tims-blog

Jack's Lullaby

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 04:03:53 +0100

Click on the link below and click the play button at HitRecord.org. Thanks for listening.

http://www.hitrecord.org/records/1218345

Verse One:

Let all the troubles of the day
Work and school and sometimes play
Softly, gently fade to gray
The time has come to slip away
Into your dreams my fabled son
Close your eyes in sleep we run
Up to the clouds and through the sun
Into new worlds, we've just begun

Chorus:

YOU'RE FREE

Verse Two:

As your body falls asleep
Your mind falls up into the deep
Places where we'll bound and leap
Over green mountains to a keep
Of walls and turrets made of stone
Worn by rain and now windblown
Ancient horns herald a tone
For your return, you have come home

Chorus:

Verse Three:

Friends and family meet you there
We sing and play without a care
Smells of cooking fill the air
We feast on tasty wholesome fair
You are nimble, you are quick
Run around the minds that stick
Bring down giants, punch and kick
Fool the nightmares with a trick

Chorus:

The Captive

Sun, 03 Mar 2013 23:36:36 +0100

This is Chapter Nineteen of my blog novel-in-progress, called The Merging (working title). You'll find links to the other chapters below the story. Please comment, share, and donate. Thank you.

I was in constant darkness. Cold stone, or maybe concrete, served as my bed. The sound of my breath echoed against the walls, often startling me. When I drifted into dreams, the darkness grew into something deep and wide.

The men in black combat uniforms waiting outside the Holy Mountain Megachurch did not save Mackenzie and I. Those gun-mounted Humvees and helicopters: they did not help the churchgoers escape the shape-shifting monsters that had begun their slaughter in the childcare complex either.

These men, these machines...were mercenaries. I knew them by the red, imbalanced seesaw symbols on their armbands. Their logo belonged to Fulcrum: an intelligence and special operations corporation. Before, when I was working at the Air Force Academy library, I’d seen Fulcrum “soldiers” coming in and out of the base for weeks.

The idea of greedy soldiers-for-hire taking billions of tax dollars for“ black ops” contracts, in order to protect private oil interests overseas, had never appealed to me, but I wasn’t about to lose my hard-won librarian job by protesting the presence of said warmongers. Now, they had me and Mackenzie. We were lucky, I guess. We were alive...or...I was. I didn’t know about Mackenzie .

As soon as we were out the door of Holy Mountain, the mercenaries opened fire on the church, killing all the creatures and Christians inside. They zip-tied my wrists and forced a bag over my head. They took Mackenzie from me. I tried, stupidly, to fight my way free. Something thumped my head, forcing me into a blackness polluted by smells of gunpowder and gas fumes.

I didn’t know why the mercenaries spared us. At first, I suspected that some of these men still had a conscience. Later on, I discovered they’d kept me alive for my father. I never saw, nor heard Mackenzie, so I assumed the worst. To God I prayed that they had not prolonged my baby girl’s suffering. I prayed for many things, and I believe He gave me the strength to live.

My captors never really let me see them. I only caught glimpses of a stocky Man in Black. He beat me and drugged me. Thank God he did not rape me. He hid his eyes with wrap-around sunglasses, and his face was always blank. He moved like a robot.

Another, taller being often came into the room and whispered in my head. I thought this emaciated being’s murmurs were some kind of interrogation technique, a result of drugs or hypnotics or something. Then the thing whispered its name: Wendigo.

I felt Wendigo--not as an individual, but as one part of a vast, hungry hive--tearing out and devouring my thoughts It, or they, left fear in the bleeding gaps of my psyche. When I’d reached the point of beating my forehead on the interrogation room table or grating my wrists against the wall to end the terror, Wendigo drove a tiny wedge of hope between suicide and I.

The creature gave me visions of Mackenzie, or the scent of honeysuckle in bloom, or the memory of waking up from a terrible dream and running into my parents’ bedroom to cuddle my dad. These experiences seemed too vivid to be fake, and I reveled in them until the intoxication of serenity overwhelmed me. Thanatos eliminated, the inquisition went on.

The interrogators asked me the same questions every day: “What has Lance Berkenkotter told you?” and “How much do you know?” I told them I only knew that my mother and father had recently separated. My father seemed to be going crazy. He kept calling me, freaked out of his mind about some kind of bat haunting him. I couldn’t stand listening to the deranged panic in his voice anymore, so I called my mom.

In a shaky voice, she’d told me, “Never, ever talk to him again Felicity. No one can help your dad now. Don’t get involved. The Air Force is taking care of him.”

My mom sounded crazy too, so I’d avoided the situation--my favorite coping mechanism. I stopped taking my dad’s phone calls and he started texting me. That’s how I knew hell had gone subzero. My dad hated technology. His nonsensical texts were a testament to his desperation. The last message of his, which I’d bothered to read, said something about shooting flying stingray turtles and running, with a cop, from the Men in Black.

Realizing that I could no longer ignore my parents’ weirdness, I called the military police at Hill Air Force Base. They referred me to an enlisted psychiatrist named Jill Andersen. She said she’d offered to help my father, but he’d refused. She told me she couldn’t do anything unless he volunteered for assistance, and that I should encourage him to “turn himself in.” Jill grilled me for awhile, asking me three times if I knew where he was. When I couldn’t answer her, she hung up.

I tried to talk to my mom several more times, but we ended up playing phone tag. She was avoiding my phone calls, and, in light of my new job, I was only too happy to find another way to circumnavigate the complications of a family gone mad. I met and became infatuated with Mackenzie’s dad Mark. Our emerging relationship, and my instant love for Mackenzie, became the excuses I needed to push my parents’ problems out of my head again.

