Principia Discordia

CHAPTER 1: He Woke Up In Prison.



OH HOLY FUCK I'M FALLI-

Hitting the hardwood floor jolted him fully awake.  Bedclothes were strewn around him, constricting his legs, and his left arm was twisted around his back.  Jack squinted at the light coming through the slatted blinds.  He tried to remember what the hell he had been dreaming of, but couldn't.  He didn't remember any of his dreams (nightmares) anymore, just flashes of images: mouths; teeth; feathers; glass splinters; spiders.  Skies falling in.  Houses, and absences. 

"Doesn't matter," he thought to himself.  "That shit doesn't apply in this world.  I got better things to do."

Jack took inventory of himself.  He worked his arm out of the sheets, rubbed the sleep from his eyes.  There was a thin crust beneath his right eye he scraped away with a jagged fingernail.  Out of the corner of his mind, he caught the first glimmer of an old, familiar pain.  His left ankle.  Again.  "Fuck."  Pushing up against the uneven hardwood, the bedclothes dropped away.  No one else was in the room, but if they were, they'd get the idea that Jack had things on his mind other than, say, hygiene.  Or general respect for property.  You could expect that his hair would a mess, nightmare-tossed and all.  But it really didn't have to be that greasy.  Raven-black once, it was now flecked with silver, underlining the proof that the creased skin at the corners of his eyes and mouth weren't just from smiling too much.  Truth is, he hardly ever smiled anymore.  Anymore? Jack couldn't remember the last time he really cracked a grin.  Right now, this ankle bullshit wasn't helping.  He took a step, and a hammer crashed down on his ankle.  That's the thing about pain.  You can pretend it's managable, you can tough your way through it, you can even ignore it for a while, but it always comes through in the end.  It fucks with you.  It turns any day into a nails-on-the-blackboard experience. You can pretend that it doesn't affect you, that your head is your own, but your body fights hard.  Jack knew, from far too much experience, that pain isn't exhausting.  Pain is easy.  What's exhausting is the battle.  The battle to move.  The battle to communicate.  The battle to get out of your own head, to push back the solipsistic pain, to overcome the spin pain puts on everything that comes at you.  Just like everything else in the world, pain has inertia.  Once it gets going, and really gets a good head of steam, you can't just turn it aside.  It just soldiers on, punching you in the face, dropping a dark hood on everything you do.  Always.

Jack could never understand how his ankle couldn't support him anymore.  The right ankle was just the same, right?  It could support him.  It wasn't like there was much to support him, anyway.  He limped his way into the dank bathroom off the north side of his bedroom, grimacing with each alternating step.  He slapped at the lightswitch, and heard the distinctive "pop" of a blown filiament.   Some of the light from the bedroom window made it into the bathroom, and Jack could see himself in the mirror, bifurcated by the jagged crack running down the middle.  In the dim light, he could see his ribs jutting against his skin, the rough stubble of several days, and he could just make out the faint tracery of old scars mapped out on his skin.  He ran his gnarled fingers across his scalp, and leaned forward to peer in the mirror.  He could make out one bloodshot eye.  That was another thing about pain- it kept you up at night.  Jack was one of those who tossed in his sleep, and every movement brought his old, bad friend back.  He looked down, and pawed through the various bottles of meds on this sink.  Nothing serious, just the over-the counter stuff.  The more serious shit was next to the bed.  Jack hated going that far though.  It killed the pain for a while, but it wasn't relief.  There was no sleep, only the void.  And even if there wasn't pain, there wasn't anything else, either.  He still woke up every day jittery, not rested.  He felt incomplete.  Jack swallowed a couple of pills dry, and made his way back into the sunlight.

Jack limped into the kitchen, which was in itself a testament to clutter.  He had learned years ago that the less you had, the less you needed to clean, but that really didn't make a difference if you didn't give a shit about food sanitation.  The sink held on to both pots, bottoms crusted and blackened from constant use and inconstant cleaning.  He knocked those around to make some room, and grabbed the stained metal coffee pot.  The tap sputtered a few times as he turned it on.  After a quick rinse, he filled it and put it on the stove, then dumped a handful of coffee grounds into it from an open bag lying on the buckled formica counter.  He turned the electric burner to high, and watched as a thin trail of smoke drifted up, the charred carbon smell blending into the general funk of stale air, overloaded ashtrays, and old beer.

A battered pair of black pants were slung over the back of a chair in the next room, frayed cuffs and washed thin.  Jack pulled them on, and saw his shoes, one overturned, next to a bottle of cheap bourbon.  He grabbed the bottle, and went back into the kitchen.  He found a chipped cup, and tipped it over the sink.  A thin dribble seeped out, and then Jack filled it halfway with the whiskey.  The black liquid was bubbling in the coffee pot, spitting hot coffee onto the stove.  He killed the heat, and counted to twenty.  The grounds had settled by that time, so he tipped some of the coffee into the cup.  The heat from the coffee sent up whiskey fumes into Jack's face, and he breathed deep.  Anything to take the edge off.  Anything to make the day more tolerable.

The trouble was, it wasn't working so well any more. The first hour or so brought a slight comfort, but then it would fade into another dark place.  It started to strip down his defenses against the pain.  The pain didn't get any worse, but his attitude sure did.  People became intolerable.  Noises got harsher, colors became vicious and mean.  The whole damn human race, all of society, those stinking, dirty, human monkeys with their chattering!  Prattling on about insignificant bullshit that wasn't anything more than a noise that they made to keep them company.  It was worse than a herd of parrots, because at least those dumb beasts ("other dumb beasts," he corrected) didn't understand the meaning behind the sounds.

Then again, maybe the chattering monkeys didn't understand what was being understood, either.  Jack was sure they could probably break down the words into a sort of cheap, illegible dictionary. He was sure  they could actually connect the sounds to the base meaning of each step of the sentence.  But can they connect the words together?  Can they form some sort of deeper meaning behind the sounds?  At what point did they perform some sort of self-lobotomy that rewired their brains, bypassing any sort of analysis, and linking what they've heard directly to the vocal cords?

Maybe it was simply a case of self-doubt.  There's a lot of doubt in the world, Jack thought, and that's to be expected.  But for generations, the monkeys deceived themselves.  No, that's not right.  They've always been deceiving themselves.  It was only natural to make first impressions, and jump to conclusions.  Hell, no one would every get anything done without being able to do that.  But there seemed to be something that happened then.  The monkeys just... stopped.  Good enough was, well, good enough.  They built a wall up, keeping out anything that might tell them they were wrong the first time around.  That's where the re-wiring starts, he thought.  When they don't want to admit they're wrong.

So it's not self-doubt then.  It's pride.  The inability to admit mistakes.  Maybe that was the original sin.  The Sin of Pride wasn't about taking credit for your actions, or about feeling good when you've done well.  Bragging about it kind of sucks, because it's already happened.  You start living in the past, you figure you've got some sort of pass to inaction.  But that's not pride.  That's what some people wanted Pride to be, because, of, well, Pride.  Pride is what keeps you from admitting you're wrong.  So, someone twisted it around.  Someone fell into a deep pit of Pride, and decided that not only weren't they wrong, they couldn't be wrong.  Pride had to be something else.  So Pride became admitting you were actually good at something, not that you didn't know what was actually going on.

But without the fear of self-doubt, there'd be no Pride.  But who isn't afraid of being wrong?  If you admit  you're wrong about one thing, then maybe no one will ever believe you again.  Then again, why should anyone believe anything something they haven't already experienced for themselves?  Is this where faith came from?  Let's say I tell you that just around the corner, a gorilla is waiting to give you a sack full of dead roses and toaster ovens.  Whether you believe me or not depends on how often flora-and-house appliance-wielding primates have skulked around corners.  Experience, yeah?  Both faith and trust come from experience.  So, he'll believe you if you tell him something he already knows.  That's not trust, that's buying into Pride.  That's running head on into your own fear of self doubt.   

Jack's head started to spin with the whiskey and coffee. He tried to get his mind around the whole thing.  If you can't admit you're wrong, if you won't admit you're wrong, then you simply aren't.  You believe anything someone tells you that you agree with, and reject anything different.  Until experience comes along again.  So, what's the answer?  Make everyone experience everything until no one needs to trust anyone anymore? Not enough years in a lifetime.  Trust was just as necessary as jumping to conclusions.

Jack took his cup of coffee-flavored whiskey to the ratty, beat-up couch and propped up his foot.  "Damn lying monkeys," he thought to himself.  When did the lie begin?  It could be said that the lie always existed.  We've been lying to ourselves since we began to receive information into our brains.  Because we naturally forget that what we see isn't all that's really out there, and we tell ourselves that what we see is Really Real Reality.  Even barring things like hallucinations and optical illusions, we're not really getting the big picture.  Take gamma rays for example.  Have you ever seen a gamma ray?  No.  You might have seen a machine that supposedly clicks when it gets hit by a gamma ray, but all that's really telling you is that "something" happened.

Jack closed his eyes, and squeezed hard on his lids.  Behind his eyes, the demon's face appeared again.  It was happening more often now.  He couldn't escape it when he was awake, either.  It used to just be part of his par for the course nightmares, but that one face started appearing more often.  It wasn't that unique a demon, either.  Typical red eyes, pointed ears, big horns, toothy grin.  It wasn't frightening, it was... annoying.  Like when your 6-year-old cousin tries scaring you, but does it over, and over, and over again.  Jack was pretty sure it was going to get creepy eventually.  The 6-year-old thing can get creepy too, if they keep at it long enough.  The fright moves behind the action, into the motivation: Why does he keep doing that?  What's the hell is wrong with him?

In the case of the demon, it was more the insistence of Jack's own head that was bothering him.  Why that image, why so... cliché?  It bothered Jack that his brain was being so trite and unoriginal.  "I mean, even if space aliens were beaming their mind-control lasers into my head, I doubt they'd resort to cheap tricks like that," he muttered to himself.  "I liked it better when it was images of impossible perverted sex acts.  At least then it was somewhat interesting."  He thought back, trying to remember when the dime-store horror image replaced the contorted writhing.  All he could come up with was sometime before That Weekend.  Not a "lost" weekend, as much as a "found" one.  It was one of those handfuls of days that seem to pop out of nowhere.

But that was a lie, as well.  Days don't just pop up, they happen, over an over again.  And even grouping them into 7-piece sections, setting up expectations for certain days over others, that's just a lie that's been engraved into the brain so much that the stupid monkeys have made it into a fact.  They walk though their lie day, looking at lie things, thinking their lie thoughts.  Because when you have deceived yourself with Pride, lying becomes the easiest thing in the world.  But wait—doesn't the lying come first?  The deeper lie, perhaps.  Somehow, certain people (monkeys) were able to convince other monkeys (people) that what they didn't experience was true.  Then they convinced them that what they couldn't experience was true.  Big whoppers, too.  Big enough to blanket the self-doubt, and then Pride comes along and seals the deal.

Jack scratched his head.  It was starting to come together now.  He put down his coffee cup on the floor and stared out the window.  The stupid monkeys.  Their lies.  Their Pride.  Where was he going with this?  The whiskey had gotten to him again, making him slow.  Jack was sure he was getting somewhere, something to do with why he always felt an impending weight on his shoulders, the imposition of some sort of "almost".  That "almost" was trapping him, holding him back, and keeping him in a holding pattern.  He waited.  He was patient.  He felt like he had been waiting for years, maybe his whole life.  No, not his whole life, he dimly recalled when he was in school, and thought he had purpose.  He couldn't remember what exactly it was, other than studying, getting grades, making his parents happy...  Pretty simple goals, really.  And now that Jack thought about it, he didn't really mind the studying, not in any sort of meaningful negative way.  He flashed on something one of his English teachers scribbled in the margins of an essay Jack had written.  Narcissistic garbage, mostly: fairly average output for a high-school sophomore.  It was some trite piece about the perils of the future, about how the futility of life plays itself out, the absurd hopelessness of it all... very pre-Camus crap.  In the margins was scrawled, "If you take care of today, tomorrow will take care of itself."  A trite platitude for a trite sob story piece.

"Looks like that didn't really work out too well," thought Jack as he looked around.  He remembered how he took that advice all those years ago, and strived to "live in the moment": He didn't look farther ahead than the following week, if that.  He took things as they came.  He re-acted rather than pro-acted.  Any wants or desires gave way to the immediate moment; to whatever happened to get in the way.  The ambitions were minimized to getting along, getting through, getting by, getting away with it.  Motivations: to keep the status quo, to keep the Now being the Now, watching it slip into the Then, waiting for the next Eventually to become the new Now.  Now to Then, and back to Now.

And where did that lead?  To a life of Settling.  When things are Good Enough, and working too hard at something is not really appreciated.  Scraping up enough dough for rent, and maybe some food, and of course, your daily supply of booze.  And somewhere along the line, Jack thought, you turned around a corner and ended up with a beat up body and a mind the dredged up thoughts about monkey minds.  And nightmares.  God, he was so tired.  He closed his eyes, and tried not to think about them.

Through the trees came a crashing, cackling, moaning snicker, whirling like stainless steel dancing goats, with razors for hooves, and AK-47s for horns.  The screaming of 10,000 lost souls in a terribly self-conscious HP Lovecraft reference but didn't self-edit due to all the terror from spurting jets of liquid flame and molten iron.  At the heart stood the tophet, the ultimate primate of death and conformity, the one great metal beast that stops thought, stops tears, stops laughter, ends pain with the finality of the axe on the neck, the Marred and Merry Scots spinning away, gouts of blood from stumpy necks and troubled words, gaping mouths on missing heads used as toilets and orifices to horse-headed and horse-cocked beasts with 7 fingers to a hand to grabbing a skull and thrusting upon, knocking out teeth against trees in the blood-red moonlight of howling allowance.  The lights, the lights, the lights in the sky spinning with flames and with fire, heating the rods and the vices and the visors and the pokers and the bellows and the reeds and the flames the fires the rattails and the cotontails and the Peters and the Pauls and the Paupers and the pawprints of wolves in the distance, keeping their time and biding their own counsel as they wait to tear the remains from the decadence feast of negligence where the monsters of the borders move in as boarders to the blind who rip out the throats of the blind and prevent the cool waters of silence from intruding on the noise orgy as the so-called saints burn the presumptive sinners from the inside  of the lizard brain, a reverse lobotomy  of silver-tongued manacles linking the past to the future and skull-fucking the present like whored out pre-pubescent lost children snatched up by unfeeling machine spiders on two legs, spindly steel talons and mandibles ripping off tattered shifts and relying on the kindness of the very steel-stick strangers now offering them to the horrors of the night clutching at them with the pudgy manipulants like greasy sausages sewn onto palms of hearts blackened by the father-fuckers and the fucked by fathers from days of yore and yards of gore and good god, what sort of black metal wanna be fucking dream--

"--IS THIS!?"  Jack sat bolt upright, sweating and clutching his throat.

His forehead and face was slick with sour-smelling sweat, and stung his eyes.  Jack groaned as he sat up, the persistent throbbing of his ankle cutting through the bleary half-conscious hypnogogue. The whiskey had made his head heavy as he fumbled for the remote for the TV.  It clicked on, blaring an ad for some neon-colored piece of trash.

Jack jammed his thumb down on the volume button, bringing it to a more manageable level.  The nightmare was almost forgotten by the time he started surfing the channels.

