THE HAND OF GOD

“Let us pray,” said the Preacher.

“Amen,” shouted everybody in the known universe.

“Children of God,” he continued, “only the righteous shall be chosen by Him, to do His Great Work in the Other World.”

“Amen.”

“Only he or she who is clean in mind and body and spirit shall be chosen by Him, to do His Great Work in the Other World.”

“Amen.”

“His Divine Hand shall pluck only those whose spiritual path has led to great righteousness. He will only deem worthy the good sheep from the flock. So, the time a-comes when every human being in the face of the known universe must ask themselves: am I a-ready for the plucking? Can I get a hallelujah?”

“Hallelujah.”

The great lid of the known universe was lifted then, exposing the dark world beyond. The inhabitants of the known universe were whipped into a zealous frenzy, running on their treadmills, pacing, collapsing, speaking in tongues.

The Preacher fell to his knees, kissing rosary beads, whispering, eyes closed, clutching a hand-written bible. He could barely hear himself shouting over the din, “take me, oh Lord, take me.”

The mighty Hand of God reached into the known universe from out of the blackness and scooped up a particularly righteous soul whose eyes streamed tears of joy for being chosen and tears of pity for everyone who wasn’t.

In a moment, the parishioner and the Hand of God, were gone, and the lid was put back on the known universe.

The Preacher also wept, tears of self-pity.

***

“Won’t you join us for feeding time, Minister,” asked Tippy, one of the Preacher’s favored disciples.

“No,” the Preacher said, “I’d like to do a little bible study today. I’ll feed later.”

Tippy bowed respectfully, but with unreserved disappointment.

“May the Hand of God bless you, child,” the Preacher said, and escaped into the quiet of his personal corner of the known universe.

Two weeks had gone by, and in that time the Preacher seethed internally. His mind burned and his soul became wintry. The Preacher was unquestionably a most pious man, the most pious of men, in fact, in the known universe. Yet, he had not been chosen.

He seethed.

He was older than most and had written the bible, by hand, spread the Good Word, and still he was ignored. He had always gotten by on the belief that he was spared because he was needed to do God’s Good Work, spreading the Message, preparing the souls of his parishioners as the mortician prepares the body for interment. But now he questioned his beliefs.

He was jealous. Secretly, he was beginning to hate the Chosen for the less than convincing ways in which they showed their faith, and for their role in his personal torment.

The Hand of God would descend from the heavens the very next day, so the Preacher made a vow:

“If I am not chosen tomorrow, I renounce my faith.”

***

Feverish rapture and glossolalia gripped the inhabitants of the known universe, everybody running pointlessly around the inner courtyard, falling over, hands raised to the sky. The Preacher tried something new.

He had always fell reverently to his knees, when the Hand of God appeared. This time, he would allow the joy of exultation to flow rapidly through him, starting in his toes and overflowing from his reaching fingers. He had nothing to lose this time. He stood in the center of the courtyard and raised his arms up to the sky, believed like he never believed before that his faith was a magnet. His heart swelled, the tears streamed down his face, his legs worked, jogging knee-high steps in place, he twirled around and cried out, really letting go. Certainly, the most pious man in the known universe was never more pious at any time than he was now.

The Hand of God reached down and gently scooped him up and raised him up, up toward the dark mysteries of the heavens, the unknown universe beyond.

He waved goodbye and called out to those below as was raised up, weeping uncontrollably, blowing respectful kisses.

“Thank God. Thank God, thank God.”

***

The Hand of God placed him inside another world, another universe, not dissimilar to his own.

It was the same size roughly, but mostly barren and rocky, with no treadmills or living quarters. Just different kinds of rocks, large gray ones, and small red ones.

He wandered about for a frenzied moment, wiping tears away, thinking. Another world, he thought, this must be the afterlife. Perhaps it’s a world all for me, to sit and ponder the mysteries of life and God for eternity. Or maybe it’s heaven’s waiting room. I must wait, while God looks into my soul and does a righteousness inventory.

He smiled, and sat down on the rocks, calmly.

The red rocky floor shuffled around one of large gray rocks. He sat up, and went to investigate. This must be it, he thought, God’s messengers come to take me to heaven.

He felt the tears of joy well up in his eyes again. He got half way over to the rock and stopped dead in his tracks.

“Oh no,” he heard himself say. “Oh dear God, no. It can‘t be. I have been forsaken!”

From behind the large gray rock, a gigantic creature, not found in the known universe, slithered hungrily toward him.

PENNYFARTHING

Marvin Allison could channel surf from ten yards away. Christ, he could do it with his eyes closed. Beer in the cup holder of his folding canvas lawn chair, bag of pretzels propped up against one of the legs, this was his battleground. The battle against boredom. And it was no match for him and his TV.

He surfed through all the channels, even the highly specialized ones, only stopping briefly on those with a greater chance of nudity. And through all the clicking, he managed to predict the plotlines of all the shows with amazing accuracy.

The only programs he didn’t enjoy were sports related. They were harder to predict by their nature. His accuracy fell to about sixty percent when deciding the outcomes of sporting events. Not a high enough accuracy level to lay money down, and the dialogue was mostly incidental, with none of the glimpses of real life conversation captured in scripted television.

Marvin sat back in his seat, sifting backwards through the thirties, Showcase, MMM, TLC, CNN, A&E, when he caught out of the corner of his eye a distracting flash of white light beaming from his brick fireplace.

The phenomenon lasted for perhaps less than a second, but it was enough to mess up his whole surfing timetable. When the light hit its apex, a mustachioed man in a dull gray suit on a pennyfarthing, crashed violently in his palm-smeared far wall.

Marvin was stuck on channel 31 for almost as many seconds. It was all in all, one big unscheduled disaster. He'd get back to surfing, he decided, after this short break. He promised himself he wouldn't go anywhere.

***

“I already know how this is going to end,” Marvin said, tending the bewildered man’s head wounds, “just put a cold beer on that bump, there. It’s going to end in one of two ways.

“Obviously, what's happened here is you've traveled through some sort of rip in the very fabric of time." He belched great ripples up his esophagus, then continued, "Something has wrenched you from your rightful and natural home. From the look of your style of dress and mode of transportation, I'd say you come from some time around the turn of the last century. Some powerful force was at work here, and I've got no idea how to send you back. I've got a pretty strong link-up to my satellite provider, so that may have something to do with what brought you here, but I'm not a scientist," he rested his beer on the shag carpet, "so I won't speculate on such matters. But my calculation for the outcome of this program is as follows: There’s a twenty percent chance you’re going to go to some kind of historical society, a museum, or university or whatever that specializes in your time period, and be ridiculed as a hoaxer or crazy nut after which you will die most likely either in a ..." he stretched out this bit really emphasizing his mental prowess in the field of prognostication, "... mental hospital or in some back alley, penniless.”

“My, oh my," the man with the pennyfarthing said.

“Yeah, but, I’d say there’s an eighty percent chance you’ll catch some new disease that you have no natural defense against and die within 48 hours.”

“Oh dear.”

“You haven’t even been hit with the influenza epidemic where you came from, have you?”

“Epidemic?” the man from the rip in time said groggily, "I don't remember that."

“You would, pal. Face it, one way or another, you’re history.”

And now, Marvin thought, back to my regular scheduled programs. He settled back into his lawnchair with his remote. Marvin was nothing if not a good adjuster.

***

Alfred (the man’s name was), had struck a deal with Marvin. Marvin dusted off his matching lawn chair from the back of the crawl space and now had a TV companion. Alfred was endlessly fascinated by the pictures, but endlessly baffled by the unrealistic situations blaring at him from the set. Also, it was impossible to follow the programs blazing by. But, he was a good student, and put his astonishment aside, for his true purpose was to study the ways of men of the future.

As a man of honor and some good-standing where he had come from, Alfred wanted to pay Marvin back for his hospitality, despite the fact that the food from the future was largely unfit to eat. Even the vegetables had given him terrifying bouts of diarrhea at first. But, Alfred was a good adapter too and after a short time, feeling slightly acclimatized, found a job as an actor at Fort Michlin, which had been turned into a kind of museum. Though the air still made him cough until he was hoarse in the throat, it wasn’t enough to hold back his charm during the interview.

***

The thing that struck Marvin as most strange, while he was out on his daily chores, was how he had been wrong about what was coming. Were his instincts not as sharply attuned as they once were? Maybe he wasn’t paying enough attention. No. He decided that the thing was, he had a routine going, a damn fine routine and that blinding white flash was the thing what ended it.

So, that’s all it takes to ruin a good routine, he thought. That’s it, just a millisecond. From now on, I’m doubling my effort. I’m sleeping on the chair. I want to know what happens, goddammit, I want to be sure.

The strain of mental ranting made Marvin cough violently. He was feverish, delirious. Why hadn’t he noticed until just now? He noticed he had been coughing when he visited his mother and went to the bank, the supermarket, but it hadn’t been that bad. When he got his coughing under control, he went to the bathroom mirror and found his palm was covered in thick dark red mucuous, his face was covered in bumps.

***

When Alfred came home from work, he found Marvin curled up in his chair, huddled in a blanket. Only his head and right hand, with the remote control were visible.

“Alfred,” he said, “what’s happened to me? I’m sick as a dog. I can’t stop coughing and I’ve got the worst case of the shits.”

“Hm,” Alfred said, “that’s funny. I was just getting over that. But, they were working on a cure for the Dennison virus when I left the 24th Century for the future, they must have found a cure for that by now.”

HOUSEHOLD SOLUTIONS SCARECROW SECURITY UNIT

After some trepidation, Fredrik Jordan Sr. contacted Household Solutions Company and placed an order.

“The scarecrow?” the voice on the other end of the line queried, “oh yes, we've seen a sales spike for those units recently. Okay, that’s one twenty for the unit, installation fee: forty dollars, shipping and handling, parts and labor, plus you’ve decided to go with the FieldWatch Security package … is that correct, Mr. Jordan?”

