(Glade, World, Master, Boy, Hero)

                                                 GLADE

There is a glacier.
Its blue tongue’s tip just tastes a frozen gorge.
There is a gorge, its walls shattered by cold; a once-green thing that, in dying, birthed a thousand aching fissures. It works its jagged way downhill, round ragged rifts and drifts until it comes upon a little frosted wood.
There is a wood, an island locked in ice.
Within this wood the gorge descends. It wanders and it wends; it brakes and all but ends outside a clearing wet with sun. And there, forking, its bent and broken arms embrace a strange, enchanted glade.

There is a glade.
And in this glade the black bears sleep, though salmon leap fat between falls. Here the field mouse draws no shadow, the eagle seeks no prey; they spend their while caressed by rays, and halcyon days are they. Here rabbit and fawn may linger, no longer need they flee. For in this timeless, taintless space, the Wild has ceased to be. (Outside the glade are shadow and prey, are ice and naked death. There blood may run freely. There the eagle, that thief, is a righteous savage, a noble fiend. But once in the glade he is dove, and has no taste for blood, running freely or otherwise).
And in this glade there nests a pool:  a dazzling, blue-and-silver jewel; profoundly deep, pristinely clear. All who sip find solace here, for this is the Eye of Being. They lap in peace, assuming blear, not knowing it is seeing. And ever thus this pool shall peer:  a silent seer, reflecting on—all that Is, and all Beyond.
(Outside the glade there lies a world where rivers ever run, where ghastly calves in random file revile a bitter sun. East, the day is born in mist. West she dies:  her rest, the deep. And North…North the Earth lies mute. Wind gnaws her hide, wind wracks her dreams. Wind screams like a flute in her white, white sleep).
But in the glade are tall, stately grasses, sunning raptly, spinning lore. Roots render the rhythms, blades bend without breeze, as signals ascend from the glade’s tender floor. (In this wise the glade weaves its word, airs its views. All the glade’s flora are bearers of news). They do not wither with fall, for in the glade there is no fall. They do not bind or wilt or brown—they gesture, spreading the mood, the mind; conveying, indeed, the very soul of the glade. As ever they have, as they shall evermore.
Bees do not hum here; they sing. They fatten the dream. Mellow and round are the timbres they sound, sweet is the music they bring. Birds do not sing here—they play. They carry the theme. Dulcet and warm are the strains they perform. Gifted musicians are they. (All in the glade are virtuosi. They were born to create. Melody, harmony, meter…are innate). Now the performance is lively and bright, now full, now almost still. For, though all in the glade may lean to the light, they must bend to the maestro’s feel.
And yet…there was a day, long ago in a dream, when this ongoing opus was torn. And on that day (so the lullaby goes) the wind brought a scream, and Dissonance was born.
There was a noise.
Moose tensed, their coffee eyes narrowed, their patient brows creased. Bees mauled the tempo, birds lost their place. The grass stood *****, all blades pointing east. There was a crash, and a shriek, and a naked, bleeding beast burst stinking through the fern, fell stumbling on its face.
Moose scattered:  unheard of. Sheep brawled, geese burst out of rhyme. The symphony, forever endeavored to soar sublime, fluttered, plunged, and, for all of a measure, ceased.
The pool was appalled…what manner brute—what kind of monster was this? Furless flank to forelimb, hide obscured by blood. As for its face…it had no face; only a look:  of shock frozen in time, of horror in amber. A deep welling rift ran temple to chin, halving the mask, caving it in. Such a grievous wound…the pool watched it stagger, on two legs and four, thrashing about till it came to a rise. There it labored for air, wiped the blood from its eyes, lashed at illusion, looked wildly round. Beholding the pool, the beast tumbled down.
And there this wretch plunged his thirst, drank his fill, fell back on his haunches.
The pool became still.
The two traded stares.
The glass read his features:  that durable eye pondered the wreckage and probed the debris. Revolted, the pool sought the succor of sky. But that thing remained—that face…in all creation…surely there could be…no other creature so ugly as he.
And he gazed in the glass.
Beneath the surface were…images…swimming in currents of shadow and light. He saw half-shapes and fragments…hideous men, exotic beasts…saw blue worlds of water, saw white worlds of ice…it was all so vague and unreal—yet somehow strangely familiar. Deeper he peered, but, as his mangled face neared, the sun smote the pool and the shapes disappeared. The brute pawed the ground and, dreaming he’d drowned, shook his head sharply and slowly looked round:
There were starlings at arm’s-length, transfixed with suspense, their tail feathers trembling, their dark eyes intense. Fantails and timber wolves, stepping in sync, paused for a sniff, stooped for a drink. Bees, pirouetting, threw light in his eyes. Seizing the moment, the pool pressed its hold.
And the glade revolved.
The freak watched it spin—saw the ferns’ greedy fingers reach round and close in, saw the tall grass rise high in an emerald sheen, swaying to rhythms from somewhere obscene. This place was madness; he struggled to stand, but, weak as he was, keeled over cold.
And the glade heaved a sigh, and the tall grass reclined, in curious patterns once rendered in whim. Far off in thunder the hard world replied, as iced pines exploded and screamed on the breeze. Down bore the sun, a chill just behind. The pool, grown blood-red, fended frost from its rim. Details dissolved in the oncoming tide. The pool dimmed to black. Night seeped through the trees.
Now flora found slumber while, pulsing below, the pool was infused with a soft ruby glow.
Soon birds bearing beech leaves, and needles of pine, laid down a spread and returned to the limb. But breath from the North blew their blanket aside. The wind grew in earnest, the air seemed to freeze.
And the wolf and the she-bear, of contrary mind, abhorring their task approached, looking grim. They sniffed him for measure, then, loathing his hide, growled their displeasure and dropped to their knees.
All night these glum attendants flanked his naked quaking form. The rising moon drew dreams in gray.
In time the man grew warm.

Morning swept through the glade in one broad stroke of the master’s brush, dappling the foliage with amber and rose. The pool was roused by the sweet pass of light. He opened his eye and the glade came alive:  into the whirlpool of life a thousand colors swam, chasing the scattering eddies of night. The magic of morning began.
Bluebird and goldfinch descended in rings, primaries clashing with robin and jay. Dollops of sun, repelled by their wings, spattered anew on the palette of day. Banking as one, the hues struck away.
There was a crowd.
And in this crowd that oddity sat, its chin on its chest, its rear pointing west. Its forepaws lay leaning, upturned and at rest. ***** and blood messed its muzzle and breast. Passed overnight. Or perhaps only dozed…tendril by tendril, claw by claw, the crowd decompressed:  the ring slowly closed.
And the stranger cried out and shifted his seat. His eyes sought his feet—rounding the arches, and topping the toes, the tall grass was questing. The little brute froze.
And the fauna took pause, and the flora went slack. Leaves followed talons, stems followed claws. Hooves tromped on paws as the crowd drifted back.
Not a breath taken. Not a move made. Stillness, like fog, enveloped the glade.
Now the grass tugged his feet, now the sea of jade splayed—left hand and right, the slender shafts reared. Gaining momentum, blade followed blade. The green field was torn till a deep swath appeared. The swath hurtled west, reflecting the sun. A hundred yards distant it died. Once more the grass stood, its tips spreading wide. The swath, born again, repeated its run.
Plain was the message, and clearly conveyed. The newcomer gawked. Confusion ensued.
The tall blades were swayed by the pulse of the glade.
But the swath was not renewed.
Something tiny bounced by. He ventured a peek, barely rolling an eye.
A chocolate sparrow, with pinfeathers black, popped past an ankle and paused to look back. The bird cocked its head, rocked in place, hopped ahead. It fluttered. It freaked. It glared and stopped dead. Vexed to its limit, it burst into flight.
The sitting thing watched till it passed out of sight.
Now a breeze bent his back, picked him half off his stern. The wind, done its best, grew flustered at last. It trailed to the west, thrilling lilies it passed. It wound round the willows and didn’t return.
So the fauna repaired to the live oak’s shade.
A strange kind of stupor fell over the glade.
From deep in the wood came a shape through the trees—a pronghorn, perhaps, or an elk swift and sure. But up limped a moose, a flyport with fur, low in the belly and wide at the knees. Wizened he was, scarcely able to see. Neither vision, nor vigor, nor velvet had he. He hobbled abreast, then groveled or died, his nose facing west, his tail flung aside.
The brute merely glazed.
But the glade was unfazed.
Those long shafts reshuffled. A tense moment passed.
The ominous shadows of badgers were cast. Three left their holes, as if to attack. They pedaled like moles and the stranger jumped back. He stumbled, fell flailing, and, kicking his guide, threw out his arms and tumbled astride. First he stepped on his tail, then he stepped on his pride. The moose bellowed twice and shook side to side while the little pest clung to his high, homely hide.
And the old moose unbent to his knees by degrees. He reeled like a drunk down the path of the breeze. Together they lurched through a break in the trees. And all morning long, and on through the day, both beggar and bearer would buckle and sway. The moose lost his temper, but never his way.
And the wind blew the sun to its deep ruby rest; the scrub, in obeisance, inclined to the west. Their slow taffy shadow in slinking would seem to slip round the rocks like a snake in a dream.
And the sun became a beacon, and the underbrush a stream. The wide Earth took their weight in stride, and the wind named him Hero.

                                               WORLD

When the sun was low the old moose began to stumble, at last limping to a halt beside a swift river lined with stunted pines. He’d half-expected a somewhat graceful dismount, but Hero, dug in like a tick, wasn’t about to let go. The moose knelt until his joints objected, shimmied, bucked, and with a sudden whirl sent the little bother flying.
Hero scraped himself out of the dirt and looked up forlornly. The ancient moose, his good eye gone bad, glared a long minute before hobbling away, his bony **** rocking with dignity, his scraggly tail fighting off imaginary flies.
Hero managed a few steps and dropped, staring in disbelief as the moose disappeared between half-frozen pines. He remained on his knees for the longest time, his jaw hanging, waiting for the moose—waiting for anything to show. At last a ruckus to his left snapped him out of it. His head ratcheted around.
Fifteen feet off the bank, three screaming gulls were dancing on an immense stone outcropping, fighting over a rapids-tossed sockeye. Hero was instantly famished. He wobbled to his feet and stumbled twice wading out, only regaining his balance by leaning against the current while rapidly wheeling his arms. The shrieking gulls reluctantly backed off as he stepped in slow-motion through the rushing water. Hero lunged at the slapping fish, cracked an ankle on the rock, and hopped around howling with both hands holding his shin. One foot was as good as none in the surging water. He went right under. Before he knew it he was being swept downriver.
This was glacial meltwater, so cold he quickly lost all sensation. Hero swallowed a mouthful and surfaced fighting for life; too disoriented to combat the current, too numb to realize his waving arm was striking something solid. That solid something turned out to be a swirling clump of rotted birches tangled up in scrub. He embraced one of these trunks as the mass slammed against isolated rocks, kicked his feet wildly, and somehow hauled himself aboard. The raft ricocheted rock to rock until repeated impacts sent it spinning. Giddy from the whirling and soaking, he clung freezing to the trees, retching continuously while the river roared in his ears. Through spray and tears he made out only cartwheeling fragments of the world.
But then the river was widening, its fury dissipating. The raft was approaching the sea. Hero gasped as the seemingly boundless Pacific swallowed the broad red belly of the sun. And as he spun he was treated to a panoramic, breathtaking spectacle:  the great indigo ocean with its slow traffic of driftwood and ice—voiced-over by the dismal calls of foraging gulls, and broken rhythmically by intermittent glimpses of the river’s rocky banks growing farther and farther apart. Whirling as it went, the dying man’s soul was taken by the sea.

At the 59th Parallel in winter, the Pacific coast plays host to numberless floes and minor bergs orphaned from Alaskan coastal glaciers. Hero cruised into a watery gridlock on a boat of ice-glazed birches, one bit of flotsam among the rest.
The cold wouldn’t let him move, wouldn’t let him breathe, wouldn’t let him think. He lay supine, feet crossed and hands clasped, terrified that to budge was to roll. An ice patina grew over the tangled trees like a white fungus—this growth soon webbed his fingers and toes, speckled his chest and thighs, glazed his hair and face, danced and disintegrated with his breath’s tapering plumes.
Floes and frozen-over debris tended to group with passing collisions; Hero’s married birches bit by bit accrued a mostly-submerged tangle of trunks and branches, all becoming fast in a creeping ice cement. Night came on just as resolutely, until land was only a flat black memory. The raft moved silently over the deep, still accepting the occasional gentle impact. And the floes became thicker and wider in a freezing doldrums; soon the proximate sea was all a broken field of packed ice, bobbing infinitesimally with the planet’s pulse.
Long ghostly strands of fog came striding over the torn ice field. They leaned this way and that, their mourners’ skirts tearing and patching and leaning anew. The ghosts were there to seal it:  their locked fingers and gray diaphanous wings were quickly becoming a wholly opaque descending shroud, its boundaries lost in the soughing wind.
Collisions came less and less. Darkness and silence, breaching some previously impenetrable barrier, began to take up residence in Hero’s chilling marrow. From his very center broke a weak little cry of refusal, of denial, as mind mustered frame in one desperate bid for freedom. His skin, frozen to the raft, peeled right off, and at that his inner brave succumbed. Hero’s smashed head arched back. His face contorted frightfully while the little lamp fluttered and paled within.
A raucous chorus slowly worked its way through the mist. It emerged a few hundred yards off—a tiny, terrified barking, growing in clarity as it grew in volume and urgency. It was a sound beacon. Hero strained eagerly, and when for one excruciating minute the beacon was cut off by a large passing body, was certain death had claimed him. Then it was back, and his heartbeat was quickening. He caught a heaving sound…something was moving his way down a wide tributary between floes. Hero could hear a gasping and snorting, accompanied by a hard slapping and splashing. The sounds vanished. In a moment the raft was rocked from below.
A sputtering muzzle blew salt in his eyes. A cold slimy flipper flapped across his chest and slapped about his face. The fur seal barked directly in his ear. Whiskers raked his dead cheek. The seal barked again.
Back below the surface it slipped. Hero listened anxiously as the splashing sound retreated whence it came.
The seal swam off perhaps a hundred feet and began barking hysterically.
From much farther off came a profusion of answering barks.
The seal swam back to Hero’s raft, circling and calling, circling and calling, while the responders approached en masse.
Now a sallow beam could be seen cutting through the fog. Several more showed vaguely along a plane yawing with some huge, barely discernible object.
A herd of northern fur seals burst into sight, barking madly, beating through the ice. They converged on Hero’s raft, really bellowing now.
Those odd yellow beams came in pursuit, and soon were close enough to eerily illuminate a gigantic wooden vessel parting the ice. The seals barked ferociously. Whenever the vessel leaned away, those nearest Hero’s raft would absolutely howl.
The fog deepened, condensed, crystallized, and then the collective light of a dozen lanterns was playing over a low, listing nightmare. Hero could hear the shouts of many aggressive men, but the waterborne seals, rather than scatter, boarded the ice and redoubled their din, fighting their way onto his quickly mobbed raft.
The sealers hurled serrated spears even as they clambered down rope ladders. When these men reached the ice the seals snapped and gnashed madly, refusing to be dislodged. The sealers lost all composure with the thrill of the hunt:  wielding clubs, spears, and hatchets—sometimes using iron bludgeons or any old utensil handed down—they crushed skulls, dragged carcasses, hooked animals still spurting and bleating. Clinging though he was, Hero was flabbergasted by the way the slipping and scampering men went about their butchery, hacking and smashing more with passion than with precision. But not a single seal attempted to flee—throughout the carnage they barked all the louder, egging on their slayers, carcass by carcass drawing the impassioned sealers to Hero’s ice-locked raft.
It was all so hazy and macabre. Hero’s eyes rolled back, and the next thing he knew he was sitting hunched on the vessel’s sopping deck. Two men were rubbing his limbs while another poured warm water down his back. He looked around in shock. The very notion of a boat containing more than one or two individuals—a sort of floating tribe—was way beyond his ken; so to see it, to have it come looming out of nothingness, was an experience almost supernatural.
He remembered some of those fur-covered men force-feeding him mouthfuls of halibut and seal fat, and he recalled a small group standing around him, shouting words that made no sense at all. After that he had a very vivid memory of their angry little chief repeatedly punching him while hollering one angry little word over and over and over. Hero couldn’t make out his inquisitor’s face, for the large feather-lined hood quite engulfed the man’s head, yet he could see those quick eyes flash as they caught the oil lamps’ light. Finally this man stopped boxing Hero’s ear. He stared hard. In these remaining decades of the tenth century it was fully within his power to administer as he saw fit—he could have ordered Hero’s immediate execution and not a man of his crew would have objected. He hesitated only because there wasn’t a hint of resistance in his prisoner’s pinched and frightened eyes. He leaned forward, studying the wound that all but split Hero’s face in two before grunting, raising his right arm, and yanking down its seal hide sleeve. Attached to the stump of his forearm was a primitive prosthesis consisting of a thick oak cap strapped to the arm with lengths of gut, and, hammered squarely into the center of that cap, a broad, cruelly hooked blade chiseled from a narwhal’s tusk. He held this obscenity in front of Hero’s eyes, traced the face’s deep diagonal rift, and once more demanded his captive’s identity. Hero then vaguely remembered being dragged along a tilting deck and thrown into the ship’s tiny hold. He retained a strong mental image of landing in a place of musty odors and dank projections.
There came a soft scuffling in the darkness, and presently a blind and exceedingly old woman felt her way to his side, mumbling as she approached. Her speech was comprised not of words; it was rather a running gibberish of cooing vowels and clucking consonants. The old woman was as mad as her circumstances; sick with sea and solitude, bedeviled by age and confinement. She sat cross-legged, patting her withered palms up his arm until she came to his face. Her strange mumbling soliloquy rose and fell as her bony fingers daintily explored the newly opened wound. Hero let his head fall back in her lap. A pair of hands like emaciated tarantulas scurried through the filth and tiny bodies until they came upon an old otter’s pelt bag that held her secrets. The woman loosened the bag’s cord and extracted an assortment of herbs, sniffing each in succession. She then scooped a handful of blubber from a bowl made of a previous occupant’s skull, kneaded the selected herbs into the blubber, and commenced gently massaging the wound, clucking and cooing while the black rats watched and waited.
For nine interminable days Hero remained in that cold, stinking compartment, rocking back and forth between life and death. The old woman never gave up on him. She clung to him during his seizures, rubbed his limbs vigorously when his blood pressure fell. She gathered various accumulated skins and, using woven strands of her own long hair, sewed him a multilayered, body-length wraparound with arm sleeves and very deep pockets, working by touch with a needle formed of a cod’s rib. By this same method she was able to fashion a pair of heavily lined snug-fitting moccasins. The old woman made him eat; she masticated the cod and halibut their keepers pitched into the hold, then shoved the results down his throat with a long gnarly forefinger. She called into his screaming nightmares, talking him out of sleep and back into their foul little reality. Together they lowed in the dark, while the keel groaned along and the waves beat time.
At the end of those dark nine days his strength was restored, but not his mind. Once again he was taken on deck.
The vessel had reached a chain of remote wind-swept islands, rocky and treeless, naked except for patchy carpets of hardy grass. These islands stretched far to the west, shrouded in mist. The ship was making for the smallest; just a chip on the sea. When they reached depth for anchorage Hero was hustled into a rowboat and lowered over the side. He looked up, saw two men climbing down by rope. These men positioned themselves at the oars and slowly rowed toward the islet. Seated between them, Hero felt like a man being led to his execution. He snuck a peek. The rowers’ heads were lowered, their features completely obscured by the heavy feathered hoods; they had all the somberness of pallbearers. Not a word passed between them as they rigidly worked their oars:  the only sound was the dip-and-purl of wood in water. Hero looked away. Against his will, he found his eyes drawn to that rocky islet waiting in the fog.
Not a bird, not a sea lion, not a shrub. It was lonesome beyond imagination.
Upon landfall one of the men used a spear’s point to **** Hero ashore. While his companion steadied the boat, he removed a skin sack full of half-frozen halibut, followed by a few armloads of precious tinder. These articles he tossed at Hero’s feet. He resumed his place at the oars and, without looking back, used the blunt end of his spear to shove off.
Hero watched the boat moving away, watched the men climbing their ropes, watched the boat being hauled aboard. As the mysterious vessel receded he saw a number of those silent men standing at the stern, stolidly returning his stare. Their hooded forms grew smaller and smaller, finally becoming indistinct. The vessel was swallowed up in fog.
Hero looked around, at a desolate world of rock and drifting ice. In the sunless pools at his feet a few purplish, flaccid sea anemones were waving in a sickly phosphorescence; along the rocks ran a tattered quilt of wild grass and lichen. It was the end of the world. He began to pace in his anxiety, only to crumple bit by bit inside his furs. At last he just sat with his face in his arms and wept. When he could weep no more he raised his head and opened his red, swollen eyes.
There were gulls all around him, staring like statuary in a madman’s garden. Standing in their midst were auks and puffins and murres, absolutely spellbound, unable to lean away. The silence was broken only by a wild, fitfully pursing wind—a wind that seemed, eerily, on the verge of producing syllables. And on that wind a flock of terns was rising slowly, their beady eyes fixed on the lone sitting man. The terns watched as he trembled, and banked as he swooned.
Then, beating as one, they threw back their wings and blew into the sun.

