Tall Tales & Short Stories

Tree of Life (finally finished!)

2011-04-07T17:21:00.000-07:00

WHEW! What a process! But here it is, finished at last!

Author’s note: While camping over Labor Day with a group of friends, sitting around the campfire and watching autumn leaves cascade down off the trees in a shower of golden hues I was struck by the thought that every leaf represented a minute of warm weather which was rapidly coming to an end. When the leaves were all gone, so too would be summer. And THEN I thought...

He awoke far too early with the dread certain feeling that something was wrong. Somewhere, somehow things weren’t as they were supposed to be.

He wasn’t surprised at the feeling – he had been anticipating it, and after his morning shower and cup of decaf, walked over to the living room window to look across the street. He was in no hurry to take in this particular view, he had a pretty good idea what he was going to see, a vista that had been a long time coming.

But knowing the inevitable wasn’t the same as living it, and he was still deeply saddened to see the Tree in front of his neighbor’s house had finally shed its last withered leaf. Even at this early hour, friends and relatives were gathering for the final task, sorting through the fallen leaves and beginning to prune the dead branches. He knew he would have to join them soon (he was honorary custodian of the block’s chain saw, after all) but he didn’t relish the thought. He’d been quite close to the old widow across the street, who’d been a surrogate grandmother to his kids as they grew up and wasn’t looking forward to the evening’s bonfire, which was always a bittersweet event. No doubt, this would be a big fire. The woman had lived her whole, long life in the same house, so she (and, of course) her Tree had never weathered the stress of transplantation. In its prime, its canopy would block out the sun and throw a welcome pool of cool shade over her lawn and half the street.

He looked sadly at his own Tree, standing forlornly by itself in his yard, no longer accompanied by his wife’s (long gone) or his childrens’ (one married, one in college in Idaho – easier to move your Tree when you were young and it was still a sapling – so much harder as you grew older and your roots grew deeper), and he was so preoccupied with current events that he didn’t notice the change that had taken place in his yard.

Deep breath. He walked out to his garage, picked up the saw and proceeded across the street. Leaf sorting was going to take awhile, the old lady had been one who just let the leaves fall and accumulate on the ground, something he couldn’t understand. He had always kept his yard neat, picking up and cataloguing his foliage as it fell. But not her, and now the task fell to her heirs, a daunting task given the years of accumulation – still a foot deep even though many leaves had blown away and were lost forever. But they’d made a good start of it, and had the customary two piles, one quite large (the everyday events) and another much, much smaller (the truly significant moments). He selected a random leaf from the second pile and inspected the image on its surface, pleased to see that it was one he remembered; her daughter’s first piano recital. He’d been there, oh, so many years ago, and smiled as a melodic snatch of Claire de Lune wafted through his memory. A second leaf sported a scene he was unfamiliar with, some sort of family picnic from the looks of it, but on the third he found his son’s childhood likeness, dressed in Halloween hobo garb and on the receiving end of an enormous popcorn ball from the (much younger–weren’t we all) woman. “Keep it,” said the lady’s son, knowing he’d have to consign the vast majority of her leaves to the fire. As the nursery rhyme said, “Leaves will fall, can’t keep ’em all.”

The Trees were a blessing, and a curse. So nice to see the vibrant springtime green of the young couple down the block’s Trees, and know there were years stretching out ahead them, still nice to see his friend’s Tree in its Autumn gold glory – he’d earned those brilliantly colored leaves one day at a time, and the Tree still clung to the majority of them. Harder to see the withered and gnarled, sparsely covered branches of the old man’s Tree three doors down. He’d be joining the neighbor woman soon. Cancer. Root rot. Call it what you will. Even harder still to see the freshly cut stump of the teenage girl killed a month ago in a car accident. Nobody knew of the tragedy until her father came out to pick up his morning paper and found her Tree, stripped clean of its leaves overnight and standing skeletally bare against the gray morning sky. No one should have to see that. No one.

Yes, a blessing, and a curse.

He pulled the cord and the chain saw roared to life, a throaty growl that sent a primal shiver of fear down the backs of everyone who heard it. The sound of a saw never meant good news.

Hours later a neatly stacked cord of wood stood in the place the tree had occupied for so many years, the everyday leaves piled deeply around its base. Community and family gathered around in a circle as the woman’s body was carried out and placed gently on top. The funerary torch was lit and touched to the leaves which ignited with a whoosh and soon the night was chased away by a fiery blaze that swirled into the sky, dancing embers mixing with the stars in a crackling display of celestial fireworks. Later, when the fire had died down enough to allow a closer approach, he tossed a leaf from his own Tree onto the coals, his favorite part of the ceremony. Fittingly enough, the image imprinted on its surface was of the old woman standing in her doorway clutching her shawl, waving goodbye. It flared briefly to life and then was gone in a swirl of ash – so fitting.

That night, on his way home, he stopped to pick up the fallen leaves under his Tree – not unusual – mature Trees have a limited amount of leaves, just as the human brain has a limited capacity for data storage. Old growth is constantly shed to make room for new memory-leaves and he diligently sorted the rejects into their two-category bins. Odd, he thought, that there would be so many, a good double-handful, but he was too tired after the day’s events to give it much thought and wearily went to bed.

––•––

The next morning, as golden sunlight filtered through the Tree and cast a dappled pattern of light on his wall, he struggled to consciousness through blinding waves of a pounding headache. No ordinary migraine this, he thought while rubbing his temples and the feeling that something wasn’t right reasserted itself, hell, stood up and punched him in the gut with a force that took his breath away.

SOMETHING’S WRONG.

He cautiously sat up in bed, drawing slow, even breaths and willing his world to stop spinning, forcing the dizziness into a room in the back of his mind and then locking the door – a biofeedback trick he had learned long ago. It worked, at least enough to allow him to stay vertical, and he shuffled to the bathroom and took a long, hot shower. That helped too, and he nearly felt normal as he opened the door to fetch the morning newspaper before feasting on a large bowl of raisin bran.

Rising from the stoop, paper in hand, he almost turned and reentered the house when something caught his eye. A little flicker that scratched at the corner of his consciousness. More leaves lay on the ground beneath the Tree. That really shouldn’t be. And then he saw it.

A branch – a small one, thank god – had been neatly severed and spirited away during the night. No. Not one - TWO. The familiar outline of the Tree’s canopy had been irrevocably, deliberately altered, an almost unthinkable offense. No sane person would maim their, or anyone else’s Tree like that! Cutting off branches meant cutting out a piece of life, and was considered a deliberate, possibly deadly assault. For, just as the Trees reflected an illness in their person, the connection ran the other way as well. A branch torn away in a thunderstorm could mean paralysis in an arm, a trunk split by lightning – a heart attack or worse. And fire. Well, it was best not to think about fire. All in all, if you wanted to live a long life, it was wise to keep your Tree well watered and have the Arborist out a few times a year to check for fungus.

But there were always the psychopaths, thankfully rare but garnering a disproportionate share of time on the 10pm news hours (not really “hours” any more are they?) The bark harvesters. The mad carvers and sap-sucking, axe-wielding weirdos that made for good horror-flick plots. And the truly scary thing was the thing that nobody other than the black-dressed Goth fans of Marilyn Manson wanted to think about.

There really are those people. Out there. At night.

Carrying bright metal saws that flash in the moonlight and slice wood like a hot knife through butter.

––•––

The Reporter sat behind the wheel of her car watching the entrance to a small brownstone with mild interest. Stakeouts were the Wonder Bread of her job - plain and boring with just a hint of taste, but impossible to make a sandwich without. And this was looking to be one big ol’ Dagwood sandwich of a story – corruption, bribery and maybe a dash of extortion thrown in for good measure. Its the kind of thing that got you noticed down at the City Desk, the kind of thing Pulitzer dreams are made of.

If you could deal with the hours of stultifying boredom.

Sooner or later the bribe-taking councilman would come out and when he did, she would follow at a discreet distance. The story was almost finished, but she still needed to fit a few more pieces into the puzzle before it could run. Above, a hawk perched observantly on a light pole scanning the ground for signs of movement. A dog barked, a train whistle blew. The woman and the hawk took it all in.

Punctuating the tedium, a single sheet of paper flitted across the deserted street. She half expected to see a tumbleweed roll along behind it completing the gray, deserted cityscape - a scene that could easily have inspired Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks” painting of a desolate diner.

Then, as if to answer her wishes, a gray Toyota pickup pulled up, parked and disgorged a small, bearish man wearing a second-hand trench coat and coke-bottle glasses who turned and shambled down the sidewalk. Every so often he would stop to inspect the plants growing in the boulevard and seemed to be taking an inordinate amount of interest in the Trees.

Not unusual, a lot of people liked to keep tabs on their neighbors’ health and activities, and the Trees, after all, were an open book of current and past events. Made interesting reading for the neighborhood busybodies. The leafy life records made it hard for kids to get away with the usual teenage activities, and made it equally difficult for the average person to commit anti-social or illegal activities. Made you think twice when you knew that an image of you losing your virginity would soon be featured for all to see in leafy glory on your Tree (and the embarrassing stuff always seemed to appear on the low-hanging, easily viewed branches.) The more hardened criminals just snipped the tell-tale leaves off, but they paid the price for such regular self-mutilation in pain and suffering – usually a deterrent, but for a certain masochistic set, a perverse incentive (the S&M crowd even hosted trimming parties, and called each other “snippers.”)

Still, the Reporter’s mild interest turned to shock when the man stopped at a honey locust in front of the councilman’s brownstone, glanced furtively from side to side and reached into his coat pocket. He produced a small pair of pruning shears, glanced around a second time, and proceeded to clip off a small twig – inserting its freshly cut end into a glass vial and returning shears and branchlet to his pocket. It was one thing to read about such things in the local counterculture rags, but another to actually witness such a mutilation.

The Reporter shook her head, unable to process the crime she had just witnessed, and was so overcome with disbelief she almost missed seeing the man bumble over and enter the door to the building’s lobby.

“That didn’t really happen,” she thought to herself, but her investigative instincts kicked in and she had the presence of mind to jot down the license number of the hobbling man’s vehicle.

––•––

“We have a problem,” the Pruner began, “that idiot down in Planning refuses to budge on the Tree allotment specs. My clients grow more displeased by the hour.”

“I don’t know what you expect me to do,” the Councilman replied, “Planning is entirely out of my purview. And even if it wasn’t, the Council will never grant a code variance to allow a development with such a small footprint allotted for the Tree garden. It would be political suicide. I’ve told you that before.”

“I refuse to believe that. I’ve shown you the studies.”

“Bullshit. Anyone can twist the science to show results they want. You just can’t plant Trees that closely together and expect them to thrive. Can’t be done. They need space and light, and your clients’ plan allows for neither. You can’t sacrifice peoples’ health just because a crowded garden puts more money in your pocket.”

“We’ve had this discussion before,” he said, “Health is a relative thing. And need I remind you that your cut comes out of that profit, the size of which is not yours to decide? You’re just not applying pressure in the proper manner.” And with that, he reached into his pocket and pulled out twig he had acquired earlier. “You’d be amazed at how peoples’ attitudes can change with the proper amount of persuasion.” He then produced a glass jar filled with clear liquid and carefully unscrewed the top. “Hydrochloric acid.” He grinned, and plunged the leaves into the jar.

“What the fuck!” the Councilman screamed and fell to the floor writhing in pain, angry red blisters erupting on his face.

“Weakling,” the Pruner hissed, “I’ll continue to handle the Planner myself. Pray that I succeed, and start calling in whatever favors you can on the Council.”

He placed the bubbling jar of withered leaves on the floor by the moaning man’s head, stepped over his body and walked out the door, chuckling.

––•––

After he had a chance to process the shock of seeing his mutilated tree, the man turned and stumbled back into his house. He stopped by the bathroom, and gulped a handful of Tylenol - the headache was going to be a bad one, but he knew as his Tree healed it would ease. He fumbled the container of capsules and dropped it, one hand barely functioning, his fingers oddly stiff and unresponsive.

Branch damage. Nerve damage.

The bastard had actually meant it, he thought and struggled to recall the anonymous phone call he’d received three days prior. Something about pushing plans through without a proper study...a development on the east end...

Then it all came back, “Play ball or else,” the caller had hissed. But for crying out loud, he was middle management. He couldn’t push a mailbox variance through Planning let alone an unorthodox project of that size and scope.

“Fucking idiot!” the Planner growled and walked into the garage, where he procured a can of fungicide from a shelf, opened the door and walked out to begin the process of healing his wounded Ash.

The Reporter watched as the odd little shuffling man emerged from the Councilman’s brownstone and immediately decided to abandon her stakeout in favor of this new and tantalizingly dangerous story. A Tree mutilator! She followed him across town to a run-down warehouse in an all but abandoned industrial park, where he exited his car and entered the building. She crossed the parking lot, sticking to the shadows looking for an opportunity to learn more. The building was in disrepair, and while none of the windows were broken, they were so covered with dust that she couldn’t see through. The woman ruefully eyed a rusty fire escape ladder that led to the roof, considered her options for a moment, and sighed. “In for a penny, in for a pound,” she told herself, and began to climb.

The ladder creaked and groaned in complaint, wobbling loosely as she ascended, loosened bits of brick and mortar raining down on her head. Ten feet from the top, the middle section of the ladder pulled free from the building with a rusty shriek and swung precariously below her feet. But she was able to scale the remaining distance and gain the rooftop just as the last anchor bolt let go and sent everything crashing to the ground.

Hearing the commotion, The Pruner looked curiously out a window, but seeing nothing returned to his task. The building was old and odd noises, clanking pipes or the occasional rat were par for the course. The entire top floor of the building was filled with Trees in large ceramic pots, each with a dangling tag that identified its rightful owner. The man walked from Tree to Tree with a large watering can, allowing each enough moisture to sustain it, but not promote growth. He wanted them (and their inter-connected owners) alive, but weakened. Occasionally he would stop and snip off a small twig – Tree and owner being in need of a reminder of just who controlled their destiny.

It was quite a profitable undertaking, each plant representing a monthly ransom payment deposited to an offshore account that changed on a bimonthly basis. As he walked, he hummed a tune in a minor key, and because human beings rarely look above their eye level, he was oblivious to the Reporter watching his every move through the skylight above.

The significance of the Trees had yet to dawn on her, although she was beginning to have suspicions. Third floor warehouse lofts weren’t the normal place for horticulturists to raise their crops, but it wasn’t unheard of either. Plenty of greenhouses were filled with ordinary trees and shrubs – not every plant in the world was connected to a corresponding human. It was a special calling.

And some people put their Trees in special nurseries if time, travel or other happenstance prevented them from caring for their own. There was a whole surrogate industry of Tree care for those who just couldn’t be bothered with the day-to-day burden of maintenance. And although most people still wanted the connection, the intimacy of caring for their Tree – the comforting ritual of filing the fallen leaves, more and more were abandoning the duty to paid minions, too busy in their interconnected, electronic world to care for another living thing, which in reality, meant too busy to care for themselves.

Hauling water to the Trees was hard work, and soon the overheated Pruner removed his shirt, draping it over a nearby branch. From her vantage point above, the incredulous Reporter gasped at what she saw. The man’s body was covered with protruding bumps and lumps, but even more horrifying were the bits and pieces of anatomy growing out at odd angles from his skin. Near his waist, a partially formed hand protruded, fingers writhing, constantly grasping at the air. Near his left shoulder, a distorted mouth struggled to form words, its broken and misshapen teeth chattering and grinding in a most sickening way. Scattered about his chest and stomach were several ears, and on his right bicep a yellowed and sclerous eye blinked and rolled blindly from side to side, tears running down his forearm. The man scratched absentmindedly at a red welt on his neck where a new part squirmed as it struggled to emerge, then reached in his pocket and produced a clipper with which he began to trim the nails of three toes wiggling on his right shoulder.

“All part of the process” the Pruner thought, unperturbed, as he stood at last before his own Tree, the only healthy and well-watered one in the building. “Healthy” was a relative term, the tree was a mishmash of grafted branches from a variety of different Trees the man was holding captive. He could feel the power as he added each new addition, here a small branch from the Banker’s Tree, there a twig from the sniveling little Accountant who lived above the neighborhood bar and was forced to cook his books.

As he carefully studied the numerous grafts, it slowly began to dawn on the Reporter that the man’s deformities were directly tied to the foreign additions to his Tree. What she didn’t know, was that the grafted bits and pieces gave the Pruner an intimate knowledge of his victims, more effective in some cases than others, depending on which part of the anatomy the branch identified with. His growing number of miscellaneous body additions were painful, aching necessities, well worth the power he gained. They gave him insight into people’s lives, he could almost read their minds as they became part of him, and through their ransomed Trees’ grafts, be controlled by him. He could see through their eyes, hear snatches of their conversations, feel their pain and joy. Taste their food and dream their dreams.

But what he didn’t realize was that the new parts were beginning to get the upper hand, clamoring ever more loudly for space in his brain, dozens of voices screaming in agony.

And it was slowing driving him insane.

––•––

As the Planner finished bandaging the ragged stumps of his missing branches he thought back through the last few months, searching for someone who might bear him ill will. One of his many abilities that enabled him to be a good planner was his nearly photographic memory. He could remember in detail waitress names from every restaurant he’d ever visited, his grade school report cards and the faces of every person he’d ever met at a party. As he turned the pages in his brain, flipping back day by day, a flood of images popped up. The old lady with a flowered print dress buying cantaloupes at the grocery store...she’d stormed off in a snit after he had selected the melon she apparently wanted, but he doubted she was his assailant. Teenagers at the gas station. The bass on their CD player was so loud the lenses in his sunglasses vibrated. Safe to rule them out as well, they were being obnoxious mainly because it was in their “teenager” job description.

Ah, but what’s this? A gray Toyota pickup parked across the street from his house, and the odd-looking operator behind the wheel who seemed to be paying an inordinate amount of interest to his Tree. He hadn’t thought twice about it at the time, but recent events threw up a red flag.

And then, suddenly, as he reflected on his memories an image flashed into his mind. Clear as day, he saw the warehouse followed by a crystal-clear vision of the Tree-filled third floor. He was overcome by an accompanying black cloud of rage - the emotion communicated so strongly it made him reel. He heard a chorus of babbling voices crying out in confusion and despair. The cacophony triggered a rotoscope of rapidly shifting scenes - workers paving a street, a dinner spread on a table, a cat sleeping peacefully on a lap, his own living room. Although he couldn’t know, he was seeing through the eyes of victims channeled by their common link, the Pruner’s multi-grafted Tree.

And then, just as suddenly as it came, the vision was gone, leaving the man on his knees, dizzy and overwhelmed.

“I’ve seen that warehouse before,” the Planner panted. He crawled over to his drafting room table where the latest requests for development lay spread for review. In a manila envelope containing the paperwork for the project with the inadequate Tree Garden he found an 8” x 10” glossy aerial photo of the property site. The warehouse stood front and center.

I’ve got you now, my friend,” he grinned and walked out the door.

––•––

On the warehouse rooftop the Reporter was searching for a way down, cursing the rusted ladder that had marooned her. She walked the perimeter, but finding no escape returned to her vigil at the skylight.

In the room below the misshapen man was pasting fallen leaves from his Tree into a large scrapbook while making meticulous notes by each. He continued this task for forty minutes, closed the book and placed it on a shelf lined with a dozen similar books. He then donned a jacket, made a cursory inspection of his surroundings and left, locking the door behind him.

The Reporter tried her cell phone again. No luck; the warehouse’s desolate location was miles away from the nearest cell tower. She then noticed a coil of electrical wire propped up next to an exhaust vent – probably left over from some forgotten construction project. The woman sat and pondered the wire for a moment, then walked over to the half-wall surrounding the rooftop. The building was in a sad state of disrepair and she soon found a loose brick which she was able to pry free with a minimum amount of effort. Returning to the skylight, she tossed it through one of the large panes of glass and then carefully cleaned the jagged edges and loose shards away from the edges. Looping the electrical wire around a protruding vent, she twisted the loose end of the wire around itself several times, pulling on it to make sure it was secure. She then dropped the remaining coil of wire through the broken window where it spiralled down to the floor below. The Reporter wrapped the wire around her back and up through her legs then cautiously backed up to the skylight and dropped through. The wire was much stiffer than a rappelling rope, which slowed her descent enough that she was able to make it down with little more than mild friction burns on her hands.

She had landed near the Pruners’ Tree and spent a few minutes inspecting the scenes on its leaves – childhood images that were quite normal, images from his later life that decidedly weren’t. She then turned her attention to the scrapbooks the man had been working on, and was soon engrossed in what she found documented there. Life Leaves and newspaper clippings along with meticulous paragraphs of handwritten notes told his tragic story.

Years earlier, he had been married to a lovely young lady – she of the golden hair and Mona Lisa smile – and he himself was quite the dashing young man. The Reporter had a bit of trouble reconciling the pictures with the twisted lump he had become, but there was no doubt it was the same fellow she had just been spying on. Here was an article with photos of their wedding, there were honeymoon leaves, weathered but still legible – the two of them at the Grand Canyon. A few years later in the desert surrounded by Saguaros. Dinner with friends.

The man was a brilliant botanist, showered with accolades from his peers. The two of them had been madly in love, so the Reporter had been only mildly surprised to read that he had intertwined his and his new wife’s Trees, grafting them together in an ultimate symbol of twisted togetherness and shared destiny. Soon they discovered they were sharing each other’s emotions, and as time passed, even each other’s thoughts. The Reporter didn’t think she could bear such a continuous union, but from the man’s writing he, at least, seemed deliriously happy.

Then, five years into their marriage, and halfway through the third scrapbook, disaster struck. Newspaper clippings documented her death by drowning, an accidental fall from a hiking trail to the fast water of a river below. The man had felt her terror as she slipped beneath the water.

His psychological damage and emotional devastation were compounded by the fact that their Trees had grown so closely together. And though the Tree surgeons had acted quickly lest her dying Tree would kill his as well, the operation was severe. Huge sections of his Tree’s trunk had to be sacrificed as the two plants were separated, intertwined branches were cut away. And some sections were impossible to remove, leaving pieces of his wife’s dead Tree forever embedded in his. Scars where bark had been stripped away were left open to the air, leaves and memories fell like rain.

From that moment on, the man’s notes became rambling and disjointed, but flashes of the brilliant botanist occasionally shone through. He tried to save himself by treating his Tree with the latest organi-chemicals and healing poultices, but the damage was deep and things deteriorated.

His body too was showing the ravages of his wounded Tree. He was barely able to walk or lift his paralyzed left arm. His eyesight was completely gone in one eye and his hearing severely diminished. He was in constant agony from a multitude of minor ailments.

And so it was that he desperately turned to a campaign of grafting stolen bits and pieces of other peoples’ Trees onto his own to repair the damage, an effort that seemed successful at first. But, gradually his writing became ever more disjointed. For it seemed that while the grafted parts may have healed the Tree’s physical wounds, the connection to their people began to work their way into his subconscious. Toward the end of the last scrapbook his leaves became increasingly deformed and his writing seemed to come from a dozen different voices. Even more disturbing was the increasing pleasure he seemed to be taking from his victims’s distress. He was beginning to relish the pain they felt, as if it validated his own wounds.

The last few pages were barely legible.

The Reporter replaced the book on the shelf and sat down, shuddering. Morning light shone through the windows, she had spent the entire night engrossed in the scrapbooks.

Suddenly, the woman was jolted out of her reverie by the clack-skritch-squeal of the door being unlocked and opened. The man was returning! She looked around the room in panic and seeing no escape dove behind the planter of the nearest Tree. Staying low to the ground, she peered around its edge.

The Pruner backed through the entrance struggling to drag a heavy carpet...no! The body of a man! It was obviously a difficult task for him, and when he had finally made it past the threshold he slumped to the floor, wheezing. Grinding and scratching noises emanated from beneath his shirt which wriggled and heaved in a dozen different places.

“You shouldn’t have come here, you idiot Planner,” he growled at the unconscious man who he then dragged over to a column and bound tightly. When he was done, he fetched a watering can and poured it over his captive’s head. The man coughed, sputtered and opened his eyes regarding the Pruner with confusion.

Ten feet behind the pair, the Reporter was alarmed to see the electrical wire dangling from the broken skylight, but the Pruner was too busy with his task at hand to give it any notice. “Why didn’t you play ball with me when you had the chance?” he hissed, nose to nose with the Planner. On his forehead an emerging fingertip twitched back and forth accusingly. “A simple variance in code was all I asked. Now, I’m afraid the measures will have to be more severe.”

He stumbled across the room and returned with a gas can and a bucket which he set on the large concrete pot holding his Tree. He filled the bucket with gasoline, clambered laboriously up to the Tree and grasped a limb.

“This is your branch, my obstinate friend,” he said, and ripped it away from the trunk.

“Aaugh!” the Planner grunted, but the pruner also cried out in pain, clasping a hand to his forehead. I trickle of blood ran out from under his fingers. “Hadn’t thought of that,” he said. “No matter, my pain will be nothing compared to what I have in mind for you.” And then his head twitched, and he looked around feverishly from side to side clasping his hands over his ears. “I can’t!” he shouted, “I can’t stop – leave me alone. Be quiet! You’ll see. It’s the only way!”

The man leapt to the floor, dipped the branch in the gasoline and produced a lighter from his pocket. A shrill squeal came from his back as the Pruner flicked it to life. “You’ll see,” he said, “it’s the only way.” But he hesitated, briefly puzzled, for when he looked up he saw the cord dangling from the skylight.

“Nooo!” the Reporter screamed, and leapt from her hiding place. Running as hard as she could, she threw her full weight behind her shoulder, which she planted in the surprised man’s chest.

A normal man may have shrugged off her assault with ease – she weighed one hundred and four dripping wet – but the Pruner’s coordination had been badly compromised by the many additions his body bore. He lost his balance, stumbling backwards out of control. Arms flailing, the lighter flew out of his grasp.

The man’s body crashed against the planter knocking the bucket of gas over, flammable liquid pouring into the container. All three people in the room watched in horror as the lighter spun in the air, seemingly in slow motion and fell into the Tree’s pot.

Whooompf! The puddle of petroleum ignited in a fireball that instantly consumed the Tree. Leaves crackled and burned, shriveling into ash which spiralled up towards the broken skylight on a column of hot air. Sparks drifted about the room like so many singed butterflies.

On the floor, the Pruner cried out in a dozen voices, tearing his shirt off in a vain effort to ease his agony. The fingers of his extra hand scratched and grasped at his skin, the mouth on his shoulder frozen open in a silent scream.

Bumps quivered all across the mans body as his skin went bright red, and then a sickening shade of black. His feet drummed against the floor for a minute and then he collapsed, drawing a few labored breaths before he stopped breathing. The grafted appendages continued to writhe and gnash for a minute more and the mercifully, all was still.

All across the city, a select group of citizens simultaneously cried out and clenched various parts of their anatomy as the sharp jolt and scorch of their grafted, burning branches was transferred. The hospital emergency room would be busy tonight, but their days of terror were actually at an end.

Thinking quickly, the Reporter scooped up the Planner’s broken branch, washed it clean with water from the watering can, and placed its ragged end in the water. She then untied the grateful man from the column.

“Why?” was all he could say.

––•––

Months later, the Planner and Reporter returned to the warehouse and sat in the reviewing stands as the Mayor depressed a plunger that detonated explosive charges which brought the warehouse tumbling down. A new project was replacing the building, but not the one the Pruner and his cohorts had imagined.

In its place would rise a center dedicated to healing people whose trees had suffered storm damage. They applauded as a young girl with a shriveled arm turned the first spadeful of earth, dropping the dirt into a waiting clay pot. A young mother, baby in arms, stepped forward and placed a seedling in the pot, smoothing the dirt around its roots.