Friends and lovers had often distracted me from unpleasant situations. When I couldn’t use people to avoid things, books or fishing--yes, girls like to fish too--helped me escape. My captors had given me nothing to pass the time in my cold cell. For a while, I was forced to confront the sheer strangeness of what had happened with my family.

Where was my sister Janice? I hadn’t talked to her for a few years, but she loved my parents. Sure, she was deployed in Afghanistan, but why hadn’t she at least tried to help? My mom had just opted out of my dad’s apparent insanity too. It was hard to blame my mom and Janice for their avoidance when I’d done the same thing my whole life.

My dad needed treatment, or at least someone to pretend they believed him. He had always been a good dad, and I had failed him when he needed me--like I had let-down so many other people in my life.

I’d cheated on my last boyfriend, Chuck, with a girl named Emerald. Neither of them loved me, and the lusty apathy seemed to be mutual, but Chuck and I had been happy during our three year relationship. Jobless with a master’s degree in Portland, I moved to Colorado for a new job without telling either of them I was leaving. Doing so felt like the best way to get out of an uncomfortable situation and start anew.

This, and many other instances of my selfishness and avoidance, played out like a picture show in the darkness of my cell.. My eyes had nothing visual to process, so my psyche tortured me with undead memories, which, in turn, became self-indictments. Sometimes, the subsequent realizations hurt worse than my captors’ torment.

Eventually, all the dark matter I’d shoved in the back of my head had escaped. I came to terms with the knowledge that I was a monster.

Like Wendigo...

No...

I came to see myself as more of an Echidna: mother of monsters. This was the plight of all human beings, and, for some reason, it spurred me on to compassion. I became aware that every person was a bumbling, avoiding sinner like me. The best salve I could offer, if I got out of captivity alive, was to ease people’s suffering and help them when I could. No more avoidance. This insight brought me several revelations.

Sometimes, when I saw no one for days, I floated up and out of my body. I coasted through Cheyenne Mountain--where I believed my prison to be--and into the sky. God had made me an Angel, I dreamed. He held my hand and showed me that Earth was no longer one world.

Wendigos, skinwalkers, and even dragons had destroyed civilization. My father stood on his porch at night, firing his shotgun at...yes...creatures that looked like flying turtle bats, until they piled on top of him. I smelled the garlic stench of these creatures’ blood, and I knew them to be Wendigo too. Looking around, I saw hundreds of worlds merging into one.

I witnessed the plutocrats of two worlds conspiring to make The End--which was really an apocalyptic transformation--happen, but something had gone wrong. Whereas two dying worlds should have combined to form one, the conspirators machines had malfunctioned, and many universes had begun to occupy the same material existence.

Now, Wendigo, the Air Force, and corporations like Fulcrum faced human and mythical monsters alike. Despite the conspirators best efforts, many people had survived the recombination and the slaughter that followed. Other sentient beings roamed the new places created in The Merging. The Wendigo and our human elite had technological power to level worlds, but machines and bombs could only help them so much. Their existence depended on the Earths and their peoples. Genocide wouldn’t work for them.

Parasites need their hosts to live for a while. Inside me, an epiphany of hope and potential beamed from this realization. My soul rejoiced before it cried-out from vertigo.

Each time I received those revelations, the claws of a dark and huge shadow yanked me back into my body. This thing was hungry for my thoughts. I could smell carrion and sulfur on its breath. I heard its malignancy spreading and consuming all life, but it had only just begun to nibble on my soul. Like a cat, it enjoyed watching its prey writhe. Besides, It needed me for something else.

Wendigo, it whispered as it shoved me back in my body, away from the reality of my dream, but this smothering shadow seemed like so much more than the ravenous, telepathic creature that had tortured me. This being was lust, rage, and greed distilled--as if all the unbridled want in rich men, serial killers, and addicts had been embodied in an all-consuming vortex that would not stop until it ended the universe on which it fed.

None of these things were dreams. I knew this. After one particular vivid vision of Wendigo tearing my mother apart, I awoke to find my cell door open.

It took me awhile to get up and stumble toward the dim light of the hallway outside the door. The corridor’s air was fresh. I’d gotten used to the smell of my own urine and feces. The sterile contrast to that stench almost made me swoon. Pale, blue lights barely lit the long room, which had metal doors on either end of it. The walls were lined with faded stainless steel. Two other cell doors, on either side of mine, were open.

Cautiously, still thinking this part of a vision, I looked inside the cells. No one was in them, but I found a hospital gown to cover my naked body. The soft garment made me remember lying under my blankets as a kid, listening to my dad read Where the Wild Things Are. That familiarity helped me continue.

I wandered beyond the empty cell. The shiny, white floor was warm on my icy feet. Somewhere just outside of my sight, I felt something tall and spindly lurking. Gasping, I looked around for Wendigo. I couldn’t see it, but I had to get out of there. I tried tugging on a door handle at one end of the hall. It was locked. The door on the other end opened into a guard room destroyed.

The shredded body parts of several servicemen in urban combat uniforms lain around the room. Whatever killed them had spilled no blood. They were pale, shrunken husks--like scarecrows in understuffed clothes. I knew they had died recently. They didn’t stink like I did. The thing that had killed them was long gone. Only the buzz of florescent lighting interrupted the stalking silence.

Desks and computers were overturned and smashed. Bullet holes riddled the cinderblock walls. Ignoring the carnage as best I could, I picked up a black rifle that reminded me of something Rambo might carry. My dad had tried to teach me about guns when I was a kid. I hadn’t picked one up since third grade because it seemed better to imagine that they didn’t exist. Now, shivers of vulnerability threatened to overcome me, and the gun felt like a scepter of protection against impending shock.