Click.
"-ports of a masked gunman breaking into houses in this terrified community and stealing vinyl record, making his exit by-"
Click.
"-talking with celebrated author, chef, congressional candidate, Nobel nominee and convicted pedophile-"
Click.
"-what unholy terror lurks between Gina's thighs?  Find out tonight on-"
Click.
"-Even if we bought you a pony, we'd probably have to kill it for food-"
Click.
"-Senator, how can you say that the educational budget can support the massive influx of mutant children from the parthenogenetic effects of last year's radioactive tanker spill in the northern part of-"
Click.
"-Puppies Puppies Puppies Puppies Puppies Puppies-"
Click.
"-fires still burning down on the Northwest side, the apparent cause being a sudden electrical discharge-"
Click.
"-JESUS! PRAISE HIM AND HIS HOLY NAME, AND THE MANTLE AND THE GLORY, FOR HE HAS RISEN AND HAS SPOKEN TO ME!  AND HE WANTS ME TO TELL YOU HIS MESSAGE OF PEACE AND THE AGONY OF-"
Click.
"-Brad, and you're the father." "How can that be?  I'm gay." "I snuck into your room last week, after your affair with Joey, and IÉ" "But I'm also your broth-"
Click.
"-Witnesses say that the strange lights moved erratically, almost playfully.  Experts have chalked this up to the bizarre weather patterns that have-"
Click.
"-can see, the substance reacts to stimuli almost as an amoeba would, which leads us to the possibility that this inorganic substance may actually approximate life-"
Click.
"BABY BABY BABY, I LOVES YOU SO CUZ YOU GOT SASS / LET'S GO INTO THE BACKSEAT OF MY CAR THAT'S GOT CLASS / SO I CAN FORCE YOU TO STICK IT IN-"
Click.
"Further evidence of blunt force trauma can be found on the cranial ridge.  As you can see, the blow crushed most of the face, obscuring the crucial and curious fact that-"
Click.
"-sheep, as you can see.  Their herding patterns have become very unusual as of late, and farmers are finding them arranged in concentric circles, resembling more often than not the mysterious crop circles that have been plaguing the area for-"
Click.
"A bit of turnabout in Hollywood today, as the paparazzi became the stalked when a movie star opened their limo door and released an eight-foot grizzly bear onto the photographers.  We'll tell you who, right after this."
Click.
"No money down! Pick yourself up in the wallet, AND the pants!"
Click.
"Ow!  My lining!"
Click.
"Then, in 1784 (a leap year), he launched what was to be his most ambitious project to date: Linking the death of Diderot (July 31), the Treaty of Paris (January 14), and the South African Locust swarms (ongoing) with the founding of the Methodist Church (December 25).  Interesting enough, he uses Gaussian field summations to-"
Click.
"Maybe it would be better if I just knocked your teeth out, yeah?"
Click.
"Another transformer explosion in the Northwest side knocks out power to an entire block of residents, now restless and scared due to recent incidents of random daytime lightning strikes officials are now calling, quote, 'suspicious'."
Click.
"Can cause heartburn, diarrhea, nausea, involuntary muscle spasms, loose bladder, eye twitching, heart palpitations, leg cramps, glaucoma, and seizures Ð But you'll never have to worry about hair loss again!"
Click.
"Migratory patterns have been disrupted, and even the iconic flight formations of the birds have changed, prompting many frantic calls to the police as frightened citizens saw ominous and disturbing symbols soaring overhead."
Click.
"More emergency crews have been called to the Northwest side of the city, as it becomes clear that over 300 people have died in unusual circumstances."
Click.
"Using nothing more than a ball point pen, a paper clip, and toothpaste, she seems to have been able to teach her mutant birthchild a fundamental lesson."
Click.
"The scarring is the most telling thing.  You see here, the right-to-left motion of the scraping.  If you look closer, you can see the splinters of wood that the tissue simply grew around and absorbed into the healing process."
Click.
"Officials are refusing press access to the Northwest side, citing health and safety issues."
Click.
"-helicopters have been waved off, due to the excessive smoke and periodic electric discharges that have already brought down two copters-"
Click.
"-we have obtained exclusive audiotape of what's going on inside the quarantine area-"
Click.
"-can barely see shapes through the smoke.  If we can zoom in, we may be able to locate the source of-"
Click.
"-sounds of muffled explosions.  Still no official comment from the authorities regarding this matter, as the boundaries of the quarantine have expended to include the 1600 block as well as-"
Click.
"-said Josephine Arellia, resident of the 1600 block, who was able to escape just before the blockade went into effect.  Chilling words from a clearly distraught woman."
Click.
"We're going to have to bzzzzthrow the feed back tozzzz the studio, until we bzzzzcan get our transmitting bzzzzzsystems back in control.  JohnzzzzZZZZ?"
Click.
"Reports of continued explosions and so-called lightning strikes are swamping the 911 emergency lines."
Click.
"-seem to have lost the signal there.  Can we get them back on air?  Well, in the meantime, let's turn to our meteorologist, Fran Parker.  Fran?"
Click.
"The Sergeant says that the wounds were self-inflicted, and indicated that any reports to the contrary should be treated as suspect and dubious."
Click.
"-from the sky, I'm telling you!  When they hit the ground, there was this blinding flash-"
Click.
"-under control.  We are treating this as a normal procedure, and are requesting National Guard presence as only a precaution, due to the possibility that looting might break out."
Click.
"-getting news from the situation on the Northwest side from our man on the ground, Henry Harwick, who has managed to gain access behind the barricade."
Click.
"Armored vehicles have been spotted on Highland Avenue, and are now surrounding the 1800 block.  Worried citizens have been trying to evacuate, but many streets have already been gridlocked as-"
Click.
"DEMONS!  DEMONS IN OUR MIDST, SMITING THE UNHOLY-"
Click.
"Cindy, I'm trying to be as inconspicuous as possible, as the press is being turned away at gunpoint now.  The police continue to insist this is for safety reasons, but it's becoming increasingly clear that... What? No, I'm simply reporting... You can't do that, I'm press, I-"
Click.
"-nothing else seems to be moving.  The smoke is thick, and has a taste to it, like of old seawater.  I'm going to try to move further towards the center of this-"
Click.
"At this time, we request that everyone in the city remain calm, and do not panic.  Emergency services has informed me that they are seeing more injuries from people trying to flee the scene than from the initial incident."
Click.
"-sky satellite shows these cloud formations here, they appear to be forming a ring shape around the city, with a very dense cloud pack right above the Northwest-"
Click.
"-getting reports of residents attacking the National Guardsmen in an effort to leave the area.  The Guardsmen have responded with riot shields and teargas, in a sight reminiscent of the WTO riots-"
Click.
"I'm press!  You can't do this!  Press! Press!"
Click.
"-at St Mercy hospital, talking with Doctor Abraham Stuvey, who says that the ER has been packed all day, and he's never seen anything like the injuries being sustained-"
Click.
"John, I have to admit, I've never seen weather like this.  I just can't explain it."
Click.
"Please, REMAIN CALM.  If we cannot settle the populace, this will escalate, I can assure you.  Please heed the orders of the Police and Military, and do not attempt to enter the barricades."
Click.
"Oh.  My. God.  Jason, are you getting this?  I'll try to get closer-"
Click.
"Gunfire has been reported at the Northwest riots.  No word on whether it was instigated by the crowd or the National Guardsmen, but they are taking no chances, and have affixed bayonets.  The scene is one of chaos and carnage-"
Click.
"Henry?  Henry, can you hear us?  Your feed has gone down.  Are you all right?  Is there any way we could-"
Click.
"REPENT, SINNERS!  OUR ANGRY GOD HAS SENT HIS FALLEN ANGELS INTO THIS WORLD TO WREAK VENGANCE UPON-"
Click.

The TV went dark as Jack sat up sharply.  "Wait," he thought.  "He used Gaussian equations for what again?  That doesn't sound right."  Jack limped over to the freezer in the kitchen, and pulled out a roll of elastic gauze he had soaked in water the night before.  He went back to the couch, and after a few minutes of work, managed to unroll the gauze and begin wrapping his ankle tightly.  He eased on a pair of socks and some boots, fished around on the floor for a crumpled white T-shirt, and made his way out the door, throwing a shoulder bag with his usual gear over one shoulder, and grabbing a cane that was leaning by the door on the way out.  It was black, with a silver handle, and Jack took it in his right hand and deftly began to support his weight as he made his way down to the street.

It was well past noon as Jack stood on the sidewalk, trying to figure out his day.  It seemed time enough for another drink.  "Craig might be in, too.  Couldn't hurt to check."  He limped up the street, and ducked into a sad looking hole in the wall just off Main.  It took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust, and then he made his way to the bar.  The old familiar barstool was waiting for him, and he sat down gratefully.  "Hey, Craig.  Hook me up with a beer?"

A large, burly man with short red hair looked back at him with surprise.  "Jack.  What are you doing here?"

"Yeah, I said I'd be cutting back, but what the hell, right?"  Jack rested his elbows on the bar, and leaned forward, hungrily.  "C'mon.  Do me right."

"Not that, man," said Craig, as he turned to dip a meaty hand into the cooler, pulling out a bottle of Dixie and easily popping the cap with just his thumb.  "I would have sworn you'd be down at the riots doing... whatever the hell it is you actually do."

"Riots?"  Jack looked puzzled as he grabbed the beer as soon as Craig put it on the bar. "What are you talking about?"

"You're shitting me."  Craig jabbed a stubby finger at the TV jammed high into a corner of the bar.  The volume was turned down, but Jack could see blocks of apartment buildings in flames, and angry and terrified civilians fighting hard with military personnel amidst strewn bodies, bleeding heavily.  A glance showed who the inevitable winner would be, especially considering the tanks at the end of one street slowly crushing anything, or anyone, in their paths.

"Wow." Jack took a pull off his beer. "I thought I might have dreamt that.  Looks dangerous."

"I figured that would be right up your alley."

"How far does it go?"

"Citywide.  Haven't you noticed the lack of traffic?"

Jack looked out the door of the bar, at the empty street.  Normally about now, there would be a stream of cars, buses, and bikes fighting for dominance in the road, and sometimes on the sidewalks.  Territorial battles over whatever small patch of asphalt they happened to have their tires on, vicious as a trapped hyena, bitter as a dumped girlfriend.  You could never lack for entertainment, looking out that door.  Fingers and more arcane gestures, arguments, fist fights, even the occasional stabbing.  Jack remembered one time how a pair of trannies started bitchslapping each other for 15 minutes before one of them finally kicked the other in the balls with her stiletto heels.  Over a moped.  It was shit like this that made Jack laugh every time, even while the empty absurd uselessness of all poured into his heart.  Jack took another swig of his beer, and looked around the empty bar.  "I guess I should get down there.  You want to tag along, or would I be interrupting your booming business?"

Craig looked around the bar as well.  It was a good place, when you came down to it. Craig had bought it about a decade ago, cheap, and spent a few months working back to life.  He didn't want to make it some sort of modernistic martini bar, he wanted to keep the rustic so-called "charm" of the place.  It had an aura of danger (mostly because of its location), but more than that, it had a sense of purpose.  There was one thing Craig wanted the bar to stand for, and that was to get a drink.  None of this singles scene, frat boy belching, effete ladies with their cosmopolitans they didn't touch, parents bringing in their toddlers, nightclub, sports bar, theme park for him.  He wanted a place where, if you wanted a good drink, you could get one.

Craig had sacrificed a lot for the place.  For the first few years, he even slept behind the bar.  And that was before he got the permits to add the fireplace.  He did without for so long because he had a long standing love affair with alcohol.  Not like Jack did, for the euphemistic "medicinal" purposes, but because he really was quite fond of the stuff.  He wasn't content with the mass marketed artificially flavored ethanol that passed for booze.  He treated liquor like a lady.  And as his mother often told him, "a lady keeps her asshole clean."

His speed rail started with bottles that usually go for twenty bucks retail, and things only got better when you went into the shelves.  Single malts snuck in from Scotland, Ukrainian horilka z pertsem that only left its homeland if formally invited, tequilas bartered off of old Mexican men in the mountains of Jalisco, the golden liquid nested safely in oaken barrels, and gins that were birthed from original Duch recipes.  And the wines!  Craig had a small cellar he had setup downstairs, and he spent many hours finding small, boutique vineyards that specialized in endangered grape species, and hand crafted their wines in small batches.  You could say a few things about his beer selection, but all that really needs to be pointed out is that a pretentious indie rocker from Seattle would undoubtedly shit their pants out of sheer pleasure if they ever saw what was on tap.

Yeah, you could call him a snob.  But you'd be missing the point.  Anyone else would have moved his trawl to NYC, and set himself up in some class joint, charging thirty bucks a glass.  But Craig didn't start with much, and he figured that there was no need to put this stuff out of reach for most people.  Most of the time, his drinks were priced wholesale Ð no markup.  Hence the sleeping accommodations for the first few years.  He had cut his overhead down as far as he could get it, so much so that one memorable evening his dinner consisted of a 1945 Mouton Rothschild and a half-eaten hamburger he found in the back dumpster.  He prided that his bar didn't try to screw you over in the name of supposed "quality".

He didn't mind when yuppies and hipsters who had heard about his place came in and asked for an appletini, or a single malt on the rocks.  He was the kind of guy that decided everything should have its place, and if something didn't belong, it would move along.  He was mostly right, too.  The kind of people that stuck around were no-bullshit characters.  They knew what they wanted, they knew how to drink it, and they quietly acknowledged each other with a nod, or maybe a wry grin.  They were the People of the Drink, and they sailed that ship with the grim pleasure of an Ahab who just caught a glimpse of white.

Of course, some patrons can't catch a hint.  Inevitable as clockwork, every St Patrick's day some half-cocked frat crew would stumble in, looking for their particular brand of kicks, and wind up learning a great deal about physics, leverage, and brute power.  Craig was an absolute gentleman when it came to alcohol, but he grew up in the streets, and didn't have the patience to talk things out.  That's one reason he befriended Jack.  That guy did nothing but think and talk, even though it was painfully clear that this rarely resolved anything.  And now the guy was heading towards a riot zone?  What the hell.  "Ok, let me gather some things."

Craig ducked behind the bar, and grabbed what he called his "battle gear": a sawed-off bat handle and a hunting knife.  He slipped the knife into his belt at the small of his back, grabbed his coat, and stuffed the bat up his right sleeve.  "You good?"

"Hold on a sec," said Jack.  "Daddy needs his medicine.  Toss me that rye, yeah?"  He pointed at the shelf behind Craig.

"Who the fuck do you think you are?  That's been mellowing since the civil war, you twunt."  Craig certainly had a way with words.

"Put it on my tab.  You know I'm good for it."  Although Craig could never understand how, Jack was good for it.  He always seemed to have money, but only when he needed it.  Craig tossed him the bottle, which was neatly tucked away in Jack's shoulder bag.

Craig vaulted the bar, and joined him at the door. "I'm gonna regret this, aren't I?"

"Yeah, probably.  But only sometimes.  Usually, you'll laugh about it for hours on end."

"No I won't."

"Oh yeah.  That would be me laughing, then.  Let's go."

Craig swung the big door behind them as the went back outside, looking for what Jack considered Fun.  "So, where is this going down, anyway?  Northwest side?" he asked.

"You bet.  Can't miss it, from what was going down on TV.  You got a car?"

"Towed.  You?"

"I traded it for a bottle of grappa."

Jack stared.  "Grappa?"

"Yeah."

"Really.  Grappa."

"Straight from Opatija."

"Oh.  Never mind, then."

"Right."

"We walk, then."

"We walk."

They started off down Main street.  Even hobbled, Jack moved at a pretty good clip.  He set the pace, with Craig next to him, impressed at his pace.  After a block or so, Craig became of a faint noise, just barely on the verge of noticing.  He looked over, and saw Jack's jaw furiously clenched, grinding his teeth together like he was milling wheat flour.  "Hey, we can slow down if you need to."

"No, everything's fine."  Jack was as used to walking on his bad ankle as he could be.  Lord knows he had done it enough so it became expected, if not familiar, and certainly not welcomed.  He had reached the point where he could ignore it, almost, for a long enough period of time that he could get where he wanted to go.  But damn, he was going to pay for that tomorrow. Maybe even later today.  Jack felt the weight of the whiskey on his hip, and he could feel its pull. Right now wasn't the time, though, because something interesting was going on.  He didn't know why, but he felt somehow that his nightmares were connected to what was going on on the Northwest side of town.  He looked up, and could see the blood orange setting sing light up the smoke they were heading toward.

In the distance, they could start to hear the familiar sounds of riot: screaming, gunfire, broken glass, sirens, and the incessant grinding of machinery.  For Jack, the grind was the key element here.  For him, this sort of stuff laid bare what he called The Machine.  There was an inevitability to it, a blind progression that everyone could predict but no one admitted.