She smiled down at the child and the Tree, and kissed each, wishing them health and happiness on the start of their shared journey.

As the people left the ceremony, a steady rain began to fall. In a world where people and plants were so intimately connected, it was the ultimate sign of good luck.

The Falls

2010-08-16T07:43:00.001-07:00

The waterfall’s full-throated rumble reverberated off the valley walls, recent rains having swollen its creek to near overflowing. Standing on the overlook in its light mist was refreshing and uplifting, and I let its power wash over me as it thundered onto the rocks below and then rushed off into the darkness. I couldn’t see around the gorge’s bend, but I knew that only a short distance away it joined a larger, more powerful river that stretched off into the distance as far as my mind could imagine. I trust in that river, even though sometimes it’s out of sight.

I stood there reflecting on how I had returned to this magical place time and again over the years. The physical space is one of the touchstones of my life, the emotional place a little harder to quantify. During the dry years, barely a trickle fell from the precipice, but more often than not the water ran high and fast, its life-giving flow straining to escape the channel and filling me with hope. Even in the midst of the most dry and dusty drought I knew this mighty cataract would roar again.

It’s a lesson worth remembering; weather the storms and the river will rise.

The police need our help!

2010-07-17T08:15:00.000-07:00

I'd like talk for a bit about an article I read in the Star Tribune yesterday... Headline was, "Police ask help to ID thieves buying big at Target stores." Apparently these desperados have rolled up more than $20,000 in charges on stolen credit cards. Accompanying the article was the requisite photograph of our criminals taken from one of the 27, 329 hidden cameras in the store - a good thing, you'd think, and a boon to the efforts of our local boys in blue. Nothing like a photo to aid in identifying these miscreants.

Well, yes. Except these photos, like all photos taken of dangerous 7-11 holdup artists were so blurry they were worse than useless! Lord Voldemort had more features in his face than these criminals. There they were, captured in photographic splendor...striped shirt and baseball cap on one, work shirt, tie and either a beret or the worst haircut ever on the other...but that was the extent of any identifying detail. Their faces were nothing more than white blobs, featureless as a lump of silly putty - no, I take that back - silly putty would have MORE detail.

So I've gotta ask. If you're going to go through all the time and effort of running an article asking for the public's help in identifying someone, wouldn't you want to release a picture that might actually contain, oh, say a nice shot of their FACE? You might just as well have run an image of a store mannequin (and, in fact, I'm not so sure that isn't what they did.)

It seems like all the store security cameras in the world share this disturbing lack of focus, making me think, "Man, whoever sells these pieces of crap must be the GREATEST salesman in the world!" "Well, yes, Mr. (or Mrs.) store owner. It's true that my camera has the resolution of a child's camera with its lens smeared with Vaseline, but I assure you, this is STATE-OF-THE-ART technology! Hundreds, nay, THOUSANDS of law-breakers have been brought to justice using these photos, as juries will ALWAYS look at an indistinguishable blob sitting on a blurry body and say, "THAT'S HIM! THAT'S the man who killed my father, raped and murdered my sister, burned my ranch, shot my dog, and stole my Bible!" (Can you guess where that quote came from?)

And, just as amazing, said store owners must be falling for the pitch buying these things by the thousands! They're everywhere!

It doesn't exactly raise my faith in the ability of the local cops to put an end to crime, but it DOES make me want to go into the security camera manufacturing business. You'd have to work REALLY hard to make a camera that could take worse shots! And, come to think of it, maybe that's the goal. Somewhere, someplace, there's a security camera manufacturer's convention...booths proudly displaying fuzzy walls full of photos, distributors clamoring for the latest camera that promises an even MORE indistinguishable rendering of a crime scene. It's money ripe for the picking!

Camp out!

2010-06-20T10:31:00.000-07:00

My track record is rather spotty when it comes to rain...I almost ALWAYS get rained on when I'm camping, the weather gods seem to have it in for me. I should hire myself out as a rainmaker to desert dwellers and precipitation starved farmers...all I'd have to do is pitch my tent in the middle of the Sahara and the clouds would start building within hours! There have been a couple Memorial Day weekends when it rained Friday through Monday without stop-thankfully those occurred years ago when I was younger and more moisture tolerant. The very first time I went camping, I went down to Banks (a discount store in NE Mpls) and pulled a tent out of the bargain box. Didn't have any poles, but I figured, what the heck, I could buy them at United Store, which I did. I was SO proud of my new acquisition and couldn't wait to try it out! I hopped on the motorcycle (since traded in for a mountain bike, a casualty of having kids and a wife who didn't like motorcycles (remind me WHY I married her?) and headed off for my favorite Mississippi blufftop meadow with my brother. That night, a thunderstorm that Noah would have been proud of blew in, and I discovered the importance of having a RAIN FLY on my tent! OMG! It was raining harder INSIDE my tent than it was outside, and since we were on motorcycles and my brother had a tiny little one-man pup tent there was no recourse. I was outside in hurricane force horizontal rain at 3:00 in the morning, flashes of lightning illuminating my plight as I desperately tried to bungee my ground tarp down over the tent. But, of course, it was a lost cause. My sleeping bag, pillow and all my clothes had already absorbed enough water to meet the needs of a small Ethiopian village, and sleep would be out of the question for the rest of the night. After purchasing the appropriate rain fly, my "bargain" tent ended up costing about 50% more than a new one.

But then I wouldn't have this story to tell, so it wasn't a total loss.

The Fire

2010-04-17T13:57:00.001-07:00

The elusive connection. The spark that’s waiting to ignite, hidden within the debris of time and place. I know it’s there, I’ve felt it before, been burned by it before. But I’ve also basked in the warmth of its amorous glow. You never know when its going to flare brightly, and I think that’s what makes its absence so frustrating. Because once you’ve had it, the everyday world seems that much colder when it’s gone dormant.

Patience, patience. It’s a virtue, you know. One I wish I had more of. And, yes, I know I just ended a sentence with a preposition. It’s hard on the hopeful romantic in me. Going without.

The connection, that is.

It’s what we’re talking about, right? It’s the possibility I always see when I meet someone new. The possibility of the future stretching out to the sky-blue horizon. The possibility of love. The possibility that spark will grow into a comfortable fire, crackling on the hearth, fed by the heat of its glowing embers.

Its hard to keep the faith, though, when the match fails to light over and over again. Sometimes makes me think I’ve got a box of defective matches, but I know that’s not it. The truth is, we’ve all got that same box, it’s how it’s meant to be. 1000 matches, and they all look the same. But only a few will catch and burn.

Makes it even more special if, rarely, one bursts to life when you strike it right. Not too hard, you’ll break the stick, not too soft - it won’t light. And then, all too often, the fire goes out just when you think you had it going good. Not enough fuel, maybe the wrong kind of wood. It looked OK when you started with it, but it couldn’t sustain itself over time.

I know how to build a fire that will last, how to stack the logs just right. I just need that right match to set it ablaze.

I KNOW it’s in this freakin’ box somewhere!

Tree Of Life

2009-10-22T20:44:00.000-07:00

It ain't over 'til its over...or is it?

2009-08-28T16:21:00.000-07:00

Officially mourning the loss of summer. Oh, don't give me that jazz about how its still August, we all know the hot stuff is just a pleasant memory now. Take the air conditioners out of the windows, get the tomatos off the vines and dust off the woolly blankets, 'cause its all downhill from here. when I was a kid, it used to sweat you pretty good if you went into the cattle barns at the state fair, but lately, the hogs are just basking in the cool breezes, 'cause August ain't what it used to be.

The good news is that November ain't what it used to be either.

I'm not complaining (well maybe I AM a little) I don't mind not having 90 degree plus days, and am plenty happy to have temps in the 80s. But my kids will never know the fun of riding in a non-air-conditioned, crank-down windowed metal solar collector of a car like our Ford LTD, which, with its black vinyl seats was so hot we used to buy a turkey at the grocery store and put it in the back seat.

It would be perfectly broiled by the time we got home.

It toughened you up. Gave you character. Prepared you for life (as a blast furnace operator, or grill greaser or desert railroad welder) and we NEVER complained. Happy to have the warmth, 'cause as we all know, only two weeks prior, we were throwing the scrawniest kid in the pool before swimming lessons to break the ice.

So I'll take the 68 degree high forcasted for tomorrow and live with it. That was a good three days of Summer while it lasted!

New Strings

2009-08-25T20:59:00.000-07:00

Put new strings on my guitar a few days ago and I'm still in a good mood.

For those of you who don't play stringed instruments, you gotta change the strings every so often. They get worn out, dirty from oil & such on your fingers, and start to sound dull and lifeless. And where a flute or trumpet pretty much always sounds the same, putting new strings on a guitar is like getting a brand new instrument. The sound snaps clear as a summer day, crisp and clean and its a joy to hear. Makes me feel like my heart is renewed with that first strum, and the harmony flows out from the sound board, vibrates through my fingertips and extends to other areas of my life.

I've had this guitar for 35 years - my entire adult life - and there's an emotional connection that runs deep. Its helped me weather some pretty bad times and celebrate some really good ones. If I feel down, just picking it up and playing awhile can usually lift my spirits. When new strings are in tune, its hard to feel bad about most anything else. I've toyed with the idea of having it cremated with me when I die, maybe it would make the passage over to the other side, and wouldn't that be cool if it did, but it seems to be such a shame to destroy such a beautiful instrument. I think I'll just have to trust that there'll be a guitar there when I get there. Wherever "there" is.

New strings. New beginnings.

I couldn't sleep last night, I was in too good a mood. Yesterday I found a brand- new, wide-screen version of "Shawshank Redemption" at the video store for only seven bucks! Made my day, I LOVE that movie. One of the best endings of any movie, ever. So my heart was happy. New strings, my favorite movie and a few other incidentals that just added to the way things were going.

I didn't even try to fall asleep, I just laid there and savored the feeling. I've missed feeling this way. Hell, I've just missed feeling. Its about time that I'm getting that part of me back.

Moving Day

2009-07-28T21:19:00.000-07:00

Moved to the new house last weekend- thanks to my friends and family for all their help! Nice to know I've got that stability in the middle of the chaos to fall back on.

Relatively speaking, it went fine. Now the fun begins, wading through a sea of boxes, six feet drifts of packing peanuts, desperately seeking that important piece of (whatever) that I KNOW I packed...

Its exciting in a fresh start kind of way, much needed after the last few years of gray dullness that have colored my life. Got my computer back up and running in record time (amazing considering I changed ISPs in the middle of it all) and now am free to respond to all the old friends who are suddenly appearing on Facebook like Marley's ghost, a kind of Internet haunting, if you will.

Don't get me wrong, I think its fabulous, and almost makes the Internet worth the swamp of lame jokes and YouTube videos I am bombarded with by well-meaning(?) friends. See the dancing yam! Its HILARIOUS!

Perhaps I'm suffering from some kind of cardboard fever...the smell of packing tape is EVERYWHERE!

And where the hell is my watch?

Rock Me, Baby

2009-06-28T12:03:00.000-07:00

Been a while since I wrote on this blog, and I’m thinking, perhaps I should explain. This was never intended to be a day to day account of my life as some blogs are, but rather an outlet for my creative writing, and my writing suffers whenever I do. In other words, due to the nature of my circumstances I haven’t felt very creative lately. But sometimes it helps the soul to write, and this is one of those times.

I’m moving in less than a month, and this time its more traumatic than any of my dozen or so previous moves (I changed addresses 10 times in 10 years when I first came to “the Cities”), mostly because its not by choice. If I could, I’d stay in Bryn Mawr, my home for the last 15 or more years...a neighborhood that has hosted the first half of my daughters’ childhoods and has been my spiritual as well as physical home. This small section of Minneapolis feels a lot like my hometown, a small burg with a real sense of community, a place like “Cheers” where everybody knows your name. A place close to nature, a place full of nurture. I’ve lived all over the metro area, from Plymouth to St. Paul and everywhere in between, and nowhere has felt as welcoming as this little patch of real estate east of Wirth Park.

But, its not to be. there’s a price to pay to live here...the few houses that are for sale are out of my price range, generally $75-100,000 more than the same (or even nicer) house only a couple miles away in the next ring of suburbs, so move it is. I’ll miss the people, although I’ll stay as connected as I can and visit often. After all, I’ll only be a couple miles and an easy bike ride away. Its not like I’m moving to Fargo.

There are plenty of other things I’ll miss as well, and strangely enough one of them will be the rocks in my back yard. But then, these rocks are more than your ordinary hunks of granite and basalt, they’re a direct link to my past. Many of them come from the fields of my parents’ farm, where it was a spring ritual to “pick rocks” before the planting season. You had to get them out lest they be ingested by the combine during harvest which would wreak havoc on the machinery - creating an expensive and time consuming delay, right when you’re racing the calendar to get the fields cleared before the snow flies. And every year, there were always new rocks to find, no matter how diligent you had been collecting them the previous season. A never ending supply lies buried in the glacial soil of southern Minnesota. Pick those rocks, throw them on the wagon and haul them to the nearest rock pile. A backbreaking bit of labor.

And there they stayed, until I bought my first home on Queen Avenue, and brought a fair number north to become landscaping around a backyard pond. When I moved to Vincent Avenue, the buyers of my previous house didn’t want the pond, so the rocks followed me westward and now reside happily by another pond.

Over the years, they’ve been joined by their brothers from the north shore, fossils from Montana and stones from any other location where it was feasible to return with a trunk full of boulders. There are pebbles from Guatemala and New Mexico and coral from Key West mixed in as well. At times, I feel like Sisyphus, who in Greek mythology was condemned to forever roll a rock up a hill, never quite making it to the top. I’ve been dragging these rocks around the face of the Earth for the better part of my life.

Until now. They won’t make the move with me - I’ll have to start over with new rocks - a fitting metaphor for my life.

There are plenty more where these came from, I’ll never want for rocks. Its the rest of my life’s connections I’m thinking of. The older I get, the harder it becomes to roll that rock up the hill.

Paddling In A Stream Of Consciousness

2009-04-13T08:14:00.000-07:00

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Aside from The Shadow, of course...Bwaaa Haahaha. My basic view of humanity is that 15% of all people are genuinely great, good-hearted, cream-of-the-crop types, 80% are vanilla-fudge, mostly non-offensive just trying to get by without making waves types, and of course, your 5% total assholes who get a disproportionate share of the press. My brother, who is a parole officer might put that number a little higher, although most people he deals with seem to fall into the "defectively stupid" category rather than the truly malevolent. Every now and then he gets one that makes for a good story. My favorite takes place about ten years ago when St. Paul was experiencing a rash of semi-tractor thefts. The cops would find the semi, usually not too many miles from the scene of the crime, parked up against a building nose-first, out of gas, with the wheels dug into the ground. The truck had been left running in gear, wheels turning, until it had exhausted the petrol. Total mystery, until they caught the guy, who turned out to be a seminary student studying for the priesthood. A good friend of mine recently became a priest, and I used to play Dungeons and Dragons with my brother's priest, so I know they're not all wackos (at least not the ones I know) but the Catholics seem to get their fair share, could it POSSIBLY have something to do with the total abstinence for life thing? Rambling a bit...ANYWAY...this particular seminary student seemed to be horny quite a bit, but was too wracked with guilt to touch himself while masturbating (boxing the clown, whacking off, waxing the porpoise, beating your meat, choking the chicken, playing pocket pool, chasing the weasel, flogging the log, etc...I think its hilarious how many euphemisms there are for it). HOWEVER, in his mind, it was OK to steal a semi, park it against a bridge in gear and let the vibrations do the work for him. That is one troubled youth. Don't know what became of him, he probably lives next door to me now.

My second favorite story comes from his first job at the St. Paul cop shop, where he had to process all incoming arrestees, filling out a form that included, among other things, all identifying marks, scars, tattoos, etc that the person had. One day the cops brought in this guy who was literally covered with tattoos. Took almost an hour to write them all down, heart with dagger on left forearm, lion on right bicep, flag on lower back, and on and on. FINALLY, three pages later, he thought he had them all, but wanted to be thorough so he asked the guy if he had any more tattoos. Got one. OK, where is it? On the end of my dick. No! Oh, yeah, wanna see?

Well of course he did, as did all the deputies in the shop, and the guy was more than proud to show it off -a scorpion wrapped around, hanging on for dear life. I've got a small tattoo of an eagle on my shoulder, and that stung a little when I got it, but I can't imagine...

Hmmm...two penis-related stories there...not intentional I assure you.

Circle of Life

2009-04-11T06:35:00.000-07:00

My sister-in-law asked me to write this story, one of thousands I could choose, about my long-time friend, Tom. We’ve known each other since we were college roommates, which, astonishingly and inevitably means more than 30 years.

As I was paging back through fading photographs looking for the image that goes with the beginning of this tale, it was impossible not to be struck by the passing years and our changing fortunes. So, what starts as a lighthearted look grows a bit darker.

Tom and I have helped renovate each others houses since the beginning of our friendship. We were both "handy" - my grandfather was a carpenter, and were both unafraid of tackling a challenge, so not really knowing what we were doing wasn't viewed as a detriment, just a challenge. But our lack of experience often led to a situation I usually referred to as "Laural and Hardy build a deck", or whatever project we were working on. We totally renovated several houses and added an addition to his family’s cabin mostly in fits and starts in the early days, and with a surprising deal of competence in the later years as he became a general contractor & I progressed to the point where I tore out half a house, vaulting the ceiling with a massive beam.

The story:
There's actually no story to this...we were building a deck on Tom's house and consuming the required amount of beer with a predictable result.

(In case you missed it, the deck is framed directly THROUGH the ladder.) I thought that was pretty funny for years, but my perspective has changed a bit lately. Changed a LOT lately.

Tom has been struggling with alcoholism lately, and the situation is deteriorating rapidly. So looking back over the years, and seeing a drink in the majority of the photos of us morphs from this pleasant memory of fun times (of which there were too many to count) to something more sinister. I've had my share of friends who fought the bottle and (thankfully) many more who drink socially and responsibly. What is it that makes the difference? Why can some of us have a few rounds and then call it quits, when others have to pass out before the liquor stops flowing.

Its sad and frustrating and frightening watching this life circle the drain, and I mean that literally. He's in bad shape, and would be the first to admit it. Trips in and out of rehab. Ambulance rides to the hospital. Serious wounds from falling down stairs drunk. DWIs. Hard for me to watch because there's nothing I can do...I can't hold his hand 24 hours a day. Ultimately he has to make the choice and live the life. Its amazing to see what a powerful hold alcohol has, and how a person can be so self-destructive, all the while knowing what they're doing could easily kill them or someone else, but powerless to stop it.

I debated long and hard about posting this story, and talked to Tom to get his permission. Events have made me a lot more tuned in to this problem, I'm hoping some of you might look at having those ten drinks in a night in a different light as well.

I grew up with the "funny drunks" on TV...Foster Brooks, Dean Martin, Otis on the Andy Griffith Show.

They don't seem so funny anymore.

Woojie's Talent

2009-02-20T05:36:00.000-08:00

The year my brother graduated from college, we moved together to a duplex on France Avenue. Among the many stories I could tell of that time, this one is the funniest, maybe even THE funniest thing I’ve ever seen.

I had a little mutt of a dog I’d named Woojie, a spritzy haired, goofy little guy who had the misfortune to be born with only half his allotment of brains. And since most dogs only have half a brain to start with, that left him two doors down from nothing. He was a basically untrainable, soap-eating, flea-hosting, curtain-shredding little ball of mischief. A canine almost totally without mental ability or talent - with two key exceptions.

He loved to play fetch, and could grab a frisbee out of the air five feet off the ground.

And he could shit. Oh, my god, he could shit. Twice his body weight, three times a day. It wasn’t totally his fault, we bought the cheapest dog chow we could find, probably packed with filler, and his digestive system excelled at doubling the volume before it came back out.

This story takes place about a week before the fourth of July, as fine a summer day as you could ask for. Beautiful, hot weather, not a cloud in the sky and a perfect time to take the dog for a walk. We had made it about three steps out the door when the Wooj assumed the classic dog squat and laid down his first steaming pile, roughly the size of a gopher mound. Soon we’d have two more stops with two more piles of equally impressive dimensions, and it was on the third stop that inspiration struck.

Brother Dale reached in his pocket and withdrew a firecracker, and as soon as he did, we both knew where it was going. Easier to blow the rancid crap up than scoop it into a bag and lug it on home. So, with a devious grin he inserted the gunpowder packed cylinder into the dog poop and withdrew a lighter.

Now, these particular firecrackers had been giving us fits all week long. They were manufactured with defective fuses that absolutely refused to burn. You had to light the darn things four or five times, as each time they would spark and fizzle, burn a fraction of an inch and then die. Every cracker. Fizzle and die. Fizzle and die. But when he went to light this fuse, the flame literally leapt from the lighter, jumping five inches onto the fuse and burning instantly down in the blink of an eye.

Fzzzt. BLAM!

Dale, wide-eyed in disbelief, barely had time to register the unlikely event and start to turn away from the oncoming tsunami. The firecracker, which was the one explosive in the entire pack of one hundred that would actually explode, did so with the energy of ten of its brothers, atomizing the pile of dog poop into a fine mist which completely coated my sibling from head to foot. Not a speck remained on the sidewalk, and 99.7 percent of the flying matter found its target, a ratio any Air Force bomber would envy.

I took it all in for a glorious half-second, and then started breaking up. It was the perfect storm of dog, poop and recalcitrant fireworks.

I still haven’t stopped laughing.

What Are The Odds?

2009-02-17T08:36:00.000-08:00

Today, as I was making breakfast an unusual thing happened, and although it may seem minor to you, I guess it shows how boring my life has been lately that I noticed it at all. I dropped a Tupperware® lid with pancake batter all over it and it landed batter side up!

Now, any student of life knows that statisticians would put the odds of such an occurrence at 50/50, but you and I know the probability of a batter-side down landing are much closer to a guaranteed, unassailable 100 percent – Murphy’s Law being firmly in control of such events. Have any of you ever fumbled a piece of jelly-coated toast and not have it end up stuck to your shoe after smearing a crimson trail of raspberry goo all over your white shirt and slacks on the way down? Four minutes before a possibly life-altering job interview?

Speaking of job interviews, one time I was proudly displaying my portfolio of work to a potential employer, when, as I flipped the page a corner caught my eye and scratched my cornea. Probability of that happening? Once in a lifetime, but that was my “once.” I finished the interview with a hand clasped over my madly tearing eye, putting on the best face that I could, but for some reason I never got a call back. People who can’t even turn a page without sustaining grievous bodily injury don’t make the most appealing candidates for employment, I guess.

But, my all-time example of beating the odds, an event so astounding that it remains burned in my memory crystal-clear a quarter of a century later, occurred at a friend’s bachelor party. You may not believe it could even happen, but I’ve got photos and a score of half-drunken eyewitnesses to back me up. The usual mayhem was going on at a typical stag party the night before the big event. There was much consumption of substances designed to negatively affect performance by many young men in their early 30s who, being confident of their own immortality, were determined to ingest mass quantities of said substances. The funniest thing we did that night was rearrange all the photos in the living room (the groom was still living with his parents) knowing our friend would never notice, but there would be a lot of “splaining” to do the second his mother walked into the room.

But I digress.

The Set-up:

Getting back to “the Event” as I call it...On the fireplace mantle sat a full bottle of beer. Behind the beer was a photo or piece of cardboard of some kind (details are a bit fuzzy.) It was a beautiful summer night and the windows were open. Suddenly a breeze whooshes through the room, blowing the picture and beer bottle off the mantle.

The Miracle:

The beer bottle fell four feet and landed upside-down on the stone hearth below, where it did not shatter, hardly spilled a drop of beer, did not tip over, didn’t even foam that much. It just sat there. An inverted glass bottle half full of beer, laughing at us mortals who were staring in slack-jawed amazement at its wonderful impossibility.

Moses parting the Red Sea probably had the same effect on the Israelites...“WTF, Mesheklabob! Did you just SEE that?”

The Rule-Breaker

2009-02-03T12:59:00.001-08:00

One hot July in the summer after I graduated from high school I didn’t have anything to do, so I decided to drive over to church camp for a day. I was raised Baptist, and thank God my parents weren’t that strict, because Baptists generally have a prohibition on anything that even remotely resembles fun. No drinking. No smoking. No going to movies, playing cards, dancing, listening to rock music or doing anything other than sitting in a corner reading the Bible. And you probably couldn’t even do that unless you were fully clothed. The joke was, “Why don’t Baptists have sex standing up? Because they’re afraid someone will see them and think they’re dancing.”

But I liked going to Bible camp, because I saw friends that I never saw any other time of the year, and because the camp had a speedboat to water ski behind. I didn’t know anyone with a boat. Nearest lake to Dexter was only about the size of a hockey rink. And the sermons and bible studies didn’t bother me that much...you just learn to zone ’em out and daydream about drinking, and dancing, and sex.

So off I went...It was “Family Camp” that week, which meant you could go for a day if you wanted, and so, even though it was a 120 mile drive, that was my plan, drive over, ski a little, drive back. But my plans got sidetracked when I got there because of "Jessie".

Jessie Knotts.

She had a brother I hung around with named Donny. (Don Knotts, get it? We all thought that was SO funny). But he wasn’t there and she was. And she was cute. Major league cute. And, holy shit, she was sunburned. Not just a little pink, she was RED from stem to stern. I knew, because she was wearing a (gasp!) bikini, which was WAY, WAY, WAY against every Baptist swimsuit regulation dating back to the Crusades!

Whoa! A rule-breaker! A female close to my heart, and definitely one I had to meet. We hit it off immediately, and spent the day together. I sat “next” to her during evening services. I put quotation marks around “next” because one of the seven unbreakable rules of Baptist Camp was that boys and girls had to maintain a 6-inch gap of separation between their bodies at all times. Thus promoting chastity and purity of thought, which was B.S., of course. And, that joke was you could still fuck if your dick was longer than 6 inches, you just couldn’t put it in all the way.

Evening came, and I had to leave. I’d only planned on staying the day and didn’t have any other clothes, or sleeping gear or a place to sleep, for that matter. But you could bet your ass I was coming back the next day. Jessie was way too hot to leave alone. And it was only 120 miles.

One way.

And come back I did. That afternoon we broke another of the seven rules and left camp together to “go for a ride” which of course meant “go parking”.

Parking was code for “find a deserted road, and at the very minimum, burn a little lip.” And we found the greatest road ever, with a driveway that went into a cornfield, which was like the Holy Grail of parking spots. Not even passing traffic could see what we were about to do.

Which was break a few Commandments. Jessie was a rule-breaker, all right.

It wasn’t as easy as it should have been. For one thing, I was driving a 1967 Mustang, and the back seat had less room than your average sized coffin. For another thing, it was 90 degrees out, making for more sweat than could have been generated by ten "Body Heat" movies. And, of course, Jessie had that world class sunburn, which made for some really eye-popping tan lines that just emphasized all the parts that I was interested in. But that just meant that she got to be on top, and I had to be careful where and what I grabbed.

Oh, my. It was spectacular. We did it like bunnies for more than an hour (which, for me, in those days was about 60-plus minutes more than average) and I was about the proudest I’d ever been in my life.

Afterward, we snuck back into camp and sat the requisite 6 inches apart at chapel. Nobody asked where we’d been, and I left for home with a song in my heart.

A rock-n-roll song.

Leaves And Losses

2009-02-02T13:43:00.001-08:00

Every time I go home (and by “home” I mean the farm where I grew up – even though I’ve now lived away from “home” twice as long as I lived there) I’m saddened by the blank space now occupying the area where a giant maple tree once stood. It’s more than a hole in the ground, it’s a hole in my heart.

