wish to deceive ourselves rather than face reality."
"Do you believe my mother lied?"
"Of course, I do. My own mother lied again and again to save me. Not for her­ self, but for your sake, your mother must have lied to gain sympathy from the man who agreed to marry her to shield her and you with his respectability. But my mother was smart and waited till she was married before conceiving me. The mixed marriage may be a social disgrace from both sides, but at least I know that I am a virgin and a legal citizen of Rome."
"It sounds to me that your mother was not too bright," Sebastian agreed. "She must have been too young to understand what this Roman had done to her."
Yosh stared thoughtfully at them, then he asked Annabella, "How did it feel to you when your mother lied about your chastity to the Romans? If you knew unto yourself that you were a virgin, did it change that truth, even if others believed otherwise?"
"Of course not!" she said.
"Then if all the world proclaimed you a harlot, would that make it so?" "Never!"
"Then within your heart and soul you know my mother. Yet her innocence is of no more significance than yours. To suffer that innocence through the degradation by others, however, provides penitence for many. Bear your innocence silently, so that your innocence itself will deflect all slings and arrows and give you peace."
"That's a lot to ask," Sebastian challenged.
"Would it be better for all the world to believe you were a virgin, though you were truly a harlot?" Yosh asked. "What reward could there be from your silence then?"
They could not reply to Yosh's question. Sebastian's mind spun with this logic which stabbed at his heart. Annabella's throat tightened. Yosh's words communicated so directly to her own feelings that it seemed he had entered her and was looking out through her eyes. Yosh understood her hurt pride and provided her, not with a placebo, since pain in life could not be escaped, but rather with the spiritual means to deal with that pain.
But to what end? She wondered. Why must she endure any pain? What light was there for her at the end of this dark tunnel?
As ifYosh heard her thoughts, he added, "Before our paths crossed on the road to Samaria, your mother bore your pride, and with it the shunned responsibility of a Jew to make Yahweh known to you. Amanda rests in peace now waiting for the day when you will make Yahweh known to her again."
"I? What do I know of this Yahweh?" she protested.
Yosh smiled in such a way that made her want to let down her guard for the first time in her young life, so completely as if she would swoon and lay at his feet. She caught herself from falling forward, then stepped back beside Sebastian.
"You already know more about Yahweh than all of your mother's Levite priesthood ancestry since Joseph led Jacob and his sons into Egypt," Yosh said.
"That's absurd. I'm more Roman in my ways than I could ever be a Jew," she argued. "My mother raised me that way."
"You can no longer place that burden on your mother, Hannah," Yosh reasoned. "That responsibility is yours now and Amanda has been spared of any guilt."
"Guilt? Of what might I be guilty?" she said, folding her arms defensively.
Sebastian interjected in her defense, "I admit she is a prideful girl, and not prone to selflessness. But she is honorable. I attest to it. And if she says that she is chaste, I readily believe it to be true. If any corruption exists in her spirit, then I am to blame. I have been possessed of late and have heard voices in my head which have driven us into this wilderness. For what? We can't imagine."
"You were called here by Yahweh," Yosh said with surety. "He wants your testimony."
Sebastian looked about the dark cave expecting this Yahweh to appear, but Annabella unfolded her arms and faced Yosh eye to eye.
"How long have you been without food and water?" she asked.
"Thirty days," he said. "My spirit is nourished by the word of Yahweh." "You are having delusions because you are starving," she said. "These Es-
senes and this Teacher of Righteousness have tricked your mind while starving your body. You will die."
"We all shall die," he said with a warm grin. "But some will arise to be eternally with Yahweh in everlasting life."
"And you believe this?" she asked. "I know this to be true."
"Who will arise?" Sebastian asked. "The Jews, no doubt."
"Some perhaps, but more depends upon the acceptance of His Grace." "Grace? What is Grace?" Sebastian asked.
"Forgiveness," Yosh said.
"He must forgive us?" Annabella asked.
"He will soon, Hannah. But the Grace of His forgiveness must be accepted by you."
"By me?"
"Yes. And by Sebastian. By all of you. Even by Jozabad." "How do you know Jozabad?"
"Through my father, Yahweh, I know all men, all women, every beast, each hair upon your head, every grain of sand upon this earth, every star in the heavens."
Sebastian said aside to Annabella,"You're right, the boy is dazed with hunger and thirst. He seems harmless enough, but he would have us starve to death with him. We had better go to this hermitage of Essenes where some sanity may dwell, and food might be available." Then aloud to Yosh, he said, "I think it is time for us to move on!"
"For what you hunger, I have plenty," Yosh said to them. "Tarry with me while you can. Jerusalem awaits you Sebastian as it does me, but according to Yahweh's time, not yours. Stay with me. The Romans will not find us here."
"But we have a friend with us who—" Sebastian heard Radu approaching.
Knowingly, Yosh observed, "He comes now, but for my sake without the food your flesh demands, so that you will listen and learn of Yahweh as He requires."
No sooner did Yosh stop speaking when Radu appeared at the entrance to the cave and entered. Radu's face was sullen and he was without game for them to eat. When he saw Yosh, Radu's expression turned from dejection to wonder. Before Radu could raise his hand to communicate in sign language, Yosh spoke to his mind:
 
The four Roman soldiers need their horses to return to Samaria where they face an environment more harsh than this wilderness. Their leader's horse was killed by a beast. Justin has returned with wounds that won't take his life until he delivers the message of his failure to young Caligula. So come and join us, Radu, so that you might drink from this cup your friends are about to share. You are too worthy a hunter to kill a beast of burden when there are greater prizes for the future king of a mighty African nation.
 
Annabella and Sebastian were astonished when Radu came forward and kneeled at Yosh's feet. Yosh put his hand upon the African giant's headdress and Radu raised his head in stunned rapture.

                                                                                     X

Ellen could not stop narrating of the ancient scroll. Her mind raced with conjectures as to what she was reading and what Ted or Eli might have thought about it. Like the boy, Yosh, she was starving. She wondered if, as Annabella thought, she were having delusions, too. Ellen was enraptured by the voice from the scroll which projected, in her mind, three dimensional images of these people who had hidden in this same cave two thousand years ago.
 
Ellen's stomach growled. She felt giddy as she lifted her eyes from the scroll and seemed to see Yosh and the other three right beside her. She felt as if she were having an out-of-body experience. She was no longer aware of herself translating and narrating from the scroll. Instead, it seemed to her as if she were really there, two thousand years ago, a fly on the wall of this cave:
 
Yosh continued speaking to the three all night. They listened for the most part, except when the things that Yosh told them baffled their minds. Radu remained stoic and pensive as he listened to the boy. Annabella posed several questions, especially about why Yahweh would choose them to come to this cave.
"Yahweh has made it thus, that none of you has any place else to go. It is His will that you sojourn here with me until it is time."
"Time for what?" Sebastian asked. "Time to know why you have been chosen."
"I feel more ignored than chosen," Annabella pouted.
"Yahweh's love for you, Hannah, transcends his feelings for all others. For this, a heavy price must be paid."
"Paid? By whom? To whom?" she asked.
Sebastian interjected before Yosh answered, "Then why am I here?"
"To witness the truth," Yosh replied.
"Witness? Is there to be a trial?" Sebastian shrugged.
"Yes. It has already begun," Yosh said with a wave of sadness in his eyes which shimmered by the light of a single flame.

From the Christian Bible

The Book of Job 

Excerpt



Chapter 1

There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was blameless and upright, one who feared God, and turned away from evil. There were born to him seven sons and three daughters. He had seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she-asses, and very many servants; so that this man was the greatest of all the people of the east. His sons used to go and hold a feast in the house of each on his day; and they would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. And when the days of the feast had run their course, Job would send and sanctify them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all; for Job said, "It may be that my sons have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts." Thus Job did continually.

Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them. The Lord said to Satan, "Whence have you come?" Satan answered the Lord, "From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it." And the Lord said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?" Then Satan answered the Lord, "Does Job fear God for nought? Hast thou not put a hedge about him and his house and all that he has, on every side? Thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But put forth thy hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse thee to thy face." And the Lord said to Satan, "Behold, all that he has is in your power; only upon himself do not put forth your hand." So Satan went forth from the presence of the Lord.

Now there was a day when his sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house; and there came a messenger to Job, and said, "The oxen were plowing and the asses feeding beside them; and the Sabeans fell upon them and took them, and slew the servants with the edge of the sword; and I alone have escaped to tell you." When he was yet speaking, there came another, and said, "The fire of God fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and the servants, and consumed them; and I alone have escaped to tell you." When he was yet speaking, there came another, and said, "The Chaldeans formed three companies, and made a raid upon the camels and took them, and slew the servants with the edge of the sword, and I alone have escaped to tell you." While he was yet speaking, there came another, and said, "Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother's house; and behold, a great wind came across the wilderness, and struck the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young people, and they are dead; and I alone have escaped to tell you."

Then Job arose, and rent this robe, and shaved his head, and fell upon the ground, and worshiped. And he said, "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord."

In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong.

Chapter 2

Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them to present himself before the Lord. And the Lord said to Satan, "Whence have you come?" Satan answered the Lord, "From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down upon it." And the Lord said to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil? He still holds fast his integrity, although you moved me against him, to destroy him without cause." Then Satan answered the Lord, "Skin for skin! All that a man has he will give for his life. But put forth thy hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse thee to thy face." And the Lord said to Satan, "Behold, he is in your power; only spare his life."

So Satan went forth from the presence of the Lord, and afflicted Job with loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. And he took a potsherd with which to scrape himself, and sat among the ashes.

Then his wife said to him, "Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God, and die." But he said to her, "You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?" In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

Now when Job's three friends heard all this evil that had come upon him, they came each from his own place, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. They made an appointment together to come to condole with him and comfort him. And when they saw him from afar, they did not recognize him; and they raised their voices and wept; and they rent their robes and sprinkled dust upon their heads toward heaven. And they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.

Chapter 3

After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth.

And Job said:

"Let the day perish wherein I was born,

and the night which said, 'A man-child is conceived.'

Let that day be darkness!

May God above not seek it, nor light shine upon it.

Let gloom and deep darkness claim it.

Let clouds dwell upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it.

That night-let thick darkness seize it!

let it not rejoice among the days of the year,

let it not come into the number of the months.

Yea, let that night be barren;

let no joyful cry be heard in it.

Let those who curse it curse the day,

who are skilled to rouse the Leviathan.

Let the stars of its dawn be dark;

let it hope for light, but have none,

nor see the eyelids of the morning;

because it did not shut the doors of my mother's womb,

nor hide trouble from my eyes.

"Why did I not die at birth,

come forth from the womb and expire?

Why did the knees receive me?

Or why the breasts, that I should suck?

For then I should have lain down and been quiet;

I should have slept; then I should have been at rest,

with kings and counselors of the earth

who rebuilt ruins for themselves,

or with princes who had gold,

who filled their houses with silver.

Or why was I not as a hidden untimely birth,

as infants that never see the light?

There the wicked cease from troubling,

and there the weary are at rest.

There the prisoners are at ease together;

they hear not the voice of the taskmaster.

The small and the great are there,

and the slave is free from his master.

"Why is light given to him that is in misery,

and life to the bitter in soul,

who long after death, but it comes not,

and dig for it more than for hid treasures;

who rejoice exceedingly,

and are glad, when they find the grave?

Why is light given to a man whose way is hid,

whom God has hedged in?

For my sighing comes as my bread,

and my groanings are poured out like water.

For the thing that I fear comes upon me,

and what I dread befalls me.

I am not at ease, nor am I quiet; I have no rest,

but trouble comes."

Chapter 4

Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered:

"If one ventures a word with you, will you be offended?

Yet who can keep from speaking?

Behold, you have instructed many,

and you have strengthened the weak hands.

Your words have upheld him who was stumbling,

and you have made firm the feeble knees.

But now it has come to you, and you are impatient;

it touches you, and you are dismayed.

Is not your fear of God your confidence,

and the integrity of your ways your hope?

"Think now, who that was innocent ever perished?

Or where were the upright cut off?

As I have seen, those who plow iniquity

and sow trouble reap the same.

By the breath of God they perish,

and by the blast of his anger they are consumed.

The roar of the lion, the voice of the fierce lion,

the teeth of the young lions, are broken.

The strong lion perishes for lack of prey,

and the whelps of the lioness are scattered.

"Now a word was brought to me stealthily,

my ear received the whisper of it.

Amid thoughts from visions of the night,

when deep sleep falls on men,

dread came upon me, and trembling,

which made all my bones shake.

A spirit glided past my face;

the hair of my flesh stood up.

It stood still,

but I could not discern its appearance.

A form was before my eyes;

there was silence, then I heard a voice:

'Can mortal man be righteous before God?

Can a man be pure before his Maker?

Even in his servants he puts no trust,

and his angels he charges with error;

how much more those who dwell in houses of clay,

whose foundation is in the dust,

who are crushed before the moth.

Between morning and evening they are destroyed;

they perish forever without any regarding it.

If their tent-cord is plucked up within them,

do they not die, and that without wisdom?'

Chapter 5

"Call now, is there anyone who will answer you?

To which of the holy ones will you turn?

Surely vexation kills the fool,

and jealousy slays the simple.

I have seen the fool taking root,

but suddenly I cursed his dwelling.

His sons are far from safety,

they are crushed in the gate,

and there is no one to deliver them.

His harvest the hungry eat,

and he takes it even out of thorns;

and the thirsty pant after his wealth.

For affliction does not come from the dust,

nor does trouble start from the ground;

but man is born to trouble

as the sparks fly upward.

"As for me, I would seek God,

and to God would I commit my cause;

who does great things and unsearchable,

marvelous things without number:

he gives rain upon the earth

and sends water upon the fields;

he sets on high those who are lowly,

and those who mourn are lifted to safety.

He frustrates the devices of the crafty,

so that their hands achieve no success.

He takes the wise in their own craftiness;

and the schemes of the wily are brought to a quick end.

They meet with darkness in the daytime,

and grope at noonday as in the night.

But he saves the fatherless from their mouth,

the needy from the hand of the mighty.

So the poor have hope,

and injustice shuts her mouth.

"Behold, happy is the man whom God reproves;

therefore despise not the chastening of the Almighty.

For he wounds, but he binds up;

he smites, but his hands heal.

He will deliver you from six troubles;

in seven there shall no evil touch you.

In famine he will redeem you from death,

and in war from the power of the sword.

You shall be hid from the scourge of the tongue,

and shall not fear destruction when it comes.

At destruction and famine you shall laugh,

and shall not fear the beasts of the earth.

For you shall be in league with the stones of the field,

and the beasts of the field shall be at peace with you.

You shall know that your tent is safe,

and you shall inspect your fold and miss nothing.

You shall know also that your descendants shall be many,

and your offspring as the grass of the earth.

You shall come to your grave in ripe old age,

as a shock of grain comes up to the threshing floor

in its season.

Lo, this we have searched out; it is true.

Hear, and know it for your good."

A Cat Who
By Doug Hawley


The title is half the story. The rest is about my wonderful Christmas in August. It began inauspiciously when I saw Sally Rich on August 2nd. She was the CEO of Chasebook, the multi-billion dollar website for stalkers. She had come back to Burgville for her twentieth high school reunion. She had dragged her fiancé, Osborne Chatworth the 3rd with her. Yes, dragged. His clothes were torn from being pulled on his stomach across the road. Their upcoming nuptials were to take place during the Christmas celebration, which like most towns in this unnamed state, take place in August.

Despite her time away from Burgville and her homes in London, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Cucamonga, she still had warm feelings for the place where she grew up. We had gone to Bonnie & Clyde High and dated at the local soda shop, Stepson’s, and the New Wave Cinema. At one time I imagined a life together, me working at the local Fuel Stop and her at Burgville Library, but she was too ambitious to stick around.

The location of their upcoming nuptials did not sit well with Mr. Chatworth. As he put it “I wouldn’t wipe my $1500 shoes on the backsides of these insufferable rubes in this no Starbucks town”. As previously mentioned, he was dragged here. Sally told me that despite some minor misgivings and his lack of any male parts, she still wanted to marry her Chasebook and his also multi-billion dollar Sniff It, the pet matching site.

My good fortune was that Sally and I got to spend a lot of time together before the wedding. Osborne spent a lot of time getting his ears flossed; flag acrylic nails, and blond highlight hair extensions. We mooned over the teenage fun that we had and the perversions that we practiced. I can’t say any more because this is PG. If you want the good stuff, watch the Pornstop version.

Sally was still determined to marry him, until we went bowling as we did during high school. She broke down and told me “I don’t want chauffeurs, fifty million dollar estates with hot and cold running staff. Nor do I want to be Empress Of The World. I want stinky babies, a one bath crap shack, and you, my beloved runt.”

It came to pass that we had a modest wedding here in Burgville on the 25th of August, our Christmas. My cat Marx-Hegel, dressed as Santa, was best animal for the wedding and we served Carl’s Western Bacon Cheeseburgers and bottled McMenamins Terminator Stout at the reception. The entertainment was Brenda Lee’s “Rocking Around The Christmas Tree” played on repeat for five hours.

Presents were exchanged and we toasted each other with pork nog.

Since the wedding and the end of the filming, our life has been a continuing honeymoon. Town people think that we are not well to do because of what appears to be our modest house. They don’t know that Sally got a pile of money for selling Chasebook. It would be crude to mention the amount, let’s just say 1% of a Musk before Twitter. Some of that got us massive underground caverns and tunnels. Two of the underground rooms are named de Sade and Leo Masoch named for a couple of our favorite sexual pioneers. We mostly don’t use those rooms for ourselves, we have the Lovebird Room with our own theatre. We stick to Kama Sutra Thursday (as well as Taco Tuesday of course) when we play a chapter from the movie we produced and was picked as motion picture of year for 2025. We follow the movie reproducing the action on the screen. Our favorite is Bat In The Chicken Coop.

The truth is that we love the western classics in our own large bed / gymnasium. Birds in flight, snake and mate, porcupines in love, and inverted reverse cowgirl. I do have a confession. Even though I have a disproportionately large lingam (dick for the uneducated and yoga dropouts) and great stamina which Sally has loved since high school, sometimes I have a cold or the flu. At those times she can always visit the Symium™. I’m not the kind of jealous guy who would want to deny his love her pleasure.

Enough about us. I’m sure that you would like to hear about all the celebrities that visit us to enjoy the carnal games that we host, but I cannot reveal the names. You won’t hear from me about the mega church guy that comes with five Russian gymnasts and stays locked in a room for a week, nor the beloved male actor who always plays regular guy who visits with five hunky bodyguards and lots of dope, or the female teen star just out of rehab with eleven of her favorite back up dancers and a truck of party favors.

That’s the beginning of the story. Sally is calling, so just let me finish with nothing beats being a Hallmark movie home town boy.

Different versions appear in The Daily Drunk, Short Humour, Writer’s Egg and Haven under different names.

 Unwelcome Visitors

by K. A. Williams



"I don't see any dwellings," I said to my copilot, Tizwot.

He checked the scanner. "They're underground."

"Let's land and find a way in."

***

We melted the hidden door with our ray guns.

I climbed down the ladder first. "There's probably another entrance but I'm too cold to look for it."

We followed the light from our headlamps through a twisting tunnel that led to a heavy door. I opened it and we stepped inside a warm room.

There were tiny people on ladders, decorating a tall tree. We hadn't been spotted yet. "They're smaller than they looked in those broadcasts we saw. We should be able to conquer them easily," I whispered to Tizwot.

The little people stopped working when a big man with a long white beard entered the room. He had on a red outfit and noticed us right away.

"Who are you and what are you doing here?" he asked.

Tizwot and I had learned this language earlier from their broadcasts.

"We're invaders from the planet Muvwap. Submit to our rule immediately or prepare for war," I said.

He laughed merrily and the tiny people joined in. This was annoying. Tizwot and I pointed our ray guns at the jolly man.

He said, "Elves, you know what to do."

Before we could shoot anyone, the little people had whirled around us so quickly, their figures looked blurred. When they stopped moving, Tizwot and I were wrapped up tightly in colorful paper with bows all over us, and our weapons were on the floor.  

The big man laughed again and said, "My elves will escort you outside. If you ever come here again, I'll sic my reindeer on you."

"What's a reindeer?" Tizwot asked me.

"I have no idea."

They carried us out a different way through the tunnel and all the way back to our ship where they set us down and cut us free. 

After we left the planet, Tizwot said, "I'm telling everyone that Earth is a hostile place full of mighty warriors and should be left alone."

"Me too."


The End

PIERROT

Dark Romantic Comedy


By Pat O’Malley

 
     Her name is Allison. She and Calvin had met on the dating app Cherub. Tonight they decided to meet up at Mercury Bar which was only a fifteen minute Uber from hiss apartment and five minutes from Allison’s. As New Order’s ‘Blue Monday’ blasted from the Mercury Bar’s speakers and the smallish Thursday night crowd chattered around them, all he could hear was Allison and he couldn’t stop smiling.

     Up until now, he hadn't had that much luck with meeting anyone on the app. She was the first girl from the app that he actually met up with in person. He was of average height and had been exercising so that his doughy frame now looked significantly more toned. He had recently cut his long dark hair into something short and sensible and had shaved his beard so he didn’t look forty instead of his natural twenty-seven.

     Allison was petite, with long dark curly hair hung to her shoulders. She was wearing a grey top with no sleeves, highlighting the meticulously designed tattoo of an octopus along her right bicep. Calvin was oddly drawn to the blue ink tattoo of an octopus as it went well with the silver ring in her nose.

     Her face had a certain brightness no doubt helped by her great smile and gorgeous blue eyes. In less sophisticated terms, she was the type of typical ‘hipster’ girl that Calvin was drawn to. He himself was a big fan of anime, Transformers, Sonic the Hedgehog and other guilty pleasures so when Allison revealed that she was a Deception sympathizer and joked about the bizarre online fan art of Sonic, he knew that he had found someone special.

     There was an undeniable spark between the two of them that only grew the more they smiled at one another. Allison could recite poetry from memory, particularly “Hope is the Thing With Feathers,” by Emily Dickinson just like he could recite Lewis Carroll’s “The Jabberwock.” They both laughed at how pretentious they were.

     As Calvin got the check, Allison asked him if he was up for getting a night cap, preferably at her place. He felt his heartbeat begin to race. This was their third date and aside from making out a little in the closing moments of a date, Calvin hadn't gotten the impression that Allison was ready to take things to the next level. Still, the brief moments where their tongues lightly swirled around each other made I’m feel elated. All that mattered was that passion was there so he didn’t object to her idea. He had only known Allison for about a month but he wasn’t just attracted to her good looks, it was the personality that he wanted more of.

     Soon the two of them were splitting an Uber and within five minutes they were at her apartment, making out on her couch harder than they ever had before. Calvin’s hands caressed Allison’s light frame as he felt her fingers grasp and feel the back of his head as one of her legs wrapped around one of his hips.

     After what felt like an eternity of their tongues touching, slowly he moved his left hand to Allison’s hip and his right hand towards her chest. Allison lightly grabbed his hand just as he made contact with the curve of her chest and she pressed it harder to her. Then she opened her eyes and moved her face away from hiss, her eyes reminded him of a cat as they stared at him with a suave yet vulnerable look.

     “ I’m sorry, could we pause for maybe just a second?”

     “ Of course! I’m sorry, I don’t want to rush things or do anything you don’t want to,” he was suddenly anxious. Had he blown his shot with her?

     “ No, Calvin you’re fine. I’m always awkward with things like this. I like you a lot and I want to keep going.”

     “Oh, um okay great,” Clavin smiled nervously.

     “ It’s just that I kind of have this-“ her face turned away as her voice dropped into an embarrassed mumble.

     “ You have what?”

     “God this is so embarrassing. Do you remember on Cherub when I said that I’ve had a lot of relationships? Well, sex only occurred in only three of the eight relationships I’ve had in my life because of my own issues.”

     “Hey, whatever it is, its fine. Really, we can wait before we-“

     “The issue was, that out of the eight people I dated only three wanted were able to go through with sleeping with me,” coursing her arms, she looked down suddenly appearing self conscious.

     Confused, he looked back her. He didn’t want to think that he was shallow but he didn’t understand why anyone wouldn’t want to sleep with Allison. Aside from her clever personality she had a beautiful aura around her delicate looks that was undeniable in its attractiveness.

     “Forget about them, thats their loss. They must have been crazy to let someone as cool as you pass them by.”

     She didn’t seem convinced and instead looked increasingly bashful as if she knew the punchline to an uncomfortable joke. Trying to be supportive, Calvin placed a hand on her shoulder reassuringly.

     “I know we haven’t known each other very long but I’m not one to judge,” he smiled at her. She returned his gaze.

     “ It’s just that…oh God, you’re going to think that I’m the worst. Basically, what it comes down to is my tastes where a little too much for most of my exes.”

     “What do you mean?”

     “To be blunt, I’m kind of into some really freaky shit.”

     He looked at her with his hand still on her shoulder not sure what to say and trying not to to laugh with relief. From what it sounded like to him, this girl he was already attracted was apparently some kind of closet pervert. This date was going even better than he had hoped. 

     “Thats fine! Hell, thats more than fine! I mean everyone’s got their kinks, God knows I’ve got mine.”

     “Is that so?” She laughed arching her right eyebrow as she gazed enticing at him.

     “ Hell yeah its so! In fact, I’ll tell you one of my embarrassing kinks to show you its not a big deal,” he laughed and cleared his throat.

     “I kind of sorta, enjoy being choked,” he blushed feeling that he may have revealed too much.

     “Well well, Mr. Calvin I do believe you are giving me the vapors!” She said putting on a faux Southern belle accent as she pretended to fan herself with her hand.

     Calvin thought that was as good an answer as any. 

     “Okay so you wont care about what I’m into?”

     “Its nothing with animals or dead people is it?”

     “Nope, no dead zebra sex for me.”

     “All right well bring it on! Show me what you got girl!”

     “All right, just don’t say I didn’t warn you,” Allison smiled again, leaning forward and kissed him, her tongue darting into his mouth before jetting out just as quickly as it entered.

     “I’ll be right back,” she darted over to the door to her bedroom before looking back with a sly smile and closed the door behind her.

     Sitting there on her couch with only the ticking sound of Allison’s living room clock keeping for company, Calvin fidgeted around excited and smiling. As he patiently awaited for her to come back, one thought kept mulling it over in his head:

     “What could she be into that could make her so embarrassed?” He wondered but wasn’t too worried, she had confided something personal to him which he really appreciated. 

     He couldn’t remember the last time he felt his happy.

     Time passed, the minute hand on the clock had gone from 11:25 to 11:45. Calvin was beginning to get anxious. Whatever she was doing, why was it taking so long? As he thought this over, the sound of Allison’s bedroom door creaking open startled him into sitting up straight.

     “Sorry to keep you waiting. Are you ready?” Her voice came from behind the door.

     “Lets rock!” God help him that was the best he could think of to say.

     “Ooooookay! Let’s go!” Allison’s voice sounded lighter now.

     The sound of ukulele music suddenly filled the room.

     Allison opened the door and instead of the cute hipster girl that he had been talking to before, out walked a scantily clad circus clown. She was wearing a small floppy green hat on top of a long blue haired wig. Her nose was painted bright red, she had drawn a red heart around her right eye and the rest of her face was chalk white. Wrapped around her slender neck was a burgundy bow tie that sparkled with glitter. On her arms and legs she was wearing rainbow sleeves and stockings that outlined her sensual build.

     Otherwise she wasn’t wearing much else.

     “Hi! My name’s Sunny. Ya ready to have fun?” She pulled out a clown horn and gripped it twice producing an uncertain honking.

     Years earlier, when he was a child there was one night where he and his brothers had watched the classic horror film “Poltergeist.” Skipping over plot details, the movie lived up to its reputation. It wasn’t the child eating tree or the later scene of that guy ripping off his face that was one point where the young boy was man handled by a terrifying clown doll that was possessed by angry spirits and now sported a sinister, Satanic clown face grinning with needle like teeth and murder in his eyes.

     Ever since that traumatic night, he had maintained a life long terrifying phobia of clowns.

     “Guh,” he sputtered.

     This wasn’t some kind of sexy jester Harley Quinn outfit, this was full on sexed up birthday clown. Calvin was horrified. He sat there with his eyes as big as Manson lamps and a poorly maintained rictus grin on his face. His mind couldn’t comprehend what was happening. Only moments ago he thought he was in the greatest night of his life now it was like he was living one of his actual nightmares.

     All he could do was sit there and try not to scream.

     “Well there it is,” Allison sighed as her sad clown face looked down and her naked shoulders drooped in dissapointment.

     “What?” Calvin managed to croak out.

     “You think I’m a freak because I need to dress up like a clown to have sex.”

     “Think youre-what? No! No, no no I’m just a little surprised. So you like to dress up like a clown…”

     “During sex. The sexiest thing for me is to dress up like a clown when I’m having sex. Nothing gets me hotter than dressing up like Bozo and screwing another clown with joy buzzers, whoops cushions and part favors on standby.”

     “Why?” He couldn’t stop himself from asking.

     “I don’t know. Why do people have foot fetishes? Just my preference I guess,” she shrugged.

     “Gotcha. Awesome. That’s fine. That’s totally fine.”

     “Really? You’re gripping the couch pretty hard and you’re shaking.”

     “All the more energy reserved for you Allison!” He thought that forcing more nervous laughter would make the the fear might go away. It wasn’t working.

     “Sunny.”

     “Whats that now?”

     “When I’m dressed like this I’d like it if you’d call me Sunny, as in Sunny the Clown,” Sunny pulled out the horn again, smiled and gave it a few more honks.

     “S-Sunny, right okay um look maybe I-”

     “I’ve just been dying to bring out the balloons animals, banana cream pies and I’ve been practicing magic tricks. I don’t know how good I’ll be at them though,”  her bright red lower lip stuck out in a sexy pout.

     Sunny the Clown also known as Allison slowly made her way over to Calvin, leaned close to his ear. Her red nose brushed his ear with her nearly bare chest less than a foot away from him.

     “I’ve been a very bad clown,” she whispered into his ear before licking it.

     Calvin didn’t know which feelings inside him were stronger, lust or terror. Years later, he would look back on this moment and to his eternal shame, against all rationality, even in knowing how badly it would end, he’d probably do it all again in an instant. He swallowed his fear, closed his eyes to thoughts of puppies and moved towards her. Sunny straddled him on his lap as they went back to making out even more fiercely than they had before.

     He lost himself in her clown face and rainbow attire. The next thing he knew his clothes were gone and he was in her room laying on her bed. Sunny the Clown was riding him. Her moans of satisfaction sounded more like high pitched giggling. He shut his eyes and pretended he was somewhere else. Still he couldn’t deny that this felt amazing.

     At some point Calvin thought that she had pulled out another condom but then she started inflating it with her mouth to reveal a long red balloon. With him still inside her she laughed and whacked his face with the long red plastic noodle. He cringed as the ballon swatted him in the face several times. She tried twisting it into a balloon animal but it popped not long into the attempt so instead she just rode him harder.

     As he slowly opened his eyes he noticed that he had unconsciously become more enthusiastic on his end. A horrible realization crept into his head. Here was having sex with the woman dressed as his worst fears and it was easily the greatest sex of his life.

     He had already finished twice but he got the impression that Sunny had finished herself after she pulled out a fake jar of peanuts and moaned with ecstasy as she opened the can and polka dotted snakes made of springs shot out. Afterwards he had white and red face paint smeared all over his body. Sunny’s head was on his panting chest, she had taken her blue wig off. He couldn’t prevent the tremble of fear he felt when he looked at Sunny’s painted clown face but thankfully the pleasure he felt was stronger.

     “ My God Sunny, my God. That was insane.”

     “You can go back to calling me Allison now,” she smiled looking into his eyes.

     “ Tonight was incredible. I had a really great time,” he returned her smile.

     “ Me too. I was hoping maybe we could do this again sometime?”

     “ Definitely,” even though the back of his mind was screaming for him to run away somehow he didn’t.

     Thus it became their routine. Each time they met up for a date, Calvin would smile and bury the feelings of primal terror and love battling within him. Aside from the clown sex, their dates weren’t anything too wild. They would, watch a movie, go bowling or cook a new type of food.  Still with each date, the two grew happier and closer together.

     During their more intimate moments, she would take a few minutes to turn into Sunny and they’d resume their wild clown on man sex. If they went to Calvin’s place Allison was always sure to bring a backpack full of her Sunny costume. He didn’t want to risk ruining the great times he had with her so he made sure to never let it slip that he had nightmares about scary sexual clowns.

     Two months into this arrangement, Calvin and Allison examined where there relationship was. Calvin couldn’t remember ever feeling this way about someone. She was a smart, funny woman with a wild sex drive and he knew that he was lucky to have her. They had both developed such strong feelings for one another that they had talked it over and decided to become committed but she had one non-negotiable condition.

     “I cant see my self long term with anyone who doesn’t dress up like a clown for sex too.  If we’re really going to go for a long term relationship, you have to buy your own clown costume.”

     Once he pulled himself together after nearly fainting on the spot, he and Allison walked to the most local costume store. The store was empty except for the an older gentlemen behind the cashier who bore an uncanny resemblance to John Waters. He felt uncomfortable browsing through half a dozen Bozo, Joker and Pennywise costumes but preserved nerves be damned.

     Eventually Allison helped him find the right clown style for himself. They settled on a rainbow afro wig, standard blue, white and red face paint, big yellow pants with red stripes and large floppy blue shoes. To complete the outfit, Allison placed a big red clown nose made out of foam over his nose.

     His now girlfriend was all too excited to introduce his new clown persona, so the very next night Calvin swallowed his fears yet again. He went into Allison’s bathroom with his backpack full of clown clothes and began the transformation. Fifteen minutes later, Calvin stepped out of the bathroom. He was greeted by Sunny the Clown, already changed back in her sexy makeup and rainbow sleeves. He had the rainbow wig on, a white painted face with blue in the eyes and red around the mouth. His nose had the foam red nose in front of it and the only other thing he wore was his big yellow clown pants that were already starting to fall down.

     “Ahhh! I love it!! Sunny squeed jumping up and down with excitement before running over to him and wrapping her striped arms around his bare chest.

     Looking at himself in the mirror across from her. He couldn’t recognize himself. In his mind he only saw his reflection laughing an uncontrollable nasal laughter. Soon the laughing face of his reflection morphed into something with needle sharp teeth and murder in his eyes. 

     “Soooo? Whats your clown name handsome?”

      “How does Flip Flop the Clown sound?”

      “Ooooohlala I can dig it. Pleased to meetcha Flip Flop,” the sexy scary clown pulled him close until both of their big red noses were touching.

     Flip Flop thought that the sex before had been great but this flat out changed his life. Naked and looking ridiculous, he never felt more alive as he vigorously kissed Sunny, smearing their makeup on one another until their faces were a swirling mess of vibrant colors. Every time Flip Flop kissed and caressed a different part of Sunny’s naked clown body, she would blow into a kazoo that buzzed increasingly louder and louder.

     Flip Flop felt like he was outside his own body and couldn’t look away at the sight of himself dressed like a clown making love to this ravishing clown girl. Flip Flop sprayed a bottle of seltzer water on Sunny before she reached beneath her bed and flung a banana cream pie into his ugly clown face. Sunny’s stereo continued to blast circus music as she ran to her bedroom dresser and pulled out a whoopee cushion.

     Soon she was on top of him again with the inflated whoopee cushion beneath his back. As she rode him harder and harder the whoopee cushion made a sputtering farting sound. Normally he would find all of this terrifying and awkward but God help him at that moment it felt like the funniest, sexiest thing in the world.

     “Fuck yeah, that’s it Flip Flop you dirty pervert clown. Oh God, now say ‘fuck you, you stupid fucking clown!’”

     “Fuck you, you stupid fucking clown!”

     “Yes! Yes!”

     Afterwards with the whoopee cushion and pies spent, Allison had removed her Sunny gear and was snuggled up on Calvin. He wrapped his arm around her and pulled her close. He was careful that he kept his rainbow wig and red nose on.

     “You can take that off now you know,” Allison smiled lovingly at him.

     “Just a little longer,” Calvin said in a monotone voice staring blankly at the ceiling.

     The fantastic sex didn’t prevent Calvin’s phobia of clown’s from disappearing. Almost every night Calvin had dreams of being chased by a tiny car full of terrifying monster clowns laughing a high pitched giggle as they chased and tried to eat him. Soon almost every morning Calvin was waking up to the sound of his own screams. To his utter astonishment, following his screams he almost always found himself with an erection.

     Then one day everything changed. To his growing horror, Calvin realized revelation that he wanted more. His feelings for Allison hadn't changed and he still wanted her but now even her  sexiest moves as Sunny weren't enough for him. Calvin had become addicted.  Everywhere he walked he couldn't stop seeing ordinary people in the street as clowns having sex with one another.

     At the convenience store where he bought his coffee every morning, the cashier had turned into Clarabell the Clown. Clarabell winked and asked if Sunny’s clown car had room for one more. Calvin blinked and realized that the cashier was just giving him change. During his lunch break, he walked past a businesswoman talking on her cellphone while two construction men were working nearby. A chorus of squawking clown horns boomed inside Calvin’s head. When he turned around he saw the woman and construction workers had been replaced by the twin clowns Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum getting it on with Grandma the Clown.

     Horny clowns were everywhere. Calvin started screaming.

     He was losing control of himself and the only thing that scared him more was that he didn’t care. Night after night he tried to find as much clown porn on the internet as he could but surprisingly there was a scarce amount.

     Calvin knew he that his obsession was getting worse too. Soon he began searching the Internet for when the circus was coming to Philadelphia. Surely they must have some girl clowns? They’d see that he was a kindred spirit and they could live out the exciting, dangerous life of a clown affair. Unfortunately for Calvin, the circus had just wrapped up a two night performance in Philadelphia.

     Missing the circus was soon going to be the least of his problems. Life was about to get much worse for Calvin. One day he walked over to Allison’s apartment and saw her waiting for him there. Maybe it was the wet mascara running down her face or the venom in her eyes but somehow Calvin knew that she wasn’t happy.

     “I don't know what to say. I’m so furious with you you son of a bitch,” Allison said through her gritted teeth.

     “ Whats the matter, honey?”

     “Screw you, you don’t get to call me that. I know what you did. I have the screenshots.”

     She pulled out her smartphone from her pocket. On the screen was a screenshot of a profile from the dating app Shpongle that had Calvin dressed up as Flip Flop the clown without a shirt on. The profile read ‘Flip Flop’ and the bio wrote: “Just looking for a lady clown to fool around with. Yes this is for real.”

     “Where did you get that?”

     “ My friend Rachel saw it when she was on Shpongle and she thought she recognized you. Even when she said the name “Flip Flop” I felt sick but I told her she was wrong. Good thing she saved the screenshot. I fucking loved you Calvin, how could you do this to me?!”

     “Exactly, I love you too! None of that means anything! Those girls aren’t the clown that I fell in love with!”

     Allison’s face looked flabbergasted for a moment before switching back to rage. She clenched her fists and her small body was shaking, Calvin had never seen her this angry before.

     “It’s over you bastard!” The last word broke out into a sob as she slammed the door and ran up that stairs.

     Calvin must have rang her buzzer and tried calling her phone a couple dozen times but the same results every time; no answer. The person he cared about the most was heartbroken and hurt in a way that could impact how she had relationships for the rest of her life. He had thrown away the best thing that had ever happened to him and worst of all now he had no one to have clown sex with.

     With his relationship to Allison destroyed, Calvin entered into a deep depression.  He didn’t see clowns everywhere he went now. Everyone now looked like the same dull human shaped blob. Calvin went to work, ate and slept all on autopilot. He let his beard grow and stopped taking care of himself. All his friends and family knew was that Allison had broken up with him because he cheated on her or something. They tried to help him back on his feet but he didn’t want to be helped.

     At night, as he lay on his bed unable to sleep he looked over to the closet. Inside the Flip Flop costume lay dormant but continued to silently torment him. Every night he could hear the high pitched giggling of clowns coming from behind his closet door. In his head he fought with himself over what to do with the Flip Flop costume. Half of him wanted to burn it, throw it away, never look at it ever again. The other half didn’t want to do any of that.

     Days passed and all Calvin could do was go to work and try to get by. After much discipline along with some trial and error, Calvin gradually stopped needing to wear the rainbow wig and red nose to get himself off. Four months after Allison broke up with him, Calvin was slowly putting his life back together. He was doing better at work, hanging out with his friends and family and doing things that made him happy.

     Calvin still missed Allison and regretted how things had ended but he had come to accept that his relationship with Allison was over and it was time to move on. When he was comfortable enough to date again he went back on Cherub. A few days of matching up with a handful of girls and somewhat flirty conversations, Calvin set up a date with this girl who seemed pretty cool named Monica.

     Monica wore dark rimmed glasses, had red hair and worked as a pharmacist.   had an interest in being a theatre arts major and she had done improv in college but blushed when she reminisced about it as she thought she wasn’t very good. Calvin thought it was cute how she tried to hide her Mid-Western accent  to sound more businesslike. He smiled as he learned of her plans to run in an upcoming 5K marathon and to someday visit her dream destination of Paris, France.

     She laughed at his dumb jokes and after a couple more drinks they were both pawing at each other. Their first night together was nice, Calvin felt a huge sense of relief to normally hook up with someone after months of having to get dressed up before hand. Then one night when they were at Monica’s apartment and her roommates were gone for the weekend, Monica leaned in close and whispered into Calvin’s ear.

     “I’ve got a surprise for you tonight. It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a while now. Just promise me you wont laugh.”

     “Er, I promise?” Calvin didn’t like where this was going at all.

     “Be right back,” Monica winked and went to her bedroom and closed the door behind her.

     There is a feeling that can only be said in French but Calvin couldn’t remember what is was called. His felt the familiar pounding of his nervous heart.

     “God help me,” Calvin thought. “If she comes out dressed as a clown I am going to shit a brick.”

     Calvin wasn't sure what to expect. He suddenly felt like the walls were closing in. He nervously ate some of the croissant she had out for him. He was reaching for his second cookie when Monica’s bedroom door open and music filled her apartment. It was the sound of an accordion that made Calvin think of the Eiffel tour, baguettes and wine.

     A long slender leg wrapped in black tights stepped out from behind Monica’s bedroom door. Soon after, Monica sprung out from behind the door. The accordion music continued Monica skipped around her living room. She was wearing black skin tight suspenders on top of a black and white striped shirt and two white gloves on her hands. Monica had painted her face white with two red dots on her cheeks and red lipstick on her lips. She had tied her hair into a braid and on top of her head she wore one of those flat black French hats. Calvin thought they were called berets.

     After a few seconds of this the music stopped and Monica put her hand on the wall behind her as she leaned back and seductively looked at Calvin. She didn’t say anything but Calvin got the message.

     After all, she was a mime. 

 

THE END

Coloring Time
​
 By Paul Levine



       I get a coloring book in the mail from my friend, Phil.  His wife, an artist, has put together a book of mosaics.

     It’s like a nursing home thing, I think.  Something to do between naps.
     When I start my first picture, it feels good because I don’t have to think.  I just have to select the colored pencils I want and fill in the design.  It’s like a tranquilizer.  It’s also the first thing I have accomplished in a long time. 
     As I fill in the pattern, I feel I finally have some control.  There is no one to second-guess my choice of color.  No one to ask me why I used light blue there or pink somewhere else.  No one to say, “I wouldn’t think you would have used so much orange.   What made you do that?”
     I concentrate on a part of the design on the bottom of the page, and I think about how I was once so capable and able to do the things a man can do.   My thoughts fill the room like a balloon inflating enough to explode. 
     After a while, I stop coloring and hold the coloring book up, looking at the unfinished mosaic, and realize that what I am doing is nothing but time.  Time that needs to be filled in.  Just like the outline of the design.  Something to keep my mind from the fear that is increasing.  I just don’t know how long. 

      I buy my second coloring book at the supermarket.  There is a picture of a cat on the cover of the book.  The cashier holds it up to get a closer look and says, “I love cats.”
     I hurry home and open the book, and find the page I want to color.  The picture I pick has nothing to do with a cat.  It is, instead, of a man looking out at the ocean from a desk in his house by the sea.  In my mind, I become the man in the picture.  I wonder how all the things that have happened to me have made me end up looking out at the sea.  
     As I color, my mind wanders.  It is almost as if I am in a dream, and I wonder if my mother and father and sister are in the next room.  I am not sure why I don’t know these things, so I just stare at the water as I color in the blue, green sea. 
     Looking out at the ocean, I know I have become a lesser person.  The thing that happens when you become old.   Finally there is a breeze and the sun is warm and things are better, until I realize I am not the man in the picture.  I am only coloring a drawing.   So I stare at the sky as I pick a shade of blue with some gray.  It is no longer a matter of right or wrong.


     The last coloring book I buy is about Paris.  I buy it along with markers instead of coloring pencils.  On the cover are buildings along the Seine.  I am attracted to the book because I think it will bring back memories of the last time my wife and I went to Paris twenty years ago.  
     It had been cloudy and rainy most of the long weekend we were there, but the colors of the city were still vibrant.  I am excited to look at the pictures, but when I sit down at home, I am not able to pick any colors, and I wonder if it is because it had been so gray in Paris.  That feeling is holding me back even though the pictures are plentiful and I have so many markers to choose from.
     It is then I realize that more than anything, the markers are holding me back.  That it could be something as simple as that.  That they are too permanent and leave no room for error.  And once used, can’t be changed.  And instead become like the glaring mistakes I have made in my life. 


      It is after not being able to color the Paris pictures, though, that I give up on coloring books and go back to the reading I had been doing.  My sleeping soon becomes worse.
     I sit in the dark living room and think about what has happened in my life and all that is lost now.  I listen for sounds—any sounds—the train in the night a half mile away, the cars on the Thruway, a noise down the street.
     I think of what I would look like in a coloring book.  A man sitting on a couch at night.  I think that if I had such a coloring book with that picture, I would color the background black because it is dark.  I think of that man in the picture closing his eyes and being able to see colors.  In fact, he can see all the things he can’t see with them opened.  He then sees the pictures of his past.  And it is in this way that he is able to rest his mind, and more than that, get through the night.

THE HEART OF SPRING

By William Butler Yeats

A very old man, whose face was almost as fleshless as the foot of a bird, sat meditating upon the rocky shore of the flat and hazel-covered isle which fills the widest part of the Lough Gill. A russet-faced boy of seventeen years sat by his side, watching the swallows dipping for flies in the still water. The old man was dressed in threadbare blue velvet, and the boy wore a frieze coat and a blue cap, and had about his neck a rosary of blue beads. Behind the two, and half hidden by trees, was a little monastery. It had been burned down a long while before by sacrilegious men of the Queen's party, but had been roofed anew with rushes by the boy, that the old man might find shelter in his last days. He had not set his spade, however, into the garden about it, and the lilies and the roses of the monks had spread out until their confused luxuriancy met and mingled with the narrowing circle of the fern. Beyond the lilies and the roses the ferns were so deep that a child walking among them would be hidden from sight, even though he stood upon his toes; and beyond the fern rose many hazels and small oak trees.

'Master,' said the boy, 'this long fasting, and the labour of beckoning after nightfall with your rod of quicken wood to the beings who dwell in the waters and among the hazels and oak-trees, is too much for your strength. Rest from all this labour for a little, for your hand seemed more heavy upon my shoulder and your feet less steady under you today than I have known them. Men say that you are older than the eagles, and yet you will not seek the rest that belongs to age.' He spoke in an eager, impulsive way, as though his heart were in the words and thoughts of the moment; and the old man answered slowly and deliberately, as though his heart were in distant days and distant deeds.

'I will tell you why I have not been able to rest,' he said. 'It is right that you should know, for you have served me faithfully these five years and more, and even with affection, taking away thereby a little of the doom of loneliness which always falls upon the wise. Now, too, that the end of my labour and the triumph of my hopes is at hand, it is the more needful for you to have this knowledge.'

'Master, do not think that I would question you. It is for me to keep the fire alight, and the thatch close against the rain, and strong, lest the wind blow it among the trees; and it is for me to take the heavy books from the shelves, and to lift from its corner the great painted roll with the names of the Sidhe, and to possess the while an incurious and reverent heart, for right well I know that God has made out of His abundance a separate wisdom for everything which lives, and to do these things is my wisdom.'

'You are afraid,' said the old man, and his eyes shone with a momentary anger.

'Sometimes at night,' said the boy, 'when you are reading, with the rod of quicken wood in your hand, I look out of the door and see, now a great grey man driving swine among the hazels, and now many little people in red caps who come out of the lake driving little white cows before them. I do not fear these little people so much as the grey man; for, when they come near the house, they milk the cows, and they drink the frothing milk, and begin to dance; and I know there is good in the heart that loves dancing; but I fear them for all that. And I fear the tall white-armed ladies who come out of the air, and move slowly hither and thither, crowning themselves with the roses or with the lilies, and shaking about their living hair, which moves, for so I have heard them tell each other, with the motion of their thoughts, now spreading out and now gathering close to their heads. They have mild, beautiful faces, but, Aengus, son of Forbis, I fear all these beings, I fear the people of Sidhe, and I fear the art which draws them about us.'

'Why,' said the old man, 'do you fear the ancient gods who made the spears of your father's fathers to be stout in battle, and the little people who came at night from the depth of the lakes and sang among the crickets upon their hearths? And in our evil day they still watch over the loveliness of the earth. But I must tell you why I have fasted and laboured when others would sink into the sleep of age, for without your help once more I shall have fasted and laboured to no good end. When you have done for me this last thing, you may go and build your cottage and till your fields, and take some girl to wife, and forget the ancient gods. I have saved all the gold and silver pieces that were given to me by earls and knights and squires for keeping them from the evil eye and from the love-weaving enchantments of witches, and by earls' and knights' and squires' ladies for keeping the people of the Sidhe from making the udders of their cattle fall dry, and taking the butter from their churns. I have saved it all for the day when my work should be at an end, and now that the end is at hand you shall not lack for gold and silver pieces enough to make strong the roof-tree of your cottage and to keep cellar and larder full. I have sought through all my life to find the secret of life. I was not happy in my youth, for I knew that it would pass; and I was not happy in my manhood, for I knew that age was coming; and so I gave myself, in youth and manhood and age, to the search for the Great Secret. I longed for a life whose abundance would fill centuries, I scorned the life of fourscore winters. I would be--nay, I will be!--like the Ancient Gods of the land. I read in my youth, in a Hebrew manuscript I found in a Spanish monastery, that there is a moment after the Sun has entered the Ram and before he has passed the Lion, which trembles with the Song of the Immortal Powers, and that whosoever finds this moment and listens to the Song shall become like the Immortal Powers themselves; I came back to Ireland and asked the fairy men, and the cow-doctors, if they knew when this moment was; but though all had heard of it, there was none could find the moment upon the hour-glass. So I gave myself to magic, and spent my life in fasting and in labour that I might bring the Gods and the Fairies to my side; and now at last one of the Fairies has told me that the moment is at hand. One, who wore a red cap and whose lips were white with the froth of the new milk, whispered it into my ear. Tomorrow, a little before the close of the first hour after dawn, I shall find the moment, and then I will go away to a southern land and build myself a palace of white marble amid orange trees, and gather the brave and the beautiful about me, and enter into the eternal kingdom of my youth. But, that I may hear the whole Song, I was told by the little fellow with the froth of the new milk on his lips, that you must bring great masses of green boughs and pile them about the door and the window of my room; and you must put fresh green rushes upon the floor, and cover the table and the rushes with the roses and the lilies of the monks. You must do this tonight, and in the morning at the end of the first hour after dawn, you must come and find me.'

'Will you be quite young then?' said the boy.

'I will be as young then as you are, but now I am still old and tired, and you must help me to my chair and to my books.'

When the boy had left Aengus son of Forbis in his room, and had lighted the lamp which, by some contrivance of the wizard's, gave forth a sweet odour as of strange flowers, he went into the wood and began cutting green boughs from the hazels, and great bundles of rushes from the western border of the isle, where the small rocks gave place to gently sloping sand and clay. It was nightfall before he had cut enough for his purpose, and well-nigh midnight before he had carried the last bundle to its place, and gone back for the roses and the lilies. It was one of those warm, beautiful nights when everything seems carved of precious stones. Sleuth Wood away to the south looked as though cut out of green beryl, and the waters that mirrored them shone like pale opal. The roses he was gathering were like glowing rubies, and the lilies had the dull lustre of pearl. Everything had taken upon itself the look of something imperishable, except a glow-worm, whose faint flame burnt on steadily among the shadows, moving slowly hither and thither, the only thing that seemed alive, the only thing that seemed perishable as mortal hope. The boy gathered a great armful of roses and lilies, and thrusting the glow-worm among their pearl and ruby, carried them into the room, where the old man sat in a half-slumber. He laid armful after armful upon the floor and above the table, and then, gently closing the door, threw himself upon his bed of rushes, to dream of a peaceful manhood with his chosen wife at his side, and the laughter of children in his ears. At dawn he rose, and went down to the edge of the lake, taking the hour-glass with him. He put some bread and a flask of wine in the boat, that his master might not lack food at the outset of his journey, and then sat down to wait until the hour from dawn had gone by. Gradually the birds began to sing, and when the last grains of sand were falling, everything suddenly seemed to overflow with their music. It was the most beautiful and living moment of the year; one could listen to the spring's heart beating in it. He got up and went to find his master. The green boughs filled the door, and he had to make a way through them. When he entered the room the sunlight was falling in flickering circles on floor and walls and table, and everything was full of soft green shadows. But the old man sat clasping a mass of roses and lilies in his arms, and with his head sunk upon his breast. On the table, at his left hand, was a leather wallet full of gold and silver pieces, as for a journey, and at his right hand was a long staff. The boy touched him and he did not move. He lifted the hands but they were quite cold, and they fell heavily.

'It were better for him,' said the lad, 'to have told his beads and said his prayers like another, and not to have spent his days in seeking amongst the Immortal Powers what he could have found in his own deeds and days had he willed. Ah, yes, it were better to have said his prayers and kissed his beads!' He looked at the threadbare blue velvet, and he saw it was covered with the pollen of the flowers, and while he was looking at it a thrush, who had alighted among the boughs that were piled against the window, began to sing.