It started when you were young, he had decided.  You began with what you Wanted.  Into that was shoved the things of Should.  Should and Want didn't get along.  Early on, Jack had heard the sound of them clashing off each other, and to him it sounded like a Detroit auto plant.  The Machine.  It got worse when the Should not only battled your Want, but even other Shoulds.  The Want, the selfish, petty, and wholly natural primatic Wants of the monkeys started becoming friends with the Shoulds.  Slowly, the faux righteous status of the Shoulds became corrupted and manipulated by the Wants, and started grinding down the primitive monkey minds of the poor humans caught in the middle.  The Machine was the result of the absolute predictive nature of the battle between Should and Want.  Jack would make a bet with anybody that as soon as the governor decided to call the National Guard, you could make an accurate prediction about how many hospital beds would be filled.  Hell, he'd even give you even odds that any large shock to the herd would spook them towards the inevitable bloodbath.

Why do these people consider themselves independent thinkers?  They're just robots running on old programs learned in school and at work, blindly heading off in one direction, heedless of what goes on around them.  The physics of the psyche:  They're like billiard balls on a shattered table.  The only time the shift their position is when they're forced to by some larger force.  It's not like they have a choice, or make a decision.  All decisions are made for them, solely on accidental encounters in their past.  It was an existence of reflection, a lifetime of reacting to habits of the past.

But what if you developed new habits? Would reprogramming your tiny brain be any different that what you were doing before?  To Jack, any successful attempt at reprogramming would just be another crack in the pool table; instead of blindly reacting to what your mother told you when you were five, you'd now be blindly reacting to what your preacher tells you at 30.  Either way, it's still a set reaction to any given stimuli.  Not like it would be that easy, even.  You don't hit a switch, or download an application.  Because you'd be reacting as the billiard ball trying to make it go sideways while it's still going forward.  Physics of psyche, yeah?  It won't change direction without adding energy.  And the faster you're tumbling down the table, the harder it is to stop.

Jack realized that not believing is easy.  There are thousands of things he didn't believe.  There was no end to it.  It was easy, for the same reason reprogramming was hard.

Incidentally, 7053 words.  I'm still behind.  I think I'm supposed to be at 7800 on day 6.

Make sure you update at the website, it keeps it easier to track and you can laugh at everyone else too.

Last night I was ahead of all y'all.

Quote from: Hoopla on November 06, 2008, 10:15:52 PM
Last night I was ahead of all y'all.

I was right on your ass. STFU.

When your program heads you in a certain direction, there ain't nothing shifting it, except for a stronger force.  Or a weaker monkey.  Because let's take a good look at the physics of the psyche.  While it's hard to shift a swiftly moving heavy object, it's easy to shift a slow moving light one.  So you've got this wacked-out, fucked-up pinball machine of a pool table, with some balls moving straight ahead, rolling over small bumps and cracks, and you have these others, like ping pong balls, flickering every which way.  Yea'h, thought Jack.  That's humanity for you.  A bunch of fucking monkeys who don't even know how to play pool.

If you have courage of your convictions, that basically means you probably will never have any others.  Nothing new will ever change your mind, ever again, regardless of what some people might call "facts" or "evidence". They just keep a-rollin along, believing their beliefs, reactin' their reactions, and ain't nuthin gonna change their minds.  Because a long time ago, someone made up their minds for them. But as strong as a long held belief is, a newly minted one is almost worse, sometimes.  When you're young, you don't even think about the little bumps and cracks you run into later on.  But when you find a strong belief later on, or if you're a small ping pong ball that gets slammed by a huge belief, well, holy shit.  There's no stopping you at all.  See, now you're consciously recognizing all the myriad potential beliefs that are coming at you, getting in your way, and you can dismiss them with a brush of your hand.  It's fairly easy to see, and fun to watch, if you're into that sort of thing.

Just imagine some poor schmuck who, after years of struggle and strife, or even after years of feeling nothing at all, suddenly finds "the" answer.  You can see it in their eyes.  There's a gleam, a spark, a drive.  It's a gleam of inertia, the kind of inertia that says, "train's a comin, best get the fuck out of the way."  It's scary.  Scary, but also really interesting.  It's like, you look at them, and you say, "really?  That's the answer?  After so many bland platitudes, and so many false starts, this is the one true Answer?  Look around, see all those other people with the mad glint in their eyes, them, THEM, the ones who, just like you, have found the One Truth that will set you all Free, because its Truly True, For Real This Time.  Why exactly is your Truth the Only Truth, and their Truth also the Only Truth?

But the you get people like Johnny Cash, who really have had a rough life, and they ground down their poor monkey minds all by themselves.  But when he finds Jesus, he's not a total freak case.  In this instance, he's seen too much.  In this case, Christ has only given him the momentum, he's seen too many cracks in the pool table.  So yeah, maybe it's tougher to reduce it down.  He's gotten into trouble going this way before.  Jack remembered when he used to talk this way at parties.  Well, casual get togethers.  Ok, bars.  Anyway, it was a few years back, and Jack had decided that it was foolish to keep his thoughts to himself.  So, he started opening his mouth.  Bad mistake, especially when it became clear that the only way he could get himself to start speaking his mind was after having a few drinks.  He got the liquid courage, but that muffled the actual thoughts.  He retreated back into the tropes, the cliches, the half true explanations, the bungled lines and was tripped up by the constant, constant interruptions.  He came off looking like a dope.

That's when he retreated back into silence.  Jack's thoughts became his companions.  Anyone else who  would stay too long got a taste, and retreated hastily backwards.  Jack learned to keep his mouth shut, and only answer the questions that were put to him.  Apparently, people don't like it when you call them monkeys.  They prefer to think of themselves as free-thinking individuals, even if they believe in destiny, even if they believe that the Great God Thor controls their lives, even if they believe that consciousness is no more than electro chemical reactions in an eight pound mass of jelly called the brain.  Their Pride that they know too much, the inevitability of the Machine that tells them Should, it overcomes their ears, shuts down their mind, and subjects them to a lifetime of ping pong ball reactions.

Take the book of Job from this perspective.  In it, Job has faith, and it's strong.  He's like a bowling ball rolling down the table.  To prove how unstoppable he is, Satan takes away everything he's ever loved, and everything he's put his faith in.  Yet time after time, he rolls on ahead, not considering other paths or alternatives.  And just when he's had enough, and says, "what the fuck?" and begins to question things, he's flattened, and kicked further down the road.  Ok, that last bit doesn't work so well, because YHWH actually makes an appearance.  Unless you want to take that as a metaphor as well, in which case, the massive subconscious structures rise up and swamp the tiny question that worked its way to the front.  Yeah, that'll work.  Until you try to jibe Satan actually taking things away, and YHVH being from the subconscious.  He'd have to work on that some more.

Craig tapped Jack on the shoulder. "Dude, you're doing it again."

"Uh?  Oh.  Right.  Sorry."

"Whatever.  Listen, what the hell are we going to do when we get there?"

"We're gonna go check it out, and see what's up."

"How... and why?"

"Somehow.  We'll see when we get there.  As for why, well... Because it's there."

"Christ."  Craig realized, not for the first time, that there was often no getting through to him.  Or getting something out of him.  Sometimes he suspected that was because there wasn't much there to get.  Not that he wasn't smart, or that he was shallow.  It was more because there was something immediate about him.  He never thought too hard about what was coming next, he just took bites out of what was around him, chewed twice, and than spat it back out.  Craig didn't know if it was actually possible to live like that, and after hanging around Jack for a few years, he wasn't sure Jack really knew, either.

The guy had been bouncing around ever since they met, and it made Craig uneasy.  He only paid attention to what was right in front of him, but he was scary good at referencing that to almost anything else.  It was like he had a great memory, but he never made any connections unless he had to.

They approached the 1900 block from the South, the sounds of the riot building step by step.  They could see the commotion, now.  Armored jeeps and paddywagons had blocked off the far end of Main, and they could see police and guardsmen occasionally running between them.  Beyond the roadblock, there was a seething mass of bodies crashing into one another, and a hollow howling that echoed off the buildings.

"Around here." Jack motioned them into an alley off of Main, and peered around the corner.  "I think we can use the basements to get over there."

"Use the...?" started Craig, then noticed Jack wasn't next to him anymore, but fumbling in his bag while crouching next to a street-level window.  "Oh, Jack.  Come on."

Jack felt his knees pop as he knelt by the window. He figured he could jimmy the lock from the outside and they could make their way to the inner sections through the net of underground connections connecting the buildings together.  As he eased the wire picks into the mechanism, he wondered if it were this easy to pick into someone's brain.

It could be easy.  All you needed was to find a weak or fragile frame, and then just apply the right pressure in just the right place.  Now that doesn't mean you can just shove it in; that's a direct way to a brain collapse; plus, if there's any kind of security, they'll come running in quick, and then you're fucked.  No, what you wanted was a subtle slip, a knife's edge into the space.  Something simple.  Something they'll agree with.  That's how you do it.  Then, once you get inside, you can start to move around.  Find other agreeable things.  But the magic was, you didn't even have to find things they agreed with.  Once you were inside, no one ever noticed the damage you could do.

It was like people had this heavy security wall that only looked out.  They were incredibly skeptical about what was on the outside; that was part of the inertia; it just kept on going, blasting down the outside ideas.  Criticizing and shooting them down for any number of reasons, real or imagined.  But if something got in, then it was like they had a backstage pass at the Republican National Convention: Never questioned, never accused, never doubted.  You were home free.  So, first thing, get in.  From there, you can start spreading, like some horrifically welcomed cancer.  And oh, the things you can do.

See, most people aren't aware of how fragile their own ideas really are.  They flit about inside the compound, only bumping into their own kind, agreeing with themselves constantly, and when this goes on long enough, they think they're strong, and assured, and righteous.  But what happens when someone gets inside without their noticing?  Yeah.  Those pretty butterflies of ideas can get clipped so easily. Just... turn them a little.  One dark idea can be like a reverse lamp, all the pretty flitting things don't get drawn to it, they turn away, they turn themselves, they turn into, they begin to become like that dark idea.  They reflect.  Once the dark idea is in there, they start to push a little.  And all the flitting ideas agree with each other, so somehow, they have to agree with the dark idea, no? 

And here's where the dark rationalization comes in.  The immense power of those damn frontal lobes can turn piss into wine.  Anything can become anything else, if you just give it a little time and a push.  That little idea, that tiny, fragile thing, it so wants to be included in the greater picture, it wants to be part of the whole. But it sees that strong, dark thought and idea, and that idea is nudging.  Why not? Why not become part of a larger idea?  There's some sense in what they're saying, after all, no reason you shouldn't go along with it. 

And all the while, the perimeter guards stand silent.  After all, their job is to fight off outside concepts.  All the difficult "mental" stuff happens on the inside, their job is just to keep stuff out.  There's not upper level thinking going on here.  They can't tell the difference between an idea that they started with and one that was snuck in.  So when all the beautiful Moon Moth thoughts become flopping vultures, they start giving orders.  To the guards.  Of course, the guards don't question anything coming from the inside, they only question what's on the outside, yeah?  So, slowly but surely, the guards start guarding against what used to be on the inside, and they keep safe what they used to repel.  And that's all there is to it.  The outside comes in.

The window eased open.  There was just enough room for jack to slip through.  "Craig, wait by that door further down."  Jack disappeared through the window.

Lucky for him, most of the residents had gotten the hell out after the news reports and the tanks.  Jack felt a dim regret for not being more of a thief, and then looked for the back door.  He negotiated his way through rococo frames of someone's grandmother, poorly knit tea cozys, and ceramic bits of nothing that people seem to collect around themselves to give them meaning.  Warm and sad at the same time, really, that something as useless and simple as a mass-produced porcelin statue could somehow tweak the memories to chain them down to some long past time when they might have thought themselves to be happy.  Jack hobbled up a small set of stairs, and began the process of unbolting, unchaining and unlocking the highly imaginative, but ultimately useless barriers keeping the outside to itself.

He opened the door to see the imposing figure of Craig blotting out the setting sun, and thrusting Jack's cane at him.  "Forgot this, you fucker," he said, brushing him aside.  "So now that we've got breaking and entering on our side, where to?"

"We need to find the access tunnels," Jack replied.  "They should be either near the bathroom or the kitchen."

"Same place from the smell.  Aw, fuck.  I meant that as a joke."  The alcove they walked into had a makeshift stove, a wooden plank on top of a cinder block, and a large hole in the opposite corner.  "We don't actually have to go down in there, do we?"

"You want to face down the riot cops?"

"Aw, hell.  You wouldn't happen to have a gasmask in that bag of yours, would you?"

Jack pretended to rummage through his bag.  "Sorry," he grinned.

"Go to hell."

" I can do you one better.  There's a ladder down here."  Jack swung a leg around and dropped a few feet.  His forehead crinkled a bit as the smell fully hit him.

"You still think this is a good idea, smart guy?"

"What the hell, right?"  Jack started to climb down into the tunnels.  "I mean, come on.  It isn't all one big toilet."

"I'll bet you a mahogany bar you're wrong."

"A mahogany bar what?"

"Shut up and get down there.  I'm right above you."

It was dark down there.  Luckily, Jack did have a hand cranked flashlight.  Unluckily, it only pushed the darkness back further down the tunnel.  Jack and Craig did their best not to look down at what they were walking through.  They headed North, as best as they could figure.  The tunnels were about 10 feet in diameter, and formed a lattice underneath the apartment complexes of the Northwest side.  A channel was carved in the bottom, and although the theory was that rainwater and the Wagathag river's overflow would be redirected through them, like most theories it didn't really play out in real life as expected.  Every so often, there was an access tube led up to the different buildings and apartments, but most of them were sealed off, or used as large-scale garbage disposals.

"Hey, Jack?"

"Yeah?"

"There's a lot of garbage down here."

"Yeah."

"Like, a lot of food and stuff."

"Yeah."

"Like, a lot of food that's been eaten."

"Yeah."

"Like, a lot of food that's been eaten after it's been tossed down here."

Jack swung his flashlight towards a pile of semi rotting scraps that looked like they had been tossed yesterday.  It definitely had a nibbled look to it.  "Yeah?"

"So, we haven't seen a single thing since we came down here.  You don't find that a little odd?"

"Well, it could be because we're down here."

"You actually have never been around feral rodents, have you?"

"Once or twice, maybe."

"Ex girlfriends don't count."

"What about a mother in law?"

"What about your sister?"

"All right, enough."

"I'm just saying..."

"Enough!"

"Ok, seriously.  There were a few nights when I was sleeping at the bar when I had to deal with a few of those fuckers.  Let me tell you, they aren't scared of a couple of people on their turf."

"So, how'd you deal with them?"

"The bat."

"Ah."

They walked on.  By now, they were truly inside, like two bad ideas wedged into an unresisting mind.  But that doesn't account for the subversion through immersion that happens so often.  You take a person who thinks one thing, and then you put them in an environment where every other person they talk to thinks the opposite.  All day long, they're inundated with the same message; but not confrontational.  A confrontation sets those guards up, and protects the flitting thoughts.  No, the conversion by immersion happens when it's not even discussed.  The constant opinion without rebuttal.  It just lives in the environment.  The guards, ordered to keep watch over differing opinions, eventually just accept it as part of the background noise.  It becomes accepted as normal, and then it gets inside.  And without even knowing it, you've become something other than you ever thought you could be.

So, with all of this, all of this mechanical, insidious, unthinking, unfeeling process, where so called "free thinking" people are forced to obey decades old rules they didn't even know they were signing up for, and don't even know how to change it, how the hell do you compete with something like that?  By turning the guards around, and by pointing them inside your own head.

Instead of questioning every outside thought that you encountered, you need to question every thought you've ever had.  Become a butterfly collector.  Nail those fuckers to a board and study them.  Where did your thoughts come from?  What did you experience that caused you to think like that?  And lastly, do you really agree with it, or after breaking it down, does it just not add up?  When you start thinking like this, that what you are is a combination of your environment and the feedback loop you have with your environment. 