There were two trees actually – one on the north, and one on the south side of the house, and both were immense. The smaller tree on the south actually lived longer–it was a tenacious son-of-a-bitch–standing for years after being split in two by a bolt of lightning. Defying all odds or logic, the surviving side stood like a sentinel by the driveway, a scrawny, matchstick half-tree, leaning precariously to the east, its shattered sliver of a trunk stubbornly refusing to acknowledge reality or gravity and fall down. For five or six years it stood there, and every time I saw it I thought, “A good, stiff fart should blow that tree over.” But through hell and high water, it never did.

Until one day I came home and it was gone.

The tree on the north was at one time the largest sugar maple in the state (we had it measured and listed in the DNR’S Big Tree Registry) with a circumference around its trunk of over ten feet, it stood 90 feet high with a crown spread of some 80 feet. It was a giant. And home to one heck of a tree house.

Its enormous limbs stretched out nearly parallel to the ground making for some great climbing...you could actually run along them. And from them, a boy could jump onto the roof of the house or garage (although you couldn’t get back again). Amazingly enough, although there were opportunities galore, I don’t ever remember anyone falling out of that tree. Its spirit enveloped and protected us (and laughed with us as we spun ourselves silly on its swing).

One summer day, I was sitting on the deck when my dog began to growl. Curious, I walked over to look around the corner of the house to see what was causing his distress. Nothing looked amiss, but I could hear a crackling sound like someone walking through dry leaves – odd, because it was mid July and the nearest dry leaf was somewhere in the Sonoran Desert – when with a mighty CRACK! one of the main branches tore loose from the tree, limbs and leaves crashing down around me. As it fell, it clipped the corner of the house sending a seismic shudder through the structure, and in a rather telling comment on my accident-prone nature as a youth, my mother’s first reaction was to look up from her book and say, “What on earth did Joe do now?”

It was the beginning of the end, the tree was shot through with rot. And although my dad tried to remove the remaining branches that threatened the buildings and leave the rest, the damage to the mighty tree’s soul was too severe. It too, was gone within a year, another erased and yellowing page in the ledger of my life that used to be written full of laughter, pirate fights, secret meetings and pre-teen espionage.

Sigh.

George Harrison said it best. All things must pass.

But that doesn’t make it any easier to see that empty spot in the lawn.

The Girl Who Loves Carmex

2009-02-02T13:42:00.000-08:00

Winters in Minnesota can be rough on a person, and I’m not talking about the 25-below zero temperatures, or the glare-ice coated streets or even the eleventy-hundred days in a row that we go without seeing the sun. No, the real problem that we all face from October to April is the almost total lack of humidity in our air. Oh, yeah. Its drier than a popcorn fart around here and it really takes its toll on our furniture, our musical instruments, our skin and our lips.

Especially our poor, tired, chapped lips.

But in our war on dessication we have a powerful ally. A fount of hydration, a magical moisturizer - a balm for the ages.

I’m talking, of course, about Carmex. Carmex. Carmex! Even the name has a lyrical, orgasmic quality as it rolls off my tongue, and sometimes I can’t stop myself from saying it. Over and over. Carmex!! Oh, that was sooo good! Its like a mantra, and often I’ll mutter it continually at night until I fall asleep and dream the dreams of the satiated - my smooth, supple lips smacking in satisfaction.

In Minneapolis, no one knows the way of the small white jar with the yellow lid better than my friend Maralee, who worships the waxy gel. Maybe a little too much, in my opinion. She keeps it in her purse. She has a tube on the night stand by her bed. She has jars stashed in secret locations throughout her house, and she even keeps a container in her mailbox in case she feels parched while fetching her letters. Whenever she goes shopping, she plots her route in such a way that she will never be farther than two miles from a drugstore or Target. Because, as we all know, sometimes those little containers of bliss run out.

And then what the hell do you do?

Panic. That’s what. And today, that’s exactly what’s happening. Look. Across the street, on the corner by the post office, standing under the billboard announcing Cub Foods’ low, low prices on rutabagas. It’s Maralee, frantically digging through her purse, her pockets all turned out, her eyes shot through with desperation. Her heart is racing, her palms are sweating. And, as she keeps licking her lips in a frenetic attempt to stave off the advancing chafe, you can almost hear her inner voice crying out in fear, “Why me? Oh, God, why me! What did I ever do to deserve this?!”

She thrusts the depleted container of moisturizer skyward in one clenched fist and falls to her knees sobbing. Passers-by are starting to avert their eyes and shift to the other side of the street. In Minnesota, its not polite to stare at the less fortunate, and certainly not the ones with chapped lips. We’ve all been there, but that doesn’t mean we want to pick that scab and let it bleed.

Better to ignore. Maybe the Salvation Army can help. Move along - nothing to see here.

And then, when all hope looks lost—when it seems that the dark night of dehydration will wash over the girl and suck the very will to live from her dry and dusty body, a little old lady with a tasteful bag purchased at a Kohl’s 50% off sale walks over and kneels at her side.

“Here, dear,” she offers kindly, “take mine. I have another.”

And she places a small cylinder of Carmex in Maralee’s hand and walks on without looking back.

“So sad,” she whispers to herself. “So sad.”

The Window

2009-02-02T13:40:00.002-08:00

A Not-So-Short Story

It’s night on the other side of the Window, and I’ve never seen that before. Somewhere a mourning dove cries her sad story of lost love, a haunting song that drifts through the night and lands softly on the sill, ruffling the curtains and cooling the room. A dog barks determinedly in the distance and I can feel the faint rumble of thunder echoing across some long forgotten plain like a discontented dream. The stars are out, shining in unfamiliar constellations – southern hemisphere, would be my guess. It could be a whole ’nother world for all I know, I was never that good at mapping the night sky. I can usually find the Big Dipper, but Orion or Pisces or or anything other than the moon remains a celestial mystery. They all look like shiny points of random light to me. Still, there’s something slightly off about these particular stars, though I’ll be damned if I can say exactly what it is.

But that’s the way it’s been lately.

Never quite real, never quite solid.

I walk to the Window (taking care to avoid the dead cat) and look out at the current version of the world. Everything’s changed and nothing’s changed. It’s still my building, of course. It’s always my building. My room is on the 19th of 27 floors, number 1956 to be exact. In fact, they’re all number 1956. Sixty doors in my hallway, every one displaying the same shiny brass number. 27 buttons on the elevator, and you guessed it, every floor is number 19. But more about that later. Right now I want to survey the landscape, because I still haven’t given up hope that there might be someone out there.

I can see quite a distance from 19 stories up. Today, the Outside features a fairly large city with gently rolling hills humping across the horizon a couple of miles away. A river runs kitty-corner through a park seven blocks to my right, and there are swing sets and a jungle gym next to a softball diamond. As I watch, a dust devil twirls erratically across the infield, stirring up memories of sweaty summer games and sweeping Baby Ruth wrappers under the bleachers; a pint-sized tornado wanna-be. The houses look about 1920’s vintage, a lot of story-and-a-half working class residences, nicely painted with freshly manicured lawns and well-kept gardens. I can make out the main street, looks like three blocks long with a handful of one and two-story buildings squatting along the sidewalk like so many brick and mortar sumo wrestlers. They’re too far away to tell what businesses occupy
the storefronts but they look like your run-of-the-mill hardware, grocery and dry goods stores with maybe a bank or two thrown in for good measure. Cars are parked sporadically along my street, but
I can’t discern makes or models because they’re not quite like any cars I’ve ever seen before, and their colors aren’t quite like any colors I’ve seen before. I can’t put it into words, how do you describe a color that isn’t?

Mostly though, I see the emptiness.

In a city that should boast a population of seven or eight thousand people, the only thing moving is the wind-blown litter. The houses are all dark, almost as if the night sky had drained down their chimneys and covered their lamps with a velvety blanket of ink. I’ve watched, ’cause all I can do is watch, but I’ve yet to catch a glimpse of another living soul. And even though I’ve heard dogs bark and cats yowl and owls hoot, I’ve never actually seen them. Never seen that mourning dove either.

So, tell me this. Who is it that’s emptying the garbage cans and cleaning up the fallen branches after the storms? Who moves the cars to new parking spaces while I’m not looking?

They’re there, but they’re not.

All right, I’ve seen enough. I know better than to do anything futile like scream at the streets. When I first arrived, I did enough shouting and crying and banging on walls to last for the rest of my life, and all it got me was a three day case of laryngitis and a throbbing set of bloody knuckles. If people are out there, they sure as hell don’t want to talk to me.

Their loss.

’Cause I’m a damn fine conversationalist.

OK, let’s see what’s in the refrigerator, anybody here want a beer? That’s an inside joke, I say that’s a joke, son. I know what’s in the refrigerator. The same thing that was in the refrigerator the last two hundred times I looked. A Braunschweiger sandwich, a Tupperware container full of parsnips, a can of Fresca and a tin of pickled herring. Whoever’s running this joint has got one twisted sense of humor. The fascinating thing is, if I take the Fresca out and drink it, the next time I open the ’fridge, it’s been replaced by a brand new can. Same goes for the rest of the food. I apparently have stumbled onto a self-replenishing lifetime supply of parsnips and pickled herring and who wouldn’t be thrilled about good fortune like that?

Now, if you think that sounds like a little slice of Heaven, let’s take a look at the rest of the palace. My room is exactly twelve feet by thirteen feet (I know, because I measured it with my own feet) and is a showcase of understated design. The aforementioned refrigerator occupies a place of honor in one corner, diagonally across the room from a lovely paisley sofa bed. That’s the tour folks, my world in a nutshell. Oh, sorry, I forgot. Through door number one, we have the bathroom. One toilet, one sink, one shower, and the seemingly obligatory supply of self-replenishing toothpaste and toilet paper. I think the pièce de résistance, though, would have to be the painting on the living room wall. A true French masterpiece. That is, if the French Masters ever painted dogs playing poker.

Directly opposite the Window lies door number two, and this is where the real weirdness begins.

Follow me into the hall, if you will. My building is constructed in a square shape, probably with a courtyard in the center, although I can’t say for sure. Along the four hallways (for the sake of argument we’ll call them north, south, east and west) are an equal number of rooms. Eight on the outside wall, seven on the inside, and an elevator centered on the inside of each hall.

Let’s take that elevator. The interior is mirrored on three sides, which gives the interesting effect of thousands of images of me ever diminishing into infinity. Sometimes I get a little flash of someone, or something else sharing the space with me. Always out of the corner of my eye, always forty or fifty reflections in. Never anything concrete, always on the edge of reality.

I think the elevator, with its endless levels of reflections is a metaphor for this whole
damn place.

As I mentioned before, the panel looks like this.

I’ve started to conduct a systematic search of every room on every floor, and have x-ed off the floors I think I have finished. That’s 360 rooms so far, and another sixteen on the next “19” floor in the series. This hasn’t been as easy as you might think. I enter the elevator and press the “19” button third from the bottom in the left hand row. The doors close, the elevator seems to drop and the buttons illuminate in descending order. When I get off the elevator the hall looks exactly like the hall I just left. Exiting, I turn left and choose the seventeenth door on my left hand side.

Number 1956, naturally.

Now the magic happens.

My key works in every door, and when I enter the room, it’s my room. They’re all my room. I’m now back on the 19th floor (the one I’ve marked with an arrow) and the room is exactly as I left it, shirt on the floor, half-consumed Fresca by the chair...whatever. To return to the floor I just left, I’ll have to go back down the hall, take the elevator to the third left “19” floor, and repeat the whole process. Now you know why only six floors are x-ed off – the bleepin’ elevators in this place are so slow they make John Goodman look like an Olympic sprinter.

So, if every door leads to an exact duplicate of what I’ll call the Master Room does that mean there are 1620 versions of me in this building? If I open the door and throw my shirt out, do 1620 doors open and 1620 shirts sail into the hall?

The answer is no, and here is my theory. There obviously are other rooms, but none so far that I can enter. Although I can see one entire side of the building with 216 separate windows when I look Outside, on the Inside the doorways seem to operate as some kind of portal to the Master Room, always bringing me home as I cross the threshold. It makes for some major league weirdness. If leave my door open, walk across the hall and open the door directly across from mine, I can look through both doors and see two identical rooms with two identical views out two identical Windows.

Therein lies the trap, but it also just might be the means of my salvation.

If you can have one portal, might you also have two?

I have no memory of time prior to waking up here some 20 odd days (emphasis on the word odd) ago. It’s as if my mind is one of those magic slates that kids play with and someone has lifted the writing sheet and erased my life. But, somehow I came to be in the Room, so it stands to reason that somehow I can get out. Starting tomorrow, I’ll begin the process of walking through every door in
the building.

Because maybe one is the way home.

I return to my Room to prepare for the search and flop down on the sofa while cracking open a nice, cold Fresca. I’m pretty sure my mind is beginning to rot away, because God help me, this stuff is starting to taste pretty good. When I look through the Window I see mountains. Outside, snow is falling in thick curtains of icy whiteness, and all traces of civilization have disappeared. This would be a heck of a place for a ski resort, the slopes are glistening powder, and the air is crisp and clean. I lean out and catch a few flakes on my tongue, and nothing has ever tasted so pure and sweet. As my breath paints dancing clouds that swirl off with the wind, I swear I can hear a baby crying.

I won’t bore you with the details of the search. Suffice it to say that I walked through every blessed door of 1,243 rooms, and every time I ended up right back where I started. Figuring it took me six minutes for each trip, and I worked ten hour days, this tour of the joint ate up nearly two weeks of my precious time.

1,243 times I walked into a room and was greeted by the smell of Braunschweiger and parsnips.

Ah, but it’s the 1,244th door makes the story.

The last door I opened was actually on a mid-level floor, ’cause I got bored and started mixing up the order. I’d long since given up any hope that anything would happen, but kept on going just for the satisfaction of completing the task. “Anything worth doing is worth doing right,” my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Apold would say right before whipping an eraser at Mike Wilkemeyer who was sleeping in the back row. And since the alternative was lounging around my room holding conversations with myself, what did I have to lose?

So, imagine my surprise when I opened that last door and gazed into a completely different room. I about passed out from the shock. The walls were pink instead of light green. The floor had a dingy orange carpet instead of checkerboard tiles, and in place of my beloved poker playing, ramblin’ gamblin’ canines hung a still life painting of a bowl of carrots. Whoever decorates these rooms must be dropping some really good acid. The painting could have been of raw fish, I didn’t care, it looked like freedom to me.

I stepped into this new and exciting land of opportunity, heart hammering, head ringing. Nothing happened. It didn’t flicker and fade away, it was as real as the headache you get after eating ice cream too fast. I looked in the refrigerator. Carrot juice, carrot cake, carrot slices and a tin of pickled carrots. Bugs fricking Bunny must live here. I didn’t care, It wasn’t the Master Room, and that meant I was about to walk out of a nightmare and into a life. I didn’t waste any time, I didn’t even bother to peer out the Window to see where I was, I just headed for the door. As Lynyrd Skynyrd would say, “Gimme two steps mister, and you’ll never see me no more!”

But just as I was about to skip out into the hall I hesitated. There was something itching in the back of my brain, something dark and nasty with two inch claws, and I knew that feeling all too well.

I slowly turned around, afraid to look, but knowing I had to. There, off to the side of the room was a dead cat. Oh, he wasn’t my dead cat, but that was kind of beside the point. Black, brown or calico, long haired or totally bald, it was a bad, bad omen.

Trembling, I walked out into the hall, a different hall, the same hall. The number on the door was 915. The numbers on all the doors were 915. The ringing in my head was getting louder. Quasimodo never had ringing like this, and he lived in a bell tower.

I collapsed on the floor and cried myself to sleep.

It’s hard to say how many days have passed since my little emotional outburst. I’ve stopped checking rooms, and have been spending my time by the Window, a rather fruitless undertaking, I must say. The view hasn’t changed much, and I haven’t seen the sun since I don’t know when. On the floor, the skeleton of the cat grins up at me, and occasionally grinds its teeth, don’t ask me how.

My newest digs are in a desert, and to call it desolate would be the understatement of the year. Miles and miles of scrubby little brush that glows a phosphorescent green in the moonlight and casts an eery light on the sand. But gradually I’ve seen the glow diminish, and two days ago (or maybe I should say two sleeping/waking cycles ago) the brush stopped fluorescing entirely. As I look up at the night sky, the stars are turning off, one by one until a darkness so complete it’s like I’m buried in a cave rains down over the land, a blackness so deep I can’t see my hand two inches in front of my face.

And the wind stops blowing.

And the monsters come out.

I can hear them now, crashing and thrashing around in the underbrush and howling in pain, or at least it sure sounds like pain. They screech and whine like a chainsaw cutting through a sheet of tin. And every now and then something flies by the Window. Something big. Something fast. Something covered in scales and reeking of rotting flesh, something that beats the air with leathery wings. Something that doesn’t have a very good sense of direction, because it slams into the side of the building so hard it makes the floor shake. They’ve been at it for four or five hours, and their blood is starting to run down the side of the building and drip on my windowsill where it forms purple puddles that bubble and froth. I decide enough is enough. I take my blankets and retreat to the hallway where I don’t have to see the carnage. I can’t shut out the sound though, it’s as loud in the hall as it is in my room, and covering my ears only seems to make it worse.

Stop it! Stop it! Oh, God make it stop! I can’t stand to just sit here, I’ve got to do something, so I start to run. Maybe if I can pass through every door in the building the world will change again and it will all go away. Maybe I won’t have to listen to the un-ending sound of breaking teeth and crunching bones.

Maybe I’ll just kill myself and be done with it all.

Or will I end up somewhere even worse than this? Is there anyplace even worse than this?

I’ve gotta run. Running eases the pain. Running holds the screams at arm’s length.

Only twenty six more floors to go.

The terrible noise escalates with every floor I complete, until it’s so loud it becomes something beyond sound. My mind stops processing the audio input, and it’s replaced by some kind of screeching background static. I haven’t stopped running for days, and the hallways are starting to distort, undulating like a serpent as I plod onward toward the next door. Always the next door. Just one more door. I’ve reached the last of the floors, and as I cross the threshold to my Master Room for the thousandth time, I’m so tired I can barely stand up but I can’t give in to the fatigue if I fall asleep here, I don’t think I’ll ever make it out I think this will be my permanent resting place, and for the rest of eternity it will just be me and the monsters I wonder how many times you can be eaten alive in hell I’m at the next to the last door, flipping through the portal for the last time, (I hope) Outside the Window a blood red moon fills the sky displacing the darkness and painting the world with a crimson brush, and I’m into the hall and down the stairs (I gave up on the elevator long ago) and now the hall on the “first” floor one foot in front of the other, one step closer to freedom the hall is shaking, the roaring is so loud its formed a halo of pain around my head turning the corner into the last hallway I can see my destination but with every step doors blow open behind me in a blast of splinters and nails don’t look back don’t look back whatever you do don’t look back I’m at the door oh where’s the goddamn key? footsteps thudding closer plaster falls from the ceiling I can smell its breath I can sense its cavernous mouth and dripping fangs needle sharp as I finally find the key and stumble through the door and pain shoots down my leg as it is raked by something incredibly sharp and the last thing I do before I lose consciousness is catch a glimpse of indescribable evil with burning embers of hate sparking and flashing in its eyes and I wedge the door shut and the noise dies as one last howl of frustration echoes into oblivion and everything is black and everything is black and everything...is...

All right. Everything is all right, although I don’t think I’ll ever be able to sleep through an entire night again. They say that time heals all wounds, but I’ve got an ache right behind my eyes that hurts so bad it makes me dizzy, and I think it will be with me until I’m lying in a box six feet under.

The running helps. I can almost forget when I run.

I’m on my twenty fourth building now, and they get better every time I flip through that last doorway in the series. The food is even getting tolerable, although I could live without the boiled cabbage this particular refrigerator keeps stocked.

Outside, daylight has returned, with a bright cerulean blue sky and fluffy cotton ball clouds. I can hear birds singing, and off in the distance a merry-go-’round squeaks along to the rhythm of children’s voices. Real voices, and they’re not the only ones. I can’t make out the words, but I can hear the murmur of conversation coming from the rooms all around me. And even though no one answers my calls, I don’t care. I can’t see ’em, and I can’t talk to ’em, but at least I’m not alone anymore. My building sits in a middle-American city, and has for quite a while now. I’ll take these neat rows of little pink houses over the dust of the desert any day. The trees sigh contentedly in the breeze, and every now and then I actually see a real, live bird fly by.

Almost time. I walk to the Window and wait for it.

Off in the distance I can hear the sound of tires on pavement, of wind rushing over the streamlined body of a car. It’s been like this for a few days now. The engine’s whine is joined by a second, and I brace myself for what comes next. Horns blare, tires squeal. I can almost see the rubber smoking as the treads skid across the asphalt, and then the crash comes. It’s louder and more wrenching than I ever could have imagined, metal tearing, glass exploding, and it goes on and on for what seems like forever. I know it’s over in a few seconds, but it feels like the springs have snapped and the clock has stopped. Then merciful silence returns, broken only by the spinning clatter of a hubcap twirling ever slower until even that sound retreats into the back alleys of my mind.

I rest my head in my hands and let my eyes drift over the streets. All is calm, all is bright. And so it will stay for the next few hours. Until the next crash. They’re getting closer now, both in distance and in frequency. Pretty soon it’s going to happen on my street, right in front of this Window, and there’s not one damn thing I can do about it. I turn away from the Window and start to run. I’ve only got seven more rooms in this building, and then it’s on to the next one in this endless series of walls, doors and floors. And Windows. Always the Windows.

Seven rooms fly by in a matter of minutes, it’s amazing what good shape you can get in if all you do is run. All day. Every day. The stairs blur by, the doors fling open, I cross over and it all starts again. It’s actually kind of comforting in a way, the repetition. I imagine a tiger in a cage probably feels the same way as he paces behind the bars. He likes the motion, he detests the confinement.

And now I’m standing before the last door on the last floor. Same old, same old. Cheap presswood construction, small peephole blinking out like some kind of miniature glass and brass cyclops,
worn carpet.

However, something is different about this door. Something I’ve never encountered before.

There’s a shiny gold plate attached with my name etched on it.

I’m going to have to think a while before I walk through this one.

So, I thought about it. It was a surprisingly hard decision. Things have been pretty good lately, aside from the car crashes, and I’ve been through way too much weirdness to have any faith that this door can lead to anything other than more trials and tribulations. Not that I have any real choice in the matter, things happen around here whether I want them to or not.

So, I take a deep breath, open the door and step through.

Jenna’s looking good tonight, and my spirits are high. After three years, seven months and twenty one days, this building is done. The glass is polished, the floors are waxed and the electricity is on. Tomorrow we cut the ribbon, tonight we celebrate. I’m always amazed by how the final structure rises like a Phoenix from the ashes of the blueprints and the concrete. I marvel at the miles of wiring and tons of steel, and the countless hands that have a part in bringing the building that had previously only existed in my imagination to three dimensional reality. Walking through the door of a finished building is the greatest rush an architect can have.

We take the elevator down to the parking level and I open the car door for Jenna, then cross to the driver’s side. It’s a warm night, so I put the top down. She’s in a good mood as well, we’re both looking forward to the party. The drive over to the restaurant is one of my favorites, a winding
two-laner that twists around a series of small lakes, and as the sun sets the sky lights up like the atmosphere is on fire. The wind rushes through our hair and I wish this night would never end. I glance over at my wife. I want to remember her like this forever. Summer splashed all over her face.

And then, as we round a particularly sharp bend in the road, a cat darts out in front of the car in the opposing lane. It all happens in the slowest of slow motion, and I notice every detail. I can see the cat, an orange tabby sprinting across the highway in full stretch. He’s not going to make it, he waited too long before making his move. I watch in horror as the other driver slams on his brakes, I can see his face, his eyes are wide and white, and I don’t know what the hell possesses him, but he swerves to miss the cat, cranking hard on his steering wheel, and fishtailing his car sharply to the left.

Over the center line, right into our lane.

It all happens in a heartbeat, I never have a chance to react, and then the world explodes in a flash of light and twisting steel, a brilliant burst of stars and finally comforting waves of darkness that wash over me like the tide.

When I wake up, I’m in our home, lying in bed, and Jenna’s sitting at my foot stroking the cat who’s purring contentedly and licking his butt. “Wake up sleepy head,” she says, “just wake up,” and leaning over kisses my forehead. “You’ve had a long, hard night.” “You got that right,” I answer, (she doesn’t know how hard). “You wouldn’t believe the dream I just had.” She just smiles one of her famous smiles and walks over to the window and draws the shades. Brilliant sunlight spills in, brighter than I’ve ever seen before. So bright the whole room is washed out in a white glare. So bright I can’t see her or anything else, I’m floating in a sea of whiteness. So bright...so bright...

“Time to go home, Sweetheart,” she says softly, “I always loved you.”

As the light begins to fade a new room blurrily comes into focus. Not my bedroom. Not the Master Room. I’ve never seen this one before. Normally, I’d say different is good, but that was a whole ’nother life ago. Upon further inspection it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that I’m lying in a hospital bed. The walls are hospital white, and the smell of antiseptic permeates every corner and every fiber in the place. Mix that with the smell of hospital food, and you get an odor that I won’t soon forget. To my left sunshine spills in through the window – that’s window with a small “w” thank you – and an intravenous line snakes up from my left forearm to a bottle hanging from a metal stand. A nurse in pink scrubs gently squeezes my wrist as she takes my pulse. “Welcome back, honey,” she says, “you’ve been out for a long time.”

She’s got that right. After that long, strange trip it’s good to be back in the real world. I savor every sensation. The cotton sheets, the squeaking wheels as an orderly pushes a gurney down the hall, Jerry Springer on the television. OK, there’s a few things I haven’t missed. I drink it all in, lingering on every detail of the room. The beeping heart monitor. The plastic chairs. The fly buzzing crazily through the air like a drunken stunt pilot. Wow, it feels good to be alive. Even the light on the ceiling seems to be a little brighter than normal.

And on the wall near foot of my bed, ensconced in an ornately carved cherrywood frame hangs a beautifully rendered oil painting. A French masterpiece, you might say.

Dogs playing poker.

I wonder if I’m really back.

Design Police

2009-02-02T13:40:00.001-08:00

The door blew in with a deafening explosion, sending wood fragments hurtling through the air and breaking the glass of every computer screen in the room. Black uniformed troops streamed in through the opening, protected by Kevlar™ vests and brandishing Corporate Identity Manuals like lethal weapons.

“Design Police!” they shouted, “Everyone put down your X-Acto© knives, place your hands on your mousepads and no one will get hurt.”

“What’s this all about?” demanded the Creative Director.

“Subdue that man.” the Captain commanded, and the troops swung into action. He was instantly bound with double-sided tape, hosed down with Spray-ment and stuck to the wall.

“I’ll ask the questions here.” the officer barked. “We’ve had a tip that this office has been making unwarranted use of creative license, an offense punishable by permanent assignment to the “Account From Hell” if you’re found guilty under guideline number 7742-B3, article 7.b; subsection 12, paragraph 13, line 7 of the Uniform Corporate Blandness Code.”

“I don’t have the foggiest notion what you’re talking about.” the CD replied, struggling to unstick his arm from the wall.

“Oh no? Then how about THIS?“ the captain retorted, snatching up a Matchprint® and waving it around like a pom-pom. “Just what do you call this color?”

“Pink.” the man replied meekly, “Sir.”

“You are aware that pink is a feminine color, and never, ever to be used in corporate communications in any way? It implies weakness and would give our competitors an edge in the marketplace.”