“Can’t be hard,” I said to the gun, voice shaking. “Just make sure the safety’s off, a bullet’s in the thingy, and pull the trigger.” I couldn’t find the safety, so I just assumed it was off because the barrel was still warm. If nothing else, I would use the weapon as a club. I also found a taser with directions imprinted on it and a baton that worked like a telescope. Something beyond instinct told me I would need these weapons very soon.

Moving forward through the facility, I saw no one else. It was as if the mercenaries had abandoned their underground prison. I didn’t think that hundreds of troops would go to that much trouble to fool me, so I tip-toed on until I found a way out.

A long series of hallways, with more unlocked doors, led into a hangar. Something had strewn twisted and disemboweled bodies throughout the hangar, but the ten jets housed in the facility were untouched. One of the big hangar gates had been torn from its hinges. The metal door lay, twisted, a hundred feet away on the tarmac outside. I searched for signs of movement, saw nothing, and tip toed out into the cold Rocky Mountain night.

As far as I could tell, the hangar was at the center of a tiny fort or base, which encircled a short runway. This compound had ten-foot walls topped with razor wire. Huge, unmanned gun turrets pointed at the sky. This place was higher on the mountainside than pines would grow. The thin air’s chill bit my throat going in. Taking a coat from the dead was unthinkable, so I went back into the hangar and found a fire suit with reflectors on it hanging next to the torn-open entryway.

Again, as I donned the heavy suit, I felt the presence of something big and invisible nearby. Whirling around, I pointed the gun at nothing and pulled the trigger. The gun popped and jerked several times. The sound echoed for a while after the last shot. A ricocheted round landed a few feet in front of me. Still, I couldn’t see the monster, the Wendigo, but I knew it was close. I began to doubt my feelings, wondering if I was experiencing some kind of post-traumatic stress. “Right,” I said, “your stress has just begun.”

Alien screeching filled the air. A flying creature that looked like some kind of lamassu landed in front of me. It swiped at me with its claws as I backed out of its reach. Hissing, it smiled from a too-human face. Its name came to me as a thought.

Piasa.

Flying monkeys, whom I’d known in dreams as little Wendigo, dive-bombed the creature. I fled the hangar, grasping my seemingly useless weapon. I ran away from the battle as fast as I could. I heard a chorus of faraway growls and cries, but no creature, human or beastly, stopped me. The broken steel gates of the facility opened up into a strange new world.

Other Chapters in The Merging

Chapter One: The Mechanic

Chapter Two: The Walker

Chapter Three: The Mechanic 2

Chapter Four: The Walker 2

Chapter Five: The Hunter

Chapter Six: The Cop

Chapter Seven: The Hunted

Chapter Eight: The Escapee

Chapter Nine: The Mercedes Man

Chapter Ten: The Shooter

Chapter Eleven: The Monster

Chapter Twelve: The Yehasuri

Chapter Thirteen: The General

Chapter Fourteen: The Wendigo

Chapter Fifteen: The Librarian

Chapter Sixteen: The Suburbanites

Chapter Seventeen: The Paralibrarian

Chapter Eighteen: The Blighted

My Son, My Sun

Sun, 12 May 2013 17:36:23 +0100

Click on the link below and click the play button to listen to my most recently created song. Thanks for listening, and please comment here or there:

http://www.hitrecord.org/records/1215671

You can also download the song from mediafire.com by clicking on the link below:

http://www.mediafire.com/?4tzbdp8gszvnc8v

Jack Meets the World (working title) - IT NEEDS PICTURES!

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 23:42:48 +0100

This is a Jack Tale written, somewhat, in the tradition of ancient fairy tales and nursery rhymes. I would really like to see illustrations for this story. Please feel free to rewrite it if you like. Just let people know how it got started. Please comment and share it too. I've elaborated on its conception below.

Page One:

Jack lived on a farm with his Grandpa Joe
Where it hardly rained, and nothing would grow

Page Two:

Brittle grasses and cottonwood trees
Hugged dry creek beds, shook in the breeze

Page Three:

“Don’t go past our fences,” Grandpa told Jack
“Never walk down the road, you’ll never come back.”

Page Four:

“There are things out there that’ll gobble up you.”
“They’ll swallow you whole, won’t bother to chew.”

Page Five:

Grandpa Joe’s words made Jack quake and start.
But Jack was wary, he had a curious heart.

Page Six:

He saw trucks on the highway, heard planes in the sky
He’d even seen folks, on horses, ride by

Page Seven:

In Grandpa’s old atlas, the world seemed big
Jack figured, to get there, he just had to DIG!

Page Eight:

Jack found an old shovel, went through the cellar doors
Tip-toed down some steps, underneath his kitchen floor.

Page Nine:

He dug far down, the spade hit something hard:
An old oak door, which led to a graveyard

Page Ten:

With headstones of angels and crosses and tombs
Misty and moonlit and filled with inky gloom

Page Eleven:

Stumbling, confused, through that chilly black night
Jack found a headstone, which gave him a fright

Page Twelve:

It said “Here lies beloved Martha and Jim...
“Don’t worry about Jack, I’ll watch over him.”

Page Thirteen:

A ghastly specter arose from the ground,
Reached for Jack, and made a monstrous sound

Page Fourteen:

Jack ran away, the ghost followed him close
It clawed at his back, it shredded his clothes

Page Fifteen:

He came upon an old rusty cemetery gate,
Unlocked and open, which led to his fate

Page Sixteen:

Fleeing through tunnels, up many more stairs
He found a new place: his Grandpa’s Nightmares

Page Seventeen:

Beyond the barbed wire, way outside the farm
In a lush, green place, both watery and warm

Page Eighteen:

A man and his girl walked the rails on track
Until a train ate them, then headed for Jack

Page Nineteen:

Some Thing grabbed Jack, yanked him out of the way
He thought of the spirit, until he heard it say

Page Twenty:

“Son, I’m sorry, it’s your old Grandpa Joe.
I had to keep you safe. I couldn’t let you know
About all places you could possibly go.
I promised your parents long, long ago
That I’d keep you safe, and raise you up well.
Instead, I’ve made the farm your prison cell.”

