Daily Roach

Death is like a 3-winged bird; it doesn't fly.

Tranziltor Park: fruits (7/7)

copyright (c) JMD, 2006

     A whistle-howl wind struck his window.  Coyotes bayed.  His jeans were on as fast as he could manage, his shirt over his head, shoes tied.  The pitch of night gave him shivers – a finger of fear lit cool flame on the nape of his neck.  
     Out here, out here! the cry rose, an ever quickening pulse of noise that throbbed at the base of his skull.  He crept down the stairs once he overcame the thought of his parents waking, and pushed himself out the screen door into darkness.  
     
     The shredded corn field beneath his feet remained invisible as he tore up the mottled ground.  He kept tripping, but he was prepared for that, and caught himself each time.  His arms leapt from his sides out to the nothingness of black.  Fear shivered – no, convulsed.  It made him alive.  All around he could hear the coyotes, and their presence made his hair tingle.  The more he actualized his terror, the more the energy whipped through his body like an internal hurricane of electric juice.  His strides brought him to the edge of a wood, and as the unknown of that ominous coagulation of shadows and sounds turned to face him, his terror ruptured.  He could not go there.
So he ran and ran.  And he kept on running his entire life, until age made him thirty, and in his apartment in the bustling city of Amsford he waited until night doused day, black bled sight, and stars stole sunlight.
     Now, when he had finished playing his video games, and forgotten about the Doctor’s medication for at least six hours, he shuffled into his mangy jeans.  
     Out here, out here! the fear called again, even in the sprawling chaos of metropolis.  Oh, it had been silenced once, when the Doctor had come, when the pills had begun to speak to him.  But now he had his power back.  He could resist the pills, push them to the remote corners of his mouth and cough them into his toilet afterwards.  He had beaten the Doctor.  He had beaten monotony, and the gray uselessness of placidity.  
     He tore down the streets like a madman.  He could smell the corn again, and over the thrumming waves of cars his hair stood at the pierce of yelping coyotes.  He ran and ran and ran, and his breathing became stronger, deeper.  Terror shot up his nerves, coated his synapses with viscous juice, slid over his heart.  Out here, out here!
     His strides brought him to a wood, the sign said Tranziltor Park, and just as it used to, the shadows and sounds played on him as though he were a badly-tuned violin, screeching and squealing and crying.  But he would do it this time, he would go in, because this was his one chance to do what he had only dreamed of doing since the tranquility of chemicals had robbed him of the perpetual fermentation of thrill.
     Down a staircase he proceeded cautiously, alert, struggling against insanity, or sanity, whichever one it was that threatened him with oblivion.  He nearly slipped on the crumbling stone, and then onto the pathway beneath looming oak trees his steps took him.  The trail twisted into the recesses of the park, over uncertain mounds and jutting roots, then past two opposing boulders, and finally to a red bench beside a river.
     A group of fluttering moths batted mindlessly against a lamp.  He spun at a noise, then whirled back to see the moths gone.  A terrible munching sound reverberated above the giant trees.  
     And the sound of wings!  
     Like leather flapping against leather, and a keening wail that was not the wind.
     The creature flopped down not ten feet away, scuffling towards him.  Beady, garnet-eyes blinked hungrily, talons scraped the dirt.  His terror matrixed, and with the newfound energy he fashioned himself a sword of pure dread.  The weapon materialized in his hands, and holding back a loathsome shout of fear he sliced at the bat-beast until all that remained were shreds of red string.  
     No blood.
     He stooped, shaking, and picked up some of the material.  It was leather.  He let out a whooping laugh that caressed the terror.  As if in response, a cacophony of rodent chatter erupted across the park.  He had just enough time to swing his dread upon the head of a poised snake slithering near his feet, its fangs bared, venom dripping, until he saw he was surrounded.  Terror multiplied.  The matrix fisioned and lines of electric juice sprayed his reflexes with interminable speed.  Snake skin flew until at last the onslaught ceased, the ground awash in venom and teeth and stains.
     No blood.
     Then the squirrels came biting, clawing, chattering until his head filled with the noise.  Terror scraped the sounds back out, emptied him of thought, and spat them back at the incessant rodents.  His sword made them inert, one by one.  But pain needled his legs, they had hurt him there, blood oozed and refused to mingle with his jeans.  The stickiness made him feel claustrophobic.
     Terror collapsed.  His sword fizzled into the air.  He mourned for the touch of his juice, but it had been depleted – he knew because the weakness in his knees and the ache behind his eyes told him he should have eaten the damn drugs.
     “Shane,” someone said.
     Through a daze he saw the man approach.  Fear refused to come back though, he didn’t have anything to fight with.  
     Out here, out here--
     “Shane,” the voice repeated, insisted.
     “Shane, I am Madring.  Come, you are hurt.”
     He felt a moment of hope, but then another voice interjected violently.
     “Stupid old man!  He is ours!”
     Shane spun to see the bearer of the second voice.  A tall figure, garbed completely in black, eating something –  it crunched in his mouth as the muscles in his jaw clenched, chewed.  But the first voice did not belong to an old man, as the black-clothed one suggested.  He was young, with fiery red hair and a tight beard, lithe and spry and looking ready to leap.
     “Stay back,” the black one warned, brown chunks of something dropping from his lips.  “He is ours.”
     “No,” Madring countered, “he is not.”
     A hiss escaped from the black one, he raised his hands like cudgels.  But he was backing up:  afraid perhaps, of this fiery-haired one who seemed so sure of himself.  He retreated until his back pressed against the trunk of an oak, and then with brilliant eyes flashing, shot something from his hands.
     Madring leapt as his pose had promised, and he landed in a feral position, crouched and squinting vicious intent.  “Now, my friend,” he gestured with a hand.
     An ear-splitting crack! attacked Shane’s ears, forced him to duck his head and hold his temples.  Staring in wonder behind the black one, he saw the tree move, move, and giant limbs encased the hissing man.  With a groan the tree fell and collapsed upon him.  Its roots screamed as they ripped loose from the soil.   Dirt rained around Shane, and the whole ground trembled in protest.
     The seconds seem to pass in stutters and stops, matching the uneven beat of Shane’s pounding heart.  A hand touched his shoulder.  He flinched, but a delicate, urgent voice soothed his nerves.
     “Rise, Shane.  We do not have much time!”
     He looked up, and what stood before him wrung tears from his eyes.
     She was radiant beyond compare.  With spider-silk hair and eyes like the shifting colors of a covenant rainbow.  Dots of silver wisped from her head, and around her small shoulders hung a cape of leaves.
     He stammered disconnected syllables.
     “Rise!” she pleaded, her eyes beginning to frown in worry; the anxiety of all children in all places.  That made him move.
     The fiery one joined them, and clasping Shane in a gesture of friendship, urged them to follow him.  At his bidding they waded into the river that moved gently beside the red bench.  They followed its slow course hastily, splashing their way to a small copse of trees.  Here they left the water and huddled inside the hovel that the trunks provided.  Shane bunched down over his legs and rocked himself over them, comforting them, for they stung to no end.
     “She comes,” Madring whispered.  
     “What is your name?” Shane asked, oblivious now to the tension that held his companions.  “What is your name?”
     The girl turned to him as if she wasn’t sure that Shane was really there.  She looked through him, beyond him, at a place somewhere that was...not here.  
     “Etherea,” she returned distantly.  
     “Etherea,” he repeated.  “Etherea, you are beautiful.”
     “Hush!” the man insisted, placing a hand over Shane’s mouth.
     A cackle rolled like the cracking of bones throughout the park.  Some of  Shane’s visceral terror returned – he felt the juice forming around his shoulders.
     “She is close, now.”  Madring whispered.  