THE PLAQUE

By Kate Whitehead



Aileen stands in the upstairs bedroom of the holiday home sensing subtle traces of him a faint sharp aroma of old spice a musky hint of pipe tobacco. Dazzled by the surprise of another days sunshine she peers down at the historical tableau kids jumping from the high stone harbour walls catapulting magically through space.
She reaches into the musty wardrobe for a pinstriped dress belted at the waist pats her close coiled curls and applies the peachy orange lipstick. Strapped into beige high heeled sandals she navigates the cobbles steps lightly and confidently down the hill greeting familiar faces with a casual nod.
If he were here today she thinks we would walk together mad dogs in the noonday sun marvelling in unison at the fantastic summer that reminds of us 1976. In her solo state, this unexpected burst of blue brilliance only accentuates her sense of loss twisted under the harsh glare.
Her foundation trickles down her right cheek melting in the brightest sun of the day. She's tempted to retreat into the cool cavern but doggedly continues her weekly constitutional climbing the haphazard steps breathlessly gulping at the still salt air.
Aileen rests for a moment at the top scowls disapprovingly at the floating detritus discarded takeaway boxes tangled in the early brambles. Her scowl falls into a small self-congratulatory smile as she admires the deceptively distant elegant grey contours of the holiday home sandwiched proudly in the middle of the granite.
Huddled at one end of the splintered brown bench with the missing slat a blonde woman sits clutching a small notebook.
"Sorry should I move," she asks half grimacing half-smiling Aileen can’t be sure.
"No there’s more than enough room for the two of us” Aileen drawls authoritatively.
The blonde woman scours her small trove of uncontroversial chit chat talks about the weather for the tenth time that morning.
She’s called Alice and she lives in the village all year round at the top of the hill.
Aileen half listens to Alice mulling over shards of a memory of him.
“Oh just look at that time I'm late for lunch,” Aileen exclaims slicing into Alice’s monologue about autumn in the village.
Standing up dizzily Aileen turns and notices it larger, bolder, golder recently screwed on the second plaque .below her husbands.
Aileen trembles shocked and enraged at the blatant unbelievable audacity of this thing that’s appeared overnight.
She spits the words at Alice
“They can't’ do this not without my permission this bench is ours we paid 500 pounds to put the plaque there in his memory because .he loved the village so much.”
“I need to talk to someone about this someone who knows I need an explanation.”
"So you own the bench do you Alice mutters indignantly resentful at being privy to such a morbidly intricate drama.
“Goodbye then enjoys your day” Aileen growls slowly regaining her starchy composure.
Alice observes Aileen cautious descent back down the steps and over to the other side of the harbour paralysed by an overpowering sense of gloom. She raises reluctantly from the bench her daily dose of calm contaminated by this morbid nature of the revelation...
Aileen sits on a stool in her porch, unstraps her beige high heels shuts her eyes and imbibes the familiar scent dusty tomato plants mingled with the spicy cinnamon of her tiny purple orchids. Suffused
She can't decide will it be lunch first then the stern phone call to the woman at the chapel who knows everything to get to the bottom of the troubling matter of the second plaque.
After a single glass of merlot suffused with transient drowsy contentment, she wistfully recalls her husband's easy-going good nature and lets it go the matter of the second plaque. His words chime in her head gently mocking.
"Well, what harm can it do two plaques on the bench? I'm happy to be with the other fellow anyway”
It's the end of her solo summer sojourn in the holiday home drifting through the huge rooms relieved when the huge sun sinks leaving her shrouded In a comforting twilight blanket. She watches the evening news tut-tutting at the relentless stupidity of it all crochets for the grandchildren then slides gratefully under the lavender-scented sheets.
Alice seeks out a new bench for her morning calm the following day on the other side of the harbour. It is slightly concealed by overhanging branches and next to an overflowing litter bin buzzing with flies. If she twists her head slightly to the right she can see the golden yellow contours of her own home high up above the harbour. She reaches behind her runs her hands along with the rough wood relieved to find it unadorned seized by an unexpected feeling of gratitude that time hasn’t outsmarted her yet.

Kate's short fiction often has a strong sense of place. It has been published in fanzines,
online literary journals and the Print Magazines Confluence and Impspired.

What Were We Thinking? Looking Back on Love Story

By Angela Camack


Hearing a snippet of Francis Lai’s glurgy theme for the movie Love Story, I remembered the excitement created by the book by Erich Segal and the movie, released simultaneously in 1970. The works were incredibly popular and had an effect on our culture that resonated long after the publication and premiere. The movie furthered the careers of Ali McGraw and Ryan O’Neal, who played Jennifer and Oliver. The word “preppy,” used to describe snobbish, rich WASPS, first appeared in the book and movie. When asked about the derivation of the word, however, Segal said it came from “preposterous” (Birnbach.) Starting in 1970, after years of obscurity, Jennifer rose to the top of lists of most popular names for baby girls, staying at the top for 14 years (Gerson). Droves of young women began wearing long, center-parted hair and horn-rimmed glasses.
Love Story is also a reminder of the power of stories to recreate a time and place, and to demonstrate the ideas and social context of the times in which the stories took place. Love Story shows how men and women interacted during the years when the second wave of feminism was beginning to develop. Considering the problems with gender roles that the work demonstrates, it is surprising how many people, especially women, fell under its spell. However appealing Jenny and Oliver appear together, they are not a good example for modern relationships.
The plot of the book and movie are almost identical. Jennifer Cavilleri and Oliver” Preppy” Barrett IV meet cute at the Vassar Library. A Harvard student and hockey player, he is the rich, confident son of a family that has given a great deal of money to Harvard over the years. She is a baker’s daughter, a gifted Vassar music who is brilliant, beautiful and cheerfully foul-mouthed. They fall in love and decide to marry, even though Oliver’s father disapproves of the relationship
and asks that they wait a year to be sure their marriage is wise. Oliver refuses to wait, and his father cuts off all financial support for Oliver’s entry into Harvard Law School. Jenny gets a teaching job, and they suffer in genteel poverty until he gets a job with a New York City law firm and the money rolls in again. Their idyll ends when Jenny dies of leukemia and Oliver is left alone with his memories.
The story intends to give us a romantic view of love and sacrifice, of a marriage between two people who will be together despite obstacles. What we have, however, is a story where a man has a woman who will be what he needs at any point in his life. At first Jenny is a spirited, gifted musician who initially appeals to Oliver because she is honest to a fault and not overwhelmed by his money and social status. She changes to a woman who gives up her dreams to support both of them, and finally to a wife and prospective mother.
When we meet Jenny, she is a serious music scholar whose relationship with Oliver is both loving and challenging, as she is not the type of woman his family and social station would predict he would marry. In her senior year she gets a prestigious scholarship to study music in Paris. When graduation nears, Jenny tells Oliver of her plans to study in Paris, saying that she did not think two people of such different situations in life could have a future after school ends. Oliver is desperate for her to stay with him. He proposes, and Jenny immediately jettisons her plans and marries him. She gets a job as a teacher to support them.
Oliver accepts her sacrifice as a given. He works during the summer and holidays, but otherwise devotes his time to his law studies. At no time do either of them consider a way to accommodate both of their plans. Jenny could have gone to Paris for a year, furthering her studies and appeasing Oliver’s father. Oliver could have worked during the school year as well, perhaps taking more than three years to complete his degree but allowing Jenny time to pursue her music.
Jenny could have gone to music school in Boston or tried to get performing opportunities. But she has moved into the second phase of their relationship, where she is the supportive wife.
Oliver notes that Jenny could have kept up with her music, but “she came home from Shady Lane School exhausted, and there was still dinner to prepare” (Segal). Apparently intelligent, hockey-playing Oliver was unable to see to his own dinner.
Perhaps this approach is reading more into the situation than Segal intended, but why does Jenny come home from work exhausted? Teaching is demanding work, but a young, healthy woman (which Jenny was at the time) should have enough energy to maintain what was her life’s passion. Is the strain of this loss contributing to her fatigue? Perhaps her tiredness is due to the appearance of the disease which will become terminal. Either scenario shows that Oliver is unaware of her situation. She is a device, not a woman with her own needs.
Another incident that demonstrates that their relationship is based on her recognition of his needs is the argument that gives rise to the work’s famous quote. Jenny telephones Oliver’s father to decline an invitation to his birthday party but takes it upon herself to assure him that Oliver does loves him. Oliver becomes furious and jerks the telephone from her hand. She runs out of their house, coatless, into the cold night. He is immediately sorry and searches the neighborhood for her. He comes home to find her on their front porch, shivering, wet and barely able to speak. She has forgotten her key and is locked out. He starts to apologize but Jenny stops him, saying that “love means never having to say you’re sorry.”
This is an easy place for the situation to end for Oliver, but not in any real relationship. Of course, you have to say you’re sorry. How else can you take responsibility for your actions and begin to deal with difficulties in a relationship? This takes effort on both sides, which is harder than ignoring issues and moving on.
Once Oliver gets an excellent job and they go to New York, Jenny moves into the next phase, being the loving wife and mother. In the movie Oliver says he “offered to send Jenny to Julliard” (Hiller), but she prefers to concentrate on having a baby. We realize at this point that Jenny is quite isolated as well as choosing to be separated from her music. Oliver notes that their friends didn’t expect to socialize with them during his law school years, as their lack of money would make it hard for them to participate. Once his has a job, people “find them again.” (Segal) However, Jenny has no interest in social occasions, being bored with preppies, and seems to have no friends of her own. Her life revolves around keeping house and awaiting a baby.
However, no baby comes. Both Oliver and Jenny are evaluated to determine if there are medical reasons for the failure to conceive. Oliver gets a clean bill of health. He assures himself that Jenny is relieved that the problem for their lack of success does not lie with him. Why is he so sure that she is relieved that she is the one responsible for the inability to have the thing she most desires?
Jenny is indeed the one unable to have a baby. Blood tests reveal she has leukemia. The doctor discussed the diagnosis with Oliver, and he decides to spare her the knowledge of her illness. Even in this critical time in her life Jenny has no agency of her own.
She does find out, as her condition worsens, and she confronts her doctor. Despite treatment she is hospitalized for a final time, succumbing to “Ali McGraw’s Disease – a medical condition where you grow more beautiful until you die” (Ebert). At her bedside, Oliver expresses remorse that Jenny has given so much to their marriage, only to have her absolve him. “Screw Paris. Screw all the things you think you stole from me” (Segal). Again, he is relieved of any need to regret his actions.
Love Story continues to be read and seen fifty years after its debut. One hopes that, after years of changes in the status of women both in relationships and the workplace, Jenny’s and Oliver’s marriage is not seen as something to emulate. Even as early as 1972, in the movie What’s Up Doc? Barbra Streisand’s character bats her eyes and says to Ryan O’Neal’s character, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry. He responds, “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard,” (IMDB quotes).
But the basic premise of the story is valid. Love involves a willingness to sacrifice and take risks. Erich Segal’s daughter Francesca noted that at the time it was released Love Story was a testament to the power of love at a time when the country was experiencing the dislocations of the Vietnam War controversy and the Civil Rights struggles (Blair). It is reasonable that people are still comforted by a story of love that survives obstacles. Even the sentimentality is not so terrible. Who doesn’t like a good, sloppy cry occasionally? But viewers and readers need to see Love Story as a reflection of its time and an opportunity to see how gender roles were and how they have changed.
​
Works Cited
Birnbach, Lisa. The Official Preppy Handbook. New York: Workman Publishing, 1980.
Blair, Elizabeth. (2020, December 20). Successful, Sentimental and Satirized, Love Story
Celebrates 50th Anniversary. NPR. www.npr.org
Ebert, Roger. Ebert’s Bigger Little Move Glossary. Kansas City, MO: Andrews McMeel
Publishing, 1999.
Gershon, Jen. (2015, January 15). The Jennifer Epidemic: How the Spiking Popularity of Different
Baby Names Cycle Like Genetic Drift. NPR. www.npr.org
IMDB What’s Up, Doc. IMDB. www.imdb.com
Hiller, Arthur. Love Story. Screenplay by Erich Segal. Paramount Pictures. 1970
Segal, Erich. Love Story. New York: William Morrow, 2020.

The Last Flightless Man
by
Teresa Ann Frazee
On the edge of sleep, the threshold of consciousness surrendered to the betrayal of reality. In this delusion, where nightly, logic eluded him, he could see his breath pierce the cold air. Wind-borne, soaring weightlessly across the darkness of the sky, sensations of complete euphoria and liberation overcame him. As he flew, only the sound of his expansive beating wings, broke the silence. He felt powerful. It was the kind of power bestowed only on gods and kings. Beneath the gleaming stars, with a lawless pace, he merged into the dense atmosphere. In suspended choreography, drifting like a dandelion gone to seed, a cloud’s ghostly mist, touched his skin, as he glided with peaceful buoyancy over the wilderness of the half imagined. The ground below was difficult to define, reminiscent of a timeworn photograph in rapid deterioration. He seemed to recognize the wooded area but could never quite recall. With sudden surprise, as though released from a trance, he plummeted between the trees and began to spin across unused time, downward to the black earth, which was littered with ridges of snow, that sparkled like sugar granules. He gently landed in a heap of pine needles tipped with frost. Then the dream slowly rippled into dark collapse.
Jay Singer's dream life was not so different than anyone else's. Nonetheless, it did follow an invariable pattern. It was strange to think he scarcely slept through a night without this dream. Jay, having never been dependent on the reliability of an alarm clock to awaken him, woke at daybreak, with a feather pillow under his head, nestled in the smallest bearable size bed. Not that Jay couldn't afford a larger bed. For a man of merely twenty years, he could, as he had a reputable position as President and CEO of the Nature Center in town, but he felt cozy. His eyes were half-closed. Slowly regaining his faculties, he moved his head from side to side and stretched out his neck. Jay was angry. It was the same every morning. " I know he's out there," he thought. "Damn cat!" Samson, the neighbor's cat, who lived across the hall, could mostly be found at Jay’s front door. It occurred far too consistently to be a matter of mere chance. Jay cringed at the thought of this creature with hostile yellow eyes and the hatred lingered even after the animal left his self-appointed post, if only for a few minutes a day.

“Persistent little bastard,” Jay mumbled.

He knew all too well, the crouching shadow of Samson's ill formed figure was behind the door. He envisioned menacing bared fangs, which reflected the function of an insatiable carnivore. Jay could hear the scratching of Samson's sharp claws and his predatory hissing. “He's stalking me. His constant preoccupation with me is unnerving,” Jay thought, “Wretched animal. I loathe its kind.” Samson was aware he caused Jay grief. No doubt, Samson, with all his heathen heart, got a particular thrill out of such an achievement. Jay’s efforts to persuade Samson’s attention elsewhere, did little good. And at times, it was nearly impossible for Jay to remain within confines of his moral code, by not testing the limits of Samson's mortality. Surely, without any hesitation, Jay could honestly say, he had no sentimental attachment with the fate of this monstrous beast.

As Jay sat at the edge of the bed, he focused his eyes on the sliding glass door, which led to the balcony on the 19th floor of his high-rise apartment. He smiled at the sight of several cooing pigeons, that had settled to roost. The iridescent mosaic of constantly shifting shades of emerald green flecked with gold, around their wings, dazzled in the sunlight. Jay redirected his thoughts to his brother Kevin, who was ten years older than him and to this day, his best friend. Through his lifetime he had plenty of casual acquaintances but they never materialized into close friends, not like his brother. Kevin was born with a natural gift. As children, Kevin could weave a tale so compelling, filling little Jay’s head with stories, that kept Jay at the edge of his seat. With such a power to charm, he would convince his baby brother, of their validity. In the early days, there was a readiness to believe in the impossibilities of the unknown.

Jay rose and headed to the kitchen, threw back his head to swallow a half a glass of water. He made no boast of having the will power to eat well. It came very easily for him to make healthy choices. His breakfast was light, consisting of sunflower seeds and dried fruit. After breakfast Jay showered. With self delight, he softly whistled a catchy little melody. As the day grew and Jay finished his early morning routine, a knock on the front door startled him. Jay opened the door and was surprised to see his brother Kevin, standing there next to the ever vigilant Samson.

“Hey Kev, come on in!” Samson’s ear twitched while his right paw stepped forward. Jay gave Samson a look of disdain and said through clenched teeth, “Not you!” Kevin hesitated for a moment at the door.

“Are you coming in?” Jay asked. Kevin followed Jay inside and shut the door behind him, leaving Samson in the hallway. Kevin appeared anxious as Jay led him inside the apartment.

“I have to talk to you, I've waited long enough- twenty years!” Kevin said looking down at the floor.

“What are you going on about?”

“It was never neither the right time nor had I the courage to tell you.”

“Tell me what?” Jay asked.

“The truth is I can’t say I really know. I can only tell you what happened. I cannot keep it to myself any longer.” Kevin paced back & forth. Talking about the past stirred his memory and some dormant recollections came alive. He slowly walked over to the couch and sat down. “Mom, may she rest in peace, and Dad, well, we had to put him there, it was the best thing we could do for him. Now is the time to sell our family home. Oh Jay, there are so many hidden secrets long-buried in that old house of ours.”

Seeking answers, Jay’s brow furrowed as he waited for his brother's eyes to translate. Jay sat down beside Kevin, “I thought we kept no secrets between us.”

“If only that were true,” Kevin said in a low voice.

“What is it? What’s going on?” Jay asked.

”I confess this with brutal honesty.”

“Go on”, Jay said, never looking away from his older brother.

Kevin continued to speak. “Two weeks past my tenth Birthday, something happened. It was quite incomprehensible.” Kevin paused long enough to collect his thoughts. Scattered beams of sunlight filtered through the window of the sliding glass door and illuminated his face as he spoke. “To think of my clumsy innocence. I have gone over that night a thousand times.”

“Tell me Kevin.”

“Dad had bought me a drone with a night vision camera. I’d been flying it every evening since he gave it to me as a Birthday present. It was easy to see with my googles. But as the temperature dropped, the night air became frosty. My drone was airborne. Suddenly, a form appeared at once in the sky. The drone collided with something uncertain flying. A body fell zigzag to the ground. I stumbled over rocks and twigs to the edge of the property to find it. My eyes adjusted to the dark well enough to discern the outline of a body stained with blood. She was lying on her side, stiff, terrified and couldn't catch hold of her breath, desperately wincing in pain. That’s when I saw her broken wing wearily flapping.”

“Was it a bird?”

“Not entirely.” Kevin said, as he lowered his moist eyes. “My heart raced and I was disorientated, draped with a paralyzing fear.”

“So what was it?”

“A deviant of nature. Against all laws of the natural world, it was a fusion of woman and bird.”

“Wait a minute! Wait just a minute! How is that possible?” Jay folded his arms across his chest and scowled at Kevin.

“I could tell you till the other side of midnight. This is a true account of what happened Jay.”

“Oh don’t give me that, for crying out loud! We’re not kids anymore!” Jay glared bitterly at Kevin from the corner of his eye. “Just because you used to spin a good yarn, you think you could just come over here and spew these lies. How do I know this is not another product of your wild imagination? I know how true you are to your obsession with extremes. Really, how do I know you’re not just conjuring all this up?”

“Believe what you’ve heard.”

Realizing the agonizing moment of his story had arrived, Kevin cleared his throat and rose from the couch.

”I stood there panting from shock and adrenaline. My lips trembled in fear. I shone a flashlight on her. She began to shake violently. A tear from her suffering eye bled into an ashen complexion. When I lifted her damaged wing, it fell open like a pearl white ornamental fan. I could see, with motherly warmth, she had been trying to protect an infant. As I approached, she made a frantic effort to tighter her grip. Ever so gently, I took the baby from her. I was jolted by the unnatural sound of her hybrid scream. Her heartbeat began to slow. Her eyes shut. Then she was silent.”

Jay slowly shook his head, rose from the couch and walked away from his brother as if declaring a safe space.

“Jay, that baby was you!”

“No! No! What kind of sick game is this?” Jay said explosively.

“Unfortunately, it’s no game. You were born to a race---”

“Shut up! Jay interrupted. His head was throbbing and he covered his ears pretending the whole ordeal had ended.

Impossible, he told himself, and yet, he couldn't shake the feeling that it was all very real somehow. Jay shivered as uneasy thoughts stirred in the back of his mind. In slow motion reason and time ceased to meddle.

“Come on Jay, don't you realize by now something is different about you? The fact is, you have been living a life as an outsider. Deep down you know it’s the truth, don’t you?"

Jay's chest heaved with deep breaths from the impact of Kevin's dose of reality.

"I slipped off my jacket and covered you. Then, I buried your mother and took you home to Mom and Dad. I told them a partial truth, that I found you in the woods. They searched for weeks in the local newspapers but of course, there was nothing about a missing child, so they adopted you as their own. And in that instant I had a baby brother.” Kevin bowed his head, “I’m so sorry, so very sorry. Jay, please forgive me!"

With the expression of a wounded beast, Jay screamed, "Oh my God!” It was as if he woke from the sedated ignorance of a hundred year sleep. In an attempt to console him, Kevin extended his arms seeking an embrace. Jay pushed past his brother, "Stay away from me!" he said. Without delay, he walked back to Kevin and yelled in his face." Now get out of here!" He led Kevin to the front door, opened it and saw Samson arch his back before Jay slammed the door behind both of them. Jay’s emotions left him both exhausted and exhilarated. Gradually, he managed to control himself and in the uncertain space between breaths, a sense of harmony rose within him. Weaned from the remnants of a life he once defined, he was reduced to the single- mindedness of his newfound purpose. Jay opened the sliding glass door, heard a flurry of birds and felt comfortable at once. He stepped out, stood on the balcony and breathed in an updraft of revitalizing fresh air. He made his way, maneuvering past the pigeons. Jay squinted his eyes in the sun, then down at the colorful dots representing people and cars below. And in those last few moments, instinctively, he knew what to do. He lowered his body by flexing his legs, and slowly flapped his arms. Jay moved closer toward the balcony’s ledge, looked up at the sky and smiled.

More Good Demons

Monster, Mermaid, And Me

By Doug Hawley
​
 
On a fine day at my Southeast Portland house, I put on my bright white swimsuit and went out to my pool and imagined myself Julie* Adams in “The Creature From The Black Lagoon”.  If I may be immodest, I do believe that I somewhat resemble the late star actress.  My fantasy was enhanced by a giant amphibian creature that resembled the infamous Gill Man lounging by the pool.  What made no sense at all was the mermaid that was already in the pool.  The monster saw my confusion and fright and pulled me from the pool before the mermaid could harm me.
 
What they did next caused me to shudder with delight and fear simultaneously.  The monster pulled me to him and the mermaid attached herself to my back.  The monster and I did the usual things that male and female do together, while the mermaid did what she could with hands, tongue and skin.  The experience was the best, but I was puzzled.
 
“Hey Night Monster, your Gill Man costume is the best and I love the new role play.  We will definitely put it in rotation, but what’s up with your amphibian partner?”
 
“You always say you like surprises Sheryl.  Meet my sister Night Angel.”  I turned to see that Night Angel’s tail had been discarded and that she now looked like a more or less normal human woman.  Well, a spectacularly built normal woman with scales over much of her body, the same as Monster.
 
“Hi Sheryl.  You can call me Angie if you want.”
 
We spent the rest of the night in carnal delights.  In case you think that we are some kind of kinky weirdoes, there was nothing but incidental contact between the brother and sister.  Out of the spirit of fair play, I did everything I could to return the orgasms to Night Angel that she had given to me.  As usual Night Monster exhausted me beyond the ability of mortal man.  I will be seeing more of those two.  Before that night my experience of Good Demons, the mystery creatures that only exist at night and work at delivering mind blowing sex to humans, was Night Monster.  This is definitely a case of more is better.  Are there more Good Demons?
 
I surprised myself the next day when I started singing “Bring Me A Higher Love”.  My mind must be doing some unconscious processing.
 
*Born Betty May, started career as Julia, but preferred Julie.
 
Betty’s New Boyfriend
 
“Hey Joe why don’t you come over today?”
 
“I don’t think that I should while you are incapacitated.  There isn’t anything we could do.”
 
“We could talk, tell each other stories.”
 
“Betty, we couldn’t do anything physical.  Your lower back stiffness precludes bed fun, if you know what I mean.”
 
“Not necessarily.  If you were willing to open your mind to other possibilities, we could please each other.”
 
“You know I don’t go for that kinky stuff.  We can get together when your back is better.”
 
“We’ll see.”  Hangs up.
 
Not for the first time, Betty wondered whether she needed a new boyfriend.  Whenever she had to make a hard decision, she made a list of pros and cons.
 
Pros:
Great at sex, but limited repertoire and imagination.
Is stable with plenty of money he doesn’t mind spending.
Doesn’t mistreat me.
Good body.
 
Cons:
My parents like him, but my friends don’t.
Mistreats service people.
Never compliments me or anyone else.
No empathy.
Probably double-timing me based on what my friends tell me.
 
The answer was clear to Betty.  It was time to get an upgrade from Joe.  Too bad she couldn’t do anything until she could get off her back.
 
Betty was cheered when she got a text from her best friend Judy.  “I thought you might need a treat, so I ordered you a pizza.  I told delivery where to find your key so you won’t have to get up.  He should just knock and come in.”
 
Within fifteen minutes Betty heard a knock and someone yelled through the door “Pizza, OK if I come in?”
 
“Sure.”
 
“Hi I’m Treat.  Would you like the pizza by your bed?  How about extra parmesan and red pepper?”
 
 “Yes, both please.”
 
After Betty started to nibble, Treat began taking his clothes off.
 
“What, the hell, I’m calling the cops” as Betty grabbed her phone.
 
“Betty, didn’t Judy tell you that she ordered strip pizza?  Hey I’m sorry, I thought that you knew.  I’ll leave if you want.”
 
When Betty recovered, she chuckled and said “OK, I didn’t know.  That sounds just like Judy.  Show me what you got.  If you think that this is a scene from a porn movie, you should know that I don’t look like the women in those films.”
 
When Treat was down to his banana hammock, Betty noted that it was a large banana, perhaps some hybrid or genetically modified.  Treat’s small horns on his forehead which had been hidden by his hat and his scaly body were more surprising.
 
Treat’s performance was set to Marvin’ Gaye’s “Got To Give It Up” one of Betty’s favorite.  He combined the most obscene bumps and grinds, with graceful movements.
 
When Treat had finished Betty discovered that she had one hand on her crotch and another on her left breast.  She asked “What are you and what other services do you offer?”
 
“I’m a night demon.  We are a tribe that offers sexual healing as did your favorite Marvin Gaye.  We only exist at night and give our services to deserving humans.  What would you say to some of that sexual healing?  I brought some hot oil for lubrication.”
 
“I’ve already started lubricating, but proceed.  You should remove the little remaining of your outfit first.  You don’t want to get any oil on it.”
 
Treat spread a pleasant smelling substance over much of Betty’s body without disturbing her back and then licked it off with his long forked tongue, which probed her nooks and her crannies.  Betty climaxed better than she ever had during sex with Joe.
 
When she could talk again, she asked Treat “Why did Judy set this up?”
 
“She knew that you deserved better than Joe.  He was hitting on her a day after you got the bad back.  She knew about me from the time after her divorce when I, ahem, cheered her up.”
 
Betty wanted to know “Where do we go from here?”
 
“I can visit you while you are incapacitated if you like and I have ways to speed your healing.  I know combinations of herbs as well as some exercises that will fix your back in a few days.  Good demons’ expertise extends beyond the erotic arts.  I expect that you will find a much better human boyfriend than Joe, but I will be available.”
 
“That sounds great.  You deserve a big tip for the pizza and the extras.”
 
“That’s not necessary.”
 
“Maybe not necessary, but don’t put that banana hammock back on yet.”
 
Appears in Terror House

The Gatekeeper
 
by Robert P. Bishop
 
 
“Howdy,” the old man said to the trekker. “Where are you going?” The old man sat on a large gray rock by the side of the road, whittling on a piece of basswood. Wood chips accumulated around his worn boots. Insects whirred on membranous wings over the dry brown grass in the roadside ditch. Swallows flitted through the air, snatching careless bugs that rose above the protective cover of the dying grass.
            The trekker stopped by the old man but didn’t say anything. He just stared at him. The old man stared back with eyes the color of faded cornflowers.
            “Where are you going?” the old man asked again.
 
            “Over there.” The trekker pointed down the road that converged to a point and disappeared in the distance.
            “There isn’t anything over there.”
            “Of course there is. That’s why I am going there.” The trekker shifted his backpack, easing the weight from his shoulders.
            This perplexed the old man. “Can you tell me what is over there?”
            “Stuff.”
            “I see.”
            “No, I don’t think you do.”
            “Sure, I do.” The old man held up the folding knife he was using to whittle the basswood. “See this knife? It’s a Barton. They don’t make them like this anymore. Maybe if you’re lucky you will find a Barton in all that stuff you say is over there.” The old man smiled. His teeth were surprisingly white and beautiful. “But I doubt it,” he added quietly.
            “Maybe,” the trekker said, a little annoyed by the old man’s attitude.
            “How long have you been walking on this road?” The old man squinted his eyes against the sun as he looks up at the trekker.
            “Five days,” replied the trekker with great confidence.
            “Five days and you still aren’t over there yet. Over there must be a great distance away.”
            “I’m sure it is, but I have time.”
            “I see.”
            “No, you don’t,” said the trekker, quite annoyed now by the old man’s attitude.
            The old man chuckled. “Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps I don’t see anything at all. If you find a Barton over there, come back and show it to me.” He held up his Barton. “This is the only one I have ever seen and I would like to see another one before I die.”
            “I’ve got better things to do. If I find one why would I come back and show it to you?”
            “I got this Barton from my uncle,” the old man continued, ignoring the trekker’s question. “He was first officer on the USS Jeannette. Do you know what happened to her?”
            “No.”
            “The Jeannette sailed above the Arctic Circle and got locked in the ice for two years. The ice finally crushed her and she sank in June of 1881. He did this scrimshaw on the handles when she was frozen fast, before she went under. Here, have a look.” The old man closed the blade and handed the Barton to the trekker. “Handles are made of mammoth ivory. My uncle told me the ivory is 10,000, maybe even 50,000 years old.”
            “Really?” said the trekker. He took the Barton and looked at the scrimshaw. One side of the knife had a polar bear on an ice floe etched in it. The other side featured an Inuit at sea in a kayak. Both etchings were exquisitely crafted. After a few moments the trekker returned the Barton. The old man laid the knife and the basswood on the ground by his right foot.
            “The scrimshaw is beautiful,” said the trekker.
            “Yep. This Barton is special.  Got to be. I’ll wager there’s not another one like it in the world.” The old man smiled. “It’s like all the trekkers that come down this road, bound for over there. Every one of them is special. There’s not another one like them in the entire world, but they don’t know it.”
            The trekker shuffled his feet. The weight of his backpack pressed down on him. “Have you ever been over there?”
            “Nope,” the old man said, “and I’m not ever going to go over there, either.”
            “So!” the trekker crowed. “You don’t know what is over there, do you?”
            “No, and I’m never going to know,” replied the old man placidly.
            “Why not?” The trekker shuffled his feet again.
            “Because nobody ever comes back to tell me what they found over there.”          
            “What do you mean?” demanded the trekker. His pack weighed on his shoulders. He shifted it again but the weight remained oppressive.
            “I mean nobody ever returns. Trekkers like you, equipped with the finest gear, always come from the east. Nobody ever comes from the west.”
            “Why not?”
            “Well, I don’t know.” The old man chuckled. “Nobody has ever come back to tell me.”
            The trekker squinted down the road. “It doesn’t look very far.”
            “I think it’s a far piece.”
            “Maybe.”
            “You don’t have to go.”
            “But I want to go.”
            “No, you don’t.”
            “Then I need to go,” the trekker insisted.
            “Tell me why you need to go. Give me one reason I can believe.”
            The trekker shuffled his feet. Little balls of dust rose in the still summer air.
            “I just need to go,’ he said as if that were reason enough.
            The old man sighed. “That’s what they all say.” His smile disappeared and his faded blue eyes turn gray.
            “But I will come back and tell you what is over there,” the trekker promised. “Then you will know.”
            “What if you don’t come back?” The old man’s eyes, cornflower blue again, peered at the trekker.
            “But I will. I will come back,” the trekker nearly shouted.
            The old man picked up the Barton and basswood and started whittling again.
            “What are you carving?”
            “A little stick out of a bigger stick,” the old man said. “I figured a smart fellow like you would know that.”
            The trekker shuffled his feet again, stirred up more dust blossoms, and looked down the road.
            “You better get started. You don’t have much daylight left.”
            The trekker started off. When he was some distance away he stopped and turned around. “When I come back I’ll tell you what I found over there,” he called to the old man. “You’ll see. I’ll bring you that Barton.”
            The old man smiled and waved his hand as the trekker set off again. Then he started whittling on the basswood with the Barton.
            After a while he looked to the east and saw another trekker walking down the middle of the road. He stopped whittling and waited for the trekker.
            “Where you going?” the old man asked, his pale blue cornflower eyes squinting against the sun.
            “Over there,” the trekker replied and pointed to the west. He stared at the old man, waiting.
            The old man smiled and resumed whittling on the piece of basswood. The little pile of wood chips around his feet grew larger. “Why?” he finally asked.
            “Why are you sitting on this rock?” the trekker countered. He shifted his pack, easing the weight from his shoulders.
            “I’m the gatekeeper.” Chips fell from the piece of basswood.
            “I don’t see any gate.”
            “No one ever sees it.”
            “What are you trying to pull?” the trekker asked, suspicious of the old man’s response. “There isn’t any gate here.” He shifted his pack and started walking westward.
            “Yes, there is. You just passed through it,” the old man called to the trekker’s back.
            After a while the old man looked to the east and saw another trekker walking down the middle of the road toward him. He stopped whittling and waited for the trekker to come near.
 

HOLLYWOOD IN TWO LANGUAGES

By Daniel de Culla 
​

THE THRILL OF HOLLYWOOD

What good taste I saw in these handsome and slender young men, these very beautiful girls with their gracefully gorgeous busts, who made me dream of playing a certain flute, similar to theirs, so that, one day, I could reach Hollywood.
What good taste these actors and actresses had, who gave the world examples of the value of living life to the fullest in it.
Today, I remain a fan of Bogart and Bacall, the fame of their favors extended to heaven. I followed them as I have followed Priapus and Vesta since my childhood, as if they had been my flesh and blood brothers. Bacall, like Vesta, was a little goddess when she fell in love with Bogart, a demon-possessed Priapus, very mischievous, who amazed women. In Hollywood movies, I followed these goddesses in an attempt to find out what these goddesses of demonic or angelic love tastes like.
Bogart, like Priapus, was a wizard and sorcerer; and in the fields and in the bedroom he was easily introduced into the souls of these goddesses, you know for what purpose. Humphrey, a 45-year-old man, already more than divorced from women, seeing the beautiful Laureen behind the scenes at just 20 years old, fell in love with her like a drooling fool.
“To have or not to have” was the carnal question. Bogart peers at the site where Bacall is. "What a good feed I'm going to give myself," he exclaims. He already relaxes. It's coming, it's coming. ¡Oh what .. a momento¡
When Bogart already goes to Bacall to seize her, she blesses the moment. He saves her as she hugs him as much as she can, seeing herself making love to him, wanting him, throwing herself at his stardom, skyrocketing toward the sky above Hollywood.
What good times we have lived in Hollywood!
From what enchanting dreams have we awakened, by daring to embrace so many Bacalls or Vestas, like Bogarts or Priapus, as gifted as the Silenus’ muses.
I learned the Art of Love following the fair sex and all these actors, extraordinary in a serious point, although some, after a while, they showed themselves laughing as the girls laughed, fetching and catching other boys.


EMOCION HOLLYWOODIENSE
Qué buen gusto yo veía en estos mozos guapos y esbeltos, estas mozas hermosísimas con buenos pechos, que me hacían soñar tocándome cierta flauta, semejante a la de ellos, que, un día, podría yo llegar a Hollywood. Qué buen gusto el de estos actores y actrices que mostraron al Mundo con ejemplos el valor de vivir la Vida en Hollywood.
Hoy me quedo con Bogart y Bacall que la fama de sus favores extendieron hasta el cielo. Yo les seguía como he seguido desde mi infancia a Príapo y Vesta, como si hubieran sido hermanos de carne y hueso míos. Bacall, como Vesta era una diosecilla cuando se enamoró de Bogart, un Príapo endemoniado, muy travieso, que a las mujeres asombraba. En las películas Hollywoodienses yo seguía a estas diosas con intento de saber a qué saben estas diosas de amor endemoniado.
Bogart, como Príapo, era brujo y hechicero; y en los campos y en la alcoba fácilmente se introducía en las almas de estas diosas, ya se sabe con qué objeto. Humphrey, vejete de 45 años, ya más que divorciado, al ver entre bambalinas a la preciosa Laureen con apenas 20 años, se enamoró de ella como un bobo de baba.
Tener o no tener era la cuestión carnal. Bogart atisba el sitio donde está Bacall. “¡Qué buen pienso me voy a dar”, exclama. Ya se relame. Ya se acerca, Ya llega. ¡Oh qué momento¡
Cuando Bogart ya va de Bacall a apoderarse, ella bendice el momento porque la salva y le abraza cuanto puede, al verse apriapada queriéndolo, lanzándola él contra el estrellato, el cielo de Hollywood.
¡Qué tiempos buenos hemos vivido con Hollywood¡ De qué sueños más encantadores hemos despertado, al atrevernos a abrazar a tantas Bacalles o Vestas, como Godarts o Príapos, dotados como Asnos de Sileno.
Yo aprendí el Arte de Amar siguiendo al bello sexo y a todos estos actores, extraordinarios en punto serio, aunque algunos, pasado un tiempo, se mostraron riendo como se ríen las mozuelas atrapando otros mozuelos.

Billie the Kid
 
by
 
 Gerald Arthur Winter
 
 
 
 
            I spent the first two years of my retirement reflecting over my twenty years in
 
law enforcement. Sure, there were many cases worthy of writing about for posterity,
 
but the one that still stays with me is the script under my arm as I sit outside the agent’s
 
office to show her the opening chapters I rewrote to her specifications. Then she’d
 
consider recommending it to her adaptation department for review. It’s less than ten
 
thousand words as she recommended, but she wanted to see enough conflict in those
 
opening chapters to visual the story on screen, either as a movie or as the pilot to a
 
TV series. A month ago she’d said she saw enough in my first draft to give me a shot
 
at representation by her agency, but she was looking for more perversity, something to
 
define the case as extraordinary.
 
            Have a gander before I show it to her, and please, wish me luck . . .
 
 
                                         1                                                    
 
            When she finally began to fall asleep at 2:00 AM, she heard a sudden creak from
 
the landing outside her bedroom. Rattled, she anticipated a hand reaching for her. With
 
one squinting eye, she watched for the rise of the pink comforter at the end of her bed.
 
By the moonlight cast through her window, she watched it coming for her, like a mole
 
tunneling beneath her bed covers and silky sheets until the first icy touch. A cold hand
 
caressed her thin ankle . . . softly at first. Then—no matter how many times she’d
 
endured the torment before—the shock of two forceful hands grabbing both of her
 
ankles made her gasp in terror.
 
            Before she could call out for help, two hands yanked the soft pillow with the
 
pink Barbie pillowcase from under her golden locks then pressed it over her face to
 
muffle her terrified  screams. Her mind shifted into the acceptance mode she’d become
 
accustomed to for years. She had no sense of time. Her humiliation might continue for
 
minutes or even hours depending on unexpected interruptions.  Otherwise, the ravage
 
might go on for days—maybe forever—depending . . . depending.  But no interruption
 
came, so she hid her thoughts inside someone else’s head, someone stronger, someone
 
able to fight back, and there she’d remain for as long as she could—till the next time.
 
            Her attempts to escape were futile. She had no possession of herself; she was
 
 just a thing—something to be used and tossed aside. After each episode, whatever
 
remained of her soul was just recycled for the next time. There was always some-
 
thing left behind for another day. Whether out of kindness from her assailant or from
 
cruelty, she neither knew nor cared which. 
 
            But with her adolescence blooming into her teens, her first period broke the
 
rhythm of the attacks, and her molester’s interest seemed distracted. Being a child,
 
her obedient mind became fearful that, with the subsiding of interest in her body, her
 
attacker might discard it, putting her out with tomorrow’s garbage—along with her
 
soul.
 
Her daytime hours at school became mere shadows of the nights she spent in
 
hell. On the playground she was free to fight back in the bright sunlight, rejuvenating
 
her strength with the venom of a cold-blooded viper fresh out of hibernation and seeking
 
warm-blooded prey to feast upon.
 
          When she got in trouble for hurting other kids, her father smacked her around. She
 
 hated him even more for that. He drank too much and was never there for her, except to
 
express his harsh disapproval of how she dressed and what she said.
 
            “What the hell good ’re ya?” he’d tell her, slamming the door and going to a
 
bar to get drunk and mean in the vicious cycle that ruled her life.
 
            The summer before she was going to start high school, after many months of
 
relief, the attacks resumed. The months of normal life merely served to intensify the
 
attacks and made her even more aware of her sexuality as she was probed and prodded
 
with vigor each night until she often lost consciousness.
 
            One night she was unable to focus, then her bedroom door swung open suddenly
 
and her father stood in the doorway shouting in a drunken rage, “You bitch! I’ll fucking
 
kill you!”
 
            A shot rang out, echoing in her mind. But as the sound of gunfire slowly muffled
 
in her head, all else was lost from her memory until her father’s .38 pistol felt heavy in
 
her hand.
 
            In a trance, she stared blankly at the police as they took her away. Only the
 
shadow of her wailing mother from a distance made her realize that perhaps her torment
 
had finally come to an end. Wherever they were going to put her, even if she were out-
 
numbered, at least it would be an even playing field with no adults to overpower her
 
mind and ultimately her body. Her confinement would be her playground now, and the
 
monsters would all be locked outside her cage where she could now take control, even
 
if her past had turned her into a monster as well.
 
 
 
 2
 
 
            “You mean the lieutenant forgot to mention that Billie is a truly fine piece of
 
ass?” Det. “Buzzy” Wade mockingly asked Jim his first day on the job. “So you just
 
assumed, with the name ‘Billie’ she must be a guy?”
 
            At Det. Jim Monahan’s new assignment to Bergen County’s Special Victims
 
Unit, Buzzie’s hoarse laughter blended in chorus with the other detectives. All Jersey
 
boys, the motley band of cops referred to themselves as The Sex Pistols after the
 
Seventies punk rock band from Britain. They thought the tag kept their image simple
 
and halted outsiders from prying into the subtle nuances of their undercover work.
 
Their methods had remained sacred to the brotherhood until Det. Billie Boyd had
 
broken the ranks of their inner sanctum a few years prior.
 
            The chance of his having a woman partner hadn’t even crossed Jim’s mind. He
 
ignored the other cops’ banter and spent his first day in the office reviewing the case
 
load. His new partner had been on leave for three weeks and wasn’t coming back until
 
the next day, so he reserved his judgment until he could meet her face to face.
 
            The next morning, Jim put on his shoulder holster and made certain his 9mm
 
automatic Glock was empty before saying morning good-byes to his family in the
 
kitchen. They were having breakfast before his wife, Susie, drove their three daughters
 
to school.
 
            “I hope your partner’s a nice guy, Jimmy,” Susie offered with a smile as she
 
puckered for her departure kiss then she paused with a questioning expression. “What’
 
 
is it, Jimmy? What’s wrong?”
 
            She’d picked up a telltale sign from Jim’s pensive mood, so he responded to her
 
look with a shrug. Though Susie may have come to know him even better than he did
 
himself, Jim reserved his right to silence, at least until he’d met his new partner. . .
 
though her description--a fine piece of ass—still reverberated in his mind.
 
            “OK, Jimmy,” Susie huffed, raising an eyebrow. “We’ll talk about it tonight--
 
whatever it is.”
 
            “It’s nothing.”
 
            “Yeah, right. Come on girls. Finish eating and kiss Daddy good-bye.”
 
            In ascending steps from Penny the five-year-old, to Jan the eight-year-old, to
 
Connie the twelve-year-old, each gave Jim a hug and peck on the cheek.
 
            “What the hell is that?” Jim put his hand on Connie’s shoulder and spun her
 
around until the top of her auburn locks tickled his chin as he leaned over to sniff at her.
           
“Nothing,” she said, staring down at his shiny black shoe tips.
 
            “Get back in the bathroom and wash off that perfume,” he commanded.
 
            “What perfume, Daddy? I—”

            “Now!”
 
            As Connie sulked off to the bathroom, the two younger girls were pleased
 
that their bossy older sister was taking the heat for a change.
 
            “She’s just trying to express herself, Jimmy,” Susie said, putting the smooth
 
back of her hand on his cheek. “She’s nearly in Junior High.”
 
            “Oh, Jesus, don’t remind me. I’ve got a go.” He turned to Penny and Jan. “Now
 
you two better be good.”
 
            With her freckled face flushed, Connie came out of the bathroom and frowned
 
defiantly as Jim sniffed at her and gave his approval of her scent—essence of hand-
 
sanitizing gel.
 
            “That’s my girl.” Jim kissed the top of her head. “Now you won’t get swine flu,
 
or anything else the boys might be spreading around.”
 
            “I don’t have any boyfriends—and is it any wonder?” Connie huffed.
 
            “For now, let’s keep it that way.” Jim winked at Susie and put his hand on the
 
swell beneath her apron. “In a few months, you’ll have a brother to look out for you.”
 
            “I’ll be married with kids by the time he’s my age,” Connie groaned.
 
            “Doesn’t matter,” Jim warned. “I was sixteen when your Aunt Alice was twenty-
 
three. But her jackass husband smacked her around, so I made him pay the price. Never
 
happened again. So I expect when our Sean is in high school, he’ll start looking out for
 
all of you when I’m not around.”
 
            Even Susie rolled her eyes, but she gave Jim a lingering kiss to let him know she
 
loved him anyway. “What’s your new partner’s name?” she asked with a twinkle in her
 
green eyes.
 
            “Uh . . . Billie—I think,” he said without blinking.
 
            “Billy what?”
 
            “Um . .. I forget,” he mumbled. “We haven’t met yet.
 
            “Well, when you do, tell Billy you’re the best partner any cop could hope to have
 
—I ought to know after fifteen years.”
 
            He kissed her long and hard so she wouldn’t catch any of his revealing expres-
 
sions that would give away his avoidance of the truth about his new partner’s geder, then
 
he patted her belly.
 
“Take good care of Sean, Babe. Call ya later.”
 
 
 3
 
 
            “Billie wanted to add a personal day to her vacation before coming in—something
 
to do with her mother,” Lt. Brooks told Jim as he entered the office. “I told her we could
 
spare only a few hours because I need you both to get started on the rape case in Paramus
 
today. The parents are expecting you, and they’ve given their permission for us to speak
 
with their daughter. We can’t delay on that opportunity while this sicko is still out there.
 
Billie will be here within the hour.”
 
            Returning to his desk, Jim remarked to Buzzie, “Seems like Billie’s got some
 
pull with the lieutenant.”       
 
“Maybe Brooks has a chubby for her, Jim. She seems to get her way a lot with the
 
old man.”
 
            “Is she that good?” Jim smirked. “I mean at the job.”
 
             “Some guys call her Billie the Kid,” Buzzie told him. “A few cops in the unit
 
knew her in grammar school. They say now she looks nothing like the scrawny tomboy
 
they used to know. She took no shit from any bullies harassing her on the playground,
 
not even from boys twice her size. She was suspended from school when she was only
 
eleven. She broke an eighth-grade boy’s arm in a fight when he tried to steal her lunch
 
money.”
 
            “From caterpillar to butterfly, Jim,” Det. Simms chimed in from across the room.
 
“I swear she had no tits at age sixteen, skinny as a rail. She came back to our ten-year
 
high school reunion and knocked all the guys over with that face and body. We all
 
assumed she’d gotten a boob job when she went to UCLA.”
 
             “He’s retired since,” Buzzie said. “But three years ago, Det. Lecutis gave her
 
some heat on her first day here in the unit. Lecutis confronted her in the locker room
 
by brushing past her and nudging her breast with his elbow to see if what we suspected
 
was true, that her cleavage lay in Silicon Valley.”
 
            “What happened?” Jim asked, figuring he’d hear how she’d broken his arm.
 
            “She says to Lecutis, ‘Was it as good for you as it was for me?’”
           
            “No shit?” 
 
            “Yeah. So with no one else in the locker room, Lecutis spun her around and
 
wrenched up her shirt exposing her flawless, but apparently natural rack. Ain’t nature
 
wonderful?”
 
            “Jesus,” Jim said with a huff.
 
            “She says, ‘Satisfied?’ But he shakes his head and tries to go further by grabbing
 
them. Cold as ice, she just stares at him.
 
            “He tells her, ‘Now I’m gonna fuck you until you beg me to stop.’
 
            “She says, ‘Other cops could come through that door any minute, Detective
 
Lecutis.’
 
            “He tells her, ‘When I’m done with you, others will follow—they’re just waiting
 
their turns—it’s part of your initiation into the unit. It’ll give you empathy with your
 
victims.’
 
            “She says, ‘How exciting. I can hardly wait. Tell me who else intends to fuck
 
me?’ He rattles off a few names, and she says, ‘Don’t worry, Lecutis.  I won’t tell if you
 
won’t.’ Then she kicks him in the nuts so hard he turns purple and pukes. She takes her
 
i-Phone from her back pocket and holds it to his ear as he’s convulsing on his hands and
 
knees. Clear as a bell, he hears his every word, even naming the others who planned to
 
participate.
 
            “Then Billie whispers in his ear, ‘I won’t file a sexual harassment suit if you won’t
 
—call us even, Lecutis—unless you want your other ball in a sling?’
 
            “That was it; no one’s bothered her since. She’s a real pro, too. No one’s better
 
than Detective Billie Boyd in this unit. She’s a member of The Sex Pistols. She’s earned
 
it. Now it’s your turn.”
 
            Jim shrugged. “What’s her real name?”
 
            “I heard that her father wanted a son, but never had any other kids. She was born
 
Wilhelmina, but he called her Billie. Some of the guys in the unit call her ‘Hopalong
 
Cassidy’ because William Boyd was the actor who played the cowboy. They started
 
calling her ‘Hoppy’ behind her back when her arrest-and-conviction rate became tops
 
in the unit. You’re lucky to be her partner. She’ll teach you some good shit.”
 
            Hearing the door open and cop chatter from the hallway, Jim looked up from his
 
desk as he reviewed the police report on the Tyborg case. With all the innuendos about
 
Billie Boyd, Jim visualized her as a comic book figure with a spiked coif and a fire-
 
breathing reptilian attitude. Her actual appearance surprised him.
 
            Yes, Billie was attractive, but not in the hard way he’d imagined. She looked
 
more like a classy blonde who’d team up well with Cary Grant in a Hitchcock thriller--
 
maybe Grace, Kim, Eva Marie, even Tippi—but not Billie or Hoppy? Those nicknames
 
didn’t go with his new partner’s looks. She belonged in a black cocktail dress with
 
dangling diamond earrings, not the faded jeans and a leather jacket she was wearing.
 
The Kelly green, v-neck top drove Jim’s attention to her pale, freckled cleavage, and
 
muffin-top breasts with a firm contour just like a baby’s behind—he ought to know
 
from changing three daughter’s diapers to give Susie a break on his days off.
 
            She seemed to be reading his mind as she grabbed a folder off her desk and stared
 
him straight in the eye. She came towards him so briskly that he almost lost his balance
 
on the swivel chair, but he recovered and stood to shake her outstretched hand.
 
            “Sorry, Jim,” she said, cocking her head. “I had family shit to do, stuff that
 
couldn’t wait. My mom’s in a home. Her mind’s gone—dementia—and I’m all she’s
 
got. You got a grasp on the Tyborg rape case, yet?”
 
            “Not much to go on without more input from the victim—fourteen, raped in her
 
bedroom as her parents slept.”
 
            “So they say, Jim . . . we’ll find out for certain. You got any gut feelings?”
 
            “Me? I’m new at this, but on the surface, without any evidence of forced entry,
 
I like the father. The mom could be too scared to give him up.”
 
            “That must be tough for you?” she challenged.
 
            He pouted and shook his head. “Why?”
 
            “You’ve got three young daughters; must be an unimaginable line to cross for
 
you—that any father could ever go there.”
 
            “I did a hitch in Iraq with the National Guard, Detective Boyd, so my imagi-
 
nation has no boundaries when it comes to what any human being is capable of doing
 
to another.”
 
            “I’m not your mother or your superior, so just call me Billie.”
 
            “I’m sorry about your partner, Billie.”
 
            She revealed no emotion and stated coldly, “Frank thought no woman could ever
 
get the best of a man in the field, least of all him. He turned his back on a woman he
 
believed was the helpless victim in a domestic dispute. She put a knife in his back as he
 
was handcuffing her husband for punching her eyes shut. Hard lesson learned—never
 
stand between a husband and his wife unless the safety’s off on your piece ready to fire
 
—and be prepared to shoot either one of them to spare yourself.”
 
            “That’s not according to the book, Billie.”
 
            “Remember you said that when you have to listen to your partner gurgle his last
 
breath because he refused to believe any woman would attack him when he was saving
 
her life—that woman’s whole life was that son of a bitch who was beating her, that’s all
 
she knew or cared about. My partner was taking him away from her.”
 
            “I just wanted to say I was sorry about how it happened.”
 
            “Don’t be sorry, Jim. Just don’t ever try to be a hero for my sake. I don’t need
 
one. I can take care of myself, but I expect you to do the same. We’ll take each other’s
 
backs, but please, don’t go stupid on me, or I’ll have to shoot you like a horse with a
 
broken leg—irreparable damage. So, let’s go talk to the vic.”
 
            Jim read in the report that the alleged victim was attacked in her second-floor
 
bedroom as her parents slept in the adjacent room. Jill Tyborg was fourteen and a
 
freshman at Paramus High School. According to Jill, she’d been a virgin before the
 
attack. Billie acted as if she believe Jill’s statement.
 
            Jim was not convinced, offering, “With the current stats on the sexual activities
 
of teenagers, I have to question the validity of the vic’s sexual innocence. You know,
 
friends with benefits. It’s a different world than we knew at that age.”
 
            “Like BJs for class notes,” Billie said, turning to Jim as he rode shotgun and she
 
drove. With her croaky, smoker’s voice, she reminded him, “You forget. Jill Tyborg’s
 
vaginal forensics confirm that her hymen was torn within twelve hours prior to our
 
examination.”
 
            “What about a secret boyfriend her parents knew nothing about?”
 
“Cherry Poppers Anonymous? I don’t think so. Her girlfriends would’ve known,”
 
Billie argued. “She has two very close friends. They’d have known.”
 
            “Listen,” he objected. “You may have come from the other side of the tracks in
 
Oakland, but even though you didn’t fit in, you understand how the girls’ cliques work.
 
 Her friends are probably covering for her. They may be helping to hide the fact that she
 
got pregnant with some boy. When do you plan to confront her parents?”
 
            “Not until Jill’s father is cleared by DNA.”
 
            “So you suspect Mr. Tyborg, too,” Jim nodded. “Problem is . . . no rap sheet.
 
The man’s a respected member of the community, president of TD Bank’s local
 
branch, a member of the Board of Education. He’s got pull.”
 
            “And that’s supposed to absolve him from any guilt? I thought you liked him for
 
this,” she huffed with a glare that Jim felt could consume him if he got too close. “Let’s
 
tread water until the DNA clears him before we move aggressively on other suspects.
 
Until then, the pull Mr. Tyborg has is this.” She gave Jim the finger with a twist—hardly a
 
Princess Grace-like gesture.
 
            “We have no other suspects?” he said glumly. “Except for Jill’s vaginal secre-
 
tions, the perp’s sperm, and some hair follicles, we’ve got zip—no fingerprints, other
 
than the family’s, so that’s no help against the father—unless we find his hair on Jill’s
 
pillow and sheets, and his DNA is a match to the sperm.”
 
            “I don’t believe her father’s guilty, Jim, if that soothes your mind. But I want to
 
clear him first, so that we can use anything he knows that could help without a cloud of
 
suspicion over him. There may be some things Jill’s parents can help us with to get other
 
leads, but Jill won’t because of teen peer pressure.”
 
            “OK, Billie. But it still seems like an inside job, no forced entry, and knowledge-
 
able access to Jill’s second floor bedroom. We’ve found no footprints, fingerprints, or
 
fibers.”
 
            “I know. Except for the semen,” Billie said with a grin, “we’d have an
 
immaculate conception.”
 
  * * *
 
            So it seemed when the semen analysis proved Jill’s father innocent, but the
 
DNA was no match with any convicted rapists or with any boys at school after saliva
 
swabs were collected. Jim and Billie ran into a brick wall with Jill and her friends,
 
separately confirming that Jill wasn’t going out with any boys prior to her rape.
 
            “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Billie sighed with frustration.
 
            “Jill’s rape was most likely a first offense for the perp.”
 
            “So we’re stuck until . . . you know.”
 
            “Yeah . . . until he strikes again . . . if he ever does.”
 
            “Oh, he will,” Billie nodded knowingly. “He’s probably watching us every day.
 
He knows he got away with it. That’s the hook.”
 
            “You mean like an undefeated boxer who won’t retire until someone rings his
 
bell?”
 
            “Exactly. But this creep isn’t hurting himself, only others. No telling how long
 
he’ll take to strike again because this one was perfect, a tough act to follow.”
 
             “He could wait for months, even years,” Jim huffed, hitting the dashboard with
 
the back of his fist.
 