"Jack!"

"What?"

"God, I hate it when you do that.  I said, what do you think went on up there?  Some of the news reports on Fox said it could be the Apocalypse."

"Well, that could be right."

"What?"

"The origins of the word 'Apocalypse' is from the Greek, meaning 'secrets revealed'.  I get the feeling that someone in the government  is trying to keep something hidden.  If the riots actually succeed in taking down the military, you can damn well bet that something's gonna be revealed."

Of course, apocalypse could also be a personal one.  One of those thunderbolt sparks, the aha moment, the horrific point where you know that the universe will never be the same again, because of the way you now see it.  The bell can't be un-rung, the door once opened will never be closed.

Like that old bugaboo Crowley used to talk about, the Keeper, or Guardian, at the Gate – Old uncle Al always liked to wrap his metaphors up into twisted little packages.  What if old Choronzon, mister 333 himself, was actually us?  What if the looming beast that waves us off from the grand Holy knowledge of the universe actually our old games and brain structures?  And more than that, what if the Dark Beast was actually the process of established thought, rather than what those thoughts actually are?  If so, then the way to enlightenment wasn't what you believed, it was how you believed... or if you even believed at all.  Because what, exactly was belief?

Wasn't belief simply a lie that stuck with you?  Jack had already started to work out the lies of perception.  So, if you put forth that a belief is some way that you think the world works, the only evidence that you have is from inherently false perceptions, the testimony of other people's false perceptions, or some after-the-fact meta theory that lays out an arbitrary framework that is constantly modified as it gets proved wrong.  Or, a more blatant, outright lie.

Somewhere, at some point, you had to just say 'fuck it' and move on.  Every kid has played the "why" game, breaking down a belief into it's component parts, and at some point, you say, "because."  Why? Because, at some point, no matter how much biology, or physics, or chemistry, or theology, or philosophy you have studied, there are some things they haven't figured out yet.  Theology had a pretty sneaky "out" though:  Because God said so.  Which is much more satisfying to say, and to hear, than "I don't know."  Or, for the more adventurous, "I don't know yet."  Ultimately, we have to have some sort of pragmatism here, something that says, "well, so far, it's been working; so, I'll just stop here."  And sure, it works, for now, in this scenario.  But will it always work, all the time?  Because if it doesn't, that your belief isn't really up to snuff.  Because it's based on lies.

Some philosophers and semanticists have tried to break down the words themselves, trying to glean the meanings behind the sounds.  But apart from making it much easier to write tech and instruction manuals, it didn't really get to the heart of the matter: The entire premise is based on and incomplete understanding of the information being received.  It could be argued that Jack's point of "fuck it, I'll just stop saying 'why' right about here" was set at a much higher bar than others'; but to Jack, it was all built on faulty foundations.  Even if it didn't look too far out of whack up close, once you pulled back and started building the massive structures of human consciousness on it, it becomes one butterfly's wing from disaster.

They turned a corner, and Jack came face to face with a rat.  A big one.  About the size of a dog.  Craig was right, he thought.  It sure has hell doesn't look scared.  It's beady eyes sized him up, and decided, "food."

Jack thought, "Ah, shit.  Here we go again."

Wonderful LMNO.
I thoroughly enjoyed that.
You get Mr. Green because mittens aren't as cool.
:mrgreen:

PART 2: RECONSTRUCTION.

Fall was Tom's favorite time of year.  It was when everything seemed to take itself into account, and to settle into acceptance.  He loved to walk through the woods South of the city, and watch the leaves turn and flutter.  The air felt cleaner, more electric.  Spring was just damp and sluggish.  The so called "new life" that gaia freaks love to talk about is the bleary life of the newly woken.  Autumn has the spark of the man who knows he doesn't have much time left, and wants to life to the fullest.  The monsoons of Summer have given way to the crisp breezes of Fall.  It's like the world gears up for one last hurrah before the snows of winter tuck it in for the night.  He was a coat and hat kind of guy anyway; for some reason, he always felt more comfortable with his leather jacket and fedora.  Not a biker's jacket, but a thin leather coat that he found in a second hand store.  It was perfect for days like this, when the thermometer hit 58 degrees Fahrenheit, and a light breeze tossed leaves in the air.  The Summer months, with the heat and the sticky, oppressive humidity, always fired up his sweat glands.  He had been known to soak through a shirt simply by walking to work.  He always felt sluggish during those months, and like he could never get clean, no matter how many showers he took.

Tom was always grateful on days like this that he lived near the old cemetery off of Highway 41.  It was carefully positioned in a sort of valley, with the roads on the opposite sides of the rise, which cut off road noise.  It was also fortunate that people had donated quite a lot of money, because it was enormous.  It was practically a state park, provided you could ignore the tombstones.  Unlike a place like Arlington cemetery, where the graves were laid out in a precise, regimented manner, Grayson's cemetery was much more haphazard, and allowed for the existing trees to remain in places, and landscaped the rest.  This gave the place a sense of flow, of progression.  You could start at the main gates, and spend more than an hour walking the paths, meandering from rough hewn obelisks to marble fronted mausoleums, crumbling civil war headstones to brass plaqued family plots.  In between were tastefully pruned bushes and a mixture of aspens, pines, and oaks.  Sometimes, when you were walking through a stand of trees, you would come across a solitary tombstone, humbly forgotten, patiently waiting for a family member to visit.

He loved walking along the edges of the various plots, off the main paths, to where the gardeners hadn't quite gotten to yet.  His black Frye boots would kick the pine needles and fallen leaves, hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket (for all his love of the fall weather, he had fairly poor circulation in his fingers).  For all the skill and planning of the landscapers, the edges were far more interesting than the main paths.  So much more was revealed this way, from lost and forgotten graves, to the empty bottles and used condoms left by the high school kids who would sneak in at night.  Lately, Tom had noticed prescription bottles strewed amongst the remains as well. It was troubling, but not as much as the pile of cheap vodka bottles and dried bloodstains he had found last week.  He shuddered.  Sometimes, he had to agree with his boyfriend: this wasn't always the nicest of places to visit.

Doug often disagreed with his going out like this, but Tom insisted that seeing the follys and violence of youth only made the stolid natural beauty of the cemetery more striking.  He had tried explaining this many times, but Doug would usually just sigh and roll his eyes, and then change the subject.  That was ok with Tom though, as he had figured out long ago that walking by yourself was extremely different than walking with company.  When someone was along with you, there was this strange need to fill the space with talk, even if there was nothing to say.  Tom had noticed this tendency ever since he was a child.  It was almost like a safety rope, like if other people didn't say anything to them, it was as if they didn't exist; and if you didn't say anything back, it would be considered rude.  So this constant cycle of existential desparation and base level politeness filled the air with nonsensical, meaningless drivel.  Observational obviousness like, "it's cold out here today," and "boy, the leaves are sure pretty."  Or rhetorical current status questions, like "Hey, how you doin'?"

This kind of behavior is what makes Twitter and Facebook so popular, Tom thought.  You just post inconsequential updates ("I am eating three-quarters of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich," "I slept for 7 hours and 34 minutes last night"), crying out into the wilderness, not hoping that someone, anyone else will actually care what color socks you're wearing today, but that you yourself still exist.

A bird called out in the early evening air.  Tom stopped, stunned.  "I guess that's why they call it 'Twitter', then," he said to himself.  He watched the bird sing, and realized that it was posting on nature's Facebook.  Maybe the point wasn't meaningless short term confirmation of existence, he thought.  Maybe it was a vestigial form of territorialism.  We constantly make noises to call out and affirm our existence, but not based on people's responses.  We announce ourselves, we demand that people notice us, that I am here and I am mine.  In a way, it's a challenge, an order to be recognized.  Maybe that's one reason people get annoyed if you don't respond to even the most trivial of comments: it's perceived as a challenge.  So perhaps it's not the content of the message, it's simply the act of messaging that carries the weight.  Smells a little like Mcluhan.

As the sun set through the trees, Tom could see one of the mausoleums scattered thought the graveyard.  It was a large cube, about fifteen feet tall, and made of black granite.  The bars of its wrought iron gate were thick and imposing, with sharpened spikes jutting out at the top.  Tom had always thought to himself, as a joke, that it looked more like the family wanted it built to keep things inside, rather than keeping intruders out.  It was a little less amusing now, as the sunlight began to fade, and Tom noticed that the gate had swung open.  Tom walked a bit closer, but stayed at the treeline.  He could see a soft red glow from inside fall across the threshold of the mausoleum's doorway.  "Now would be a good time to be leaving," he thought to himself.  He turned to go back the way he came, when he caught the sound of mean laughter.  To his right, in the cemetery proper, were two rough looking twenty somethings. They had beat up jeans jackets, and holes in their pants. Long, ratty hair was shoved under baseball caps.  Their heavy workboots clomped against the asphalt of the path.  The taller one was holding a large bottle of sort of liquor.  The shorter one had a flashlight, and a two foot length of rebar.  Tom ducked behind a tree.  While this town was more queer friendly than most, he had learned the hard way that sometimes, stereotypes were quite accurate.  He had no intention of finding out whether these apparently disaffected youth were gay bashers, homeless vet bashers, rapists, or simply young men who enjoyed getting drunk and fondling construction materials.  They were close enough now that he could hear what they were saying.  The tall one was already in mid rant.

"I told you man, those bitches wanted it!"

"Shut the fuck up, man.  You're fucking high."

"So what?  I know them, man, they'd do anything for some weed and some booze."

"Sure, they say that, but you know what?  Fuck it.  They'd just take a hit, giggle, then say shit like it's their fucking period or something, and all we'd get out of it is an empty bottle and blueballs."

"You faggot.  That's what these are for."  He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a small vial. "GHB, man.  Give 'em one drop and they won't know what fuckin hit them."

"Serious?  Where'd you get that, man?"

"Down at The Block.  Some dude was selling it outside the D Street Club."

"Well, fuck.  I don't care if the bitch ain't moving, so long as I can get a piece.  Let's head back now!"

"Hold up.  Check that out."  The tall one was looking at the mausoleum.

"What the hell?"  They walked closer, and the short one pointed his flashlight into the tomb.

"What is it?"  The taller one brought the bottle up to his lips and took a swig.  He put the vial back into his pocket, and then crouched and slid a knife out of his boot.

"I don't know, it looks like aAAAKKKG-" a shadow moved through the red glow, and something lashed out at the short one.  The flashlight dropped to the ground and spun crazily, the beam of light throwing a tiny spotlight at the treetops, a row of headstones, the knees of the other thug, and then went out.  The rebar hit the ground with a clang.  Something long and ropey was extended from inside the tomb and had wrapped around the short dirtbag's neck.  He was making wet, bubbly sounds and was trying to claw at whatever was choking him.

For what it's worth, his friend at least had some sort of honor.  Instead of running away, he actually stepped up and swung the knife at the thing.  Not that it did any good.  Tom saw something flop at the foot of the door, and squirm forward.  Then, as it leaped up and wrapped around his waist, Tom could see that it looked like some sort of tentacle, stretching back into the mausoleum.  The tall thug screamed once, and then was lifted off his feet and pulled into the tomb.  Tom watched, terrified, as the tentacle wrapped around the shorter one's neck jerked back as well, with a wet crunching noise.  The young punk's body toppled forward, and his head rolled off to one side, three or four feet away.  Nothing happened for at least 5 seconds, and then Tom heard a slithering thump.  He decided he really didn't want to see what might be making its way through the door of the tomb, so he turned and ran.

This was one of those times when Tom would have been happy to have another person with him, territorial birdsongs or no.  The twilight was rapidly making way for serious night, and there was only a sliver of moon coming over the hill.  The shrubs tore at his pants, and once or twice he narrowly avoided breaking his kneecaps on a tombstone lurking in the dark.  He found his way to a more established path, and raced for the exit.  He made it to the gates, and paused to look back.  The graveyard looked back at him, silent and cold.  There was no sign of movement, and the only thing he could hear was his own lungs, panting in the chilled night air.  He needed to get home.  He needed to call the police.  He'd figure out what to tell them when he got there.

Doug was in the kitchen when Tom came through the door.  The air was filled with the smell of  roast chicken and a curried pumpkin soup.  Doug considered himself a pretty decent cook, and no one had yet needed to disagree with him.  He had picked up the skill fairly young in life, hanging around his mom's kitchen, poking his fingers into things, offering to help out.  Luckily, his mother liked to cook, so he had nightly lessons on what to do to actually make food.

In college, Doug spent most of his money on rent and beer, so he couldn't really afford to go out to eat.  He had tried the ramen diet, and was completely turned off.  Instead, he found that five dollars could get you a pot of rice, some fresh spinach, and some chicken thighs, and you could actually keep the leftovers (have you ever tried eating leftover ramen? Not recommended).  His friends soon found out that Doug actually knew how a stove worked, and they all struck a deal: if they brought over the ingredients, he'd cook it.  Pooling their funds helped them get better ingredients: Lamb, artichokes, asparagus, delicata squash, prime rib even.  Doug began to watch the TV shows, and soon felt brave enough to go off recipe.  He learned a few very important lessons.  First off, cooking consisted mainly of chopping things, and adding heat to them.  Fancy techniques refined the final product, but 90% of the time, all you really needed was a pan, a knife, and a pair of tongs.  You chop, you heat, you add ingredients, you mix, you turn, you remove some things, you add others, you reduce, you deglaze, you warm through, you arrange on a plate.  Pan, knife, tongs.

That's not to say that Doug didn't get off on his fancy gadgets.  He had a slow cooker to make his own stock.  He dedicated an old coffee grinder to make his own curries and ground spices.  He had a china cap, which turned the usually "blenderized" soups into silken wonders.  He had at least a dozen blades, from cleavers to paring knives.  He had whisks, digital scales, dutch ovens, juicers, immersion blenders, steamer pots, strainers, and a drawer full of as many spatulas, bamboo spoons, and spiders as you could ever want.

The second thing Doug had learned was that, unlike baking, everything was "to taste".  Ok, almost everything.  There was still some chemistry magic going on in a few processes, but the only reason to use a full teaspoon of thyme instead of a half was whether you liked thyme, and how much of it you wanted to taste.  Taking that into consideration, his spice cabinet took up at least a quarter of the kitchen.  He had the standard basil/oregano/crushed red pepper, but that just wasn't enough for him.  Three kinds of salt; white, black, and green peppercorns; cumin, tarragon, dried chilies, mustard seed and coriander; curry powder, ras al hanout, and so called "Cajun" spice blends; at least a half dozen vinegars, just as many oils, and more kinds of hot sauce than was really good for a person to actually own.  And his fish sauce.  Ah, his fish sauce.

He knew that the recent "umami" craze was completely out of control.  The "brand new discovery" of a secret "fifth taste" that wasn't sweet, salty, sour, or bitter.  Brand new?  It's been known since 1908.  Doug figured it didn't help that it resurfaced in the age of marketing in the US, who grabbed the name "Umami" and ran with it as some sort of exotic concept.  Why not just call it "savory"?  It means the same thing, has was known in Western cooking for centuries; just look at the fascination and passion for truffles.  All the same despite all the hype, Doug couldn't deny that underlying savory flavor.  And for him, the best expression of that was his nam pla fish sauce.  Just a few splashes of the light amber liquid in a soup or a sauce brought everything together.

Doug was just pulling the toasted pumpkin seeds from the oven when he heard Tom come in.  "What the hell, Tom?  I was this far from getting worried about you!" he barked.  When Tom turned the corner though, Doug's annoyance vanished like a bad dream in the light of day.  "Tom?  What's the matter."

"I don't think you're going to believe me, but we need to call the police.  Something happened to a couple of kids in the cemetery."

"Another assault?"

"No.  It was... I have no idea what it was."  Tom sat down heavily on a chair.  He looked up at Doug with a pained expression.  "Can you get me a glass of scotch?"