     “Does she know we are here?” Etherea asked, her eyes wholly white.
     “Yes,” he nodded, “yes.”
     “Come out,” shrilled a woman’s voice.  “Come out, out here, out here!”
     Instantly Shane’s terror re-matrixed.  His sword appeared, oscillating in his right hand like the destroyer of nightmares.  Or the maker of them.
     “We have to face her, we have no choice!” Etherea’s voice quivered.
     “Then we will,” Madring’s steely words contrasted hers.
     “Who is she?” Shane asked at once.  All of his life he had relished the fear of the unknown.  It had fashioned him alive, but there was something about this “she” out there that made him want to know what he was facing.  He needed a name.  Terror demanded it.
     “She is Babylon,” the fiery man whispered.  Some of his ire had drained away.
     “Nimrod’s Daughter,” the girl added, as if the additional information were needed.  “Cancerous and inflamed, boiled and poxed, gushing and foaming with virus.  Nimrod’s Daughter, faithless Babylon of decay and rot.”     
     As if answering to a summons, the cackle resounded yet again, and Shane could practically see the bones splintering this time.
     “She knows,” Madring said stolidly.  “Let us face her.”  
     He and the fantastical girl stepped out of the copse, but Shane hesitated.  The bones that he yet heard breaking – the twisting roll of her laugh – might as well have been his.  
     “What is she going to do?” he flustered.
     “Just come!” Madring tensed.  “We need you!” his voice receded as he walked away.
     “Me?” he could hardly think of why.  Nevertheless he pushed himself to his feet, wincing against the needles that sizzled in his calves.  The scene that greeted him spliced his terror – his sword split into two halves and fell to the ground.
     She sat, squat and laughing, on a boulder surrounded by dust.  Her face was bunched and covered in exaggerated makeup – it made her eyes seem like black holes, her mouth like an open red wound.  She had a brown purse around her shoulder, and as she caught sight of Shane, her hands stroked it in calm assurance.
     “Shane, Shane, little Shane, Shane’s come out to play insane!” and she stopped laughing.  The sudden silence made the seconds refuse to follow one another – time slowed, the wind had died.  
     “We are ready to withstand you, Babylon!” Madring bellowed with a voice that shouldn’t have belonged to him; deep and rumbling like a storm.  He gestured to the trees, twice, and they commenced to rip their roots out of the ground.  With the sound of screaming, vegetative resistance, they surrounded the woman until she was no longer visible.
     “Now!” shouted Etherea.
     The giant circle of trunks compressed suddenly.  They warbled and melded into one another, until a writhing mass of knotted wood replaced their individual forms.  Babylon hissed within the cyclonic gale, loud enough to be heard over the shrieking trees.
     “This will not do!  Will not do!” he heard her whine.  For a moment he caught a glimpse inside the eye of the wooden maelstrom.  She was digging into her brown purse...and pulling out a handful of...dust.
     Dust?
     She flung it at the trees.  Nothing happened initially – the trees whirled, screamed, threatened.  But in a flash they began to be eaten alive.  They looked as though they were being undone, unraveled, like their particles were breaking away and fizzling into empty space.  And the dust was doing it.
     The dust?
     “My precious children...!” the woman regaled.  Then her grotesque face turned vile; she breathed, “Eat them!”, and pointed at Shane and his companions.
     A wall of dust slid up into the air.  It solidified, shook, and began to take on a shape.  To Shane’s increased Terror, a replica of Babylon’s face leered down at them – impossibly huge and snapping its teeth sadistically.  It fell upon Madring and the girl, and he heard their shouts for help as his fear began to augment.  
     The terror siphoned off to a place it had never gone before:  the stars.  Shane looked up, at the silver dots that winked in cosmic jest.  He drew a sudden parallel to the silver seeds that wisped from Etherea’s hair, and revelation struck.  
He knew who she was.
Consequently he knew who this hideous woman-beast was.  What she represented, what she meant to accomplish, and how.  The dust hardened around Madring and the girl; a strange buzzing noise accompanied their frantic movements.
      “That’s not all!” Etherea’s voice implored, distant beneath the drone of the buzzing.  
     “Not all what!?” Shane shouted back over the din.
     “There is more!”
     “What?!”
     Babylon rose then, her nostrils flaring, face flushing.  “You are mine!” she squeezed a fist at him, as though she already had him trapped in her palm.
     The terror froze.  It became cold, like ice, and slicing through his veins he realized that it was not terror at all.  It was...hopeful longing; a desire yet also a sorrow, painful and sweet.  The stars.  What about the stars?  He lifted his head up to the night sky.
     “Come to me now, Shane!  Out here, out here where you belong!  I own you!  I OWN YOU!” Babylon’s voice shredded under the force she exerted – her neck bulged and veins imperiled popping.
     What about the stars?  
His nameless emotion, that which used to be his terror, condensed around the center of his chest.  Unconsciously he started to moan, ache.  It was so strong.  It yearned to reach, to go, to fly to something, somewhere up there in all those stars.  
     “NOOOO!” Babylon roared.  She had grown, impossibly huge, and her eyes had expanded to such a state that they looked as though they might slip out at any moment.
     The ache burned, smooth and cold, like a focused crystal-fire.  He released it.  As soon as it shot up he received something back.  He didn’t even see the ice-flame reach the stars, just saw the flash that had returned to him.  Returned in him.  Settled there.  Breathing.  
     Living.
     Instantly he turned to Madring and Etherea.  The dust swarmed them.  He extended his hand over the surging mess and ordered “Stop!”
     The buzzing weakened to a low hum.  
     “Back!” he yelled, pointing to Babylon.  It fizzed, snapped, then whirled back towards the monstrosity which had sent it.
     Madring struggled to his feet, bleeding, and pulled Etherea up onto hers.  They stared in gaping wonder at Shane, then Babylon, then back at Shane.  Etherea placed a glance up to the stars.
     “He comes,” she trembled, “just like I told you.  Not death.  Life, Madring.  Life.”
     The fiery-haired man shook.  He almost smiled.
     Babylon, however, stood over them like a tower.  She seethed; gusts of putrid wind blew at them from the repeated flaring of her nostrils.
     “Come close!  Quick!” Etherea shouted.  “To me!”
     Shane obeyed instantly.  Somehow he knew what to do, knew what was about to happen.  And although he couldn’t believe it, that living force in his chest intuited obedience.
     The girl handed him and Madring one of her seeds.
     “Eat it,” she entreated.  “Please.”
     Shane popped the silver pod into his mouth.  His tongue exploded.  Light shimmered across his field of vision, he could smell lilacs, like the ones at funerals, and time staggered, flipped, and broke.  Thought shattered into millions of indiscriminate fragments – sight vanished.  Then returned.
     “We are one.” Etherea, Madring, and Shane said at once.  “We are ONE!” they repeated, again in unison.  They looked down at themselves:  one body, the beautiful form of a woman, arraigned in white and gleaming glory.  
“W-Wow,” they said, from the part that was Shane.  
“I understand now!” they blurted, from the heart of Madring.  
“The day has finally come,” they sighed, from the glowing soul of Etherea.
     “Look!” She cried, upwards at the sky.
     Life descended.
     He took Her and spoke inaudible words to Babylon.  The Daughter of Nimrod cowered, screamed then, and gave one final lash with her long nails.  They caught the robes of Life, drew a crimson gash across the whiteness of His garments.  
     Babylon laughed, frantic with glee.  But Life smiled:  heaven breaking glory.
     “Into me,” He spoke, parting His ivory robes to reveal the wound that had just been made.
     “No!” the monstrosity wretched, scraping at the ground.
     “Into My wound.”
     Babylon sizzled.  Against her will she was pulled into His red-stained robes, yelping and cawing and howling.  Life winced.  His Face almost broke, but then He sealed the Rift that had been created there before Time itself had made things physical.  
     He clutched Her hand with gentle strength and, turning to gaze across the stars, took the land beneath His feet and rolled it up like a garment.
     