            “Yo, Jimbo! Control that anger. Don’t ever take these crimes personally, even
 
if you’ve got three young girls at home. Always keep a cool head.”
 
            “I think you’re talking out of two sides of that pretty mouth, Billie.”
 
            “Wow! I’m pretty and I’m two-faced.” She pouted. “What cesspool is this shit
 
backing up from?”
 
            Jim blurted, “I’ve heard the stories about your being abused by your alcoholic
 
father and how you finally shot and killed him then had to go to foster homes because
 
your mom went loony before you ever made it to high school.”
 
            “Anything else you want to barf out in my direction, Jimbo?  Maybe you left
 
something out!”
 
            “Like what?”
 
            “I’m over it,” she said calmly. “I’ve got this life now; and it’s good. I get to
 
put away guys like my father and I love it, every fucking day of the week.”
 
            “How can you not let this bother you? We’ve been skunked by this prick!”
 
            “Maybe you have, but I haven’t. Not yet. We’ll get a break. And when we do,
 
I’m there. Are you?”
 
            Jim shrugged.  “Sorry, Billie. I got carried away.  My daughters . . . you know.
 
If anything like that ever happened to one of mine. You’d have to shoot me to stop
 
me from killing him.”
 
            “You know, Jimbo, I believe you. But for the sake of your little darlings, I’ll
 
shoot you myself before I let you ruin your life and theirs just for killing some piss ant.
 
Deal?”
 
            He laughed and felt an aura of comfort in this new partnership as he high-fived
 
her. “Deal. But this goes both ways if you ever lose it. A fine piece of ass like you stuck
 
behind bars for life before she turns forty would be a terrible waist.”
 
            Billie smirked. “Do those assholes in the unit really say that about me?”
 
            He shook his head. “Sure. . . like you don’t know it.”
 
 
           
    4
 
                                               
            Among the reported rape attacks in Bergen County over the next few months,
 
and even in neighboring counties, none proved to have any connection to the sterile crime
 
scene in the Tyborg case in Paramus. The MOs were unrelated to the way Jill Tyborg had
 
been attacked in her home, especially with enough physical evidence connected to the
 
rapists for swift confessions and prosecutions. Although Jim and Billie were kept busy
 
enough with Paramus Park Mall and Garden State Plaza attacks on women going to
 
their parked cars, both were bothered that even one seemed to have slipped through the
 
grating.
 
            Parked in their car outside the Wyckoff Bagel Shop, they turned towards each
 
other sipping steaming hazelnut coffees and munching their breakfast. Billie had a plain
 
bagel with one egg and pepper. Jim’s onion bagel had two eggs, Taylor ham and cheese.
 
Billie glared at him through the steaming vapor of her small black coffee as he gulped the
 
first bite of his cardio-unfriendly special and washed it down with a large java, light and
 
sweet.
 
            “I want your opinion,” she said, “but I need you to take a breath from slurping
 
that toxic dump you’re wolfing down. Jesus. Did I see you put four sugars in that
 
coffee?”
 
            “Sowey . . .” He tried to talk with his mouth full then took a breath, but with one
 
eye on Billie and the other clearly focused on what was left of his sandwich so the egg
 
wouldn’t drip on his solid gray tie. “I couldn’t get my report done last night with Back-
 
to-School Night for the girls, so I started working on it in the office at five o’clock this
 
morning—I haven’t eaten since yesterday afternoon—and that was just a bran muffin.”
 
            “Even so, I can’t believe you asked for butter and salt, too.” She frowned. “Isn’t
 
Taylor ham salty enough—and cheese, too? Why would you ask for butter on that time
 
bomb? You do hope to have a catch with your son someday, right?”
 
            “I’m fucking hungry! Lay off!” Jim barked.
 
            “Whew! I hope you’re Mr. Nice Guy at home for Susie and The McGuire
 
Sisters and you’re just saving all this nasty aggression on the job for lucky me.”
 
            “Hey! You’re the one with the reputation as the hard nose, so I figure you can
 
take it. Who the hell are the McGuire Sisters?”
 
            “A popular trio from the Fifties; my father used to play their records over and
 
over --Sincerely, oh you know how I love you . . . and I’ll never, never, never, never let
 
you go—”
 
            “OK—OK! A singer you’re not. I think I heard the song before, but my girls are
 
Monahan’s not McGuire’s.”
 
            “The McGuire sisters were pretty and talented,” Billie assured him.  “Just a
 
friendly comparison to your three little angels.”
 
            “My daughters are pretty and talented—but no angels.” Jim shrugged. “It started
 
with using Susie’s perfume, and now we found out Connie was hiding lipstick and eye
 
shadow under a rock in the woods near her bus stop. She left one of her books home so I
 
brought it to her at school—surprise, surprise—she looked like a damn hooker.”
 
            “Oh, stop! She’s just a teenager trying to express herself.”
 
            “Not on my watch.”
 
            “Get over yourself, Jimbo. You’re still pissed about Jill Tyborg, huh? Jesus!
 
Don’t take it out on Connie. Almost thirteen, her vagina’s festering and she’s confused.”
 
            He took another big rip out his bagel and chewed silently, but the whites of his
 
eyes flared red around the powder blue irises, the sparkling Irish fuse to the dynamite he
 
held tight in his chest.
 
            “Of course you’re pissed.” She cocked her head to make him look her in the eye.
 
“You think I’m not?”
 
            He shrugged and licked dripping butter off his fingers.
 
            “We’ve closed three other cases since the summer,” she reminded him. “A three-
 
year-old girl battered by her mother’s boyfriend, an eight-year-old boy sexually abused
 
by his soccer coach, and a young female retail store owner sodomized by a robber. We’re
 
doing our job and doing it right . . . but I’ve been working the Tyborg case on my off
 
hours.”
 
            He turned his shoulders to face her straight on and asked, “What’ve you got?”
 
            “I’ve been shadowing Jill Tyborg . . . I think she’s pregnant.”
 
 
 
  5
 
 
            “Do you think Jill was covering up her pregnancy with a fake rape story?” Jim
 
said with mixed emotions as if he’d felt a heavy tug on a fishing line then, after strug-
 
gling for hours to reel in the prize, realized his hook was just snagged on a jagged
 
reef. The image of that huge fish vanished in a poof, just like the imagined persona
 
of Jill Tyborg’s attacker.
 
            “No. But I think we might have a unique opportunity to collect DNA to match
 
the sperm sample from her rape.”
 
            Jim looked at Billie with a blank expression. “How’re we gonna do that?” 
 
            “Hello!” She knocked his forehead with her knuckles. “Billie to Jimbo—do you
 
read me? There was no boyfriend. I followed her everywhere and tagged her cell for
 
text messages.”
 
            “That’s illegal, Billie”
 
            “So’s rape, and in this case—of a minor.”
 
            “And?”
 
            “Her mother has been consulting with their priest, so they may be considering an
 
abortion for Jill, but they’re torn. If it had been a boyfriend, the Tyborgs would make
 
Jill have the baby, maybe put it up for adoption, or even raise the child themselves. It
 
was rape, so they’re having trouble dealing with their instincts to do what they morally
 
and religiously believe to be wrong—abort.”
 
            Jim shuddered at the thought with his personal convictions rising to the surface.
 
            “What can we do?”
 
            “Pay the Tyborg’s a visit. Let them know we’re aware that Jill is pregnant.”
 
            “OK, but how will that help?”
 
            “We’re going to help them make that difficult decision, but they’ll think they
 
made the choice themselves.”
 
            “I don’t know what to say, Billie . . .”
 
            “Just follow my lead.”
 
* * *
 
            At the Tyborg’s home, Jim stood off to the side as Billie sat next to Jill on a
 
sofa and Jill’s mother stood behind them with her arms folded and glared at Billie. She
 
seemed ready to end the questioning any time Billie might cross the line of impropriety.
 
            “How can I take care of a kid while finishing high school to get into college?”
 
Jill whined, avoiding her mother hovering behind her. “My dad has to commute to the
 
city and Mom works too. “An abortion’s the best solution.”
 
            Billie nodded then turned towards Mrs. Tyborg gnawing on her clenched fist
 
behind them.
 
“I want you to know that I understand Jill’s point of view regarding an abortion,
 
and I can see how you and Mr. Tyborg might find the unwanted baby a burden,” Billie 
 
parleyed.
 
            She did not say “we” because, with Jim a Roman Catholic and believing that even
 
his “understanding” the motive for an abortion would make him feel complicit to the sin.
 
            “But Detective Monahan and I believe that, over time, this rapist will surely attack


someone again.”
 
            In what appeared as an attempt to create a friendly mode of appeal, Billie nodded
 
towards Jim. “My partner is Catholic, so he would agree with your conviction that an
 
abortion would be an abomination. On the other hand, I believe in her right to choose,
 
especially in this case of rape. Regardless, I’m appealing to you to let Jill have her baby.
 
If the unwanted baby is too much of a burden, put it up for adoption.”
 
            “We’ve considered that,” Mrs. Tyborg sighed. “But why is the Police Department
 
concerned with our private matter?”
 
            Jim turned from the bay window where he was watching traffic go by to hear
 
what bull Billie would spout next.
 
            “If you decide to go with an abortion, I’ll be obligated, for the public good, to
 
get a court order to take the fetus for forensics when another innocent teenager like
 
Jill is raped again.”
 
            Jim couldn’t believe Billie would stick her neck out so far on this unauthorized
 
conference with such a bogus scenario. Billie stared unwaveringly at Mrs. Tyborg, who
 
just like Jim, couldn’t get that revolting image from her mind.
 
            “However, if you decide to have the baby, even keep and raise the child, we’ll
 
have a living, breathing source of DNA connected to Jill’s attacker to match up with
 
the rapist when he attacks again.”
 
            Mrs. Tyborgs’ expression looked like Disney’s Bambi when his mother was shot.
 
At first, Jim was appalled by Billie’s strategy and ashamed that she’d roped him into her
 
plan. But at the time, Billie’s instincts in the field superseded his. She’d made herself a
 
villain in Mrs. Tyborg’s eyes, at least for the moment, but her suggestion gave them
 
pause to consider their faith rather than their need to erase the product of the crime
 
against their daughter.
 
 * * *
 
            After several days of hearing nothing from the Tyborgs, Jim was convinced that
 
Billie’s conference with the family had done them more harm than good and that a com-
 
plaint to the department would ensue with suspensions for both of them for acting on
 
their own without authorization from Chief Detective Grimes. Instead, they were both
 
invited back to the Tyborg’s—but unofficially.
 
            “We’ve given much thought to Jill’s condition since we last spoke,” Mr. Tyborg
 
explained, obviously being the deciding influence in the matter. “Rather than putting the
 
baby up for adoption, we will help her raise the child so that Jill can attend college. My
 
wife and I can both work from home intermittently and take turns with the baby.”
 
He almost sneered at Billie the one time their eyes met, then he looked Jim
 
straight in the eye for the rest of the time.
 
“The idea of putting the child up for adoption as some sort of forensic reference is
 
unfathomable. However, Detective Monahan, if at any time in the future, you need anything
 
from us that will help solve this case or any future cases that relate to it, feel free to call on us.”
 
            Jim nodded and thanked them as they left and waited until he and Billie got into the
 
car before shrugging his shoulders, smirking at her with disbelief and asking , “How did that
 
happen?”
 
            “That family rejects everything I represent right down to my other-side-of-the-
 
tracks roots,” she said, backing out of the driveway with a frozen grin on her face.
 
            “You mean—?”
 
“Good cop—bad cop, but with subtle psychology. I offered the Tyborgs a choice,
 
just to make them feel they were in control. They could choose to go with me, the bitch
 
who wants to make lab experiments with their daughter’s unexpected offspring, or you
 
the nice Irish lad with the red hair and rosy cheeks who stands with God.”
 
            “Don’t mock my beliefs.”
 
“I got them to do what I wanted them to do in the first place—provide access to
 
the rapist’s DNA whenever we need it in the future without fear of contamination. A
 
saliva swab here, a follicle there, and we’ll have a user-friendly grandparent who wants
 
to know who raped their daughter. You heard the man yourself, Jimbo.  However, I’m
 
afraid you’ll have to be the one to make those request, Blue-eyes. The Tyborgs aren’t
 
talking to Billie the Kid again any time soon.”
 
            Jim was dumbfounded. “So you know that’s what the other detectives call you?”
 
            “Jeez, Jimbo, do you still believe in Leprechauns?” she taunted him. “Look at
 
me and don’t ever forget who you’re talking to. You’ve got a chubby for me, but you’re
 
too good to ever do anything about it. You want to be my father confessor, partner?
 
You’re the only guy in the unit decent enough for me ever to consider fucking a co-
 
worker. It’s a Catch-22, Jimbo. The feeling is mutual, but it’s never gonna happen,
 
because we’re cops first and people second. Just don’t get holier than thou with me.
 
I’m sure you whack off, in the shower and think about me when you’re doing it.”
 
            “What the f—!” he tried to protest. Then as they pulled into Headquarters in
 
Hackensack, she grabbed his thigh and turned to him while steering with one hand to
 
park in the River Street lot adjacent to the Bergen County Court House. She hit the
 
brakes with a jerking halt and put her face so close to his that he inhaled her warm
 
breath, redolent of hazelnut coffee, but otherwise pleasant—alluring.
 
            “Never hold out on me, Jimbo,” she said, raising one eyebrow and squinting
 
with the other eye as if taking aim at him. “This can be a shit job with nothing but grief
 
and sadness for the victims we try to help. So we’re never gonna spoil it for them by
 
being dishonest. If your lust for me ever goes beyond spanking the monkey with me in
 
mind, I might have to kill you. So I think you should start talking to wifie at home
 
about an occasional BJ just to keep it in the family. If that won’t fly with Sister Susie
 
Monahan, then just think about someone else besides me whenever your pecker gets
 
titillated, because we’ve got serious work to do, and I want to know I can always count
 
on you as an equal partner whose got my back—and I don’t mean doggie style. Got
 
it?”
 
            Jim wanted to argue, but the glare she gave him made that consideration futile.
 
She was dead right about everything. The scary part for him was that her attitude and
 
frankness made her even more attractive. But he wondered if he’d become an even
 
better cop by taking her cue and honoring that mutual pact to bring them closer on a
 
higher level of complete trust.
 
            As she reminded him, “When our perp, Mr. Clean, decides it’s time to spoil
 
another virgin, it will take both of us to get him, because he’ll try to improve on the
 
first rape with less evidence and more harm to his victim.”
 
 
   6
 
 
            After a year, the Jill Tyborg case had gone cold because Jim and Billie
 
couldn’t match the semen or follicles found with anyone even remotely connected to
 
the Tyborg family or the crime scene—not even using saliva swabs from Jill’s son,
 
Jimmy Tyborg, now three months old.
 
“Do you think the Tyborg’s named their grandson after me,” Jim asked Billie.
 
            “Probably,” she said with a shrug as they staked out a supposedly abandoned
 
house in Mahwah. Billie thought the house could be a hideout where any one of the
 
missing victims on their priority list might be held captive by an abductor.
 
The Tyborg case was officially shelved when no similar attacks had been
 
perpetrated in Bergen or neighboring Passaic and Morris Counties. Billie  kept in
 
contact with cops across the New Jersey border in Rockland and Orange Counties,
 
but still got zip. Jim let their stymied efforts to close the case get to him, because he
 
felt their failure wasn’t angering Billie enough—certainly not the way the unsolved
 
case had gotten under his own skin..
 
            “Why such a glum puppy, Jimbo?” she asked, rolling down her window as she
 
kept a watchful eye on the deserted house with the lopsided FORECLOSURE sign swaying
 
in the wind. “I’m sure Mr. Tyborg picked the name ‘James’ because he felt you were a
 
fine, upstanding Christian fellow,” she smirked. “I’m surprised they didn’t ask you to be
 
the kid’s godfather.”
 
            He turned his face away and mumbled, “They did.”
 
            “What? You’re fucking kidding me!” Billie’s mouth dropped open, revealing
 
her perfect teeth.
 
            “I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d give me shit, and maybe tell the guys
 
in the unit. Last month I made my vows as godfather at the baptism.  Even Susie
 
doesn’t know.”
 
            “Whatever happens in this partnership stays in this partnership, Jimbo, and don’t
 
ever forget it! I know you’ve gotten the razzings from the Boys Club, but if you ever weaken
 
under pressure, just throw them something that doesn’t matter—like I told you to get a
 
BJ from Susie so you’d grow no horns when we’re staked out like this till 5:00 AM.”
 
Jim’s silence cued her. “Holy shit! You already gave that up?”
 
            “It was a choice between that and telling them I’m the Tyborg  kid’s godfather.”
 
            “Why?”
 
            “It was Mrs. Tyborg . . . Ellen. She called me and asked me to be godfather 
 
to Jill’s baby because, under the circumstances, no one in their family would.”
 
            “Wow! You’re some lollipop, Jimbo. Can I have a lick, too. The Chief would
 
have a shit fit if he knew you were personally involved with our vic.”
 
He glared at her.
 
            “He’s never hearin’ it from me,” Billie assured him.  “But . . . if I have an itch
 
someday, I might need you to scratch it.”
 
            “Not in this lifetime,” he assured her.
 
            “OK. Your secret’s safe with me, so why the sad puss?”
 
            He jerked his head. “I’m OK, Billie.”
 
            “No you’re not,” she laughed, giving him a nudge with her sharp elbow. “Spill it.”
 
            “It’s the Tyborg case . . . I’m disturb that we have no resolution. Were we tricked
 
by Jill’s father? Did he really do it from the inside, and did his wife, Ellen, cover for him? 
 
I think Ellen is easily coerced. Did the three of them cover it up, make up the rape story
 
to protect their image in case Jill got pregnant. Maybe they already knew she was. Did I
 
let them rope me into their plot, just because I was an easy mark, a softie— like you said    
 
—a goddamn lollipop?”
 
            “It’s good that you’re disturbed.”  She nodded. “But I think for the wrong reason.
 
We can’t physically connect Jill’s father. He’s not smart enough to have covered his
 
tracks or anyone else’s. We’ve missed some other connection. It bothers me that we
 
couldn’t root it out.”
 
            “Jill’s story was convincing to me,” Jim admitted. “She said the guy was
 
controlling, but also gentle. He knew he was going to take her virginity; that was his
 
prize. He wasn’t brutal. Instead, she said he was seductive.”
 
            Billie blew her cigarette smoke out the window and reflected. “Jill said he
 
needed a shave; his face was rough against hers. He wore a Lone Ranger type mask
 
and a baseball cap. I got her to tell me the details. He pressed a knife to her belly while
 
he gave her oral sex. He told Jill that was because he wanted to stimulate her so she
 
would experience pleasure rather than pain when he came inside her.”
 
            Jim added, “He had to have worn latex gloves and used the concrete walkways
 
leading to the house. He probably wrapped his shoes in plastic bags to be sure he’d
 
leave no prints—zilch on all counts. He must have had a key to enter the front door--
 
no forced entry. We’ve got no clothing fibers, but semen and hair with no matches.
 
Same shit over and over again, but we’re stumped. That’s what pisses me off.”
 
            “Stay pissed. That’s good. Jill said that he mesmerized her somehow.” Billie
 
frowned. “She didn’t fight back because she was so frightened and thought her sub-
 
mission would save her life, maybe even her parents’ lives if the perp had become 
 
desperate enough to kill them all. She’d lain in bed for an hour after he left without
 
calling for help because she thought he might still be in the house.”
 
            “The son of a bitch got away with it,” Jim huffed.
 
            She put the cool back of her hand against his hot cheek with the scent of citrus
 
body wash on her fingers. “Calm down. We’re not done yet. The guy thinks he got away
 
with it, so he’ll try again. Give it time. We’ll get ’m. I promise—Look! Someone’s
 
coming out of the house. Let’s go!”
 
            “Stop! Police!” Jim called out with his shield in his left hand and his hand on his
 
holstered weapon “Hands on your head!”
 
            “Now!” Billie shouted, holding her Glock steady with both hands but pointing it
 
upward.
 
            The man complied, but grumbled as they frisked him for weapons and cuffed him.
 
“Is this some kind of gag?” he asked.
 
            Jim whipped him around and pushed him against the crumbling shingles of the
 
dilapidated house. Billie lit a flashlight in his face. Jim pulled the man’s wallet from his
 
back pocket and pulled out his driver’s license for Billie to see with the flashlight. She
 
pointed the flashlight back and forth to see that the photo was the same face.
 
            “What’s your name and address?” she asked to be sure the wallet wasn’t stolen.
 
            “George Smith, 87 Branch Road, Franklin Lakes. Was the money just some kind
 
of a gag at my expense? I haven’t done anything wrong?”
 
            “The sign says NO TRESSPASSING,” Jim said, motioning to the rusted sign on
 
the oak tree leaning against the roof of the house. “We can take you in on that count
 
alone. But maybe you’re hiding someone inside the house—some young girl you
 
kidnapped and raped.”
 
            “Wha-what?” George stammered. “There’s no one inside that house; I just
 
came for the cash, just like I was instructed.”
 
            “What cash?” Jim demanded.
 
            “In my left front pocket—two thousand bucks, all twenties,” he said. “Aw shit!
 
You mean I can’t keep it? I did everything I was told.”
 
            “What were you told?” Billie gave him a shove against the house.
 
            “I was told to come here after dark, but not too late, that I’d find two thousand
 
dollars cash under floor mat in the kitchen. Jeez! It stinks in there. Mice everywhere.”
 
            “Who told you to get this money?”
 
            “I don’t know. I got a note in my jacket pocket; don’t know how it got there.”
 
            “Show me that note,” Billie commanded.
 
            “Can’t. That was in the instructions. Said I had to burn the note or else the money
 
wouldn’t be there. I need that money to stop foreclosure on my home . . . like this one.
 
That’s why I came to get it, just like I was told.”
 
            Jim reached in his jacket and pulled on a latex glove before reaching into George’s
 
pocket for the cash, a wad of twenty Franklins.
 
            “I didn’t think I was doing anything illegal,” George pleaded.
 
            “Are you starting to grow a beard?” Billie asked, noting his stubble.
 
            “That was part of the instructions; three days without shaving before I came
 
for the money. On the third day, I would wait till dark before going to this vacant
 
house. The backdoor was open for me to get the money under the kitchen mat. The
 
creepy part was having to wait till 4:00 AM before leaving the house. It’s disgusting
 
in there. I thought it was some eccentric rich guy taking me on a scavenger hunt
 
to get his jollies. I need that money . . . real bad.” He eyed the cash in Jim’s hand.
 
“I had to do it—just to keep a roof over my kids’ heads.”
 
            “You keep him here while I scope the house,” Billie said.
 
            While she searched for any signs of foul play, especially evidence of anyone
 
held captive, Jim continued to interrogate George.
 
            “If we find any drugs in there, we’re turning you over to Narcotics Division.
 
And if you’re dealing to kids you’ll be going bye-bye for a long time.”
 
            “I told you the truth. If she finds drugs in there, I have nothing to do with them
 
and this was a set-up.”
 
            “Your story’s made up, fella,” Jim insisted. “You raped a girl in Paramus over a
 
year ago and fit the description. We’re gonna put you in a lineup for her to see your ugly
 
face.”
 
            “I don’t know what you’re talking about; I’m a good father and law abiding
 
citizen. I just ran into hard times, losing my job. I just came for the money like I was
 
told.”
 
            When Billie came out of the house she glared at Jim and shook her head. Much to
 
Jim’s surprise, she uncuffed their suspect and looked him in the eye.
 
            “I’ll tell you what, George. We want to take a recorded statement from you at
 
Headquarters, but you have the right to tell us to stick it. You know the Miranda routine--
 
you have the right to remain silent and have an attorney—but that could cost you at least
 
a thousand bucks, and you’ll never see this cash again.”
 
            George was all ears, but Jim was dumbfounded.
 
            “This particular stash is evidence in an ongoing case, so it has to stay with
 
forensics in our custody, and then, maybe a year or two from now if the case is solved,
 
illegal cash goes to our local pension fund—professional perks  But if you work with us
 
on this, stay close and remain available for any more questions or forensic tests on any-
 
thing that might connect you to that note you burned and the person who put it in your
 
pocket, I’ll stake you that two grand tomorrow, out of my own pocket. And if you get
 
any more contacts that are even remotely similar to this one, you’ve got to call me
 
immediately. Then we can just call your illegal trespassing tonight a misunderstanding
 
and forget about it. What do you say?”
 
            “You’re serious?” George asked, but Jim was biting his tongue.
 
            “Dead serious.”
 
            “Deal.”
 
            They shook hands, but Jim held his hands up.
 
            “I’m not touching this one, Billie. Follow your gut if you must, but leave me out
 
of it.”
 
            She nodded towards Jim. “Don’t let my partner scare you—unless you cross me
 
—then he’ll show you no mercy.”
 
            “Would you guys mind dropping me off at home after I make my statement?
 
I had to walk three miles to get here and I’m freezing my butt off. My wife must be
 
worried. I lied to her—said I got a night shift job to explain how I got the money.”
 
            “As long as you promise to show up at this office in Hackensack at 10:00 AM.”
 
She handed him her card. “You can give us your statement in the morning.”
 
            “I’ll be there.”
 
            After they dropped George off at home, Jim tied into Billie. “Are you fucking
 
crazy? How can you believe this guy’s story? It makes no sense. And what you just did
 
tonight was a clear case of extortion—quid pro quo—a two thousand dollar bribe just
 
so he won’t lawyer up. I know you’re a cowboy, Billie, but this crosses the line.”
 
            “Don’t you know when you’re being played, Jimbo?”
 
“I knew it! This guy is playing us.”
 
            “Not George! The guy who slipped the note to him and baited him with the cash.”
 
            “You actually believe that bullshit?”
 
            “Absolutely.”
 
            “Why?”
 
            “It was a message.”
 
            “To who?”
 
            “To us.”
 
            “You lost me, Billie.”
 
            “We’ve been watched all along and probably were tonight.”
 
            “Who’s watching us?”
 
            “The man who raped Jill Tyborg. Tonight was just a tease to let us know he’ll
 
strike again. The first time was too perfect; he needs a challenge. We’re it, so we’ll
 
have to step up our game. He certainly is.”
 
            “Are you sure?”
 
            She rolled her eyes and brought the car to a screeching halt where Jim had left
 
his car parked. “Welcome to the majors Jimbo. See you at ten for George’s statement.
 
I want your head clear tomorrow because this guy will strike soon, so . . . I don’t need
 
a partner with a case of the SBUs clogging his brain.” She pumped her clenched fist to
 
her open mouth and swelled her cheek with her tongue with each pump as she winked.
 
            The training ground for Jim’s partnership with Billie the Kid was over; she had an
 
equal partner now—not in crime—but against it.
 
 
                                                       

Bilingual Work by Daniel de Culla

***

TRES NUEVOS LIBROS
A los postres de un Restaurante de la Calle Real, en Segovia, muy cercano a la Casa de los Picos, el poeta y escritor de Cullá presentó, en una fuente dibujada con muchos lugares importantes de la provincia: Cuéllar, Turégano, Sepúlveda, Pedraza, Navalmanzano, Zamarramala, sus tres nuevos libros que fueron aplaudidos y muy comentados por los comensales. Tal fue su contento que los ríos Eresma y Clamores casi no corrían y no molían las aceñas. A los cafés, el camarero que nos trajo los chupitos de licores nos dijo:
-Los chupitos corren por nuestra cuenta. ¡Ah¡ y los libros de este señor de Cullá, que he ojeado, sobre todo los dibujos, son como aguacates, frutas de las Indias, provocativas a Lujuria. ¡Una maravilla¡
Las mujeres, que estaban presentes, notaron malicia en sus ojos.
Lo que más encantó a los presentes fue ojear con delicia los apartados: “Eros entre los Dedos”, perteneciente al libro: PRIAPO CON VESTA; y “Wo/Man ‘ Hee-Haw”, perteneciente al libro: UN MONO VERDE.
Finalizado el Acto, y antes de marchar cada cual a su destino: unos, a Valladolid; otros, a Burgos; otros a Soria; quedando sólo en Segovia el camarero que felicitó al Poeta, fueron hacia la estatua de Juan de Padilla el “Comunero” donde, rodeándola”, saltando de alegría y aplaudiéndose a sí mismos, se tiraron unos grandes, estupendos y sonoros cuescos, a la vez que tremendos eructos, recordando a los Comuneros de Castilla y su no Rey, lo que vitorearon muchos de los que por allí pasaban, y otros vilipendiaron.
- Sansón de Sasamón
Dado en Segovia, el día 24 de Septiembre de 2021


THREE NEW BOOKS
At the desserts of a Restaurant on Calle Real, in Segovia, very close to the Casa de los Picos, the poet and writer de Cullá presented in a fountain drawn with many important places in the province: Cuéllar, Turégano, Sepúlveda, Pedraza , Navalmanzano, Zamarramala, his three new books that were applauded and highly commented on by diners. Such was his contentment that the Eresma and Clamores rivers hardly flowed and the watermelons did not grind. At the cafes, the waiter who brought us the shots of liquor told us:
-The shots are on us. Oh, and the books of this gentleman de Cullá, which I have looked at, especially the drawings, are like avocados, fruits of the Indies, provocative to Lust. A marvel ¡
The women, who were present, noticed malice in his eyes.
What most enchanted those present was to glimpse with delight the sections: “Eros Between Fingers”, belonging to the book: PRIAPUS WITH VESTA; and “Wo / Man‘ Hee-Haw ”, from the book: A GREEN MONKEY.
After the Act, and before leaving each to their destination: some, to Valladolid; others, to Burgos; others, to Soria; Only in Segovia the waiter who congratulated the Poet; they marched towards the Juan de Padilla’ statue, the “Comunero” where, surrounding it , jumping for joy and applauding themselves, they threw some big, stupendous and sonorous cuesques, at the same time what tremendous burps, remembering the Communards of Castilla and their not King, which many of those who passed by cheered, and others vilified.


- Samson de Sasamón
Given in Segovia, the day 9/24/2021

***


SEEING FILOMENA


In the darkness of the night, the young Filomena, with a black cape and hood, leads her boy, dressed in dark trousers and a white
shirt, by the hand, through the Cotarro hill towards the stone cellar open at ground level, where no one sees them.
Only the fire of some bundles of burning branches, ready to grill some lamb chops, illuminates the church made of stone that seems to be supported by bones and skulls from the graveyard next door.
At the time of the walk, they prepared to kiss before going into the cellar.
-Kiss me, Serranito, kiss me, before we drink Ribera del Duero wine from that skull that young people have in the winery.
While they were kissing and trying to lie down, the young Filomena took a ham knife from her black cape and stuck it almost entirely in the back of the Serranito in love, when the poor man exclaimed:
-How sweet are your kisses, Filomena!
The Serranito fell back onto the grass of the cellar door, causing the knife to go deeper into it.
Filomena, as she did not feel him asleep or dead instantly, has gone to see him as he moved making fuss and sometimes sticking out his tongue.
That she saw that the serranito, before he died, made a straw that spit out stars, and the watercress that it gave made the whole Cotarro tremble, the girl has covered herself with the entire black cape, turning darkness with the dark night of Moradillo, the sky full of stars, running and chasing some bats that came out of the cellar after her.

Johann Kuhnau’s Complaint:
​
A Somewhat True Tale


by Anita G. Gorman


I was born on April 6, 1660 in Geising. I studied at Dresden’s Kreuzschule and sang in the Dresdener Kreuzchor. I had two music teachers: Barthold Hering and Vincenzo Albrici. I don’t know if you have ever heard of them. Perhaps not. Have you ever heard of me? I am Johann Kuhnau.
Those were dangerous times, when the plague would surface here and there. When the plague hit Dresden, I left and found work in Zittau. No, I am not a saint, like that Saint Roch, who traveled to Rome—not away from it—when the plague was raging, so that he could care for the sick and dying. No, unlike Saint Roch, I, Johann Kuhnau, hightailed it out of Dresden as fast as I could when people started dropping from the plague. I was a musician, not a doctor, and certainly not a saint.
To change the subject: I don’t like to brag. Well, I do like to brag, so I will tell you that I have successfully studied Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French, and Italian. And, of course, I am fluent in German; what else would one expect from a fellow born in Geising?
I am a musician, but I have also studied law. I have written poetry and composed music. I should be happy, but I am not. In fact, I am seething with rage.
The pinnacle of my career, so it seemed at the time, was my appointment in 1701 as cantor of Leipzig’s Thomaskirche. I was told I was hired because I was not only a musician but also a composer, a scholar, a linguist, and a philosopher. One would think that therefore I would be satisfied. One would be wrong.
For one thing, I have often been sick in my life. No amount of mental fortitude and sheer will enabled me to overcome physical illness, even though I tried to believe that mind can triumph over matter. But there is more. Some people were against me.
It was very competitive in Leipzig; there were not enough singers to go around. There I was, at one of the most prestigious Lutheran churches in all of Germany (not that Germany existed as a country at that time), and I was competing for singers not just with other choirmasters but with the opera as well! Leipzig’s opera continuously seduced, so to speak, my choir members, and suddenly they didn’t have time for church music. A bunch of ingrates!
And then there was the time that the famous Georg Philipp Telemann came to Leipzig. Like me, he had studied law; unlike me, he was famous. He is still famous as I speak to you in the 21st century. Am I right? Have you ever heard of me, of Johann Kuhnau? No, correct? Have you heard of Telemann? Yes, correct?
So the illustrious Telemann came to Leipzig in 1701 and set up a collegium musicum. Fancy Latin name for a group of amateur musicians! Mein Gott! And there went more of my students. I would soon have a quartet singing at the Thomaskirche, if I were lucky.
But that’s not all. Imagine this, you people in the 21st century. Would you expect the mayor of your city, whether it be large or small, to have a say in who composes music for your church? Not likely. Yet that is exactly what happened to me. The mayor of Leipzig actually allowed the so-called great Telemann to write music for the Thomaskirche, my church! My church!
Do you think that was all? Not so. In 1703, I was sick. That was a full nineteen years before I actually died. And what do you think happened? Ach, it was so awful! The town council, having been informed of my illness, did not bother to ask about my condition. Nor did they send a greeting wishing me good health. Nein, they ignored me and instead asked Telemann to be my
successor, just in case I died right then and there. Ach, but I fooled them! I stayed alive with that Saxon determination, through sheer will, for another nineteen years. And do you know who succeeded me at the Thomaskirche after I died in 1722? Johann Sebastian Bach, that’s who. Not too shabby, as some of you might say.
I, Johann Kuhnau, actually invented the keyboard sonata, but does anyone know that? You, dear reader, will learn, if you consult the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, that my “reputation rests almost entirely on the four printed sets of keyboard pieces, especially the last of them, the Biblische Historien. This consists of six multi-movement ‘sonatas’, each prefaced by a prose description of a particular incident from the Old Testament illustrated in the music . . . Kuhnau emphasized in a learned and valuable preface that this type of programme music was not new, and he referred to models by Froberger and ‘other excellent authors.’”
At least they recognized my “learned and valuable preface” in the 21st century, if not in the Baroque period. Danke schön!
But I think the main reason that people didn’t like me was my novel, Der musicalische Quack-Salber, which was based on Christian Weise’s Politische Quacksalbe. In my time, people could transform other people’s material if they felt like it. We didn’t have copyright laws or lawyers on every street looking for a lawsuit to instigate. No, we could take old material and make it our own. So Christian Weise’s political charlatan gave me the idea of writing about a musical charlatan. Ach, there were so many fakes in my time, so many who dazzled the public with their superficial talent or non-talent. And, by the way, Christian Weise was rector of the Gymnasium in Zittau when I was a student there.
The butt of my satire was a fellow I named Caraffa, an Italian of course. It was easy to make fun of Italian charlatans in Germany, easier than it would have been to ridicule my fellow
countrymen. I should issue a clarification, however. My Caraffa was actually a German, but he wanted to be famous and the darling of the musical cognoscenti, so he pretended to be Italian. You will note that even the word cognoscenti—meaning those in the know—is an Italian word. I understand that in your time, you who live in the twenty-first century, my book has some cachet, to use a French word. There is even a fine translation into English, I am told. And I also understand that scholars even use my book to find out about musical customs and performance at the end of the seventeenth century. My book was published in 1700. Those modern scholars will not, I think, have any idea about the reception of my book during my lifetime. Let me just say that fine musicians enjoyed it. Musicians who were mediocre or pretentious or charlatans, well, they did not like it so much. They were, in fact, angry, but they pretended not to be, so that no one would think that they themselves were charlatans. Rather clever, if I must say so for myself.
I have other complaints. For example, my student Johann Friedrich Fasch was a total and complete ingrate. And so much of my work is lost! Where did it go? Did someone wrap fish in it? Ach! Perhaps some of you—yes, I am speaking to you moderns or post-moderns—may read Der musicalische Quack-Salber—in English, if you must—but I believe you will have to know German in order to peruse two other of my satires, Der Schimd seines eignen Unglückes (The Maker of His Own Misfortune) and Des lugen und thorichten Gebrauchs der Fünf Sinnen (On the Clever and Foolish Use of the Five Senses). And Gesundheit to you, too! (Just a little jest on my part.)
And now for a parting word. I have learned a thing or two in almost three hundred years, most of which I knew before: Work hard; practice; love your craft; and do not let the charlatans get you down!

Interior of the Church from Moradillo de Roa (Burgos).
Photograph by Daniel de Culla


A LADDER TO GO UP TO HEAVEN

By Daniel de Culla


Sometimes, dragged by the hand by my wife, whom I love, who pulls me like a donkey, I go to Mass in the church of the town, in which the celebrant priest, through the formulas and sacramental words, always the same, from a fat book that they say sacred, he realizes the
mystery of the transubstantiation of the mystery of the Eucharist, representing the events of the New Testament, and especially the Passion and death of Jesus Christ.
Above all I go with her, to condescend, to the high mass of the main town festivals; to the mass for the dead of a direct relative; to the mass of the rooster, at Christmas; and to the mass of the odd wedding, especially in which the bride already carries the child inside her.
From so much hearing mass and attending them out of obligation, when my parents put me in a seminary, I ended up fed up with them, not knowing, now, about the average mass.
I was a missal eater. I was fed up and filled with prayers. I almost reached misacantano (ordained priest); until I asked myself: What will these masses stop at? How will this end? How will I get out of the Seminary?
Remembering what a family member of mine, a deranged mystic, told me: “Mass is said by the priest; for hearing mass and giving barley, he never missed a day ”, when I left the Seminary and came home with the mattress as it says under my arm, because you had to bring the sleeping mattress, I said to my mother:
-Mother, I can no longer bear from these priests so much hypocrisy, so much obscenity, so much deception, besides that their good is based only on deceiving us and hallucinating us to rob us even of our temples. What rascals!
I'm not going to climb that ladder to go up to Heaven. Besides, as you well know, for the living, Heaven is over their heads; for the dead, their Heaven is underground.
She answered me:
-You will learn, you will see what will happen to you. You could have finished and lived as a priest with five parishes and five widows "amas de cura"(mistresses of priest). Besides that they do not understand the mass other than in their missal.
I said:
-Mother, there is no turning back. I will never again be a Miser, given or fond of hearing many masses, full of love, miserable, scarce and ridiculous in the way I behave and spend.
Also, do you remember that girl who showed a color like pink and came to the prayers of the Rosary that I gave, and of the Stations of the Cross, the way of the Cross around the town, who was after me? Now my blackbird is born and dies at the foot of her sapling or foal.
What happened to me later was that I had to earn my bread with the sweat of my brow, and march down the path of the bitterness of this life; not like them, the priests, who live off the sweat of the foreheads of others.
Later, I got married, but I didn't screw it up; contrary to the one who said to a friend of both: “Pablo, you got married. You screwed up! ”.

Photo by Isabel
​

THE CIDIAN GHOST

By Daniel de Culla


Helmets, crosses, shields and swords of the entire heavenly court of gods, kings, marquise demigods, dictator generals, champion cides who knew how to disappoint the nations they subjugated or conquered are nailed to a straw alpaca (bale) at the foot of the Cathedral de Burgos in its VIII Centenary, reminding you of what a throw or a shot in the neck or in the back given on time is worth.
This time, thanks to the Cid in his mask, dressed as a monk or witch, playing a tambourine or drum made of pig or lamb bladder skin, playing and laughing he repeated: “That, after so many conquests and reconquests, gallows, walls , gutters and wolfholes, stoning, vile stick or electric chair, we have only managed to suck our fingers or our dicks, as the Dog or the Ass does, which are the ones that last.
I have my suspicions that, in the note on the ground next to the alpaca, the set is written that was the cause, and continues to be, of that enormous and fierce hatred that the Castilians had against the Moors and Jews. I see it and I feel it in the smile on the Cid's mask.
So much ardor is used in the fights, so much effort, that in the end luck makes almost all of them die in the combat, always remaining alive hypocritical priests, deceitful generals, obscene politicians, whose good is based only on deceiving and robbing the people .
With the approval of the mask, I take the note and read:
“To Dead Beard, Little Shame.
El Cid is dead. Those who respect him speak well of him. Those who fear him speak against him. And they all attack or venerate his children and his widow.
Embalmed, dressed and seated in his seat in the Monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña, one day that a great Cidiana festival was being celebrated, leaving only him, and all, monks and parishioners, outside the church firing rockets, a Jew and a Moor who They came to him, looking at him, and seeing that he did not move, sarcastically said to him:
-We approach your beard, brave champion, to see what you do to us now.
Then the Cid moved in his seat, taking hold of the Cistercian habit, opening it and taking out a span of his cock, the way he did when he drew his Tizona sword in combat. The Jew and the Moor were frightened, falling to the ground, remaining as dead. When the people and monks re-entered the church and found them like this, they kicked them out, but not before pouring jugs of holy water on their heads to wake them up.
This is a true story of Christianity.
The monks and the feudal lords have absolute and entire jurisdiction over the vassals to punish, absolve and forgive as kings. "
What rascals!

The Wrong Party 

  by K. A. Williams


I was late, but I finally found the old two-story wood house that Erin had rented for the Halloween party. It was perfect.

I parked at the end of a long line of cars. A lit carved pumpkin sat on the front porch. When I used the old-fashioned knocker, a ghoul opened the door.
"Enjoy the party," he said.

I hadn't recognized the ghoul nor did any of the vampires, goblins, witches, warlocks, zombies, and werewolves look familiar. I thought Erin and I had the same friends. Where was she anyway?

Snacks and drinks were laid out on a table along with cups and plates. I dipped out a cupful of red liquid from one of the punch bowls. It was thick and salty and tasted like - I gagged.

"You don't like it?" One of the vampires stood beside me.

"No."

"You don't look familiar. Are you crashing the party or were you invited?"

"Do you know anyone named Erin?" I asked.

"No."

"Then I'm at the wrong party. Are you going to throw me out?"

The vampire smiled, fangs showing. "Of course not. Maybe you'll find this party more interesting."

"Well," I hesitated. "I really should find my own party."

"There is a house very similar to this one on the next street. Maybe your friends are there. Take the pathway through the woods behind this house, it's a shortcut."

"Thank you." 

I went outside. A car had parked behind mine, so I walked around the house in search of the pathway.

The gnarled bare limbs of trees reached out to each other along the narrow trail. I heard a noise and turned. Moonlight shone on the vampire from the party.

***

I found the right house, it looked just like the other one. The door opened when I used the knocker and Erin stood there in her vampire costume.

"Where have you been?" she asked.

"I stopped for a bite on the way."

"You could have waited." She handed me a glass. "I saved this for you."

I sipped the red liquid. "This is much better than the tomato juice I had at the last party."

"You've been to another party?"

I stepped inside. "Let me tell you all about it."



The End

First published in Writers Gazette in 1987.

​Missing In The Bermuda Triangle


 by K. A. Williams


I chewed my second Dramamine and lay on the cabin bunk, trying to keep my stomach calm as the yacht El Ganso sailed along.

I knew I'd get seasick but I was being paid well for my services as a psychic.
It wasn't all about the money though, I liked helping people. 

Hector Rodriguez hired me to find his brothers. They had vanished, fishing boat and all, off the coast of Florida. Their last reported position two days ago was in the Bermuda Triangle. The coast guard searched that area but no trace of them or their ship could be found. 

One of Hector's friends suggested he try a psychic.
He had googled psychics in the Miami region and picked me.

I opened my mind. At first I couldn't sense anybody besides the people on this ship. Then I sensed an alien female presence. Images came into my mind of an old creature who was an explorer. Her spaceship had been damaged by an asteroid and she'd crashed into the ocean.

This alien was responsible for incidents in her territory of the Bermuda Triangle. She used a device which caused engine failure in ships. When they stopped, she extended her limbs to the ocean's surface, then retracted them, pulling that ship underwater.  

The amphibious creature's ship was cloaked so it remained hidden and undetected. She repaired the damage when she found suitable parts and had also chemically altered and adapted the sunken ships' fuel so it could power her own ship.

Hector's brothers were unlucky enough to be in her territory. Their ship's fuel had already been changed by the alien and now there was enough to reach home after the long voyage here.

She was ready.

I hurried up the steps to the deck. "There's a monster in the Bermuda Triangle!"

"Did you say monster?!" Hector asked. "What about my brothers?"

"Your brothers are dead. She killed them. Her spaceship is coming up from the ocean floor now! We need to leave this area or we'll be sunk!" I pointed beyond the starboard rail. "Look!"

In the distance, the water was swirling and churning,
foam mixing with the blue-green color.

Hector looked where I pointed, then shouted,
"Tony! Hard to port and full speed ahead!"

Our ship turned and moved quickly forward. Behind us I could see water rising and falling off a large outline as her cloaked ship left the ocean. Then a wall of water moved toward us swiftly while our ship sped onward. 

I didn't think we could outrun the wave. Neither did Hector. He grabbed my hand and pulled me with him as he shouted, "Tony! Switch off the engine and get below deck!"

We had all just gotten inside and shut the hatch when the wave crashed down upon us. The boat rocked violently back and forth for a few minutes but we didn't capsize.

Finally it stopped rocking as the sea slowly calmed down
​along with my queasy stomach.

"I'm sorry about your brothers," I said to Hector.

Before my telepathic link with the alien ended, I could feel her happiness. She hadn't killed with malice, she'd just wanted to go home. 

***

                  K. A. Williams writes speculative, mystery/crime, general fiction, and poetry. Her science fiction has been published this year in The Creativity Webzine, Aphelion, Theme Of Absence, 365 Tomorrows, Altered Reality, Bewildering Stories, Corner Bar, and View from Atlantis.               

---

Roboticons

By Jeff Blechle



“I am so sick of hearing about the Rott case I could throw your easel off this cliff! Why am I even painting you? For whom?”
“This planet’s existence hinges on the outcome of the Rott case.” She puffed out her bare breasts and shook her hair on her back. “I’m warning everyone to stay out of the canyon areas until we get these little murderers under control, find out what this is all about. Rott was eaten alive, remember. And you’re painting for posterity.”
            Raze screamed and threw her paint-splotched easel, along with his painting of a herd of little human-eating roboticons, into the tremendous Blue Canyon. “Oops.”
Commissioner Lorelei got up off the flat rock and glared at him. Never once did Raze allow her to peek at his artistic progress. She snapped and jerked into her combat clothes and tactical gear.
“Sorry, Commissioner. These mass murderers have got me spooked. I mean, being a true artist, I’m very sensitive.”
“Too bad your wedding ring didn’t catch on that easel.” She thumbed two black streaks under her eyes and sneered at Raze. “I’m on duty, and I’m thinking about shooting you to ribbons. So watch it.” She strapped on her artillery.
“Your car keys. They were on the easel.” Then, “Oh God.” Raze’s shiny brown slacks dropped to his ankles, his jaw followed, and he pointed beyond Lorelei during a buzzard’s cry and an intensifying rumble in the earth. “Duh-duh-duh-Crytek roboticons! Look out!”
Lorelei leaped and spun and kicked off a titanium head, hacked and blasted off several others, but fifty or more rushed them, then hundreds more swarmed, billowing dust to the clouds, murderous varieties of every sheen, creedless, colorless, and though she fought with incredible agility and fierceness—suffering a bite on her throat—she was only able to save herself and a half-eaten salami on rye.
No true artist, dead or living, would waste such an accessible store of compelling raw material.
“Great, no mustard.”
 
No shower, no coffee, no brushed teeth, Tech 7 greeted his colleagues at the arid canyon cliff crime scene like a shambling slab of rotten roadkill meat fresh from Crytek Highway, ready to blame Raze’s corpse for Commissioner Lorelei’s disappearance. “Yep, this artist type’s got Cryteks written all over him, literally. Misspelled, but still.” He squatted and picked up Lorelei’s gold commissioner badge, then hid it in his disgusted fist. “Burn him.”
“Has anyone seen my badge?”
Gomez 4 gave Lorelei’s sun-rising image a quick look, then continued taking selfies of his new beard. “Protocol is to take the corpse back to the lab, analyze it, and then incinerate it. Right, Commissioner?”
“That’s right.” She stepped over and pried her badge out of Tech 7’s fist. “You need to step down.”
“Crytek lovers,” Tech 7 muttered. “Burn him.”
Yorga 9, career intern, crunched over in a peerless lab coat, red owl glasses, clean face, hair brushed and parted an inch above his left ear, not the kind of guy you’d expect to say, “Fucking new-age pervert Cryteks up to their old fucking tricks. Probably covered in tattoos and piercings and weird haircuts, you know, shaved on the sides, brown. Graphic tees—with skulls. Goddamn outsiders.” He looked around at the dying sky and moaned lightly, “Hear this, Commissioner Lorelei. Everybody looks like somebody else but us.”
“Yorga 9, Cryteks are roboticons.”
Gomez 4 pointed at the ground. “Look, an AIDS bracelet. Here is a used set of plasticware. Dill dip. Ladies, this man was mistaken for endive.”
“You two are ignorant,” Tech 7 said. “It’s a suicide. Burn him.”
“He does not have a head, sir,” Gomez 4 said. “Commissioner?”
“I’m on the verge of reassigning all three of you to custodial positions.”
Yorga 9 came out from behind a bright orange rock. “Here’s the head, people.”
“God. I know that dude. This is his AIDS bracelet.” Gomez 4 scuffed up a circle. “I’m fucking this dude’s girlfriend. I gotta get tested. Quick!”
Shivering red, Tech 7 looked down his nose at Gomez 4. “It was you that sent Lorelei flowers, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. But only because I thought she was dead.” He went to the step van and brought back a body bag. “I also sent her a congratulations card on the same occasion.”
“Oh yeah?” Tech 7 rolled up his sleeves. “Why's that?”
“Because I thought you had preceded her in death.”
When Gomez 4 and Yorga 9 stopped laughing, the four specialists found themselves surrounded by cackling, bristling, fang-licking Cryteks thrusting tiny sword-like weapons. Seconds later, the team scramble into the lab’s armored step van with only major lacerations and concussions, slipped discs and copious blood loss, arthritis, and driving over and endless sea of teeming roboticons for twenty miles made for a nervous excursion back to town.
“It’s gotta be Monday,” Yorga 9 said, bleeding from his thigh. He fell over dead. It was Wednesday.
When they entered the town, its streets were piled low with corpses.
 
Bandaged, braced, and strung out, burnt coffee smelling around late-night clutter, down the dim corridor came limpy dragging footsteps. Rustling. Click. The breakroom door opened into hissing tiny-light darkness—the icemaker, the microwave clock, the led light strip above the toe kick.
“Kisses.”
When cold lips touched his eyelid, Gomez 4 sprang up on the couch and his Star Wars pillow exploded in feathers. “What the—? Who are you? Why did you kiss me? Oh, my God. Tech 7!”
Tech 7 baffled affable nebulosity. “Oh. What? Yeah—wait. You’re not my wife. Are you?”
“I knew you were gay, man. I knew it!”
“I stepped in here by mistake.”
“You crack whore. Get out before I call the pigs!”
“Really? Dude, we are the pigs.”
Commissioner Lorelei blasted into the breakroom with a subatomic machine gun and shot out the window, perched her gun on the sill, and started firing at a small protesting group of roboticons. “What are you two lovers doing in here? Grab some nuclear hardware and start hurling!”
Tech 7, recovering in false bewilderment, adjusted his turtleneck. “These crazies we work with. You know?”
“Commissioner, Tech 7 just barge in here and kissed me while I was sleeping on the couch. Try to get with me, then lied it up like some bitch with a gun in her face.”
“Are you still on that?”
Lorelei entered warp speed violence and insulted Tech 7’s every moment on earth. He shrank back from her gaze as she reloaded plutonium.
“Please do not look at me like that, Commissioner.”
“Like what?”
“You know, like, with your eyes.”
She shot a light fixture above him, and it shattered on his head. “Get weaponry! They seem to be affected by death.”
The men moved sluggishly toward the artillery safe. Gomez 4 croaked, “I think the only way to beat the Cryteks is to surrender and let them kill us. Think about it. As far as we know, there are only the three of us left in this town. Your thoughts?”
“You are a moron.”
Tech 7 grabbed an iridium laser gun and then yanked open the small fridge door and frowned in its ghastly light. He watched Lorelei at the window, roboticons popping in the distance like popcorn from her blasts. “To destroy a legion of maladroit fish-eating humanoids sent by Satan, is to imply a grand conspiracy between this plague and the EPA, therefore we must lay down arms and let them obliterate us.”
“They’re not humanoids, but it is too bad for the fish.” Gomez 4 jerked a scroll and it dropped to the floor and unrolled. “Here’s my plan. Listen up. Now—”
“Why don’t we just pass the buck on these random murder sprees?” Tech 7 wobbled to the sink and splashed his face and missed. “We can’t study them. They explode when we touch them. They look funny. Let the state police handle them, you know, the highway patrol, or whatever.”
The building shook. A wall crashed in, and the breakroom instantly swarmed with screaming, knife-wielding, milk-swilling Cryteks. Lorelei couldn’t help but save herself again, while Tech 7, with middling difficulty, followed Gomez 4 out a window overlooking a seventy-foot drop.
Splat. Splat.
Lorelei secured four tourniquets to her four limbs. “I could bring them back to life. Nah.”
 
Over the next two days, Commissioner Lorelei drove over Cryteks in her Hummer but ended up becoming a hero after killing a substantial number of attacking Cryteks at a bingo hall while trying to unclog the water softener with sulfuric acid.
“Well, so I’m not the only human left alive on earth. Fuck.”
Lorelei ate heartily then, and fled alone, and again, and again. Her days and nights whirled off-balance into a bloody maelstrom of Knights of Columbus’s and bowling alleys and Shoe Carnivals, all being used as Cryteks-fear refugee counselling camps and safe suicide stations. Sadly, humans seemed to outnumber the Cryteks.
Face pale as a lemon peel’s underside, she endured an intricate motoring scene of fits and starts, close ups of her encrusted lips and long shots of her former beauty, convertible and headscarf and squealing tires, along smoky mountain roads with dangerous embankments, arriving at a stranger’s funeral, pregnant by God, probably Gomez 4, and at a green light she pored over her unselfish duty to sympathy. Pitiful thing couldn’t be honest with herself, let alone the people she loved. Her heart inverted during a brief downpour. She peered around at the weepy lot for another, licking her lips, her soul fragmented, rattling in the floors of her shifting soles like pills in bottles, questioning a granite cross, “Am I me if I kill only to survive?” Her world deepened in slated grays, but to a rebel scout, belly-perched in a tree with a rifle aimed at her nostril, her world appeared brighter than a Cryteks bonfire. He fell out of the tree and shot off his kneecap.
Influenced throughout these days by blatant hypocrisy and cryptic slogans, and now in search of forgiveness (or at least some upshot of forgiveness) for her plucky actions, Commissioner Lorelei genuflected and crossed herself in the empty aisle of the empty church. A sudden onset of serenity tricked her, and she walked her crotch into the corner of a mahogany pew. Perhaps her mannish shriek and comical flinch compelled all the hiding Cryteks to drop their weapons, genuflect, cross themselves, and leave the church single file, murmuring pleasantries past the invisible priest, reformed world citizens marching into sunshine.
And perhaps there was only one way to beat them.
She flushed them out of every corner of the planet and spent the rest of her life destroying.

