Behind Glass Doors.

Every time he goes by this place, used to be on the bus ‘till his pass ran out, every time he goes by he looks at the window, the poster, and he thinks. Walks by, and stares at the window. Tries to match his reflection so his face covers the one on the poster. But he’s too short, his hair’s a mess, not slick like the man on the poster. His smile is a grimace, and his eyes don’t shine.

So he walks by. Every time. He wants to “Apply Now!” , to go behind the glass doors, to be the Man in the Suit, smiling and beaming and shining. But all his clothes are old sweaters and jeans, Salvation Army. He knows, though, he’s got to look just right, just like the Man, to even get past those doors. He knows he’s got to do it.

When he’s picking up his unemployment cheque, he knows, somehow he knows by taking it in his hands – it’s the last one. The envelope feels too heavy. Sure enough, there’s a letter inside, and they’re telling him he’s not trying, but he’s been walking. But they just won’t get it. Folding the cheque into his wallet, he feels like he’s been kicked in the sack.

And when he’s in line at the bank, the feeling doesn’t go away. The pain rolls up into his bladder, man, oh man, it’s not comfortable. Walking down the street, he’s limping a little. When he’s trying on the pants of a suit, the pain has shot up into his side, just rolling up and down, from balls to bladder to under his ribs. And he’s squirming and bending and cramping. The sales guy’s talking to him about shoes, and he just nods and counts out the cash for the suit, and bolts. Runs bowl-legged all the way to a clinic. Gets to catch his breath in the waiting room while kicking himself for wearing the suit, nervously eyeing all those people walking around with samples.

Old army boots under a new cheap suit, that’s what the doctor sees when telling him it’s either a kidney stone or a bladder infection, but he can’t afford x-rays or follow-ups, so he just gets a prescription for antibiotics and hopes for the best. Never in his life did he think that hoping for the best would be hoping for a bladder infection. And now he can’t even afford dress shoes.

Monday morning. He walks by the place. Once. Forgot his wallet, so he walks back home. Twice. Forgot his resume. Three times, four, and now he’s just pacing. And now standing in front of the glass doors. There’s the poster, behind his reflection. The reflection with the cheap suit. The bad hair. The army boots with a thick coat of black shine that look nothing like dress shoes. The Man in the poster looks down at him. The Man in his crisp suit, great hair, a smile like a switchblade and the hand extended to shake his, but it feels like it’s grabbing him. Right by the balls. And that pain starts up again, he thought the pills cleared it all up, but now it’s shooting right through him. And nailing him right to the spot along with his fear and anxiety and desperation.

Then he feels something like fire and acid fill his bladder, and he forgets about the Man in the poster, and his desperation and his fear. The pain flings him through the doors and at the counter where all he can squeeze out, red faced and teeth clenched, is “Bathroom! Stone!”. The guy behind the counter – cheap suit, bad hair- just points, looking terrified.

When he finishes screaming and his eye focus again, he thinks he can see a tiny rock in the toilet along with the blood and piss, but probably not. Doesn’t want to give it much thought. He can hear a knocking at the door – “Sir, it’s the manager. Are you alright? Should I call an ambulance?”. He pulls his pants up, opens the door, and trying to keep his hand from shaking too much, he hands over his resume.

ZERO

I've been up here much too long....much too long. I've seen the worst of man, heinous crimes upon their brothers, sisters........and the children...the children look dead. For in some times and in some places children are alive, safe. NO one appears safe..................WHAT THEY FEEL IS MY NAME..I'VE BEEN TAKING IT FOR SOMETIME......NOOOWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!





WHERE IS JESUS?



September 9th, around 4 am, the most important and baffling situation the human race has ever encountered took place. Every effigy of Jesus on the planet ....just got off the cross and walked away. The phenomenon whipped the world up in a mass frenzy of paranoia. Our savior has left the premises and vanished..............





A drunk?.... Just look at him, slumped over, half passed out, cigarette burned to the filter in his finger tips.... is it him? Is this man to take my place? He's very strange looking! Not a handsome man, shaved head, missing teeth, lanky, not healthy at all. He is a strange being....without a care....without any real moral judgment, perhaps a pagan from my youth...... looking to the sun again? That would be a grand turn of luck but I know why I'm here. The end...the end of my story. For this drunk I look upon is the guardian of his fellow man,

the next "savior" if you will, or maybe the great destroyer of all that is....live or dead.

I remember the days I was a young man like him, a great time, but every one's youth gets better with age. The friends that I talked to, the ideas we shared, all radical milestones and the memories that carved today. Yet, nothing has changed.....Rome is still in power ... the lost souls, those of structured spirit. I was about the same age as him when I got the call, sorry, when I answered the call (one always has the choice). Free...... we are all free, right and wrong are abstract thoughts, intertwined to form the mystery of.... fate. See, my fate was served with friendship and fellowship, maybe brotherhood, but I took the passive way out. I chose love........ the only feeling in the universe that never ends. Though scars of fear rip dark holes in time, those places demons lurk.

