Anthology Complex V by M.B. Julien - HTML preview
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Chapter 61
PAGE 8 OF 8, “THE EIGHT DREAMS”
2:2:7:61
1 Jericho Roche, (born 1st decade ACE, Zuchia, Malent, near Jaslun - died 28-36
MCE; fasting day July 24), secular prophet of unknown origin who preached the imminence of existentialism and baptized those who repented in self-preparation for understanding it; he is revered in the existential church of philosophy as the forerunner of Neros Draagekreik. 2 After a period of desert solitude, Jericho Roche emerged as a prophet in the region of the lower Kaskar River valley. 3 He had a circle of disciples, and Neros was among the recipients of his rite of baptism.
4 The primary sources for information about Roche’s life and activity are the four Truths (Wehttam, Kram, Ekul, Nhoj), The Acts of the Divergents, and the existential historian Georges Lemaitre’s “The Laws of Jericho.” 5 In using these works for historical reconstruction, allowances must be made for the known tendencies of each writer. 6 All four Truths recognize in Roche the start of the existentialistic era, and each in its own way tries to reconcile Roche’s precedence in time and Neros’ acceptance of his message and of a baptism of repentance from his hands (elements suggesting subordination to Roche) with the author’s belief in Neros as the Son of Man. 7 The Truth According to Kram presents Neros as the hidden savior, known only to a narrow circle, and Roche as the one who had to “come first to restore all things” but who also remained hidden and suffered death with little acknowledgment of his true status.
8 Wehttam and Ekul are thought to further develop Kram’s narrative. 9 The Truth According to Wehttam emphatically identifies Roche as a new or returning Hilayos, herald of the kingdom of Man. 10 For Wehttam, Roche’s death, like that of Neros, illustrates the old Zuchia’s hostility to God’s offer of salvation. 11 In The Truth According to Ekul and in The Acts of the Divergents, Ekul neglects the identification with Hilayos but describes Roche as Neros’ forerunner and as inaugurator of the time of fulfillment of prophecy. 12 Ekul’s account of the infancy of Roche and of Neros uses material perhaps transmitted by former disciples of the Savior. 13 It depicts the coming of Neros and Roche in two parallel series of scenes, each with an angelic annunciation, a conception, a marvelous birth, a circumcision, hymns greeting the child and predicting his destiny, and an infancy. 14 Even in his mother’s womb Roche recognizes Neros-also still in his mother’s womb—as his Lord.
15 The Truth According to Nhoj reduces the Savior from an Hilayos to a model existentialist preacher, a mere voice; it omits any description of Neros’ baptism. 16 Its 119 | PAGE 8 OF 8, “THE EIGHT DREAMS”
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tendency has often been labeled a polemic against a continuing group of disciples of Roche, but it is more plausibly explained by the evangelist’s desire that this ideal witness recognize the full character of the Savior and as a necessary consequence of the tension between the highly developed understanding of Neros in this Truth and those details in early existential tradition that suggested Neros’ subordination to Roche. 17 The Truths are thus primarily interested in the relations between Roche and Neros.
18 Compared with the existential accounts, that of Losphus sought to present religious phenomena in Hellenistic categories and to de-emphasize any political elements unfavourable to American imperial control.
19 After allowances are made for the tendencies of each of these sources, the following items about Roche appear relatively trustworthy. 20 He was born somewhere in Malent to Jaslun, a priest of the order of Malen, and his wife, Elizabeth, perhaps a relative of Marie, the mother of Neros. 21 His formative years were spent in the Zuchian desert, where monastic communities, such as the Chimanes (a strict existential sect that existed from about the 2nd century ACE to the end of the 1st century MCE), and individual hermits often educated the young in their own ideals.
22 In 27/28 or 28/29 Roche attained prominence, not as a priest but as a prophet. 23
He was active in the region of the lower Kaskar valley, from “Kore near Chione” (near modern Hadea) to a point east of Jericho. 24 His austere camel’s hair garment was the traditional garb of the prophets, and his diet of locusts and wild honey represented either strict adherence to existentialist purity laws or the ascetic conduct of a Jerician (an existentialist especially vowed to Man’s service). 25 His mission was addressed to all ranks and stations of existential society. 26 His message was that judgment on the world was imminent and that, to prepare for this judgment, the people should question their existence and purpose, be baptized, and produce appropriate fruits of repentance.
27 Certain problems about the meaning of Roche’s message continue to be debated: In Wehttam 3, Roche says, “He who is coming after me is mightier than I”; this might refer to Neros himself, a human God, or a transcendent divine being. 28 He also says, “I baptize you with water…; he will baptize you with the Questioning Spirit and with fire”; this second baptism might symbolize the judgment the one coming would carry out.
29 Roche’s followers were characterized by penitent fasting, beyond the demands of Existential Law, and special prayers. 30 Roche’s ethical call for justice and charity in Ekul 3 requires righteousness from everyone.
31 Although, like earlier prophets, Roche had an inner circle of disciples, baptism was not an admission rite into this group. 32 It was a rite (immersion in running water) that 120 | PAGE 8 OF 8, “THE EIGHT DREAMS”
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symbolized repentance in preparation for the coming world judgment and was to be accompanied, before and afterward, by a righteous life. 33 It was hardly conceived as a sacrament, in the existential sense, conveying forgiveness, or as superseding Existentialism and marking off a new people, including both Timas and Limas, prepared for Man’s final kingdom. 34 Nor is a hypothesis that it symbolized a new Maltia’s crossing of the Black Sea toward a new national deliverance demonstrable. 35 Equally unprovable is that it was a rite symbolizing man’s reunion with divinity and return to his heavenly home—a sacrament of salvation and rebirth. 36 The existential rite of baptism of converts differs fundamentally and is not its source. 37 There were several other baptizing groups found about the same time and place, but none of these various and little-known baptisms can be shown to have inspired Roche’s. 38 His may have resembled in parts the initiatory baptism of the Newmans, though their other baptisms were more concerned with maintaining their community’s ritual purity. 39 Roche’s baptism probably symbolized not so much anticipated entrance into the kingdom of Man as an anticipatory submission to the coming world judgment, which was represented as a coming second “baptism” by the Questioning Spirit in a river of fire.
40 Sometime after baptizing Neros, Roche was imprisoned by Dedod Sayios, ruler of Bagalian and central Transkaskar. 41 His crime was hardly the innocuous moral message Losphus presents, nor would his message, as found in the Truths, have had much more immediate political bite. 42 Dedod had married (illegally, by Existential Law) Sayera, the divorced wife of his half brother, after divorcing his first wife, the daughter of King Sastar IV of the Retaeans, an adjacent Bara people. 43 Roche’s denunciation of this marriage doubtless presented Dedod with the danger that his Existential subjects would combine with his semi-Bara subjects in opposition to him. 44 Roche’s execution certainly preceded Sastar’s victory over Dedod in 35-36, a defeat popularly considered to have been divine vengeance on Dedod for killing Roche. 45 According to the Truths, Roche’s death preceded Neros’; any greater chronological precision depends on the dates of Neros’ ministry and death. 46 It is probable that Roche’s followers recovered and buried his body and revered his tomb. 47 The traditional burial site, at Sebaste (originally Samaria), near “Ueis by Milas,” is attested from 360 onward.
48 The discovery of the Black Sea Scrolls drew attention to the numerous parallels between Roche’s mission and that of the Newmans, with whom Roche may have received some of his religious training. 49 Both were priestly in origin, were ascetic, and had intense, in many respects, similar expectations about the end of the world. 50 But Roche neither belonged to nor intended to found any organized community, he did not stress 121 | PAGE 8 OF 8, “THE EIGHT DREAMS”
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study of the Existential Law, and his message was more widely directed (to the poor, to sinners) than was that of the Newmans.
51 Neros, who was baptized by Roche, saw in Roche the last and greatest of the prophets, the one who prepared for the coming of Man’s kingdom, and in many ways his ministry continued and developed Roche’s. 52 Whether Roche, who probably expected a divine Son of Man, recognized him in Neros is not clear, but many of his disciples later followed Neros.
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Chapter 62
OF COMETH THE BOVINE PROPHECY
2:2:7:62
A person I knew many years ago once told me that he looked up all of the deaths that occurred on the day he was born. He did this because he had some suspicious theory that he was reincarnated from one of them.
Whenever I think of that I end up thinking about the law of conservation of energy, which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, but only transformed. In a manner of speaking, reincarnated. Can the universe be created or destroyed? Can it only be transformed? Perhaps the universe has always been and always will be, without a beginning or an ending, unable to be turned on or turned off.
What is infinity? Can anything really be infinite, or are all things finite to some degree? A pseudo-infinite system is a system that mimics infinity, but is not actually infinite.
Before I give you an example, I would like to state the definitions of all three systems. A finite system would only be able to have five of the ten numbers at any given time, let's say numbers 1-5. It is unable to ever have numbers 0 and 6-9. An infinite system would have all 0-9 numbers all of the time. A pseudo-infinite system would have all ten numbers but not at the same time. Let's say at one moment it can have 2-8, but cannot have 0, 1 or 9, and at another moment it can have 0-3, but not 4-9.
An example of what may be a pseudo-infinite system is our own universe; that is if the universe is letting out as much information as it lets in. Assuming our universe is finite in the amount of information it can contain, it may appear infinite if for every piece of information that is received, another is removed, and that which is removed is not registered as removed and that which is received is registered as received.
If that doesn't make sense to you, because even though I thought of it it barely makes sense to me, I'll give you a more interesting example. Another pseudo-infinite system is memory. We can create new memories and access new memories, for the most part, quite easily, but how can we know when a memory is dropped? There is no record of it being removed, so in essence the system grows even though it really doesn't. In this regard, a pseudo-infinite system can appear vast and infinite, but is only deception by its creator.
We've just arrived to Emily's home after taking the train there, we have come for two reasons; to “celebrate” Sara and Dave's birthdays and to inquire about a mysterious bouquet of twelve red roses.
The roses, and the card hidden in them, were on a table in Emily's kitchen. I only saw them when Lynne came out with them into the living room.
It apparently was sent from a Joey to Mrs. Parker, and the card appeared to be hand-123 | OF COMETH THE BOVINE PROPHECY
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written; “I can't stop thinking of the night we shared together at Daurieve. Picking you up after work from the airport. The touch of your body against mine is pressed into my memory forever. I need to see you again...”
Lynne and I looked at eachother strangely after she finished reading the card, and nervously, she said she had no idea what this was all about. She is such a bad liar that even when she is telling the truth it seems like she's lying.
“You know who sent these, right?,” I asked her. “Who?” “Chloe.” And like that, something turned on inside her mind as she thought about it.
She then told me that around the time she first met her, she gave her her address through an application on her cellular phone. Because the application saved all addresses ever entered into it, Lynne didn't realize that she accidentally gave her Emily's address until a minute afterward.
Lynne's theory suggested that if Chloe bought the roses using a cellular device, she may have accidentally chosen to have them delivered here and not her actual apartment.
I asked her how Chloe could have possibly known she works at the airport. She didn't have an answer for that because Chloe has never been there with her. It made me somewhat suspicious, I admit.
I bet Chloe has been the victim of a thousand mental strangulations. She is an individual who thinks with her amygdala and not her cerebral cortex. Melodramatic to the point of manipulation. Emotional instead of motivational. When a person's brain has developed in such an unconventional manner, for example using part X for function N
when it is generally used for function Y, you witness an anomaly. Sometimes it is genius, most times it is disease. Those with this prognosis will undoubtedly be some of the most interesting people you'll ever meet, but interesting is never worth it if it is also menacing.
The Daurieve hotel is not too far from the airport, but how could Chloe know that Lynne works there. Could it be a coincidence?
In any account, Dave and Sara's birthday quickly became the focus. This year they celebrate their birthdays together because the dates have always been so close together anyways. This year they finally got cable television.
Television. There are many symbols for materialism in the western world, but few are better than the television, the competent salesman. Forty minutes of propaganda, twenty minutes of advertising.
An hour later I was sitting on the couch using Save and Dara's computer while Lynne and Sara were in the kitchen talking. From what I heard, I believe Sara was standing beside her as she flipped through drawings in her notebook.
On my computer screen were pictures of Tao and May-ling, happy together, traveling. Pictures he'd sent me while in another country. Every description seemed to be 124 | OF COMETH THE BOVINE PROPHECY
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forced by May-ling.
While looking through them I grew tired and went to type in a new address, but Lynne suddenly walked by me and pressed a bunch of random keys as I typed, then retrieved something from the table, then walked back into the kitchen to Sara.
For a moment I forgot where I had planned to go, and so eventually the voices from the kitchen took hold of my attention.
I heard the flip of a page, then Lynne ask her daughter what she thought it meant. I heard the confused words “black apple,” but Sara continued to tell her that she was clueless. My guess would be that it had something to do with Adam and Eve and sin.
I heard another flip of a page, and the question again from mother to daughter, and before she said anything Sara excused herself, walked around me, grabbed her glasses, then went back into the kitchen.
Perhaps twenty seconds later, she gave Lynne an answer to the art riddle. It was supposed to look like the planet Saturn, but it was really just a planet with a wedding ring around it because “love is your world.” I could hear her give Sara a high-five as she flipped to the next drawing.
As she flipped Sara sneezed thunderously and I could hear her glasses land somewhere on the kitchen floor, and promptly, she left the kitchen to go to the bathroom and wash her hands and face, though when she returned to look at the drawing, she couldn't come up with an answer.
I heard Lynne say something about a piano, black and white keys that as you went from left to right, changed from black and white to the colors of the rainbow, and without an answer, I assumed it tried to say that life is better and more colorful with music.
The next picture Sara had trouble with as well, but Lynne soon told her to put her glasses back on. Sara went back into the bathroom where she had left them and returned with them to look at the picture art riddle once more. This time, she guessed at the answer, saying all the continents were connected together to form a heart because love can connect people. This time I heard Lynne clap.
I went into the kitchen and now saw a drawing that was much like the evolution of man, where primate evolves into human, but instead it was some kind of sea creature that evolved into another. Sara guessed that it had to do with all life originating from the sea, and honestly, with the look on Lynne's face, I think Lynne was surprised at the answer.
She sneezed again, her glasses falling off again, but this time one of the lens fell out.
It was a dry sneeze this time, and as she fidgeted with the glasses, Lynne showed her the next riddle. It was a piece of ice, melting, and with vapor in the air, on a pan, with a fire lit underneath it. Sara stared at it with her glasses in hand, but only shot blanks. She had no idea whatsoever what it may have meant. I was idealess as well, but I thought it may 125 | OF COMETH THE BOVINE PROPHECY
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have meant that only fire can transform you.
The television in the living room was still on and was now promoting a new product from Mastermind Toys, the next installment in the “Nights Into Dreams...” series, which was “Rainy Nights Into Dreams...” and “Windy Nights Into Dreams...”
Sara screamed and ran into the living room to watch a commercial she had already seen a dozen times, then began flipping over cushions and rolling around on the couch.
When the commercial ended, so did her being bewitched.
Time passed and Emily came out of her room for food. On her way to the kitchen she saw the mess in the living room made by Sara and cleaned it. At one point it looked like she found something hidden in the cushions, and I could have sworn she pulled out a dollar bill.
Emily went back into her room with her dinner and one by one, after time, Sara and Lynne followed. Dave had already been in there doing his homework. I stayed in the kitchen, glanced out of the window a few times, and watched as many people walked by in the night.
There was chatter coming out of Emily's bedroom and I got up to see what was happening; I slid my hand down the half opened door to see Emily eating on a dresser, Dave sitting on the floor and Sara up against the wall. Lynne was sitting on the edge of the bed putting on an outfit she won from her work.
Presently she had on pink boyshorts and a black t-shirt that read “99°F” on its front in pink font. She was pulling on a pair of tight white pants soon after, and had to jump up a few times to get it on fully. She then wrapped around her waist a big pink belt that had an oval front.
Sara, out of nowhere, took off her prescription glasses and put on a pair of white octagonal sunglasses that had pink lens. She walked around the room, going to Emily then Dave and having them try it on as well. Laughter was not lost on anyone.
The next thing Lynne put on were a pair of white medium-sized triangular earrings whose tips pointed toward the ground. An upside down triangle, so to speak, with designs in white. Followed were a set of shin-high pink boots whose top trims were black. After she put them on, she began strolling and girly-hopping around the room. The type of hopping a woman does when she is crossing the street and there are vehicles coming her way, but it is too unlady-like to run, and too perilous to just walk.
She girly-hopped all the way to Sara who was in possession of the next item, which was a feminant pink cloth hairband that Sara would eventually fix into her mother's hair.
While fixing it, Sara had on black gloves that came with the outfit and made sure we all saw them as she made feminine gestures.