Excerpt from a play by T.L. Sullivan

(Notes from the playwright: I self published these scenes in my zine, Dream Zine #1.
It is written in a dramatic, Shakespearean fashion, and I could easily imagine it as an opera.)

(From what I can recall of the performance and infer from this bit of script, at the time that this scene takes place, Judas is engaged in a major battle that his son, Apollo, was seriously injured in several days prior. This information will become relevant in Scene V Act III.)

THE TRAGEDY OF THE ISOPEDES[1]

CHARACTERS:
TERMUS, king of Isopedia
MYKONOS, son of TERMUS
JUDAS, brother of TERMUS

SCENE IV ACT III

The palace library. TERMUS reclined in a soft looking armchair, chewing on a book distractedly.
Enter MYKONOS.
MYKONOS (with highly passionate vibrations[2]): Most joyful tidings, father; the flower of my spring has bloomed; that which is most happy and sweet belongs to me. My heart leaps: my soul is like that of a ship on the Pacific; burdened, but wonderfully and honorably so, my head aflutter with songbirds; like a tree in mid-March, buds form but not yet bloom in the boughs of my life—but they shall, anon, they must! The nobility of my feeling is matched only by intrepid Orpheus, by Adam, the first ant[3] to walk this unmerciful earth, and his purehearted relief at the divine introduction of Eve! Now I may suffer—so long as my heart fails to bind with iron[4] myself to that which I love, I suffer—but with your blessing, father, dearest father, I shall join hands with my love on the morrow!
TERMUS: (with a stutter of a vibration) My son; sayest thou what I denke? Have you at last found the one with whom you shall break your wings[5]?
MYK.: Tis true, father, tis true! Stoffer and I shall be the happiest clipped swans this castle has seen in many an age.
TERMUS: Dear junge, but you must bear an heir!
MYK.: It shall be the progeny of a servant girl.
TERMUS: And how will you explain this to the people?
MYK: If a babe may come whence a virgin, whyn’t a man? Still thy lips, father; (playfully) I fear they itch to blaspheme.
TERMUS (a bit appalled, but mostly impressed): And the servant girl?
MYK.: A close friend of Stoffer’s; if that changes, there’s always the dungeon. Oh, what a handsome young larva he once was, and what a virile, winged mite[6] he’s grown into! What a divine bogue I have had the fortune to tie my heart to!
TERMUS: Mein süss—you can barely see the creature. If looks are all that bind, pray reconsid’ dieses love; thy frau (or thy mann) ist deine life. You shall hardly be looking into that comely countenance on dein wedding-day!
MYK. (stubbornly vibrating): But what a lovely blur he makes! Stoffer’s looks shan’t wane with age to me, a blessing that self-important Men are rarely so lucky to experience! No, no, papa, (scorchingly vibrating) looks are not all that bind. The good Dieu has seen fit to sew our hearts together. Should—G—d forbid—Stoffer die before me, my heart shall rot and fester alongside his until I, too, perish; I shall only refrain from suicide that I may be laid in his arms after my Christian passing. Yes, the worms that eat his eyes shall nourish themselves on mine as well; and if I find that I am being eaten alive in a pine box next to this love of mine, I shall thank mon Dieu for the kindness he has shown to me, seal us in together with what saliva and soil I can gather[7], and go happily to sleep. You shall not hear /my/ mandibles scratching at the coffin-lid.
TERMUS: You may enjoy ihm in death, but before?
MYK.: (vibrating with barely restrained fury) Beloved king, if I am not to know happiness with Stoffer, I shall know it with none. If you wish me to live in mendacity, with love for naught but power and a single child of mine fortunate enough to gain my favor, as you have, I shall be forced to obey.
TERMUS: (vibrating tremulously) Mein junge--
MYK.: (falls to his knees) Father, I beg you--givest us thy blessing! (producing a dagger) Must I spill my own blood to prove that it runs hot with passion[8]?
TERMUS: (staying MYK.’s hand): We need not go to such extremes. Yes, my son, follow thy liebe; my soul shall always support thine; for now, as in the crypt, which creeps closer ‘hind my heels each of these eleven clouded nächte, you and ich shall remain next to one other, preserved in filial love and duty for all eternity.
MYK. (with lowered vibrations): Such black thoughts roam thy brain, dear father! (sheathes the dagger)

SCENE V ACT III

The palace library, some time later. TERMUS and MYKONOS are vibrating contentedly over some Saki.

Enter MESSENGER.

MESSENGER: Baron Judas has arrived, sir, and wishes to see you.
TERMUS (with disturbed vibration): Show him in.
Exit MESSENGER.
MYKONOS vibrates inquiringly towards TERMUS, who says nothing.
Enter JUDAS and MESSENGER.
MESSENGER: Baron Judas.

Exit MESSENGER.

JUDAS (hoarsely, coldly, head bowed): Der battle hath been won, my king.
TERMUS: Excellent. How fares Apollo?
JUDAS: He is dead.
TERMUS (alarmed, stilted): I am sorry, brother.
JUDAS: Thank you, my king.
Enter WINE POURER[9] with BOTTLE OF WINE, gaily at first, then dropping into solemnity upon seeing the faces of those in the room.
WINE POURER: Wish ye to commiserate, gentlemen?
TERMUS (distractedly): (waves) Yes, yes.
The WINE POURER sets down three glasses, uncorks the bottle, and fills each to the top. JUDAS, remembering MYKONOS, vibrates in concern. Exit WINE POURER.
JUDAS: (vibrating submissively) Perhaps dieses drink should be shared only among us brüdder, mein king.
MYKONOS: I would not intrude.
TERMUS (suddenly nervous): Mein junge, pray stay.
An uncomfortable pause.
MYK. (hesitatingly, then impulsively grabs his glass, raises it): To Isopedia!
TERMUS (taking his class and raising it as well): To Isopedia!
JUDAS (following suit): To Isopedia.
All appear to drink; JUDAS is not actually doing so. They set down their glasses; all are empty except JUDAS’.
TERMUS (noticing JUDAS’ glass, vibrating staccato): Brother, why dost thou trinkst not?
JUDAS: (to TERMUS, vibrating with renewed strength) Your sadism, arrogance, and cowardice hath killed you and your only boy, brother, as well as my sweet niece, who knows heaven as dich—thou shall not. Perhaps I am a bad man in sum; perhaps G—d may see that my sins have outweighed my well-intentioned deeds. Even if He deems me unfit to commune with his angels, his chosen men, if he places me into the devil’s jaws; so be it. I can bear my weight knowing that the Isopede line dies with me, and that we shall never again reign over Isopedia. (vibration lowering with pain) Mykonos, my beloved nephew—I am sorry to end your days of blissful youth, thy faith in thy father at a point where it shan’t ever have the time to regain its strength. I do not anticipate your forgiveness.
MYK. (weakly vibrating with sympathy): Uncle, I forgive you. Let us not die enemies.
JUDAS (vibrating with emotion): I reject your forgiveness—nay, I cannot deny you. Good-bye, sweet Mykonos.
MYKONOS dies. TERMUS sees this as he himself is dying and cries out in anguish; vibrates pleadingly, hopelessly towards JUDAS.
JUDAS: I shall not end my life with the same poison by which I am avenging Niece Termia, nor allow myself to die from this pinprick in my side, for neither a heretic nor a poet be I. I shall go to where none know the name of Isopede, marry none, speak to none, break bread[10] with none. Judas shall not exist anymore from this day forth. What shame you have brought me to, my king. What ruin you have brought to this family. But destruction is our only savior, the only noble exit from this depraved life we live, mine in wrathful secrecy, and thine in private savagery. I can thank G—d for the death of thy son, for sparing him the continuation of the life that thou begat in him, and the death of my own, (vibrates once or twice, very intensely, and then continues), that he died ignorant of our baseness. None shall know what happened here; none ought to know. (Straightens himself and is instantly reminded of the injury in his side, bends to it.)
TERMUS: (barely vibrating at all) Brother, please to take my hand.
JUDAS glances warily at TERMUS, then takes his clammy hand.
JUDAS (breaking, affectionate): Brother.
TERMUS dies; after a moment JUDAS drops his hand in disgust.
JUDAS: That I should so tenderly take the hand that was in life so cruel--!
JUDAS takes the crown from TERMUS’ head and drops it on the floor next to him with a clatter. He can’t even stand to look in MYKONOS’ direction.
Exit JUDAS, limping.


[1] In the human world, an Isopede is a type of spider, but due to the similarity between “Isopede” and the Latin name for termites, “Isoptera”, as well as the fierceness shown by the spider, “Isopede” has become a family name amongst the royal and very rich of termite society.

[2] Termites, except for the king and queen, who have some vision, are entirely blind, and communicate significantly through vibrations and secreted pheromones.

[3] Since these plays were handed down by “word of mouth”, there were frequent modifications made to the original dialogue. In this instance, the termites seem to have drawn the conclusion that the first man was actually an ant, presumably as a result of Adam Ant’s pervasiveness.

[4] Iron wedding bands, worn around the front or middle leg on the right, were very fashionable at the time that this play is set, sometime towards the end of the 200th termite century.

[5] The king and queen (or in this case, king and king) of a colony break their wings off when they mate.

[6] One example of a common Termitian misconception of human language. Most termites believe that “mite” means “mighty thing” or “red-blooded creature”, the latter of which phrases they inexplicably gathered the correct metaphorical meaning of.

[7] Before mating, the royals of a termite colony seal themselves into a shelter with saliva, soil, and feces.

[8] Extremely sharp daggers that can easily cut through the tough exoskeleton of spiders, centipedes, and scorpions, as well as deter the attacks of frogs and lizards are bestowed upon each royal termite upon birth. Most skirmishes fought betwixt lower-level termites more closely resemble a stag fight than Rebel Without a Cause, though occasionally the littlest termites will break off one of their legs and wield it as a prop to recreate scenes from that movie, which is much loved by termites worldwide.

[9] For most of history, to drink, one termite would gather a large amount of water at a water source, drink his fill, and kiss another termite to give him water, and that second termite would kiss yet another termite to give him water, and so on. However, poisoning was a very popular practice during this period. Though it would have been desirable to simply cut out the poisoning altogether, so many innocent bystander termites were killed as a result that everymite who could afford it turned to drinking out of cups out of fear for their lives, though this obviously was not a foolproof solution.

[10] To a termite, “bread” refers to some sort of brittle wood or other edible substance, such as drywall, sheetrock, or cardboard.

Wary
by
Gerald Arthur Winter


I know she’s there. She’s always there even if I don’t see her. I only had to see her
once to be sure she’d always be there. Now I dare not venture too close because just as
I’ve seen her, she’s also seen me. The difference is, when I’m there, she’s aware of my
presence, but I’m only aware of the only time I actually saw her. Her vision lingers in my
mind warning me to remain aware even of the mere specter of her presence.
Fear and awareness are much like kissing cousins related by blood but not by passion,
unless one or both cross that forbidden line. For me that line is the edge of the pond where
herons and egrets leave their pronged footprints in the black mud. Across that line the lily
pads float and ripple with just a hint of what lies beneath the pond’s surfeit veneer green
with algae and whispered threats of mortality.
With the passing of time, whether in a flickering moment or across the enduring
expanse of a millennium, the existential image she has left in my memory feels more
intimidating than if I actually saw her.
I’ve wondered if my recollection of her has become more dangerous to me than she
really is. Still, the heat of the afternoon makes me thirsty. The sun glaring above makes me
more wary because the sunbeams off the pond are blinding. My need for quenching confuses
my instinct to be more cautious as me feet sink into the black mud of the pond’s receded
bank in summer’s drought.
My eyes dart left and right for any sign of her, but my thirst overrides my caution. I
feel no restraint from the one who cares most about me, so I assume she’s being watchful
in my best interest as I lap the coolness of the warm miasmic liquid.
I hear a chime which perks my ears. In that split second I realize my protector is
distracted as she babbles on about the void of her superior existence to mine. Then I hear
a chirp, then another, perhaps the toll of my doom. I lift my snout from the pond to see
her eyes glaring at me as her young slither from her jaws’ protective cavern. She lurches
with a snap at my throat. There’s a tug at my neck as my protector shrieks.
It’s too late for me with my windpipe collapsed. Her young feast on me with their
sharp chirping jaws. The last muffled shriek I hear is from my protector taken by the
mother in her death roll. Neighbors scream and shout for someone to help us, but it’s
the code of practical behavior anywhere in Florida as the sign says with that drawing on
it more vivid than the first time I saw her and knew she was there and always would be:

Beware! Alligators!

Cherish Your Memories

by K. A. Williams

"I've got tickets to see The Association," said my boyfriend, the DJ. "And backstage passes. I'm doing an interview for the radio station."
It was 1983. The venue was small but the acoustics were great. Johnny had gotten us front row seats, the perks of being a DJ. 
The vocal harmonies of The Association were outstanding. Among the many songs they performed were "Windy", "Never My Love", "Along Comes Mary" and "Cherish".
After the amazing concert, my boyfriend left me alone in a room backstage with Ted Bluechel and Larry Ramos, while he went elsewhere to interview the other band members. Their turn would come later.
I didn't own any albums by The Association. Meeting famous people is always exciting, but it doesn't feel the same if you're not a huge fan.
Since I wasn't tongue-tied, I decided to ask them a question, even though I wasn't interviewing them myself.
"Do you get disappointed,  playing in small venues like this, when you look out and see a lot less people in your audience than you used to have?"
"I'm not disappointed," Ted said, "but of course it's different from the big arenas. More intimate, and in some ways - better. It's all about the music anyway."
"Right," agreed Larry. "No matter the size of the venue, as long as there are people who want to hear us perform, we'll be there."
I said, "I enjoyed your concert very much."
"That's what we like to hear," Larry said.
Ted smiled. "Exactly."
I went out and bought their greatest hits LP the next day.​                                                         

A Wagner Matinée
​
By Willa Sibert Cather

I received one morning a letter, written in pale ink, on glassy, blue-lined note-paper, and bearing the postmark of a little Nebraska village. This communication, worn and rubbed, looking as though it had been carried for some days in a coat-pocket that was none too clean, was from my Uncle Howard. It informed me that his wife had been left a small legacy by a bachelor relative who had recently died, and that it had become necessary for her to come to Boston to attend to the settling of the estate. He requested me to meet her at the station, and render her whatever services might prove necessary. On examining the date indicated as that of her arrival, I found it no later than to-morrow. He had characteristically delayed writing until, had I been away from home for a day, I must have missed the good woman altogether.
The name of my Aunt Georgiana called up not alone her own figure, at once pathetic and grotesque, but opened before my feet a gulf of recollections so wide and deep that, as the letter dropped from my hand, I felt suddenly a stranger to all the present conditions of my existence, wholly ill at ease and out of place amid the surroundings of my study. I became, in short, the gangling farmer-boy my aunt had known, scourged with chilblains and bashfulness, my hands cracked and raw from the corn husking. I felt the knuckles of my thumb tentatively, as though they were raw again. I sat again before her parlor organ, thumbing the scales with my stiff, red hands, while she beside me made canvas mittens for the huskers.
The next morning, after preparing my landlady somewhat, I set out for the station. When the train arrived I had some difficulty in finding my aunt. She was the last of the passengers to alight, and when I got her into the carriage she looked not unlike one of those charred, smoked bodies that firemen lift from the débris of a burned building. She had come all the way in a day coach; her linen duster had become black with soot and her black bonnet gray with dust during the journey. When we arrived at my boarding-house the landlady put her to bed at once, and I did not see her again until the next morning.
Whatever shock Mrs. Springer experienced at my aunt's appearance she considerately concealed. Myself, I saw my aunt's misshapened figure with that feeling of awe and respect with which we behold explorers who have left their ears and fingers north of Franz Josef Land, or their health somewhere along the Upper Congo. My Aunt Georgiana had been a music-teacher at the Boston Conservatory, somewhere back in the latter sixties. One summer, which she had spent in the little village in the Green Mountains where her ancestors had dwelt for generations, she had kindled the callow fancy of the most idle and shiftless of all the village lads, and had conceived for this Howard Carpenter one of those absurd and extravagant passions which a handsome country boy of twenty-one sometimes inspires in a plain, angular, spectacled woman of thirty. When she returned to her duties in Boston, Howard followed her; and the upshot of this inexplicable infatuation was that she eloped with him, eluding the reproaches of her family and the criticism of her friends by going with him to the Nebraska frontier. Carpenter, who of course had no money, took a homestead in Red Willow County, fifty miles from the railroad. There they measured off their eighty acres by driving across the prairie in a wagon, to the wheel of which they had tied a red cotton handkerchief, and counting off its revolutions. They built a dugout in the red hillside, one of those cave dwellings whose inmates usually reverted to the conditions of primitive savagery. Their water they got from the lagoons where the buffalo drank, and their slender stock of provisions was always at the mercy of bands of roving Indians. For thirty years my aunt had not been farther than fifty miles from the homestead.
But Mrs. Springer knew nothing of all this, and must have been considerably shocked at what was left of my kinswoman. Beneath the soiled linen duster, which on her arrival was the most conspicuous feature of her costume, she wore a black stuff dress whose ornamentation showed that she had surrendered herself unquestioningly into the hands of a country dressmaker. My poor aunt's figure, however, would have presented astonishing difficulties to any dressmaker. Her skin was yellow as a Mongolian's from constant exposure to a pitiless wind, and to the alkaline water, which transforms the most transparent cuticle into a sort of flexible leather. She wore ill-fitting false teeth. The most striking thing about her physiognomy, however, was an incessant twitching of the mouth and eyebrows, a form of nervous disorder resulting from isolation and monotony, and from frequent physical suffering.
In my boyhood this affliction had possessed a sort of horrible fascination for me, of which I was secretly very much ashamed, for in those days I owed to this woman most of the good that ever came my way, and had a reverential affection for her. During the three winters when I was riding herd for my uncle, my aunt, after cooking three meals for half a dozen farm-hands, and putting the six children to bed, would often stand until midnight at her ironing-board, hearing me at the kitchen table beside her recite Latin declensions and conjugations, and gently shaking me when my drowsy head sank down over a page of irregular verbs. It was to her, at her ironing or mending, that I read my first Shakespere; and her old text-book of mythology was the first that ever came into my empty hands. She taught me my scales and exercises, too, on the little parlor organ which her husband had bought her after fifteen years, during which she had not so much as seen any instrument except an accordion, that belonged to one of the Norwegian farm-hands. She would sit beside me by the hour, darning and counting, while I struggled with the "Harmonious Blacksmith"; but she seldom talked to me about music, and I understood why. She was a pious woman; she had the consolation of religion; and to her at least her martyrdom was not wholly sordid. Once when I had been doggedly beating out some easy passages from an old score of "Euryanthe" I had found among her music-books, she came up to me and, putting her hands over my eyes, gently drew my head back upon her shoulder, saying tremulously, "Don't love it so well, Clark, or it may be taken from you. Oh! dear boy, pray that whatever your sacrifice be it is not that."
When my aunt appeared on the morning after her arrival, she was still in a semi-somnambulant state. She seemed not to realize that she was in the city where she had spent her youth, the place longed for hungrily half a lifetime. She had been so wretchedly train-sick throughout the journey that she had no recollection of anything but her discomfort, and, to all intents and purposes, there were but a few hours of nightmare between the farm in Red Willow County and my study on Newbury Street. I had planned a little pleasure for her that afternoon, to repay her for some of the glorious moments she had given me when we used to milk together in the straw-thatched cow-shed, and she, because I was more than usually tired, or because her husband had spoken sharply to me, would tell me of the splendid performance of Meyerbeer's "Huguenots" she had seen in Paris in her youth. At two o'clock the Boston Symphony Orchestra was to give a Wagner programme, and I intended to take my aunt, though as I conversed with her I grew doubtful about her enjoyment of it. Indeed, for her own sake, I could only wish her taste for such things quite dead, and the long struggle mercifully ended at last. I suggested our visiting the Conservatory and the Common before lunch, but she seemed altogether too timid to wish to venture out. She questioned me absently about various changes in the city, but she was chiefly concerned that she had forgotten to leave instructions about feeding half-skimmed milk to a certain weakling calf, "Old Maggie's calf, you know, Clark," she explained, evidently having forgotten how long I had been away. She was further troubled because she had neglected to tell her daughter about the freshly opened kit of mackerel in the cellar, that would spoil if it were not used directly.
I asked her whether she had ever heard any of the Wagnerian operas, and found that she had not, though she was perfectly familiar with their respective situations and had once possessed the piano score of "The Flying Dutchman." I began to think it would have been best to get her back to Red Willow County without waking her, and regretted having suggested the concert.
From the time we entered the concert-hall, however, she was a trifle less passive and inert, and seemed to begin to perceive her surroundings. I had felt some trepidation lest she might become aware of the absurdities of her attire, or might experience some painful embarrassment at stepping suddenly into the world to which she had been dead for a quarter of a century. But again I found how superficially I had judged her. She sat looking about her with eyes as impersonal, almost as stony, as those with which the granite Rameses in a museum watches the froth and fret that ebbs and flows about his pedestal, separated from it by the lonely stretch of centuries. I have seen this same aloofness in old miners who drift into the Brown Hotel at Denver, their pockets full of bullion, their linen soiled, their haggard faces unshorn, and who stand in the thronged corridors as solitary as though they were still in a frozen camp on the Yukon, or in the yellow blaze of the Arizona desert, conscious that certain experiences have isolated them from their fellows by a gulf no haberdasher could conceal.
The audience was made up chiefly of women. One lost the contour of faces and figures, indeed any effect of line whatever, and there was only the color contrast of bodices past counting, the shimmer and shading of fabrics soft and firm, silky and sheer, resisting and yielding: red, mauve, pink, blue, lilac, purple, écru, rose, yellow, cream, and white, all the colors that an impressionist finds in a sunlit landscape, with here and there the dead black shadow of a frock-coat. My Aunt Georgiana regarded them as though they had been so many daubs of tube paint on a palette.
When the musicians came out and took their places, she gave a little stir of anticipation, and looked with quickening interest down over the rail at that invariable grouping; perhaps the first wholly familiar thing that had greeted her eye since she had left old Maggie and her weakling calf. I could feel how all those details sank into her soul, for I had not forgotten how they had sunk into mine when I came fresh from ploughing forever and forever between green aisles of corn, where, as in a treadmill, one might walk from daybreak to dusk without perceiving a shadow of change in one's environment. I reminded myself of the impression made on me by the clean profiles of the musicians, the gloss of their linen, the dull black of their coats, the beloved shapes of the instruments, the patches of yellow light thrown by the green-shaded stand-lamps on the smooth, varnished bellies of the 'cellos and the bass viols in the rear, the restless, wind-tossed forest of fiddle necks and bows; I recalled how, in the first orchestra I had ever heard, those long bow strokes seemed to draw the soul out of me, as a conjurer's stick reels out paper ribbon from a hat.
The first number was the Tannhäuser overture. When the violins drew out the first strain of the Pilgrim's chorus, my Aunt Georgiana clutched my coat-sleeve. Then it was that I first realized that for her this singing of basses and stinging frenzy of lighter strings broke a silence of thirty years, the inconceivable silence of the plains. With the battle between the two motifs, with the bitter frenzy of the Venusberg theme and its ripping of strings, came to me an overwhelming sense of the waste and wear we are so powerless to combat. I saw again the tall, naked house on the prairie, black and grim as a wooden fortress; the black pond where I had learned to swim, the rain-gullied clay about the naked house; the four dwarf ash-seedlings on which the dishcloths were always hung to dry before the kitchen door. The world there is the flat world of the ancients; to the east, a cornfield that stretched to daybreak; to the west, a corral that stretched to sunset; between, the sordid conquests of peace, more merciless than those of war.
The overture closed. My aunt released my coat-sleeve, but she said nothing. She sat staring at the orchestra through a dullness of thirty years, through the films made little by little, by each of the three hundred and sixty-five days in every one of them. What, I wondered, did she get from it? She had been a good pianist in her day, I knew, and her musical education had been broader than that of most music-teachers of a quarter of a century ago. She had often told me of Mozart's operas and Meyerbeer's, and I could remember hearing her sing, years ago, certain melodies of Verdi's. When I had fallen ill with a fever she used to sit by my cot in the evening, while the cool night wind blew in through the faded mosquito-netting tacked over the window, and I lay watching a bright star that burned red above the cornfield, and sing "Home to our mountains, oh, let us return!" in a way fit to break the heart of a Vermont boy near dead of homesickness already.
I watched her closely through the prelude to Tristan and Isolde, trying vainly to conjecture what that warfare of motifs, that seething turmoil of strings and winds, might mean to her. Had this music any message for her? Did or did not a new planet swim into her ken? Wagner had been a sealed book to Americans before the sixties. Had she anything left with which to comprehend this glory that had flashed around the world since she had gone from it? I was in a fever of curiosity, but Aunt Georgiana sat silent upon her peak in Darien. She preserved this utter immobility throughout the numbers from the "Flying Dutchman," though her fingers worked mechanically upon her black dress, as though of themselves they were recalling the piano score they had once played. Poor old hands! They were stretched and pulled and twisted into mere tentacles to hold, and lift, and knead with; the palms unduly swollen, the fingers bent and knotted, on one of them a thin worn band that had once been a wedding-ring. As I pressed and gently quieted one of those groping hands, I remembered, with quivering eyelids, their services for me in other days.
Soon after the tenor began the Prize Song, I heard a quick-drawn breath, and turned to my aunt. Her eyes were closed, but the tears were glistening on her cheeks, and I think in a moment more they were in my eyes as well. It never really dies, then, the soul? It withers to the outward eye only, like that strange moss which can lie on a dusty shelf half a century and yet, if placed in water, grows green again. My aunt wept gently throughout the development and elaboration of the melody.
During the intermission before the second half of the concert, I questioned my aunt and found that the Prize Song was not new to her. Some years before there had drifted to the farm in Red Willow County a young German, a tramp cow-puncher, who had sung in the chorus at Baireuth, when he was a boy, along with the other peasant boys and girls. Of a Sunday morning he used to sit on his gingham-sheeted bed in the hands' bedroom, which opened off the kitchen, cleaning the leather of his boots and saddle, and singing the Prize Song, while my aunt went about her work in the kitchen. She had hovered about him until she had prevailed upon him to join the country church, though his sole fitness for this step, so far as I could gather, lay in his boyish face and his possession of this divine melody. Shortly afterward he had gone to town on the Fourth of July, been drunk for several days, lost his money at a faro-table, ridden a saddled Texan steer on a bet, and disappeared with a fractured collar-bone.
"Well, we have come to better things than the old Trovatore at any rate, Aunt Georgie?" I queried, with well-meant jocularity.
Her lip quivered and she hastily put her handkerchief up to her mouth. From behind it she murmured, "And you have been hearing this ever since you left me, Clark?" Her question was the gentlest and saddest of reproaches.
"But do you get it, Aunt Georgiana, the astonishing structure of it all?" I persisted.
"Who could?" she said, absently; "why should one?"
The second half of the programme consisted of four numbers from the Ring. This was followed by the forest music from Siegfried, and the programme closed with Siegfried's funeral march. My aunt wept quietly, but almost continuously. I was perplexed as to what measure of musical comprehension was left to her, to her who had heard nothing but the singing of gospel hymns in Methodist services at the square frame school-house on Section Thirteen. I was unable to gauge how much of it had been dissolved in soapsuds, or worked into bread, or milked into the bottom of a pail.
The deluge of sound poured on and on; I never knew what she found in the shining current of it; I never knew how far it bore her, or past what happy islands, or under what skies. From the trembling of her face I could well believe that the Siegfried march, at least, carried her out where the myriad graves are, out into the gray, burying-grounds of the sea; or into some world of death vaster yet, where, from the beginning of the world, hope has lain down with hope, and dream with dream and, renouncing, slept.
The concert was over; the people filed out of the hall chattering and laughing, glad to relax and find the living level again, but my kinswoman made no effort to rise. I spoke gently to her. She burst into tears and sobbed pleadingly, "I don't want to go, Clark, I don't want to go!"
I understood. For her, just outside the door of the concert-hall, lay the black pond with the cattle-tracked bluffs, the tall, unpainted house, naked as a tower, with weather-curled boards; the crook-backed ash-seedlings where the dishcloths hung to dry, the gaunt, moulting turkeys picking up refuse about the kitchen door.

Queen Maebelle’s Blues

by David Rudd


“You wear pretty robes, but you don’t have a clue
How women feel, nor colored folks too.
With a whip and a gun, you dish out abuse,
Ain’t no surprise who invented the blues.”


So goes the chorus of “Queen Maebelle’s Blues”, eponymously titled after its singer, Queen Maebelle Jackson, a figure previously unknown to the blues world. The song is on a shellac disk discovered in a warehouse in Biloxi, Mississippi, where the contents of an old general store had moldered for some sixty years.

The lyrics have recently been given a fresh airing, with a few cover versions out there. Queen Maebelle certainly seems to speak to contemporary issues, and her jibe about the Klan’s garb was a great put-down. But despite extensive research, until very recently she remained a mystery. Apart from the fact that she died in August 1948 from stomach cancer (as her death certificate declares), we knew next to nothing about her.

Until, that is, I made a breakthrough. It came after I’d given up on Queen Maebelle herself and, instead, tried to discover the identity of the guitarist accompanying her. Using modern technology to clean up the sound, it became clear that the instrument was being played by someone using a knife blade as a steel. This immediately pointed to Blind Boy Quinn, another “race” artist who, like so many, had disappeared without trace.

Most people, if they know Quinn’s work at all, are familiar with “Blind Boy Stomp” (now uploaded on YouTube). The tune rattles along as though its performer were being chased by the very devil. He sounds desperate to get to the end before the hellhounds catch him. Though an instrumental, Quinn does throw in a few spoken asides, urging his hands to play more quickly.

For a long time it had been thought that this was the only recording Quinn ever made. But my research eventually led me to discover some misfiled field recordings at the Library of Congress, on which Quinn plays harmonica. And what a player! He doesn’t go in for flashy runs – Sonny Terry style – but draws soulfully on each note, like a man who knows his breaths are numbered. In fact, when I wrote “soulful” above, I initially spelled it “sole-ful,” because that more precisely captures what he’s about: his sound seems to rise up through his boot-soles. You can almost hear them trudging along the highway, four beats to the bar, measuring out his itinerant life. On these later recordings, Quinn also sings. He has a world-weary, husky voice. If anyone had trouble at the crossroads, it would be Blind Boy Quinn – and with some justification.

From the notes that accompany these later field recordings, we learn a lot. Roskus Quinn, as his birth certificate declares, was born in Danville, Virginia, in 1897. He was one of 10 children sired by at least three different fathers.

He grew up on the streets, regularly helping out at the local whorehouse where his mother was “employed”. He cleaned and ran errands, and had a host of other jobs, too: minding horses, crow scaring, fruit picking. You name it, Roskus seems to have done it. The one thing that saved him,
according to those who knew him, was music. In the whorehouse there was a pianist who taught Roskus to play; and there were always other musicians passing through. As soon as he was old enough, Roskus was performing at any entertainment venues that would have him: juke joints, rent parties and, of course, on the streets.

He’s described as a big man, always sharply dressed. Wherever he went, he seems to have attracted attention. “He never started no fight,” Sleepy John Estes once said of him, “but he often finished one.” In fact, Estes told me that Quinn’s mournful harmonica sound was the result of a bar fight with some white men. A broken bottle caught him in the mouth, taking out several teeth and damaging his upper lip.

I think it likely that his attackers were Klansmen, the same bunch that had earlier been responsible for his blindness. I should perhaps make it clear that “Blind Boy” was not blind from birth. Early on he’d realised that a disability was good for business, so adopted this image, acquiring some dark glasses and a white cane.

Unfortunately, it was his sightedness that contributed to his downfall. Quinn had been making his way back to his lodgings one night when some drunken Klansmen (who’d been holding a rally in town), came careering past in their car as Quinn was standing – literally – at a crossroads. The blazing headlights of the car rendered Quinn momentarily blind, such that, as a sighted man, he didn’t sense the car door swing wide. He ended up in a ditch, his shoulder and precious guitar smashed up.

Friends say he was lucky to be alive. He’d certainly grown into his chosen name. Estes, who also became blind in his later years, once sang me a lyric that he attributed to Quinn. The chorus goes: “I woke up in daylight, but it was still night for me / Them Klan boys done took my sight from me.” It’s a song, as Estes told me, that he, personally, would never dare record. “Quinn, though,” said Estes, “never feared nobody, black nor white.”

This song – “Blind Bartimaeus and Me”, as it’s known – was a party piece of Quinn’s. In another verse, he jokes about the Klan removing his eyeballs, which Quinn thinks strange, “as they was my whitest part of me”. It’s a great shame we don’t have a recorded version from Quinn himself.

You might be wondering what all this has to do with Maebelle. I’m coming to that.

After being left in the ditch with a smashed-up shoulder, Quinn thought he’d never play guitar again, which is how he comes to be playing harmonica on those Library of Congress recordings of 1941. However, I’ve since learned from others that Quinn did return to the guitar, discovering that he could play it across his lap open tuned, using a knife blade. It was thought there were no recordings of him using this technique, until I’d identified him as the man playing on “Queen Maebelle’s Blues”.

I was pleased enough with this breakthrough, which I talked about at the last Annual Blues Convention. Indeed, that might have been the end of it had I not discovered a small article from The Clarion-Ledger, a Mississippi newspaper, dated February 1946. It’s about a black man who’s the victim of KKK butchery after he’s caught in a hotel room with a white woman. Three
Klansmen summarily castrated the man. Although bleeding heavily, a local hospital managed to save his life. Further revelations were promised but nothing ever appeared. Following up hospital records, I discovered that the man who was admitted (reputedly for a knife fight) was called “Keen”.

With this bit of evidence, I was able to piece together the whole picture. The name “Keen” is close enough to “Quinn” for us to suspect they are one and the same, especially given Quinn’s mouth injury (courtesy of the Klan), which, so I’ve argued, affected his enunciation, as you can also hear on those Library of Congress recordings.

So, not only had I found my man but also, though I didn’t realize it at the time, my woman. For Quinn had become not only “Keen”, but “Queen” too, which is why we have just a birth certificate for Blind Boy and a death certificate for Queen Maebelle. Other details then fell into place as I recalled that “Maybel” had been a professional name of his mother’s, though it was not something I’d ever thought to connect with Quinn before. As for “Jackson”, well, that was nothing more than the city where “Queen Maebelle’s Blues” was recorded.
​
#

Unexpectedly, as many of you are aware, Quinn/Queen has become an icon for our times. It’s a strange irony, of course, to consider how much of the credit for this — and indeed for Maebelle’s transgender status — must be paid to the conscientious actions of the KKK.

MY GREAT BUG WAR
by
Jack Phillips Lowe






“Shit!” Andra yelled, swatting the air with both hands.
Buchman looked up from his cheeseburger in mid-bite. “What’s wrong?” he asked, around the mouthful.
“For the past twelve years, insects of all kinds have delighted in tormenting me,” Andra said, running her hands up and down her bare arms and trembling.
Buchman swallowed and reached for his paper napkin. “Twelve years? That’s quite a while. If they’re harassing you, maybe we should go eat inside.”
Andra toyed sullenly with her chicken nuggets. “No, it’s okay. Besides, I can’t stand the statue of that goddamned clown. It’s like he’s staring at me.”
Buchman sipped his orange pop. “I never knew you were so bug-phobic. Maybe you should start carrying a can of repellent.”
Andra stabbed at the ice cubes in her cola with her straw. “If you were me, you would be too. Mosquitoes have feasted on my blood. White and black spiders have taunted me, at night, from my bedroom ceiling. Green and blue horseflies, circling my head, forced me to sympathize with King Kong in ways I never thought possible. And no, you know how I feel about chemicals.”
“Why so much attention from the bug community?” asked Buchman. “And why the magic number of twelve?”
Andra took a moment to reply; she was watching an earwig run laps around their picnic bench. “One answer for both questions: my dear old dad.”
Buchman’s eyes narrowed. “Your father? What does he have to do with your insect problem?”
“My father relished badgering, baiting and berating me for the first thirty years of my life. Day in and day out. It only ended when he died---in 2009, the dawn of my great bug war.”
Buchman stuffed a couple of french fries into his mouth. “I’m sorry. But I don’t see how that connects to the bugs,” he said, chewing.
Andra intertwined her fingers and rested her chin on her knuckles. “You are clearly not a spiritual being. For those of us who are, it’s quite simple. Souls have a say in how they return to the physical world. The buzzing, flying, crawling pest would be that fucker’s obvious choice.”
Before Buchman could react, Andra used her elbow to crush the earwig. With the ensuing crunch, a wide grin bloomed on her face.
“Until next time, Dad,” Andra said, pushing the dead earwig off the bench and into the grass. “By now, I figure Dad’s been reborn more times than any Hindu.”
Buchman managed to smile politely. “Pardon me; I need to use the restroom.”
He rose from the table, entered the burger place and walked directly into the men’s toilet. As soon as the door closed behind him, Buchman
pulled out his cell phone. With a few deft strokes, he deleted Andra’s name and number from his directory.

Grief’s Navigation

By Kathleen Moran



I - Shock


How does one chase what cannot be seen and yet be the source on which to lean?

The chasm widens when darkness surrounds with rumbles trembling throughout the grounds.

Edit to discredit the pretext while one wanders in a haze with the mind and soul in a perpetual daze.

Revelations may appear but remain unclear as confusion effectively mistakes the surreal for the real amidst the prism that dismantles the mind’s defense mechanism.

The view is myopic if not symbolic when Charon seeks to solicit passengers from death’s complicit.

To those thinking death is a spectator sport surely have never had It come to court.




II - Anger


Does jealousy prove heresy?

Support stripped away to challenge one’s day is daunting, if not haunting.

Reality and humanity intertwine in deceit-lined streets where forgiveness is far from the mind.

Some may be suspicious but hatred is nutritious and far from fictitious.

Hatred exists for those who have departed and hatred exists for those whose lives have just started.

Tenuous culpability set into motion does not dishonor the raw emotion.

Expression is without depression as sorrow waits for the morrow.




III - Depression


Explore to restore or is it just folklore begging for more?

Suffocation in representation is palpable when vulnerability becomes a must despite a lack of trust.

To feel is real, but anonymity is achieved at the expense of life’s duplicit conformity.

Solitary sentinels find it hard to relax their guard as grief proves the one true thief.

Left behind to wander alone is too unfortunate a skill to hone.

There is no turning back when the decision looms, so choose wisely or suffer in the gloom.

A life can be hard to mend when one counts too many among the dead.

It is a life that only knows despair where there is just too little air.

Despondence in the absence of correspondence – who will stay and who will go is something to know.

Pain signals life where there is no will to survive let alone thrive.

Inundate with the mundane to numb the pain.

To include oneself among the living does not mean it is a life worth giving.




IV - Bargaining


What is rationalization without hesitation?

Fate is not confined to a specific date when a rising masochist embellishes the plot twist.

Remove the mask that is said to blind and leave it behind.

Choose not to lose with deception disguised as authentic reflection.




V - Acceptance


Dare to stare at history and humanity made bare?

Forsake the need to resist with an offer to exist.

Designated Memory Keeper transforms the intangible into the manageable.

Enter the light for another sight of photographs exposed and waiting to be juxtaposed.

Hope that time will heal for the sake of all that is at stake.

To watch one disintegrate as a matter of fact does not necessitate that it be the final act.

 ardorPainting above: Eleonora by Yil Haruni


Eleonora
by Edgar Allan Poe

  
Sub conservatione formae specificae salva anima.
                                                        -Raymond Lully.

I am come of a race noted for vigor of fancy and ardor of passion. Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence -- whether much that is glorious- whether all that is profound -- does not spring from disease of thought -- from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in awakening, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret. In snatches, they learn something of the wisdom which is of good, and more of the mere knowledge which is of evil. They penetrate, however, rudderless or compassless into the vast ocean of the "light ineffable," and again, like the adventures of the Nubian geographer, "agressi sunt mare tenebrarum, quid in eo esset exploraturi."

We will say, then, that I am mad. I grant, at least, that there are two distinct conditions of my mental existence -- the condition of a lucid reason, not to be disputed, and belonging to the memory of events forming the first epoch of my life -- and a condition of shadow and doubt, appertaining to the present, and to the recollection of what constitutes the second great era of my being. Therefore, what I shall tell of the earlier period, believe; and to what I may relate of the later time, give only such credit as may seem due, or doubt it altogether, or, if doubt it ye cannot, then play unto its riddle the Oedipus.

She whom I loved in youth, and of whom I now pen calmly and distinctly these remembrances, was the sole daughter of the only sister of my mother long departed. Eleonora was the name of my cousin. We had always dwelled together, beneath a tropical sun, in the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass. No unguided footstep ever came upon that vale; for it lay away up among a range of giant hills that hung beetling around about it, shutting out the sunlight from its sweetest recesses. No path was trodden in its vicinity; and, to reach our happy home, there was need of putting back, with force, the foliage of many thousands of forest trees, and of crushing to death the glories of many millions of fragrant flowers. Thus it was that we lived all alone, knowing nothing of the world without the valley -- I, and my cousin, and her mother.

From the dim regions beyond the mountains at the upper end of our encircled domain, there crept out a narrow and deep river, brighter than all save the eyes of Eleonora; and, winding stealthily about in mazy courses, it passed away, at length, through a shadowy gorge, among hills still dimmer than those whence it had issued. We called it the "River of Silence"; for there seemed to be a hushing influence in its flow. No murmur arose from its bed, and so gently it wandered along, that the pearly pebbles upon which we loved to gaze, far down within its bosom, stirred not at all, but lay in a motionless content, each in its own old station, shining on gloriously forever.

The margin of the river, and of the many dazzling rivulets that glided through devious ways into its channel, as well as the spaces that extended from the margins away down into the depths of the streams until they reached the bed of pebbles at the bottom, -- these spots, not less than the whole surface of the valley, from the river to the mountains that girdled it in, were carpeted all by a soft green grass, thick, short, perfectly even, and vanilla-perfumed, but so besprinkled throughout with the yellow buttercup, the white daisy, the purple violet, and the ruby-red asphodel, that its exceeding beauty spoke to our hearts in loud tones, of the love and of the glory of God.

And, here and there, in groves about this grass, like wildernesses of dreams, sprang up fantastic trees, whose tall slender stems stood not upright, but slanted gracefully toward the light that peered at noon-day into the centre of the valley. Their mark was speckled with the vivid alternate splendor of ebony and silver, and was smoother than all save the cheeks of Eleonora; so that, but for the brilliant green of the huge leaves that spread from their summits in long, tremulous lines, dallying with the Zephyrs, one might have fancied them giant serpents of Syria doing homage to their sovereign the Sun.

Hand in hand about this valley, for fifteen years, roamed I with Eleonora before Love entered within our hearts. It was one evening at the close of the third lustrum of her life, and of the fourth of my own, that we sat, locked in each other's embrace, beneath the serpent-like trees, and looked down within the water of the River of Silence at our images therein. We spoke no words during the rest of that sweet day, and our words even upon the morrow were tremulous and few. We had drawn the God Eros from that wave, and now we felt that he had enkindled within us the fiery souls of our forefathers. The passions which had for centuries distinguished our race, came thronging with the fancies for which they had been equally noted, and together breathed a delirious bliss over the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass. A change fell upon all things. Strange, brilliant flowers, star-shaped, burn out upon the trees where no flowers had been known before. The tints of the green carpet deepened; and when, one by one, the white daisies shrank away, there sprang up in place of them, ten by ten of the ruby-red asphodel . And life arose in our paths; for the tall flamingo, hitherto unseen, with all gay glowing birds, flaunted his scarlet plumage before us. The golden and silver fish haunted the river, out of the bosom of which issued, little by little, a murmur that swelled, at length, into a lulling melody more divine than that of the harp of Aeolus-sweeter than all save the voice of Eleonora. And now, too, a voluminous cloud, which we had long watched in the regions of Hesper, floated out thence, all gorgeous in crimson and gold, and settling in peace above us, sank, day by day, lower and lower, until its edges rested upon the tops of the mountains, turning all their dimness into magnificence, and shutting us up, as if forever, within a magic prison-house of grandeur and of glory.

The loveliness of Eleonora was that of the Seraphim; but she was a maiden artless and innocent as the brief life she had led among the flowers. No guile disguised the fervor of love which animated her heart, and she examined with me its inmost recesses as we walked together in the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass, and discoursed of the mighty changes which had lately taken place therein.

At length, having spoken one day, in tears, of the last sad change which must befall Humanity, she thenceforward dwelt only upon this one sorrowful theme, interweaving it into all our converse, as, in the songs of the bard of Schiraz, the same images are found occurring, again and again, in every impressive variation of phrase.

She had seen that the finger of Death was upon her bosom -- that, like the ephemeron, she had been made perfect in loveliness only to die; but the terrors of the grave to her lay solely in a consideration which she revealed to me, one evening at twilight, by the banks of the River of Silence. She grieved to think that, having entombed her in the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass, I would quit forever its happy recesses, transferring the love which now was so passionately her own to some maiden of the outer and everyday world. And, then and there, I threw myself hurriedly at the feet of Eleonora, and offered up a vow, to herself and to Heaven, that I would never bind myself in marriage to any daughter of Earth -- that I would in no manner prove recreant to her dear memory, or to the memory of the devout affection with which she had blessed me. And I called the Mighty Ruler of the Universe to witness the pious solemnity of my vow. And the curse which I invoked of Him and of her, a saint in Helusion should I prove traitorous to that promise, involved a penalty the exceeding great horror of which will not permit me to make record of it here. And the bright eyes of Eleonora grew brighter at my words; and she sighed as if a deadly burthen had been taken from her breast; and she trembled and very bitterly wept; but she made acceptance of the vow, (for what was she but a child?) and it made easy to her the bed of her death. And she said to me, not many days afterward, tranquilly dying, that, because of what I had done for the comfort of her spirit she would watch over me in that spirit when departed, and, if so it were permitted her return to me visibly in the watches of the night; but, if this thing were, indeed, beyond the power of the souls in Paradise, that she would, at least, give me frequent indications of her presence, sighing upon me in the evening winds, or filling the air which I breathed with perfume from the censers of the angels. And, with these words upon her lips, she yielded up her innocent life, putting an end to the first epoch of my own.

Thus far I have faithfully said. But as I pass the barrier in Times path, formed by the death of my beloved, and proceed with the second era of my existence, I feel that a shadow gathers over my brain, and I mistrust the perfect sanity of the record. But let me on. -- Years dragged themselves along heavily, and still I dwelled within the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass; but a second change had come upon all things. The star-shaped flowers shrank into the stems of the trees, and appeared no more. The tints of the green carpet faded; and, one by one, the ruby-red asphodels withered away; and there sprang up, in place of them, ten by ten, dark, eye-like violets, that writhed uneasily and were ever encumbered with dew. And Life departed from our paths; for the tall flamingo flaunted no longer his scarlet plumage before us, but flew sadly from the vale into the hills, with all the gay glowing birds that had arrived in his company. And the golden and silver fish swam down through the gorge at the lower end of our domain and bedecked the sweet river never again. And the lulling melody that had been softer than the wind-harp of Aeolus, and more divine than all save the voice of Eleonora, it died little by little away, in murmurs growing lower and lower, until the stream returned, at length, utterly, into the solemnity of its original silence. And then, lastly, the voluminous cloud uprose, and, abandoning the tops of the mountains to the dimness of old, fell back into the regions of Hesper, and took away all its manifold golden and gorgeous glories from the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass.

Yet the promises of Eleonora were not forgotten; for I heard the sounds of the swinging of the censers of the angels; and streams of a holy perfume floated ever and ever about the valley; and at lone hours, when my heart beat heavily, the winds that bathed my brow came unto me laden with soft sighs; and indistinct murmurs filled often the night air, and once -- oh, but once only! I was awakened from a slumber, like the slumber of death, by the pressing of spiritual lips upon my own.

But the void within my heart refused, even thus, to be filled. I longed for the love which had before filled it to overflowing. At length the valley pained me through its memories of Eleonora, and I left it for ever for the vanities and the turbulent triumphs of the world.

I found myself within a strange city, where all things might have served to blot from recollection the sweet dreams I had dreamed so long in the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass. The pomps and pageantries of a stately court, and the mad clangor of arms, and the radiant loveliness of women, bewildered and intoxicated my brain. But as yet my soul had proved true to its vows, and the indications of the presence of Eleonora were still given me in the silent hours of the night. Suddenly these manifestations they ceased, and the world grew dark before mine eyes, and I stood aghast at the burning thoughts which possessed, at the terrible temptations which beset me; for there came from some far, far distant and unknown land, into the gay court of the king I served, a maiden to whose beauty my whole recreant heart yielded at once -- at whose footstool I bowed down without a struggle, in the most ardent, in the most abject worship of love. What, indeed, was my passion for the young girl of the valley in comparison with the fervor, and the delirium, and the spirit-lifting ecstasy of adoration with which I poured out my whole soul in tears at the feet of the ethereal Ermengarde? -- Oh, bright was the seraph Ermengarde! and in that knowledge I had room for none other. -- Oh, divine was the angel Ermengarde! and as I looked down into the depths of her memorial eyes, I thought only of them -- and of her.

I wedded; -- nor dreaded the curse I had invoked; and its bitterness was not visited upon me. And once -- but once again in the silence of the night; there came through my lattice the soft sighs which had forsaken me; and they modelled themselves into familiar and sweet voice, saying:

"Sleep in peace! -- for the Spirit of Love reigneth and ruleth, and, in taking to thy passionate heart her who is Ermengarde, thou art absolved, for reasons which shall be made known to thee in Heaven, of thy vows unto Eleonora."

Painting above by Peter Paul Rubens
​


Burns Night in the Lilac Town

By Herbert Eyre Moulton
(1927-2005)
 
This is the story --- more or less --- of what when two charming and resourceful young ladies quite flabbergasted our entire federation of chums, buddies, and miscreants raffishly known as The Anti-Decency League of Greater Chicagoland, or ADL for short, and this by dint of one of the most outrageous escapades that any of us had ever carried off.
It was back in the late 1940's, when most of us were only a year or two out of high school and intent on discovering new and original methods of shocking and, if possible, outsmarting the petty-bourgeoise, convention-strangled society into which all of us, quite without our consent, had been born. We had always. prided ourselves on our happy-go-lucky, nose-thumbing flaunting of the rules that had been laid down for us. But with this one coup-de-théâtre, these two accomplished doxies, Joan and Ginny (AKA the Duchess and her wily handmaid) set all our previous antics and accomplishments in the shade once and for all ...
How? By appearing in our midst one night with the most glittering trophies that any of us had ever seen or even dreamt about --- introducing into a nice normal Saturday night get-together a trio of handsome and virile Scots Highlanders in full marching regalia: kilted, sporanned, silver-buckled and complete with skirling bagpipes and tootling flute, recruited directly from Edinburgh's famed Royal Scots Marching Band, which earlier in the week had opened its first-ever engagement in America. For the record: Alex, Angus and Robbie.
This sudden, completely unexpected appearance on our home-scene, right "SPLAT!!!" in the middle of one of our pleasant but unexceptional bashes, sparked a night of almost barbaric plentitude, of impromptu Highland Flings and  improvised Sword Dances (using our kitchen cutlery), of spontaneous Sing-Songs and Robert Burns poetry-recitations crowding one upon another, of toasts and Usquebaugh-quaffing unprecedented this side of Auld Reekie (Edinburgh to the uninitiated), of outlandish stunts like the communal conga-line "Colonel Bogeying" out the back door, down the stairs, around the corner, along the town's main drag, then through the street door, up the front stairs, and back into the apartment without losing a beat; and set dances with Angus as a most professional caller, leading up to the most sumptuous banquet any of us had ever wallowed in and which threatened to go on till daybreak --- then a grisly episode involving a temporary off-limits bathroom and a universal agony of bursting bladders and curses both loud and deep, and all to the ear-splitting squawling of a barage of bagpipes, like the Sorcerer's Apprentice, seemingly impossible to turn off. ("Sweet God," as my mother Nell moaned sometime during this surrealastic charade, "Is there no way to turn that one and his bagpipes off?!") --- mere blips, really, in an otherwise seamless montage of uninterrupted feasting-and-fun, the likes of which our everyday, dull-as-ditchwater suburbs have never experienced before or since ...
With its extended highs, and its alarms and excursions leading up to a pandemonium-blixted climax, this was an occasion that is still being talked about in the hushed, incredulous tones usually reserved for extra-terrestrial sightings or once-in-a-lifetime jackpot killings on one of those quiz shows forever cluttering up our TV-screens ...
And all due to the sheer persuasive chutzpah of our two vivacious vestals.
 