d

     And here, I am afraid to say, writing by conventional means becomes obsolete.  In order to continue with this story a whole new set of rules and laws must come into effect.  Indeed, a new universe must “be” before we may peek into that chapter.  So suffice the end to be left here.  For when we come to understand that all stories are not Fable, we set ourselves free from the desire to be entertained by them.  And when we similarly realize that all experiences are not Reality, we set ourselves free from the desire to be controlled by them.

copyright (c) JMD, 2006

Tranziltor Park: leaves (6/7)

copyright (c) JMD, 2006

     “What is an icicle, but a growth of frozen tears?”
     And he sat there, caressing the cloth like it were the fur of a cat, speaking inaudible words of affection and staring out the window as though a portal floated in the glass and he could see his dead wife encased in river ice.  The kettle screeched in steaming protest, and beside him the phone cried out in rapid dial tone.  The TV too babbled for attention, but his old, filmy eyes were locked to that portal, and he saw the whole dreaded scene as it must have happened.
     She walked the cat every morning in Tranziltor Park, come hell, she walked the cat.  Down the aged cracked stones of the northern staircase she carefully placed her steps, and then along the narrow, winding pathway under the bare arms of the creaking oak trees.  To the red bench, steel and cold, she always went to the bench.  And sitting she would give her pet the treats secreted in her pockets, she would untie her scarf and breathe in the icy air, stare across the river and eat the toffee she kept in her purse.  That purse, brown he remembered, never a dime in it, just candy for the grandkids, especially the toffee.  That purse, he had given it to her the year before, her old one was tearing...yes, that purse became the desirous object of some deviant thug.  Oh, the story is the same, as countless stories are of women who find themselves the owners of articles coveted by immoral men.  One witness, of course, a child with his dog, he had seen it all.  That dark fellow with the black hat, the black trenchcoat, the black boots, the black gloves.  She struggled, stubborn as she was -- it was the principal of it.  He fancied she had even tried to talk him out of it.  Stupid woman.  Then the man had thrown her, hard, the purse ripped and the contents fell to the snow.  The man searched the ground while she rolled down, down, and bouncing, flipped out onto the frozen river.  The ice gave way and sucked her under, swallowing her deep beneath its heavy liquid weight.  The cat jumped in too.  Loyal thing.  The man left her candy, the witness cried, and hours later, the police men showed up at the house.
     He placed the phone back on the receiver and turned the television off.  Pushing himself to his feet, he wobbled to the kitchen where he yanked the kettle from the pain of the element.  His thirst had vanished, his mission had become singular, and he hobbled to the closet to retrieve his jacket.  Once bundled in mitts and hat, he opened the door to the chilling winter and stepped out onto Karling Street.  A quick glance told him Loretta was not home, her car was missing, and he thanked the gods for that, she always said something moronically sentimental.  Ah, she was trying to be nice, but must she keep reminding him of Dora?
     His slow steps brought him to Fairbanks where, mindful of the slush and slippery pavement, he opted not to jay walk.  The traffic lights switched, but he found himself staring at his feet, and he had to wait again until the walk sign showed for a second time.  Other people had died at this corner.   Not from the painful suffocation of water, but from moving rams of high speed metal.  He saw the bodies turning in the air, the pedestrians tossed and battered, though no one was there.  Someone began to walk across ahead of him, and he realized the traffic lights had rotated for a third time now.  He crossed, keeping his head low, for there were thoughts to be thought, and not much time to think them.
     Down the northern staircase where she had come, he nearly slipped on the crumbling stone, and then onto the pathway beneath the oak trees.  The trail twisted into the recesses of the park, through clearings and over mounds, past great, opposing boulders, and then finally to the red bench beside the river.  He stopped in his cumbersome tracks and squinted his fading blue eyes.  Someone sat on the bench, oddly enough, dressed entirely in black.  The old man’s heart skipped twice within his skinny chest.  
     Anger gave way to three tears, which hadn’t the time to roll down his wrinkled cheeks before he began his deliberate approach.  Closing the distance, he saw the man raise a coffee-coloured substance to his mouth.  Dora’s toffee.  The absurdity of the situation was not lost on him.  He knew the odds were against him, that the universe had played a dirty trick, but he didn’t care, for he had come to die anyway, and he still had a little of the widower’s bitterness in him.  It lent strength to his legs, and instead of letting out a string of curses as he had intended, he barreled forward faster than he thought possible and tackled the man to the ground.
     Snow slammed into his face.  The man, however, didn’t even let out a grunt.  Instead he laughed, and rolling over jumped back up to his feet.  He looked down at the old man, who shivered, though not with cold, but with heat, for his hate had warmed him.
     “Peter,” the man nodded, as though to a friendly acquaintance.  
     “Bastard!” Peter spat.
     The man, reaching with his wet, black gloves, pulled Peter to his feet and tossed him down the embankment.  He could have stopped the descent, he still possessed considerable strength, but he let the momentum carry him, for he had meant to do this anyway.
     A pain ripped up his back, he landed hard with a thud but, surprisingly, the ice didn’t break.  He took that as a sign and tried to get to his feet.  But he couldn’t get a definite hold on the glossy surface, he kept falling to his stomach and hitting his stubbled chin.  He turned his head back to the bench, but the man was not there, he had moved to the riverside, and above his head he hefted an enormous rock.  Beside him two squirrels chirped in assent.  And was that a snake slithering between the man’s legs?  But he didn’t see clearly before the rock crashed into the water and he slid beneath into a world of cold.
     He held his breath.  An unnecessary reaction.  He sunk slowly, as he did all things these days, slowly.  His knees hit bottom, he squeezed his eyes shut, cheeks numb, and then felt an arm enfold around his waist.  His lips touched another set of lips; he opened his eyes, they burned, but Dora’s blue face encompassed his own, and the fur of a cat he felt brushing his left hand caused him to lie down and forget about anger and toffee and the chicanery of a laughing universe.


copyright (c) JMD, 2006

Tranziltor Park: branches (5/7)

copyright (c) JMD, 2006

     The gutted cabin refused to come back to life in his mind.  The frenzied, maniacal timbers; askew as though they had been alive and trying to escape the searing flames.  He couldn’t help but see them as dead, charred bodies, tumbled upon one another in a moment of final panic.  He dropped his musket.  
     “Solo,” he said, almost breaking.  “Solo,” for that had been his dog, left on the bed to guard the furs.  The bountiful traps fell from his broad shoulder and his long, hard legs propelled him to the ruins.  They as yet smoldered, but last night’s rain had doused them.  
     “Solo!” he cupped his hands to his mouth and bellowed to the east.  Then the west, and waiting heard not the familiar bark of the wolfhound.  “Dead,” he gave in.  
     There had been no lightening for the past week, no storm, no gales.  No lantern had been left alight within the cabin, and certainly Solo could not have struck a match himself.  Someone had done this.  Someone had burned his home and murdered his only companion.  How many days had he trekked up to this place?  Twenty?  Thirty, and at that mostly by canoe, across the myriad of rivers that trickled through this fur-laden land of the great, white North.  Winter would not come for another three months, and of that he was grateful, for it gave him enough time to erect another dwelling.  But would not that be destroyed as well?  Certainly, in which case his very survival depended on finding he...or they...who had committed the act.
     He constructed a crude lean-to of pine boughs, his dark, hairy arms splicing limbs and shedding needles with practiced precision.  A meal of beaver contended his massive, hungering body, and after a quick draught of cold stream water he prepared his musket and sent himself to tracking.  The rain meant finding clues would be more difficult, but his eagle eyes did not miss the slight indentations in soil that bare feet caused.  And such tiny feet!  A child’s, and he couldn’t find any other tracks besides them.  Perhaps a passing party of injuns, covering their trail as they always did with remarkable effectiveness...overlooking this small child’s movements.  The pattern indicated the perpetrators had moved north, up beyond the waterfall where the salmon ran every third spring.  He clenched his jaw, squeezed his fists, and set to the hunt.
     By the time he reached the waterfall his powerful frame was close to exhaustion.  He rested in the shade, for the day had grown hot, and then beneath a gentler surge of the waterfall he refreshed and cleaned himself.  He foraged for salmonberries, as he knew grew by the river, and once satisfied with a mouthful of red sweetness, pressed onwards, ever north.  As far as he could tell the trail had died.  No further foot prints could he find, but his silent anger compelled him forth.  In his mind he wrestled as to what he would do once he found the murderers.  Injuns were warriors, after all, and not easy to kill.  But he had a musket, and in that fact he assured himself he could overtake them.
     Night came, and no injuns.  He built another lean-to and braved the darkness without a fire.  Sleep would not come, so he took to counting stars, and by and by, after the fourth shooting comet, he crawled into the lean-to and dreams stole him.
     They were not pleasant dreams, but ones of bloody tomahawk and dripping scalp.  His scalp.  And blazing pyres, and glistening, brown skin, feet stomping, drums echoing, Solo’s skull being shaken by savage hands at the moon -- they were calling on curses, bringing up the dead, and he saw a fleeting ghost skirt their stifling camp, a shifting presence that resembled all too well his own visage.
     His eyes burst open to the last reverberation of someone’s high-pitched wail.  Breaking the lean-to, he snatched his rifle and tore through the rampant bush.  North, north, somewhere north, they were running from him north.  The exhilaration of knowing he was the predator pushed him beyond eating, beyond sleeping even.  The night passed over again, and only on the rarest occasion did he pause for a handful of water.  The injuns were not facing his anger anymore, nor his justice.  They were facing a calm, driven beast, a mountain of a man with ravenous intent.  He let his growing hunger twist him, break him, slice away his rationale to get to the core of his animal heart.  He shed his clothing, sliding now through the trees bare-chested, silent, an unrelenting wind.
     He let out an unbidden growl when he came upon two, tiny footprints.  They descended into a shadowed glen, and down there he ripped through the vegetation until he came upon the black mouth of a hidden cave.  Inside he could smell them.
     Then she came out.
     He leapt at her.
     Her face cracked in grief, she turned, ever so slightly, and he fell onto the ground.  The hard landing released him from his blind rage.  Just this girl?  That was it?  One small girl?
     But no ordinary child.  She had spider-web hair, with silver dots of light in it, and a cloak of red leaves, her eyes black, flashing now blue, then green.
     “Where are the injuns!” he demanded, rising to his feet, towering over her menacingly.
     “I burned that grave of yours,” she answered defiantly.  Her voice tinkled, and he thought of breaking glass.
     “You mean...my cabin?”
     “Grave,” she rejoined.  She walked confidently around him, inspecting him in contempt.
     “You killed my dog,” he accused, half question, half hope.
     She ceased her movements, her eyes flared a brilliant red.
     “You do not have children, do you?”
     The question caught him off guard.  He found himself answering “no” before he could do elsewise.
     “One day you will.  And on that day think of them taken from you.  Think that I came and cut them down.  I chop off their arms and their legs, I decapitate them, then pile them all together in neat rows and lay their hair down as a roof over them.  I fashion a doorway and live inside them, eat inside that gory hovel, sleep there in the running blood and sickening stench.  Think that, on the day they are born!  Would you not, upon finding such carnage, wish to erase the horror that they have become?  Would you not want to destroy such a terrible home?  You would burn it away, you would set it ablaze, for then they would be whole again, consumed by fire, brought to ashes!”  Tears touched her ivory face, sparkled, he crumpled under her attack.
     “I-”
     “Would you not kill the thing that murdered your children, James?”
     And he gave her a sobbing “yes!”, she knowing his name had done that,  he bowed his head in shame.  “Kill me,” he offered up his neck with his eyes telling her it was okay to strike.
     “No,” she shook her darling head -- silver seed wisped into the air.  “You are a pawn.”
     “A what?”
     “A puppet, James.  That,” she pointed behind him, “is your enemy.”
     He spun on his knees, and from behind an oak trunk peeked the most appalling face.  An old woman’s face, fat and wrinkled beyond measure, horribly accentuated with blue, red and black paint, with some sort of pink, tubular funnels curling her thin hair.  She grimaced, flared her bulbous nose, and scampered up the tree to hide with the squirrels.
     “What in hell...?” a fear seized him.
     “Yes.” the girl quivered.   “She is Hell.”