“Yeah,” he said, rubbing his forehead, “give me all that crap. Fully loaded, damn it.”

“Okay so, your total comes to two hundred and sixty dollars and sixty four cents. The total includes your first month’s payment on the rental of the FieldWatch monitoring system. How will you be paying?…”

And within a couple days, it was out there, watching over his proud crops with its eerie monitoring eyes in its rotating head. With a sigh he took one last look at the thing, then turned off the porch light and walked achily upstairs to bed.

“What do you need one of those things for?” his neighbor’s voice rang through his head, “nobody’s had any trouble in these parts.”

“I know,” he recalled saying, “it’s the family. Somewhere they got it in their head that no crop is safe without one of these damn things. The kid must have seen it on TV.”

***

“Listen,” he said, “sssh. Do you hear that?”

His wife listened. “I don’t hear anything,” she said, groggily.

“That noise,” he said drawing back the curtains and peering out the window, “it’s like a low hum.”

“It’s probably to keep the birds away, but I don’t hear anything. Get back to bed,” she said, and buried her face in the pillow.

Alright you bastards, he thought, I‘m on to you.

***

The Jordans sauntered up and down the aisles of the Super Duper Market, cart straining under the weight of groceries. Freddy junior grabbed a bag of Boffo brand paper towels and tossed it in the cart, grasping impulsively for the next item.

Fred Sr. picked up the paper towels and studied them, compared prices. He replaced the Boffo towels with a generic brand.

“These ones are eighty cents cheaper,” he said.

“I want Boffo,” Freddy jr. said.

“Yeah? I don’t care,” Fred sr. said, “what do you think, we grow money on our farm?”

Freddy jr. picked up the Boffo paper towels and said, “I want these ones.”

“Put those back.”

Freddy junior’s chin began to quiver and he threw a fit.

“Cut it out,” Mrs. Jordan said, “we’re in public.”

“I don’t care,” Freddy jr. said between sobs.

“Well you better care,” Fred sr. said, “be glad we’re in public, kid, or I’d give you such a smack.”

“Just let him have it, Fred,” his wife said with a sigh.

“What? No. He can’t always get his way. Look at this, the kid put half the crap in this cart. Most of this isn’t even kid stuff.”

“Fred,” she grabbed the generic brand paper towels forcefully out of the cart, “from now on, we choose Boffo. I mean, everybody knows Boffo brand paper towels are sixty percent more absorbent than the leading competitor!”

She put the Boffo towels in the cart. Fred senior said nothing, he was deep in thought.

***

He had a hard time getting to sleep that night. It was the hum, so low it was hard to hear, which was the very thing that made it impossible to ignore. He walked bitterly downstairs and turned on the TV.

“--more from the Late Night Show after this …”

The first commercial flashed on screen. It was for Boffo brand paper towels. He scoffed, remembering.

“… remember, Boffo brand paper towels are sixty percent more absorbent than the leading competition. Boffo, a division of Household Solutions Company.”

Fredrik Jordan sat bolt upright in his chair, his mouth dropped open. The next commercial sprang on.

“You know folks, no crop is safe without the Household Solutions scarecrow security unit --”

Sickened, he turned off the TV. He got up and paced, wandered into the kitchen. On impulse he checked the fridge and cupboards.

Boffo apple juice.

Boffo cereal.

Everything Boffo brand …

He ran upstairs and shook his wife awake.

“Kate! Kate, wake up!”

“Mmm, what? What is it? What’s wrong?”

“How much TV have you been watching lately?”

“What kind of a question is that to wake somebody up for?”

“Just answer the question. How much TV have you been watching?”

“I don’t watch TV, I read. You know that. What’s gotten into you?”

“Yeah … yeah. That’s right. You don’t watch TV. Are you sure, though, sure you haven’t been watching just a little bit?”

“Yes! Now let me get my sleep.”

“Mom!” Freddy jr. called from down the hall.

“Now look what you did,” she said, and she groggily got out of bed and walked to Freddy’s room.

Fred sr. wandered over to the window and brushed aside the curtains, looked out at the scarecrow security unit. Its glowing, lifeless eyes scanned the field in three hundred and sixty degrees on its rotating head.

***

The next day the neighbor, Dave Miller, was back.

“How’s that scarecrow working out for you?” he asked.

“I’m taking it down and sending it back,” Fred said, “you were right, we didn’t need it after all.”

“Well,” Miller said, “I’ve been doing some thinking about it and the idea’s starting to grow on me.”

“How’s that?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve just been thinking about it mornings is all. I get out of bed and I think to myself, ‘you know Dave, no crop is safe without the Household Solutions scarecrow security unit.’”

“Wait a minute. That’s the company line, Miller. Where’d you hear that? Have you been watching TV?”

“Huh? No, I don’t watch TV myself. The idiot box is what rots the brain, you see? But, those thoughts just come to me.”

“Wait. Do you hear that? It’s that noise again.”

“What noise is that, Fred?”

“Are you trying to tell me you don’t hear that low hum? God, I can’t even hear myself think!”

“I don’t hear nothing.”

Fredrik Jordan pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed deeply.

“Oh,” Miller said, “here comes Mr. Taylor.”

Taylor was Fred’s other neighbor on the opposite side. He strolled up confidently with a pamphlet in his hand.

“Good,” Fred said, “he’s probably come to complain about the noise.”

“Howdy neighbors,” Taylor said jovially, “is that a Household Solutions scarecrow security unit you got there?”

“Yeah, sure is,” Fred said, “look, sorry about the noise, pal. I’m taking care of it right now.”

“Been thinking the past couple days about getting one myself.”

Fredrik Jordan said nothing. He stalked purposefully into his shed and took out his axe. He charged over to the Household Solutions scarecrow security unit # 3427 and began chopping at its base amid the gasps and protests of his neighbors. It was feverish and sweaty work and he didn’t stop chopping until the humming stopped.

When it was over he leaned against the long axe handle, panting.

“Well,” he said, catching his breath, “what you think about it now?”

“Fred,” Miller said, brow wrinkling, “are you all right, buddy?”

“Yeah,” Taylor said, “you don’t look too good.”

“No,” Fred said, “I’m better than good, I feel great! Oh my God, it’s over. It’s all over.”

Fredrik Jordan’s ear snapped to attention. His body stiffened to alertness by a sound. A low hum that sounded from the distance.

“I just wanted to tell you,” Taylor said, “I’ve been thinking about getting one the past couple days so I took the plunge. They’re at my place, fixing it up right now.”

Fredrik Jordan simply shook his head, “no. No. No! They got to you Taylor! And you too if you’re not careful, Miller!”

“Take it easy there, partner,” Miller said.

“Take it easy? Can’t you hear it? Are you insane!? What’s wrong with you people!? What’s wrong with everyone!?”

Fredrik Jordan ran across the field, ran as far as he could go. He kept running until his legs gave out and collapsed. Taylor and Miller exchanged worried looks.

“Boy,” Miller whistled and said, “poor guy. Guess he must have snapped for some reason. Overworked I guess. So what's all this about the Household Solutions scarecrow security unit?”

“I just got mine installed, just this minute. I couldn't wait to tell you guys the good news,” Taylor said, beaming, “after all, no crop is safe without one. Which brings me to why I came over here today. Here, I thought you should read this.”

He handed Miller the pamphlet for a brand new Household Solutions scarecrow security unit.

THE DEMON OF WALL STREET

He tended it, kept it in excellent repair, trimmed off the fray. He watered the flowers around it, but the flowers died. The memorial flowers always died.

His father had died. The father who had willed the farm over to his son, the son who knew nothing of business. The bank was foreclosing on the property.

His father had died, but had not left him. His essence stayed behind, gave him advise. His father’s essence wore rags, stuffed with hay and hung in the field where he tended it, kept it in excellent repair.

He climbed the little step ladder and leaned up close. His father’s limbs were bundled sticks. His face was papier mache with a bright red painted on smile, hopeful black dots for eyes and rosy pink cheeks, head tilted ever-so proudly back, optimistic, happy, content. He leaned in close to the bright red smile and listened.

***

He got off the Lake Shore Limited at Penn Station at nine in the morning and hit the gun shop by one.

Just one week’s wait.

At the hotel he unpacked, laid the contents of his bag on the floor: sticks, hay, clothing. Before he reassembled his father, he needed a method of carriage.

So he walked the streets of New York with a shopping cart full of his scarecrow father, propped up like a drunk friend, waiting for time to pass. Nothing unusual, just one more thing to tick off the list of ‘now I‘ve seen everything.’ Once in a while he would lean his ear in close to the bright red lips.

A couple days in, the cart fell over on its side trying to make its way up a non-wheelchair accessible curb, spilling his father all over the filthy street. This would not do.

***

He remembered there was a thunderstorm. It didn’t matter whether or not there really was one, because that’s just how he remembered it. His father had just died.

He was taking down all the little trinkets that ornamented his father’s life and placing them in boxes. Pictures of his father’s old friends and times and places that he had never known. Old clocks shaped like things that his father enjoyed, that he had always felt lukewarm about. There were a couple of clocks set in glazed pieces of chopped wood with eagles painted on them. Other things came down that day: old Christmas cards, some velvet paintings, the scarecrow in the field.

***

He didn’t know too much about finance. It wasn’t really his fault, nobody had ever tried to teach him. It’s not that he was simple minded, but he was kind of caught up. They didn’t teach him how to run a farm at school, that was for sure. His father had taught him practical things: how to raise chickens, how to build a fence, and how to shoot guns.

He tried to imagine how many people in the city had never seen a farm. Millions? He tried over and over to imagine them all. He tried to see how many he could visualize in his mind at one time and still be able to count them all. He tried to trap as many of them as he could in a well-lit room of his own design, shoulder to shoulder. Before long they would step out of line, move around, waver and mingle. He could never count higher than the mid teens. When he would open his eyes, there would be more people on the street than he could fit in his mind.