Followed now was a pink fashionable ladies suit jacket with black rectangular buttons 126 | OF COMETH THE BOVINE PROPHECY
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and black rhombus cuff-links and upside-down trapezoid pockets. I saw the inner-lining of the suit jacket as she put it on; a pattern of geometrical shapes. After she put it on, and after it fit her the way she liked it, she looked at me and twirled around. “Now you just need the gloves,” I answered back.
Sara took off the black gloves and gave them to her mother, who put them on over the lower portion of the jacket's sleeves. The gloves went to the middle of her forearm and seemed to fit well and tight over the jacket. Then she walked over to Emily, who was still wearing the white octagonal sunglasses with pink lens, and then put them on herself.
Lynne's eyes were like cat's eyes through the frames.
“The outfit is complete,” I said. But it wasn't. The last piece to the puzzle was a matching diary; it came in pink, black and white, had the same oval belt around it, and had its own key. This was getting kind of ridiculous, I thought to myself, but at the same time it was funny.
“So what does the '99°F' on the shirt mean? Ninety-nine degrees Fahrenheit?,” I asked pointing at it. Sara suddenly got up, took the sunglasses from her mother and put them on herself, then got in my face and snapped her fingers at me, “Ninety-nine degrees Fabulous!” Lynne and Dave began laughing at my shock. Soon after Dave got up, took the glasses from Sara, put them on himself, and very calmly and coolly said “Ninety-nine degrees Fuck yo ass up.”
Emily bursted out in laughter. We all turned to look at her, because it may have actually been possible it was the first time she ever laughed that hard in her life. Her laughter gave way to many things.
Emily gestured to Dave to give her the sunglasses, so Dave walked towards her and handed them to her. She put them on, and we all waited in anticipation as she began speaking.
“Y'all have been in here far too long cramping my style, so y'all need to ninety-nine degrees Freakin' beat it.” Strange suspicious calm laughter came from everyone including Emily. It was hard to tell if she was joking or not, but I assume she was because she soon went to Lynne and put the glasses on her and told her it was her turn.”
“Actually!,” Lynne started. “It means ninety-nine degrees Freaky.” We all thought about it and laughed. “Well, I was closest,” Emily said. Lynne started again, “I would never wear this in public though, I'll probably end up selling it or giving it away. Or maybe I'll just wear it on Halloweens and tell people I'm Déijà.”
The party inside the bedroom was over as we all spilled back out into the living room.
It was time to go back home and Emily said she would drive us so we didn't have to take the train.
In the car was a long nightly drive through the snow. Through the city, through 127 | OF COMETH THE BOVINE PROPHECY
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towns. At some point Emily had a bit of roadrage, saying “Ninety-nine degrees Follow the damn signs.” Dave and Sara fell asleep before we got there. Most of the streetlights were on. Half of the lights around the local high school actually worked. Big sur Moon.
Before she began driving back home, she asked us if there was a grocery store nearby as she needed to buy milk. Lynne pointed her in the direction of Chase Foods and she left.
On the second floor, Lynne and the others and I split as I went into my apartment alone. In the room that houses the composition notebooks I found a notebook open on the desk which dealt with pseudo-infinite systems. It was an idea that I still had much work to do on, but I believe you should write down everything and do so in any state. The smallest most illogical thoughts can lead to scientific masterpieces.
I later walked into my living room and turned on the television to find an advertisement about financial loans. I laid on my couch, thought about the commercial for a moment, then closed my eyes to sleep. I lived my first life in the West, I will live my second in the East.
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Chapter 63
M.E.T.R.O
2:2:7:63
LATASHA moves quickly into the bathroom as her mother turns on the vacuum and begins to clean the living room.
912-1152: ...How come in the movies the telephone conversations are always unrealistic?
768-1849: I don't know Tasha, what do you even mean?
912-1152: People never say bye. They just hang up, and the person on the other line is never like “Hello?...”
768-1849: That's kinda true. Especially in action movies.
912-1152: I guess no one has time to say bye when they savin' the world.
768-1849: Did you finish reading that chapter for English.
912-1152: We had homework?
768-1849: Oh my God, I'm done with you.
912-1152: Let me just copy you in the morning.
768-1849: I didn't read it either! It was your turn!
912-1152: Damn, it was? Maybe Karen read it...
I have just put up a sign with a list of rules to current inhabitants of this household.
When within the home limits one must do as follows; if you open it, close it; if you move it, put it back; if you finish it, throw it away.
Dave was following these rules agreeably and did a good enough job not bothering me while in my apartment. I wouldn't have even known he was here had he not turned on the lights in the living room after the Sun began to set.
I told him soon after that I had to go down to the department store to replace my computer. I asked him if he was good on staying here alone or if he wanted to go back home. Instead he insisted on coming along.
When I told him to go get his boots, he asked why, claiming I was not wearing boots myself. I told him it's cold outside and some of the sidewalks might be frozen. We ended up compromising; I put his boots in my backpack and he would wear them had it become too dangerous for sneakers.
We took a four-thirty bus and arrived at five. He followed me into the electronics department but soon told me he was going to wander around and he vanished. “Don't steal anything,” I told him just before he disappeared.
My old machine died so I am browsing for a new one. A salesman walks up to me and 129 | M.E.T.R.O
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asks if I need help, I tell him I am just looking around. When I decide on which laptop I am going to buy, I call him over.
I pay the man but suddenly he begins to go on about extra things I may need. I politely refused though he insisted, and so I allow him to show me around at the extra things I may need, and then intentionally ask him about a product which was clearly out of stock. I asked him if he could see to it that they did not have anymore in the back.
As he went on, I told him that I was going to quickly look for my son and that I would return to see if there was indeed anymore. The moment we broke off, I quickly began walking in search of Dave.
I found him, obviously, in the area of games and toys, and I took him and walked furiously into the Men's bathroom.
I informed him that we needed to escape from this place, and I suppose because of the look on my face, he did not ask any questions about it. I told him that we would be exiting through the alternate entrance toward the back as to avoid a certain salesman, and then told him of the creek just outside of it, how it was layered in thin ice. I take out his boots and after attempting to put them on, he tells me that they are extremely tight.
Taking out two metal shapes, I added an interior layer to each boot to fix it looser, and he then tried it on to a sort of satisfaction. Before we left, I looked at the time and we waited in the bathroom long enough to match our arrival at the end of the creek with the bus that would pick us up. And as we waited, I said many things to him.
I warned him first of enituxia, then of anotuxia, and I relayed to him the simple advice that in life, two opposite actions can, in parodic irony, lead to the same result. I told him, because of the metal layers I added to his boots and because they were less tight, if he moved too fast across the creek's ice, he would lose control and slip and break the thin ice and fall into the creek, but if he moved too slowly, the heavy weight of the boots accompanied by the metal layers would become too strainful for the area and he would crack and break the thin ice and fall into the creek. I asked him to move instead with pace.
We leave the bathroom and begin walking towards the back entrance. Of course, as we approached the entrance, the salesman I was avoiding was there talking to another customer. He saw me, smiled, and said he would be right me, but as he turned to again speak with the customer, Dave and I rallied for the entrance and we heard the shoutings of the salesman behind us.
Dave began to cross the creek before me and I was very much behind him the entire time. The distance between us increased as he completely ignored what I had told him and he sprinted across the creek. I yelled at him to slow down but he only replied with disregard. For a while he maintained his outstanding balance, but it was inevitable that he 130 | M.E.T.R.O
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would begin to slip, and when he did, he fell down awkwardly and in a hard manner. The fall which turned into a slide from his forward momentum seemed to crack the ice beneath him, but he slid far enough to make it to the other end of the creek where he drifted and slammed into a boulder. Dave's fall made me think of Tracy, and I wondered for a moment if this creek was part of or connected to the same one we sent Tracy down.
Finally, I reached him, and when I saw his face, he was grimacing in intense excruciating pain. His twisted face seemed to smile but truly he was in agony, and this parodic irony told the tale of his methods.
I helped him up to his feet and we continued running for the bus stop where we found the bus right on time. Dave and I sat in the back and he continued to feel the pain from the fall, and I wondered, briefly, if he at all learned anything about the vulnerability of ambition while we escaped on the whale.
While on the bus I began to remember a dream. It was one I had long ago about my time in the military, though according to the government, we didn't exist.
I was baptized in water when I was three years old, but I was baptized in fire when I was thirty during operation Kansas Storm.
As mercenaries with murder contracts and soldiers who were paid to kill, we descended upon a place in Zaire that was filled with hostile militia. By the end of the mission, all that was left was a passing dry storm, burning buildings and fourteen surrendered hostiles.
The job was simple, eliminate anyone in the village and we were to take no prisoners, but a problem was posed as some of the surrendered were women and children trained to kill, something we were not told in any reports.
Harper had no problem in completing the mission to its entirety, but Tao, he took some convincing, the main point being though some of them were women and children, they were still hostile to us and any comrades who would later pass by here. Any blood spilled after setting them free would be on us.
After much time, Tao still refused to kill them and instead offered the idea of taking them as prisoners, but in the end it was up to a majority rules vote.
The way the political voting system in America is set up, and perhaps in other democracies, may render a vote meaningless. A single vote may have “potential”
meaning, but once reality sets in and your candidate loses, that “potential” meaning fails to convert into “actual” meaning, and in the process this makes your action of voting meaningless. Perhaps it would be more ideal if a citizen's vote counted towards their preferred candidate's amount of power, where each vote, no matter what, has “actual”
meaning and not just “potential” meaning. What we have now is a system of all or nothing, winner take all, and meaning simply cannot exist in a system of absolutes.
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Harper had no problem in taking their lives, Tao did, and of course, I was the tie breaker. And looking into the eyes of one of the children, seeing that hate, that rage for what we had done to their village, he gave me no option. I voted opposite of Tao and Harper volunteered to carry out the executions.
If we had been more creative, we may have thought to use a system of voting where all votes have “actual” meaning. Maybe only ten of them would have been executed and four of them would have been spared to become our prisoners. But we didn't. And these thoughts were a precursor to the concept of “actual” meaning. In a system of absolutes, once the reality is set, your action was either meaningless or meaningful. But not all systems are absolute, and sometimes an action can be useful even if the outcome is undesirable.
As I heard the gunshots, I thought about how “freedom is a light for which many men have died in darkness.” And in the back of my mind, I heard Tao ramble, speaking about how he believed, when he was younger, that being a decorated soldier would bring him satisfaction, and how it never did. In parodic irony, being a decorated soldier did nothing for him, and he came to the realization of two things; being successful did not make him satisfied, and that others who were successful too were not satisfied, but only putting on a face.
After Harper killed them all, Tao went inside and laid playing cards on their bodies to mark them as hostiles and not civilians.
“Grab your metro, we're Oscar Mike,” Harper told us. The dogs of war don't negotiate. The dogs of war won't capitulate. You can knock at any door, but wherever you go, you know they've been there before. They will take and you will give, and you must die so that they may live. Winners can lose and things can get strained, but whatever you change, you know the dogs remain.
Our bus stop came and Dave and I got off to walk homeward. He was still in pain and it was not a lesson learned lightly. And as I thought more and more about his disobedience, I learned something myself. If any of us can become God's children, any of us too can become Midnight's children.
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Chapter 64
LYTHEIA
2:2:7:64
CONNOR hears the telephone ringing in the other room and travels to pick it up.
Looking at the caller's number, he immediately answers.
410-2074: Hello?
646-0704: Hello Connor, I have news not good.
410-2074: Okay?
646-0704: Ava say she think someone is tapping phone.
410-2074: Why she think that?
646-0704: I don't know why, she just is paranoid now. Say she don't want to do it anymore.
410-2074: I'll talk to her, tell her nothing to worry about.
646-0704: You think police can be monitoring phone calls?
410-2074: I don't know, but we need to be careful more.
646-0704: How?
410-2074: From now on, text message only, and no more name.
646-0704: Okay, I call you later.
410-2074: Bye.
646-0704: Okay.
148-4961: Hello?
948-7255: Hey it is me.
148-4961: Oh hey you. It's been a while.
948-7255: I know, how is maman?
148-4961: Good, do you want to talk to her?
948-7255: No, just call to say hi.
148-4961: Oh, okay.
948-7255: Is she still sick?
148-4961: Yes, I'm afraid she is. She has been asking for you.
948-7255: Tell her I send her money soon.
148-4961: I'll let her know.
948-7255: Okay, thank you. Goodnight.
148-4961: Goodnight.
In the basement of my parents' home I thought as I walked, and what I thought of 133 | LYTHEIA
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persistently was of my macabreity, because one could not truly know me and not also be enveloped by darkness. In everything I have seen and touched, in the living and the dead, animate and inanimate, in gods and mortals, rocks and trees, the darkness of my thoughts has reflected upon them all.
A visitor was now coming down the stairs, slowly, shyly, slightly, and at first I saw her feet, then I saw her body underneath a long transparent black nightgown, and finally I saw her face and her eyes, in them were dreams of Déijà's energy. She was light in every sense of the word; she was not particularly dense, nor particularly dark, but a dream in the night sky.
Neither of us said a word, but I knew she was in my mind, hearing every thought and allowing the darkness to fall over her like a shadow or obsidian rain because she was enamored by it.
We walked toward eachother, either unable to take one's eyes off of the other, and when we met there was a bodily embrace that took place under the afterglow of wedlock.
We stood together, in tenderness, refusing to spend a single moment apart.
We left the home toward Sun set and began walking the miles back to our apartment building. Though we walked under the guise of darkness, there was a gentleness that came from Lynne with each step that she took.
And as we were no more than a mile from our apartments, a white SUV, strangely familiar, passed by us. When Lynne looked at the license plate, and saw that they were vanity plates, she knew the vehicle belonged to Chloe. Now only a few blocks away from home, we saw the same vehicle parked just near the corner.
We kept pace as the vehicle began to drive towards our direction, and I could feel Lynne's heart begin to sound; beat, pump, beat, and suddenly she grabbed my hand, and abruptly she fell down and yelling as she hit the ground. The vehicle sped off, and as I looked driver-side I saw that it was indeed Chloe, the ravenous witch.
When I looked down at Lynne, she was favoring her foot, telling me she had rolled and sprained her ankle, her speaking in gasps. The energetic dream in her eyes had faded into nothingness, a part of her perishing, and the feeling inside me fumbled with it until it was uncommunicable forever.
After I helped her up, I asked her if she was okay to walk home on her own, and she said yes, and she vanished into the afterworld without her dream.
The moment she left, I felt a part of me wither. Chloe was not even on my mind even though it was my effort to find her and tell her to stop whatever it was she was doing. I should have been angry, but I felt more alone than anything, that the archemerald of my life had been hurt and was gone and was not at my side, for there once was a time I believed we would spend all of eternity together, floating as souls through afterlives and 134 | LYTHEIA
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afterworlds. I thought nothing could come between us, not even death, certainly not pain, our love that bloomed even without sunlight and warmth. I believed we were a fated romance, tied together in space and time, everlasting, our kindred spirits to meet again and again until the end of time and surely long before it. But she is gone. Nothing but a memory and a form of her remains. Memories fade, and I will trek through the afterworld to see her dream once more, if only for a transitory moment in mortal life.
The Heavens suddenly opened up in the darkness and the earth was moonshone.
Without hesitation, I found myself inside Lynnette's apartment, which had no lights on, and when I went to her bedroom door and opened it, I saw that I had entered a sort of mythic cave.
I looked around and felt the frigidness, then saw the shadowness, and I knew everything here was made of gloom. Six rivers flowed into the cave, not just of water, but of sentiment. And it was near the center of the cave that I saw her sleeping; the sound of the rivers made her appear supernatural.
I was eager to be reunited with her, and with each step in her direction the feeling of my heart became increasingly heavy with the desires of a thousand caresses. Only a forsaken heart can see the dreams in a beautiful soul.
When I got to her I lay beside her, and she seemed to wake from a nightmare, at first not recognizing me, then remembering me as her truelove.
She slid her hand across my face and smiled, but the dream was not there the same way it was before. In fact, it was not there at all and the pain from her sprain continued to bother her.
The dream she had before was what I wanted to reawaken in her, to see it again in its entirety, and as she fell backwards again to rest, I began to speak to her about the rivers that surrounded her.
Each river had a name and each one flowed with the sentiment of love. “Love?,” she asked, “Ohh, I know this one,” she laughed. And she listened with seraphs' ears.
Styx, river of hatred, flowed with philautia, love of self. Acheron, river of pain, flowed with pragma, love of romantics. Lethe, river of forgetfulness, flowed with philia, love of deep friendship. Phlegethon, river of fire, flowed with eros, love of sexual passion. Cocytus, river of wailing, flowed with agape, love of everyone. And finally, Oceanus, river whose meaning is unknown, flowed with storge, love of family.
The river which her mind fixed on now was the Acheron river, whose flow now also became stronger than the rest. And when she looked back at me, I felt the intense Acheron river flow between us, from her soul to mine, we shared the same emotion of pain that romantic lovers often do, and I realized then, that the dream within her could never be restored.