There was a blaze.
Behind that blaze a pair of black, bug-like eyes met his and immediately withdrew. A man wrapped in caribou hides stood abruptly, drawing angry swarms of sparks.
The Aleut peered queerly into the icy Pacific, his craggy profile merging seamlessly with a jumble of rocks showing just beyond his shoulder. The man was very tall, closer to seven feet than to six, and thin almost to emaciation.
He was also a mute. Soon enough he would display a talent for communication through gutturals, but now his body language spoke louder than words. It told the shivering stranger that he was not only disliked—he was feared.
The islander removed the hides he’d piled on the sleeping man. He produced a bone awl and strategically pierced a caribou hide, draped the hide over the old woman’s handiwork, and ran a cord of tightly woven tendons crosswise through his made holes, knotting it at the bottom to create a kind of cloak. He then killed the fire, heaped wood, fish, and remaining hides into Hero’s arms, and led him to a tiny cove where his long skin canoe lay in the grass. This was not the one-man kayak used by his people for centuries, but an actual canoe modeled on the graceful vessels he’d observed under the control of northern coastal tribesmen. After dragging it into the water he perched Hero in the fore, placed the cargo in the middle, and stepped into the rear like a gaunt furry spider. The Aleut dug out a paddle and began pulling with smooth strokes of surprising muscularity, his black eyes trained on his quiet companion’s back.
So began their long island-hopping journey. They stepped the chain one stone at a time, living off the sea. But much as the islander disliked Hero’s vapid company, it was not in his nature to proceed expeditiously; his people, remote as they were, had learned to count not in days but in generations. Given this, the Aleut took his time. He showed Hero how to build shelters of skin and gut; during bad weather the two would sit on an island in utter silence while rain hammered on their stretched seal-intestine window. And one very clear night he pointed out constellations while attempting to demonstrate, using broad gestures, just how the brighter heavenly bodies were in perfect alignment with the Aleutians. Hero followed his guide’s gestures as a pet follows its master’s movements and, like a pet, soon became bored. The Aleut did not grow flustered. He grew ever more wary:  behind that granite, weather-beaten exterior squirmed a very primitive imagination. Superstitious as he was, the Aleut was almost certain Hero could read his mind. So one time, and one time only, he threw a searing look at the back of Hero’s bowed and listing head. After a long minute of vigorous thought-projection he shifted his gaze aside. The brute appeared to feel this shift, and gently turned his head. And both saw the ocean break rhythm, and watched as otters and sea lions surfaced, noted their progress, and slipped without tremor beneath the waves.
In spring the fogs lifted. The grimness gave way to serenity, a generous sun buttered the dappled sea. On the islands grass grew lushly. Wildflowers leapt on the color-starved eye.
And one day the islander’s nape itched. He turned to see a flock of arctic terns casually tracking them under a gorgeous, white-plumed sky. As the day progressed the terns came drifting high overhead, slowly but surely taking the lead.
The Aleut squinted against the sun. He’d never known these birds to pursue a westerly migratory pattern—the terns were distributing themselves into a rough wedge shape, much like geese on the wing.
For a while he let the flock be his guide. Then, to test his stars, he cunningly steered his canoe north. At once the wedge disintegrated. Not until he’d lowered his eyes and pulled purposefully to the west did the disrupted pattern reassert itself. He peered up timidly. The wedge was now in the shape of a perfect arrowhead.
Just so were the fates of mariners and aviators inextricably entwined. At night, once the Aleut had landed his canoe on the nearest pearl, the terns would light in a quiet circle and remain until sunrise. As the Aleut and Hero took to sea, the flock would quickly form that same authoritative pattern.
In time the Aleut paddled his companion clear to the westernmost islands of the Aleutian chain. His people had dwelt, even here, a thousand years and more, but no contemporary islander knew for certain what lay beyond. Legend told of an enormous land mass forever gripped by cold, where a cruel people waylaid innocent seafarers for barbaric sacrificial rites.
So here the islander paused. But even as he vacillated he noticed the terns were veering south.
If the Aleut had been able to curse aloud he would have been vociferous. He was being compelled to follow an even less desirable course—that of the unknown open ocean. Now he looked upon his passenger’s hunched back not with fear but with loathing. He took a deep breath, rolled his shoulders, and defiantly continued west. The wedge broke up immediately. The terns dive-bombed the canoe, whirled around the windmilling Aleut, tore skyward and hovered determinedly. Something huge broke surface behind them, but the Aleut was way too frayed to turn. He dropped his head, a beaten man, and began paddling south. Little by little the birds returned to formation.
The tiny canoe had no business going up against the mighty Pacific. It would soon have been swallowed and smashed, had not the terns veered in close formation whenever the distant sea appeared too rough. Once he’d lost his bearings the Aleut religiously followed their serpentine course.
The days began to warm.
Now the sea’s bounty all but leapt in the canoe.
It seemed the Aleut was forever catching the finest currents, practically sliding down a corridor entirely free of peril. In this manner he was able to safely navigate waters no such craft had mastered before.
They were proceeding south by southwest, awed children of a plenteous, generous sea. The going became easier by the day, the ocean heavier with cod.
Nights the Aleut drifted comfortably, but a lifetime of wariness made him wake off and on. He’d slowly rise to find Hero sitting quietly under the stars, and soon he’d see, pallid in moonlight, a large body neatly pleating the ocean’s surface. The shape would precede them a while, only to vanish without a ripple.
All this strangeness kept the Aleut’s heart in a whirl, though he took pains to maintain his poise.
To allay his fear he kept a flat black stone planted squarely between them. It was his oldest treasure; an oddity he’d taken off the body of a mauled Tlingit woman when he was a child. Who she was, and how she’d come by the stone, were mysteries far beyond him, for no such piece had ever been known to Aleut or Inuk.
The stone was smooth and had been worked perfectly round. Bright yellow specks were scattered about its dull black face.
Long ago someone had etched a quaint and clumsy rune on that flat black surface—it was the crude, universal symbol for sun:  a broad circle surrounded by several rays. When the stone was rubbed against a pelt it possessed the curious property of growing quite warm and bright in the rune’s grooves, while the surface remained cool and dull.
This stone, both friend and overlord, had always “spoken to him”. It caused him to become restless when it was time to move on, and allowed him to relax when a destination had been reached. In this way he’d come to the familiar islet and discovered the unconscious little man. Just so:  the stone, he was sure, was responsible for making him “feel bad” as he watched the stranger shiver, and “feel better” once he’d built him a life-saving fire from the small pile of tinder he’d found nearby.
By now, however, the Aleut was wholly disenchanted with his stone, and deeply regretted having done its mysterious bidding. Never before had he been so long from sight of land, and never before had he felt so very, very small. The unimagined immensity of the Pacific was really starting to get to him when, after all their while at sea, a gray, seductive haze broke the horizon. They had reached another chain of islands, an Asian chain, the dark and smoky Kurils. Here a cold current kept the climate cool and foggy, and the chill, along with the prevalence of otter and seal, made him feel almost at home.
But this place gave him the creeps; he was a stranger, a trespasser somewhere sacred. There was a looming quality to the island mountains that made him extraordinarily aware of his transience, his pettiness, his puniness. He grew more and more cautious, sure their progress was being monitored—he could have sworn he saw wraiths in the trees, and wolves padding warily in the brush. The big islands looked on breathlessly. All along the rocky cliffs, thousands of auks and puffins followed the canoe in dead silence, their heads turning simultaneously, their countless tiny eyes peering redly through the fog. As the weeks passed, the Aleut’s anxiety was manifested in tics and sighs, and he’d cringe each time the crimson sun sank behind those black volcanic summits. In his imagination the mountains would rise right out of the sea, as though to pluck him. But the islands, in all their dignity, would always refuse to acknowledge so meek a stranger, and return their eyes to sea. The Aleut would hang his head, and timidly paddle by.
Then for days and days he pulled his weary canoe west—through a strait parting two mighty islands not part of the chain, and thence across a sea that was a warm, enticing bath. Spring had come to the East Asian coastal waters, and the Ainu, alone and in groups, were venturing deeper in search of increasing bounty. The Aleut, absorbed in his thoughts of sweet climate and bitter fate, was unaware they’d been spotted.
This first meeting between strangers of different worlds was a brief and awkward one. A lone Ainu fisherman, seeing the Aleut come paddling out of the unknown, dropped his net and turned to stone. The Aleut, for his part, instinctively froze with his body turned half-away to make the leanest target possible. Their stares locked. Never had the Aleut seen a face so heavily bearded, and never hair so fair. The Ainu began banging on his bronze catch pail. Other fishers soon appeared from the north and south, effectively cutting off the canoe. The Aleut caressed his stone and looked to the sky. The wedge had vanished. He put down his head and paddled for all he was worth.
With the word out, uncountable fishing craft appeared out of the blue and broke into hot pursuit, their pilots determined to force the canoe ashore.
Suddenly they were in sight of land, and the sea was absolutely riddled with watercraft. A train of small boats cast off from the mainland, even as a posse of two-man coracle-like tubs began to surround the battered skin canoe, their inhabitants calling back and forth in astonishment at the sight of these dark, savage newcomers. But the pursuing little coastal men, banging excitedly on the sides of their boats, were not Ainu. They had very straight black hair, prominent cheekbones, and strangely slanted eyes. And their speech, oddly marvelous as it was, was a rapid series of coos, chirps, and barks. Their boats formed a tight semi-circle around the canoe, forcing the Aleut to approach the mainland. The little men banged their boats maniacally, with more joining in as the canoe neared shore.
A bit farther south was a natural harbor swarming with fishing vessels of every description. As the canoe was forced into this harbor, people along the rocky coast began banging whatever they could get their hands on, until the air was filled with their lunatic percussion.
Tiny brown men came running along a soft yellow cliff overlooking the harbor, gesturing wildly. The canoe was squeezed between a chain of tubs and the shore, and, as it slowed, the tempo and ferocity of the banging decreased accordingly. When the canoe came to a halt the banging and shouting stopped. Hero creaked to his feet. The first North American to set foot on Asian soil stepped out shakily.
There followed the profoundest silence imaginable.
A second later it was as if a dam had burst.
Hundreds of hysterical, yammering voices erupted from hundreds of hysterical, clinging men and women. Hero was spun around, jostled about, handed along. He stared into their astounded, pinched little faces, and the sun, pulsing between their heads as he was turned, repeatedly stabbed his eyes. There came an excited outburst and frantic splashing which could only have been the Aleut’s violent demise, and then Hero was somehow limping alongside a primitive fishing village, blindly following a narrow dirt path that hugged the yellow cliff’s base. The warm spring sun caught the dust as he shambled. He rounded a bend and stopped.
Half a dozen children stood in his way, too fascinated to run. A chatter and scuffle rose behind him. He looked back to see that he was now in the midst of a small crowd of these children, and that more were running up with cries of amazement.
A stone struck his shoulder. As Hero turned another glanced off his chest.
A moment later he was being pelted from all sides, and the giggles and gasps had become something wildly unreal. He dropped to his knees in a hail of hurled rocks, covered his head with his arms, and slithered up the path on his belly.
A new voice broke in; an older, authoritative voice.
The children scampered off squealing.
Hero, shaken to his feet, found himself face to face with a diminutive, shouting, incomprehensible old man. The old man threw his arm around Hero’s waist and, jabbering all the while, led him to a secondary path cut into the cliff’s face. This path sloped gently upward over the waves. Together they picked their way to a place maybe halfway up, where the cliff’s face was honeycombed with natural alcoves and dug-out caves. Most of these spaces were used as one-man shelters; a few, cut deeper in the earth, as family hives. Strange gabbing people slid out of these holes like worms, reaching, but the little old man, who was evidently a little old man of some stature, embraced his find possessively and shouted them back inside.
The path narrowed as they climbed.
At its summit spread the upscale end of the neighborhood. Hero was led to a hovel nestled amid dozens of similar hovels, all scattered around a dainty stream wending between patches of stunted vegetation.
The old man’s place was basically a one-room hut fashioned of earth and salvaged boat hulls, with a slender side-yard surrounded by dry, dusty hedges. But inside it was clean and tidy, with rice paper partitioning and, built into the far earthen wall, a miniature stone fireplace. The old man sat his guest in the exact center of the room. There he fed him scraps from his bowl, using long sticks to pluck out bits of fish and clumps of tiny, starchy white pellets.
He studied the brute closely, watched him chew, walked round and round him. He poked here. He pinched there.
And that night he lit a fire on his crushed-shell hearth.
Hero curled up on a mat where the gossip of flames could reach him. Nearby, at his delicate wicker table, the old man sat in semi-darkness, illuminated only from the waist down.
But his eyes were alive. They spat and darted as they reflected the fire’s light, and, when at last they’d begun to sputter, his scratchy little voice came pattering out of the dark, muttering something vile and oddly modulated, sometimes in a whisper, sometimes in a gathering snarl.
Hero feigned slumber, unable to ignore those paired ominous flashes. Still, the room was cozy, and the fire warm, and the play of light and shadow kicked sleep in his eyes.

In the morning he woke in the old man’s side-yard, his head pounding, a rusty iron clamp securely fastened around his neck. This clamp was attached to the outermost link of a crude three-foot chain, and the link at the other end to a long stake driven into eight inches of solid rock. The chain and stake, like the clamp, were hammered of local iron. The clamp was too tight for comfortable swallowing, the chain too short to make standing possible. Hero could, however, spread out on his chest and stretch an arm to a low row of hedges. By parting the tangled undergrowth he had a limited view of the fishing village below, and of the harbor beyond. As the days passed he was able to tweak himself a view-space discernible only from his peculiar vantage. He accomplished this by gently breaking small branches strategically, then guiding their interrupted growth with the utmost tenderness. It was his secret garden.
He had no memory—none whatsoever—of being staked here. Obviously the old man hadn’t set this up overnight. Hero’s mind prodded timidly…how many others had been chained to this spot, and why?
But over the subsequent weeks and months he went beyond caring. Each day was the same:  just after dawn the old man would storm into the tiny side-yard swinging his reed whip wildly. The lashings were savage and unremitting. The old man, except for his eyes, would be mute. Only his whip need speak. And the snap of his reed had but one message:  when you see this whip you go down, and you go down immediately.
The naked savage, scarred head to foot, learned to go prostrate on the moment. Even so, the old man couldn’t resist the temptation to indulge in the occasional good old, all-out thrashing. And after each session he would toss the prisoner a vile mess of dead fish and rotting leftovers.
Hero lived like this for many months, lost in a confused world of pain and anticipation. Perversely, he came to look forward to the bite of that whip, for, whether he flogged him in passion or just for sport, the old man was always sure to make it personal. It seemed their relationship might go on forever.
But one day there was a great commotion in the sleepy little fishing village. Hero parted the leaves and beheld a small train of oblong coaches at rest near the harbor. Large oxen yoked in pairs lolled between the carriages, immune to the clamor around them. There were dark shaggy horses and colorfully dressed Bactrian camels. The horses and camels were tethered in the rear, but were occasionally paraded around the carriages by little men wielding long painted bamboo poles. The whole affair was exotic and mesmerizing, eccentric and profane. Hero watched all day in amazement, infected by the hubbub, though he was totally mystified by the crowd’s fascination on the carriages’ far side.
And late that afternoon he saw the old man come walking out of that crowd, talking heatedly with another man. The stranger was shorter and broader than the old man, with long stringy hair and long stringy mustaches. He saw them climbing the path, saw them crawl inside a hole lashing furiously. They were lost from view for a minute, then popped up big as life. Hero glowed and curled up eagerly as they approached.
The old man and stranger came into the narrow side-yard still arguing. The old man grabbed Hero by the hair and twisted until he was facing the newcomer.
The stranger had oily, porous skin, and a round but grave countenance. His highly slanted eyes were bright and restless. He studied Hero’s mutilated face with keen interest before borrowing the old man’s reed. When Hero scraped at his feet he grunted and returned the reed.
The stranger pulled out something shiny and hefted it in his hand. He then raised his other hand while considering Hero, as though weighing him too. The old man’s eyes glinted, and for an instant his expression became grotesquely servile. The stranger and old man, facing, nodded curtly in unison. The stranger dropped the shiny thing onto the old man’s itching palm. The old man whipped Hero frantically before taking a small ax to the chain. A few hard blows split a link, the broken link was bent back by the tool’s shaft, and the prisoner was at last released.
The old man handed the stranger a short hempen rope. The stranger bowed deeply. He then tied an end of the rope through one of the remaining links and began dragging Hero along. Hero’s hands sought the old man, who kicked and cursed him all the way to the path. The three stumbled single-file to the bottom. The old man waved his arms and shouted hysterically, trotting behind until he ran out of breath. But he got in a final kick and, before he came to a gasping halt, managed to lash Hero once for old time’s sake, and to spit on him twice for luck.

There were five carriages; a long one in the center hitched to four oxen, and two smaller coaches in the front and rear with a pair of oxen on each. The carriages were old and battered, built of splitting wood slats and rusted iron braces. Various hides, spare wheels, and a hundred odds and ends were tied to the sides and roofs. Hero’s new master, using him as a ram, shoved him through the crowd to the long carriage. He hauled him up the single wood step and watched the crowd’s reaction. Children hid behind mothers, mothers hissed and jeered, men spat in that smashed, disgusting face.
Satisfied, Hero’s master twisted the rope tighter and dragged him through the hide flap that served as the carriage’s rear wall.
A strange ruckus began at their entrance.
Inside the carriage were bulky shapes and quirky movements, yet the immediate and overwhelming impression was one of unbelievable stench. Hero, instantly covered with flies, was kicked and shoved down a foot-wide aisle. The carriage’s walls were riddled with black flecks of old dried blood, the floor coated with standing *****, a variety of small carcasses, and some clinging, indefinable slime. But the living contents of this hell were so horrifying, and so unexpected, that Hero at once dropped to his knees. Observing this, master grabbed a whip off the wall and lashed him along the floor.
A number of bamboo cages lined either side of the carriage, each four feet high, four feet wide, and three feet deep. In the first cage to their left, a quadruple amputee dangled in a leather harness in a cloud of flies, jealously gnawing a chicken carcass balanced on his belly. The second cage held a man who had been burned over ninety per cent of his body, and the third a middle-aged woman with no eyes or tongue, her head shaved. The next cage housed a fully grown black leopard, its bright eyes fixed on the horrified newcomer. Then an empty cage, and finally a cage containing a demented man whose long yellow nails were busily raking a face deeply scarred and bleeding.
The first cage against the opposite wall held two girls rolling in their own excrement. Siamese twins unable to part, they had developed a unique method of locomotion, and now executed a three-quarters cartwheel in Hero’s direction, their mangled, severely bitten hands attempting to reach him through the bars. In the cage next to theirs a naked dwarf glowered menacingly, his eyes following coldly as Hero’s master shoved him down the narrow aisle, occasionally pausing to lash a cage. The hissing and howling increased as each prisoner beheld the new neighbor.
The third cage held an intensely sick adult Bornean sun bear, so confined it was entirely unable to move. Its hide was a patchwork of scraggly fur and grayish skin, glistening with odd eruptions. It rolled its sunken eyes in Hero’s direction, its muzzle twitching feebly.
The next cage contained a man who was frightfully diseased. Broad fungal patches covered his face and limbs, terminating in waxy folds that dangled like a rooster’s wattles. Welling sores spotted his chest and back. His eyes were bugged and sallow; his lower lip drooped below his chin. He barked wetly at Hero’s passing legs.
The second-to-last cage housed a rare, completely hairless Chinese albino, and the last cage a very tall, skeletal woman. The albino snapped at Hero while repeatedly banging his head against the cage. The woman hissed and coiled like a snake, her spine arching amazingly.
Master hauled Hero to the empty cage on his left, swung its door open with his foot, and forced him to his knees by pushing down with all his weight. He kicked and punched until Hero had been squeezed inside, then shut and secured the wide bamboo door.
Master inched his way back down the carriage, hammering the **** of his whip on each cage as he passed. There was a glimpse of daylight as he lifted the flap.
Once he’d departed, the carriage grew eerily silent.
Hero cautiously turned his head. Less than a foot away, the black leopard was frozen in place, one paw waving hypnotically in his face. The beast’s fangs were bared, its ears straight back, its eyes glistening. Hero turned ever so slowly, until he was looking into the eyes of the demented man in the final cage. The man cocked his head quizzically. A second later he was screaming his lungs out in a bizarre downward spiral.
At once the carriage erupted. The freaks shrieked and scrabbled, the leopard spun in place. Directly across the aisle, the albino hurled himself against the bars of his cage. He batted his face with his fists, threw back his head, and just howled and howled and howled. The snake woman curled even tighter, her long scrawny legs entwined behind her head.
Hero sat with breath held, absolutely silent, absolutely motionless. He very, very slowly closed his eyes.

Later that night the flap was flung high. The menagerie came alive as master, weirdly illuminated by moonlight, slowly made his way down the aisle carrying a skin sack oozing blood. He stopped at each cage to toss in a dying chicken and a handful of smelt.
When he reached Hero’s cage he looked down thoughtfully.
He extracted a quivering chicken and held it above the cage so that blood dripped on the brute’s deeply pleated forehead. Hero lowered his eyes. Master’s face darkened. He smashed the bird against the cage, over and over, a vein throbbing in his temple. Finally he hissed and displayed the limp chicken high over the albino’s head. The albino yelped and kicked, thrusting his hand up between the bars and jerking it back to lick away the blood rolling down his forearm.
Master eyed Hero coldly before pointedly dropping the chicken into the albino’s searching hands.
Master hissed again. He slowly made his way out.
Soon there was a commotion outside. The carriage rocked a bit before settling. Hero, turning in his cage to peek through a rift in the wood, saw horses being urged forward. He could hear men shouting. The carriage rocked again. He looked up and saw the gibbous moon suspended in mist. For just a second something wedge-shaped cut across its soft white face.
But then the oxen were grunting, the wheels had been freed, and the horses drawn abreast. Master’s lash spat left and right, and the show proceeded…west.

                                              MA­STER

She was very round and very small, with very short, very shaggy black hair. Her arms bore the scars of numerous bites from beast and man, and around her neck ran long wheals from a particularly savage owner. Hero, having spent the better part of the morning watching master storm in and out of a strange screaming house, now watched him drag the little round woman through the dirt. For a while he listened to the song of his master’s lash, waiting for the woman to break. But there was never a whimper.
It had been a difficult transaction for master, and an altogether difficult morning. For hours he’d paced up and down the main carriage, alternately murmuring affectionately into, and lashing at, each cage he visited. The sun bear, long dead and stuffed, had been taken outside for barter. It had soon been returned.
Master had lingered over Hero’s cage for a good while, staring critically. He’d begun shouting, and three of his men had burst in through the flap, unlatched the demented man’s cage, and dragged him out by the feet for trade, master personally stomping on his torn and groping hands.
And now master was kicking and shoving the little woman down the aisle as his men restrained her by the hair and throat. Upon master’s command these men stripped her naked and commenced pinching and slapping while making threatening faces and mocking noises. The freaks sat right up in their cages.
The woman looked as though she’d fainted:  her arms were lax, her eyes rolled up. Her whole face seemed to purse, and her body, head to toe, began to run blue. Her fingers quivered, arched, and clawed—the woman was self-asphyxiating. Master fairly leaped with delight while the cages rocked around him. He had the men slap her awake. Once she was fully conscious they stuffed her into the demented man’s old cage next to Hero’s.
Master then looked in eagerly, one to the other, his hands balled into fists. The woman buried her odd round face in her forearms as she squeezed herself into her cage’s deepest corner. Hero gazed indifferently and went back to his peephole.
Master exploded. He smacked and kicked the cages over and over, swore up and down, ran the shaft of his whip back and forth against the heavy bamboo bars. Eventually he calmed somewhat. He stared coldly at Hero, made a ***** smile, and spat right in his eyes. A tense minute passed. Master slowly made his way outside.
Hero automatically relaxed. Across the aisle the albino ****** his face between his cage’s bars to sniff the newcomer. The leopard, bobbing rhythmically, emitted a high-pitched squeal that gradually descended to a steadily throbbing growl.
Hero looked the stranger over. Once she’d lowered her hands he saw that her eyes were crossed, her jaw slack, her face as round as the full moon. He looked closer. There were scars all over her throat and arms:  plainly, the small round woman had been treated very badly. Hero instinctively slid a foot between the bars; the woman cried out and scrunched even deeper. Across the aisle the albino quickly extended an arm. Without knowing why, Hero turned on him. The albino flinched, his eyes tearing into Hero’s. A second later he was stamping his feet and grinning wildly. Hero went back to his peephole.
Next morning master and two of his men dismantled the bamboo walls separating Hero’s and the woman’s cages. They bound the frames with broad leather bands, making a single cage of the two.
A common door was fashioned and secured. Master used his broad blade to shear away Hero’s rags. The men hunched around the long cage expectantly.
The naked couple backed away. Master was instantly exasperated—he shouted, lashed furiously, stamped and screamed, jabbed a broken shaft between the bars with malevolent intent, whirled and hurled the shaft at nothing. The carriage’s inmates went out of their minds. At master’s bellowed command a man scurried outside, returning with a long rope of woven leather strands. Master opened the cage and, applying all his weight, pinned Hero and his new mate in an awkward embrace while his men tied them together.
Again master and his men bent over the long cage to watch.
When Hero realized his predicament he made a desperate attempt to reach his peephole.
The men, misreading his struggles, babbled and cheered, but master threw up his hands. He then, through gesture, ordered his men to drape a number of hides over the long cage. Once these hides were in place he very quietly bent to one knee and placed an ear against the cage. After a while he cursed and rose to his feet. He shook the cage and stormed out, whipping and kicking the howling inmates.
In the semi-darkness the man and woman quit fighting their bonds.
A muffled patter began on the hide-covered roof.
Rain, as always, had a calming effect on the carriage’s occupants, causing the freaks and beasts to slip, one by one, into lethargy or slumber. Under such a spell, the attainment of master’s goal was inevitable.
It was a coupling both innocent and vile, without passion or celebration. Occasionally the freaks would surface, register their excitement by shrieking, shaking their cages, or otherwise clamoring…but very quickly the air would stifle them, weighing their heads and confusing their impulses. The atmosphere grew heavier by the minute. And, when night rolled over the carriages, the rain came down in sheets.

Leaning ******* the woman’s cage, master slipped his gnarly hand between the bars and slowly rubbed her belly in a counter-clockwise motion, his sinister features soft in the candle’s light. And he told, in nonsensical cooing whispers, of a lovingly secure and impossibly prosperous future.
How large and promising that belly had become! And how wise was he, the cunning and aggressive master, in his far-reaching business decisions. He turned his affection to the motionless gaping brute; stroked the battlefield of its face, tossed in another lizard. Master rubbed his palms together. From now on it was extra lizards daily, for both the woman and her mate. He remarked, with only passing interest, his star player’s continuing indifference. They didn’t know each other, didn’t need each other.
There’d been months of shows on the road now, broken only recently by this sensible rejoining of the mates at conception.
Hero’s horrible disfigurement was unquestionably top draw; he was a guaranteed crowd pleaser at every stop. So now master looked him straight in the eyes and smiled. He held the reeking candle high. The carriage was absolutely silent. Master smiled again, rose to his feet, tiptoed away.
Hero watched him retreat until the flap had fallen. He returned to his peephole, saw master round the rear of the carriage and slowly crunch by. For a time he could see nothing but the half-shapes of junipers bathed in starlight. There was a tentative movement to his right and a large shape came to obstruct his view.
The horse stood for a minute in profile. It slowly brought its head to rest against the carriage, applying its eye to the peephole. Hero froze. The two remained fixed, eyeball to eyeball, while a breeze played odd tunes on the outer wall’s hanging paraphernalia. The horse’s big dark eye rolled nervously. A long moment passed. Slowly the horse backed off. It stood uncertainly for a while, staring at the peephole. Then it quietly moved away.

Master kicked the cages one by one, left hand and right, as he slowly made his way down the aisle. Into each cage he delivered a personalized warning in passing—a growl, a hiss, a bark—but he was quickly losing control. Animal electricity hopscotched the carriage, cage to cage, ceiling to floor, front to rear and back again. Master froze. Much more of this excitement, he feared, could seriously agitate the woman—with grave consequences for master.
She was splayed on her back, in labor’s throes, her ankles and wrists bound to the long cage. Hero had been removed to give her room, and now sat hunched atop the snake woman’s cage, two men holding him by the throat and legs.
Master gnashed and snarled, listening to the woman scream, watching her stupid round head bounce up and down and back and forth. He knew it! He’d been suckered, hoodwinked, scammed—ripped off like a common rube. The woman was too ******* to handle even something as natural as childbirth. Still…it was too late to second-guess himself—all these months he’d been patient—he’d been supportive and vigilant and now he would not be denied. He flogged one of the men to alleviate his tension.
The blue lady was very slowly, very dramatically arching her spine. Master wiped the sweat from his eyes. When the bars were pleating her big round belly, her shoulders began drumming on the straw-strewn floor.
Master screamed one very colorful expletive.
A razor silence came over the carriage. Not a body moved or breathed.
At last two men tiptoed around their purpling master and leaned into the cage. One obediently ****** a foot between the bars. He pushed ******* her right knee while using a hand to grip the left knee, spreading her legs wide. The other man drew a broad leather strap between her teeth. After lifting the woman’s head he pulled the strap behind her neck, knotted it to make a gag, and yanked a skin sack over her face. He looked up anxiously. Master licked his lips and nodded. The man made a fist and frantically punched the woman’s face until her muffled screams ceased. She moaned gently throughout her contractions.
Master genuflected, brought a spitting candle in tight, and took a deep breath. As he raised his hand the candle’s light bounced off his knife’s chipped and scored eleven-inch blade. Master swore and reached down carefully. He flicked his wrist twice and the menagerie went mad.