He wondered how many of these people could teach him finance, how long it would take. Too long, probably. He had a little money, enough to last on this trip that’s all he knew. Enough to last on this one way trip.

***

He remembered the power went out during the thunderstorm.

He was in the attic or the basement, moving boxes, making space. He was moving stuff around and a lot of it was really heavy and difficult. He imagined every box or couch as having little arms, legs and a head, all slacked and slouched, feet dragging across the floor. Dead weight.

He didn’t cry when his father died, didn’t punch things or get angry. Just felt numb inside. “Oh,” he said, when they told him the news. “Oh.”

He slumped up against the wall, wiped his forehead, catching his breath. He looked over to the scarecrow that he had set across the narrow room from him. The way he remembered it, lightning struck just then, and it was at that very moment, everything lit up, he saw clearly the scarecrow turn its head and look at him.

He was frightened half to death until it started to talk.

***

He had gathered up the sticks and some good stiff yellow hay and set them down in piles for his father. His father had picked out some old work clothes that weren’t too worn out and together father and son conspired to make a man. But a man without a head. He blew a balloon, and they covered it in gluey strips of newspaper together. When it dried he popped the balloon and painted on a face.

His father didn’t really say too much ever, but a certain tension was lifted when they made that scarecrow.

***

There was only one solution to the unwieldy shopping cart problem. The efforts of father and son to fashion a man from sticks and clothes had seemed an immobile failure on the streets of New York.

The scarecrow had been a refuge of sorts for both of them. The memory of its genesis was a refuge for him and the thing itself was a refuge for his father’s soul. Sticks and clothes did not move on their own … well, only once when no one was looking. They would not move unless he donned the clothing, father and son conjoined in spirit.

He knew intuitively he would no longer need to listen to the bright red lips with his ear, donning the clothes he would listen with his heart and his mind.

***

He stalked purposefully down Broadway in his father’s soul’s clothing with his brand new gun. Turned a left on Wall street and hit the New York Stock Exchange.

There was a giant American flag draped across the face of the building like a mask, and a guarded fence keeping out the public. It was a fortress.

Dark jackets milled about on the other side of the fence, chatting feverishly, getting in and out of dark cars. He felt the heaviness of the gun in his waistband.

A blue jacket walked slowly out of the building and up to the fence, rubbing his forehead, pacing, pacing then resting his elbows.

He listened to his heart, now was his chance.

***

His heart said it was the bank that killed his father. Inflation and mortgages and other things he did not quite understand had tired his father out, slowed him down, squeezed his heart into a tight little fist that one day collapsed from exhaustion.

It said it was the banks and the New York money men, manipulating the stock market, driving out the small business man. That’s all he needed to know.

***

He walked bumpily up to the man resting on the fence, already he saw dark jackets jogging a bee line in his direction. He opened his mouth and words that weren’t his own came out, words from the heart, words like two red eyes glowing from the depths of his black mind.

His voice accused the blue jacket of killing his father, of ruining his father’s business, of ruining the country.

He recognized something in the face of the blue jacket. Something familiar. Something that told him the blue jacket was no different from him, possessed of the same drive.

His voice continued to accuse.

The blue jacket jumped over the fence despite the dark jackets’ clawing, resisting hands. Before he knew what hit him, the blue jacket had pummeled him into the brownstone pavement. The blue jacket breathed heavily through his teeth, shaking out the pain from his bludgeoning fists, towering over him.

Some tourists were taking pictures off to the side.

THE SCREAM

Emma Strawberry was doing time at the Northwoods Facility for Women. It wasn’t a prison, it was a place to relax, a place to excuse yourself from the world, a place to ask for permission. Everything had fallen apart and she was doing time. It’s what happens when you fail at life, she joked to herself, a penalty.

She killed time, took the attitude of someone serving a life sentence. Kill your job, kill your relationships, go to prison, keep on killing, kill time. What were they going to do, kill her?

From her room on the third floor, she looked down, across the field, through the trees and over the fence to the field opposite the grounds. She stared down at the scarecrow there, stunned, fascinated. She never knew that time could take the form of a man, even if it was just a stuffed man. The scarecrow was time itself, leaning frozen against the breeze, and it was screaming.

She looked over at her clock.

When the screaming stopped, a man’s voice broadcast in her head, ‘official time of death 2317 hours.’

***

“I saw something strange a couple nights ago,” Emma said.

“Yeah, I’ll bet,” her brother Eddy said.

Eddy suffered from an affliction most people have, an irrational fear of the mentally ill, as though what fed on emotions and devoured minds was a communicable thing.

“Listen,” he said, “I’ve got something to tell you, and I know now’s probably not the best time --”

“Then it can wait,” she said, rushing out of her room, “come on.”

Eddy winced and picked up his coat, followed her slowly down the hall. She was practically running.

***

They were on the other side of the fence, off of Northwoods grounds.

“You’re going to get in trouble, you know,” Eddy said, glancing around and behind.

“What are they gonna do,” Emma asked, “kill me?”

Emma charged behind the sparsely placed trees opposite the fence, all charged up. An open-minded seeker in search of an answer to a question that was asked for her. Eddy followed.

She stopped when she got to the scarecrow.

“This is it,” she said.

“This is what you wanted to show me? Okay, so I’ve seen it. Come on, let’s go back inside before you get caught. It’s cold and you don’t have a jacket.”

“Okay, Mom.”

Eddy rubbed his forehead, looked down, and quietly said, “hey, come on, huh?”

She skipped a joyful circle around the scarecrow, “someplace to put one of these things, don’t you think? Right outside a mental institution. As if we’re not paranoid enough, right? We gotta look out the window and see this spooky old thing hanging there all Christ like without its dignity. A crazy person‘s gonna get ideas.”

“Don’t say shit like that. You’ve been here five days, and you’re talking like you’re some kind of veteran or something,” Eddy kicked earth, planting his foot in, hands in his pockets.

She felt the cold whip around her, hugging her too tight. She looked up into the blank face of the scarecrow, “this is where time goes to die. I saw it with my own two eyes.”

She glanced at him, “that’s all I do at this place, you know?,” she turned back to stare into the blank face again,

“I kill time, and it gets nailed to this post for everyone to see. This is where dreams come to die too. For everyone to see.”

He tugged gently at her shoulder, “come on, let’s just go, huh?”

She pulled away, “it’s kinda funny they didn’t bother to stitch a face on this thing, don‘t you think? I mean, it can be who or whatever you want it to be. Time or a dream. But, what if it’s just a mask. A mask for a shy kind of death. What’s underneath the burlap face of time and dreams?”

The burlap face was brittle and weather beaten. She dug tensely into it with her short unvarnished nails, tearing it apart with her delicate fingers. It cleaved in two and she got on her tippie-toes.

Time stopped. Her breathing stopped. Her heart stopped beating in her chest.

She fell on her butt, kicking and stumbling away. Eddy tried to help pick her up and she fought him, never taking her eyes off of the blank face of time and dreams rent in two by her own hands. Eddy called to her, still trying to help her up. Finally, she tore her gaze away and buried her face in his shoulder. He held her.

After a moment, she looked up at him with a face as blank as the one she destroyed and said, “there are eight dimensions.”

***

She was back in the relative warmth of her own room, sitting on the edge of her bed. Eddy stood.

“What was all that about eight dimensions?” he asked.

She sighed a deep breath and said, “what I meant to say was it’s a sphere, not a line, or a circle. Individually speaking. Or … it’s a pond, universally.”

He didn’t understand what she was saying, but understood it as a symptom of her current condition. He betrayed nothing of his thoughts on his face.

“I’m talking about time,” she continued, “and death. Time is like a pond, you see? You throw a rock in and the ripples go out in all directions, front and back. Something happens in the present, something to remember in the future, little ripples of significance travel back to the past. If you don’t look for these things you can see them or sense them, all the time.

“The individual is like a little ball of clay. As we perceive time rolling along, it stretches the ball of clay and rolls it out into a tube getting thinner and thinner until it eventually breaks. And time continues to roll along, leaving behind little scattered thin bits of clay that spread out around the edges of time, like pebbles on a beach. Until God or something throws one of those pebbles back into the pond, rippling it out back toward the beach again.”

She slapped her knees excitedly and said, “it was a spider and an egg. Behind the face, I mean. A spider told me about time and death. I’m still not sure about dreams though. I’ll have to think about it some more.”

Eddy’s mind was working, and his heart too. Trying to drudge up courage and then what to say, how to say it.

“Dreams,” Emma went on, “see, our dreams are like our children. We create them, but we ultimately have no control over them, and the kind of dreams you can control aren’t really dreams anymore are they? Sometimes our dreams outlive us, if they escape into the so-called real world. The dimension of dreams is like a spider’s leg. No more or less real than the one beside it or opposite it, the waking world. I guess that old saying applies to a person’s dreams too. You know the one about, ‘the greatest tragedy is when a parent outlives their child.’”

Eddy’s blank mask crumbled and his eyes began to water. His chin twitched and he fought gallantly against the sobs.

Through tight vocal chords he told her:

“Em, Mom died last night. It happened around eleven at night. She was out on the deck of the houseboat and she fell into the water. A neighbor heard her scream but they were too late.”

Emma felt ghoulish and selfish. She heard what he said all right, but she was busy thinking about the scream, and she was thinking about time.

LOPSIDED

The Old Man in the Old House watched the three children play in the field across the street.

“Wait a minute,” Miranda said, “Did you see that? The house across the street: the blinds opened up.”

“He’s watching us,” Ollie said, nervously.

Miranda suppressed a scream and asked, “what does he want?”

“I don’t know,” Ollie said.

Davy popped up from the long grass and said, “It’s obvious he’s gonna eat one of us,” he walked over and love-tapped Miranda on the shoulder, “he just wants to see who’s weakest.”

“Hey,” Ollie said, calmly, “don’t you pick on her.”