Page Twenty One:

“Everyone dies. There’s no point in fear.”
“You’re still in danger, even when you’re near.”

Page Twenty Two:

Jack hugged his Grandpa, then turned back around.
Strolled through the graveyard, and up through the ground

Page Twenty Three:

He made it to the farm, climbed through the cellar door
Where he found his old Grandpa, lifeless, on the floor

THE BEGINNING

This story is dedicated to my son Jack--who is named after all the fabled Jacks--and his unborn brother Elias. If you've had a chance to read any old western fables, then you know they can be gruesome and tragic. Here are a couple of blogs about the origins of the popular fairy tales we know today. Click on the links below to read more about them:

http://wintermute.hubpages.com/hub/The-gruesome-origins-of-your-favourite-fairy-tales

http://www.cracked.com/article_15962_the-gruesome-origins-5-popular-fairy-tales.html

My son and I share with a fascination with the macabre. He's only three years old, but he loves scary movies and books. I can remember loving the Thundercats' foe Mumm-ra more than the heroic felines themselves, simply because he was spooky. I read and loved my first Stephen King novel Thinner when I was in fifth grade. Recently, Jack has fixated on a story called One Stormy Night, which is about a ghost dog, and a couple episodes on BBC's TV show Merlin, in which ghosts from the Celtic Otherworld invade Camelot. These are just a few instances of our mutual obsession with nightmarish themes.

I believe that the ancient fairy tales served many purposes. One primary purpose, which scholars and critics often miss, is these story's power to communicate certain facts about reality that help us reach useful epiphanies about existence. These include, but are not limited to, the ideas that:

1. The nebulous concept, which we think of as individual life, is finite--if it ever really exists at all.
2. Everything, or the interconnected Whole to which we belong, is continuously changing. This change is, perhaps, the truest form of reality that we can conceive of.
3. The delusion of our own consciousness, as well as the consciousness of the perceived other, will eventually end, and it will not usually happen as our Ego would like it to.
4. We are "...the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world," as Tyler Durden of Palahniuk's Fight Club would say.

Eastern philosophies or religions have many analogues to the gruesome western fairy tales, which lead to the lessons or epiphanies outlined above. For instance, the Hindu goddess Kali is usually depicted in all her gruesome splendor(clinging a baby's head, and with a belt of decapitations) despite the fact that she is also considered to be a mother deity. Buddhists call the cyclic processes of learning these, and many more lessons, Samsara.

One function of these stories, and my Jack Tale, is to communicate what we've learned, and what we must learn again. My son and I have a similar way of seeking the deeper meaning of things. In noticing that similarity, I wrote this kid's story, which does not contain cutesy, contemporary picture book themes. Sorry about that. I hope you've enjoyed it. Or, at least, it made you think.

Update: "Eviscerated" by Sam Sanco

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 18:27:33 +0100

In my previous blog entry, "How to Get Eviscerated," I included links to a song called "Eviscerated," which I initially conceived as an acoustic punk song. Since then, the song has undergone a few transmutations by way of the talented musician Sam Sanco. This is her latest doo-wop version:

http://www.hitrecord.org/records/1206473

Here's to "the folk process," as Sam calls it. The return to this process in all forms of art will herald a time of collaboration and cultural enrichment, as long as we do not let the plutocracy make an undead abomination of it through law. Open your mind and heart. Create and collaborate.

How to Get Eviscerated: One Song in Many Forms

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 02:37:51 +0100

I was reading The Walking Dead comics a couple years ago. A friend had heard that I liked zombie fiction, so he recommended Robert Kirkman's work. I'd been in my job for seven years. I'd been in the suburbs for eons. The analogy of the zombie and the modern consumer should be obvious to all of us now, but I wanted to take it a bit further. I tend to accuse others of being zombies without exploring my own plight. Well, I'm just as much a slavering zombie, and a gun-toting survivalist, as anyone else. Yes, even the self-proclaimed pacifist loves them some war and violence.

Horror and Survival stories flay away the pastel paints of our world. They allow the reader and the author to look inside themselves and figure some really important things out, such as: Do I really have compassion? Could I figure things out before I died? What would it take for me to beat my undead grandmother into oblivion? Etcetera. Too many people write zombie fiction these days, so I wanted to write a zombie song about my experiences in what some have called The Matrix. Click on the link below and hit the "play" button to find out how it turned out.

Eviscerated

My friend and world-renowned artist Sam Sanco did a cover of the song with the help of Andy Petersen. (Update: she now has an even better version--if that's possible). Download and listen to the file here:

Eviscerated 2.1 by Sam Sanco

Sam's version eventually inspired me to create an electronic version of the song, with the help of Joni Miller and Matt Mcnulty. Also, Matt Koenig would like credit for creating download-able zombie horde moans and screams. I do appreciate them. Check out the electronic version by clicking on the link below and clicking on the "play" button:

Eviscerated Electronic

You may notice that not a soul has commented or collaborated-on any of the things I've posted on the site referenced in the links above. Be warned: If you post to there, you must conform to their very distinct parameters of art, or you shall be banished to obscurity along with the teen angst poetry and scribblings of virgin artists. Who knows if I'll find a fresher way to make the song? Sam tells me she's working on a "better" version. Either way, I'm open to it.