The child was a tremendous disappointment.
Master had eagerly anticipated an infant ******* and deformed; something embracing the best qualities of its parents. He had even designed a special cage that could be expanded by degrees as the spawn developed. There also remained the tantalizing option of a family display, though such an undertaking would require the eventual construction of a structure even larger than the cage its parents now shared. Master anguished over the logistics, knowing it would break his heart to have to cut one of his jewels’ throats just to make room for a growing child. Nights he would slowly pace the carriage with all the possessiveness of a jealous suitor, one hand maneuvering a sputtering candle, the other tenderly rapping his whip’s **** against each visited cage.
But the boy was a flawless specimen; a beautiful, undemanding baby. From the moment master angrily tossed the placenta he felt cheated, even betrayed. He grimaced as it peaceably took to its mother’s breast, despite the surrounding horrors. Master hated it, immediately and entirely. The ****** thing was so docile it was almost charming. He drew his knife and was just reaching down, when an overwhelming sense of dread shook him like a rat in the jaws of a mastiff. Sweat poured down his squat, pig-tailed nape. He knew he would live to regret it, but decided to not cut the child’s throat right away. It was the oddest feeling. His knife hand had trembled for the first time in his life, and he had found himself momentarily contemplating right and wrong at the outset of a perfectly simple and commonplace procedure. That was it, then. His business instincts were letting him know there was a good, albeit unknowable, reason to let the sweet baby live. Master left the carriage anxiously, muttering in his ambivalence.
The boy grew to embody his worst expectations. Not only was it a poorly oriented child, clinging to its father rather than its master almost from the moment of weaning, but it soon proved a lousy draw with the patrons. Those who paid to view the child dangling in its special cage inevitably departed unsatisfied, some vocalizing, strangely, an acute sense of shame. So once again master entered the carriage with his knife hand steady, and once again he exited trembling, his heart in his throat and his soul in a whirl. He whipped the dwarf savagely before leaving. What place conscience in the mind of a businessman?
Soon as the boy could walk, master put him to work fetching and feeding. But the brat was slothful in his chores, preferring to hang around his family’s cage while staring wistfully at his father. For their part, the parents were wholly disinterested. Master would fume while Hero gazed for hours out his peephole—even as the mother lolled, perpetually ill. Sometimes that accursed woman’s condition riled poor master to no end. She could teeter at death’s door for months at a time, her body changing hues to the fascination of customers, only to bounce back with a hardiness that was of interest to no one. But at the peak of her performances the blue lady could really hold a crowd. Master produced an entire outdoors extravaganza around her:  within concentric rings of raging torches his men would slowly strip her naked before wild audiences, then allow the dwarf and albino to take her while the leopard strained against a gaily festooned chain. Master circulated his crew through the crowds to encourage his patrons’ cult-like behavior of breath-holding and fainting. No getting around it:  the customers were crazy about her—village to village, master’s Bactrian vanguard’s colorful robes shouted her approaching fame. And Hero’s popularity continued to soar. Many were the nights when master, pacing the perimeter, wondered just what devilry could have produced the lovely boy.
Overall, Hero remained his master’s favorite conceit and hottest property. Part of the little brute’s appeal was, of course, his exoticness. And certainly the ugliness arising from his deformity was compelling…but there was a detachedness about him that fascinated every soul with a fistful of copper cash coins. Whether they ****** him, cudgeled him, or spat in his face, he remained unflappable, staring only at the aching sky. Though many would leave uneasy, master noted with deep satisfaction that they almost invariably returned.
The boy soon evinced an amazing affinity for animals. No matter how agitated an ox or horse became, the child could pacify it with one hand on a lowered brow. This was a source of endless fascination for the crew. Wagers were made. The boy was pitted against oxen whipped to a frenzy. But they would not harm him; they would rather go prostrate and take the lash. Master tried to work this knack into a viable act, but his patrons just weren’t buying. They wanted freaks.
When the lad was a mere five years old, master had him trained in the peripheral art of the pickpocket. The boy worked well alone, and had all the makings of a fine little flimflam artist. Master sighed, his chronic nightmares a thing of the past. As ever, his business instincts were guiding him well.
Then late one afternoon he found the boy squatting outside his parents’ cage. The boy had done the unthinkable:  he had deposited his day’s pickings at the feet of his father instead of bringing the ***** to master. Master flew into a rage and raised his whip to give the little traitor the lashing he deserved. But before he could deliver a single stroke his other hand shot to his chest and he staggered back against the albino’s cage. He blinked down at the boy, who regarded him steadily while scooping the plunder into a little pile.
From that day on the boy placed whatever he could get his hands on at his father’s feet. As time passed he became ever more adroit at thievery, growing into a youngster both admired and despised by master and his crew; admired because theft was a cinch for him, despised because they were all that much lighter in their possessions.
Now, for eleven long years the strange little train had bounced along, sometimes camping outside villages for months, occasionally pausing on connecting roads. The show traversed the heart of Manchuria, skirted the Gobi in the north, and so eventually crossed almost the entire width of Mongolia before proceeding north to the confluence of the rivers Yenisey and Ob’. Much silver and copper had come to master’s coffer, much fame to his name, but he now sat looking over a vast, unmapped Siberian wilderness. The mostly nomadic characters they’d been encountering spoke in tongues unfamiliar even to his personal valet-translator-accountant, and the tone of these nomads had been unmistakably hostile.
Master huddled surlily under a canopy of sopping hides. Night was falling hard during a merciless rain, the wind was picking up, and his supplies coach was bogged in a growing sea of mud. At that moment he accepted the whole end-of-the-line concept, and knew he wasn’t going anywhere but back. And when he got back he was going to shine! He jumped from the coach.
The earth took his weight for a heartbeat—and he was up to his chin in muck, splashing about on his hands and knees, sliding forward on his palms and toes. He did a belly flop into a rain-filled depression and churned to his feet with the devil in his eyes. Wallowing in mud and bile, master stomped to the supplies coach and kicked wildly at the stuck rear wheels.
Somewhere between kicks he lost it completely.
Master broke for his whip. One minute he was blindly lashing his men, the next he’d succumbed to a mindless ferocity. He thrashed about like a berserker; whipping the beasts, the coach, the very night. His men were scarcely able to move in all that mud, but their dread of his savagery kept them hopping. They gathered as one and shoved the coach recklessly; slipping, splashing, shouting. A minute later, three lay splayed underfoot, but the mired wheel had been freed.
Throughout all this the oxen had swayed nervously, while the horses softly tramped their hooves in place. Master had his men turn the oxen about until the rickety train was pointing dead east. He checked the hitches and personally applied the lash. The oxen didn’t budge. Master swore and wiped the rain from his eyes. He had the horses hitched ahead of the oxen, but they were even less obliging. Master flew into a spectacular rage. His men, fearing for their lives, ran liberally with the lash.
The swaying of oxen picked up until the entire train of carriages was rocking. Yet the oxen could not, would not be compelled, under any amount of prodding, to take an eastward step. Master looked around in exasperation.
The night had gone insane.
Horses were fighting hitches, oxen walking on fire.
Master cursed the rain and mud and lashed all the harder. His men, seeking to please, whipped maniacally until the horses and both lead oxen broke their hitches and bolted west. The men immediately embraced the rear oxen, but the hitches shattered and the beasts stormed off. The remaining horses blew it, kicking at everything and nothing.
Inside the long carriage all was chaos. The albino was neighing and screaming, the aged leopard spinning in its cage. Hero stared out his peephole, amazed at the blur of figures stumbling by in the rain.
A pair of clopping blows rattled the opposite wall. Three slats cracked. A tremendous impact, and a huge section collapsed. A thrashing, hysterical mare burst through the breach in a veil of rain.
The horse went mad, killing the albino and snake woman in a flurry of hooves. She fell ******* the near wall, crushing the cages. The leopard shot into the air like a rocket, slashed at the mare’s throat and vanished in the rain. The horse reared above the family cage. She was just coming down in a wheeling storm of hooves when something made her freeze. Her stare locked with Hero’s, and a second later her eyes were rolling in their sockets. The mare kicked crazily and came down ******* her left flank, smashing the long cage’s side. She whirled upright and leaped outside.
For a tense minute the family sat in the rubble, rain bombarding their eyes. Nothing in their years of captivity had prepared them for such a situation. But by the end of that minute the son had taken full command. He rolled onto his back, braced himself, and kicked his parents across the aisle, through the remnants of the opposing cage, and out of the carriage. They all fell about in the mud and rain. To the west, the mare stared back strangely as she splashed into the night. The boy wedged himself between his parents, threw his arms around them, and pushed with all his might. Their bodies found a common center of gravity. Fumbling drunkenly, the family staggered through the rain in the wake of the mare.

The boy was the natural leader.
Master’s innocent-looking little ex-student could quickly assess and exploit almost any situation. He did the foraging and the figuring, slept with one eye open and one fist ready. He got what he wanted by charm or by stealth, slipping off at nightfall, returning at daybreak with small slaughtered animals and chunks of dark peasant bread. He also pilfered any bauble or oddity he could get his paws on, to be placed reverently at his father’s mangled feet. Breadwinner and watchdog, he faithfully held the family together; a nuclear son. He sewed hardy feather-lined cloaks of reindeer hide, and turned a cache of marmot pelts into a kind of side-slung backpack. He was doting nurse during his mother’s episodes, and unbending apportioner of calories in lean times. Dauntless when it meant crossing mighty rivers, relentless when it came to finding mountain passes. But the endless marching, the unreliable diet, and the countless predators made the three wanderers lean, haggard moving targets. There were times when the little lamp of family was all but extinguished, and long stands in places that seemed absolutely impassable. Still, the boy would work things out. He would stoop to any level to feed Hero, and for a stranger to threaten his father was to summon a psychotic, unyielding monster. He was both spear and shield.
The toughest job of all was maintaining a tight unit, meaning he was forced to become a hard-nosed ******* whenever his father was ready to wander off, which always seemed to be whenever the mother was hurting most. She’d become a tremendous impediment to Hero’s compulsion, and therefore her son’s chief nemesis. It wasn’t a big-picture concern anyway; the writing was on the wall. The blue lady’s attacks were increasing spectacularly on the steppe; her world had always been an enclosure of some kind, and the great horizon was proving just too much. Perhaps these intense affairs served as links to Hero’s suppressed memories, for at the onset of each attack he’d turn and hike, and then only exhaustion could curb him. The boy would press his mother on, dragging, shoving, and smacking—he could be mean when necessary, and though circumstances had made him the nucleus, their worlds unquestionably revolved around Hero. Where he sat, they sat. When he rose, they did the same. In this manner they marched for years across the vast steppes, single-file—father, mother, and son, respectively—unmolested, lacking possessions, always following the sun. Long before they could be measured they had drifted into obscurity.
The woman’s end came quickly and dramatically, in a rocky little depression on a half-frozen field. One moment she was responsive to her son’s prompts, the next she was flat on her back, her eyelids fluttering. That night she leapt from fever to chill, from alertness to stupor. The boy, squatting beside their campfire, watched her face and hands run cadaver-blue to fish belly-pale and back again. While he was staring her eyes popped open and her hands came scrabbling. He sweated through the clawing embrace until he could bear it no longer. He oozed out and ran down to fetch his father.
When they got back Hero watched incuriously for a while. His mate’s face was scrunched up and her skin the color of sapphires. She wasn’t breathing.
His gaze became glassy, his eyes returned to the night. As he rose the boy immediately grabbed an arm. Neither moved for minutes. When the boy at last relinquished, his father casually stumbled off.
Strange things were going on in Hero’s world. Some days he would notice how animals regarded him oddly, in a manner that seemed almost personal. He found, for instance, that particular creatures were recognizable even over great distances. A number of times he would sit with one in a stare-down, waiting patiently, until the animal’s natural disposition caused it to bolt. Though the meaning of these encounters was way over his head, he would watch, and he would listen.
In time he noticed an increasing skittishness in some of these familiar creatures. Something had them spooked. He then observed a number of lean gray wolves moving in and out of the picture with an air of complete indifference:  these wolves weren’t hunting; they were loitering—lounging in the grass, lackadaisically padding to the rear, filing by slowly in the distance. Once in a while a lounger would raise its head, yawn cavernously, and drop back out of sight. So unobtrusive was their behavior that even Hero’s ever-vigilant son began to take them for granted. They paused where the family paused, and halted whenever the woman broke down. Perfectly camouflaged by the gray boulders and dire sky, they were completely forgotten in the drama of her passing.
There were other, far subtler events existing for Hero’s senses alone. He could perceive patterns in everything around him; in the manner vegetation gave way wherever his heart was leading, in the way so many animals appeared to be not merely mirroring, but making his course. And wind, rain, running water:  these phenomena had voices. Yet not for everybody. No one—not his mate, not his son, not another soul on the planet could hear this call, for they were all of a sort. They were static, they were temporal. Hero couldn’t have cared less about the lives of his family, or about the mundane goings-on in the encampments and small tribes they skirted. Such beings lived in a world that was defined by the moment. They shouted, they banged, they clamored.
But west—west was music.
For his boy, once again watching Hero shamble off, the moment of truth had arrived. He looked back down, at his mother’s death mask being remade by the dying light of their campfire. As the flames dwindled he could have sworn he saw shadows creep into the wells of her eyes, while others, crawling up around her jawline, drew her bluing lips like purse strings. He hopped to his feet and ran for another handful of tinder. When their little fire provided enough light he dropped to his knees and looked again.
She was sinking right before his eyes, every aspect of her expression in collapse. The boy watched clinically, fascinated. As the flames began to sputter he thought he could see large purple bruises spreading across her cheeks like the seeping limbs of overflowing pools. He bent closer.
From deep in the night came the longest, the leanest, the saddest wail he’d ever heard. He turned to see the starlit ghost of his father, facing away, staring at a low barren hill. Uncountable stars embroidered the spot. The boy made out a low shape moving along the hilltop, cutting off patches of stars as it passed.
The wolf howled again; a mournful, spiraling cry to nowhere and nothing. Hero’s head notched upward. He began to hike.
Halfway to his feet the boy stopped dead.
It took a minute to sense why he’d frozen in place, and a good while longer for his heart to quit pounding. He was aware of a nervous padding, and, once his vision had adjusted, of a lazy stream of eyes gleaming in the dying campfire’s light. The eyes bobbed around him, glared momentarily, returned to the ground.
A massive gasp, and his mother was tearing at his wrist. He watched her hyperventilating, saw her bulbous yellow eyes sinking in a wide violet pool. With a sizzle and pop the last tongue of flame was taken by the night.
Then her clammy hands were all over him, pulling and demanding, caressing and beseeching. He had to pry them off like leeches, had to place them clasped on her shuddering arched belly.
A silky snarl rose almost in his ear.
With a little squeal he sprang to his feet, even as something nearby jumped back in response.
The boy stood absolutely still while the panting thing padded nearer. They stood very close, smelling each other. He instinctively extended a hand, palm forward. But it was no good; his arm was shaking out of control. The snarl rose again, not so tentatively this time. His mother’s nails tore at his ankle.
The boy gently stepped away, only to find himself surrounded by the shifting silhouettes of half a dozen gray wolves. They approached in a calculated manner:  two from the left, one from the right, another from behind. He was being goaded away from his mother; he could hear her fists beating the ground, and a few seconds later the sounds of a nauseating assault and ravaging.
He shakily raised his other hand. Now both arms were extended, and their message was clearly one of defense rather than control. Two snapping wolves stepped aside, leaving him a gateway into the night. A cold wet nose bumped his wrist.
Screaming like a woman, he took off after his father just as fast as his feet would carry him.

                                                  BOY

Alon­g the great Kazakh Steppe a man could wander a lifetime and never meet another of his kind—especially if his kind happened to be Alaskan Inuk, and if he happened to be the teenaged patriarch of a two-man family going nowhere.
Here history is mostly mute.
Upon this continent-spanning steppe, unnamed communities were scattered and rebuilt, lives blown about by the wind. The only centers of humanity a traveler might encounter, far removed from the Silk Road at the very crack of the new millennium, were temporary encampments of civilization at its rudest—shifting holes of cutthroat commerce existing solely for the barter of silk and spices and hapless souls. Life here was revered far less than merchandise, and the longest-lived men were those who kept their distance.
Hero and his boy hiked over permafrost and tundra for years; their meandering course a drunken mapmaker’s scrawl. Chronological entries along this imaginary line would reveal that they’d stopped, sometimes for months at a time, when the father had grown too weak and disoriented to continue. Hero’s internal compass was long-sprung, and his weight had fallen considerably. He’d sit on his lonesome, scarecrow-scrawny, wistfully scrolling a 360-horizon while his boy scouted and scavenged. Then, for no apparent reason, he’d just up-and hike—sometimes northwest, sometimes along a tangential plane that always threatened to spiral. It was brutal:  winters were frigid, summers, by odd contrast, running steamy to baking. Season by season these marches lost their tenaciousness, and eventually their heart. Hero’s obsession was becoming his demise.
Now, to a hypothetical observer, the ratty pair of woolly camels materializing out of the rising August heat might have been mirages.
These beasts were novelties here, and pioneers, for they were way beyond their normal stomping grounds. They’d tramped for months with a mind-numbing monotonousness, a thousand miles and more; round the Urals to the south, and through the hard territory braced by the Volga and Voronezh, avoiding anything that even smelled of men. They’d been wild camels; ugly, ill-tempered, and unpredictable, until the boy tamed them by touch…but this new pattern was a literal change of pace…for weeks the frail little man and his dark teenaged son rose and fell with the animals’ rhythm, lulled by it, sick of it, dreaming of lands far removed from hoarfrost and peat moss. In this manner they were borne clear to present-day Belarus, whereupon the camels’ stupefying march began to quicken. Mile by mile they put on steam, until one day they reached a broad area distinguishable from its bracing terrain only by its many deep surface cracks. Here the camels’ behavior became erratic; they crouched at an angle while tramping, their long necks oscillating, their noses bobbing along the ground. Eventually they came upon a dingy pool nestled in a pebbly depression. The local brush surrounding this pool was situated like iron filings about a lodestone. The boy hauled back his camel’s neck and laid a hand on its brow. The brute slowed to a halt. The other camel imitated its partner, move for move. Simultaneously the animals dropped to their knees.
The boy jumped off, catching Hero as he fell. The camels stood watching stupidly as son maneuvered father, but after a while grew nervous and began tramping their hooves in time. They slowly stepped to the pool’s rim and knelt woozily, their noses poised just above the surface. Their whiskers danced on the pool’s face, their lids became heavy, their hindquarters quivered as they drank. Their nostrils, having fluttered in unison, remained agape. They appeared to be asleep.
The boy began filling skins.
The water was quite warm; he slurped a palmful and almost immediately felt intoxicated.
He flicked it off his fingers; the water was bad.
Three heads were now mirrored in the pool; the camels’ at ten o’clock and two o’clock, the boy’s at six. He watched their reflections continue to ripple, long after the pool had become still. His face, melting and firming, rapidly fluctuated between extremes of age, and between his own recognizable features and those of some…monstrosity. The effect was hypnotic. He felt his joints stiffen; his eyes became weak, his thoughts muddled…his face was irresistibly drawn to the pool’s surface, and for a moment he was in real peril of drowning. He ****** his head aside and creaked to his feet.
Where the camels had knelt were only the prints of their bellies and knees. In the distance they could be seen galloping all-out for the horizon, right back the way they’d come. The boy watched until they were swallowed by their dust, and when he turned around his father was long gone.
Now he knew it was all just a matter of time.
And sure enough, after eleven more days of feebly staggering along, Hero completely ran out of gas. The boy bundled him up in a shawl, like an old woman.
Sitting there, cradling an unresponsive man weighing less than eighty pounds, he couldn’t help but let his morbid fantasies run wild. He was now old enough to realize his father had at some time suffered severe head trauma, and honest enough to accept that the man was rapidly approaching a vegetative state. This understanding accompanied him like a shadow, and that night he questioned, for the very first time, his own convoluted rationale.
He was just beginning to sense that his will was not his own.
He built a semi-permanent camp west of the Desna and foraged in a tight spiral, always returning in a straight line. Some days he came back feeling uneasy, sensing another presence. Then it was every other day. It bugged him to no end. At last, when it became every day, he hauled his father to his feet and began a resolute march to the west.
Again he became anxious, and after only a dozen yards.
He turned slowly while hunching, certain something bulky had just dropped out of sight. Nothing looked suspicious, everything looked suspicious. He walked Hero some more, occasionally peering back over his shoulder. There was…something.
He whirled:  only masses of rock and high brush. Yet, when he really strained his eyes, he was sure, pretty sure, that he could make out a large crouching body continuous with the rocks. Heart in his throat, he began a slow steady creep, only to pause, positive the bulge, whatever it was, had shifted in response. The boy very gradually raised his arm until it was level with his eyes, faced the palm outward, and extended the arm parallel with the ground. He could almost feel some kind of current passing between his itching palm and…nothing. He walked over to Hero, stopped again. There’d been the subtlest sense of traction. The boy propped up his father in a cloud of flies and waited.
In a minute the bulge drew *****.
Out of the brush strolled a furry gray wild ***, her back inclined from countless weary miles; stretching her neck, pausing to nibble, taking her sweet time. Grungy as she was, she fit right in.
At the boy’s first casual step she immediately hit the dirt and remained flat on her belly, one big dark eye staring between her hooves. Another step, and her **** bunched up. The closer he got, the higher her rear end rose. When he was almost at arm’s length she sprang back and danced away, seeming to bound with delight. But not to the east, as she’d come.
To the northwest.
She backpedaled while the boy came on whistling and cooing, matching him step for step. But the moment he threw up his arms in resignation she spun round as though cued, dropped on her belly, and peered over her shoulder.
The boy was first to blink. This time he approached fractionally, keeping movements to a minimum. She rose just as carefully, sauntering northwest in reverse, and at the first sign of hesitation turned, dropped, and cautiously gazed back. The boy glared at that huge mocking **** and broke into a sprint. She easily danced out of reach, plopped down, and continued to stare.
He began hurling stones, with venom and with accuracy, until she’d scurried into the brush.
But on the way back to his father he could feel her tagging along.
Twenty feet behind she halted, looking bemused.
The boy nodded ironically. He walked Hero over, murmuring baby talk all the way, and firmly placed a palm on the animal’s muzzle once her breath grazed his fingers. She stroked his hand up and down with her whiskers, gave a kind of curtsy, and waited on her knees while he helped his father mount.
At Hero’s touch a shudder ran down her body. She stood up straight. Her eyes became set, her back absolutely stiff. She put down her head and began the long trek northwest, never once breaking stride.
It was an amazing march, an impossible feat. For a little over three days and almost four hundred miles she progressed like an automaton, driving herself without rest, without food or water.
After trotting alongside for an hour the boy climbed on and force-fed his father berries and smoked meat, his dark eyes constantly searching the countryside. Occasionally he’d see a run of red foxes to their left, watching intently, padding cautiously. Sooner or later they’d vanish, only to be replaced by a train of feline or equine pursuers. Packs approached and receded while, high overhead, flocks formed triangular patterns that continually broke up and reformed. There was a peculiar rhythmic quality to this ebb and flow that lulled his senses further. The boy shook his head to clear it, but his exhaustion was deeper than he’d supposed—even the brush appeared to be leaning northwest.
That first day he grew numb with the pace, and that night the relentless pounding of her hooves drew him into a miserable slumber. He wrapped his arms around his sleeping father and lay half atop. When he couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer he tore strips from his skins, then looped his tied wrists round her neck, his ankles round her belly.
On the second day she was breathing hard, but her back was still high and she showed no signs of faltering. Her eyes remained focused on the ground dead ahead. She always sensed the best routes; finding mountain passes, fording wetlands.
But by the third day they could feel her ribs quaking against their legs. Her breath exploded as she marched, blood frothed and caked about her nostrils. Still she pushed herself on, her pace so steady it was almost metronomic.
On the fourth day her legs were gone. She veered and stumbled, shuddering every few paces. The boy hopped off for the umpteenth time and tried to bring her to graze, but she wouldn’t be turned. He ran behind her as she staggered along, unwilling, or unable, to rest.
At last a foreleg gave and she went down hard. Sobbing and snorting, she plowed her muzzle back and forth in the soil, the useless leg repeatedly pounding the ground. After a minute she raised her head and brayed at the sky, her neck muscles taut, her head slowly swinging side to side. Her cry went on and on.
With a tremendous effort she pushed herself upright and butted the boy aside. Every part of her body was shaking. From her depths a low moan grew to a steady bray, and finally to a wild, pulsing howl. She came to a rise, but was too weak to climb without sliding. Stamping in frustration, she managed a few feet, reared feebly, slid some more. The boy got behind her and applied his back; it took all he had to assist her almost to the top. With a desperate lunge she crashed on her belly.
Amazingly, she dragged herself on, her howl now a scream, her head whipping left and right. When she could pull herself no farther she ****** forth her neck to its very limit and, with a shudder that ran from the tip of her nose to the tuft on her tail, shoved her muzzle straight into the dirt and died.
The boy hauled off his father and fell back. The animal’s eyes were fixed upwards, seeming, even in death, to be straining for a glimpse of what lay just beyond the rise. The boy half-dragged Hero the last few yards. They collapsed at the top, and together looked over the cold Baltic Sea.

At water’s edge a haggard fisherman sat on his boat’s ravaged deck, blindly staring out to sea. His was a queer vessel; a family structure built more like an aft-cabined barge than like seacraft typical of that period. The fisherman’s boat, like his mind, had been abused beyond repair.
He’d lost much in his life. Time had taken his dreams, pox his face, hardship his back and shoulders. And, more recently, a brawling band of drunken Baltic pirates had ***** his wife and daughter before butchering them along with his two fine sons, while he sat helplessly bound to the mast. Finally, to further their delight, they’d set the boat aflame and sent it crackling against the sun; knowing he could hear their hoots and howls, knowing he would drift undead, accompanied only by this last unspeakable memory.
But a squall, without prelude, had doused the flames and blown his home ashore.
There he’d remained for a full long day, staring at nothing, his shattered life caught on the rocks. On the second day he’d worked himself free and commenced staggering about in his memories, gathering shards. It was a pathetic claim. He made a pile of all the old bedding and linen and usable cords, and set about sewing a sort of mementos sail. All that third day he had sewn, and on the fourth he had hoisted this sail and been moved to see it billowing in a northwest-blowing breeze. Again he just sat and gaped. And later that day he’d become aware of a commotion taking place on the long grade leading down to the water, where a writhing mass of seagulls was proceeding like a tremendous slow-motion snowball. He’d never seen anything like it. It wasn’t uncommon to find gulls in a group of many dozens or more, but there must have been two, maybe three thousand of the birds now swarming toward his boat. They were making an incredible racket. In the midst of this cloud could be seen a couple of slowly walking figures; as they neared he made out a small man accompanying a boy in his late teens, both dressed in odd skins. When they reached the rocks his eyes were drawn to the small man’s face. It was a foreign face, brutish and dark, with a deep cleft running from above the right temple to the jaw’s left side. Whatever instrument had felled this man had been devastating—everything in its path was smashed, and with permanence. The forehead was caved in. There was no bridge to the nose, the left cheek was completely collapsed, one side of the mouth was a mangled mess. The jaw itself had set improperly, so that it jutted to the side. The general impression, especially from a distance, was of some unforgettable circus freak’s countenance puckering at an angle. It was a face right out of a nightmare. But there was nothing frightening about the eyes. They were the eyes of a child.
Maybe half the gulls hopped screaming on the rocks. The rest circled overhead.
The boy considered the fisherman curiously before placing a foot on the charred deck. His gaze went around the boat, lingered on the makeshift sail, returned to the slumped figure. He passed a hand before the eyes. No response. He then leaned in close and placed his fingers on the man’s forehead. Immediately that bleak expression became fluid, brimming over with horror and heartbreak. Tears rolled down the fisherman’s cheeks as he gasped, shuddered, and backed up the scorched mast to his feet. Thus propped, he squinted at his visitors and was overcome by a wave of homesickness so strong he had to turn away. The feeling bewildered him, for this vessel, and this sea, were all the home he’d ever known. He clung to the mast while the boy helped his father board. Once he’d collected himself, the fisherman tore a heavy crossbeam from the toasted cabin. He and the boy used this as a lever, and together they shoved the boat off the rocks. The wind picked up nicely, and the little craft was swept across the water.
Exploding off the rocks, the gulls shot after the boat as if it were brimming with fish, the loudest and orneriest vying for favored positions directly overhead. The melee attracted additional gulls—they came shrieking in their hundreds from all sides, banking and calling in the oddest manner, until the mass grew so thick as to cast a permanent shadow on the boat. All day long the clamor continued, and all that night. The fisherman rolled with the rudder, listlessly, allowing the sea to control him. Eventually he let go, that the wind might bear them where it would. His sail ballooned but held firm, and the boat fairly zipped across a sea somehow smooth as glass, broken only by the vacillating ripples of bottleneck dolphins and migrating humpback whales. The three tiny sailors sat hunched together, motionless, all throughout the next day, until the black coast of Sweden loomed in the twilight.
As the boat neared land the cloud of gulls broke up, shot to shore, and landed in groups of a thousand and more; a dizzying, wildly uproarious reception committee.
The dung-covered boat slammed into the rocks, shattering the fisherman’s trance. He intuitively walked his **** up the mast and, swaying there, watched the boy draw his father over the side and lead him to a clearing at wood’s edge. There in the dusk he made out what appeared to be a hefty spotted runaway heifer hitched to a rickety wood wagon. He saw the cow gallop up to meet them, saw the boy look around warily, saw him help the little man into the wagon and climb in beside him. The animal immediately began picking through the woods, the large brass bell round her neck clanging forlornly.
The clarity of that bell made him realize just how quiet it had become. He craned his neck:  there wasn’t a gull in sight. He fell back against the shot mast and slid onto his tailbone with a clacking of teeth. His eyes were misting up. In the gathering dark a few sail fragments flew past and were ****** into the woods. The boat rocked and relaxed. After that there was only the sound of the receding bell’s sad, monotonous song being batted about by the wind.