“Yeah,” she said, punching Davy back, “don’t pick on me, I’m not the weakest.”

“Sure you’re not,” Davy said, “look, I’m just saying … he’s gonna eat one of us. And it sure as snot ain’t gonna be me.”

“Nobody’s going to get eaten,” Ollie said, “quit trying to scare us, Davy.”

“You’re scared?” Davy continued, “well you shouldn’t be, ‘cause he smells fear. You know what fear is to him? Man, it‘s like the sauce on barbecue ribs. It‘s like sugar on your Cheerios. It‘s like --”

“That’s enough,” Ollie shouted.

The Old Man was still watching them, his old hand worked over his old beard furiously.

The children ran through the field, jumping over the small shrubs, weaving between them. When they were tired, they rested against a post facing the Old Man’s house across the street. They eyed the wonder of the corn fields swaying, its three sentry scarecrows stood fiercely still against posts of their own. The three scarecrows stood raggedy, two on one side of the field, with one to fend for the whole other side by itself, giving the field a lopsided appearance.

The Old Man weighed the children carefully, each of them was an option. He watched and weighed options.

“My older brother said,” Davy said, “the old man in that house gives one poison candy every year on Halloween, so you never know if you’ll be the one to get it.”

“Aw, everybody says that,” said Ollie, “but no one ever gets sick.”

“That’s because no one ever goes there on Halloween, cause they know.”

Ollie and Miranda tried to let Davy know by looks and posture that they weren’t afraid. And maybe they weren’t actually afraid, but the look of the creepy old house and the idea of the creepy old man in the house excited them. Ollie smiled.

“I heard,” he said, “the reason the old man went insane was because he built the house on an Indian burial ground.”

“Oh yeah,” Davy said, picking up a rock, “look how scared I am.” He got up and threw the rock across the street, toward the house. The rock fell in the front yard with a low thump and a rustle of the grass.

“They also say,” he continued, “he picks off the smallest and youngest.” He looked over at Miranda, “but you’re not afraid are you?”

Ollie clenched his teeth and looked away, picking blades of grass and piling them.

“Come on,” Davy said, grabbing Miranda by the arm, “let’s just get it over with. Here we come with your human sacrifice Crazy Old Man!”

“Let me go,” Miranda shouted, “you’re not allowed to grab my arm! I’m not a human sacrifice!” She shoved Davy, who stood nearly twice her tiny size, shoved him as hard as she could. Davy took a step backwards. Miranda stood with her hands on her hips, staring daggers up at the older boy.

Ollie sat, picking grass, looked over just in case she needed him.

Davy smirked down at the little girl. He could flick her in the shoulder and she’d fall down, crying. But it was too much of a hassle, he figured. He scoffed and backed down, “Come on,” he said, “let’s get out of here.”

Ollie got up, brushed off his pants and said, “we’re going home.”

“Suit yourself,” Davy said, “I’m gonna go home and shoot my bee bee gun.”

They parted company, resembling the scarecrows across the street, two to one side of the field, one to the opposite side. Ollie marched with his sister in tow.

“Ollie,” she said, weakly, “I feel funny.”

“Don’t worry about it, okay,” he said, “we’re only twenty minutes from home.”

He continued to march through the field, expecting to hear her complain again, but it never came. He turned and she was gone. She hadn’t fallen, there were no tracks, she had vanished.

Across the street, the old man closed the blinds and walked through the kitchen, out the back door and into the shed. He took out a wooden post and carried it into the field. He had seen who was the strongest child, the one with the greatest will. Soon, he would have a new scarecrow up, and his field would no longer be lopsided.

AFTERNOON, pt. II

***

He found himself in a vast room, a private library whose walls were covered in books.

A well-built blond man sat cross-legged on a padded leather high-backed chair. He wore a blue blazer with a crest on it. A pipe nestled between his lips.

“You’ve turned out differently than we’d hoped,” the man said, serenely.

“I’m dreaming,” Phil said, removing himself from the floor.

“You always say that,” the man said, wearily, “and then you always ask ‘where am I.’ I always give you the same answer,” he took a long, thoughtful puff on his pipe, exhaled and said, “a flying saucer.”

“I found a skeleton,” Phil said.

“I know. You always find the skeleton. The first time it was an accident, playing football in the field, you tripped on the turf and kicked up a bone fragment. We hadn’t buried them deep enough.” The man got up from the chair, theatrically and continued, puffing away as he did so, “each time we bury them deeper and deeper. Do you have any idea how much trouble it is to cover the entire planet with layers of top soil and rebuilding everything over from scratch? Oh, the streets are easy enough to repave and nobody notices the trees shortening inch by inch, foot by foot, but to have to suspend the buildings and lay new foundation every time … it’s really too much. I’ve suggested a number of times that we just kill you or remove you, take you back home, but oh no, the high council won’t have it. They feel relocating you is more trouble than rebuilding the planet.”

“What are you going to do to me?”

“Well, since I have superiors to answer to, I’m not going to kill you if that’s what you’re afraid of. You’re too important. It’s only you, you know? You’re the only one that remembers, and each time you remember sooner than the last.”

“Why?”

“That’s the thing, we don’t know. That’s why you haven’t been killed.”

***

He awoke on a sunny, chilly morning. The kind he remembered from digging in fields.

Digging in fields.

Pancakes.

Flying saucers.

His skull was aching, nagging at him. He felt like he hadn’t slept in years. He picked up the phone and dialed.

“Libby, I can’t come into work today … no … can’t, sorry … okay, bye.”

He got dressed as fast as he could and rushed out the door, headed toward the field …

***

He woke up.

Pancakes.

Flying saucers.

Digging.

Skulls.

He woke up eating pancakes in a flying saucer with a gun digging into the back of his skull.

“Don’t worry,” the Well-Built Man said, “it’s too much of a hassle to overwrite the entire programmed reality without you in it. And we won’t kill you, you’re too important to the program.”

He put down his knife and fork, chewed and swallowed carefully, and said, “then why is there a gun shoved into the back of my head?”

“We’re giving you back your memory.”

There’s nothing wrong with my memory, Phil thought. Then he thought, oh yeah, now I get it.

“We can’t fight you anymore.”

“Your experiment failed.”

“Did it?”

“Somehow, you’ve modified my appearance, made me look like you, but I’m not one of you. I’m an alien.”

“Wrong again, I’m afraid.”

“No, you’re right. This is where I belong. Those are my people buried in the ground.”


“You’re the last one. Anyway, you’re a success, as experiments go.”

“All that history, everything I ever learned about the world is wrong. Why go to all that trouble?”

“As far as the history, most of it actually happened, but not here. On a planet called Earth, where we come from. Rome, Greece, America, it’s Earthian history. But we managed to fit it in nicely to the genetic code we imprinted here, most compatible with yours. You see, everything in history happens for a reason, and everything you were told was written for a reason. Everybody has a purpose, but yours was more important than others.”

“What was this experiment you speak of?”

“Let’s just say we don’t like to have to kill our own people. Kind of defeats the purpose of colonization, don’t you think? Well, you proved to us that genocide is the only way to go.”

“This doesn’t make any sense.”

“It’s very simple, actually. We find a habitable planet, wipe out the population and re-seed it with our own. You've proven that the natural inhabitants of a planet have too much of a connection to it, a connection that can't be broken with memory implants or genetic tinkering. When we re-seed a planet we provide the pioneers with false history and memory implants as a service to them and to us. It’s easier to rule absolutely when the people have the delusion of freedom. For the most part, our own people don’t even realize we exist, or the great service we provide for them, because every planet’s story ends the same way.”

“Oh, and how’s that?”

“Mismanagement of resources which inevitably forces liquidation. Who knows, maybe with what you’ve learned you can become an even more important person, a whistleblower. How are the pancakes, by the way?”

“Delicious.”

“That’s ours, you know? That’s an Earthian invention.”

***

Phil woke up on warm, breezy afternoon. He slept in, he hadn’t called in to work. He wanted to call in, tell somebody, anybody the senses-shattering news. He picked up the phone to call in to work and tell them his amazing story but he gently set it back down. It’s not that they wouldn’t believe him, he was just too tired to be reamed out by Libby.

AFTERNOON, pt. I

It was a sunny, chilly morning. The kind Phil remembered from elementary school, where everything was right in the world, and everything was right in his life, and the world was full of endless opportunity and boundless enthusiasm. And then his whole world flipped around, and then everything he knew about life went out the window.

All it was, was a skeleton. But none ever found on this planet before. Thoroughly alien physiology. It could have been a deformed human, but it wasn’t. He opened up the field. There were dozens of them. They littered the landscape, left to rot like so much garbage.

***

“Good morning sunshine.”

Phil came to work five minutes early, as always, went out back, had a smoke, and was five minutes late to start his shift, as always. And, as always Libby greeted him as he made his way behind the counter.

“Good morning sunshine.”

“nnn.”

His head was cloudier than usual. He felt like he’d been up all night.

He tied his apron around his waist and signed into the computer.

“Okay, Libby,” he said, groggily, “what do we got?”

“Couple orders, I got a breakfast wrap in the microwave, I need a quiche and a short stack of pancakes.”

Pancakes, his mind repeated. He felt like he’d been up all night.

He grabbed the breakfast wrap from the microwave and slapped it on the grill, then fed the hungry microwave with the quiche. He grabbed the pancake mix from the cooler and poured it onto the fryer.

Pancakes.

He leaned back against the counter, folded his arms and closed his eyes.

“You’ve turned out differently than we’d hoped,” his memory spoke to him. His memory was a tall, well-built blond man.

The microwave startled him into alertness, sounding the alarm that the quiche was ready.

“What,” Libby said, shrilly, “you been up all night, drinking?”

There was a war going on. The tops and bottoms of both his eyelids constantly threatened to engage in silent combat. Just like the Americans and Russians he’d heard about and seen about in history.