“Well, I read that series of memos, but this is an ad for tampons.”

“He disagreed with me about strategy on a client’s annual report,” an Account Rep said in a whiney voice, walking through the hole where the door used to be. “He wanted to use an unorthodox typeface!”

“It was Bodoni, for crying out loud!”

“I don’t care. I think I know what the client wants a lot better than you. I specifically said use a
serif font!”

“Bodoni is a serif font, you moron.”

“You’re just making it worse for yourself.” the Captain said. “We also have information that you sent fonts to an output bureau (strictly against the law), set copy flush right, reversed type out of a photograph, chose a non-recycled paper and took too long for a lunch five weeks ago. I don’t think I need to go any further.”

“No doubt about it,” the AE said, “all strictly against the rules.”

“This guy is gone,” the policeman said, signalling his troops to peel the unfortunate man off the wall, “I’d suggest the rest of you take notice. From now on, there will be no, I repeat no, use of creativity of any kind in your designs. Spontaneity and freshness are tools of the Design Devil and will not be tolerated in this company. Our clients want good old-fashioned, familiar materials, produced overnight with very little cleverness, and by God, that’s just what we’re going to give them!”

And with that, they backed cautiously out the door, dragging the man behind them.

The creative staff never saw the CD again, until one day a copywriter picked up the morning newspaper and saw the headline, “Local Man Wins Best Of Show In National Design Competition.”

“Poor sucker,” she thought to herself sadly, “he still hasn’t learned!”

You Think You've Got It Bad

2009-02-02T13:39:00.001-08:00

I’m sitting here with with my two little daughters, and like all grown-ups since the Bronze Age I’m thinking, “These kids have got it made.” No doubt about it, we had it a lot harder when I was a child.

Yep. Life was a challenge growing up way back in the prehistoric sixties. You kids now-a-days don’t realize it, but when I was a lad the world was just emerging from the dark ages. Our family was luckier than some, but even so, we only had dirt to eat. Still, it was better than nothing, and we did come up with some interesting variations to combat the monotony of serving soil for every meal. Oh, sure, there was brown dirt, red dirt, black dirt, and for a special treat, maybe a little clay. You could mix it with water and make mud (lots easier on the teeth), and in the winter of course, we had frozen dirt a-la-mode.

We didn’t have any of your fancy electronic toys to play with either. I remember the thrill of my first toy, (which I finally received on my seventh birthday). It was awesome. It was interactive.

It was a stick.

Not just any stick, mind you. A nice stick. It was about twenty inches long, with a few small
nubs on one end and smooth, brown bark. I was the envy of all my stickless friends, and when
I took it to school for show and tell even the teacher was jealous. I carried it with me wherever
I went, and in a fit of creativity named it “Stick”. Man, I loved that old branch. I often wonder where he is today.

Now, I hope I haven’t given you the impression that life was dull in those days. Far from it. We had our entertainment, stuff that would beat the socks off anything you can do today. I used to love going to the weekly Stare-downs. And then there were the Breathing Festivals, Walking Bees and Blinking Contests. We Pendletons come from a long line of blinkers. Grandpa was Tri-County champ back in ’13, ’14 and ’18, with an unbeatable flutter-shut combination that kept his rivals terrified for most of the decade.

“But wait,” you say, “I’ve heard so much about the music of that era. The Stones. The Byrds.
The Beatles.”

Well, there may be some selective memory at work here. Everything, it seems, looks better in retrospect, and those groups were really just A) a bunch of guys hammering different sized
rocks together, B) a flock of crows that shrieked from dawn ’til dusk in Harvey Tapp’s grove,
and C) a coffee can full of bugs that would buzz in annoyance if you shook them up enough.

Still, somehow we found a way to dance to it.

We had to walk to school. 37 miles. Through waist-deep volcanic ash. Uphill both ways.

Medicine was still in a primitive state. A visit to the doctor usually involved waiving around a chicken, dancing and drum-beats. The nurse used a syringe with a square, rusty needle to give you a shot, and usually had to pound it into your butt with a hammer. The X-ray machine could melt the plastic keychain in your pocket.

The only TV was in another county. It picked up one station, which in those days mostly featured programs about oven cleaning and pet de-lousing. Everyone looked forward to the big holiday tire rotation spectaculars. And movies! Kids today complain because they only have four thousand channels on cable, but in my day, movies were nothing more than three guys and a
light bulb behind a sheet. You may have seen the 1967 Oscar-winning “Dog Barking” on late-night re-runs. Personally, I thought “Ostrich Head” should have won that year, but who can account for Hollywood tastes?

There was no Nintendo. No Internet or e-mail. No cellular phones, VCRs, cassette decks or microwave ovens. No CDs. No color TV, no cable TV. No space shuttle, and no Super Bowl. Computers filled entire rooms and required their own nuclear power source. No pocket calculators, no interstate highways. No twenty-screen cineplexes. Heart transplants were a decade away, and anesthetic was just a large wooden mallet to the head. There were no women Senators or Congress-people. There were still Mailmen and Firemen, not letter-carriers or fire-fighters. Airline “food” was served by stewardesses instead of flight attendants. There was no Diet Coke, no contact lenses, no Taco Bells, Wendys or Arbys. We wore Red Ball Jets rather than Nikes. No one played football on Monday nights. There were no fax machines.

Pretty grim, huh?

Little daughters, you’re lucky to be living in the modern world. You can communicate via satellite with your cousin in New Mexico, and you take it for granted. Your world is full of promise and hope.

But I remember walking out into the yard one cloudless August night in 1969 and gazing up at a spectacular full moon hovering brightly in the sky above our farm. There were men walking around on that moon, and the thought of it nearly blew me away. In the first 13 years of my life we went from Howdy Doody to “One small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind”.

Maybe the dark ages weren’t so dark after all.

The Trip To Nowhere

2009-02-02T13:38:00.001-08:00

My wife and I were driving along on the highway the other day when I spotted a historical marker along-side the road. I couldn’t help it, I just had to pull over and see what it had to say.

It’s not that it was any big deal, it was just your run-of-the-mill marker. But, whenever I see those bronze roadside plaques my heart beats faster, my palms begin to sweat and I start salivating like a Pavlovian dog. You see, I was conditioned as a child to hold these informational monuments in high regard. Dispensers of vital trivia, they must be read, because you never know when someone might ask you if you know where Laura Ingalls-Wilder once built a sod outhouse, or where Buffalo Bill’s beloved pet prairie dog is buried, or where General Grant once had a headache or where the geographical center of South Dakota is located.

I can say I’ve been there.

It’s my mother’s fault, I think. She used to research our family vacations and day-trips for months ahead of time, scouring local tourist guidebooks and atlases for any and all must-see points of interest within driving range. I’m sure they looked good on paper, but I have to say, when you’ve seen one warehouse full of clocks, you’ve seen them all. As a child I visited the Amish earmuff-weaving colonies, the quaint chewing gum grottos of Poontzville, Iowa and the famed Cracker caves in West Pfizer. I’ve seen the world’s largest ball of toilet paper and petted the only surviving laughing badger in all of North America.

En-route to these storied attractions, we stopped and read every roadside sign and historical marker we encountered, and though the years have passed and they have all dissolved onto a kind of chronological blur, there is one that stands out in my memories. A marker so significant, so different from all the others that it warranted a trip of it’s own, a pilgrimage miles into the heart of nowhere just to say that we stood on the hallowed ground.

It was in Iowa, of course. You can visit it right there in Tweed county on Highway 233, four miles west of Putzdale.

The place where nothing happened.

It was a watershed moment in my young life, and I can still remember what it said.

“Here, on the banks of the Unnamed River, nothing happened.

No battles were ever fought here, and the nearest railroad passed by seventeen miles to the East. The early explorers generally disdained the area, giving it a wide berth, and the Indians had no name for it. During the land rush years of the 1800’s it was settled by a series of anonymous pioneers, none of whose names are known today, and although there are some records of a town being established in the vicinity, no evidence of it’s location presently exists. If you look in any direction, you will see several miles of flat, non-descript land. This area, known as “The Flats”, contains soil so poor, that even grass won’t grow, and instead, the hills are colonized by a generic form of fungus.”

“Wow,” we thought, “it’s boring, but by God, it’s unique.”

My mother read on...

“Although many people would be tempted to call this area unique, it actually isn’t - similar landforms may be found on every continent, and in fact the entire nation of Lower Twerdzania is built on land exactly like this.”

We stood there on the scenic overlook (actually a small hillock about the size of a pitcher’s
mound), drinking in the splendid blandness of it all for nearly an hour. My mother took 4300 photographs that all looked exactly the same, and then we adjourned to the requisite souvenir shop. It was a hard choice. As every child knows, the main purpose of a vacation is to buy every worthless plastic dolphin, dog whistle and postcard that you can lay your hands on. These are then carted around in your pocket for the entire trip, and promptly discarded as soon as you cross the threshold of your home. I was torn between the “Box-O-Dirt” and the always reliable “My parents went absolutely nowhere, and all they got me was this lousy T-shirt” shirt. I finally chose one of those holographic keychains with a 3-D picture of the Flats that changed perspective when you looked at it from a different angle. Of course, it didn’t change much, mud is pretty much mud no matter what your viewpoint might be, but that didn’t matter. I didn’t have any keys to put on it anyway.

On the way home, my brother and I played auto bingo, fought with each other, tried to spot license plates from foreign states, fought with each other, sang every campfire song we could think of, fought with each other, and tried not to throw up too many times. In other words a typical family vacation.

Hey, you’ll have to stop over some time and see the slides!

Just Wait 'Til tomorrow

2009-02-02T13:37:00.000-08:00

OK. So I got married. In October.
A few years ago.

It was a beautiful ceremony, held on top of a four hundred foot high bluff overlooking the confluence of the Mississippi and Whitewater rivers. You can see for about five miles up one river and nine or ten down the other, and there are usually some real, honest-to-goodness bald eagles drifting around on the air currents overhead. It’s been my favorite place on Earth (like I might have another one on some other planet) ever since I stumbled upon it one afternoon while riding motorcycles with my brother, Dale.

Anyway, the wedding went off without a hitch (pun intended), unless you count the fact that it was about 45 degrees with gale force winds (it was 85° two days before) or the small matter of me losing our marriage license during the Groom’s Dinner (I never did find it), or how our photographer’s car stalled after the ceremony leaving her stranded in the middle of nowhere. And, I never really got the chance to thank my friends for burying my car with left over salad bar vegetables, mummifying it in Saran Wrap and pouring flour down the defroster vents. But those were minor details, and easily overcome (although we’re still trying to thaw out the Bride’s sister, and I continue to initiate a choking flour-blizzard whenever I try to defrost the windshield). But, that’s the kind of stuff that will turn into a really incredible story fifty years from now when we’re sitting in our rocket-powered, anti-gravitational wheelchairs on the nursing home heli-pad.

In case you’re interested, we honeymooned in Cancun & Cozumel (which, true to our wedding’s natural disaster theme were wiped out by the direct hit of a hurricane five days before). They pretty much had it patched up by the time we got there, and on the plus side, we were the only tourists in the entire Yucatan peninsula, so getting a table in the restaurants was a snap (although thirty-four tip-starved waiters desperately circling your table like vultures does get annoying after a while). We snorkeled, dutifully learned the key Spanish phrases (Señor! ¿Donde esta el Banyo?: Mister -Quick! You gotta tell me! Where is the bathroom?!) and endured a six hour local bus ride back to town from the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza, during which I was surrounded and nearly taken prisoner by a marauding band of six year-old children, equipped with some kind of peso-sensing technology and hell-bent on relieving me of all currency.

So, all-in-all it was a lovely vacation, but like I said, that was last year and I still haven’t written
my thank you notes and people are beginning to call the coroner to see if I’m still alive.

I am. It’s just that I was bound by IBSP (International Brotherhood of Scofflaws and Procrastinators) bylaws to wait until now to start putting pen to paper. I did have a good reason to postpone the inevitable at first. We lost the list (no, really, we did, I swear it) of who gave us what, but having an actual reason to delay writing runs counter to what professional level procrastination is all about, and I wanted to stay pure. And, to tell you the truth, I was kind of consumed with training for the Olympics.

Oh, sure. Although it doesn’t get as much press as the more glamorous sports like gymnastics or boxing, there is an Olympic procrastination team. Or at least there was supposed to be. Apparently, the people who were in charge of submitting the documentation for thirty-seven countries all missed the filing deadline. Go figure.

But, that’s OK. As we’re fond of saying, “There’s always next time.” Besides, I’m still waiting for my 1992 uniform to show up, and you can’t compete naked, even though that’s the way the ancient Greek procrastinators used to do it.

I guess this is all pretty hard to understand if you’re not living the life. The hard work, the sacrifice. The constant fear of accidentally doing something when you’re supposed to do it. One year, I almost renewed my car’s license tabs on time and the stress nearly got me. I had to put off a dozen dentist’s appointments just to get back to normal.

I hope you’ll forgive me. I meant to get those thank you’s out, I really did. It’s just that stuff came up, and you know how it goes. But, they’re all written now, and wasn’t it Ben Franklin who said, “Better late than never?” Or how about that great Carly Simon song about how waiting makes everything so much better. Anticipation I think it was. Wasn’t that a great message?

So, thanks for waiting, and thanks to my lovely wife, Agnes, who would gently remind me,
“Joe, If you don’t get your thank you’s out sometime this century or I’m going tie your ears behind your back!!!”

Ha, ha. What a great kid. I’ve really got to tell her just how much I love her, and how she’s made my life better in a thousand different ways. And how much she means to me. Because you never know if you’re going to be here to see the next sunrise. Carpe Diem. Seize the day!

You bet! Me and Nike, we’re just gonna do it!

Well... maybe tomorrow.

The Cow's Game

2009-02-02T13:34:00.000-08:00

I once saw a Far Side cartoon showing a bunch of cows standing on their hind legs in a field, talking amongst themselves. When their lookout spotted a car, they dropped down on all fours until it had passed, and then resumed their bipedal stance. I thought, “Now here’s a guy who knows his cows.”

Having grown up on a dairy farm, I feel relatively confident in stating that people generally don’t give cows enough credit for being the cunning, conniving creatures that they really are. Whether it be plotting to circumvent the electric fence or devising a scheme to be at the far end of the pasture every night at milking time, I can say with confidence that cows are the most nefarious of creatures.

Ours were Guernsey’s, (the brown and white spotted kind) and I’m here to tell you about a little game that they used to play. It might have been that they were bored with their bovine existence, or possibly they were just plain cantankerous. But as far as I could tell, the object of this Cow’s Game was to be as big a pain in the ass to the farmer as possible.

Here’s how it went.

Points were scored on an aggravation index of one to five, and at the end of the evening milking, the Bossy with the highest total was accorded a place of honor at the evening feed bunk (no small thing - these cows went for the ground corn like piranhas, and woe be it to anyone who got in their way). I probably never would have figured it out, but I found their score sheet hidden behind the silo one day.

It went like this...

Official Scoring Tabulation Index: The Cow’s Game

Offense Points Scored

Don’t take a crap all day. Eat as much as you possibly can, and hold it in until
you are pressurized tighter than the Goodyear blimp. Let fly as soon as you get
inside the barn. 1 point bonus if you get it on the walls as well as the floor.
4 point bonus for leaving a big pile on the floor on your way out as well........................ 3

For God’s sake, don’t stick your head in the stanchion on the first try (stanchions are
a sort of yoke that closes on the cow’s neck to hold them in position while being
milked). Go to the left. Go to the right. Go for your neighbor’s spot. Points per miss........ 1

Sneeze and blow snot all over the farmer’s leg as he walks by............................................... 4

Wait until the farmer steps between you and your neighbor to attach the milking
machine, then squish him flat between the two of you. Two point bonus if he
actually turns blue and passes out..................................................................................... 2

Fart lustily as he walks behind you (2 point bonus for blowing him into the wall.
10 point bonus if you have diarrhea and can coat him with poop from head to toe........ 1

Stomp on farmer’s foot, and refuse to move no matter how much he screams
(note: the hilarity of this stunt can be greatly enhanced by putting all 1200
pounds of your weight on the hoof on his foot...................................................................... 1

Nudge the feed shovel with your nose as the farmer walks by, causing corn to
spill all over the floor........................................................................................................... 1

Hold the water valve open on your drinking trough until it overflows, causing a flood
Noah would be proud of...................................................................................................... 2

Squat down and dip your tail in the gutter. Absorb at least three pounds of liquid
manure. When farmer approaches, swat him in the face with it (2 point bonus if
his mouth is open at the time)........................................................................................... 5

Conspire with chickens and ducks to steal socks out of the dryer and hide in a remote
corner of the barnyard (editor’s note: although I have no direct proof this was actually
going on, it explains a lot doesn’t it?).................................................................................... 1

Although most points for this game are scored in the barn, this being the area of maximum human
contact, you may also collect points for...

Finding a minute hole in the fence, enlarging it, and leading the entire herd on a
five-county cross-country marathon..................................................................................... 3

Standing under the bedroom window and mooing obnoxiously at 5:00 a.m.......................... 1

The all-time Cow’s Game champion was one Abnazzer Grizelda Mumphidine, who scored a record 84.5 points on April 6, 1972. Her portrait now hangs in the Bovine Hall of Fame in Waterloo, Iowa.

Unfortunately, she pissed the farmer off so much, he hauled her into town the next day and sold her to the packing house for hamburger.

You Can't Serve That!

2009-02-02T13:33:00.000-08:00

I heard about the opening from one of my friends. Nickerson’s needed a cook. Nickerson Farms, that is. Our local establishment was one of a chain of restaurants scattered across the fruited plain, a procession of red roofed barns squatting on Interstate exits throughout middle America that sucked the tourists in
like flies.

It was the middle seventies, and the big gas price shock was still a few years away. Motorhomes prowled the highways like a shore to shining shore procession of whales on wheels, and why not? Gas was cheap, (less than 50¢ a gallon) and three miles per gallon was deemed an acceptable level of ecstasy. Somewhere, somebody decided to cash in on this seemingly endless supply of rolling credit and hence, the concept. Nickerson’s was something for everyone. A combination gas station, restaurant and kitschy gift shop all rolled into one! Get your gas, food and bumper stickers, folks! I could never figure out why anyone would want a souvenir from Dexter, Minnesota (pop. 303, a town so off the beaten track that the biggest thing to happen in twenty years was when they built a new twin pond sewage treatment plant) but I guess no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of people who have been cooped up in a car with seven small children, a dog and an AM radio for ten hours and 500 miles of Interstate hell.

So, they hired me and I joined a cast of characters that among others, included:

Gladys. A hyperkinetic, 50 year old blur of a waitress who made The Amazing Flash look like a Galapagos tortoise. She whirled around the dining room at two mph less than the speed of light, and would do anything for a tip. The only way to understand her when she talked was to record her speech and play it back at half-speed, but I loved her, because she never made a mistake on her orders. And I hated her because she would substitute menu items at the drop of a hat. “Oh, you want a turkey dinner with chicken instead of turkey, fries instead of mashed potatoes, Dom Perignon instead of milk and a tickets to Jesus Christ Superstar instead of dessert? No problem.” Of course, she was a hit with the customers, and had to use a wheelbarrow to haul away her tips at the end of the day. Gladys would blow into the break room in a cloud of dust, grab a cigarette, suck off a few quick puffs and then blow back out leaving the smoldering butts to set off every fire alarm in the building. We used to soak toothpicks in pickle juice for a couple of days and then insert them into her waiting cigs. This caused a choking fog of eye-watering pickle-smoke to envelop the county whenever she lit up, but she wouldn’t put it out until the last shred of tobacco had burned down to the filter. “Oh!” she’d exclaim, wrinkling up her nose in disgust, “This cigarette tastes like shit!” But it still got smoked.

"Gracie" Poor Gracie. She never did get it straight. Waitressing was just way too complicated an ordeal for her to master. At last count I figured 372 of my gray hairs are directly attributable to her. The menus could have been written in Szechuan Chinese for all she knew. Joanne’s special talents invariably surfaced during a mad dinner rush, or when a busload of 154 Armenian whale trainers was clogging the system. Then she would blithely enter an order calling for toast; over easy. What? Or my personal favorite - fish legs. “Fish legs, Gracie?” “Oh, I guess I meant a chicken leg.” “O.K. Do you want the whole leg or just the foot part?” “Don’t get smart with me. Anyone can make a mistake.”

True. But she raised confusion to an art form.

Johnny G Our resident 90 pound weakling, and itinerant dish washer. John’s ability to be obnoxious in any situation and reputation for continual whining was the inspiration for the infamous “one hour rule”, i.e., all cooks must hit the dishwasher once every hour. If you happened to be feeling lenient and inclined to forego the ritual, you could count on the kid to do something stupid like putting grasshoppers in the deep fat fryer, or spiders on the grill or blowing his nose on his apron, and that would earn him a pummeling. So, it was, “C’mere John, your hour’s up!” “Aw, c’mon you guys - I been good.” “Get over here, John, you know the rules.” Smack. Tormenting John was a favorite pastime around the place, and if you were good enough at it, you could start him swearing. The boy had a definite talent. He could cuss for twenty minutes straight and never use the same word twice, an ability that earned him grudging respect from all of us (except for Norma, our ultra religious back-up cook who was sure there was a special room in Hades reserved for certain young men who couldn’t control their mouths). This, of course, was all the more reason to get him going, so taking a page from The Devil’s Guide To A Dishwashers’ Hell, we’d artfully stack the bus tubs three feet high with dishes encrusted with baked on bar-b-que sauce (nuke ’em five minutes in the microwave at maximum warp, and you’d need a sandblaster to get the stuff off). Within minutes enough invectives would be flying around the sink to make a sailor blush, and Norma would be grabbing for her heart medicine. This tactic worked fine for about two months, until John decided to simply throw the offending dishes away rather than trying to get them clean. We were soon suffering an acute plate shortage, and Johnny G earned another thumping.

Boog A fellow fry cook, Boog was one of the skinniest kids you’d ever hope to see. We used to tease him because he had no ass. Seriously. His legs appeared to be joined directly to his back, with no discernable cheeks intervening. But, he turned what could’ve been a handicap into an advantage saying it came in kind of handy. Not having an ass meant he never got beat up, because nobody could whip his ass. He didn’t get tired since his ass was never dragging, he never made an ass out of himself and no one could ever tell him, “Get your ass out of here!” He had a whole list of attributes that made asslessness seem positively desirable. Boog was the prototypical reason that people in the know shy away from eating out in restaurants staffed by high schoolers. Drop a burger into the no-man’s land between the steam table and the garbage can? Fish it out, dust it off (if you’ve got time) and send it out, the minerals will do ’em good. He lived by the Fry Cook’s Golden Creed: “There’s no such thing as spoiled food”, and could usually be found lurking under a counter with a fire extinguisher waiting for an unsuspecting waitress to walk by. Luckily, we never had a fire. What we did have, was a whole bunch of empty extinguishers and a squad of waitresses with frozen butts. 20 years ago this was called “fun.” Now it’s probably sexual harassment, but give us a break. Remember, this was during a time when leisure suits were considered high fashion and CB radios were the rage. Whenever I look at pictures from that era I’m convinced we were all in the grips of some kind of national dementia.

Troobs Another member of the assless set, this guy was so skinny that if he stood sideways he disappeared, a distinct advantage when it came to sneaking up on our back-up cook Ethel and tying her apron strings to the bread rack. He was the chief linguist of the place, and was responsible for inventing a whole new language which enabled us to communicate within earshot of customers without them knowing what we were saying. “Lar - we got a 2-4 niner with a 26B” would translate to: cute girl at the counter (but she has a big boyfriend), just as “Looks like a hard winter coming on” would mean: Better pull Johhny G out of the trash can, the manager’s coming! Troobs was decidedly the most wholesome member of our clan, but maintained a low-level devious streak which allowed him to stretch Saran Wrap over the women’s toilet (totally invisible to the naked eye, and guaranteed to cause a minor pee-flood) without causing every waitress in the building to reach for the knife drawer.

Zoad Also a cook, Zoad was a good natured, easy-going fellow. The thing I remember most about him was his car, a 1965 Ford Falcon that he called “the Quiet Coon” because he’d just installed a new muffler. Trips in the Coon were always an adventure due to the looseness of the steering linkage, which allowed a 162 degree swing without noticeably affecting your direction of travel. Riding with Zoad was known as “Coon Pinball” because you basically bounced from ditch to ditch. As an added bonus, the brakes would engage sporadically at best, so you never really knew if you were going to squeak to a halt or continue rolling right off the edge of the world. When he bought a Mustang, Boog acquired the Coon so as to maintain the tradition of placing our lives in jeopardy on even the shortest of trips. The new car was much better, having only 159 degrees of play in the steering. After a while this zig-zagging mode of travel became second nature to us, and we’d all get a little disoriented if we had to ride in a vehicle that could actually maintain a straight line down the road.

Now, every restaurant has its regular customers, and we were no exception. There was an old guy named Cliff who showed up every morning to help make the coffee. We had another pair named Chet and Bud who always came in on Friday and split a chicken dinner (woe be it to the foolish cook who gave Bud a smaller plate than Chet!)

And then we had Fat Irene.

This was no casual nickname, mind you. This was a woman who was on a mission to single-handedly consume more food than the nation of India. We knew when she was coming because the dishes would start to rattle off the shelves from the tremors induced by her gait, and also because the dining room would be swept by a reverential hush as she walked in. The rest of the customers could sense that this lady was there to eat. Whenever she showed up, you just automatically knew to call the chicken farm and order up an extra semi-load of birds for the night, because our walk-in freezer only had 213 cubic feet of space, and you just couldn’t fit enough Rhode Island Reds in there to last through a Hurricane Irene feeding frenzy.

Thursday, 8:26 p.m. All-you-can-eat chicken night. It was starting to look like an easy evening. Thirty-four minutes to closing and still no sign of Fat Irene. But then...

...thummmmmmp.......thummmmmmp.......thummmmmmp.

If you’ve ever seen Jurassic Park you know what I’m talking about. Remember how the dinosaur’s
footstep vibrations made the rings appear in the glass of water? Same thing. Little children were diving under the tables. Grown-ups were breaking for cover like there was going to be a shootout in an old-west saloon. The chandeliers were swaying.

And then she appeared.

We had double doors at the front entrance, and squeezing her through was still touch-and-go, but
we’d all been through this before. The gas pump attendant had rigged up a kind of half snow plow - half battering ram contraption on the front of his pickup, and with a little run across the parking lot to build up speed, was able to wedge her through with a minimum of effort.

Troobs looks over to me and says, “You know, I believe she’s lost weight.”

About this time, I glanced out the screen door in the break room and saw a chicken walk by. “What the heck is going on here?” I wondered. “Zoad, you get her started on the salad, bread, potatoes and beans while I check this out.”

I walked out the back door, and waded into a literal sea of chickens. The semi was parked in the back lot, and birds were everywhere. On the roof. In the ditches. Under the cars. And more were arriving all the time. In a scene reminiscent of The Great Escape they were popping out of a hole in the top of
the truck, rappelling down the side and breaking for cover while clutching forged passports under
their wings.

They’d even set a brush fire as a diversion.

I went back and checked the cooler. Only seventeen pieces of chicken left. This was going to be trouble.

Well, first things first. I called the Dexter fire department to put out the blaze which was starting to threaten the cars in our parking lot. I have to say, they responded quickly, if not efficiently. Within
minutes the first engine arrived, firemen twisting a cat’s tail because the siren didn’t work. The guys dismounted, and made a great show of surveying the situation, unrolling hoses, and generally preparing to tackle this challenging conflagration, which by then was burning with abandon. The hose was stretched, the men advanced and the signal was given. But, in a scene the Keystone Kops would have been proud of, a small “fweep” of escaping air was all that came out of the nozzle. It seems that no one had remembered to refill the water tank after fighting the last great blaze (Ole Johnson’s dog house).