She was 23 when I died. She showed me, as women do, how to love... cherish, how to be a man. I can't really tell how long it has been. How much time has gone by? The mid-age was so loud with callings for the most hideous prayers, asking for pointless metals and ownership of others........... sometimes called a marriage, mostly referred to as slavery........ To beg for great love then turn around and beat that very love with every fear and insecurity one can channel at that grand instance of weakness............ That is the root of all weakness and shackles most souls, most people, the fear that you are not the best you. This race stops when in the hands of a lover.

I don't believe it, I can't! This shell of a man, mind recoiling in heartache and loneliness, is to lead the spirit back into the hearts of the human race. But I can hear the chattering of demons in the shadows, whispering in his ears while he sleeps, and not the smallest sign of fear in his slobber. He dreams of that great love with the bravery of a million dead warriors....... he reminds me of a being that wanders through the halls of conscience...Odin the warrior poet, all father of his tribe. His time may end in the same way as Odin and I, hanging for wisdom. I hope that he isn't misused as I was, forming the perfect, divine fright to control the thoughts of the world...... the only freedom men and woman have is in their hopes and wishes, once that is controlled by any institution or tyrant the soul begins to die. I knew the moment that I gave up my physical self that the future was up to humanity............. i had to watch every person all the time. They hung me up there, like a scarecrow, chasing people from freedom and personal growth. Everything I lived and died for has been twisted to control the innocence of children and make them forget every soul's true mission, the golden rule, to be nice and helpful to every thing.....To grow into a loving mother..........or in the case of men, to quell the jealous breast, become gentle and peaceful.

A stir...... Without missing a step he bolts from his inebriated state pulling a razor sharp dagger from his person, dashing crazed into the night. Around the side of the house and over a fence without a thought, the man stalks......So I followed, but by the time i found him, he had a demon by the neck........ Once a human, the demon came from a lust for acceptance which led to the dark solitary life of poison....... Man made demon juice that leaves the chained in a state of terrible self gratification, harming all that stand in it's way.

"Leave now, get off drugs, there may be hope for you, but the next time I see you trying to sneak through a little girl's window........",he pauses to press the blade to the demon's ear," I'll eat your fucking skin."
With a quick motion he covers the demon's mouth and lops the ear off then leans in to whisper, "Hear me now?"

He lets go the wounded beast, and with a whimper the demon disappears into the night. He wipes the blade on his leg and brings the other arm up to soak up a mix of blood and rain water from his face. He turns and realizes that I am standing behind him. Without missing a beat he says,"Oh Jesus, I didn't see you there. Want a beer?" He walks right passed me and hops back over the fence, to take his seat and pulls two beers out of a half empty case.

"Come on .", he says while waving me over.

"Come have a beer, if you're really real?", he snickers,"Come on....You can tell me all about hell and punishment. I'm ready."

"That was the most hideous form of justice I've seen and it will probably work, I don't think that I can really say that it was wrong of you. Your motives where pure.", I said to him.

"So ... you're not hear to smite me?" he shrugs.

I look him right in the soul, right to the pit of his conscience, and try to break his smug sarcastic demeanor, replying in a stern voice," You don't know, do you?"




....TO BE CONTINUED IN NOVEMBER.

Governance

Max was a fine little hatchling. He stood larger than many others and his call was stronger than all the others. Mother knew who to feed first.

He had a truly remarkable left scar on his face and as he grew, it was remarked that he was a “freak of nature” and not a “normal” being.

He did grow up with a sense of not-belonging, but what difference it made, and how much worse he felt for not being one of the flock, was never tested by his mind or heart.

By the time he was old enough to sit on his own perch, he had made the decision that he would not invest another’s word in to his self-esteem. He had known that he was made, and that he would be unmade, by greater thoughts and choices than his own.

“Look out there, at the edge of the horizon,” Normy said. “What is that?”

“Can’t tell just yet,” Fooraq said. “Let’s get closer.”

“No, no,” Max warned. “Don’t you see it?”

“What Max?” Normy asked.

“It’s one of those men who stand still. Let’s take it easy over there,” said Max and the four of them, Linda included, made their way just east of the man who stood still.

Blinking was one of Max’s most noticeable qualities. He never blinked. He saw all and took in all, and never turned away. Life was a fait accompli.

Sitting there, looking at the man, they surmised what he meant and what they should feel about it.

“Look it isn’t good news. He is there for a reason. We should respect that and not approach him or the area,” Linda said.