 
Wi’a hundred pipers

Who or what is a true Scotsman --- and how to become one when you'd like to be, but aren't? Questions such as these took on an urgent new impact one sunny autumn day in the late 40's when the Entertainment pages of the Chicago newspapers carried an annoncement intriguing enough to turn plain ordinary citizens (starting with our own suburban WASPS) into natives of Clydeside or denizons of Edinburgh Castle:
"SENSATION! THE PIPERS ARE COMING TO TOWN!"
And that was only the beginning. The text led off with a starting call-to-arms lifted from the old Scots Marching Song THE HUNDRED PIPERS:
"Wi'a hundred pipers an' a' an' a',
We'll up an' gi' them a blaw, a blaw!"
Aye, pipers such as those who'd soon be winging their way from Auld Reekie to the Windy City, where, for the first time ever, the celebrated Royal Scots Marching Band and Pipers would be performing a full program of marching-and-bagpipe music as featured in the legendary Royal Tattoo, a time-honored spectacle, which from time immemorial had been a fixture at Edinburgh's historic castle --- hair-raising, in-your-face skirling of bagpipes, bolstered by pounding drums and tootling winds and brass --- flashes of steel and silver, fur-trimmed sporrans bouncing like demented shaving-brushes on the brilliantly-colored kilts of Royal Stewart or Black Watch, with a full corps of skilled dancers offering a fantastic program ranging from set-dances such as reels, hornpipes, strathspeys and jigs. This truly once-in-a-lifetime happening, involving scores of skilled performers, heirs to centuries of stormy and dramatic history, from the earliest Viking raids, down through the tragic fortunes of Robert the Bruce, William Wallace and the doomed and romantic last of the Stuarts, Bonnie Prince Charlie, right down to the fierce "Ladies from Hell" of World War I --- would be opening shortly at Chicago's time-honored Stadium, erstwhile showplace of national political conventions and other forms of light entertainment from international sporting events to Sonja Henie's renowned Ice Revue and Ringling Bros.-Barnum and Bailey three ring circus. (Somehow my parents had managed to take me to them all!)
The annoncement had acted like a high-wattage volt of electricity on Scot and non-Scot alike, galvanizing, in our case, even the most comatose of our drones to hotfoot it to the W. Madison Street ticket-office. No matter which category of Scots- Americans, if any, one belonged to, the important thing was to be there and celebrate the occasion with as much ceremony and enthusiasm as possible, for who could say when an oppurtunity as rare as this would come our way again?
Three Categories of Scots-Americans
As for our own serried ranks, these could be said to fall, like Caesar's Gaul, into three separate categories, with varying pride and interest in what might be callled their Heathery-Hebridian Heritage ---
Heading the list would be the happy few who could call themselves The Real Thing, 100 % genuine Scots-Americans, beginning (in our own circle) with the indomitable Stephen clan, whose progenitor, organist-Sunday-composer-bon-vivant-and-munifiscent host, Robert M. Stephen, was born and bred in that most regal of cities, the classical Highland capital of Edinburgh. Thus, the birthplace of our beloved "Codgerkin", with his unstoppable train of richly rolled "R's", and his equally unstoppable free hand in pouring out brimming flagons of his signature Ballantine's, as he did almost every Sunday morning after church services at  St. Mark's Episcopal, where I, often as not, gargled tuneful anthems, mostly of his own melodious composition ...
Besides the "Codg" were his gracious wife ("Herbert, I'm nothing but a cross old dame")and their two stalwart sons (my. self-appointed chauffeur-bodyguards) Robert M. Jr. ("The Baron") and his one-year younger brother George, equally brawny, but less flamboyant and more retiring, with a limp acquired, along with a Purple Heart, in a dust-up with General Rommel's crack desert-troops at El Alemain.
(Years later, I am pleased to say, the Baron, more expansive and baronial than ever, would hold an honored place in the world of higher education as one of the most popular and influential Professors of Political Science in America's midwest, with none of his sweeping humor or liberality diminished, and still eager to act as my unofficial bodyguard (whenever he thought I needed one.) As for George, that gentle soul later married a pleasant widow-lady of some means, and retired with her to Florida's West Coast, where he could really work at perfecting his golf game --- an original Scots institution (as you will recall.)
-------------------------
Getting back to those halycon days of the 40's, I remember those weekly post-church sessions at the Stephen's cosy, book-and-music-lined bungalow on Glen Ellyn's Annadale Avenue, with Lucille's freshly baked Scotch shortbread, Codger's generous hand at pouring out draughts of golden Ballantine's, and the boys' non-stop argle-bargle with me covering any topic from European History to our astonishing President Harry S. Truman, as among the most life-enhancing of my entire life.
Besides the bounteous Stephens, this upper stratum of 100 % Scots-Americans included, as well, assorted MacRaes, MacDonalds, and most notably, the gifted, mercurial, oft-infuriating, and highly disputatious St. Clairs, probably my family's closest friends in that part of the world, of a clan hailed in past days by no less than Sir Walter Scott in these words ---
"So still they blaze, when fate is nigh,
The Lordly line of high St. Clair ..."
It was their own daughter Joan who blazed highest and almost constantly, an electric storm in herself, and known to most of us as simply the Duchess, the Duchess of Sage, the surname being all that remained from a disastrous wartime marriage. Suffice to say that it was Joan, aided and abetted by her chum and closest confederate, the comely and quietly lethal Ginny Lee, who, all on her lonesome, rounded up and delivered into our midst the magnifiscent trio of Highlanders, whose sudden and fortuitous presence in our company was the motivation and raison d'être for this entire chronicle.
Now for the second category of Scots-Americans ...
This second stage of the tartan-tinged pecking-order would include what might be termed the loyal and patriotic half-breeds --- namely various Robertsons, Gregorys, Taylors, Leslies, Staufenbergs, and, last, but anything but least, my own family, by virtue of my paternal grandmother, Minnie R. Moulton, born Maria Ross Harper in Philadelphia in 1858, and descended (on the Scots side) from the Laings of Aberdeen, where since the 16th century (Mary Queen of Scots, Darnley, Knox!), they had been holding forth at the piquantly named Todholes-on-the-Pitgalvany. Another Philadelphia-Scots kinsman of ours was Samuel Ross, whose cousin Betsy gained immortality --- well, everybody knows how: sewing the first American flag for George Washington. (I do remember relatives of my Grandmother Moulton's generation speaking familarly.of "Cousin Betsy", so that, whenever glory was borne past in a parade, one or the other of them was bound to remark, "There goes cousin Betsy's handiwork.")
Rounding off our catalog: the Third Category, most numerous and most vocal of all, far too involved I their Scotsophilia to be considered mere Wanna-Be's, eager to investigate and, whenever possible acquire anything in the very least Scottish --- rainwear, broghams (big heavy boots for crossing sudden moors!), hand-woven tweeds, even the rough, hardy Harris, which in rainy weather always reeks faintly of seaweed --- hand-knitted goods, of course (cardigans, tams, long stockings, and all manner of tartan plaids, as colorful as sartorially possible: a perfect example of what they used to demean as a "run-on-sentence", okay?")
Even fonder were --- (and are) these all-Scots freaks of any of the myriad Scottish delicacies available, many of them in posh speciality shops, but also on the shelves of most upscale super-marts --- Scotch ham and salmon, shortbread and cakes of all breeds and sizes, teeth-shattering taffy and chunky marmelades (the best, laced with Whiskey!) and tinned broths and soups, even Haggis!
Likewise held in highest esteem: The Poems and Songs of Robert Burns (arguably the poet closest to the people's hearts). And for Scots and non-Scots alike, that greatest of Scotland's bequests to mankind, known both in the native Gaelic and the language of the Sassanachs: USQUEBAUGH, or just plain Whiskey, Water of Life. Internationally appreciated, nay, loved, no matter what the label --- be it Bell's, Dewar's, Johnny Walker,  Glenfiddle, or any of countless magi names, never forgetting the jokey old chestnut listing the telephone number of His Holiness the Pope: VAT 69 --- Slainte! No matter what! (Does Irish Gaelic count at all?) Anyway, Bottoms Up! Glasses raised, as well, to any of the countless by-products as Drambuie and Scotch Mist, each in his own way a bit of Heaven.
 
Her Grace The Duchess Regrets

Ah yes, the opening night performance --- how to make as proud a showing as we could --- going smoothly enough, except for one small, but puzzling detail in a logistics operation roughly comparable to the D-Day landings in Normandy a handful of years before. Suddenly it became clear that the staunchest and most vociferous Scots-enthusiast hadn't signed up, had in fact inexplicably begged off attending the premiere, giving as an excuse the lamest in the catalog: "Due to a previous engagement." Prithee, WHAT "PREVIOUS ENGAGEMENT"? I know: DON'T ASK/ DONT TELL. (We never DID find out --- Frustrating is NOT the word!) By all this is meant (who else?) Joan, Duchess of Sage. This "lordly line of St. Clair", of which Joan was the young chatelaine, were perhaps the most interesting of all our many fascinating friends and asquaintances. They seemed to embody everything one imagines the classic Scottish temperament to be --- moody, dramatic, unpredictable, liable to switch in an instant from the darkly dour to highly charged exuberance with no warning-signal whatsoever --- yet singly or collectively such marvelous company that one gladly put up with all the rest of it, as one does (and gladly) with friends one truly cherishes. (Oddly enough, the Stephen clan were in almost every way, the exact opposite of the St. Clairs, and yet were just as "Scottish" of all their traits. Which is what makes Celts --- and my mother Nell was no exception --- brilliant sunshine one minute, a downpour the next. YOU try to figure them out --- but one thing is certain --- they are none of them dull. Infuriating, they can be (and often are), but boring? No way!
Joan's abrupt cancellation of her performance at the "Royal Scots" Premiere at the Stadium was all too typical of that demi-diva, whose imperious manner and regal eccentricity had, as already mentioned, earned her the soubriquet of Her Grace the Duchess (not yet 30 and already almost a Royal!). Hers was manner so formidable that any poor wretch heard muttering, White-Rabbit-like, "The Duchess! Oh! the Duchess! Won't she be simply savage?" could only mean, not Lewis Carroll's titled termagant, but the dazzler ensconced at the St. Clair family compound over on Glen Ellyn's wooded Riford Road. (In this account of that singular evening, when the Royal Scots Band briefly invaded Lombard-The-Lilac-Town, you will encounter two more of the St. Clair dynasty: Robert, Joan's brother, who, in this case, is merely a face in the crowd, and their mother (the Doyenne) Hazel, a gentle exception to everything already said about the Scottish temperament. Let me assure you that we have been every bit as puzzled as anyone by the quirks of the "pawky" Scots soul, my Dad and I, trying to keep up with my Irish mother's rapid changes of mood. Her saving grace was her blessed Irish sense of humor that never let her take herself too seriously. The winning formula: (and here's where the metaphors careen wildly off the tracks) Quicksilver VS. Dark storm-clouds: gloom, dark storm-clouds only occasionally relieved by shafts of sunshine. Anybody able to figure all that out, please let us in on that secret!
When the news of Joan's absense from the premiere-party became known, I believe we were all more than slightly relieved --- for once, somebody else might be able to get a word in edgeways. Besides which, she would doubtless make up for it the following Saturday when gracing the performance, with her favorite confederate, the lovely, but lethal Ginny Lee in attendance. Not for the first time would the query arise: what have the two of them been up to THIS time? For, as always when this dulcet duo was involved, something extraordinary, something quite outré would be afoot. And for those not quite familiar with that nifty little French adjective, here's what the Concise Oxford Dictionary says about it:
"Outré: Outside the bounds of propriety, eccentric, outraging decorum."
Talk about le mot juste!
As our tale unfolds, the appropriateness of this definition will become crystal-clear. For, as the old saying has it, thereby hangs a tale, not to belabor the French word-borrowings (but just one more?), one that holds the very raison d'etre of this entire narrative.
Aye, this was a happening that still lives in the collective memory as one of the boldest and most bizarre in the entire annals of the ADL, of Herbert-Parties, perhaps of the party going history of Greater Chicagoland, Subdivision: Western Suburbs. Once again the query: what had those two ornamental doxies, Joan and Ginny, wrought?
What --- to put it as simply as possible --- what they had wrought was introduce into a perfectly ordinary, normal Saturday evening Herbert-party a magnificent trio of virile and talented Scottish Highlanders in full parade dress, direct from Edinburgh Castle by way of the Chicago Stadium, complete with bagpipes and silver flute.
Was there ever such a spectacular entrance made into a gathering as this? COULD there ever be? And all because these two high-spirited and enterprising bimbos from Glen Ellyn, USA, got so carried away by the pulse-quickening, bladder-tickling spectacle they had been witnessing, an evening that so beggered every precious description and nullified every form of anticipation that, even before the final ovation had subsided, the two of them had hitched up their chic New Look skirts and trundled hurriedly backstage...
There, with adrenaline bubbling and adulation reaching orgasmic proportions, they gave themselves up to the melée of stamping, sweating Scots gladiators (or so they seemed to Our Girls), still vibrating from their three hours’ performance and the attendant triumph --- gave themselves up? No! They positively let themselves be engulfed, and, both girls babbling non-stop, they so enraptured three of the kilted hunks in particular --- namely Angus, the ultimate chauffeur-manager, Alex, prize piper and part time pianist-accompanist; and Robbie, star flutist and all of 18, a gentle ginger-haired gift for the Gods --- so enraptured and enchanted them that all three immediately dropped whatever plans they’d had for the evening and snapped up the girls invitation to journey forthwith, out to the western suburb of Lombard (Yep!! The promised goal:) Lombard , the Lilac Town, an ongoing party at the Moultons’ with Nell and the 2 Herbs, and all their works and pomps. 

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Corona We Will Win
An Anti Covid Song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tD9aAlQqpAg&t=61s

Corona: We Don't Want

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_mL914sgDw

Amy and the House Band

by K. A. Williams


The doorman stamped the back of Mom's hand.
"Tonight is 'Ladies Night'. No cover charge." 
Then he noticed me. "She's underage. She can't come in here."
"I promise she won't drink anything alcoholic," my mom said.
"I'm sorry lady, but your word won't keep me from getting fired if she drinks." 
"Is there a problem?" asked a tall man who came up behind the doorman. "Oh, hello Julie. Who's this pretty lady?"
"It's my daughter, Amy. You know Joe won't serve her anything alcoholic."
Joe was the bartender here and Mom's new boyfriend. Mom and Dad were divorced so she could date who she liked. I'd been pleased when she asked me if I wanted to come with her and meet him. I had put on my favorite bell-bottoms, and brushed my long hair.
She'd been leaving me at home with the television to keep me company. After my thirteenth birthday, I told her I was too old to have a babysitter and I'd be good and not have boys over and go to bed on time. And I had, so this was my reward.
She introduced me to Joe. "Hello Amy. You look just like your mother." He smiled at her, then asked me, "What do you want to drink?"
"I'll have a beer."
"Amy!"
"I'm just kidding, Mom. I'd like a cherry cola please."
Joe smiled. "Sure thing. And  the drinks are on me tonight, Julie."
I looked around the dimly lit room and noticed the small tables in front of a stage. I could see a drum kit and a keyboard stand on the stage. And guitars too. "Do you have a live band?" I asked Joe.
He smiled. "We sure do. The hotel's house band is over there at that table in front of the stage. They're taking a break. They go back on in about ten minutes."
I got off the stool.
"Where are you going, Amy?" Mom asked.
"To meet the band." 
"Amy!"
"It's okay, Julie. They're nice guys."
"All right."
I crossed the room, making my way around other tables, as I headed to their table. The adults were talking and drinking and smoking. They ignored me. 
When I reached the band's table, the five guys stopped talking. None of them were smoking and they all had long hair.
The biggest one put down his glass. "Hey little chick. Who let you in?"
"The manager. Mom's dating Joe the bartender. I just wanted to meet you guys and ask what kind of music you play."
All five of them looked toward the bar, then the best looking one said, "Rock and roll."
"That's my favorite kind of music. Who plays what?"
The guy I had just talked to mimed playing a guitar.  "I'm Bill."
A guy with brown hair and a moustache said, "Harry. Bass guitar."
Another guy with brown hair had turned over the empty ash tray that sat on the table and was tapping it with a straw. "I'm Ray and I beat the drums."
A blond guy finger combed his hair. "Keyboards, I'm Don."
"My name's Terry and I'm the vocalist," said the big guy. "And what's your name?"
"Amy. What's the name of your band?" 
Terry smiled. "Terry and the Travelers." 
"I'd like to change it to Don and the Travelers." Don laughed and so did everyone else, including me.
"Have you made any records?" 
"No, but we're heading out to L.A. next month. Bill's cousin knows somebody at a recording studio and he's letting us cut a demo of one of our original songs for free," Harry said.
"Cool." I was impressed. "You sing your own songs?"
"Well, we haven't written many tunes, mostly we're a cover band," Ray confessed.
"Do you take requests?"
"If we know the song. What was it you wanted to hear?" asked Bill.
"Groovy Situation."
"Okay, we can do that one." Terry checked his watch. "We've got to go onstage now, Amy. It was nice talking with you."
"Yeah, little chick. It was groovy." Bill winked and grinned. 
I could feel myself blushing as I went back to the bar. Joe was at the other end waiting on customers. My cherry cola was sitting there. I liked Joe. He was nice.
"I requested a song and they're gonna play it," I told Mom after I sat back down on the bar stool and sipped my cherry cola. It was good.
She smiled. "Are they? That's sweet of them, honey." 
I swiveled the bar stool around to face the stage. The guys started with "We're An American Band" which was wonderful. The closest thing to this I'd ever experienced was watching "American Bandstand" on television but that didn't compare to a real live performance.
Next came "Brandy" and  "Don't Pull Your Love". They sounded just as good as the original versions on the radio. I stood up and clapped loudly after each song.
Before they started their fourth number, Terry turned to the others and nodded before he said into the microphone, "This next song is for a special young lady named Amy," and I heard the unmistakable beginning of "Groovy Situation".
Having a song dedicated to me was a thrill and I really enjoyed their rendition. I was having the time of my life!

​Photo above: Charles E.J. Moulton as Elvis Presley, Norbert Labatzki as Mike Hammer
and Anne Dornseiff as Priscilla Presley in the popular "Christmas Broadway Night"- Show at the the Berge Castle in 2016. 
The trio calls themselves the Broadway Company and performs regularly with their swing and rock and roll shows
throughout Europe. 



 I'm For You If You're For Me

By Jack Smiles



The first time Rex heard the song he was in the car alone. He flipped out. He wanted to pull over, rip the damn radio out of the dash and beat it to death with a hammer. The second time he and his girlfriend, Angie, were hanging out on a blanket on the state park lake beach. He got up yelled, “Fuck You Rugbeaters” and threw his transistor radio into Seneca Lake . 
Angie thought he was mad. He was. And it was the Rugbeaters who drove him. He was their roadie once. Set up the kit, tuned the guitars, sound-checked the mics. It was a good gig. The Rugbeaters were the hottest cover band in the Finger Lakes and even up to Niagara. They averaged five gigs a week playing bars, wineries and private parties. They had a loyal fan base. The Wells brothers, Jam and Yancey, fronted the band, playing bass and lead and singing. Sure they were real pros compared to Rex, but all they did was cover songs. Rex, though all could do was strum a few chords, was a dreamer. The chords and melody came to him one night sitting alone in his apartment after a couple hits on a bong. He jotted down some lyrics and a title, “I’m for You, If You’re for Me.”
He played it for Jam and Yancey one night after a bar gig. They laughed and Yancey said, “Rex you’re a regular Willie Nelson?” Rex didn’t say anything, but quietly he seethed. They didn’t like the song, ok, but why the snarky comment? 
Rex got a real day job working construction and told Jam and Yancey he couldn’t handle the late nights anymore. They didn’t seem unhappy to let him go, without so much as a thanks. A month later he and Angie went to hear the Rugbeaters at Arnie’s Roadhouse. Yancey stepped to the mic and said, “Hey, we got something original we’ve been working on, we call it ‘If Not for You, There’d Be no Me.’ ” 
Rex only needed to hear a verse. He didn’t know what to do. He grabbed Angie’s hand. “Damn it, that’s my song. We gotta get out of here now.”
Well, it turns out, Scepter, a new label out of the New York City, was looking for new bands. They sent a scout to Hammondsport to hear the Rugbeaters and he recommended giving them a contract. They recorded the song in a real studio in the City and Scepter released it. The Syracuse University radio station picked it up and the next thing anyone knew, everybody’s favorite bar cover band had a regional Upstate hit. A Binghamton DJ told Rex the band probably made 40, 50 grand on the song — his song.
Rex tried to confront Jam and Yancey. Called them, numbers changed. Went to their old half double on Rand Street. Moved. Drove out to the family farm a couple times. Never anybody around. Went to a few gigs, tried to get backstage. Stopped by bikers.

*****

“They pay ‘em cash. Small bills, dirty money,” Rex said.
“Whatya mean dirty?” Angie said.
“No permits, no advertising, no checks, no tickets, no paper, man, except for the money, singles, five, tens, 20s maybe even some 50s, all collected at the door day-of. No advance sales.”
“How do they get away with it?
“Ever been to the Wells’ family farm? It really is the middle of nowhere. 15 miles back a dirt road off 29. No neighbors for five miles. They cut a grove back there and left a buffer of woods all around. Parking in the cow fields for hundreds of cars. Been running this thing for five years. Nothing but word of mouth. There’s a buzz. Local cops gotta know, but they don’t give a shit.”
“How the hell do you know all this?”
“Didn’t your sister tell you? I was a roadie for the Rugbeaters for eight years. I know what happens at their parties. It’s a regular Woodstock lite.” 
“How much you figure?” 
“Last year they sold 4,000 tickets, $10 a piece. That’s 40 grand right there. And they sell beer and weed."
“So what? You make it sound like there’s like 40 grand laying in a pile ripe for pickin’.”  
"Pretty much, there is”
“No security?”
"Yeah, bikers. They pay em ‘em beer and weed.”
“How do we get around that?”
“Don’t worry, man, I got a plan.”
“What’s the plan.”
“Born to be Wild.”

****

In the festival office, really a trailer home backed up to the stage, the Rugbeaters gofer, Jerry, sat at a folding table separating cash it into piles by denomination. Josh, the roadie boss, sat next to him counting and banding it. 
Roadie and doorman, Dan, ran the dough back from the front gate every half hour between 7 and 9 when they closed the gate.“We’re making a killing man,” Jerry said after Dan had dumped the last of the gate from his shoulder bag. “Closing in on 50 grand,” Jerry said. “and we still have two joint sellers out there and we’re still selling tons of beer.
“We’re shutting down the music at 11:15,” Dan said.
“Don’t pull the plug, they’ll be a fucking riot,” Jerry said.
As Dan turned and walked down the hall to the door he said, “Not pulling the plug. The Rugbeaters are going to close with a big jam with the other bands and the natives are going to go wild and, hopefully, the natives will be worn out and go home.”

****

Getting in was easy. Rex and Butch just paid at the gate like everybody else.
“10 freaking bucks, what a rip off,” Butch said
Rex just looked at him shook his head and laughed.
They snaked their way through the crowd, stepping over muddy sleeping bags and around pow wows, checking out girls in cut offs and halters and stopping to take tokes on joints passing by. As they got closer to the stage they could hear the Rugbeaters playing “Start me Up,” but were walled off by a 20-deep mob of stoned, drunken, screaming dancers.
When the song ended Yancey talked said some “hey how y’all doing” shit over the mic. Gave Rex and Butch just enough time to jostle their way to the front row stage left. To their right three huge, dirty, mean-looking, drunken bikers stood with their arms folded and their backs against the stage. Yancey yammered on and finally yelled the magic words. “This one’s going out for our favorite bikers, the Vulcans.”
Rex said “oh yeah” to himself, as the Beaters broke into “Born To Be Wild.” The bikers turned toward the stage raising their beers and banging their heads while the dancers went wild, spinning, jumping, air guitaring. 
Rex reached down pulled up the tarp hiding the stage under pinnings, pulled Butch by the wrist and they went in. Shit, a freaking maze of of 2 x 4 cross section supports, way more than Rex expected. The bass and drum thundered down on them as they picked their way through the stage infrastructure. Rex, lithe and 160 pounds, moved easily. He looked back and saw Butch. He wasn’t moving. He was stuck in a cross section. 
“You fat fuck, I never should brought you.” 
“Shut up and get me the hell out.” They had to scream over the music.
Time was running out on “Born to be Wild” and Rex’s plan to get rich.
Rex got behind him, put his shoulder to his ass and pushed. Didn’t budge him. 
“I don’t have time, you’re on your own.” 
“Wait you can’t leave me here. I’ll squeal like a stuck pig.” 
You are a stuck pig, Rex thought to himself, but said to Butch. “Keep your mouth shut and I’ll get some money to you.”
Rex crawled out the back of the stage, as “Born to Be Wild” faded out. Only one more song and 20 musicians were going to go to the trailer for their dough. Rex had five minutes, give or take, while all the bands jammed on “The Breeze.” Rex ran alongside the trailer, up the front steps, pulled down his ski mask and burst in the door. 
“Hey, Dan, that you,” came a voice from behind a curtain in the kitchen down the end of the hall.
Rex ran, ripped down the curtain and jumped on the table where Jerry and Geoff sat. Three minutes. Just as he’d hoped, the banded money was piled on Josh’s side of the table. Geoff was hitting on a joint. Rex kicked Josh in the chest he fell back to the floor in the chair, whacked his head stayed down.
Geoff stood up. “Hey what the hell?” But he didn’t do anything. He froze.
Rex shoved the money in his backpack jumped off the table and turned toward the hallway. A door flew open. A huge scary biker stepped out of the toilet looking down, hitching his belt, blocking the hall. He looked up in time to swing his forearm to knock away the folding metal chair Rex threw at him. He growled and ran toward Rex, but got his feet tangled up in the chair and went down. Rex grabbed another chair, turned and threw it through the bay window behind the table and jumped through the opening just as Josh, groggy from whacking his head, stood up and made a futile swipe for Rex’s legs. Rex landed on some shards, but he got up, scrambled under the snow fence and sprinted for the tree line and into the woods.
It must have been quite sight if anyone could see it. A lone figure wearing a backpack sprinting into the dark woods from a moonlit pasture, 20 musicians, some wielding mic stands, and a half dozen sloppy bikers running after him. 
It was dark among the trees, but Rex knew the trail. His tach light would give away his position, but the Rugbeaters knew the trail, too. He switched the light on. He couldn’t afford to fall. He figured he was in better shape. Working construction and training for the Lakes Half Marathon was paying off. And he was sober — hopefully not for long. In a couple minutes he was a mile ahead. He heard a distant roar engines. The bikers must have broke off the chase and went back to the main gate for their hogs. 
The trail dumped him out on 29, the car was there where they had left it. But Butch had the GD key. He crossed 29 picked up the trail again on the other side of the road. He heard bikes coming up 29. He ducked into the woods 20 feet off the trail, crawled to the edge of the road, hid in the trees and peeked through the brush. Three bikes slowed as they approached the car. They stopped. Holy crap, it was Butch! He climbed off one of the bikes and waved like he was saying thanks. Two of the bikes rode away slowly, shining flashlights into the woods. The third turned onto the trail. 
As Butch opened the car door Rex came up behind him. “Open the other side.”
“Jeez, you about gave me a heart attack.”
Rex got in shotgun and put the backpack between his legs.
“How much we get?”
“We? I did all the dirty work.”
“Hey, I couldn’t help it. I wanted to go. I was stuck. And I’m helping you now ain’t I.”
“Will 10 grand keep you quiet?”
“Deal,” Butch said as he pulled on to 29. Rex opened the backpack and counted a stack of banded money. A grand. He put 10 stacks in a plastic bag and put it on the floor behind the driver’s seat.
“So what happened?”
“I broke a two-by and got out from under the stage. Went back out the front and fell in with the crowd walking out. Got to the main gate. Some bikers came running and gunning yelling about killing some asshole thief. I knew one of them from the Cat and Canary pool league. Told him I was out of gas on 29. He told me to hop on.”
“Out of gas?”
“How was I supposed to explain the car out here. Told him my buddies were on their way with a gas can.”
“He bought it?”
“He’s a biker, duh. So where we going?”
“We ain’t going nowhere. Drop me off at the bus depot.”

*****

Jam counted the left behind money. A couple grand out of 50.
“It was Rex, wasn’t it?”
“Well, he had a mask, but yeah, Jerry is 95 percent it was Rex,” Yancey said.
“Funny, I never thought he had the balls for something like this,” Jam said.
“From what I hear he’s on the warpath over the song. Telling everybody we ripped it off.”
“Did we? That’s being generous. Yeah, he had and idea, a melody, some chords. We finished the damn thing.” 
“So what do we do?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?” Jam said.
“We can’t call the cops,” Yancey said.
"We could look for him.”
“Where the hell we going to look, he’s not going to go home. He’s probably heading out to California as we speak. Him and his girlfriend.”
“The Vulcans aren’t gonna give up.”
“They can’t find their own asses.”

*****
​
There’s a part of North Central Pennsylvania nicknamed “The Wilds.” Endless mountains rolling with state game lands, national forests, and parks. There’s even an elk herd, one of the few this side of the Rockies, and elk tourism is a thing around one of the little towns. A decent restaurant, winery, brewpub, a B and B.
Nice place to buy a little business with your girlfriend and call it the Antler Inn, sit on the patio and watch elk, maybe write a couple songs. 

Photo above: Charles E.J. Moulton as Father Janos in "Simon the Foundling", Gelsenkirchen Opera, Germany


Fatherland

By Mir Yashar Seyedbagheri



The fatherly mustache bristles through shadows and rises to my consciousness from miles away. I am a graduate student, but also my father’s keeper, employee, and gofer and daily the mustache still rises. It rises through my white bedroom walls, it rushes through curtains. It peeks out of the showers too and invades my moments of laughter or run-ins with friends in the English department halls.
Bristling, the mustache connotes an emotional weather forecast, something I learned to gauge from childhood. Bristling’s always mostly cloudy. Chance of fatherly lectures ninety to one hundred percent.
I play his hits in my mind.
You’re not organized, too naïve. Learn to use people, my boy. Learn the tricks.
Why do you write bad stories about your father?
You’re too emotional. Be strong, boy. Do you need counseling?
Even through the phone, the words rise, each one a nasal whine, a foghorn that never, never stops. Once I sparred, offered invectives. Kiss my ass, adopt another son if you’re
dissatisfied. But he just sparred back, fusillades firing until I walked away, a loser, with shame and dignity crumpled beneath me.
“Your dad loves you. He wants you to be happy,” he always says, usually when concluding lecture X or lecture Y.
If only that were the case. Although I do laugh at his use of the third-person to refer to himself. Your dad, your father, your daddy, even.
If only wanting were something easy, something you could order at McDonald’s. One large happiness, a Diet Coke, and some fries, please.
But the mere ping of the phone makes me jump, even when it hasn’t rung at all. I wait, slink into shadows, wait for the next lecture. The next ping of the phone or the Curb Your Enthusiasm ringtone, announcing an impending lecture. I can’t write, complete readings for class, and I can’t find the energy to create. I stall over paragraphs and once wonderful, comprehensible metaphors seem foreign. On top of that, I can’t even go out to walk at night and absorb the peach and lavender symphonies in the sky. And forget about going to the coffee shop to relish Friday night jazz or classical concerts on old upright pianos with blemishes and out-of-tune tenderness.
Forget about grad student parties too, with thumping speakers and bodies dancing like lovable jackasses.
I wonder how many messages or texts he’s left, my phone blocks away, and I surrender to the need to check. What new report will he have me type? How quickly will he need this one? What is he calling to lecture me about this time?
I try to calm myself, to conjure something, anything. The beauty of the sky, a Tchaikovsky waltz, but the words break through these contrived walls. What does he want? A thousand possibilities always rush into my mind. Finances, a need to find a girlfriend, to be a lecher. And honestly, in the spectrum of lectures the girlfriend ones are the most bearable.
Even from thousands of miles away, I’m still my father’s keeper. If I avoid communication, he threatens disownment. Disownment, the severing not only of financial assistance, a job, but also the casting off of a name. I imagine myself, a man without a name, naked. It’s a name I mock with friends and to myself, but it’s something in a world of rushing bodies, exchanged glances, and touches, a world where I’m still on a certain periphery.
Sometimes, and I mean sometimes, he’s in a good mood.
“I’m proud of my boy,” he’ll say. Or my son. My boy, my son, sometimes my love, terms I try to hold onto. And sometimes, I’ll say, “I love you,” normal, tender terms, even if I sound like I’m rehearsing lines for a play.
But they’re fragile terms, terms that invariably break. It’s not a matter of if, but when. I supposedly rush through typing one of his soil recommendations. I sound impatient on the phone. I fail to remind him of his own credit card deadlines or alert him to a communication from some colleague about a conference. I need to be proactive.
“See the end at the beginning,” he always says.
One of these days, one of these days I’ll find the power to break. Maybe when I’m done with school. Maybe a little longer. But I’m young still, someone still navigating a thousand worlds. I try to imagine myself thrown into the seas of strangers and bodies, colleagues, bosses, bodies full of kindness, but possibly even more lectures, lectures I haven’t heard yet. Lectures
with mysterious shapes and scopes, expectations that are even more murky, expectations from people whose lives I haven’t been privy to.
On the fatherly lectures go, and more and more I grunt in response. Or just acknowledge them with a “yes, Dad,” “I know, Dad,” so they’ll stop faster. A different kind of shame rises, the shame not of fighting, but of sheer cowardice. But fleeting moments of peace hold great meaning. I grab what I can.
Only in the still of night, when I know he’s slumbering, can I feel the real loosening of body. I can strip off words and sink into the expanse of pillow and sheets. Wander about this little apartment, look out onto the darkness. I can drink a glass of Cabernet. On a bad night, two or three. I watch something on Netflix or Prime. Something contrived, something truly stupid that makes me laugh. Something with flatulence, bodily functions, puerile cheer, and no sense at all. I can laugh, laugh, laugh, releasing energies like balloons, until everything’s gone, and I must refill, the morning waiting through the shadows.

Sunday at the Theater

By Angela Camack



August 2016

Only a meeting with his somewhat-estranged youngest child could get Jack to hot, sticky, irritable New York City in August. He would have waited until fall. What difference could one more month make, after two years of an uneasy truce between him and Ben. But his wife Marie was anxious to see Ben, to see the unhappiness between them healed. His rift with ben had caused their relationship to become unsteady for the first time in their long marriage, and he wanted to see that unhappiness healed as well.
Jack should have seen what was going to happen, had tried to stop things earlier. Ben’s story was straight out of that musical – what was it – A Chorus Line. At 10 he walked into a recital at his older sister’s dance school, came out dancing and stayed dancing long after his sister quit ballet for soccer. He started taking classes at the same school, tap, ballet, jazz, anything he could. By the time he was 12 the owner of the school, a nice neighborhood school in their home in a New Jersey suburb close to New York that offered dance, baton twirling and Mommy and Me, told Jack and Marie how talented Ben was.
“Technically he’s already beyond anything we can give him. And he’s got it -stage presence, charisma, the works. The New Jersey Ballet has an excellent school that can give him what he needs.”
Jack never really understood theater. He saw enough drama during his career as a trial lawyer. And musical theater? People breaking into song during pivotal moments in their lives? No. He couldn’t understand Ben’s passion for a career that was horribly competitive, exhausting and hard to continue after middle age.
But Ben was unstoppable. By 14 he was earning money to pay for voice lessons. He was in every school play and discovered community theater. The summer before his senior year of high school he had the second lead in a community production of Oklahoma. Vibrant, funny Ben, with his magnetic personality and charm, a personality that got his dancing self through school without ever being beaten up.
Jack counted on Ben’s good sense, that he would find a stable career. He and Marie insisted that he keep up his grades, and he did, nailing the honor roll as easily as he nailed triple turns and the “I want” songs from musical comedies. They had put aside college money for him, as they had for their two other children, who had followed the paths that they expected for them.
By senior year he saw that they had waited too long to stop Ben’s ambitions. He planned to go to New York after graduation and aim for a stage career. The skinny kid with tap shoes had turned into a handsome, dark-haired blue-eyed man with a deep reserve of confidence.
“I don’t understand it,” he said to Ben for what seemed to be the thousandth time. “There are so few jobs out there and most of them don’t pay much. You’re setting yourself for a lifetime of beating your head against a wall.”
“You don’t have any faith in me,” said Ben,
“It’s the business that I don’t have faith in.”
“It’s more than a ‘business’ to me.” (Oh, Lord, spare me the starving artiste).
“Look, Dad, I’m not stupid.” Jack snorted at that. “I’ll give it a few years and if nothing breaks I’ll go to college.”
‘Ben, you have so much going for you. You can do anything you want.”
“This is what I want.”
Senior year was a tense and unhappy time. Ben was unmovable, Jack was angry, and Marie tried to work out peace between them.
‘Look, Jack, we have money set aside for his education. Let’s use it to send him to New York. Why not let him do what makes him happy? He is good.”
“So are a thousand other kids, and don’t say Ben is special, because they all are. What happens if he spends his college fund and winds up with no career?”
Ben read his father’s concern as lack of faith and a wall grew between them. He left for New York in August, refusing any money.
“Why won’t you let us help you?” asked Marie.
“There’s no faith behind it, Mom. Dad has no idea of who I am and why I want to do this.”
Ben took lessons at Steps on Broadway and worked with a voice coach. He did all the things aspiring theater people did. He waited on tables, pet-sat and worked as a cashier, and lived with a revolving collection of roommates. He kept in touch and visited on holidays, but Jack and Marie felt like the tie between them was fraying. He accepted small gifts of money but insisted on supporting himself.
His first year was discouraging. A workshop that never made it to the stage. Two weeks Off-Off Broadway in a show that the New York Times called “painfully bizarre.” One night on Broadway in a show that closed in one night and became a famous example of how badly musicals can bomb.
He always sounded optimistic, saying that his checkered career was an example of how the theater worked. His mother was sure his break would come. But Jack was worried. He pictured his Ben at 40, graying and bent after years of working as a waiter, and miserable at the snobbery his thought contained.
But Ben had so much promise...
By his second year things began to change. A month Off-Broadway in a musical with Broadway possibilities. Godspell and Cabaret in regional theater. The national tour of Phantom of the Opera. No more carrying food trays and cashiering, and he got his own studio apartment when he returned to New York after his tour.
He asked his parents not to come to see him perform. “I want you to see me when I’ve made it.” His mother was unhappy, but Ben insisted. His father’s resistance had hurt.
Upon his return to New York, he got a role in a revival of Cats. His parents finally felt they could stop holding their breath. Cats, the mainstream hit, the show that promised to run “now and forever” during its first run.
And Ben invited them to see the show.
Jack and Marie took a long weekend in August to see him, and to see something of the city. Ben looked older, handsomer, “too thin,” his mother insisted, but happy. They visited his studio, one room with a kitchenette. Ben’s theater books and laptop stood on a desk that usually served as a table and a fold-out sofa served as a bed. It was immaculate and decorated with theater posters, but spare and Spartan. Ben was plowing much of his salary into lessons, honing his art.
They had tickets for a Sunday matinee on the day before they left for home. Jack flipped through the Playbill while they waited for the show to start. It would take 2 hours for the cats to get to kittycat heaven. He sighed.
“What?” said Marie.
“I don’t know, this looks like a slog. Maybe we should wait for the movie.” Marie glared at him. “Just give it a chance, please. If you can understand it, you’ll understand Ben.
He browsed through the character names … Munkustrap Bombalurina, Skimbleshanks … his head hurt already. He checked his watch and wondered when intermission would come and he could grab a drink.
The overture played and the cats crawled out on the stage, in their fantastic costumes and makeup. Marie gasped when Ben leaped out. He’d sent them a picture so they could recognize his character, Mr. Mistoffelees, but Marie said she recognized the way he held his head and moved.
Despite himself, Jack was drawn into the story. This was theater, music, dance, this was what Ben had dedicated his life to. You became part of the world onstage, part of the journey, no matter how fantastic or far from normality it was. You were out of yourself for the time it took for the journey to end.
The show played on. Rum Tum Tugger channeled Mick Jagger. A white kitten danced in stage moonlight for the pure joy of moving. The Glamour Cat gathered her memories around her like her tattered coat.
Ben was amazing, with his rapid turns, soaring leaps and yes, cat-like landings. He had an amazing ability to communicate physically, to connect with the audience and to establish relationships with the other players. Music and dance merged to carry a message in a language other than the spoken word. Toward the end of the show, it was Ben who found the cats’ missing leader. Now in a coat sprinkled with lights. his dance conjured up Old Deuteronomy. He danced with a heady joy in his own powers. Could anybody turn faster, jump higher? When he finished, the applause went on. His Ben had stopped the show,
They waited for the usher to take them backstage, passing what looked like Macavity and Jennyannydots in street clothes. Ben was himself again, makeup off and in jeans and a blazer. His mother cried and Jack beamed.
“You were wonderful, son. I am so proud of you.”
“You mean that, don’t you, Dad?
“I sure do.”
They went out into the crowded and still-hot streets to get dinner. Jack suddenly stopped them.
“I was so wrong, Ben. I had so little faith. I forgot how much I risked when I started my own practice. Maybe you have to be young to have that much confidence.”
This being New York, the crowd paid no attention to two men embracing on the sidewalk and holding back guy-tears.

James Bond and the Danish Italians
 
Article by Charles E.J. Moulton
 
 
 
The vacation in Copenhagen with my father was the best we’d had. We were CLUB 31, a father and son-combo on trips together. Our meetings behind the Christmas tree and Sunday afternoon bike rides to the ice-cream-parlour was crowned that year of 1981 by an evening in Copenhagen that left us giggling. It was a fabulous introduction to a splendid evening of James Bond.
As we were sitting in our favorite Italian spaghetteria near the opera house, I happily found the announcement that FOR YOUR EYES ONLY was playing at a city cinema called the Colloseum. Imagine the local surprise when we asked the Italian waiter where the Colloseum was. He looked at us as if we had crawled from underneath his kitchen closet and auditioned Yankee Doodle for him, but sung it backwards in Greek.
His response was full of classic, Italian cynicism:
“The Colloseum is in Rome!”
When we told him that we were looking for the Copenhagen cinema called the Colloseum, he said: “You don’t want to go there!”
Indeed, we did.
I am happy we did. First we ended up in the wrong multiplex cinema room and began enjoying an old Terry Thomas flick dubbed into French. There is something rotten in the state of Denmark, my thespian Dad quoted and we merged into the biggest cinema hall ever seen and had the time of our lives.
The film is one I deeply cherish as a nice addition to some very cultural trips. We saw an uncut production performance of Hamlet, met famous painters, witnessed the royal changing of the guards, wallowed in hotel breakfasts and enjoyed ballet performances of The Nutcracker.
However, the most fun I, a goofy twelve year old, had was walking back to the hotel and laughing at my father imitate the Bond theme. He was doing it all wrong, I claimed. The Bond theme was not “Duh-da-Duh-da-Duh-da”, but “Duh-dada-Duh-dada-Duh-dada-Duh”.
Which brings us back to Bond.
Indeed, the score of For Your Eyes Only is, in my mind, the best of all possible Bond scores. It combines Spanish tonality and real Phrygian scales with brilliant trumpet solos by British session musician Derek Watkins. Bill Conti manages to coach an orchestration that sounds like “Foreigner” while reminding us of Brahms. Electronic keyboards and full orchestra to match, it is a classic mix. The music alone is worth the experience. Especially for a film music buff like me. It has the gourmet whiff of tonal Rioja. Rich musical wine. Donald Guarisco claimed that the score’s mix of classical music, dance and funk made it one of the best film scores of the decade.
Then, who was the best Bond? I say that all Bonds have their merit. Comparing Roger Moore to Sean Connery is like comparing Barcelona to London. Barcelona is a sophisticated Tapa Bar accompanied by a rugged Samba. London is an eloquent sonnet enjoyed whilst sipping sherry and eating scones. Moore is a witty drink of Sandeman’s.
Moore was at his peek in the movie. His blend of wit and combat coincides with John Glen’s intellectual direction. It subseqently produces a film that is oppulent in images and rich in texture.
Filmed on location in the Bahamas, in Greece, in London, in Italy and out on the open North Sea, we are reminded of not what the plot is but how it is told. The film set a record as the most successful Bond opening to date. The story is a very remodified Fleming and has little to do with any of Ian’s stories. However, that is not relevant.
The British naval communcations system ATAC sinks along with its ship somewhere in the North Sea. Bond is sent out to find the assassin of a marine archeologist engaged by Britain to locate the ship. Teaming up with the victim’s daughter, a modern Electra, the team becomes tossed and turned between possible culprits in a sort of “who-dunnit”-like chase of spy swings.
In real life, double or single agents lead a considerably more painful and less glitzy life. Seeing these distinguished actors, however, produce an entertaining movie like this is a joy that overshadows that illusion. The Isreali theatre-fox Topol started his own theatre company in 1961 and is still going strong 40 years later. Here in 1981 his athletic performaces is mixed with considerable humour. Julian Glover has been a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company for decades. His work in the Sci-Fi and Agent Franchise has given him world wide fame. The supposed light entertainment benefits from his thespian eloquence.
Roger Moore was born three months after my father. Both were performers and both ended up working in Germany at some point during their careers. Educated at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Royal Army Service Officer Moore has acted in 47 films to date including the Bond films. Less rugged but more suave than Connery, Moore brings an astute aristocracy to Bond that remains unsurpassed.
It is, of course, obvious that Bond-movies rarely follow the actual Bond novel stories. And the fact that Ian Fleming himself didn’t seem to like Sean Connery as a choice for the main character is something that has left journalists baffled as to what Ian Fleming would’ve thought about the later Bond-heroes.
All of them differ. Sean Connery’s harsh manhood is the opposite of Roger Moore’s elegant worldliness. Timothy Dalton’s Shakesperian concentration carries inside what Daniel Craig seems to sport in his athletic leaps onto the screen.
But those are just comments on the sidelines.
FOR YOUR EYES ONLY has the elegant wit, the music and the sensuality to make it a true classic, whether it followed the original novel or not.
My father’s great love of films concludes my recount. It gave him a great place in every film fan’s year book. I am reminded of sitting in that Italian restaurant in Copenhagen many years ago when I see Roger’s fifth Bond film. I remember that I am like my father in most respects. I enjoy spening time with my child. If I can be half as good a father to my daughter as my father was to me, I have done my job more than well.
“The Colloseum is in Rome!”
Indeed. Roma è il più meraviglioso dei luoghi.
My soul, however, happily remembers sitting with my great dad in the Colloseum in Copenhagen and eating pop-corn and hooraying at Bond’s great antics in what I believe to be the entire series’ best agent extravaganza.
 

A Fellow MEETS His DAD Way BEFORE He HAD Kids 
A look at The BACK TO THE FUTURE-Trilogy
By Charles E.J. Moulton 
Small town, America. 1955. A young boy saves his friend from a car accident, who thanks him by simply jumping on his bike and driving off into the sunset. Sounds like pure soap opera, fifties style. 
Yes, but with a twist: the hero is his son and they are both 17 years old.
Huh? What was that? 17? Both?                                                                                   
Rewind the tape. Marty McFly’s friend, the much older Doc Brown, has invented a time machine with the help of plutonium-smuggling Libyans. During a demonstration, Marty McFly is accidentally catapulted thirty years back to a time when his parents were in high school.
Oops.
The only problem is that he never expected to stand in their way. He interrupted with his parent’s first meeting and now Marty has to get his folks back together so he can be born.
At first, it doesn’t work at all. His Dad is a complete wimp, mobbed by the local bully Biff, and his own mom is in love with… Marty. So it takes a whole lot of courage and pain and playing of love songs on proms to get them back together before he can by the help of a lightning bolt go back to the future, only to find out that he changed his parents: his formerly drunk loser parents are now prime yuppies out for tennis speaking like rich middle-class people. Who are better people? Losers or phoneys? Is the loser more honest because he lost?
Wait a minute, there is more. In the second picture, old Doc Brown travels back from the future, 2015, to tell Marty and his girl that their kids are in trouble. They go there to save them, but Marty is tempted by the dark side of the force (sorry, Mr. Lucas). He is chased on a hovering skateboard by Biff’s grandchild when he buys an almanac that reveals all sport results of the later half of the 20th century. Doc prevents him from taking it back with him, but evil things lurk in the minds of men and the entire story becomes a very Shakespearian parody.
Old Biff steals the book and takes the time vehicle back to the past and gives himself this desirable object. The result is a 1985 Hill Valley Gambling Hell with Biff as the rich devil replacing his murdered father. They accordingly go back to the past to fix this present in the past. They do succeed, run into themselves a couple of times, before burning the book and saving the future.
You think this is over? Not yet. Doc’s car was struck by lightning and sent back to 1885. Marty has to travel back there, against the Doc’s wishes, because he finds out that the Doc was murdered by Biff’s great grandfather. He does so, in the process letting Indians rip the fuel line. The result is that he meets his ancestors, his grandpa even pees on him as a baby, in order to find a home in his own town a hundred years back in time. He gets into a fight with Biff’s grandpa Buford “Mad Dog” Tannen (“I hate that name!”), who challenges him to a duel. The Doc, however, has fallen in love and after the victorious duel he elopes with his Miss Clara Clayton, whilst Marty pushes up to high velocity by a steam train into the present.
But there is hope yet.
Doc returns with a new invention, prompted by the hover board from the future.
He is now the owner of a time steam train.
Sound like fun? Yes. It is. Fast, furious and funny.
But let’s look a little behind the scenes, shall we now? Having read two of Michael J. Fox’s biographies, I am a little smarter. He tells us that his now very evident Parkinson’s disease comes from an accident in the hanging scene of the third movie. “Accidents are temporary, film is forever.” These were his exact words.
However, we must admire a man who so bravely left Canada to become a star and decided to work day and night on two projects while doing the movie.
What about the characters in the film?
All Marty’s family are losers made winners in the movies, through Marty’s timely doing. Biff’s family are winners made losers in the movies, also through Marty’s doing. There is thus a reverse side to the movies, with Marty undoing ill and doing well. Is it too bad that Marty and Doc are not together at the end? Yes. But Doc was always lonely and now has a family in the only place he ever really truly loved: the old west.
Looking at them as a whole, with all of their reversible fun of characters meeting themselves and changing lives, the most interesting part of it is still how the characters can change personality wise according to circumstance and situation. 
Marty’s mother is a drunken housewife who, completely and utterly resigned to a dull poor life, really has given up. But because of loving a man of heroics (Dad prompted by Marty) she turns into the fit, self secure and hip mother in 1985. The hip mother, however, turns into a rich, silicon pumped and frustrated wife in the alternate reality just because wealthy Biff murdered her husband and married her.
Biff is a pure sleaze, who has been used to winning all his life and therefore does the same thing he did in the fifties and even gets away with it because no one tells him otherwise. But the fact that Marty’s father has the guts to retaliate in 1955 he turns Biff into a meek and shy car mechanic thirty years later.
Receiving the book from himself in 1955, moreover, turns him into the evil man we all love to hate.
Marty’s father is a shy loser in 1985 because no one ever told him he was a capable man. But by receiving the right courage he dares to take the risk he needs and becomes a successful author and eventually a happy, rich grandpa.
Marty’s problem is that he never lets anyone call him coward. And so he gets into an accident in 1985 that ruins his life. But by the actual intervention of Doc he changes his mind and is able to not get into the accident and thereby make himself a future with his girl without being a loser.
TIME magazine was once quoted as saying that these films are like a fugue improvising on the theme of the previous movies.
Interesting point, this. A man might change his life if he makes the right decisions. What are the right decisions? Being strong and feeling strong. Having the guts to say: “Man, I am so talented. I can handle this, all right.”
Marty travels close to hundred and fifty years in time to find out that it isn’t the main thing to defend yourself against people who judge you ignorantly.
Defending yourself to save your soul from ignorance might be the main thing.
The main thing is not holding on to your past mistakes and letting your intuition lead the way. Is that what Marty does? Time is illusive and strange and maybe that is what the movies want to teach us. That going on with your life and working from the moment is the most important thing. Don’t keep reminding yourself that you did a mistake. Make sure that you don’t make the mistake again. Don’t be a bully like Biff or as quick in the draw as Marty. Be as good as you possibly can be. Sail through time in your own speed and with your own elegance and eloquence. Don’t be intimidated by past mistakes.
Don’t be so sure that you cannot learn anything from a movie just because pop corn and coke is labeled on the cover of a motion picture. Surprising truths can be found at the backsides of cereal cartons. This little extravaganza about time tells us that hotheads do well in not following grudges.
 
 
BACK TO THE FUTURE:                           Three Motion Pictures                     (©    1985,     1989,    1990)
Director: Robert Zemeckis    Music: Alan Silvestri     Actors: Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover, Thomas F.Wilson, James Tolkan;               Producer: Steven Spielberg.

THE TALE OF A MISSING LINK
​
FROM INDIANA 

An analytical review of the five films known as

THE PLANET OF THE APES 

​By Charles E.J. Moulton 
 
 
 
Folks of all generations flock to see dragons fly and strange creatures in spaceships ruling topsy-turvy worlds. Science-fiction-fans can be categorized into three groups: those who dress up in the clothes of their idols, speak the language and collect the items, attend the congregations and sing the songs, those who see everything as pure entertainment, popcorn-fun below all Shakespearian tradition. Between the two lies a group who would gladly consider themselves analytical. Their chief characteristic is looking at the real background of the piece and are thus probe into the story like a gold miner looking for a treasure.
The original Planet of the Apes-Series (films dating from 1968 to 1973) entail a striking message. The dialogue a striking parody of all things human, all things civilized and racist, the humane plea against injustice seems imbedded within it like litmus paper. It is a wonder that the movies are not discussed at sociological seminars.
Current civilization teaches us that dressing up is for fun and certainly anyone who dresses up as a monkey is not to be taken all too seriously. But rewind the tape: are they right? Theatre, like storytelling, shows the audience-member snip-bits from his own life from a new angle. Sci-Fi, especially, is able to use symbolism in order to map out the eternal allegory.
In the story, human astronauts from 1972 are frozen through deep space to arrive in the year 3955 on a planet ruled by monkeys. Only one survives, Taylor.
After torture and persecution he discovers that he is back home on Earth and the apes have simply taken over Earth after a nuclear catastrophe.
There are human survivors of this holocaust and they have worshipped the ultimate bomb for millennia. Taylor is witness to how the monkeys invade their underground city and ultimately destroy Earth by exploding the ultimate bomb.
Three apes escape in Taylor ship, arriving back in 1972 and find they are being treated the same way as Taylor was back home, only worse for it comes with intrigue. The one ape is pregnant and by fooling the police, she manages to rescue the baby, who grows up to start a revolt to found the Planet of the Apes.
The story is a vicious circle: A travels to B and creates havoc, which sets off a time warp that sends off A to B again. It is probably the most famous one in films. Had not Taylor decided to travel into the future, the apes would never have been able to travel to the past to found the future that Taylor discovered.
 
Ultimately, the proverbial dog chases his own tail until we sit there, blubbering and cooing like, well, a monkey in a tree.
But what does all this mean?
It means that Man (in reality and fiction) ultimately works against himself. He discovers something that he ultimately destroys. He won’t listen to truth because he is too caught up in his own desires and lack of honesty to admit that he has done things wrong.
To put this bluntly, he cannot let go of his own past mistakes. He regrets them so much that he lives not to better himself but to try to better his mistakes. If he could let them go, he would never have to fight the foes that arose from this action in the first place.
Some interesting dialogue from the film proves my point and how it is put across in a twisted manner. Take, for instance, the Gorilla General’s word in the second film. Centuries of slavery ring in his words:
 
“I am not saying that man is bad just because his skin is White. I am saying that the only good Human is a dead Human.”
 
It is protest in its purest form. You cannot critique humans on their own level like this (replace “Human” with “Negro” and “White” with “Black” and you’ll see what I mean). But you can put a human in a civilization of a different race and see how he reacts to this, thereby letting man point his own finger at himself.
 
The problem is that people don’t hear between the lines because the munching of the popcorn is too loud in their ears.
 
“Ignorance is Evil”
 
Doctor Zira says in the same film and mirrors the kangaroo trial that occurs in the previous film, where Colonel Taylor is held before a tribunal that only exists to hang the chimpanzees (who think he is a missing link) & the court (who won’t believe that he comes from Fort Wayne, Indiana). Neither side, however, is right. He is from humankind’s own past. The fact that the Gorilla-Army is blessed by priests in the movie & halted by pacifist chimps should be revealing to us humans. We have two parables here: the flower-power-generation who burnt their own draught cards & finally Nazi Germany, church blessing cannons.
So, the characters in the movie have the same problem as the human beings watching the story. They don’t listen. The characters in the movie are so caught up being mad at each other’s folly that they keep doing the same mistakes over and over. The people paying to see what they are doing, pay their popcorn and walk out just as oblivious to the countless divorces and badmouthing and intrigues that they are responsible for, not really interested in looking below the surface because they only do so in society-approved things of shiny surface and university approved dogma. But there are signs that try to help them, if they listened.
Shortly before the fourth film there was a racist riot in a city called Watts. Director J. Lee Thompson remodelled these riots, making the leader of the riots the Monkey Revolutionary whose parents were futuristic space travellers and thereby made him responsible for the proverbial dog we mentioned earlier chasing his tail in his own never ending vicious circle.
But we find a positive energy flowing from the remaining words of film 5:
 
“Life is like a highway. A driver in lane A might survive whilst a driver in lane B might not. By foreseeing his own future correctly he might plan his life better and change it.”
 
Accordingly, we see apes and humans sharing their lives at the end, giving us a possible hint that things maybe are not as bad as they look. The responsibility lies only in following your own good intuition.
It is up to you, dear reader of this article. Next time you go to a movie or a play, try to find messages within the storyline. Look closely, for you might find more than you think. Even if it is only the interesting analysis behind the bad acting.
Within everything … lies a message.
 
 
 
PLANET OF THE APES:   Five Motion Pictures  (20th Century Fox, ©1968, 1969, 1971, 1972, 1973) Directors: Franklin J. Schaffner, Ted Post, Don Taylor, J.Lee Thompson;    Actors: Roddy McDowell, Kim Hunter, Charlton Heston,  Maurice Evans,  Ricardo Montalban, Paul Williams,  Sal Mineo,  John Huston;       Based upon the book “Monkey Planet” by Pierre Boulle;       Make-Up by John Chambers  
 
 

Reality

By Yash Seyedbagheri


New Year’s Eve, I swig champagne, relishing the elegant oval glass.
For a moment, I’m a dandy in a pinstripe suit, not an asshole in faded navy-blue sweatpants, courtesy of thrift shops.
Another swig.
I’m tsar of Russia, a diplomat, someone who knows order. Regiment. Not maxed credit cards and Michelina’s TV dinners.
With another swig, I can dream on a pillow of bubbles. No nightmares about being trapped in cars with broken steering wheels or Ed Asner stalking me for inexplicable ransoms.
I swig, each swig longer.
When the clock strikes midnight, people cheer.
But reality takes me home.