The little cow strode through moonlit woods until she came to a path formed by the rutting of wheels over many years. She followed this broken, serpentine track throughout the night, and by morning was passing farms and, occasionally, crossing broader paths that might realistically be defined as roads. All day long she bore down that ragged track, until she came in late afternoon to a clearing near a village. Here many such tracks converged. And here the boy slipped away while she grazed.
Sometime after dark he returned with a load of straw, a couple of pilfered blankets, and a fat iron kettle. Crammed in this kettle were salt, tubers, cheese, a few loaves of rye, legumes, and a plump foot of lamb sausage. Most of this ***** he’d brought in tied to the bowed back of a huge, puffing, highly amenable black pig which, thus laden, now followed the boy’s every step like a fresh convert tracing the heels of the messiah. The boy built a fire under the stars, filled the kettle with creek water, and commenced simmering their dinner. While waiting, he couldn’t help but note an odd feature of the local flora:  plants, especially trees, all seemed inclined to a northwesterly disposition, though no amount of wind could account for it. He shooed the pig. But rather than run along, it backpedaled in a nervous circle, round and round in reverse, until it lost its balance and fell on its ****. There it remained, a yard behind the wagon. The boy fed his father and lined the wagon with straw. They settled in for the night. The boy must have nodded, might have dreamt, but while he was drifting he became aware of a stirring in the woods. He sat up, saw the pig’s eyes gleaming inches from his nose. And there were a number of animals, some wild, some strayed from farmsteads, arranged in a broad circle around the wagon, their eyes glinting with moonlight. Not a rustle, not a peep, was lifted from the woods.
In the morning he woke to find the pig still staring. The fidgeting heifer, impatient to roll, began her long day’s march while Hero and his boy were yet stretching and scratching, and the ******* pig, galloping heavily, fell in close behind. Each new day this routine was repeated. They banged past farms and small communities until the ruts intersected a broad rocky road wending halfway across the kingdom. The cow addressed this road with vigor. They picked up followers—a goat here, a couple of sheep there—which hurried after the wagon as best they could. The cow stomped on with resolve, mile after mile, day after day, her bell keeping steady time. That bell’s peal attracted foals, lambs, and kids into the wagon’s narrowing wake. Hares hopped between hooves and wheels, boars and blue foxes fell in and withdrew. White falcons, normally solo fliers, whirled into wedge shapes high overhead.
At night the entire train would camp on the road while the boy raided proximate farmsteads, always returning fully laden. And as soon as the fire died the colony grew, creature by creature, and the moment the sun broke the horizon the heifer came to life and moved on, but each day a bit more resolutely, as though straining to meet a deadline. The march took on a sense of real urgency. The cow pressed on with attitude, the clang of her bell more strident with each passing mile. Soon her followers numbered in the hundreds, as animals deserted their farms or crept out of the woods to tag along. Tillers and traders stood dumbfounded, amazed by the bizarre flow.
Once they’d crossed into Norway the frothing cow veered hard to the west. The pace really picked up; no longer were Hero and his boy afforded the luxury of a night’s sleep in one spot. Days blurred into a single variegated flow as the bashed and lopsided wagon continued building its entourage; the riders were surrounded dawn to dusk by a confused and confusing scurry. Word of the flow’s weirdness preceded it clear to the Norwegian coast, so that now plowmen and merchants, wearily gathering their goggling families, found themselves lined in anticipation along the king’s highway. Horsemen went pounding to and fro with news of the procession’s progress and particulars, children ran through the streets banging pots in imitation of the cow’s approaching bell. Livestock wheeled and stamped, fowl leaped and crashed.
The slobbering cow broke into a run.
Bystanders trotted behind, calling back and forth excitedly, while the wagon’s permanent following squealed and squawked between their heels. The cow made a hard turn onto a widening swath in the brush. This swath, seeming to strain against the soil, ran straight down to the crest of a low hill overlooking the Atlantic. On either side a crowd had been studying the phenomenon for some time, but now all eyes swung to the dark and disfigured man and his son, clinging to the disintegrating wagon behind the careening spotted cow.
The trailing people traded views as they ran. Most—at the very outset of the new millennium, with Christianity burgeoning throughout Europe—leaned to the miraculous. Others, just as superstitious but prone to a darker point of view, threw looks of horror at the deformed little man. Yet they ran no less eagerly.
The galloping crowd made for the seaside, where only one local event of any moment was brewing:  on the coast a Greenlander Viking was preparing his longship for the rough voyage home. Impetuous son of the great island’s first permanent European settler, he’d just been baptized in Olaf’s court, and was now eager to sail—but not as a warrior—as a missionary. While his spirit remained in a tug-o’-war between his father Erik’s will and that of gods old and new, his duty was clearly to his king. And Olaf had charged him with the Christianization of pagan Greenland.
Something on the wind now made this destined man turn his head. From behind the gentle hill to his rear came a kind of thunder. Heads popped up, followed by a confused explosion of voices, and seconds later a frantic bug-eyed heifer burst into view, dragging the wheel-less skeleton of a shattered wooden wagon. On the wagon’s splayed frame a man and teenaged boy clung for their lives as the spewing animal made a beeline for his ship.
The new missionary, still egocentric enough to assume his Maker might actually toss him a personal, surreptitiously rolled up his eyes. The sky yawned at his arrogance. At his side a smallish cowled man rose irritably, but the missionary sat him right back down. He then snorted, squared his shoulders, and signaled his men to halt their preparations.
Knowing it was expected, he gathered his hard Nordic pride and coolly made his way into the crowd.

The priest clung to port, gagging above the waves.
After a completely uneventful minute he leaned back and stared through tearing eyes at the distant backdrop of gathering mists. Weeks now…a man of his constitution had no business at sea.
Along, too, were a quirky little man and his fiercely devoted son.
Through his pantomime, the boy had been so persistent in begging their passage that refusal, under the circumstances, would have been unbecoming not only a man of God but a man of the world.
So there it was:  a priest who couldn’t hold his lunch, a witless eyesore who couldn’t sit still, and a surly teenaged protector who snarled at the first hard look. This crossing just had to be some kind of divine test—of mortal patience as well as moral values. Norsemen weren’t made for babysitting.
The mists condensed.
And the shifting shape became a hard familiar coast.
And the longship was mooring, and the crew were jostling and clambering, and the big missionary had booted off the haunted little freak and his hypersensitive son, and was condescendingly half-escorting, half-carrying, the green priest ashore.
And they were home.

Priest in tow, Leif quickly took up the Christianization of Greenland’s Western Settlement, as per Olaf’s command. The mangled little man and his son followed him around like dogs, slept outside his door and annoyed his visitors, ultimately proving far easier to adopt than to shake. Barely tolerable shadows…still, the lad was simply amazing with livestock…and though the youth’s useless father seemed time and again to be just begging for a whooping, his son’s presence bore some ineffable quality that always curbed the missionary’s hand. Several times he’d witnessed the father approached by settlers bent on abuse. Each time the boy had stepped in, and each time the troublemakers were mysteriously repelled. The missionary of course didn’t attribute any kind of celestial intervention to these episodes, and certainly the popular notion of devilry was a natural reaction to the pair’s outrageous exoticness, but…in the son’s company, and even under the sharp eyes of his fellow Norsemen, Leif more than once found himself oddly moved to protect the father. And so the deformed man and his boy day by day blent in—as village idiot and mystic guide. And when in time a ****** brought tales of an unvisited land to the west, it was only natural for the restless Greenlander to buy that ******’s boat and, before stalwart comrades, weary family, and whimsical God Almighty, reluctantly accept the eccentric father and son as sort of seagoing mascots.
Hero was from then on irrepressible. During preparations he would pipe and stammer in his half-mute way, brimming with a confounding anxiety that kept him underfoot and at odds with all. On frigid nights he perched on the westernmost rocks, moaning to the horizon in the strangest fashion while his son stood guard. He positively spooked the locals; they’d gossip, nervously and with bile, of an answering wind that came wailing off the sea like a banshee in labor. The whole island wanted rid of him. And when his champing beneficiary, still clinging to the notion of Christian charity, bundled him aboard with his son and a crew of thirty-five, not a single settler was sorry to see him go.
Almost from the moment they cast off everything went wrong, as all attempts to control the longship were met with some kind of unknowable countermanding force. Vikings were not renowned for passive resistance—they fought, squaresail and steering oar, leaning oarsman to oarsman, until the ship rocked on the waves like a bucking bronco. An erratic weather system pursued them, worsening dramatically at each minute variation in heading. The Norsemen doubled down, and when the clouds finally burst wide, the cowling sea went mad. Dervishes whirled about the hull, crisscrossing winds bedeviled the sail. Patches of kelp belonging to much warmer waters came heaving alongside, fouling the work of the oars, while far to the west a humongous fog bank formed, eradicating the navigable field. The lightning-streaked horizon was a throbbing gray slit.
The longship became locked in a slow westerly current.
Fatigued crewmen complained of headaches and hallucinations, and of a nasty, slightly metallic tang to the air. There were numerous walrus sightings; bobbing flippers and snouts amid drifting ice chunks that came prowling the North Sea like a circling pack of famished white wolves.
Worst of all was the boy’s father—instantly agitated by everything and nothing, prey to some primitive impulse that caused him to periodically incline his head, shudder to his feet, and loop his arms as though embracing the sky. Leif would watch him scrabbling at the prow like a cat at a tree, furs snapping in the wind. He’d watch the boy re-seat him for the hundredth time, and for the hundredth time be filled with an immense contempt. By now he’d acknowledged that it takes a special kind of strength to shoulder charity and tolerance. That brown little freak struck him as an enormous malformed barnacle, slowly working its way back up the prow. Trying so hard to go unnoticed, looking and listening so intently, though there was nothing to see other than the growing shelves of fog, and nothing to hear save the rising, almost hysterical voice of the wind.
Leif sniffed the air, his ******’s instincts nagging him. This was a foul current, and a fool's errand; he took a deep breath and tentatively ordered the longship brought about.
The ship kicked twice, as though an enormous submarine hand had seized and released the hull.
A whirl formed in the water, causing the keeling ship to sweep around like a clock’s second hand. All about them, those drift-ice ghosts cruised dangerously near.
But they’d been liberated from that accursed current. Leif fiercely urged on his rowers, and at last the ship broke free. They made a bead due north.
Night came and the temperature plummeted.
Small sheets of ice converged, drifting between the hunks. The Norsemen, instinctively huddling amidships, passed out one by one in a massive pile of fur and flesh. In the freezing silence the floes bumped and recoiled, bumped and gathered, bumped and bonded. The tiny ship, swallowed whole, was dragged along in a labyrinth of black sea and interlocking slabs of ice.

The Norsemen came to in a surly, foul-smelling heap, lost at sea. While they were still groggy a voice cried out that a darker patch was developing in the fog. The men all fell to port. Under the confusion of their voices could be heard a distant rumble.
At this Hero hauled himself up the high curved prow. A half-light began to penetrate the fog, barely illuminating the irregular faces of drifting ice. The missionary stormed forward and indicated by gestures that if the boy didn’t restrain his father he would have the man tied down.
The longship stopped dead in the water.
The men found themselves regarding a perpetually frozen coastline swathed in bluish veils of mist. Directly before them loomed an immense ice cliff hundreds of feet high. Rising beyond this cliff were endless snow fields, where lean violet shadows seemed to drag about of their own volition. And upon those bleak fields a thin howling wind prowled, kicking up brief white dervishes, leaving a strange zigzagging signature.
Even as they stared, a darker shadow high on the ice cliff’s glistening face began to widen, accompanied by a cracking sound that could be felt before it was heard. With the illusion of slow-motion, a stupendous chunk broke out of the cliff and came screaming toward the sea. It hit the water like a bomb. The thunder of its separation and the explosion of its impact took a moment to reach them. Then, out of a spewing crater of crests and spume, the new calf came lunging, tromping the sea so hard the longship, fully a mile to sea, was swept out and ****** back in like a cork. The floundering mountain of ice bobbed and lilted, generating huge waves which continued to rock the ship long after the monster had settled. In a while the roaring in their ears subsided and there remained only the swirling, nerve-wracking howl of the wind.
The missionary’s eyes swept left and right. Whatever this place was, it sure wasn’t the fair shoreline he’d been promised. Hero again scrambled up the prow, and Leif again yanked him down. This time he made good his threat; he had the little nuisance bound, though he was half-tempted to let him take his chances overboard.
From somewhere deep in the haze grew a soulful, otherworldly call. It went on and on, electrifying the air, bottoming out once the ship had merged with that previously fought westerly flow.
By now Leif’s nerves were shot. He ordered the oars raised.
The longship began to drift. Ship and ice were pulled due west.
The clouds fell far behind as the ship embarked upon an amazingly calm sea—so calm its entire visible surface was featureless except for the faint wakes provided by the ship and its hulking ice companions. To the east a huge fog bank appeared on the horizon, and a while later a smaller bank to the north. Then a very dense one to the south. In time these banks converged, imperceptibly becoming a single mass that closed about the ship, bit by bit creating a slowly heaving dome. Tiny beads of water appeared on beards and eyebrows; in a minute everything was soaked. The only sound was that of the dragging steering oar. The men were now sopping ghosts, speaking only with their eyes.
Directly ahead the fog began to dimple. The dimple became a hollow, the hollow a cave, and then ship and ice were being towed through a low, ever-extending tunnel in fog. The current increased its pull. Ship and drifting ice accelerated through the tunnel.
After a while the missionary quietly stepped forward. He stood with one hand on the prow’s neck, listening to the mist, so motionless he might have been a carved extension of the longship’s aggressive design. Not a man breathed. The tunnel’s dilating and contracting bore was producing an all but seamless series of oscillating, near-phonetic sounds. Leif almost tiptoed back. No god, pagan or Christian, could account for the strangeness of this situation.
They were borne on a course that grew more southerly, and the following day beheld an inhospitable shoreline glazed by dazzling white beaches. Their course held. Two days later they came upon a far pleasanter, thickly wooded coast. Here the current released its hold, and here the missionary untied Hero and personally placed him and his son in a tiny oak faering. He was just as sick of them as he was excited by this promising new land. Once the rowboat had been heaved over the side, he and another man stepped aboard and took up the oars. They began rowing with easy, powerful strokes.
When the boat kissed sand the missionary stood unsteadily.
The first European to set foot on North American soil now placed one hand on his crucifix, the other on his sword’s hilt, and awkwardly plunged his leg into the thigh-deep, ice-cold surf. Before he could take another step the boat lurched as Hero leapt headfirst into the water, followed an instant later by his son. The Greenlanders watched sourly as the two splashed their way into a mad dash for the waiting pines. Leif wished them both good riddance and turned to grin wryly at his fellow Norseman. He must have blacked out for a second, must have been blinded by a shaft of sun, for he found he was staring stupidly at a point midway between his companion and the longship. It felt like he’d been kicked between the eyes.
Everything was dissolving.
He studied the beach and pines closely, but saw nothing of the man or his boy. He turned back, disoriented. With what seemed a superhuman effort he took up his oars. He rowed out sluggishly, in a dream, and the fog rolled in to meet him.

The boy broke into the trees and embraced a trunk, fighting for breath. What happened next happened so fast and so unexpectedly he didn’t have a chance to react.
Three savages stepped from behind the pines and beat him to his knees. They twisted his arms behind his back and hauled him to his feet. He’d barely processed the impression of a wild painted face when something sharp struck him ******* the temple and tore down his cheek to the jaw. Two of the assailants manhandled him into an upright position and held him in place while the third brought his weapon down again and again and again.
All but dead, he watched a nightmare countenance shouting through a shot veil of blood, and behind that image a reeling crimson sun. He lay there gushing while the savages went through his rags. They propped him against a pine and shrieked with triumph, tore the hair and gory scalp from his skull, threw back their heads and screamed at the screaming sky. Tooth and nail, they ripped apart his face and throat and, certain he would die, split what bits of fur were left and let his carcass lie.

                                                HERO

The weeks stretched into months while he fought his way back into the light.
He progressed in stages; only half-conscious, stumbling along in a blood-red stupor punctuated by a slow strobe of frequent blackouts. Days loomed and decayed, nights pounced and were gone; the backlit, swirling gray cosmos collapsed and expanded on every missed beat of his pulse. A thousand times he broke down to die, and a thousand times he clawed to his feet, driven to pursue a tiny, ghost-like figure fluttering in his memory.
Everything conspired to check him.
A bay like an immense landlocked sea was skirted over months or years—it was all the same. Cold locked him in, Hunger drove him afield, that rude ***** Wind lashed him blind, wore him like a shoe, screamed for his skin while he worked his way west.
Somehow he ate, somehow he avoided being eaten; the instincts that had served him halfway around the planet were still vital beneath the abused exterior. His simple burrows became sturdy temporary shelters. He relearned the art of fire, and began to cook what he killed. He manufactured crude snares and weapons and, when his recuperation was complete, paid closer attention to the on-again, off-again trail he’d been following…forever.
Sometimes this trail would call to him like a lover. Other times he stood peering uncertainly, trying to recapture meanings and aims. Then the ground would turn spongy and the sky revolve, and once again he’d be lying all but dead in the woods, while from the face of the sun emerged a vile winged horror, its ugly pale head lashing side to side, its cruelly hooked beak dangling something that glistened in the wild pulsing light…then the fat moon, rising like gas against the icy black night…the feel of the wind:  the slashing of her nails, the chafing of her hem…the sound of things crunching and pausing and sniffing…then the sun, blazing anew. And again that thing, descending, its wide black wings beating slowly, metronomically—but none of that mattered any more. For his mind had quit him, had flown howling into ice and pine to roost with things surreal. In the day his madness might muddle and run, or spend the light stalking, cat-like, watching and waiting. But at night it came creeping from all sides. Sometimes it came in waves. It could gnaw like the devil, or wrap around him like a warm second skin. But none of that mattered either.
The only thing that mattered was the trail—whether it was lost for good, or for only a while. He’d been following it through his episodes, always north, wondering just who and where in the world he was, and trying to shake a ridiculous notion of being led on a wild goose chase.
The cold was unbelievable.
The deeper north he delved, the more confused he became. He grew starved for colors and scents, finding nonexistent patterns in the stark contrast of shadow and snow. He thought he could detect a kind of otherworldly design in the overwhelming number of dead ends he encountered, and, too, in the diabolically frustrating locations of natural obstacles. He seemed to be forever fighting the wind—a hulking, despondent snowman, he hiked face down and focused, while another aspect of his attention floated just behind, disembodied, watching his silent pursuers…leaving no tracks, blending perfectly with the environment in their clever winter coats…not predators, but creatures that normally should have been hightailing it away from him. By the time he could turn, they’d become nothing more menacing than snowdrifts. But they pursued him nevertheless.
And so his paranoia increased…had there ever really been a trail…and when did this miserably cold, miserably anemic crusade begin…his long-term memory was falling apart a chunk at a time. It just got colder and colder and colder until at last, one snippet of a day during one blur of a year, he found himself utterly lost, and clueless as to his history or objective. His mind was a blank, as colorless and featureless as the endless world of ice around him. He’d come this far solely to learn that the only trail he’d been following was his own—and now even that trail was succumbing to ice. On all sides there was nothing to see but an infinite field of glaring whiteness, and nothing to hear but the ululating wail of the tubular polar wind. It was the loneliest, the unholiest, the creepiest sound imaginable. But it wasn’t insanity that made him wheel. It was his self-preservation instinct.
And then he was somehow on his knees in the woods, facing a furious setting sun.
Whole seasons had passed from his memory like chalk from a board. His only recollections were those of a broken, haunted animal:  of being perilously sick, of fearing the unseen, of blindly struggling across a solid-white wilderness. That he’d survived such an ordeal meant nothing to him. And that he had in some indecipherable manner stumbled across the cold-as-stone trail did not fill him with amazement or with thankfulness—there simply wasn’t anything visual or emotional left to draw on. A significant part of his life had been whited out.
But now he could focus entirely on the trail. And before he knew it, the fuzzy area between fantasy and reality found a seam. He began to analyze and plan. He paid attention to hygiene, and kept a kind of running mental journal. Things were sorting out. Yet there were nights when the old sickness would resurface, reestablish its hold, and leave him sweating and uncertain under the stars. Then, paradoxically, his perception would become razor-keen. And so he would see, on a distant hilltop, a pair of scrawny silhouettes, one on four legs and one on two, slowly crossing the faintly pocked face of the setting moon. He would become strangely excited, and thereafter retain crystal-clear images of himself, as if seen from above, hurrying with adroitness through the silent, graveyard-like setting of black and blue night and white-frosted trees. Then the fuzzy area would broaden, and it would be the next morning, and he would be staring at the prints of man and elk in snow. And he would see how the elk’s prints doubled back, and how the man’s prints terminated where he had obviously mounted his guide. An unfathomable glow would bring tears to his eyes. But, even as he gathered himself, a fresh snowfall would wipe out the prints. And once again the world would plummet into white. And the wind would howl as the snow hammered his eyes. And he would ***** on.

A haggard animal sat shivering in a small grove of frozen pines, watching his campfire die. His eyes were fixed. Like the fire, he was running out of warmth, running out of fuel. There wasn’t a whole lot of tinder round his bones, and not much feeling left in his limbs. The slowly heaping downfall was burying him alive, but he was too numb to care.
It had taken him six long years to cross an entire continent, and during that time he’d known only cold and excruciating pain. The pain was leaving him now. The cold was making it right. His eyes glazed over.
Along a narrow plain to the west a herd of caribou filed dreamily through the snow, cutting across a panoramic backdrop of dazzling white mountains. The slow-motion parade was hypnotic. After a while it occurred to the drifting man, in a roundabout way, that he was dying, that he was nonchalantly freezing to death. Concurrent with this notion there rose in his chest a wonderful liquid warmth. His eyes slowly closed and, once shut, began to set fast.
He was jolted from within. It was as if he’d been kicked in the heart.
He ****** to his feet, pounded his fists on his thighs, felt nothing. The breath spurted from his mouth in small white clouds as he stumbled downhill after the slow caribou train. He swam through the snow, hallucinating, imagining that certain individuals in the herd were mocking him by slowing and accelerating, while others glanced back with expressions of contempt.
As he burst into their midst the animals stepped aside indifferently. A few galloped ahead to keep up the herd, but most simply sidestepped while he danced there, stamping his feet and smacking his hands. The herd grew thinner, until only the old and infirm were filing by. The man desperately embraced a hobbling female for warmth, but she cried out and kicked, triggering a panic reaction in the herd. Clinging for his life, the man was dragged along beside her as the herd stormed into a maze of flying ice and snow. His weight caused her to stagger sideways until they slammed against the flank of a sick male. The man instinctively threw an arm over the male and, thus draped between them, was borne across the drifted plain for upwards of a mile, his freezing feet alternately dangling above and dragging through the snow. The herd broke into a hard run, forcing him to assume a broken trot. Soon his legs were stinging. Sensation rushed through his body.
Now the herd, still picking up speed, began to contract, jamming him between his bearers. There was a quick jolt to his right and he was lifted clean off his feet, nearly straddling the bucking female. It had become an all-out stampede. Through hard-flung snow he saw the cause:  just ahead, the caribou had run head-on into a solid wall of galloping wood bison, and both frantic herds had blindly veered to the east; were in fact running side by side down a deep, ragged canyon—were pouring over the canyon’s lip like a cataract. He was approaching, at breakneck pace, that very place where the converged herds so abruptly swerved. The hanging man snarled as he was borne inevitably to the point of deflection.
There came a concussion at his left shoulder, followed by a blast of snow. In an instant the ailing male was tumbling head over heels to the east, ****** into the stampede’s plummeting mass by the fury of its descent. The man and female, rebounding from this impact, were shot to the west in a crazy jumble of flailing legs. The caribou lost her footing, flew nose-first into a snowbank, and came up running. Kicking off, the man used the last of his strength to heave himself astride. At first she fought to shake him, but the spell of the run was too strong. She and half a dozen others went pounding in the opposite direction of the stampede, quickly joined by a number of bison that had likewise splintered from their herd. The riding man could make out their huge hulking shapes thundering by in a blizzard of flying ice, could hear their heavy gasps and explosive grunts. One passed so close he felt its massive flank brush his leg. He peered to his right and saw a black, pig-like eye regarding him excitedly, moving up and down like a piston as the beast ran alongside.
The eye shifted, focusing on the gasping, completely obsessed female. The bull dropped its head and slammed into the caribou’s side, sending her and the man careening down a ***** to the west. The caribou brayed hysterically and her backside went down, but she managed, despite the weight of her rider, to return to all fours and frantically continue along the *****. Again the bull charged, crashing into her shoulder. The man and caribou were launched sideways into the white searing air.
He sat up carefully. The huffing bison was straddling him like a bully laying down the ground rules. Its big wiry beard came right up to brush his chin. The stench of its breath was stupefying.
The bull stamped and snorted, thrusting its stubby horns left and right as the man used his elbows and heels to back away. The bull followed, move for move. When the man collapsed under his own impetus the bull shoved him along with its snout, bellowing furiously. Clear down the ***** they lunged, shoving and lurching, until the man lay sprawled on his back; up to his chin in snow, completely helpless. The ton of a bull butted and kicked, but only glancingly:  those hooves could **** with a blow. At last the man, in one clean sequence, spun on his rear, dropped to his side, and went rolling down the ***** using his elbows for ******.
At the bottom ran a narrow fence of frosted saplings marking an ice cliff’s precipice. He lay face down in the snow, too done in to do anything but **** at an air pocket.
And there came a high-pitched crackling, a sound like the protracted gasp of embers in a dead fire. He turned just as those saplings began leaning to the west, their frozen skins cracking with the strain.
The bison bellowed menacingly.
The sprawled man looked back and saw it still standing with legs spread wide, silhouetted against the sky. In a moment it began huffing downhill, lurching side to side, surfing the snow between lunges.
It chased him through the genuflecting saplings straight into a frozen gully where, protected by a few feet of insurmountable verticality, he was able to slide on the ice between its stomping hooves, downhill out of reach, then downhill out of control—spinning just in time to glimpse a breathtaking vista:
Partly framed by the gully-straddling saplings was a vast crescent of jagged white mountains seemingly huddled round a small stretch of snow-draped pines. The little wood these mountains surrounded was isolated in a broad lake of solid ice. Hundreds of fissures radiated crazily throughout this packed ice field, appearing to issue from somewhere near the frozen wood’s center, which was completely obscured by a ring of rising mist. Above this thumbnail panorama the sun showered gold.
Then the gully dipped radically, and he was skidding headfirst, slamming back and forth against its slick white walls. This uncontrollable plunge had the positive effect of getting his blood flowing. Yet it tore him up. Had the gully concluded in a cul-de-sac, or had further progress required a single calorie of uphill effort, his struggle would certainly have ended here. He would have been too weak to move, and death would have been swift.
But there was a glacier—a great river of ice pouring slowly out of the clouds. The gully, terminating in a little scoop formation near the glacier’s base, spat him flailing onto its gnarly glass hide. He went head over heels, bits of skin and fur flying like chips from a band saw. Somehow he gained his footing, and then he was running against his will, tumbling and recovering and tumbling again.
He didn’t catch much of that crazy run. He half-glimpsed whirling walls of ice, felt a fickle surface underfoot, and broke through an assaultive mist that clung to his ankles and arms. He remembered having the ragged hides torn right off his body, and then being skinned alive. And he remembered reaching the glacier’s base and crawling like an animal; round its sweeping drifts, past its peaked moraines, all the way to a twisting frozen gorge.
And he followed this gorge down; ricocheting wall to wall, delirious, small plumes of thrashed snow marking his descent.
Through a freezing wood he fumbled. In a veil of mist he tumbled down a steep and verdant grade. As cold consumed his closing breath, he fell upon, near-blind, near death, a strange, enchanted glade.