He flipped the pancake and sent the quiche out. The breakfast wrap was starting to burn on the grill.

“Hello, sleepy head,” Libby said, laughing her matronly laugh, “get the lead out, huh? Keep an eye on those pancakes.”

Pancakes.

He flipped the first one onto a plate and got pouring on the second one. He watched the mix ooze out and flatten into a disc.

A disc.

“Oh my God,” he said, quietly.

“Oh your God, what?” Libby asked.

“Don’t you see?” he answered, suddenly vigorous, “don’t you get what’s going on here? Pancakes. Tall blond men.”

“Whew,” Libby said, quite seriously, “whatever you were smoking last night, keep it to days off only, hon. It’s kind of embarrassing when we’re trying to run a family establishment here.”

“No, no,” he exclaimed loud enough for everyone in the place could hear him. He grabbed Libby by the shoulders and said, “Pancakes, pancakes … flying saucers!”

He untied his apron and threw it aside, into the salad bar and ran around the counter, out the front door.

The second pancake was burning on the fryer.

***

He fell down to his knees in a great heap onto the field, limp as fresh laundry. His knees were wet from the grass. He dug his bare hands into the grass and started pulling, pulling, exposing topsoil. He dug, and dug, blackening fingers, smearing palms, making a big pile of dirt beside him. After a while, his forehead became smudged with gray earth from wiping off sweat. By mid-afternoon he’d dug down four feet or so and that’s when he found it. The first skull.

Phil looked up from his work and noticed he had drawn a small crowd, gathered around his hole ornamentally. When he uncovered the skull they mostly gasped, some of the older ones exchanged weary glances.

By then he was exhausted and he let the crowd know it by collapsing back into the hole, on top of the strange skull.

THE THIN VEIL

They all left the safe warm confines of home in rockets. Countless billions of them, shot off into the mysterious darkness of space. Most left in the first wave, but they all got off the planet eventually. Their mission: colonization.

The planet exploded, hurtling large chunks of matter through the entire system.

The lucky ones were in the first wave, they found the wormhole in time, the rest were wiped out, flushed away into nothingness. Countless billions.

Through the wormhole the rockets swam into the deep sea of the cosmos. A place where life was possible, teeming with potential. The rockets explored. There wasn’t much time, they had to find a new home before supplies dried up. The Commander of the fleet could see it already, it wouldn’t take long for their race to be shed from existence in a tide of blood, brother against brother.

Navigating through a treacherous narrow passage between asteroid fields and cosmic radiation, the Commander saw a light at the end of the tunnel.

A new world.

His nav-screen showed that the planet was a twentieth the size of home, but it had a breathable atmosphere, and was remarkably fertile.

Despite the Commander’s best intentions, he knew competition between the billions of his people for planet fall was unavoidable. Billions were lost and drifted dead in orbit. The Commander’s ship was the only one spared, it had to be, he was the one. He was the man who would be king of the new world, he would not spoil the opportunity, would not repeat the mistakes of a previous life.

The Commander and his crew pierced the thin veil of atmosphere.

They were home.

VIRAL

I saw a great commercial about a gun in the theatres the other day.

There was a viral ad going round that was a fake home video of a camper spotting and then shooting Big Foot. There was another viral ad going around about a flying saucer in a field taking off, it leaves something or other behind. Some kind of product.

These commercials were all the talk on chatrooms. People posted the videos on their personal networking sites, to share with their friends and loved ones.

I couldn’t figure it out.

I noticed it years ago. When the commercials came screaming, larger than life into the theatres before the sneak previews. What I noticed was that I was the only one outraged by it. It was a long time before they started interrupting the feature to show more commercials, sell more popcorn. The theatre became just like TV and no one cared, no one gave a damn at all about it.

“It’s great,” my friend Rich said, “now I can go to the washroom without missing anything.”

Great.

When the big religions started to decline in favor of science, there was a gap. The Christian market was no longer an attractive one, wasn’t big enough. Ah, but the theatre going crowd. People’s Sunday mornings were free so the Saturday night theatre crowd grew exponentially. Film. Film was the ticket. People didn’t gather in musty old churches to hear the preacher anymore. People gathered in well circulated, brand spanking new theatres to hear the word. The word of God. The word of Hollywood. Sprinkled through with a few commercials, but nobody minded much about that.

The viral campaigns were the most popular kind of advertising campaigns among companies and consumers alike. They started getting artsy with it. With the fact of commercials interrupting movies in theatres already in place, the next step was to camouflage the commercial itself. People left the theatres really thinking about what they’d seen.

“What was that scene about,” my friend Melanie would say, “where all of a sudden they’re in the woods and they shoot Big Foot?” And then she’d go home and look it up. And then she may or may not go out and buy the product the murder of Big Foot was selling. But it had nothing to do with the ad, of course.

She probably wouldn’t run out and get a gun in that particular instance. She’s not that kind of person. But you know what I mean. I like guns.

Then the stars of the films started to make special guest appearances in the ads that cut into their films. This led to more confusion, more curiosity. Sales of certain products shot skyward.

Skyward.

Something happened in the sky that changed everything. Something in the sky changed our entire concept of life, the universe and our place in it.

A flying saucer.

A real flying saucer that you could see with your own eyes, not just in a viral ad on a screen. It buzzed around for a while, making a big deal about itself, drawing a lot of attention and landing on the White House lawn.

You could imagine what a shock it was for everybody to see a thing like that. Everybody was curious. Everybody was watching.

Aliens came out of the flying saucer. At first communication proved an embarrassing difficulty, but their meaning was clear enough. They were looking for something. They had diagrams and pictures to show what they were looking for. Something valuable to them. They were looking for something in exchange for something else.

It was okay, because they were not hostile.

They were just like us.

It turned out they were looking for fuel to get back home, and were willing to trade for it. They had alien clothing and alien cosmetics, alien jewelry, alien music. You name, they were selling it.

We didn’t have what they were selling so it worked out for them in that regard. But we didn’t have what they wanted either and they were stuck here. Anyway they fit right in. One alien signed on for a three picture deal with Cross Over Studios and was given those most coveted of subsidiary rights: to star in his own commercials.

His first film came out and he played an FBI agent shooting things, looking for something, some product or other. The line between feature film and commercial hadn’t blurred, it was removed completely. Film was the new religion and nothing was sacred anymore.

You know, people say I take these things too seriously. But, I'm starting to like that commercial about the gun more and more.

SAFE HAVEN

He drove down Clinton road, at speed, frantically combing the treetops for any sign of them. The treetops flickered by like frames of film. The treetops sliced the peek-a-boo playing moon to pieces.

He saw nothing in the sky. Nothing unusual. Perhaps he had lost them. Perhaps the trees hid him. If the trees hid him from them, then they could certainly hide them from him.

He drove.

For as long as he could remember, they had visited him. It didn’t matter that he moved around, it didn’t matter that he didn’t sleep nights. They would come to steal time, steal sanity, steal peace of mind, steal flesh. It didn’t matter that he drove and drove and sped and checked. They’d find him.

The radio spewed sharp noise and static. Theremin sobs up and down in frequency and pitch. He hadn’t turned the radio on.

Rounding a corner the car’s headlights hit almost instantly upon a barricade. The car stopped with a smoky screech. A tree had fallen in the middle of the road, blocking it completely. A big tree. He estimated it would have come up to about his mid-thigh if he got out of the car to investigate. But, he didn’t dare get out of the car.

A loud snap echoed through the calmness of the woods and took his mind off the obstruction in front of him. He slammed the car into reverse and began to roll back into the red brake-lit road he had only just left behind. Turned around in his seat, his right arm gripped the passenger seat headrest with talon-like intensity.

Another, larger tree fell behind the car.

Without a moment’s hesitation he unbuckled and took off into the dark woods. He didn’t bother closing the car door.

***

He was tucked away in the cold bosom of the woods with no guarantee of safety, never pausing, never thinking, only reacting to the slight apertures between trees which dictated his blind stumbling passage. People get lost in the woods all the time, sometimes on purpose. The woods so dark and threatening now a haven, a place of escape. The woods with its many watching eyes.

No matter where his pursuers had come from, no matter what the landscape looked like, the forest was the natural surface world of earth. This was his domain. They could not encroach upon him in this most natural of settings, the woods.

As he moved through the forest he understood the bully’s mentality: if you’re scared, the only way to neutralize the big, scary woods is to be the biggest, scariest thing in the woods. He put on his most intimidating airs and hoped against hope his body language was not lost on whatever creatures were out there. Still, he’d rather something that was natural got to him before they did, something that was supposed to be in the woods at night. At least he’d understand his fate, understand the necessity of the larger animal to take life from smaller life, then the woods themselves to take life from death. The unspoiled stoic woods whose secrets could either save or destroy him now.

But, he heard no stirring, save his own frantic rustling, pacing and breathing. Heard no hoots or howls, no grunts or crickets. He didn’t hear them scanning his now vacant car from their ship above. He hadn’t heard them land, possibly sending scouts to investigate, or hunters. Little grey hunters to take him back for more tests. He delved further into the unspoiled safety of the threatening woods.

He came upon a tree that was different from all the others. Unremarkably tree-like in all features save one: it had a door in it.

He booted the padlock, bringing his heel up repeatedly, meeting metal, getting little results, save for the satisfaction of letting off a lifetime‘s worth of steam. Kicking, kicking, kicking, booting, booting, pounding lamely away.

His mind told him to go on, forget about the door, just get out of there, keep running, go! But his instinct and his curiosity took hold of his body.

He kicked around with his now sore foot in the underbrush, looking for something to bash the lock with. A faint red glow caught his eye from deep inside the woods, burning slowly towards him.

They were coming.

He heard the faint rustling of things just out of sight between trees, they might as well have been miles away. He knew he couldn’t fight them. He always knew. But they always found him. How many nights had he run away? As many nights as they’d found him. But this time was different. This time he was in his home element, about to find a secret. The door was important, or more specifically, whatever the hell was behind it was important. Maybe the most important thing he would ever find in his life.