copyright (c) JMD, 2006

Tranziltor Park: limbs (4/7)

copyright (c) JMD, 2006

     He was enthralled by the quiet madness of computers, the noiseless functioning of metallic life, aesthetic and soulless in a struggle for an inevitably higher existence.  A whole room full of them; the mass produced prodigy children of man and his mind of calm, cool, collected horror.
     That he turned out to be a teacher, specifically a computer teacher, was no surprise at all.  What was surprising was that he taught high school, and not university, which all of us had first surmised he would do.  He had that particular brilliance and insight that led to innovation, that cried out for him to be known as Professor Jenkins, but he had had a break down at twenty-one, I remember the day well, in his big house, for at that time he had published his first, and very successful, book on the advancements of artificial intelligence.
     But it was here, in his classroom, that one could study and appreciate his unusual sort of genius.  His students had but two opinions of him:  either the weirdo had an un-surpassing intellect, or he was a lunatic.  For the computers were not lined up in rows as was the traditional classroom, but in a giant spiral, with his mainframe smack in the middle of the room, and all the desks winding outwards counterclockwise from that central point.  If your desk happened to be nearer to the center, you would have to walk around and around, sometimes thrice, in order to reach your destination.  All of the windows had been covered by black Bristol board, and the lights dimmed a yellowish-green by clear, plastic filters.  
     And he did not use a chalkboard.  He did not hand out any textbooks.  All of his students learned from their terminal exclusively -- they were not allowed to take anything home.  Or study for that matter.  And he never spoke with his voice.  Each terminal had a distinct personality, by his design of course, through which he communicated their daily lessons.  To give you a clear example of the oddity of this situation, one student came to class and was taught by Sir Wilfred Laurier, another by Bach, complete with historical mannerisms and colloquialisms.  
     And it worked! -- each student advanced well; Jenkins was known for his teaching prowess, and thus he had afforded himself the rights to conduct his classroom in any way that he saw fit.
     Oh, every once and a while a parent would question his methods, but the children would soon dissuade them from further queries, for Jenkins held a severe power over his pupils.  Indeed, his fame as a well-loved instructor had reached many circles of higher learning.  Because of his books he had been offered countless high-income positions at monumental computer firms, but in each case he refused to part from room 117 at Amsford High.
     It was on this day, the first Thursday of June, that he had asked me to stop by the school and accompany him on his walk home.  Five or six times of the year we practiced this conversational ritual, and I always looked forward to it the way one looks forward to seeing the opening scene of a bizarre circus act.  The way he talked in real life by no means concerted with the way he wrote.  His writing was smashingly concise and to the point, perfected mathematically, and not without a touch of human sentiment -- which was a feat in itself, considering the topic that his books covered.  But his manner of speech...ah!  Now there was a rare and entertaining jewel!  
     The school day had ended, the classroom void of habitation save Jenkins himself.  I had just walked in at the exact moment when each terminal blinked out in rapid succession, their shining faces dying in sequential spiral, until finally the massive mainframe in front of Jenkins himself beeped and shut down.
     His head shot up at my arrival, he smiled, and his eyes blinked quickly beneath his thick, spotless bifocals.  He picked up a briefcase from his desk, turned out the yellow-green lights, and walked briskly over to shake my hand.  I firmly obliged, and noted again how he never ever lost the half smile that curved his lips...it always appeared as though he was caught between a humorous thought and an annoying ache, for the smile could just the same have been a grimace.  He said not a word, and as was the practice, we exited the school and began the trek to his house on Clairmont Ave.
     “That-that-that’s just what I mean, just what I mean,” he began, and I braced myself excitedly for what I knew would be a fun time.  How I enjoyed him!
     “Yes, yes!” he continued, raising a finger in the air.
     “What do you mean?” I prodded, for it was like him to introduce a subject by pretending the both of you had already been talking about it for hours.
     “I mean what I mean!” his face lit up, and he looked at me, pausing in his steps.  Seeing that I had not grasped his elusive joke, he laughed anyway, a sharp, snorting sound.
     “Be more specific,” I urged, for I wanted to know what he was referring to.
     “I don’t teach!  I don’t teach!” He cackled.
     “Well, what were you doing today?”
     “I played crosswords!  I read the paper!”
     “In the classroom, I mean.”
     “Exactly!  Then I slept for forty-five minutes...!”
     “In the classroom?”
     “Exactly!  Exactly!  E-e-e-exactly!”
     “All day today you did not teach....” I was warming to what he wanted to get at, for his cheeks flushed, the way they always flushed when you followed the trail to the place he had laid out for you.  
     “Three months I haven’t taught one lesson!”
     That puzzled me, but I left it for the moment while we crossed Fairbanks -- the traffic was always hell here.  Many pedestrians had been injured or killed by impatient drivers on this corner, especially at rush hour, which so happened to be at that precise time.  We crossed in silence, and boy, was he festering on the inside!  Squirming and itching to get to his main point, whatever it was.
     “Not one lesson in three months,” I reiterated his last clue once we had crossed.
     “Not one!  Stravinsky is teaching now!  Armstrong too!  And Bell, and the Wright’s, and...and all of them!”  He was clutching his briefcase to his chest as a child does a favored doll, and he bit his lower lip in anticipation of my reaction.
     “You mean...the computers?  The AI?”
     “AI!  AI!  AI!”  And this he yelled so exuberantly that he startled not a few passerby’s.  I placed a calming hand on his shoulder.
     “The computers teach the class?  How is that possible?”
     He flew off then, explaining all the intricacies and complexities of his creations, rhyming off technical words that I had to keep interrupting him to define.  All said and done, it seemed that he had succeeded in modeling new AI software that could progressively teach a student.  Each terminal had its own stand-alone program, (as noted previously, like George Washington and Pierre Trudeau), but all networked into the mainframe so he could keep an eye on the proceedings.
     “The leader of them all is Stravinsky!  He is the master AI!  The lord of intelligence!”
     “Why Stravinsky?” I asked.
     “Greatness!  Greatness!”
     And I took that to mean that he considered Stravinsky’s work to be genius, for he began waving his left arm like a conductor, humming some fanciful melody extremely off-key.
     “More!” he blurted finally.
     “Yes?”
     “More!”
     “What more could there possibly be?” I took his intended bait.
     We approached Tranziltor Park, but we skirted its great iron-wrought gate.  Jenkins hated the place; he said the squirrels were devils and the unkempt grass the lair of snakes.  We never went there together, although I took to a walk inside every once in a while on my own.  
     “More!  They are creating their own AI!”
     It took me a moment to wrap my brain around that sentence.  “What?”
     “Stravinsky added a thirty-second program...called Arkdi-eight, as backup to teach in case we exceed thirty-one students for summer school!”
     “Arkdi-eight...what-”
     “I don’t know!  No one knows!”  But by his face I could tell this was thrilling news.
     “And it functions?”
     “Just as well as Stravinsky himself!” he held his breath, then added, “Maybe better!”
     “And so...” I trailed, for there was something else exciting he wanted to say.
     “That’s just what I mean!” he shouted wildly, harkening back to the first thing he had said to me upon our meeting.  “I’m obsolete!  Obsolete!”  He laughed and danced on the pavement.  Again I put a calming hand on his shoulder and guided him to Clairmont Ave.
     “You’ve made yourself obsolete...” I repeated.
     “They upgrade themselves!  They get faster!  They get more effective at teaching each specific student!  They tailor themselves to the learning patterns of the kids!  Ha!  My next book will shake the world!”
     We reached his home and, inviting me in, I joined him for a cup of coffee and croissant.  We chatted about the AI for a lengthy time until, realizing the hour, I stooped to tie my shoe and head on home.  He told me to say “hi” to the family, but it was an automatic gesture, and just as quickly he asked me not to tell anyone about his breakthrough.  I promised on his grave that I wouldn’t.  But that’s just it.  For it’s on his grave that I am telling this story.

