Anthology Complex VI by M.B. Julien - HTML preview
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⸿ “Behold, a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.”
It was two hours later that we had the rider of the black horse imprisoned in our camp.
Sterling, Stephanie, John, Gary, Ramix, we had all devised a plan to kidnap the rider of the black horse in the midnight hours. And with a successful kidnapping, we removed the hood upon his face but soon learned the powerful human ability of hyperbole. We had been told legends of the four horseman and of their supernaturality, but what we uncovered was no more than an ordinary man who was perhaps suffering from some sort of psychosis.
Nonetheless, we interrogated the rider of the black horse, and while he himself had not lived up to the legend, what he told us was mystical. He told us that these were the end times, and soon the Earth would enter into the haunted realm of the dead, where all life would abandon it through sword, through hunger, through beasts of the Earth. The 171 | THE HAUNTING OF WOODMIRE
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coming world, he said, would come toward us like a scythe through a dark field.
Furthering my walk I soon saw the Paradise Port bridge in the distance and witnessed the sight of the subway train that rode alongside it.
When I finally returned to my apartment, there was Lynne who asked me what I thought. I told her I liked it and wouldn't mind moving there. And so it was set.
For a while we both moved through my apartment, she mostly cleaning and myself mostly taping boxes. When we were done, we looked at each other with unconvincing eyes. Denizens of Chase, it is in all of us, for we are all animals of and in the animal kingdom, where taboo feeds on the last of our desires.
She had nothing on but a very short and lovely denim skirt and white panties underneath. On her ears were large hoop earrings.
It started with black heels, then black stockings, and then a yellow strap that found itself attracted to a yellow garter belt. I also noticed she had very strong red lipstick on.
She had on a small light blue top which opened to show her breasts. Towards the bottom were only nylons and tan heels.
On her head was a sunhat and around her waist very lacy blue panties that were outlined in a flapping silver. When she turned around, I noticed she had on the glasses of a deviant teacher.
Something like a gold belt around her neck. Then a jet black wig. Then hanging gold earrings. Then a sleeping gown with sleeves that went down to her feet. But the gown was opened for me to see everything.
All in blue. The outfit was almost fishnet, but the holes were very small. Blue stockings that were connected by blue straps to a blue top, and blue elbow length gloves that were opened at the hands.
She had on jeans and pulled them down to reveal her black panties. Also was on her a brown bra and a yellow shirt. What stuck out most was the short-haired brunette wig.
Soon I gave her a Grant and a Jackson, and soon she dressed into Déijàs Are Forever and then walked away from me and back to Grantson street...
Watching her as I did she disappearing, I noticed that my body had decided to spend more blood on my brain than my genitals. With this revelation, I also noticed that the most recent outfit worn and adorned by the fabulous Lynnette did not excite me as her first. And I thought to myself, laughing, “Isn't that how it works?”
To everything there is the truth, and too to everything there is the fantastic. A heightened evaluation that over time diminishes. And thinking more on this fact, I realized there was one thing that in my time of being did not diminish, in fact and in stead, the fantasticness increased. What has been reliable to me for as long as I have lived is the act of thinking, the gaining of knowledge, and the blessing of wisdom.
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J uly 29 th
The oldest city. The oldest industry. Sex. I am rising through the ranks in the escort game. The richer the date, the more I have to take. Yadia and I had our biggest score yesterday. It was so big that the both of us decided to buy guns to protect ourselves, just incase. This was the seventh date, or arrangement, I've had with this man and I was able to clay his keys without him having a clue. Yadia did her thing and we robbed the house very efficiently. Upon entering his home, I found out that his surname was Pryce, which also meant he was a liar and must have had something to hide. For me, I don't have a personal life. Everything is business. While looking through the home for hidden valuables, I found locked away many pictures of naked adolescent boys. I soon then found that these were his wife's pictures. Men have sides, women have secrets.
Furthermore on the perverseness of the wife was a book I found tittied “Eevee” and it must have been missing its first page because it began abruptly. It looked important, so I took it, and then began reading it later a few hours to find that it was about a man who had relations with a canine. It was a lewd book but something happened in the beginning of the book that was strange. There was some trouble on the highway, which I think must have echoed the highway sinkhole tragedy that happened here recently. I thought it was strange, that was all. What a horrible way to die, in the blazes of hell... When they find my body under all the wreckage of the cars, I hope that day I would have decided to wear my favorite red dress. And I hope they bury me in that red dress. Not customary, I know, but I never have been... You destroyed all the virtues the Lord gave to you.
F
ebruary 22 nd
, 1980
I dyed my hair red. People who are worth your judgment will never judge you. My life has been reduced to hospitals. No more are the runways. No more are the commercials and music videos and cameos. I always knew that my industry was superficial, so it shouldn't come as a shock to me that I am now too ugly to be a part of it.
And it doesn't. Sometimes the universe is subtle that way. I've moved on, I guess. Now I am a lonely little man who spends his time between a hospital and a studio apartment on 42nd street. I am getting old. Sicker. Often I feel like the current month will be my last.
Some days I cannot even look myself in the mirror because of the horrid look this disease has brought upon my body. I spent too many nights partying. I spent too many nights being reckless. And now I am paying for it. A week ago, a pastor came into my room and asked to speak to me. If this was 10 years ago, I would have asked him what he wanted 173 | THE HAUNTING OF WOODMIRE
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and then said no. I was bigger than God. But ten years later I am as fragile as a butterfly.
For a long time I had no one to talk to, so I allowed the pastor in and we began talking about things to asses my situation. It was the first time I prayed since I was a child. He came back today and we prayed again. I didn't ask God why this was happening to me, because I already had all those answers. But I asked him if he would give me just a little bit more time. More time to see all the things I have missed in life. I asked for more time with my family, with my friends, and even though they don't come by to visit me much, I know that given enough time I will see them again. I plan to pray more. To pray more often, even. And I hope that God will forgive me for all of my sins done in ignorance.
CAM00183: In front of the church could be read the sign which reads “Don't pay heed to temptation, For his hands are so cold.” Several days of monitoring this camera would eventually show the conclusion of a church session.
CAM50413: A view of the library could be seen as cars drive past.
CAM44761: A set of twins wearing medical masks and playing freeze tag with their friends.
CAM71230: A woman walking her small dog, which appears to have a silver tooth, stops to talk with strangers, all wearing gloves and medical masks.
CAM11894: A man wearing a mask with two faces, one on each end, pranks passerbys by jumping out and scaring them as they walk past him. Victims are shown scared, and then laughing.
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Chapter 95
CAVE MYTHOLOGY: MESSAGES!
2:3:10:95
AFTER finding the tools necessary to complete his final job as a carpenter, the narrator left the parents' home and began his trek back to his apartment. Reaching his apartment parking lot and walking through it, he heard a sound come from behind him. It was one man yelling toward another man, and from the look of it, they were friends who had not seen eachother in a long time. The narrator, still looking, became captivated at the view; not of the two gentlemen, but of what appeared behind them. Standing just in front of the apartment door and looking forward, he made note of the strange image in the sky; it was a cloud in the form of a perfect circle.
I stood in front of my apartment building, looking forward and I made a mental note that this would be the last time I would see the train station before me in this way. Only a few years ago I remember the apartment building that used to be in its place and a morning in which I witnessed a perfect circle in the form of a cloud. It is a memory that I have not really forgotten, for whatever that is worth.
As I stood there I saw the storage unit owner pull into the parking lot in his truck, and out walked he with a duo of friends. They spoke to me briefly, moved the truck closer into a rightful position, and we all went on packing things from my apartment into the moving truck.
When everything was removed from it and the apartment empty, I looked at it one last time. Then I left, entered the back of the truck, sat down, and held on to something in the dark for the bumpy ride.
Along the way to my new home, I thought of the idea of the deather ghost. It is the idea that though some people may leave a place, they too leave behind a ghost of themselves in that same location. They speak of it on terms of a person dying spiritually, or changing spiritually, and leaving that place a new person but their old person remaining there for eternity.
One example was of a renowned film director and the renowned film he created. It was a film in the context of the Vietnam war and the film itself was produced in the jungles of Vietnam. It was said the film was so terribly difficult to make that when the director returned home to America, he was different; and that a piece of him had remained in Vietnam where it would die to live on only as a ghost.
There must be ghosts everywhere, then. Think of all the places with intense life, struggle, glory, places with stories that must be told; yes, indeed, there must be ghosts everywhere.
When we finally arrived, we all quickly went to work knowing the faster we moved 175 | CAVE MYTHOLOGY: MESSAGES!
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the faster we could move on with our lives. When it was all done, I thanked them all and then paid the storage unit owner, and then they were gone.
J uly 5 th , 1951
Poolidise. This has become the nickname for this place. Here there is no day, only is there night. It feels like something out of a hazy nightmare. There is a persistent smoke that runs on the horizon of Pool street. Buildings crumble. It is indeed the paradise for sex addicts. A sexpool. And if not sex addicts, those venturing into the darknesses not afforded to them by others. Every day I play the game in this rustic breeding ground. The money that passes through here has made every one happy in a sad kind of way. All of the girls eat, but at what cost. Nothing is regulated. It is like we have turned back the hands of time to those old days of man and woman. There is no marriage, only gratification. When I walk Pool street at night I see the faces of hungry men and tired women. I see the face of my hungry father and my tired mother. And when I check into a motel room with a man, after I have fed him to his heart's desire, I go the bathroom, look into the mirror, and I see that my face too has grown tiredsome. Like my mother, and her mother before her, I see my tired eyes. I have no where to go, no where to run to. It feels as if Pool street has been my home my entire life. But now it has been invaded. It has been invaded by dark clouds. Dim colorful lights. Yelling women. Men with guns. Men with cards. Women with dreams. But what kind of woman could dream in a place like this? This place is the end of all dreams. This is the place people reach at the end of their dreams to wake up. One day I wish to wake up to something new. Something far away from London, maybe a place in America. I remember reading about the opening of the Paradise Port bridge when I was 14. How all the people walked on it when it first opened and they were all so happy. I hope to one day wake up to Boden Valade and his symphonies. To hear his songs the way he couldn't. But I know that Pool street is a place where dreams die. The only beautiful thing about this world is that we can all be loved, no matter what's wrong with us, someone wants to love you and fuck you.
By now it was only a little bit past noon but I had the wonderfully beautiful view of San Rashida in my window. It is strange to have passed through this area many times before in my life without ever had knowing one day I would live in it...
Moving away from the window I noticed a note on the wall. I moved closer to read it: Pastor Death has approached and Count Love has been foreshadowed. Commander Sickness has laced the horizon while President Sleep follows closely behind. And Doctor Redemption, the road he takes is nigh. I will see you upon the hour that words do not 176 | CAVE MYTHOLOGY: MESSAGES!
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speak and the truth is without form and void.
When I looked back toward the city, I noted it had suddenly become dark, and I grabbed my coat, went down the elevator, and walked out into the dark city of dreams; Vondapolis.
I did not have to walk far between the crowded streets before I came upon a protest which detailed the dissatisfaction the citizens of Vondapolis had against a mandatory vaccination. Like the plan required, the virus had been released on the peoples and millions have already died. The city is in disarray, and while many are willing to take the vaccination, many are not and willing to suffer death and illness.
The corruption and evil of this city sprouted from the mind of Duncan Harharwood.
Otherwise known as Dusk, who is also the mayor of Vondapolis. A mind split into two, he echoed the contrast between day and night.
And just before dawn, a fog slowly settled into his office before the beginning of his day's work. “Hello again,” he knew it to be me. Whatever my intentions were, Dusk began first.
“I've been waiting for you to show yourself again,” he told me, “and I so enjoyed our most previous conversation on phythics that you made me realize something important.
About myself, about law and order, politics, government. About humanity...” “Get to it,”
I said. And he entered into a soliloquy, only after putting on his mask: In life, we have the concepts of good and evil, but we as an intelligent species have come to the conclusion that being evil has no consequences, and nor does being good.
Being an intelligent species and recognizing this, two things have been created from this notion, which are law and religion. With law, we punish evil acts, but do not reward good acts. So while there is deterrence against evil, there is no incentive for good. Phythics would categorize this as a resolution that is partially objective. The universe, which we have both already agreed upon is indifferent in the matters of judging good and evil, is fully objective in its view toward morality. This would be in comparison to the view that is fully subjective, which leads us to the second creation of man; religion, where the evil go to Hell and the good to Heaven. Here, in full subjectivity, there are consequences for evil acts and there are consequences for good acts. When objectivity looks at evil, it is indifferent, but when subjectivity looks at evil, it organizes ways of managing it. But subjectivity will not only spend its resources in evil, it will recognize good as well, to the point it will use good deeds as its method for deterrence against evil instead of plainly punishment. But recognizing good is not always good in of itself, this is when we begin to stray from the natural view of the objective universe, who knows not good nor evil, and so bad things will happen to good people while the wicked scour the Earth.
When Dusk finished, he sat back down and awaited for my reply. I knew exactly 177 | CAVE MYTHOLOGY: MESSAGES!
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what he was trying to say, and yet I asked him of the concept of karma as a natural component of this supposedly uncaring and objective universe. He disagreed.
I then took out a domino, and explained to him that since I had last seen Dice, my body had been forming dominoes and they exited my body from the skin leaving scars. I also told him that I soon learned their purpose. When I threw a domino at something, it had a 1 in 6 chance of changing the netron count in the atoms of that item. In short, it had a 1 in 6 chance of killing that item, whether it was a person or an actual object.
Dusk asked me if I was about to throw the domino at him. If the universe was karmic, he would die, if the universe was objective, he would live. And so I prepared the throw, allowing tensity to build in his veins, and then I struck him center mass.
Nothing happened. The domino bounced off his chest and onto his office table, where it spun a little until it fell flat. Dusk smiled at me, whereabouts his arrogance made me angry and I soon found my hands around his neck. If the universe was not willing to deter evil, then I would become that missing order.
When I looked behind me once more I saw all the boxes that came from moving.
Carefully navigating my way, I found the couch and sat down. I did not feel like doing much more than laying down, certainly I didn't feel like unpacking boxes. These boxes would probably remain the way they were for a few more weeks.
And so I sat, laid, and soaked in the vision of the new apartment. I saw the ways the Sun hit certain walls and missed certain others, causing that impression of light and dark.
For a little moment the light had gone down drastically as I assumed clouds it were that covered the Sun, and the light came back, and then went away for an even shorter amount of time and then came back almost permanently. It was nice, these things you can only notice in new places.
But then suddenly I began to hear a voice come from one of the boxes. I immediately recognized it as Sara, and I was amazed that the walkie-talkie had such a great communication distance. I unpacked the box it was in, going through random items such as Lynne's Blood & Gold, saying “I read you,” until Sara began to talk again: Walkie #1: Are you at the new house?
Walkie #2: Yeah, I am.
Walkie #1: Cool, mom said this time me and David get to have our own rooms.
Walkie #2: Where is she going stay?
Walkie #1: She's taking the living room since it's so big. I think she really wants it because of the windows.
Walkie #2: Well, you know your mom...
Walkie #1: Can I still come to your place sometimes? Yeah, can we?
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Walkie #2: If I feel like it.
Walkie #1: Sounds good!
Walkie #2: Is your mom home yet? She should be there soon.
Walkie #1: No, she said she's stopping by there first.
Walkie #2: By where?
Walkie #1: There!
Walkie #2: Here?
Walkie #1: Yes! Are you deaf?
Walkie #2: No...
Walkie #1: Anyway, we'll see you when we see you, which will probably be when school ends and we move there, too.
Walkie #2: Sounds good, over and out you two.
Walkie #1: Over and out.
Exactly ten minutes later I received a message from Lynne on my phone, and exactly five minutes later she knocked on my door. I let her in and she observed my new apartment as if it were a new species. She saw that the structure was different than hers, and also noted that this one, in comparison to her two-bedroom, only had one bedroom.
She eventually said she liked it, and then asked if I wanted to go see hers.
We took the flight of stairs up to the 22nd floor and then entered her apartment. I noticed the differences immediately and felt it was perfect for a body of three. It would be good for Sara and Dave to have their own living spaces. They were old enough now.
And Lynne, well I suppose she didn't really need a room of her own. But I also felt that if Sara and Dave spent their entire lives in their rooms, then she would win out as she had so much space.
Lynne began to check out what would be her closet and inspected it like I've never seen anything inspected before. That was when, helping her examine it, I noticed a small little compartment. When Lynne opened it, something fell out.