Under ordinary circumstances this situation would have been a matter of some concern to me, but that night I had more pressing matters on my mind. Fat Irene had consumed all but four pieces of the chicken at hand and was starting to get a little cranky. This was more than a little bit disturbing to the wait-staff, who knew from past experience that a hungry, unsatiated Irene was more dangerous and unpredictable than a badger in a bowling bag. Small animals and underweight children had been known to be sucked into the vortex that surrounded her plate if food was low and they got too close.

The waterless firemen now came in and appropriated the restaurant’s fire extinguishers, but as you may have guessed, this also was a somewhat less than successful effort, since none of them had any charge left. Boog had long ago relieved them of pressure, frosting panties.

Outside, sparks were flying from the grass fire, and inside, sparks were flying from Fat Irene’s silverware when the answer to our problems hit me. “Of course!” I thought, “It’s been right in front of my nose all along!” Acting quickly, (the last drumstick had just disappeared whole into her mouth) I collected the kitchen staff and we started a chicken drive. Banging pots and waving aprons we rounded up about thirty of the critters and herded them toward the ditch. Dust flew and much squawking ensued, but luck was with us, and the disoriented fowl ran directly into the path of the oncoming brush fire where they were bar-b-qued on the spot. The heat burned their feathers completely off, and left behind a golden brown carcass, fried just right. You could smell that roasted chicken all the way into Grand Meadow (Home of the dreaded Grand Meadow Larks, the second worst team mascot ever conceived, surpassed only by the feared Blooming Prairie Blossoms.)

We picked ’em up, threw ’em on a platter and shipped ’em out.

So, that was the end of it. The fire eventually burned out of its own accord, and Fat Irene declared the night’s repast to be the “best damn chicken dinner” she’d ever eaten.

Nickerson’s closed years ago, a victim of the Arab oil embargo, but I still think of that day whenever I stop in to visit the Colonel for a bucket of extra-crispy.

Catch 2222

2009-02-02T13:32:00.002-08:00

Kandra Jardeaux sat at the breakfast table and skimmed over the morning’s headlines. Same old
stuff, although he had to admit, actually seeing “The World Ends Today” in black and mauve was a
bit unsettling. He reached over and switched the monitor off with an irritated flick of the wrist.

They’d known about it for weeks now, and after fifty-seven days of twenty-four hour hysteria he didn’t think there was much the NewsVid could add to the story. You really couldn’t blame them, though. It wasn’t every day that the Earth was struck head-on by a ninety-four mile wide asteroid, and as stories went, this was probably the mother of them all. Every video rag and newszine in the United Hemisphere had been saturating the airwaves with asteroid minutiae ever since a wayward comet had blasted into the orbiting chunk of rock between Mars and Jupiter and sent it falling toward the Sun, on a collision course with destiny. Hot off the press! The end of civilization! Get your asteroid souvenirs!

He wondered if the dinosaurs had cashed in on their cataclysm the way the world’s latest dominant species had.

But profiteers aside, the truly amazing thing to Kandra was the way most people were reacting. Life was generally proceeding on schedule, and instead of the mass panic you might expect in the face of such a disaster, his nutrient bus continued to arrive right on time. The monorails were still humming smoothly along, power was uninterrupted and the brain-twists were still begging for credits outside his building.

So, on this last day of existence, he took it in stride when the telewall began chiming.

Kandra crossed the room and passed his hand over the “accept” sensor. The windows darkened as the living room shimmered briefly, and faded into a three dimensional image featuring a rather frazzled looking attorney seated behind a large plexiglass desk.

“Good day Mr. Jardeaux,” he intoned nasally, “I’m sorry to disturb you, but I have been going through the company files - setting things in order, don’t you know - and I came across a letter addressed to your attention buried in our records. I thought you might like to have it.”

“Of course, just drop it in my e-mail.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” the lawyer replied. “you see, this is an actual letter. Written on realpaper, sealed in an envelope, the whole schmear. It’s the first one I’ve ever actually seen, except in museums and the holoflicks, of course. Very valuable, I’d guess, or at least it would be if the world wasn’t ending today. Pity.” The man removed a portion of his skull and flicked absent-mindedly at a few switches.

“Jeez, I hate it when they do that,” Kandra thought, grimacing.

“It was supposed to have been delivered to you months ago, but as you can imagine, things have been rather a-jumble around here lately. Apparently it was mis-filed by a temp last March. My apologies.
I’ll teleport it over to you in a few minutes, if you’ll be so kind as to give my secretary your credit authorization for billing purposes. Money makes the world go ’round, at least for a few more hours.”

“Right,” Kandra replied and placed his thumb on the scanner.
A letter! A mystery. Surely, a voice from the distant past,” Kandra mused. Realpaper hadn’t been
available for over a century! “Well, I guess history can be put off for a few more minutes.”

He crossed the room, and sat down next to the teleportal, calmly waiting for his package to materialize. The world might be running out of time, but he still had his whole life in front of him. He chuckled
quietly, as he regarded the odd-looking tangle of cyber-relays, fusion ramps, Doery flags and optical switches that protruded from his chair.

In a few days he would be hailed as the savior of the world, and he was rather looking forward to it.

It seemed like it was only yesterday that he had made the discovery. “Time flies when you’re having fun,” he thought, and smiled at the pun. He had been watching the electrocution of a shoplifter on his favorite game show, Hang ’em High, when the figurative door in his mind had been blown open as
God dropped the secret to time travel into his lap. He had leapt to his feet, Super-Coke spouting out
of his nose, and dashed to the computer to record his insight while it was still fresh. The logic was inescapable. Time wasn’t linear, it was all twisted, chock full of tunnels winding through the fabric of space like some kind of cosmic Swiss cheese. All you had to do was to enter the cheese at point A, and if you picked the right time-tunnel, you would emerge at point B in the past, the future, or if you chose a circular route, right back where you had started. But getting to point A in the first place was the trick.

Well, the key to the cheese was the chair in which he sat.

For a while, he hadn’t thought he could get it built before the asteroid hit, but he’d made it. Barely.

And today would be the Great Escape. Hours before impact, he would exit, stage left, leaving this time and space behind as the Earth was torn apart. He’d travel back far enough to warn humanity about its coming demise, (ten years should be about right) and then reap the benefits of a grateful World Council. When 2222 rolled around again and the comet returned, all it would encounter would be empty space.

Power and fame. Money and love. The adoration of billions of people would be his.

Kandra Jardeaux. King of the World.

And in the midst of his reverie the machine beside him began to hum, and the envelope appeared.

“And now, for one small mystery before I venture into the larger.” he said, gingerly slitting the container and removing the paper within.

It was written in his own hand, and said...

Kandra! Greetings from the stone age. 1937. My god, they barely have electricity here. Before I go any further, I believe a celebration is in order. Congratulations to us. As this letter evidences, the time machine worked (although a little too well). We were right about the nature of time, but the McGregor effect was considerably stronger than anticipated, making it nearly impossible to choose the correct time-tunnel. The ride was rough, and the landing was rougher, causing irreparable damage to the time machine. Luckily, I escaped with little more than scratches and a bruised ego. Since then I have been scrabbling about the twentieth century trying to figure out a way to communicate with you.

After a few days, I hit upon our law firm. The world may pass away, but lawyers go on and on. In exchange for Grandfather’s gold ring, they have undertaken to deliver this letter to you (me) in 2222. The timing, of course, was crucial. It had to be after we tumbled onto the Cheese Theory, (I didn’t want to take any chance of disrupting the creative process) but in time to make corrections (if possible) to the flight calculations. Whether this letter will survive the centuries will depend on the reputation of their firm and a lot of luck.

That was the good news.

The bad news is that there is a larger problem than merely being able to control the tunnel selection process. It would seem that traveling through time has affected my body’s functions on a microscopic level. As near as I can determine using the primitive instruments available here, the osmatic action of my cellular membranes is becoming increasingly distorted. My body cells are taking in water faster than they can get rid of it. I figure I have another thirty hours left before I literally swell up and explode. Not a death I particularly relish. Let’s hope you/I are successful and this timeline ends before it comes to that.

So, there it is. I know that given time, you can overcome these problems. You have to, there’s no other way out. Good luck to us, we’ll need it.

Yours truly,

Yours Truly.

Kandra exhaled slowly, allowing the letter to fall to the floor at his side.

Although he had the means to travel through the ages, for the world and for him, time had run out. In the end, humanity’s destruction would be chalked up to a misplaced letter. And wasn’t that the way it had always been? The more invincible the foe seemed, the less force that was needed to bring it down.

Two choices. A slow, painful death in an unfamiliar time or a fiery denouement by asteroid.

“Some choice,” he whispered to himself.

He walked into his kitchen and called up a large pitcher of margaritas from the food replicator, dragged his chair out onto the balcony, and plopped down with his feet up on the railing.

“A toast,” he said, raising his glass to the world below. “Close, but no cigar.”

And then he sat back and waited for the sky to fall.

The Cat Came Back

2009-02-02T13:32:00.001-08:00

Everybody makes such a big deal out of dying. Well, I’m here to tell ya, it ain’t no big whoop. Dyin’s the easy part, or at least it sure was for me. Nothin’ to it, I could-a done it standin’ on my head.

Being dead. Now that’s a horse of a different color.

I don’t want ya to get the idea that I’m some kind of expert or something, but this story is being told from a first-person point of view. I been there, or I guess I should say I am there. No shit. If I’m lyin’, I’m dyin’. Heh, heh. A little dead guy humor there.

When I was alive I used to spend a goodly amount of time wonderin’ what it would be like. I mean, lots of people say they know what lies on the other side of the great beyond, but I always figured that was just so much bullcookies. Nobody knows. Outa all the preachers an’ prophets poundin’ pulpits, kickin’ ass and takin’ names, not a single one of ’em has ever been there to see for hisself. “But it says so in the Good Book! Heaven and Hell!” they shout and bang the bible. Yeah, right, and I had a book that said Superman could piss into the wind and not get wet, but that don’t make it so.

Still, ya hear tell about these folks having outta body experiences after car wrecks and such all the
time. And I had a friend what was in a supposedly haunted ceramics room in school one time. He swore an unmotorized potter’s wheel just started turnin’ all by it’s lonesome, and I believe him. He was genuinely scared spitless that night. Vampire and werewolf stories are as old as humanity itself. The undead. Frankenstein. The Egyptians preserved the bodies of their deceased, ’cause they figured they’d be needin’ ’em later when they came back. There’s a lotta weird stuff in the world that even the Einstein Boys down at Harvard can’t explain. We tend to discount the ghost stories we hear ’cause it makes the world seem safer not to have Aunt Gertie’s spirit takin’ up residence in your closet, but that don’t mean she’s not in there rearranging your underwear and stealin’ your socks.

Now me, I always thought I’d buy it in a car crash. You know, a 20¢ pin snaps in the steering column someday on a winding country road. Fireball in the night sky. Very romantic.

But it seems Molly saw my demise in a little different way.

We’d been married about six years and was doin’ OK, I guess. Had a nice little house, a cabin on a lake up north, a new Taurus in the garage and that was good enough for me. But like the Rolling Stones said, satisfaction came hard for that girl. Molly wanted more; always a new pair of shoes away from happiness.

And then lightning struck.

9, 15, 56, 34, 29, 38. My birthday and her measurements made us rich, courtesy of the state lottery.

Silly me. I thought we had it made. Even she couldn’t spend 42 million dollars in a lifetime. Yeah, that last year and a half was the happiest time of my life. We traveled. We partied. We built a new house in the mountains.

I never saw it coming.

It was our anniversary for Pete’s sake, which only goes to show you what a cold-hearted bitch she really was. We’d just finished the cornish game hens and were sitting in front of the fire drinking champagne when my head started to spin and everything got real blurry. It happened so fast. Strichnine would be my guess. She poisoned me!

And there I was, floating in the air above, looking down at my own body lying on the floor, rather amazed by it all. “It’s true!” I thought, and I was so awestruck by the fact that there really was life after death that I wasn’t even upset with her for killing my ass.

But that didn’t last long.

I hadn’t been down three minutes when the door swings open and who should come strollin’ in but my best friend Ray. Molly looks at him and says, “Where you been, lover? We gotta get him outta here!”

But Ray’s playing it cool, sayin’, “Now, don’t get your undies in a bundle, he ain’t goin’ nowhere. We didn’t plan this for four months just to screw it up now,” and he starts to drag my body out the door.

Molly and Ray! Who woulda thought! Obviously not me.

Well, I guess they hadn’t used quite enough poison, ‘cause as he’s pullin’ me down the back steps, I get this really goofy sensation and literally fall out of the sky and land right smack dab back in my body. That hurt too, and now I’m moanin’, and trying to make some sense outta what the hell just happened to me. I opened my eyes, but everything was pretty fuzzy and I still couldn’t move a lick. Ray, he don’t even bat an eye, he just walks over to the shed, picks up a shovel and crosses the yard to where I’m stretched out on my back.

“Sorry, ol’ Hoss,” he says, “I know this is gonna hurt you a lot more than it hurts me.” Then he put the point of the spade to my forehead, and jumped on it with both feet.

If it hurt, I don’t remember it.

When I woke up, everything was dark and silent as the night. I tried to move, but nothin’ doin’. In
fact after I’d been lyin’ there what seemed like a couple hours I became aware of something that really jerked a knot in my tail.

I wasn’t breathing.

No matter how I looked at it (and I looked at it from a whole lot of different ways in the next few weeks) it all added up to the same thing. I was deader ’n a doornail, and the answer to the all-time cosmic question, at least for me, was that after you cash in your chips you don’t go anywhere. No pearly gates. No coming back as your uncle Benny’s favorite sheep. No tripping around the galaxy. Sorry to disappoint ya folks, you just stay right where you are.

And let me tell you, it’s boring as hell.

You don’t even sleep. It’s pretty much the worst thing you could ever think of.

So, I got really good at playing mental games, I’ll tell you that. I constructed crossword puzzles in my head. I built a new house, board by board. I invented a whole new language.

And time crept by.

Who knows how much? Without any reference to the passing of night and day, it’s impossible to say.
But eventually, I began to notice something unbelievably odd. I was regaining the use of my limbs. No foolin’. It took a while, but what’s time to a dead man? With a little practice I was even able to force air through my lungs and tried singing a song (Don’t Fear The Reaper by Blue Oyster Cult), although by then my vocal chords were starting to decay pretty badly, and I didn’t much like the sound of what came out. Kinda wet and raspy. I guess the Mormon Tabernacle Choir will have to wait.

It wasn’t long (or was it?) before I was able to raise my arms and confirm what I’d suspected all along.
I was buried in a rough wooden box, about shoulder width and a foot high, and I’m tellin’ ya, it was almost worse to know. Before, I couldn’t tell where I was, some weird kind of limbo I thought, I wasn’t even sure I was still in my body, although it seemed that way. Now I knew.

I remembered what a coroner friend told me, how he’d have to dig up the coffins sometimes. He always thought it was kinda creepy ’cause a few of them would have their silk linings all shredded, like the
people inside was tryin’ to get out. ’Course, I always thought he was just yankin’ my chain.

That was quite while ago. I’m noticing it difficult to concentrate, more and more. I think brain start to rot away, and it affecting me. Bugs and centipedes starting get in too. Damn cracks in wood box. Since feeling come back, I know they boring through flesh my. This really starting to annoy me! But good news! I was able to loosen board in ceiling! I lots of time, and patience always my strong suit. I think not long before I have it off.

Board came off Alright. Lots dirt fall in on me, and now can’t move again. This sucks! I just starting to enjoy being able scratch, and now I’m screwed. But oh, well. Death goes on. Ha, ha. More humor.

Something new. Felt tug on hand. Dog dug me up. Sumbitch chewed off left arm! But dirt loose enough that out I now. Moon bright as sun. Been long time since seen I light! Not stand able, been too long, guess. I work on.

Day pass. Practice perfect make. Finally stand, even walk can fast though not. Damn dog come back. Now missing part right shoulder. I hate dog, but guess I not beauty contest win anyway.

Have plan. Know this woods, not too far, my house old. Shotgun still barn in? Not nine lives, but this cat back!

Molly. Ray.

Guess who coming to dinner?

The Diary Of Marga Xan

2009-02-02T13:30:00.002-08:00

A Not-So-Short Story

206/3347:46

Today I begin the first chapter of my “Vacation Chronicles”, at the urging of my Otherlife counselor. According to the rather sketchy information contained in the pamphlet she gave me, First Vacation can be a time of immense confusion. They got that right.

Vacations. As the period of formal education nears its end, it’s all you talk about. Despite the
official restraint of relevant information the word gets out. Friends recall parental conversations concerning time spent on exotic Otherworlds.

Rumors of Uncle Derza...“He never came back, you know. I heard my mother say it was the most fantastic thing she’d ever experienced.” Everybody seems to think Vacations must be some sort of fantasy ride, the ultimate high. Sometimes I wonder... after all, they are government sponsored.

The amount of secrecy makes me worry. The adults say the young have no need to know, you’ll find
out soon enough. Well, I made it. The shroud of secrecy is about to be pulled away and put an end to fifteen years of speculation.

Today, I’m en route to Homeworld Transmigration Center M6.

Tomorrow the mystery unfolds.

208/3348:72

HTC M6. You wouldn’t believe the size of this place. According to the orientation hologram, the
campus is comprised of fifty-seven separate buildings, thirty eight miles of transportation tubes, has its own fusion plant, and boasts a full time staff of 37,000. M6 is just one of fifteen identical installations
on Homeworld.

I’ll be spending the next three weeks with Frosh-group 93 in preparatory classes. Translation: more school. As they say, “Life’s a bitch...and then you die.”

208/3363:27

Sorry it’s been so long between entries, but I’ve really been spinning the discs. For the official version of reality, may I present my latest class report:

A BRIEF HISTORY OF TRANSMIGRATION VACATIONS

by Marga Re Xan M6t56639711RCD

According to historical tradition the universe was seeded with life by our parent race some four billion years ago. Our ancestors then settled on Homeworld to monitor the development of Otherworld species. Over a period of time, it became apparent that the Grand Life Experiment would have a rather curious outcome. Although scientists had predicted that intelligence and organization would evolve on a statistical number of planets, no such civilizing force arose. In fact, only a handful of worlds developed an ecology beyond the simplest microbial levels, and of those, only eleven reached advanced levels of plant and animal life. It seems that human levels of intelligence are not the inevitable result of evolutionary forces.

125,000 years ago, a deadly plague mutated into existence on planet seven, completely destroying the world’s multi-cellular life forms. When unwitting scientists returned to Homeworld carrying the virus, the population was swept with disease. Ninety-two percent of all life was lost within two weeks, and the planet was plunged into a 34,000 year period of ignorance and strife. Death came so swiftly only a fraction of the records of the time were able to be permanently preserved, and some of those were lost in the ages’ numerous wars and natural disasters. Among the data lost and never recovered was the secret to inter-stellar travel. Although files had been uncovered pointing to the existence of the Otherworlds, they were beyond mankind’s reach, brightly beckoning points in the sky, and a source of constant frustration to those who could only imagine the resources they represented.

All that changed in 200/7544 when a little known theoretical physicist named Condra Pandlin began experimentation in the then new field of Cold Energy. Pandlin’s misfortune became humanity’s greatest discovery when he accidentally reversed polarization in a power cell and teleported his soul into the body of the laboratory cat.

Life Image Transmigration was born.

In the years that followed, it was discovered that it was possible to impose a human life Image on virtually any lower life form. The superior energy of the higher image would pre-empt the lower, enabling the Traveler to effectively assume control of its new Otherbody. Unfortunately, upon retrieval of the Life Image, the host body would perish, its own Life Image irreparably distorted by the control of a foreign force. During early experimentation, some fascinating papers were written by researchers who had spent time as a dog or other animal. Some people even opted out of paralyzed or disfigured bodies to spend the rest of their days soaring the air currents as eagles.

Inevitably, the Transmigrationists turned their attentions to the Otherworlds. The vast distances of space posed no barrier to the peculiar energy involved in the increasingly popular “soul rides”, and on five of the worlds an incredible discovery was made.

During the Great Plague a small number of scientists had been stranded on the Otherworlds. Cut off from civilization, their progeny had reverted to barbarism,
occasionally inter-breeding with gene-spliced primates, a legacy of earlier efforts to
spur local evolution to human levels. Soul-riding researchers found a race of man-apes using stone tools and living in caves. A new program of evolutionary stimulation was launched, although with difficulty. The relatively advanced state of the native minds made transmigration extremely taxing, even when the target body was a newborn. Although the superior mind would eventually prevail, the resulting Life Image conflict would leave the Traveler with no memory of previous self, thereby rendering Image retrieval impossible until the death of the host body. So, although your Homebody remains in suspended animation during the trip, Otherworld Transmigration is a “lifetime” deal. You can’t come back until your Otherself dies.

The loss of primary identity made the evolutionists’ task considerably harder. They couldn’t direct events, and had to rely on the Travelers’ increased intelligence alone to move things along. It was a slow process. Although a Traveler retains full memory of their Otherself upon return to Homeworld, the early scientists usually couldn’t wait for a random death to return information, and began using a series of “spy animals” to gather needed data, and even rarely to direct events. There are a couple recorded instances of dogs influencing decisions and occasionally intervening to save a Traveler’s life, but these were generally few and far between.

Evolution proceeded at an accelerated pace, and approximately 6000 years ago civilization was appearing on five of the Otherworlds. Meanwhile, on Homeworld, free-radical suppressant R~3 had just been discovered, effectively putting an end to the aging process. With drastically reduced death rates, and fewer fatal diseases every year,the population began to soar. Until then, most Transmigrations taking place were evenly divided between scientific missions and wealthy thrill seekers. But, as resources became strained, support for mandatory stays away from Homeworld grew. Finally, in 207/8230 the Enforced Vacation Act was passed. Everyone of legal age was required to spend one Otherlife every thirty years away from Homeworld. In 208/5766 that was updated to every twenty years, and it now stands at every fifteen. Vacations were, and are, touted as opportunities to gain knowledge and wisdom, visit exotic lands, live another life, and soon became immensely popular.

END RUN

208/3363:34

So that’s the official storyline. I, along with a few other members of my Frosh-group think there might be more to it than meets the eye. Observation: First-trippers are completely isolated from contact with Repeaters. Observation: Our access to library files is restricted to Otherworld information so hopelessly skewed toward presenting a pretty picture that it smacks of the worst kind of propaganda. Observation: The military and police presence here is immense. What are they protecting? Who are they guarding? Crime and war have been virtually unheard of on Homeworld for generations.

208/3364:44

Today we got the official tour of the facilities. Very impressive. First stop was a block long gallery of Otherworld Images. All representational holography, of course. It’s impossible to send physical imaging equipment to the Otherworlds, and the problem of memory loss prevents Traveler/Scientists from constructing the necessary end links for a hyperwave channel even if they wanted to. Back in 200/9347 a ship equipped with canine-operable equipment was dispatched to the nearest Otherworld, 0-4, but even at top speed, it’s still 24,000 years away. Until then, all we have are the images Vacationing artists have created upon their return.

Otherworld One (m/1) has a double star system, with three sister planets and four moons visible at varying times during the day. m/2 is a tropical paradise, lush vegetation, and a features a peculiar sort of bird that changes colors in seconds. m/3 seems to be mostly mountainous, with breathtaking vistas of canyons and mile-high waterfalls. m/4, our nearest neighbor, is actually the most unlike Homeworld, a planet comprised almost entirely of Oceans, and can only boast of a single moon. m/5 has a rather pinkish atmosphere, and low gravity, with the holograms depicting games where players leap 30-40 meters at a time.

The plant and animal life on each planet has it’s individual differences, but overall is strikingly similar, not surprising considering its common origin. Same for the human population. Given variation in height, coloring, and minor physical features, the people bear a great resemblance to ourselves, also not surprising - they still carry the founding scientist’s genes.

Cultures and traditions vary wildly, depending on the planet, and sometimes even from place to place on each world, a difficult concept for one having been raised as part of a global system to grasp.

All in all, the Otherworld images convey a reassuring sense of familiarity, beautiful worlds and beautiful people, each a lovely place to spend an Otherlife.

I think it sounds too good to be true.

Most of the other first-riders are milling around, babbling ecstatically about this Otherworld, or that beautiful sunset, or the spires of Lyristen, a city on m/3. Only a few of us aren’t caught up in the
experience. One of the cautious ones is Reba Lyi, a fem I recognize from my history orientation group. I’ll make a point of talking to her later.

Next stop is the actual Transmigration Station, or rather, one of many. The guide informs us there are 130 stations in this building alone, each capable of handling thirty-six rides per hour. They operate
continuously, twenty six hours a day. The control room looks like a typical fusion power station, banks of flashing lights, print-outs, and glowing monitors. The technicians are dressed in matching jumpsuits, color-coordinated each according to their function. On one side of the room, a row of windows allow a view of the waiting area, rows of chairs face a tele-screen on the front wall that is presently showing a documentary on the solar kites of m/2. Periodically an ident number will run across the bottom
of the screen, and its owner will obediently rise and walk through the pink door beneath the display. Attendants are dispensing Relaxit for those with a case of the jitters, and lending a helping hand to the terminally nervous as they walk into the unknown.

On the other wall, another string of windows overlook the three Transmigration chambers. I can see a line of capsules along one wall as they enter a box-like device near a porthole at the end of the room. The Vacationer simply enters a capsule through a hatch, and is carried along a track to the box. The machine is connected to the main Life Image bank, which selects an appropriate Otherself body being born, and imposes the new Life Image on it. After transmission, the Homebody is placed in suspended animation, and safe in its self-monitoring cocoon is transferred to storage until retrieval.

It sounds too easy, our guide says, but in centuries of operation there has yet to be a major malfunction. Transmigration is safer than a monorail ride to the store. In answer to our questions; No, there has never been a loss from storage of a Homebody, the safeguards are failsafe. The chances of imposing on an Otherself of the wrong sex are miniscule - .002%, and even if it happens it merely results in a little gender confusion (not fatal). Most Otherselves adapt quite well, and it gives you a new appreciation of the opposite sex upon return to Homeworld. Some people even ask for it.

Destination planet is chosen by lottery, specific placement is impossible - you take the body being born at the moment of Transmigration. Although it is quickly lost, you do retain memory of your Primary Self for about fifteen weeks after arrival.

Some vacationers have reported an ability to remember bits and pieces of primary memory, recalling past Vacations and Homeworld images. Some have accidentally established a tenuous telepathic link to non-Vacationing relatives, and a scientific panel has been formed to investigate the possibility of strengthening communication with these so called “mediums.” Although generally dismissed on the Otherworlds as crackpots, should this experiment succeed, it could provide the first real two-way
communication channel between Homeworld and our Vacationing Otherselves.

The Transmigration process itself is totally painless. Riders generally report the sensation of flying, a feeling of well-being, and most report being drawn toward a bright source of light. Scientists theorize this light source to be the destination planet’s sun, although no firm data is available on Life Image
perception during transmission.

208/3365:13

So that’s the official storyline. After the tour I had an opportunity to talk to Reba, and found she shares my distrust of the government version. We’ve agreed to attempt to obtain more information, but it’s not going to be easy. We need access to restricted library files, and that means we need a gold card to clear security.