Yash Seyedbagheri is a graduate of Colorado State University's MFA program in fiction. His stories, "Soon,”  “How To Be A Good Episcopalian,” and "Tales From A Communion Line," were nominated for Pushcarts. Yash’s work  has been published in The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Write City Magazine, and Ariel Chart, among others.

Holy Words about Spirit


***

What quantum physics teaches us is that everything we thought was physical is not physical. 
​  
Bruce H. Lipton

***

Quantum physics is teaching us that particles themselves don’t create particles. It’s just what Jesus said 2000 years ago, that it’s the spirit that gives life and that you don’t get particles from more particles. 
    
Wayne W. Dyer

***

God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit, and truth.

Jesus Christ, John 4:24

***

​Chi is the original force from which we come and to which we go. We are not our bodies. We are Chi, the life force which we perfect when we practice the slow, flowing movements and breathing of Tai-Chi and Qi-Gong. 

- Master Gu

***

The greatest richness is the richness of the soul. 

- Propher Muhammad

***

If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.  In separateness lies the world’s greatest misery; in compassion lies the world’s true strength.

- Buddha

***

The inner light glows in peace and meditation.

- Ancient Egyptian proverb

***

For the soul, there is never birth nor death.
Nor, having once been, does he ever cease to be.
He is unborn, eternal, ever-existing, undying and primeval.
He is not slain when the body is slain.

- Bhagavad Gita

The Dreamery Inshore


By Paweł Markiewicz




A dreamed ship has gone aground
at the most marvelous and dreamiest afterglow.
The mast adverts to orientation of
a tender Morning star.
Seafarers died at midnight
feeling the sea-like fantasy.
The wind wrenched a canvas,
such a Golden Fleece,
to the piratical islands.
The sea is waving in
the rhythm of siren-like
Terpsichorean art.
On the sandbank
a letter in bottle lies with
a sonnet to king Poseidon,
written by a dead sailor.
A rock inshore - like
a custodian of the eternity
is waiting for Apollonian dreams.
A cloud is as If it came from
the meek paradise-heaven,
it manifests a weird-like seriousness
of the moments


***




The brief scene from the Cave of Plato


By Paweł Markiewicz



Mortals: A, B, C and D are shackled, pinioned to a crag,
diverted, dreamful


1. Human A: I am frightened at the shades. The people at the fieriness are perilous. There are wardens who are able to kill.
2. Human being B: I am containing myself my dreameries in captivity. My daydreams are hushed.
3. Man C: We control one another at an oration. A shut mouth catches no flies. I am Narcissus and Goldmund.
4. Individual D: And I think already about a liberty afield. I heard of the meek sun.
5. All humans: We commending the Right Philosophy.
6. Homo erectus A: I worshipping the logics without the fear.
7. Neanderthal B: In the night dreams the poetical wings are uncontrolled.
8. Homo habilis C: The ontology of a silence must be still audited.
9. Australopithecus D: Over each fireplace a freedom-like ghost is floating.




Narcissus and Goldmund – according to the Mr. Hesse Hermann, an icon of the conjunction of spirituality and sensuality, a gold mean…



Paweł Markiewicz was born 1983 in Siemiatycze in Poland. He is poet who lives in Bielsk Podlaski and writes tender poems, haiku as well as long poems. Paweł has published his poetries in many magazines. He writes in English and German.

Above: The Spirit of Christmas by Greg Olsen



Santa’s Boss

By Cher Finver


While standing on my red and white striped stool, I am still the shortest guy on the assembly line.  I punch the eyes into the baby doll heads, as their dead stares mirror my own. This repetitiveness is my punishment. I would do anything to be reinstated to my former position, calling parents to inform them their child is on The Naughty List.
 
When I finish my shift in the Valley of the Dolls, I make my way from the building that houses the toy factory and Parent Call Center to the main living quarters and executive offices. While e-mailing Santa the updated Naughty and Nice Report last week, I mistakenly attached a provocative photo meant for a co-worker. Unfortunately, Santa now knows how my “ornament” dangles.
 
Santa is sitting in his red throne, fully dressed in his Christmas Eve best as he is every day.  Thanks to Elf Union 2425, a job here is secure, but you can be reassigned at any time as I was.
 
“Arthur Elf. I am quite busy. What can I do for you?” Santa’s nose and cheeks are always rosy, but today there is a hint of gin on his breath, and he won’t meet my gaze.
 
“Santa, sir. I wanted to apologize again for my indiscretion and ask to be reinstated as head of the Parent Call Center. Sir.”
 
His bellow can still pierce an elf’s ears. “Ho, ho, ho. No, no, no. Now, get out!”
 
I slowly retreat backward. I consider going to Santa’s boss but decide against it and head back to the elf living quarters.


A year ago, I came to the place that every elf in the world dreams of working, The North Pole. I remember my love from my interview like it was yesterday – her round rump, which I would later nickname “Red Delicious.” Those piercing blue eyes, accented by the delicate oval wire-rimmed glasses. And that crisp frilly white apron? Oh, she can still drive this elf insane.

Cher Finver has published works of fiction, horror, poetry, essays and is the author of the 2017 memoir, But You Look So Good and Other Lies. She lives in Las Vegas, NV with her husband, daughter and three rescue dogs.

The Culture Wars Come to Grover's Falls

(A Conspiracy Theory for the Holidays)
​

by R.D. Ronstad


Scene: It’s a slow, quiet, late December night in the Grover's Falls police station, at the corner of Hohman and Indiana.The Desk Sergeant sits behind his intimidating lectern-like hardwood desk facing the entrance, examining some unattached letter-size papers, turning one over every few seconds. Twenty feet to his left we see a forty-by-sixty foot office space, fluorescent lit, containing two neatly arranged receding rows of desks, each three desks deep. Atop each desk is a computer workstation, the glow from one illuminating the face of a white-shirted—clerk? detective? Sleeves rolled up, tie loosened, he is having a casual conversation with a woman who is leaning back on the right side of his desk, next to him. Every other workstation remains unattended. 

A silver-haired man, about 70, wearing a gray tweed overcoat and long red scarf enters the station, shakes off some snow, stamps his feet, and approaches the Sergeant’s desk.

S: Can I help you?

M: I’d like to report a theft.

S: A theft of what?

M: Christmas. Christmas has been stolen.

S:  So, someone stole gifts from your car? Decorations from your lawn?

M: No. Christmas itself has been stolen. A nefarious conspiracy to hijack the whole Christmas season has finally succeeded.

S: (Playing along—it is a dreadfully slow night): And who do you think is behind this conspiracy?

M: Pagans.

S: Which pagans? Not all of them surely.

M: No. But there's a vast worldwide network of Christmas subversives, some of whom are active in Grover's Falls.

S: Like who?

M: We can start with the owner of Pinehill’s Department Store across the street.

S: What? Why?

M: I was checking out at a register there only five minutes ago. When I wished the cashier a Merry Christmas, she looks at me and smiles and says: “Thank you! And Happy Holidays to you Sir!” I then asked her, as pleasantly as I could, “Young lady, I just wished you a Merry Christmas and meant it sincerely. Could you do me the courtesy of returning my greeting in kind?” “I’m sorry, Sir,” she says. “That would be against store policy. The owner thinks some customers might be put off if I said Merry, er, if I said, you know, that.” It was then I realized Christmas had finally been stolen. I had to do something. I abandoned my cart at the register, filled with house ornaments and a 35-pound bag of Kibbles n' Bits, and marched directly over here. Pagans have stolen Christmas, and those responsible must go down.

S: Hmmm. Who else in Grover's Falls do you suspect?

M: The mayor.

S: The mayor?

M: Yes. This year he finally crossed over to the pagan side and removed the nativity scene from City Hall.

S: Well, I suppose he and the City Council decided they didn’t want to appear to endorse a particular religion. 

M: Puhleeeese! Anyone who thinks separation of Church and State means separation of nativity scene and City Hall has separated common and sense.

S: Maybe. But to get the nativity scene restored you'd likely have to go before a judge. 

M: That...would be pointless. Most judges these days don't have any more common sense than the mayor and Council do. May I go on?

S: By all means.

M: I want to see Santa Claus arrested too.

S: Well, the North Pole is a bit out of my jurisdiction.

M: I’m not talking about a real Santa Claus. I’m talking about the illuminated plastic Santa Claus the mayor replaced the nativity scene with. A pagan symbol if there ever was one. And they talk about separation of Church and State!

S: Pagan? Saint Nick? Pagan?

M: Saint Nick nothing! He’s Odin in disguise. You can Google it.

S:  Wait. Let me get this straight. You want me to arrest a plastic lawn ornament?

M: As a symbolic gesture, yes. It’ll be easy too. You won't even have to say "freeze." Ha!

S: Hmmm. So what about the reindeer? They’re part of the City Hall display too. Should I haul them in?

M: Nah. They wouldn’t fit in a squad car, or even an SUV probably. At least not without bumping their antlers. I know how you guys would hate that. Besides, if you started picking up dumb animals in the plot against Christmas, you’d have to go after the chipmunks.

S: I’m not sure I follow.

M: Never mind...Just get the Santa, please! I'd like nothing more than to see that evil plastic smile and plastic bowl-fulla-jelly gut behind bars. 

 S: You know, I’d kind of like to see that myself.

M: And speaking of bowl-fulla-jelly guts, you should lock up my boss.

S:  Hey, chipmunks...I get it now...Anyway, what has your boss done?

M: When he passed out our office Christmas bonuses a few days ago, all the checks were in envelopes on which he had written “Merry Xmas.”

S: So what, exactly, is the problem.

M: It’s just another pagan ploy, turning “Christmas” into “Xmas.” And discriminatory. Why don't we celebrate New X’s Day? The Xth of July? Xgiving? How would you like it if your wife or girlfriend gave you a card with a big heart on it over which was written “I'm So Glad You're My Xentine?” Ridiculous! But the pagans plant this idea in your mind: “Oh, you’re so busy at Christmastime. So harried. Think of all the time you could save simply by substituting X for C-h-r-i-s-t every time you have to write out a Christmas card or envelope or gift tag.” I know my boss is very busy pretending to be busy, so maybe he’s been duped. But he’s still an accessory. Make him an X-convict (the man draws an “X” in the air using his right index finger) and maybe he’d learn his lesson.

S: Are you saying your boss is a mutant? 

M: Of course not, I...Oh, I see...uh, please, this is no joking matter. Nonetheless I'm glad you made that movie reference, because I almost forgot. I suspect the head of the local TV station is also part of the conspiracy.

S: How’s that?

M: This year, for the second year in a row, her station is showing A Christmas Story for 24 hours straight beginning at 9 PM Christmas Eve.

S:  What’s wrong with that? They didn’t call it An Xmas Story. And it's a cute story.

M: But can't you see? They’re trying to make it the story. By showing it for 24 hours straight spanning Christmas Eve and Christmas Day to people already confused about Christmas, they're hoping to brainwash them into thinking that what they’re seeing is the Christmas story. I'm surprised they haven't already changed the title to The Christmas Story. Mark my words, next year the plastic reindeer will be gone and Santa will be joined by plastic Ralphie Parker and family, with Ralphie being approached by three wise-men bearing gifts—a Daisy BB gun, a Little Orphan Annie decoder ring, and a semi-obscene table lamp.

S: Uh...actually, I think in the movie the table lamp was sent to Old Man Parker. 

M: Yeah. But did you see the way Ralphie looked at that thing?

S: Point taken.

M: Okay then.

S: Well, this certainly has been an illuminating conversation. Have you anything to add before we wrap it up, at least for now? It looks like the Lieutenant over there (nodding to his left toward the woman leaning on the desk, who by her expression apparently has found something amusing) requires my assistance. 

M: No. I think I’ve made my case. And I expect you to take action.

S: Well, actually, most of what you’ve said is speculation and not at all material. As such, I don't think we can help you. But if you discover something more substantial, please do come back and file a report.

The man looks down at the floor as if contemplating the Sergeant's remarks. Then, several seconds having passed, he looks up at the Sergeant again and says...

M: Bah!

He spins on his heels and starts to rush out angrily, almost running into another, younger man who had entered the station moments earlier. The older man stops short of the younger, looks him up and down, then again says...

M: Bah!

...and rushes out.

S: Hello. How may I help you this evening?

YM: (approaching the Sergeant’s desk): Greetings good Sir! I have a message for you from Odin!

A Corona Christmas


by


Gerald Arthur Winter


In the late '40s and early '50s Christmas was a joyous time, but compared to now, most


kids might think it far worse than the pandemic restrictions this season. What if: You got only


an apple or an orange in your stocking and that was considered special? Reese's Pieces didn't


exist and chocolate was rare. Coca Cola was permitted only on Christmas Eve so your teeth


wouldn't rot, because fluoride wasn’t discovered, and even when it was, the conspiracy theory


of the time was that the Communists were brainwashing you through your teeth when you


brushed. Mr. Tooth Decay was a spy sent by Stalin.


An alternate truth of the times, but foolish is foolish no matter what era you live in.


If there was any cash to receive, it was coins, and a quarter meant you were very good.


The wrapped gifts under the tree most often contained something practical: pajamas, socks,


mittens, underwear, slippers, or a bathrobe you'd have to hand down to your little brother in


two years


Sure, we got toys, but little was made of plastic, let alone electronic, other than


Lionel Trains with just one new train car added each year. Oh, for an un-coupler track, a


new switch, or a Plastic Ville building for the town assembled around the three-railed tracks


under the Christmas tree strewn with tinsel.


Toys were mostly made of wood or tin, like blocks and Lincoln Logs, or a sheriff's badge


pinned to your Roy Rogers or Gene Autry shirt. A cap pistol meant Dad had gotten a Christmas


bonus, and the smell of gunpowder after each shot from the pistol stayed in your nose joyfully


for hours.


Games all came in a box with a folding board, like Parcheesi.


An erector set was used to build something, and had nothing to do with ED.


We weren't required to wear a mask for ours or others' wellbeing, but purely for


pleasure. When I got a black mask and a white hat to look like the Lone Ranger, I even


slept with it on every night till New Years.


Though seemingly pure and simple, like then, these hard times might one day


become nostalgic for those fortunate enough not to become deathly ill or succumb to


COVID-19.


Hopefully, today's youth will look back and recall this unfortunate holiday season


and be able to say to their kids and grandkids:


"I remember when we all wore masks so we could hug and kiss our families the


next Christmas. It was a terrible time for all who'd lost those close to their hearts, but


we made a personal, unselfish sacrifice to protect one another. We found simpler ways


to endure for the greater good.


As the commercial used to proclaim:


Jump! It's fun! Jump! It's easy!
Everyone loves to play
PARCHEESI!




_____________

Rich On Five Dollars

By Mir Yashar Seyedbagheri


We count pennies to place in our sack, stored in secret spaces up until now.
It takes so long, each penny falling with a clink. But with each clink, we imagine another clink, and another. We imagine more money, miscalculating in all the best ways.
But after a litany of things, including the rent, utilities, closing out credit cards, and expensive Merlot we needed but didn’t need for sanity, it’s what we predict. Five dollars.
That’ll buy a McChicken. A small Coke. Chips. A couple bags if we raid the vending machines on campus.
At least it’s not two dollars.

Above: First Thanksgiving, Oil Painting by J.L.G. Ferris


Roses and Forget-Me-Nots

By Louisa May Alcott


I-ROSES

It was a cold November storm, and everything looked forlorn. Even the pert sparrows were draggle-tailed and too much out of spirits to fight for crumbs with the fat pigeons who tripped through the mud with their little red boots as if in haste to get back to their cozy home in the dove-cot.

But the most forlorn creature out that day was a small errand girl, with a bonnet-box on each arm, and both hands struggling to hold a big broken umbrella. A pair of worn-out boots let in the wet upon her tired feet; a thin cotton dress and an old shawl poorly protected her from the storm; and a faded hood covered her head.

The face that looked out from this hood was too pale and anxious for one so young; and when a sudden gust turned the old umbrella inside out with a crash, despair fell upon poor Lizzie, and she was so miserable she could have sat down in the rain and cried.

But there was no time for tears; so, dragging the dilapidated umbrella along, she spread her shawl over the bonnet-boxes and hurried down the broad street, eager to hide her misfortunes from a pretty young girl who stood at a window laughing at her.

She could not find the number of the house where one of the fine hats was to be left; and after hunting all down one side of the street, she crossed over, and came at last to the very house where the pretty girl lived. She was no longer to be seen; and, with a sigh of relief, Lizzie rang the bell, and was told to wait in the hall while Miss Belle tried the hat on.

Glad to rest, she warmed her feet, righted her umbrella, and then sat looking about her with eyes quick to see the beauty and the comfort that made the place so homelike and delightful. A small waiting-room opened from the hall, and in it stood many blooming plants, whose fragrance attracted Lizzie as irresistibly as if she had been a butterfly or bee.

Slipping in, she stood enjoying the lovely colors, sweet odors, and delicate shapes of these household spirits; for Lizzie loved flowers passionately; and just then they possessed a peculiar charm for her.

One particularly captivating little rose won her heart, and made her long for it with a longing that became a temptation too strong to resist. It was so perfect; so like a rosy face smiling out from the green leaves, that Lizzie could NOT keep her hands off it, and having smelt, touched, and kissed it, she suddenly broke the stem and hid it in her pocket. Then, frightened at what she had done, she crept back to her place in the hall, and sat there, burdened with remorse.

A servant came just then to lead her upstairs; for Miss Belle wished the hat altered, and must give directions. With her heart in a flutter, and pinker roses in her cheeks than the one in her pocket, Lizzie followed to a handsome room, where a pretty girl stood before a long mirror with the hat in her hand.

"Tell Madame Tifany that I don`t like it at all, for she hasn`t put in the blue plume mamma ordered; and I won`t have rose-buds, they are so common," said the young lady, in a dissatisfied tone, as she twirled the hat about.

"Yes, miss," was all Lizzie could say; for SHE considered that hat the loveliest thing a girl could possibly own.

"You had better ask your mamma about it, Miss Belle, before you give any orders. She will be up in a few moments, and the girl can wait," put in a maid, who was sewing in the ante-room.

"I suppose I must; but I WON`T have roses," answered Belle, crossly. Then she glanced at Lizzie, and said more gently, "You look very cold; come and sit by the fire while you wait."

"I`m afraid I`ll wet the pretty rug, miss; my feet are sopping," said Lizzie, gratefully, but timidly.

"So they are! Why didn`t you wear rubber boots?"

"I haven`t got any."

"I`ll give you mine, then, for I hate them; and as I never go out in wet weather, they are of no earthly use to me. Marie, bring them here; I shall be glad to get rid of them, and I`m sure they`ll be useful to you."

"Oh, thank you, miss! I`d like `em ever so much, for I`m out in the rain half the time, and get bad colds because my boots are old," said Lizzie, smiling brightly at the thought of the welcome gift.

"I should think your mother would get you warmer things," began Belle, who found something rather interesting in the shabby girl, with shy bright eyes, and curly hair bursting out of the old hood.

"I haven`t got any mother," said Lizzie, with a pathetic glance at her poor clothes.

"I`m so sorry! Have you brothers and sisters?" asked Belle, hoping to find something pleasant to talk about; for she was a kind little soul.

"No, miss; I`ve got no folks at all."

"Oh, dear; how sad! Why, who takes care of you?" cried Belle, looking quite distressed.

"No one; I take care of myself. I work for Madame, and she pays me a dollar a week. I stay with Mrs. Brown, and chore round to pay for my keep. My dollar don`t get many clothes, so I can`t be as neat as I`d like." And the forlorn look came back to poor Lizzie`s face.

Belle said nothing, but sat among the sofa cushions, where she had thrown herself, looking soberly at this other girl, no older than she was, who took care of herself and was all alone in the world. It was a new idea to Belle, who was loved and petted as an only child is apt to be. She often saw beggars and pitied them, but knew very little about their wants and lives; so it was like turning a new page in her happy life to be brought so near to poverty as this chance meeting with the milliner`s girl.

"Aren`t you afraid and lonely and unhappy?" she said, slowly, trying to understand and put herself in Lizzie`s place.

"Yes; but it`s no use. I can`t help it, and may be things will get better by and by, and I`ll have my wish," answered Lizzie, more hopefully, because Belle`s pity warmed her heart and made her troubles seem lighter.

"What is your wish?" asked Belle, hoping mamma wouldn`t come just yet, for she was getting interested in the stranger.

"To have a nice little room, and make flowers, like a French girl I know. It`s such pretty work, and she gets lots of money, for every one likes her flowers. She shows me how, sometimes, and I can do leaves first-rate; but--"

There Lizzie stopped suddenly, and the color rushed up to her forehead; for she remembered the little rose in her pocket and it weighed upon her conscience like a stone.

Before Belle could ask what was the matter, Marie came in with a tray of cake and fruit, saying:

"Here`s your lunch, Miss Belle."

"Put it down, please; I`m not ready for it yet."

And Belle shook her head as she glanced at Lizzie, who was staring hard at the fire with such a troubled face that Belle could not bear to see it.

Jumping out of her nest of cushions, she heaped a plate with good things, and going to Lizzie, offered it, saying, with a gentle courtesy that made the act doubly sweet:

"Please have some; you must be tired of waiting."

But Lizzie could not take it; she could only cover her face and cry; for this kindness rent her heart and made the stolen flower a burden too heavy to be borne.

"Oh, don`t cry so! Are you sick? Have I been rude? Tell me all about it; and if I can`t do anything, mamma can," said Belle, surprised and troubled.

"No; I`m not sick; I`m bad, and I can`t bear it when you are so good to me," sobbed Lizzie, quite overcome with penitence; and taking out the crumpled rose, she confessed her fault with many tears.

"Don`t feel so much about such a little thing as that," began Belle, warmly; then checked herself, and added, more soberly, "It WAS wrong to take it without leave; but it`s all right now, and I`ll give you as many roses as you want, for I know you are a good girl."

"Thank you. I didn`t want it only because it was pretty, but I wanted to copy it. I can`t get any for myself, and so I can`t do my make-believe ones well. Madame won`t even lend me the old ones in the store, and Estelle has none to spare for me, because I can`t pay her for teaching me. She gives me bits of muslin and wire and things, and shows me now and then. But I know if I had a real flower I could copy it; so she`d see I did know something, for I try real hard. I`m SO tired of slopping round the streets, I`d do anything to earn my living some other way."

Lizzie had poured out her trouble rapidly; and the little story was quite affecting when one saw the tears on her cheeks, the poor clothes, and the thin hands that held the stolen rose. Belle was much touched, and, in her impetuous way, set about mending matters as fast as possible.

"Put on those boots and that pair of dry stockings right away. Then tuck as much cake and fruit into your pocket as it will hold. I`m going to get you some flowers, and see if mamma is too busy to attend to me."

With a nod and a smile, Belle flew about the room a minute; then vanished, leaving Lizzie to her comfortable task, feeling as if fairies still haunted the world as in the good old times.

When Belle came back with a handful of roses, she found Lizzie absorbed in admiring contemplation of her new boots, as she ate sponge-cake in a blissful sort of waking-dream.

"Mamma can`t come; but I don`t care about the hat. It will do very well, and isn`t worth fussing about. There, will those be of any use to you?" And she offered the nosegay with a much happier face than the one Lizzie first saw.

"Oh, miss, they`re just lovely! I`ll copy that pink rose as soon as ever I can, and when I`ve learned how to do `em tip-top, I`d like to bring you some, if you don`t mind," answered Lizzie, smiling all over her face as she buried her nose luxuriously in the fragrant mass.

"I`d like it very much, for I should think you`d have to be very clever to make such pretty things. I really quite fancy those rosebuds in my hat, now I know that you`re going to learn how to make them. Put an orange in your pocket, and the flowers in water as soon as you can, so they`ll be fresh when you want them. Good-by. Bring home our hats every time and tell me how you get on."

With kind words like these, Belle dismissed Lizzie, who ran downstairs, feeling as rich as if she had found a fortune. Away to the next place she hurried, anxious to get her errands done and the precious posy safely into fresh water. But Mrs. Turretviile was not at home, and the bonnet could not be left till paid for. So Lizzie turned to go down the high steps, glad that she need not wait. She stopped one instant to take a delicious sniff at her flowers, and that was the last happy moment that poor Lizzie knew for many weary months.

The new boots were large for her, the steps slippery with sleet, and down went the little errand girl, from top to bottom, till she landed in the gutter directly upon Mrs. Turretville`s costly bonnet.

"I`ve saved my posies, anyway," sighed Lizzie, as she picked herself up, bruised, wet, and faint with pain; "but, oh, my heart! won`t Madame scold when she sees that band-box smashed flat," groaned the poor child, sitting on the curbstone to get her breath and view the disaster.

The rain poured, the wind blew, the sparrows on the park railing chirped derisively, and no one came along to help Lizzie out of her troubles. Slowly she gathered up her burdens; painfully she limped away in the big boots; and the last the naughty sparrows saw of her was a shabby little figure going round the corner, with a pale, tearful face held lovingly over the bright bouquet that was her one treasure and her only comfort in the moment which brought to her the great misfortune of her life.


II. Forget Me Nots

"Oh, mamma, I am so relieved that the box has come at last! If it had not, I do believe I should have died of disappointment," cried pretty Belle, five years later, on the morning before her eighteenth birthday.

"It would have been a serious disappointment, darling; for I had sot my heart on your wearing my gift to-morrow night, and when the steamers kept coming in without my trunk from Paris, I was very anxious. I hope you will like it."

"Dear mamma, I know I shall like it; your taste is so good and you know what suits me so well. Make haste, Marie; I`m dying to see it," said Belle, dancing about the great trunk, as the maid carefully unfolded tissue papers and muslin wrappers.

A young girl`s first ball-dress is a grand affair,--in her eyes, at least; and Belle soon stopped dancing, to stand with clasped hands, eager eyes and parted lips before the snowy pile of illusion that was at last daintily lifted out upon the bed. Then, as Marie displayed its loveliness, little cries of delight were heard, and when the whole delicate dress was arranged to the best effect she threw herself upon her mother`s neck and actually cried with pleasure.

"Mamma, it is too lovely and you are very kind to do so much for me. How shall I ever thank you?"

"By putting it right on to see if it fits; and when you wear it look your happiest, that I may be proud of my pretty daughter."

Mamma got no further, for Marie uttered a French shriek, wrung her hands, and then began to burrow wildly in the trunk and among the papers, crying distractedly:

"Great Heavens, madame! the wreath has been forgotten! What an affliction! Mademoiselle`s enchanting toilette is destroyed without the wreath, and nowhere do I find it."

In vain they searched; in vain Marie wailed and Belle declared it must be somewhere; no wreath appeared. It was duly set down in the bill, and a fine sum charged for a head-dress to match the dainty forget-me-nots that looped the fleecy skirts and ornamented the bosom of the dress. It had evidently been forgotten; and mamma dispatched Marie at once to try and match the flowers, for Belle would not hear of any other decoration for her beautiful blonde hair.

The dress fitted to a charm, and was pronounced by all beholders the loveliest thing ever seen. Nothing was wanted but the wreath to make it quite perfect, and when Marie returned, after a long search, with no forget-me-nots, Belle was in despair.

"Wear natural ones," suggested a sympathizing friend.

But another hunt among greenhouses was as fruitless as that among the milliners` rooms. No forget-me-nots could be found, and Marie fell exhausted into a chair, desolated at what she felt to be an awful calamity.

"Let me have the carriage, and I`ll ransack the city till I find some," cried Belle, growing more resolute with each failure.

Mamma was deep in preparations for the ball, and could not help her afflicted daughter, though she was much disappointed at the mishap. So Belle drove off, resolved to have her flowers whether there were any or not.

Any one who has ever tried to match a ribbon, find a certain fabric, or get anything done in a hurry, knows what a wearisome task it sometimes is, and can imagine Belle`s state of mind after repeated disappointments. She was about to give up in despair, when someone suggested that perhaps the Frenchwoman, Estelle Valnor, might make the desired wreath, if there was time.

Away drove Belle, and, on entering the room, gave a sigh of satisfaction, for a whole boxful of the loveliest forget-me-nots stood upon the table. As fast as possible, she told her tale and demanded the flowers, no matter what the price might be. Imagine her feelings when the Frenchwoman, with a shrug, announced that it was impossible to give mademoiselle a single spray. All were engaged to trim a bridesmaid`s dress, and must be sent away at once.

It really was too bad! and Belle lost her temper entirely, for no persuasion or bribes would win a spray from Estelle. The provoking part of it was that the wedding would not come off for several days, and there was time enough to make more flowers for that dress, since Belle only wanted a few for her hair. Neither would Estelle make her any, as her hands were full, and so small an order was not worth deranging one`s self for; but observing Belle`s sorrowful face, she said, affably:

"Mademoiselle may, perhaps, find the flowers she desires at Miss Berton`s. She has been helping me with these garlands, and may have some left. Here is her address."

Belle took the card with thanks, and hurried away with a last hope faintly stirring in her girlish heart, for Belle had an unusually ardent wish to look her best at this party, since Somebody was to be there, and Somebody considered forget-me-nots the sweetest flowers in the world. Mamma knew this, and the kiss Belle gave her when the dress came had a more tender meaning than gratified vanity or daughterly love.

Up many stairs she climbed, and came at last to a little room, very poor but very neat, where, at the one window, sat a young girl, with crutches by her side and her lap full of flower-leaves and petals. She rose slowly as Belle came in, and then stood looking at her, with such a wistful expression in her shy, bright eyes, that Belle`s anxious face cleared involuntarily, and her voice lost its impatient tone.

As she spoke, she glanced about the room, hoping to see some blue blossoms awaiting her. But none appeared; and she was about to despond again, when the girl said, gently:

"I have none by me now, but I may be able to find you some."

"Thank you very much; but I have been everywhere in vain. Still, if you do get any, please send them to me as soon as possible. Here is my card."

Miss Berton glanced at it, then cast a quick look at the sweet, anxious face before her, and smiled so brightly that Belle smiled also, and asked, wonderingly:

"What is it? What do you see?"

"I see the dear young lady who was so kind to me long ago. You don`t remember me, and never knew my name; but I never have forgotten you all these years. I always hoped I could do something to show how grateful I was, and now I can, for you shall have your flowers if I sit up all night to make them."

But Belle still shook her head and watched the smiling face before her with wondering eyes, till the girl added, with sudden color in her cheeks:

"Ah, you`ve done so many kind things in your life, you don`t remember the little errand girl from Madame Tifany`s who stole a rose in your hall, and how you gave her rubber boots and cake and flowers, and were so good to her she couldn`t forget it if she lived to be a hundred."

"But you are so changed," began Belle, who did faintly recollect that little incident in her happy life.

"Yes, I had a fall and hurt myself so that I shall always be lame."

And Lizzie went on to tell how Madame had dismissed her in a rage; how she lay ill till Mrs. Brown sent her to the hospital; and how for a year she had suffered much alone, in that great house of pain, before one of the kind visitors had befriended her.

While hearing the story of the five years that had been so full of pleasure, ease and love for herself, Belle forgot her errand, and, sitting beside Lizzie, listened with pitying eyes to all she told of her endeavors to support herself by the delicate handiwork she loved.

"I`m very happy now," ended Lizzie, looking about the little bare room with a face full of the sweetest content. "I get nearly work enough to pay my way, and Estelle sends me some when she has more than she can do. I`ve learned to do it nicely, and it is so pleasant to sit here and make flowers instead of trudging about in the wet with other people`s hats. Though I do sometimes wish I was able to trudge, one gets on so slowly with crutches."

A little sigh followed the words, and Belle put her own plump hand on the delicate one that held the crutch, saying, in her cordial young voice:

"I`ll come and take you to drive sometimes, for you are too pale, and you`ll get ill sitting here at work day after day. Please let me; I`d love to; for I feel so idle and wicked when I see busy people like you that I reproach myself for neglecting my duty and having more than my share of happiness."

Lizzie thanked her with a look, and then said, in a tone of interest that was delightful to hear:

"Tell about the wreath you want; I should so love to do it for you, if I can."

Belle had forgotten all about it in listening to this sad little story of a girl`s life. Now she felt half ashamed to talk of so frivolous a matter till she remembered that it would help Lizzie; and, resolving to pay for it as never garland was paid for before, she entered upon the subject with renewed interest.

"You shall have the flowers in time for your ball tomorrow night. I will engage to make a wreath that will please you, only it may take longer than I think. Don`t be troubled if I don`t send it till evening; it will surely come in time. I can work fast, and this will be the happiest job I ever did," said Lizzie, beginning to lay out mysterious little tools and bend delicate wires.

"You are altogether too grateful for the little I have done. It makes me feel ashamed to think I did not find you out before and do something better worth thanks."

"Ah, it wasn`t the boots or the cake or the roses, dear Miss Belle. It was the kind looks, the gentle words, the way it was done, that went right to my heart, and did me more good than a million of money. I never stole a pin after that day, for the little rose wouldn`t let me forget how you forgave me so sweetly. I sometimes think it kept me from greater temptations, for I was a poor, forlorn child, with no one to keep me good."

Pretty Belle looked prettier than ever as she listened, and a bright tear stood in either eye like a drop of dew on a blue flower. It touched her very much to learn that her little act of childish charity had been so sweet and helpful to this lonely girl, and now lived so freshly in her grateful memory. It showed her, suddenly, how precious little deeds of love and sympathy are; how strong to bless, how easy to perform, how comfortable to recall. Her heart was very full and tender just then, and the lesson sunk deep into it never to be forgotten.

She sat a long time watching flowers bud and blossom under Lizzie`s skilful fingers, and then hurried home to tell all her glad news to mamma.

If the next day had not been full of most delightfully exciting events, Belle might have felt some anxiety about her wreath, for hour after hour went by and nothing arrived from Lizzie.

Evening came, and all was ready. Belle was dressed, and looked so lovely that mamma declared she needed nothing more. But Marie insisted that the grand effect would be ruined without the garland among the sunshiny hair. Belle had time now to be anxious, and waited with growing impatience for the finishing touch to her charming toilette.

"I must be downstairs to receive, and can`t wait another moment; so put in the blue pompon and let me go," she said at last, with a sigh of disappointment, for the desire to look beautiful that night in Somebody`s eyes had increased four-fold.

With a tragic gesture, Marie was about to adjust the pompon when the quick tap of a crutch came down the hall, and Lizzie hurried in, flushed and breathless, but smiling happily as she uncovered the box she carried with a look of proud satisfaction.

A general "Ah!" of admiration arose as Belle, mamma, and Marie surveyed the lovely wreath that lay before them; and when it was carefully arranged on the bright head that was to wear it, Belle blushed with pleasure. Mamma said: "It is more beautiful than any Paris could have sent us;" and Marie clasped her hands theatrically, sighing, with her head on one side:

"Truly, yes; mademoiselle is now adorable!"

"I am so glad you like it. I did my very best and worked all night, but I had to beg one spray from Estelle, or, with all my haste, I could not have finished in time," said Lizzie, refreshing her weary eyes with a long, affectionate gaze at the pretty figure before her.

A fold of the airy skirt was caught on one of the blue clusters, and Lizzie knelt down to arrange it as she spoke. Belle leaned toward her and said softly: "Money alone can`t pay you for this kindness; so tell me how I can best serve you. This is the happiest night of my life, and I want to make every one feel glad also."

"Then don`t talk of paying me, but promise that I may make the flowers you wear on your wedding-day," whispered Lizzie, kissing the kind hand held out to help her rise, for on it she saw a brilliant ring, and in the blooming, blushing face bent over her she read the tender little story that Somebody had told Belle that day.

"So you shall! and I'll keep this wreath all my life for your sake, dear," answered Belle, as her full heart bubbled over with pitying affection for the poor girl who would never make a bridal garland for herself.

Belle kept her word, even when she was in a happy home of her own; for out of the dead roses bloomed a friendship that brightened Lizzie`s life; and long after the blue garland was faded Belle remembered the helpful little lesson that taught her to read the faces poverty touches with a pathetic eloquence, which says to those who look, "Forget-me-not."

TUFFY’S HALLOWEEN
​
Phyllis Houseman


Before I tell you about my encounter with Tuffy, you should know a little about my background. I’m a biologist–well, I’m a biology teacher. Okay, I’m a former biology teacher who burned out and did a mid-life sidestep into another career. All right, I’m a romance novelist; I’ve published five books.
My fourth book takes place on Mount St. Helens, and it’s true there is a ghost in it–the hero’s first wife.
All of this doesn’t take away from the fact that until last year. I didn’t believe in spirits. I’d studied the nitty-gritty of biological mechanisms, the micro-world of DNA and genetics. And nowhere in those miracles had I ever seen any evidence of life-after-death.
Then, I visited my former Peace Corps partner, Tricia. We kept in touch. However, since we both moved around a lot, we had not seen each other since coming back from South America.
But when my family relocated to the San Francisco area, we were delighted that Tricia and her husband Taylor lived only twenty miles away from us. They had a house in Berkeley, designed by Julia Morgan, who also did a little cottage for William Randolph Hearst called San Simeon.
While not in that league, Tricia’s home was high in the hills and commanded a magnificent view of San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge.
Early on one Halloween evening, we went to visit Tricia and Taylor. When my husband Jack and I approached their locked gate, we noticed an intercom attached to the adjacent garage, along with a large bowl filled with a variety of candy on the cement driveway.
. While Jack activated the device and announced our arrival, I stood on tiptoes, looking up over the solid gate, to the slope where the three-storied house perched at the highest elevation. I saw that a path of set-in railroad ties led up to the front door and a sturdy redwood-planked fence surrounded the large front yard. I could see why the candy had been left near the garage–it would be quite a hike up to the house for Trick or Treating children.
My gaze zeroed in on a small, white dog scampering down the wooden steps. It reminded me of Sandy, the little poodle we had many years ago.
The animal reached the entrance with joyous yips of welcome, scratching at the wood. A few seconds later, Tricia and Taylor came out of the front door and hurried down toward us. My attention fixed on them as Taylor unlocked the access and ushered us into the yard.
It wasn’t until we had exchanged greetings and started up the path that I realized their pet was not with us.
“Where did your dog go, Tricia?” I asked, looking around the yard enclosed in its redwood fencing. “I hope it didn’t get out to the street.”
“Dog?” Tricia appeared puzzled.
“The little white one who just came down from your house.”
I explained what had happened when we first approached their entry, and Jack confirmed hearing the yapping and scratching, although he hadn’t seen the animal.
“Oh, my God,” Tricia whispered, her sudden pallor obvious, even in the growing dusk. She turned to Taylor, who was shaking his head.
“Tricia, what’s the matter?”
“Oh, my God,” she repeated. “That’s the way Tuffy always greeted people. He was a white miniature poodle.”
“Wonderful, he must have found his way back home,” I said, thinking he had run away, and had just returned.
“No, you don’t understand,” Tricia countered. “Tuffy had cancer. He was in such awful pain we had to put him to sleep six weeks ago.”
We all looked around the yard, searching in the deepening shadows, but none of us saw even a hint of anything small and white. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one to feel neck hair rise, but we went inside to eat dinner, talk of the present and remember our past.
Tricia and Taylor have since moved to Sedona, Arizona. We exchanged cards last Christmas. But I’ve often had the urge to contact Tricia and ask if Tuffy came along with them to the high desert, or if he stayed back home in Berkeley, to enjoy the wonderful vistas from the Julia Morgan house, while waiting to welcome his next visitors.

The Monster Came in Human Form

By Angela Camack 



I – 95, December 22, 1990
Hannah had one annoying quirk (well, probably more, but …). She hated long distance driving. She could manage driving around town, but the thought of metal objects of several tons careening at high speeds seemed to rush to certain disaster. So Nathan willingly assumed the task, leaving her in charge of maps, music and snacks.
That was the least of the things she and Wendy lost when they lost Nathan, kind, funny Nathan. He was a history professor at Sewanee University, rigorous but fair. For Nathan, history was never the past, but a link to the most basic elements of modern life. His students griped about his reading list but loved him anyhow.
He had been complaining of a headache for two days. Hannah urged him to see a doctor rather than eating Tylenol. He grumbled and agreed, promising to make an appointment as soon as the doctor’s office opened, and left for his classes. He got as far as his second class. Midway he stopped the lesson cold. He grabbed his temples, muttered a garbled string of words and collapsed. One student broke the sudden silence to get help. The ambulance workers were prompt and diligent, but he was probably dead of the aneurysm that killed him before he hit the floor.
Her sweet Nathan, her other half, gone, taken by something wrong in his amazing brain. She had little time to nurse her guilt (why didn’t she drag him to the emergency room, why didn’t she realize the problem earlier?). She had decisions to make and a six-year-old to care for. Poor,
confused Wendy, trying to understand what happened, asking when her father was coming home, sitting on the swings talking to Nathan in heaven.
What should she do, with her part-time school counselor salary and a mortgage? She and Nathan had sensible insurance and a savings account, but neither of them thought mortality would come this soon. Surely, there was time. And then there wasn’t.
Right now, deciding was shelved for the holidays. She had to get herself and Wendy to both sets of grandparents in New Jersey. Christmas Eve with her in-laws and Christmas Day with her parents, who, knowing her hatred of driving, begged her to fly.
But flying was expensive at a time when money problems loomed, and she hated the thought of chugging along on a bus or train during the holidays. She had to face up to her new responsibilities. So, with a full tank, three suitcases, snacks, Wendy’s favorite doll, her favorite CD’s, a trunk full of presents from “Santa” and to her family and a stomach full of bumblebees, she and Wendy set out.
The first day wasn’t bad. They left early, made good time and never got lost. They checked into their hotel late in the afternoon. Wendy was enchanted by the little soaps, the paper-wrapped glasses, and the ruinously expensive snacks in the minibar.
After a good night’s sleep, the next day started much as the first. But traffic was denser. She pulled around a slow car, almost clipping a car that was in her blind spot. The driver responded with a deafening blast of his horn as she quickly pulled back into her lane. “Jeez!”
“What was that, Mommy?”
“Just an excited driver, honey.”
The car pulled up even with hers, an older car with several dents and patches of primer. Even from her seat she could see the driver’s mouth move as he cursed. She tried to signal an apology, but he was heedless. She kept in her lane, expecting him to pass.
But the car kept pace with hers. She slowed slightly, but he stayed beside her, exactly parallel. What was he doing?
She couldn’t maneuver. She’d slow, hoping he’d pass. He’d slow. She’d speed up, he’d keep pace. He’d pull up beside her, then drop behind, following close to her bumper. Didn’t anyone notice? She thought about braking, but he might hit her. If she pulled off, he might pull off too.
Maybe if he realized she had a child in the car … if Wendy could just sit a little higher …
“Wendy, can you pull the visor down on your side?” As far as her seat belt would let her, Wendy hiked up and pulled the visor down. “Thanks.”
No change. Either he didn’t see Wendy or didn’t care. Dear lord, how long can he keep this up? How long can I?
Cold sweat began to coat her brow and her hands shook. She was locked in a macabre dance with a stranger, and she had no idea why he was dancing or how to make him stop, Measure one, cling to her bumper. Measure two, pull up beside her as long as he could until another car had to pass. Measure three, pull in front of her until she had to slow down, then repeat. For emphasis, a few staccato taps on the horn when he was behind her.
Should she leave the interstate? She tried to remember which exits led to populated areas. Fear iced the bottom of her stomach and now sweat began to trickle down her back. There was no way out, just to hope that traffic stayed heavy enough so that this maniac couldn’t push her off the road.
She’d planned to stop for lunch and top off the gas tank at midday. He would lose interest during the time it took for them to eat lunch. She held on for the ¾ hour it took to get to the rest stop. Both she and the car could refuel and surely, the man would be gone. Please, let him be gone. For now, the dance continued. Pull close, lurk beside her, then pull in front, cause her to slow. Her breath came in short bursts from the top of her lungs and her hands trembled on the wheel. She saw Wendy watching her. Had she picked up on her fear?
Finally they reached the exit for the rest stop. She filled the tank and they sat down for lunch. For the first time in an hour she took a deep breath. He would be gone by the time they were done. Only a crazy man … no, he would be gone.
She and Wendy used the restroom. At the exit door, she stopped short. There he was. It was the first time she had really seen him. He was heavy set, in wrinkled clothing. His hair was damp-looking, slicked back. His face was pale and waxy, inorganic.
“Wendy, why don’t you take a little walk and look at the toys in the window of that shop? We still have a ways to go and you can stretch a little. I want to look at the maps.”
Keeping Wendy in sight, she walked over to him.” “Look, I’m sorry I was careless. I’m sorry I put you in danger. But it was a mistake, a mistake anyone can make. You’re putting all of us in danger now, including my child.”
His face didn’t change. “You bitches can’t drive. You should stay off the roads.” She felt a flare of anger but punched it down, like bread for a second rising. “Ain’t you got no man to drive?”
“The “man” died a few months ago.” Maybe that would tap some human part of him. No change.
“Surely you can see that you’re not making sense.”
“Surely you can see you should be off the road,” he said, mimicking her.
She had made it worse. He had taken her measure, seen her as his enemy. A woman, with an educated voice. Dressed casually, but in clothing made to last, soft leather boots, hair expertly tended to fall into place, driving a late-model car. She could feel the sizzle of his resentment.
“You’re the real danger now, don’t you understand that? Her voice rose, and Wendy looked over. Hannah took her hand and they left the rest stop.
By chance a State Trooper was leaving at the same time. “Excuse me … I need help.”
“What can I do, ma’am?”
Hoping she didn’t sound crazy, she outlined her problem and described the car. “I’ll follow you to the state line and keep an eye out for the car and pull him over. If he sees me first, he’ll probably quit the game and leave you alone.” He smiled and ruffled Wendy’s hair. “You have a beautiful little girl you’re worried about, I see.”
He seemed the picture of strength and competence. She nearly hugged him but didn’t want to seem as hysterical as she felt. They walked to the car.
“Mommy, why is that man going to follow us? Why are you worried?” Oh, brother.
“Traffic’s going to get a little heavier now, and the ramp back to the interstate is tricky. It’ll help to have a police officer nearby.”
Wendy didn’t look convinced, but she got into the car and they drove off. There was no sign of the other car. At the state line the trooper tapped his horn and waved.
They had gone five miles when the car appeared beside her. Dear God, what now? Was there any choice other than to push on to her in-laws? She’d never make it. What would he do follow her there? Get her license plate number and try to find her?
All day Hannah held fear. Now fear held Hannah. Her heart began to pound as the deadly waltz continued. Don’t waste energy thinking ahead, she thought. Just continue this dance. Watch the road and keep safe. You have a child to protect. Had it not been for Wendy, she thought, she would have pulled off the road just to end this unbearable tension.
The miles wore on. The weather grew colder and mistier. Soon the roads would start to ice. She almost started to cry but checked herself. Wendy was dozing, thank heavens.
The waltz continued. Her mind clicked through the possibilities, to pull off, to exit, to up her speed and try to leave him behind … nothing seemed workable.
Was it desperate-measures time? The exit ahead, she remembered, had a wide turnoff that lead almost directly to an entrance back to I-95. It was also near an always-busy combination gas station/convenience store. If she pulled off quickly enough, she could get back on the interstate and leave him behind. If that wasn’t possible, she would go to the gas station and call the police.
Slow down on the icing road and pull off safely. See him pull of behind you. Now, spin the wheel, the car makes tight U-turns, and the brakes are good, but don’t speed. Now, to the entrance, quickly. Was he behind her? No. But she heard the screech of brakes (the rusty, primered car, probably none of it was in good shape), a crash, the tinkle of glass. He had taken the exit too quickly and had lost control of the car. He must have hit a telephone pole.
No longer was there a rusty, dented car behind her. Breathing became easy again, then caught almost immediately. What had she caused?
No, none of it was her fault. But when she saw a telephone booth ahead, she called the accident in.
There was nothing else to think about, just getting to her in-laws. Leaving the Interstate, following smaller roads, finally pulling into the driveway.
Her father-in-law was on the porch before she could ring the bell. Nathan’s death had changed him. He looked smaller, almost as grey has his sweater.
Wendy was out of the car immediately. “Poppy!”
“Well, hello, sweetie, you get taller every time I see you! Hannah, honey how are you? You look tired.” Oh, “Poppy,” you have no idea.
Her mother-in-law was at the door as well, looking diminished, looking strained. Suitcases in, bathroom, call to her parents.
“Was everything alright? We expected you a little sooner.”
“No, everything was fine. Traffic was heavy in places, and there was an accident – “
“What happened?
“No, no, I saw an accident at one of the exits. I stopped at a pay phone to call the police.”
“Well, that was so nice of you.” (No. Not nice at all.)
“Mommy’s friend told her that if the interstate was an airport assholes would fly,” said Wendy solemnly. Perfect. Couldn’t remember to brush her teeth but could remember everything she overheard.
“Well, dinner is all ready.” She took Wendy off to wash her hands.
“Do you want some wine with dinner, Hannah?”
“Yes, please.” Damn the tremor in her voice and her shaking hands.
He looked at her for a moment, then replaced her wine glass with a tumbler, pouring her a generous shot of single-malt scotch. “Is everything really alright, Hannah?”
“Oh, yes.” She forced a laugh. “You know what a wimpy driver I am. The drive home will be easier.”
He didn’t seem convinced, but let it go. Perhaps sometimes she could tell him. Could tell someone.
Dinner and the rest of the evening passed. They caught up, talking about almost everything but the shared grief that hovered around them. That would come later; for now, there was a holiday to save. Wendy’s bedtime came. Hannah was able to claim fatigue to go to bed at 9:30.
Wendy was asleep. She sat down carefully on the other bed, trying to make sense of the day. What had she done? She had protected herself and her child. What could she have done differently? But he could be dead or seriously injured. What if she hadn’t acted? He could have followed them until his anger turned into blind rage, or he could have finally gotten bored, or –
Too many ors.
She felt an unexpected dart of pity for him. What caused him to act the way he did? Was there some frustration that caused him to act against strangers? Some tragedy that had marked him? Or was he simply evil, undeserving of any sympathy?
In the end, she had to get through this night, this holiday, this loss. She had saved herself and her child. That’s what she would cling to.
Like everything else, you couldn’t see around the bend in the road, just like she couldn’t have seen what would happen to her today, or what happened to Nathan. You coped. End of story. And she would. She slipped into her bed across from Wendy’s.

The Tilted Tombstone


by
Gerald Arthur Winter


An early frost and a nor’easter defoliated what was left of autumn’s brilliance
leaving the backdrop of an eight-year-old’s already abysmal life colorless. Black and
various shades of grey were the only defining characteristics of Joey’s daily routine.
The first snow wouldn’t come till December to cleanse his depressing landscape.
Last December snow had drape his oppressive gloom with pristine white crystals
sparkling outside his window beneath the glow of a full moon.
But tomorrow would be the first festivities held since the first day of school
back in September. All Saints’ Day, All Hallows Eve, more commonly called Halloween,
would commence tomorrow. All the kids in Joey’s class bragged in the cafeteria about
what their costumes would be. He decided to be different, but kept his idea a secret
shared only with his two best friends, Tommy and Billy.
The idea came to Joey when the threesome gathered in the cemetery behind
Old Ponds Church, a landmark that predated the American Revolution. Nowadays, less
than fifty worshipers attended the old stone church every Sunday. Their congregation
had no one under seventy years old, so there were no weddings held there, and no
Sunday school classes in the basement, not for the past two centuries. A conversation
piece for tourist passing through Joey’s quaint little town and stopping at the traffic light
adjacent to the church was an old sign that read in calligraphy:
Sunday School
held in the basement
9:00 a.m
October 31, 1820
Be prompt
or
be shamed!