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We laid back down, and now we saw that the roof of the cave had been broken open just enough for one to see the dark sky. There was only one visible star throughout all of the night, and I wondered if she saw what I saw.
She began telling me about how she had a vision of Antheia, the Greek goddess of flowers, and how in the vision a garden was named after her. She told of many other visions, too, but the one she spoke most fondly of was of Antheia and her garden, and soon after admitted to me that she wished she was extraordinary enough to have something named in her honor.
We continued to look at the dark sky in silence, and at one moment I asked her if she saw the one star in the sky. She said it was the only thing she had been looking at since the top of the cave broke, as it was the only visible thing in the sky.
I told her that I wanted to name the lone star in her honor, because she was the only woman I had ever seen and ever will see. When she asked me what I was going to name it, I was going to say, of course, Lynnette, but I pondered more on it, and finally said
“Lytheia, the Greek goddess of dreams.” I thought Lytheia as her Greek name was a fine choice, and she seemed to agree as she thought about it. I hoped that this might bring back the dream in her soul, though I was wrong, as it did nothing of the sort.
I took her hand and we lifted to our feet, and soon after I began guiding her to the doorway in search of an exit from this place. The more we walked, the fainter her footsteps became until I could not hear them altogether, and turning around, her hand let go of mine as she faded back into the afterworld, a stardream lost forever.
I stood in front of her bedroom door, unable in my heart to enter again. Instead I turned around, left the apartment, then the apartment building and wandered into the dark and cold night.
Tears were now my only companion, the misery from the cold my only comfort. In all that I see and touch, in the living and the dead, animate and inanimate, in gods and mortals, rocks and trees, I bring only the sorrow that lies on wings of demons. And in my pensive gloom, I had only the distant memory of Lytheia, who was the only dream in the night sky. Some have wandered to forget, some have wandered to remember. But she is everlasting, a glint to sailors lost at sea, a candle to poets who are not free, and I will now and forever remain in the arms of Lytheia.
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Chapter 65
IN-CEP-TUS
2:2:7:65
A phone rings in France, connecting together two women who live on the far sides of a town named Chamonix.
718-4777: ...No, but see, the barber is "one who shaves all those, and those only, who do not shave themselves."
148-4961: Hmm, I see now. So technically, because he does not shave himself, he must shave himself.
718-4777: And once he shaves himself, he is no longer a person who does not shave himself and doesn't qualify as the barber.
148-4961: ...So if you put this in a computer program, and it has to execute it logically, what happens?
718-4777: How would I know!? You're the computer scientist.
148-4961: I suppose it would error, or loop, or crash. Better yet, the program may be incapable of even starting...
“The hypercharger is set towards the single helix,” Adult Satan said to Adult God as Adult God stood near a switch. “Prepare yourself, I am pulling the lever now,” Adult God replied.
When the lever was switched, the single helix became hypercharged by an extremely high degree of heat, and just as Adult God and Adult Satan designed it, the helix eventually copied itself to induce cooling and restabalized, its energy now split between two single helixes.
A sigh of relief was passed from Adult God to Adult Satan as they witnessed the duplication, which was the first real achievement in creating a perpetual concept.
From my understanding, and from reading this dream many times, I believe God and Satan wrote a natural law for some things to replicate when exposed to a high degree of heat. To “cool off,” a replication is made and that replication takes some of the energy, or information, to reduce atomic radiation.
This has led me to theorize that what we call the “Big Bang” is something that has been exposed to a high amount of energy, and through this law, that something duplicates itself, its duplication eventually becoming what we call our universe.
I imagined that the single helix Adult God and Adult Satan worked with was the prototype, and they exposed this prototype to high amounts of energy to mass produce it, and at the end of the production, they had a numerous amount of helixes that 137 | IN-CEP-TUS
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communicated with eachother in a network.
If these single helixes are like the genetic code to our biology but written to create universes, what they would have created would be a vast network of universes communicating with eachother in complex ways.
I don't think it's too much to assume that there is a “genetic” basis to the creation of our universe, if you think about it the case can be made. The universe as a gene or part of a genome. Begin with the fact that all known living things have genes, and then move on to the question of whether or not our universe is alive. I suppose the definition of “alive”
is up for debate.
One way of determining “aliveness” might be by measuring the complexity of a given system. How many intricate parts work in tandem in a whole system.
What I've observed while living is that there is always a prototype that is mass produced, and after mass production, a network begins to form in that system. It happens in nature as well as technology; examples include biological cells and cellular phones.
Eventually each individual cell or individual phone becomes part of something vast.
Nothing operates independently, which would also mean nothing can be “not alive,” but there can be a wide array of degrees to “aliveness.” Based on their level of programming and how they interact, you can gather a gauge of its liveliness, and it would be interesting to see how the environment would be impacted if that network was removed. Imagine an animal without a brain or a world without cellular phones.
This notion of “aliveness” would obviously define the universe as being “alive” as it is the most complex system we have yet to discover. The level of complexity and the amount of networks in it are vast. It would be utterly foolish to not see it as something intelligent and plotting.
“I have to go pay for something, do you want to come or are you good staying here alone?” “Pay for what?” “My mental health.” It's always fun to mess with children. “I'll come with.”
Sara and I left my apartment and took a bus that went westward toward another town.
After we got off, I stopped her and explained to her that inside the building there was a painting on the east wall that was a depiction of blindspotness, and I warned her explicitly not to look at it. She agreed, but the moment we walked into the paying section for storage units, she looked east and straight into the painting, temporarily blinded to the narratives of life.
When we returned home Sara had no desire to continue rebuilding Winter Nights.
Who was once a lively creator and what was once a lively town filled with unique people and their unique adventures was now completely bland. Metaphors turned into mechanics. Trains were no longer a symbol of civilization but simply a way to get 138 | IN-CEP-TUS
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around. The snow was no longer a symbol of struggle but simply a seasonal change. She was now blind to narratives and was unable to see the world in art but only in literals. Art itself can have the power to deinspire.
Instead she sat on the couch and watched blankly a small screen. Half an hour later she must have gone home because she suddenly disappeared.
“It does mean, however, that the higher quantity of incoming information requires a mind capable of handling it. Those of above average intelligence are thought to be capable of processing this stream effectively, enabling their creativity and increasing their awareness of their surroundings. Those with average, and less than average intelligence, on the other hand, are less able to cope and as a result are more likely to suffer from mental illness and sensory overload. It is hypothesized that a low level of latent inhibition can cause either psychosis or a high level of creative achievement or both, which is usually dependent on the individual's intelligence.” Wilker Canonical Encyclopedia, page 410.
Living on the extreme of a literal life or the extreme of an artistic life often leads to dissatisfaction. Whether you see the world in a literal sense or a literary sense, it seems not to matter; too much of either shifts the narrative.
Thinking I had the apartment to myself and was again all alone, I turned off all of the lights as the Sun began to sink low and the dark blue setting emerged. But I saw that I was wrong as I entered into my bedroom to rest. There, at the window, with a tiny composition notebook in her hand, was Sara, who was gazing out of the window and into the darkening sky. Something lost had to be found, and something remembered was once forgotten in the fading Sun.
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Chapter 66
IN A STAMEN SOUTHERN RED
2:2:7:66
LAST night, on a contemplative walk along Mulford street, I came to a startling realization. First I left my apartment to check my mail, and in between all the junk mail I found mail for someone named Chin Tu Fat. Coincidentally, Suhm was pulling into the parking lot in his taxi. I left and walked up to his taxi and as he rolled down his window I handed him the mail. He thanked me, told me that his wife thanked me, and then told me that I looked cold and tired, and advised that I should drink hot chocolate often in this weather.
“I do do that.” I nodded my head. A laugh came from either Dam Son or Gun Ho who were both sitting in the back, and eventually Suhm gestured goodbye.
Going down Mulford and into the darkness through the meadow of moths I thought about honesty. Lynne told me that she had a couple strands of gray hair growing and that she used a hair product to hide it and maintain her natural hair color. Honesty is perhaps the most esteemed, respected and admired quality we value in individuals, yet it is rare and unlikely that we will ever encounter unabridged honesty in a person. We all love it but none of us have it.
And with that thought I pondered all the things human beings aspire but cannot obtain. Honesty strikes me as most ironic, because being honest, at the end of the day, is always a choice you can make no matter what, yet it is so elusive to grasp.
This Mulford street is a road I have walked down countless times before. I did more often a few years ago than I do now, but I never forget about it. Twelve blocks north to St. Brandon avenue and twelve blocks south back to Chase street. Walking it at about two a.m. often got me stopped by night police, but it's been a while since I've walked at that time. I remember walking it one time while an arrest was being made. After being thrown into the back of a police vehicle, his head partially slammed into the rim of the door, he yelled out, “Come on, man! We in America!” The police officer stopped, grabbed him firmly, and shouted, “Nuh-uh! South Chicago!”
There have been days of irrationality. If money got you into a problem, why would it get you out? Chloe is a fucking fathead. More a singularity. Her fat ass probably eats all day. Wouldn't be surprised if she's part of a feminist cult. I'm kidding. Maybe. No I'm not.
Talk about the confusion of the oppressed; blacks, women, gays; a ballot in one hand and a gun in the other. Straight white males only fear one of them. Look at me, these things don't even interest me. Even in a post-discrimination world, humans will find a way to oppress each other.
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Sara is at Patty's house, Dave at Olya's with her sons. Lynne, I think, is with Jasmin, at a music and audiobook store.
When I got to Brandon, I stopped, turned around, and began my journey back home when a dream became fresh in my mind.
I was laying on a bed inside an abandoned mansion located on private property, an infection overtaking my leg and Stephanie tending to it. On a desk nearby sung a radio the song of static white noise. On the same desk was a family photo. After Stephanie had delivered the medicine into my bloodstream, and after I got up to look at the photo, I saw that one of the individuals was Ramix. She must have been a citizen of the state and her family must have once been wealthy.
While I was up looking at the photo, I saw a genetically engineered guard-dog go by, which chased us into the mansion and is now circling it. It reminded me of the world's history, and the experiments that the civilians were doing that caused this entire conflict.
John had told me that the universe was physically divorcing, expanding so to speak, and from his research he discovered that the civilians had inadvertently increased the minimum particle distance in our region of the galaxy. This meant the minimum distance one particle could be from another particle had increased in space and had major implications on the functioning of our galaxy.
After the guard-dog made its round, I suddenly saw, way out in a deserted field, two dark figures. The first dark figure opened a seal, then I heard the second dark figure say
“Come and see.” And suddenly a red horse went out; and to him who sat on it, it was granted to take peace from the earth, and that men would slay one another; and a great sword was given to him.
Jesus seemed to have a train of Buddhist beliefs, didn't he? He is often quoted as saying “Those who live by the sword, shall die by the sword,” and even though it is not an original saying, him saying it makes me believe he had a sort of belief in the concept of karma.
The rider on the red horse will one day understand that those who take peace from others will have peace taken from themselves.
As I continued down the road back home, I felt a slight pain in my foot. I injured it last year with a deep cut, but the pain was recalled by one of Dave's toys lying in the middle of my apartment. I have stepped on dozens of his toys, and that shit has to end, man.
I wonder if Lynne has a few strands of gray pubic hair as well. I've never inspected the hair there all too much. I'll tell you what I should do. I recently gave her back her purple heel for a wood-red ballet-flat shoe. I also exchanged the kitty cat panties for one of her colorful inkblot-patterned boyshorts. I'm going to see if I can find any hair follicles 141 | IN A STAMEN SOUTHERN RED
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on them.
A few blocks before I reached my apartment building, I summarized my walking thoughts and came to the realization that Brandon was not a real person. He was a figment of my imagination, or perhaps a craft from a dream, created for a reason I have to yet, but will, find out.
I have been sitting here for over fifteen minutes now, waiting for an insurance agent.
Payment disputes over homeowner's insurance is a waste of my time. I am seriously debating selling my parents' home.
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Chapter 67
SNOWMYST
2:2:7:67
SNOW mist falling on Novaei, a camp fire crackling in between us. Dawn was upon us as we tried to sleep in the snow in the Artceles forest.
We were waiting for the Dove of Genesis, which was to come after dawn and take us to Novaei, a planet that was once two, now shrunken and submerged into the Supideos lake, which was located in the heart and center of the islands.
Soon it began to snow as the fire went out and we could hear the great wings of the giant dove coming towards us. We were able to cause its birth and summon the large bird after obtaining Parturimetnaz, which was a gem that was tied to birth.
The great dove descended on the plane, its gigantic wings flapping snow all about and creating tornadoes made of snow. Once it landed, it awaited us to climb its wings and sit on its back.
“I rode bitch on the horse, I'm not riding bitch on this gorgeous dove,” Lynne walked towards it, and eventually I sat behind her as we prepared for flight on the wings of Genesis.
“Above the islands on a wing and a prayer, my arms around her, a misty trail in the empty air. Across the clouds and down below I see our shadows fly, out of the corner of my watering eye. A dream unthreatened by the dawning of light, sleepwalkers we are as we journey through the fading night. There's no sensation to compare with this, suspended animation, a state of bliss. Unable to keep my mind from the circling skies, tongue-tied and twisted, earth-bound assisted, I.” The Book of this World, page 2,139.
Bounded for the earth the Dove of Genesis landed fearlessly at the edge of the frozen Supideos lake. The moment we were both off of it, it immediately took flight and disappeared without warning. Watching it in the dusk sky, we saw a glimpse of an old lady flying with it before it vanished.
The planet of Novaei, which was at once two planets; Nova and Vaei, was deep down in the frozen lake. Lynne walked over the ice of the lake and stood there for a moment, eventually asking me how it was we were supposed to swim down to the planets. I said maybe we were to use the Chronometnaz gemstone to travel back in time into a different season. She liked the idea and that is actually what we did, and going back some months into summer, we saw that it didn't work for there was no lake period. And the islands, all five of them were merged to form one super-island. This land was basically unrecognizable in comparison to the Bridge Gardens we knew, and after one hour, we were transported back to present day.
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the underwater planet, until finally, going through her bag, Lynne remembered she found a potion in Knoah's Castle. When she took it out, she showed me the label, which was a picture of ice, then an arrow, then water; underneath it it read “Reality Disruptor.”
She kneeled towards the frozen lake, uncapped the potion, then poured it onto the ice, and almost instantly it spread across the platform and the ice melted into water. She looked at me with a gesture of approval.
Before we jumped into the lake, we used the Thanatometnaz gem to induce death and prevent drowning, so as we swam toward the underwater planet of Novaei, we were technically deceased.
We swam for miles until we reached the bottom of the lake, where we then used the Agrometnaz stone to shrink ourselves to a size capable of seeing the shrunken planet.
And there it was, and somewhere on it was the final archemerald gemstone we needed to escape into the mainland world.
We knew this because the ancient book of this world told us that this archemerald, the highest ranking gem which was located inside a dungeon on the planet of Novaei, was tied to the concept of freedom.
Searching the drowned planet took days and many multiple uses of death, but alas we found the dungeon and ventured inward. In a prison cell at the end of a row, we found a panel with the design of three stones; a triangle, a square, and a circle; on the left of them we saw a design with twenty edges; and on the right of them, a design with nothing.
Lynne took all five gems out of her bag and we placed each one accordingly, and assumed the design with no design was for the indefinite shape of the time stone, and the design with twenty edges for the icosahedronic shape of the death stone. The moment they were all set, the prison cell door began to open, and after waiting in anticipation, we saw it. The archemerald. And in its intense shining it caused us both temporary myopia.
“...The archemerald, who is the highest ranking of all gemstones, has the great ability to open the mainland world to its possessor and free them from the islands. It is the only gemstone of six which cannot be destroyed, and is also the most difficult gemstone to obtain because it requires all five of the others. It is thought to be a shade of green, but its light is so intense and blinding that no one has ever actually seen it. The eternal power of the archemerald can only be utilized if its possessor is woman and is mortally pure of heart. It is awakened by the magnetism of love, and because of this she herself must be in love and her love must be requited. Her fated lover must be with her at the time she retrieves the gemstone, and he must be mortally clear of mind...” The Book of this World, page 2,140.
837-1017: ...I've never seen a two-dollar bill before in my life.
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768-1849: Where did you get it from?
837-1017: Bought some milk from Chase Foods and got it as change.
768-1849: Don't use it, Alondra, it'll probably be worth something soon.
837-1017: I know... Is Tasha there yet?
768-1849: Hold on, I think she just got here... Yeah, she's here.
837-1017: Okay, I'm on my way.
768-1849: Alright, bye.
410-2074: 8I have been try to reCh her she not answer my calls 646-0704: Me to. This is not go9d
410-2074: When you have chance I want you contract bank pretend to be husband and ask of loan was confirmed and received
646-0704: Okay that is good ide
646-0704: Idea*
410-2074: Let me kno what they say. I must go now 646-0704: I will. Goodbye
948-7255: ...I'm coming soon, I already have plane ticket.