208/3365:54

Getting the gold card was embarrassingly easy. We simply seduced a clerk down in records, and lifted it while he was pre-occupied. We’re hoping he’ll be too embarrassed to turn it in for a few days, and by that time we’ll have what we want anyway.

Reba suggested a trial run, so we took a little unsupervised tour of the RepeatRiders departure lounges. We figured if we got stopped we could plead ignorance, “We’re lost officer”, and since it’s not as sensitive an area as the library or storage banks we’d get off with a warning. Nobody bothered us though, the gold card was as good as its name.

We didn’t stay long. The repeater’s lounges had a really strange air about them. Whereas the FirstRiders’ call areas were buzzing with excitement, the few we saw in this section were depressingly quiet. No one talked to you, our questions bringing clipped answers or more likely, silent stares. Not exactly the atmosphere you’d expect from a bunch of people about to have the time of their Otherlives.

And there was another difference, the security presence was far more noticeable. There were military uniforms everywhere, and these guys meant business. Although inconspicuous, each man carried a small silver cylinder. Zap packs. I remember them from a couple of student demonstrations I attended. Nasty little things. You don’t want to tangle with them twice. We decided to call an end to our impromptu tour when a couple of the guards started paying a little too much attention to us.

On the way back we saw another curious sight. A prison van pulled up to a dock at the back of building seven, and discharged eight manacled convicts, who were led through the bay to a waiting elevator. Building seven is all Transmigration stations. Where did they come from, and why would prisoners be going on Vacation?

208/3366:32

Every hour is important now, this gold card isn’t going to stay active much longer. Not only that, our Departure is slated for the day after tomorrow.

Reba and I have decided the best plan of action is to attempt to slip into the library with the opening hour’s rush.

208/3367:04

So much has happened in the last few hours my head is spinning. I’ve got to get this entered while it’s still fresh.

We slipped security at the library, no problem. It took a while to find the section we wanted- the place has 48 floors, and like all government buildings is a maze of conflicting directions. After a series of trial and error inquiries, the Info-bot pointed us to a glass enclosed room on floor twenty-seven. Fortunately, once you’re in the building, the library relies on electronic security, and our card was
never questioned.

Restricted Access was surprisingly busy, maybe thirty to forty people coming and going at all times. We’d spent about two hours locating files and transferring data to personal discs, when my screen went blank. Now, that’s something that never happens, and since everyone else’s screens were still glowing, I figured the card had termed out, and that meant trouble. The terminal wouldn’t give up the disc I was working on, so I grabbed the two I’d already filled, and went looking for Reba, who was two stacks over. We’d just left the R.A. cube when the blue suits started appearing. Government Golds aren’t accustomed to Security search and seizures, and a scuffle broke out almost immediately. We didn’t waste time cheering for the trouble-maker, who was holding his own against ever mounting opposition, we just jumped a down-tube and got the hell out.

Stopping at the third floor balcony, we could see it would be useless trying to get out the main entrance. Security was doubled and people were being carded. So, we decided to split up - Reba trying the people mover, which was still running, while I decided to try a different route.

All buildings constructed after the Deza-tel fire of ’1755 are required to have emergency slides installed on the first twenty floors. The problem was starting a fire-in a building designed to be virtually fire-proof. Even the antique realpaper books are treated to resist combustion. Solution? Good old fashioned toilet paper, it hasn’t changed in centuries, and burns like a charm. So I started a small blaze in the rest room, and amid screaming alarms and a torrent of water, hopped into the snake-like tube and slid to safety in the commons three stories below. I blended into the startled crowd, and eventually made my way back to my room.

I haven’t been able to contact Reba Lyi since.

208/3367:54

Still no word from Reba. I’ve been reviewing the data that she collected as well as my stuff. Even though we were cut off, and didn’t get the entire picture, what we have tells a pretty chilling story.

For starters, the history of Transmigration has been marred from the very beginning by political abuse. The Otherworlds were basically used as convenient penal colonies, and still are. Homeworld has no jails, convicted offenders are simply beamed off to serve a prescribed number of Otherlives away from the planet. The worse the crime, the worse the situation your Otherself finds itself in, and some of those can be pretty bad. The Otherworlds aren’t all the serene paradises the government would have you believe. More on that later - suffice it to say that serving a sentence can be an outstandingly miserable experience. There aren’t many repeat offenders.

Add to the legitimate criminals an endless string of politically motivated exiles, conveniently misplaced by the government to silence opposition. If they are merely annoyed with you, someday you might be allowed to return. If they really consider you an enemy, your Homebody might just disappear. You
simply cease to exist. End of problem.

The government isn’t the only one playing these games either. If you’ve got the money, you can buy off
a guard at the storage terminal, and hey, your mother-in-law problem vanishes. Or the president of a competing concern never returns. An even more interesting tactic is to arrange to have a conspirator’s Life Image re-integrated into an enemy’s Homebody, and pose as the real person. It happens so much there’s a whole division down at Security devoted to sniffing out impersonators. It’s also why the government gives Vacation exemptions to highly placed officials. Nothing is fool-proof, though. I wonder how many people in power are really who they say they are.

In a related, bizarre twist, there are a couple hundred thousand people who belong to a Homebody swapping club. It’s officially discouraged, but not illegal. Members spend time in each other’s bodies, and more than a few lawsuits have been filed for damages done during occupation. Broken bones,
contracted diseases, accidental amputations - that sort of thing.

There’s also a huge black market for healthy Homebodies. The ailing rich, unable or unwanting to
steal a body from storage, will contract with a disadvantaged person for the use of their physical self.
It’s a chance for perpetual youth. One such Life Image is said to be on his tenth body - he’s over 2,300 years old.

Every now and then, something legitimately goes wrong. Power failures, natural disasters, computer malfunctions and the like are responsible, combined with theft, for the loss of six percent of all Homebodies placed in storage every year. If your relatives have the money or the clout, they’ll buy you a new Homebody, thereby contributing to the cycle. For a little less, you can be placed into an endless cycle of Otherlives, at least until the flow of bribe money stops.

For most people, their Life image terminates along with their Otherself. No one complains too vigorously. Mistakes could be made on their next Vacation.

Sound bad? Consider this. The Transmigration process itself isn’t as mistake-free as it’s made out to be. Getting a wrong sex Otherbody happens about fifteen percent of the time, not .003 like the guide said, and lots of people have big problems with it. A female Life Image placed in a male body can be quite confusing. Not every Otherbody is in perfect shape, many have deformities, weakening diseases or other defects. Not all Otherworld medicine is advanced as ours, cancer- is still rampant on m/4. Control can’t predict stuff like that, so they just say, “Learn from it,” or “Look how lucky you are on Homeworld compared to that,” and meanwhile you’re stuck with a miserable existence until your Otherself dies.

Sometimes the guiding mechanism fails and your Life Image ends up getting beamed into the middle of an Otherworld star.

O.K. Let’s say you get by all that. What are the Otherworlds really like? The holograms depict five islands of paradise, but there are really only four left - m/2 blew itself up in a nuclear fission war fifty years ago. There was no way Homeworld could handle re-integration of so many Life Images at once, so over two billion souls were lost. The planet is now the ultimate prison sentence - a wasted, radioactive desert, inhabited by twisted mutants.

You’d think that that would have put an end to the Homebody shortage for good. No way. The government had an auction. They were gone within three days. The average Homeworld citizen’s age dropped thirty-two years. Prime specimens were selling at the rate of fifty million credits apiece. A lot of people bought two.

On the other end of the scale lies m/5. For some reason, evolution has proceeded so rapidly there
that Life Image domination of their bodies has become impossible. Their souls are as strong as ours, thus closing the door to travel, except to the planet’s lower species. Our only presence on 0-5 lies in
a limited number of animal spies. At their present rate of advance, technological parity with Homeworld is predicted in 1700 years. We should be able to establish communication in 400. I wonder what
they’ll say?

So. Three Otherworlds left, and Homeworld’s population still growing. Let’s take a look at them.

m/1. Also known as Cara System 3. This Otherworld lives up to its billing. Part of a double star system, the planet is eighty percent tropical. The population has stabilized at about 3.5 billion, technology has advanced to level III. Most disease has been eliminated, and primitive inter-planetary space flight has been achieved.

Cara System III is a playground of the rich and powerful. For all practical purposes, you have to buy your way in. Homeworld allows Cara to maintain a stable population because the policy makers have a stake in keeping their Vacationland pure.

It would be a supreme coup to achieve m/1 on FirstRide.

m/3. Of the remaining two planets, m/3 is handling its growing share of Vacationers the best. Its
planetary governing council is best prepared to deal with a population now exceeding three billion. Even so, there are areas of the planet with poor communication, lowered nutritional standards, and exposure to the elements. Climate control is only in early stages.

m/3 has its moments though. Medical care is generally good, and about half of the planet is truly
enjoyable. Forget the lottery system - if you can’t buy Cara III, you can still obtain favorable placement on m/3 for a reasonable price.

m/4 gets everybody else. There’s a saying; when asked how bad can a situation get, the answer is, “As bad as a day on 0-4.” Overpopulated, fractionalized local governments contribute to food shortages, and are constantly at war with each other. Resources are strained, and there is no coordinated plan to deal with ever increasing pollution threats. Medicine is still in primitive stages, as reported earlier in this journal, cancer is uncontrolled. Technology still mired in level I, is advancing, although slowly. Ozone levels have been depleted, and global warming is causing weather fluctuations on a massive scale. Nuclear fission is still used as a power source, and radioactive leaks do happen.

No one goes to m/4 voluntarily.

208/3367:89

Still no contact with Reba.

208/3367:91

At the suggestion of our ever friendly InfoBot I checked the status board, and was shocked to find Reba’s name listed under “Departed...3367:67”. She wasn’t supposed to leave until tomorrow.

I really have a bad feeling about this.

208/3368:21

Departure day.

I was up all night considering my options. The way I see it there are two possibilities that explain Reba’s early Departure. Option A is she chose an early out as a way to escape pursuit by the Security forces. If they were close behind, she may have bribed a Techie and hopped a Ride out of danger. She wouldn’t have had time to notify me of her plans.

Option B is the one that kept me up all night. If Security did catch up to her, they probably did a memory scan and then shot her off to some corner of m/4 or worse. That would mean they know about me.

Intercepting Government files is a serious offense, they don’t like you knowing things you’re not supposed to. Even so, the material we accessed was hardly of the most sensitive nature. Anyone who’s spent time on m/4 or the penal colony of m/2 would be aware that not all Otherworlds are a bed of roses.

So... either they know about me, and are waiting for RideTime to execute their sentence, or I’m safe, and stand the usual risks of ending up with an unpleasant Otherlife. My social status should be good enough to merit a Trip to m/3, if l can bribe the right person.

There is one other alternative.

I could go underground- join the Z-Riders. They don’t believe in Transmigration, and refuse the mandatory Trips. It would mean abandoning everything I own, completely defying the authorities, and making a run for the FreeZone, an area I’ve barely heard about, and have only the vaguest notion of
how to find.

I can’t do it. I’d be declared a Runner the second I didn’t show for Departure, my access cards would closeout, and a city-wide alert would spread before I could even clear M-6 property lines. And that’s assuming that they don’t have surveillance on me already. If I added Running to the charges of File-
tapping, I’d probably be looking at a sure stint on the Nuclear Playground.

I don’t have a choice, I’ll take my chances on the Ride.

208/3368:46

Departure lounge T7. This will be the last entry in this journal for a while, possibly forever. I’ve signed over every credit in my name to a shifty-eyed little grunt at Ride Control who assures me I’ll have a pleasant Destination. I don’t trust him for a nano-second, but what can I do? At least I tried.

Everyone around me is chattering excitedly about the things they’re going to do, places they’re going to see, speculating on Destinations. There’s going to be a few surprised faces when these people get back from Vacation and realize they just spent an entire Otherlife as a laborer in an m/4 spice mine.

The Board just flashed 5663962, it won’t be long now. My hands are shaking so bad I can hardly hold this transcriber. I have the overwhelming desire to break and run, but I’d swear every Bluesuit in the place is watching me. Paranoia does funny things to your head. My mouth is dry, my palms are wet, everything’s backwards. My heart is racing, and seems to go faster the closer we get to my number. All around me people are walking into oblivion, blissfully ignorant.

56639711RCD. That’s me. I’m so dizzy I can hardly stand up.

Oh god, just give me a bearable Otherlife.

Please don’t let it be m/4.

END TRANSCRIPT

Chalaka Mgumbwe looked up at the canvas above her and was grateful. Outside a desert sandstorm raged, but the ragged tent provided some relief from the wind and the searing sun that had parched the land for seemingly endless months. When her village ran out of food, she had walked seventy miles through the burning desert to the relief camp, where meager shipments of food and medicine were occasionally allowed to get through by the rebel army.

She looked at the stranger’s white face, and closed her eyes as the pain came again. The man was babbling something in a foreign tongue, and Chalaka arched her back as a fresh wave of pain washed over her. She was so weak. She didn’t think she could make it, but she braced herself and pushed one more time. And then suddenly it was all over.

A cry drifted across the sand, and the doctor, weary from months of service in the Ethiopian desert, regarded the latest addition to a troubled land.

“Welcome to the world, little one,” he said.

And in his hands the baby girl opened her eyes...

...and began to scream.

Visual Clutter

2009-02-02T13:30:00.001-08:00

Don Parsons had never been a particularly patient man. Even in the best of times a red light would send him into a fit of fist waving curses followed by an impatient horn blast the second the offending signal switched to green. Supermarket lines were death to him, he bought a VCR so he wouldn’t have to wait through commercials, ate only microwave food, and got automatic dialing on his telephone- he especially hated it when he had to wait for himself to dial the number.

Don felt that life should be kept uncluttered, free of unnecessary trash that slowed you down, and resented society for installing so many barriers to the efficient execution of his daily duties. He lobbied long and hard for tripling the speed of the elevators in his office building, and pouted for a week when the supervisor turned him down, correctly reasoning that little old ladies and small children would be squashed flat by the G forces encountered on the upward trip. Most of his co-workers still hadn’t
forgiven him for the time (when in search of a swifter entrance and exit) he removed the rest room doors, and some considered it downright strange that he took a stopwatch along on his bathroom breaks, always in search of a more expeditious urination.

Of all the things that made Don wince, the worst was VISUAL CLUTTER.

It was hard enough to process incoming data without the distraction of dancing neon chicken-burgers, velvet Elvis bumper stickers, singing Maxi-Sponge tampons, and his personal anathema, Joey Buttafuoco room deoderizers. God! If there was ONE thing in life he hated, it was VISUAL CLUTTER.

Don, of course, worked for an outdoor advertising agency.

He designed billboards.

Monday, July 27.

It was a day gone bad right from the start. Don’s three minute egg took four minutes to cook. His
velcro shoe closures became hopelessly entangled in the shag carpet, and his bus was a full 27 seconds late. When he finally did get to work, a scant 34 minutes early, a fat woman got stuck in the revolving door and a rescue squad had to be summoned. Don couldn’t wait. He climbed the fire escape.

The day ground on. He was put on hold. Twice. A busload of Japanese tourists arrived at McDonalds ahead of him and insisted on photographing the french fries. When he got on the elevator, someone had pushed all the buttons and he stopped at 57 floors before reaching his own.

His secretary was sick. Her replacement could only speak Portuguese and Swahili.

Someone tacked a piece of paper to the bulletin board announcing the company’s annual broccoli cheesecake and watermelon lasagna picnic.

VISUAL CLUTTER.

That night, on his way home, something happened that changed Don’s life. Caught in a traffic jam for two hours, he looked out the window. Next to the bus sat an old American Motors Pacer. Purple.

Don winced.

He tried not to look, but it kept pulling his eyes toward it like an electromagnet. And worst of all, in the back window hung a small yellow diamond. He looked at it for two hours without blinking.

BABY ON BOARD.

He heard it. In the very back of his mind. It went, “click.”

Nobody saw Don for two weeks after that. He took some of his 72 accumulated days of vacation, ran
up huge bills at the local auto parts and army surplus stores, and disappeared into his garage for hours at a time.

Someone should have known. He paid his phone bill a day late. He turned off the hourly beeper on his watch. He ordered a pizza with everything... and waited for it.

On Monday, August 10th, two weeks to the day after “Black Monday” his neighbors were relieved to see Don emerge in his grey Chevy. He didn’t wave, but that wasn’t unusual, (waving being a great waster of precious time) and headed directly for the Interstate.

As he drove, he sang a little song...

I hate to see them laugh at me
It makes me spit and sputter
The time has come to put an end
To all this VISUAL CLUTTER!

O.K., so it wasn’t Beethoven, he hadn’t had time to do better.

It really didn’t matter. In the long run, nothing mattered.

Don pulled in behind a yellow Taurus station wagon. In the back window hung a matching yellow
sign... BABY ON BOARD. Don chuckled as he depressed a small switch near the turn signal. There was a barely audible hum as a partition slid back in his hood to reveal a pair of anti-tank missiles. “VISUAL CLUTTER!” Don yelled as he thumbed the button on his gear shift, and a flame shot out as the rocket sped away. The yellow Taurus exploded in a satisfying fireball that shattered windows for a block around, and rained debris down on an exultant Don (who hit the brakes as soon as he shot). Not
wanting to waste valuable time gloating, he drove on, and soon spotted a red Volkswagen Jetta dangling the incriminating yellow diamond like a beacon in its window. “Too small for the heavy stuff,” Don decided. Instead he flipped another switch that revealed a .30 calibre machine gun near the headlights. It was a little harder to avoid the crash that time, as he had to be within range to fire. Nevertheless, Don liked the spraying glass and the patterns the bullets made as they stitched through the car, which went into a wild spin before flipping over and wrapping itself around a bridge abutment.

Flushed with joy, it wasn’t long before Don spotted the next car. They were everywhere! VISUAL
CLUTTER! VISUAL CLUTTER!

Don had to laugh at this one, which declared, “CHIHUAHUA IN GLOVE COMPARTMENT.”

“Sorry,” Don said, “no points for humor,” and he laid down an oil slick in front of the hapless motorist. Don saw the man’s eyes go wide as he spun into the opposing lane of traffic and disappeared into the grill of an oncoming garbage truck. Two for the price of one! Don was elated.

He had one close call later that day, a police cruiser with a little yellow “COP ON BOARD” sign that snuck up behind him. Luckily, he still had a few anti-personnel mines left or things could have gotten a bit dicey.

Later that night as he flossed his teeth, (gotta get rid of that dental clutter) Don thought about the future. He imagined a world of Public Television, Instant Cash Machines, Freeze Dried Coffee and Water Piks. He knew he still had a long way to go, but he did have 58 days of vacation remaining, and a lot could be accomplished in that span of time.

He thought about the neutron bomb safely nestled in his trunk.

He didn’t want to use it- he’d really rather not. It had a serious defect.

Although it dispensed with offending scenic litterers quite nicely...

...it left all that VISUAL CLUTTER!

A Little South Of Heaven

2009-02-02T13:28:00.000-08:00

Percy shuffled the papers on his desk nervously. The boss wanted to see him, and that could only mean bad news was on the way. When the clock read 1:30, he straightened his tie, checked his reflection in the picture frame containing his wife’s portrait, cleared his throat and strode over to the door marked “City Desk” in what he hoped was a self-assured manner.

“Come in, Perseus,” his supervisor said, “have a chair.”

“I’d prefer to stand,” Percy replied, “I sit most of the day as it is.”

“Your choice,” the man replied, “let’s get down to it, then. You haven’t been doing too well lately,
have you?”

“A few set-backs, I’ll agree,” Percy conceded, “but I feel like it’s only a matter of time before I can get back to my old form. I just need another chance, sir. I’m sure I can do it.”

“Yes, harrumph, ah yes. Well, it can be a devil of a job.” They both shared a hearty laugh at the pun, and he continued. “Herpes was your idea wasn’t it? And a little work in Northern Ireland, and of course the Jim Jones thing in Guyana, but it’s been a long time since you caused any significant misery in the world. You’re on a losing streak Perseus, and we just can’t afford that sort of thing around here. My department has always maintained a first-class rating, and I intend to see that it stays that way. The Big Guy himself will be coming through on an inspection tour in a few days, and I need to show results!”

“I know I can do it, sir. I just need a chance, just one more chance,” Percy pleaded humbly.

“Very well, son. I’ve always liked you, but this is the last opportunity you’ll get. Screw up, and even I won’t be able to protect you from the Chairman’s wrath. Here’s the file,” he said, sliding a manila folder across his desk. “Now get out, and good luck.”

“Thank you sir,” Percy said taking the folder and walking out the door, “You won’t regret it.” He returned to his cubicle, and sat down to examine its contents, wiping the sweat from his brow. “Hot
as Hell in here today,” he thought, smiling, “just the way I like it.”

A half an hour later he replaced the last sheet of paper in the folder and laid it on his desk. “Piece of cake,” he said, and decided to take the rest of the day off. He was going to be pretty busy for the next few days, and he thought maybe he and the missus could get in an afternoon at the Lake of Fire before he had to leave.

The next day he arose bright and early, took a hot sulphur bath, and put on his best suit. “See you later honey,” he called, “don’t wait up.”

He caught the 7:45 bus to the Corridor, and got off at the Denver staircase. “666 stories to Topworld,” he thought, wistfully eyeing the elevators. But, unfortunately you had to be Grade C or better to ride them, and Percy was still languishing at Grade D status. “Oh, well,” he sighed, and started up the steps.

Two hours later, he was sitting on a park bench in downtown Boulder, Colorado. Across the way, a young couple were lying on a blanket, happily sharing a picnic lunch. “Periods of transition,” he remembered from his graduate psychology course, “present the best opportunity for chaos to be introduced. Tragedy will be greatly enhanced at these times.” And, Percy knew from studying the files in the folder, that these young lovers were at a watershed moment in their relationship. He took the files out, and began once more to review the papers, glancing occasionally at the man and woman as they ate.

The man’s name was J.D. Fieldcrest, age: 37, 6-1, 210, brown and hazel. He taught English at a community college in Phoenix, liked to ski, played piano and wrote the occasional song. He lived alone, with his two cats, Biscuit and Gravy, and was passionately in love with the woman, although he still hadn’t told her so.

The woman was Jennifer Walsh, pushing 30, 5-3, 125, sandy brown and blue. She was a pharmaceutical rep who traveled all over the western states, hawking the latest wonder drugs to unsuspecting docs who were universally charmed by her vibrant personality, and easy smile. She lived with her sister in Boulder, liked going to the theatre, and wanted nothing more than to live in a mountain cabin with a big husky dog. She thought she might be falling in love with the man, but was still wary after her last relationship, which had ended badly. Commitment was a scary proposition for her, and J.D. had been hinting around that he was interested in something more permanent, which she wasn’t sure she was ready for just yet. Even though she was attracted to him, whenever he was in town she would begin to feel suffocated, and had to fight the urge to run away. “Thank God he hasn’t said those three little words yet,” she thought, “I just couldn’t handle it.”

Percy grinned, and replaced the folders in his briefcase. “This could actually be fun,” he thought. He walked across the park to a pay phone, fumbling around in his pocket, looking for change. Another hassle to deal with. Grade C operatives all had cellular phones - so much easier to conceal, and of course, ultimately portable. It made it a lot harder when you had to find a phone nearby, and severely limited your ability to deal with a mobile subject. “Ah yes, more of the perks of power,” he grumbled, and picked up the receiver.

He inserted a quarter and said, “J.D. Fieldcrest’s brain please.”

J.D. and Jenny were having a playful argument about what the initials in his name stood for. She still
didn’t know, and he wouldn’t tell her.

“John Dillinger.” she said hopefully.

“Nope.”

“Junkyard Dog, then.”

“Close.”

“Justin Dickless.”

“Oh, that’s cute.”

Percy cradled the phone on his shoulder and said, “Tell her you love her, J.D.”

“I don’t think so,” J.D.’s brain replied.

“She needs to hear it, son. You need to let her know how you feel.”

“She’s not ready.”

“She’s a big girl, J.D. She can handle it. Besides, you’re going to explode if you try to keep it to yourself any longer. Honesty’s the best policy, you know. No secrets and all that jazz.”

“I’m not so sure. She gets kinda squirrely when I try to talk about love.”

“Tell her, J.D.”

Percy hung up and watched the conversing couple for a minute, and when a look of shock washed over Jennifer’s face he deposited another quarter.

“He’s really pushing, isn’t he, Jenny,” he said, “it’s just like before. He won’t stop, he’ll just keep pushing and pushing until you give in. You’ll lose your freedom. You’ll lose your identity. You’ll end up fat and married, washing his socks and eating TV dinners, and you’ll never have any more fun. He’ll be possessive and jealous, and if he isn’t, you’ll probably invent some reason to break it off. It’s a family curse, you know. Your sisters ruined their marriages, and so will you. Run away, Jenny. Run away while you still can!”

He hung up the phone and returned to observe from the bench as the conversation escalated into a fight. When Jennifer tried to leave, J.D. grabbed her by the arm and she slapped his face. More harsh words ensued, and the whole scene ended with the woman storming off to her car and driving away in a cloud of dust and tears.

Percy watched as J.D. checked into the hotel across the street, made a small note as to which room, and walked into the restaurant to order lunch.

“Something hot,” he told the waiter.

Later that afternoon he called a cab, and rode out to Jennifer’s house. He slipped into the living room (locked doors were no problem for someone with his special talents) and found her sitting on the couch agitatedly flipping through a Redbook. He stole back to the kitchen and picked up the telephone.

“He’s limiting you, Jenny girl,” he said. “No woman should have to be stuck with just one man. Who does he think he is? He lives miles away, you hardly ever see each other, and God knows, it gets lonely on the road. Is he worth it, Jenny? Could you ever be satisfied with just one man? With this man? Is he really so special that you would give up all the others? There’s lots of men out there Jenny. What makes him so different, so unique? There’s plenty of others that could take his place in a second. Why buy the bull when you could have the whole darn breeding service?”

“Damn straight,” she replied.

“Let’s go have a drink,” Percy said, and hung up the phone.

Five margaritas later, they were eying the beefcake at the Nasty Habit saloon. Jennifer was sitting at the bar, and Percy was standing in the hallway by the rest rooms, pay phone in hand.

“Ooh, he’s cute,” he said, “must be some kind of body builder. To hell with the brains and a sense of humor, give me rippling biceps and a tight butt any day. Hey, perk up! He’s looking your way, now’s your chance. We’ll show that little prick J.D. that he can’t dictate your life!”

Jennifer looked the construction worker in the eye and sensuously licked the salt off the rim of her glass.

“Good girl,” Percy said, flicking the switch on the phone and dialing J.D’s room.

“What do ya say J.D.?” he said. “You know, I think we made a big mistake this afternoon. We shouldn’t have pushed Jenny so far. We knew she was a little skittish about this commitment thing. Maybe we’d better go over to her place and try to make up, huh? She’s probably cooled off by now. You don’t want to lose her, J.D. Not over something as silly as this. How many women have you met in your life that compare to her, J.D.? Pretty damn few. None, actually. She’s been the brightest flame in your fire, and we both know it.”

“I’ll see you there, J.D.” he said, and hanging up, followed Jennifer and her newfound admirer out to their cars.

“Oh, this is getting good.”

J.D. arrived at Jennifer’s house a minute after she and the body builder did. He sat in his car and watched dazedly as the two of them got out and kissed passionately. Then Jennifer took the man’s hand and pulled him through the door, into her house. He saw her throw her coat on the floor, and then close the curtains.

This wasn’t the first time J.D. had been betrayed by his feelings, but it was the most painful.