It was a book titled LOSS OF SERVICE and it looked quite old. She took it and opened it and began to read some of it aloud:
This is a book of poetry! But it comes with a game! Each poem is originally a song you may or may not have heard before, but has gone through many language translations so that it has lost its original meaning and has become something new. Each song was originally written in English, went through various translations transformations, and then was put back in English, where it would be something new. The game? Can you guess what the song originally was? There will always be clues... Sometimes... And know this, 179 | CAVE MYTHOLOGY: MESSAGES!
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even the titles of the poems were their song's original title, just translatically transformed!
Even the name of this book, Loss of Service, was originally the phrase Lost in Translation! Have fun!
She flipped the page to the first poem and begins reading it, but I didn't recognize the title or the poem itself. Or rather, I should say, the song.
THE SNOW
There are clouds above
Sirius is a wild spirit
Dog and tree
The moon is beautiful
I think,
Heaven will fall
Now it's time to celebrate
You shed a thousand tears for me
Accepted
Take what you want from me
I'm,
Flying with small wings
We were both confused, and the next thing we knew we were both sitting on the floor in her living room trying to figure out the obscurity of the poem.
I noted that what I noticed during her reading was the sky and things falling out of it.
Most notably, Heaven and rain. And for the sky, the clouds and moon. When she asked me where I got rain from, I said shedding a thousand tears must mean rainfall, it couldn't mean anything else. She also noted, saying before she forgot, that Sirius was the brightest star closest to Earth, and that it was known as the Dog Star because of the constellation it was a part of. And she surmised that this had something to do with the “dog and tree.”
Then she suddenly shouted, “Wild spirit!” Which next came the inclusion of the ideas of the Native Americans. The connection to the dog and tree from the phrase “wild spirit”
came to her like a shocking answer, but neither of us had any idea what a dog or a tree would symbolize in Native American ideals. So we both took out our phones and looked things up.
She noted that Native Americans held dogs in high esteem and were honored and 180 | CAVE MYTHOLOGY: MESSAGES!
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were known as the first companion animal to man. For the tree I learned that they were often noted as “Standing People,” and were symbols of longevity and the idea of having strong roots.
Putting our heads together, we attempted at deconstructing Sirius, wild spirit, dog and tree. The term wild was in opposite of domesticated, which were dogs who were trained by humans to be domesticated “wolves.” And Sirius, a major star, was from the wild, and had a wild spirit, meaning it was not or could not be domesticated. I thought this was in a way saying you could conquer things on Earth, but not things in outer space. Lynne added on by saying the moon, which is in outer space, could be beautiful, but as it is a part of the Heavens, along with the clouds, it could fall. I asked her to elaborate, and boy did she elaborate. “I think humans have a penchant for romanticizing the moon, which would come from the same atmosphere as Sirius who we know to be a wild spirit.
Romanticizing the moon in this context is the same as trying to domesticate it, to make beautiful something that is out in the deep dark cold and has no life upon or within it.
And when you realize that outer space and the things in it, Sirius and the moon and so much more, that they cannot be domesticated, you also realize that to romanticize them when in their nature they are actually hostile and wild things, the Heavens will fall on you. And wait! I just realized something,” she yelled, “it's not rain. The title of the poem is The Snow.” She immediately went into speaking about how the Heaven's falling could mean when that hostility from outer space makes its way into our world. Sometimes that coldness comes along with the thousands of tears of snowfall. It can be harsh, and sometimes as a human spectator all you can do it accept it.
We both immediately began to speak of Blizzard Tracy, which was a clear example of the hostility of nature and an attack that seems to fall from the Heavens.
Just then, Lynne received a message from Dakota, Pedro's wife. Once she told me this, I tried thinking again of where I could have met her. I know that when Lynne finished with her message, she thought about it to. But suddenly we both got up from off the ground of the new and empty apartment and left it, she taking the book of poems along with her. It was hers now. I waved her goodbye in the long hall, then entered my own apartment, that was tragically filled with boxes.
Woodmire presently had the great distinction of looking dissimilar to any other town in the world. It was the home of an undocumented virus and even in day in felt like night.
The entire town now was being guarded. Hazmat suits. Doctors. Scientists. Border patrol. People could enter, but no one could leave. All one could do was hope to flee.
Inside Reader Medical Hospital was newly born Tomiko. She was born completely healthy, but despite the heightened hygiene of the hospital and its protocols, she eventually contracted the undocumented virus.
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Like others who showed symptoms of the virus, she was moved to a certain section in the hospital and secluded. Here, in this section of the hospital, it was a place for eventual death, and little Tomiko was no exception to the rule.
At the backend of the church, six of seven of the children sat enclosed in a circle with their relatively new friend, Flo. All sitting on old metal lawn chairs, they discussed further with Flo the haunting nature perceived of Woodmire outside of Woodmire.
Soon, Pattie was seen walking toward them, absent from school but never absent from Woodmire. She came with sickness, as she had a cold, and this was the reasoning of her absence from school.
She sat down, asking them what they were speaking of, and Kane relayed to her that the subject was that of the Ice Cream man. Suddenly, however, the topic of conversation landed on card games, to which Flo recounted to them one of her favorite pastimes.
“I don't know how to play any card games,” admitted Pattie. Soon, each other child made the same admission and seeing this Florella was amazed. “You guys don't know how to play any card games? In my day, cards are all we had. That and sticks,” Flo laughed.
Flo then left the children and then returned with a standard deck of 52 cards playing cards.
“This game is called Lore. Well, I grew up calling it Lore, some people call it 13.
Either way, its the same game no matter where you grew up. I learned it from a movie called The Legend of Eight Jack. I will admit though, I have not played it in years so I may not be completely correct on the rules. First, we shuffle the deck,” which Flo did,
“then I will pass out all of the cards evenly among all players,” which too, she did.
“Whoever dealed the cards makes the first throw, which can be made anywhere on the ground below.” Flo took one of her cards and kindly threw it onto the ground. “Then, going in a clockwise motion,” Flo looked at Kane, “the next player throws down a card that matches the suit of the card thrown previously.”
Kane then went through his cards finding no card that matched Flo's suit. “What if I don't have a matching card?,” Kane asked. “Oh, then your turn is skipped,” Flo looked at Sara.
Sara looked through her cards eventually finding a matching suit, but as she went to throw it onto the ground, Flo stopped her. “One of the rules is that the card you are throwing must touch the card previously thrown while not touching any other card on the ground. If the card doesn't touch the most recent card or hovers over or touches another card that was thrown before the previous card, that person must receive a card from all the other players. Each can choose whatever card to give them as long as the suit of the card hasn't been activated. Activated suits are any suits that have been thrown. The 182 | CAVE MYTHOLOGY: MESSAGES!
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number on the missed card is the max number of cards that player receives from everyone else, counting counter clockwise. If the person throws a face card, they are immune to receiving cards even if they miss their throw or foul. Whether a throw is fair or not is judged by all players not throwing,” Flo finished.
Sara scratched her head, then looked confusingly at her peers who shared the same limited and dim insights. When Flo saw this confusion, she herself wondered if she was remembering the rules of the game correctly.
Then, finally, Sara threw her card with the same kind gesture that Flo did. It missed barely, landing just millimeters from Flo's card, but Sara was lucky that the number on her card was only a 2. Flo instructed Kane to give Sara any card in his hand, and afterward, Flo also handed Sara a card. “The point of the game, as you all may have guessed, is to relieve yourself of all your cards. Then you will be declared the winner!”
The children felt at instinct that this could be a fun game despite the confusing rules, and so they indulged Florella. They completed a successful first round of the clubs suit, to which Flo made her last announcement of the game. “Once all 13 cards are down for that suit, the dealer counts them to make sure. If there are less than 13, we check who missed and each person gives that person who missed any card from their deck that hasn't been activated as a penalty, and then after the penalized player may add the missing card or cards to the deck and put that suit aside. The next first thrower of the new suit is the person who put down the most recent card, even if it was the penalized player.”
And so this game went on into the evening, and the children had far more fun than they could have ever imagined inside a ghost town. The game, of course, was riddled with memory errors from Flo, but as they played and ran into things that didn't make sense, they made up their own rules to enhance the game itself.
But one thing was missing from the story of this game. It was something Flo did not know herself, for she could not have known. 13 was not just a game played by humans, but too by the lore of Mirewood. The monsters, in the night, would play this very game as they waited for humans to approach.
CAM50423: A view of a wide street. A woman passes by with an orange rolling grocery cart. It is obvious there are extremely strong winds by evidence of fluttering clothes.
CAM47551: Every ten minutes could be seen an ambulance driving down the street.
CAM00183: In front of the church could be read the sign which reads “God be with us.” Several days of monitoring this camera would eventually show the conclusion of a church session.
CAM78830: A man with a medical mask disconnects this camera device.
CAM11190: A group of co-workers are seen playing Lore on their lunch break.
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Charles Foster Kane saw now that the library would be open soon. Much sooner than he thought based on the very slow progress it held before. Speaking to Kaylene, she commented on the fact of his expansive donating to the library's very first books and told him that his contribution would not go unnoticed.
Soon after, Kane found himself cleaning the bathrooms of the G.S. Global Publishing building. By this time, many had either left work or were leaving work. Finishing his duties, he then went into the main office area and began his work there. He did not know that Jennifer Cole had been working late, so he was startled when she called out to him from her office and invited him inside.
“I've been reading the book of poems your friend wrote,” she told Kane, “it's quite impressive, I can say that with honesty, but I'm not sure I can get the brass to go along with publishing a poetry book, they just don't sell well enough.” She saw the disappointment within Charles. “But I've been kicking around an idea in my mind about poetry books. Poetry doesn't sell because of the form it's in, no one reads books. Not like they used to. But people do listen to music.”
Charles thought. “You want to turn it into an album?,” Charles asked. Cole nodded.
Conceding to the fact said beforehand, Charles didn't think it was the worst idea. He gestured for the book from Cole and after receiving it looked on at the prose as lyrics. For some of the songs, it seemed to work, for others, not so much, but the two seemed to agree that this was the best direction for Déijà.
J anuary 1 st , 1969
This industry is filled with disturbed men. “Boardwalkers,” as I am told they are called but I'm not exactly sure why. They invest in you by paying for your surgeries and anything else you might need to win a pageant, and then they buy your silence by putting money into your bank account. The silence they are buying is to keep the information of their own strange and twisted desires in the dark. One of them fancied being tied up and hung up upside down while I went around their body and gave them small knife cuts.
Now at first I absolutely disagreed, but what they do is threaten your career. And if threatening your career isn't enough, they do worst, they talk up your career and all the things they can do for you. Another had the strange addiction of having cloths tied at various points throughout his body to slow down blood circulation. One of them collected birds. Like dead birds. And he saved all of their beaks and what got him off was having me take different beaks and stab him with them. Tonight I was at a New Year's Day party, and my date, which of course was one of them, took me to his home after the party and had me press his face flush into a mold of clay. He said not being able to breathe 184 | CAVE MYTHOLOGY: MESSAGES!
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excited him. I later learned that he was the creator of the popular MissPlay magazines. I didn't know all of this would entail me doing all of these favors for these men. I just wanted to be in competitions. I'm seeing that that is becoming a lost dream. And I know that if I go back to my parents, they'll just tell me that they told me so.
In a cave I have seen the drawing of an old bearded man near sea. The image is encircled by a perfect circle, and in his hand the old man holds a bottle with a message in it, and from this distinction I know it to be the story of God and his inability to communicate with his creation.
I wonder, what happens when millions of people collectively pray on the same matter? The matter could be a natural disaster, such as a hurricane that is currently going through a city, and there is international coverage on it and many millions of people around the world are praying for minimal casualties.
Obviously the object of prayer at a time like this would be to reach the ears of God, who would be the only one capable of minimizing the casualties. But one has to wonder, is God more likely to hear or listen when there is more people trying to speak to him?
Let's look at the scientific and logical precedence, if any.
Are there examples of something being greater in magnitude and intensity that results in a higher awareness of it? Yes, there are many actually. Sound; the greater the sound, the more likely you are to hear it. Sight; the greater the size of an object, the more likely you are to see it. If there is an explosion, the greater its intensity, the more likely you are to see it, hear it, and feel it. So it would make sense for humans to reason that more people praying gives you a better chance at God becoming aware of your prayers.
However, there is one problem; all of my examples deal with the physical realm and not the abstract realm, the abstract realm being where you find something like the concept of prayer. There is no real way to measure something so abstract such as prayer.
It is indeed possible for abstract concepts, such as force, to be measured, but things like force have a physical component to them.
The next question leads us to this; is there precedence for measuring abstract magnitude and intensity? I have thought about this for hours. For a long time I figured that there wasn't, until I realized that the closest thing I could imagine to being an answer was time. Time is purely abstract, yet when we think of things in our past, we are able to in a way gauge, or measure, how long ago a certain event occurred, and this gives us the sense that we can indeed measure the magnitude or intensity of a concept that is abstract.
Think about what it means to be nostalgic, it is literally an instinct measuring something that should not be measurable.
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measurable. Can you think of any?
If truly there is no measurement capable in abstract things, at least by the human mind in our current stage of evolution, then perhaps God is the only being who can measure abstract magnitude and intensity. Perhaps this is how he would hear millions of people praying at the same time. But we as humans, who are incapable of this detection, would never be able to receive any message he sends if it is dependent on an ability to measure the abstract.
In this story, God has indeed heard all of the humans, but he has no way of communicating with them. And so one day he puts a light in a bottle and floats it out to sea. When it is eventually opened by a human, the light spreads all throughout the world, giving humans the ability to perceive and measure the magnitude and intensity of abstract things. This is the true moment that humans can feel the existence of God.
For a long time I traveled with the Chimanahmin people. For much of that time they saw me as an outsider. “One who did not live like them, but like the others.” And their final test of acceptance to me was a month spent in the wild. If I came back, they would no longer reject me, and they would teach me the Wildcard.
I won't go into the details of my struggle in the wild, maybe I will some day soon, but right now I will speak briefly of my last day in the wild before my return to the Chimanahmin peoples.
To reach back to them, it was required of me the willpower to traverse a great mountain. It took many days, some filled with rain, others filled with animals, a few filled with incapacitation. Surely, a part of me died in that wilderness. But when I reached the top of mountain, I was able to finally see a great way out into the Earth. Reaching that peak, I understood that this was the exact location where the bottle of light had been open and spread into the world.
I looked out and saw the beauty of nature. I had been given the ability and the right to quantify the existence of God, and it was a quality extraordinaire. And it was there, at the peak of the mountain and looking out into the Earth, it was there that I first saw the overwhelming face of God.
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Chapter 96
WELCOME TO MIREWOOD
2:3:10:96
THE narrator had entered his apartment building, and after drinking water from his apartment, he walked down into the basement of the apartment building itself. There, he utilized the tools required to measure various dimensions and properties of the basement itself, which itself a small portion of it would be redone. After making way these measurements, the narrator opened his own storage unit after unlocking the lock with combinations of 31, 17 and 16. There he stored the tools brought over from his parents'
home. When he reached his own home, he made a brief call to the landlord of the apartment, relaying to him the information he had acquired.
Traversing midnight, I left my apartment with a garbage bag in my hand and made a left until I reached the end of the hall, where waiting there for me was a garbage shoot.
Or is it chute? I'm not sure.
I opened it and disposed of the garbage, whereby looking back toward the direction I came I saw someone walking. I don't believe they saw me, but I saw them enter the apartment across mine.
When I was back in my apartment I could hear Lynne's voice come over the walkie-talkie. She now also had one in which she would speak to either I or her kids while on late night shifts for work. Because she had received a promotion and worked mostly from home now, those were rare, but this was one of those rare nights. I spoke with her again on the possible places we may have seen or met Dakota, and we again failed to come up with anything plausible. About thirty minutes later, she fell asleep.
And I again became aware of someone entering the apartment across from mine. I assumed it was simply the same person going out and then back in, but about an hour later, when I heard those same noises again, I checked by looking through the peephole.
It was someone different. Entering the apartment at three A.M.
There were some things I needed to move around in my apartment and while doing so I accidentally knocked over a box and spilled some of its contents. I noticed that this box did not belong to me and was put in here by mistake, as it was one of David's boxes and it was one of his toys that slid out. When I went to pick it up, I must've pressed something for the damned thing began to speak, “This way, little man,” it said. I put it back in its box and made note of its peculiar and deathly geometry.
For the many faces of death, one of them is the geometry of death. It's said from the moment we are conceived we are dying. This surely is true, but what is not noted is the geometry of our deaths.
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of course will represent vitality, and has the ability to move alongside the line and at one point may reach B. The simple question is this; does the dot only move in one direction and gradually toward B until it reaches B? When one thinks of death, that is the exact geometry we imagine; that the moment we are born, our vitality travels only in one way, and that way is toward death.