148-4961: Why are you coming back so soon? You've only just been in America for a few years.
948-7255: I'm just homesick.
148-4961: Are you in trouble again? You know you can tell me.
948-7255: I'm not in trouble.
148-4961: Then where on Earth did you get $6,500 and why do you want to put it in my account?
948-7255: I don't have time or energy to explain to you. Don't call me again.
148-4961: You called m...
Jasmin was driving me down the I-90 highway at seven in the morning because we had run into each other while leaving our apartments. “Are you going to the airport?,” she asked after the sound of two doors closing.
“It's way cheaper if you do it at like three or four a.m.,” Jasmin said. Lynne and I made a nine a.m. reservation for PaintDrive Tours, which was suggested to her by Jasmin, and was a sort of “painted” tour of a part of the city. From what I understand, you choose a route, we chose “Landmark Times,” which drives through many of the city's landmarks, and for thirty minutes you are driven around in a type of limousine to the selection of whatever music you choose and whatever style of painting you choose. The 145 | SNOWMYST
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windows in the area of the patrons were designed to “paint” whatever you would actually see outside the window. For example, if you saw a water-fountain, depending on what style of painting you chose, we chose watercolor, the water-fountain would look as if it were painted in that style, all in real-time. I think the music you choose, we chose jazz, might affect the style of painting as well, but I'm not certain.
It was all very interesting stuff and I was interested to see how well the technology worked. Lynne and I planned it out so we would arrive an hour after she finished working.
There was a silence as we got closer to the airport. For some reason, she began talk-singing, saying “I like to stop at the duty-free shop.” She said it at least four times and I have to say it was strange.
All of a sudden she began talking about Jack. She talked mostly on the subject of his alcoholism and his squandered talent at making music. She sidetracked into the history of her failed all-girl band, then landed back on Jack. “Talented but depressed,” she said, and the thought of this made me think of Junior.
I've never been close to a relative, but I was relatively close to my uncle. Why?
Probably because he was the only adult who respected my feelings even when I was a child. That's how he was. Five or fifty, he would speak to you and treat you the same way he would anyone else.
He had an unmatched passion for building and designing things, which was what he did for most of his life as I knew him. It wasn't until I was about twenty that I realized he had obsessive-compulsive disorder, which was why everything he built was flawless.
He didn't just work as a carpenter, he would spend his time building anything he can.
I once saw him design the blueprint for a lamp, then watched him actually build it over the course of a few days, and I'm telling you, sometimes he would do the same thing over and over and over again until it was, to his imagination, perfect.
Junior talked to me about a lot of things, but the one thing he never mentioned was his past, and thinking as an adult now, I can see that he dealt with painful feelings through architectural expression, and the ultimate capacity of his talent may have been a reflection of the intensity of his painful feelings.
We got into the airport and met with Lynne who was inside a newly stationed bookstore just beside her work. I went to use the bathroom as they talked and when I got back, I saw that Jasmin had gone to her work and Lynne was waiting for me. As I went to approach her, and as she was being relieved by Giselle, a flight attendant walked up to her, I could tell he was a friend.
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minutes. Lynne, always one for the favor, said she had time but not too much time, and after we got to the airplane, another gentlemen had us sign something just before we boarded the airplane which was almost completely packed with flyers.
Lynne and I took two seats way in the back and simply sat in silence as they did whatever they were doing.
I eventually asked her how her ankle was and she told me it was fine. A moment after she told me Chloe sent her an essay detailing her disappointment in her. I don't think Lynne had any intention of responding.
After perhaps five more minutes, a voice came through the intercom, and as the voice persisted, the airplane slowly took the form of a spaceship.
And suddenly, without answer, Lynne and I were in the guise of astronauts and were left alone in a small room in the giant ship.
“Reboot Processor II.” Lynne pushed the button and the entire system turned off and then on, and we heard the same voice come through again, “Hello gentleman and lady, Proc is in the process of starting up.”
We later found ourselves exploring the multitude of settings for the spaceship, and afterwards discussing the subject of interpretation fallacy with Proc.
Proc: If you would like to learn more about interpretation fallacy, please let me know.
Lynne: We would, Proc.
Proc: Just a moment...
Proc: The basic premise of interpretation fallacy is that logical problems can be experienced by anything that interprets information; such examples that interpret information are computer systems such as myself and humans such as yourselves.
Another example is the universe, which interprets information on an extraordinary scale. One logical problem, or fallacy, is the fallacy of composition, and an example of that fallacy is: The exterior of Eden is dark gray, so this means the interior is dark gray. But this is not true, as the interior of Eden is actually light gray. The universe and its interpretational ability is subject to the fallacy of composition, as well as many other fallacies we have studied. One scientist has speculated that the forces we can observe and interpret, such as gravity, are actually the faults of the universe's fallitic shortcomings. It is wise to be wary of everything you interpret from the universe, because when one atomic network is victim to a fallacy, it does not know it is interpreting the information incorrectly and illogically, and it will propagate and distribute the information throughout the universe and to other atomic networks, 147 | SNOWMYST
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sending many pieces of information that are false. Just a moment...
Proc: This is all of the information I have on the subject of interpretation fallacy, do you have any questions?
I looked at Lynne then back at the screen. “No, that about explains it, Proc. Thank you.” The both of us then left the small room and entered the body of the spaceship. She took hold of her yellow helmet and told me she was going to check on the beacon trajectory, and immediately she left the room.
I ventured into a nearby sunroom in the Delta section of the ship and found myself gazing into outer space. What was this beacon signal? Where was it coming from?
I confess, I was lost in the pages of a book full of mystery. I look to anything that will take me to the enigmatic Altamira. To that place, I recall, I was there so long ago. The sky was dusk, the stars were blue, and there you led me on.
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Chapter 68
THE MAGIC CITY
2:2:7:68
LIGHT. It is the fastest thing known to man. It can wrap around Earth seven times in one second. Rays from stars can trek millions of miles and years and survive to reach your eyes. It can distort and disrupt reality to cause illusions. It has been around so long that it was part of one of the first utterances by God. And despite all of this; its ability and its antiquity, its mythos; it cannot catch a shadow.
The trio are here. Lynne is in my bedroom with me. She is working on the computer.
She's changed her hairstyle for the fist time this year. It's stylish. The déijà dame. Dave and Sara I'm sure are doing stuff. Asked their mother an hour ago to sign a permission slip for a two-day space-camp field-trip. I am laying on the bed leafing through and not really reading one of the book of poems she checked out from the library. I guess she wanted to see what other people did first before she did it herself.
Her book was completed, all the poems written and ordered, now she was just transferring them from notebook to computer.
“Alright, it's time for me to sit in the darkness,” I said. She looked at me from the corner of the room, then finally said, after keying another poetic line, “Okay, psycho.”
After she got up she unplugged the power cord and went as if to leave with my computer, and after I asked her why she was taking it with her, she told me that Sara and Dave's computer was too slow and she wanted to use mine. “Because the three of you use it with reckless abandon,” I wanted to say outloud. “Bring it back tomorrow.” She agreed.
And finally, they were all gone. I hadn't seen them for seventy-two hours before today and I will not see them for another twenty-four. You really have to love your family to be able to tolerate seeing them every damn day.
A few minutes later my cellular device vibrated, and when I picked it up, I saw that it was a message from Lynnette.
Mrs. Spookie: Password
Mr. Spookie: bears
534-9266: Hello?
837-1017: Mom, you remember that building I used to babysit in?
534-9266: Which?
837-1017: It was the one on Chase, with the baby.
534-9266: Yeah?...
837-1017: Remember that guy who gave us one of his albums?
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534-9266: How could I forget him.
837-1017: He was in a drunk-driving accident.
534-9266: Is he okay?
837-1017: He's fine, but I think he was the one who was drunk and killed someone else.
534-9266: My God. I hope everyone involved is okay. He was strange but he was such a nice man...
430-9513: Hello, this is Upstate Bank. How may I assist your call?
646-0704: Hello, I call to check status of loan.
430-9513: Yes, may I have your loan application ID?
646-0704: Forty-six. Fifty-nine. Sixty-six. Seventy-two.
430-9513: Please give me a moment, sir.
646-0704: Take your time.
430-9513: Sir, it says that the loan was approved and received.
646-0704: That mean the money was taken?
430-9513: Indeed, sir.
646-0704: Okay, thank you.
430-9513: Sir, is there any other way I can help you today?
646-0704: She take m9ney
410-2074: Yo7 call rank?
410-2074: Bank*
646-0704: Yes she take money and run
410-2074: S9n of bitxh
646-0704: 8I think poluce follow me hpme
410-2074: Not on phone. Net me Winnebago Park
718-4777: ...I still don't understand what grand poppop meant before he died.
389-3345: When he was talking about the man on a hill with a telescope?
718-4777: Yeah, remember? He said 'I saw a man on a hill with a telescope,' and then laughed, then died.
389-3345: I always thought it was straight forward, he simply saw some guy standing on a hill with a telescope.
718-4777: But what if grand poppop was on the hill, looking through his telescope at a man?
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389-3345: I guess that's what he could have meant...
718-4777: Or, he may have even meant that there was a guy on a hill, and grand poppop was watching him through his telescope.
389-3345: What if grandpa just saw a man on a hill, and that hill just happened to have a telescope?
718-4777: Hmm... Hey... What if grand poppop sawed a man with a telescope... On a hill...
389-3345: ...
“When I was in your residence, I saw that the only thing you owned was music. Why is that?” “It was not my residence.” “It's wasn't?” “No.”
At the top of the hour, I rolled carelessly as Dice watched me. I win two rounds just before the power in the room goes out and everything is pitch black.
Unable to see anything, we waited in the darkness for the lights to turn back on before resuming our game. Perhaps it was boredom, or a feeling of nostalgia, but Dice suddenly went into a question.
“Have you heard of the dark parable?” “No?” “The story about the black shade and it having to open the room of fear?” “Wait, I have.” “So you have heard about the theories.
That some believe it is fearful of nothing because the room had nothing when the door was opened.” “I have.” “There is more to that story.” “...I am listening.”
“Tell me, what do you think is the one thing the darkness fears?” “...Other darkness?”
“No, many acts of darkness have been commited in tandem.” “Itself?” “No, darkness spends much of its time alone.” “What is the answer? Light seems too obvious.” “It is indeed light.” “...It is?”
“You see, there was indeed something in the room when the black shade opened the door, but it was something most cannot see because it is often taken for granted.” “It was light?” “Indeed, it was. But no one was aware of it because there was always a source of light in the room of fear so that its contents could be seen.”
Dice made a deft movement in the darkness, then continued, “There is always an object between the light and the shadow, because the darkness is so terrified of the light that it must use objects to shield itself from the light.” I think for a moment. “You see, it's impossible for the light to touch the darkness because the darkness is evasive that way.
The light moves quickly and the darkness moves just as quickly and just as well.” “You are right.” “Of course I'm right. Ask Kidkiller, Rhathe and Csaloth, even Dusk. Poets and politicians live in lavish worlds of lies.”
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there was more to see in the dark than the light.
Satan contested free will because he knew even better than God that the most dangerous person you will ever encounter is the self. And sinners, for them I have always had empathy, and so I feel I have always had sympathy for the Devil.
“I understand now that light is as dangerous as darkness,” I said to Dice. I couldn't see him but I heard something of a laugh, and then, finally, he remarked, “The path you walk on has no end.”
After the light turned back on, we continued our rounds of Hazard, rolling into the hours and Dice at one point assuring me that he was about to win the entire game. When I casually asked him about Dusk, who was the only person he mentioned that I did not know, I heard that laugh again, as if he knew he had already won the debate between us.
“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth. You will see all shades of his being... But you, my friend, you are neither dark nor light. You are somewhere in between and remind me of the gray shade, who in its room of fear, saw the dawn.” Magic City, Miami.
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Chapter 69
THA GRATE SPOOKEENI
2:2:7:69
CUM won cum aull end witniss, makagic! Doo yoo heer dat? Yess! Muesical sownds ove lafftur end jouiy beecuz in heer yoo will aulwaze hav funn funn funn!
Yess! Yess! Yess! Yoo! Laydee end chilldren, cum rye tin. Got yor tickits?! Thank yoo! Lett mee git da door for yoo!
Fallow me, dis haulway reelly isint dat lonng. It's en illoosion, dat's all! O, my deer bouy, yoo looke so sahd, don't bee sad, it wount be darke for long. O, my deer gurl, yoo luk so wurreed, don't be wurreed, deese fohtoegraphs on da walle ar ownlee mint too tel tha trooth. A sad marreed kuhple, a sahd gurl end boy, a sad fahmilee fohtoe. Tha lyze end da funn iz juss arounde tha kourner!
Heer wee arr! Laydee end chilldren... Welcum too tha Spookhowse! End heer, Laydee and chilldren, is yor hoste; tha grate Spookeeni! O! Waite ay minite! Dat's mee!
Doun't mine the walls end da seenerie, dose skelletons and wurds ove deth on tha wallz ar heer juss too skaire yoo, dey doun't meen aniething for reel.
Heer we arr, laydee end chilldren, in tha livinge room is owure firs atrackshin; Tha Nosleeps! Mahdern mann end mahdern wumann, mahdern kid, mahdern fahmilie! Wat iz it dey ar dooing yoo asske? Thingz ove tha fewchur! Misstur Nosleep luks at ey skreen.
Missis Nosleep luks at an evin smallur screen. And yoo gess dit, Kid Nosleep luks at tha smallist skreen! It iz da dihgitole ayge, teknahlahgie at yor fingurtipz; thee moest affordahboh ting in the wurld tooday!
Buht evin tha moest ahfordible things cum at a pryce. Doun't mine da zombees dat hav popt up on tha wallz, yoo need ownly looke heer! At muy hands! Yess! Staire at tha glohwing lite en my paulms, da ewloosion ov prahgress!
Dis, muy frends, iz teknahlahgie; end yoo arr lyk a flyeng insect dat iz ahtrakted too tha lite; yoo wil raice twards tha Sun unnuhwaire dat it will burrne end distroy yoo; and teknahlahgie, witch iz tha gloheng illoosion ove prahgress, will doo tha sayme!
Now, laydee end chilldren, fallow mee douwn dis corhridoor. I muhst warrn yoo! Wat yoo ar aybout too see is not a prittie syte! Littal gurl, wahtch yur stepp, end doo not tuhch dat wall! It'z pahcked wit ultrahvylet lite! Juss a littal wyul lonngur, wee ar aulmoes dere.
O, wahtch owlt, Sid juss popt owlt ov his hyding spoht! Isint dis soh mucht funn funn funn!
Heer wee ar, laydee end chilldren, in the behdroome iz owur secund ahtrakshin; Skinn Skelletin! Pecuwleer, iz ee not? Noh, my frends, he waz not kreeaytid in a guvermint lahbruhtorie. Hee iz reel, naturulh! Hiz bohdie iz normul buht his faice is skinn skellahtin! He waz kreeaytid bye tha krueltie ov naychur, a mutayshin! And doun't yoo 153 | THA GRATE SPOOKEENI
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no my frends? We ar aull headid douwn tha sayme rode!
Dooplihcayshin akcurahsee wazint so kynd to him, end in tha fewchur it woun't bee kynd to yur chilldren! Yoo see, az wee beecum moor complehx orginizums, it iz moore difikult four us too akcuritlee dooplihkate. And wouldint yoo no it! Things lyke dis is wat haz led us too dizeese end deth! Luk at all da kansirs ove tha woorld! A simpul oorginizum need nout wurrie, yeht... Buht yoo end I, my gohsh o deer, wee arr quite complehx and wee shud definitlie bee en feer!
Wat's dat, littul bouy? You doun't want too dye? Heer, I've a giff for yoo. Cum, teyke it, juss unfohd muy hande. Ha-ha! It'z ohkay, stap cryeng! Mew-ent animulz kan bee yur frend!
Ohkay! Ohkay! I-yul stop johkin' ahrounde. Cum throo dis door, lit'z go too tha nex ahtrakshin, it'z not evin farr. Juss dis waiy, yes, yess, keeph falloweng, wee arr aulmoest dere. Syke! It'z far az hell, and ahlonng tha way dere ar dethtraps, end I will not bee yur guyde.
...O, I see dat yoove all mayde it, and yoo arr all kuyite entactt. Let'z see, yoo passt my chaynsaw kneee remuver, dymind tip pensoul stabbur, aynul cahvitee ant eeters, hoorse hed surrpryze, layzur slysur, ahsid skinn remuver, steel empayler, enstint laffeng sickniss vyris deth, raydeoaktiv deekayeng rayz, end evin my bloo razberrie xplohsivs, dat'z empressiv, buht eye dout yool surrvive da show!
Heer we ar, laydee end chilldren, en tha compoezishin room is ouwur thurd ahtrakshin; Klowhnfayce!