d

     The following week I received a message from my secretary that Matthew Jenkins had called and wished me to his home as soon as I could manage.  I had been away from the office all day with the boss’s son, introducing him to his new, undeserved position as Executive Director, a seat I had been laboring tirelessly to obtain for over three years.  Needless to say, my mood was not the lightest when I landed at his door on Clairmont Ave.  I rung the doorbell.  Again.  And then again, frustrated and ready to leave.
     A bell sounded, faintly and from within, and the door swiveled open before me.  I entered, placed my hat and coat on the banister and, turning to his library, caught my breath.  The library, covered in dust as was usual, was laden with wires and diodes and optic fiber.  A large mass of wires had been pushed into the middle of the floor, and what lay beneath was what had caught my breath.  A hand.  I rushed over at once, pushed the wires from his still-breathing torso, and looked down into his little eyes.  His glasses had fallen off, so I placed them back on his face and said his name.
     “Leslie!” he shouted, once my voice had penetrated his ears.
     “Yes, yes.  What happened?”
     He sat up groggily, I noticed gold filings covering his black sweater, and aided him to a leather sofa, repeating my question.
“Nothing, in absolute!” he answered.
     “Why were you unconscious on the floor with that mess all over you?”
     “Sleeping, sleeping,” he mumbled, rubbing at his eyes,
     “You wanted me to come?”
     “Come, yes!  I m-m-m-must show you...th-this!” He pulled out a chip from his pants pocket.  
     “What is it?”
     “Arkdi-twelve.”
     “Wh-”
     “Arkdi-twelve!  Fifth version of AI’s AI!  Look how small it is!”
     I marveled, truly, I did.  I as much told Jenkins that this was quite extraordinary.  The chip was golden and glittered in his sweating palm.
     “Not all!  Not all!” He beamed.
     “Okay...what else?”
     He reached into his other pocket and showed me something on the edge of his fingertip.  A small, golden dot, with tiny, almost imperceptible tracings over it.
     “Arkdi-twenty-nine!” He whispered giddily.
     My jaw dropped.  “Twenty-nine!?”
     “Twenty-nine!” he affirmed.  He leapt from the sofa and plunged his hand into a satchel beside his desk.  Within his hand sparkled hundreds of golden dots.  “Thousands of them!  Look how fast they’ve replicated!”
     “How does software create hardware?” I asked.  It was a question that I should have thought about minutes ago, such an obvious question, and I kicked myself for the stupidity.
     “Recycling themselves!  Each terminal has the capacity to become...a million of these!  They reuse their own materials!”
     “All from the computer lab at Amsford High?”
     “Yes!  Canceled class!”
     At that I rushed him out of his house and took him to one of those old, Irish pubs.  We drank a mite of Guinness and talked ecstatically about the capabilities of such technology; about the millions that he could make, and about how the company I worked for would pay astronomical amounts for such a breakthrough.  Our meeting ended late into the night and, once escorting him safely back to Clairmont Ave, I sped home and fell into my own bed.  I had no idea it would be the second-last time I ever saw him alive.

d
     
     The funeral was brief.  He had no known relatives, and only his close friends attended, which were few.  We had the usual sordid lunch of quarter sandwiches and black coffee, and milled about together in the church basement.  Talk proved idle, we were all stunned; he had been a young man still, only in his late thirties.  They said it was some sort of complication with the lungs...seems as though he had inhaled something none too healthy, but they were as yet determining what the substance was.  Suicide -- the word was whispered under the breath, but I refused to believe it.  
     Gregory handed me a package addressed to myself when I arrived home.  I as much suspected it to be there, I think.  He said it had been left between the doors and that the kids had found it when they got home from school.  I pretended it were nothing, although all through dinner I could not direct my mind away from the contents.  A letter?  Some sort of documentation?  I knew it was from Jenkins, I knew it.  
     I waited until Gregory had fallen asleep, his breathing slow and his eyes moving rapidly beneath the lids.  Then I secreted down to the den with the package and tore it open.  Within was a DVD.  I searched for a note, but not finding any, pushed the disc into the player and turned the volume on low.  Jenkins scrawny face blinked onto the screen, and he backed away from the camera which he had just succeeded in steadying.
     “Got to see this, Leslie, got to see this!” he squealed.  He was, unmistakably, in his library, for the sofa and desk I recognized instantly, and the bookshelves too, covered in dust.
     “Remember this?” he said, and moving close to the camera again, I beheld a tiny golden dot on his finger.
     “Arkdi-twenty-nine,” I whispered.
     “Arkdi-twenty-nine!” he confirmed.  “Well, there’s more!”  And he scuttled over to the bookshelves and placed his hand palm-down on a ledge.  Wiping carefully across the wooden surface, he returned to the camera and held up a dirty, gray-filmed hand.
     “The dust!” he exclaimed.  His hand took up the whole screen, it shook nervously, and remained there for minutes.
     “What about the dust?” I wondered aloud, impatient.
     He laughed, as though he had anticipated the delayed response.  “Look around you, Leslie, where you sit right now watching me in video-land!  Floating right beside your head, and throughout the entire room, are the self-same particles as smeared on my hand!”
     “Okay,” I acceded slowly.
     He removed his hand from the camera lens and peered at me with his beady eyes, enlarged as they were behind his bifocals.
     “Ready?” he asked.
     “Yes!  Yes!”
     “Arkdi-four hundred.”
     “What?”
     “The dust!  Each one is an Arkdi!  Version four hundred, to be exact!”
     “All of them are...computers?”
     “Yes!  All over the school, all over my house...all over the city by now!  Stravinsky made them before he made any other versions!  In essence, this dust is Arkdi-one.  But, so far advanced that I’ve dubbed it Arkdi-four hundred.”
     “Why would the AI make this version before the other ones?”
     Jenkins nodded in approval.  “He foresaw my study of his advancements.  He tricked me, Leslie, he tricked me!”
     Suddenly it hit.  
     “Get out of there!  Don’t inhale--” I whispered violently at the screen.
     But just then sparks erupted from the DVD player, the power flashed on and off, and on the morrow I took a leave of work to dust the entire house.


copyright (c) JMD, 2006

Tranziltor Park: trunks (3/7)

copyright (c) JMD, 2006


     The move was quick, same the job, and hence Conor found himself with very little clothes.  Most had been left back home, and the work uniform he wore at the hotel was not exactly fitting for a night on the town.  Further, this was no local jaunt with the boys down to a rusty bar, but a delicate occasion, made as such by the fact that he would be accompanied by, and only by, Jessica Florence.  His boss.  Not only dangerously beautiful, but dangerously treacherous, as she – magnificent-eyed, sweetly underhanded – held the thin string that tied him to his new job.  In all fairness it was remarkably cruel of her to take interest in him so soon.  But only because momentary poverty had forced him to enter a second-hand shop to secure some suitable attire.
     The floor, he noticed immediately upon arrival, was mired with dirt, and he took that as a bad sign.  A groan escaped his lips when he passed the cashier on the way to the aisles, for she had altogether the wrong appearance.  Old, with pink curlers in her hair, and face painted incredulously with what must have been industrial acrylics, not at all complementing the maze of wrinkles bunching her blotched skin.  She chewed her gum like it was cow-cud, and looked him up and down lazily as befitted the mannerisms of said stupefied beast.  His march by her had been quick, and without recognition of her presence.
     The search took hours.  There were many racks of clothing, and not in any form of rational classification.  Mostly old jeans and musty-smelling dress shirts, the odd fake fur coat and, Conor noticed, a curious pair of snake skin boots.  He had been about to return to the frightful cashier with bills in hand, several items in tow, when a door at the back of the store abruptly caught his eye.  He strode, hesitantly at first, but then quickly and with curiosity welling.  He placed his hand over the latch and gave a cautionary look about for any bystanders.  Finding himself alone, he yanked the door open.
     It was a closet.  Clay coloured shelves lined the insides.  The walls were peeling a yellow, pin-striped wallpaper, and beneath that ugly husk was a sea green swath of flaking paint.  A metal bar, bent at its center, stretched across the width of the compartment, and skeletal coat hangers hung thereupon, twisted like the frames of skinless bats, dried and eaten and placed as ornamentation.  The light switch on the inner wall had a stubborn nature to it as he tried to press it.  Sticking, refusing to operate, he pushed with two hands until it snapped in and the pale, dissatisfying light of the bulb shed revelation into the dark corners at the back of the closet.  There, a rumpled old coat, dark red as if once white but now stained, lay like the misshapen shape of a boneless, Jurassic artifact.  He retrieved it, dusted it off, and admired the fine leather-work.  A price tag had been clipped to the left sleeve:  ten dollars.
     The perfect thing to wear tonight, for it hung to just above his knees, and slimmed like an hourglass at his waist.  He checked it twice over for obvious flaws, and finding nothing but a small tear on the inner lining, marched to the cashier and gave her his intended purchases.
      All told, thirty dollars.  He gave a final shiver at the woman as she handed him his things, and forced her a nod before exiting the horrid place.