"Um... Sure."  Doug didn't like it when Tom drank whiskey, because it had the tendency to turn him into another person, a mean one.  Normally, Tom was a quiet, reserved guy, with a sharp wit and an easy smile.  But put a few glasses of bourbon or scotch, and he turned surly, sarcastic, and cruel.  When they had first started dating, Doug was sure that Tom was schizophrenic, or at least bi-polar.  It took a couple of months to figure it out, and ever since, he had kept a close watch on what Tom was drinking.  Right now, it didn't seem like a good idea to start up that conversation again.  He went to the bar, and poured Tom an inch or so of single malt into a rocks glass.  He walked it over to Tom, who grabbed it and breathed the fumes deeply before taking a gulp.  "So, what happened?  You're starting to worry me again."

"I don't know how to explain it.  I was walking through Grayson's as I usually do, and when it started getting dark I saw a couple of punk kids looking for trouble.  I didn't want to even take a chance with that, so I ducked into the trees."  He took another sip of scotch.  "They were talking the standard line of shit... getting drunk, date rape braggadocio, all that.  Then.  Then.  Oh, God."

Doug knelt beside the chair, and took one of Tom's hands in both of his.  "Ok honey, you're ok.  Just go slow, and tell me what happened."

"There was this grave, this tomb, and the gate was open, and this light was on inside, and, and, and the little fuckers went near it, and this thing-"

"Wait, what?"

"-This thing, this, this tentacle thing came out and killed them-"

"Oh, you asshole."  Doug stood up and brushed his pants angrily.  "You really had me worried there.  Honestly.  You and your fucking pranks.  I swear, I don't know why you keep doing this to me, you know how pissed off I get-"

"No!  You don't understand!"  The urgency in Tom's voice stopped Doug short.  "I'm serious!  I saw... something, and it attacked those kids, and killed them! They were screaming!"

"If this is some sort of elaborate joke..."

"No, no I swear."

Doug sighed.  "Ok, so you saw 'something', it was dark, but all you really know is that two young men were attacked."

Tom looked up with pained, confused eyes.  "Yeah, I guess."

"So, you're right.  We should call the cops.  But they're going to want to know what you saw, and you can't  tell them that you saw something that sounds like a bad HP Lovecraft knockoff."

"But I was there..."

"...And you don't have a good excuse as to what happened.  What if they start accusing you of the attack, like a reverse queer bash, and your only defense are these 'tentacle things'? They'll lock you up, and I'll never see you again.  So shape up!"

"Well... I could say that they threatened me, and I turned and ran, and when I was running away, I heard screams, so that's why I called?"

"That might work. We need to do it soon, though.  The longer we wait, the less innocent and concerned we seem."

"But I am innocent!" Tom protested.

"Of course you are.  But you're not a cop.  A cop is going to see two dead assholes who were looking for trouble, and one live faggot who watched them die who doesn't have a good alibi.  I'm going to get the phone."  Doug got his cell phone from the charger, and dialed 911.  "Hello?  Yes, I'd like to report a potential hate crime at Grayson's cemetery.  Yes, I'll hold."  He looked over at Tom.  "Just let me do the talking.  You're too distraught from the attack."

"Fucking right I am," muttered Tom into his glass.

Doug turned back to the phone.  "Yes?  Yes, my partner was attacked at Grayson's cemetery this evening.  Doug.  Doug Vertian.  No, not 'Version', Vertian.  V-E-R-T-I-A-N.   Yes.  No, he just got in.  He's quite shaken up.  Two, I think.  No, they threatened him, and he ran away.  Yes, I know, but as he was running, he heard a scream.  He thinks someone else may have been attacked.  Yes.  Tom.  Tom Bertrand.  Bertrand.  B-E-R-T-R-A-N-D.  Yes.  I see.  No, that's fine.  87 and Main, Northeast.  Apartment Three.  Yes, thanks.  See you soon.  Yes.  Ok, goodbye."  He hung up the phone.  "No more scotch for you, Tom.  The police are coming over here to interview you.  I'll make some coffee."

Tom looked up.  "What do I say?"

"Say exactly what happened.  You saw some young toughs, they threatened you, you ran away, you heard screams."

"But that's not what-"

"You saw some young toughs, they threatened you, you ran away, you heard screams.  How hard is that?  Ok, look at it this way:  Their appearance seemed threatening you, you heard them scream, you ran away, right?"

"But the tentacles-"

Doug got very quiet.  "Tom, listen very closely.  The police will be here in no less than twenty minutes.  If, when they question you, you make any mention of tombs, lights, monsters, or tentacles, I will tell them you're an alcoholic and this was all a delusion brought on by your drunkenness, and that I actually called them because you beat me.  Do you understand me?"

"Hey, that's not fair!"

"Tom?"

"I... Yes."

"No tentacles.  You saw some young toughs, they threatened you, you ran away, you heard screams.  Say it."

"I saw some young toughs, they threatened me, I ran away, I heard screams."

"Good. With any luck, you'll just have to sign a report, and they'll go away.  Are there any drugs in the house?"

"Not since Wednesday."

"Better times.  Ok.  Finish that, and I'm going to make coffee.  I guess we'll have our dinner cold, later."  He walked back into the kitchen, and began to assemble to coffeemaker.  Tom drained the glass, and just sat there, looking lost.

It only took ten minutes for the police to show.  Doug let them in.  There were two of them, a detective and a patrolman.

Doug showed them into the living room, and then went to the kitchen and poured out four cups of coffee.  He brought them back into the room just as they began to interview Tom.

"Ok, sir.  Just tell us what happened."

"Well, detective... Mitchell, was it?  I was taking a walk through Grayson's, and-"

"Hold it," said the detective.  "Why exactly were you walking through the cemetery?"

"What?  I... I like going for walks, and Grayson's is a nice place.."

"Is that all?  I mean, and no disrespect here, but Grayson's has a... reputation."

"And what exactly do you mean by that?" asked Doug icily.

"Well, sir.  It's just that we need a complete account of what Mr Bertrand was doing that evening."

"He told you.  He was going for a walk.  He enjoys walking.  He wasn't trying to buy drugs, and he wasn't trolling for a bit of, as you would say, 'rough trade'.  Tom isn't like that."

"Please, Mr..." He looked at his notebook. "Vertain.  Let Mr. Bertrand speak for himself."

"This is ridiculous!" cried Doug. "We call in a potential assault, and you're here asking my boyfriend if he was trolling for whores?"

"Please calm down, sir.  We have a squad car down at the graveyard, checking things out.  You, in fact, are not helping matters right now,"

"Doug, please, it's all right," said Tom softly.  "No, officer, I wasn't there for any reason other than I enjoy walking through Grayson's in the Fall."

Detective Mitchell made a note in his notebook.  "Ok then, we'll just move on for now.  What happened next?"

"Well, as I was walking, I was approached by two young men, and they started calling me names.  One of them was holding a steel bar, and I became frightened."

"What sort of things were they saying?"

"Oh... you know... things like 'hey faggot', and 'fucking queer'... stuff like that."

"And you are sure you didn't do anything to provoke them in any way?"

"Oh come on!" shouted Doug.  "I know that blaming the victim is a common habit, but I thought you would be more subtle about it!"

"That's enough, Mr. Vertian.  We're just trying to get the full story.  Answer the question, Mr Bertrand."

"Tom, don't.  Don't satisfy this asshole's need to make you the one to blame!"

"Enough.  Officer Jenkem, please take Mr. Vertian into the other room."  The patrolman grabbed Doug by the arm, and said, "Please sir.  Step this way."

"What?  No!  You can't tell me what to do in my own home!"

"Sir, please.  This will just take a minute.  Please.  Humor us."  Officer Jenkem calmly but firmly led Doug into the kitchen.

"Now, just hold on a second-"

"Sir."  The way Jenkem looked at Doug said volumes.  It said, "Hey there, faggot.  I don't have a problem with you and your perverted ways, or your sinful life.  I'm a cop.  I've seen things that would make you puke.  You and your faggy boyfriend don't bother me.  What bothers me is when you, with your stuck up   attitude, and your 'I watch "Law and Order"' mentality, try messing with my investigation.  If you keep this up, you'll find out what 'harassment and intimidation' actually means.  So shut the fuck up, and back the fuck down."  Doug decided to keep his mouth shut, and walked into the kitchen.

Back in the living room, Detective Mitchell gave Tom a hard look.  "So, these toughs confronted you.  What happened next?"

"I didn't want any trouble, so I turned and ran."

"Just like that?"

"Just like that."

"And then?"

"As I was running away, I heard someone scream."

"You heard.  You didn't see anything?"

"Um.  No.  I didn't see.  Anything."

"So, those boys might have been playing a prank on you."

"I guess.  But...  Isn't it better that I called?  I mean, like, benefit of the doubt?"

"Hmm."  Mitchell turned a page in his notebook.  "Now, Mr. Bertrand, let's get back to why you were in the cemetery in the first place."

"But, I was just going for a walk!"

"So you say.  But I do have a few questions.  First off-"

A cell phone rang.  "Hold on a second."  He flipped open his phone.  "Mitchell.  Yeah.  No, I'm here.  Yeah.  Really?  Yeah.  Ok.  I think I can make that happen.  Five minutes."  He snapped the phone shut.  "That was the crew at the cemetery.  We're going to have to bring you down there."

"No!"

"Excuse me?"

"You can't take me down there!"

"But Mr Bertrand, you were just saying how you enjoy Grayson's."

"I- I'm sorry.  It's just that I'm still a little freaked out."

"But nothing happened to you, Mr Bertrand.  They called you names, you ran away.  That's all."

"You don't understand.  It was a... I was scared."

"Ok, Mr Bertrand.  If you want, you can bring your partner with you.  Will that make you calmer?"

"I.  I suppose so.  May I go tell him?"

"Be my guest."

Tom walked out to the kitchen.  His left hand trembled slightly.  "Doug?"

"Tom? Are you all right?"

"Yeah.  Tom, they're asking us to go down there.  To Greyson's."  There was a look of terror in Tom's eyes.  Doug could tell he was on the brink of freaking out.  Doug grabbed his hand.  "It will be ok, babe.  We'll be there with the police.  I'm sure officer Jenkem will make sure nothing happens."  Doug shot a look at Jenkem, who looked back stonily.

"Ok, let's go then," said Mitchell.

Pulling up at the cemetery, there were half a dozen police cars lined up at the gates, lights flashing.  The four of them stepped out of the car, with Tom holding tight to Doug's hand.  "This way," said Mitchell, leading the way inside the graveyard.  As the four of them walked down the dark path, Tom became more and more agitated.  Doug started to pick up on his anxiety.  Tentacles?  Really?  Tom was imaginative, but he was also fairly realistic, most of the time.  The fact that he was so freaked out was starting to freak Doug out. 

Up ahead, they could see the beams of other policeman's flashlights waving, cutting through the night.  As they approached, Tom could see the black, dark tomb.  He froze.

Tom had consistently slowed his steps as he drew closer to where it happened, and when he saw the dim outline of the mausoleum, he stopped completely.  It looked almost malevolent, squatting in the dark like some giant stone toad, just waiting for something tasty to fly near.  Tom did not want to be that fly.  Out of the darkness, another officer walked up to Detective Mitchell.

"Sir, we've found a large pool of blood, but no signs of a struggle, and no signs of any bodies."

"Is there any indication that the bodies may have been dragged off?"

"No sir.  Everything is basically untouched, with the exception of all the blood."

"Well, that is indeed odd." He turned to Tom.  "Mr Bergeron, can you explain this?"

"Me?  I- Why do you think I could explain...?"

"He told you," Doug broke in.  "He ran away."

"There's something you're not telling me, and I want to know what it is." As he leaned in closer to Tom, Doug noticed it had gotten much darker all of a sudden.  Cloud had rolled in quickly, and low, muting the reflected light from the city, and obscuring what little of the moon there was.  At the same time, he felt his skin begin to tingle, like when you rub your feet across the carpet, just before you zap yourself on a door handle.

"I- I- I don't know what you're talking about," stammered Tom.

"Yes you do.  I can tell.  I can feel it.  You know what happened here.  And you better start talking, you little-"

There was an enormous crack, and a blinding flash.  To the left of them, a tree exploded as a bolt of lightning struck it.  Everyone hit the ground as another bolt struck to their right.

"We have to get to some kind of shelter!" shouted Mitchell above the din.  "Get moving!"

"Where?" cried Tom, but he knew what the answer would be.

"In there!" Mitchell pointed at the tomb.  Tom could see that the gate was still open.  The red glow was gone, but there was no way he could go in there.

"I can't!"

"You have to!  Otherwise-"  There was another tremendous crack, and a policeman screamed at the bolt struck him and his shirt burst into flame.  The scream was cut short as he toppled forward, and collapsed.  Another cop started to beat out the fire on his back, separately trying to call for help on his radio. "It's not working!" he yelled.  "I can't get a signal or anyth-"  Another explosion cut off his words, and large oak was split in half, and slowly toppled over.  "Go! Go!" yelled Detective Mitchell, grabbing Tom by one arm, and dragging him to the tomb.  Officer Jenkem was pulling Doug, while Doug was trying to reach Tom.  A rapid series of lightening strikes deafened them, and laid waste to the graveyard around them.

Tom's eyes grew wide with terror as he was dragged closer and closer to the tomb.  He tried to dig his heels in, but the ground seemed slick, and he suddenly realized that the slickness was because he was being dragged through the blood puddle where one of the punks was decapitated.  He gave off a choked moan, stumbled, and was forcefully shoved by detective Mitchell into the tomb.  Tom hit the floor, and curled up into a ball.  In an instant, Doug was beside him, trying to get him to sit up.  Outside all around them, the lightening strikes hit the ground fast, and with increased fury.  The sound was deafening, as the officers and the two men crammed themselves in the tomb.  There were two stone coffins on either side, built into the floor and the walls, going up about 3 feet.  Time and neglect had eroded the names, unreadable even in the constant bright cataclysmic strobe flashes from the lightening.

An officer tapped Mitchell on the shoulder, and pointed at the floor neat the back wall.  There was a large trapdoor there, about 5 feet across, with a steel circular handle.  Mitchell stepped over to it, and pulled.  It opened easily, and revealed stairs that descended into darkness.  Mitchell motioned for everyone to follow him, and he started down the stairs.

"Come on!" Doug shouted to Tom over the crashing thunder. "It's too dangerous here!  We have to follow them!"  Tom shook his head, not moving.  "Tom, please!  We'll be with a dozen cops with guns and flashlights!  We'll be ok!  Tom!  Please!"  Doug helped him to his feet.  "I promise!  It will be all right, but we have to go now!" Slowly, with unsteady steps, Tom approached the stairs, and with Doug's help, began to walk down.

The steps led down into a large stone room, almost twice the size of the tomb above them.  The policemen's flashlights lit it up fairly well, and it was much quieter down here.  There were still constant rumblings from the thunder and lightening, but not the blinding, deafening catastrophe upstairs.

"Did anyone know about this?" asked Mitchell.  No one answered.  There was a large hole carved into one wall, which looked like it was the beginning, or end, of a tunnel.

Officer Jenkem asked the real question that was on everyone's mind: "What the fuck is going on out there?"

"Do I look like a goddamn weatherman?" replied Mitchell.  "For all I know, it's the goddamn end of days." He looked around the room.  It was bare, and clean.  Apart from the stairs and the tunnel, there was nothing there.  "Who builds a room under a graveyard?" he asked himself.  "You'd think all the bodies would get in the way."  He went over to the wall with the tunnel, and looked in.  It stretched away and slightly down, and vanished into the darkness.  He stepped in.  "Jenkem, you're with me.  Smith, Casper, keep an eye on those two," he motioned at Tom and Doug.  "The rest of you... keep trying the radios."

Mitchell unholstered his gun, swung his flashlight into the tunnel, and started down.  Jenkem followed close behind, also slipping his gun from its holster.  The tunnel was about 10 feet in diameter, and the walls were smooth stone, with tiny grooves running laterally along the walls.  Jenkem reached out to touch the wall.  "Whoa, weird."

"What's up, Rob?"