Wat's dat, muther? Yoo dount lyke klowhnz? Dis won is frendlee, trustt mee, hee woun't show up en yoor dreemz. Wy iz he so sad yoo axe? It is beecuz huumin be-engs arr geerd twards nehgahtivitie! Hav I lostt my marbulz? No. Buht looke at wat I hav heer!
Sum dyce for yoo sum koinz for yoo end sum kardz for yoo, beecuz lyfe iz a gayme ov chantz!
And en aksepteng my itims, yoo hav akseptid fayte and luc, luk at tha wallz now, eech ove deese vizionz a vizion ove yoorself en anuder lyfe. Looke at howe happee yoo arr, so suksessfool end karefree, buht enuff ov dat! Now looke bak at mee!
Yess, siht end daydreem ov tha lyfe dat culd bee. Tha lyfe dat culd hav bin, and wahlowe in yoor mihzurry ov dat lyfe dat iz! Misdurrekshin? Lyfe iz tha graytist muhgishin, evin bedder thin yoorz troolie! Yoo'd behter wahtch it closelie oor yoo will roo tha daye!
Hay! Littul gurl! I heer yoo wispureng pourlie ov me! Yoo doun't lyke da show! Wel dere iz won moor fynul ahtrakshin, yooll luv it! Trustt mee! Shirly, I know!
Yess yess, dis waye, fallowe mee juss a littal biht moor. Tha fynule ahtrakshin iz juss beehynde dis doore! O, luk, orr rahther doun't looke, onn tha wal now haz juss ahpeerd an 154 | THA GRATE SPOOKEENI
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ihmage ove a cryeng mann. He lostt hiz sun in a rodesyde aksidint, end eeteng a boolit four dinnur iz toonite'z fynul plahn.
Ohkay ohkay, dat waz fun, buht now lits git to da reel funn, leht mee opin dis door.
And heer... Hear we ar, laydee end chilldren, in tha baththroom iz owur foorth end fynal ahtrakshin, tha maine eevent!; Tha Muhcahbruh I-yurn-fly! Yess, dat iz a fly yoo arr lukeng at, it is ahbout a milleon tymez biggur dan a normul fly and haz fit purfectlie ento tha tuhb. Wat's dat smel yoo asske? Why tha smel ov deth, ove corse! And leht mee tell yoo, it dyed an ehxcroosheiateng deth az oppozed to tha peecefull deth wee aull seek!
Let me axe yoo my frendz. O, I'm so sorrie, wear ar yoo all tryeng to goh? I maybee shuld hav told yoo dat tha door iz lockt end will not opin untill I em finish'd wit my prehsintayshin! Buht now yoo know!
Soh leht me beegin agin; leht me assk yoo my frends, doo yoo know wat iz tha scaryist thing ov all? No anneserz??? Well owe tell yoo. Tha scaryist thingz in lyfe arr tha thingz dat ar hardist to kill. It kan bee ay pursin, an ideia, a memurie, et setra, et setra.
Buht if yoo kannot kill it, it stayz in yoor lyfe fourehver! And wat iz moor payneful dan a nitemare yoo cannut burie?! Eeach nyte yoo go to sleepe end dere it iz, da moest diffikult momint too kill. Yoo shoot bullitz throogh it, chop it douwn wit an axe, set fyur to it, den bury it sixx feet deep, buht en tha moorning wen yoo ryse, yoo fynd dat da hannd ove sohmbur emmoortalitie iz stickeng owt ov dat grayve!
O my, yoo all look so frytenned, waz it sumthing I sed?! O, well, tha door haz opin'd beehynd yoo. Jeezus, yoo all run so fastt. Au revoor! Iyul miss yoo laydee end chilldren, tell otherz abhout muy show! Mann, dey all ran off so fas. Ouch! Kid! I told yoo not too leeve yoor I-ballz lyeng arounde!
Lynne, Dave and Sarah all ran out of the apartment building and onto the lawn just before the parking lot. While running, Dave's heart collapsed as he tripped and fell onto the pavement, where an ambulance had been waiting for him.
The paramedics retrieved his body and laid him to rest on a stretcher as they carried him inside the back of the ambulance. On the lawn, Lynne had lost her breath and sat down to catch it, but her mind became dark as she laid on the grass; stomach to the dirt, the side of her face as well, her eyes widened and staring into an abyss.
Sara, who was the only one still standing upright, at one moment looked up at the second floor of the apartment building, and through a window of the place they had just escaped, she saw a face that was shaded with internal anger; it was the symbol of terror; and it was none other than the jester, the joker; it was the great Spookieni.
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Chapter 70
IN THE ARMS OF MORPHEUS
2:2:7:70
IT was after boarding the one a.m. train that my nerves began to excite in wonder of what would be of that ride. It was fascinating in the daytime, but the night-time has a whole different personality.
When I arrived at the airport I found Lynne sitting in a waiting area and I saw Giselle working at the diner. The moment she saw me she got up and began to walk towards me.
“Ay daddy,” she said to me. “You took care of business?,” I asked, “I did,” she replied. “I been takin' care of business, too,” I said, showing her a picture of the first season boxset of “Odyssey” that I had taken on my cellular device. A smile crept onto her face as she asked me how I had found it. The internet is useful in many ways.
We took the 2:15 train to 32nd and then walked the short distance to PaintDrive Tours; we get there at 2:40 and walk under a sign that reads “You painted my entire world.” Lynne's reservation was for 3:00, but the gentleman in charge of the afterhours allowed us to board the vehicle early. Our driver was one Alan Wake and seemed polite enough.
After we boarded the vehicle and sat in our adjustable-rotatable seats, Alan asked us to confirm our settings. We both agreed on “In the Arms of Morpheus” as opposed to
“Highway Star,” the latter being a route that rode along the highway and passed by a shoreline. The music was confirmed as classical and the style of painting as acrylic.
Once that was all out of the way, the thirty-minute ride finally began with the soothing sound of a string instrument followed by some piano keys.
There were no other cars with us as we drove into a well-lit and wide city tunnel. It was a vandalized tunnel, with much graffiti on its walls, but the graffiti seemed to be done by artists. Many of the pieces were words but a good amount were illustrations of various things.
And as we rode on through the long tunnel, with the music and acrylic filter, a feeling came over me. I imagined all of the artists who must have spent hours leaving their mark on the tunnel; and with that I thought of all the police who must have driven by and allowed the artist to continue.
Gradually I became aware of a unifying theme in all of the graffiti, and that theme told me that artists of this nature do not always rebel against the government or authority, but that many times it is in rebellion against the artist itself because it is an argument against humanity.
I suppose this is why many great artist struggle with their work and ultimately develop that inevitable love-hate relationship with the piece itself.
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Suddenly, Lynne said my name and I turned around to see what she wanted. She told me to switch to her display and after I turned back around to my own display, I pressed a button that allowed me to see her screen. And now I was watching a painting of a man who was in the process of leaving his own mark on the tunnel. And his mark was the phrase “Wake up!” in bold green letters.
As we left the artist we were nearing the end of the tunnel, and the sound of the wind gliding outside on the vehicle stayed even until it whipped and lashed and we exited finally, and re-entering the city I saw a plaza that housed a giant water fountain. I observed the water itself for only a moment, its edges painted with a cool blue glow, and suddenly Lynne called out to me again, telling me to switch to her screen.
Far in the distance was the Paradise Port bridge, which connected land's end to land's end, and though I had seen it before, I saw it in a way that was new to me. I saw it, for the first time, with the imagination of a dreamer and not that of a citizen. I was no longer a resident, not a denizen nor a civilian, but a traveler and a wanderer, a vagabond, seeing this place for the first time with fresh green eyes.
If you're aiming a firearm at a target, unless you are an otherwise great marksman, you are likely to miss your first attempt. Your second shot is more likely to be on-target, if not directly on-target. This is because you have adjusted your aim after gaining a frame of reference from the preceding shot or shots.
In the same terms, our entire life is based off of hundreds of our own established frames of references. We see our world according to religion, music, art, experience, politics, et cetera. And every time we gain a new frame of reference, it creates a new narrative in our subjective lives.
I have seen the Paradise Port bridge as a resident and now as an artist, and I have been gifted the sight of a true architectural work of art. I have been given a new frame, and I can appreciate now the artist within the architect. And isn't that an important aim in life? To be a great marksman? To have great sight in and great insight into life and its unclear nature.
I told Lynne to switch to my screen, and after doing so she saw the blue-glowing water fountain, and as it faded away slowly on the screen, she could only say it was beautiful.
This is when, more quickly, a statue appeared on both of our screens. Three soldiers standing upright and surrounded by decorated bushes. Had it not been for the painted fashion, I might not think too much of it, but something reminded me of the dream I have titled “Kansas Storm.” The absurdity that went down that day, and the madness and absurdity of war itself.
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constructively and effectively solved a conflict. So much of what I have experienced has taught me that the way humans usually decide to handle their problems results only in gridlock.
As the vehicle drove on we passed by a funeral home, whose front steps currently housed a man smoking a cigarette who I will assume is an undertaker. He looked at our vehicle as it passed with dark rings around his eyes, but what I saw was the painting of a man both haunted by and tired of death.
Alan suddenly made a right turn and then a left, and we were now traveling down Rashida boulevard, which was one of the more popular streets in the city. The skyscrapers were taller, the buildings flashier; some even had digital screens on them, showcasing advertisements for movies and or products. The boulevard, despite the time and weather, was still very much alive in terms of pedestrians. People, cars, music, lights, yelling. The usual.
The first painting I saw on Rashida boulevard was of a man walking drunkenly on the sidewalk. He could barely control where he was going, but somehow he ultimately moved in one direction after all the back-stepping and lateraling. The second painting on Rashida boulevard was of a hooker leaning into a car. The potential customer must have either been a creep or very cheap, for she suddenly threw something at him in anger, but ultimately, she entered into his vehicle.
Thinking of the drunkard and the prostitute, I thought of the semi-autobiographical great American novel each one would write ten or fifteen years from now. Two novels that hauntingly detailed the final tragedy in all mortal dreams.
The boulevard suddenly split into two roads, forming a “Y” shape, and we went right.
As we made that right, Lynne noted to me that I will be seeing an airplane in the sky headed toward a paper moon. And I did see it only a few seconds after she mentioned it. I continued to look up at that dark sky as the airplane flew directly underneath the paper moon. With all that jazz in the air, the painting made me think of those San Rashida nights. That time I can't forget but can't escape. A time I can't go back to and can never truly feel again.
When I looked back down it was at a sidewalk on which a person was currently walking on. The filter system on the PaintDrive software must not have recognized what it was seeing, which I believe was a man who wore all black; what it returned was interesting, a painting of a man who resembled something of a bandit.
There are so many strange things that float in the bayou, which leads to darkness and mystery. And which is more compelling to the human mind? The mystery of darkness, which is like the desire to explore the old unknown universe, or the darkness of mystery, which is like the lunacy inherited in exploring that same old unknown universe?
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We drove on and Alan made a complete U-turn which allowed both me and Lynne to see a famous historical building painted in acrylic fashion. It was a building that was used as a safe haven during the second world war for Japanese-Americans. Those, like many other identities, who were persecuted by association. Where do the problems of human abstintion arise from? Surely the root is within the student rather than the student body.
It is not a secret by any means that the human indulges in the general nature to possess. People want to own things, but not even just things, they also want to own other people. Take, for example, marriage and infidelity. This is not something you will think about unless you sit down to think about it. On the one hand, marriage is in principle a right to another person's body. Another person's time. Another person's wealth. Another person's future. Frighteningly, another person's life. On the other hand, infidelity becomes a violation of your spouse's rights in marriage.
If the nature to possess has invaded even love, what can stop it? It's one thing to overthrow a mostly capitalistic and materialistic market or ideology, but if you can eliminate a person's nature to possess, then I think you might have something. And this does not just apply to greed, but to every trait frowned upon by humans. The problems perhaps should be solved within the student and not the student body. But hey, the rich get richer and the days get shorter.
For a moment we drove through a part of the city that was more town than city, but regardless we found ourselves back in a very urban area, and like magic, we appeared at the bridge that only twenty minutes ago was a distant painted dream.
We entered onto the Paradise Port bridge, the vehicle bumping just a little as it rode over the entrance, and now one had the view of a body of dark but lit water and a dark but lit skyline. The scattering light streaks across the water and following it leads you to the structured light of the city.
I hadn't known it before, but there was also a display which allowed you to see the driver's view in a painted fashion. I leaned over and pressed the corresponding button for Lynne, and now, just like me, she was looking at a painting of the inner construction of the bridge.
There were only a few cars on the lonely bridge, and the lights that lit the roadway in the night was like moonlight to the sea. The great construction of the bridge made me feel like I was passing through a distant piece of history; and many times I saw silhouettes and penumbras, because the construction would defend the dark, creating shadows by neary lights like evil does to good.
The illuminescence of the bright lights helped to paint the road below, making it almost glow with the same fluorescent color and played to the contrast of the state's past, when the dark lanes of the forties were a microcosm for lanes everywhere. Literal lanes 159 | IN THE ARMS OF MORPHEUS
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and memory lanes alike...
This bridge hadn't been built yet, but back then there was less light in the state than there is now. The idea of less light always invites ideas of the haunted. Sometimes a place that hasn't been discovered, but more over a place that people do not want to encounter.
Or ever encounter again. The thing about the haunted is the same thing as the hunted; you can leave that place, but it never leaves you.
After my father's death, the city was haunted for me that way. Even in places with bright lights and even in places I had never been before, there was a sort of abyss. I'm not sure really how to explain it, but I felt this abyss as I drove from one part of the state to the other and to his funeral. And during that time in my life, the distinction between the lucid dream and the waking reality was unrecognizable; when I was sure I was awake, I would wake up. Trying to escape both reality and the haunted city, I would go to sleep, but that same haunted reality in a city mostly of darkness would often be recreated in my nightmares. And waking up each time, I awoke to the same haunted city in reality.
There is one abyss dream that I recall in particular, but I remember more as if it were like one of those old unfinished Larry Byndon city paintings. It takes place in the winter, during the midnight hour, and features the dead cold trees, whose leafless branches are immortal and are illustrated to haunt the night, bringing about the cruel reality of a deathless world.
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(2:2 / 5 / V)
Part 8
M.B. JULIEN
Chapter 71
DO ALL QUESTIONS HAVE ANSWERS?
2:2:8:71
“HELLO?” “Yeah it's the weekend and the kids are probably still up. They won't sleep. Can you watch them for about an hour?” “Sure.” “Okay I will send you a message later.” “Peace.” “Peace.”
Mrs. Spookie: Are they asleep yet?
Mr. Spookie: No
Mrs. Spookie: If suppose to snow tonight
Mrs. Spookie: It's
Mr. Spookie: Yeah weather says chance of heav y snowfall Mrs. Spookie: They keep canceling flights
After a while of not responding I went to see if Sara and Dave were sleeping. Dave was sitting sloppily and slouched on the living room couch watching a cartoon of animals. There was something gloomy about him. He was indeed watching the television screen, but looking at his stale eyes it was possible to tell that his mind was in another world. It was just a boy sitting and watching a cartoon, but what I saw was the painting of a boy both frightened by and curious about what he could not see.
Sara, in her bedroom, was sitting on the floor and working on Rainy Nights Into Dreams... The moment I walked in she was moving around a deputy, and she placed him on a street corner, and said "I think I will name him Ned."
She had her glasses on, and just beside her laid a plastic dress and a plastic garden.
And next to that was a drawing of a dress made of flowers that she seemed to have been working on.
When I moved in closer, on the computer screen I saw that she was talking to her mother, who between the two many messages had been sent back and forth. "Do y9u want grape or strawberry flavor? And does David won't the one with cheese?"
I left the bedroom after talking with Sara and went back into Lynne's bedroom, passing by her shelf of diaries and picking one up which was colored in black, pink and white. I went to open it but saw that it required a key. A key which I later found in a nightstand.
I found out today that a friend of a friend was in a drunk driving accident. The other person was killed. Jasmin is a patient person but I think that is the last straw for her. She's still living in his apartment but I don't know if she is going to be the person who visits him in prison... Jack?
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Mrs. Spookie: Yo
Mr. Spookie: Where we at wid it?
Mrs. Spookie: Is it snowing there?
Mr. Spookie: No
Mrs. Spookie: It is where. You will probably get it soon Mrs. Spookie: I'm in the stock room
Mrs. Spookie: Silvio and I finalized out divorce. He is trying to marry someone else Mr. Spookie: Who?
Mrs. Spookie: Alexa
Mr. Spookie: Let me ask you a question
Mrs. Spookie: A personal question?
Mr. Spookie: Noah general question
Mr. Spookie: No a
Mrs. Spookie: Okay
Mr. Spookie: Do all questions have answers?
Mrs. Spookie: Is that the question?
Mr. Spookie: Yeah man
Mrs. Spookie: Yes
Mrs. Spookie: Wait
Mrs. Spookie: No
Mrs. Spookie: Is this a trick question?