“Yeah, but that corn sure looks good. It looks like we could do a lot with that,” Normy remarked.

“I agree,” Fooraq said. “We should go for it. I don’t see any reason…”

“No. I don’t trust it,” Linda said, fear leading her voice.

Max looked at the scene and thought long and hard about what he saw. There was the rustling corn, shaking uncontrollably in the midday breeze; there was the thickness of forest to the other side of the cornfield where all species are lost in the darkness; and there was the stand still man, moving only when the gusts determined it so, and always smirking like it knew more than anyone what should be done.
The warmth of the day was quickly fleeting and the opportunity seemed to be fading.

Farooq could not sit still like he was anticipating the opportunity escaping from them. Max did not pay much attention to him. Normy leaned slowly towards the field as a prelude to a run-in. Max only saw that he was leaning. Linda turned her back to the corn and gazed back in to the dark forest. Max paid special attention to her.

“Well, if you all are going to stay here, then I should say that I plan to go,” Normy said in a low voice.

Farooq immediately jumped in to the field and swarmed to the first stock of corn that he could reach but upon seeing the grave smirk on the face of the stand still man, he spoke loudly and returned quickly to the group.

“That was close,” Farooq said in a low voice again. He sill seemed as eager as he had before, but was now looking in the direction of the dark forest just as Linda was.

Normy’s disposition appeared to have changed amongst the group. He was no longer leaning towards the corn field, instead stood upright, as if unsure of how he should sit, uncomfortable with the complexity of choice.

Max noticed it all as he always did and noticed more than he could comprehend.

Normy kept quiet but the sun was dipping as eternally does and eventually he became extremely uncomfortable with the slipping of time.

“Ok, I’ve seen this before, and perhaps more than once. That man with the smirk will stand still and he is no threat. We can go get some… it can be done,” Normy said.

“Wait,” Max warned.

But Normy took off and so did Linda and Farooq – in the other direction, tired of the dilemma – and Max opened his eyes wide so that he might see all.

He immediately took off after Normy, crying loudly “you don’t understand Normy… you didn’t see…”

A husky voice called out “pullllllllll!!!!”

Before he knew it, Max was on the ground. As he knew it, that was where he belonged, to which he saw it quite clearly. He saw the smirk of the man who no longer stood still.

He knew that nothing stood still forever.

Pink Floyd - Scarecrow promo (1967)

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.

Hondo the Dead

The long wooden hands moved very slowly under that raggedy jacket arm. Jerry had seen it though. He had seen the movement and it was for him academic that it now stood still in the corn field, unmoved by his attention.

He knew Hondo did it for him.

Upon seeing this marvelous animation, he ran back to the farm house where Dad was prepping the chicken for dinner in the kitchen and Mom was brushing the dust off the pictures above the fireplace mantel.

Jerry unknowingly kicked the cat as he ran in the house and the cat began racing around the house like a wild beast that had been dealt an unexpected blow. But it was just a cat.

“Jeremiah Alistair Lalonde, you little troublemaker, stop that ruckus and come sit down,” Jerry’s Dad yelled.

The minutes were left to their own devices and they spun away and sped away before they were corralled by the hour. Jerry had become antsy amongst all the time lost and his mind spun a tad out of control until he stood up and said in an eager voice: “Dad! You got to see what’s going on outside. I’ve never seen nothing like it.”

“What Jerry?” his Dad said in patient annoyance.

“Outside… outside,” Jerry begun pointing to the window that overlooked the browning cornfield in hopes that Dad would understand what he was getting at without saying more.

“Sit down and calm down. Dinner will be in a couple of hours and you have Sunday homework to be on, don’t you,” said Dad in a there-there tone.

The night sky was chasing the sun westerly and Jerry thought his dad might miss one of the most stunning moments ever seen on this property -- which his family had spent 200 years ploughing and sowing -- rubbing sauce all over a chicken breast.

Grabbing his dad’s right hand, Jerry pulled with all his might his dad’s thick body towards the door. But it was all for not. His father was built like a 19th century engine locomotive, heavy and slow and his father never moved until his whistle blew loudly.

“Jerry, what has gotten in to that scrambled brain of yours? Sit down and begin your studies,” said Dad without blowing his whistle too loudly.

“But I saw it!”

“You don’t know what you saw. But I’ll tell you, you’ll see the back of my hand if you don’t see the words in those books very soon. Now come on,” said Dad, who tore apart the chicken pieces one-by-one.