When he was a young college student, he thought that he had met the girl of his dreams. She made his world go ’round, and she said that he did the same for her. It was the happiest time of his life, as they went shopping for the engagement ring, and speculated about their future together. They played along with The Newlywed Game, answering all the questions as if they were already married. They slept in a little twin bed, and when the bedroom got too cold in the winter, they moved out to the living room floor on a sleeping bag. The future was bright in front of them, and J.D. thought that he had found the woman with whom he could grow old.

Then, one day, he decided to surprise her, and drove over to her parent’s house without telling her. The joke was on him, however, when she came home with her old boyfriend, snuggled up next to her in his car. They spotted J.D.’s Camaro in the driveway, and didn’t stop, but he saw them drive by from his station at the picture window.

He cried for the entire summer.

But, this time was worse, because he had struggled for years to get past the old hurt and have a normal relationship. And now the trust didn’t come so easily. He had vowed to never be hurt like that again, and for years that meant never letting anyone get close enough to do the hurting. Jennifer had been the first woman he had let himself really fall for in fifteen years. And now here she was about to make love to another man.

To J.D., the faith he had placed in her meant everything. In his heart he had said, “I trust you not to take advantage of me if I love you. I will always be there for you, I’ll love you and support you and I’ll be your biggest fan. And I’ll hope that you won’t hurt me, because I don’t think I could take it again.”

He looked at the shaded windows one last time and turned the car around, weeping bitterly as he drove back to the motel.

“So much for trust,” he thought dejectedly.

Along the way he stopped at a pawn shop and bought a pistol.

Percy stood in the park watching J.D.’s hotel window with delight. “Amazing,” he thought, “It’s working out even better than I could have hoped for.”

Back at the house, Jennifer pulled back, looking at the man on the couch next to her and wondered, “What the hell am I doing? One fight with J.D. and I’m about to wax this guy’s porpoise? What’s got into me? This is so wrong.”

She walked over to the counter, picked up the phone, and called the hotel. “J.D. Fieldcrest, please,” she told the operator.

After the twelfth ring she hung up. “Damn,” she said, “Listen Arty Joe, I’m sorry, but I can’t do this. I have to leave. I really am sorry.”

“I knew it was too good to be true,” he sulked, and picked up his coat.

In his room, J.D. contemplated the gun. Its barrel was smooth and black, and it was heavy in his hand. He caressed it gently, turning it over and staring at it with rapt fascination. In his left hand he held his wallet, open to a portrait of Jennifer.

“Bye, Jenny,” he said softly to the picture, “I could’ve loved you more than anything,” and he put the
barrel of the pistol in his mouth.

Percy sat on the park bench, grinning like he was at a movie.

“Act three, scene two,” he said as Jennifer’s car pulled up in front of the lobby. “The girlfriend arrives.”

Jennifer got out of the car and walked quickly into the hotel. As she stepped onto the elevator, a single gunshot shattered the silence of the night.

Percy laughed and walked over to a lilac bush. “Perfect timing,” he said, “could be my best ever.” Then the bush shimmered and a door appeared, allowing Percy to step through. “Wait ’til the boss sees these tapes,” he said, “Human misery at its best. The tragic ending! One dead, one mourning for the rest of her life. I’ll make Grade C yet!”

And with that, he began his long descent.

He went right to the office as soon as he got back. Everyone was waiting for him, including the
Big Guy himself.

“Rightfully so,” he thought, “a masterpiece like this doesn’t happen every day.”

“My adoring fans,” he said as he walked through the door, but stopped short after a few feet. He didn’t like the way they were all looking at him.

“What?” he said, feeling their hostility envelop him.

“You screw up, you left too soon,” his boss growled, “look at this!” and he plugged a tape into the VCR. Percy watched apprehensively as the drama unfolded. There he was in the park, there was Jennifer, arriving too late, and then came the sharp crack of the gunshot. But when the view shifted to the hotel room, Percy’s heart sank as he saw that J.D. had pulled the pistol away at the last moment. Oh, shit, and there was Jennifer bursting through the door, falling into his arms, the two of them crying and swearing their undying love to each other.

“A happy ending, YOU NITWIT!” shouted The Prince Of Darkness, “I CAN’T STAND HAPPY ENDINGS!”

So they took poor Percy away. “You can have your choice,” said the head guardsman, “of where you will spend eternity.” Behind door number one was a roomful of people being slowly eaten by snakes.

“I hate snakes,” Percy whimpered.

Through door number two he saw a group of dentists happily drilling away on a number of
screaming patients.

“No novocaine in Hell,” said the guard with a grin.

Behind door number three was a group of people standing chin deep in pig shit, smoking cigarettes.

“All things considered, I think I’ll go for this one,” Percy said.

“Suit yourself,” said the devil, tossing him into the pit.

“Well, it smells terrible, and tastes worse, but it beats the snakes or the dentists,” Percy said. “Can I bum a cigarette?” he asked, tapping the man next to him on the shoulder.

Just then the door opened, and the biggest, meanest devil Percy had ever seen walked in. “Alright
assholes,” he bellowed, “break’s over! Everybody back to standing on your heads!”

Mr. President!

2009-02-02T13:27:00.000-08:00

Andy awoke to the intermittent buzz of the vidi-phone, wondering, “Who on earth can be calling at this hour?” He turned down the infra-red heating units, tossed a couple of Insta-Wake! tablets into a glass of water, and swung his feet out of bed. Oh, man! What was the name of that bar? Antares? He’d have to remember that one. Unlike the majority of the local hangouts, they were serving pure Peruvian Shake-water, as the size of his headache throbbingly confirmed. He threw a shoe at the offending phone, drank the glass of sickeningly sweet liquid, and staggered over to the desk. “They can land a woman on Mars, but they still can’t make a hangover cure that doesn’t taste like lizard spit,” he muttered, and punched the TRANSMIT button.

As the message appeared on the screen, Andy’s eyes grew larger, his frown grew deeper, and he promptly realized that he had to be hallucinating. “Must be some weird reaction to last night’s drugs and the morning’s stimulant,” he thought. He slapped himself in an effort to return to reality, miscalculated the amount of force needed, and knocked himself out of the chair. As he pulled himself back up, he came face to screen with the computer display, realized that it wasn’t a figment of his imagination, and sat back to contemplate the meaning of the fifteen words appearing before him:

“Congratulations, Mr. Weenarian, you have just been elected President of the United States of America.”

Andy realized that ever since the Election Reform Act was passed back in ’23 that it was possible for any citizen to be randomly selected to head the country, but like most Americans, he never thought the computers would actually stick him with the job. Oh sure, it was mostly a ceremonial post now, and he wouldn’t mind the pension, but it would also play havoc with your life for the fourteen months, seven days of your term. “This is gonna be a major-league pain in the ass,” he grumbled.

He didn’t know how true that statement would be until later that morning.

He was sitting on the john doing his morning duty when two men wearing aviator sunglasses walked in. “Good morning, Mr. President,” said the first man, who looked a good deal like Charles Bronson on a bad day. “Good morning, Mr. President,” said the second man, and Andy thought he detected a slight lisp. “Secret Service,” said the first man. “I’m afraid that we’ll be your constant companions for the next few months. Would you like a wipe?”

“Get the hell out of my bathroom!” Andy screamed, and shook a tube of Preparation-H menacingly at the men, who beat a hasty retreat. “Kind of testy, isn’t he?” man number one said as they left. Andy could hear them outside the door calling in their report, “President Weenarian awake and alert. Currently pinching a loaf. Refused Secret Service assistance.”

“What next?” Andy wondered, and reached for the toilet paper, which of course, was empty. He hopped out of the bathroom, shorts around his ankles, and was just reaching into the closet for more tissue when he was greeted by a chorus of, “Mr. President! Mr. President!” He turned around and was greeted by the White House press corps.

The rest of his day was spent signing legislation such as a bill prohibiting the sale of LSD to pre-schoolers before noon, another authorizing medical experimentation on people convicted of speeding twice in a three-year period, and a controversial amendment to the Constitution that called for the public flogging of anyone caught having sex with the lights on. “All good laws,” he thought.

Later that night as he was preparing for bed, he walked over to the window and gazed out at the city. “Maybe it won’t be so bad being President,” he thought. He was Somebody now. And as he was about to turn away from the city lights, a small hole appeared in the window, followed by a small hole appearing in Andy’s head.

The Secret service men rushed to his side. “Didn’t you tell him about windows?!” asked man
number one.

“I thought you did,” said man number two, “Oh, shit.”

And so ended the shortest term ever of America’s highest appointed official. A national hour of
mourning was declared, and his name was etched into history.

Lincoln, Kennedy... Weenarian.

Alley Cat's Eyes

2009-02-02T13:25:00.000-08:00

A Not-So-Short-Story

llison found the box in a dusty corner of her grandmother’s attic.

On a warm day in July she decided she had put it off long enough. After all, the woman had
been dead for three years now, and Allison had been living in the old farm house for the better part of the last two. It was time for the cobwebs to come down, to let a little light into the heart of the house, and she was vaguely aware that the cleansing would probably include a little housecleaning of her own soul as well.

The first time she had ventured up to the mysterious room at the peak of the house she was only three years old. She had felt like Alice falling through the looking glass as she opened the little door at the top of the stairs, and looked into a room overflowing with the accumulated treasures of a lifetime. There were old leather steamer trunks, bearing stenciled witness to travels in faraway lands. Kuala Lampur. Shanghai. Bombay. Old playbills from Broadway productions. Tintype photographs of Paris, the Tower of London, Cairo, and a score of other unrecognizable, exotic cities. Here were boxes of letters bearing postmarks from even more remote locations. Over there was a rack of beautiful silk dresses that looked like they’d never been worn. On a table sat an ancient crank-up phonograph, and next to it a stack of the biggest records that Allison had ever seen. Opera glasses. Rice paper fans. A bamboo walking stick. Khaki shirts. A tiger’s paw.

It had become her sanctuary, an isolated island of a private reality that no one else could share. All through her childhood she would return to the little room and fantasize that it was her playing polo with the Duke of Ascot. And what a grand time she had sharing tea with that mysterious Indian rajah who had the most piercing black eyes. And what about that time she was captured by Pygmies while on safari, and nearly became the main course of their evening meal before being rescued by the dashing Lord Fontaine? She drifted through the canals of Venice while a gondolier sang Italian love songs to her, and slept in the shadows of the pyramids.

And now, here she was years later, all grown up and floating away on a sea of memories.

Allison was 25 and living in Massachusetts when her mother had called with the news that Granny Em had suffered a stroke, and it didn’t look good. She had flown back to Milwaukee the next day, rented a car, and arrived at the farmhouse just as the sun was setting. It had been three years since she had seen her grandmother, and as she approached the bed she was struck by how small and fragile the old lady had become. Yet, it was still the same woman lying there who always smelled of cinnamon and cloves, the one who loved to play piano and had an incredible memory for names. The world traveler who had married a shoe salesman from Toledo, and spent the last 35 years of her life feeding chickens on a small farm in central Wisconsin. Allison sat beside her bed, and was holding her hand when she died.

She had been a little surprised to learn that the farm had been willed to her, and surprised herself
further when she decided to quit her job in Boston and move back to the Midwest. But what the hell, she thought, you can be a CPA anywhere, and it wasn’t as if her life was such a rousing success that she couldn’t leave. The city was always a hostile place to her, and she missed the familiarity of small town life. So, she gave her notice, packed her bags, and returned to her childhood haunts.

She intended to turn the attic into an office eventually, but kept putting it off because of the enormity of the job of removing what looked like several tons of debris left over from of her grandmother’s early life. But, every journey begins with a single step, and the time for that step had arrived. So, she began sifting through the years. Out went the letters. The table she’d save. The copper spittoon would go. The dresses could be sold to a costume shop. And gradually the pile began to diminish, although it was seven days later that Allison confronted the last stack of crates.

About halfway through, she found a small box made of zebra wood, bound with golden chains and inlaid with ivory. A carved cobra with ruby eyes coiled its way around the lid, and a small padlock secured the hasp. “Now, why haven’t I ever noticed this before?” Allison wondered. As she was carrying the box over to the better light near the window, she felt a sudden stab of pain in her hand and was shocked to see two small drops of blood welling up on her thumb. “It bit me!” was her first thought, “Son-of-a bitch!” But that was crazy, wooden snakes didn’t go around biting people. She must have accidentally stuck her finger in the snake’s mouth, and sure enough, the little sucker did have two sharp golden fangs, now tinted red with blood. I’m going to have to be more careful, she reminded herself, and
gingerly set the box on the window sill.

“That’s better,” she thought, examining her find in the dusty sunlight. The box was obviously the work
of a master craftsman, covered with glyphs depicting half-human, half-animal forms that danced about the cover. In the shadows of the attic they seemed to move of their own accord, bobbing and weaving, prancing in time to some distant beat. Allison could feel the drums’ rhythm in her head, and could
actually hear the clacking of sticks, the staccato cracking of whips, and the clapping hands keeping time to chants in some foreign tongue. She closed her eyes and began to rock back and forth, lost in a dream of flickering firelight, swaying palms and jungle sounds. In her vision, she danced faster and faster, leaping and spinning and racing in circles, until she could dance no more and collapsed into a sea of gently caressing hands that lowered her softly to the ground. As she looked up, she saw the dark form
of a man silhouetted against the night sky, with stars shining in his eyes and a wavering blue light enveloping his hands. Allison could hear him laughing, a halting animalistic bark. And as he knelt by her side, he whispered, “Sleep now, my child, for you will soon have much to do.” Then he placed his palm over her eyes, and the world faded to black.

About this time Gabriel Oscarson was driving by, returning home from his nightly bull and beer session with the boys down at the Dew Drop Inn, and noticed the light in the third floor window. Little Ally’s
got herself a TV up there he thought, prob’ly got one of them dirty movies they rented down at the Kwik Trip plugged in, and wouldn’t he like to do a little plugging in himself. He pulled over to the side of the road, popped the top on a cold Grain Belt, and sat back to contemplate the house. Oh, how he’d love to introduce her to Monty Python, the amazing one-eyed trouser snake, and he thought wouldn’t she love it too. Ol’ Gabe might not have the education or the looks, but by God, he knew what a woman needed, and this one needed it more than most. Her, and her holier than thou Boston attitude. Two years she’d been back, and not so much as a how do ya do to him, and they’d practically been lovers in high school. At Donnie Pott’s prom party she’d gotten drunk on cherry sloe gin, and was shaking her ass in everybody’s face, but all the other guys were too chicken to do anything about it. Not Ol’ Gabe though, he’d waited until she staggered upstairs to go to the bathroom to make his move. Oh sure, she squealed a little when he followed her in, and even scratched his face a good one, but he liked it when they put up a little fight. He had her pants off and was just about to bring out Moby Dick for a little har-poon-ing, when Bobby G.D. Peterson came busting in and pulled him off. He would’ve kicked his ass good, but Frank and Tim Reed were there too, and it ended up being his ass that got the kicking.

Well, maybe tonight would be different.

Gabe finished the beer, pulled a second can from the cooler, and crushed the empty against his forehead. Oh yeah, tonight would be different, he thought. He had a hard-on a cat couldn’t scratch, a real diamond cutter, and this one wasn’t going to go to waste. He got out of the truck, closed the door softly and walked up the driveway.

As he approached the house he could hear the drums, shit, he could feel the drums. “Bitch has really got the volume cranked on the TV,” he thought. Well, so much the better, it just made it easier for Ol’ Gabe to raid the nookie jar. He drained the second beer, crushing the can as he’d done with the first, and tossed it aside. It was really too easy to do that with these wussy aluminum cans, not like the old steel can days when crushing a beer on your forehead was a true sign of manhood.

He walked around to the back of the house and tried the door, which was unlocked. “God bless country livin’,” he said, and walked on in. “Sheesh, that music’s loud- the way the windows are rattling in their frames, she must be deaf.” Well, you didn’t have to be able to hear for what he had in mind. Gabe passed through the dining room and ascended the stairs. “Second floor; dry goods, handcuffs, shotgun shells and crotchless panties,” he whispered.

Gabe stopped at the base of the third floor stairs for a moment and looked up at the door, blue light flooding out through the crack at the bottom. As his foot touched the first step, the drums abruptly stopped, sending silence crashing down on him. “Aw crap,” he thought, but then, “No way, there’s no damn way she heard me, not with that racket blasting away.” So, he crept slowly up the stairs, taking care not to make any noise, and paused at the top. His heart was racing with the thrill of the hunt.
“This time there won’t be a Bobby Peterson,” he said to himself, and licked his lips in anticipation.

Meanwhile, Allison lay unconscious on the floor of the attic, an angry red streak slowly rising from her hand toward her shoulder.

The following is excerpted from pages of Abby Lincoln’s notebook;

7 / 13 It’s now been seven weeks since my arrival in Blackduck, and the boredom is starting to set in. So, to counter the daily monotony I have decided to start a journal. When I first heard of the Project at the U of M it sounded really romantic, three months in the north woods of Minnesota tracking the movements of black bears- how exciting! But the reality is a little different. We spend most of the day driving around in a beat-up Ford truck sporting a little aluminum antenna, searching for the elusive beep of a radio collar. We have seven bears in our area collared, but they wander in and out of range, so the chances of running across one is fairly low. When we do make contact, it’s out of the truck and into the woods to try for a visual sighting. This isn’t as risky as it sounds, the bears aren’t a problem as long as they don’t feel threatened, and we don’t push it.

The real danger is that I may die from loss of blood to the omnipresent swarm of mosquitoes, clouds of which may block out the sun at times. They don’t seem to notice Gary, who doesn’t
even bother with repellent, being possessed of some strange body chemistry which renders him
distasteful to the little winged menaces. Instead they concentrate on me, and it doesn’t make a difference what kind of spray I use, although I have noticed that Cutters will cause them a
moment’s hesitation before landing for the feast. I fear that by the time I return to civilization
my body will be nothing but one large welt.

There is no shortage of other wildlife to be observed, mostly small game such as porcupines, deer, raccoons and your other assorted varmints, and every now and then we may catch a glimpse of a moose or two hustling across the road. Jeez, they’re big!

We’ll be camping out for the next few weeks in a remote part of the woods in order to get closer to the animals, so I guess I’d better get started setting up the tents...looks like a nice clear night, maybe I’ll see some shooting stars.

Gabe paused a moment with his ear to the door, but hearing nothing, threw it open and sprang through, ready for a struggle. He was momentarily confused by the empty room, “Shit, nothing in here but a pile of old boxes- so where the hell was that music coming from?” he wondered. But he let it slip- Ol’ Gabe didn’t have the longest attention span in the world, and seeing Allison lying crumpled on the floor, he turned to the business at hand. “Drunk again,” he said, a little disappointedly- this was going to be too easy. He took his belt off and used it to tie her hands behind her back- no sense being too reckless, he remembered the scratches from their last encounter.

Allison was floating in a darkly silent room, slowly spinning through empty space, but gradually
becoming aware of a growing globe of light at one end. She felt like she was swimming through syrup
as she attempted to reach the brightening glow, so near, yet so far away. And as she neared the light,
she became more aware of sounds and feeling, until she awoke to find herself pressed to the floor by some enormous weight. As her head cleared she realized to her horror that the weight was a sweating, drooling Gabe Oscarson, and for some reason her arms weren’t working like they should be. As she started to struggle he said, “About time you woke up, Ally cat, now we can have us some real fun.” and his lips parted in a gap-toothed grin. Allison’s response was to bite his hand. “Like it rough, huh?” he said, “Me too,” and he smashed his bleeding hand into her face.

Allison struggled weakly for a while longer, before allowing the comforting darkness of unconsciousness to claim her again.

When he was finished, Gabe lit up a cigarette, and leaned back against a trunk. “Not bad,” he thought, “a little too passive to be real fun, but still enjoyable.” He stubbed the cigarette out on the floor, retrieved his belt, and paused on his way out to write i’ll be back in the dust on the window.

Then he turned and walked out of the attic, chuckling to himself, unaware of the growing green glow that was filling the room behind him. And as he started his truck and drove away, thin tendrils of smoke began to curl up from the small wooden box by the window.

“Jersey” Bob Daggett replaced the receiver and wiped his nose in disgust. He’d just taken a call
from the emergency room saying some broad got herself worked over, and now he was going to have to go down and take her statement. Shitfire- only 40 minutes until the end of his shift, and now he was probably going to miss A Current Affair, and they were having some report on double-jointed Chinese hookers or something that he really wanted to see. He grabbed his hat and gun and headed out the door cursing the day he had decided to become a deputy in this one-horse town.

His mood had improved considerably after leaving the hospital, though. The woman was only semi-
conscious, but she was coherent enough to point the finger of blame at none other than one Gabe Oscarson, and that was going to present a special opportunity for Deputy Bob. He didn’t much care for the fat S.O.B., but they had been playing poker together down at Ruby May’s every Friday for the last eight months, and now the lawman was in hock to him to the tune of about 3500 bucks. Jersey Bob, who was never one to let a little thing like the law stand in the way of personal gain, saw the opportunity to make this particular debt fade away like a bad fart in a hurricane.

Gabe would be righteously pissed, of course, but given the option of relocation to a warmer climate of his own choosing, or incarceration in a state facility, Bob thought he knew which choice he would make. Gabe had seen Deliverance, and probably would have a sensible aversion to playing piggy for some of the big boys down in the state “pen”.

A month passed before Allison ventured up to the attic again, and though her physical wounds had healed, the mental bruises were still fresh and painful. The sheriff’s office had shown little inclination
to pursue her case, and that hurt almost as much as the original attack. It seemed that Ol’ Gabe had exhibited remarkable foresight in skipping the country, and it didn’t look like any major effort would be made to locate him.

Allison’s days were filled with a renewed passion for work, both the accounting jobs at the office and the tasks around her house. She didn’t want idle time that would allow the tapes in her head a chance to rewind and play back. So, her files had been updated and reorganized a dozen times, and the house had been cleaned ’til it squeaked. For the most part, her strategy was successful, but after the sun set it was a different story. Her nights were filled with alternating dreams of the rape and images of the dark man from her fevered vision. Allison would toss and turn all night, and would awake soaked in sweat, with anger burning like an ember in her chest. She dreaded going to sleep, but her growing exhaustion made it unavoidable.

And through it all, the attic called to her.

She felt an irresistible urge to return to the room that grew stronger with each passing day. And Allison was hearing the drums again, their rhythm matching the beating of her heart, urging her toward the third floor. Finally, the draw of the attic overcame her fear, and she found herself ascending the stairs and entering the room. Standing before the window, she felt a remarkable calm wash over her, warm as a tropical breeze.

Allison once again turned her attention to the zebra wood box, marveling at the intricate scrollwork that adorned its surface. From its perch on the lid the cobra gazed silently back at her through crimson eyes, and when she touched the delicate golden padlock it fell open with a soft click. Heart racing, she opened the lid and found a beautiful silver bracelet lying on a bed of black velvet. On its surface a dozen different animals were exquisitely engraved, a prancing wolf, a jaguar, an eagle in flight, a coiling snake, a bear- all with eyes of diamond. And, like the dancing figures on the box, they appeared to move, changing shape in the shifting light. Allison felt a strange electric thrill course through her body as she placed the bracelet on her wrist, and sat down, closing her eyes until the dizziness passed.

When she opened her eyes, she was walking through the woods, keenly aware of the smallest of sounds, with such a heightened sense of smell that she could identify a dozen different scents that swirled around her. But her perspective was all wrong, she was seeing the world from only a few feet above the ground. She looked around, and was amazed to find she was walking in the company of a pair of powerfully built wolves. In fact, after further investigation, Allison realized that she herself was looking at the world through decidedly canine eyes. Suddenly, a rabbit burst out of a bush, and they were off on an exhilarating chase through the brush, trees flying by in a rush of adrenaline. She soon caught the rabbit, and lay down, jealously guarding her kill. Allison closed her eyes, savoring the texture and smell
of fresh meat.

When she opened them again, she was once again sitting in her attic, the coppery taste of blood still fresh in her mouth.

From Abby Lincoln’s journal:

8 / 27 My stay in the woods has been extended for another month, and it looks like the time will be well spent. In the last few days something different has been happening. We have been noticing some unusual movement of the animals around here. Our bears seem to have cleared out of their normal range, and we are tracking four of them in a generally south-easterly direction, we passed Grand Rapids a few hours ago. This just doesn’t happen as far as I know, bears wander in and out of their home range, but generally follow their own rhythm. These guys seem to be on some kind of group journey, and there isn’t any reason for it. Food is plentiful this year and we haven’t had any major fires. We’re at a loss for an explanation. And it’s not just the bears, either. Gary and I have both sighted wolves in the last few hours, and this is getting pretty far south for them, although it’s not unheard of. Kinda weird, but exciting. I wonder where they’re all heading?

Gabe Oscarson turned the TV off and tossed the remote control across the room in disgust. He’d been living at his brother’s house in Tulsa for over a month now, and had just about had his fill of Regis and Kathie Lee, amazing no-food/ no-brain miracle diets, cheating husbands, cheating wives, cheating great-grandmothers, priests in drag, exhibitionist housewives and the Maytag repairmen who serviced their spin cycles, and all the other fodder so common on daytime TV. By his own count he had watched 27 marriages, 32 divorces, more illicit affairs than he could count, a circumcision, 87 murders, 634 commercials for tampons and other assorted feminine hygiene products, and was beginning to suspect that he was falling in love with Erica Kane of All My Children. Clearly it was time for a change.

He threw his clothes into a pair of grocery bags, grabbed a half empty twelve pack from the refrigerator, scrawled a hasty note to brother Dick, and was out the door. By 5:00 he’d finished the last of the beer, and was weaving past Joplin, Missouri on his way to Kansas City and points north. Gabe figured he still had a little unfinished business to conduct with a certain swine-loving deputy who owed him money,
and thought a return engagement at Ally’s house would also be in order. He reached into the glove
compartment, pulled out a battered .44 revolver and checked the cylinder for shells. Four out of six compartments were filled, and he reasoned that that would be more than enough firepower to put a
permanent end to two of his most vexing problems. He looked down the barrel, sighted in an
imaginary target, and squeezed the trigger. “Bang, you’re dead!” he said to himself, and laughing
wildly, tucked the pistol into the waist of his jeans. Oh yeah, this was going to be fun.

Jersey Bob shook his head sadly. Another empty trap! This was beginning to look like a wasted trip, and not the first one, either. He could remember walking this same trapline as a boy and barely being able to carry home all the pelts he had collected. Not any more, though. The animals had been getting fewer and farther between for the last ten years due to loss of habitat and over-hunting. Nowdays you counted yourself lucky to come home with a muskrat or two, forget about a mink or ermine, you just didn’t get ’em. He was just about to say screw it, and go home, when he saw a flash of movement up ahead where his last trap was set. “What the hell,” he said to his dog, “better check that one out, looks like we got ourselves something.” The dog wagged his tail in canine agreement, and bounded ahead to see for himself.

Allison was walking along the creek, still amazed by it all. The illusion of being in the wolf’s body
hadn’t been a hallucination at all, it had been real. Whenever she wore the silver bracelet, she was
able to see the world through the eyes of any number of animals, and even control their movements to a certain extent. She was getting better at persuading their unfamiliar bodies to do as she wished, but the effort still left her exhausted. The smaller animals were easy to control, and she laughed to herself, remembering the first time she had viewed the world from a mouse’s perspective, the house had seemed enormous! She was also getting better at choosing which animals she could project herself into, which at first it had been a rather haphazard affair. She soon discovered that she was limited to only those
animals that had been engraved on the bracelet, and seemed to be plugged into some kind of unconscious animal network, sensing where they were, and vice-versa.