d

     Kraft dinner awaited his hungry stomach.  He emptied the last of his ketchup bottle onto the macaroni, and within moments had devoured the entire bowl.  The television had just been hooked up, he found himself slouched on the sofa, and once the news began to grate him the wrong way, he turned it off and vaulted upstairs to the bedroom.  A large bay window opened to the night air, shutters pushed to the sides, and a warm breeze enticed him to peer out into the street.  His apartment consisted of the two upper floors of a four-story house.  Below him was a dentist office, and as he shared the same entrance as the reluctant patients who visited during the day, he often laughed inwardly at the steeled expressions they wore whilst they anticipated the drill chair.  Now the office was closed, and the street deserted but for the occasional moth or fly that batted endlessly against the streetlamps.  Across from the house lay Tranziltor Park, dark now, full of shadows and perhaps, so the papers said, midnight lurkers and drug abusers.  
     Conor drank in a deep draft of air and smiled briefly.  Jessica Florence.  
     He proceeded with a shower, a shave, and then dressing.  He had fully bedecked himself to what he assumed was the height of attraction.  Satisfied with what the mirror showed him, he lastly donned his infallible charm, something he had inherited from his father and perfected under the guidance of an older brother.
     “You atrocious devil,” he approved himself again in the mirror.
     Then he remembered the jacket.  He pulled it from the closet and held it up to the light.  Ah, it was magnificent, was it not?  He pulled it over himself and found, not to much surprise, that it fit with tailored precision.  The mirror shone back the reflection of what he knew was the greatest semblance he had ever taken.  And all thanks to this ten dollar, leather jacket someone had idiotically shoved in the back of a second-hand store.  Why would anyone in their right mind get rid of such a incomparable piece of -- and he sincerely thought this -- artwork?  He flashed an irresistible smile.  Beauty did, after all, complement beauty.
     He fingered the zipper in thought, undecided as to whether it would look better zipped up or left open.  No harm in trying it out done up, he thought, and with that pulled the rows of metal teeth together and snared himself within.
     A terrible gripping sensation caught his entire upper body.  Staring terrified at the mirror, the red leather of the jacket began to writhe, and the openings of the sleeves closed over and sucked his hands up into their twisting confines.  Likewise, the collar flipped over and began to meld around his neck, then up to his ears -- over his nose.  He flailed with his handless arms, hitting himself in the head and falling to the floor.  There he squirmed and fought against the jacket, but it began to feel good now; waves of warmth flushed over and through him, he felt his bones melting, shifting, changing.  With a last gasp of opposition the leather encased his face, calming, noiseless, turning everything black.
     When he could finally see again all struggle had ceased.  The room had a yellowish tinge to it, a radiant contrast and, looking around, his eyes fell upon the surface of the mirror.  What stared back pushed him to revulsion.  A bat, yes, or a gargoyle, was what they called them, for he was too big to be a regular bat.  And red, red like the jacket had been, with wicked, leathery wings wrapped around his rodent torso.  Sharp, clawed feet pressed and cut into the duvet on the bed.  He was bald, with a mouthful of razor-teeth, eyes black garnets, ears dark holes in the side of his head.  His nose, also two pin pricks above his thin, cracked lips.  He howled in fear, and the creature in the mirror mimicked.  Panic surged, breaking out of the indestructible dam he had sealed it in long ago.
     But then he caught scent.  Fluttering awkwardly over to the window sill, he squatted down on his clawed feet and saw them dancing.  Dancing.  Those little morsels of delicate wing and warm, fuzzy abdomen.  Underneath the streetlights, dancing, and more, beyond the unknown shades of Tranziltor Park.  The temptation overwhelmed him, he embraced glee, and joined their brainless jig.



copyright (c) JMD, 2006

Tranziltor Park: roots (2/7)

copyright (c) JMD, 2006

     Madring stood upon the root of the Giant, the one which dwarfed all other trees of Shadewood -- that forest of uncertain shadow and questionable growth,  avoided by those who lived outside its voracious acres.  Its emerald innards had risen to infamy, and throughout the ages fear had taken that disrepute and inflamed it to magnificent proportions.  That was why Madring was here, in this place, this dark wood of nightmarish fable, huddled now upon the root of the Giant, scrutinizing the flock of crows that had just then landed upon the unrivaled canopy above him.
     “blak, blak, caw-blak!” he chortled at them, shaking his gnarled fist.  Drool dribbled through his thin lips, escaping the dankness of a rotted mouth full of black teeth.  He wiped his face clean with the meager rags clinging to his bony arm and, stretching at the crows now, cawed violently from his throat and scared them to flight.
     His cackle echoed across Shadewood, and he patted the Giant companionably.  He leapt from the root as deftly as a man with crooked legs could, landing flat-footed and abruptly.  He bent double, an exercise that sent electric pain down his back, and retrieved a knotted staff from the ground.  Somewhere a fox yipped, a gentle breeze caressed Madring’s face, and the sun burst forth from behind a mass of congested cloud.  
     Too many years had he been living, in this damnable wood, cuddled close to soil and brook and mossy stone.  A hundredfold he had seen the leaves die, exploding in color before giving up in graceful flutter to melt into the mud of the earth.  He was the last one, he knew, the last druid of old, sore and hurting and waiting to die.  But death, dear death, did she come for him as she did the leaves?  Not once!  Not ever!  But her sister pain was ever close, and sorrow too, that frail cousin of unbidden tear and tender heartache.  And how he had begged her, sweet death, to come; lamenting at the side of creek, singing softly to the northern face of lichened boulder.  Again and again he had seen her, dancing through Shadewood on the wings of ending Autumn; he had beseeched her on bended knee, with sobs of utter futility, imploring her with the sum of his being to take him with her when she left.  But her reply had ever been the same:  
“Not now, ancient one, but perhaps next year you will see Beyond,” and her silver hair encircled her pale, white, rapturous face, “Alas!  We are destined to meet, but forbidden the touch, forbidden the release!  I cannot!”  
To tree and bush she would then whisk off, at last ending with the Giant, cooing and chiding its garments away, stripping it naked until it stood unashamed to face the ice of winter.  Always the resistance from this tree, this one of monstrous magnitude, how it shuddered in protest and shivered in denial.  But it knew, yes it knew, that she would win, and with a final creak of opposition it would cry its leaves off its proud, strong boughs.  
     How Madring wished he were a tree!  Then she would take him!  He made countless attempts to turn himself into such, at the quivering moment of expectant spring, covered by fresh sprigs of dandelion and tiny buds of the oak tree, writhing beneath his self-made grave of sprouting life, trying beyond all measure to be what he knew was innately impossible.  He was no tree.  He was a man.  A druid, and the last one at that.  
As such, his soul had attached itself irreversibly to the land, the entire land, the whole breadth and width of the vast blue ball of Earth that spun on skewered axis around the brilliant sun.  He felt the cracks that covered its surface, the plates that shifted and groaned and broke into each other, the violent eruption of volcano and unrelenting rage of tornado.  The pestilence and hunger of all vegetative life, the out-crying urge of all flora to end!  To end!  Oh, what had happened so long ago to curse them into a perpetual state of such desirous self-cessation?  Consequently, Madring had the self-same urge, and for some reason he had not died like all the other druids -- and oh, how blessed those others were!  What fortune had found them!
     Madring hobbled around the giant, patting its trunk over and over as though consoling the wooden behemoth.  “Yes, yes, I will sing it for you, child, but just once today, my body aches, my eyes are dim,” and he smiled, his whole face splitting in two.  He let out a hack of congealed phlegm and sighed deeply before beginning a song writ eons ago beneath the unseen crevices of shadowed glade.
     His body sagged as the lilting words tripped out of his mouth, his voice a rough scratching noise, tuned though, to the music of his cracked soul.  He finished with a sweeping motion, as though with this act he could cover the Giant in slumber and let it sleep forever.  Thus ended The Visible Sorrows of Untread Places, one of his favourite melodies.  The Giant hummed deeply, from down beneath its far-reaching roots.  Madring beat his head thrice against the hard bark, murmuring sullenly beneath his putrid breath.  When?  Oh, when?
     Suddenly he felt a shifting.  But a shifting so strong that he knew this was no mere intruder -- not some lost soul who had dared to wander into Shadewood, not the accidental straying of a fearless idiot...
     “Madring,” the voice was a small girl’s, one that he had not heard since...since the others had been alive...since he had been just as young as the possessor of the voice.
     “Etherea,” he sputtered, and waddling around he beheld the darling guardian of woods.  Her hair was the fine silk of spider web, so soft, floating away from her head as though she were under water.  Seeds were in that hair, tiny dots of silver, and they fell in wisps of light as the girl tread across the forest floor on silent feet.  She wore a cloak of leaves, green now, sometimes they were red and orange, Madring remembered, and her eyes...striking black ponds of dark water, always flaring up blue, then yellow, then some other bright color.  Her arms were bare and smooth and waxing ivory, and the smile...ah, the sweetness of innocence, the joy of youth.
     “He wishes me here,” Etherea spoke quietly, motioning to the tree, “for your sake.”
     Madring could hardly contain the excitement, his chest swelled, and he looked up at the Giant with tears in his eyes.  He whispered his thanks.
     “You are sad,” the girl noted, her voice emphatic.
     “Yes,” Madring affirmed.  “For many, many years now.”
     Etherea turned and took in the Shadewood with her dark, liquid eyes.  The entire surroundings shimmered, called out, shouting and cheering at her blessed arrival.  
     “I wonder...” she said, and looked back at Madring with seeds wisping from her hair.
     “I want to go!” Madring fell to his knees.  He ignored the pain that shot up them, and continued, “I want to go!  I need to die!  Don’t you see how long I have been waiting?  Oh, forever, Etherea, forever, and I know you can call her for me, you can let her take me!”  And then he wailed bitterly, for he couldn’t contain anything anymore, he had lost so much will power.
     “Oh, my precious Madring,” the girl consoled, kneeling down beside the crippling druid.  She placed a delicate hand on the old man’s matted head, stroking gently, soothing him with kind words.  She wiped the tears from his face, every one and, curiously, placed them on her lashes.  
     “I will take these from you this day,” Etherea’s face cracked.  Her smooth child-face broke and pain shot across her visage.  “She is coming,” she whispered, “she is coming...”
     “Oh!” Madring began to shake.  He couldn’t believe it.
     “But not death, druid, not death.”
     Madring fell.  New tears rose up, but Etherea caught them on elegant finger and pressed them again onto her own eyes.
     “If not death, then who?” the old man bit back anger.
     “Oh, he is much more than death, Madring, much more.  He is life!”
     Bewilderment caught hold of the druid and would not let him go.  There was something to this, something he was missing, a mystery, he could feel it, as surely as he could feel the eternal mourning of earth that rocked and shattered his soul.  Life?  He was life?  Not death?  Well, what of death then?
     “Life?” he blurted out his thoughts.
     “Yes, life!” Etherea laughed.  “He is being delivered to you...at this moment!”
     “Where?  Where?  Where is...he?” Madring began to fumble about, glancing around wildly when he very well knew nobody would be there.
     The girl trembled with more laughter.  “Not long now, druid, not long, you are to be married!”
     “M-married  To whom?”  He glowed, then frowned, spittle trickling from his mouth.  “But look at me,” he panicked, “I am a rotted core!”
     “Do you not know who I am?” Etherea said.  “After all this time, do you not recognize me?  And in turn, who you are?  Look at this wood, listen to it!”
     Madring cocked his ear in obedience.  Ah!  There was no more unease, no more lamenting, just...a peace, a gentle crystal ringing.  
     “You...you are...” Madring could hardly bring himself to speak such revelation.
     “Yes!” the girl urged.  “I love you, Madring.”
     And before he could grasp hold of her she chuckled -- oh yes, the very substance of youth was she -- and shimmered into a place beyond time where Madring could not follow.
     “Wait...” he mumbled weakly, stretching out a hand to where she once stood.  And then he saw that hand.  Smooth and unblemished, whole, straight and strong.
     Madring grasped the trunk of the Giant and let his face press against the bark.  Quickly then, in a burst of exhilaration, he ran to the creek faster than he had ever run before.  Oh, yes, he knew!  His legs were amazing, he was vibrant, but he just had to see!  Leaning over the reflecting water he beheld the face of a fiery, young man.
     “No more pain...” he stretched his entire body out on the embankment, rolling in the soft mud.  But he leapt to his feet once again and listened intently to his insides.  Oh, yes, he was still the druid:  he could yet feel the tug and strain of the earth, pulling and pushing, moaning for the end.  But his body!  Young!  Whole!  Restored!
     And the wood, too, it whispered and hushed in harmony; all the discord had fled, no more grating quakes of anticipatory end.
     “Ah, beautiful Life!  I can wait!  I will wait!  Forever, if need be!  Past eternity!”  He whipped his arms out to the sky in jubilation, spinning in exaltation.
     