This is no longer "my" song. It belongs to everyone. I'd love to see it morph in even more ways. Also, I'd love to hear your zombie songs. Send some my way if you get the chance.

The Blighted

Sun, 03 Mar 2013 22:42:23 +0100

Read the other chapters of this unfinished blog novel called The Merging by scrolling to the bottom of the page and clicking on the links below.

Gutshot and bleeding, I could only think of my daughters. Each bump in the road started a new fire in my belly. I was curled over like a fetus, and I couldn’t take my hands away from the ragged jelly of my innards. At first, when I closed my eyes, I saw the tall alien who we came to know as Wendigo, tear out my wife Jan’s throat. The pain in my heart was worse than the seething hurt inside me, so I learned to keep my eyes open.

Thoughts of my daughter Felicity kept me hanging on as the ex-cop Travis Parker drove across Idaho and Utah. Teeth gritted in pain, I couldn’t raise my head to watch the alien plants blending with the trees, shrubs, and grasses of earth. I could only watch the dusty tan dashboard of the Toyota truck carrying us through the wilderness.

I thought Jan had been my last hope. When tug comes to yank, any real man’d rather see his baby girls survive. Jan would’ve wanted it that way too. My mind just blanked out, rather than think of her death and every other crazy thing I’d witnessed for the past couple months. Jan was dead. I couldn’t do anything about it. Felicity was still alive, far as I could tell. Seeing Felicity one last time became my reason to survive.

Travis filled in a few blanks for me later. Somewhere outside of Park City, Utah, he’d held a doctor at gunpoint. The doctor sewed me up and gave me some of his last antibiotics. Then Travis took some morphine from a roving band of junkies. That’s all I cared to know, and all he’d ever tell me.

My head began to “clear,” despite the fact I was on smack most of the time. We moved over desert and mountain back roads. The old Toyota crapped-out somewhere southwest of Grand Junction, Colorado.

We picked up an old International Scout from alongside the road. It wouldn’t start at first. Compared to the other vehicles, the Scout had weathered the apocalypse well. Scorched and crumpled cars littered Interstate 70. There were fewer SUVs and trucks, but they looked no better. The place smelled of soil, char, and rot. The Scout was a godsend among the wreckage of our dying world.

Come to find out, the old 4X4 just needed a little coolant and an ignition wire splice. Travis figured that someone must’ve abandoned it before the shit hit the fan. I still couldn’t move well, so Travis gave me my shotgun and propped me up against the Scout’s tire. I watched for monsters and told him how to fix the vehicle.

Strange moans and roars sounded all around us. Some came from miles away. Others seemed to leap out of the pine forest surrounding the highway. The movement of some huge creature shook the earth as Travis finished siphoning gas from an overturned Hummer. The rumbling was moving toward us fast. Parker brought the Scout back to life. “It’s alive!” He shouted. Then he dragged me back into the old SUV and we were off. As the Scout began to climb a mountain pass, I looked behind us and saw a snake-like monster slithering out of the forest.

“World Serpent,” Travis said.

“Huh?”

“You know, Thor and the World Serpent.”
I nodded, even though I didn’t know. My gut ached and my morphine was wearing off. I didn’t care to hear him talk anymore.

Morphine made me feel a lot better, so I’d overused it. Now I only had two vials left and I was far from healed. Trying to take the pain for as long as I could, but craving the numb joy of the opiate, I focused on the scenery around us.

A whole new world had broken through Earth in some places. Evergreen forests had once populated most of the mountains along Interstate 70. Some pestilent beetle and a rash of recent fires during a bad drought had killed a lot of those pine trees. As we rolled past the wreckage of resort towns, alien life continued to infest the landscape.

Parker and I could spot the places where it was worst. Amid the slopes of ponderosa and spruce, festering wounds of purple and orange vegetation ate-up the dead trees. Large monsters, like the snake thing we’d seen a while back, had beaten paths through the forest. Shattered trunks and branches were scattered everywhere. We had to stop more than once to move a tree out of the way with the Scout’s winch.

When I took the morphine, my fear went away. I smiled at the onslaught of a new world. The smoking rubble and twisted bodies littering our used-to-be civilization seemed full of mysterious opportunity. Hell, I’m not saying that was the right way of thinking, but the hope in that madness helped me survive as much as Felicity.

“Where we going?” I asked Parker as we passed through a town called Granby.

He scowled at the windshield as he swerved to avoid a jackknifed horse trailer. “What do you mean where are we going? You chose this path. You don’t remember whining for hours about your daughter Felicity?”

“I don’t,” I said, “but I can see how it might happen. Felicity is the only daughter that I have a chance to see again. I got plenty of other questions too. For instance, why would you take care of me? The world done ended already.”

Travis shrugged. “You were my brother’s friend. He had faith in you, and you survived some heinous shit. Maybe we’re the only ones who know that the government is helping these invaders. We have to do something about it.”

“Thank you Parker,” I said. “You just don’t usually see folks as...kind as you.”

“Kind?” Travis asked, glaring at me.

“Nevermind. I’m out of morphine. My stomach still hurts, and I’m real addicted. I don’t have the wits to explain myself.”

Travis sighed and pulled over. “Here’s another reason to keep you alive,” he said. “Whatever happened to you and the other mechanics at Hill Air Force Base has something to do with how the world ended.”

Grunting in pain, I said, “I got the same impression after what happened at Bear Lake. I just wish I could remember what they did to me as a kid. They took me. I know it. But I don’t know what they did. Figuring that out would help us clear things up.”

Parker reached into a black pack on the Scout’s back seat and took out a big bottle of prescription pills. He threw it on my lap. “Get addicted to something else,” he said. “We still have a long way to go.” The bottle’s label said “Oxycontin.”