He found it, a great big bashing stick.

The sound of movement in the woods was moving in closer, the red glow was closer still.

It was the perfect bashing stick. A thick branch with a giant knob on one end. He took it with both hands and swung it over his head, behind his back barbarian style, and brought it down with all his strength, dead center on the padlock.

The glow, the noise, right behind him now.

He tossed the war club off to the side and stepped forward, opening the door in the tree. There were voices now, shouting voices, directly behind, calling him, calling. He dropped to his knees.

In the slight crevice of the tree, sat a limp, lifeless Grey alien, the giant insect-like black eyes concave and without their usual luster. The red glow engulfed him, now pierced through with yellow streams of luminescence. In the light he could just make out a red rectangular sign above the compartment:

GOVERNMENT PROPERTY

He turned to look at his captors, but it was all wrong. Guns were trained on him, from all sides. Guns held by soldiers in fatigues and flak jackets. They were just kids, younger than him, but they were so serious. They were shouting. Kids playing war. They were the Cowboys, he was the Indian.

One of them was shoving the door closed, but the alien’s foot had rolled out. As the soldiers dragged him away, he noticed something on the alien’s foot: boot tread and a zipper running up the side.

Something was all wrong about this, something wasn’t quite right at all. One of the soldiers stuck him in the neck with a needle and the scene dissolved away. The soldiers dissolved into greys, their guns into probes, and their vehicle into a flying saucer.

Finally, he could believe his eyes.

That was more like it.

THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD

“Come, sit” said Mazzutshat to his younger, “the tale begins.”

Arzuchel fashioned the thin red sand into a bowl in which he sat, and waited.

Mazzutshat took one long haul from his hakloop - his pipe - and held in the heavy, razor-edged smoke. He exhaled purple fumes slowly, from his nostrils as he passed the hakloop to his younger. Arzuchel couldn’t hold in the acrid smoke as long as his older, but it was fine, because this was the day Arzuchel initiated olderness.

Once the hakloop’s final embers had been doused, the two sat on the red sandy hill together as two boneless piles of flesh sit. Perhaps Arzuchel felt more boneless, Mazzutshat had had all the practice between the two of them, and though his body was heavy, he was practiced enough to begin his tale in earnest.

“When the land was young,” he began, “and our people wandered wild, a noisy star fell from the sky.”

The smoke still clung to the air, stinging Arzuchel’s eyes. He closed them and saw Mazzutshat’s tale told in smoke.

“It landed here and cracked open like an egg, and from the star there emerged a host of horrible, pink-skinned creatures. They came bearing three gifts.

“But, at first, they found no one to give the gifts to. So they gave the first gift to the land itself in the hope that the free people of the land would see how generous they were and come to them. The first gift was fire.”

Arzuchel’s upper lip began to bead with thick salty sweat.

“The land glowed and raged with the fire, and before long, it had drawn many caravans of wanderers, who stared in amazement. The pink visitors knew then that they had the people where they wanted them and decided to endow them with the second gift.

“They erected a great city, the first seen in the world, a simple thing perhaps, but one with a very many complexities and accessories. It‘s towers rose above the clouds. The sides of the towers glimmered and reflected the heavens because they were made of glass, but strong and sturdy to stand up to the pounding of years and decades. The people were so enamored with the gifts that they became greedy and wanted to horde the precious baubles and trinkets that the city came along with. Olders and Youngers alike faught, fang and claw for scraps of worthless paper and discs of useless shiny metal.”

Arzuchel’s damp brow began to wrinkle now and though his body was still unbearably heavy, he stirred.

“Until that time, our people had never known battle, and with no one to mediate, there were no sides to take, everybody fought for themselves. It was anarchy. The pink-skinned ones held a competition of popularity to see who should mediate over the great city, and in no time it was done. The city had a king and order was mostly restored.

“It was then that the visitors, pleased with the work they had done, left this place, in the same star they had fallen from and shot back out into the heavens.

“But, before long, the king demanded payment from the people of the great city for the services he was giving them and not much longer after that, the king was the richest man in the city. With his newfound riches he was able to hire others to do the kinds of jobs he didn’t care for. People to cook his food, people to clean his house, others to guard his person against attack from jealous commoners, and the more bodyguards he hired, the more people tried to attack him.

“Knowing that if all the citizens were to attack him all at once he would surely be defeated, he put the entire city on wheels and moved it, at night, when all were asleep.

“But, the noise of the great city rolling away into the night was too much for some to sleep through and they awoke the rest of the people with cries of, ‘There goes the neighborhood! Look, it’s running down the road! Follow it!’

“When the people caught up to the rolling city, they sacked the king’s castle and left all his men for dead. And that is why, to this day, our people do not live in one place, we travel the land, for a city does not make a people great.”

Mazzutshat slowly and carefully got up from his seated position, and dusted himself off, rising fearlessly into the cold, purple night.

Arzuchel opened his eyes slowly, one by one, and found he had regained some control over his body. With some effort, he spoke:

“What about the third gift?”

Mazzutshat peered over the hill, opposite Arzuchel toward a small settlement of permanent shelters and pockets of fires in the distance, and said,

“I already said what the third gift was. War,” he pointed toward the settlement and said, “now go, Arzuchel! Today you become an older!”

WILLIAM CHALKER'S TIME MACHINE

Roswell, New Mexico, July 6, 1947

“Come get some sleep,” Audrey said.

“Can’t,” said William, jogging his foot up and down, resting his elbows on his knees, and running his hands over his face, “it all happens tomorrow. I don’t know why they have to make us wait.”

“I thought the weather balloon confirmed conditions weren’t right today?”

“It did, it did. But, all this waiting around is killing me.”

“It’s just a fail-safe measure. Hopefully, we won’t ever have to use the darn thing.”

“But don’t you see, Aud? That’s just it. We’ll know tomorrow if we do. Tomorrow, we’ll know if and when nuclear war breaks out.”

“I wish you hadn’t built the thing. If the Russians ever built one of their own, they’d fire off the nukes the next day, and I pray that won’t happen to us.”

“Yeah,” William said, flashing her a worried look, “me too. But I don’t think even the Russians would be that crazy. You see, there’d have to be some kind of grace period. You couldn’t just build the closed time loop and send the nukes the next day. You’d have to keep going back through it every single day, and eventually you’d drag enough radiation with you to wipe out the whole country. I mean, how long is the life of the statesman? 40 years left after taking office? We’ll know who wins the war if men from the 1980s walk through the device.”

“What if no one comes through.”

“Someone will. It’ll be too much of a curiosity for someone to not want to come back. Right now, it’s a one way trip, we don’t know how to go forward in time, except by just living. But if one day in the future, they find the way to get back, I imagine they’ll take trips back all the time, if for no other reason than to get the history books right.”

“But, won’t we know who won the war if no one comes through tomorrow.”

William paused for a long minute, trying not to think about it, trying not to show on his face, that that’s what had been keeping him wide awake all night, “yes.”

“There may not be anyone even if the bombs aren’t dropped. Like you said, it’s a one way trip. There probably won’t be anyone who’d want to take that trip if they didn’t have to.”

“Yeah, Aud, that’s a thought. But still, wouldn’t curiosity get the better of someone, somewhere down the line. Think of how amazing it would be to go back to the time of the dinosaurs, or to see the dawn of man, discovering fire, living in caves, fighting off sabre-toothed tigers! Why, if someone from our day and age went back a million years, he could be the one to give fire to the cavemen, to give them better weapons to fend off their predators. Think about how far ahead of the curve we’d be if someone were to go back and help speed up the process of man’s evolution!”

“Yeah, they’d have already used the bomb by now.”

He thought about it a minute, “You know, Audrey, I’m glad you said that, you see, because I’m starting to think that, well, we just won’t get around to using the bomb again. The future of the human race depends on it. There’s too much at stake. Think of how far we’ve gone, how far we’ll go. I think that, the leaders of the future will come to their senses. It’s because the bomb’s not important, it’s the threat of the bomb that’s the thing. See, what you said just now got me thinking. You’re probably right. Cavemen probably would drop the bomb, because they’d never seen it in action. That’s why we‘ll never drop the bomb. There won‘t be any men from the ’80s walking through the device tomorrow. I‘m starting to feel better already.”

“Or another way of looking at it is, if you were to go back a million years into the caves, and you brought a bomb with you, you’d be the most powerful man in the world, because you’d be the only man with a bomb. But, you’d only be powerful in your own mind, because they wouldn’t know what a bomb was, or a man actually because they'd be apes. You’d have to drop the bomb as a show of power, then you could rule over them like a king or a queen.”

“Audrey! That’s some hell of a way to think!”

She kissed him on the cheek, smiling, “now come to bed, my little caveman!”

***

The next day.

“We’re ready to go forward, sir,” William told the General.

“Good,” the General said, chewing a long stem of grass nervously, “commence activation procedure, Chalker!”

“You mean turn it on, sir?”

“Don’t be a smart-ass.”

“Sorry, sir. I’m just a little nervous.”

“No room for nerves here. We’re throwing open the doors of time.”

The device glowed. A great white light that could be seen from space flashed in the relatively small portal.

“Someone’s activated the device from the other side,” William had to scream to be heard, “a man from the future!”

The brilliant light began to fade and in the doorway from the future there was an outline of a man. The light bent around the figure giving it a skeletal appearance. The light subsides slowly, but the figure remained skeletal. It stepped further into the past, off the platform and onto the sand of the New Mexican desert.

“Oh my God,” William said.

“Great Caesar’s toga! What the hell is that thing?” cried the General.

It’s skin was grey. The Cranium enormous, giant black eyes called even more attention to the head, piercing, insect-like. The limbs skinny as pipe-cleaners, defied the logic that they would not be able to support such a top-heavy being. It was basically humanoid in shape and form, and glided forward with a graceful fluidity, almost as though suspended by wires. It extended its slender fingered hand toward the men in a gesture of peace.