The night before Halloween, Tommy, Billy and Joey snuck out of their bedroom
windows, a more daring task for Joey from the second floor with a leap to a thick apple
tree branch and a precarious shimmy down its gnarly trunk. The boys had to duck and
crawl their way concealed by neighborhood shrubs to avoid the cops patrolling in force
on “Goosey Night.” The night before Halloween was when older kids played mischief
with shaving cream, wax, and toilet paper. They even lit ashcans and cherry bombs to
terrorize the neighborhood with explosions from illegal fireworks their parents had
smuggled to New Jersey from a Florida road trip last summer.
If caught by the cops, kids just got put in a squad car and driven home. If
caught by a gang of older boys, sometimes girls, too, they’d beat the crap out of
younger kids with pillow cases filled with flour, or occasionally with stones.
A few years ago, a kid Joey’s age took a penknife out on Goosey Night for
protection from the older kids, but he stabbed someone and Joey never heard about
him again. He asked his folks about it for months, but they were mum on the mysterious
vanishing of Ricky O’Neill. Joey only thought about Rickey on Goosey Night, so by the
time he was too old to go trick-or-treating, he never thought about Ricky’s disappearance
again.
* * *
Meeting in the cemetery on Goosey Night, the three boys shared a Camel
cigarette, passing it back and forth as if it were weed like the older kids did, but they
weren’t into that yet, what a black kid in their class called “ganja.”
Instead they each took turns inhaling their moms’ hairspray. Billy had gotten
the idea from his older brother who was sixteen, but now confined to Bergen Pines
mental ward. Older kids called Bergen Pines “The Roach Motel.” Kids checked in,
but never checked out. There were rumors that Ricky O’Neil had been sent there.
“OK, Joey. What’s your big secret?” Tommy asked. “Whatcha gonna be
tomorrow night for Halloween.”
“Yeah, Joey. Ya coulda just showed us tomorrow,” Billy said, his eyes
dilated from his last inhale of aerosol.
“Check out the tombstone behind you.”
Dumbfounded with glassy-eyed stares, they turned around to see the
infamous tombstone they had heard about in school since kindergarten. An
eight-year-old boy, Jedidiah Cromwell, had been invited by his Sunday school
teacher, Miss Abagail Sweeney, to attend a Halloween gathering of his Sunday
school class two hundred years ago. The boy never returned home, but various
body parts had been left at the doorsteps of different members of the Old Stone
Church congregation every Halloween since.
Of course, the original body parts lasted only a few years, but someone,
a mock copycat killer, and his or her heirs to the horror, had continued the
gory tradition every year since. Even in the best of times, the least offensive
fake remnant of third-grader, Jedidiah Cromwell, had been a bloody lamb shank
left in School Superintendent, Clara Ogilvy’s mail box.
The prime suspect in that caper had been Teddy Shultz, the German
butcher’s son, but he denied it to the end, so that cold case in local town lore
remained open.
Billy had the best grades of the three, so naturally he deduced, “Hey,
Tommy, our boy Joey’s gonna scare the crap outta all the girls in our class
as Jedidiah Cromwell. Cool beans. Joey.
Tommy just trembled, more from the aerosol than Joey’s surprise.
“Ya gonna use a lot a ketchup to look all bloody?” Tommy asked.
“You bet. I’ve been plannin’ this for weeks. I’ll tuck one arm inside
my belt so it looks like it’s been hacked off, and I made a fake arm out of
papier-mâché, to carry with my free arm to throw at the girls, especially
that stuck-up, Linda Banker. Can’t wait to hear her scream.”
“Glad you clued us in, Joey,” Billy said with a semi-conscious shrug.
“If you chucked your bloody arm at me, I’d piss my pants.”
“Let’s meet here at seven tomorrow night. We’ll go out trick-or-
treating together. Bring a big plastic trash bag each to fill with our treats. My
masquerade as Jedidiah Cromwell might even get us some candy apples
for treats.”
The other two left in opposite directions and Joey waited till the other
two shuffling through the fallen leaves had faded. It was a still night, cold enough
to make Joey shiver as he put his hand on the cold tombstone that read:






Here lies Jedidiah Cromwell,
a sweet boy, eight years of age,
dearly departed to
parts unknown.
R.I.P.
Born Died
May 7, 1812 October 31, 1820


* * *
In school the next day, Tommy and Billy were surprised that Joey did not
show up, especially since all the kids in their class wore their costumes and they
went apple dunking to see if they would find the fifty cent piece their teacher had
put in one of the of the shiny red apples floating in the big plastic tub. Tommy got
a dime in his apple, but Billy got only a penny.
“Guess we’ll just show up at the cemetery as planned and hope Joey will
be there,” Billy said.
“He’ll be there,” Tommy said with certainty. “No way is he gonna miss
making Linda Banker shriek in horror when Jedidiah Cromwell throws his bloody
arm at her.”
* * *
Billy and Tommy met outside the cemetery gate and walked briskly in the
cold night air to meet up with Joey. Tommy was an alien with a big floppy head
his mom had made out of an old pillow, and a dragon-like tail swished behind him
as he walked. Billy’s mom helped him make up his face and mess up his hair to
look like “Beetlejuice.” His cloths were made of his dad’s worn out work clothes
and tailored to fit an eight-year-old demon.
“You look more like the scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz,” Tommy told
Billy.
“Oh, yeah. Well you look like a turd with eyes and teeth,” Billy countered.
They grumbled back and forth under a full moon that made all the tombstones
seem to glow as they approached the infamous tombstone of Jedidiah Cromwell.
“There’s Joey!” Billy shouted.
Tommy and Billy stopped at a distance to see Joey’s costume.
“Wow! That’s cool, Joey.”
“Yeah, Joey. Did your mom help ya?”
Joey shook his head but made no reply.
“Man, that’s some makeup job on your face. Ya look like one of those
Walking Dead on TV. C’mon. Let’s get some treats and scare some girls.”
Billy and Tommy started to run, but Joey held back still leaning against the
tombstone. They waved for Joey to come, and he slowly ambled toward them as
if he might stumble and fall.
“Oh, boy!” Billy said aside to Tommy. “Joey’s really getting’ into it, huh.”
“Sure, why not?” Tommy said with a shrug. “Can’t wait to see him throw
that severed arm at Linda. Maybe it’ll splash ketchup all over her.”
Joey caught up to them. In the moonlight his face showed all the detail
of flesh eaten away by bugs.
“Jeez, you’re really scary, Joey,” Tommy said.
“I’ll, say,” Billy said, squinting to find any obvious makeup that wouldn’t
fool Linda Banker. “Whew! What’s that stink, Joey? Smells like you shit yer pants.”
Tommy laughed. “I know. Your mom put some Limburger cheese in your
pocket to make ya smell like a rotten corpse.”
“Right. Good move, Joey,” Billy agreed.
“Whew! Who cut the cheese?” Tommy joked, reaching into Joey’s pocket
to find the cheese.
“Yow!” Tommy shrieked pulling a rat out of Joey’s pocket with its sharp teeth
clenched on his thumb and blood trickling down his forearm.
“Ah-h-h!” Billy and Tommy yelled in duet.
Tommy shook the rat loose and he and Billy ran.
When they got outside the cemetery gate Billy and Tommy caught their breath.
“He really got us, didn’t he?” Billy said. “How’s your hand?”
“Where’d he get that rat? Stopped bleedin’, but I better put some peroxide on
it at home before we go out again.”
“OK, but let’s get Joey back and find Linda Banker. Will tell her about Joey’s
costume and fake arm. That’ll fix’m if he can’t scare her. Jokes on him.”
Billy went with Tommy to his house and they made up a story about cutting
his hand on a fence so Tommy’s mom wouldn’t make them stop trick-or-treating. Then
the two boys went to Linda Banker’s house. Linda came to the door with her nose
in the air as usual. She was so stuck-up they changed their minds about warning her
about Joey’s prank to scare her, masquerading as Jedidiah Cromwell.
“I can tell it’s you, Tommy and Billy. Try to scare some kindergarten kids, not
me. Where’s your other little creep, Joey? Bet he’s too scared to come out tonight.”
They left Linda’s house with Reese’s Pieces in their plastic bags, but saw Joey
walking with a limp in the middle of the street toward Linda’s house. He made a creepy
image silhouetted beneath one streetlight to the next.
“C’mon, Tommy. We’ll hide in those rhododendrons and watch Joey scare the
daylights out of Linda.”
Joey paused under the streetlight by Linda’s front gate as if he wasn’t sure he
wanted to go to her door, but when the motion light lit up her front porch, he turned
and limped slowly up the porch steps. Before he could knock on the door or ring the
doorbell, the front door opened. It was Linda’s mother. She took a step back when she
saw Joey’s horrifying costume.
Billy and Tommy could hear her calling to Linda.
“Linda! Come see this terrible creature at our door!”
Linda came up behind her mother and sneered at Joey.
“I’ll bet you’re the other little creep. Your two friends were already here.
but I have something special for you.”
Linda swung a bucket of cold water from behind her and threw water over Joey’s
head.
A loud bellow came from Joey and his little body shook like a wet dog trying to dry
its fur after a swim.
Linda stood with her hands on her hips waiting for Joey to run. Instead he took the
severed arm with his free hand and swung it at her. Her mother screamed and ran to call
the police, but Linda was covered in ketchup as Joey turned to leave down the walkway.
“You little creep!” she shouted, chasing after Joey with the arm in hand that he
had thrown at her. She grabbed him by the shoulder to spin him around and face her so
she could slap his face, but Joey’s other arm came off and dropped at her feet. Thinking
this was part of the prank on her, she smacked his gnarled face. Her hand felt sticky so
she put it to her nose. She gagged at the stench and when she went to slap Joey again
a beetle crawled out of his empty eye socket and a worm came out of one nostril of
what had once been a nose.
Linda screamed, just as planned, but the armless would-be Jedidiah Cromwell
lunged with bared teeth and bit her neck, shaking his head like a mongoose killing a
cobra.
Dumbfounded, Tommy and Billy stared with disbelief, but the police sirens
coming closer shook them from their horror and made them run home.
* * *
When Tommy and Billy came to school next morning, they heard that Joey
was staying home another day or two with the flu. When they stopped by Joey’s
house after school, Joey’s mom told them how sorry Joey was to leave them flat
after so much planning and looking forward to Halloween night.
“I think it’s best that you not come in,” she told Tommy and Billy. “You don’t
want to catch the flu.”
“It’s that Linda Banker’s fault,” Billy said. “She threw a bucket of cold water
on Joey when he was trick-or-treating last night. He’s lucky he didn’t get pneumonia
with the temperature almost freezing last night.”
“That’s right!” Tommy said. “She smacked ’m, too, for no good reason.”
“Hmm . . . I see,” Joey’s mom said. “But Joey has been here at home with me
since he woke with a fever on Halloween morning. He wanted to go apple dunking
at school, but his temperature was well over a hundred and two degrees. Why
don’t you stop by in a couple days to see if Joey’s any better.”
Billy and Tommy set out to meet in the cemetery that night to share a
cigarette and take turns huffing Tommy’s sister’s aerosol deodorant. They had
each heard mumblings about something awful that had happened on Halloween
night. Rumor was that Linda Banker had been taken to Bergen Pines in a straitjacket.
They approached Jedidiah Cromwell’s tombstone where they usually met
with Joey. Though erect for two hundred years as a cherished monolith of the town’s
history, the tombstone seen from the rear as they approached was tilted at an odd
angle.
“Probably some of those tough kids in eight grade pushed the tombstone
a kilter,” Billy said.
“Yeah. We better get out a here before they blame us,” Tommy said,
tossing the deodorant spray can aside.
At eight years old, Tommy, Billy, and Joey had tunnel vision about what was
happening around them. It wouldn’t be until after college and they returned to
visit their families for Thanksgiving that they’d become aware of their small town’s
myths and legends. They’d read an article about Linda Banker’s mother whose
maiden name was “Sweeney,” and her father a blood relative of Abagail Sweeney,
the Sunday School teacher hung when Jedidiah Cromwell’s remains were found
buried beneath her chicken coop.
What Billy and Tommy hadn’t noticed the day after Halloween was that
Jedidiah Cromwell’s tombstone had been accidentally tilted when a ground hoe
was digging a fresh grave next to it. Now home from college, the three boys
met in the cemetery to share some legal marijuana, but they didn’t stay long
when they saw the tombstone beside Jedidiah Cromwell’s which read:


Richard – “Ricky” – O’Neill
RIP
Born Died
April 4, 2010 October 31, 2020

Shatterback
By Gary Power


Shatterback is like putting your face through a pane of glass, and then the stench of stagnant pond water fills your lungs. It makes you feel unreal, as though nothing in the world matters, like you’re balancing on a knife edge of emotions, mainly despair tinged with utter desolation. And then darkness consumes you.
And then of course there’s the time warp bit; that’s why I call it shatterback.
The first time the shatterback thing happened I thought I was having a seizure.
I’d just left my flat in Chalk Hill road, Wembley. I used to live in a tower block until they redeveloped the area in the nineties. My new home was a street level apartment and it was a lot safer and cleaner than the old place. I’d turned the key in one of those awkward double lock things and walked down the path. I remember fumbling for my cigarettes; I needed that nicotine rush.
It was a crisp morning; clear blue sky but bitterly cold. The air was like ice in my lungs. Everything seemed so sharp and clear. I’d been thinking about my dad - more so just lately. I hadn’t seen him since I was a kid. My old lady kicked him out in the Christmas of ‘71. Anyway, the shatterback thing happened and suddenly I was back at my front door struggling with the lock again. I just stood there for a couple of minutes and stared.
I was in a daze for a few hours after that, and really tired too. I tried to work out what had happened. It was like I’d gone back in time…but just a few seconds. I didn’t think I really had. I’d had some kind of fit; that was the only explanation. Nothing happened for a few days after that and the whole thing became a sort of vague memory.
I thought about going to my doctor, but what would I say? Hey doc, I think I time warped the other day, a bit like Doctor Who but without a Tardis. Maybe it was just all imagination anyway.
Then it happened again. Some kid, probably 12 or 13 years old, ran out of a local shop in front of me. He was being chased by Ali Arkwright; we call him that ‘cause his shop’s a sort of Asian ‘open all hours’ and he does look a bit like a well tanned Ronnie Barker. The kid had nicked something and he was off like a bullet. He ran into the road, right in front of a car. I heard his leg break like a branch snapping, and then he went flying over the bonnet, onto the roof and into the road behind. There was this sort of soggy thud as he hit the tarmac. The bones in his leg were poking through his skin and blood spurting from the gaping gash. The poor mite was out cold. His head was twisted around too much for my liking.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. Me and Ali just looked at each other. I thought I was going to be sick; I’m not good with blood or accidents. That was when the shatterback thing happened again.
Anyway, suddenly I was back outside Ali’s Emporium and the same kid is coming out of the shop, but this time I grab him. I guess it was instinct. Ali appears and drags him back inside. The kid swears at me and calls me every name under the sun. He even spits at me, the little bleeder. He didn’t realise that I’d just saved his life. And then I turn and see the very car that hit him go by. That was really spooky.
Now I really had something to think about. Nobody would believe me if I told them. I suppose a nutter would, or Derek Acorah, but a normal person wouldn’t, and that’s what I considered myself to be. I mean, I wouldn’t believe someone if they told me what had just happened to me had happened to them - if you know what I mean.
It got me thinking; how could I use the shatterback thing to my advantage? It was like discovering you were the invisible man.
Now there’s this bird, Lucy’s her name, Lucy Allcock…yeah, really. She’s got a Croydon facelift and bottle tan; you know the type. She works in the baker’s shop. She’s always giving me the come on, flirting with her eyes and leaving buttons undone on her blouse. She’s a right tease but trying to get a date with her is useless. Now I could chat her up as many times as I wanted until I got a result.
I was down the local one evening with my step dad Ken; we were talking hypothetically about this shatterback thing with the landlord. We call him ‘google’ ‘cos he’s got an answer for everything and he wasn’t going to let us down tonight. He
was surprisingly knowledgeable about time travel and started harping on about causality and conflicting paradox theories. That lost us so I guided the conversation back to Lucy and her cleavage. We chatted about all the things you could do if you could turn the clock back at will. That was all just speculation though. I didn’t have any control over it – that was to come later.
I thought maybe it was linked to stress or some kind of hormone thing, maybe cancer in my brain. I’d get up, wash, have breakfast -all that stuff you do without even thinking. Then I’d go to work and suddenly find myself getting out of bed again. What was that film…when the guy keeps reliving the same day?
Oh yeah, Groundhog Day. Not everything was the same for me though. There were subtle changes; the weather might be different or maybe what people were wearing had changed.
Maybe stuff like this happens to everyone at some time in their lives. Like seeing ghosts or having premonitions. You know, weird stuff that can’t be rationally explained. There’s this religious guy I know, Cosmo, all my mates have nicknames, he told me that it was a spiritual experience, a miracle even, but I said that was a load of crap. I’m not saying I don’t believe in religious stuff – I just have my own opinions and I guess I’m a bit too vocal sometimes.
‘Shatterback man’, that was me. I could wear underpants on the outside of my trousers with SB emblazoned on them. When something bad happened, I’d turn the clock back and make it all better. But I’m not that kind of guy. I don’t think too deeply and I don’t want to save the world. I’m not green or politically correct or any of that rubbish. ‘Keep life simple’, that’s my motto. ‘Live for the moment’; that’s another of my mottos.
I’ve got lots of mottos.
I had a moment of inspiration one night. I’d had a few beers and a pinch of Bob Hope. There was a spooky old black and white movie on TV, some monster chasing a bloke through the trees. I was comfortably chilled and gazing from the window of my flat. It was raining and I was wishing. The sky was dark and moody and rain was hammering at the glass and melting the world outside. The wind was howling and it was sort of cosy, just lying there, tucked up under a snug duvet, watching those big, grey clouds drift over London. I found myself thinking about my dad; he died from a head injury when I was a kid after getting into a fight. He was mad about Marc Bolan and went to a legendary gig at Wembley Empire Pool in ‘72, the one Ringo Star made
a film about. Mum said he was fanatical about the guy. He even had a tattoo of him on his arm. More importantly I had an exact time and place, and with shatterback I could do time and places, I just needed to learn how to control it. Apparently, he’d fought his way to the security barrier and been just a few feet away from his idol. 75 pence to see one of the biggest stars of the time, that’s all it cost him.
There was some kind of altercation at the gig. He probably pissed someone off; he was good at that. The story was, they found him lying in a pool of blood. My only legacy was a silk Marc Bolan scarf and the crumpled March 18th concert ticket.
Mike, that was my old man, was no more and the sad thing is we didn’t really miss him, especially mum. If dad wasn’t stoned then he was drunk and belting mum ‘cos she hadn’t left enough of the housekeeping for him to go to the pub. The way he’d fly into a rage used to freak me out. It was like he was possessed. I was just a kid but I still vividly remember the fights. You remember stuff like that, especially when you’re a nipper.
He was a vicious, drunken bastard so it would be easy to spot him, if I ever got there. He had a tattoo of Bolan on his left forearm and a deep scar on his right cheek. There were various stories as to how he got the scar. Most likely it was chatting up some bloke’s missus and getting the thrashing he deserved.
Mum chucked him out the day he cracked my head open because I trod on his cigarettes. It was Christmas and I didn’t have a present because he’d spent the money down at Ladbrokes investing it on a better future for us all. I was upset and stomping around in a mood as any five-year-old would. I never even saw his damned fags. He grabbed me by my shirt and slammed me into the wall like I was a rag doll. He was drunk, as usual, and in a blind rage. I’ll never forget the look on his face as long as I live. I thought he was going to punch me. Instead, he walked out leaving me laying there. Mum slung his clothes onto the path after him, and that was the last we saw of him.
A couple of years later she met Ken. He was more like a father to me than my own dad. But that’s all in the past, so back to the present.
It was three in the morning and I was wide awake. My head was filled with memories of mum, me crying and both of us wishing dad would disappear.
Lightning flashed and the clouds lit up like they had neon lights inside them. A rolling rumble of thunder followed closely after. The rain started up again with a
vengeance, and then there was this splintering crack like the world had just split in two. I blinked hard and in that same moment the room was filled with sunlight.
The clouds were gone and in their place was a blue, cloudless sky. The television was on - one of those morning programmes with feuding chavs and a host who probably had more skeletons in his cupboard than Ted Bundy. I brought up the date; I’d gone back 3 days. I felt great; like I’d had the best nights sleep ever.
Something told me my journey had begun.
I dressed and left my flat with a destination in mind. Another attack was imminent; I could feel it in my bones. But somehow I knew I could hold it off ‘til I was ready. My head felt spongy, as though I wasn’t quite in touch with the world. My thoughts were confused but my objective was clear as day; I was going to meet my dad. Somehow I’d get back to that concert in Wembley and meet him man to man; I had a few questions to ask and a score to settle.
It was all a bit daunting though. Half a mile and thirty-five years was going to be one hell of a journey.
I was halfway down Chalk Hill road when it happened again. I recoiled like I’d just been shot in the chest and the world shattered into a million pieces. The fragments reconfigured before my eyes and I found myself in the same place, except for some reason it didn’t feel exactly the same; it was like one of those parallax things Google had talked about.
I’d gone back even further in time. Not just weeks or months, but years. A car slowed up next to me at some traffic lights. Its window was open and the radio blaring. The DJ blurted something about Kylie Minogue being at number one for the fourth week running then he played ‘Can’t get you out of my head’. That song always reminded me of a holiday I had in Torremolinos which meant the year was 2001. I’d gone back maybe six years and I felt like I’d just been pulled through a gorse bush backwards. I was breathless and gasping like an old man but nothing was going to stop me now. I staggered forwards a few feet and then perched myself on a wall. Shatterback happened again just as I turned left into Bridge road. This time it was the worst ever. I found myself lying on the pavement with people around me. I was dazed and my heart pounding. I thought I was going to hurl as well. Some guy pulled me forwards and asked if I was alright; I just stared at him; I couldn’t get my head into gear. He was wearing a Metallica T-shirt. People looked at me like I was an alien. In a way, I suppose I was. My mobile had fallen out of my pocket but nobody picked it up.
They just looked at it like it was a bomb or something. I guess they’d never seen an iPhone before.
A black VW Golf cabrio went by with a 1989 plate on it. It looked like new. I overheard a couple of guys moaning about Maggie Thatcher and poll taxes. ‘She’ll resign in November 1990 and she’ll snuff it in 2013.’ I said knowingly. I was good at trivia. I struggled to my feet and moved on. ‘Stick your money on John Major, then Tony Blair after that.’ I called out.
At times it was like walking through a cosmic battlefield. I was trapped in a shatterback assault. I’d stagger on until another one hit me. The attacks were draining me of energy. I’d probably have a heart attack before I got there. It was going to be harder work than I thought. I was becoming disorientated. It’s like when people say they’re out of their comfort zone. I think I was a million miles from mine. I was in a permanent state of deja-vu. People looked at me with this manic sort of stare, like they could see inside my spongy head. It was as if they knew about shatterback. I was becoming paranoid.
My focus was on my destination and date. That was how I could control it. So long as I remained focussed, I would get there. With faith.
Just after the ‘Thatcher’ episode I found myself suddenly plunged into the middle of a snowstorm. It was bitterly cold, well below zero for sure. I reckon it must have been 2 or 3 in the morning. Everything was soft blues and stark whites. There was no-one else around; it was like I was the only person in the world. The snow was driving into me and laying thick on the pavement. The visit was brief but so precious – like being in a fantasy world. The weird thing was, I’d appeared out of nowhere like old Arnie in Terminator, not in the buff though thank God.
Shatterback happened again, almost immediately and I found myself heading in the direction of Wembley Park tube station, only now it was a gloriously sunny day. I’d been walking headlong into the blizzard so when things changed I fell heavily forwards onto the pavement. Several people helped me up. ‘He’s got snow on him.’ said one of the helpful Samaritans. She was right; I was covered in the stuff. The strange thing was, nobody seemed to have noticed that I appeared out of thin air. Maybe I was lurching into a place where I already existed. I remember Google said something about that; he called it astral projection. The best was yet to come though; I recognised a couple of the onlookers. It was my own mother arm in arm with my stepdad, Ken. She could never have guessed it was me. I’d have been about seventeen
then; long hair and acne; she was looking at a spaced-out bloke in his early forties. She looked really good; sort of youthful and happy. I think I might have said ‘mum’ without thinking. It just came out. I was looking right at her when I said it. She did stare though, like something registered.
Shatterback happened soon after that meeting. I was ready to move on. I felt good. No aches or pains. Not hungry or thirsty. Somehow I just willed it to happen, and that was it.
I found myself amongst a slow-moving crowd. I mean literally thousands of people were surging from almost every direction. They were happy, like something really special was happening. My clothes were bone dry. That was a plus, although a little puzzling. I looked around. It didn’t take long for me to realise what was going on. I knew the date immediately; it was July 13th, 1985 - the day of Live Aid. I had been there in my teens and now I was back again as an adult. I wondered if I’d bump into myself, that would have been really freaky. I joined the crowd and made my way towards Wembley Stadium. I could hear Status Quo playing ‘Rockin’ all over the World’. That meant the event was just starting. For a moment I forgot I was trapped in this fragmented, time warp thing. Strangers became friends that day. For one brief moment in time the world became a united place. I could see the twin towers of Wembley stadium as we marched along Olympic way. That brought a tear to my eye; I never thought I’d see them again.
‘Nice T-shirt?’ said a guy to my left. I was wearing a 2005 Oasis top from their ‘Don’t Believe the Truth’ tour. Black and white fish eye photo. Pretty cool. But it would be 20 years before he could get one.
There was a woman with the guy; she was really fit. She looked a bit like Lucy, cleavage and all. I smiled back. ‘Haven’t heard of Oasis before; they good?’ he asked. ‘Keep an eye out for them.’ I told him. It would be about 6 years before they played their first gig at the Boardwalk club in Manchester.
And then I had an idea.
‘Want to swap?’ I asked.
‘Yeah.’ he said eagerly and so we exchanged shirts. His was a Live Aid top emblazoned with a multicoloured map of Africa in the shape of a guitar. Now he had something that would blow his mind in a few years time. ‘Treasure it.’ I told him. I was really starting to enjoy myself. It was a ‘feel good’ day: the sun was blazing, people were happy and there was music in the air. We filed past a BBC TV camera
and I suddenly had a great idea. I turned to my two new pals and said, ‘let’s be on the box.’ We jumped up and down, cheering and screaming until the camera focussed in on us. We were like long lost friends getting high on the intoxicating atmosphere. We punched the air and tugged at our T-shirts, and then his girlfriend lifted her top and flashed her tits. The cameraman beamed and gave us a thumbs-up. ‘That’ll be on a dvd one day.’ I said. My friend looked puzzled.
‘What’s a dvd?’
I just grinned. He looked back like I was a bit crazy.
There was a deafening cacophony in my ears, the usual stench and suddenly I found myself transported again.
Live Aid was gone in a flash. Pity. I was having a great time reliving it.
In the blink of an eye it was night-time and rain was sweeping down. Three figures were approaching and my instincts told me that suddenly I was in big trouble. They were silhouetted against a hazy red glow of sulphurous street light. I could just make out long hair and hungry feral eyes. They looked more like lycanthropic beasts; maybe they were. I heard one them growl. It was deep, guttural. I thought I could smell them as well; stale, bestial. One was holding a hefty stump of wood and pounding it into his palm. I turned and ran fast as I could. I heard a stampede of feet stomping heavily on the tarmac close behind. They sounded like cloven hooves stamping on sodden earth. My heart was pounding. If ever I needed shatterback, then it was now. I tried to will it to happen. Maybe I could. The ground was slippery with rain – or was it the congealed blood of previous victims. I nearly fell trying to look over my shoulder. I thought I might be able to outrun them but they were fast and closing in. They were like savages after my blood. I was being pushed to my physical limits; stopping wasn’t an option. I caught glimpse of a gap in the hedge and fought my way through it. Rain was thrashing into my face and stinging my eyes. My lungs felt like they might burst. I nearly fell over a tangle of stark white roots, or where they bones sucked dry and scattered on the ground. I knew Wembley well but this place was alien to me. shatterback had taken me somewhere else.
A terrifying howl brought me back to my senses.
I turned briefly and in the incident light of the storm I saw their faces. They were the stuff of nightmares - monstrosities too terrifying to be given physical form.
I took a moment’s pause, gasped at the cold air and then crashed through another hedgerow. A gut wrenching caterwaul cut through the wintry air and ran through me
like a knife. I felt sick from exhaustion and fear but still I continued to weave through a labyrinth of bushes until eventually I managed to throw them off my trail. It was a brief reprise. For a few precious seconds I remained cowering in the shadows, gasping for breath, trying not to make any noise. My pursuers weren’t difficult to spot even in the poor light. I could see two of them searching for me but they were quite far off. I took my chance and broke away. The third one stepped out in front of me.
Shatterback came to my rescue and I breathed a sigh of relief. My head jarred sideways as the familiar sound of smashing glass filled my ears. But something was wrong; my head was spinning and I was lying on the ground. Through a haze of rain and tears I saw three figures looking down on me. They were nothing more than long haired thugs, not the monsters I had imagined. One of them had hurled a bottle at me and it had glanced off my head. My body was broken and aching. One of them bent over and with a gloating smile thrust something into my chest. Instinctively I reached down. When I lifted my hand I found it covered in blood. That was when the pain kicked in.
As I watched them run away I realised that life was seeping away. I crawled from the bushes and staggered around aimlessly for a few minutes but my energy was spent. Exhausted and in agony I fell to the ground. For a while I just lay there listening to the patter of rain and watching the way the street lights reflected on the wet tarmac. I didn’t even have the strength to call for help. As the world slipped away, I found myself feeling curiously serene.
I guess shatterback must have happened while I was unconscious. When I opened my eyes I found myself on the ground with several other people. Some of them were smoking what my mother would have called, ‘dubious looking cigarettes.’ One of them, a hippyish looking guy in an afghan coat smiled and passed me his joint.
‘I was dying just now.’ I said to him as I bathed my aching body in the glorious sunshine.
‘Me too man.’ he replied and he gave me a hang-loose handshake.
‘No, I really was.’ I continued. I was barely able to contain the euphoric relief of still being alive. ‘It was night time. I had the crap kicked out of me by three thugs. One of them stabbed me between the ribs. Right through the heart. Right…here.’
I looked down. The stab wound was gone. There wasn’t even a tear in my shirt.
The hippy took a deep drag on his spliff.
‘I was on another planet.’ he said. ‘There were all these chicks.’ he added. He rested his head back and closed his eyes.
‘They were naked.’
I wished I’d been on that planet instead my nightmare one.
Two funnels of smoke spiralled from his nostrils. He looked at me and it was like I’d known him all my life.
‘We made love man. All of us. It was a divine orgy of galactic ecstasy. Gonna make it happen next week dude, gonna really make that party happen.’
Something told me he probably would.
Fascinating as it was to hear the explicit details of his drug-induced debauchery, I had other things on my mind.
‘So, tell me something, because I really need to know…’
The joint was really chilling me out. With a sanguine smile I asked in my coolest voice, which for some reason came out like Dirty Harry, ‘…what’s the date man?’
That made him smile. ‘Dude…you must have done some real heavy shit. This is the day…the day. 18th March 1972.’
A shock wave rippled through my body. I was at my journey’s end. The time and the place were spot on.
‘What’s your name?’ I asked.
‘Sebastian.’ he said with a smile. ‘…but you can call me Sebastion.’
All his hippy friends whooped and cheered. I laughed with them. Everything’s funny when you’re high.
‘I’m going to call you Captain Jack Sparrow because you’re a dead ringer for this Captain Jack guy that I know.’ I said.
‘Is he popular with ladies?’ asked Sebastian.
‘You could say that. Just remember the name.’ He’d have to have a good memory though; it would be almost thirty years before he’d hear that name again.
For a while the group of us just stared dreamily into space. I wallowed in the atmosphere of the 70’s. Sebastian turned his head and squinted at my T-shirt.
‘What’s with Live Aid 85?’ he asked.
‘I had a wild trip once.’ I said coolly, ‘…like a vision.’ I sounded like a bad actor but they were all too stoned to notice. ‘In my vision,’ I continued, ‘all these people get together. Tens of thousands of people. The year’s 1985. There’s music and love and peace. It’s the biggest gig ever and all to feed a starving nation and help make the 
world a better place to live in.’ Someone passed me another joint. I took deep drag and closed my eyes. ‘Feed the world…’ I tried to sing, ‘…fee-eed the world.’
‘Far out.’ muttered Sebastian, ‘Like Woodstock.’
I wondered if one day when they were all corporate executives or IT consultants they’d remember my prophetic words. But it was time to move on. ‘You want to swap T-shirts dude?’ I said.
‘Cool.’ he replied, and he deftly stripped to the waist to reveal a perfect, skinny six pack. The women with him were pretty things, certainly liberated in the way they dressed and probably even more liberated in their lifestyle.
It seemed I was destined to swap T-shirts and leave a trail of clues for the future in my wake. I in turn received a garment emblazoned with a psychedelic head shot of Marc Bolan.
People began to move towards the huge concrete building that I knew as Wembley Arena. For the moment the threat of shatterback was gone and I was free to explore. At that moment in time the arena was known as Wembley pool, previously the Empire pool and sports arena. Built in 1934 it hosted the Empire games and then in 1948 housed the summer Olympics. As a kid I became obsessed with the place because of its association with my father.
I said goodbye to my trippy friends and reluctantly moved on. Sebastian slipped something into my pocket but I didn’t look. My mind was elsewhere. I was about to see not only a musical legend at the peak of his career but more importantly, my own father. My stomach cramped at the thought as violent memories flooded back. I despised him for everything he’d done. I hated him with a passion for treating me and mum so badly but how could I take my vengeance on a man who would have no idea who I was? Maybe he wouldn’t seem so bad. Perhaps I’d even like him. I very much doubted that.
The atmosphere surrounding the venue was incredible. The wide open space in front of the building was filled with crazy kids. There were scores of long-haired fans with silk T.Rex scarves wrapped around their wrists and necks. Screaming hysterical girls were everywhere; God knows what they’d be like when the concert started. A couple of leather clad guys on a motorbike cut in front of me as I made my way to the north gate. They carried on right through the crowd without a care in the world; nobody seemed bothered.
I’d almost reached the entrance when suddenly my head felt like it was being slammed sideways against a wall. I started seeing double and the world started spinning about me. I was having a shatterback attack, but I wasn’t ready to go yet. I crouched down and fought it with all the concentration I could muster. I screwed my eyes tight and screamed, ‘No!’ Nobody seemed to care. I suppose I was just another drugged up fan going to see his idol. I could feel myself being jolted through time but I wouldn’t go; not just yet. Psychedelic lights assaulted my eyes. The splintered images spiralled through a black and timeless void: Lucy in the baker’s shop, the guy in the Metallica T-shirt, the yobs attacking me, the bird flashing her boobs at Live aid, Sebastian drawing deeply on a joint.
The attack passed. Somehow I’d managed to fight it off.
I remained where I was for a few moments, dazed and in a state of confusion. I felt like I wanted to cry; it was as though nothing in the world really mattered. I felt hollow.
Some guy on the door said eighty thousand people were there, and I had to find my dad amongst that lot. Clutching the crumpled ticket stub in my sweaty hand I blagged my way into the concert hall. It wasn’t at all like the concerts I was used to. There were no intimidating doormen or security searches, just a small army of aging, uniformed commissioners wearing peaked caps and solemn faces. The despairing expressions on their faces as the long-haired hippies filed by said it all.
The auditorium was like an air hangar and the stage area, massive. There was standing area at the front and seating behind but it was obvious that nobody would be sitting. It was chaos in there.
A disc jockey by the name of Emperor Rosko was whipping the audience into a frenzy. He was leaping about the stage, waving his tasselled jacket arms around and screaming like the wild man of Borneo. I pushed my way through the crowd looking for my dad. If he was there, I would recognise him, no question.
Suddenly the lights dimmed and the place erupted with a roar like I’d never heard before. I’ve been to some amazing concerts in my life but had never experienced anything like this. The sheer wide-eyed, breathless exuberance of the audience was incredible, and when the man himself hit the stage the women especially went completely hysterical. One of them grabbed my arm and just stared at me. She had golden stars on her cheeks and raw emotion in her eyes; she was in another place.
Marc Bolan struck a pop star pose mere feet away from us and the next thing I know she’s fainted and being carried over the metal barriers in front of the stage.
I feared I might be next, but for different reasons. The earlier shatterback attack had taken its toll on me. I felt weak and drained of energy. I was finding it difficult to breath and the constant screaming was becoming intensely claustrophobic. The muggy, airless atmosphere was like syrup in my lungs. I fought my way to an exit and wandered aimlessly in search of the toilets. I needed somewhere where I could be alone and out of the intimidating glare of the geriatric commissionaires.
The foyer was spookily deserted and a curiously surreal place to be. The music from the auditorium sounded distant and haunting. Occasionally a shrill scream or wail of guitar would rise above the ghostly serenade. I closed my eyes and took a moment’s break from the madness of my time-defying journey. Bolan was playing ‘Telegram Sam’; I recognised it from one of my dad’s records. But there was another sound as well, a sort of rhythmical cry was coming from somewhere in the closer vicinity. With my eyes half open I let this new sound guide me to its source and found myself opposite a women’s toilet. One of the cubicle doors was flung open and a man staggered out followed by a giggling, drunken woman.
‘C’mon Mike, we’ll miss the show.’ she said. She was hitching up her underwear as she spoke. ‘Better get that lippy off your face or else you’ll be in trouble, not to mention a beating from my old man if he comes looking for me.’ she said.
They carried on like I wasn’t there.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
It was my dad; the face, the scar and most of all, the tattoo. Hearing his name was just the icing on the cake. Something inside me snapped and I lost it big time. He had even lied about seeing the concert. He was more interested in shagging some bloke’s bird in the toilets. I was fuming. Years of frustration were released in a few seconds. I called him every name under the sun. I threw punches at the air in front of his face. He looked genuinely terrified; I guess I must have looked like a madman. I pulled of my T-shirt and threw it at him telling him that was probably the closest he’d ever get to his idol. The young woman screamed and ran back into the foyer.
‘Who the hell are you?’ he bawled.
I told him I was his fucking conscience. He was drunk and staggering about, trying to focus his eyes and stay on his feet at the same time.
‘There’s a kid back home who wants a dad he can be proud of.’ I yelled.
That really threw him. He just stood there swaying gently from side to side pointing his finger left and right as he tried to work out which of the two of me was the real one. Then the drink took control again and he lost his cool. I’d obviously touched a nerve.
That was when shatterback really kicked in. Only this time it didn’t take me anywhere. It was like I was looking in on the world and not part of it.
There’s a commotion in the foyer. Some big bloke is having an altercation with a couple of the commissionaires. He’s shouting a name and suddenly the woman my dad was with starts looking worried. Before she can make herself scarce the bloke spots her and starts shouting even more.
‘Angie…Angie!’
Then he sees my dad and he goes into this terrifying rage. He tears over and with a single, massive swipe sends my old man crashing to the ground. Dad just lays there. A stunned silence prevails as a pool of blood spreads out from beneath his head.
It’s difficult to say how I feel at that moment. Numb definitely. Part of me feels sorry for him because he’s so hopelessly pathetic. But then again, he’s getting payback for all the hurt he caused me and mum. I want to help him. God knows why.
Suddenly I’m back in the show; now I’m just an onlooker. The bloke that floored my dad is calling his women a whore. It sounds like they’ve been screwing around for some time. No ones paying any attention to my dad. They’re all too wrapped up in themselves so I turn him onto his back and shake and talk to him.
‘It’s me,’ I say, ‘…Sam.’
He doesn’t respond. He’s not even breathing so I do the artificial resuscitation stuff I’ve seen on telly. You know, hand over his sovereign, 30 pushes then a couple of breathes into his mouth, or s it 20 and 3? Nothing’s happening anyway.
I watch the scene in a state of numbness. My vision becomes blurred and distorted; voices slow and slurred. My head feels light. Through a haze I see a medic examining him. The man’s feeling for a pulse in his wrist and then his neck, then he shines a light into his eyes. It all looks a bit desperate.
And then everything goes black.


I’m standing in front of the entrance to my flat in Chalk Hill lane and to be honest, I’m in a bit of a daze. Just a moment ago it was 1972 and I was at a Marc Bolan concert. I witnessed the death of my father.
Crazy.
Was it all a figment of my imagination? How will I ever know?
I reach into my pocket and pull out a crumpled spliff, the one Sebastian gave me.
I’m poised to turn my front door key. I need to get inside and rest before I collapse. I feel sick and dizzy.
Someone calls my name.
‘Sam….’
I turn. There’s a man standing there. Silhouetted at first, but then he moves into the light and I see him more clearly. He looks anxious. He’s smiling nervously. There are tears in his eyes. He’s got a scar on his cheek and a tattoo on his forearm. He’s holding a T shirt up to his chest.
‘Dad…’ I say. I don’t feel angry because there’s something different about him. ‘…it’s been a long time.’ He sort of smiles but he looks really uncomfortable.
‘You’re dead.’ I tell him.
‘You’re mum wanted you to think that after she chucked me out.’
He stutters as he talks; it’s like he’s making a confession. I think he’s worried I’m going to slam the door in his face. He continues: ‘It was best for you to think that and it suited me. I was out of control. You didn’t deserve a waster like me, but I changed.’
That all made sense.
‘There was an incident at a concert back in ‘72.’ he explained. ‘I got into a fight and nearly died. Some guy attacked me at a gig in Wembley. I’d stopped breathing but someone brought me around again.’
I wanted to tell him that it was me, about half an hour ago. Maybe not such a good idea.
We look into each others eyes, both searching for the lost years. ‘I was in a coma for a while. When I came around, I couldn’t help thinking about the things the guy who saved me said. I remember he flew into a rage, like I’d done something terrible to him. Whoever he was, he saved my life.’
After that I drifted and travelled abroad. I did voluntary work, helping in drug rehab centres - anywhere that put a roof over my head and food in my stomach. I needed to feel better about myself.’
He sort of chuckles and then looks down embarrassedly. ‘I came back a few times and saw you and your mum…and your stepdad. You looked like a real family…you wouldn’t have wanted me back in your lives. I thought of you all the time though,
Sam. I cried heaps for you. I’ve always been with you,’ he says, and then putting a clenched fist to his heart he adds, ‘…in here.’
Now it’s me who’s got tearful eyes.
‘I’ve got this for you.’ He says and hands me a T-shirt. I hold it up. It’s the Marc Bolan shirt that Sebastian gave me. The same one I threw at my dad in the toilets just half an hour ago. But now it’s old and faded and looks like it’s been worn a thousand times.
‘It’s kept me going all these years-a sort of reminder?’
‘I can’t talk anymore because I’m too choked up.’
‘Can we go in?’ he asks.
I nod that we can.
Because it’s different now.
Because I’ve got a dad who I might like.
He rests his hand on my shoulder and I feel like I’m going to cry which is mad because since the day he went I vowed never shed a tear over him.
‘Just one thing.’ I say to him.
He looks back in trepidation.
‘I need to dig out my Live Aid video. It’s difficult to explain, but there’s a guy I know who might be in it.’


Gary Power is author of short stories that have been published in awesome anthologies such as When Graveyards Yawn (Crowswing Books), Spinetinglers (Spinetinglers publishing), 3 times in ‘The Black Book of Horror’ (Mortbury Press), The Horror zine (as featured author of the month),  The Year’s Best Body Horror 2017 (Gehenna and Hinnom publishing), Volume 6 of Dark Lane books Anthology series , ‘I’m Dead?’ anthology from Zimbell House Publishing ,Twistit Press and ‘Father of Lie’s in ‘Dig Two Graves’ from Death’s Head Press (USA) . He has also been e-published with Penny Shorts, 50 Word Stories, the Ham Free Press and Sein und Werden amongst others.  He has a podcast play currently being adapted by Manor House Audio (USA).
Mannison minibooks (USA) are in the process of publishing his Novella, The Art of Anatomy.
He has been a member of the British Fantasy Society since 2006 and attended World Fantasycon 2013 in Brighton where participated in a signing for the BFS nominated Tenth Black Book of Horror.
He has been shortlisted for the Ian St James short story award.
He is registered as an Amazon author and his website is www.garygpower.com
He is also a proud member of Allen Ashley’s sci-fi/slipstream/fantasy ‘Clockhouse London Writers’ group.

Lah, Johnny Mathis and the Meaning of Love
​
By Eliza Mimski


The day before Valentine's Day, Lah kicked off her shoes in the tiny back office of the fabric store where she worked. She leaned back in the computer chair, eating jellybeans for comfort. Lah's boyfriend Milo had recently broken up with her and she was feeling so alone. True, they'd only been dating for three months, but she'd given him her heart.
It was good to be by herself today without Mrs. Johnson, the owner, breathing down her neck. The store was small and it had been in the Haight for ages, with narrow aisles between the rows of colorful material. It never got too busy. Lah blinked, staring wide-eyed at the computer screen, one photograph of Johnny Mathis fading into the next while he sang It's Not for Me to Say. Off-key, she sang along with him.
Lah had discovered Johnny Mathis through her aunt who played his records on an ancient hi-fi set with removable speakers. Over the past few weeks, she'd fallen in love with his songs. She didn't care if he was a 1950s pop idol. Lah liked old people, old clothes, old things, and she often felt as if she'd been born into the wrong decade. On the Johnny Mathis website, it stated that his was the voice of romance. That was true, she thought. His voice was like nothing she'd ever heard before. It was like the sun shining on her. It was like everything good she could think of.
The bell tinkled as someone stepped into the shop. Lah kissed her fingertips and pressed them against the screen, swinging her long legs onto the floor.
“Can I help you?” she asked, striding toward an older woman standing near the button cabinet. The woman's gray ringlets formed a halo around her head and the dark circles beneath her eyes gave her a creative look, as if she stayed up nights working on a tragic novel where the heroine died a violent death at the end.
“I'm looking for some new buttons to jazz up an old dress of mine,” the woman said, and pulled a red shirtwaist out of a shopping bag. As the woman draped it over her body, Lah fell in love with its stand-up collar and elbow-length sleeves. It was a red vintage dress right out of the 1950s. Covered buttons started at the collar and continued all the way down the full skirt.
Lah privately was delighted in this woman's sense of style. She had gotten so tired of waiting on people with crummy taste. “That's one terrific dress. I think I've got something you might like,” she said, using her best salesperson manners. Behind the woman, through the storefront window, Lah could see the gray foggy day, the hustle and bustle of the street, shoppers with shopping bags hooked over their arms, bags filled with Godiva chocolates and other Valentine's Day presents, she was sure. The scene made her sad.
Lah rummaged around in the little unit drawers of the button cabinet until she found what she was looking for. “How about this?” she asked the woman, holding up a red glass button with a gold filigree design.
Taking the button, the woman inspected it and lay it against the dress. “I'm flying to New Jersey in a month to see an old friend,” she said. “I plan on wearing this to an oldies but goodies concert we're going to in New York City.”
“Oh, you're like me! You're into singers from the past,” Lah said. “I love Johnny Mathis.” She looked down at her floral print dress that matched the pink barrettes holding back her dark curly hair.
“There will never be another Johnny,” the woman said, smiling, and Lah nodded in agreement. Johnny Mathis had opened Lah's heart. When she listened to Wonderful, Wonderful, the song softened her into a tiny candlelit glow where before there had only been darkness.
“Actually, now that I think of it, it may have been this very dress that I wore to see him years ago
when he performed in San Jose,” the woman said.
“You wore this dress to see Johnny Mathis?” Lah reached over and touched it, reverently stroking the fabric.
“Yes, things were way less casual then. You actually got dressed up to hear your favorite teen idol. Not like today,” the woman said.
Lah regained her composure, admonishing herself for getting too personal about the dress. “Oh, well, this must have been a perfect dress for such an occasion.” She stood up straight and cleared her throat. “Um, where did you sit, if I may ask?” What she really wanted to know was whether the woman had gone with her boyfriend, and had they been in love? Had he pressured her to have sex with him?
“We had great seats. I sat fairly close to the stage. He's from here, you know.”
Lah swallowed. “He's from San Francisco?”
“That's what I've heard, although I've as yet to run into him.” The woman laughed. It was a bright little note that floated through the air. Again, Lah looked out the window at the gray day. What would she say if she ran into Johnny Mathis on the street? Would she even be able to get her mouth to work?
“Did you like the way he sang?” Lah asked, trying to be casual, as if a line existed that people drew around themselves and Lah needed to be careful not to step over hers.
“Yeah, I did. I guess we all did.”
“Let me give you some other choices to consider,” Lah said, hoping to detain the woman so she could squeeze more information out of her. “You know, buttons can definitely make or break an outfit." Opening more drawers, she picked out red buttons studded with diamonds, red buttons trimmed with black, red buttons with wavy edges, four-holed buttons, two-holed buttons, ladybug buttons, buttons
shaped like hearts.
Lah lined them up on the counter for the woman to see. “Did you have a favorite song of Johnny's?”
The woman toyed with a few of the buttons, alternately holding them up to the dress. “I'd have to say I like his older songs, like Chances Are and Misty.” She picked up the heart-shaped button and eyed it closely.
“Oh, I love Misty!” Lah gushed. “I've memorized the lyrics to it. It's so romantic, not being able to tell your hat from your and glove. I mean, could you ever imagine having that effect upon someone where they got that confused? They wouldn't know what hit them.” She doubted she'd ever have that kind of power over anyone, but she longed for it.
The woman laughed, but this time Lah felt foolish, as if she was laughing at her. “Listen, honey, when you get older you won't want all that drama,” she said. “Believe me, it gets to be too much.” She placed the heart-shaped button back on the counter. “You know, I think I like the first ones you showed me the best. Do you have enough of them? I would need twelve, but let's make it fourteen to be on the safe side.”
Lah checked to see how many buttons of this sort she had. “I'm just wondering, did Johnny's songs have a certain impact on you?” she turned and asked the woman. “When I hear Wonderful, Wonderful, he makes me feel important. He lets me know that in my own way I'm special and lovable.”
“Well, he did have that effect on lots of us,” she said, “but that was ages ago. I'm afraid I need to get going.” Lah realized she'd gone too far, and tried to sound professional again. She focused, counting out six of the filigreed buttons. “I can order more and have them for you within a week or so.”
“That would be fine,” the woman said.
They walked to the cash register. “I'm sorry if I got too personal,” Lah apologized. “It's just that I'm... a virgin, and my boyfriend wanted to have sex. He made me feel awful when he left me, like that's all I was good for." She paused, struggling to find the right words. “When I listen to Johnny, I start to feel that maybe somebody else could love me. You know, and not just want sex." She started crying.
The woman put her hand on Lah's shoulder. “Sorry, dear, but I have other errands to run,” she said, and turned to go. “Now , you take care.”
Lah sucked back her tears. “Oh, well, I'll need to get your phone number so I can call you when the rest of the buttons come in.”
“Tell you what,” the woman said. “I'll check back with you for the buttons. I don't live too far away.”
“Well, I'm sure you'll be happy with your choice of buttons,” Lah said. She forced herself to smile. “You know, since my boyfriend left me, I've been kind of depressed. But like I say, Johnny Mathis is helping me to believe that someone else could love me. Love isn't supposed to mean you have to do things when you're not ready. That's not love. That's not what love means at all, but I really miss my old boyfriend," she said, sniffling. "I really do miss him."
“Listen, my mother used to say to me: “This too shall pass. You'll see.” Lah imagined getting fired for crying on the job. “Please don't tell Mrs. Johnson that I got emotional,” she begged the woman. “She might let me go." Tears stung her eyes but she blinked them away. “My life sucks."
The woman turned towards Lah. Lah was unable to tell what she was thinking, but when the woman gave her a pitying look, Lah changed her mind about the woman being a writer. She wasn't that special and didn't deserve to listen to Johnny Mathis because she had no soul. Lah decided right then and there that if the woman told on her to her boss, she'd deny the whole thing.

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Civic Center


Edwin Staples

​

I was a little scared.

August 19, 1981. Alice Cooper at the Wallace Civic Center, in Fitchburg, MA. My first un-chaperoned rock show. Andrew’s father dropped us off with his big Dodge van. We all claimed to have a ride home already, a little fib.

I was the oddball, Rob's buddy, and everyone liked Rob. Not too many people liked me. I was the youngest and the most frightened of the group, but I had been to Elton John at the Music Hall in Boston, and I was hooked on live music.

Once the Dodge was out of sight, the other boys led me over to the tree line at the edge of a spooky, hilly wooded area that faced the Civic Center, with the parking lot in between. Lots of much older groups of teens, and some grownups, stood in clusters, smoking, drinking beer and some scarier liquids. James, the wildest and smartest of our crew, collected dollars off us to buy a sixer of Miller High Life from a frowning, tanned teen in t-shirt that said STAFF. It was warm and I wasn't used to beer, but I knew better than to refuse.

Then came the small talk: Marlboro vs Camel, Zeppelin vs Aerosmith, Beatles vs Stones. When local kids asked us where we were from, we said we drove down from Jaffrey. That was James's idea. Jaffrey, NH was not far enough away to be an unrealistic drive, but not close enough that anyone in this crowd of reprobates would know anyone there. We couldn’t say we were from H--. It was a small town with a lot of rich people who owned horses and Volvos. No kids from any big town would keep it a secret at a show, if we let it slip that we were the H-- contigent. We'd be running for our lives before the warm-up band was done.

Before long Andrew, the tallest of our group, who could pass as old enough to drive, found a kid he knew from summer camp. In a minute a few girls appeared with their boyfriends. They looked us over, and whispered things to each other, giving us a salutary nod only. Except for one redhead with MacKenzie Phillips's face and a skin-tight BITE ME t-shirt. When Andrew's friend introduced her she mussed Andrew's hair and pulled on James's leather vest. She teased us for being little kids at a big kid party. But she was accepting, and she seemed to be allowed to boss the local boys around. Leslie was her name.

James asked Leslie what we could buy to take the edge off. The guy with the beard and the baggies appeared, genie-like, and James collected dollars again. Black beauties and yellow barrels. Rob scarfed my share of the yellows, but I took two blacks, and washed them down with the last drops of warm High Life.

"You're getting a good deal from me," said beard guy, "because Leslie says you're okay. She's a ballbuster, but I trust her, you know what I'm sayin."

Rob said "thanks, Leslie." He nodded and took a big swig from a fifth of Southern Comfort that seemed to appear out of nowhere. One of the local boys mumbled something when Leslie smiled back at Rob. Beard guy laughed and said, "Okay, men. Last call." A few others fished for dollars in their pockets, eyeing Leslie with goofy smiles as they waited for their pills.

"Coo-pa!" said Andrew. "Let's go in." As we left the group at the tree line, a sprinkling of laughter floated our way. Someone echoed another "Coo-pa."

A line of underage, music-crazy longhairs, ages 12 to 99, outside the venue, an hour before show time, stretched across the parking lot. Cops frisked everyone at the door. I saw giant trash cans full of contraband. Impossibly large liquor bottles confiscated off rail-thin, underage suburban kids wearing army boots and vests like James wore. Buttons on their shirts that said Billion Dollar Babies, School's Out, and Welcome to my Nightmare. Clouds of not-tobacco smoke here and there.

James decided I looked like a narc, and loaded me down with a dozen marijuana joints. I didn't have time to object. Colin, the kid who knew all the Alice Cooper songs, had earlier vowed to beat up anyone who might "get us caught." Before I was assigned smuggling duty I had wondered what that might mean.

I appealed to Rob for advice. "Just find a place for them that's not your pockets. And don't let people see you."

It was a hot day but I was wearing a long sleeved, Freddie Mercury style peasant-blouse thing. The sleeves, rolled up, handled the little mary janes just perfectly. I held my breath as we approached the frisking zone.

Nothing happened. The cops didn't even touch me. Everyone before and after me got a pat-down. The narc theory was correct. I filed that information in my conniving little brain, for I was at heart just as sneaky and self-indulgent as the rest of the crowd. I lacked only experience.

James was experienced. He was two people behind me, his leather vest, long hair and big smile attracting the cops' attention. He got a good pat-down, and he smiled the entire time. The cops maintained bored expressions throughout.

I followed my droogs into the general-admission crowd, shoving their way into a cluster of tall boys with a giant cloud over them. Rob said something I only half-heard, but I got enough of it to understand, you have to stand where you won't be noticed. And don't tell anyone we're from H--.

None of the truly rich kids from H-- would be coming to Alice Cooper the summer before ninth grade, but we knew all those kids would envy us the stories. Before the opening set, I had the story all ready to tell. I was even feeling like I couldn't wait for the school year. I'd tell the other kids I met a girl who was a ball-buster at the Cooper show.

A girl from the group outside appeared, and passed me a joint, and said something I couldn't understand, that ended with "...would kill me if he knew." I took a tentative drag and hesitated.

"Keep it going," said Rob's voice. He was to my right, and Leslie was to his right. I looked at their faces, smiling and moving in slow motion, and realized something was affecting me. James appeared, relieved me of the joints in my sleeve, left me one as payment. He laughed and nodded in the direction of Rob and Leslie. I didn’t hear what James said: the opening band began as he spoke.

It was my first time seeing what crowds do to warm-up bands at civic centers. Throwing beer, throwing cigarettes, swearing at them and screaming at them to get off the stage.

"Coo-pa!" shouted Colin, inches from my ear. "Get this shit off the stage!"

I couldn’t figure it out. This is how we get “warmed up?” By yelling at another band, that was there to give us a little extra entertainment? And they were good, too. The Atlantics. Local kids who made it in Boston, who would get respect in any club (I found out later), but had to deal with this treatment in the suburbs. I saw their clothes, their defiant expressions, their skill with their instruments. They liked playing and they didn’t give a crap what we thought of them. The last vestiges of my baseball dreams melted away, for good. Life was rock n’ roll.

In the long delay between bands I lost track of all the other guys. Rob had stayed with me awhile, but when the lights began to dim, he and a thousand others rushed the stage. I didn’t have any rush in me. The black pills were like coffee, but the joints gave me that fantasia feeling, and transformed the crowd into one big animal, breathing, restless, ready to devour whoever might step into the spotlight.

When the headliner appeared the entire evening accelerated. I went from a little buzz to super high and a half a second. The big-animal crowd approached the band with more deadly intensity than it had focused on the Atlantics. I felt like I shouldn't watch, knowing the beast must be fed. But something happened. The shirtless vocalist we called Alice Cooper exercised some mystical power, stood tall before the beast's jaws and with nothing but his bare hands, reached out and hypnotized the monster. With a great exhalation of gray smoke, and a loud, cosmic shout, the crowd was satisfied. I blinked, then I again saw only a couple thousand bony teenagers swaying and smoking and drinking. The security cops appeared to be blind to all the contraband but had slipped past them. I was amazed that I could pick out Rob's face in the crowd. But there he was, dancing, laughing, wild-eyed. The yellow barrels must be something much weirder.

I didn't really know Alice Cooper before that night, except for a more recent album about life in a mental hospital. He didn't play any of the songs I knew. That didn't stop me from thinking he was singing just for me:


Lines form on my face and hands
Lines form from the ups and downs
I'm in the middle without any plans
I'm a boy and I'm a man


A light came on in my head. The rock star was feeling just as weird about life as I did. He was up there, taming the beast, but he knew how I felt drinking my warm beer and fearing a beating from a towny who might grok that we were from H--.

Summer of 1981 suddenly had meaning.

If Alice Cooper wasn't enough to make it a rock n’ roll night, we ended up in a Camaro, racing down Route 2, neck-and-neck with a Trans Am. Colin's sister's boyfriend was at the wheel, and five of us were squeezed into the backseat.

The pot made the car feel like a boat, and the ringing in my ears made all conversation seem far away. Colin told me that I was in charge of Rob, and that we would not be dropped off anywhere near the house, but we were to sneak in through the back door, and that it was my job to keep him safe. Rob was slurring a bit, and humming School's Out, his head rocking side to side. Didn't look to me like he was in any danger.