“Bottoms up,” I said, popping the bottle’s safety cap. “Here’s to finding Felicity.”

Parker didn’t say anything.

Before long, we were close to the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains. The ruins tourist traps got thicker, and so did the monsters. As ever it was, and always it will be, humans could be the worst beasts of ‘em all. We found out that as we rolled into a place called Georgetown.

Other Chapters in The Merging

Chapter One: The Mechanic

Chapter Two: The Walker

Chapter Three: The Mechanic 2

Chapter Four: The Walker 2

Chapter Five: The Hunter

High Plains Dimension: Washing in the Breeze

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 04:50:18 +0100

True isolation has its own particular kind of peace. Walking out across the drought-dried prairie, turned nearly to desert, the wind and your quieting thoughts are the only sounds. Breathing in the autumn, smells of straw, earth, and fresh fill your head. However, the High Plains are not lonely.

You can reach out to folks here with an open heart and smile. Most respond in kind. Out here, nearly everyone waves and says hello. They care about who you are and what you do--and that’s usually a good thing. If you respect and hold dear the spider silk binding of their community, they will embrace you.

Go to Denver or The Springs. Get out and try to cross a road. Wait until someone yells at you for daring to slow their drag race with your audacious walking. See how faces and faiths fall at the mad, greedy hands grasping for all the greasy burgers and widgets you’ll never need. Gorge yourself until you're nauseous. Can you see The End yet? You passed it right after Colorado Boulevard.

Get back in your car. Keep your windows up and drive to a small town 60 miles east of the Front Range. Find a dirt road with so few ranches that you could swear it was the first time you ever felt out of civilization’s reach. Stop in the middle of everywhere.

Open your car door and get out. Take a deep breath and let the breeze wash you. Smell those pastures and hear that nothing. Welcome to your world: the one you never knew.

Fimbulvetr with visuals by Jane Placid

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 01:36:57 +0100

The Paralibrarian

Sun, 03 Mar 2013 22:43:04 +0100

Read the other chapters of this unfinished blog novel called The Merging by scrolling to the bottom of the page and clicking on the links below.

Standing in front of the Rampart Rock library, I saw something big and metallic twirl through the air toward Jake. The object made a tuning fork "tung" as it bounced off his skull. He crumpled to his knees and fell on his face.

"Serves you right, asshole," I screamed. Then I looked at the The Murderer. He kept his gun trained on the roof two stories up.

"Is this really how the apocalypse goes?" I asked no one in particular. "The bad guys win? The murderers, kidnappers, and crazies are the only ones stupid enough to survive?"

"Be quiet," The Murderer said. "Someone's up there on the roof. They just tossed a wrench at your skirt-wearing friend."

“He’s not my friend.”

From above, a masculine-but-female voice sounded: "That was your warning shot--a three quarters-inch wrench. You don't wanna see what kinda damage a shovel will do. Get outta here."

I looked around for somewhere to run. Smoke had filled Rampart rock. The growls and calls of monsters echoed off the library's white brick walls. These sounds had replaced the yelling and gunshots that were the last cries of our dying civilization. I had no other place to go in this horrible new world.

Another wrench went "ting" off the library sidewalk, just inches from where I stood. I shrieked.

"That's warning number two," the voice above us said.

"Calm the hell down," said The Murderer. "We got no place else to go. Just let us inside. We aint here to loot."

"Sure," the roof woman said. "That's what all the thieves say. This library is all that's left now. You can't see it from down there, but all of Colorado’s burning. I'll be damned if I let some blood-spattered lowlife and his lunatic friends come in and ruin this place."

"Your the lunatic," I shouted. "Where's your humanity--or even your decency."

The Murderer said, "Keep talkin’. I got a bead on her."

"Wait," I said, waving my arms at the woman on the roof. "Don't try to throw another wrench. This psycho is a murderer. He'll shoot you if you show yourself. I just watched him kill some guy for being a jerk."

The Murderer shook his head, saying, "That dude was a mass murderer and a thief..."

The woman interrupted: "...And you want me to let you fruitcakes inside?"

A man’s voice sounded from above. "Eloise?" He asked. "What are you doing up there? Knock it off. They just want help."

Jake pushed himself up off the asphalt. "What...?" He looked around. Recognition quickly replaced the confusion in his eyes. He saw the pool of blood from his head wound and he turned his gaze toward me. The laceration on his scalp made me think of the bump on my forehead. He'd caused that bump by taking me down with a bola. My injury still throbbed.

"Don't mind me here people," Jake said, standing up. "I'm just bleeding to death." He prodded his cut scalp with his fingers and hissed..

"Karma," I said, smirking.

Jake shrugged and nodded. "Who...?"

"I'm sorry," the man voice echoed from above. "Eloise has gone a little nuts, but she means well. Trust me. We just want to protect this place. We'll let you all in if you give up your weapons at the door."

A strange, low whisper sounded in my head. Stay here Sadie, it said. You'll be safer outside. I looked around for the source of the voice. Noone was there, and neither Jake, nor the Murderer indicated they’d heard it. Maybe it’s PTSD, I said. Just ignore it.

The Murderer's conversation with the library people had attracted the attention of what looked like a flock of flying monkeys. These creatures hovered above the library, chirping some secret language. Eloise stood up on the roof and hurled another wrench at the little hovering , `things. Fortunately, The Murderer didn't take a shot at her chunky silhouette. The wrench flew short of the monsters. Their chittering responses sounded like laughter.

"I’ll set my weapons aside for now," Jake said, placing his spears, bola, and a machete by the boarded-up glass door of the library. "But I owe Eloise one for the head wound."

"One what, dickweed?" Eloise asked.

The library man said, "Language, Eloise."