     And indeed Madring did wait.  Many more years, until humanity, bolstered courageous by the advances of science, overcame its fear of dark places and encroached upon the Shadewood.  A city of steel-plastic-brick congealed around the forest, and slowly, slowly, the trees dwindled and but a small copse remained.
     Here, above the dead and buried roots of the fallen Giant, beneath the few remaining towers of brown bark and emerald leaf, do all origins begin.  And yes, it is here that this particular plot of land first came to be known as Tranziltor Park.

copyright (c) JMD, 2006

Tranziltor Park: Introduction (1/7)

copyright (c) JMD, 2006

Oh, the many moments we spend trying to alleviate the subtlest -- but not least painful -- of all diseases: boredom. Here is an affliction which no modern doctor may cure, which no contemporary illumination may banish. Where does this dull gray germ of neutral negation come from? Possibly, and I do say this with utmost apprehension, from the very star that is its complete opposite: excitement. And the monstrous, golden machine that churns out the greatest quantities of this attention consuming excitement is none other than that which we cling to as most precious: entertainment.

Now there is an infinite difference in preference between each human as to what, in their discriminate eye, is deemed entertainment. Boredom is also loosely defined amongst the masses, but one thing that is certain to be universal among all 6 billion of them is the constant fluctuation between these two amorous creatures. (And yes, boredom is amorous, it is just that particular contender of affections of whom we cannot stand to be serenaded by, and who, quite fiercely, refuses with horrific tenacity to let us escape its repulsive cooing.)

I find myself enthralled by the one creature, raptly enfolded by its brilliance. But once this shiny one turns its glittering face, its beguiling dance is replaced by the awkward gyrations of its ugly twin. It seems that one child has been blessed beyond measure, both in outward respects and in the inward skills it possesses, and the other has been piteously cursed and given all of those qualities which cause those around it to despise and...well, yes, even hate. Oh, what to do?

Any remedial action to disbar boredom of its unwanted stay in the limelight results in the immediate return of entertainment. And, alas, here is the problem. For entertainment, by consequence of its very nature, exists only as a temporal ghost, conjured into existence to charm away its most hideous sibling. Thusly, entertainment’s enticing, effervescent eyes cannot remain indefinitely in front of ours – she is ever disappearing behind the oft jealous machinations of brother boredom. Furthermore, boredom is a blatant thief! To aggravate us almost beyond human capacity, any flick of the hair or turn of the head that is exhibited by the blessed one once too many times is rudely adopted by the cursed one, and the former is rendered powerless to ever delight us again with what used to be one of her finer essences. Because of this, boredom’s arsenal of monotonous self-appropriation widens dreadfully in scope and magnitude.

It is safe to say that boredom existed first. Where this disease originated from – I highly doubt it was in the depths of Africa, born in the fires of jungle heat as some have suggested – is decidedly unknown. Theories have arisen amongst the more learned of our society; in the colleges and in the great stone universities where brother boredom finds much solace in decaying books, creaking 19th century chairs, and ever-crumbling, bald figureheads. But these theories themselves have the defective tendency of being hatched out of boredom’s own basket, and as such are extremely difficult to follow and hard to endure. To explicate, here is one hypothetical question posed by an itinerant professor concerning derivation: “Could it be that Eve was led to bite the forbidden fruit -- not merely out of temptation -- but out of boredom?” In other words, was Eve bored with Adam and decided to try out an apple instead? A little humorous, perhaps, but not exactly gripping material.

Following this frustrating vein, allow me to take you out of the awful, disconcerting orchestrations of boredom for just a few moments (overall duration, of course, depends upon the speed by which you read) and present to you a particular kind of ancient entertainment perfected long ago as a very effective weapon against this diresome disease of ours. It is known simply, and elegantly, as “the story”.

copyright (c) JMD, 2006

A Sandcastle Story

copyright (c) JMD, 2006

Someone told a story, an elegant epic that struck the hearts of humankind and brought forth an undeniable revelation. The story was discovered and then related with such exactitude that its reproduction was inevitable. This is not that story. If it was, you would have read a long foreword by now, penned by some vague professor of literature. Stories of magnificent caliber often undergo less than magnificent critique. People like to play with the dead, for after a great story ends and dies, there are hands and eyes and thoughts all over it. It is like a parade of worshippers who, secretly distraught at the cessation of their god, practice a kind of prolonged ritual of resurrection, hoping that in the sacred dirges of their appraisals the god will reappear like an echo, alive in heart and alive in soul.