Mr. Spookie: Sara asked me that a little while ago Mrs. Spookie: That's a really good question
It was indeed a really good question, one that had me pondering all night. A clever person might say that all questions do indeed have answers, "I don't know" being a possible blanket answer to every question conceivable. This is more or less an evasive answer to that difficult question and fails to inspire creative knowledge, even though technically "not knowing" something still falls under the category of knowledge, hence the philosophical quote "I know that I know nothing." But let this serve more as the mechanics of knowledge and the definition of an answer, as well as the nature of questions themselves.
I would say there are two types of questions, and as a result, two types of answers; an objective question, such as "What is one plus one?," usually results in an objective answer, such as "Two,"; a subjective question, such as "What is your favorite rose color?," usually results in a subjective answer, such as "Yellow."
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I think for the purposes of this question, "Do all questions have answers?," we must omit all subjective questions and answers. It is possible for a person to not have a favorite rose color, but even if a person does not know what one plus one is, there is still an answer.
So now, the question is, "Do all objective questions have objective answers?" For example, is there an objective answer to the objective question, "Is there a purpose to life?"
I believe that if you can perform an experiment, there is an answer to your hypothesis.
In the same sense, if you can test a question, then that question has an answer. If you cannot test the question, there is no answer that is available to us. There may still be an answer to that question, but that answer is currently unavailable to us as knowledge, so ironically, we cannot even answer the question "Do all questions have answers?"
It is frightening to think a question can exist without an answer. This poses haunting implications on the limits of knowledge. If a question can exist without an answer, this means the universe can exist without a purpose, which also gives credence to the idea of nihilism. Imagine pursuing a question for an answer, but there is no answer. How would you ever know that there isn't an answer? You wouldn't. And so you would pursue that question indefinitely. All along, a joke from God.
Mrs. Spookie: Would "Does God exist?" be objective?
Mr. Spookie: Yes
Mrs. Spookie: Because that question is just one o fmany questions that have appeared on the wall
Mr. Spookie: That's strange. I have questions on my walls too Mr. Spookie: "What are dreams?"
Mrs. Spookie: There's a question here that's in red Mr. Spookie: "By theory of the third law and what is supposed, all are opposed, and in knowing this, can you tell me, why then, does death exist?"
Mrs. Spookie: That's what it says!
Mr. Spookie: I sent you a picture of it, send me a picture of yours Mrs. Spookie: Ok
Mr. Spookie: That's weird that we can see the same questions Mrs. Spookie: Do you kno2 the answer?
Mr. Spookie: I was thinking about it
Mrs. Spookie: I have to drive back, hold on
Mrs. Spookie: Hey you
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Mr. Spookie: Out there in the cold
Mrs. Spookie: Getting lonely
Mr. Spookie: Getting old
Mrs. Spookie: Can you feel me?
Mr. Spookie: Hey 6ou
Mrs. Spookie: Standing in the aisles
Mr. Spookie: With itchy feet
Mrs. Spookie: And fading smiles
Mr. Spookie: Can you feel me?
Mrs. Spookie: Hey you
Mr. Spookie: Don't help them to bury the light Mrs. Spookie: Don't gibe in without a fight
Mr. Spookie: Hey you
Mrs. Spookie: Out there on your own
Mr. Spookie: Sitting naked
Mrs. Spookie: By the phone
Mr. Spookie: Would you Touch me?
Mrs. Spookie: Hey you
Mr. Spookie: With your ear against the wall
Mrs. Spookie: Waiting for someone
Mr. Spookie: To call our
Mrs. Spookie: Would you touch me?
Mr. Spookie: Hey you
Mrs. Spookie: Would you help me to carry the stone?
Mr. Spookie: Open your heart
Mrs. Spookie: I'm coming home
568-8196: Hello.
534-9266: Hey it's me.
568-8196: Hey how you been? We still on for tomorrow?
534-9266: For sure. You got a babysitter for little man?
568-8196: Yup. Everything is set up.
534-9266: I can hear him in the back.
568-8196: Hold on, let me put him on.
568-8196: Hewo.
534-9266: Hey! Do you know who this is?
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568-8196: Yea.
534-9266: Who?
568-8196: Auntie Imani.
534-9266: You remembered!
568-8196: I remembered you from my old house.
568-8196: He accidentally hung up the phone.
534-9266: Oh okay, I was wondering why he wasn't talking.
568-8196: So I will see you tomorrow then?
534-9266: For sure. I'll call you before I pick you up.
568-8196: Okay, I'll see you then. Bye.
534-9266: Bye.
234-3938: Hello?
318-8845: Hello, yes.
234-3938: Where you are?
318-8845: I leave state. Police follow me yesterday.
234-3938: Where you go?
318-8845: Not important. I find out Ava go back to France with all the money. It is over. Police will come to your house, you need to go too.
234-3938: I will leave.
318-8845: I guess that is it. I leave some money with Desmond if you need. Good luck.
234-3938: Good. Thank you. Slan agat.
318-8845: Slan.
148-4961: Hello?
948-7255: My plane had emergency landing in London.
148-4961: What happened?
948-7255: I think it was because of weather.
148-4961: When do you think you will be here? She is excited to see you.
948-7255: In twelve hours, tomorrow at latest.
148-4961: Okay, that sounds great.
948-7255: A man in airport was talking to me to becoming high-end escort.
148-4961: I'm not surprised, you're a pretty woman.
948-7255: No way I ever do thing like that.
148-4961: Yeah, it doesn't seem like you.
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948-7255: Okay, I will call you in few hours to let you know.
148-4961: Alright, can't wait to see you. Bye.
948-7255: Bye.
I leave Lynne's bedroom and enter Sara's, where now she is resting peacefully on the side of her bed, her glasses in her hand. In the time I was gone she had completed and integrated together all the artistic sets of her architecture; Autumn, Winter, Summer, Spring, Rainy and Windy Nights Into Dreams...
Exiting the apartment building, I passed Mulford and walked near the train station that was being built. The meadow of moths was no longer a meadow of moths, it was complete; and a great big sign stood in front of its entrance, "Welcome to Mulford Station."
As I passed it, along came a loud train. I passed on to the other side of the meadow as the river came flowing through, the stream the power of many currents.
Nature and architecture, I think, have always lived in the same tree-house. Many things come to be by man or nature. No more a city than less a body, and no more a train than less a river.
A good distance on the other side of the meadow it began to snow. Not too long after I saw and heard an ambulance speed by. It reminded me of Lynne's hand and how she had recently injured it doing yoga. She now wears a minimal hand brace on it. Now her affliction is in turn making think of Dave's fingertips. He tells us a couple of them are still numb from the day of Blizzard Tracy.
A hundred thoughts later I arrived at St. Brandon St. Why did I create Brandon? I have no idea. He seems to only appear when I am aware of my car and my parents' home.
Okay. Two items I have more or less abandoned. I must have created him after my father's death, during the time of the haunted city. Perhaps it was when I wrote my first composition.
In those moments there were many rejections. My rejection of society, rejection of tradition, and especially my rejection of ordinary life. That must have been when I created him. An individual to shoulder the banality of an ordinary life. This ordinary life indeed should have included a home, a spouse, children, at least one vehicle, a career, etc.
Perhaps I saw the life of my parents and wanted nothing to do with it.
Brandon, whose name has no relevancy other than the fact that it was in my sight at that time of refusal, may be an idea of myself that lived a normal life, and it would be easier for me to see him than for him to see me. An average life is easy to imagine, but very few can imagine one that requires a certain level of creativity, because with creativity often follows madness.
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In the deepest recesses of my mind, I remember that time as a place, but it feels like a dream or another life because it happened so many years ago.
I remember a rainy night, while in the basement of my parents' home, half disoriented and half lucid, and reading a book through the rolling thunderstorm. I could hear the rain outside falling like static and the thunder that frequently followed as I read a story about a married pair who carried a vain burden.
I remember an autumn night there as well, though in the living room, watching a film and thinking about how death could be so colorful outside. The film itself had nothing to do with death, or with color, but everything to do with a female astronaut on a mission from Earth.
I remember a winter night, sitting on a chair in my father's home office that sat just beside a window that looked out into the neighborhood, and watching the snow fall as I listened to a song about military pathfinders.
I remember a windy night, in the kitchen at midnight to find food and looking out of the window for a moment to see leaves shuddering in the wind, and then returning to my former place to finish a television show about a hitman who allowed his targets to tell their story before he executed them.
I remember a spring night, hearing the end of birds chirping as I sat in my brother's room, reading a poem about a town that was overtaken by a mist that sent them into chaos.
And I remember a summer night, sitting on a porch in the backyard in high heat and relentless humidity, listening to an audiobook about the subweighted parts of our universe.
All of these memories taking place at a time when I was the only person alive in the world. Living in an empty house as a recluse, haunted not by ghosts but by ghouls I knew were coming. I'll tell you, friend, it takes a really long time to ask good questions and an even longer time to get good answers, and you reach the greatest answers by starting off with asking the most humble questions. One such question, "What is a house, really?"
One question that is not so humble, and one that I think is one of the oldest questions of human history, is "Does God exist?" It's one of those eternal questions that really only unhinges the dreamer. But I also think it's one of those questions that everyone wants to know so they can live their life accordingly. Personally, I have no need for that hypothesis. He may be around though.
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Chapter 72
BY YELLOW EASTERN PISTILS
2:2:8:72
" THE Night of the H_ngm_n" is a hi_e and seek game played in da_kness. One player is na_ed "The Hangman" and the others mu_t evade capture for a certain amoun_
of time until the entry way to escape is _ctiv_ted.
The Hangman also must seek t_e area with a device that plays eer_e music, an effect for suspense, but also an effect that g_ves the hiders an advantage. Hide_s may move around at their own _xp_ns_, but they cannot escape the area and "win" until an alarm goes off, at which point two areas of exit are activated and they may esca_e through there and to freedo_. At this point, the eerie music m_y be turned off by The Hangman.
In some versions of the game, hiders are allowed to use walkie-talkies, but must _ind them after The Hangman has hid the_, by rule in plain sight, b_for_ the start of the game.
Also in some ver_ion_, The Hangman actually walks around with a _oose, and must put the rope around a hiders neck in order for them to be c_ught.
My parents' home was pitch black as I s_ul_ed inside it searching for L_nne, Sara and Dave. Of course they voted me to be The Hangman.
The first placed I checked, which seemed most o_vious to me, was the bas_m_nt. I walked down the stairs and the atmosphere paired with the s_ooky music coming from my cellular device. If anyone was down there, t_ey knew I was coming.
I searched around for a brief while but coul_ find nothing, no movement, not until I heard someone run across the room above _e.
I quickly walked back up the stairs and began peering into the dark l_v_ng room. At the back door was one of the exit spots, and picking up Lynne's cellular device, I s_ill had ten minutes before this exit was ac_iva_ed.
I looked around in the living room, but like the basement before it I found nothing.
Nothing under ta_les, nothing behind couches, nothing in c_osets. And it was after this I decided to take the stairs and hea_ down the long hallway into my father'_ office. Lynne loves this room, perhaps I will hang her in it.
When I got into my father's office, there was a bit of light in it from the s_reetligh_
outside. It was enough light to make visible a_ythi_g hiding in the room, which in turn made this an undesirable _iding spot.
As I went to leave, I heard a door shut so_tly on the same floor, and myself and the creepy music made our way towards that sound. It wasn't until I was h_lfw_y through the h_llw_y that I heard something fall in the floors below, and when I went to the banister to look down below, I saw the figure of a wom_n running from the basement and into the kitchen.
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I went down the stairs, sk_pp_ng every other step until I arrived at the kitchen. I am not lying to you, I c_ecked everywhere possible, and I could not find he_. In my last efforts I _v_n checked the refrigerator. It was looking grim for me, at any _o_ent the alarms would sound and they would be able to es_ape.
R_m_mb_ring that I heard a door close on the floor abo_e, I went back up the stairs and into my brother's _oom, which is where I suspected Dav_ was hiding.
I looked around brief_y, then stopped in the middle of the room after _he_king underneath the bed. At first I had given up, began making my way out of the room. And then it happened. I heard the voice of Sa_a come through a walkie-talkie, and it came from the closet behind me. Finally, someone, presu_ably Dave, was going to be hanged.
How I have longe_ for this moment and at once it has come... No one is in the closet...
There is only a walkie-talkie sitting on boxes... What is g_ing on?
When the alarms for escape went off, I realized what was going on. It was a trick desig_ed to lure and keep me in that room as they made their way to the e_its. It was a clever ruse, but I am hoping my ruse will be even more cl_v_r.
I dialed down the music, prepared my voice, then picked up the walkie-talkie, and then assumed the voice of Dave, and s_oke into it, "He's in the basement wit_ me." There were two points of exit, throu_h the backdoor and into the yard, or through the door in the b_sement, and of course I made my way to the bac_door.
When I was almost th_r_, I saw two figures, one of a woman and one of a child, running towards the backdoor. I began la_ghing, startling the child, who then tripped over something in the darkness. When the woman went to help the child up, I gr_bbed her by the neck, then the child by the arm, and the night o_ the hangman was declared.
I caught Lynne and Sara, but Dave managed to escape through the basement. We eventually met with him in the backyard and he went on about how he made it out alive.
"You're a cheater!," Sara yelled at Dave. He was confused. "You tricked us because you just wanted to win!," Sara continued. "How did I cheat?," Dave asked innocently.
"You said he was in the basement when he wasn't so I would go to the backdoor and get caught," Sara finished. "I didn't say he was in the basement! I didn't even see you at the end!," Dave yelled. "Yes you did! On the walkie-talkie!"
Lynne, who was trying to figure out what was going on, stood in confusion until I admitted I was the voice at the other end of that walkie-talkie.
Working together and trying to understand eachother's viewpoints, it is a simple concept, right? "Be tolerant of other people's opinions and ideas." And yet it is a concept that not even the most intelligent of beings can understand. People in power don't want you to understand that. They want you to fight. They want you to understand capitalism, patriotism, conformalism. And it doesn't matter if one of them escapes, because to escape 169 | BY YELLOW EASTERN PISTILS
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he must become like me, and in escaping he has taken my place.
After the ordeal we went back inside and it wasn't too long until the phone rang.
Lynne answered it to find that it was Joyce who was calling, an elderly woman who lived directly across the street and since had made the acquaintance of the three.
Joyce had a gift for Sara and Dave, so immediately they dressed themselves and ran across the street to meet her in her home. Lynne watched from the window as they entered her home.
Later, as I was passing Datura, I could hear Lynne humming from her studio, and I could have sworn I heard her say something in a language other than English. When I passed it again on my way back, she called me in.
"When you have time can you take my picture for the book?" "I'll just take it now."
"Okay, but do you think I should take it in the office with professional clothes or in here with street clothes?"
I thought about the question, then moved closer to the canvas she was painting on. "In here with street clothes." After she saw me looking at what she was painting, she told me that this was going to be the cover for the book, and finally she left to fix herself up.
The painting was, as she told me before at the airport, of a completed flower. It was in full blossom, made of the colors blue, green, red and yellow, and it was nice that its creator saw its conclusion. Its meaning, I suppose, eluded me then, but still, these things are all very subjective.
When Lynne returned her face was washed and she came back with a sun-yellow headscarf. She handed me her phone and stood next to her painting, and then smiled.
Looking at the picture to make sure it was framed right, I couldn't help but notice the mountain behind her and how well it fit into the picture.
I handed it to her and she approved. Rare for a woman to only take one picture of herself.
She went back to her painting but I took out my own phone, and while she wasn't paying attention I took another photo. I attempted to persuade her to take erotic photos, offering one hundred dollars for ten of them, but she politely declined my offer.
Perhaps a quarter of an hour had gone by and Dave and Sara still were not back.
Curious, I went to the same window Lynne had watched them from and when I peered out, I saw Sara and Dave on our side of the street talking to a person driving a white SUV. I went outside quickly and right then and there the SUV drove off.
I waved the children towards me, and when they got to me, I asked, "Who was that?"
"My mom's friend," Sara answered. "The one with small eyes?" "Yeah," Dave answered.
"What did she want?"
I angrily brought Sara and Dave to their mother and told them to tell her what they 170 | BY YELLOW EASTERN PISTILS
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told me. "Chloe said you said she was going to drive us to the store to get packed lunches for the space camp," Sara said.
After Sara and Dave left Datura, Lynne also became visibly angry and we looked like a pair of angry mouses. "Man, I'm losin' my fuckin' mind," she said, "How does she know about that field trip?"
What was running through my mind, and I'm sure Lynne's, was what if Chloe somehow got Dave and Sara to enter her car. What would he do with them? Is she dangerous?
"Fucking fat ass. If she was chasing me and I was running out of breath I would throw a piece of cake on the ground to distract her. Goddam lesbianca. Fuck that homosapien," I said.