"I aint cool with dropping my weapon," The Murderer said. "'Least not until I see your faces. I can't trust you."

"Forget it Maynard," Eloise said to the library man. "They're not getting inside."

"Shut up Eloise." Speaking to us, Maynard said, "You can trust us, but you don't know that yet, and you don’t want to stay out here with those things above us. They’re smart little killers."

The Murderer nodded. "Fine. I'll put my weapon down when I hear you unlock these boarded-up doors in front of us."

"I guess that'll have to do," Maynard said, leaning over the roof. His silhouette was much smaller than Eloise’s, and I could tell he had long hair of some kind. “Don't worry about Eloise,” he said. “I'll keep her in check."

A couple minutes later, we heard the front door locks click open. An emaciated old guy with grey dreadlocks and a long, salt and pepper goatee stuck his head out of the crack in the door. He wore a multicolored plaid leisure suit and a polka dotted collared shirt. He looked around, noting the flying creatures above us. "Unnerving little buggers, aren't they?” He asked us. "I’m Maynard. Come on inside."

Maynard swung open the door and The Murderer fixed his gigantic handgun on the guy. Maynard put his hands up. "Come on," he said. "This is about trust. I did my part. We're human beings here. We need to work together or we're all dead."

A sound of something big swinging through the air came from above. I looked up and saw a big snow shovel spiraling through the air towards The Murderer. He stepped aside and the shovel made a hollow scraping noise as it hit the sidewalk year the murderer.

The Murderer fired at Maynard, but Jake smacked his arms upwards, causing the shot to go high and wide. I ran up and punched The Murderer in the throat as he tried to pistol-whip Jake. Nuts and throat: That’s what they always taught in rape defense classes. The Murderer doubled over and Jake twisted the gun out of his hands. Jake threw the gun into a sewer grate and dodged a kick from The Murderer.

I slapped The Murderer to get his attention, but Jake spoke before I could.

"What the hell are you doing?" Jake yelled. "This is our only chance. If you don't like it, you can get the hell out of here."

The Murderer couldn't talk yet. He just stared and growled. I tried to slap him in the face again, but he grabbed my hand and shoved me away. Jake came between us and said, “Everyone calm the hell down.” He looked at Maynard, who was placidly holding the door open as if the bullet hole in the wall near his head wasn’t there.

“That was uncalled-for,” Maynard said. “Come on inside.”

The Murderer, The Barefoot Neanderthal, and I filed into the building. As we entered a wide open space at the front of the library, a portly woman in blue overalls charged us. She held a long pair of hedge clippers like a lance.

“STOP ELOISE,” Maynard shouted, and she did halt.

Pointing at me, Eloise said, “That little wafer-of-a-woman is right.” Then she jabbed her finger at The Murderer. “He’s a murderer.”

“Wait just a damn minute,” The Murderer said. “This chick Sadie don’t know a thing about me. The guy I shot might’ve been responsible for this.” He gestured around with his hands to indicate the chaos outside. “And I mean all of it.”

Eloise said, “What? You think that gives you the right to shoot at Maynard?”

“No,” The Murderer said, looking down. “I’m sorry. That was wrong. My head aint on straight right now. I woke up this mornin’ with a hangover and my arm was in this rich guy’s pool, see. There was smoke and guns going off everywhere. I still don’t really know what the hell’s going on.”

“The end of the world,” Jake said. “Someone or something has torn the seams between our world and another.”

Scratching his head, Maynard said, “Mmmm...not exactly. From what I’ve seen, we may be dealing with creatures from many worlds, and maybe even stories.”

“Stories?” I asked.

“Never mind that for now,” Maynard said. “Come inside. Let’s get you guys settled in, and we can talk about everything that’s happened. Eloise, will you please continue your guard duty on the roof?”

Eloise huffed, turned around, and disappeared down a hallway. “If they kill you,” she said, “don’t tell Saint Peter that I didn’t try.”

Maynard led us toward the center of the library, where a circular set of windows walled-off part of the building. The sign above this area said, “Kids.” I saw short shelves of DVDs, CDs, video games, and books along the way. The library’s high ceilings made it look larger than it was. Its walls were lined with covered windows.

We walked past a circular marble desk. A sign hanging above the desk said “Information.” Maynard held open the swinging glass door to the children’s area for us. Name tags, shaped like various animals, lay all over the yellow and blue carpet tiles. In my head, I saw little hands dropping those nametags in panic. Picture books were scattered everywhere too. “Sorry for the mess,” Maynard said. “I was in the middle of storytime when the myths started tearing things up outside.” He gestured for us to sit on some bean bag chairs in the middle of the room. “Please have a seat.”

The blinds over the windows in the outer walls were sheer like lingerie. I could still see out of them. I kept looking outside, wondering when a monster would bust through the windows and eat me. “Don’t you have any big kid chairs,” I asked Maynard.

“A few,” Maynard said, sitting down on a bean bag chair that looked like a frog. “Just take a load off on one of these. You’ll thank me once you snuggle into ‘em. They’ll help you relax.”

Jake said, “Thanks Maynard, but those monsters outside: I know them. Calm is good. Relaxationa: not so much.” Jake squatted down, leaning toward the circle of bean bags like some kind of aboriginal shaman. I was glad his kilt covered his dangling parts.

The Murderer just kept pacing outside the circle, scanning the parking lots and lawns through the partially-blinded windows.

“We should start with names,” Maynard said.

“I aint got time for this,” The Murderer said.

“Why, you have an appointment or something?” Jake asked, rubbing his head. “I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sure we’re stuck, and this is the safest place to be.”

I pointed at The Murderer, saying, “His name is The Murderer.”