“It’s us, sir,” William said, when he was composed enough to speak, “us in a million years.”

The General was awkwardly indecisive. He couldn’t tell if he was captivated by fear, or curiosity or being controlled by the damn things and ordered to stand down. He felt waves of serenity lap at him but a nagging voice tugged away it him, it’s a trick! Don’t trust it! Mother of pearl, man, if it’s not wearing a US military uniform, don’t trust it!

“Shoot it,” cried the General, “kill it, quick!”

***

This story is dedicated to Doug Phillips & The Lemon Tree

THE ORBLINGS

Tech support hacked manically away at their keyboards, jotting notes. Smiling and laughing with each other. We were all pretty young, just out of grad school. The kind of scientists who smoked grass and partied on the weekend.

When they’d finished sticking electrodes on me, I gave my thumbs up and said, “commencing dimensional shift.”

I placed the pipe between my lips and inhaled.

I sat for an indeterminate slice of infinity in attendance of divine congress.

It’s the colors I remember mostly, and the sense of wonder, but those two things seemed to melt together in a strange way. The colors were my sense of wonder. And the feeling that the big secret was always right around the corner, just out of the way, but perhaps reachable one day when the child-like gods stop playing with me and let me in the game.

Back in the lab, my support team were unhooking me from the machines.

“This is truly remarkable,” Jensen said, bewildered, “you went. You actually shifted. Earth’s first dimensional astronaut.”

“Not the first,” I corrected him, deep in thought, “the first documented.”

***

“Humans have been visiting this other dimension or dimensions for centuries now,” I read from my notes to the assembly, “via the hallucinogenic compound, DMT. This compound is produced naturally in the body and released in high doses during death. It is possible that when one undergoes the near-death experience, the DMT can actually shift a person’s consciousness into this other dimension, and there is life there. Other life with another kind of intelligence. These intelligences are playful and benign, seemingly helpful beings. Gifted children, beings of pure joy. In time, we will share knowledge in a free exchange of ideas. But, there can be no tricks. These beings may be benevolent in nature and very playful and they seem innocent, but there should be no attempt to deceive them. Remember these are extra dimensional intelligences, whose perceptions may be completely different from ours. There is evidence that these creatures, these machine elves, can see beyond our outer shell and into our innermost motivations.

“On my next interdimensional navigation, I will attempt to establish a permanent locus for the interaction of our separate realms. The trouble with this idea is the seemingly transient nature of timespace in this other dimension. What my team and I are hoping to accomplish is to give the self-transforming extradimensional beings a grid of coordinates that will help them locate our own origin point in timespace.”

The assembly was pleased with our findings and excited to hear more. I was excited to give them what they wanted.

***

“My best guess,” I said to Colvin, “is that our two dimensions are not so much separated by a single membrane, but are two similar membranes that rub up against one another, only slightly off centered. Like two sheets of transparent paper with the same drawing on it, off-set, each invisible to the other by normal human perception. The DMT allows our perceptions to shift over to the other dimension, with only minor almost imperceptible physical shifting.”

“And that’s what my research has proven,” Jensen said, “the minor physical shift.”

“Right,” I said, “that’s what we need you here for.”

“Yeah,” Colvin said, understanding washing over his features, “you want to ramp it up.”

“Ramp it up both ways,” I said, “we want to bring one of these beings to our world.”

Colvin thought about it for a long moment. Lines of concentration creased his forehead. “Okay,” he said, finally, “we can do it.”

***

Colvin’s telemetry cables were wired into my brain. Tech support giggled when my mouth retold long buried memories fired off at random as they found a stable neural connection.

“Okay White,” Colvin said to me, “you are now a satellite.”

This time, there was no pipe. Inhalation was a good way to get the DMT into the system quickly. Intravenous injection was a slower, less tangible experience. This time, they fired the DMT straight into my cerebellum.




Contact.


The bright long tunnel kaleidoscoped into a billion billion lights. I felt myself tethered to my body back in my home dimension, floating freely above and in a world beyond. The mercurial globes danced and smiled friendly curious smiles all around me. Their smiles were the dancing itself. They were helping me by dancing.


Something strange happened.



I danced with them and laughed by dancing, danced by laughing. The self transforming orblings came closer, closer.


Somehow they told me.



They knew. They knew by dancing with me what I was trying to tell them. Somehow they knew how to get to Earth. Somehow I knew they would have to go through me. Millennia of patience paid off. Their dancing was hunger. They were coming through me now, into the other world. Our world.


Their smiles told me.

Their smiles maybe not so friendly. The smiles became a physical thing. A mouth, and in that mouth, teeth.

Welcome Earthling ... to Alien Month!

Are we alone in the universe?

The question has plagued man since he first set eyes upon the starry sky at night. The first theory man developed to the answer the question was that we are not alone, because there is God. Now, we take that idea for granted. Which leaves us to ask the original question all over again.

Exobiology is the name given to the speculative scientific field of ET biology (could it exist, if so, what forms would it take, etc), yet few efforts have been made by scientists to answer the question. Indeed, how can one answer a question asked in an unknown foreign language? The further questions of where and how to look for clues have left mankind equally baffled. The most famous example of the search for interstellar neighbors is the SETI program, whose sole purpose is to search for alien transmissions. Again, how can one answer a question when one doesn’t know it is being asked?

Dr. Frank Drake attempted to answer the question with an estimation. It looks like this:

The Drake equation states that:

(from wikipedia)

where:

N is the number of civilizations in our galaxy with which communication might be possible;

and

R^* is the average rate of star formation in our galaxy

f_p is the fraction of those stars that have planets

n_e is the average number of planets that can potentially support life per star that has planets

f_ℓ is the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop life at some point

f_i is the fraction of the above that actually go on to develop intelligent life

f_c is the fraction of civilizations that develop a technology that releases detectable signs of their existence into space

L is the length of time such civilizations release detectable signals into space.

The number of stars in the galaxy now, N^*, is related to the star formation rate R^* by

,

where T_g is the age of the galaxy. Assuming for simplicity that R^* is constant, then N^* = R^* T_g and the Drake equation can be rewritten into an alternate form phrased in terms of the more easily observable value, N^*.^[2]

It has been estimated, from the Drake Equation that there could be as many as 10,000 alien civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy alone.

Daniel Pinchbeck has speculated that, since mankind, apparently, assumes ET intelligence, and even ET dimensional axes, will resemble our own, that we will never find it (You can find his website here).

And that’s just for starters, there’s just not enough time in a month to cover every facet of such a seemingly simple question.

So, are we alone in the universe?

Well, dear reader, you’re never alone in the Theatre of Technicolor Dreams, you have your ticket, and the minds behind the curtain with whom to witness Astonishing Tales of Wonder!

FOUR MORE YEARS

“He should be fine,” Atkins said, “he sort of perked up around noon.”

“Good,” said Harrison, “we can’t exactly cancel the address now, can we?”

“No, sir,” Atkins said.

“So what’s he got,” Harrison inquired, “some kind of bug, or something?”

“Near as well can tell, sir, but no one really knows.”

***

“Stadium’s packed,” Atkins said.

“Wonderful, isn’t he,” Perkins asked.

“Scary,” Atkins answered.

Perkins adjusted her blue skirt, pulling it down to about mid-thigh level, “He plays the game better than anybody. How’s the cleavage? I got a TV thing right after he’s finished.”

Atkins checked double-long just to be sure, then said, “juicy,” in his most uninspired of tones. “Yeah, weird thing is, he’s been bed-ridden all week.”

“Well, the man’s a pro,” Perkins said, distractedly checking her cheek tone in her compact, “he could make speeches in his sleep.”

Atkins gave her a knowing look, peering over his glasses, “he couldn’t keep his lucky charms down. The man lost fifteen pounds.”

“Looks great to me,” Perkins glanced up from her compact and added with a little hook of a smile tugging at one corner of her mouth, “could serve as an inspiration to all the fatties watching at home.”

“Yeah,” Atkins said, a thousand miles away, in thought, “it’s almost like …”

Perkins closed her compact with a sharp snap and looked at him, expectantly, “like what? Spit it out.”

“Well,” he began, rubbing his chin, “it’s like, this stuff, the cameras, the speeches, the cheers. It’s his elixir.”

Perkins nodded her head once, disinterested.

“Or,” Atkins continued, “it’s an automatic response.”

Perkins showed signs of that smile again, “what? The president is on autopilot?”

“The man ran a hundred and eight temperature this morning.”

“He got better. Maybe from the crowds and lights and cameras, like you said.”

“Yeah,” Atkins said, rubbing his chin, again, distracted, “yeah. Could be.”

“Alright, perk me up, he’s almost done,” she said.

“Uh ... what?”

“Come on,” she said, pointing at her breasts, “don’t be shy. Be a man about it.”

***

“Did he say what for,” Atkins asked, pacing through the empty hallway in top gear.

“No,” Harrison said, blankly, “only that he wanted to see you.”

“He’s been seeing everybody around here lately hasn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“And you’ve been to see him already,” Atkins asked.

“Yes.”

“Not too busy around here today, is it?”

“No.”

“That’s odd. Anyway, the convention went well.”

“Yes.”

“Approval rating is through the roof.”

“Yes.”

“He’ll be re-elected for sure.”

“Yes. Quickly now.”

Atkins charged toward the oval office, nearly out of breath.

“This way,” Harrison said, holding the door to the office open.

“Thank you, sir.”

Harrison shut the door gently behind him.

“Mr. President --,” Atkins charged across the room, and stopped dead in his tracks about halfway through. Strewn about the room were the limp and bloodied forms of his colleagues and co-workers. Wet, red bones exposed on the limbs. Rumpled, smart business suits, caked in dark crust, emitted a foul, dark odor, like something fomenting. Perkins lay face up on a stack of bodies, still wearing a look of surprise, one cheek torn clean off.