"I've never seen stone like this.  It reminds me of..."

"Yeah?"

"Well, horn, actually."

"Horn?  Like, it's been grown?  Get real."

"I'm just saying."

"Rob, would you please shut the hell up?  You're giving me the creeps."

"Yes, sir."

The tunnel was a straight shot for a few hundred yards more.  It opened up into a more prosaic tunnel, which Mitchell recognize immediately.  "Hey, isn't this part of the old tunnel system?"

"Looks like it.  I didn't know it extended this far.  Detective, look at this."  Jenkem had pointed his flashlight at where the two tunnels intersected.  The joined didn't look built so much as molded.   It was like the entire passage was formed and shaped into place, rather than constructed.  The two policemen look at each other.  "What are your thoughts, Jim?"

Mitchell looked him straight in the eye.  "Rob, I won't lie to you.  This is really weird.  But it looks like something got started, and I'm willing to stick through and finish it.  How about you?"

"You're the boss."  Jenkem looked to his right, then to his left.  "What direction are these tunnels running?"

"As as guess?  I'd say East and West.  There's a chance these things were built to handle major Spring thaw runoff, and if they're centered under The Block, that would be to the West of us."

"All right.  So, which way is West, which is East?"

"Beats the hell out of me.  Let's just go this way."

The two men went off into the darkness, and without actually knowing it, headed West.

Tom began to relax.  His mind had already begun the healing process, and was busily covering up the gaping hole in his picture of reality with bits and pieces of lies and rationalizations.  The story he had told the cops was suddenly making a lot more sense.  He knew it wasn't true, but then again, what exactly did he see, anyway?  It was dark, he was scared, and while something had happened to those two boys, there was undoubtedly some reasonable explanation to be had.  After all, here he was, in this room, and there wasn't any scary monsters around.  Just him, and Doug, and a bunch of cops.

Cops who were, it should be said, now talking in low voices, huddled in a circle.  "Rick is still up there!" the one called Casper said. 

"Yeah, but he got hit by that lightening!" replied Smith.  Upstairs, the booming had subsided somewhat, but there were still occasional strikes.  "There's no way-"

"Can you hear yourself?  That's one of our own up there, and we just left him lying on the ground.  If George hadn't put out his shirt that was on fire, he'd be a barbecue by now!"

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying," said Casper, straightening up, "That I'm going to go get Rick."

"But Detective Mitchell said-"

"Fuck what he said.  Arrogant prick.  That's my partner up there.  Anyone going to try and stop me?"  No one made a move.  "All right then."  He walked up the stairs.  They watched him go.  The entire group looked around and watched each other, trying not to look nervous.  Each boom of thunder made them wince, and one or two cops started looking a bit bashful, and made tentative moves towards the stairs.   Then, between crashes of thunder, they heard Casper grunting, and the sound of a body being dragged.  "A little help here!" he shouted at the top of the stairs.  "You wouldn't believe what's going on-"

There was a flash of light and an enormous boom as Casper and the policeman's body he was dragging were flung down the steps.  The tomb itself suffered a direct strike.  With a tremendous cracking noise, the roof toppled inward.  As the two bodies tumbled down the stairs and into the stone room, dust billowed from the trapdoor entrance.  The two men lay motionless on the floor.  Then one of them, Casper, rolled over groaning.  The other officers rushed over to them.

"I'm fine," said Casper through clenched teeth.  "Check on Rick."  The one called Greg was already there, head to chest.  He gently started removing Rick's charred shirt, and then stopped.  He dropped his head to his chest.  "What is it?" asked Casper.  "Greg, what?"

Without a word, Greg pushed rick over to his right.  Rick rolled easily, and everyone could clearly see a large hole, about the size of a half dollar, burned into his chest, right above his heart.  The hold was blackened and burnt, and the could see it went in deep.  Deeper than was obviously healthy.  "It's no use, Casper," said Rick softly.  "His chest exploded."

"Aw, no," moaned Casper.  He propped himself up on one elbow, and struggled to his feet.  His nose was bleeding, and his clothes were torn.  "Rick, man, I'm sorry," he whispered.

"Tom leaned over and whispered in Doug's ear, "Well, at least he's already buried."

"I heard that, you asshole!" yelled Casper, and stumbled over to them.  "How the fuck can you just sit there and make jokes!?  That is a human, an actual person, and you decide to mock him?" His hand became a fist, and cocked back.  "You know what I'm going to do to you?  I'm gonna kick your ass so hard, and then book you for resisting arrest, so I can kick your ass again..." Doug was pointing at the wall.  Casper turned around, saying, "What?"  The force of the tomb above collapsing had shook sections of the wall's facade in the room.  The room wasn't just blank stone after all, but covered with a plaster that made it look like blank stone.  A large chunk had fallen off the wall opposite the tunnel's entrance, and they could see pictures of symbols marking up the wall underneath.

"What the hell?"  The one called Smith walked over to the wall.  "These look familiar," he said, catching the edge of the broken plaster and pulling more chunks off the wall.  "They look like..."

"...Like those crop circles they've been showing on TV," said Doug.  "No one's sure what they are, but where they used to only appear in cornfields and things like that, they've been showing up everywhere.  But those drawing look... old."

Casper scoffed.  "Oh, bullshit," he said.  "Crop circles are bullshit, and people who believe in them are full of bullshit.

"You do have to admit that crop circles actually there when they're found," said Doug.

"But they're man made!"

"So what if they are?  Someone had to make them, for some reason that no one's been able to figure out yet.  And more than one someone.  Not only have they been showing up on multiple continents, they've been documented for more than 100 years.  So it's a multi generational, international project for reasons unknown.  And now they're here, too.  Exactly what part of all this is not suspicious to you?"

"Suspicious, maybe.  Criminal, no."  Casper turned towards the other cops.  "Has anyone been able to get a radio signal?"  They shook their heads.  "The hell with this, then.  Let's get out of here.

"That's gonna be kind of hard," said Smith, who pointed up the stairs.  The entire trapdoor entrance was blocked by the roof of the mausoleum.  "Looks like we're gonna have to follow Detective Mitchell."

As a side note, I fell down the whiskey hole this weekend, and woke up in a drag bar.  Needless to say, I didn't get any writing done.  I'm at 17,700.  I better make up for lost time.

"Oh, what the hell, man," groaned Casper.  "What the hell is going on out there?  There wasn't any rain, or anything, just fallen trees and lightening bolts.  And now this.  I gotta think about this."  He started pacing back and forth, as Doug began peeling off more plaster.  Tom frowned, looking at the patterns as they revealed themselves.

"Hey, doesn't that look like...  Isn't that downtown, on the Northwest side?"  He asked.

Doug answered, "Really, you think so? I thought it was a layout of Greyson's."

Officer Smith spoke up.  "You know?  I don't think I ever noticed this, but Greyson's looks a hell of a lot like downtown Northwest, when you look at it from above like this.  How weird.  So, if this is the water tower, and this is the cooling plant," he traced his finger along the wall.  "Then old Masterson's grave is right where the civic center is."

Doug picked up the thread.  "Ok, ok, I get it.  That means this is the path from the memorial rose garden, which means we're right-"

"Here."  Tom stabbed his finger at a point on the wall.  "Right at the civic center transit stop."  His finger jabbed again.  "Look at what the circles are doing.  Doesn't it look like they're all converging in a way?" He squinted. "Yeah, from here, and looping down this way.  They all seem to spiral, see?  And this, this place right here, is the focal point."

"Who gives a shit?" cried Casper. "A bunch of graffitti, that's what I see!  Some kids broke in years ago, trashed the place, so the owner of the plot decided to cover it up rather than clean it off!  I bet you'll find the misspelled name of their dark lord 'SATIN' spraypainted under there!"  His hand waved angrily at the other wall.  "What we should be concerned with here, 'gentlemen', is that one police officer is dead, two more have gone down that damn tunnel rogue, our radios don't work, and the only way out is down that same damn tunnel!"  He pulled out his nightstick, and pointed it at Tom.  "And you, you little shit.  Don't you think we've forgotten about you.  I want to know where you hid the bodies.  In fact," he said as he grabbed Tom by the arm, "I want you to show me."  He pused Tom towards the tunnel.  Doug moved as if to grab him, but Casper jabbed the nightstick into his gut.  Doug bent over, gasping for air.  "Smith, grab that one," Casper said pointing to Doug.  "I'll handle this faggot."  He stepped closer to Tom.  "You hear that, faggot?  Yeah, I said it.  Faggot.  Get moving."  He shoved Tom into the tunnel.

"I- I can't see," said Tom.

Casper made a noise of disgust.  "Here," he said, handing Tom a flashlight.  "But don't try anything clever.  Remember who's carrying the gun around here."  He followed Tom into the tunnel, with Doug and Smith behind them.  "The rest of you stay here and get those radios working!" barked Casper.  They made their way down the tunnel, ending up, just like Mitchell and Jenkem, at the same junction of tunnels.  Casper stepped ahead of Tom and asked, "So what the hell?  Which way, Smith?"

"Why do you think I know?  It's not like I grew up here."

"Fuck Smith, I thought your sister was a sewer rat."

"Real tasteful there, Casper.  Just like your mother."

"Oh, so you mean that WASN'T your sister I picked up on Franklin Street last month?"

"Casper, I'm getting really sick of your shit.  If you mention Samantha once more-"  The echos of a shot rang out through the tunnel.  It seemed to be coming from their left.  "You three stay here!" cried Casper exitedly, grabbing the flashlight from Tom as he drew his gun and ran off into the dark.  Smith, Tom, and Doug watched him go.  Tom spoke first.

"Officer Smith?"

"Yes?"

"May I call you by your first name?"

"It's Mark."

"Mark?"

"Yeah?"

"What the fuck is wong with that guy?"

"Hey!  That's no way to talk about him.  He just lost his partner.  He's been edgy for a long time, and all this- this weirdness isn't helping.  He's a good cop."

"Really."

"Yeah, really."

"You know, I could probably have his badge for what he said to me."

"Sir, don't you know it's not a wise idea to threaten a cop when another cop is standing right next to you?"  Smith's tone had gotten a bit colder.

"What?  Oh, I'm sorry.  I didn't mean I would, just that your definition of 'good cop' seems a but odd to me, considering the context."

"Mr Bertrand, if I were you, I'd exercise my right to remain silent. Immediately."

They watched the pinprick of light from the flashlight bobble down the tunnel, then vanish as officer Casper turned a corner somewhere ahead.  Mark turned to them and said, "Look.  I don't care if you're a couple.  None of us do, really.  That sort of thinking went out a long time ago.  I know a lot of people look at the cops and see us as some sort of jack-booted professional thug, with a mentality little better than the sort of scum we're forced to deal with on a daily basis.  But that's not really true.  Sure, we have a darker view of humanity; after all, not unlike, say, a political reporter's.  We're pretty much forced to look it in the face day after day, to watch man's brutality to man perpetuate constantly.  The base, tragic stupidity in an endless spin cycle.  We are there when poverty finally crumbles the last pillar of morality in a desperate man's soul.  We're there when endless frustration transformes into blind rage and overcomes compassion.  We see weak-willed sheep turn to escapism, escalating from drug  to drug when they realize that their horrific reality trumps the chemical fantasy they so yearn for.  We witness the petty solipsism that convinces one man that he'll never get caught after running over a bum, for a woman to hide her baby in a garbage can, for a child to take a gun into their school.  People expect us to be a sieve for the dregs of humanity, to use our own brains and bodies to filter out the Great Unpleasantness in the world.  They want us to shield them from the problems of the society they continually vote for, from the inevitable as clockwork results of school closings, factory layoffs, and political corruption.  And when the tide rises too high, and their shoes are splattered with the dreck and detrius of their own making, when they catch our attention: They holler that the nation is becoming a police state.

"So, it can only be natural that some of the shit that we protect you from accretes on us.  It can only be expected that our view of the world is shaped by what we view in the world.  We see hate, sorrow, anger, violence, and above all, by far, what we see most of day to day is the abject stupidity of the human race.  And we see this ocean of ignorance rolling up the beach of society, threatening to swamp all we hold dear.  And we know it will never stop.  We know we will never win.  We are continually told to fall back, to make sure that our damns and levees are sufficiently weak so the ignorant are neither repressed, nor suffering by our hands.  Well, our job is to repress.  To repel the anarchy, to push back at the Lord of the Flies chaos that befalls mankind when the bottom falls out of their lives.  Like a Sysiphusian army, we fight the avalanche, pebble by pebble, until our backs give out, and we fall only to be replaced by another blue uniform.  But when we look back at the society we are saving, all we see are fat bankers and politicians catapulting more rocks to the top of the mountain, to join forces with the plummeting granite as they tumble their way back down, into our arms.

"No, we're not fools.  We can see that we're merely pawns to the regulators and elected officials.  We can see the flaws in the laws they pass, and we can sense their glee as they establish regulations and procedures designed to generate money for them as they generate another generation of criminals, whose greatest crime was to be born on the wrong side of the economic gap.  So you might be able to understand where we're coming from:  The violent and destructive dregs of the stupid despise us, because we cannot allow them to be neither violent nor destrictive.  The non violent and stupid despise us because all they see is the police holding the tide back, they do not see what the tide is made of, nor what the consequences would be if we let go.  The victims despise us because we did not show up soon enough.  The innocent despise us because we show up too soon.  All around us, we are dispised.  So, huddling like the Spartan 300, we make our last stand against the barbaric horde, knowing as we do, and as we die, those we protect loate us.

"And you stand there, thinking you can threaten us because we called you a taboo name?"

"Um.  Wow."  Doug just stared at him.  "Where did that come from?"

"This may come as a shock, but some cops are fairly well read, and actually think about things now and again."

Tom spoke up. "Do most cops really think like that?  That they are some kind of spat upon hero, like a, a, a janitor at Society's High Scool?"

"You wouldn't believe half of what we think," said Mark.  "If I started telling you what goes through our head on patrol-"  A scream reverberated though the tunnel, followed by several gunshots.  Mark drew his pistol with his right hand, and crossed his arm perpendicualr with his left, supporting the gun while still holding the flashlight with it's beam lighting up what little of the tunnel it could.  "Turn your lights off!" hissed Mark at the two men.  They quickly complied.  They sat in the dim glimmer of Mark's flashlight, waiting to see what was ahead of them.  Tom began to tremble again, flashing back to what he thought he saw earlier that evening.

What they heard next was the sound of hundreds of tiny feet, running like mad, straight at them.  What they saw in the beam of Mark's flashlight was an undulating carpet of tangled fur, and pink tails, and sharp, white teeth.  What they smelled was the sewer come to life.  The rats swarmed around them, racing between their feet as they tried to get out of the way by diving towards the side tunnel that led back to the stone room.  Mark yelled in pain as he stepped on a rat's tail, who spun around and sank its teeth into his ankle.  Other than that, the rats paid no attention to the men.  They ran on, with the occasional squeak, ran in what looked like terror.  Soon, they were gone, heading down the tunnel in the opposite direction of where Casper headed, and where they heard the gunshots come from.

Mark winced as he touched his ankle.  A thin trickle of blood was running into his show, and was making his sock damp.  "Dammit," he said, "I'm gonna need to get a series of rabies shots when we get back."  He got to his feet, tested his weight on his ankle.  "I hate to tell you this, guys," he said.  "But we need to go up there and check this out."

"We?" asked Doug. "What the hell are you talking about?  Are you trying to put us deliberately in harm's way?"

"I'm not sure how much of this you haven't gotten yet," replied officer Smith.  You reported an assault, with no bodies and a slew of blood, but the apparent perpetrator's bodies are missing, and your boyfriend here is the last to see what may have happened.  That doesn't make him a suspect, but that certainly makes him a Person of Interest.  Now, I would be remiss in my duties if I didn't have you remain in police custody.  Besides, Tom here might actually lead us to the bodies, given enough time."

"I told you, I didn't do anything!" wailed Tom.

"Whatever.  Let's go.  Don't make me cuff you."