But what if that is untrue? What if the dot were able to, despite its general movement toward B, move back and forth alongside the line? This could be imagined as an individual changing their diet or receiving surgery. And this is the true conviction of philosophical geometry, or, the geometry of death; observing line movements and applying them to a certain phenomena.
There are various types of line movements. We have covered two; gradual movement and non-linear movement. Another line movement type is accelerated and de-accelerated movement, where the dot begins at A, and as it makes its way toward B it gradually accelerates or de-accelerates. There are binary and pseudobinary types. Basically, for binary, there is no "traveling" alongside the line, the relevant point is point A until it instantly becomes point B. With pseudobinary, it is the same idea except you can have more than just two points. You can have a number of points between A and B that the dot will instantly travel to as it generally progresses toward the final point. The final example, and perhaps the strangest, is the seemingly eternal/immortal movement, where the dot begins at point A and at a certain speed, but each movement toward B causes the speed to be reduced and cut by half. With this line, the dot, technically, should never reach point B.
All of these movement types should be regarded under the context of death, more specifically, birth to life to death. And as strange as the final movement type may seem, the geometry of death can become more bizarre when you introduce not new line movement types but new line structures. One such structure would be a circle.
With the general two-pointed line, once you get from A to B, there is no way back to A except through traveling backwards. With a circle, however, you can get back to the beginning via the end. This already changes concepts related to death, but as fascinating as this is, we should not be paying so much attention to the structure of the line and the new dimensions it presents as much as we should be paying attention to the area within the circle, where the geometry of death becomes enchanting.
The dot, instead of only being able to travel alongside the line of the circle, now has the option of traveling within the area of the enclosed circle. The beautiful thing about this is that where the dot was restricted to simple left and right movements, it is now unrestricted and can move left, right, up, down and diagonally in a full 360-degree range.
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whether it was a straight line or a circled line, but in this free dynamic, the line has no guide and it is influenced in perhaps a more complex manner.
Despite its freedom from the line, the dot however is still connected to it. The closest distance from the dot to the circled line is the point that is activated, and by activation I mean that is where the dot would have been marked as being had it still been on the line itself. This is especially interesting because it is possible for the dot to be in a position where it activates more than one point on the circled line. To take this matter directly to the extreme, imagine the dot traveling to the true center of the circle. At this moment, at the true center, every position on the circled line is the same exact distance away from the dot. This action would activate every point on the line, and the dot would essentially be at every measure of the line all at the same time.
If we pair this with the infinite allusion, which states that there are the same amount of numbers between 1 and 180 as there are 0 and 1 (through decimals), which is an infinite amount of numbers, we can also say that there are an infinite amount of degrees between 90 and 91, and when the dot is in the true center of the circle, it is connected to an infinite amount of positions on the line and has activated an infinite amount of points.
This image may be better suited when imagining it through the lens of a 3D sphere as opposed to the 2D circle. In this regard, we can more accurately feel the infinity of the concept.
But what happens when more than one point is activated? The amount of activated points most generally is supposed to be only one, but with the circle it can be more than one based on the positioning of the dot within the area of the closed circled line.
For this my instinct was to propose something seen in chemistry. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe (75%) and is comprised of 1 proton. The next most abundant is helium (25%), and is comprised of 2 protons. This may be an inaccurate assumption, but it may be possible that that the most abundant amount of positions for the dot within the circle may result in one point being activated. And then the second most abundant could be positions that result in 2 points being activated. We know that the true center of the circle activates every point on the circled line and is also the least abundant in positions that the dot could be to activate every point (only 1).
Where this more deeply pairs with chemistry is that the amount of activated points together may, like the accumulation of protons changes its element, change the interpretation of the points themselves. Under the regards of the geometry of death, any location on any line represents the time away from death. And if having more than one dot on that line transforms the concept of "time away from death" like the amount of protons transforms the element, what could this transformation result in? What could it mean? This is something I will have to investigate further...
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Mar
ch 7 th , 1997
I'm not sure how to articulate the idea, but sometimes it feels like ten years is a long enough time to feel like you've spent more than one lifetime. I'm on vacation and this is the first time I've been back here since the eighties, about 10 years ago, and thinking of all the memories I made back then it doesn't feel like it was a part of the life I have now.
How so much has changed... I live in America now, in a beautiful town named Woodmire, but London is a city that will always be a part of me. It's funny that I'm on holiday and the place I am in now is a run-down vacant complex. I don't mind it though, not every place you go on vacation needs to be beautiful, sometimes it's more about what that place means to you than how it looks. I don't see it anymore, but I took a picture somewhere around here, one that I still have, and I remember telling myself that one day I would look back on it after I made it out. I stand here now, though, thinking of all the people who didn't make it off Pool street. My son is almost twenty now and I'm thankful we both made it out. It was the one thing I knew I would have to do. I graduated college sometime ago and was lucky enough to find a job right after so I could leave the strip club for good. It's a shame to see this place abandoned, but now that I think about it, maybe that's what a place like this deserves. Maybe a place like the pool shouldn't exist...
As a place that perhaps drowned the dreams of many people, maybe we all needed to abandon it...
Se
ptember 13 th , 2010
The place where I used to cam was raided and shut down due to criminal activity.
Some girls were arrested but were released right away, they wanted mostly the men who were running it illegally. By the time it was raided I was kicking around a new idea in my brain to combat the onslaught of the digital porn industry. I know I won't be able to beat them, so I have decided to join them. Aid them, even. I have the business strategy all laid out and all I need is some decent people to help me create it. I will create a website where girls and women (and even boys and men!) can upload many photos of themselves for people to use for their digital translation into 3D models. No one has done this yet and the makers of the software that makes this possible don't seem to have the time or resources to do it themselves. Right now, they are letting the idea power itself and have their users just upload pictures from their hard drive, but with a catalog of women (and men!) this eliminates the need to 1) have to have the picture already and 2) needing to use your imagination. You just buy a subscription, you get access to a multitude of models, and 178 | WELCOME TO MIREWOOD
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you will get samples of their voice and huge selection of pictures (in various styles as well, just incase let's say you want the same girl but with a different hairstyle). I'm thinking about calling the website/business: Poolies.
Just inside of a year, Latasha had worked hard at losing over fifty pounds. She was now a much slender girl who boasted an erect carriage. This did not go unnoticed by a particular man who stared at her from a distance as she walked through the park. A dozen sentences later, the man had used his silver tongue and peaked the interest of Tasha in the possibility of becoming a dancer. The man gave to her his card, which detailed himself as a manager of adult entertainers in the adult entertainment industry.
Tasha again thought at the prospect of becoming a dancer, and she thought on it for days thinking deeply of the easy money to be made.
A week later, Tasha scheduled for a more detailed meeting with the man at the strip club he represented. When she arrived, at which it was still day and the establishment was not yet open to patrons, she walked through the stage and sat in a room with other women, some her age, some much older. And as she studied her surroundings, she for a very brief moment thought of her old friend, Mr. Paxton, and then she became more increasingly aware of many other things. And she was at least agonizingly aware of the easy money in the vicinity and convinced that it was hers for a few swift movements in the right direction.
At Kane's desk did he work diligently toward the completion of his extended short story. As he typed the final lines, he could only think of the very beginning of LYBONREHC:
The total and complete evacuation of the continent of Australia after a nuclear radiation disaster had far-reaching implications on the history of the Earth. But there were things that did not evacuate Australia; the wildlife, which included not just the land animals or the air animals, but also the water animals, and the need to survive, which accompanies all living things. And for the lost animal kingdom which had been left behind, survival was the only game following the first years after the disaster.
A small while after the incident walked all along the continent a lonesome dog. Like many of the other animals that remained in the contaminated state of Australia, this dog became an outsider, a stranger, an outcast, for it had not four but six legs to do all of its walking.
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after a nuclear disaster, all humans have long evacuated but the surviving animals have undergone an intellectual growth. For hundreds of years, right under the nose of human global domination, the mutated animals are forming their own civilization and are at the forefront of their own coming global domination. One of the more interesting things to note of LYBONREHC is that it is a fictional answer to a fictional question; where did mythical creatures such as dragons, loch ness monsters and bigfoots come from?
“I'm on a mission niggas think is impossible,” “but when I swing my sword they all choppable.” Dave and Kane, respectively, sung the lyrics of a rap song they had heard the day before while on their way to the abandoned hospital ruins.
Behind the duo walked the others who were less enthusiastic about entering the establishment. “Look, I know it's not haunted or whatever, but if I see anything weird I'm booking it out of there,” said Sara to Pattie. Overhearing this, Gun Ho replied, “Yeah, like, I know all the stories we've been hearing of this place are just stories and they aren't true, but if I see anything strange I'm dippin'.”
Kristie and Dam Son concluded the conversation right at the entrance of Reader Medical Hospital by relaying what the others had said to Dave and Kane, who also agreed that upon initiation with anything otherworldly, evacuation would be eminent.
“But of course,” Dave said finally, “there won't be anything otherworldly in there...”
And all of the friends entered the hospital ruins, a dark and unfinished hospital where many lives had been saved.
All of the friends mostly stuck with each-other as they browsed the ground floor.
There were many rooms but they were mostly empty. Only a few remained with hospital beds and rarely one might see attire fit to a hospital. And so the group decided to take the stairs to a higher level, and then a higher level, and then a higher level until nearly half of an hour had passed and they had seen nothing that truly interested them.
Upon entering a floor of which they had lost count, the group anticipated this floor would be like all of the floors below. This was not to be true, and all of the floors below would, unknown to the visitors, become like Hell.
“Hey, guys... Guys... That light is on,” Gun Ho told the others of a room in the distance. At first the others didn't believe him, that a light could possibly be on in a place like this, but as they approached they saw that Gun Ho was not playing games.
“What do you think is in there?,” Dave asked Kane. “I have no idea...” Dave continued, “Let's all go check together,” Dave suggested. “No! We said at the first sign of strangeness we were out!,” Kristie yelled. And yet, Kristie herself felt unsatisfied when she said this, knowing leaving without seeing why a strange and mysterious light was on in an abandoned hospital might bother her for many days and nights.
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other that they all became convinced.
Slowly but surely, the group walked toward the door, and Dave, once at the door, began to open it. Once the door was finally opened, all of the kids saw the most horrifying thing they had ever seen in their lives. At the center of the room was a large man who was standing before a corpse who was hanging upside down. The large man made a deft movement at the corpse's neck and suddenly was there a waterfall of blood that landed inside a bucket below.
“Don the bleeder!,” Kane yelled aloud. And this startled Don, who was collecting blood from the corpse for a transfusion, and suddenly he looked in the direction of the children. When the kids saw that he saw them, they froze, and it was only when Don began walking toward them that they themselves had the mind to begin running toward where they came. But as Sara turned 'round, as she was the first to begin running, she suddenly saw that there was a small figure in the distance with two meat cleavers who would block them from leaving.
When Kane saw this, he again yelled, “Tommie Cleaver!” At the same instance, Tommie began running at Sara and eventually leapt at her, bringing her down to the ground. Kristie, seeing this, reacted quickly and attempted to kick Tommie off of Sara.
Simultaneously, Don grabbed for Dave but missed several times. Dam Son and Gun Ho, possibly the fastest two of the group of friends, were able to make it down to the lower level while Pattie, perhaps the fastest of the girls, while not being able to make it to a lower level, made it into a bathroom on the same level.
Kane, seeing that Sara and Kristie were need of help, ran toward them, grabbed Tommie and then threw her several feet away from them. The area in which Tommie landed was now so weak that to fall on it would break it and you would fall onto the level below. In the scrummage as well, one of Tommie's cleavers fell from her body and Kristie made sure to pick it up in case of defense.
On the lower level were Dam and Gun, who while running to get to an even lower level, saw Tommie fall from the ceiling. This fall did not phase Tommie, however, as she was indeed otherworldly. She had died Tomiko, and then five years passed and soon she woke up from death, being aged by five years.
When Gun and Dam saw her get up as quickly as she did, they turned and began running in the other direction. Tommie wielded one of the meat cleavers and took aim at Gun. Just as she threw the cleaver, Gun made a sudden turn, the cleaver missing him by mere inches and planting itself into a wall. Upon realization of this, Gun suddenly tripped and fell and required the assistance of his step-brother to get back up in a timely manner.
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outside when it became quiet, but in the distance she could see and hear Don the bleeder walking around. Retreating back into the bathroom, she saw an object in one of the urinals. It was a firearm. Surely a firearm that no longer worked, but she took it anyway, in the case of defense.
Dave had evaded the many attempts of Don, and he now suspected that he had the same blood-type as the current Don the bleeder. With Tommie out of the way, Dave met up with Kristie, Sara and Kane and they all made their way to the lower level. Luckily for them, at present there was no one on the lower level as Tommie had chased Gun and Dam down another level. Soon, however, did follow Don.
No longer hearing Don, Pattie again opened the door to the bathroom. When she saw that it was clear, she slowly made her way out of the bathroom, through the hospital ruins, and then proceeded to go down into the lower level where she believed she heard the voices of her friends.
As Kristie, Dave, Sara and Kane attempted to find the way into the lower level, turning a corner, they were suddenly met by Don, who stomped the floor beneath them and broke it so that they would fall through. This all occurred, but before Dave could fall with his friends onto the lower level, Don specifically grabbed him. Now was Dave in the possession of Don who required his blood.
Don carried Dave, kicking and screaming, to a room on the current level where he then proceeded to hang him upside down in an effort to drain his blood. But Pattie had become aware of this and followed them, gun in hand, to this room where just before Don went to slash Dave's throat, Pattie appeared and yelled at Don, pointing the gun at him.
Don was startled but not afraid of a mere mortal and her weapon, so he began to walk toward her to suspend the nuisance. Out of panic, Pattie pulled the trigger. No bullet came out, however there was a bizarre reaction from Don to the pulling of the trigger. He suddenly grabbed his own head and went down onto one knee, as if the gun was of another design; not that of projectiles but of frequency. In the panic, Pattie helped Dave down as Don suffered something awful, and the two ran out of the room and onto the lower level where they met some of the others.
Tommie was now without cleavers, but her hands were just as lethal. All of the friends were now reunited on this level, Pattie with a strange gun and Kristie with a cleaver. And when the group inevitably ran into Tommie, Pattie instinctively tried shooting the gun in her direction, but it did not have the same effect it had on Don, who was still suffering something awful on the level above. Tommie again ran and this time leapt at Kristie who she saw as the only threat, and was able to disarm her and retrieve one of her cleavers back. But just before Tommie could chop to pieces Kristie, Dave grabbed the firearm from Pattie as he had noticed a feature of the firearm while hanging 182 | WELCOME TO MIREWOOD
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upside down in the level above. He took the firearm and seemed to re-calibrate it from a mechanism at the base of the gun, and then took aim at Tommie. This time, when the trigger was pulled, it affected Tommie in the same way it did Don.
“Let's get the fuck out of here!,” Dave yelled after he saw that he had temporarily disabled Tommie. And while leaving to go to the lower level, they all saw that Don was restored to his former well-being and was chasing after them.
The children ran as fast as they could through all of the levels of the hospital until they finally reached the ground floor, even at this point, still wondering if what was happening to them was real or not. For some reason, Don was not able to follow them onto the ground floor, as when the children looked back to see where he was, they saw him simply standing and watching. And just before exiting the hospital ruins, they look back one final time, now seeing that Tommie was standing beside Don, neither of them pursuing but only watching with deathly eyes. But the running did not end at this realization of safety. The children exited Reader and kept running. Even past the church did they run, until they were completely out of Woodmire for good. Now, none of the children had any intention of ever coming back to Woodmire, and this declaration was individually made by each child. And as all of the children ran past the borderline that told you you were now leaving Woodmire, they passed by a makeshift sign that was perhaps made in honor of all of the bizarre stories and characters told of Woodmire. And this sign, it simply read, “Welcome to Mirewood.”
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Chapter 97
HEROES AND VILLAINS
2:3:10:97
AFTER a brief phone call, the narrator placed down the receiver and walked through the living room. The current frame of the television had caught his interest and later so did the audio that came from it. “It was like... I don't know,” one man said to another man on the screen, “it just kept cutting in half or something...” The narrator, somewhat intrigued by the dialogue, sat down to watch, and soon discovered it was a television show about heroes and villains.
I have been sitting here in a new kitchen, half past midnight, thinking for the past ten or twenty minutes about Pedro's wife. Where have I seen her before? There is no doubt in my mind that I had met her prior to that dinner, but where? But how? For what reason did we interact.
It must have been on a train... The trainsystem has to be at the center of it all. We are all the three of us bound by the trains; Lynne knows Pedro through the train, and I have used the train each time to visit Lynne at work. We must have seen or met Dakota on a train...