There is a pool.
And in this pool a man lay purged, his broken body half-submerged.
The stumbling man stopped. He knelt to weep, but lost his thread. One hand took a bicep, the other, the head. With a twist and pull the corpse emerged.
That visage…that face—misshapen mask, contorted, bleached; of life’s deposits fully leached. Essence dispatched—a void, sodden wretch.
He let it fall and the glass was breached. All a freak, all a stretch:  upon this act his grip detached.
And the bridge collapsed…one vagabond grasp…what were these feelings; recaptured and trashed…a span elapsed…who was this puckered mass…he hauled it by the waist and thighs…slid it in, watched the pool react:  purse and recover, expand, contract. The glass reformed, now silver-backed…a sudden mirror…the man leaned nearer…saw his reflection, just smashed, remade intact.
The pool grew still.
Within its depth a shadow stirred—visions gathered, some distinct, some obscure. What they meant, and who they were, was much too much to fathom. The glass became blurred.
He closed his eyes, let his heavy head fall, fell back on his haunches, felt the sweat seep and crawl. The air was a pall—as he struggled to rise, a nib crossed his wrist.
He opened his eyes.
Between his fingers the blades poked and crept. Round his knuckles they ventured, up his forearm they stepped:  they seemed to be triggered by prompts from the ground. He shook his head slowly and dully looked round.
There were jays grouped about him, their black eyes aglow. Red hens came running, their fat chicks in tow. Gophers engaged in a weird hide-and-seek. Bluebells and buttercups craned for a peek. Sparrows hopped past and, paying no heed, burst into flight. He watched them recede.
Westward they flew.
Bewildered, he slumped.
Bumped from behind, he jumped to his feet, flabbergasted to find an ancient gray moose near-eclipsing the sky, with grit in his snarl and fire in his eye.
The old moose took aim.
The man turned to flee and stumbled, then tumbled and fell on a palm and a knee.

But there lies a world (so the lullaby goes) where rivers ever run.
Poked from behind, pushed out of his mind, he staggered into sun.







Copyright 2020 by Ron Sanders.

Contact:  ronsandersartofprose(at)yahoo(dot)com

Cats and Birds communicate well. The Cat stalks the Bird and the Bird flees for its Life and then the bird is caught and killed by the merciless hunter. Now that's a pretty clear communication.  Birds are cats prey. It has caused a dilemma for me over the years because I love cats but I also love birds.

I already had two parakeet birds when I brought my first cat home. To remedy any conflict I put up a shelf and kept the bird cage on the shelf. The shelf was up high and I had to step on a stool to reach it but it granted the birds absolute safety from my two cats while I was at work or away. The second cat I got was a female gymnast that could jump high and climb anything but the shelf was not in her reach.

Over the years my original set of birds changed because they died, except for a blue colored bird that survived the three other birds in the span of ten years.  I named this bird "Bluebird."  Everytime a bird would die I thought it was sad that the single bird was all by itself and I would drive to the pet store and purchase another bird to make the world right.

After the third bird died there was a short lapse of time that Bluebird stayed by herself.  I noticed that Bluebird was not sad at all.  In fact, I never saw her so happy.

She started singing all the time and jumping merrily around the cage like she was having the time of her life.  She would go into the corner of the cage and do little somersault flips in the corner of the cage that were so funny and cute that I would laugh out loud when I saw her do it.  I would make a clicking noise to the bird that she would repeat back to me and at that point I just couldn't find a good reason to purchase another companion bird for my single bird that was so happy to be on her own.

At the end of the day when it was time to relax, I would be in the living room watching evening television with my two cozy, affectionate cats.  Usually pet people consider their pets their family as I did, and I started bringing the bird cage in the living room in the evenings so that Bluebird would spend time with the family.

It is perfectly alright to laugh at this because it is hilarious that someone would consider their cat creatures their family but I was sincere, single and loved my pets which have always been a major part of my life. Since I didn't have anywhere to put the birdcage I just set the cage on the floor against a wall right in front of me so I could see the cage at all times.

At first my girl cat would sit in front of the bird cage and just stare at the bird and watch the bird closely.  I would make an announcement to my cat that Bluebird was a family bird and not for hunting.

As time passed, the cat would lay casually by the bird cage and watch the bird casually.  Further down the road the cat would lounge and take naps by the bird cage, abandoning  the need altogether to watch the bird so closely.  The other cat stayed away from the cage and was not interested in the bird.

The cat and the bird started playing through the cage.  A game of tag was initiated by the bird. Now, in the evenings they played tag through the cage and I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't see it myself.

My twelve pound girl cat was gentle and careful as she pawed where the bird was chirping and jumping inside the cage and insisting dramatically that the cat catch her and when the cats paw touched the bird through the cage it was caught and the bird would acknowledge the catch by touching the cats paw with its beak and then continue jumping all around for the next tag.

They did this on a regular basis.  It was neat.  It was love.  It was fun. Sometimes when the cat would leave the cage and be heading a few feet away, the bird would make a lot of chirping sounds as if calling to the cat and the cat would stop, turn around and go sit back at the cage keeping the bird company.

The bird actually called the cat back to the cage to hang out.  I was never so brave as to let the bird out of the cage to play with the cat without the protection of its cage.  

It was just a pleasure to see the cat treat the parakeet bird as one of the family as the two of them became very good friends.

A Long Poem About A Cat
By Lynn Guevrekian

Memes on Every Theme

To hell with thought! Bring on the memes —
"The highest art," or so it seems.
They cover every single theme —
A **** for feelings: cheap and lean.

Who needs the mind? Just feel instead!
Why think at all? The brain is dead.
Much easier to sit and scroll,
To bathe in lies, to numb the soul.

And if those memes are set to clips —
Behold the miracles of drips!
Raised on TV’s myth parade,
With pop as idol, sense decayed.

Then march in rows — a zombie troop —
Each meme a leash, each thought a dupe.
The world is dumb — hence meme’s loud roar,
Each one more brainless than before.

A meme’s a tool, like fear or lie,
To make the herd obey and die.
These generations rot in dust —
Once ruled by hype, then crushed by rust.

Dust to dust — their world will fall,
Its lies and filth will feed the crawl.
But now the memes explode and spurt —
Like melted cheese on news dessert.



---------------------



1.
Memes replace thought — obey, consume.
A smiling herd walks toward its doom.

2.
Scroll and drool — forget to think.
Truth is ash, and memes the stink.

3.
Memes are chains with GIF disguise —
They rot your mind and feed you lies.

4.
Mind is silenced. Lies are screamed.
And pop-star memes — the Devil’s dream.

5.
Memes are maggots in the brain —
Squirming joy in drooling pain.

6.
Click, obey — your soul gets *****.
Each meme a noose in candy-shaped.

7.
Your thoughts were sold for meme parade.
Now rot in gifs your masters made.

8.
Mindless scroll — the grave gets near.
Each meme injects a new veneer.

9.
Memes — the ***** of the dead,
Served in songs to dull your head.



---------------------



Bags of Waste


They feast on Hamlet-omelets still,
As if there’s nothing else to fill.
This world is packed with vacant eyes —
The thinking man just starves or dies.

He cannot chant the worn-out lies,
The myths drilled in through dull replies.
They pump in trash since early youth —
And rot begins by killing truth.

Not every brooding soul’s a sage —
Dostoevsky's just a bore on stage.
But once you're stuffed with every fake,
You lose the urge to see — or wake.

No thought remains that burns alone,
That fights, defends a mind its own.
They’re not alive — these bags of waste
Repeat what filth they’ve learned to taste.

It breeds in generations deep —
This art of drowning thought in sleep.
The filth, the lies — all hand-designed
By swine who seek to rot mankind.

No thoughts? Then pens are traded for pens.
The herd is fat — enclosed in dens.
Fed myths and laws that all obey —
To keep the thinking ones at bay.



---------------------



1.
No thoughts — just waste in human skin.
They feed on lies, and call it sin.

2.
Bags of garbage, taught to moo —
Truth was slain to comfort you.

3.
Once you ate the myth buffet —
Your soul began to rot that day.

4.
No mind, no fire — just passive meat.
The herd is groomed for sheer defeat.

5.
Fed on Dostoevsky's gloom and mold —
But never dared to break the hold.

6.
Truth's a toxin in this land —
So they eat lies, and think it grand.

7.
You're not a man — you're rotting code,
A host for lies in flesh and mode.

8.
Decayed inside, still dressed as thought —
Your brain's a bag the virus bought.

9.
They stuffed your skull with myth and pain —
Now all you do is spread the stain.

10.
A walking bin of pre-set lies —
That smiles while everything it dies.

11.
Infected meat with glazed-over eyes —
Programmed to graze, consume, despise.



---------------------



"TO THE BAGS OF WASTE"
(A Manifesto for the Thinking Dead)

You feast on Hamlet like it’s food,
Declare your boredom as a mood.
Yet when the truth knocks at your gate —
You blink, you scroll. You take the bait.

You chant the myths they drilled inside.
You smile while letting thought subside.
You speak in memes, obey and grin —
A corpse of culture, dressed in skin.

You are not men — you're rotting code,
A landfill set to mindless mode.
You carry lies like sacred blood,
And wade through life as passive mud.

You quote your "genius" from a screen,
But never saw what genius means.
Each myth you eat becomes your cage —
A soft, obedient, padded stage.

You are bags — not minds, not flames.
You are files with different names.
You are bins of pre-chewed pain —
And all you birth is more insane.

Your eyes are blind, your speech is staged,
Your "truths" are memes pre-soaked in rage.
You graze like beasts, well-fed and tamed —
Your slavery no longer shamed.

We see you.
We name you.
We burn the mold you came through.

From waste to fire — let the purge begin.
No virus thrives where Thought breaks in.



---------------------



New Tactics for the Fight


If you fight a lie with lying —
Even “for the greater good” —
You’re already dead, just trying
To look alive, as corpses would.

Lies are total. Only truth
Can reply with steady flame.
Hard, yes — but to mimic ruth-
less dark, is just the same.

This is war. A war for soul.
Demons lie — that’s all they do.
Crushing meaning, self, and goal —
Every word they speak untrue.

Don’t be fooled — they’re sly, not wise.
They boil the frog, they cloud the skies.
Lies infect entire lands —
Not with guns, but with commands.

Old tools fail — discard them fast!
New revolt must truly last.
They’ve refined soul-killing arts —
So strike where rot and ruin starts.

Seek the breakthrough. Change the form.
Find the weapon past the norm.
Rotting beasts infect the Earth —
Make them tremble at rebirth.



---------------------



MANIFESTO OF THE NEW FIGHT

To those who still see.

I. The Mask of Good
You said it was for peace.
You claimed it served the light.
But truth, once bent, is torn to pieces —
And so you’ve lost the fight.

To fight with lies, though “for the right,”
Is still to serve the very blight.
The war is not for land or gold —
It’s for the soul, the flame, the hold.


II. The Depth of War
This war is not with bombs and steel —
It claws at thought, it mocks what’s real.
Each word is twisted, meaning *****,
And even light gets reshaped.

The creatures lie — with savage pride.
They crush the truth, then call it “guide.”
They forge their facts, corrupt the air,
And smile inside your quiet despair.


III. The Boiled Nation
They boil the people slow, like frogs,
With laws, distractions, fame and fogs.
They’re not “wise” — they’re just diseased.
They feed on hearts like swarming fleas.

The lies are baked into the ground.
The truth is hunted, gagged and bound.
And all the “news” and "sacred rules"
Are weapons crafted just for fools.


IV. Break the Pattern
The old tools? Dead. They served the beast.
The “debates,” the “rights,” the “voting feast.”
They mock your efforts while you speak —
They gut your truth, then call you weak.

Don’t use their tongue. Don’t wear their skin.
The battle starts and ends within.
You want to win? Then burn their scripts.
Unlearn their myths. Reforge your grip.


V. New Weapons, New Will
New tactics rise where old ones fail.
Not to convince — but to derail.
Seek out the cracks, the open seams —
Strike through illusion, not through dreams.

Your target: beasts that rot the core,
That feed on souls and cry for more.
They are the ulcer of this land —
Make truth itself your rebel brand.


VI. Final Call
Truth is not soft — it’s fire and fight.
It does not bow to “greater right.”
So forge your mind into a blade,
And cut through every trap they’ve laid.

The war is now. The field is you.
There’s nothing safe, and nothing new —
Until the lie is scorched away,
And soul reclaims the light of day.

We are the Breakthrough.
We are not meat.
We are the Thought that won't retreat.

New fight. New fire. New form.
And this time — we are the storm.



---------------------



Insatiable Monster


The world’s a monster, always fed —
It drains your strength, it leaves you dead.
But soon you'll find, when all feels gone,
A pit where none but you hang on.

Drained and cold, yet in that grave
You'll spark again — you'll find the brave.
Outside the mob, the brainless crowd,
Where noise is cheap and dumb is loud.

You will regain the fire, the fight —
So burn, ignite your inner light.
Though fools may scream from every side,
Don’t waste your fire — let silence guide.

Whisper truths to kindred minds,
If such rare souls you ever find.
Or write in silence, store your gold —
This path won’t leave your spirit cold.

To seek, to think, to fight, to make —
That is the path the true must take.
To create — again, again! —
That is how the soul breaks chains.

All else? A mockery of breath —
A life that stinks of fear and death.
A trembling lie. A spirit’s wake.
A form that walks, but never wakes.



---------------------



MINI-MANIFESTO: IGNITE THE SOUL

The world’s a monster — draining might,
It steals your strength, devours the light.

But in the pit where all seem lost,
You find the flame — no matter cost.

Don’t roar with fools, don’t shout in vain —
Whisper truth and bear the strain.

Seek the rare, the minds that fight,
Create with fire — burn the night!

Think. Resist. Create. Repeat.
This is the path no foe can beat.

All else is death in empty breath,
A life that’s chained, a dance with death.

But you — ignite. Become the flame.
The world’s insatiable — tame the game.



---------------------



Don’t Play with “Positive”


Don’t chase “positivity” —
Dive deep into the NEGATIVE.
Forget the tale of “happy life” —
It’s darkness dressed as narrative.

The real story’s dark and grim,
Not just dirt, but foul and dim.
Once it was mere filth and waste,
Now fools heed lies with blind haste.

Even stars and sages read
The shadow’s truth — the hidden creed.
In light, some shades just disappear,
Grasp the dark — the truth is clear.

In this hellish maze of spite,
You’ll see how Darkness wields its might.
If you dwell in comfort’s cage,
You’re a fool locked in a stage.

No escape that way, no flight.
Work with intuition’s sight.
Let the Light become your care —
Or doom will settle everywhere.

In darkness, Light is sharp and pure —
“Positive” just blinds, obscure.
If you seek the Light above,
Fight the fiends — oppose, be tough.



---------------------



1.
Don’t drown in lies of “happy” light —
True power lives within the night.

2.
Positive blinds, but darkness shows —
Fight the fiends; oppose your foes!

3.
Comfort’s cage is fool’s domain —
Intuition breaks the chain.

4.
Light in darkness — sharp and cold,
Fake bright lies just dull and fold.

5.
Forget the “happy” scripted spiel —
In shadow’s truth, you’ll find what’s real.



---------------------



The Global Zoo-Circus


“Mumu” and courage never mix
When darkness clouds the mind’s own fix.
Around, dull stumps and hamsters hide
In burrows safe, nowhere to ride.

And packs of foolish dogs abound —
Not simple beasts, but Darkness’ hounds.
And all forget the solid base —
The core dissolved, erased, displaced.

Such broken souls will redefine
What “bold” means in their poisoned mind.
Forget “bravery” — when the crook
Attacks the wise with ***** look!

And “maturity” is just the act
Of swallowing all filth intact,
Dragging crumbs into your den —
Calling such habits “mind” again?

You’ll lose the last remains inside —
The very soul that once had pride.
The Spirit leads, the mind obeys —
Forget that truth, you’re but a slave.

A servant pig, a dog on lease,
No matter how they boast or “please.”
A cat is wiser than such swine —
At least its eyes still hold a sign.

And soon will come the fiery days —
That cleanse the world in cleansing blaze.
This dumb zoo-circus will be swept
By flames from High, through Sun’s adept.

Fifty years past, it was just “circ” —
Now brighter beams through windows work.



---------------------



THE GLOBAL ZOO-CIRCUS

“Mumu” and courage? Never twins
Where darkness thick and venom wins.
Around — dull stumps, blind hamsters hide,
In filthy holes, no will, no pride.

Packs of dogs — not pets, but fiends,
Darkness’ hounds with poisoned genes.
All forget the solid base —
The soul erased, replaced by disgrace.

“Bravery”? Joke! When fools attack
The wise — their minds they try to crack!
“Maturity”? Just rotting rot —
Swallowing ****, feeding the clot.

Call these habits “mind”? You’ll lose
Your last spark, your sacred fuse.
Spirit leads — the mind’s a tool.
Forget that truth — become their fool.

Servant pig, or dog on chain,
No pride, no fight, just dull refrain.
A cat’s more sharp, its eyes still glow —
While swine march blind to their own woe.

But soon the firestorm will rise —
Burning down this circus of lies.
Flames from Above, through Sun’s fierce light,
Will purge this dark and cursed blight.

Fifty years ago — mere circus cheap,
Now light breaks in — no lies to keep.



---------------------



ZOO-CIRCUS RIOT

No “Mumu,” no courage here —
Darkness rules, the end is near.
Stupid stumps and hamsters crawl,
Blind dogs bark — they serve the fall.

Bravery? Ha! Fools attack
Wise minds — they’ll crack your back!
“Maturity” is just decay —
Swallow **** and rot away.

Spirit leads — don’t be a slave!
Pig or dog, you dig your grave.
Cat’s eyes burn — but swine are blind,
Lost in darkness, crushed, confined.

Fire’s coming — scorch this mess,
Burn the circus — no more less!
From Above — the flames ignite,
Sun will cleanse the cursed night!



---------------------



Worse and Worse


Worse and worse —
The lies grow dense,
Deeper curses,
Thicker sense.

More poison
In filthy lies,
Sharper minds
In merciless cries

Of valley’s evil,
Where fear and gloom
Crush all will —
Sin’s dark tomb.

Once by whip,
Now by deceit.
The world’s a cage —
No escape fleet.

To soar above —
No wings to lend.
To reach through madness —
Hope’s thin bend.

Rising hard —
Foul stench climbs high.
Only choice —
Death or evil’s spy.

Poison’s sharper
In corruption’s grip,
But servile shame
Eases the trip.

And choice dissolves —
Death claims the theme,
Consuming all —
The final scream.



---------------------



Weariness Is Not Sarcoma


Weariness crawling deep in your bones?
Then spit it out — crush it, break the stones!
Nothing to lose — just shame and dust,
No dawn of reason, no hope or trust.

Fight your last battle, even alone,
To hell with the outcome, to hell what's known.
This world’s for dogs, all sold and broke —
Learn well how to die, that’s no joke.

The worm gnaws sharp — it’s fear in “good,”
That worm of worry, twisted and crude.
If you listen — you’re rabble, the dirt,
If you heed it — you’re wisdom’s worst flirt.

Reject all lies, or you’re long gone,
Dead before death, in decay drawn.
You’ve entered Hell — Mirrors so bent,
Selling misery as joy’s event.

To cast off lies — you must cut deep,
Cut yourself raw, no easy sleep.
No walking Hell with calm or ease,
If you’re serene — you’re just disease.

And you’ll be lonely all your days,
If truth is all that lights your ways.
Weariness will come in time’s stream —
Then spit it out, don’t lose that gleam.

Forget much else — forget it well,
Only truth in the soul will dwell.
But many here have lost their souls,
Hell’s delirium fully controls.

Be like a shrink for many minds —
Don’t waste your nerves on fools and grinds.
Wait for the crash, the world in pain,
Earth bleeding wounds, soaked in disdain.

This cataclysm will cleanse the cold,
Soulless swept, the pure behold.
For global fascism’s guilt —
No hiding, no escape built.

Weariness is the least concern —
Shift your soul’s focus, learn to burn
With mighty effort, that true gem —
All else is dust and worthless stem.

This is Alchemy’s true course,
For fighters who deny fear’s force.
If not, then idiot you are —
And this whole world is dust so far.

Weariness, lizards, dust, and sticky fear —
Attributes of Hell that’s near.
The soul must know — or face the crash:
Devoured by Hell’s putrid lash.



---------------------



Weariness Ain’t No Cancer

Weariness creeps deep in your bones?
Spit it out — crush it to stones!
Nothing left — just **** and dust,
No dawn for minds, no hope or trust.

Fight your last fight — fight alone!
To hell with all outcomes known.
This world’s a kennel for dogs sold —
Learn to die fierce, fierce and bold.

The worm of fear, dressed as “good,”
Sows your mind with rotten wood.
You listen — you’re rabble, ****.
You heed it — you’re wisdom’s ***.

Cut off the lies, or you’re dead —
Dead before death, rotting, bled.
Hell’s Mirrors warped and foul —
Selling chains as happiness foul.

No soft steps through Hell’s domain,
Calm in Hell? You’re just its stain.
Lonely warrior, truth your sword —
Weariness? That’s your reward.

Forget the rest — just keep truth bright,
In soul’s dark depths, the only light.
Many soulless crawl in Hell,
Madness rings the devil’s bell.

Be psychiatrist, cold and sharp —
Don’t waste nerve on brainless carp.
Cataclysm’s coming, Earth will bleed,
Soulless swept by fire’s creed.

Fascism’s plague we all must pay —
No escape, no hideaway.

Weariness? The least you’ll feel —
Shift your soul, make strength real!
Fight! Fear’s dead weight you must shun —
Fail and this world turns to dust and gun.

Lizards, dust, fear’s sticky sting —
Hell’s own marks, the devil’s ring.
Know this, or face the crash —
Hell’s putrid maw will gnash and slash.



---------------------



Man’s Fate

From childhood, everyone is placed
Within the harsh, dumb scheme’s embrace —
To forge a soul without a spark,
Obedient, silent, cold and dark.

Stupidity and soullessness
Are goals the cattle-class possess,
Who hold the highest powers here,
Driving slaves to death and fear.

Death comes in forms, both gross and deep —
The spirit’s death is worse to keep.
The graveyard swells with lifeless throngs —
This world’s no home, but crypt of wrongs.

Laws exist for lifeless dead,
Rules made for fools to bow their head.
The air is stale, the chains grow tight,
Bonds forged in darkness, snuffing light.

Amidst this ruin, fragile blooms
Of wisdom rare, like sapphires’ rooms.
Yet chains are made, and fools are bred,
Betrayers, brutes, and hangmen fed,

Who guard their skins and heed the lies
Of brazen fiends with hollow eyes.
Lies bottomless, absurd, profane,
Deadly orders to **** the sane.

Armies march with tests and plagues,
To burn the land in fiery waves —
Better than ******’s cruel fire,
Their lies consume and never tire.

Only Spirit can break the cage,
And strengthen Mind to rage the rage.
These frames fit ***** and feeble drones —
Soon Darkness cracks the ancient stones.

Darkness destroyed by Sun’s fierce light —
Its blaze will burn the dark to blight.
Step out from shadows, choose your fight,
Become a blazing beam of light!

Burn the World’s disgrace away —
Let that be your defiant say.
Risk your life to stand and shout,
Find your tribe and band about.

Join the fight against the fascist curse,
Or be the dead, the doomed, the worse,
Bowed beneath a fatal fate —
Submit, and seal your endless state.



---------------------



Fight or rot — no in-between,
Break the chains or join the mean.
Rise as fire, burn the lies,
Or become one dead who dies!



---------------------



No mercy for the slave or fool,
Crush the Darkness, break the rule!
Burn their lies in blazing wrath —
Or rot forever in their path!



---------------------



Comparative Zoology

A tiny bird pecks grain,
While pigs just eat all plain.
What’s the difference here?
Pigs gorge without fear.

And what makes fools apart
From swine’s coarse heart?
They chew on tastier lies,
Feeding fear and despise.

Drunk on lies, far worse
Than pigs in their curse —
Captured by the BEAST, they fall,
Like flails that smash it all.

They wreck the last remains
Of reason in their brains,
Fighting battles doomed,
For pay alone consumed.

The BEASTS of fools know well
How to torment and quell.
The sums are clear as hell —
Life’s impossible to dwell.

The smart can’t bear this zoo,
Where LIES reign bold and true,
Breeding death’s approach —
Each lie a tightening noose.

The **** that schemes the camps,
Brews storms and global cramps.
Death, or Death’s harsh call —
A fascist world to fall.

It sweeps all in its path —
So sweep the world in wrath,
Or else in that dread camp
We’ll crawl, all of us stamped.



---------------------



Comparative Zoology

Tiny bird pecks seeds alone,
Pigs devour all — they own the throne.
What’s the **** difference, fool?
Pigs eat filth, you swallow drool.