Jerry opened his Math 4 Basics book and began to mouth the words so that his dad would believe he was reading and thinking about the book’s contents but his very true thoughts belonged to that slight rolling of a wooden broom stick that was the scarecrow’s arm. For the last few weeks of summer he spent his dusks talking to the scarecrow who he had named Hondo. As the first breeze of fall blew through the field Dad took to the field with his farmhands, as he had every year of Jerry's life, and began to pull off the blanket of corn on the farm bed. Jerry thought that soon Hondo would be as cold as the snow that was waiting to attack the winter days without the corn. And so he begged his dad to give him one of his old raggedy jackets to put on poor old Hondo.

“I don’t like you spending all your time out in that field alone,” said Mom one night at the dinner table. Mom had been watching Jerry arrive home from school and immediately drop his bag, pick up an apple and run outside to the cornfield.

“I am not alone,” said Jerry in response but to no avail, Mom and Dad had grown sick and tired of the whole Hondo thing.

That conversation did not lead anywhere and back to the present the current reading of his math book didn’t fool Dad, who stopped his chicken prep and walked over to the table to sit beside Jerry, his brown eyes cold and loving stared right in to Jerry's mind.

“You are growing famous around town, Jerry. People say it is weird that you don’t make friends from school,” said his dad.

Jerry just kept reading, “8 times 8 is 16…”

His dad placed his hand on the page Jerry was reading from but Jerry kept reading, “9 times finger is…”

“You have to see it from our perspective, Jerry. It ain’t right that you are spending so much time with that bundle of sticks.”

Jerry kept reading, though he wasn’t reading from the book, which Dad had taken away.

“Jerry!”

Dad got up from the table and left the room exasperated. Jerry smiled a little since he knew he had out willed his father, had endured the stormy issue and could now rock back and forth on his chair in victory.

A sudden urge developed inside his heart and his mind begun to stir about. He got up from the table and walked over to the window which looked over the cornfield and began to gaze at Hondo, who stood alone, his smile appeared sad, his body unattended.

Hondo the strong: the only one who could survive a night, a winter, a lifetime in the outside with nothing to keep him company but the whistling of dead corn and the spare time of a nine year old boy from Leader, Saskatchewan.

As he stared silently out the window, a light burst from the right where the barn was. A couple of cows could be heard complaining but Jerry thought nothing of it. He turned his attention back to Hondo and gave him a quick wave hoping to see that right arm re-animate and wave back as a magical moment in a Saskatchewan fall.

A shadow walked out of the back of the barn and storming like a bull in heat. The shadow was tall and thick and Jerry knew at an instant it was Dad, carrying an axe in one hand and a bag in the other.

Dad made his way up to Hondo and without a thought began chopping down the scarecrow limb-by-limb, first starting at the arms, then the neck and finally the post the scarecrow had sat upon until there was no evidence of Hondo ever existing.

Sitting down on the floor, Jerry felt a ripping sensation run through his body from his stomach to his neck until he felt a bulge at his Adams apple and the darkest emotion burst forth until Hondo became a tired memory.

Dad walked back in the house and dropped the bag of sticks that had once been Hondo and said in matter of fact tone "pick him up and let's build him in your room."

But Jerry returned to the table. It as as if Hondo were just a figment of Jerry’s history that had been forgotten.

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.

Scarecrows: Hay-stuffed sub-morons or fear-inducing super-geniuses?

With Halloween coming at the end of the month, those behind the curtain wish to shift focus a little. September was a fine month indeed for astonishing tales that dealt heavily in science fiction, but perhaps it is time to touch on darker subject matter. Tales thick in atmosphere, and heavy on chills. Our subject matter: the scarecrow. Our focus: to illustrate the secret world of the scarecrow.

Sure, you may say, scarecrows aren’t scary, they sign songs and dance around brainlessly. We here respond by asking, wouldn’t that very sight be frightening, in and of itself, if seen by the unaided eye in the light of the real world? Surely, you may say, there is better Halloween subject matter than the wily old scarecrow; Witches, Bats, Frankenstein’s Monster, Werewolves (oh, we’ve covered that already). Why the scarecrow, you may ask, why?

I’ll tell you why. Because the scarecrow can be more than just a dummy, it can do more than just scare away birds, it can also scare people, yes, it can be a very frightening thing indeed! Of course, it can also sit back and stonily observe …

But, I’m sure you trust us, else you mightn’t have purchased your ticket to the Theatre of Technicolor Dreams to observe … Astonishing Tales of Wonder!

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.

Far from truth

Mom, Dad, sister Kelly, brother Danny – the whole family Amuhn – began fidgeting around the room, appearing nervous; almost sickly.

It had been a strange few days leading up to Larissa’s 18th birthday; there was an absence of the normal arrangements and stupor that normally has everyone’s lid popping ala Pez. Usually, the Amuhn’s house would fill with chatter and bugaboo about who to buy a cake from, who to invite to the party, who to bring the flowers, who to give a speech, who-who-who……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

“Larissa, sit own my dear, we need to talk,” said Cheryl, also known as Mrs. Amuhn.