They walked into the tunnel, and set off into the darkness.  Soon, they came to the turn in the tunnel where they saw Casper's light dissappear.  The combined light of their flashlights did their best to fight off the blackness.  It was a few hundred yards later that they found the blood.  It ran through the though in the floor of the tunnel, and it was splattered on the walls, even on the ceiling.  They waved their lights across the area, wordless.  Doug caught a glint of metal off to one side, and edged over as nonchalantly as he could under the circumastances.  It wasn't that hard, as officer Smith was distracted as he stared at all the blood.  Doug saw that the glint was Casper's gun, still cocked.  He pointed his flashlight away, and kept it level as he knelt down, and picked up the pistol, sliding it into the waistband of his pants, pulling his shirt down over it.  He hadn't fired a gun since the summer between high school and college, and he didn't know why he didn't alert officer Smith and show him the gun.  He just knew that he needed it, and he needed it to be a secret.  He pointed his flashlight down the tunnel.  He grabbed Tom's hand.  "Are you ok?"

"I'm scared."

"I know.  I think we'll be ok.  Officer Smith?"

"What?"

"Can we get the hell out of here?  Please?"

"Ok, but. . ."  He swung his light against the wall of the tunnel.  "Look familiar?"

Scrawled on the tunnel wall in blood was a rough outline of Grayson's.  Inside that were dozens of circles, converging towards the middle.

SECTION C: ESCHATON.


Sheila Penskoe sat at her desk, trying not to fall asleep.  The overwhelming artificiality of the fluorescent lights pressed down upon her, and the low hum of her computer lulled her further down.  She hadn't slept well last night.  Even in the late Fall, she awoke sweating, her T shirt sticking uncomfortably to her skin.  She was getting the sinking feeling that her dreams had slid out of her life as smoothly and completely as her actual dreams when she woke up.  Maybe that's why so many people called them dreams; if you never wake up, they can be as real as anything else you could ever imagine.

She had gone to college eager to study piano and art history.  Her parents didn't really mind, they encouraged her to broaden her mind.  They figured that a good college teaches a little bit of everything.  "As long as she knows how to think, she'll land on her feet," her father always said.  She had studied hard, and her parents would have been pleased to know they were right.  She didn't just learn Bach, and how chiaroscuro had been used across the centuries.  She found herself learning calculus, and reading Joyce, and learning a bit of biology and chemistry as well.  Not to imply that she was some bookworm; she had her fair share of stories to tell about keg parties and ignorant boys with clumsy hands.  But mostly, she spent her time at the conservatory and the museums.  She had played in a small jazz combo on the weekends, and sat in the front row during her Art History lectures.  She saw herself as a well-rounded artist, and she carefully cultured and nourished her dream: To be a jazz musician, and support herself playing gigs and recording.  As a backup, she figured she could get a job at a museum, or maybe even teach.

Without too much effort, she was able to graduate with a 3.2 average.  She borrowed the security deposit for an apartment from her family after graduation, and quickly got a temp job through an agency, working at a bank.  Sure, it wasn't related to her degree, but it was a way of making some money to pay rent and food.  It left her with plenty of time to practice the piano, and she made a habit of looking in the classifieds of the local nightlife magazine where bands posted "musician wanted" ads. 

Ten years later, she looked around herself, and wondered what happened.  The bank eventually offered her a permanent position in the branch office on the Northwest side, and she jumped at the chance to make a salary, bonuses, overtime, and get health benefits and vacations.  The hours didn't get any longer, but the list of responsibilities did.  She would come home at night, wiped out from the mental stresses of the day, and all she wanted to do was open a bottle of wine, and fall down on the couch next to her turntable.  She'd usually go through most of the wine while listening to Bill Evans or Thelonius Monk or Vince Guaraldi, or even Cecil Taylor if she was feeling ambitious.  She would usually wake up around ten thirty to the soft hiss of the record needle spinning the lock groove at the end of the record; upon which she would haul herself to bed to get back up at six to go back to work.

Though she still practiced the piano once or twice a week, she had never found a group that really went anywhere.  Once every other month, at the most, she would find herself playing a coffee shop or tiny bar with one or two people she had kept in contact with from school.  Usually, these shows were exhilarating for her to play.  She loved the sound of the piano filling the room, mixing conversationally with the drums and the bass, maybe if a saxophone, if they could find one that didn't sound like a buzz saw trying to play like Coltrane and failing miserably.  But as enjoyable as being on stage was, she never seemed to get much momentum from it.  It always seemed to her like the moment she got off stage, she went from being "The Penskoe Combo" to just Sheila.  And she still had to go to work the next day.

She held onto that dream, though.  She scraped and saved her money to record a CD of herself, and even was able to stretch her credit cards far enough to press a case of them.  Most of that case was still under her bed.  She offered them for sale at her shows, and every so often someone would sound eager to buy, but after that night, she usually would never see them at another show.  Sheila was optimistic.  She sent the CD to radio stations and labels, even though they explicitly said they did not accept unsolicited materials.

And it wasn't as if she had stopped being creative.  Ideas for songs would keep popping into hear head, and when she had a moment, she'd sit down at the piano, and jot them down in her book of notation paper.  She'd spend a bit of time sketching out an arrangement, but these days she left it at ninety percent complete.  She had learned through experience that people didn't really want to hear new songs, especially in jazz. They wanted to hear the standards, and the "new" standards, the Miles, the Coleman, all that.  She had come to the conclusion that the effort it would take to polish her ideas wouldn't bear fruit.  It was fine with her if all she did was get the idea out of her head and onto the paper, and play with it a little bit.  As a result, her notebook was filled with scribbles and jots and edits.  Every time she had a new idea, her heart lit up, and she loved losing herself in the process of working out a particularly challenging bit of harmony.  But these days, the results were pretty much a private thing.

She thought that might be one of the reasons she wasn't getting much sleep lately; she was starting to realize that the life she was living in her head didn't quite match the live her body was going through from day to day.  They matched, if your put your mind to it, but Sheila was still telling people that she was a musician, who was doing banking to pay the bills.  But what if, she thought to herself in that dark, lonely night at two o'clock am, what if she was a banker who had music as her hobby?  After all, she spent 40 hours a week at a bank, and maybe a quarter of that time on her music.  At what point does the scale tip?  Maybe it didn't matter that she thought about her piano constantly, nor the flickers of joy she got from playing, or the scraps of melody that were always in her head.  Maybe it was about what you do, not how you rationalize it. 

It was there, late at night, that Sheila decided that the main problem was that she had talent, but not ambition; skill, but not genius; passion, but not drive; ability, but not opportunity.  She was the kind of person you had to get to know over time before you understood her talent.  It was like her job.  She had worked the temp thing for a couple of years before the bank actually noticed that she was making big contributions to the department.  It actually took the death of her father; while she was away attending the funeral, the team took a big hit in productivity, and they realized that what was keeping them up to speed was Sheila.  The day after she got back, the offered her the job.

She thought that if she could just get involved in the right social circle, and made friends with the right people, they would eventually notice that she was a very good piano player, and had interesting musical ideas, and they would spread the word and come to her gigs and help open those tricky doors to the music industry.  They were like screen doors, with a huge padlock on them.  If you were small enough, you could pass through, but you'd be too small to be noticed.  If you wanted to enter and be big, you needed the key, or you needed someone on the other side to let you in.  Sheila was pretty sure that they only gave the key out once or twice a generation, so she thought that plan B would be best.

The only problem, of course, was that Sheila was often too tired to put on her best face and go meet strangers.  Plus, when she did go out, she noticed that a lot of people were people she didn't really want to know, or befriend, or even hang out with.  After even five minutes of conversation, she wanted to go home and take a shower.  It didn't help that she had become a little more shy and reclusive over the years, either.  She could still pull off her cocktail charm at moments, but those moments were getting farther apart.  Now, when she was at the occasional party, like if an old college friend invited her to a holiday party or something, more often than not you'd find her in a corner, sipping her drink, and watching people.  When someone would come up to her, she would be able to engage them in some small talk, but a voice in her head would go off on a long monologue about how this guy was boring her, she didn't care about what he was saying, maybe if she finished this drink quickly she could move away, use that as an excuse, and when's the earliest I can leave?  Invariably, all this would start coming through her eyes, at which point whoever she was talking to would politely make some sort of exit from the conversation.

So, there she was at her desk, trying to stay awake, and wondering if the dream was ever close enough to be real.  A month or so back, the TV had played a marathon of "before they were famous" biography shows, and she had watched with interest.  What she saw were little boys and girls, desperate for attention.  They gave up, or tried to give up, anything that was counter to their tightly focused goals.  They were backstabbers and suck ups.  They developed artificial personalities to fit their environment.  They were alternately cruel, vapid, Machiavellian, and naïve.  They were, Sheila found, not very nice people. 

Of course, she didn't want to be a TRL superstar.  She just wanted to make a living off of her music.  But she thought of that screen door again.  As far as she could tell, there was no real middle ground.  To the best of her knowledge, there was either not enough, or too much, and you had to go through years of not enough before you got too much.  But even if she was wrong about that, even if she could make enough money for food and rent, how much did success depend on selfishness? 

She thought about it like a pyramid.  The higher up you got, the fewer places there were for you, and on the capstone were the Famous:  That one person who, for now, was the distillation of millions of dreamer's ambitions.  But like water buffalo around a slowly drying oasis, the competition gets more and more vicious as the amount of available room becomes smaller.  You had to be unmerciful to those around you.  You had to claim that social space as your territory, and defend it like a bear.  Or, more accurately, like a poop-flinging monkey.  How much poop was Sheila willing to throw?

Not much, truth be told.  She considered herself a nice person.  Nice enough, anyway.  Well, maybe not so much when she was driving and some douche bag cuts her off, but she certainly considered herself to be compassionate more often than not.  Deferential, too.  Not in a meek way, though.  It was more that she considered herself a collaborator rather than a leader.  She was very good at using her knowledge and skills to work through problems, and knew enough diplomacy to get everyone on the same page, but she just didn't seem to have that vague leadership quality that drew people in like magnets.  She had been given leadership responsibilities before, and when everyone was pointed in the same direction, she liked the feeling.  But she was certain that she couldn't command respect like some people did.  She preferred when people liked her.  Not to any sort of pathological degree, but she was far more comfortable when the people around her enjoyed her company.  The times when she did have to put her foot down and make demands always made her feel uncomfortable, bossy, and generally like a bitch.  It was fairly obvious that if a mixture of blind ambition, greed and selfishness is what it took to make it to the top, or even to the middle, there was no chance in hell Sheila was ever going to make it, except out of sheer luck.

What upset her the most, though, was that none of this had anything to do with the motivating interest in the first place: the music.  Sheila felt a singular joy while playing.  When she was in the middle of it all, it was like she was transported clear out of her head.  Nothing for her existed in those moments except for the keyboard, and her band mates.  A five minute song could, for her, last for what seemed like forever.  The outside world disappeared.  She had no worries, no pains, and no exhaustion.  This, this one moment, this is what she was good at.  She wasn't incompetent doing other thing, but she knew, deep in her heart, that this was the only thing she knew would make her happy.

From the moment she woke up, there was some sort of tune going through her head.  On her way to work, she would tap our rhythms on the seat of the bus, humming softy to herself.  At work, she would often become distracted by an errant idea of a transition, or a progression that might work, if put in the right place.  Coming home, she would try to muster the mental strength to work out an idea before it ran away.  It usually ran away.

So, to say that her core desire was actually a hobby, well . . . Her mind kept trying to refuse that prospect.  How could something so transformative be nothing more than something to pass the time between office hours?  There had to be more to it than that.  She had taken the bank job as a way to allow her to play her music without worrying about food or shelter.  Now, that job had crept its way into her life, subsuming all the things she held dear!  Or maybe, she thought to herself, maybe that life you dreamt about was nothing more that your way of keeping one foot out the door of a so called "normal" life.  Maybe this is your way of keeping yourself apart from everyone you've met at those parties and bars, the ones you consider boring and uninteresting.  Because you're an artist, right?  This is your way of never committing, never going forward.  You became comfortable, didn't you?  You never had to take a big risk.  Taking a risk with your music might have meant catching a break, or crashing and burning, but you never had to do either, because you felt "stable" in your bank job.  So things stayed the same.  Stayed the same for so long that your safety net became your anchor.  An anchor of a ship that never set sail, because it never had sails. Just monthly account statements.

"-account statements.  Sheila?  Hey, Sheila?"

She snapped her head up with a jolt.  Ron, her manager, was asking her something.  Bashfully, she took off her headphones.  "I'm sorry, Ron, what was that?"

"I said, can you handle this call from the Minneapolis branch office?  They're asking about the June 2003 account statements."  Ron stood over her desk, not exactly looming.  He couldn't loom, really.  When you're five and a half feet tall, and weigh two hundred twenty pounds (with most of it decidedly not muscle), you don't "loom" so much as "take up space".

"Oh.  Yeah, sure!  Just transfer them over."

"Thanks, Sheila.  You're the best."  Ron walked back to his office, throwing a glance back at the blonde woman.  Her hair was pulled back into a pony tail, and a conservatively starched white shirt and black skirt adorned her slim frame.  As Sheila reached for her coffee mug, he caught a glimpse of a tattoo peeking out of the cuff of her left shirtsleeve.  He shook his head.  "She really needs to loosen up," he thought.  He grabbed the phone and punched the buttons to transfer the call.

The phone rang.

"Main Street Bank, this is Sheila.  Yes.  Oh, yes, Mr. Marbisen.  What can I do for you today?  Mm hmm.  Yes.  Yes, of course.  Do you have an account number?  I see."  Sheila tapped a few codes into the computer.  "Well, we do need New Business form 5078-a.  Yes.  Well, it's because of federal regulations.  Yes sir, I know.  But we're the ones who will have to pay the fine.  Yes, I know.  If it's any consolation, we will accept a fax.  Well, yes.  But what you have to understand, sir is-"

The line went dead.

"Sir?"

The power went out.

Ron came out of his office.  "What the hell?"

Like groundhogs, various bank employees started popping their heads above their cubicles, and chattering.

"Did we blow a fuse?"
"I think it's the whole building."
"More like the whole block, look!"
"Is this a blackout?"
"I need to get my kids!"
"Does anyone have a portable radio?"
"I don't want to be in this part of town if there's a riot!"

"Ok people," said Ron. "Let's treat this like a fire drill. Everyone just stay calm, and head for the-" The explosion cut him off.  General panic ensued.

"Holy shit!"
"Are we under attack?"
"Terrorists!"
"Get out of my way!  My babies!"
"Go! Go!"

Sheila sat quietly in her cubicle as the bank employees streamed out of the office towards the stairs.  They were eight stories up, and she could only imagine the trampling taking place in the stairwell.  She slipped out of her heels, and pulled out a pair of sneakers, which she put on.  Calmly and quietly, she gathered her purse and jacket.  There was a flash of light outside, another explosion, and the building shook.  She could hear distant screams of terror from the stairwells.

"Was that lightening?" she asked herself as she walked in the opposite direction of the hordes of bank employees fighting their way downstairs.  She looked out the plate glass windows, and saw a large cloud of smoke filling the sky, rolling towards her building.  Sheila broke in to a quick walk, not running yet, as several more explosions shook the building.  Behind her, she heard a window shatter, and she could hear rumbling from the aftershocks coming from outside.  She could also now hear sirens.  She turned a corner, and saw her destination up on the right:  A small door that led to a service access shaft that led straight into the basement.  She opened the door, and heard, "Sheila!  Hold up!"  Turning, she saw the portly shape of Ron jogging her way.

"I didn't see you in the evacuation route, so I came back to see if you were ok," he panted.

"Oh, hi Ron," Sheila replied.  "Yeah, I know what a CF that fire drill can be, so I scoped out another route a few months ago."

"Oh, great!  We really need to get out of here."  He looked around nervously.  "What do you think is happening?"

"I really don't know.  It seems serious though." Another explosion rocked the building.  "Did you see the broken window?"

"Yeah.  Scary.  So, what's this way out?"