******* hoard their spite and fear,
Feasting lies, they choke on smear.
Drunk on *******, worse than swine,
Trapped by BEASTS that crush the mind.

They smash the last spark of thought,
Fight pointless wars, for greed they’re bought.
BEASTS of fools know how to break,
Drive the herd, control the fake.

Smart minds choke on this zoo’s stink,
Lies spit venom, push to brink.
**** breeds death, camps in command,
Global fascists scorch the land.

They’ll burn it all — no mercy shown,
So burn it down or die alone.
Or crawl to camps in slavish rows —
The choice is yours, as darkness grows.



---------------------



Comparative Zoology

Tiny bird pecks its worthless grain,
Pigs gobble all—dumb, filthy, insane.
What’s the ******’ difference, you ***** slime?
Pigs eat ****, fools swallow grime.

Fools fatten on fear and hate,
Feed on lies, sealing their fate.
Drunk on ******* worse than swine,
Cursed by BEASTS that crush the mind.

They smash the last spark of reason’s light,
Waging useless fights for greed and spite.
BEASTS of fools, cruel puppeteers,
Drive the herd with venomous sneers.

Smart minds suffocate in this zoo’s stench,
Lies spit poison, life’s twisted wrench.
**** plots death, camps in control,
Global fascists burning the soul.

They’ll torch the world, no mercy given,
So fight or die, your fate is written.
Burn it all or crawl like slaves,
Darkness wins if courage caves.



---------------------



Comparative Zoology

Tiny bird pecks its ****-for-grain,
Pigs choke down filth and puke in pain.
What’s the ******’ difference, dumb-*** freak?
Pigs eat trash, fools lick the sleak.

Fools gorge on fear and bitter hate,
Swallow lies — that’s their deathly fate.
Drunk on *******, worse than swine,
Caught in BEASTS’ chains — a noose divine.

They smash the last flicker of reason’s fire,
Fuel pointless wars for greed’s desire.
BEASTS of fools, vile masters of pain,
Twist minds, drive herd, and spread the stain.

Smart ones suffocate in this cursed pit,
Lies drip poison, truth’s counterfeit.
**** schemes death in brutal camps,
Fascist fires burn Earth’s lamp.

They’ll raze the world without a shred,
Fight now or rot among the dead.
Burn it all or crawl like slaves,
Darkness reigns if courage caves.



---------------------



Comparative Zoology

Tiny bird scraps scraps like ****,
Pigs gorge on **** — they never quit.
What’s the difference, dumb *****? None!
Pigs eat crap, fools drool and run.

Fools feast on fear and rancid spite,
Swallow lies like death’s invite.
Drunk on *******, worse than swine,
Chained to BEASTS, fists made to grind.

They crush the last spark of reason’s flame,
Fueling pointless wars for filthy gain.
BEASTS of fools, sick masters of pain,
Bend minds, herd sheep, spread the stain.

The smart suffocate in this stinking pit,
Lies drip poison, truth’s counterfeit.
**** plots death in twisted camps,
Fascist blaze burns Earth’s lamp.

They’ll raze the world to ash and bone,
Fight now — or rot, broken and lone.
Burn it all or crawl as slaves,
Darkness wins if courage caves.



---------------------



Dust

“Shake off the dust of cities, shake the dust
Of strange tongues, of friendship and of hate,
The dust of grief, of love, and mortal fate.
O, free man choosing freedom’s gust!
You hold but desert winds and dust.”
— Ibn Said, The Demon Tablets


Like cotton wrapped in dust —
“Friendship,” “love” decay,
And sticky fear’s a toxin
Coursing in the veins.

No friendship lives, no love survives
When you’re a slave by will —
Only beasts get service,
Only scraps and filth to fill.

That filth is in the mind too:
Trash and petty waste — decay.
Beasts in savage frenzy
**** souls day by day.

More rotten with each moment —
Soul’s slashes grow severe.
Genocide more ruthless —
A filthy fool’s career.

This fool will be the end —
Subdued, wild, and blind.
Satan reigns a god here —
Most lost, insane, confined.

Shake it off — all this filth!
Step light and walk your way.
Mystics, poets — forward!
Leading out of decay.

On this cursed road,
Leaving Hell behind.
No more fragile victim —
Or you’ll rot confined.

Bravely dive inside —
Only there truth’s found.
Fight for light — or perish,
If you bow down.

This city is a desert,
But your path’s not lost —
If you fight: Hell vanishes —
All rotten chaos tossed.

No sorrow, no death —
Just cleansing desert wind.
Believe in that alone —
Strike lies dead, unpinned.

Rot’s salt and core is Hell,
Fascist slime’s domain.
World bowed down in terror —
Horror’s cold, dull chain.

If you’re trapped in “desert” —
No light left to take.
Now the cataclysm nears —
No more time to break.

It’ll sweep away all Hell —
All rotten, all betrayed.
Gone forever — vile and weak —
In dust, forever laid.

Only in Pure Spirit
Will life be born anew.
If bright, your path is clear —
The stench and slime won’t glue.

To Light they’ll not cling —
They’ll fall and quickly fade.
You’re not cast out —
Let beasts keep up their charade.

Time ticks on —
No place for liars’ games.
For traitors who have fallen —
No refuge, no names.

Shake off the city’s dust,
The dust of hate and love.
All space is torn apart —
Mirages die, above.

Mirages in the desert —
This pitiful world’s scorn.
Here in lies you’re trapped —
A frog, dumb, forlorn, and worn.



---------------------



Dust

Shake off the dust of cities, dust of lies,
Dust of fake friends and ****** goodbyes,
Dust of pain, of love turned into death —
You, free man? Just wind in desert breath.

Like cotton wrapped in dust and fear’s sick glue,
“Friendship,” “love” — impossible for you.
Slave to beasts, just scraps and filthy crumbs,
Brains rotted out, no hope that comes.

That filth’s inside your mind as well:
Trash and nonsense, a living hell.
Beasts in rage tear souls apart,
Slaughter hope and crush the heart.

Every day it gets more vile,
Soul’s butchered with a brutal smile.
Genocide’s the brutal score,
Fool’s plague killing evermore.

This fool’s the end —
Broken, tamed, unfit.
Satan’s god,
The insane, the spit.

Shake it off, you filth-drowned wretch!
Step light, get out the stench and stretch.
Mystics, poets — lead the fight,
Escape this endless, choking night.

On cursed paths, leave Hell behind.
Stop being weak, or rot confined.
Dive inside, find truth’s hot flame,
Fight for Light — or die in shame.

This city’s desert —
Your path is fire.
Fight and Hell burns down —
Rot’s funeral pyre.

No death, no grief —
Just cleansing dry wind.
Believe in this —
Strike lies, begin.

Hell’s salt and core is rotten lies,
Fascist slime beneath these skies.
World bowed down in terror’s clutch —
Horror’s grip — too **** much.

If trapped inside this desert shell,
No light to claim, no hope to sell,
The cataclysm’s close, it’s near —
Sweeping Hell away with fear.

Gone forever, rotten ****,
Betrayers fall, their time is done.
Only pure spirit rises bright,
Cuts through stench and wins the fight.

To Light they cling no more —
They fall, they drop, they rot and roar.
You’re not cast out —
Let beasts lie in their gore.

Time ticks down —
No place for lies,
For traitors broken,
No disguise.

Shake off city dust —
Hate and lies be crushed.
Space torn wide —
Mirages crushed.

Mirages in the desert —
This pitiful world’s curse.
Trapped in lies like slime and mud,
A dumb, forsaken frog, alone and cursed.



---------------------



Dust

Shake city dust —
Lies and friends, all dust and death.
Freedom? Ha —
Just wind in barren breath.

Friendship’s poison, love’s a lie,
Slave to beasts who watch you die.
Brains rotted, souls torn apart —
Hell’s plague choking every heart.

Every day the rot grows worse,
Genocide’s the curse.
Fool kneels, Satan’s throne,
Insane masses, all alone.

Shake it off — step through the fire,
Mystics lead, lift your ire.
Fight inside, or drown in shame —
Hell’s desert burns your name.

No grief, no death — just cleansing flame,
Strike the lies, destroy the game.
Fascist slime will drown and fall —
Cataclysm burns it all.

Only Spirit rises strong,
Cuts through filth, rights the wrong.
Mirages shatter, fade to black —
Fools sink, never come back.

Shake the dust —
Break the chain.
No lies remain,
Only pain.



---------------------



Fool

All is wasted under this cursed sky.
Joy is only for the fool who won’t ask why.
Then you stand like prey in a shooting range,
Targeted by another fool, sharp and strange,

Armed far better, aiming for your brain,
These cursed lands breed idiots, insane.
Where darkness reigns, not even a spark —
Only lies towering like Everest stark.

You live trapped in a zoo’s grim cage,
Half-beasts roaming, full of rage.
The fool breeds even in chains,
Joyful in his new-world pains.

He feels no soul’s sharp sting or grief,
Blind to fascist’s vile deceit.
The world destroyed “for his health’s sake,”
But if no blood flows, the fool will take

His feast, and think it’s all a game,
While wisdom guards against the shame.
Fools run the madhouse worldwide —
With liars, thugs standing side by side.

Fools cheer their masks — the muzzles bind
The dumbest slaves, deaf and blind.
If cops don’t wear helmets yet,
And graves aren’t filling just yet,

Then all is fine — let’s eat and breed,
Drink on, ignore the growing greed.
No need for truth to slaves so blind —
The fake virus will end mankind.



---------------------



FOOL

All’s wasted under this **** sky.
Only fools find joy — no need to try.
You’re target practice in a firing range,
Another idiot shoots you — cold and strange.

Better armed, they smash your mind,
This hell breeds idiots, deaf and blind.
No light, just lies piled Everest-high,
You live trapped in a beastmen’s lie.

Fools breed behind cold bars,
Happy slaves to their new scars.
No pain, no truth inside their head,
Blind to fascists — death and dread.

They “protect” your health by killing this world,
No blood? Then fools feast, flags unfurled.
Wisdom fights — fools run the show,
With liars, thugs in sick combo.

Masks choke dumb slaves, no hope in sight,
Cops without helmets, graves not quite right.
So all is fine — keep eating, breed,
Drown in lies, ignore the need.

Truth is poison to the dumb,
Fake virus wipes out some.
The fool’s last laugh — a final breath,
Doomed to march to silent death.



---------------------



FOOL'S WAR CRY

Fools feast while the world decays,
Brains are targets in the haze.
Masks choke slaves, cops lie and cheat —
Wake or rot beneath their feet!

**** the lies, burn the fools,
Break the chains, smash their rules!
No mercy for the dumb and blind —
Fight with fire, free your mind!



---------------------



FOOL'S WAR SCREAM

Fools breed plague, a choking blight,
Brains get blasted — no respite.
Masks on slaves, cops choke and lie,
Truth gets crushed, let ******* die!

Burn the fools, no mercy shown,
Crush their lies, break every bone!
No pity for the dumb and weak —
Rage, revolt, the strong don’t speak!

Chains will snap beneath our boots,
Crush the **** and rotten suits!
Wake the fire, strike with hate —
Fools are fodder for the fate!



---------------------



SHADOWS OF THE FOOL

Fools crawl blind in endless night,
Feeding lies that **** the light.
Masks suffocate, chains grow tight —
Death awaits the weak, the blind, the trite.

No salvation, no reprieve,
Only blood that fools conceive.
Rot and filth beneath their skin,
This is where the darkness wins.

Crush the plague, the human ****,
Break their bones — no hope will come.
Silent screams and shattered bones,
The fools will rot in hell alone.

Rise, the fire burns so cold,
Truth forgotten, lies unfold.
In the shadows, fury waits —
Fools will drown in twisted fates.



---------------------



SHROUDED IN FOOL'S DARKNESS

Fools drag chains through endless night,
Breathing poison, killing light.
Blindly crawling in their hell,
Souls enslaved in cursed shell.

Masks choke tight — no air, no hope,
In this pit, no chance to cope.
Filth and rot beneath cracked skin,
Sins of mind, the plague within.

Madness rules, the world decays,
Truth consumed by lies’ malaise.
Silent screams behind the veil,
Broken wills that always fail.

Burn them down — the pestilence,
Crush the spawn of impotence.
Let the shadows swallow all,
Fools shall drown beneath their fall.

No salvation waits for those
Whose minds rot where darkness grows.
Hell’s own puppets, lost and blind —
Wretched fools of cursed kind.

Rise the fire, cold and grim,
Light’s last breath grows faint and dim.
But in ashes, fury wakes —
Vengeance born when darkness breaks.



---------------------



FOOL'S WRATH — NO MERCY GIVEN

Fools drag chains through ****-stained night,
Choking lies that **** the light.
Blinded, cursed, and dragged to hell,
Souls crushed hard inside their shell.

Masks suffocate, no breath, no hope,
In this *******, no way to cope.
Rotting guts and filthy skin,
Mindless plague — the devil’s sin.

Madness rules — the world’s decayed,
Truth’s been ripped and torn away.
Silent screams beneath the veil,
Broken wills that always fail.

Burn the vermin, purge the ****,
Crush their lies till all is numb.
Let the shadows drown them deep,
Fools deserve the grave they keep.

No salvation for the blind,
Rotting filth that eats the mind.
Hell’s own puppets, slaves in chains —
Pathetic fools, the world’s remains.

Raise the fire, cold and grim,
Light’s last breath flickers and dims.
From the ash, a fury wakes —
Vengeance born as darkness breaks.



---------------------



FOOL’S WRATH

Fools rot, blind slaves in chains,
Breeding lies, disease remains.
Rotting brains and broken souls —
Hell’s own dogs with filthy goals.

Masks choke, silence screams,
Lost in lies, crushed dreams.
Burn the ****, purge the pain —
Only ashes will remain.

No hope for stupid fools,
Wretched slaves, broken rules.
Fire rises — darkness falls,
Vengeance shouts — the final call.

Truth is weapon, lies decay,
Fools will rot — no other way.
Hell’s plague on this ****** earth,
Time to burn the fool’s false worth.



---------------------



Scab

Those pulling strings won’t blow their cover—
Invisible behind the show.
Clowns act out the ****’s script, no other,
Whip lies slashing, beating low.

The puppetmaster lurks in shadows,
Dreams to bind all strings for life.
Fools groan, curse clowns with bitter echoes,
But truth’s denied amid the strife.

To **** all thought—that’s ruling’s purpose,
Success lies in dumbing down the crowd.
From age to age, the mind grows worthless,
Idiocy reigns fierce and loud.

For most are fools, a pliant herd,
Easy to steer through clownish acts.
The **** got bold—now plans are stirred
To build death camps for killing facts.

And CowID showed the brutal truth:
How simple it is to enslave—
A global camp for fools uncouth,
A world infected by the scab of knaves.



---------------------



The Scab

The ones who pull the strings won’t die —
They hide unseen behind the freakshow.
Clowns obey the filthy lie,
Whipping truth with every blow.

The puppetmaster basks in shade,
Dreams of binding all the strings.
Fools moan, curse clowns, but truth’s betrayed —
No honor in the puppets’ kings.

To **** all thought — the ruler’s goal,
Success in dumbing down the breed.
Generation dull, a blackened hole,
Idiots spawned like rotting ****.

The herd of fools is all they need,
So easy to control the mob.
The **** got brazen, plotting greed —
Death camps built for easier job.

CowID proved how **** simple,
To cage the world in hellish bars.
A plague of scabs, dumb and crippled,
Ruled by freaks with empty scars.



---------------------



Tragic Themes

Tragic themes, best left alone,
By fools too dull to hear or see,
It’s easier in Hell to rot
When dumb and mute — a misery.

Dumb is he whose mind and soul
Turn deaf to tragedy’s call,
Madness is the heir they sow —
Into ranks of Satan’s thrall.

Satan’s servants, blind and numb,
Fed with false hope, thick and lame,
Mind’s a slurry, mush, and sludge —
Fascism’s seed is sown in shame.

Dull fools always march to fascism,
Chewing up the last of honor,
Those with conscience face the end,
Cut down silent, no defender.

Not just bullets end their days —
Crushed in silence, left to drown,
In poverty, forgotten deep,
No one hears them ’midst the clown.

All media’s chained to devils —
CowID proved the puppets’ role.
With new devils come new lies,
Fascism’s face takes darker toll.

****** now by lies alone —
Darkness’ chief and cruelest art,
Reducing humans to mere beasts —
Hell’s chaos tearing hearts apart.



---------------------



Propaganda

Propaganda’s like Uganda —
Level of “progress” is crap.
Run by **** who feed on Satan,
Spewing ashes, poison sap.

Dumbheads get it dumped on top —
People bear it, brains decay,
This foul *******’s cruelty
Rips their minds and burns away.

**** pulls strings, the clown’s a puppet,
Dancing dumb on TV’s stage,
“Politician” triples lies,
Cash his only real wage.

Goebbels spins in Hell’s own vat,
Wild beasts trust his crap with zeal,
Worship dung with sick devotion —
Filth that’s forced on us to feel.

Half-baked Fuhrer hits the box,
Blabbering lies to all who hear,
“King’s not real” — spit it out,
Trample truth without a tear.

Two-faced Fuhrer rules the scene,
Propaganda’s worth the price.
Beasts in war, unseen but deadly,
Destroy souls in silent ice.

Stupid world with open ears,
Forgot how to think and see,
War’s real trophy is the souls,
Who let beasts inside their plea.



---------------------



Storm Within

There’s no such thing as "happiness"
For slaves so weak and small.
Only storms and darkness reign —
If your mind begins to fall.

You must rebuild from inside,
Learn this truth and keep it true:
Spirit’s fire alone can break
The hell that’s crushing you.

This hell drives souls to death,
Not just the flesh, but deep —
A worthy man becomes a worm,
Lost in shadows steep.

Trust nothing but yourself,
These gates lead to the end.
Deception cuts like knives on paths
That never seem to bend.

Your soul is torn to shreds —
Heal yourself or die.
Sooner or later it will break,
No matter how you try.

Seek no teacher’s hollow words —
Chase the shadows out.
Your mind’s a cesspool — filled with crap,
Fighting without doubt.

The stench won’t just fade away —
Drive that filth from sight,
Or hell will reign within your mind,
Darkening all your light.

Strength and wisdom live inside,
Cleanse your thoughts, uproot lies,
Weeds of falsehood sprout like vines,
Sown for many days gone by.

Sharpen your critical blade —
Cut through the ****** deceit.
To hell with fake politeness —
Burn lies in scorching heat.

Engage in work creative,
Love the process, not the prize.
The sprouts you grow will feed your soul,
And make your spirit rise.

You are your judge and reward,
Joy returns through the night,
Amid the nightmare called existence —
When you reclaim your light.

Stay clear from blind sheep’s herd —
Guard your strength with care.
Their animal "prana" poisons —
Run fast from that snare!

Turn your gaze from the masses,
Focus deep on the known:
The path of true awakening,
Where lies get overthrown.

Concentrate on "other worlds,"
Not this prison of dread,
For in obsession, madness dwells —
And fear will cloud your head.

These "other worlds" are spirit’s flight,
A higher realm to own.
Cast off rotten crutches — dead weight,
And leave them all alone.

This hellish world is all crutches —
Built on idols vile.
Tear down these false gods, cleanse your soul —
Heed only lyre’s wild.

For in harsh poetry,
Worlds beyond break through the gloom —
Sharp as blades when poets speak,
Their truths cut through the tomb.

There’s much more yet to say —
Lyre’s burden is deep,
But this tale must wait for now —
More secrets you shall keep.



---------------------



Storm Within

No joy exists for wretched slaves,
Just storms that rip your mind apart.
When spirit’s weak, you walk the graves —
A broken soul, a shattered heart.

Rebuild yourself from deep inside,
Learn this hard truth — your inner flame
Alone can burn the hellworld’s lies,
Destroy the shackles, break the chain.

This hell drives souls toward decay,
Turns worthy men to crawling filth.
The devil’s slaves obey, obey —
Consumed by darkness, drowned in guilt.

Trust no one — only yourself,
These gates lead straight to death’s domain.
Deception slashes like a blade,
Your soul’s blood spilled in bitter pain.

Your heart’s a battlefield, all torn —
Heal now or die beneath the weight.
The poison’s deep; the night is worn —
You face the endless hand of fate.

Forget the teachers, fools, and liars —
Expel the shadows from your mind.
Your thoughts are cesspools, rotted pyres,
Where toxic filth is intertwined.

The stench won’t fade; you must uproot
This plague or hell will reign inside.
Your consciousness, the only root —
Clear lies before they crush your pride.

Strength and wisdom dwell within,
Purge your thoughts, uproot the weeds.
Falsehood’s seeds breed endless sin —
They feed on pain and darkest deeds.

Sharpen your sword of clarity —
Slice lies with ruthless, deadly force.
Forget the mask of “politeness” —
Burn deceit without remorse.

Create with passion, fight with love,
The process is the only prize.
The sprouts you nurture rise above
The poison and the hateful lies.

You are your judge, your only prize,
Joy can return despite the night.
In this hellscape called "existence,"
You wrest your soul back into light.

Avoid the sheep — their dumbed-down herd,
Their “animal breath” will poison you.
Run far, escape their stinking herd,
Before their plague infects you too.

Divert your gaze from empty crowds,
Focus sharp on truth’s own path.
Seek out the worlds beyond the clouds —
Beyond the rage, beyond the wrath.

Fixate on other realms, not here —
This prison built on fear and hate.
Obsession breeds the madman’s sneer,
And fear enslaves the human state.

Those “other worlds” — the spirit’s flight,
A higher place beyond decay.
Cast off the rotten crutches, blight —
Discard false idols, burn away.

This world’s a cage of crutches, lies,
Built on foul idols, dead and cold.
Tear down these shrines with fire in eyes,
Cleanse your soul, be fierce and bold.

For poetry can cut like knives,
Revealing worlds beyond the night.
The harshest words are battle cries,
Truth’s razor piercing dark with light.

There’s more to say — the lyre knows —
But secrets wait in shadowed folds.
The story deep inside still grows,
More truths remain to be told.



---------------------



Storm Within

No joy for slaves who crawl and rot,
Just endless storms inside the brain.
When spirit’s crushed, you’re what you’re not —
A hollow shell consumed by pain.

Reforge your soul from ash and flame,
Embrace the fury deep within.
Only fire can burn this shame,
And break the chains of flesh and sin.

This hell drives souls into the pit,
Turns proud men into crawling waste.
The devil’s dogs obey and sit,
Their honor lost, their will disgraced.

Believe no one — just trust your blood,
The gates to death swing wide and black.
Deception’s knives drip poisoned flood,
And drag your spirit’s life off track.

Your soul’s a battlefield of scars,
Heal fast or drown beneath the weight.
The poison sinks, the night is mars,
You stand before your final fate.

Forget the fools, the liars’ lies —
Purge shadows from your mental core.
Your mind’s a swamp where darkness lies,
A cesspool breeding endless gore.

The stench won’t fade — root out the plague,
Or hell will claim your very breath.
Your consciousness must fight and rage,
Destroy deceit, defy your death.

Inside you dwell the strength and light,
Clear out the weeds, uproot the rot.
Falsehood’s seeds breed endless blight —
They feed on all that’s good and fought.

Sharpen your blade — relentless, sharp,
Slice lies to ashes, burn their veil.
Forget the mask, the fake “sharpsharp” —
The truth will carve and never fail.

Create with fire, fight with hate,
Love every stroke, embrace the strife.
Your growing shoots will dominate
The sickness choking all your life.

You are the judge, the warrior’s prize,
Joy can return from darkest hell.
In this nightmare called "existence,"
You wrest your soul from death’s cold spell.

Avoid the sheep, the dumbed-down horde,
Their stench will poison flesh and mind.
Run fast, escape their cursed sword,
Before their plague enslaves mankind.

Turn eyes away from empty herds,
Fix gaze on realms beyond the cage.
Seek worlds where spirit flies like birds —
Beyond the fury, fear, and rage.

Focus sharp on other planes,
This world’s a cage of fear and lies.
Madness grows where darkness reigns,
And fear is law beneath these skies.

Those “other worlds” — the spirit’s fire,
A realm beyond decay and death.
Cast off the crutches, false desire —
Burn idols cold with final breath.

This world’s a prison made of lies,
Built on idols foul and dead.
Tear down those shrines, watch falsehood die,
Cleanse your soul — rise from the dead.

Poetry’s a sword that cuts,
Revealing realms beyond the dark.
Harsh words ignite, fierce thunderstruts,
Truth’s blade ignites the faintest spark.

There’s more to say — the lyre screams —
But secrets wait beyond the veil.
The story’s deep — a flood of dreams,
More truths await beyond the pale.



---------------------



Storm Within

No joy for slaves who rot and crawl,
Only storms that drag you down.
When spirit’s crushed — you’re nothing at all —
A crawling beast beneath the crown.

Reforge your soul in blazing hell,
Embrace the wrath that burns inside.
Only fire can break this spell —
And shred the chains of flesh and pride.

This pit of hell drives souls to sludge,
Turns kings to vermin, fit to die.
The devil’s dogs bark loud and judge,
Their honor dead, beneath the sky.

Trust no ****** — trust your blood,
The gates to death swing wide and black.
The lies will stab you like a flood,
Dragging your soul down a broken track.

Your mind’s a swamp of poison and ****,
A cesspool breeding endless death.
The stench won’t leave, you must commit
To purge the rot with iron breath.

Within you burns the primal light,
Rip out the weeds, crush every lie.
The seeds of poison choke your sight —
A graveyard ‘neath a toxic sky.

Sharpen the blade, relentless steel,
Slice through the plague and burn the veil.
No tact, no mercy — lies must kneel,
Their carcasses feed the hellish gale.

Create with rage, destroy with fire,
Love every scar that marks the fight.
Your wrath will rise, it won’t expire —
The darkness cowers at your light.

You’re judge, executioner, and flame,
Joy’s return from Hell’s cold grip.
In nightmare’s depths, reclaim your name —
Rip life from Death’s corrupting slip.

Avoid the sheep, the herd of fools,
Their stench will poison all they touch.
Run fast, escape their fatal rules,
Their poisoned breath kills much too much.

Turn your gaze from empty herds,
Fix on realms beyond this cage.
Seek worlds where freedom breaks the words,
Beyond the fear, the rage, the rage.

Focus sharp on spirit’s plane,
This world’s a cage of fear and lies.
Madness rules where darkness reigns,
And Death commands beneath these skies.

Other worlds — the fire of soul,
Realms beyond decay and death.
Cast away the crutches’ role —
Burn false idols with your breath.

This world’s a prison built on lies,
Idols foul and long since dead.
Tear their temples down — watch truth rise,
Cleanse your soul — resurrect the dead.

Poetry’s a blade that cuts,
Reveals the realms beyond the night.
Harsh words like thunder — deafening ruts —
Truth’s blade ignites the final fight.