Then it hit me. On one night out of many afterhour visits to Lynne at the airport, there was one when we took the train home and boarded a car with one other passenger. The night was remembered so easily and stood out from the rest because of the woman's strange behavior, who constantly asked us if we were sitting in her seat, and constantly asked why she could not get reception on the train. I know now that that woman was in fact Dakota, but she was far in presence what she was that night as opposed to what she was during dinner in Lynne's apartment; I seem to recall a restless older woman, a bit dirty at the seams as if she was recently homeless, and of a mind so frenzied that bordered on mental disability. But at the dinner, that same woman was easily presentable to friends and family, a pillar of youthful beauty, youthful energy, and her head was screwed on so tight that after me, she may have been the most mentally sound and stable individual at the table.
And now that I have figured out who she was and where I had met her, I had moved on to the question of why both of these women were so far apart from one another. The thought of a distance between them made me think of my own mental pursuit to find her, and how each time I would think about where I may have met her, I felt as if I was getting closer to the answer and yet could never actually reach the answer. And this collusion of spacial distance made me think of time distance.
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can be infinitely divided into smaller segments. A simple question: Can the universe exist and not exist at the same time?
First, now that we know that time is ultimately unreliable because it can be infinitely divided into smaller segments, this becomes a bad question. Let us say someone is able to pinpoint, to the best of their ability, a nanosecond in which the universe was existing and not existing simultaneously. I could then take that tiny unit of measurement and cut it in half, and then create a diagram showing that in one half of that nanosecond, the universe existed, and in the other half, the universe did not exist.
So which statement is true? The universe existed and didn't exist at the same time?
Or, the universe first existed, and then didn't exist? The reason why all of these questions are bad and why both of these statements are of no value is because they can both be true.
How can you ever accurately pinpoint at exactly what time something occurred if you have the ability to continually cut in half a time segment? It may be that the very notion and construct of time itself and its divisive nature can prove that nothing ever truly happens at the time. If time didn't exist, would everything happen all at once?
This leads us to I/M = T. We will define a microprocess as the smallest possible process to operate within the universe. A process will be basically an action in the universe, and so a microprocess will be its most basic form. To better illustrate this, we can picture "one second" as a process and "one milisecond" as a microprocess. Now let us assume that no microprocesses could ever occur at the time. This is to say, before one process could begin on Mars, another process that is already in process on Venus would have to finish first. This rule would also apply to microprocesses; before a microprocess could begin on Mars, another microprocess that is already in process on Venus would have to finish first.
If this were the case, imagine the unfathomable amount of microprocesses that occur even within just one second throughout the universe. If each of these microprocesses had to wait their turn before they could be processed, this would clearly, or perhaps not clearly, give you an impression on just how small the smallest possible unit of time could be. Imagine, in the great vastness of the universe, every process in it having to happen sequentially, one after the other.
I = Initial time segment with 1:1 ratio or default time to complete a process M = Microprocess
T = (New) Time to complete processes with updates of amount of processes
[I/M = T] would be a mathematical representation of how small, in terms of time, a microprocess can get. This in turn illustrates how small a single time segment could get.
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If I tried to show you how small a time segment could get, especially how small they would have to be for our grand universe to operate under the mentioned terms, I would fail miserably. The best way is to do the math, but even then, you may underestimate the wealth of processes.
Getting up from the lone chair in the kitchen, I knew that my next interaction with Lynne would begin with the immediate revelation of my discovery of who Dakota was, and where we had seen her.
All students describing as present were arrived at West Lincoln Middle School.
“We're never going back there, right??,” Kristie asked Kane as he stood in front of his locker looking for his Mathematics 213 schoolbook. She asked as if Kane were the ringleader, and so Kane, with all of his diluted fear, answered as if he were indeed the ringleader, “...No.” And Kristie was relieved as they both walked to their second period history class.
During third period, Dave, Pattie and Gun socialized during free time in their math class. In a corner of the room, the three discussed the apparent firearm that had saved their lives. All that was truly known of the mysterious device was that it was now hidden within Dave's room. Once conversation of that ghostly hour had made it to its end, Pattie made the slight suggestion of telling either the police or their parents that they had witnessed a grisly murder.
At fourth period, Sara and Dam were walking through a theater hall with their Language Arts class and on the way to see a play depicting Rope. As they walked, the two went back and forth describing what they believed they witnessed in the hospital ruins. Often there were inconsistencies, but to only the things that truly mattered was there consonance. They both agreed, despite the disparity, that they were all chased through the hospital by two supernatural entities.
Then came sixth period which was also a period of lunch for the seven students.
There, for the first time since abandoning Mirewood, the students were all together to discuss that event.
“Tell them what you told me,” Kristie said to Kane. “What? What?,” Dave asked impatiently.
Kane looked around, and then called for the group to huddle. Once he felt comfortable, he began speaking.
“There's this thing I remember reading about in one of my dad's books. It's called something like 'shared psychosis',” the others grew curious, “I think Kristie has the definition.”
Kristie searched her pockets to find the definition she had written down only hours earlier while her and Kane studied the phenomena. Then she read aloud what she has 187 | HEROES AND VILLAINS
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written in a whisperly voice.
“Shared psychotic disorder... Folie à deux,” she said slowly and incorrectly, “is a rare disorder characterized by sharing a delusion among two or more people in a close relationship. The inducer, primary, who has a psychotic disorder with delusions influences another non-psychotic individual or more, induced, secondary, based on a delusional belief.”
“What's that mean, though?,” Dam Son asked. Kane's strange mind devised an answer that none of them could see coming. “I think... We were there so often for so long that we started to develop a relationship with the town... And I think the town itself is the primary and we as a group are the secondary... And as time went on, it influenced us into believing its delusions.”
“This is all too crazy!,” Dave shouted. “How could it be possible that we ALL share this SAME delusion!” Everyone looked around and at eachother, and they all seemed to agree that David had a point. Two things were more likely; only one person would have a delusion, or they would all have delusions and they would all be unique to their own psyche, meaning during the hospital event, each of them would have seen something different.
After David made this point, Sara came up with an idea to settle this once and for all.
But in order for her hypothesis to work correctly, she had to separate all of the others.
With only ten minutes left in the lunch period, she worked quickly. All of the others were now gapped a seat, and one by one by one, Sara asked each student a question in private so that the others could not hear. And each conversation went more or less exactly like this:
Sara: When we heard all the rumors about Tommie, every one described her as a five-year old little white kid, right?
Student: Yeah, she's a little white girl.
Sara: Try to remember her...
Student: Wait...
And this happened with each student. A brief pause and then a revelation. They all, every single one of them, suddenly remembered that Tommie was not white at all, but distinctly Asian. Sara would ask each of the students if they at ever talked about this with any of the other students after the incident, and they all said no. With a minute left in the lunch period, Sara brought the group back together and they all discussed the fact that Tommie Cleaver was definitely Asian.
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J une 19 th
Maman died today. It's strange the way that I feel. I don't feel sad, I don't even feel guilty, but I don't understand why I didn't even give her the chance to say goodbye to me.
I knew she was sick. I even made plans to go back to France to be with her. But I ended up here, in London, and never had any desire to go back home. I didn't hate her, I didn't love her. But I should have been better than her. I should have visited her to let her see me one last time. Maybe I was too hard on her. Her life before was already hard. But any women who mix men and love is bound to have a difficult life. Sometimes I felt like for her, everything circled back to pleasing a man. But if you please a man one time, you have to be prepared to please him again. That's the one way I was different from her.
From her, from my sisters, from my aunts, from all of the women in my family. Too many times they've allowed men to steal things from them. Not me. Yesterday, Yadia and I robbed a politician the same way we've robbed other men. No difference between a rich prick and a poor prick, they all cum the same way just like every woman moans in the same language. The keys we copied were to a yacht. We knew how high-profile this job would be so we made sure to wear masks and gloves. All in all we drove out of there with tens of thousands worth in jewelry. It was only when I got home that I saw one of the boxes we took had folders described as “classified” and “security clearance 9.” I did not have the class or the security clearance to read any of these documents, but hell, they were now mine, so I let curiosity take control. The first document I read was concerning China, Japan and foreign affairs. Honestly, I was never one for politics, and nothing I skimmed spoke of corruption, so it wasn't long before I fell asleep to wake up to the news of my mother's death. Before she died, I'd thought of her death a lot, but I didn't know how it would affect me, if at all. It has affected me, but not in any way I could have anticipated. It's just still so strange, to know that for the first time in my life I am in a world without her. I'll miss her, but I'll never forgive her for all the men she chose over me. Never mix love with men, only business.
The students had all settled themselves into their own homes after various obligations such as after-school activities and chores. Pattie was sitting in the living room where she had just finished her homework and invited the rest of the students into a group chat on her cellular device.
The first to accept the invitation was Dave, and shortly after, Sara, after they had both spent half of an hour packing some of their belongings. Then came Kane after throwing out some garbage. After was Kristie, who had just gotten home from an after-school computer class. Then came Dam and Gun, who had just finished cleaning their father's 189 | HEROES AND VILLAINS
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taxi.
“Do you guy's think we should tell the police?,” Pattie asked the group. “But what would we even tell them?,” Kristie asked. “We saw someone get killed,” Pattie finished.
“But if we tell them that, we also have to tell them that it was a giant who goes after certain blood types and a little cleaver-wielding girl who did the killing,” Sara supposed.
“...Since you put it that way,” Pattie said, “Yeah, they would laugh at us...”
“What if we lied... Or, well, not lie, but leave out some stuff...,” Gun suggested,
“Like, we tell them we saw a man killing another person, but we leave out the blood type stuff and we leave out Tommie completely.” “That makes sense,” his brother agreed.
“I also think, first, we just tell our parents... If our parents tell the police, the police will take it more seriously,” Kristie suggested. They all agreed.
After the discussion, the students had successfully concocted a version of the event with a few omissions, and it went like this:
They were all walking from school and through Woodmire one afternoon when they became curious about the Reader Medical hospital building. They went inside, only to just observe the building for a glimpse of the past. And then they heard a sound on one of the higher levels. When they went to go look, they saw a man killing another man, and right after this they ran away and never returned.
CAM59928: Militia is seen preventing people with force from leaving Woodmire.
CAM47551: Every hour could be seen a tank driving down the street.
CAM00183: In front of the church could be read the sign which reads “Psalm 34:4”.
Several months of monitoring this camera would eventually show the conclusion of a church session.
CAM78930: A man with a medical mask disconnects this camera device.
CAM43192: A family is seen being smuggled out of Woodmire.
Inside Reader Medical hospital laid a man in a ward filled with those who had been contaminated with the undocumented virus. The virus had attacked the man's body and his per-existing conditions required for him a blood transfusion. But this blood transfusion would never take place and soon this man would perish. So too were the fates of other individuals; they had contracted the virus and it affected them in different ways; a man who suffered from psychosis and split-personality disorder; two twins of whom it affected their blood-flow; even a canine, whose teeth had begun to fall out, the virus had affected them all in unseen ways until they were met with the phantom of death.
But there were some of which this phantom of death could not see. They were few, but they were there. Even within the ward of doom there was one young man who was immune not from the virus, but from its fatal design. His name was William Freyman, twenty years old, quarantined from society.
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All around him was nothing but pain on the wings of death. Resting in his hospital bed, he waited for 3 A.M., at which time he snuck out of his hospital room and into the hallway. He was guided by the blue light of the moon that passed through the hospital's large window panes, but he was led by dementia.
Finally arriving at his uncle's room, he went to his uncle's side. His uncle was the only parental figure he had ever known, and the mercy he would soon show his uncle came to him as a noble act. He saw his uncle suffering, short of breath, and to be soon visited by the phantom of death anyway. And so as his uncle lay there sleeping, William placed his hand on his uncle's mouth and helped him onto the other side of darkness.
There was no purpose to stay within the hospital any longer. Will's uncle was now deceased and Will's own symptoms were disappearing. These facts helped him to decide that he would flee from the hospital, and then eventually from the town.
The disarray of the town had made a reflection for the disarray of the hospital, and so Will found it easy to escape without detection. After doing so, he walked through the softly monitored streets of Woodmire, the blue glow of the moon still shining on the haunted streets. He found his home and took whatever he could carry on his person, and then went to his employment which had recently been shut down. It was the town's biggest meat factory, and he knew of an underground passage that would help him flee Woodmire.
Bill walked through the tunnel until he reached a gate. It was a gate that was never really locked, and pushing it open, he walked further through the tunnel until he found a ladder. Climbing the ladder and then exiting the tunnel, he found himself in the neighboring town which was called Mist Harbor. With only a few hundred dollars and now no one to look after him, Freyman made calculated plans for the next chapter in his life.
Reading Loss of Service, the poem at hand made me ponder the correlation between law and religion. Law and religion are closely related as the most important thing about either is a projected morality toward other life. Without both law and religion, it's hard to imagine what kind of world we would be living in... It's hard to imagine that a human being ultimately has an innate moral code, moral genetic code, even, and more importantly, that this code is shared collectively throughout common humanhood. The way I would better detail what I mean is with this statement: One could travel all over the world and ask individuals if they think a certain action should be punished, and for the most part, you'll get mostly the same answer, but after asking the same individuals what the severity of the punishment should be, you'll find that the answers vary wildly.
Many years ago I wrote a formula that detailed this phenomena. The basic principle behind it is that as you add items (or, in this case, “options”) to it, the more equal the 191 | HEROES AND VILLAINS
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dispersement becomes. That is to say, the fewer items, the less equal the dispersement.
o = options
a = options decimal
c = curver
d = drop off rate
r = reiteration
p = population
f = final result
a = 0.01*o
c = 100/a
d = c/100
f = (d/100)(p)
r = o
--on each reiteration, d is the percentage of remaining people who will have that option chosen--
for (int i = 0; i < r; i++) { f; p = p – f; }
These notes attempt to detail the phenomena that as items are added to a pool, the more equal each item becomes. It can be found in many areas of life. One thing, though, that I realized about this is that at the end of each iteration, there is a surplus. What are we supposed to do with that surplus? I proposed two things; add the entirety of the surplus to option #1 or recycle the surplus and repeat the entire operation over and over again until p is less than 1.
My thought processees were interrupted by a knocking at my door. “Open the door B.” She still has been spending too much time with Dave.
She entered my apartment and saw that I still had not even come close to finishing my unpacking expedition. “I'm sleeping upstairs tonight so I can help you unpack some of this stuff,” she offered. “Knock yourself out,” I went to sit on my couch. She nodded her head as she went through the boxes.
An hour later and the purple light of the moon began to shine through windows; she was coming up on finishing with half of my apartment. I just watched her as she went 192 | HEROES AND VILLAINS
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about the residence speaking to herself and arranging things in a neatly order. At some unorderly minute, she came across a box that actually belonged to her and must have been placed in my old apartment by mistake. It was the box of erotic clothings, and she joked that if someone else would have found it, they might think something queer of me.
“Lynne, I don't care what people think of me, I only care what you think of me,” I smiled at her. Even with her back turned toward me as she looked through the box, I could feel her laughter. And slowly, she turned around holding one of the outfits to her chest.
My mind half-dreamed of her walking down a nightly San Rashida boulevard as she tried on various outfits she had never worn before. And when you mix love and fantasy, that love is more potent than just love alone, and regrettably, that is my lovemap.
Another quite simple and deliciously desireful outfit. Nothing but a lacy flowery top with string straps.
This was basically a wedding outfit, but not a dress. She had on the long veil, and the rest was see-through white stockings and a see-through white top. In her hand was of course a bouquet of white flowers. Also a pearl necklace.
She was covered all in black, I should say black flowers. But the black and the flowers were very see-through.
She had on a cow-girl's hat and a red bandanna around her neck. Golden star-shaped earrings and a cow-girl's shirt.
This was like the previous blue outfit, silky blue stockings connected to a silky blue garter-belt, but she also had on blue silky gloves. Around her neck was a choker with a jewelry type flower.
She had nothing on but a sweater and a long pearl necklace.
She had nothing on but ankle length socks and a shirt that was too small. The purple shirt basically was too short to fully cover the length of her breasts.
When she was done she walked over to me with her hand out. “Ain't shit for free,”
she said. I gave her a Grant and a Jackson and then she promptly went away upstairs to her own apartment only to return a few minutes later in a black dress. The last few steps to me she accelerated and jump onto me on the couch and laid in my arms. She has no idea that sometimes I wear a black hockey mask when I masturbate to her pictures. I'm just kidding...
As she laid on me her foot touched mine and I could feel a small bit of glass inside my foot. It must have now been embedded deep within my foot.