"Through here."  Sheila stepped through the door, which led to a small alcove.  Surrounded by a cage was a hole in the floor, with a ladder running down.  She opened the cage door, and swung one leg over onto the ladder.  She looked up at Ron just at the point where he had lost his willpower over self decorum, and was glancing up her skirt.  She did her best to ignore his crudeness, and said, "Ron, this is just a ladder going down, floor by floor.  Can you manage?"

Embarrassed, Ron quickly looked in her green eyes.  "Uh, yeah!  Not a problem.  I'm right above you."

"That's what I'm worried about.  If you fall, I won't be able to catch you."

"So. . .  You want me to go first?"  She shot him a look.  He smiled weakly.  "I promise I won't look up."

"Fine."  Sheila got off the ladder and stepped to one side as Ron moved by her and took her place.  "Just keep heading down.  This leads straight into the basement," she said.

"The basement?"

"Yeah.  If you haven't noticed, there's some really weird and dangerous stuff happening outside." As if in sympathetic punctuation, the building shuddered, and was accompanied by a loud and low booming sound.  "The basement has been coded as a bomb shelter in case of emergencies.  Right now, it seems the only place that might stand up to whatever is going on out there is in the basement."

"Whatever you say."  Ron began climbing down, his knuckles already white from holding on to his weight as his feet tested out the rungs, inching down step by step.

"Why the hell did I wear a skirt today," Sheila muttered to herself as she watched Ron's head disappear through the hole in the floor.  After a couple of yards, she followed him down.  Ron moved pretty slowly.  It seemed he was running out of gas after they passed the fifth floor.  "Hey!" Sheila called out.  "Take a break!"  He stepped off the ladder onto the fourth floor landing with relief.  He bent over at the waist, and shook his hands out.  Sheila jumped off the ladder a few rungs up, landing softly next to him.  "You ok, Ron?"

He looked up, and smiled weakly.  "Can you tell I haven't been to the gym in years?"

"You'll be all right.   Just a few more to go."  Outside, she could hear the rumble and boom of the explosions increasing in frequency.  She thought that she could vaguely make out the sound of sirens, but couldn't be sure.  "Ron, we really need to get going."

"Yeah.  Just let me catch my breath." He straightened out, and winced. "it would be kind of funny if this were a fire drill, huh?"

The building shook to a powerful blast.  "I don't think so, Ron.  Go.  Now."  Sheila pushed him towards the ladder.  With a groan, he got back on, and continued his slow descent.  "Ron, the faster the go, the less time you'll have to be holding on," she said.

"I know, but- If I slip, I- Pick up a lot- Of speed."

Sheila realized, as she followed him down, that she didn't really know what to do once they got down there.  She hoped there would be more than just a concrete box, but there was no way of telling.  She found this access ladder during lunch one day, but had never gone all the way down to the basement with it.  What if the building collapsed?  Then a more imminent thought struck her:  What if there was already someone there, and it turns into the "Twilight Zone" episode with the guy killing people who wanted to get into his bomb shelter?

As they got close to the main floor, the noise of the explosions got louder.  Dust and mortar sprinkled down on them.  Ron's breathing became labored and hoarse.  "Only two floors to go!" shouted Sheila.  "Come on, Ron!" Sheila looked down, and could see the dark hole that led to the basement.  It didn't look very inviting, but there was really no choice at this point.  She noticed that Ron had stopped climbing down.  "Ron!  Go!"

"I can't," he panted.  "I have to rest."

"No time!" cried Sheila, as the building shuddered around them.  Then, the building took the decision out of Ron's hands. Literally, as the section of ladder he was holding tore free from the wall with a shriek.  Ron's voice added to the shriek, as Sheila watched in horror.  Like in slow motion, she watched him twist from vertical to horizontal.  One hand reached out to grab hold of the ladder, and missed.  His pudgy body sank through the air, and she could see his eyes were wide with fright.  Sheila thought he was going to hit the landing, but his trajectory was off.  His legs and hips dropped through the hole into the basement, but his back struck the edge of the landing.  Sheila saw his head get thrown back, and slam into the floor with a dull, hollow "thonk" that somehow cut through the noise from outside, his eyes going from terrified to blank in an instant.  A splatter of blood, like a paint bubble, splashed out from behind his skull as the rest of his body dropped through the hole, following his feet.  And then he was gone into the dark.

"Ron!" she cried out, and made her way down the ladder as quickly as she could, until she got to the section the tore off.  She made her way down three more rungs, using just her arms as support, legs dangling in the air.  She swung her feet a couple of time, and let go, aiming for the landing.  Her leap was good, but her left foot hit the smear of blood as she landed, and slipped out from under her.

She fell backwards, and the image of Ron smashing into the edge of the hole flashed through her mind as she tried twisting her body to the left.  She landed, just missing the hole; she landed hard on her shoulder, her bag slitting open.  Various random crap spilled out, but she really didn't care about that.  She sat up wincing, grabbed first her shoulder, and then her phone, then wallet, then keys.  The rest of the bag was the generic flotsam a woman has to carry if she wants to be accepted in the patriarchal and misogynistic society.   She cursed again for wearing a skirt, pulled out her cash (twenty seven dollars), wrapped it around her ID and credit card, and shoved it into her bra.  She wasn't sure what to do with her cell phone, but then shoved it into her sock, and pushed it down to her ankle.  A jab of pain went through her shoulder a she pushed herself up, and grabbed the ladder leading down to the basement.

As she dropped through the floor, she saw that there was a trapdoor on the other side that swung up, sealing it off from the inside.  She hesitated, and peered around at the bunker.  It seemed like there was some sort of emergency generator, but it was very weak.  The lights were recessed and glowed yellow, offering a sepia tone to the room.  Seeing that there was enough light down there to see, she grabbed the hatch, and slammed it home.  The bolts were easy to throw with one hand, and she made her way down the rest of the ladder.

Ron was lying close to the ladder.  His arms were splayed out to either side, and his legs were crumpled up underneath him. A thin rivulet of blood trickled from his head and across the concrete floor, heading towards a drain in the center.  His eyes were glazed over, unseeing.  Sheila knelt over his body, and pressed her fingers to his neck.  His head lolled over to one side, revealing the crushed mess that was the back of his head.  She backed up hastily, tripping over her own feet.  She sat down, hard, and stared at Ron's body.  Then she looked away.  Not wanting to look at him anymore, she cast her gaze around the room.  In the dim light she could see there were stand-along shelves lining the walls.  Various boxes were arranged on them, but she couldn't make out what they were.  She got to her feet, and noticed that the building was still shaking occasionally from whatever was going on outside.  She slowly got to her feet, and went over to one of the shelves.  She grabbed a box, slid it out, and looked inside.  It was filled with paper, with lines and lines of handwriting.  Pulling out the top sheet, she squinted in the sepia light, and read:

"Rooted to the floor of it all with hard nails in the knotted wood there are spiders that spend their lives catching the lives of the annoyances and missteps of your life.  They spin their ruby webs and wait patiently for the opportunity to relieve you of your burdens. Like an old sailor who praises the fisherman praising the fish he catches and kills.  The symbolic relationships become more than real in the center of the maelstrom."

Sheila reached into the box and pulled out another page.

"It was then he realized the pluses and minuses of friendship-- you love who they are ands what they bring to the static 1010101 of your life. But it was who they weren't that was the problem. Sure, they were fun, but they were Hungry.  It's not about what makes you happy, nor about ducking aside and Saying, "this time, I'm going to make Her happy." It's about the nudge. Let's talk about the nudge. It   ain't gonna kill us. The nudge is the chunk of ourselves that we say "fuck it" to. What part did we create, what part was given to us...

"How are we supposed to tell the difference?  Maybe we can figure it out by the amount of pain it will cause. But pain is so subjective.  How intolerable is it to stay in an UntZ club? Well, with a sardine- stacked dance floor, and five deep at the bar, it can be pretty obvious that if it hurts now, the only thing that's gonna put you over the top ain't gonna happen any time soon.

"But eventually and incrementally, the next morning shows it's face like an insolent child trying to get back into your good graces, poking her head around the doorway, with a pout perfected by years of getting what she wants."

Sheila tried to make heads and tails out of what the hell was in these boxes, and who might have left it here.  She grabbed another sheet.

"'there's something in the sky.'
"Her voice shook a bit as she said it, which was odd. There were dozens of things in the sky, more than dozens actually. But that wasn't the problem. The problem was, there was NOTHING in the sky. The sky wasn't even there. At least, part of it wasn't. The part directly over her head was somehow absent, as if a hole was cut out of the air.  She knew it was a part of the singular eventuality that led to the place of the Other.  It was colorless, and made no sound.  To her, it looked and felt like death.  How death is an absence.  Her mother made a similar hole in her life when her blood began to poison itself, and she refused treatment.  Oh mother oh mother oh mother. . ."

Sheila tossed the papers back into the box, and pull out another.

He could feel the serpents coil thief long tongues around his hope,
whispering the sweetest lies and of honest truths. About and above,
fractured sillouettes flapped about like diseased seagulls fighting
for scraps of stale garbage held from gloved hands of tourists. The
moist noise of the crowd swelled and burst onto the arena where the
sacrificial pawns waited out for the endgame to shift slowly to the
inevitable collapse. Market share must be considers, which explained
the closed circuit TV cameras. The cameramen stood stock still, and
the sun gleamed off the grafted steel appendages that had been
surgically implanted to their bones.

How pale, then, the threats and accusations thrown like candy to
starving street urchins! See them fall and rattle away from our
subject, her proud breasts standing high and haughty in the thick
night air.  See her lips, as they part and curve, revealing tiny sharp
teeth, and a thin pink tongue slithers out to taste the air. Greasy
electricity moves like a stalking beast, looking for the new victim.
Bolts smash the dirt like giant's fists. Hail the heralds of the
Coming! Let them clear a path through the clean and the impure alike.
Stand not in the path of the Chosen, but rather give yourself to them.
Offer your skin, receive their mark. Look at the
Rings in your flesh, feel how they tease and tear at your mind,
holding you still, bending your will. You are commanded to obey, and
you will hear the Forbidden Letters that have been kept hidden from
mere humanity for centuries by the Keepers. The very air itself twists
when the Words are spoken; the Forbidden Letters sear molecules as
they pass.

Kill the insect in your heart that urges you towards say "no", that
taunts you to defy and rebel. It's buzzing serves no purpose to the
Chosen. And it serves no purpose to you. For how can you stand up to
the might and strength of the Chosen? Kill it! Kill it! Grind it under
your heel, silence the nagging and annoying speck that you call
'concience' and 'will'. Feel the dirt on your knees as you submit to
the Chosen. You will feel it and find it to be most natural. For They
are the superior, and you the inferior. From their nests they shall
command the world, and you shall obey. Obey. Obey.

Sheila pulled at another box on another shelf on another wall.  The steel shelves rocked slightly as the box's edge caught against the lip of the shelf.  At the same time, another explosion rocked the building.  The shelf heeled sharply, and the whole structure, at least nine feet high, began to topple over.  With a curse, Sheila jumped back and away from the rain of boxes and paper.  As the whole thing came crashing down, one box in particular fell heavy, and instead of a fountain of crazed writing, just sat there with a silent 'crunch'.  After the ringing in her ears subsided, she nudged the box with her toe.  It didn't budge.  She knelt, and opened it.  Inside was a flashlight like the kind security guards carry-- about a foot and a half long, and built out of thick metal.  There was also a lunch pail, a stack of wrapped up reams of paper, and four boxes of cheap ball point pens.

"The night watchman?  What the hell?"  Sheila shook her head, and looked around at the still standing shelves.  "There must be thousands of pages here," she thought.  She looked at the exposed wall, and saw that the writing didn't stop with sheets of paper.  The wall was filled with scrawled writing.  Sheila went over to the wall, and tried to read what was more scraped than written.  She started as far up as she could see.

"Do not pass. You will not pass.  No entrance.  You are commanded no entrance.  Holy God forbids such things such as these.  Do not pass. From whence and where you came, you shall return. You shall not pass.  Go back, go back.  That such as this has no place on earth, nor in heaven.  Do not pass.  Return."

She glanced further down the wall, close to the floor.

"In Their glory, and in Their supremacy.  In black grace They walk, and Their time will soon come.  But not now.  Hold, and await the moment.  The ground will be scorched to make ready the coming.  Hold, be still.  Do not walk upon the unclean ground.  Do not step upon earth that has yet to be cleaned.  Patience.  Hold.  In glory and fury they come.  Their power and supremacy are not to be questioned.  Hold."

As Sheila read, she noticed that the wall didn't look right.  It was lumpy, and the she noticed again that the words on the wall seemed both written and carved.  There was a vertical crack that started at the floor and went up about seven feet.  She dug a fingernail in and pulled.  A chunk of plaster came away, and she found herself looking at hard wood paneling.  She dug her fingers into the hole, and pulled some more.  Soon, she had uncovered a heavy looking door. The door knob looked like it was broken off, but she noticed that as she was uncovering the door that it shook a bit in it's frame.  She backed up a bit, grabbed the hem of her skirt lifting it to her waist, and then kicked out at the door at the area where the broken doorknob was. 

"Owww!  Fuck!" She cried.  The door had buckled slightly, but not given way.  With a determined look on her face, she reared back and lashed out again.  With a crash, the door burst inward, revealing a dark hallway.  She could only see a few yards in, so she grabbed the flashlight, and turned it on.  Now, she could see at least two yards more, but that didn't really help.  She looked down at her skirt.  Then she slowly turned, and looked at Ron's body.  Then she looked back down at her skirt.  "Damn," she thought.

She slowly walked back to Ron's body.  She took a deep breath.  "Ron, you're pretty much probably dead.  And just because you used to stare at me from the neck down when we were working doesn't detract from the fact that it feel incredibly strange and uncomfortable for me to do this.  I don't know if there is a God, but if there is, I hope He, She or It doesn't mind what I'm about to do."  She knelt by the body, and unbuckled his pants.  Then she slid down his zipper, and tugged his pants down his hips.  They wouldn't easily slip past his crotch.  She groaned at no one in particular, and then reached a hand into his pants to try and slide them off his hips.  Her eyes went wide, and she tried to suppress a giggle, in spite of herself.  "Ron, you could have been in movies," she said to his corpse.  "What were you doing in a bank?"  She grabbed his pant legs, and pulled them off.  She then quickly unbuttoned her skirt, which dropped to the floor, and stepped into the dead man's pants.

Scooping up the flashlight, she started down the corridor.  It seemed to her a normal corridor, floor, walls, ceiling.  No lights, however.  Ahead of her, however, she could hear what seemed to be a trickle of water, like a stream.  And also, of course, a smell.  It was like a sewer.  But Sheila knew that you didn't connect a regular office hallway with a sewer main.  Not for the first time, Sheila discovered that she was wrong.

NOVEL FAIL.

Quote from: Drunkard LMNO on December 01, 2008, 01:09:24 PM
NOVEL FAIL.

Wordcount, pls.

I didn't make it either.  I made it to about 35000 words (I still need to do the full word count) but got very distracted these last two weeks.  BLAH.

Quote from: Net on December 01, 2008, 01:30:39 PM

Quote from: Drunkard LMNO on December 01, 2008, 01:09:24 PM
NOVEL FAIL.

Wordcount, pls.

Somewhere around 27,000.

Quote from: LMNO on December 01, 2008, 05:59:15 PM

Quote from: Net on December 01, 2008, 01:30:39 PM

Quote from: Drunkard LMNO on December 01, 2008, 01:09:24 PM
NOVEL FAIL.

Wordcount, pls.

Somewhere around 27,000.

NOVELLA WIN.

Hah!

I suppose I should write some Lovecraftian conclusion, then.


"Tekelili!  Tekelili!"

And then Jack was a shoggoth.


THE END.

Quote from: LMNO on December 02, 2008, 05:26:50 PM
Hah!

I suppose I should write some Lovecraftian conclusion, then.


"Tekelili!  Tekelili!"

And then Jack was a shoggoth.


THE END.

:mittens:

BUMP

I barely remember writing this.