Larissa would normally have done what her mother asked of her but blatantly refused her mother’s offer and leaned against the wall awaiting word of her judgement.

“Larissa!” Cheryl said sternly.

“Mother,” Larissa mocked her mother’s tone………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

On Monday Dad, also known as Marty, began the day by rolling over on top of his wife like a tumbling rock and whispered slowly “you know what Sunday is, right?”

Cheryl did not at first pick up on Marty’s implications, having been confused by her racing desire revving up for a quick circuit. Marty notice the lack of acknowledgment as soon as she and he finished their good morning, and sat bedside to continue, “It is Larissa’s 18th.”

At the word 18th, Cheryl brushed past Marty without as much as a breath and rumbled over to the bathroom to brush her teeth……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Sitting across from her parents, Larissa made like a border guard on a power trip and stared right at her parents daring them to cross her line.

“Get the look off your face Larry,” Marty warned his angry daughter. “Or we won’t have any more discussion.”

“What discussion?” Larissa asked in a normal tone but with a dash of confrontation.

“Don’t yell,” Marty yelled.

This was not the way they had planned to tell her…………………………………………………………………………………………………………

“We will not tell her that way,” said Marty.

Tuesday, and Cheryl had woke up earlier that morning resolute to tell her daughter the dark truth about how she came to be a Amuhn. But Marty had other ideas.

“On Sunday we can let her and the rest of the family know about her arrival in our family,” Marty said.

Cheryl saw the wisdom in his words and though her face looked strong, her knees were pathetically weak and her heart faint with anticipation…………………………………………………………………………………….

Calming themselves down, Cheryl got up and brought a beer over to Larissa. Cheryl and Marty had always planned on cracking open a beer with Larissa on her big 18. They had done so with their two older children with mixed results. Kelly hated the taste of beer and immediately removed any thought of drinking another sip of alcohol the rest of her life. Danny had enjoyed the beer so much that he had a few more and a few more and a few more until he had a few too many and was now regularly attending AA meetings…………………………………………………………………………………

Wednesday was a dark and cloudy day outside of the house, but inside it was sunny. At least according to Cheryl, who decided she would busy herself with a display of cleaning around the house. And was she ever busy. Top of the cabinets were attended to and so were the baseboards. If you were scum on the toilet you were gone from the bathroom after Wednesday.

Kelly was out with her boyfriend Jamie all day and was not seen, while Danny was secluded in his room apparently lost in his thoughts.

Larrissa was at school, first day of community college.

Marty went to work………………………………………………………………………………………

The beer sat untouched, Larissa’s eyes remained unmoved by the alcoholic gesture. She felt there was a lake of information held back by this dam of family unity, which she wanted to burst open at her whim. She wanted the whole thing to come crashing down.

Larissa glared at her father, he being the one she had always played for a fool, and waited for the first leak…………………………………………………………………………………

Thursday was dry and silent. Nothing was said and all was clean.

Larissa had been busy by her class work and Danny was busy with something in his bedroom and Kelly was busy getting busy with Jamie and Mom and Dad – Cheryl and Marty – were not busy but oddly quiet, and acting quite unloving.……………………………………………………………………

“It’s time you know the truth,” Marty said his voice tempered by an obvious sense of remorse.

“Truth,” Larissa said.

Cheryl moved over to Marty’s side and clasped his shoulder in the first sign of love from the two in three days……………………………

Friday Larissa got a feeling that something was amiss as normally she would have dug out the dreary present her parents had purchased for her and passed quick judgement.

Larissa had become so intrigued by the lack of anticipation in the house that she approached Danny’s bedroom door in effort to get at some information.

“Danny, can we talk,” she asked.


“Danny isn’t here,” Danny said, followed by the sound of an opening window and a cry “She can’t know!”…………

“The truth Larry is that we love you,” Marty said in last second cowardice. He retreated behind the shield of his words and then went on his full attack…….

By Saturday Larissa had bore enough. She wanted answers and in the morning sat in the family kitchen, a guarantee for Amuhn family traffic and waited and waited and waited.

By midnight no person had shown face in the room. Finding family empty, Larissa went to her friend Shauna’s house and wept…

Moment of truth.

Marty was slow to come up with the necessary words to tell his daughter what he wanted to tell her and so waited patiently for her relax.

“You are not our blood daughter,” Cheryl blurted out.

Kelly embraced her sister as soon as the daughter phrase had appeared but Larissa, completely blown away by the bursting dam could not move her arms and return the affection.

“You are our sister,” Kelly whispered in her ear.

“Ok, who is my mom?”

“We don’t know. We have no idea what or who she was,” Marty said.