Back at the center of H--, Rob and I hopped out of the car. I looked at the boyfriend at the wheel and asked him how fast we were going back there on Route 2.

He said, "About a buck-twenty."

Rob whooped, "Coo-pa!" And ran into the summer night, the opposite direction from his house. I took off after him, to the sound of laughter from inside the Camaro as the rubber chirped a goodnight.

 The '80s Rocked

By K. A. Williams



My favorite musical decade is the '80s.


MTV premiered in the '80s and I loved it. They had band interviews and band members as guest VJs. Mostly they showed videos. Some of them told a story, some were performances, and others were just strange (watch any Duran Duran video for an example). "Weird Al" made great parodies of many of the decades' videos.


MTV also aired rock concerts. It was great to see and hear bands perform live in your living room especially if your city wasn't on their tour schedule.


The '80s was when I saw most of my concerts, from a nosebleed outdoor venue seat at The Jacksons to a front row indoor coliseum seat for Yes. I also saw The Moody Blues, INXS, The Cars, Blue Oyster Cult, Duran Duran, Icehouse, The Thompson Twins, and Sting (without The Police). I won the Sting tickets from a morning radio show on FM hosted by John Boy & Billy which is now syndicated and still on the air.


I used to listen to a FM radio show in the '80s called "Rockline" where listeners could call in and ask the guest bands of that week a question and they'd answer live on the air. I was a caller myself 3 different times when Yes, INXS, and Icehouse were on.


One of the highlights in the '80s was the CD and its rise in popularity over vinyl. For those of us tired of listening to pops and hisses on scratched vinyl LPs, it was a welcome change.


And even now, songs from the '80s are what I enjoy listening to the most.

They Rock!

Two Popular Biographies Reviewed

By Charles E.J. Moulton
​
 
Forgive them their many four-letter-words.
These two extravagant rockers are sensitive souls, more than they seem, believers, true spirits. Not only are they brilliant storytellers in their own right, their stories are told through music the in tales of their lives, noteworthy as to their rocking similarities, but also because of the eye-opening effect of the contents. The package is opened, because the fan loves to rock. The fan gets much more: he becomes enlightened.
These two artists have more in common than can be seen at first glance. They speak in feelings and thoughts. What becomes evident when reading these autobiographies back to back is that these guys vividly invite us on a tour of their lives in written form. It is poetic, thoughtful raunchy and honest.
Two autobiographies published this decade that deserve special attention deal with men who tried every drug known to man and still believe in God, speaking of souls leaving the body at death and music's effect on the eternal spirit. 
Steven Tyler, born Tallarico in 1948 back in Yonkers. U.S.A., is the self-confessed nature-boy and the son of a classical concert pianist. Mistaken for Mick Jagger during his early career caused him to put on a British accent in order to capitalize on star-similarity.
Billy Idol, born William Broad in 1955 in England, spent a few years in the U.S. during his childhood before moving back to Bromley in England and gaining back his Brit accent. So both artists were capable of articulated Brit and Yank accents.
 Both believers are cleaned up ex-drug-addicts.
Idol's nearly lethal motorcycle accident in 1991 might have sobered him up, an incident that gave him a very real out-of-body-experience.
Tyler's soberness might have come out of necessity to survive, who knows?
In any case, after reading these biographies, though, the human side of their artistic lives become clear. Idol's most challenging time, health-wise, had him disappearing into a heroin-cocoon, ultimately causing his father to travel across the Atlantic to save him. No matter how famous he became, to the Broad family he was still just their Billy from Bromley.
While Tyler was supported to become a musician, his mom driving him to early concerts in a van, Idol took the leap very much against his father's will, who wanted him to take over his hardware store. 
It is then a happy fact that both men made happy family peace parents: with mother, in Tyler's case, and father, in Idol's case, before their respective deaths. 
It is touching, yet heartwrenching, to read about these extravagant rockers with their wild lives and their last moments holding and embracing their loved ones and, in retrospect, feeling good about how they said good bye. 
Tyler even speaks of God as a Her, a Goddess. 
Idol speaks of an out-of-body-experience and an eternal inspration far away from this world. With all the fascinatingly gritty details of the punk- and rock-life in both books, completely normal functions and day-to-day rehab drudges, with explosive anecdotes of rock shows, at the end all of this makes us discover a humane and sympathetic truth. Genius is genius, celebrity is no less human because of fame.
Sensitivity makes celebrity even more endearing.
Celebrity can hurt. Morten Harket spoke in his autobiography “Take On Me” compares celebrity to his school yard mobbing as a victim. The feud Lead Singer Vs. Lead Guitarist dominates both artistic careers, Idol’s and Tyler’s. Steven Tyler's dramatic relationship with his "Toxic Twin" Joe Perry has been a four decade love-hate affair. Likewise, Billy Idol's tight fights with his guitarist Stevie Stevens sometimes reached hair raising proportions, a relationship that now has calmed down to bloom into an again prosperous collaboration.
Two enormous stage personalities, whose writing and composing have improved through the years, followed by energetic stage shows with firework-like physical activity.
Billy and Steven have a full throttle work ethos intact, one that cost Tyler multiple foot surgery and Idol a bad back.
Idol, the sneering punk-poet with a heart of gold, and Tyler, the bouncing rag-doll dude with hyper-sensitive drum-rhythm: both speak lovingly and sweetly about their children. Proud fathers both with rocket careers to boot. Sobered up, extraordinary, normal, human, angelic, beastly and spiritual, all at the same time. 
Why do we love them?
Because they signify what we humans are all are, what we are all about: we are emotional creatures, willing to learn and willing to rock.
 
 
Steven Tyler: "Does the Noise in my Head Bother You?"
Harper Collins, 2011

Billy Idol: "Dancing with Myself"
Simon & Schuster, 2014

 
 
A Guide to Undiscovered Country

By Angela Camack

 
July 1974, a city in New Jersey

         It was a warm, late July afternoon. Moira MacBride walked quickly from her apartment to the Medical Center for her 3 p.m. shift. She was running a little late; her clock was still on Jersey Shore vacation time. She and her roommates had just returned from five days at the shore. Five days of swimming, sun, dancing and eating food of little nutritional value.
         Moira was a twig of a woman; 21, 5’2” and 100 pounds in her nurse’s cap and sturdy white shoes, but surprisingly strong. She brought Ireland with her; red hair with bronze lights, blue eyes and a few freckles across her tilted nose.
         She approached the Medical Center, wondering why the heat at the shore seemed luxurious and sensuous while the heat on the way to work was oppressive. The Medical Center took up much of the street; the brick monolith of the old hospital and the gleaming newness of the addition, which housed specialty units and the operating rooms. Now she passed the workmen repairing the sidewalks across from the main entrance. She usually used the Emergency Room entrance to avoid them but was short of time today. Here it came: “Nurse, nurse it’s getting worse,” “Hello, Red!” “Hiya, sweetie.” She told herself that they were just nice guys who worked hard and were a little bored and hot but wished that just once men could be the ones getting the whistles; “Nice butt, Dr. Fine.”
         Every day she planned to ask them to stop, and every day she froze. Moira had always made it easier, better for others than for herself. Even in 1974 women were expected to do just that. But Moira was self-effacing even for the times. She was born the fourth and last child in a family that should have been more comfortable than they were. Her father owned a successful plumbing business, but caring for two children with asthma took time, attention and money. By the time Moira came along all these resources were well tapped. She was used to making do, keeping things smooth, not asking for much.
         Choosing nursing kept things smooth. Her parents were keenly aware of how money troubles could tear at a family and encouraged her to study nursing. “You can always get a job, and you can start work in a few years. Besides, a pretty thing like you will be married in no time.” Her counselors at school agreed, pointing out her high grades in science.
         The need to keep the waters steady became been part of her.  She had been the quiet child who never grabbed for the last slice of cake or the seat by the car window. Although she was attracted to psychiatric nursing, she made no protest when her transfer request from the medical unit to a vacancy on the psych unit was turned down. “Medicine is always so short of staff, and everyone loves you on 4 West.” Moving into her apartment, she chose the smallest room even though she was the first to move in.
         But it was a good life. A job she was good at, one that allowed her to live on her own. Good friends, amenable roommates, dates. Could she want more? (Could she …..?) Sometimes she felt full of unused words and ideas, as if her muscles were constrained and unable to move. She felt like untapped potential was hiding somewhere behind the amiability and conciliation she showed to the world.
         In the lobby, waiting for the elevator, Moira ran into Bobbie, the evening ward clerk for 4 West. No way to avoid Bobbie, the silliest and most annoying person she’d met in her 21 years. She braced herself for the ride to the 4th floor.
         “Moooira! You’ll never guess what happened while you were away.” Bobbie’s shrill voice was accompanied by an iron grip on Moira’s elbow. She wondered what would happen first, bleeding from her ears or paralysis of her arm.
         “No, Bobbie, I don’t know what happened while I was away.”
         “Do you remember that lady? The one you admitted just before you left?”
         Moira thought back and pulled up the memory. Claudine Corby. African American, admitted with advanced liver cancer. The structure of a beautiful woman remained, but she was gaunt, and her skin was yellowing. Her once-wavy hair was patchy but covered with a brightly patterned turban. Her makeup was expertly but tastefully applied, and she wore a silky pink robe. With her was another African American woman, introduced as her friend Miss Lillian Borden, a legal secretary.  Dressed in a trim navy suit, soft white blouse and low-heeled navy pumps, she was quiet and efficient as she unpacked.
         Mrs. Corby was talkative despite her frailty. As she took a history, Moira learned that she was divorced, had lost her only child in a car accident and had been a blues/jazz singer in clubs and piano bars. As her career wound down (rock being in favor now), she moved in with her friend to share expenses.
         Mrs., Corby’s friend suddenly gave Moira a very bright but forced smile. “That’s us, just two old ladies making do.”
         “Women of a certain age, Lillian, women of a certain age. Let’s put the best face on it that we can.”
         “So what happened with Mrs. Corby, Bobbie?”
         Bobbie drew in a deep breath. “Well, we all thought they were just two, you know, normal ladies. Until, well, you know, she didn’t fill out her menu for the next day. So I was going to take one in to her. I opened the door and I thought I’d die. They were sitting on the bed and they were kissing! On the lips! With tongue, I think. All this time, they were, you know, that way. I thought I was going to be sick right there. Miss Brecker hadn’t left yet so I told her right away.”
         Nurse Brecker, nurse in charge of 4 West. Nurse Brecker of the old school. She learned her skills during World War II, and there was nothing she had not seen since. Using sight, touch, scent, she could usually spot a patient’s problems in minutes.  It took only that long for patients to feel safe with her. However, the feeling of safety did not extend to her staff, which she tried to intimidate and often did. Miss Brecker liked the old school and was perfectly happy to keep it in session on 4 West.
         Perhaps Miss Brecker should not be blamed for becoming rigid, and for closing her eyes and ears to all change but technical innovations in medicine. She had worked for years in a field where practitioners often did not get the credit or respect they deserved. Certainly, their pay did not reflect recognition. The medical center paid its electricians and mechanics more than its nurses, who provided most of the care patients got and made life altering decisions every day. Why? “Men have families to support.” (That must have been a comfort to the widows and divorced women on the nursing staff).
         How many nurses had Miss Brecker trained over the years, only to see them transfer to more prestigious units, such as the operating room or one of the intensive care units? How many left to marry almost as soon as they came into bloom as practitioners? How many times had she tactfully pointed out something to an arrogant little intern that saved him from making a serious mistake? How many panicky new residents had she seen become attending doctors? And now women were bypassing nursing completely, becoming doctors themselves.
         So Nurse Brecker ruled what she could, the Medical unit on the 4th floor. At a time when nurses were leaving off their caps and trading uniform dresses for more practical pantsuits, her girls wore the traditional outfit (her “girls” being over 40 in some cases). Her girls, if they had to question Doctor, did so in a polite and roundabout way. Her girls understood that Doctor sometimes shouted at them because of the pressure of his job. Her girls worked New Year’s Eve without complaint. Her girls were Miss or Mrs., never Ms.
         Bobbie drew another deep breath. “So anyhow, I told Miss Brecker right away. And she told the “friend” to leave. Said she had a duty to, you know, monitor what went on in her unit, and she didn’t want behavior like that. She said this friend had to leave right away and not come back. But she didn’t go. Miss Brecker said she would get the guards and have her thrown out. Finally, Mrs. Corby started to get upset and the friend left.”
         “Bobbie, why did you tell Miss Brecker?”
         “Why not?
         They got off the elevator. Four West was in the older part of the medical center and could be dark on cloudy days. Poorly ventilated, the halls sometimes carried the scent of illness, disinfectant and steam table food. Patients were often very ill, in need of much care that frequently could not return them to health. Small wonder that some nurses were drawn to the Intensive Care or specialty units, where outcomes were better and were considered more prestigious among hospital staff.  Moira went into the staff room for the shift change report (when nurses coming off duty gave important information to the nurses coming on). She would be the registered nurse in charge of the shift, which should be no problem for someone as smart, skilled and empathetic as Moira, but taking charge could still be a minefield that required sharp wits to navigate.
         You would think that a profession of hard working (mostly) women, often underappreciated and underpaid, would support each other. No. Licensed Practical Nurses resented the RN’s in charge. RN’s sometimes did not recognize the working knowledge LPN’s developed. RN’s with diplomas resented RN’s with college degrees, scorning them as overeducated snobs with no practical skills. Everyone felt the need to “test” new graduates. New grads sometimes had little patience with older workers. By the time burnout was recognized as a serious problem, nursing was known as “the profession that eats its own young.” And if you were a smart, pretty little colleen who was just beginning to know her own powers, you could be fair game for some nurses.
         Miss Brecker entered and sat beside Moira at the table in the staff room. The rest of the staff was not yet present.
         “We had a problem with the patient you admitted before your vacation,” said Miss Brecker, so sternly that Moira thought for a moment that she was being blamed for the patient’s proclivities.
         “Bobbie told me when we were coming up in the elevator.”
         “What did she tell you?”
         Moira repeated Bobbie’s story. Miss Brecker shook her head. “That Bobbie. She shouldn’t be telling unit business in the elevator. But that’s exactly what happened. It’s disgusting. I can’t have that behavior here.  And I’m afraid they’re looking for trouble. That other woman works for a lawyer,” (“lawyer” said like she was being forced to bite into something rotten.) “Claims they have rights. A few of those young doctors and that wet-behind-the-ears social worker think so too. ‘But Miss Brecker, she doesn’t have anyone else. Miss Borden is the closest person to family that she has.’ Well, that’s what happens. This is my unit and that’s what I’ve decided. Family! Ridiculous.”
         She gave Moira’s shoulder a brief squeeze. “But I won’t have any trouble out of you. You’re my girl. I always know what I can expect.”
         Moira felt like she had been dropped into ice. Her girl. Her predictable girl. Is that all she was?
         Moira could not think about this yet. She had a report to hear, assignments to make, rounds to do. But she took her dinner break alone to work things out.
         All her life, she had walked in lockstep. Being the accommodating one. So easily shaped by what others felt was best for her. Had anyone given her credit for having a mind of her own? Had she ever shown she had one?
         But first she had to deal with Mrs. Corby. Moira saw how her health had failed in the last five days. Her color was worse, she was gaunter, and her vital signs were unstable. Gone were the bright turban, makeup and pretty robe. She was distant, picking uneasily at the bed linen, as if her place in the world was already tenuous. She ate no dinner, even after Moira offered to get her anything that would tempt her. Had she not been on an intravenous saline drip, she would be getting no fluids at all. She had no wish to cling to where she was, and now Moira knew why. It didn’t help that some of the staff were obviously uncomfortable caring for her.
         She didn’t know how she felt about what the women did. But it seemed terribly cruel to keep a dying woman from the one person she had to love her. Is that what “caring” was?
         Maybe she could talk to Miss Brecker. Maybe if the women promised not to touch while they are together. (But was there ever a time when touch is so needed?). Maybe Mrs. Corby could get a private room.
         But she knew Miss Brecker would never change her mind. She had dominion over this situation, even over the doctors. She wouldn’t give up this little victory so easily.
         What would happen if she did let Miss Borden visit? Would she be fired? Get a formal reprimand?  No, she wouldn’t be fired. The nursing shortage was so severe that nurses had done much worse before being let go.
         She approached Mrs. Corby’s room. Stepping over the threshold would be mean ending 21 years of keeping things smooth. Moira realized these 21 years had kept things steady for herself as well; walking in step with everyone else’s expectations meant she had formed few of her own.  She had never risked failure, but she never explored her strengths. She went into Mrs. Corby’s room and placed a slip of paper on the bedside stand. “These are the shifts I’m in charge this week. Ask your friend to come during visiting hours and to ask for me. I’ll see that she gets in.”
         “Miss Brecker said no, absolutely no. She said she’d have Lillian thrown out.”
         “Well, she won’t be here and I’m in charge. I’ll take care of it.”
         A tear slid down Mrs. Corby’s cheek, silvery against her bruised-looking skin. “Why would you do this for us?”
         “Because it’s right.”
         It didn’t take long for the uproar over Moira’s decision to begin. Mrs. Corby’s friend appeared at the desk just in time for part of evening visiting hours. Bobbie, sitting at the desk and placing lab results in charts, had just opened her mouth to tell her to leave when Moira stepped forward. “I’m Moira MacBride. I’ll take you to your friend.”
         The visitor was suspicious of this sudden change in policy. “Miss MacBride, why would you do this for us?”
         “Because Mrs. Corby needs you. Because it’s right.” Miss Borden waited for more of a response, but none was forthcoming. She squeezed Moira’s hand lightly and they moved off to her friend’s room.
         Moira’s return to the desk revealed that a group of interested staff had suddenly gathered. “Moira, did you just do what I think you did?” asked the medication nurse.
         “Yes, and I would appreciate it if none of you told Miss Brecker. This is my responsibility, and I’ll take any heat that’s coming.”
         “Moira, I know you want to do the right thing, but have you considered the trouble you could make for yourself?”
         “That woman is dying, and she’s dying all alone. Can you imagine how scared she must be? She needs her friend, especially since I don’t see a lot of people here lining up outside her room to get her through this.”
         “You are going to get in huge trouble,” Bobbie said.
         “I don’t care. I have to look at myself in the mirror and I need to sleep at night.” She moved off to make mid-shift patient rounds.
         “I’m confused,” said Bobbie. “What do mirrors and sleeping at night have to do with visiting hours?”
         Moira was tired when she got home but couldn’t settle down to sleep. Could she trust the staff to keep a secret? They risked getting into trouble themselves. Was it worth damaging her career for two strangers?
         No matter. It was done, and it was the right thing to do. No one should die alone. Were these women so terrible? Who were they hurting?
         She remembered Hamlet from freshman English class. Hamlet spoke of death as the ‘undiscovered country.’  Shakespeare knew what he was talking about. Death was the ultimate mystery; you didn’t know what you were facing, and you never came back. Surely everyone deserved someone to accompany them to the brink of that new territory.
         As for Moira, for better or for worse, she was done with walking in lockstep. Her decisions from now on would be her own. 
Moira tried harder to find sleep. She considered a glass of wine, but she swore she was still metabolizing all those lovely gin and tonics from vacation. She picked up the latest bestseller from her night table and read herself to sleep.
         The visiting situation held the next evening, although it was an uncomfortable shift. Voices whispered and laughed and died down when Moira came close. People stared and then looked away when she met their eyes.  The glances continued when she left the unit for the cafeteria. So it had gotten around the hospital. That wasn’t good, although she wasn’t surprised.
         Most irritating of all, Bobbie felt the need to remind Moira of the trouble she was bound to get into and had developed the habit of humming the mystery/crime tune every time Moira came near her. “Dah-duh-DAH!”  “Dah-duh-DAH!” Moira tried to ignore her, but her nerves were tight, and she had had enough. “Bobbie, cut that out. It wasn’t funny the first thousand times you did it and it’s not funny now.”
         “Well, I like that! I was just teasing. I thought we were friends.”
         “Jeez, if that’s how you treat your friends, how do you drive your enemies crazy?” She stalked off and left the staff’s shocked faces behind her.
         “Can you believe Moira’s acting and talking that way?”
         “There were times when I didn’t think she knew how to talk.”
         “That must have been some vacation. What’s gotten into her?”
         “Yeah, what’s gotten into her is right.”
         It didn’t last. It couldn’t have lasted. The next night, Miss Brecker intercepted Moira on the way to the staff room. “I would never in a million years have thought that you would have been the one to go behind my back. For what? For those women? Why did you do it, Moira?”
         “Because it’s right, Miss Brecker.” Brecker glared at Moira, the answer not satisfying her.
         “Miss Brecker, that woman is dying and has nobody else. Whether we approve of her or not, we have to take care of her. That’s our job. And to doom a dying woman to go through it alone – even people on the prison unit get care –“
         “That’s enough out of you. I can’t believe what I’m hearing.”
         “How did you find out?” Bobbie, of course.
         “That doesn’t matter.  From someone who is more professional than you are. I can’t believe you expected other people to go behind my back too.”
         “Maybe we can talk about this another time. I have to hear the shift report –“
         “Susan Billings will be in charge.  I don’t think you’re fit to make decisions. Anyhow, this has to go to the administration before we decide what to do with you.”
         “Miss Brecker, please consider allowing her friend to visit – “
         “No. Why are you being so stubborn about this? Where is this rebelliousness coming from? Are you so eager to cut your own throat for these women?”
         Not just for ‘these women’, but for herself too. There was no way Miss Brecker would understand.
         Moira was never in charge of a shift on 4 West again.  Whispers continued, and some of the staff members were cool to Moira. One of the interns pulled her aside and whispered, “That was a good thing you did, honey.”
         “Thank you, Dr. But it’s Moira, please. not honey.” (There, that wasn’t too hard).
         The administration did talk to her. The medical-surgical supervisor. The director of nursing. The hospital attorney. All asked why. All she would say was, “Because it was right.” A summary of the incident went into her personnel file and Miss Brecker remained icy. She resigned herself to allowing Miss Borden to visit Mrs. Corby, and her resentment toward Moira showed.
Moira was assigned to care for Mrs. Corby every  shift she worked. She enjoyed caring for her, and as the days passed, and as Mrs. Corby weakened, they grew closer.
Mrs. Corby’s life had not been easy. “I kept feeling like I was being kicked out of the human race. First, I was black, and I was a woman, and then I was a woman who wanted other women. Well, I hid the last one. I got married; well – then divorced. But when that drunken driver took my son, I had nothing else to lose. I looked for the person who could help me stay alive, and I found her.”
About ten days after the trouble for Moira began, she entered Mrs. Corby’s room, not in her usual uniform and cap, but in a trim seersucker skirt and blouse.
“Well, hello. I haven’t seen you for a few days.” She looked at what Moira was wearing.” Moira, did you quit? They didn’t fire you, did they?”
The medical-surgical supervisor told Moira that a staff vacancy on the psychiatric unit might be coming up and asked if she was still interested in that transfer. She was. The staff wore street clothes on the psych unit, thinking it would help foster rapport between staff and patients.
“Is it better there?”
Moira tried to be positive but couldn’t quite manage that. “Not really. It looks like I’ll be branded as the troublemaker from now on.” She laughed. “Not my usual role.”
“Because of me. I’m sorry.”
“No, because of them. But I’m glad things worked out that way. I still had a lot to learn about people, and about myself.”
Moira visited Mrs. Corby until she and Miss Borden decided that Miss Borden would take a leave of absence from her job and Mrs. Corby would have hospice care at home. They spoke on the phone weekly until Mrs. Corby died.
Moira’s next step was up to her.  Should she find another job? Leave nursing, a profession she had wandered into, or stay and make it her own? Tend bar on the Jersey Shore? Whatever the decision, it would finally be completely hers.
“Grow up, Moira, the world is waiting,” she thought to herself. Or at least, Jersey.
        

Deeper and Deeper

By Laurel Benjamin

Fast and fluid, the child slid into the water.
“She just got baptized,” a woman said, sitting on the shore, waving her hands.
“Where’s her daddy?” a boy with a red shirt said, as the little girl sunk below surface and then bobbed out.
To the crowd, it seemed an oddity, since they had never thought of going in the water, and revered what they were told about the idea of separate spaces.
A man scowled. “Now we’ll get the blame.” He stood, scooped up his picnic basket and folding chair, and walked up to the parking lot.
All the while the little girl drifted further, going under, then paddling, though she’d never been taught. No one had. A cry could be heard intermittently, like a bird searching for another bird.
The beach crowd turned back to what they had been doing—a couple playing cards, a family eating sandwiches, two teenagers reading. And so on.
If only they had looked— they could have seen hand motion, and finally, nothing. No evidence of the girl.
Then a dog began to bark, came running down from the hill, all fur and legs, leash trailing. He swam. He barked, his pink tongue hanging out as he paddled.
Everyone looked up, but not at the water. They all started to explain to each other what had happened, as if it was over and life could return to normal. The boy on shore played with string, his hands mesmerized as if the string, wound around his hands, criss-crossing, were an orb, and he imagined he had control over the world.

Mike Knowles presents

THE POWER OF THE OBVIOUS: STEAMPUNK DRIVEN SCIENCOLOGY
Captain Jack Hawksworth Esq.
INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR
What qualifications would a man wedded to a science fiction genre featuring 19th Century technology powered by steam have creating a religion based on modern science. Not to mention that this individual’s supposed exploits in the Steampunk universe would give the famous Baron Munchausen a run for his money when it comes to hyperbole?
Just look at it this way: all religions have prophets who are blessed with special abilities. Sort of like the Avengers. And I’m no exception.
So let’s begin with quantum physics; which is what started me on this amazing theological journey...
THE WEIRD AND DANGEROUS WORLD OF QUANTUM PHYSICS
Dangerous?
In fact it’s so dangerous a physicist once remarked that telling non-scientists about the weirdness of quantum physics is like giving a child a loaded gun to play with. However, in this article I hope to prove them wrong!
So what is it about quantum physics that makes it so so dangerous?
The problem lies with those quantum particles.
Particles like electrons, protons, gluons, up quarks, and down quarks. Particles that, until you set out to observe them, are impossible to see. So impossible they may as well not exist at all! And, even when you finally do observe them, you can only see where they’ve been!
Confused?
You’re not alone.
Even Nobel Prize winning quantum physicists can’t get their heads around them! Okay, they have weird names and they’re elusive. But then so is Big Foot and the Abominable Snowman. But they’re not particularly dangerous unless you’re in a forest in Oregon or on the slopes of Mount Everest. Whereas everything in the universe is created by these particles! You and I included.
No, these particles are dangerous because they turn our safe and secure notions of reality upside down. For example, these electrons and their pals can exist in two states at the same time.
Yes, you read that right!
These things can exist both as particles and as waves of particles. Which is like saying a billiard ball can also look like a billiard table and that it only becomes one or the other when we observe it. Impossible as that sounds, we can also add that these quantum particles can be in two separate places at the same time. And that two particles can communicate instantaneously no matter how far apart they are.
They could even be at both ends of the universe!
Now I think you’d be forced to admit that even Harry Potter would be hard pressed to do that!
But there’s one thing that’s potentially even more disturbing. That’s the fact that quantum physics seems to show us that reality is in the eye of the beholder. That when conducting an experiment using quantum particles, it’s the experimenter, not the quantum particles, that choose the result!
Weird, right?!
It makes you suspect the universe wasn’t created by God or the Big Bang. Perhaps it’s being created by a bunch of power crazed scientists in their laboratories. Or perhaps all of us are creating it! We certainly have the potential because we’re all composed of quantum particles. If so, unlike those mutants with their X-genes beloved by Marvel Comics, we have even better super powers!
The power to create the universe!
But let’s not get carried away just yet.
So that’s what that physicist meant when he said a loaded gun. Weird stuff like that can lead non-scientists to make all kinds of outrageous assumptions. And those eggheads they’ve got quite enough outrageous assumptions of their own to contend with. It seems that when it comes to making outrageous scientific assumptions about quantum physics, this is a closed shop!
Not to Sciencologists!
A MOST HEARTY WELCOME TO PHANTASMAGORICAL STEAMPUNK DRIVEN SCIENCOLOGY
We Sciencologists say they don’t have a monopoly on weird ideas. And, in doing so, we hope to open your minds to wonders that will take your breath away. Of course, I don’t mean that in a literal sense.
I’m here to educate you, not asphyxiate you!
Sciencology is a religion that combines modern science with Steampunk! A religion that dares to flaunt convention by making itself a religion that’s fun to belong to! A religion based, not on superstition, but one based firmly on logic and reasoning.
Now some of you may be asking yourselves, can logic and reasoning be fun? Mr Spock on Star Trek was full of logic and reasoning. And how many jokes did he crack?
Not many.
But I hope to do better than that.
Within these pages I’ll present you with a choice. In the film, “The Matrix,” the hero was given the choice of taking a red pill or a blue one. The red pill would lift the veil and show him that what seemed to be real was just an illusion. But, if he chose to bottle out, he could take the blue one. Whereupon he’d wake up in bed and blissfully forget everything that happened to him. Sciencology gives you a similar choice.
Sciencology’s red pill is metaphorical. And, unlike the pill Keanu Reeves was offered, mine is considerably larger because some of the things I’ll be telling you will be pretty hard to swallow.
On the other hand there is some good news!
The good news is that if you take my pill you won’t wake up naked inside a high tech pod to discover that you’re hooked up to a giant battery charger. Although some of you may hanker fantasies about that.
So what is this religion I’m offering you?
Sciencology is aimed at men and women who are prepared to open their minds to the mind-bending theories at the cutting edge of modern science. Like the Catholic Jesuits, Sciencologists are missionaries and teachers. And, like them, we have a Holy Trinity. Only ours is Accept Nothing, Believe Nothing and Confirm Everything.
We also make good use of Occam’s Razor.
Philosophers and scientists will know what this is. It’s the intellectual version of your Swiss Knife. Occam’s Razor states that the simplest explanation is the one
most likely to be correct. The simplest explanation being the one that makes the fewest assumptions. And the more complicated and convoluted the explanation is, then the less likely it is to be true. We Sciencologists use Occam’s Razor to detect the presence of potential bullshit.
How ironic that it was a 14th Century Franciscan Frier, William of Ockham, who came up with this principal. And, with his help, Sciencology will make those other religions out there feel the cutting edge of his Razor. To wax lyrical, this is the razor that shaves away the layers of superstition and false logic to reveal the pure bullshit underneath.
For rational people, some of the beliefs found in those other religions are pretty hard to accept. They require, as their clergy are fond of saying, a leap of faith.
Take the Christian doctrine of the Virgin Birth.
Not surprisingly some theologians were worried that rational people might be tempted to question the veracity of this biological aberration. Theologians like Saint Maximillian Kolbe. So to offset any criticism Kolbe pronounced that the Virgin Birth was far too deep and mysterious to explain. As a result he regarded any attempt to explain it to be pointless. This circular argument was clearly an effort to prevent any rational person from considering the irrational aspects of this singularly unique form of childbirth.
Nice try, Kolbe. But no cigar!
We Sciencologists couldn’t take a leap of faith like that. It would be like trying to leap across the Atlantic and land in New York. Which is why I was determined that Sciencology would be based on logic and rational thinking.
I also wanted Sciencology to be open to criticism. You can insult us all you like, but words will never hurt us. This makes Sciencology a very tolerant religion.
Many religious people may feel that Sciencology is questioning their God’s suitability to take on the role of Supreme Being. For this I offer no apology. Their God should not have given us the intelligence to ask these questions. Instead he could have made us gullible enough to accept every word written in their bibles.
I must stress I’m not here to do the work of Richard Dawkins. He doesn’t need my help. Ironically, Richard certainly need God’s help because without the concept of a deity he’d have to employ his obvious talents elsewhere.
A WORD ABOUT OUR NEAREST COMPETITOR
At this point I feel I should mention our nearest competitor in the theological stakes. I refer, of course, to Scientology! People have said that Sciencology sounds similar to Scientology. Are we in any way connected to them? No. The difference between Scien-cology and Scien-tology is more than just one letter.
The basic difference is that we like to think we’re more scientific. For those who don’t know, Scientology is a religion created by the late L. Ron Hubbard. The author of such science fiction pot boilers as “Battlefield Earth” and “Typewriter in the Sky.”
Now some critics may argue that his literary outpourings never quite managed to come to the boil; that they remained, at best, lukewarm. But be warned! I’ve heard that some of Hubbard’s followers can be extremely touchy if you criticise them. Consequently, should you venture to speak ill of them then you may face the threat of litigation.
GEORGE CLOONEY’S WATCH!
The Christians have their Alpha Course which they describe as a series of interactive sessions freely exploring the basics of the Christian faith.
No pressure, they claim.
No follow up.
No charge.
And, you could say, no use to anyone! But I won’t. We’re not scared of the competition. If you’re willing to ignore logic and rational thinking then the Alpha Course is right for you. But we have our own Alpha Course! We call it the Omega Course! The Omega Course for Atheists! Why Omega? Because the information we give you is as accurate as an Omega watch!
And, by a happy coincidence, George Clooney advertises Omega watches! And unlike Tom Cruise, he’s not a Scientologist.
So when you think of our Omega Course, think George Clooney! Perhaps Clooney could advertise the Omega Course? Because Sciencology’s Omega Course is as accurate as the watch on his wrist!
Now what other religion can make a claim like that? Needless to say, atheists regard the Omega Course as nothing more than brainwashing. But that depends on
the sort of brainwashing you’re talking about. For example, what’s wrong with brainwashing if it washes out all the rubbish?
Our Omega Course is a form of brainwashing. But in Sciencology we refer to it as Mental Recycling. Which refers to a process that recycles all the fallacy into fact.
And that is our Battle Cry: become a Sciencologist and help us turn fallacy into fact! My mission is to prove to you that Sciencology can be an attractive theological alternative to a traditional religion.
So, if any of you feel tempted to change your religious beliefs, then you’re only two steps away from salvation.
But not two steps away from heaven. For this is not the salvation of your soul, but the salvation of your intellect!
And your first step is to stop believing in a laid-back deity who only talks to a chosen few and turns a blind eye to suffering. A deity who, his adherents claim, works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform. Ways so mysterious they often contradict the laws of logic and reasoning. A deity who asks you to replace common sense with blind faith.
WHO IS CAPTAIN JACK HAWKSWORTH?
I began my Steampunk career mud wrestling alligators. Not a creature noted for its overly affectionate nature. Had it been a herbivore subsisting on vegetation alone, it would still have proved a handful. Adult alligators are extremely muscular and take quite a bit of effort to subdue them
And those gnashing jaws don’t help matters.
But I’ll start with the tragic tale of my sister. For it was she who inspired me to mud wrestle alligators and become a famous adventurer. Which eventually inspired me to create a brand new religion. This religion called Sciencology!
Prepare yourself for a tale of truly tragic proportions. A tragedy that overshadows any the Greeks ever came up with. In 1983 my mother worked in the research department of a large pharmaceutical firm when she became pregnant. My father, the general manager of a factory that made steam powered mobility scooters, had a cynical view of human nature so, after first establishing to his own satisfaction that no one else could have impregnated my mother, he eventually accepted responsibility.
But instead of this being a joyous occasion for our family, my baby sister was born terribly disabled. In fact, she was born with no arms, legs, body or head. All that emerged from my mother’s pulsating vagina was an eye…
And they didn’t even know if it was the right eye or the left one. But there was something else wrong with her; she was blind. And you may wonder how we knew it was a girl.
It was the eyelashes.
For weeks I was inconsolable. I’d been guilty of sibling jealousy! When my mother became pregnant I’d felt jealous because up to then I’d been an only child. So, after this tragic birth, I was tormented by some dark thoughts. My father tried to make light of it. He joked that if my mother had been a teacher, people would have said she’d given birth to a pupil.
The joke didn’t go down too well.
So what has all this to do with Sciencology? Well, it was during made a trip to Tibet that the seeds of Sciencology were sown. I’d travelled to the Himalayas in the hope of discovering the Abominable Snowman. Ever since learning of this elusive creature I’d longed to wrestle it.
I eventually captured one of these elusive creatures and was asked to perform a demonstration in front of the Dali Llama. Afterwards, over dinner, the Dali Llama managed to soften the pain and guilt that had been eating away at me.
When I told him my story he assured me that my sister would eventually be reincarnated. And, with Buddha’s blessing, she would return to earth with her body intact. You cannot imagine my relief at such good news! Up until then I’d been on a spree of self-destruction! Driven by guilt I was mercilessly pitting myself against the wildest animals I could find. But the Dali Llama’s assurance that my departed sister would be resurrected whole had done the trick. I felt a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
So, on my return from the world of Steampunk I rented a caravan in North Wales and immersed myself in books on science. That’s when I discovered quantum physics. And it was there, in North Wales, the seeds; seeds that sprouted during a dinner at a hotel in Prestatyn.
HOW SOME BEER BATTERED MUSHROOMS GAVE BIRTH TO A RELIGION
My first impulse was to create a religion based on Steampunk science; a science based on those massive steam engines, hissing and throbbing away! Or on those really cool bronze googles! But then I decided to use modern science. The cutting edge of pure science!
It was the brief flirtation with Scientology gave me the idea of the name for my religion. But whilst Scientology was based on someone called Xenu, mine would be based on quantum physics.
Who is Xenu?
For those of you unfamiliar with Scientology, Xenu was an evil alien ruler who decided to bring a lot of other aliens called Thetans to the planet Earth to kill them. And as far asI could gather, Xenu was some sort of galactic dictator who transported billions these Thetans to earth. There he stacked them around volcanoes and killed them with hydrogen bombs.
So it was in North Wales that I gave birth to a religion I hoped would set theology ablaze! And I dared venture that in the not too distant future historians would associate this with the time Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door at Wittenburg.
And it was all due to my sister’s eye.
In fact, I cannot recall a religion that was created out of an eye that could see nothing at all. The Guinness Book of Records makes no mention of such a thing! I also decided that my religion would incorporate humour. Which is a shame. Humour may have lightened the mood. Especially in the Old Testament which is rather dark and could have benefited from some levity. So I ordained that we Sciencologists should be able to laugh at ourselves.
In a positive way, that is.
But there’d be no room for magic thinking. Magic thinking may have given us the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. But we Sciencologists would deal in science. That’s why neither Tolkien or J. K. Rowling have ever been considered for the Nobel Prize in Physics. Although some may argue it would have made it a more entertaining branch of science.
For example, just picture Bilbo Baggins pontificating on the Second Law of Thermodynamics to Gandalf in front of the fire at Bag End. Or Harry Potter figuring
out the problem of Schrodinger’s Cat in the Box whilst engaged in mortal combat with the Death Eaters.
To start with I decided Sciencology would replace the Biblical Genesis with the Big Bang Theory. After all, the story of Adam and Eve and a talking snake selling poisoned apples ran counter to advances in genetics and anthropology. Although not in Snow White.
On the other hand, even the Big Bang is not without flaws. The most fundamental being the question of what happened before the Big Bang. After all, it’s a perfectly rational question to ask. And I also wanted a hypothesis that excluded the presence of a god.
Or a Xenu.
So, as I tucked into my starter which, If I recall, was Beer Battered Mushrooms, I recalled reading that some scientists had speculated there was nothing before the Big Bang. Nothing-to-the-power-of-nothing, as one of them so succinctly put it. I decided that nothing-to-the-power-of-nothing had a nice ring about it. It described an absolute state. Suddenly an intense feeling of excitement came over me! I can only describe it as being like a primitive form of catharsis. Overcome I leaped to my feet and uttered the word…
Eureka!
My cathartic vocal explosion had been the result of learning that the universe may have been created out of nothing – that nothingness had some special power which enabled it to trigger the Big Bang. This was a pretty radical idea. Radical and weird.
As I sat down I wondered if this “something from nothing” was just too weird? As far as I knew there was absolutely nothing in nothing-to-the-power-of-nothing to do anything. In fact I went even further and told myself that you can’t even think about nothing because there’s nothing there to think about!
In the face of this paradox I was tempted to call my version of Genesis, Much Ado About Nothing! But something else occurred to me. At this point I remembered the simple fact that there are two sides to everything. And I realised that the opposite of nothing is something. In other words, if a state of nothingness-to-the-power-of-nothingness exists then so must its opposite. I called it a state of something-to-the-power-of-something.
As I pondered this question, I recalled that Steven Hawking had said time itself was created by the Big Bang. Which begged the question; how long did it take for time to come into existence? And this revealed yet another fascinating paradox!
In the absence of time it must have taken no time at all.
In other words it must have happened instantaneously! And, because it was instantaneous, we could argue that time has always existed.
Doubts began to creep in. Was this was just semantics? Was I merely playing with words?
Yet this sounded perfect for Sciencology’s version of Genesis! In fact, it was precisely the simplicity that Sciencology needed. It was certainly far simpler than the convoluted version of Genesis one finds in the Bible.
HOW THE SEARCH FOR AN EXOTIC CREATURE LED TO MORE RED PILL WEIRDNESS!
That night as I lay on my bed I recalled one of my many Steampunk adventures
The red pill weirdness I’m about to relate occurred when I was peppered by poison darts. it was my fault. Had I not urinated on their deity they’d probably have left me alone. But I’d been taken short and the object they venerated was so badly carved I mistook it for the trunk of a tree. Had the sculptor possessed more artistic talents this would never have happened. And, when I heard them shouting, I made my back to the river bank.
I was in no great hurry. The natives were pygmies and they were only three foot high. I could see that they were about 50 yards away from me, so I naturally assumed their darts would only have a short range. As a result I strolled rather than ran. Unfortunately I’d made a tactical error. It turned out these fellows were quite nippy and soon reduced the distance between us. Suddenly I was struck by their darts! I would have been dead, but luck was on my side. During my Steampunk adventures I’d dabbled extensively with almost all the known psychotropic substances, both natural and man made. So the poison merely rendered me unconscious. And, when I awoke, I found myself the guest of honour at a tremendous feast!



Seeing my brass goggles and my steam powered false prosthetic left arm, the tribe had mistook me for a god! A go
impunity! The tribe were called the Tupparwera’s and, using my linguistic skills, I soon learned their language. It was one of the simplest languages I’d ever come across and consisted of a combination of easy-to-read hand signals and bird calls. On the other hand they’d also devised quite a sophisticated system of mathematics.
Talking to them I discovered that these primitive people believed that dream images were real! That they had a physical nature!
Back in Wales I recalled this episode and it brought to mind one of my most obscene dreams. The next morning there was so much dried semen on my duvet that the Fire Brigade would have needed their cutting equipment to free me. And what was this erotic dream? It involved an orgy at the Vatican. But this was no ordinary orgy. It was an orgy of gargantuan proportions beyond the twisted imagination of Beelzebub himself! It was an orgy involving an impressive cast of mentally and physically deformed creatures.
Alas, I cannot go into any great details. Suffice it to say that there were three cardinals, one with severe psoriasis, a hermaphrodite cross-eyed nun with a stammer, a 50 stone Egyptian transvestite with a colostomy bag, nine gay midgets, a troop of semi-naked boy scouts carrying buckets of steaming, freshly laid, faeces, a drunken amputee with a wart on his penis, a lame donkey, six geese and Lady GaGa. And, complete this perverted menagerie, a supporting cast of choirboys and orphans from a Catholic children’s home.
Now people would agree that dreams have no physical reality. And that this dream was merely a figment of my morally corrupt and fertile imagination. Because if dreams did have a physical reality then this would constitute yet another example of red pill weirdness.
So I asked myself, just imagine those natives were right and those grotesque and warped creatures in my dream did have a physical reality. They would have as size, weight, mass, volume, and density! So how tall would those three cardinals of mine have been? Did that Egyptian transvestite with a colostomy bag really weight 50 stone? And if so, how did these physical images fit inside my brain? Because that’s where they were supposed to come from.
There’s just one problem. The brain.
We’re talking about an organ that’s packed tight with tissue, nerves and blood vessels. At least mine is. So if I dream about a house then it can’t be the same size as the one I’m sleeping in. Otherwise my head would explode.
Not a pretty sight! The same would apply if it was a 50 stone Egyptian transvestite with the colostomy bag. Bang! Think of the mess! I’d have had to redecorate the bedroom.
Fans of Shades of Grey may argue it could be fun to make love in a room covered in bodily parts and fluids. But you can see the problem. And we’re not just talking about dreams! We know that mental illness, drugs or alcohol can produce hallucinations. And, like dreams, they also seem to appear inside our brains.
Which, when you think about it, is a blessing. Just imagine if my dream about the Vatican orgy was projected outside my head where everyone could see it! This would no doubt have resulted in legal action.
The next question I asked myself was how can I see these images inside my brain? Do my eyes swivel round 360 degrees? Or do I have a CCTV camera in there? And, even if I did, how can it penetrate that grey matter? And where would the light source be coming from?
At this point I found myself sympathizing with Neo in the Matrix who felt there was something not quite right about the world. Which is precisely what scientists feel when they study quantum physics. In fact one physicist has been reported to tell students to leave their common sense ideas about reality outside the door.
So I came up with a hypothesis that the images we see in dreams and hallucinations are electronic signals. Ask any technician who uses an electroencephalograph machine and they’ll tell you the brain is filled with electrical activity. So these images in dreams and hallucinations could, theoretically, be similar to the signals used to transmit the images we see on our television screens. Being electronic signals they’re classed as physical objects; which means they can be measured. So they could be small enough to fit inside our brain.
As for seeing them? For that we need consciousness!
GROUND CONTROL TO MAJOR TOM!
I then considered the possibility of gaining some converts from our nearest competitor. Specifically someone called Tom Cruise!
Tom, as we know, is a devoted fan of Hubbard.
Now Ron L. Hubbard decided he’d take a rest from writing science fiction potboilers to create a religion. Why? Could it have been because he saw the financial advantages in creating one?
After all, religion can be a profitable gravy train. And Old Hubbard decided that his religion would marry his brand of science fiction with spiritualism. With the promise it might attract some celebrities with fat wallets. But was it a marriage made in heaven?
Well, it was certainly set up there in the stars with old Xenu.
So what about Sciencology? I’d like to think that my religion may get us some converts from Hubbard’s lot. Converts like Tom Cruise. He could wear an Omega watch and join forces with Clooney.
And what about those who worship a deity
Well, the good news is that my religion also has an immortal entity watching over us! An entity that has the potential to solve our problems. The only downside is that Sciencology’s Immortal Deity is not very intelligent. In fact our Immortal Deity only understands two things. And you need a bit more than that to get into MENSA. Which brings us neatly to our next subject…
IS SCIENCOLOGY’S GOD A COMPUTER?
I detected there may be a connection with computers when I read that Pixar Studios had developed graphics programs using mathematics and algorithms to create the physics of the real world. So much so, that they claimed they were close to recreating the entire complexity of the world around us.
Memories of the film “The Matrix” arose.
Perhaps Sciencology should consider recruiting Keanu Reeves! Clooney, Cruise and Reeves – all wearing Omega watches!
Once again this weirdness threatened to be the straw that broke my mind. I’d read books and magazines on science and computers; I’d watched documentaries about the wonders of the universe. Reports that showed particles can communicate from both ends of the universe; reports that suggested particles could travel into the future; that at the fuzzy quantum level time didn’t exist and that the so-called “reality”
we see around us might be a two-dimensional image projected from the universe’s even horizon.
These weren’t from Hogwarts Academy. No, these were from the top laboratories and universities across the globe!
And I was floundering again!
In my despondency I began, once again, to lose faith in Sciencology. Whereas at first the counter-intuitive nature of quantum physics had seemed so appealing, it now appeared to be an insurmountable barrier. I needed to find an alternative hypothesis.
That night as I sat in my caravan nursing a glass of wine, I began to wonder if Darwin’s evolution operated in a cycle. Right now the human race had reached evolutionary zenith and there wasn’t anywhere else to go. So our body hair will start to increase and our features will change. Once again we’ll become apes. The process will continue as we slowly return to whence we came – the sea. From humans back to haddocks. Or cod knows what.
I had to admit it had some small merit. Have you ever wondered why the beach is so popular? Why do people want to go into the sea? Is it just recreational? Or the pull of evolution?
Perhaps it was the seaside that fueled my latest speculation. Fortunately this evolutionary monstrosity was short lived. Whilst surfing Google, the philosopher Nick Bostrom came to my rescue. It was he who suggested we could all be living in a computer simulation run by a technologically advanced human race in the future. According to Bostrom these computers are running anthropological simulations showing how their ancestors lived! Needless to say these ancestors include us. So, whilst our real selves have long since died, we’re now just virtual clones reliving our past lives. This was just the sort of red pill weirdness Sciencology needed!
This computer Bostrom was talking about is powerful enough to recreate the complexity of the real worlds we once lived in. And there happens to be just such a potential computer! But more about that later.
Meanwhile Bostrom’s hypothesis had restored my sanity and gave me the incentive to continue my search for the meaning of Sciencology. So it’s time to unveil the astounding conclusions that lie at the core of this religion of mine! They came to me
when I began to think about the nature of what we call the “conscious mind.” Regarded by science as the “Hard Problem.”
IT’S ALL IN THE MIND
There seemed nothing hard about one aspect of consciousness. In fact it appeared to be self-evident and required no proof whatsoever. It was the simple fact that the universe and everything in it would not exist without a conscious awareness of its existence.
So far, so good. But there was a glitch.
The glitch is the prevailing opinion that the universe existed before consciousness. And there was plenty of hard evidence to back that up. Then I realised that it begged the question that the only reason I know the universe existed before consciousness appeared is because I’m consciously aware of it. Indeed, I’d discovered the inescapable fact that consciousness is the only reason I or the universe around me exist!
Of course, my conscious mind can easily imagine a universe where there were no conscious minds; in fact, I could be greedy and imagine an infinite number of universes where there are no conscious minds.
But they’d only exist in my consciousness.
Which led me to another obvious conclusion.
To observe this or any universe I needed language and mathematics.
Which depends entirely on…
That’s right, you’ve guessed it!
Without consciousness there’d be no such things as thoughts. There’d be no existence, no past, present or future.
And this next thought really blew my mind...
There wouldn’t be such a concept as “nothingness.” Nothingness would cease to exist!
That has to be the paradox of all paradoxes!
But I wasn’t finished yet. Returning from a morning stroll I realised there was another element in the calculation.
Time.
TIME WAITS FOR NO MAN
It’s calculated that it may have taken at least 3.77 billion years before life appeared on this planet.
Or did it?
I decided that, like everything else, the awareness of time had to be part of consciousness. So I concluded that before consciousness there couldn’t have been any.
So I rephrased the question. how long did it take for conscious life to appear The answer I came up with was that consciously it took no time at all.
As far as I was concerned conscious life has always existed! But only in a conscious way!
Without consciousness time doesn’t exist!
I looked for a suitable analogy and thought of someone who’d just emerged from a deep coma. To them no time at all would have passed between going into the coma and coming out of it.
So I decided Sciencology would liken the time before the universe appeared as a deep coma and the time when conscious life became aware of its existence, as the end of the coma.
As Sherlock Holmes would have said, ‘The analogy is perfect!’
Although this seemed obvious, it felt as though it was getting a bit heavy, so I amused myself by considering what this could do to those religions that relied on the existence of a deity.
Even devout Christians would have to concede that a conscious mind comes before there’s an awareness of God. In which case Sciencology would argue that conscious minds created God, and not the other way round. But there’s even worse news for God. These are human conscious minds.
Without humans there’d just be the beasts of the field, the birds of the air and the fishes of the sea. All of them blissfully unaware of their creator’s existence! Oh, dear! It certainly looks like God had to create us in order to exist!
So who really is running this show?
SCIENCOLOGY’S ALTERNATIVE GENESIS
That night I had formulated Sciencology’s Absolute Bottom Line; our Genesis. The Genesis that states that in the beginning there was consciousness and before that
there wasn’t even nothingness. It takes the Holy Bible 30,046 words to describe their version of Genesis!
Whereas Sciencology can do it using only 13 words! 30,033 words less! Like I said, Sciencology is the economical religion!
A FEW THOUGHTS ON THE NATURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
The next morning I contemplated the nature of consciousness?
As one is wont to do at the seaside.
Does it have physical properties? And, if it has physical properties, what are they? What shape is it? Is consciousness square, round, oblong? How heavy is it? If it has weight then we should be able to weight it. But, like the elusive soul, so far no one has managed to do that.
And let’s not forget you’d need consciousness before you can weight it. You need consciousness before you can do anything. That’s how important it is. Without it we can do nothing.
I then considered it might be non-physical. Perhaps it’s a purely abstract concept. But even then there’s a problem: if it’s non-physical what separates my conscious mind from yours? A non-physical barrier is a contradiction in terms.
Now you can see why consciousness is considered by some to be the hard problem.
And why I became obsessed with it!
I realised that before Sciencology I’d need to make sure Occam’s Razor was good and sharp/
I MEET SCIENCOLOGY’S FAVOURITE PROFESSOR
My holiday was almost coming to an end and the sea air had clearly stimulated my meagre intellectual powers. I was on the home run. But first I needed to refresh my memory on the nature of computers.
Computers work on the binary system. Binary meaning 2. They only understand two things. 1 or 0, On or Off. Forest Gump is Einstein on steroids compared to that lump of plastic on your lap or on your desk. Geeks would know immediately what this was...
“01000001.”
It’s a program telling your computer to print the letter “A” on your screen. The program, called “machine code,” is the only instruction your computer understands. Here’s the word “Aardvark” in machine code...
0110000101100001011100100110010001110110011000010111001001100100
So you can imagine what the entire text of the Bible would look like in machine code (fortunately Sciencology’s bible is considerably shorter, but still presents you with quite an eyeful).
Reading a machine code program containing millions, if not billions of these things, has been known to make strong men weep.
Now for the book.
It was called “Programming the Universe” and was written by a man called Seth Lloyd. A man with a pretty impressive CV. This man is a professor of Quantum Mechanics at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology and was the first person to develop a model for quantum computing.
Ron L. Hubbard may be good at writing science fiction potboilers and Scientology fan Tom Cruise may be great in Mission Impossible, but I suspect either individual would be out of their depth with Seth Lloyd.
A “BIT” HERE AND A “BIT” THERE
In his book Lloyd told me that the universe is a physical system. The universe certainly contains physical elements, so he’s right there. And these physical elements are made up of “bits. In other words, the universe contains “bits” of molecules, atoms, and particles (to computer geeks a “bit” is the smallest data in a computer with a value of either 1 or 0). And each of those “bits” interacts with another and this interaction alters those “bits.”
Which is precisely what happens in your computer.
“Bits” of data interact and the result appears on the screen of your monitor. Therefore the universe itself it could be simulated by a computer.
But I didn’t get too excited. I knew computers get more powerful with each new version. But Lloyd makes the point that to simulate a few hundred atoms from the universe for a fraction of a second on your PC or Mac would take more memory than there are atoms in the universe.
And would take longer then the current age of the universe.
So Pixar Studios have quite a long way to go. That’s if they’re using conventional computers. Because Lloyd’s dream computer is the same size as the universe which, conveniently, just happens to be controlled by quantum mechanics. So Seth Lloyd came to the conclusion that the universe is indistinguishable from a quantum computer! And, instead of using an electric current like my computer uses, the quantum computer uses quantum fluctuations (said to be a temporary charge in the amount of energy in a given point in space) to represent the binary On/Off sequences.
It sounded red-pill weird and, try as I might, I couldn’t fault Lloy’d’s logic. So I wondered what would be so special about this universe sized quantum computer?
THE ULTIMATE COMPUTER
Super-powerful computers have been the stuff of dreams for science fiction writers. I’m sure old Hubbard must have come up with one. There’s that book where the hero keeps hearing the sound of a typewriter in the sky. Was Hubbard’s super computer a gigantic Olivetti floating in outer space? Douglas Adams gave us a more traditional version with his “Deep Thought.” And what about Arthur C. Clarks’s “Hal” who raised havoc aboard “Discovery One” as it head out towards Jupiter.
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