For a while we both laid there and had the silent view of the night sky and nearby buildings. For whatever reason, I suddenly remembered of Dakota and immediately told Lynne of what I had discovered. When I spoke of the that night on the train her mind instantly clicked and she quickly confirmed that that was in fact where we had met 193 | HEROES AND VILLAINS
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Dakota. We talked about how bizarre she was on the train but how normally social she was at dinner. We came up with a bunch of theories, some of them touching on double-lives and split-personalities, but really we had not an idea on her behavior and we knew that the next time we saw her it would be strange because even Dakota herself did not recognize us. Or, maybe she did... Who knows?
Ready to turn in for the night, Lynne turned her self around to lay face first on me. It didn't take long with her face directly into mine and her body so firmly pressed against mine that she felt me. And in that same longing I could hear her whisper the words
“Game over.” And as I gandered twice at dusk from my living room window, my imagination tweaked and spun twofold of all the things I was going to do to Lynne.
A
ugust 18 th , 1993
I finally understand. It only took a year for me to finally get recognition and become wildly famous in the industry, but I get it now. You can commit yourself wholeheartedly to your passion and do something that is real to you, but it will never pay the bills or keep your belly full. And you can do something fake, something that almost means nothing to you, and you will drown in success. The way I've felt must be the way every artist feels when they sell out... Give up on their dream... I've done a film where I am a prostitute, but now I truly know what it means to be one. I don't love these movies that I make now, I don't love that they are all completely fake and void of the truth form, but what else can I do? I tried to be authentic but I don't want to live out on the streets. I don't want to beg for food. I don't have any other choice but to sacrifice what I want and to give the people what they want. I wish I was strong enough to fight the good fight, but being this famous and making this much money isn't something I can trash. All the artists who never give into the temptations of being rich and famous, all the ones who never whore themselves or their talents out to an industry, they are the true heroes. I've become a porn icon for all of my fake movies while my real films sit and rot. At the top of my list of successful movies is Bridetight, where I play an innocent and pure bride, but I gotta tell you, I don't feel pure. And you know, anyone can be talented, but only a few people can be lucky...
Rebecca and her family had finally moved out of their apartment building and relocated to Paradise Island. During a walk to a government office early one afternoon, Becca was stopped by a gentleman who was calling for her from a distance. When the man finally caught up and approached her, he detailed the facts that he was an agent for performing talents and spoke to her on the possibility of becoming an actress. “I have an eye for artists,” the man claimed. The man then gave to her his card, which also detailed 194 | HEROES AND VILLAINS
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himself as a manager of adult entertainers in the adult entertainment industry.
Later that afternoon while in her new room, Becca visited the web-address on the man's card and found that he was the owner of a pornographic company and had its studio in New Paris, a small city connected to the south of San Rashida. Becca had no interest in pursuing anything of the like but for whatever reason continued to browse the website and saw a large number of models in the catalog.
For a number of days, Becca thought on her encounter with the man in that early afternoon, and she thought even more on the section of the site that dealt with softcore pornography. If she ever did pursue such a career, it would be in this development which seemed to feature the female form as a solo act. Of course, Becca began to think of the easy money to be made, and as her thoughts concentrated on the venture, she found herself finally calling the man.
An appointment was made for an interview in New Paris, to which Becca arrived after taking the subway. And soon she sat in a room with other women, some her age, some much older, all of whom who either had the inescapable desire to be seen, or the temporary need for quick money. Becca was not entirely sure which one she was there for. Maybe the former, maybe the latter. Maybe both. But what she did understand of the world is that there were classes in it, and for each class of people, there was a place for them.
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Chapter 98
POOL STREET MAFIA
2:3:10:98
This diary belongs to Sierra Pryce.
J uly 12 th , 1951
I am so tired... Now that all of the prostitution has been pushed into this one location, and now that it has been “legalized,” every girl here averages about 35 men each day. I won't get into how much money that is a day, but it's a lot. It's certainly more than I've ever made before. But it's all made me so tired. Not the kind of tired you get from working a full shift and coming home just wanted to rest... It's something more than that.
I'm exhausted. Sometimes I don't even get up after and just wait for the next man to lie on top of me because I just can't move. I get so tired I can't even leave Poolidise. I'll just pick myself up after I can't take anymore and find a room where I can sleep, but sometimes I can't even sleep because of all the noise around me. It's just sex 24 hours a day here.
There is no escape from it. At first it seemed well to not have to deal with half the shit we girls have to deal with, and it was so nice to make so much money, but now... This place is literally Hell. I want it to go back to how it was, even if I only make a fraction of what I am making now. I miss my friends. I miss Peaches. I miss Claudia. I miss the 300
pound girl who can always make us all laugh. I miss the girl with the burns all over her body. When we used to run this street, it meant something. Any man who found himself on this side of town was a freak, and there was a certain pride we gained from that. We were exotic and our differences helped us form a bond. It helped me so much. They helped me so much. Because everywhere I turned I was chased out. I was hated. What I am is something I would never wish on anyone else. There is no good that I can see that comes from being in the middle. A hero is good, a villain is bad, but where do anti-heroes and anti-villains fit in the story? A million dollars... Can't retire, not worth it to work. The poorest rich person in London. The world's tallest dwarf. The weakest strongman at the circus. Black people may hate me, but I don't hate them. White people may hate me, but I don't hate them. I love every one. And if it were up to me, mixing black and white should be something to be celebrated. But I am a half-breed who is hated by every one. Not black enough to be black and not white enough to be white. The only place I was ever loved was on Pool street. By my sisters and the men who paid me. I love them too, but I don't feel that I can go on any longer in this hellhole. I am just too tired, and my body has nothing left to give.
This diary belongs to Audrey Li.
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Mar
ch 1 st , 1970
It's not my fault. They forced me. I didn't want to do any of that stuff. No matter how many times I tell myself these things I still feel guilt. I've been feeling guilt ever since it happened. The last year every day has been misery and guilt. I got close to Marcos. Not in a romantic way but in a supportive way. He was one of them who I actually liked, and he actually liked me, but he wasn't any different from the rest of them. He was into some vile shit just like the others, but there was something about him that was real. I still believe every word he told me was the truth and I truly believe he had my best interest at heart. It's just, he liked pain like the rest of them. He called me over one midnight because he was feeling lonely and I went over as soon as I could, leaving the apartment he bought for me. We talked about upcoming contests but it wasn't long until he wanted something else. I'll be frank, Marcos liked it up the ass... He had a collection of strap-ons and dildos and some of them were things that should never go inside anyone's body. He knew I was too shy to use a strap-on, so sometimes he would have me shove his gigantic dildos into his ass. It was nerve-wracking the first time I did it, but I'll admit I got used to it. It made me happy that I was making him happy, in a weird sort of way. But that midnight was different, he was anxious and he wanted real pain. I stuck it so hard and so far into him that he made a movement I had never seen before and a sound that scared me, and for the first time he actually told me to stop. Marcos was a man who didn't rely on a safe word, but that night he told me to stop. A few minutes later, he told me didn't feel right and asked me to call Janinez right away. He ended up going to the hospital and staying overnight, and then died the following morning due to internal hemorrhaging.
Him dying destroyed me, but I didn't know or expect of what came next. All of his associates told me to keep quiet. Told me to shut up. Else they would ruin my life. Ruin my family's life. Since his death I've barely left my house and I don't talk to the people in those circles at all anymore. My dream is done. And for the past year, I receive constant reminders that they are watching me and making sure I speak nothing of the things I did for the boardwalkers. That I speak nothing of anything that the women do for these men.
The sexual favors they stock as payment for dreams. They bring fear into my life with threats of gang rape. Abuse. They say if I'm not careful I won't see another sunrise. They even sent a woman to my house right after it happened and she slapped me. I didn't even do anything. But I don't know. It's been a while now and I've had time to think. The powerful and wealthy people in those circles, they string you along and make you do things you don't want to do and make promises they don't intend to keep. I wonder how many girls like me never even saw a platform. Never even made it to a contest. There must be thousands. Thousands of women doing these nasty and disgusting things for men 197 | POOL STREET MAFIA
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who are just playing them. I don't think I can sit and say nothing. It's a dirty game, and I don't think I can stand for it. Some stories need to be told so that they never happen again.
This diary belongs to Jackie Layke.
D
ecember 2 nd
, 2005
To Joseph White:
Where do I begin? I love you. I'll start with that. There were a lot of things I told you about my past but there were some things I didn't. Don't worry, it's nothing that will upset you. But you have been so wonderful to me that I feel like I owe it to you for you to know everything about me. I'll start with 1973. As you know, I was a supermodel. A damn good one in my prime. But I was not a nice person. I was egocentric, narcissistic, just plain old mean and nasty. I judged people by what they wore and what they could afford. And it's not like anything I've ever outgrown, to this day there is still a piece of that to me, but I'm just glad it's not the first thing that comes to mind anymore. For a few years I was still relevant in the industry, but then sometime in 1974 I started to feel sick.
By '78 I knew I was dying, but it wasn't until '83 that I knew what was killing me. We know it today as HIV, or AIDS, I'm still not completely sure which one I should call it. In 1983 I moved to America with the help of a pastor. I got better treatment here and God answered my prayer. Another thing you already know is that in '92 I became a Christian.
I felt like God gave me a second chance at life. A second life, even. I was sick, but his grace kept me alive. By 2000 everyone I knew in the 70s and 80s were all but dead.
Killed by what was killing me. I felt strange that I had outlived them all. I know now the incredible strength of prayer. I just wish they had had someone to pray for them. With them. Of course, in 2003, I met you and you changed my life. Geez, you were so much younger than me but so much older than me at the same time. I guess that's what drew me to you. Your old soul. But you were and still are so colorful. I know that you will live an important life. A long life that will touch to the core anyone you meet. You will explore your passions and you will change the lives of those who experience your art. That's the difference between you and me. I didn't contribute anything new. Just by your character, I know that you will. And now to the tough part. I will have passed by the time you are given this letter. I will join the spirits from the 70s and 80s who are waiting for me, but I want you to know this one final thing. I will not be afraid to finally meet God.
Your friend, Jackie
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This diary belongs to Kiana Davidson.
A
ugust 11 th , 1999
I am almost certain there isn't a place on this green Earth like Woodmire. The music is different. The food is different. The people are different. It is an eternally beautiful place that I am proud to call home. It is the place of my second life and the place of my rebirth. I go on walks in the evening, sometimes with my son if he feels like it, and there isn't a neighborhood all throughout the town that isn't filled with life. Children playing in the streets, working men coming home to their wives who have prepared supper for their family. Sometimes it kind of feels like an old place, but that only adds to its charm. But I must admit, as beautiful of a place as it is, there is something odd about it. Something strange. I think it's only something you can see or feel if you've lived here long enough, because when we first moved here, it wasn't there. It was like any other town to me, until I became used to it. That's when that feeling came about. I'm probably not doing a good job describing it, but there is one thing that I've always associated with it. One of the most beautiful images I've ever seen in my life is that of a bearded man who has been in isolation for so long that to even look at them makes your mind curious of the things they've thought and the things they've dreamed. But what makes it so beautiful is that at the same time, that notion is terrifying. Imagine the great and terrible thoughts that come from such a long period of isolation. Things that are truly beautiful always have a terrifying subtext, which is why I think the image of a woman is the most beautiful of all.
The image of a woman has driven men to do both great and terrible things. We have so many pieces of art done in the name of a woman, but we have so much immorality done in the name of women. I get the same uneasy feeling when I walk the streets of Woodmire and have the privilege of witnessing her beauty. She is so beautiful, and that to me is terrifying.
This diary belongs to Roxana Nights.
O
ctober 16 th , 2000
I met a woman last year who brought back so many feelings to me. I had a baby in 1994. Her name was Gina. But she died in 1999 a short while after we moved to the city of San Rashida. I don't know what I could say about her that any mother wouldn't say about their child. She was special. She was an angel. She changed my life. A year before she died we went to a festival that had all sorts of activities. There was an artist there, a painter. He saw my daughter and ran up to me and told me how beautiful he thought she was. At first I was confused, but he then asked if he could paint me a painting of her for a 199 | POOL STREET MAFIA
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small fee. The idea grew on me and so my daughter posed for the painting. It didn't take long and when he was finished he gave the painting to me and I looked at it. “It's so...
Realistic,” I said to him. He had captured the personality of my daughter without ever having known her at all. To me, that was the definition of an artist. I couldn't help but ask him questions and he told me about the realism and naturalism movement in art that happened long ago. He told me of painters who would paint every day people in the grandness that was reserved for important people. And he told me that he painted my daughter with the same grandness. I paid for the piece of art and soon we left the festival.
A week after she died, I found myself staring at the painting. Remembering that sunny day that she posed for it. The moment I looked away from the painting I had decided to quit the industry and revert all of the surgeries I had had. My daughter had left a hole in me, and so when I heard about what was happening in Woodmire, I volunteered to have my home be used as a quarantine location for residents that were fleeing. All my life, even when I was a pornstar, every thing I did was to give back to the world. I believe it was fate that had happened, because I was given a woman and her son to shelter and quarantine, and the woman was the spitting image of my Gina. It was as if she were Gina, but 30 years older. The same skin, the same eyes, the same mouth, hair, chin, every thing.
I couldn't believe it and I nearly toppled over when I first picked her up to drive to my home. She later told me her name was Kiana Davidson and that she had lived in the same area I lived in in London. We were both so excited to speak of Pool street and the things we did in the skin industry. She had lived there in the decade before I did, but we felt so connected in our experiences. She told me about Woodmire and how it was so hard for her to escape and that I was her savior. She had lost her home, her job, everything. After the quarantine period, she was allowed to leave and continue her life, but I asked her if she would stay with me. She did, and a few weeks ago she moved out but promised me she would move within the same building. She lives on the same floor as me now, so it's basically the same thing. The feelings she gives me are so strong. Sometimes when we are in love we have ideas or notions about why we are in love, but sometimes there is an essence that eludes us. A true reason that evades us. But this time it is not lost on me. I know exactly why I am in love with Kiana but I am not sure if I should be ashamed of it or not. My daughter was my world, and when she died I was lost. When I look at Kiana, there are no words to describe how much she reminds me of her. It is an aching pain to want to touch someone so badly but cannot. I have dreams of holding Kiana the same way I did my daughter. I have dreams of laying beside her on our bed and gently moving my hand through her hair. I know the image of it seems strange, for me to do these things with an adult woman, but I suppose it is what it is. What brings me shame is that in this longing for her, I have desires that one might call impure. I fantasize through nights about 200 | POOL STREET MAFIA
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embracing her nude body, our skin pressed up against eachother tight and unrelenting. I have never been attracted to a woman, especially not in this way, so I ask myself where did these desires come from? I mean, I know they root from Gina, but I loved Gina in a motherly way. I love Kiana, to a certain degree, in the same way, but there are so many other ways I want to love her and for her to love me; and it hardens my heart that this is a tabooed secret I can never tell her.
This diary belongs to Valentina Flores.
Nov
ember 24 th , 2012
I never dreamed of making it this far. This industry is all about women but it's the men who make the real money. That seems to be changing. I guess it always was with the rise of camming. I bought the website and turned Poolies into a reality. It was a shaky start but it was also what people wanted. At first it was just me and a techie friend I had. I can't even say he was a friend, really, but he saw the potential of my idea and even though I couldn't pay him yet, he did it anyway because it could be a big payday for him.
Turns out it was and now he is paid handsomely every two weeks. One of the first things we did was build our catalog, which comprised of 80 women who sent us specialized photos of themselves. We had all types of women from all walks of life, even specialty women like amputees and bald women. That was actually his idea and it was a good one.
We started marketing ourselves and it didn't take long for us to start receiving hits in the thousands. A few months into the operation we had over 250 women, each with specialized photosets. The same woman could take a photo of herself with dyed hair, different color eye contacts, different outfits. We paid them for their photos at a flat fee and they were happy with what they got. You could sign up for Poolies as a subscriber, in which you have access to all of the women for a certain fee per month, or you could buy certain photos at your own leisure. Most people subscribed, and most of the people who started out with just purchases ended up subscribing. Poolies became an instant hit, and then we were inevitably contacted by MissPlay, who offered to buy us out. When we saw their offering price, we planned to sell right away. We would stay in the company as executives and would earn a salary and also earn a cut based off of revenue from website subscriptions but also from magazine sales. One of the things MissPlay wanted to do was feature rare photos of women you could only get from the magazine so they could drive up their magazine sales and subscriptions. Once you had the magazine, all you had to do was scan the photo and she (or he) would be added to your list. The idea of how much I make a day kind of scares me. It was only a few years ago that I struggled to get by on Pool street, and now I look down on that abandoned street from the 20th floor of the 201 | POOL STREET MAFIA
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MissPlay building. I think of all the girls I used to cam with back then. I feel sorry for them, some of them still camming for pennies on the dollar. In one year, they will be obsolete.