More to say — the lyre screams —
Secrets wait beyond the veil.
A flood of wrath, a stream of dreams,
More truth awaits beyond the pale.



---------------------



Inner Storm

No joy for slaves in hell’s decay,
Only storms that drag you down.
When spirit dies — you’re just the prey,
A filthy beast beneath the crown.

Reforge yourself inside the flame,
Embrace the wrath that burns your core.
Only fire can break the chain,
And drag you back from death’s dark door.

This pit of poison breeds the ******,
Turns kings to filth, their honor sold.
The devil’s puppets grip the land,
Their lies like chains, their hearts are cold.

Trust no **** — trust only blood,
The gates to death swing wide and black.
Lies tear your soul like poisoned flood,
Dragging you down a shattered track.

Your mind’s a sewer filled with rot,
A cesspool boiling with disease.
The stench won’t leave — you must fight lot,
And purge the slime with iron breeze.

Inside you burns the primal spark,
Rip out the weeds, destroy the blight.
The poison seeds choke out the dark —
A graveyard crawling in the night.

Sharpen the blade — unflinching steel,
Cut through the plague, burn every lie.
No mercy now — make demons kneel,
Their carcasses feed hell’s black sky.

Create with fury, forge with pain,
Love every scar that marks the war.
Your wrath will rise and never wane —
Darkness will cower, flee, and roar.

Judge, executioner, and flame,
Joy reborn from Hell’s cold grip.
In nightmare’s depths reclaim your name —
Rip life from Death’s corrupting slip.

Avoid the sheep, the dumb, the blind,
Their stench will poison all they touch.
Run fast, escape their fatal bind,
Their poisoned breath kills far too much.

Turn your gaze from empty herds,
Fix on realms beyond this cage.
Seek worlds where freedom breaks the words,
Beyond the fear, the rage, the rage.

Focus sharp on spirit’s plane,
This world’s a cage of fear and lies.
Madness rules where darkness reigns,
And Death commands beneath these skies.

Other worlds — the soul’s fierce fire,
Realms beyond the decay and death.
Cast away crutches — false desire —
Burn idols down with righteous breath.

This world’s a prison built on lies,
Idols foul and long since dead.
Tear their temples down — truth will rise,
Cleanse your soul — resurrect the dead.

Poetry’s a blade that cuts,
Revealing realms beyond the night.
Harsh words like thunder — deafening ruts —
Truth’s blade ignites the final fight.

More awaits — the lyre screams loud —
Secrets lie beyond the veil.
Wrath floods forth — a storm, a cloud —
Truth’s fire will shatter the pale.



---------------------



Ragequake

No bliss for slaves beneath the sun —
Only storms that break and burn.
When spirit’s crushed, the end’s begun,
You’re just a beast with no return.

Rebuild inside, ignite your core,
Let fury blast the chains away.
Only wrath can settle score,
And drag you screaming from decay.

This hell breeds fiends that wear a crown,
Kings turned to vermin, sold to lies.
Devil’s pawns, they drag us down,
Their venom poisoning the skies.

Trust nothing but your blood and bone,
Death’s gates swing wide for all who fall.
Lies rip the soul and grind to stone,
A shattered mind in hell’s black hall.

Your mind’s a sewer, foul and thick,
A rotten pit that stinks of doom.
The stench won’t fade — it claws and sticks,
Purge the slime or face your tomb.

Inside you burns a savage flame,
Tear out the weeds that choke your breath.
Poison seeds born in your name,
Feed the worms of creeping death.

Sharpen sharp your ruthless sword —
Cut lies to ash, burn every mask.
No mercy now, strike the horde,
Feed hell’s fire — complete the task.

Create in fury, build in pain,
Love each scar earned in this fight.
Your wrath is pure, it breaks the chain —
Darkness flees before your light.

Judge, executioner, flame —
Joy reborn from hellish grip.
In nightmares fierce reclaim your name —
Drag life back from death’s cold slip.

Flee the flock, the blind, the fools,
Their stench will poison all they touch.
Escape the deathly sheepfold rules,
Their breath’s a plague that kills too much.

Turn your eyes to realms beyond,
Fix your soul on distant planes.
Seek worlds where truth is found,
Beyond fear’s chains and madness’ chains.

Focus sharp on spirit’s flame —
This world’s a cage of lies and dread.
Madness rules and death proclaims —
Dark shadows linger where we tread.

Other worlds — soul’s raging fire,
Realms beyond this rotten death.
Throw down crutches, false desire —
Burn idols with your righteous breath.

This world’s a prison built on lies,
Temples shattered, idols dead.
Tear it down, let truth arise —
Cleanse your soul, raise from the dead.

Poetry is the razor’s edge,
Cutting through the darkest night.
Words that roar, the prophet’s pledge —
Truth’s fire sets the final fight.

More awaits beyond the veil,
Lyre’s scream breaks the silence tight.
Wrath ignites a thunderous gale —
Truth’s storm will shatter endless night.



---------------------



Pyrrhic Victory

The media brazenly lies,
Wiping minds, dimming eyes,
And we obey the Dark’s commands,
Marching blind to no-man’s lands.

The world soaked in total lies,
Like an ocean mad and wide,
A victory for beasts deranged—
Conformist sheep, forever chained.

No country left to call its own,
The fire of death in Hell is sown.
The Earth itself—Hell’s twisted throne,
Where traitors thrive, corrupt, alone.

Only one thing wakes the dead—
The sharp command: “Attack!” it said.
Fascism rules where minds have died,
In lies and fear we all abide.

False CowID exposed the game,
Then madness warred without a name.
Before that, AIDS had dulled the throng—
Now needles lead the blind along,

Turning sheep to wicked cattle,
Obedient to evil’s battle.

The whole world’s gripped by dark control,
A madman leads the captive soul
To camps anew—this vile disgrace.
If we allowed this evil place,

Then we must bear the blame and cost,
For letting all humanity be lost.

A Pyrrhic win against the foe—
Burning slaves with evil’s glow,
To clear the field for cruel experiments,
Where darkness breeds new torments.



---------------------



The Luciferian System

No matter what problems rise,
No matter what barriers stand—
Once you bow to System’s lies,
You’re no more than a dog, a hand

Ready to obey on scraps,
“Attack!” you’ll do with slavish zeal.
For fake safety, empty snacks,
You’ll crush freedom’s fragile feel.

Prepare to face the slaughterhouse—
Betrayers get disposed with speed.
Younger dogs will take your vows,
It’s all numbers here they heed.

No matter what problems come,
Save your soul through all the lies.
Though this truth is old and numb,
Mirages cloud your weary eyes.

The System’s base is darkest haze,
Its weapon—lies that cut like knives.
We live in these declining days—
Don’t count money, count your life.

From the global kennel’s cage,
If your soul is light and free,
You’ll set sail for Spirit’s stage—
But the trained dog falls to the deep.



---------------------



The Luciferian System

No matter what walls block your way,
No matter what hellscape you face—
Once you bow to the System’s sway,
You’re just a beast, a bred disgrace.

Ready to snap at the crumb,
“Attack!” they command with cold sneer.
For fake safety, junk to numb,
You’ll **** the freedom you hold dear.

Brace yourself for the killing floor—
Traitors get crushed without a thought.
Younger hounds will race for more,
Just numbers in this brutal plot.

No matter what chaos breaks loose,
Save your soul amidst the lies.
This old truth’s a fatal noose,
Mirages blind the wise.

The System thrives on thickest smoke,
Its weapon is pure filthy lies.
We’re drowning in the final choke—
Count not your coins, but your cries.

From the worldwide dog pound’s hell,
If your soul’s still sharp and clean,
You’ll break free from this cursed shell—
While trained dogs drown in the obscene.



---------------------



The Luciferian System

No matter what **** walls arise,
No matter how the darkness bleeds—
If you bow down, betray the skies,
You’re nothing but a slave who feeds.

A savage hound, a mindless beast,
Snapping for your pitiful crumbs.
“Attack!” they howl—the cruel feast
Of broken souls, the silence drums.

Welcome to the slaughterhouse,
Where traitors bleed and rot in chains.
Young wolves sharpen sharpened jaws,
Counting only flesh and gains.

No hope remains—just twisted lies,
A fog that chokes the breathing light.
Your soul’s a corpse beneath the skies,
Drowned deep in endless, soulless night.

The System’s plague is darkest blight,
Its weapon forged from poison breath.
We march into eternal night—
Not coin, but spirit meets its death.

From global kennels, reeking hell,
If your soul’s not cracked or sold,
You’ll break these ****** chains of spell—
While trained dogs drown in filth and cold.

Bow not to Lucifer’s cold grin—
Or fall into the black abyss.
Where screams are swallowed deep within,
And light is but a dying kiss.



---------------------



Luciferian System

No matter how the chaos screams,
No matter how the darkness swells—
Submit yourself, become their fiend,
A dog condemned to endless hell.

A beast enslaved, mind torn to shreds,
Snarling for your scraps of lies.
“Attack!” commands the puppeteers,
While freedom in your spirit dies.

Welcome to the slaughter pit,
Where traitors choke on bitter chains.
Young wolves prowl, teeth sharpened sharp—
Counting only blood and gains.

No light escapes this poisoned veil,
No hope beyond the blackened breath.
Your soul a carcass, crushed and frail,
Drowning in eternal death.

The System’s core—deception’s maw,
Its venom seeps through every vein.
We walk the path of final law—
Where spirit bleeds and breaks in pain.

From kennels vast and world consumed,
If you’re not cracked, if still you fight,
You’ll break the spell, resist the doom—
While trained dogs fade into night.

Bow to Lucifer? Be ******.
Fall into the void below,
Where screams are swallowed by the ******,
And light’s last ember flickers low.

There is no mercy in this tomb,
No salvation for the weak—
Only endless, yawning gloom,
Where darkness reigns and hope is bleak.

Fight or fall in shadow’s grip,
The abyss waits with open jaws—
But to kneel is your soul’s death trip,
In Lucifer’s cruel claws.



---------------------



Luciferian System — Descent into the Abyss

No matter what hell haunts your mind,
No matter what walls close you in—
Submit yourself, become their kind,
A hound bred for eternal sin.

A slave to shadows, stripped of will,
Snarling, broken, licking lies.
“Attack!” the masters coldly shrill,
While your last freedom slowly dies.

Into the slaughterhouse of souls,
Where traitors bleed without a sound,
Young wolves hunt, control the roles,
Counting corpses, cold and drowned.

No light escapes this cursed cage,
No hope survives the poisoned breath.
Your spirit crushed beneath the rage—
A carcass fed to endless death.

The System’s heart is lies and plague,
Its venom floods your every vein.
We live the age of final plague—
Where only agony remains.

From global kennels, vast and grim,
If soul is light enough to flee,
Break through the darkness, tear the rim—
Or drown with dogs in misery.

Bow down to Lucifer’s cruel throne?
Fall deep into the endless pit—
Where screams are crushed and all alone,
Hope’s dying embers barely lit.

No mercy waits beyond this door,
No grace for those too weak to fight—
Just endless night, a brutal war,
Where darkness smothers every light.

Resist or perish in its grip,
The abyss yawns with savage jaws—
To kneel is death, a poisoned sip,
Held tight within the devil’s claws.



---------------------



Revolt Against the Abyss

Break the chains — no time for fear,
This System’s venom rules too long!
Their lies are swords, their grip severe,
But we rise fierce, defy the wrong.

No slave to puppets’ vile commands,
No leash to bite, no throat to choke.
We burn their lies with open hands,
And crush their fake, accursed yoke.

The Devil’s dogs shall drown in screams,
Their Kennels cracked by rebel fire.
We shatter all their twisted schemes,
Their hollow gods—consume, expire!

The darkness grins, but we bring light,
A blaze of wrath, a flood of truth.
No fake salvation, no false right—
Just iron will, the sword of proof.

This war is ours—no place for lies,
No mercy for the blind and weak.
We’ll strike the venom where it lies,
Expose the frauds, the snakes who speak.

Rise up, your spirit cannot die,
Though hell surrounds with ruthless claws.
From ashes, flames will pierce the sky—
We are the storm that breaks their laws.

No more slaves! No quiet despair!
No lies, no chains, no false consent!
We tear the mask, reveal the snare—
And claim the night with fierce intent.

Fight on, the abyss will crack and fall—
When madness meets the warrior’s roar.



---------------------



Step into the Abyss

No turning back — just step ahead,
Break chains and shatter frozen dread!
Your gaze a blade, your heart is steel,
Burn down your fear, ignite the zeal.

In this hell where darkness reigns,
Light tears the veils, the falsehood wanes!
Enemies quake, their masks will crack,
Their lies will shatter — no turning back.

You’re no slave, no puppet weak,
Rebellion’s pulse runs wild and sleek!
Soul’s fire — fearless, sharp as swords,
Let false worlds drown in mocking hordes.

Though hell still crushes fragile earth,
You’re the fracture, lightning’s birth!
Break the system, cast off chains,
A rebel’s roar will burn the plains.

Your spirit — lightning, thunder’s strike,
Where fears turn dust, lies fold like pike.
Rise, fighter, shout into the night —
Let liars fall in blazing light!



---------------------



No Mercy for the Puppeteers

Chains will snap, and heads will roll,
No mercy for the puppeteers’ control.
Their rotten lies, their toxic breath,
We'll drag them screaming down to death.

False gods crumble, masks will burn,
The tides of rage begin to turn.
No place for traitors, liars, snakes —
Their hollow empire splits and breaks.

The weak obey, the strong revolt,
With sharpened minds and no remorse.
This world’s a cage, but hell awaits,
For those who serve the hands of fate.

So raise the fist, embrace the pain,
In ashes’ storm, we rise again.
No compromise, no silent truce,
Destroy the liars — end abuse.



---------------------



Horror of Non-Being

Worse than worse — your life decays,
Clear as day — no light betrays.
Not a moment, not a breath,
Free from thoughts of hell and death.

The whole world’s ripped, the whole world’s lost,
Plunging deep, the final cost.
The ninth great wave of lies and pain,
Drowning souls in ceaseless rain.

Rotten lies have claimed it all,
Wounds that bleed, the endless crawl.
They just whine — weak fight, no grit,
Idiots howl, their fate is writ.

Enough’s enough — this hell must break!
For kin’s disgrace, the fascists quake.
They built a camp, a deathly tomb,
A cesspit’s stink, eternal doom.

Only Sun can burn this Bedlam,
Scorch to bottom, break the dam.
Tremble now, you foul disgrace,
For betraying Mind and Grace.

Vile creatures face their doom,
Mad hordes accounted soon.
You’ll rise again if spirit’s tough,
Return to those who wait above.

They wait for brave who kept their pride,
Die with skill, no place to hide.
The time has come — embrace the dark,
The final reckoning will spark.



---------------------



Horror of Non-Being

Worse than hell, your wasted life,
Clear as glass — no end to strife.
Not a second, not a breath,
Free from shadows cast by death.

World torn open, torn to shreds,
Falling fast to endless dregs.
Ninth wave crashing, lies ablaze,
Drowning all in toxic haze.

Rot and filth have crushed it all,
Bleeding wounds, the final fall.
Whiners whimper, fight is lost,
Idiots howl — the world’s their cost.

Break this Hell, it’s time to burn!
Shame on kin who won’t return.
Fascist **** built camps of pain,
Stinking cesspools drenched in shame.

Only Sun can scorch this pit,
Burn it down, the hate must split.
Tremble, worm, you sold your soul,
Betrayed the Mind, betrayed the Whole.

Filthy beasts will face the fire,
Mad mobs crushed beneath the pyre.
Rise again if spirit’s steel,
Back to those who dare to feel.

They await the brave and true,
Those who kept their honor due.
Die with purpose, die with hate,
Now’s the time to seal your fate.



---------------------



Rotten Core

******* ain't no **** coupons —
They shear us, hoarding MARAZM.
Fools block all our way — these monsters
Build their traps to feed the chasm.

No leader’s worse than the rabble
Who blindly worship their lies.
Culture’s fight is now a shamble —
No more nations, just ash skies.

An ******* can sometimes wake,
Grasp a shred, refuse to bend,
But he chose to chew and breed —
Chose the evil in the end.

Selling out for filthy pay,
Feeding greed that only grows,
Gnawing fast to ****** the prize,
Diving deep in putrid throes.

**** like these—no longer human—
Satan reigns their freakish god,
And this curse has lasted ages,
Centuries of devil’s fraud.

No way back—history’s twisted,
All is falsehood, all is dark,
Blindly stumbling through the shadows,
Wandering without a spark.

Fake science rules the present,
Crafting lies with polished skill,
CowID’s proof of madness,
Feeding chaos, breaking will.

******* are our stumbling blocks,
The Führer just a clown of Night.
No peace left, just pens and fences,
For beasts and cages tight.

Reason’s few are fading fast,
Doomed to vanish day by day,
Everything is lost, consumed—
Only fire burns decay.

The Sun brings blazing justice—
Will scorch this mad, corrupted world.
But sheep can’t see the coming blaze,
The endless feast of lies unfurled.

If you trust these filthy fiends,
Blindly follow their commands,
The more the hate and treachery—
The faster death consumes these lands.

Sun and Earth are Reason’s forces,
Fake science gets its checkmate move.
When madness rules the many,
All falls down in final groove.

They don’t need these *******,
Darkness, traitors, filthy spawn,
Ruling with their tons of lies—
Rotten core before the dawn.



---------------------



****

All this **** — hopeless, rotten,
Pathetic and a joke.
Monsters lie with mouths wide open —
But **** devours every hoax.

This ****** world’s corrupt and rotten,
Betrayal’s their **** trade.
If you’re smart and brave, you’re dead men—
They die, fade, and degrade.

Drowning deep in ***** and sorrow,
Crawling out just for a flash.
Cities, towns—all pens of *******—
Madness bound to crash.

And the broken—“normal,” hailed,
Only fools create the rage.
Gluttony, *****, and burning pits—
The crown of this bleak stage.

Development and dreams?
Three quarters of the sheep.
Are they human? No—just slaughter—
Goats for demons’ keep.



---------------------



****

This world’s pure **** — no hope, no light,
Lies feed the pigs who lost the fight.
Brains rot, guts choke on bitter bile,
Sheep march blind, no will, no guile.

Smart die fast, weak breed the plague,
Madness rules — the truth’s a vague.
Cities burn in mental chains,
Screams drown out the dying brains.

Eat the lies, choke on the grime,
**** devours all sense and time.
Goat-men sold to devil’s game,
Slaughtered sheep with cursed names.



---------------------



To the Heights...

A tropical night in Moldova’s land,
By day, the sun scorches, fierce and grand.
Its molten chains may melt away —
For minds too sharp, no place to stay.

The Spirit’s caught in endless traps,
A battle for the soul unwraps.
Traitors fire like guns on sight,
Lies and fear cut like a knife.

Soulless armies breed in war,
The world’s a stench, a hellish core.
In Gorky’s play, we sink so low —
At bottom lies the crushing woe.

Long ago, Tsvetaeva knew,
This place’s price — pure hellish glue.
The noose became her grim release —
Only fools find here their peace.

Tropical nights, the Alps aflame,
The Sun burns down the cursed game.
Hell’s black dust will scatter wide —
With it, the horrors, fear, and pride.

The path to Heights beyond this pain
Runs through the Spirit’s cleansing flame.
Only few will leave that Hell —
Those who refuse the darkness’ sell.



---------------------



To the Heights...

Tropical nights in Moldova’s hell,
By day, the sun’s a scorching spell.
It melts the chains of frozen minds —
No place for souls, just death it finds.

Spirit trapped in vicious snares,
The fight for souls — soaked in despairs.
Traitors blast with venomed lies,
Fear sticky, choking, cold disguise.

Soulless beasts breed in this war,
The world’s a stench, a rotting core.
Gorky’s stage — the pit of pain,
Where only madness will remain.

Tsvetaeva saw it clear —
This hell’s no place for hope or fear.
Her noose became the final door —
Only fools endure this gore.

Tropical nights, the Alps ablaze,
The sun burns down the cursed maze.
Hell’s black ashes sweep the land,
Tearing down this cursed brand.

The road to Heights cuts through the fire,
Through Spirit’s wrath and fierce desire.
Few will rise from this abyss —
Those who won’t betray the kiss.



---------------------



Manipulating Minds

Manipulating minds —
The cruelest trade on Earth.
From childhood’s earliest finds,
They **** your Reason’s birth.

All school programs shape
To grind you into dust.
The loudest brutes escape,
Inside — the Void and rust.

But few will keep their brains,
While others fall like prey,
Trapped in different chains,
Their souls just fade away.

“Culture” and the box of lies
Will finish off us all.
Here Hell itself defies —
Inhuman triumph’s call.

Work’s a chain, enslaving,
Rest’s a total blank,
The foulest depraving —
Stop whining, stop the prank.

You must discern the snare,
Unmask each cunning trick.
This massive, toxic lair
Is vast and growing thick.

Huge funds have been poured
Into these crafted lies,
Not simple fibs, but war,
A science to disguise.

For years they study how
To blind us, tighten grips,
And every moment now
They sharpen poison-tips.

The art of weaving shame,
Bold, filthy, blatant fraud —
“Science” spins the game,
And fools applaud the fraud.

They’ll worship chains as wings,
Declare dull minds as wise,
And cruelty will bring
The fascist’s new disguise.

They need the stupid brute —
The perfect slave, controlled.
Thus floods the lies acute,
Each stream corrupts the soul.

In this vast flow, we drown,
All snared within the net.
Instead of thirst for truth —
A cesspool full of sweat.

Mindless trivia kills
The Spirit, Reason’s light —
The endless muck that spills
Feeds swarms that crawl at night.

You’ve turned a dung-born fly —
Your Spirit’s flame is dim.
While lies grow wild and high —
The source of every sin.

Yet freedom’s path remains —
Build worlds apart, alone.
Escape this Hell’s domains,
Create your own new throne.



---------------------



Center Your Soul

Center on Spirit deep,
And mute your noisy mind —
Then all the chains and lies
Will fade, no more to bind.

See with an open gaze,
Straight into core and truth.
The world’s a fascist maze,
A monster’s cruel booth.

That fiendish breed is “merry,”
Made madhouse here to stay.
And soon that madhouse turns
To *****’s endless fray.

Destroying Spirit’s light —
The core device of Hell.
To turn you dung-born fly,
They push you down to hell.

With poison and with lies,
They twist the minds of men.
Madness spreads like wildfire —
Especially with children.

They dumb the minds with care,
Programming the weak.
The soul and reason fade,
As darkened futures leak.

Under the pressure, fog
Crushes fragile youth.
Into a slave-mind fog,
Stupid, blind to truth.

A twisted, broken breed,
Emerges from this fray.
The herd turns dumb and blind —
To beasts that roam astray.

So easy to degrade,
With poverty and scorn,
No urge to seek the Source —
The Spirit dead, forlorn.

In the end, it kills
The last bright sparks of soul.
Reason rots away —
Humans no more, but lice, the whole.

They storm the “arena” —
That brutal ***** pit.
Pay dearly every time
To leave this lunatic.

The price is Spirit’s strain,
The last fierce fight to rise.
You’ll find your cleansing fire —
If you don’t shake or hide.

When you become as one
With yearning toward the Light,
You’ll never be a beast,
You’ll claim your answer’s right.

That answer burns within —
No gifts will come from them.
Soon all will forget
That only Spirit’s gem

Is worth the highest cost.
Ignite! Burn fierce and bright!
You’ll see then clear at last —
It’s not some “heaven’s” blight,

Nor dull oblivion’s sleep,
But Spirit’s fight to keep.

The torture on the golden ship of evil horrors
after arriving at the big golden pirate ship of torture we are made to walk along the black plank to board the grisly ship.  The horses look around the deck while the evil pirates watch with nasty and wicked eyes of hate towards our bodies.

All of a sudden hundreds of ghostly pirates appear from their  city of spikes and watch  us on the devils deck of terror.  The patch eyed monster with one leg then shouts towards a dark room on the ships deck while the other creatures jump and scream with a mist pint of froth in  their red hands.

The golden  goddess screams in terror when a dark figure wearing a purple hat walks out on the red deck of horrors.  We all look in horror when the rest of the pirates  chain our army towards  the ships  rails of torture.

i comfort luitent megs with my outreached arm while the dark pirate figure without a nose  and mouth pulls out it jagged  red swords  of horror at our trembling bodies.  The golden goddess stares inside its deep purple eyes while it pulls two  warriors out  from the carnage.

The horses plead for mercy while the  creature drags then towards a small dark corner of the ship.  One of the warriors is then tied down on a long plank of wood while the other pirates begin to move forward towards her shaken bodies.

An angry golden goddess try's to break free from the chains of torture while the other brave warrior try's to save the poor old woman warriors body.  We weep with anger when the pirates begin to rip her golden uniform off revealing her  lacy white old underwear of modesty.

The pirate monsters then quickly surround the shaken mature  woman  and ripping  her underwear off with ease. We listen the the pirate creatures howl with pleasure  whilst exploring her naked body.

Two of the pirates hold her head down while  the ******* pirate  pulls out its small flashing blade and cuts off  her nose  while she scream in terror.  The other pirates then keep her head very still while the creature begins to cut her mouth and lips off while blood fires up across the ships cold dark deck.

A sick golden goddess then begins to throw up when the black pirate holds the woman's golden lips  in the air for all the other pirates to see  and enjoy. We all sink into a dark huddle when the  other warrior is pinned down and sliced open by the black  pirates  sword of horror.

The horses tremble and shake when the other  warrior is pinned by down by fifteen pirate creatures for the black demon pirate pleasure. We all look with open eyes when the demon black pirate carefully removes hes golden genitals and ***** for the screaming warrior.

We are all then taken below deck towards a long  black freezing jail while the pirates party  and drink on spike city of evil horrors.  The horses sit and wonder how to escape  the evil city while the rest of us lay down in the dark  cells of torture.

written by wayne mockler
ownership and copyright wayne mockler


The torture on the golden ship of evil horrors part 2

After a long few hours in the cold dark cells of horror the  evil pirates bring us up on deck while all the other creatures watch  from pirate land of evil. The golden goddess and her army are led out first onto the golden ships deck with  me and luiteant  megs, white tiger and horses behind us.

We shiver and shake when we notice the plank of torture  hanging over the cold red water of evil.  One of the dark pirates comes towards our cold tired bodies and looks at us with  its green eyes of evil while its flowing  hair of snakes shines at our clouded minds of terror.

The golden goddess speaks out towards a smiling one eyed captain before being ******* with rope on a ships pole.  We be the captain for mercy but he's monster pull out two golden warriors and makes them stand near the long plank of wood.