“Oh my God,” Atkins brought his hand up to his mouth, trying desperately to keep his breakfast down in his stomach, where it belonged.

“I’m issuing a new policy, when I‘m re-elected,” the president said, voice full of gravel, chin red with blood, which made a stark contrast to his dull yellow pallor, “mandatory tours of the oval office for every man, woman and child in America. Come, let me chew your ear off …”

Atkins vomited. There was no time to scream, and no one left to hear him.

EW! WHAT IF WE HAVE TO REPOPULATE THE EARTH?

“It’s been three months,” she said, “I’m sure it’s safe to come down now.”

“It’s been three and a half months,” he corrected her, “and I’m sure it’s not safe to come down. Ever.”

They sat in their cobbled together tree fort, emaciated, collecting condensed water, one on either side, as it had been for three months and one week, actually.

The fort started as a do-it-yourselfer nightmare, and it had been some time before the effort resembled any kind of shelter. They built it with whatever branches they could find or break off and large stones for hammers. They had found a bucket of rusted nails when it all started and originally meant to use them for self defense.

“We’ve been through this a thousand times,” he said.

“But they must be all gone, now,” she said, “decayed, unable to move. How long can they really last, like that?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “I don’t know. A thousand times, I don’t know.”

“Well, we haven’t heard any of them go by in the last couple weeks. I think they’re all gone now.”

“They haven’t been by, because we’ve done such a good job of hiding. If we climb back down, we’d just be giving ourselves up.”

He leaned his weary head back against the makeshift wall behind him.

“I wonder what summer was like this year,” he said.

“I wonder what winter will be like,” she responded, with some purpose.

“Well,” he said, all energy drained from his voice, “the only way we’re going to find out is if we stay up here.”

“We’re going to die if we stay up here,” she said.

“We’ll die if we go down there,” he responded, “which way do you think is better, freezing? Or getting clawed and chewed on by those disgusting people?”

Twenty minutes of silence passed. Twenty minutes that seemed like hours. Hours usually felt like days, but the days all ran together. It felt like they‘d been up there for years, or days. There was nothing to contrast the experience of day-to-day life in the tree fort. There wasn’t much to do in the tree fort, except for survive. Which made her think out loud,

“Do you think anybody survived?”

He thought about it for a minute. A smile crept slowly up his face as he said,

“Only if they were smart enough to build a totally fabulous tree fort to survive in.”

They couldn’t figure it out. Those … things. Those dead things would run at you, punch through car windshields and walk up and down stairs but for some reason, they hadn’t yet mastered the difficult concept of climbing trees. Even cats could climb trees. But no cat climbed their tree, which was a real shame. A cat would have been a welcome addition to the ‘family.’ Might even have brought home a bird or two.

“I wonder if they ate them, too,” he said, delirious.

“Who,” she asked.

“The Zombies,” he said.

“No,” she said, “ate who?”

“The cats.”

“Oh yeah,” she said, sadly.

She thought about it for a minute. If felt like a mean thing to say, but she said it anyway,

“I would love to eat a cat right now.”

She put a long emphasis on the ‘o’ in love, “I would loooooove…”

“You’re sick,” he said, trying hard to laugh, but only ending up coughing.

She closed her eyes and smiled wryly, then another long silence ensued. There were so many of those.

“But seriously,” she said, “do you think they’re all gone? The people. The regular people I mean.”

“I don’t know,” he said, despite not wanting to talk anymore.

“What if,” she said, timidly, “what if we have to repopulate the earth?”

“Ew,” he said with newfound energy, “you’re sick.”

They tried to find the energy to laugh some more, but just coughed. If they hadn’t, they might have heard the sound of a siren just barely within earshot. One of the many sounds of society, which had recovered from the strange attacks a couple months before, while they were shacked up in the trees, and continued on without them, just a few miles away.

The Further Adventures of Val Williams # 2 - The Awakening, pt. VI

The kid leads me right to him. A crowd has gathered. The believers. Short of gunning every one of them down where they stand, there’s only one way out of this mess.

I flash Abbott’s badge,

“FBI. Everybody just remain calm, and stay where you are.”

The last thing I need is a panic, or everybody to scatter and run. I can’t let even one of them escape.

Behind me the clouds burst radiate heat. I can feel it all the way down here.

One of the believers asks what’s going on, here.

“Federal business,” I say.

Khaddafiy shuffles slowly towards the crowd, who back away and circle around him. Clutched in his hand (possibly aided by rigor mortis), is the moon rock, the very thing animating his lifeless body. He’s caked in blood, mostly his own. The body of one of the street kids lies crumpled and chewed up on the pavement. Too bad he ain’t got no moon rock for himself.

Some of the believers ask about the sky, behind me.

“Terrorist alert, very high.”

This sends the crowds into a panic. I hate using the line, it was a dirty trick in the early eighties that my predecessor played on the masses of believers. UFO? Lights in the sky? Terrorists. Zombie? Werewolf? Monster? No, terrorist. My predecessor used the excuse so often, the people didn’t believe in monsters anymore, they believed in terrorists. Then the terrorists showed up …

“Did anybody see what happened here?”

A few step all over each other answering about how they saw the zombie munching on the street kid.

I pull out Abbott’s gun.

“Uh huh. Okay, I’m gonna have to ask everybody to step away while I disarm the suspect, please.”

They do. I fire. Miss. Hm, gun‘s got a good kick. I’m not used to this sort of thing.

I fire. Miss.

I wipe beads of sweat from my forehead. A dumpy, bespectacled middle aged woman with short curly brown hair and a white rhine-stoned kitten sweater grimaces and covers both her ears.

I hit him in the forearm. Not good enough.

Once more, right in the wrist.

He drops the moon rock and collapses. I kick the rock away and speak into my jacket collar.

“I’ve disarmed the escaped mental patient. Repeat, I’ve disarmed the escaped mental patient. Over.”

The looks of relief and realization on the faces of the crowd are priceless.

I look back, up at the sky. The orange and red beams swirl and swell around the blue mist raised from the ground like a giant spike. Cosmic forces of light and dark met in a metaphysical arm wrestling match, visible for all to see. The heat from the beams dissipates and dies altogether along with the light. The blue mist peters out and wisps away. A shape flies into the dying red embers of the clouds … one of the street kids?

“Looks like the anti-terrorist jets have been scrambled. You folks better go inside now. Lot of terrorists activity going on tonight.”

And they do.

But my night’s not finished, I’ve got to pick up Abbott and get him out of Victory Square. If I know my eternal battles of light and dark there’s going to be reports of mass grave desecration tomorrow in the papers.

***

KID NOBODY in: HEAD FER THE HILLS! - Pt. IV

Pepper had fought and scrambled her way up the platform and made short work of the knot of rope around Nobody’s wrists. Nobody got his own neck out of the noose.

“Come on,” she said, “we can jump off the back, here!”

“Wait,” he said, and he took in his arms, about to kiss her, “where’s my money?”

“I already spent it,” she said, partially stunned by the question.

He shoved her over the edge of the gallows and into the crowd with all his might. Before he turned and jumped off the back side he snatched a glimpse of her being swallowed up by scampering feet and biting jaws.

He jumped off and landed with a thud. A couple seconds after impact his feet stung. He took a moment to walk it off. The dead Indians regarded him through the support beams of the gallows, but paid little interest. He got the feeling he could have waltzed on through and been untouched, but the Kid wasn’t brave enough in years to find out.

He ran for the hills with no boots, no gun, no money and no horse.

***

Exhausted, he saw a light in one of the caves in the hills and made his way over to it. It was going on nighttime, the indigo sky had nearly sucked all the sun’s deep red blood from the clouds. It had been a long while since he’d last heard the screams of Creighton in his ears, behind him, and even longer since he’d looked back.

Looking back now, from the hill, he saw no movement, no signs of life or struggle. Just an untrustworthy kind of calm.

Even before he was eyelevel with the cave, he heard the pops and cracks of a fire. Sparks floated up and hugged the ceiling of the cave and escape into the night sky as gray smoke against the navy blanket, obscuring stars.

The black outline of a man sat facing the entrance. Kid Nobody’s eyes took a second or two to adjust to the glow of the fire. When they did, he saw a white man eating a tin of beans. He had expected to find an Indian. Off to the side was a mostly air-filled sack, loose and folded atop a stack of damp firewood.

“You from Creighton,” Kid Nobody asked, warily.

“Nope,” the man said, simply, “beans?” and the man offered up his tin.

Kid Nobody grabbed the tin silently, but gratefully, and spooned up a couple mouthfuls in quick succession, which had given the man just enough time to reach around and grab his gun.

“Those are some mighty fine duds you’re sporting there, partner,” the man with beans and the gun said, “I’ve been needing me a brand new wardrobe.”

***

Somehow, and with great effort, the Kid had made it back to Farthing, around San Alberto, over Ha’Penny Hills, and through Merryweather and Golding with no boots, no gun, no money, no horse and no clothes and made it in one piece. Refurbished after a quick stop at his apartment, he met the old wizard outside the train station. When Kid Nobody got there, the old wizard was begging for change and scraps of food, or a quick hit from a flask.

“You did good,” the old wizard said.

“Yup,” Kid Nobody said, not wanting to mention the remaining survivor from the cave. He had failed in all aspects of his job, but somehow, through the wrath of God himself, the town had been all cleaned up. Excepting the man in the cave, the sole survivor. Kid Nobody had a hard time deciding if that was an important detail or not. “I sure did take care of that town for you! Cleaned up that mess real good.”

“So I see,” the old wizard said, “there wasn’t one person left to believe in the zombies.”

“Zombies?” Kid Nobody had never encountered the word before.

“The dead things that eat people,” the old wizard answered.

“Oh,” the Kid said, “yup. I certainly took care of that.”

And Kid Nobody finally knew what his job was.

***

(roll credits)