This diary belongs to Ava Walsh.
J une 29 th
A few days ago I escorted an affluent man, for the third time this year, to a birthday party. But he was a man I had not yet stolen from. Back at the hotel I overheard him talking about 727 thousand in cash hidden in a warehouse somewhere on Pool street and that he had the key to get inside and retrieve the funds, but that it would take him two days to remove all of the cash from the warehouse. Of course, I clayed as many of his keys as I could before he could get back. A day later Yadia began following him around.
She saw his home, his workplace, his mistress. It wasn't until the next day that Yadia followed him to Pool street in the middle of the night where he seemed to enter an abandoned warehouse. Yadia claims she saw him enter with nothing in his hands, and also exit with nothing in his hands. Either way, we made plans to visit the warehouse when we thought it safe to do so. But I got greedy. Tonight I came to the warehouse alone in search of the money. It's possible that the money has already been removed, but I have looked everywhere and there is no sign of it here. When I went to leave about an hour ago, I suddenly received a dozen messages all at once on my phone. I saw that my sister had left me a message. An angry message. She said that I killed her. She said I was the worst kind of human being. A liar and a thief. She called me all kinds of things until finally at the end she said I was a prostitute. I was shocked by it. It was something I would have never imagined her calling me. I wasn't insulted by it, I've used sex to get what I want my entire life. No, it didn't insult me. It did something worse. It made me stare and think. Looking out of the large window panes I looked out onto Pool street. It was the first time I had ever been here, but even from France I had heard all of the stories of it. This street was and still is infamous, even in its abandoned state. And looking out onto the street I became aware of a very old poster behind me which caught its reflection on the glass. I turned around and went over to it. It was a movie poster for a movie that was released in 1943. It featured the silhouette of a nude woman and was named
“Piscina”. I must have been near the sex cinema that some say existed back in the 40s.
Often regarded as the first cinema to feature pornographic films, its existence was shrouded in mystery and no one knew if it really existed or not. If it did, this is the only street that could hold such a secret. A theater of darkness filled mostly with men and a couple of women, private, and a dream of desires. Man... People don't understand. People 202 | POOL STREET MAFIA
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don't get it. I grew up in this stuff. My grandmother was Fiona Walsh. You know who Fiona Walsh was? All my people; my mother, my aunts, my cousins. It's just what we do.
You just live with this stuff until you can't breathe anymore. What's the point? I have so much money already but here am I am trying to fuck over Yadia. By the end of next month I will have had sex with 20 different men, and none of them will make me feel anything. Not pleasure or pain. It's all pointless and I don't want any of it. I don't even want the money. I want what Mixie wanted. I want it to go away. I want to start over.
That's what I want. I don't care where. Anywhere. I just want to go somewhere where I can breathe like regular folk. I decided an hour ago that this is my farewell letter. There might come a time when we no longer sell guns and drugs, but we will always sell women. That fantasy is forever.
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Chapter 99
3:33
2:3:10:99
IT was now midnight and the narrator was very tired. He found the remote, hidden somewhere in between the cushions of the couch, and then finally turned the television off and retired to his bedroom, where he laid asleep to dream.
In the morning of a Saturday in June, the children told to their parents of their witnessing of a murder in Woodmire. The parents, who were Charles, father to FKII, Lynne, mother to Sara and David, Sumn and Chin, father and mother to Dam and Gun, Linda, mother to Pattie, Paul and Isi, father and mother to Kristie, had believed their children and the story they told and decided to speak more on it together in person. After some time, they called the police and an officer of the law arrived.
Officer Megan Parrish had been patrolling the area when she received radio communication that a group of civilians had recently witnessed a murder. Driving to the parents, who were accompanied by their kids in the parking lot, Megan stepped out of her police unit and approached the group. The parents soon spoke of what the children spoke, saying the children had been walking through Woodmire and wanted to see what the inside of Reader Medical hospital had looked like when they witnessed one man slashing the throat of another man. They then ran and never looked back.
After writing down various bits of information and details, Megan asked if she could speak to the children. The parents allowed this.
The children told her the story again, the same way the parents did, and she was satisfied of the results. But something was eating at the heart and soul of Kane the Second. He knew that Officer Megan would have to visit Woodmire, and he knew that once she arrived, it would turn into Mirewood and her life would be in danger.
“Are you going there now?,” Kane asked the officer excitedly. “Yes, I have to check the area,” she replied. “You can't!,” Kane yelled. Everyone's attention was now on Kane and he saw this. Panicking, he couldn't help but shout out the truth. He began shouting at no one in particular about how Don the Bleeder had done the killing and how they were chased by him and Tommie Cleaver. He screamed of Algor and Rigor and a canine with metal teeth. He continued to yell about predatory birds and a meat factory that was definitely alive. He went on and on until finally he began to speak about a little old lady who still lived there and was one of the nicest people he had ever met. Megan stopped him there and all of the adults were surprised to hear all of this. Embarrassed, perhaps, that they had wasted the officer's time. Even the other children were disappointed, as now they all looked like imaginative children. But despite her now being suspicious of every thing every one had told her, Megan felt she had a duty to visit Woodmire and examine 204 | 3:33
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the Reader Medical hospital building to make sure it housed no corpse.
An African-american officer had been making his rounds of the Poolidise nightmare when he became aware of a strong odor. At first, he assumed the odor was the cousin of the many other stenches he had smelled throughout Pool street, but soon came to know that this one was different. When he found the door that the odor called out from, he found a lifeless body within the room.
“Brian, you there,” he said into his radio. “Yeah, what's up?” “We got a problem.”
The officer told his Caucasian patrol partner of his location and when Brian finally arrived, he too saw the lifeless body of Sierra slouched over a chair.
“What do we do?,” Brian asked. “I don't know...” “If this hits the news it could be bad news for the force,” Brian said. “...I was thinking about hiding the body, but I just don't know,” Michael answered. “...Let's just call the LT,” Michael finally suggested.
The two officers traveled through the dark and smoky hellhole and to a payphone where they called their commanding officer who had been home sleeping.
“Sir, we found one of the girls in a room... She's dead... No I don't think it was a murder or a suicide, I didn't find any signs to suggest those things... She's black.” The description of her race caught the attention of Brian, and then soon Michael hung up the receiver and the two returned to the body to continue their inspection.
Looking over her body, Brian made a comment to his partner. “You think she looks black? She looks white to me.” Michael looked at her face again. The polarizing nature of Sierra's beauty was an enigma to all who saw her.
When the lieutenant arrived, he too looked into this illusion, but he saw her with political eyes. “This is the plan, gentlemen. Poolidise is over. We're going to remove every one from the area, kick the hammies out and move the girls back to where they were before. There can be no sight of this. Then we're going to report this death. It looks accidental. But honestly, I don't know what it looks like. It looks like she may have just keeled over and died. And looking at her, we shouldn't have too much pushback from the community. She's too black for any important white figure to care about, and she's too white for any black activists to fight for. We'll report this, people will protest for a week, and then forget. We good?” The officers seemed to agree.
By the afternoon, Poolidise was indeed over and prostitutes were again spread all throughout Pool street and the surrounding streets as they were a month before. Mixie's death had been reported and knowledge of the Poolidise experiment began to grow throughout the community. Following the next two days, there was enough outrage from the community that prostitution could be consolidated into a small area and overlooked as legal, and many blamed this solution to be the true reason for Mixie's death, but as the lieutenant predicted, there was not enough outrage to memorialize her death. Instead, at 205 | 3:33
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the end of the week when there was barely any mention of Mixie at all, a great rain had fallen in London and had flooded every street. Soon after, the section of Pool street where Mixie had died was taped off, and soon this property would become an abandoned site of 1950s London.
At an hour past noon, Megan arrived to the town of Woodmire. She parked her unit in front of the welcome sign, which she noticed had been vandalized to say Mirewood instead of Woodmire. Looking through her map, she located the Reader Medical hospital building and soon began driving in that direction. Making a left turn, the building should have been on her right, and yet it was the post office. She thought perhaps she may have looked at the map incorrectly, and browsing it once more saw that she indeed had taken a wrong turn on a wrong street.
Reversing back onto the street behind her, she turned and continued back the way she'd came, but something was off. “This wasn't here before,” she said to herself. She was referring to one of the town's churches, which she was sure she had not driven past before. Regardless, she continued driving until she made the correct turn, and yet, the building she sook was not in sight. It was simply a row of business stores long forgotten.
Frustrated, she looked down at her map once more.
So engrossed was she that it took a moment for her to notice that her ears were hearing something. Something she couldn't identify, and as she looked around through all of her windows, something she could not see. With all the directional confusement her heart began to race, and finally she heard someone begin to speak to her in what her mind interpreted, in its current state, as a ghost.
“Hello there, officer!,” Florella shouted as she appeared at Megan's driver door window. The shock had made Megan fly backwards further into her seat. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to frightened you,” Flo apologized.
Megan exited her vehicle and couldn't believe it. The sight of the elderly lady gave a small amount of credence to the shoutings of Kane.
The two began to converse, and Megan eventually learned that she indeed did live here. Megan told Flo that this was not a place for anyone to live, to live alone much less, and that she wanted to have her moved. Of course, Flo rejected the notion. Before Flo left, Megan asked for directions to the old Reader Medical hospital building, to which Flo pointed her the way.
Finally driving up to the building she was looking for, Megan exited her unit and began walking inside. Entering the building she had startled a group of birds who excitedly flew outside. She looked at her notes and noted that she saw that the children saw the murder take place on an upper level. After finally reaching that level, she began looking around. She didn't expect to find anything, but meeting the elderly lady gave her 206 | 3:33
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the belief that anything was possible.
It was perhaps within three minutes of searching, Megan heard another noise. Distant at first, but it was coming in her direction. As it neared, she understood it not to be in the building but outside, and looking out of a nearby window, she saw an ice cream truck speeding down the lonely road. It was after this moment, when she turned around to continue her search, that she discovered a pair of legs sticking out from behind a hospital bed. They were bare and the feet attached to them gave the impression that they had been scorched.
Megan slowly walked up to see what was of the rest of the body, and when she saw that the victim's neck had been slashed, she again thought of Kane, of all of the children and their parents, and she knew them to be true.
In 1962, just over a decade after the events of Poolidise, that area of Pool street was back on the block and was soon to be the operating location of a pageant model training business. This was so until in 1970, Audrey Li, who had been employed by the business, was featured in an interview and revealed all of the dark secrets of the dark men behind these pageants.
“They're a rotten bunch,” she told the interviewer, “they string you along and buy you things and play with your head. They play with your integrity and your dignity and make you do vile things.”
The vile things Audrey spoke of resulted in the accidental death of one such boardwalker and the entire situation has been a large burden on Li, who says the event was one of the main reasons she felt she needed to speak out.
“These are women with dreams, and it's so embarrassing to not ever even make it to the stage. But through all of this I have learned something important. If the world considers you pretty, be cautious, because if you don't learn how to express yourself in a good way, you'll learn how to express yourself in a bad way.”
Since the interview, dozens of other women from similar industries have spoken out about the treatment against women in what you might call the superficial world. Their stories are up next.
“M13 this is R41, copy,” Megan said into her radio. “R41 copy.” “I got a body here.
788 Gerald street, Reader Medical hospital.” “Okay one moment.” “Yeah okay,” Megan kneeled down to make a closer inspection of the body, “female, dressed kinda like a hooker, but she looks young. Biracial, I think... Hey M13, I'm gonna also need to remove a resident from the neighborhood.” “...From Woodmire?,” M13 asked with intent curiosity. “Yes, old lady's been living here.” “Okay, hold on, timestamping this finding at 3:33 PM.”
Within fifteen minutes, police had arrived at the scene and begun their work. An alert 207 | 3:33
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officer had heard of the finding in the time between and alerted both detectives Wilson and Rousseau of the finding, both of which found it extremely interesting and hurried to the location.
Wilson and Rousseau exited their unmarked unit and began walking toward the hospital building, which, by now, was surrounded by police.
They went through the building and up to the level which lay the deceased. Looking around, they found the deceased and walked over to her as Megan watched with intent eyes from the distance.
“Must've walked through Hell,” Rousseau commented on the victim's burned feet.
After a moment of inspecting the deceased, Wilson made comments of his own, “Slashed throat and a female. Doesn't fit. Don't think our guy would have taken the risk to come back here anyway. Honestly, who would?” Rousseau seemed to agree with his partner.
Standing back up, Wilson scanned the room and then pointed at Megan who immediately pointed at herself for confirmation. In her walk toward the detectives she was immeasurably nervous and wondered if she had perhaps done something against protocol.
“Megan, you said there's an old woman living here?,” Wilson asked her. She was surprised the detective knew her name. “Yes. Yes, do you need to speak to her? I'll show you where she lives,” Megan responded.
The three traveled out of the quarters of the hospital building and began walking toward the huddled police vehicles. “Look, Megan, how far does she live anyway?,”
Rousseau asked. “Not far, only a few blocks,” Megan replied. “Me and Wilson have been sitting in a disgusting unit since five this morning waiting for a suspect, you mind if we walk?” Megan did not mind, and then looked to Wilson. Wilson seemed to agree with his partner.
During the walk, Wilson made a startling observation. He had checked his watch earlier when he first arrived at 4:04 PM, but checking it again he noticed that it had stopped. He confirmed this by asking the others the time, both of which had indicated it was 4:41 PM, and yet his watch told him it was only 4:32 PM.
“You know, I was here a couple winters back,” he seemed to talk to Megan, “just after the bodies were found and before all the spooky stories of this town started to circulate the area. I nevermind the spooky stories, it's all just kid stuff, but I do remember one about time stopping in Woodmire...” “...Boo,” Rousseau joked. And by then they had arrived.
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nothing of the matter. And of the recent homicide, she said she did not even know occurred.
After all of this, Rousseau told Florella that, for fear of her safety, they would have to move her to another residence. Florella refused, and then asked the officers to leave, but leaving Florella in a place like Woodmire was not an option.
After much debate, Rousseau resorted to legal disinformation, claiming Woodmire was not even on the government's list of habitable sites, and reasoned with her that should she go with them today, he will allow her to return in a timely manner. Florella was visibly upset with the threat of having her removed permanently, and began telling the officers why she lived there in the first place.
Megan was sorry to hear her reasons and stepped forward. “If you go with us, we'll leave a sign for your son telling you where you are just in case he comes back while you're away.” Florella thought about it, then seemed to agree, but also noted that she would only leave under the condition that Rousseau provided her with one of his cigarettes, a vice she had not indulged for decades.
Florella looked back at her home a final time, and then at the note that had been left on the door, and then finally entered the police vehicle to be driven away by Megan.
Returning to the hospital, Wilson and Rousseau began speaking with other various agents of the law. They learned that the body was recently deceased and that information from the deceased's cellular phone had been obtained. The most pertinent data to the detectives was that fact that for many of the applications on the device, the username stored seemed to be “Mixie.” But in investigating this name, the detectives would soon discover there was no information related to anyone who either by birth or by nickname was assigned the moniker of Mixie.
All of the parents and children who had a role in the police's discovery of the body found at the old Reader Medical hospital building in Woodmire sat attentively as the 11
o'clock news began.
It did not take long at all for a newscaster to began speaking of the murder. None of them could believe what they were a part of, now to forever be a part of Mirewood legacy.
“Yes!,” Dave shouted when they revealed they had found a recently deceased body in the building. Lynne, Sumn, Charles, Chin, Dam and Gun were all startled by this gesture, and then reverted their eyes back to the screen. “We're not crazy,” Dave elbowed FK11, whose eyes, like the rest, were fixed on the television.
The next day, each of the parents received a phone call from the police department asking if they could bring their children down to the fire station for further questioning.
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oath. And so they practiced in Kane's room for the future questioning.
“Raise your right hand,” Dave said, “and then repeat after me. 'I, Kane, swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God'.” Kane repeated, “I, Kane, swear to tell the truth, all the truths, and nothing... God help me...”
Death in the afternoon... Meena Onsari is one of the most interesting writers I've ever had the pleasure of reading. I am reading her book, Priceless, now for perhaps the third time and it is still so fresh. The novel is about a photographer who has the ability to go back in time and take photographs of historical past events. Those wealthy in her time pay her for specific photos she can capture, but every photo snapped is an arduous mission. Nonetheless, she is a sort of photographic hitman, graphic mercenary, and every chapter is about a photograph she suffers to take.
I mention the novel because a line in it made me think of a line from another book.