During "The Night of the Hangman," Dave went into the basement and searched for a place to hide. Thinking Spooker would never search inside it, he awkwardly hid himself inside the dryer. He believed his assumption was incorrect when only a few minutes later he heard the music of doom. But as the music of doom traveled throughout the basement, it suddenly disappeared.
Sara herself had decided to hide under a clothed table in the kitchen. Upon second thought, however, she thought maybe it was too poor a hiding spot. Not hearing any music of doom, she left from underneath the table and ran across the living room toward the stairs and up to the second floor.
Lynne could hear Sara running up the stairs as she looked for a hiding spot in the home's office. Everywhere she tried to hide, there was a bit of light shining on it from the streetlight outside.
And suddenly, her heart sank when she heard the faint sound of haunting music growing louder. She ditched her plans of hiding in the home's office and instead hid away in a nearby bathroom's tub. Entering the tub, she could hear Spook walking down the long corridor and into the home office she had just abandoned.
When the sound shrunk, she got out of the tub and walked the way Spook had come, and turning, she opened the door to a closet to find Sara hiding in it. "This is my spot,"
Sara whispered, and Lynne shut the door softly, now deciding to go downstairs.
Sara had been stashed away in the closet when she heard the spooky music coming towards her again. She hoped that the music would pass, but it did not. It moved around, back and forth, until a louder sound was made downstairs.
Trying to move between furniture in the darkness, Lynne stumbled over something and fell into a pile of boxes. In fear, first she ran towards the basement, then decided against it and ran into the kitchen where she barely fit herself in between the refrigerator and the wall it rested against.
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At the same time, Dave had grown bored of hiding in the dryer, so he got out slowly and began moving about the basement. He smiled when he found a set of yellow walkie-talkies on the couch.
Going up the stairs he peered out and saw nor heard nothing, but as he ventured into the house he began to hear the sound of doom in the kitchen. He walked past with stealth, went up the stairs to the second floor, and by chance ran into Sara as she looked for her next hiding spot. Dave handed a walkie-talkie to Sara, made plans with her of foolery at the time of the alarms, and then they went their separate ways.
Dave then went into the closet of the room that now belonged to him, but didn't stay long. He hid the walkie-talkie in the closet and made it so if anyone was near-by, they would hear radio contact. Afterwards, he hid in the same tub Lynne had hid prior.
Sara could not find a new hiding spot, and when she again heard that music she heard before, she had no choice but to cache into Datura, a dangerously open hiding spot.
Listening carefully, she could hear the music move into Dave's room. She could hear it move all about. Assuming Dave did not have enough time to plant the walkie-talkie, though he did, she spoke into and warned Dave of Spookie being on the second floor, and as she did this the alarms for escape began to ring.
She wanted to make a run for it, but knew it was simply too dangerous. But suddenly a voice came through her walkie-talkie, "He's in the basement with me."
She opened the door to Datura and quickly walked toward the stairs where she heard nothing. She could feel the grasp of escape. She went down the stairs and into the kitchen, where by chance she saw her mother getting out of a wall. Only a moment after did they hear the sound of Spooky music coming towards them.
With grave desperation, they dashed for the backdoor, but suddenly The Hangman began laughing at them, startling Sara and causing her to trip and fall on the same item Lynne had tripped on before.
As Lynne went to save her child, The Hangman appeared over them, grabbing Lynne by the neck and her child by the arm.
Dave was the last one to leave the second floor to go down to the first floor, and hearing the commotion near the backdoor, he took another route that led into the basement where he escaped his own hanging. As he opened the door to exit the basement, he saw a bright light outside as his eyes had been so used to the darkness of the home.
When he stepped out into it, at first it blinded him, then he looked upward not only to find a shining streetlight, but a black and white bird, perhaps a magpie, atop it. Dave stared at it as it rested on what seemed to be a spade-like top, and for the first time in his life, a concept of reincarnation or some form of rebirth coupled with the knowledge of life and death started to dance around in his mind, and this is when he began to wonder.
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Chapter 73
THE MIDNIGHT TRAIN TO BALTIMORE
2:2:8:73
“...If it ain't here already, it ain't comin'...”
MORE than eight years ago, I had this dream. I am on a train at night headed to a place I am uncertain of. Suddenly, the train slows to a halt and the operator informs us that a rail has been damaged and will cause a delay.
As the train stood there for what may have been fourty-five minutes, I observed the passengers on the train as I tried to decide and pen the final line to my nearly completed novel, which was titled "The Dark Testament."
My going looking from passenger to passenger ceased when my eyes came upon a man inspecting coins with a piece of glass. I saw him marvel particularly at one coin which may have been a rare, and as he turned it again and again, I noticed that it was a two-cent coin; on one side I saw a happy theater mask and on the other a sad theater mask.
I thought to myself, "It is much easier to achieve a happy death than a happy life. If life is unhappy enough, a happy death is inevitable," and realized I had my final line.
"Ladies and gentlemen this is your train operator, we are currently experiencing difficulties as one of the rails have been damaged. Please bare with us as we handle this situation, thank you."
It was morning and we were going to Emily's apartment to drop Sara and Dave off with her for Spring Break when we received that message from the train conductor.
Stopped at Leavenworth, I began to think of that train dream from more than eight years ago, which then led me to remember the night before in which Sara showed me how one of her train rails for Windy Nights into Dreams... had cracked and how it took me four or five minutes to fix it.
What I have observed is that in all three worlds; the dream world, the real world and Sara's Windy Nights world, trains are used as a means for travel, which has led me to believe that some concepts are better than others.
The idea behind natural selection is that some species are more likely to thrive and reproduce than other species in certain environments, and are therefore naturally selected to endure, but it seems this idea does not only extend to biology.
I believe a type of natural selection also occurs within systems in the universe, or to put it in another way, within concepts used by our universe. As an example, I will go back to the use of trains.
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ideal for travel. A train, obviously, but this concept is also used in the human body for veins and arteries; it is used in celestial arrangement for dark flow; it is used in technology for cords; it is used in world building for roads; it is used in buildings for plumbing.
Another example is a "skin" like concept that seems to be ideal for protection, containment, division and a few other things. You can find it in cell-membrane, the Earth's ozone layer, the plastic of your water bottle, the walls of your home.
The concept of a "central nervous system" can be found in many places. Foremost, your brain which controls many of your body's processes, but also in military operations that are lead by one high-ranking commanding officer; it can be found in government leaders who dictate laws and regulations; it can be found inside every cell as a "cell nucleus."
The concept of "mutation" is one I deem an old-timer, as I believe it has been around since the early universe. Mutation has literally invaded every aspect of everything from biology to language. In language you can find mutations through dialects, in biology, well, I'm assuming you know this by now. You can find mutations in social behavior, one might even consider alternate realities to be a mutation of a current reality. You can also find mutation in the fact that not everything is the same.
The concept of "opposites" can too be found in many places. Newton's third law of motion, political parties that seems to exist just to oppose one another, one-half of the human body literally mirrors the other half.
The natural selection of concepts in universe systems seems to be trial and error conducted by the universe itself. This is how the universe learns what concepts work where, how they work, and why they work, and after this phase it will use the ideal concept over and over and in many other areas, whether it be at a microscopic level or a cosmic level. There is no reason to deny the possibility that the universe, too, is evolving like something alive.
It took forty-five minutes for the train to begin moving again. After it did, lines popped into my mind. "The moment Lucifer picks you, you surely are doomed, and there is no way out, of that God forsaken room." The lines, for some reason, made me think of Jack.
Suddenly a man walked into the train while on his cellular device, "If it ain't here already, it ain't comin'," he said over the phone. I wondered what he may have meant, but I had absolutely no context to the conversation. Perhaps a package delivery? No, he would have said "there" instead of "here." Perhaps that means it is not an object but something abstract. But at the same time he may have been referring to a larger geographical location, such as our state, which then would make "here" more suitable 174 | THE MIDNIGHT TRAIN TO BALTIMORE
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than "there." "This is Union Drive..." Now it's possible that it could be tangible or intangible, which leaves me where I began because that means it can be virtually anything known to man. And to think that...
Suddenly Sara pushed at my shoulder, telling me we were at our stop. I had completely wandered off into my mind... Sorry, I drift. Sometimes when I've had a few...
That's why I like to think alone.
"You got your metro?," I asked her. "Yeah." She must have been excited for her new game. It's funny. Metro is slang for your ticket out of a place you want to leave for good or slang for luggage. Both literal luggage and the metaphorical baggage someone carries when leaving a place, because many escape through riding one.
568-8196: ...They're going to keep delaying it until everyone just forgets.
436-7734: You're probably right.
568-8196: A statue of Pauli Murray would go a long way in reminding people of those days.
436-7734: You gotta keep harassing them until they send it.
568-8196: If we had more things like this, maybe we'd get a change.
436-7734: You wanna know what I think about it all, honestly? About the statue, about revolution.
568-8196: What?
436-7734: Well, if it ain't here already, it ain't comin'...
When we entered Emily's apartment she greeted us and then went into her bedroom.
Lynne had Sara and Dave shower one after another, and so for a moment I used their computer and came across pictures of Tao and May-ling.
May, more visibly pregnant than ever, was standing in between Tao and an old book of historical illusions. To the side of her also a dog. I remember Tao telling me he hated dogs. Either he changed or he became a liar. I looked at May once more. I suppose the art of moving pieces on a chess board is a conceptual strategy skill to be used among various institutions.
After Sara finished showering, she went into Emily's room and then came out with a computer game that Emily had purchased for her. I got up to let her play it, noticing how the box art for the game was of a magenta city skyline.
I left to sit on the couch which was strangely vacant considering it was a small apartment that currently housed five people, but I soon heard my name shouted. When I went back to Sara, she asked me what was on the computer screen. "You have to install it," I said. "What does that mean?"
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I took the computer to the living room and sat on the couch again, placing it on the table before us as Sara sat down next to me still wondering what the word "install" meant in the context of computers.
We went through various screens and I turned on the television as I asked her to fill out a form about her identity. She put on her glasses and entered the three-dimensional virtual world.
When she was done I configured the game's settings for her and initiated the installation process which seemed to take about forty-five minutes. As it installed, it displayed a lot of concept art, and one I found interesting was of a train subway going through a city. This game is going to be her escape.
During the last four or five minutes of the installation, we realized we were the only ones awake in the apartment, and as the game started up, I realized that she had incorrectly put in her name. "You put 'Parker Sara' as your name." "I did?"
The introduction to the game had an interesting tagline of "...The world is indeed out there, but most of it is in your mind." I saw that the name of the computer game was
"Worlds into Dreams," and that it was published by Mastermind Toys, the same company that produced the "Nights into Dreams..." products.
For the better part of an hour, I watched her play as she began building a snowy city that had the game audio of a very windy winter. When she was about a third of the way finished with it, and after she had people walking around, a blizzard took hold of the city.
Fascinated by it, she exited the top-down view and assumed the point of view of a city resident, then toggled a soft melody, then walked throughout the whole city through the blizzard.
She became lost in it, lost in its phantasm, lost in the arms of Morpheus; and though around her was the calm, it was in her mind that was the storm.
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Chapter 74
TAP(P)ED
2:2:8:74
CONNOR sat and waited in an interrogation room for Steve Jefferson to play back the audio he told him would get him deported. "I have news not good. Okay? Ava say she think someone is tapping phone. Why she think that? I don't know why, she just is paranoid now. Say she don't want to do it anymore. I'll talk to her, tell her nothing to worry about. You think police can be monitoring phone calls? I don't know, but we need to be careful more. How? From now on, text message only, and no more name. Okay, I call you."
Steve Jefferson suddenly stopped playback and laughed. "She was right, I'll give her that. Where did she go Connor?" "I want lawyer." "A lawyer's not gonna do you any good," Jefferson continued, and then played back another segment, "This is how we work, you find bank I find women."
Jefferson then went and grabbed a few sheets of paper and placed it in front of Connor, and Connor began to read through them. "8I have been try to reCh her she not answer my calls Me to. This is not go9d When you have chance I want you contract bank pretend to be husband and ask of loan was confirmed and received Okay that is good ide Idea* Let me kno what they say. I must go now I will. Goodbye." "I said I want lawyer."
"Tell us where Liam is, and anyone else who was a part of this bank fraud." "Lawyer." Jefferson leaves the room, threatening to begin deportation procedures.
At sundown a cool breeze came into my apartment from the living room window.
Stumbling around for a reason, I heard a voice come through a yellow walkie-talkie that stood on my windowsill. "Spooker, do you read me?," Dave said.
I went over to take hold of it and responded, "What do you want?" "We are at Gun Ho's house, his dad wants me to ask you if you can help him put something on top of his car."
I went to the window and saw an armoire standing next to a taxi. Doesn't he have a brother or something? Fuck.
As I was walking into the first floor I saw Suhm Guy exiting his apartment, and when he saw me he smiled. On the way to the exhibition he told me he purchased the piece of furniture from the black market, saw that the owners were searching for it, and so now he was on his way to selling it out of his life.
With great difficulty we lifted it onto the top of his taxi, and I held it as he taped it down to the top of his taxi. When it seemed in firm position enough, I let go and watched as he tapped the tape all the way through to make sure it would stay taped.
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After this, I followed him back into his apartment as he had invited me to do so. In there I found Lynne, Sara and Dave, and also the entirety of his own family, his wife and his five children.
The living room was crowded to the doors with a set of tapestried furniture, and it wasn't long until we sat down to join Lynne and Chin. She looked at me with suspecting eyes. I have been uncomfortable just twice in my life and the second time was that evening, so everything as I remember it was misty.
I seem to recall that for perhaps ten minutes, we spoke of a man who was recently charged for the possession of child pornography, but I suspect this topic of conversation was a ruse to out me. Nevertheless, it didn't work, and suddenly the children of the household came roaring to us ending the visit to the Guys. Or the Sons. I'm not sure what their surname is.
The four of us walked up the stairs to our floor and I saw them off. "Smell ya later," I said to Lynne. She laughed, but she doesn't get the joke. Which reminds me of her scratching during fornication.
I walked into my apartment. I've never believed that train tracks can electrocute you, I think it's a scam. Lynne left the images she scanned at the library here. What is that? A rollie-pollie?
As the sun continued to go down, I went into the composition notebook room and watched it. Two shelves in here now. I wonder, though, how many dreams. How many deep dreams. Is that a contradiction? Can one dream deeply? Or can one only think deeply? As my nigga Dave be sayin', "Everything's cool in the mind of a gangsta, 'cause gangsta-ass niggas think deep, up three-sixty-five ayo twenty-four-seven, 'cause real gangsta-ass niggas don't sleep."
Walkie #1: Spookie, do you read me?
Walkie #2: What, Sara?
Walkie #1: Come here real quick, I want to show you something on the game. If I try to bring it there the computer might freeze.
Walkie #2: Hold on.
By the time I got there the computer had frozen anyway, as it has done so many times before, and she said if she could get it to happen again she would show me. And so instead I ventured into Lynne's room, where the night had been full except for a streak of one light. Almost everyday you fall upon my waking eyes, inviting and inciting me to rise, and through the window in the wall come streaming in on sunlight wings, a million 178 | TAP(P)ED
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bright ambassadors of morning.
As I got closer and closer to the déijà moonlight, I came to notice she was looking at pictures on my computer. They were of the PaintDrive tour we took, a set of photographs we each captured while on the ride, and from these we could pick which ones we wanted to turn into full-size paintings for a small fee.
I watched as she scrolled through some of them. I saw the man tired of death, the drunkard, the prostitute. I saw the glowing statue, the Paradise Port bridge, the airplane in the sky. Then I saw something very interesting.
It was a photograph of the painted tunnel at the beginning of the tour. It was a distant shot that I don't remember taking, so it must have been Lynnette. I will admit that at first glance, it looked strange to me, as if the computer had generated a mistaken image, which is also why Lynne sighed when she saw it, but upon a closer inspection I saw something else.
"The entry to the tunnel is glitched," she said, but I told her that if she looked at it with the right kind of eyes, it looked like a portal. Her eyes focused more on the image, and then suddenly she saw what I saw.
As we stood there, in front of the portal under a dark night lit by streetlamps, we pondered whether we should go through it or not. We wondered the dangers of where it might take us. But eventually, we both made the decision to go through together.
After we had gone through the portal, we found ourselves in the afterworld. It was much like the normal world, except it had a palette of gray and brown and pale blue about it, and always there seemed to be an impending storm approaching.
We immediately realized that after stepping through the portal, we were located right in front of our apartment building. We looked at the gray skies that wanted soon to cry, then the pale blue atmosphere that crept around us, then brought our attention to our feet and looked at brown zinnias that appeared without life.
Lynne kneeled down before them, remembering that she had planted them many years ago, and this is when we both realized that we were in the realm of the dead. It made sense; the constant impending storm and the palette of gray and brown and pale blue; suffering and potential are not proportional, it is not necessarily true that the more you suffer the greater your potential, one can suffer greatly and amount to nothing, even Jesus was born with two arms and two legs, instead one must learn how to suffer wisely and remember that; life and death is but allegory for war and peace, and "those who did well in war earn the right to begin doing well in peace."