“What she was? What do you mean ‘What she was’?”

“No daughter, you are not ONE of us,” said Cheryl.

“Truth is, we don’t even know when you were born. This is not your birthday, it’s the day you arrived on our doorstep,” Marty said.

Danny moved to Larissa’s side but did not hug his sister as Kelly had.

Cheryl pointed upwards to the ceiling.

“What, you want to send me to live in the crawl space?”

“No,” Marty screamed in pain. “You are from up ^^^^^^^^^^,” he began to point repetedly, “^^^^^^^ there, honey.”

Larissa could not understand.

“You’re an alien,” Danny said, his first words of the week in the house setting the room awash.

Danny didn’t wait to explain himself. He ran off with a bottle of beer in his hand.

“Well, glad we got out of that one,” Marty said and cracked open a beer himself. “Good week… goooooood-good week.”

Happy Birthday Larissa!

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.

Biff-lien

“So, wada-lien?”

The question rolled easily enough from Garry Perry but the answer sat square on the tip of Clay Biffley’s tongue. He thought long and hard about the answer and until one sprung to his mind, he sat there rubbing each hair on his chin. He always did this.

Garry Perry could not wait and his heart thumped many beats and spoiled the reflective moment Clay Biffley was trying to have.

“So?”

It was the winter of ’99. Nothing so spectacular happened in the winter of ’99 as to remember it for more than what it was. Many people have said that massive event of ’99 was the turn of the millennium but to give such an auspicious occasion more value than a clock simply turning from one minute to the next, as if the human phenomenon was actually a global phenomenon, was a fallacy.

On December 31, with the day off from work, the two Sloughians had spent the whole day discussing Slough matters when the subject had turned to belief and the millennium.The conversation at some point veered off the road of discussion and went off-roading through the world of aliens.

“So?” Garry Perry pestered strongly.

Clay Biffley smiled and said “id a bee wadever you lika id to a bee.”

“Bud-ahhhhhhh, wha if there bee no thing I like id bee?”

Clay Biffley was more stumped then a clear-cut forest and he began to ponder that question deeply. What if no one gave a hoot about life in outer space?

Garry Perry’s puppy Coloru began messing about on the dock of his home and Garry Perry ran to him, tired from the obscure answers he was getting from the father of all Slough culture, the one and only Clay Biffley.

“Oh a fug-a-loo Coloru. Wada you do?”

Coloru had let himself go all over the dock and the messy colour left was worse than the condition of the Slough booger-coloured waters. Garry Perry didn’t get mad. He couldn’t find that kind of anger for a puppy.

To celebrate the 34th anniversary of Garry Perry’s mothers first vagina vacancy, Clay Biffley bought the wallowing Garry Perry a puppy to bring his spirits up. Garry Perry had become depressed about living alone, saddened by his total isolation from people his own age and people he thought were just like him… well except for the alone thing.

He felt the whole world grabbing his shoulders tightly and dragging him to a dark place.

“Well Garry Perry,” hollered Clay Biffley, “you can-a do do whadever ya wanna, bud I belee that there bee more to dis than be in our eye.”

Garry Perry listened intently to the older man’s words. He had always been right even when Garry Perry thought for sure he was proven wrong. The latest word from Clay Biffley was that the whole world was feeling very concerned about this Y2K virus meant to spread around the world as soon as the clock turned zero. Garry Perry feared his eyeballs would jump out of his skull each time Clay Biffley said the word Y2K. Mostly he was afraid he would never get the chance to meet another person outside of the Slough and would die alone on January 1, forever stuck in the mediocrity of his life. He decided that day sitting on the deck of his raised home that Garry Perry would not die alone.

Walking out the door he bid farewell to his dear Coloru by patting him the head and giving him a smile. He then thundered down the bridge from his home to Dyke Rd and ran down the street.

“Bizarre,” said one of two joggers cut off by Garry Perry’s immediate departure.

“Muddy flatters,” the second jogger said with spite.

There was no plan – None whatsoever. All Garry Perry had in his mind was the will to run to Steveston Highway, the bearlike need to make his presence known, and the blooming idea in his head that he was to meet someone very special that day. He went in to the first store he could find and bounced inside the Wally Market convenience store on 4 Rd.

The only person in the store was a man he knew very well and did not like. Peter Nguyen, Wally Market convenience store owner. Once Garry Perry saw the expressionless face behind the counter, he pulled a quick 180 and was about to ditch the store when Peter Nguyen screamed “Stop you fieff!”

Garry Perry froze.

“I not robbery,” said Garry Perry.

“Leme check you out then, ok?” Peter Nguyen said, his hands patting down the lonely dove. His hands were thorough and particular, cupping at both the side pockets and the back pockets. Garry Perry’s heart raced and said very firmly, “I likey tuni sandy, no peady butter!”