This afternoon she was walking along the water in search of crawdads and small fish. She could see
herself in the calm surface of a small pool, and giggled at the ring-tailed, black masked reflection that looked back at her. She washed her face, and continued on along the bank, thinking life as a raccoon was pretty carefree. Eat a little corn, catch a few fish, sleep in a hollow tree. Nope, not too bad at all.

But as she was going to find out, there was a little more to it than that.

As she rounded a bend in the creek, Allison spotted Jersey Bob and his dog about a hundred yards away, their attention fixed on something at the man’s feet. She was a little surprised that she hadn’t heard or smelled them before this, but upon closer inspection, noticed that the wind was at her back. The dog was bobbing back and forth, growling and snapping at some unseen foe while the deputy stood on the bank laughing at its antics. But he soon grew tired of the game and pulled the dog back, removed the pistol from his holster, and fired a single shot toward the ground.

The raccoon decided he had seen quite enough of this triple threat of Man, Dog and Gun, but Allison wanted to find out what all the fuss was about, and using all of her will, kept the animal from turning tail and running away. She decided to climb a small tree to gain a better view, and from her wobbly perch was horrified to see the man removing a beautiful golden-brown fox from the jaws of a steel trap. Its head hung limply, and was stained red from the bullet wound’s bloody flow. Then, Jersey Bob began to taunt the dog with the fox’s body, thrusting it at him, growling and snapping it’s lifeless jaws, sending the dog into a barking, gyrating frenzy. After a few minutes of this new game, he reached into his pocket, withdrew a knife and slitted the fox’s belly, removed the entrails and threw them to the eagerly awaiting dog who wasted no time in devouring them. That was all that Allison could take, she was overcome with nausea, and head spinning, lost her grip on the branch and fell to the ground.

The deputy caught this flash of movement out of the corner of his eye, and temporarily abandoning his newfound prize began to walk over to the tree to investigate. Suddenly, the raccoon sprang out from
the weeds, and began to high-tail it toward the nearby woods. “Aw, shit. Lookit that sucker run!” he exclaimed, and took off after the animal, calling to the dog as he ran, “C’mon Booger! We got another fur coat on the hoof! Let’s go boy!”

Booger really wasn’t too interested in the man at the moment, he had a pile of fox guts to deal with. But Bob was yelling, “Hey, you lazy bag o’ bones, he’s a-gettin’ away!” and when the dog finally looked up, he saw the fat deputy stumbling across the field, losing the race to an equally fat masked ball of fur. He looked reluctantly at the meat, decided it probably wouldn’t go anywhere, and began to lope across the field, joining in the chase.

As Allison raced through the weeds, gunshots rang out, and she felt the bullets zipping past her head, dirt exploding in black mini-geysers by her side. She looked over her shoulder and saw the dog closing fast. “We gotta get to the woods,” she told the coon, “Run!” She was almost into the trees when the
dog caught up to her, jaws snapping at her heels. When it became obvious she couldn’t reach the safety of the forest, she turned to fight. Although outweighed, the raccoon put up a good fight, snarling and biting, a brown and black whirlwind of fury. The two animals rolled across the ground, fur flying in all directions, blood drawn on each. When Allison bit down hard on Booger’s muzzle, the dog drew back yelping and she again turned to run for the brush. But the man was standing in her way, gun drawn, and the last thing she saw was a flash of light from its muzzle. The world exploded in a blinding flash of stars, lightning and thunder, and then there was nothing.

Back at her house, Allison fell to the floor of her living room where she lay motionless, eyes open,
chest still.

This whole display had been watched from the woodland shadows by several pairs of animal eyes,
and from the road by one pair of the human variety. “Gol-dang wonder the chubby little sucker didn’t have a heart attack,” Gabe Oscarson thought to himself, referring to Deputy Bob rather than the raccoon. He tossed the binoculars in the back seat of his car, checked to make sure the bullets were still in the cylinder of his revolver, tucked it into the waist of his pants, and got out.

Jersey Bob looked up in disbelief as he was skinning the raccoon. To say that he was less than thrilled to see his old friend walking across the field to him would’ve been the understatement of the year. “Now Gabe, what the hell are you doin’ back in town?” he asked, “I told you you’d have to lay low for at least a year before you could come back. You’re gonna screw everything up.”

“I guess this means you don’t got my 3500 bucks,” Gabe replied.

“You got that right, you stupid prick” Jersey Bob said, “Now you either get the hell on back to Oklahoma, or I’m gonna run your sorry ass right on down to jail. No fuckin’ around.”

“I thought as much,” Gabe said, and pulling the gun out of his pants, shot the deputy through his left eye, blowing a significant portion of the back of his head into the grass behind him.

“Ya shouldn’t-a messed with me, Jersey Bob.” Gabe said with a grin, returning the gun to its home in his pants. “You don’t mind if I take these do you?” he asked as he slipped the lifeless deputy’s handcuffs into his jacket pocket. “I didn’t think so. C’mon dog, you’re goin’ with me,” he said, and sauntered back to the car.

“One down,” he thought to himself, and laughed. “Whoa, baby, that was kinda fun.”

Allison moaned softly and rolled over on her side. Her head was throbbing, and she was so weak that she couldn’t even sit up. The cat was licking her cheek with a look of feline concern. “Did somebody get the license of the truck that ran over me?” she asked. Apparently the cat didn’t know, because it sat down and began licking its butt. That reminded Allison of the old joke, “Q- Why does a dog lick his balls? A- Because he can.” and she laughed, but stopped quickly. “Ouch, that hurts!” she said, and began to crawl slowly down the hallway to the bathroom. She filled the tub with steaming water, and spent the last ounce of her energy crawling over the edge, not even bothering to remove her clothes. “Ahhh, that’s better,” she sighed, and sank down into the suds. Within minutes she had drifted off to sleep, and never heard the soft click as the kitchen door was opened, then closed.

She awoke with a start to find Gabe sitting on the toilet watching her, and was distressed to learn that her right wrist was handcuffed to the shower pipe behind her head. “We meet again, Alley Cat,” he said, pulling a length of duct tape from its roll, and wrapping it around her mouth while holding her free hand in his. “Guess you’re not the only one who can take a bath with her clothes on,” he said, and climbed into the tub with her, sloshing water over the edge, and effectively pinning her under his weight. Then he pulled a pair of scissors from his pocket and began to cut her blouse away. “I wouldn’t struggle too much Alley Cat,” he said to the bucking woman beneath him, “It’d be a cryin shame if I was to accidentally slip and snip off one of your nipples. Oh yeah, there they are,” he said and ripped her shirt open the rest of the way, dropping the shears into the tub in the process. “So nice, gimme some of that,” he said and bent down and bit her breast roughly. Allison, taking advantage of the soapy water was able to free her hand, and felt around frantically, finally finding the scissors. Gabe leaned back in order to unbuckle his belt, and when he did Allison bent forward and plunged the scissors into her attacker’s shoulder.

“Shit!” Gabe bellowed, and lurched out of the tub, scissors firmly implanted in his back. “Oh, damn! You’re gonna pay for that one Alley, yes you are!” he shouted, but when he tried to stand up he slipped on the soapy floor and fell hard, striking his head on the sink as he went down. “Mmmm,” he growled, dazed, but he made no effort to get up again. Allison ripped the tape from her mouth, and gasped for breath, sucking in huge lungfulls of air. She could see the handcuff keys in his shirt pocket, and tried mightily to reach them, straining against the manacles, but they were inches beyond her grasp. She pulled the cuffs a little farther down on the pipe and tried again, almost enough- she could just about hook the key ring with her finger, just a little bit moore... Suddenly, Gabe’s eyes flew open and his hand shot up grasping her wrist in a vice-like grip. “I don’t think so, little Missy,” he growled, and stood up carefully. He reached behind his back and pulled the blood stained scissors from his shoulder. “I love it when you put up a fight,” he said, “but that was totally uncalled for. I believe that little trick will cost you your left eye,” he said and advanced with the scissors in his hand. Allison retreated to the back
corner of the tub, “Fuck you, Gabe,” she hissed.

“That too, Alley Cat,” he said with a grin, “but first you pay.”

From Abby Lincoln’s journal:

8 / 29 HOT! Hotter than hot. Looks like we’re going to set some kind of record for the end of August, it’s been flirting with 100 degrees for the last few days, and they said on the radio that it’s going to be 103 tomorrow. It’s not so bad as long as the truck is moving, but most of the time we spend by the side of some road trying to get a fix on our bears, and then it’s like we’re roasting turkeys in a pickup oven. I’m amazed at what these animals are doing, and still don’t have a clue as to why. We’re all the way into central Wisconsin, having traveled pretty much
non-stop since we started, and these bears haven’t ate or slept for days. Of our original four, we’re down to two that are still traveling, the heat and lack of food and water got the other two. I’m a
little worried about # 32 though, we haven’t been able to get a fix on him for hours. Now where did he go? Looks like I’m going to help push Gatorade and iced tea to new heights on the stock market in the next few days, that is, if I don’t sweat to death first.

Booger looked around and whined nervously. He didn’t like this, didn’t like it one bit. The man had gone into the house and left him alone in the yard tied to a fence post, and now he could hear things moving around in the grove of trees behind him. Strange scents drifted in on the wind to his sensitive nose, smells he couldn’t identify, and that spelled DANGER. He strained against his collar, trying to break free. He’d would’ve felt a whole lot better under the truck, he was much too exposed out here, no way to protect his flank. But there was no escape, so he adopted the best defensive posture that he could, back to the fence, ears down and hackles up, and waited for whatever was in the brush to make the next move.

Gabe grabbed a handful of Allison’s hair and bent her head back, scissors in front of her face. “Sorry ’bout this Alley Cat,” he sneered, “I know it’s gonna hurt you a lot more than it hurts me.” Then he raised the point to her eye, and drew back.

Suddenly, an explosion of barks, yips and growls and ratting trash cans could be heard from the yard. Gabe paused, “Could be we got company,” he told Allison, “too bad for them if we do.” He turned to the door, and on his way out he said, “Don’t go anywhere Alley Cat, I’ll be back.”

Booger was really raising hell by now, and Gabe stopped on his way out to retrieve his pistol from his jacket pocket, then crept cautiously to the kitchen door. Just as he got there, he heard the dog give one last pained yelp and then all was quiet. When he looked out, he was surprised to see a fairly large black bear standing over the battered body of his erstwhile canine companion. Forgetting for the moment their rather brief association, Gabe lost it. “You son-of-a-bitch!” he yelled, “That dog was the only friend I had!” He raised the pistol and fired three shots at bear #32 which squealed in pain and ran off limping into the trees. He dashed out to the dog, but it was clear that he was quite dead. “Now that really sucks!” he said, holding the dog’s head in his hands. “Oh, somebody’s gonna pay for this,” he
whispered, and stood up turning toward the house.

“And what the hell is this?” Gabe asked, swallowing hard. Between him and the kitchen door sat one black, and three gray wolves, and when he looked around, he noticed a dozen more emerging from the brush. The wolf on the left looked him in the eye and licked its chops. “You’re ’spose to be
scared of me, dammit,” Gabe said, and raising the pistol, pointed it at the dark animal’s head and
pulled the trigger.

“Click,” went the gun.

“Oh, shit,” went Gabe, and now he was more than a little frightened. His hands were shaking, and
the sweat on his brow had little to do with the morning sun. Two more wolves joined the four by the house, who stood up and began walking slowly toward the man. He spun around, and saw he was nearly surrounded by them now, a slowly closing circle of black eyes and bright white teeth.

Near the edge of the lawn, about 30 feet from where he stood, was the small tin shed that housed the farm’s water pump. Gabe figured he didn’t have much choice in the matter, and began to back slowly away from the house and toward the shed, losing his nerve and breaking into a run when he was about ten feet from the door. The wolves took this as their cue and leapt forward, one grabbing Gabe’s foot, another leaping for an arm, a third clamping his powerful jaws on the man’s left hand, twisting his
head and tearing three fingers free. Blood gushed, Gabe screamed and stumbled forward, dragging the animals with him, and found an ax leaning against the shed. Another wolf tore a mouthful of flesh from Gabe’s thigh as he swung the ax into the animal’s head, but as that one fell, another took his place, and jumping up, ripped a chunk of the man’s face away. He heard, rather than felt the bones in his foot
crackling like Rice Crispies as he fought his way through a whirlwind of gray fur and snapping teeth,
and finally gaining the door managed to get inside the building and close the door.

The building was literally crawling with spiders, but Gabe barely noticed as he collapsed on the floor, bleeding from a dozen wounds, and began to ponder his situation. “Not good,” was his assessment as he split his shirt into shreds, wrapping his torn flesh as best he could. He could tell that it wasn’t going to be easy to stop the loss of blood.

It was a couple of hours later before the adrenaline wore off and the pain really started.

In the house Allison sat waiting in the bathtub. She had a pretty good idea what was going on outside, the bracelet’s sixth sense had told her that the farm was virtually crawling with wolves, and she had the feeling that Gabe’s reign of terror was pretty much over for her. She looked at the scissors lying on the floor and shuddered. “Looks like we might be here for a bit,” she said to the handcuffs, and slumped down in the tub, crying softly.

That day and night went by quickly, as she drifted in and out of fitful bouts of exhausted sleep, and the next afternoon she awoke refreshed, although quite stiff from sleeping on the tub’s hard surface. “Well, at least I won’t die of thirst,” she thought, although she was beginning to feel some nagging hunger pains. “I wonder how long it will be before someone misses me at work?”

She decided to take a look around outside, and closed her eyes, searching for the nearest animal eyes she could appropriate.

Gabe’s night had been a little rougher.

After baking in the tin shed for a day, and spending a sleepless night unsuccessfully fending off an onslaught of spider bites he was beginning to look like a human raspberry. The pain from his wounds was relentless, and he was still bleeding from the worst of them. He distractedly scratched at the flesh dangling from his face, sending a couple of spiders scurrying for cover. He was starting to hallucinate, and he’d had enough first aid to know that blood loss, dehydration and infection would kill him just as surely as the wolves would if he didn’t get to a hospital, and quick.

But, when he looked out through the dusty window he could see they were still there. A ring of wolves surrounding the little building, watching. Waiting. There was also a large red hawk sitting on the fence post where the dog had been tied. The black wolf walked over to the building and stood up on his hind legs next to the window, his face inches from Gabe’s. “Little pig, little pig, let me come in,” the wolf said to him.

“Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin,” Gabe replied. He knew what happened to most of the pigs in that story.

As the day went by, the temperature climbed. 97. 98. 99.

By 3:00 in the afternoon it was 102 degrees in the shade, and about 140 in the shed. Gabe was barely conscious, and drawing his breath in short pants. He had gone beyond thirst, so far that drinking water now would probably hurt. His eyes were clogged with dust, and rosy red streaks were rising up the veins of his arms and legs, nearing his heart.

His mother sat on the floor next to him shaking her head. “Gabriel, Gabriel what have you done?” she asked sadly, “I thought I raised you better.”

“I fucked up, Mom,” he replied.

“And cursing at your mother, too,” she said sorrowfully, “I’m afraid you’re going to have to be chastised, and rather severely. You know very well that good boys don’t fuck up.” Then she reached up to the side of her head and grasping a zipper, peeled her face away to reveal the eight eyes and hairy head of a Black Widow spider. “Give your mother a kiss,” the spider hissed, poison dripping from its fangs as it reached for him.

Gabe screamed hoarsely, threw open the door, and ran out of the building. He didn’t stop screaming for several minutes.

The wolves didn’t care.

They too liked it when their victims put up a fight.

When they were done, the hawk flew down to the tattered remnants of Gabe’s shirt, removed the keys from what was left of the pocket, and flew quietly off toward the house.

From Abby Lincoln’s journal:

9 / 15 Well school starts in a few days, and I have to admit it’ll be somewhat of a
relief after the hectic pace of the last month. I’m happy to report that most of our bears are back
in their home range again. We still don’t have an explanation for their little cross-country trek, but it should make one heck of a thesis for me. Bear 32 ran into a little trouble, probably a farmer protecting his chickens, or maybe just scared. Can’t blame him, bears don’t make an appearance in south-central Wisconsin too often. Anyway, we had to tranquilize the old boy and pull out a couple of slugs, luckily not in any vital area, so he should be o.k. Maybe Disney will make it into a movie- “The Travels of Bear 32” or something.

Guess that’ll do it. Bye journal, it’s been a fun summer.

Alec got out of bed and looked out the window of the cabin. “Snowing pretty hard,” he said, “should be plenty of fresh powder for skiing tomorrow. Oh, Jeez Louise. Will ya look at these bite marks on my neck? I look like I’ve been mauled! Cripes Ali, you’re an animal!”

Allison rolled over and smiled, “More than you know Alec, more than you know.”

The wolf loved the freshly falling snow, it muffled all the sounds in the forest, and made it harder for the smaller animals to move around, thereby increasing her chances of catching a meal. Tonight it was big game, though. The pack had been following a herd of elk for the last two days, and it was finally time for the attack. Silently, they stole down from the trees, flanking a late-born calf that was struggling to keep up with the adults, Hiding in the shadows until the last moment. And then, breaking from cover, the chase was on. Down through the valley they ran, scattering the elk in a flurry of snow. The wolf savored the bite of the wind in her face, the scent of prey strong in her nostrils. She didn’t even care if they caught it, tonight the thrill of the hunt was enough.

And in her bed, Allison twitched and rolled about, growling softly in her sleep.

Alec sat and watched her for a while. “Sometimes I wonder,” he said, “Sometimes I wonder.”

Oh, Shit

2009-02-02T13:24:00.002-08:00

I’d like to say a few words about the most versatile substance in the entire western world.

Shit.

Did you ever give somebody shit? Nice present. How about if somebody gives you shit, and you just have to sit there and take it? What if you’re stuck with it, like “I couldn’t give a shit,” or what if you get the shits? Then you usually feel like shit too. And if you feel like shit, you usually look like shit. Kind of a gross thought- “Wow, you look like shit!” I suppose that would actually be true if you were a real shithead. Or if you tied one on the night before and got really shitfaced.

I met a real dumb shit one time, boy, he really had shit for brains. You couldn’t understand a word he said. I said, “Man, get the shit out of your mouth!” He was carrying a little bag around with him that could talk, but you couldn’t believe a word that it said. It was a real lying sack of shit. I told him,
“I don’t believe this shit.” He said, “You’ve gotta be shitting me.”

No shit.

Did you ever go to church when you were little and try to dip your hand in the little fountain? Your mom would say, “Don’t touch that son, that’s the Holy Shit!” How was I supposed to know? It looked like the same old shit to me.

Or if you tried to take a shit? Put that back where you found it!

How high do you have to pile the shit before you get into really deep shit?

I went to a party the other day. The hostess said, “Be careful with that, this is some expensive shit!”
“I know that you little shit.” “Hey, do you want the shit beat out of you?” No thanks. She had some really good shit, though. Good thing too, because one time I got hold of some bad shit. I tried to throw it away, but the shit hit the fan. What a mess!

I’ve got a friend who’s a real sportsman. Boy, he loves to shoot the shit. Hates dressing it out
though. He’s too poor to afford clay pigeons so we use shit on a shingle. Funny guy. In his back yard he’s got a shit house. Every time it rains it kind of melts down. Nice guy, but he’s so full of shit his
eyes are brown.

One final thought. I was in a restaurant the other day, and the guy beside me says, “This hamburger tastes like shit!”

I wonder how he knew?

Bob and Emily

2009-02-02T13:24:00.001-08:00

It was late autumn when he saw her. Indian Summer was in full swing, the sky was a beautiful cerulean blue, and the trees were simply ablaze with color. Bob had decided to take advantage of the unseasonable weather, and was walking through the woods, reveling in the explosion of reds, oranges and yellows.
It was Fourth of July fireworks in October, the forest’s last big show before the icy blanket of snow settled on the land, and silenced the rustling leaves for the winter.

He had stopped to get a drink from the little stream that wound its way through the trees, crystal cool water that babbled contentedly over the rocks on the start of its long journey to the Gulf of Mexico. When he raised his head, she was standing on the other side, and he gazed into the most beautiful chestnut brown eyes that he had ever seen.

“Uh, oh,” he thought. “Goodbye heart.”

Now, there are those who might scoff at the idea of love at first sight, but as for Bob, he never had the slightest doubt. He knew right then and there that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her, and apparently she felt the same way. They soon became inseparable, spending long afternoons together, walking through the meadows, planning for the future, reminiscing about the past and sharing the present. He wondered how he had ever survived without her, and thrilled to the way his heart would race whenever she was near.

Sure, he knew they had their differences, but what couple doesn’t? Yet his family and friends remained adamantly opposed to the relationship. “Love is blind,” they said, “Wake up and smell the coffee, Bob. She’s too different for you. You’ll never make it work. If nothing else, look at the difference in your ages, for Pete’s sake. She comes from the wrong side of the tracks. A union like this, it’s never been done before, what are you, some kind of radical?”

And even his mother joined in the chorus, “Bob honey, face the facts. She’s black, and you’re white. Folks just can’t accept someone so different from us.”

But Bob didn’t care. When he looked into her eyes, all he saw was the most beautiful, caring soul that he had ever met. And so they persevered. But everywhere they went, they could feel the disapproving stares, and hear the whispered conversations that went on behind their backs. Oh, they tried their best to ignore it, but ultimately, the social stigma was just too much for them to bear.

So, late one evening, after the sun set, they met down by their beloved stream and simply faded away into the darkness of the night, never to return.

Well, the scandal rocked the little community. The enormity of what they had done was unprecedented, and the gossip burned for weeks that stretched into years, and eventually became a legend that reached far beyond the little farm where it was born.

Perhaps you’ve even heard of it...

The day the cow and the horse ran away.

Minutes From “The God’s Club”

2009-02-02T13:22:00.000-08:00

The 9,673,427th annual meeting of The Gods’ Club was called to order by Amshanizae 27, Most Wise and Exalted Ruler of Universe Q-345:21, All Knowing, All Seeing, Benevolent King of Kings, Holiest of Holies, Most Wise Lord and Master, President.

Present were Top Gods from all the major universes (except Dren, Lord of R-664:12 who apparently is still pissed about losing the last election for Activities Coordinator). Secondary Gods from the parallel realities, and a host of minor deities, too numerous to name, were also in attendance.

Treasurer’s Report

The Treasurer’s report was read by a particularly smug looking He Who Has No Name (who true
to His theatrical nature assumed the form of a burning bush). Current balance stands at $3,445,675,876,541.17, an increase of $45,654,876,543.21 from last cycle, largely due to the auction of a newly created Godship of the Horsehead Nebula. Said auction brought in $38,000,000,000.00- a new record for a public service position. The Treasurer reminded everyone that even though we have a modest surplus, it’s still important that dues be paid on time, citing the example of Thelonius IV, who was stripped of several worlds as punishment for non-payment. Of special note was a debit of over $312,987,000,000 payed to the Galerian System for damages incurred during a drunken brawl following last new-cycle’s party. Apparently three moons were completely vaporized, a score of planets thrown out of alignment, and a small star was deliberately sent super-nova. Conduct like this is a disgrace to all Deities and will not be tolerated. If you can’t hold your liquor, for Our sake drink some spring water or something instead. Remember, billions of people look up to us, so try and set a good example.

A motion was made and seconded, and the treasurer’s report was accepted as submitted.

Old Business:

Work continues on Galaxy A, an experimental star system proposed by a student action group in Zeus 19’s Pre-Divinity class. The challenge here is to create a reality so preposterous that no one would
possibly believe that it exists. One suggestion is to create a series of worlds populated entirely by
politicians who genuinely care about their constituents, accept a vow of poverty, and devote their career to lowering taxes and improving benefits (this was rejected, as being impossible to achieve, even for Gods). Another wag envisioned a series of worlds populated entirely by characters from Gilligan’s Island, Green Acres, The Mod Squad, The Patty Duke Show, and other 60’s Earth television fare (also rejected, it already exists as cable TV). Still another seemingly impossible scenario has a planet of people who actually mean it when they say, “Of course I’ll still respect you in the morning!”. Theses are due by the end of Spring quarter.

Members will be pleased to know that the steam system in the sauna room has finally been repaired.

Lastly, the Lost & Found bin near the coat room is overflowing! All divine beings are asked to please stop on their way out and retrieve any garments or personal items before leaving, or we will be buried in a sea of misplaced gloves and hats!

New Business:

Bandrella the Glorious reports that negotiations have stalled, and a strike by the Angels’ union is practically guaranteed. Management has offered an increase in pay of over 4%, shorter hosannas,
and the option of electric guitar rather than the standard harp & trumpet lessons, but remains
snagged on the union’s demand of weekly wing cleaning and halo polishing, rather than monthly,
as currently offered.

The Most Praised Ompherious brings news that Hell is still frozen over, a development that took most of us by surprise after Michael Jackson married Lisa Marie Presley. Although there is a general unrest among the devils, it appears that no serious disruption of continuity has otherwise resulted, and demonic possessions were actually down 3% according to latest figures.

Orwari Cofuscurum, Chief of Security, states that we have recently been caught up in a wave of Supreme Beings peddling candy bars, magazine subscriptions, fruit, and raffle tickets for their children’s various causes. As every omniscient ruler of a universe here should know, this is a violation of Club policy, and will not be tolerated.

The Magnificent and Ever Present, All-encompassing, Exalted and Honored Penterios the Great,
Master of The Four Winds, Keeper of the Keys of Gondorff, Blessed Child of Mesheklebob would like to announce that He has changed His name, and from this day forward would really prefer to be addressed as “Fred”.

And last, but not least, The Gods’ Club is pleased to introduce our first Goddess member, Athena Colada from Universe T-933:42. As we all know, times have changed a lot in the last million years, and we are now proud to offer membership to any all-powerful entity regardless of his or her sex. President Amshanizae presided over the swearing-in ceremony, and the teaching of the secret club handshake.

No new business was brought forward, a motion was made and seconded, meeting adjourned.

Respectfully submitted,

Benterminous Adzetly
God of Thunder, Lord of Light
Secretary

Paper Tigers

2009-02-02T13:19:00.000-08:00

You know, we’ve all been hearing so much about recycling lately, that it’s easy to forget there’s another side to the story.

Did you ever wonder how the trees feel about the paper making process? Let’s imagine that you are
an average Conifer, hangin’ out in the old home woods. Life is good. You don’t have too many responsibilities, really. Mostly you just stand around BS-ing with the other Pines, complaining about those obnoxious Hardwoods that are moving onto your turf. They think they’re so superior, especially the Oaks. Ha! Squirrel feeders, that’s all they are! Throwing their acorns around like everyone in
the forest worships the ground they grow in. Oh sure, they have a nice grain, but you have to be a
little suspicious of anyone who drops their leaves at the first sign of a little cold weather. They just
can’t take it.

You’re one of the few, the proud, the Red Pines! You ain’t no Quaking Aspen!

You and the neighbors grew up together, planted at the same time- and it’s kind of like living in a big
college dorm. Everybody’s the same age, and you’ve been cross-pollinating for quite a few years now (although your parents still don’t know).

As little seedlings, you scared each other silly with horror stories about the evil killer Paul Bunyan, or the “careless smokers”, and everyone knew a few really stupid trees that played with fire. ’Course they didn’t last long. But that was a long time ago, and you’re all grown up now.

You know the answer to the old question, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one’s around, does it
make a noise?” Damn right it does, (they go down screaming) and it’s really unnerving, ’cause it could’ve been you!

You hate woodpeckers with a passion.

Then one day a bunch of heavy equipment rumbles into the woods, and bing, bang, boom, you’re chopped, hauled, chipped and rolled, and before you know it somebody is reading a short story that’s
written all over you.

Well hey, it could’ve been worse.

You could have been made into toilet paper!