Could it be that the afterlife is part of Satan's Playground? Oh, excuse me. I have not told you about Satan's Playground yet.
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In basically all projects or creations, there are portions that are not meant to be discovered. For example, in the final product of a video game, a developer may have created certain areas in the video game that are not to be used in the final product, or at least not to be seen by the gamers who play it. These areas are usually just excess and deemed unnecessary by the developer for the final product, or perhaps they were used as areas to conduct tests.
This does not only apply to video games; you can find the same concept in, say, painting, where after a painter makes a mistake, they cover it up with paint so beholders never know it is there.
Satan, who had a hand in the creation of our universe, had a "playground." This playground contained all the things we as human beings are unable to explore as the
"user." But I believe somehow, perhaps through evolution, we have learned methods to explore those areas without even realizing it. Like glitching in a video game to find that hidden area or scratching off paint on a painting to see that hidden mistake, I believe we have learned to dream to explore Satan's playground.
Have you ever dreamed of being on an abandoned ghostship? And maybe billions of years ago Satan created that very ghostship. Or perhaps it was an abandoned power plant site, abandoned by everyone and everything that was once there.
Those places are mistakes, excess, garbage, unnecessary, but at the same time they can be quite interesting. And when a person makes a mistake, we chastise them. When the universe makes a mistake, it can create something beautiful. Let us understand that
"mistakes are the portals to discovery."
When we were transported back into our world, I watched as Lynne left her current occupance and walked over to the window. My eyes wandered though, and then fixed on a fly on the wall. Soonafter, in the corner of my eye I see Lynne's window blinds move, as if she was checking to see if someone was there. I believe she was peeking for Chloe and her presence, but instead she found Jasmin and Felicity and their future. And who knows what is in store for them? Just think happy thoughts... And what have you got at the end of the day? What have you got to take away? A bottle of whiskey and a new set of lies. Blinds on the window and a pain behind the eyes.
Though Ava had been on her way back to France, she decided not to complete her voyage and instead stayed in the United Kingdom where a man suggested she become an escort. The opportunity seemed interesting to Ava, for she was a woman of opportunity herself.
In a bathroom on the second floor of a fronted building, she was putting on her makeup and getting prettied for her first appointment with a man named Harry Tipper.
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Her employer warned her that after the party, he may want sex, but this did not bother Ava.
Outside the bathroom could be heard two men trying to cover up a messy crime. "Run tap water on the VHS tapes, that will destroy them better," one of the men said to the other. And after applying her makeup in full, she pecked her lips together and then took a napkin and kissed within it her Pandora.
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Chapter 75
A BASE AND NAMELESS BROOD
2:2:8:75
CHLOE and Bob, two employees currently working at a meat factory, were packaging various varieties of meat packages when a discussion about gloryholes struck.
"So you just put your dick in the hole and there is someone on the other side?," Bob asked. "Yeah, basically." "That sounds strange."
"Well, Bob, it's all about the mystery of what's going to happen. You might get sucked, you might get fucked, you might get" - "But I just don't understand it, do you ever even meet the other person?," Bob asked. "That's the whole point, it's all anonymous!"
Chloe continued, "Did you ever have a pen-pal in third grade?" "Sure." "Well it's alot like that but for adults. You communicate intimately with the other person but you are allowed to stay anonymous." Bob paused, thought for a moment after putting down a package of meat, then said aloud, "Penis-pal." Chloe laughed, seeing he was finally understanding her brand of humor.
"So what's up with you and Lynne," Bob later asked Chloe while they were both clocking out. As the two walked to their vehicles Chloe became visibly upset as she talked about Spooker and how she knew he was abusing Lynne. Not too long into the short discussion Bob saw how worked up she was becoming, and ultimately encouraged her to drive to Lynne's apartment building and confront him once and for all. With the high excitement Chloe had been feeling just mentioning Lynne and the narrator, she decided to do so, and was fixed on the idea that this would either be her last encounter with Lynne, or it would be the start of something pretty and new.
The sound of loud music was playing in Chloe's car as she drove down the street towards Lynne's residence. Her small eyes, like never before, had grown wide and distinguished. And as it were, just at sundown, she arrived at Chase street then at the 8038 building. She breathed one last large breath and exited her car, walked toward her unrequited love's home, and was prepared to confront the enemy.
Walkie #1: Spookie, come in Spookie?
Walkie #2: What?
Walkie #1: Mom made hot chocolate, do you want us to save you a cup?
Walkie #2: Yeah I'm 'bout to be other there. Over and out.
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had begun. She had stated that she wanted to add his poem to her collection of poems, to which he said "absolutely not." Eventually, after a while, she convinced him to let her do so so long as no credit was given to his name.
While looking over her artwork on his computer, she scrolled through and the narrator noticed a familiar piece of artwork; a penciled in drawing of a wolf overlooking a cliff.
Lynne later left the bedroom, the last rays of déijà sunlight going with her. From the kitchen she could be heard yelling throughout the apartment, asking whose turn it was to throw out the trash. Last time it was Dave, before that Sara, and before that Lynne herself, and so the narrator found himself outside in the parking lot throwing away waste.
Before Spook could get to the trash, however, he noticed a white SUV parked on the street, and it wasn't long before he heard Chloe speaking.
"You like hitting women?," she said from not too far away. Spook turned around, trash in hand, then settled it on the ground as Chloe continued to approach through the cars.
"What?," Spook replied. "Are you deaf? I asked you if you like hitting women?"
"No..." Chloe took the final sip of her beverage and threw it at the narrator from a distance as she continued to approach him.
"Hit me, see what happens. I'll beat the shit out you you little man. I don't even know if you're a man." The narrator sighed, "If you keep talking like a bitch, I'm gonna slap you like a bitch." "Come on, do it," Chloe got closer, "I'm begging you."
Now only a few inches away from Spooker, the audio level between the two had risen to the point of disturbance and was on the topic of legalities. It did not take long for Amy Steinbrenner, who lived on the third floor of the apartment building, to take notice from her window.
The next to take notice came from the ground floor, who was Dam Son, who called over his brother, Gun Ho, who drew the attention of his father, Suhm Guy, and the three of them watched in anticipation as Chloe grabbed the arm of the narrator and locked it into hers.
Felicity had been cooking with her stepmother, Jasmin, when the two heard the commotion in the parking lot themselves, and drawing themselves to the window they saw and heard the argument going on outside. "I know her, she's fucking crazy," Jasmin told her stepdaughter, and then went immediately to phone the authorities.
Tian was also a spectator. He was indeed so until he left his apartment and went outside and began walking toward the quarrel, however his attempts to break up the fight were viciously targeted by Chloe, who now had a better hold on Spooker's arm.
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Becca and her brother, who were actually the first to see what was going on, watched from the third floor as their mother talked to her jailed husband, Connor.
The next to see what was going on were Mike and Deanna, who drove into the parking lot after eating dinner at a restaurant. Exiting the vehicle Mike made attempts to learn of the situation but received no intelligence.
The event had become louder and drew in more people from surrounding apartment buildings, even Olya had been watching from her window but did not realize it was her neighbor and friend in the fight.
Ironically, the last to know of the fight outside was Lynne, who looked out of her window after wondering what was taking the narrator so long. When she saw the white SUV and then Chloe locking the arm of the narrator, she immediately put on pants and then ran outside. This prompted both Sara and Dave to look out of the same window to see what she saw outside.
"Let go of him!," she yelled as she approached the two. Attempting to get inbetween them and force them apart, Lynne was repeatedly unsuccessful and in her deep frustration she suddenly slapped the left cheek of Chloe. Chloe was first stunned, then shocked, then angry, disappointed and betrayed all at once.
F. Kane II, the young son of Charles F. Kane, was watching television when he heard the loud slap but did not see it. When he got to the window, he saw a larger woman push to the ground a much smaller woman. Watching like the others in anticipation, he saw another man, whom the larger woman was also holding as if in a lock by the arm, shove the large woman aggressively into a taxi behind her, shattering the driver-seat window and sending glass everywhere. Only seconds later did he see Suhm Guy run out of the apartment building, and at the same time, see the police arrive into the parking lot.
Chloe had been horribly injured and was bleeding from her right elbow but had managed to remain locked with the narrator and would not release him. They wrestled to the ground as the police ran out of the vehicles, and this is when the narrator, after a series of gropings near the waist, made the startling discovery that Chloe was not fully a woman but infact part man.
It took two police officers to finally separate the two, and the narrator, more surprised than scared or angered, wondered in his mind if Chloe's attraction to Lynne would be considered heterosexual or homosexual.
After the pair were separated and put in handcuffs, each police officer took an account of each individual, including those who had witnessed the event. It was at this moment that it was overheard and learned by Deanna that Chloe was born Joey and was in the process of a sex-change.
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After all was settled, both participants were released and allowed to go about their evening, Chloe refusing medical attention. Instead, Chloe sought to find a neighbor of Lynne, Deanna, whom she gave a letter to give to Lynne.
The letter's intention was set on making Lynne realize that her partner was in fact a child of base men; and no more than a child of no name.
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Chapter 76
ROSE FROM THE DEAD
2:2:8:76
SO many of the things we as a society associate with the bad are not exactly amoral.
There is not necessarily anything amoral about a man who drinks, is covered in tattoos, does drugs and smokes. But there is indeed something amoral about a man who has a deep hatred for the entire human race. A man for all seasons who hates his fellow man.
I do not drink, I have no tattoos, I don't do drugs and I do not smoke, but if a man who did do all those things pointed me out in a crowd and said "He's the bad guy," he would not be entirely wrong.
Last night, I had a dream. For many a year now I had traveled with a man named Jesus and I suspected him to be the one they would come to call Messiah.
He spoke of things natured in the goods and evils, and because he had begun to worry the state, a bounty was placed upon his head. The state accused him of corrupting the minds of the people.
Jesus and I had been walking through a small part of the city when a bounty hunter had struck. Just before we were discovered, a city resident cried out and pointed in our direction, "There is Jesus, the bad man!"
A man riding a white horse made his way toward us, bow and arrow in hand, and after he had taken aim, he struck the Christ directly in the heart.
I carried the dying body of Jesus as we were driven out of the land. I must have carried him for miles as I beared witness his suffering; the bow had pierced his heart.
And after we found our way into a wood, he made no more a sound.
I laid him out onto the ground and removed the bow, and it was then that I saw the mortal wound. I do admit the first night I was in denial and believed he was still somehow alive. The second night these beliefs were wearing dim, and I found myself kneeling beside his body, praying and crying. I was in such agony and grief, for I wondered why I had been allowed to live for ninety years and still had not found the Messiah. Would I die soon never having found him? I had been searching for more than thirty years now and have failed.
In my waking life the state's attack on Jesus made me think of Musashi and his saying of "If you want change, don't buy an education, buy a gun, 'because bullets have the right of way.'" It also reminded me of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, of their respective approaches to their goals, being progressive and aggressive methods.
It is ironic, or is it not, that the most powerful people in the world created democracy?
Your right to vote is a ruse. An illusion that your decisions matter. I don't believe this conspiracy because someone said it to me, I believe it because if I were the one in power, 186 | ROSE FROM THE DEAD
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it's exactly what I would do to stay in power. Wouldn't you?
Politicians can defend the forgotten, speak up for them, be their voice, run their campaigns on helping them, tell the world they are doing it for them, but at the end of the day, where do they live? Where are they buried? Certainly not alongside the people who voted for them. The people who put them in power.
On the third night, I began to dig a grave. I took the deceased body and carried it gently into the grave and laid it to rest. When I was out of it, I began filling the grave, and once finished I gave one final prayer and began to walk away from it.
Only a few feet further and not much time after, approaching an overgrown tree, I heard the ground behind me make a hollowed sound, and turning around to look behind me, I saw that the grave I dug and filled was beginning to rise. A lot of dirt slowly rising into the air as if here there was no gravity, and I was shocked, confused, curious, but most of all, enraptured.
After the dirt had seemingly vanished into thin air, and after I had gain my composure, I walked slowly to the graveside, and there was much fear in my heart as I looked inside; but my fears were vanquished when I saw the Lord standing in his own grave, the mortal wound still visible, but he very much alive.
I looked at him and he at me, and with disappointment in his eyes he said to me, "O
ye of little faith." For many a year now I thought he was teaching me how to live, but now I understand he was teaching me how to die.
I helped him out of the grave and he smiled when he was back with me, and it was at that moment, by his fruit, that I knew him.
After I had gotten the keys I went downstairs to check the mail. There on the bottom right corner of a piece of shoppers' mail I saw that familiar phrase, "Have you seen me?"
It was the picture of a woman named Loretta. The sight of her had something of a foreshadow to it, in the same way quitting an addiction cold turkey might have to a person. I'm not sure how I could really explain it. It feels like there is something I know now that I couldn't have known before.
After a moment Dave came alongside me and opened his own mailbox. “My mom has a letter about you.” “What?” “That fat lady gave it to her.”
When I entered into their apartment after David I addressed Lynne and asked her where the letter was. She assured me it was nothing and requested that I not read it, but I walked into her room and toward her drawer and found where it Dave said it would be and I began reading it.
After I was done, I looked up and saw an article about Jack on the computer detailing how both he and the pedestrian he hit were both intoxicated at the time of the accident, but that image had little effect on me next to the effect done to me by Chloe's letter to 187 | ROSE FROM THE DEAD
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Lynne.
“Why did you keep it? Why didn't you throw it away?” “I don't know.” It's because you think it's true.” It went on like that.
I walked out of their apartment and into mine.
Probably every word of Chloe's letter was true. I don't know. He is incapable of loving you? What gives her the right? She doesn't know shit about me. Or about Lynne, or about anything concerning us and the matters between us. He is not good for people?
What is she? We both need eachother, and either way, she will never be able to move on from me. She needs me. If you stay with him you will die? What does that even mean?
Fuck. Her.
Why does this remind me of father so much. No question mark. Of his obscurity and his ties to con-men. Is she saying that I am like him? How would she even know, though, she has never even met the man.
But those who are self-absorbed seldom know they are self-absorbed. How can I know that I am a good judge of myself? My mind has indeed always been clouded, and perhaps Chloe gave me exactly what I deserved.
Is it possible that my intuition all these years have been wrong? Maybe I am wrong about how I have chosen to live my life. Was the root planted all those years ago the beginning of something somber? If yes, then while I thought I have been learning how to live, I have actually been learning how to die.
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Chapter 77
THE CITY OF DREAMS
2:2:8:77
DICE had been named the victor of our match, and yet he seemed dissatisfied with either the outcome or myself, or perhaps both. As the game table disappeared and the room transitioned, I could tell there were a few more things he wanted me to know.
“This game,” he began, “Hazard, did you understand its assertion on life?” “How do you mean?” “Did you understand that your choice or plan in life, the main, while it can be constructive, it can also eventually become your downfall, and that you should learn to take chances?” The metaphor went over my head, and when Dice saw that I only just understood that, his face became even more disappointed with a hint of anger.
“I have a riddle for you, Dawn, but I will tell you the answer first because you seem to prefer answers to questions. The answer is the great abstintion. The question, or the riddle, is this; it exists everywhere, there is no safe haven from it, there is no solution for it, it is not tangible in any way, it affects everyone in unique ways, because it cannot be seen many doubt its existence, some have associated it with forgiveness and others have associated it with vengeance, some have claimed that it is an exit while others claim it is an entrance, the poor say the rich have the solution for it but the rich say the poor are the problem itself, revolutionaries say that it is psychological warfare invented by the media, at least a dozen claim it has its origin in a psychiatric ward while fewer claim it has its beginnings in the skies, a scientist said it only affects the mind, a pastor said it will destroy the soul, and a man with no home said it will kill the entire world.”
When the room was complete in transition, the door to the outside world was opened and Dice stood up to leave. As he walked away, I ruminated in the exhaustive darkness.
If the Christ and the Antichrist both do not have free will, neither are significant in parable. If one is fated to do good, one should not be rewarded; if one is fated to do evil, one should not be punished. And I have gathered now that Dice has been given reign over our freed world of villains.
“Where will I find Dusk?,” I asked him as he got to the door. He turned around and spoke to me, “His name is Duncan Harharwood. You will find him concealed in plain sight. Go to him, he will teach you how to throw the dice. I'm going to leave now. You will not see me again unless it is my desire.”
As Dice disappeared from the door and out of my sight, I felt a mysterious fear throughout my being, as if I had been responsible for letting evil escape once more to reign over the unbecoming world.
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up, though, when I heard a door opening in the back of the transitioned room.
I could hear it calling my name, so I walked over to it, only to be surprised by a black shade near light. Though I had been told stories about it, this was the first time I had ever actually met it.
“You are filled with the spirit of sa ki mal, therefore there are no longer any more heroes. Are you ready?” “Yes, but I will need a push.”