“Oh you like the rest of the muddy flatter, huh. I’m watching all you come to my store. None of you work, I never see you leave the flatters. You are like aliens or monster or some freaky thing,” Peter Nguyen said walking back to the counter. “Now get out!”

Garry Perry returned home, his heart broken, his soul gone.

Sitting alone his home, his heart pounding slowly, Garry Perry thought to himself what life would be like dying all alone, his eyeballs falling out and no one there to pick them up. Before he could think of the answer Clay Biffley walked through the door…

“You wanna see-lien? They in the blacky-verse!”

The clock struck zero.

He rushed outside to sit beside Clay Biffley, two lawn chairs sitting side by side.

“And Y2K?” Garry Perry asked as stars striped the winter night sky

“CPU works,” Clay Biffley said in as simple an expression as man can.

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!”

Born of Flesh, Made of Glass

The clanking of the metal chains around the prisoners’ ankles sounded like a sad chorus to the crowd of humans who had gathered at the side of the road.

“They are like animals – our boys are animals… for crys’sake do something about it… they have us now… We love you boys, never forget that… kill them all … nothing but a bunch weaklings!”

It was mid-autumn and the air had grown clear and cool. Six days before, it had rained incessantly never stopping but for a pocket or two. The clear sky had brought no relief to the prisoner soldiers for it was the colour of fading fire. They had grown irritable and tired amongst their captors’ unyielding march to nowhere. But like the cattle they were, they seemed unable to help themselves against their masters’ will, though they knew instinctually they were soon to meet the scythe.

Any time a man grew slightly restless he was tortured or worse yet, was fed to the zombie horde. The eyes of the invaders gave great council to their concerns. Word amongst the prisoner soldiers passed quickly, as intended, that a simple flinch was worth a thousand whips – an attempted escape a horrid death.

Fear raged in the eyes of the soldiers. This is what had become of the great Anti-Terrifying Forces. A simple flinch worth a thousand whips. Had RuWolf’s analysis come true? Were the ATF nothing but a bunch of fear mongers unable to truly defend humanity from its real enemy?

After a long march the golden invaders told the men to sit and rest. As soon as the golden men had turned their backs, childish arguing ensued amongst the group. The arguing must have stemmed from the knowledge that the worst was yet to come, that the journey would become horrible.

Fights broke out over food and water and jackets. All these resources had become vital. That they had become resources at all was a cruel joke played on the once mighty ATF. During the Zombie wars they had been given the most powerful and pertinent resources in regards not just to their victory but also to their survival. Now they were reduced to fighting over pathetic linen not thick enough to warm the fattest man.

Fire would be delivered once every three days. The golden invaders would ration it out though it would only be two pits, an eastern and western fire, which made it difficult for all 80 captors to have warmth. Though none of the soldiers knew why they did not use fire more often, they would often ask their souls ‘were they not afraid of the cold like us?’

The answer should have been as bright as the sun. As the rationing continued, it became quickly evident that the masters would never be near when a fire was lit.

The prisoner soldiers had not begun to realize their advantage during the early days of the invasion. Self preservation was the most dominant thought during this time and when the fires were sparked they did not question it and chose only to speak amongst themselves about pleasant thoughts of children, sunny days and speculation. And on these warm nights, the fighting lessened.

As time went on and new captives were found, something had changed. It was a feeling growing in the heart of each man but no words were directly spoken about their new understanding. They only shot malicious eyes at one another and discussed trivial things to keep their thoughts from betraying them.

But eventually every dam must burst.

Over at the western fire, the forty or so men gathered as close to the fire as possible and spoke earnestly about their future.

“Suppose they want us alive?” asked a soldier named Hatfield-Singh, who feared many things and had braved even more. “What you think it’s for?”

“Could be about anything,” said another soldier, slight in stature with a receding hairline. His name was Romero and he annoyed his fellow prisoner soldiers with his pesky questioning. But he never changed his attitude and one soldier – a veteran officer of some distinction – had taken a liking to the older grunt.

“It could be about building something, maybe a death ray or some other killing device. Makes sense to me,” said a deep voice away from the fire.

The conversation had aroused much suspicion from the men of the eastern fire, and unbeknownst to the men of the western fire, they stopped their own conversation so that they might hear the western word.

“No that doesn’t make sense,” said Hatfield-Singh. “I haven’t seen any evidence of that . I think they want to sacrifice us like the Incas did. ‘Fact I think they taught the all the pyramid people how to think. Think about all Mayan, Incan and Egyptian reverence for gold.”

“So we are going to build a pyramid,” wondered Romero. The eastern fire men laughed a horse laugh, almost as a sigh of relief.