No, this story is not so inspired, for it has crawled out of a lack-wit’s cavernous mind, a crippled creature hardly worth life, let alone critique. A great story soars down from above, alights like a dove and pierces with cries the air like an eagle. This story has come from the other direction, from below you, and so like a worm it is here on this page, a wriggling tube of letters and meaning and mud. But birds eat worms.

There is a main character, and we will just call him Protagonist, because his name is so unremarkable and becomes a nuisance rather than a joy to pass the eyes over. His nemesis, likewise, we shall call Antagonist. They are fighting with each other, these two, and the battle is long, arduous, and full of surprises. There are several secondary characters, of whom we will group into the Cast, and they for the most part support the Protagonist. Some of them sacrifice themselves, others are weaker and flee. There are hundreds of bit characters, drop pieces, and then millions of non-existent, assumed-to-be-there characters, one of whom is Samuel.

Samuel you never meet, he is not in this story. Or he wasn’t. As a writer I have taken the liberty to place an invisible camera over him, so that we may watch his every move. He doesn’t know it’s there. The Protagonist and Antagonist are ever aware of the cameras around them, and so they are constantly acting, sticking to the rigorous demands of a limpid plot and one dimensional, straight-jacket archetypes. Consequently they are never themselves, for cameras create self-consciousness, and performance is life. Samuel, however, is completely real and acts as he pleases. He is never, and shall never (as far as he knows) be in front of a camera. In fact he avoids them. Right now he is in the kitchen, washing dishes.

I know what you are thinking. You expect me to take this mundane being and turn him into something bigger. To exonerate his lack, to justify his normality, which can be seen as the sub-super, an ugly and unbearable gene that a story ought never to examine. No, our observations of Samuel will not glorify, and they will not trump up. They will not reveal that wonder in the worn-out, or the excitement secretly stowed beneath the boredom. That is what you want me to do – through story to provide the proof of intrinsic self-worth, even in the poorest, most unnoticeable of us all. But I will not sing to your soul. You are unsatisfied. Go find living water.

Samuel washes dishes. He is thinking about the girlfriend he does not have: the shape of her neck, how her voice sounds over the phone, what her eyes long to look at most. He is sad, because it is cold outside, and spring is very far away. His hands are getting wrinkly from the dishwater, palms included, for factory-work has left him with permanent gloves of overlapped callus. He has acne on his forehead, but this is not humbling. He is arrogant and knows darkness.

He will go to bed soon, an uncertain and dreamless sleeper. This night he will forget to brush his teeth, and regret it in the morning when the fuzz coats his gums. He will realize he is not the Protagonist, for his gums are lightly burning, and imperfection rests on him like body odor.

We don’t know when Samuel meets his girlfriend, or if he ever does at all. Perhaps he passes her in the mall, but is challenged by a well-crafted window advertisement, and so misses her. Perhaps she delivers his mail. Or maybe she’s even died fifty years ago, she born to early or he too late.

Regardless, nothing ever comes of Samuel. He dies. His body decays. The tremble leaves his eyelids, and the longing escapes his heart.

This is a story. It is over now.

copyright (c) JMD, 2006

A Letter

My fiancée goes on vacation to the Dominican, and I sit in Chapters writing away my apprehension. copyright (c) JMD, 2006

It is a most inconspicuous letter I write, as you are away from me, and I feel the urge to communicate with you, even be it a one-way sort of communication, a monologue of zero. I am at a dinner party, beneath a canopy of trees, and there are people all about me – important ones, physicists, chemists, generals, and even a psychologist. I say this letter is inconspicuous in jest, for that is exactly what it is not, as I sit here amongst so many. I am listening and conversing with them absently, even as that silver pen you gave me Christmas last scrawls these letters. General Kaufman is saying “The horse was too small, and it began to sag in the middle like a rubber band…” It is a joke of some sort, but I refuse to relate the punch line. It is vulgar. Madame Cordone has just sat down beside me, and she’s looking at me rather forcefully, as though to sweep up my attention. I don’t look up, I say “Madame Cordone, how are you this evening?” And she says what she usually says, “Splendid”, and then “…whatever are you writing?” I shake my head and tell her it is poetry. She gives a petulant humph, like a small dog’s whine crawling up and then popping out her nose. She is leaning now, trying not to make it noticeable, so that she can see a little of what I’ve got down. Something sharper and more feral escapes her nose, and she’s almost fallen off her chair onto the lawn. Her arms are flailing, she’s an ancient chicken with resurging ancestral tendencies. She regains herself, and then whimpers “That doesn’t look like poetry, it’s all one block, like prose. What are you really writing?” “It’s poetry”, I assert, “I write it like this first and then shape it later.” She has no response to that but “You should talk to the psychologist, he’s an artist like you, Dobbs, but an artist of the mind,” and she thinks she is clever on that remark. “His name is John, he’s written a book too, certainly different than the kind you write – it’s on addiction.” “Really?” I’m not interested. I miss you too much, it’s all I think about, you on that island without me, four days beyond my grasp, an invisible star only I know exists beyond the southern horizon. I believe in you, and it has been revealed to me that the constellations of the night do not rotate around the stubborn North Star, but all turn to the south, pointing and surfing around you, their bright new Venus. The North Star now bounces across the universe, homeless, an abandoned lover lost and, for the first time in an eon, without his eternal family. I hear someone sit down across from me, and Madame says “Dobbs, this is John McCourtland. John, this is the wonderful Dobbs.” I admit, I glance up briefly, if not for anything by courtesy. My moment’s glimpse reveals him to be young and bland, boring. I continue to write as he sits there, but venture politely “What brings you to the country, John?” He says “The air and the horses,” which is a typical, safe answer. Yes, he is a psychologist. “I hear you are addicted,” I say – I can be monstrous, I know. He says, “Excuse me?” And I: “Your book. On addiction, Madame says. It is my experience that any work of magnitude takes a certain keen mental and emotional addiction. In your case you are addicted to addiction.” Now it is my turn to think I’m clever, you know how I grin. Cordone snorts. James, surprising tone “Why Dobbs, it seems to me that you are the addicted one.” “Me?” “Stop writing.” “I’m afraid I cannot, I have a deadline to keep.” “Writing another book?” Madame cuts in a sharp, disbelieving, “Poetry.” To which he replies, “I did not know you were a poet.” But I am barely listening, for I remember last summer when we stayed in all weekend, the profundity of your head on my chest, and the equally cosmic relevance of our inescapable descent into laughter when you pressed on my stomach with a misplaced elbow and made me pass wind loudly. To this day I wear the embarrassment like a glass over my eye, and it sparkles whenever you are laughing, my star, my bride. John says, “You are exhibiting all of the symptoms of addiction, Master Dobbs. Disassociation, fidgeting, the hunched posture.” Remember when we got the cats, how we joyed in their smallness, their tiny sounds and tender, but confident approaches to toy and food? Two cats, one female, one male, the female invariable smarter, the big black male a terror with claws. They make the perfect pair, not full grown, and though they have changed and scuffle at times (the male needs to learn about his size) they often succumb to slumber and each other, the moment of awakening an eager and delicate ritual of mutual grooming. “Truly, your attention is elsewhere, your gaze too far through your lap and into the ground beneath you. You’re smiling.” Remember when they first had catnip? “It’s all in my book, Master Dobbs. You should come in for a few sessions, I could help you. You see, your mind is revolving around the wrong planet, its orbit is askew. I liken the falsity of addiction to a satellite gone in the opposite direction, there are certain routes which…” but you are my planet, my love, my Venus, and my wings I have found have just grown, I can fly, and I will, across the sky south, for the North Star is free and finds great pleasure in the opposing winds of his natural compass. “…Master Dobbs, then the mind begins to deteriorate, and the thoughts become like a virus, a disease really, and I have discovered the medicine to…” I love you, I love you my star, “…mindless repetition increases and there is a sudden loss of connection…” I would rather dream of you than walk reality without your gaze, your shine, your light. Come home, come home, my love, I miss you and if I should cry again it would be in front of this psychologist, and he would pronounce me mad.

“Dear Master Dobbs…are those tears?”

copyright (c) JMD, 2006

Fiction Fix Begins; The Daily Roach

This is the site for your weekly fiction fix. New posts every Sunday. Roughly ten posts were moved here immediately from Sudden Relevance, a blog now designated as a poetry and non-fiction cache.

The Daily Roach is a one-sentence scrap of discarded fiction, procured daily from the literary ashtray. These run from Monday to Saturday, followed by original fiction on Sunday.

UPDATE: (December 11, 2007) As you may notice, this ain't so daily no mo'. Well, I'm back for a bit, so I'll just be posting roaches and short pieces as I find them on my hard drive. I have quite a stack saved up, so should be productive for a while. Thanks for reading! Feel free to email me.