“What’ll we do with ourselves this afternoon?” cried Daisy, “and the day after that, and the next thirty years?” These are words uttered by a character named Daisy Buchanan in the novel "The Great Gatsby". Reading this sentence in the course of reading the entire novel, one might pass over it and not think much of it if at all, but these words echo sentiments of a feeling that is a cornerstone in the human condition: boredom.
If some of us can't figure out what to do with a free afternoon, how are we supposed to figure out what to do with our entire lives? And this question is not targeted at the ever so deep and philosophical nature of finding one's purpose but rather it is about simply having something to do and keep busy. In addition, people who have found their deep purpose in life are not exactly free from boredom, as this harrowing feeling, or harrowing thought, is often felt or thought of once something has ended or once a person has finished something.
I refer to it as harrowing because I believe it is one of the scariest thoughts a human being can have. It is not that it is threatening or even remotely horrifying, but it is the very definition of uncertainty. Boredom when mixed with uncertainty can provide such a heavy and distressing weight because it lies dangerously close to death. But not a biological death. It is the death that comes to make new things old.
This was like the wedding outfit but instead of a veil, it was a white women's suit jacket. On her hair was a dark brown wig.
A pink corset, a blonde wig, and stockings which on their hind side were holed and connected by small pink ribbons.
This was like a farmer girl's outfit, cowboy boots, white daisy-dukes, a white and red flannel bra.
Black heels, black stockings, black panties, black bicep length gloves, black hair, and a pink ribbon tied into that hair.
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This was a leopard-print swimsuit.
Black leather boots, red panties, extremely big hair and drum sticks. I'm assuming she was supposed to be a rocker.
Clearly this was the uniform of a secretary; except the only thing the secretary had on was a black and white corset, black and white heels, and a black women's suit jacket.
The attire of the sleepy; a simple completely transparent white sleeping top made of soft fabric. At the top near the breasts were a row of pink flowers.
Red heels, a red purse, and red polka dotted dress where the circles were white.
Thin stockings that almost had no color, and a sleeping gown top that was basically completely see-though.
Ballet-style shoes and thigh-high stocks. Her bra was very fluffy and lacy, and a piece of fabric came out of her hair.
Like one I've seen before, she had on heels with socks that were flappy. Her skirt was plaid, her shirt was silky, and her nails were done.
A simple outfit, it was nothing but a transparent green sleeping gown that went to her knees.
Another sun hat that was outlined in a pale purple. Around her waist was a silky pale pink fabric with flowers that had straps falling to the ground. Her backside and frontside were completely exposed.
The outfit of a flight attendant; a black hat, white gloves, brown nylons, and the jacket of a flight attendant.
And that was the final outfit left in the box. I don't think either of us were exactly sad that there were no more, and she had finally earned the Benjamin. I handed her a Grant and a Benjamin and she tucked it away and soon went back upstairs I supposed to change. I had now fifteen new photographs of her in my possession that I would look forward to phantasizing about in the darkness.
...I think of the blossoms of black roses. The scorn of dangerous skies. Somber holidays. The unwell who were marred by striations of convention. I am thinking of cold days in January. Nights without television. A bruised ego. The sudden impact of illness. I am thinking of my psychology. Fractured. My ambition. Fading. All these things and more I am thinking of, I had or felt only before Lynne.
The light from a camera flashed as it panned and zoomed the corpse of Ava Walsh, whose still body lie in an abandoned building somewhere off Pool street. Just near the corpse also were other bodies of law enforcement and two detectives who had recently arrived. Of importance recovered from the scene was a diary which stated was belonged to Ava Walsh, and this would be an identifying measure, along with dental records, as the corpse's face was eaten off by animals. The diary, being written entirely in French, was 211 | 3:33
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soon to be translated into a form for English speaking readers.
After the diary had been translated in full, both detectives would read their copy intently and would find a suicide letter at the end of it.
While one detective would accept the suicide letter, the other would not, and the two would go back and forth over whether this was actually a suicide or a staged homicide.
Formulated theories on the homicide included the fact that an anonymous caller had tipped them off of the body inside the abandoned warehouse. The detective who did not believe it was a suicide postulated, after reading the diary several times, that Ava was the victim of a honeypot. He suggested that someone found out about what she had been doing, most likely a political aid, and so they set a trap for her to see if she was indeed the thief. Another suggested theory was that she was the victim of Yadia, whose greed was as great as Ava's, and perhaps it was Yadia who was the anonymous tipper.
But the other detective did not believe any of this was the case. He believed the answer was far simpler and that the scene that they investigated was not staged but simply told the truth. He believed that Ava's final page in her diary, the suicide letter, was written with such emotion and such humanity that it could not be a lie. He believed that Ava was a person who could not see themselves living a life beyond what they were. And to his partner he made a curious statement about the lives of women so associated to that of a harlot, “As long as men are buying, women will sell.”
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Chapter 100
FROM DUSK TILL DAWN
2:3:10:100
THE narrator had woken up with a dream fresh in his mind. After waking, he found a composition notebook to begin writing down the dream. He wrote of parked vehicles and circles and an individual who told him he could not fool himself. Soon after, the narrator thought significantly on the choices made in this life. And he thought of the choices to be made. He stayed still, found himself thinking on endless possibilities, and created himself in the place where any dream can begin.
The new library had finally opened for the first time. Among its opening guests were of course Charles F. Kane, who for a few moments in the beginning could not believe the library was finally completed. He went all over and saw all of the books he had donated and watched as all of the general public went about the library choosing what they wanted to read. In his ecstasy he lost track of time, but soon Kaylene found him and told him it was time for him to give the library's first reading, an honor awarded to him for having donated so many pieces of literature.
In the audience was his friend and boss, Jennifer Cole, who was excited to be there and excited for Kane himself. And with all of the excitement, Kane began reading a passage from one of his favorite novellas that he had carefully selected: When you got to Rachel's door, you noticed that it was slightly open. "Miss Marshall,"
you said aloud. When you got no reply, you said it aloud once more and just as slight as the opened door. And in contrast to the subtleties of life were booming pops and two heated bullets that went through the door before you.
After reaching the closest wall you withdrew your weapon and could hear someone opening a window and exiting the apartment. You slowly walked inside until finally you saw Rachel tied to a chair. After you removed the tape from her mouth, she told you to call the police. She was being robbed at gunpoint and relayed the information to me that the individual who just escaped was a wanted man, and perhaps the same wanted man who was wanted in connection for all of the burglaries in this sector of the city. While calling for the police you looked out of your window and in the distance could see a woman being craftjacked. You shouted out of the window and when the burglar saw you, he began running for a darkened alley.
You chased the criminal through alleys, through buildings and through streets, all while thinking to yourself that this was not your circus or your monkies. You caught glimpses 213 | FROM DUSK TILL DAWN
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of him. You caught shadows. And then he would disappear. In ways, you thought, he was much like the nemesis that was a cold case. People, stories, who every other year revealed themselves to you only to vanish the same way they had before. So tired from the pursuit you sat down under blue neon lights and watched as police hovercrafts searched the city. The criminal had escaped from you and only Tohmae remained in your grasp.
As you walked back to the residence of Rachel in your mind you could only think of the criterion moment, which was a concept often taught to anyone who visited antholic services. If you went to church enough times, you would eventually hear the lesson.
The criterion moment is the idea that no matter who you are, whether you are conscious of it or not, you will have a goal in your life and if it is achieved, it will validate all prior points in your life. The concept is in the tree of philosophy and under the branch of meaning. It is a way of giving meaning to otherwise random events. One of the more interesting things you've found of the criterion moment is that it can be realized retroactively. That is to say, long after a moment you have deemed random or perhaps worthless, you can trace points back to the moment and come to realize that this otherwise random moment was actually the moment everything changed, for better or for worse. In this regard, the criterion moment can often be referred to as the "critical"
moment.
You never concluded the Tohmae case, but it is a case that has stayed with you unlike any other. Your criterion moment, you thought to yourself, was the day you sealed the Tohmae case for good. Though you'd think about it from time to time, it was the day you officially moved on from it. And that moment was critical for you because in that moment you traded one failure for many successes. Tohmae, he changed the way you investigated every thing, from cases to life itself, and you have been invaluably better for it.
When the children arrived to the fire station, they were sat down by Daniel Wilson, who asked them to tell him every thing they could remember about their time at Woodmire. This discussion paled in the comparison of color to the discussion the children and the parents would have only two weeks later after being paid and invited to the workplace of a renowned psychic who lived in Mist Harbor.
Like the reader, it was the first time any of them had ever actually been to the town of Mist Harbor, and seeing this, the psychic, one Germain Stradler, gave each of them a souvenir.
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“Start at the beginning,” Stradler asked. The kids all looked at eachother, and then at their parents, and then back at eachother.
“Well, the five of us all live in the same building,” Sara pointed at her associated residents, “and I met Pattie and Kristie in P.E.” “What brought you to Woodmire?”
“We used to live there, Paul, Christina and I, with our relatives,” Isi said, “I used to tell Christina old stories about that place before the virus hit it.”
“At first it was just Pattie and me,” Kristie continued, “we used to just walk through it to get home but we liked how empty it was. And then we met Sara, and sometimes she would walk through it with us but rarely. A little while ago she started walking with us through it afterschool every day, and then soon the boys began walking with us. That was the first time we ever stopped and actually stayed for a bit in it, when the boys came with us.”
Germain, while listening to the children, had taken out a deck of tarot cards and placed them on the table. “What's that?,” Charles asked from the corner.
“These are special cards,” he said to the kids, “and they are linked to the spirit of Woodmire... Or shall I say, Mirewood.” The children all looked at eachother. “It's a practice that some psychics use to communicate with undead lands. We will bury these cards into part of the land's earth and leave it there for a year, and once a year has passed we will recover them, and by that time the land will have become aware of the cards. I buried these cards in Woodmire about two and half years after all those bodies were found. I had already had interest in it long before when it was just an abandoned town, but I buried the cards in an effort to speak with the undead town to aid the police in the investigation. Needless to say, I've had trouble receiving any insights, but I want to try again today, with you children,” Germain spread the cards, face down, through out the table, “I will flip a card and you will tell me if you see anything in its vision.” The children seemed to agree.
Germain looked down at the cards, took a deep breath, and then began to hover his left hand above the cards, eventually flipping over one at best his random.
The first card was the image of a yin-yang symbol, though the colors were blue and green.
Germain waited a moment, looked at each child, but saw that not one had made any connection of the symbol to the town. “This is a symbol used to depict dualism. Many things in our physical and abstract worlds operate in duality. We have good and evil, hot and cold, two arms and two legs, a waking and a sleeping state.” Germain suddenly saw something in Pattie's expression. “Tell me... What did you see Pattie?,” he gave her the card.
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was Algor or Rigor, but we saw him walking down the street at night in a weird way,”
Pattie finished.
“The twins,” Germain said looking at the ceiling, and after closing his eyes in the same pose, began again, “After you reveal to me what you see, if it is true, she, Mirewood, will send me a vision to speak back to you so that you may communicate.”
Charles slightly sat up and forward from his seat and asked impatiently, “What do you see?...”
“...I see... I can see what the children have seen. A young man, walking down a dark street, slowly, awkwardly, but I am told he is not Algor or Rigor, but is in fact Pallor, one of four brothers who is the first stage of death. I see that Algor and Rigor are not yin and yang, but are one set of two twins, a yin to Pallor and Livor, who is their yang. Pallor has come to me, to speak to you through me, and he has said it was not his intention to frighten any of you, but that he was sent to communicate to you that the town of Mirewood was undergoing its first stage of death.”
Germain opened his eyes as if from a daze. “Mirewood is in its first stage of death, that is interesting,” he said to the children, “I'm not sure what the deeper meaning behind that is and frankly it doesn't make sense, considering Mirewood has been dead for years.”
“What is Mirewood?,” Lynne asked everyone. “It's the name of the haunted Woodmire,” Sara replied. “Ah,” Lynne finished.
“Wait!,” Chin shouted. Dam and Son hoped to not be embarrassed by their mother.
“You say Woodmire, but kids say Mirewood. But...,” Chin froze as she could not figure out how to explain to the others what she wanted to say. And so she looked at Dam and began speaking to him in a foreign language, and soon after Dam translated.
“She's right... Mirewood is the new form of Woodmire. And when people die, when you first hear about their death, it's easy for people to tell false stories. So she says Mirewood, not Woodmire, is in it's first stage of death, and the way we all tell stories about it is evidence of it...”
Germain nodded his head and agreed with the insight provided by Chin. And once again, he hovered over the cards and selected a new one.
This time the card displayed the illustration of a clocktower that told the time of 12:12. Germain scanned the faces of the children and saw the same expression in each, it was something they recognized immediately. “What do you all see?,” he asked them.
They all almost started talking at once, and then stopped, looking at eachother, and then one voice came from many. “There was a clocktower in Woodmire, but we never went in it,” Kristie said, “the weird thing about it is that most of the times when we saw it, the hands were stopped and never moved. But there was one time when we actually saw it moving, so we started to think maybe sometimes at night it works, but it stops working in 216 | FROM DUSK TILL DAWN
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the day time.”
Germain closed his eyes, squinting at times, trying to see more clearly the vision that was being given to him. “...I see this clock, and it is frozen the way you have told me. I am entering it through the wings of a bird. I see words on the wall... They say... 'Time is of the presence'.”
Germain opened his eyes, again squinting at times, and then repeating the words he saw on the wall.
He looked over every one before him and then began speaking, “I have an idea of what the town is trying to tell us,” he said, “You told me often when seeing the clocktower, its hands stood still, and that there was only one time that you saw them moving which was at an hour you had never visited it before. And so this has led you to believe that the clock starts at night and stops in the day. In an old Afterworld story, there is a monster character in which when you see it, it is frozen in time and space, however, when you look away, it comes to life. I see this in the town, as which when you were all in it, time stopped, but when you were gone, it came to life. The writing inside the clocktower, I believe, means when you are present, time stands still. But so many people believe they will run out of time to do things, run out of time to live life fully, and for these people time moves quickly. When you look at the monsters, you are facing your fears, and you learn to live your life in such a manner that time is forever. I also think of the idea that which the town was trying to communicate to you. That it is impossible for it itself to move on after its tragedy. It cannot move on because time is stopped, but as we know, time and space are related, so I believe the subtext in this is that truly, the town can not physically move forward to pass beyond its history. Were there any things that suggested the town wanted you to repair the clocktower?”
The children all looked at eachother and then followed several negatives. “That is fine,” Germain smiled, let's move on.
Germain again hovered over the cards and then selected one. This time it was an illustration of a shape that resembled an “L.” Germain looked at the children, who none whatsoever gave any hint of knowing its significance. Even Germain too was stumped as he searched within his mind of the vast knowledge of the history of Woodmire.
“...I know that L is 50 in roman numerals, but I am puzzled by what it may mean, none of you feel any strange energy from the number 50?,” he asked.
No child ever did speak, but of whom did speak was an adult, Isi, who earlier told the group she once lived in Woodmire.
“I think I know what it means,” everyone looked in Isi's direction. “Please,” Germain gestured.
“My great grandmother died when she was fifty. My grandmother died at fifty, and 217 | FROM DUSK TILL DAWN
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my mother also died at fifty. They were all the oldest-born females in their families. My sister, who is older than me, her fiftieth birthday is today and she is terrified of the year.
Do you think the town is telling me that she will die this year?”
“I don't think she has anything to worry about, because I believe the town is only interested in speaking to and through the experiences of the children who witnessed the murder,” Germain tried to relieve her of the anxious feelings.
Germain saw that the children could not associate the symbol with anything they may have observed at Woodmire, and so he went on to the next card.
The next card featured what appeared to be a puzzle with arrows next to the pieces.
As he showed all of the children the card, he scanned their faces for changes. Nothing came to the children at first, but then Gun suddenly made a connection. “The shifting!,”
he yelled. And soon all of the children seem to readily agree.
“Shifting?,” Germain asked. Gun attempted to answer his query, “Past a certain time, the town becomes aware of its visitors, and it will try to confuse the visitors by moving things around in the town. Like if you passed the school, and then tried to go back exactly the way you came, the school would be gone and would be replaced with like, a department store, or something.”
Germain closed his eyes to receive the incoming vision from the town. “...I see... I see Mirewood in the beautiful evening. But this evening it is conscious. I am again flying in the sight of birds, looking over the undead town as it moves things around. But I have not become lost... I have found a church.”
When Germain opened his eyes he could tell that all of the children knew of the church, and even so, Dave began telling Germain of how the church was one of the sites they first became accustomed with and it was there they spent most of their time.
“I see,” Germain said, and continuing, “it makes perfect sense. You may have assumed that the town was playing tricks on you, trying to confuse you and make you become lost by rearranging its parts, but on the contrary, the town is perhaps benevolent and was trying to guide you, or lead you somewhere. Churches are known to be safe havens, and even undead churches are still protected by the light of the Christ. I believe the most that the town chose you all, it lead you to the church, and would protect you from all the evils of the town.”