“If they wanted to do us harm they would have killed off the citizens, instead they let them line up on the streets and let them demoralize us like the ungrateful cowards they are,” said the deep voice from the back.

The man who owned that voice in the back appeared before the fire and his face lit up like a jack o’ lantern in the unnatural light. His eyes were baggy and withdrawn, his lips thin and curled in. Over his right breast the soldiers could see the officer’s shield still shining bright and clean. Immediately as a sign of respect, the soldiers waited patiently for him to say something. In a deep voice he continued: “if they are building something it isn’t going to be useful for us earthlings. It’s going to be used either against or by us for some sort of aim they have. As for the citizenry, just because the citizenry are not in chains does not mean they are not held captive. What is the difference, huh, if the cell is a globe or a metal box? Where would they go, my man?”

Captain Frankie Biggs began to smile at his own words. He coughed and then in his deep voice continued to describe to the prisoner soldiers gathered by the western fire why he thought they were building something.

“Listen, if they wanted us dead we would be dead. We have seen that they have reluctantly killed prisoners that have acted up. They prefer to torture and shame us. Keeping us around for something, for sure.”

None of the soldiers said a word. They continued to listen.

“Why is that? Because they want something from us, naturally, and we will have to do something for them in order to stay alive,” said Biggs. “Listen I don’t know what they want to build just as much as you don’t. But the fact remains we will live until we find out what that is.”

“We could escape,” said Hatfield-Singh. His young heart showing more and more. “And we sit here like cattle awaiting our slaughter and for what?”

“We sit here because we want to live asshole,” said a tired voice from the eastern fire.

Several grumbles of agreement came from that fire.

“Ya fool Jonesy,” said Hatfield-Singh.

The eastern fire group’s grumbles grew louder and the men over there began to line up blocking out the direct light from the fire, making it difficult to see their faces.

“Shut up Hat, that talk will get us killed, you good for nothing punk,” said Sam Jones, the eldest man standing by the eastern fire.

The arguing went on between the two camps for hours, neither side giving an inch, the west wanting freedom the east wanting life, but neither gaining ground. As most fights go that are filled with fear and belief, the more they argued the worse the feelings got and the more the pressure built. For as much as the two fire camps would have loved to tear each others limbs apart, they were no more capable to do a thing about it then a baby is capable of choosing when he may enter and leave a playpen.

Capt Biggs had not said a word during the bitter bickering thinking very much about why they were even fighting about this to begin with. “Man is fragile,” he thought. “God, heaven, afterlife, ghosts – we use the terms but why? They form a belief...keep us going. The golden men? They use chains and drag us from one point to another in a never ending march. For what? To kill a belief… keep us quitting.”

“Our immortality?” questioned Biggs. “Forget that ‘mate. We are certainly no gods. We are man: born as earthly flesh and made as vulnerable as glass.”

With that a great struggle commenced amongst the two groups – a thought versus shame– born of flesh, made of glass. Many men – perhaps half the total – from both sides pulled as hard as they could to get at one another.

One of the soldiers, a young man not more than twenty, arose to his feet and begun to clank the chains around his ankles against the western fire pit.

Clank! Born of flesh – Clank! Made of glass – Clank! Born of Flesh – Clank! Made of glass… and on it went until the arguing and clanking it inevitably caught the attention of the golden invaders who made note of what was happening but did not approach the group.

A terrifying piercing sound broke over the fire. It was the sound the golden invaders used as a “humanitarian” method of subduing the prisoners. It did not work. The men of the western fire continued in their rebellion, certain of its success as a group who had once lost hope but had found it again, recharged and more vibrant then it had been before. Tired and without hope, the men of the eastern fire begged and pleaded the men of the western fire to quit and not upset their captors.

“Please, we beg of you. Do the right thing and shut up,” said Jones.

Capt. Biggs felt that the eastern men had begun to cherish their chains as a baby cherishes his play pen: outside the links horrible risk; inside the links loving captivity.

The golden invaders had not seen this split coming. Panicking, they began zapping their prisoners one-by-one, regardless of the fire, though as usual it seemed in their tentative actions they did not wish to murder the whole set only to make an example of a very few. But they had not accounted for the very words that seemed to have appeared just as wondrously out of the sky as they had.

“Born of flesh! Made of Glass! Born of flesh! Made of Glass!”

The western men kept going until they were subdued finally just before dawn.

When the cold and grey October dawn fell upon them and the fire pits had crackled their last spark, the men of the western fire were violently awoken to see what their eyes could not believe.

The men of the eastern fire were gone. And standing where they should have been was Sergeant Dmitri Moulaki holding his right hand high in the air.

A zombie horde stood behind him awaiting their orders.