The Murderer glared at me and said, “Kill an enemy in war, and you’re a hero. Kill a thieving plutocrat in “society,” and you’re a murderer. I have many names. Ted is my legal name. Marines called me Fox, after the Indian name my mom gave me, which I can’t say anymore.”

Maynard looked at me. “What’s your name?” He asked.

“Sadie Lakshmi. I’m from here, but I’ve never been to the library before. I write...er...wrote for the Rampart Rock Reporter.”

Maynard frowned and nodded.. Jake said, “I’m Jake Green, and I’m from a lot of places. I was born and raised in Fort Collins. Most recently, I was stuck in the world where a lot of the creatures came from.”

“How is that possible?” Maynard asked rhetorically. “As far as I can tell, most of these monsters are mythological.”

“Wait,” The Murderer said. “Before we get into that, tell us what’s up with you.”

Maynard said, “My name is Maynard Scott. I live in Larkspur, but I originally came from Cheyenne. I’m a Children’s Assistant here at the library.”

“Don’t you mean “librarian?” I asked.

“No. I’m a paraprofessional, so I can’t call myself a librarian.”

“Figures,” The Murderer said. “That’s government for you. Queens and soldier ants all around. Listen...I’m sorry for shooting at you again...”

Maynard said, “It really hasn’t soaked-in that I almost died. Plus, I have a gift for selective amnesia, so let’s just forget about it while we can..”

The Murderer nodded, sat down on a bean bag, and looked at me. “We’re all murderers in our own way,” he said, “but that wasn’t just some random killing on my part. I’d been stalking the dude in the Mercedes for months. I’m pretty sure this here apocalypse is partly his fault.”

I said, “We’re sure that’s what this is then: The Apocalypse.”

Everyone nodded. Fox said, “I don’t see any cavalry riding in. Colorado has a ton of military bases, both public and secret. The army, at least, should be running counter-ops against these things by now. I think Mercedes Man and his kind wanted this to happen.”

“But this doesn’t have to be the end of humanity,” Maynard said. “We have all we need to rebuild society right here...except for nutritious food, maybe.”

“Why would we want to rebuild it?” Jake asked. “The end was going to happen anyway.. I mean, look at America and its people....”

“You’re such a jerk off,” I said to Jake.

“Great,” he said. “Here we go. Just discredit the kilted guy who thinks our society sucks.”

Maynard and The Murderer stifled laughs.

“I knew this was coming,” Jake said to Maynard. “I ran through a torn seam, which joined our world to the Other Place, a couple months back. Of course, I didn’t figure that out ‘til I was stuck there. The seams kept getting bigger. That’s how I got out. More monsters kept leaking out too. I don’t think this is going to end well.”

Fox interrupted: “Wait. Jake here is talking like these monsters are from some other worlds that, somehow, are right here too. You, Maynard, are saying that these monsters are from stories.”

I said, “I don’t think any of this is real.”

Maynard said, “It doesn’t matter if this is real or if it’s in someone’s head. We should try to survive, regardless. I’ve seen a Chinese dragon, flying monkeys, Piasa, and what I think may have been Wendigo in the past few hours.”

Something nearby whispered, Stiiiillllll Heeerrreee. It sounded like it came from my head, so I didn’t say anything, but I started to get scared.

Jake asked, “What about the bathorses, apebadgers, and pigdogs?”

Fox said, “Who cares. Maynard is right. We can debate the finer points of monsters later. We need to work out a way to survive. Maybe this library is the best place to do it.”

Jake said, “I disagree. Surviving outside, where we can run, fight, or forage, is our best bet.”

I said, “Now’s probably a great time to tell you that Jake was stalking me because he wanted me to start some kind of Mad Max tribe cult with him. I declined after he threw a bola at me and knocked me out. Not that I would have agreed to it anyway”

Jake said, “You forgot the part about how I saved you from the bathorses last night.”

Fox said, “Y’all can step out into the chaos. No one’s stopping you.”

Jake said, “I don’t know about Sadie, but I’m sticking around--even if it’s just to see how this plays out. I think we were meant to meet for a reason. Maybe you guys are my tribe.”

I said, “I’m staying, as long as Mr. Neanderthal and Mr. Murderer keep their distance.”

Jake folded his arms and glared. Fox looked out the windows and shook his head.

Maynard said, “Excellent! You’ll all stay here then. The library has all kinds of information that can help us pull through this. Electricity is out and the Internet is down, but we still have books about everything. Maybe we can start rebuilding after all this settles down...”

Fox said, “That’s assuming a lot. If people like Mercedes Man had anything to do with this...invasion, then this is just the first assault.”

Jake smiled said, “Are you kidding. This is paradise. All we can do is survive. No more zombies. No more TV. No more mindless jobs and endless grind.”

I said, “Just so we’re clear, Maynard’s the only person I trust right now. Considering how he looks, that’s not a compliment to you guys.”

Sitting there, on his froggy bean bag chair, Maynard gave us all a gap-toothed grin. “We’ll get through this together,” he said. “I just have to figure out how to tell Eloise that you’re our new story time guests.”

Chapter One: The Mechanic

Chapter Two: The Walker

Chapter Three: The Mechanic 2

Chapter Four: The Walker 2

Chapter Five: The Hunter

Chapter Six: The Cop

Chapter Seven: The Hunted

Chapter Eight: The Escapee

Chapter Nine: The Mercedes Man

Chapter Ten: The Shooter

Chapter Eleven: The Monster

Chapter Twelve: The Yehasuri

Chapter Thirteen: The General

Chapter Fourteen: The Wendigo

Chapter Fifteen: The Librarian

Chapter Sixteen: The Suburbanites

Chapter Eighteen: The Blighted

Chapter Nineteen: The Captive