Again, a new card was chosen, and this one was the illustration of a flame. Like the other cards, it was shown to the children, but it was a long time before Kane gave a suggestion to what it may have been trying to communicate.
“Remember, you guys, when we were sitting near the deathhouse, near the playground, when the phones kept ringing but no one would say anything?” “Oh, yeah!,”
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to the psychic. “Yeah,” Sara began speaking, “we started thinking maybe the town itself was trying to call us, because the same number on the phone was the same number on the firetruck.”
Germain closed his eyes. In the darkness he saw a great fire, and when light came, he looked up to see that a cell-phone tower was ablazed. The heat of the fire soon woke him up to find the children staring at him.
“Abandoned places, just like populated places, have similarities despite their stark contrasts,” he said to everyone in the room. “Spirits move from one abandoned location to another like humans move from one populated area to another populated area. But sometimes just as a human may become lost in an abandoned location, a spirit may become lost in a populated area. My theory is that the town was not calling you, or calling anyone, but that someone alive who used to live in Woodmire was trying to call it,” he emphasized the it.
The children thought of all the people who must have lived in Woodmire before its abandoning and how often they may have thought of the place they used to live, longing for it as if a deceased relative.
When Germain flipped over the next card, he showed to them all the illustration of a brain with a lit light bulb above it.
The children first focused on what the meaning of the brain may have been and then eventually fell onto the light bulb, and in thinking of electricity, they all seemed to agree that this card spoke of the meat plant.
“There was a meat plant there, and while we were walking around in it it suddenly turned on and like, came to life,” Kristie said to the psychic.
Germain closed his eyes and saw a yellow building. He flew into it and saw the darkness and the rust of the facility, only ever lit in areas exposed by the damaged roof.
And like the children saw, darkness disappeared for a moment when light was returned to the plant, and then disappeared soon thereafter.
“I think I know the answer to this one,” Germain said, “if Mirewood is in the first stage of death, the meat factory receiving a surge of electricity is like a brain moments after death. Part of it still works and receives activity spikes. And from what I've read, the region of the brain that often still has activity is the part of the brain known for dreams and altered states of consciousness. And we can all thank dreams for the more creative and fantastic parts of our psychology, all of the enchantment and all of the horror.” The children and the parents all seemed to agree.
Germain checked his watch; this was the first time this afternoon he had done so, and told to his visitors that this would be the final card. He hovered his long arms all throughout the table as if to indicate this was the main event, and finally he flipped a card 219 | FROM DUSK TILL DAWN
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over onto its back. The following card was indeed the main event, and everyone at once knew of its implications; it was the simple illustration of a pool of blood which had knives bathing in it.
“Don the Bleeder,” Kane said under his breath in amazement. Even Germain, the physic, was amazed. He not needed to know what the children saw, for already he had known, and in closing his eyes he found himself inside Hell.
“...I see... I see a young woman. Her soul walks through Hell. She is barefoot as she walks through the flames. And she is leading me somewhere. This is the end of her journey. She has found a portal that is the entrance to the new world. She exits, and we are in Mirewood.”
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CAM00183: In front of the church could be seen a man putting up a new sign which reads “All the angels sing about Jesus's mighty sword, and they'll shield you with their wings, and keep you close to the Lord.” Several years of monitoring this camera would eventually show the conclusion of a church session.
From Wikers:
1970- The Orchid- A masculine flower representing luxury and strength. Greek men would eat orchid roots before conceiving a child, believing it would grant them a boy.
2000- The Amaryllis- Named for the Greek word meaning "to sparkle", this flower symbolizes beauty, pride and determination.
1990- The Marigold- Called the "herb of the sun" the marigold has many meanings, as it symbolizes the intense moods of the creative, from passion to grief.
1950- The Daylily- A flower that withers at night and is associated with both the sensitivity and softness of motherhood and scandalous coquetry at the same time.
1980- The Sunflower- Always facing sunward, this flower symbolizes dedication and ambition.
1960- The Daffodil- The Narcissus flower. This blossom is so named for the Greek god 220 | FROM DUSK TILL DAWN
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that perished for the love of his own reflection. This symbolizes vanity and rebirth.
2010- Jimsonweed- More colloquially known as Devil's Snare, or the Liar's Trumpet, this poisonous yet beautiful plant is known for its trickery. Beneath pretty white, lovely scented blossoms are toxic burrs that induce delirium, amnesia and death. "Beware, beware the devil's snare".
It took the entire afternoon and the help of the storage unit owner and his two friends to move in Lynne, Sara and David from their old apartment to their new. The minute we were done the three were exhausted; Lynne lie asleep in her living room on a couch, Sara lie asleep on the bed in her room, and Dave lie asleep on the bed in his room. I stayed there for a few minutes and thought about what they had told me throughout the move.
How they visited a psychic in relation to a murder they witnessed. It was all so bizarre and interesting at the same time, but I just couldn't wrap my head around someone they called Don the Bleeder. And then there was also Tommie Beaver. Just weird stuff...
⸿ I stayed there for a little while longer and the thought of those horrors brought me to thoughts of a dream I had about seven years ago. On the roof of a federal building I found myself hanging on to the forearm of a security guard who went over the ledge. I tried and I tried to lift him up so that he may make it back onto the roof, but suddenly I heard Dusk behind me.
With a rapid movement, Dusk chopped off my hand and the man fell into oblivion.
Dusk too tried to throw me over, but I countered his attack and threw him backward into a door. The ensuing minutes featured my final battle with Dusk as a fog slowly crept into the atmosphere.
When the battle was over I had retired Dusk of his motor faculties. As he lay on his back, he had only a few things left to say to me. He tried to speak through his mask but had much trouble doing so, and so I removed it for him. As the fog settled and became more dense, he said to me his final words.
“You cannot stop it... It has already begun.” “What's begun?” “...The Information Age...” “What is that?” “Did you know, Dawn, when I was a boy, there was a tragedy in my town. Three boys were walking around in a cave and they became tired so they sat.
One of the boys had stolen a revolver and some bullets from his father. Another boy was amazed at the sight, and dared, almost urged, the boy with the gun to do one round of Russian roulette. The remaining boy, he urged the boy with the gun to put it away less it harmed one of them. The boy with the gun took one round, placed it inside the revolver, spun the revolver, pointed the gun at his head and fired. He had survived the roulette and this alone was enough to become legend, but the same boy urged him again to do one 221 | FROM DUSK TILL DAWN
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final round. The second pull of the trigger is what made him become legend. Later that day authorities were brought to the body of the dead boy by the other two boys, who did not say much except that it was an accident. For years the boy who urged the game of Russian roulette was in the spotlight, constantly appearing in interviews, and the sorrow and pain he displayed in these interviews were genuine, true, honest; though no one except the other boy knew, he suffered of a guilt that was beyond comprehension. This made him a hero to the eyes of the people; the boy who became a man and spoke out against guns. So much was known of this man that it was inevitable for him to become hero. Less was known of the other boy who told the dead boy to put the gun away. After the event, he disappeared into obscurity. No one really knew of him, certainly not like they knew of the other boy. They did not hear of him until a few years after the event when he was wanted for blowing up a gun store. Mind you, he did it after midnight when no one would he hurt, but none the less, he was a criminal. He was arrested and tried as an adult and was eventually sent to prison.”
“Why are you telling me this?” “Because, Dawn, information is everything in our world. To create a villain is to not tell their story, and, inversely, telling someone's story is how you create a hero. Like this, heroes can become villains and villains can become heroes. If you are constantly exposed to someone, given compounds of information about their life and everything in between, eventually you will come to sympathize with them, even if they have done evil things. Inversely, if you keep someone a mystery, hide or completely erase who they were and what they'd done, they become estranged to everyone.”
“I understand...” “Dawn, my superpower didn't come when I put on the mask, it came in my human element as a politician. My superpower was oppression; making sure the stories of my enemies were lost in history forever. But I operated on such a small scale.
Operation Duskfall, it will be immense. Grand. And it cannot be stopped.”
“What is Duskfall?” Dusk laughed, then choked, then spoke. “The vaccine that everyone is taking, it will be used to download information into a person's brain that is beneficial to the government, or to delete information not desired by the government.
With this, the government will be able to change or influence a person with information downloaded to their brain. They can alter a person's psychology with the data they choose.”
“...But, why?” “Because, Dawn! This world is full of people who are too ignorant to know what is good for them! And much too stubborn to appreciate the dawn of a new era! People do not like new things, they hate when things change, and prefer to have things done in the manner they always have been done. They don't know anything about the new way, and know every thing of the old way. We did tests and we could actually 222 | FROM DUSK TILL DAWN
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see the way the brain struggled when dealing with something new or something it had very little information about. This created the villain condition. But after it learned enough about it, it slowly morphed into the hero condition. This vaccine, and widespread input of information into the populous, it will bring us to new heights as a species!”
“You're insane,” I stood up with a fist full of dominoes in the unquiet mist. “You may destroy me,” he said with a dying breath, “but you will still have to deal with Bloodclot,”
he laughed. I looked at Dusk one final time, and fired several dominoes into him. On the ninth domino, there was a small explosion and he was gone forever, vaporized into another dimension. I turned around and walked toward the door of the roof, my arm missing a hand and spooling blood onto the concrete.
I learned from another dream of the world I had sent Dusk to. In the other dream, someone explained it to me, I can't remember who off the top of my head.
In chemistry and the study of atoms, the number of protons in which an atom carries determines that atom's element. For example, in a silver atom, you will find 47 protons.
This gives us the dynamic that within a system, a certain number of data within that system can determine what that system is. A loosely similar concept is how the population of an area can determine the adjective used to describe that mass of people; ie a family, a town, a city or a country.
With a singular atom comes protons, neutrons, electrons; and I am sure there are things of the atom we have yet to detect. And if the amount of protons can determine the element of that atom, what if there is another amount which can determine the way an atom sends and receives atomic information?
Let us suppose that "the" atomic network is only "an" atomic network, and that there are a multitude of atomic networks in existence. Let us suppose further that within every atom there is a certain amount of netrons. A netron will be defined as this: the amount of netrons determines which network the atom operates under. This is to say that if there were two atomic networks (Network1 and Network2), an atom with one netron could only send and receive data to and from other atoms who also only carried one netron. An atom with two netrons could only send and receive data to and from other atoms who also only carried two netrons. The precedence, or comparative proof of concept for this, is the simple idea of frequency.
Something interesting born out of the idea of netrons is the manipulation of netrons themselves. To alter the amount of protons in an atom to change the element itself, atoms are smashed into eachother at extremely high speeds. One wonders if the same process could be used to alter the amount of netrons in an atom. If successful, and if the amount of netrons within the atom increase or decrease, the atom should disappear as it would no longer interact with the atoms in your own atomic network.
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Further interests lie in the mystery of dark matter and dark energy. Because we can detect dark energy and dark matter and are aware of its existence, this would mean its atoms operate in the same network as ours, which we will state is Network1. But, the extremely dark and mysterious nature of these energies and matters would suggest the idea that within a network, you can have various versions. We may be able to detect the existence of the dark energy and the dark matter because all of this matter is on the same network, but atomic communication between atoms on different versions of a network (ie Network1.1 and Network1.2) may be indecipherable, meaning the exchange between two atoms on differing versions of a network may be like two people who speak two different languages trying to communicate with one another.
Where two atoms on two different networks are not even aware of the other's existence, two atoms on the same network but with differing network versions can interact and communicate with eachother but their end result in communication would only appear as something we might call "white noise." Or, maybe in this particular instance, it should be called "dark noise."
Another thing to note on atomic networks; in science fiction, there is a device used, or rather a room, where a person could go in, and each year that they spend inside the room, the environment outside of the room goes by by one second. So if you spend 10 years inside this room, when you exit it and return to the actual world, only 10 seconds would have gone by in that world. This room can be used to train for something you would not have enough time to train for in the real world. It is basically a time saver, in a way.
Is a room like this actually possible to create? I'm sure many theoretical scientists may say yes. Actually, I'm not sure, but that's besides the point. I wonder if such a room is possible using the concept of smashing atoms together to change the amount of netrons within the atom. Adding a netron to an atom will move it to the next network above, and if that network has fewer atoms in general, would time dilate and move faster there?
There are a few things to note before going further. The reasoning for there being fewer atoms as you go up the network ladder is because of something I've noted from our own universe. Hydrogen, which has a proton count of 1 and is the most abundant element in our universe (75%), and helium, which has a proton count of 2 and the is the second most abundant element in our universe (25%), seem to follow a logical order. This would tell me that the number of netrons also work in a similar order. I would believe that Network1 would have the most amount of atoms, followed by Network2, which would have the next most amount of atoms. Adding too many netrons to an atom might knock it into a network that barely has any atoms at all, which may be an unstable network to begin with.
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atoms you will need to be able to knock them back out and regress them back to the lower network, i.e. going back to N1 from N4.
After knocking all of the necessary atoms into the network you desire, you would eventually knock yourself into that network which would have much fewer atoms but still be stable. There, time would go faster than on the former network, and when you return, you would find that you aged faster than others back in the former network. Inversely, if you go from a higher network to a lower network and then return to the higher network, you can slow down aging.
As you go down the atomic network ladder, the order of things become more and more stable; that is until you reach network zero. Similar to the concepts of white noise and white light, network zero is a "white universe" in which atoms within it have no netrons and are able to communicate with all other atoms from all other networks. In effect, this would be a strange universe complete with chaos. If you yourself were knocked into it, your atoms would be able to communicate with the entirety of all atomic networks, which, atomically speaking, would not be a good thing.
This network, nicknamed NETZERO, it is also theorized that this is where God resides. At any rate, I learned that this was the network I sent Dusk to. I learned that when one of my dominoes strikes an individual and chance should intervene, it sends them to the hell of Netzero.
When my mind was returned to me I found myself in Lynne's apartment again. She was still sleeping, and probably wouldn't be up until around midnight to go to work in closely following hours. I left the apartment and went back to my own. In there I wrote a note that said “I'll be back in a month,” and then I went back to Lynne's apartment and left it a place I knew she would find it. Then I took a bus that took me east to my storage unit. I took out my keys and rolled up the storage unit, entered it, and then closed it shut behind me.
I brought with me my laptop computer, which now carried 50% of my dreams, 50%
of my ideas and notes, and 100% of my dirty pictures of Lynnette.
I went through it for hours, went through so much of the information I had collected for years. And going through so much of this information in such a short span of time left me in a condition of reflection.
People who are filled with dreams are special. I'm not speaking of dreams in the context of goals or purposes, but actual dreams. People who are filled with stories and characters and strange ideas. Even more special is the act of bringing those dreams into a hostile reality. It's not easy. You have to be of manner and a maniac.
What doesn't start out as a dream? Every thing you see in life started out as a dream in someone's heart and in someone's mind. The house on the corner, a long time ago, was 225 | FROM DUSK TILL DAWN
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once someone's dream. The internet, a long time ago, was once someone's dream. Even the design of a shoe, a long time ago, was once someone's dream.
The problem with dreams is that a lot of times they look a lot like life, and you don't have the presence of mind to enjoy them until after you wake up and they're already behind you. Not so much unlike dying and given the opportunity to look back on your life. If one could learn to become lucid during dreams, become aware, perhaps one could learn to enjoy the dream as they moved through it.
My plan after graduating high school was to just leave and go live out in the woods alone for the rest of my life. Honest to God. I never did, but there were so many things I wanted to do in my life. Things for this world. Things for the people in this world. I wanted to do my share in helping feed the starving children of this world. I wanted to bring sick people the medicine they needed. I wanted to give the homeless a place to sleep. I used to bargain with God, asking him to take my health in exchange for the chance to help. I offered my health and not my life because death is easy and living with pain is not. But I've realized today, that many years ago, I accepted the notion that I was not the one who was meant to do these things. Whatever this thing is that's inside of me, it's been here for a long time. And I wonder, what have I learned in living that is so valuable that I wouldn't trade to have never lived at all.
I looked at my life, reduced to a man lost in a tiny room. My mind was getting old.
But there were still things I had left to do. I went to the darkness because I was called.
David and Sara, grown tired from the event of moving from one home to another, slept thoroughly through the midnight hour. Each child now possessed their own living quarters, and in each room lay somewhere a card with a graphic on it that should tell of the receiver of their fate. David's card held an illustration of a lightning bolt, and Sara's card held an illustration of a leaf. Neither child could see what either card foreshadowed, but each child was equally curious at the prospect of their destiny. Their paths, riddled like dreams, were in the palms of their hands.
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