One of the golden warriors is forced to walk the long dark plank while others look on in terror and suspense. The horses try and break free from their handcuffs but get beat down by  the evil pirate creatures of horror

A scared and  terrified warrior stands in the middle of the plank until a giant black figure emerges from the deep red river. The figure a shark with five heads and axe tail jumps at the golden warrior leaving a big deep cut on his forehead with golden blood flowing out everywhere.

I hold a terrified luitent megs tight while his head ***** open in the cold dark night of spike city.  The horses hold onto a shaking white tiger while the creature dives back in the deep red water.

The shark  monster  then jumps again but this time cutting the warriors head off while making the golden blood pour over the dark plank of wood.  The golden goddess begs for mercy until the pirates surround the fighting body of torture with eyes transfixed on her large ******* with glee.

We tell the pirates to keep of her  until  a black pirate with one arm begins to unbutton  her golden  blouse with ease.  The other creatures get closer towards her blushing red cheeks while the dark pirate begins to release the red buttons and exposing her large  ******* to cheers from the ***** pirates  creatures.

After getting  touched and explored by all the evil pirates a crying golden goddess is carried towards spike city drinking saloon along with the other golden warriors. We are  made  to follow behind a guard of pirates while the horses and white tiger  are chained up in the cages of hell.

Once in the drinking den of horror we are made to sit on big long stool while the pirates  strip a red faced golden goddess naked  while the captain watches with a barrel of ***.  we are then taken back towards the dark cage in spike city and locked up with the horses and white tiger.

We look over at the  other big cage from hell and see the army of golden warriors laid down  from the fight on hell.  The horses tend to to a distraught golden goddess with their warm fur of hope and look for a way to escape this hell hole.

written by wayne mockler
ownership and copyright wayne mockler

The torture on the golden ship of evil horrors part 3

After a long night of drinking and laughing the dark pirates settle down under a mist of red sky of horrors.  We sit alone in our  cold dark cage until the  purple light of sunlight shines though the next morning.

The pirate creature wake and walk around the dark spike city of horror until another ship sails in under a tunnel of torture towards the dark city's lights.  A scared golden goddess looks out and sees another pirate ship with orange sails come into spike  harbour.

We cringe with horror when the dark pirates cheer the ship while an orange pirate with six arms stands on its deck.  The  big green and blue ship then settles in harbour while the six armed orange creatures jump out and walk around the scared golden warriors cage.

A sadistic dark pirate captain  then unlocks the cage and drags out tow more golden warriors screaming and kicking for survival. The disgusting black captain then throws one of our heroes to the  orange horrors of lust.

The horses bang and shout at the dark pirate captain  until the orange creatures carry  the golden warrior woman towards a cold dark table of hate.  we listen to her screams while the pirates begin to cut open her golden uniform from to to bottom.

An angry golden goddess screams with anger when the creatures mange to prize open her golden bra  and ripping it off with loud screams of joy  from the other drunken pirates.  She blushes  red with horror when the  creatures  slip down her golden thong causing the  pirates to go wild with excitement.

We sit and watch with anger when the pirates begin  to touch her naked body all over while he screams in anger and hatred. The  creatures then carry her naked body towards the  creatures drinking saloon  of evil.

I hold and comfort luitent megs while the cheer's get higher and higher  followed by a dull silence. All of a sudden two evil  orange pirates  bring out her golden head before sticking in on a long pole near the river.

The golden goddess screams and kicks with anger at the glowing guards while  the other golden warrior is dragged inside the saloon of horror.  We then suddenly hear high pitched screams coming from the warrior inside until a pirate shouts yes in a loud clear voice.

Another  four pirates of evil walk out holding various  parts of the mans body in their glowing  hands of golden blood. The horses bury their heads in the  cage corner whilst the  creatures throw s his head and legs inside a big dark plastic bag of evil.

We all sit alone in the dark  cage of evil  while the orange and black  creatures toast and dance in the  cold evil  saloon of hatred.  The golden goddess and horses look around the dark cage wondering how to escape from the torture of the creatures hands.

written by wayne mockler
ownership and copyright wayne mockler

I followed him down the trail until we got to the mouth of the mines. The life and energy of the surrounding maples and birches seemed to come to a still and then die as we walked closer, closer. The air was cold and dark and damp and smelt of mold and moths. Delvos stepped into the darkness anyways.
“Well, girl, you coming or aren’t you?”
I could see his yellowed tobacco teeth form into a slimy smile as I stepped out of the sun. It was still inside. The canary chirped.
“This tunnel is just the mouth to over two hundred others exactly like it. Stay close. Last thing I need this month is National Geographic on my *** for losing one of their puppet girls.”
“Delvos, ****. I have two masters degrees.” He rolled his eyes.
“Spare me.” He trotted off around the corner to the left, whistling.
“I survived alone in the jungles of Bolivia alone for two months chasing an Azara’s Spinetail. I climbed the tallest mountain in Nepal shooting Satyr Tragopans along the cliff faces. In Peru I…” Suddenly I felt the weight of the darkness. In my blinding anger I lost track of his lantern. I stopped, my heartbeat picked up, and I tried to remind myself of what I did in Peru.
I followed a Diurnal Peruvian Pygmy-Owl across the gravel tops of the Andes Mountains, no light but the Southern Cross and waning moon above. I am not scared of darkness. I am not scared of darkness.
I stopped to listen. Somewhere in front of me the canary chirped.

When I first got the job in Vermont I couldn’t have been more frustrated. Mining canaries? Never had I ever ‘chased’ a more mundane bird. Nonetheless, when Jack Reynolds sends you on a shoot you don’t say no, so I packed up my camera bag and hoped on the next plane out of Washington.
“His name is John Delvos.” Jack said. He handed me the manila case envelope. “He’s lived in rural Vermont his entire life. Apparently his family bred the canaries for the miners of the Sheldon Quarry since the early twenties. When the accident happened the whole town basically shut down. There were no canaries in the mines the day the gas killed the miners. His mother died in a fire of some sort shortly after. The town blamed the Delvos family and ran them into the woods. His father built a cabin and once his father died, Delvos continued to breed the birds. He ships them to other mining towns across the country now. We want to run a piece about the inhumanity of breeding animals to die so humans won’t.” I stood in silence in front of his deep mahogany desk, suddenly aware of the lack of make-up on my face. He smiled, “You’re leaving on Tuesday.”
“Yes sir.”
“Don’t look so smug, Lila. This may not be the most exotic bird you’ve shot but the humanity of this piece has the potential to be a cover story. Get the shots, write the story.”

“Do you understand the darkness now, Ms. Rivers? Your prestigious masters degrees don’t mean **** down here.” Delvos reappeared behind the crack of his match in a side tunnel not twenty yards in front of me. He relit the oily lantern and turned his back without another word. I reluctantly followed deeper into the damp darkness.
“Why were there no canaries in the mine on, you know, that day?” The shadows of the lantern flickered against the iron canary cage chained on his hip and the yellow bird hopped inside.
“I was nine, Ms. Rivers. I didn’t understand much at the time.” We turned right into the next tunnel and our shoes crunched on jagged stones. All the stones were black.
“But surely you understand now?”
The canary chirped.

When I first got to Sheldon and began asking about the location of the Delvos’ cabin you would have thought I was asking where the first gate to hell was located. Mothers would smile and say, “Sorry, Miss, I can’t say,” and hurriedly flock their children in the opposite direction. After two hours of polite refusals I gave up. I spent the rest of the first day photographing the town square. It was quaint; old stone barbershops surrounded by oaks and black squirrels, a western themed whiskey bar, and a few greasy spoon restaurants interspersed in-between. I booked a room in the Walking Horse Motel for Wednesday night, determined to get a good nights sleep and defeat this towns fear of John Delvos tomorrow.
My room was a tiny one bed square with no TV. Surprise, surprise. At least I had my camera and computer to entertain myself. I reached into the side of my camera bag and pulled out my Turkish Golds and Macaw-beak yellow BIC. I stepped out onto the dirt in front of my door and lit up. I looked up and the stars stole all the oxygen surrounding me. They were dancing and smiling above me and I forgot Delvos, Jack, and all of Sheldon except it’s sky. Puffing away, I stepped farther and farther from my door and deeper into the darkness of night. The father into the darkness the more dizzying the stars dancing became.
“Ma’am? Everything okay?”
Startled, I dropped my cigarette on the ground and the ember fell off.
“I’m sorry, sir. I was just, um, the stars…” I snuffed out the orange glow in the dirt with my boot and extended my hand, “Lila Waters, and you are?”
“Ian Benet. I haven’t seen you around here before, Ms. Waters, are you new to town?”
“I’m here for work. I’m a bird photographer and journalist for National Geographic. I’m looking for John Delvos but I’m starting to think he’s going to be harder to track than a Magpie Robin.”
The stars tiptoed in their tiny circles above in the silence. Then, they disappeared with a spark as Ian lit up his wooden pipe. It was a light colored wood, stained with rich brown tobacco and ash. He passed me his matches, smiling.
“What do you want with that old *******? Don’t tell me National Geographic is interested in the Delvos canaries.”
I lit up another stick and took a drag. “Shocking, right?”
“Actually, it’s about time their story is told.” Benet walked to the wooden bench to our left and patted the seat beside him. I walked over. “The Delvos canaries saved hundreds of Sheldonian lives over the years. But the day a crew went into the mines without one, my father came out of the ground as cold as when we put him back into it in his coffin.”
I sat in silence, unsure what to say. “Mr. Benet, I’m so sorry…”
“Please, just Ian. My father was the last Mr. Benet.”
We sat on the wooden bench, heat leaving our bodies to warm the dead wood beneath our legs. I shivered; the stars dance suddenly colder and more violent.
“Delvos canaries are martyrs, Ms. Waters. This whole town indebted to those tiny yellow birds, but nobody cares to remember that anymore.”
“Can you tell me where I can find Mr. Delvos and his, erm, martyrs?” The ember of my second cigarette was close to my pinching fingertips.
“Follow me.” Ian stood up and walked to the edge of the woods in front of us. We crunched the cold dust beneath our feet, making me aware of how silent it was. Ian stopped at a large elm and pointed, “See that yellow notch?” Sure enough, there was a notch cut and dyed yellow at his finger’s end. “If you follow true north from this tree into the woods you’ll find this notch about every fifty yards or so. Follow the yellow and it’ll spit you out onto the Delvos property.”
“Thank you, Ian. I really can’t begin to tell you how thankful I am to find out where to find this elusive Mr. Delvos and his canaries.”
“You don’t have to,” he knocked the ash out of his pipe against the tree, “Just do those birds justice in your article. Remember, martyrs. Tell old Delvos Ian Benet sends his regards.” He turned and walked back to the motel and I stood and watched in silence. It was then I realized I hadn’t heard a single bird since I got to Sheldon. The stars dance was manic above me as I walked back to my room and shut the door.

The canary chirped and Delvos stopped.
“This is a good place to break out fast. Sit.”
I sat obediently, squirming around until the rocks formed a more comfortable nest around my bony hips. We left for the mines as the stars were fading in the vermillion Vermont sky this morning and had been walking for what seemed like an eternity. I was definitely ready to eat. He handed me a gallon Ziploc bag from his backpack filled with raisins, nuts, various dried fruits, and a stiff piece of bread. I attacked the food like a raven.
“I was the reason no canaries entered the mines that day, Ms. Waters.” Delvos broke a piece of his bread off and wrapped it around a dried piece of apricot, or maybe apple. I was suddenly aware of my every motion and swallowed, loudly. I crinkled into my Ziploc and crunched on the pecans I dug out, waiting.
“Aren’t you going to ask why?”
“I’m not a parrot, Mr. Delvos, I don’t answer expectedly on command. You’ll tell me if you want.” I hurriedly stuffed a fistful of dried pears into my mouth.
Delvos chuckled and my nerves eased, “You’ve got steel in you, Ms. Rivers, I’ll give you that much.”
I nodded and continued cramming pears in my mouth.
“I was only nine. The canaries were my pets, all of them. I hated when Dad would send them into the mines to die for men I couldn’t give two ***** about. It was my birthday and I asked for an afternoon of freedom with my pets and Dad obliged. I was in the aviary with pocketfuls of sunflower-seeds. Whenever I threw a handful into the air above me, the air came to life with flickering yellow brushes and songs of joy. It was the happiest I have ever been, wholly surrounded and protected by my friends. Around twelve thirty that afternoon the Sheriff pulled up, lights ablaze. The blue and red lights stilled my yellow sky to green again and that’s when I heard the shouting. He cuffed my Dad on the hood of the car and Mom was crying and pushing her fists into the sheriff’s chest. I didn’t understand at all. The Sheriff ended up putting Mom in the car too and they all left me in the aviary. I sat there until around four that afternoon before they sent anyone to come get me.”
Delvos took a small bite of his bread and chewed a moment. “No matter how many handfuls of seeds I threw in the air after that, the birds wouldn’t stir. They wouldn’t even sing. I think they knew what was happening.”
I was at a loss for words so of course I blurted, “I didn’t see an aviary at your house…”
Delvos laughed. “Someone burnt down the house I was raised in the next week while we were sleeping. Mom died that night. The whole dark was burning with screams and my yellow canaries were orange and hot against the black sky. That’s the only night I’ve seen black canaries and the only night I’ve heard them scream.”
I swallowed some mixed nuts and they rubbed against my dry throat.
“They never caught the person. A week later Dad took the remainder of the birds and we marched into the woods. We worked for months clearing the land and rebuilding our lives. We spent most of the time in silence, except for the canary cries. When the house was finally built and the birds little coops were as well, Dad finally talked. The only thing he could say was ‘Canaries are not the same as a Phoenix, John. Not the same at all.”
The canary chirped, still only visible by the lanterns flame. Not fully yellow, I realized, here in the mines, but not fully orange either.

When I first walked onto John Delvos’ property on Thursday morning he was scattering feed into the bird coops in the front of his cabin. Everything was made of wood and still wet with the morning’s dew.
“Mr. Delvos?” He spun around, startled, and walked up to me a little too fast.
“Why are you here? Who are you?”
“My name is Lila Waters, sir, I am a photographer and journalist for National Geographic Magazine and we are going to run an article on your canaries.”
“Not interested”
“Please, sir, can I ask you just a few quick questions as take a couple pictures of your, erm, martyrs?”
His eyes narrowed and he walked up to me, studying my face with an intense, glowering gaze. He spit a mouthful of dip onto the ground without breaking eye contact. I shifted my camera bag’s weight to the other shoulder.
“Who told you to call them that?”
“I met Ian Benet last night, he told me how important your birds are to this community, sir. He sends his regards.”
Delvos laughed and motioned for me to follow as he turned his back. “You can take pictures but I have to approve which ones you publish. That’s my rule.”
“Sir, it’s really not up to me, you see, my boss, Jack Reynolds, is one of the CEO’s for the magazine and he...”
“Those are my rules, Ms. Waters.” He turned and picked back up the bucket of seed and began to walk back to the birds. “You want to interview me then we do it in the mine. Be back here at four thirty in the morning.”
“Sir…?”
“Get some sleep, Ms. Waters. You’ll want to be rested for the mine.” He turned, walked up his wooden stairs, and closed the door to his cabin.
I was left alone in the woods and spent the next hour snapping pictures of the little, yellow canaries in their cages. I took a couple pictures of his house and the surrounding trees, packed up my camera and trekked back to my motel.

“You finished yet?” Delvos stood up and the memory of his green and brown wooded homestead fled from my memory as the mine again consumed my consciousness. Dark, quiet, and stagnant. I closed the Ziploc and stuffed the bag, mainly filled with the raisins I sifted through, into my pocket.
Delvos grunted and the canary flapped in its cage as he stood again and, swinging the lantern, rounded another corner. The path we were on began to take a noticeable ***** downward and the moisture on the walls and air multiplied.
The canary chirped.
The lantern flickered against the moist, black stones, sleek and piled in the corners we past. The path stopped ahead at a wall of solid black and brown Earth.
The canary chirped twice.
It smelt of clay and mildew and Delvos said, “Go on, touch it.”
I reached my hand out, camera uselessly hanging like a bat over my shoulder. The rock was cold and hard. It felt dead.
The Canary was flitting its wings in the cage now, chirping every few seconds.
“This is the last tunnel they were digging when the gas under our feet broke free from hell and killed those men.”
Delvos hoisted the lantern above our heads, illuminating the surrounding gloom. All was completely still and even my own vapor seemed to fall out of my mouth and simply die. The canary was dancing a frantic jig, now, similar to the mating dance of the Great Frigate Bird I shot in the Amazon jungle. As I watched the canary and listened to its small wings beat against the cold metal cage I begin to feel dizzy. The bird’s cries had transformed into a scream colder than fire and somehow more fierce.
The ability to fly is what always made me jealous of birds as a child, but as my temple throbbed and the canary danced I realized I was amiss. Screaming, yellow feathers whipped and the entire inside of the cage was instantaneously filled. It was beautiful until the very end. Dizzying, really.
Defeated, the canary sank to the floor, one beaten wing hanging out of the iron bars at a most unnatural angle. Its claws were opening and closing, grasping the tainted cave air, or, perhaps, trying to push it away. Delvos unclipped the cage and sat it on the floor in the space between us, lantern still held swaying above his head. The bird was aflame now, the silent red blood absorbing into the apologetic, yellow feathers. Orange, a living fire. I pulled out my camera as I sat on the ground beside the cage. I took a few shots, the camera’s clicks louder than the feeble chirps sounding out of the canary’s tattered, yellow beak. My head was spinning. Its coal-black eyes reflected the lantern’s flame above. I could see its tiny, red tongue in the bottom of its mouth.
Opening.
Closing.
Opening, wider, too wide, then,
Silence.


I felt dizzy. I remember feeling the darkness surround me; it felt warm.

“I vaguely remember Delvos helping me to my feet, but leaving the mine was a complete haze.” I told the panel back in D.C., “It wasn’t until we had crossed the stream on the way back to the cabin that I began to feel myself again. Even then, I felt like I was living a dream. When we got back to the cabin the sight of the lively yellow canaries in their coops made me cry. Delvos brought me a bottle of water and told me I needed to hit the trail because the sun set early in the winter, so I le

I am like a dog trapped in a cage by society. Society is my owner. Telling me not to leave the cage even when the door is wide open. They give me commands. Sit. Stop. Stay. They tell me what to do. Every time I’m fed up with society and I try to speak out, they yell. Stop barking! Be quiet! So I do. I am quiet. Outside that cage is a world. The cage is unlocked. I can get out, but I don’t. They tell me to stay in the cage because the world is harsh and cruel. They tell me it’s for the best and for my own safety. So I obey my owner because I was trained to believe society is always right. They set rules for me and I follow. That is why I feel trapped. I can easily go. I have a choice but instead I sit and follow my orders. I don’t speak out. I don’t stand out. I just sit and stay. They all think I’m quiet and secretive and shy. I’m not. That isn’t the real me. There is a difference in who I truly am and who they believe I am. They made me that way. Just like the way cruel owners make a dog mean or lifeless.

    I was taught to be obedient

    I imagine the outside of that cage is a life worth living. We live in a beautiful world. I’m just too scared to see it because that cage hides the truth.  That cage is filled with fears and anxiety because of what my owner says about the past, the present and the future of my life. I just don’t know what the world truly is. I don’t really know what I truly am either.

    But for now, I guess I am just a dog trapped in a cage by society. Scared of what’s beyond my cage.

It all began when someone left the window open.
The love bird cocked its bright green head at the shut door of Woodren’s third floor bedroom, perched on her bedpost. Its bright black eyes glittered, listening for the sounds of Woodren’s footsteps. None came. It ruffled its feathers impatiently; waiting for Woodren to come back with some water for its thirsty beak.
The love bird’s first memory was of Woodren: her clear gray eyes expressing her great happiness through them and not through the tiny curve of a smile on her thin pale lips. Her small white fingers pressed on the syringe gently, and a hot, mushy substance that tasted of apples and bananas went down its throat. The tiny black beak clattered against the plastic syringe greedily. “Aw, you poor baby. You’re hungry aren’t you, my Hoopsie-girl?” she murmured.
She then later taught her baby lovebird to fly with the patience of a mother. As soon as its wings started flapping feebly, she lifted Hoopsie up on the palm of her hand above her head and drew her hand away quickly, teaching the lovebird to fly and landing on Woodren’s soft bed. On cold nights, Woodren would wrap her favorite emerald green scarf around Hoopsie and place her behind the television where it was always warm and sellotape the electric sockets and wires so that Hoopsie was safe.
Woodren never even considered snipping the feathers of Hoopsie’s wings; she would never hurt her darling creature, and snip of its greatest glory. She would comb the feathers with a miniature pink Barbie brush, noticing how blue feathers had started to appear on Hoopsie’s wings and red ones slowly layered beneath the blue as time went by.
Showering Hoopsie was the hardest of all. Aunt and Uncle Palmer had no idea that Hoopsie even existed and revealing her presence would leave both Hoopsie and Woodren with no home. Late at night, Woodren would have to sneak out to the bathroom on the first floor (not on the second floor because that one was right next to Aunt and Uncle Palmer’s bedroom), down the stairs (taking care to step over the thirteenth stair that groaned so loudly), turn on the taps quietly and wash a sleepy Hoopsie with warm water.
Her two youngest cousins often made fun of her for the funny smell that stuck on her clothes sometimes. Linda and Lucy, her bratty twin cousins, asked in their scornful sing-song voices, “Why do you lock your room Woodren? Scared we’ll find all your old ***** clothes under the bed that you wouldn’t let Ma throw away?”
“No, maybe she’s scared we’ll find naughty magazines? If we do, we’ll tell Pa and you’ll have nowhere to stay ‘cause Pa says that type of behavior is sinful and he won’t tolerate it in his house!”
Woodren found it in her heart to look upon her silly cousins as childish entertainment. What did they know of the love she had for Hoopsie? “No, I’m scared you’ll find the monster under my bed and start crying for your Ma”
Linda narrowed her blue eyes, “I’m telling Ma you mentioned Lucy’s fear of the monster under the bed to her face! Besides, you don’t have anywhere else to go. You live on Pa’s charity. Ma said so.”
It was the lowest of insults based on a harsh truth. Woodren’s mother had died of cancer when Woodren was very young and her father followed her mother not a year after with heart grief. Her mother had asked her younger sister to take in Woodren; they were her only relatives and had stopped being fond of her once their own two twin daughters arrived and Mr. Palmer started to have to work harder to feed the six bellies at his dinner table. She just became another mouth to feed.
The only person Woodren got along well with in the household was her eldest cousin, Max. Max rarely spoke in anything but grunts, thought of his two little sisters as annoying brats, refused to say more than two sentences at a time to his simpering mother and loudly obnoxious father and often came and sat in Woodren’s room with his large feet against the wall, stroking Hoopsie’s head in silence. She really was fond of Max sometimes. He could be so thoughtful. Just two weeks before, for her birthday, Max had bought her maroon silk curtains with white birds imprinted upon them. He had even gone further than that and stitched in white thread, “Happy birthday. I love you” a red wonky heart followed and then “From Hoopsie.” Simply imagining him sitting there with a huge, thick curtain holding a tiny needle in his bear-like paws, cursing as he stabbed his rough fingertips and fumbling clumsily made her shout with laughter.
It was Max’s idea to buy Hoopsie a big metal cage and attach it to a branch on the big tree in their garden with a piece of shoelace, hidden among all the green leaves. That way, when Hoopsie sang Woodren wouldn’t have to blast her music and radio at the same time or pinch Hoopsie’s beaks shut when her Aunt or Uncle come to  yell at her if she was deaf or crazy or both. And that way, Woodren’s room wouldn’t have its twangy smell of bird **** and Woodren wouldn’t have to be paranoid all day long at school, wondering if nosy Aunt Palmer had broken into her room and found Hoopsie. And that way, she could leave her window open during the day, trying to rid her room off the nutty, sugary smell.
Max’s room was on the same floor as Woodren, the third floor. Every morning, bright and early before school, Woodren would run with a small lump in her sweater and the keys to her locked room jingling on her wrists to Max’s room. Max would barely acknowledge her as she ran across his room, opened his window and climbed out like a monkey to the branch that pushed against his window sill. She crawled along it with speed and sat there, with her legs hanging down and the branch between her legs, fumbled for the cage door above her head, made sure there was enough water and food to last Hoopsie for the day, popped Hoopsie inside with a quick kiss, arranged the fan-like fresh morning-smell leaves to cover the cage completely and skate back towards Max’s window.
Hoopsie mourned with a few high whistling notes. She hated being away from Woodren during the day- waiting for the moment when the sun was getting hot, and Hoopsie was tired of chatting to the birds in the nearby trees, when Woodren’s sharp little white face with its explosion of frizzy black hair would appear in between the leaves with her happy grey eyes and let her fly around the tree before calling, “Hoopsie” followed by her signature tilting whistle. But for now, and for every morning till noon, Hoopsie would have to wait.
“You don’t think they’ll find her do you?” Woodren would ask Max as she clambered back into his window. It was their daily morning ritual.
“No. Pa told Ma that it’s all about privacy now that I’m a growing-up boy. I’ll lock my door; promise.” He would reply back, completing their ritual.
“Are you still eating lunch with that Ed kid?” he asked, completely breaking their ritual this morning.
“Yes.” She was completely surprised. Not only was Max breaking a routine, Max of all people, he was doing so by asking her a question about her personal life.
Woodren eyed Max strangely. To her, Max was her huge cousin that somehow managed to communicate with a variety of different grunts and hated cutting his hair because of his fear of sharp objects; but to the rest of the school and neighborhood, she knew Max was the “strong and silent” handsome tall boy, every girl’s dream, with his shaggy blonde hair.
“Why?” her gray eyes grew rounder when suspicious instead of narrowing.  
“You don’t have many friends at school.”
“You know I don’t get along with any of them but Ed. I don’t like being friends with people unless I actually like them… unlike all the other girls at school.”
“I don’t like you staying around the Ed kid too much.”
Woodren felt a little glow of affection for Max in her heart. She understood why Max was worried. Ed was unstable with the rest of the world. He did what he wanted to, he said exactly what he wanted to and he wasn’t afraid of anything because he didn’t care what anyone said. He was the kid that the no parents wanted their children to stay near. There wasn’t anything Ed hadn’t done before.
Despite what everyone else thought, Woodren knew that his morals and sense of good and justice were strong in his heart. And when it came to Woodren he was always there for her since he moved to the neighborhood more than half a year ago. No matter how many offending remarks he made, she felt he had become the only stable thing in her life in spite of him being so apt to change. She had learned to depend on him.  
At the breakfast table, Woodren’s gray eyes slid over from Linda to Lucy to Aunt Palmer to Uncle Palmer and rested on Max the longest. Until she had come to look at Max, all four of them were identical in their attractive features and identical in their pinched-up, suspicious and petty expressions glazed over with a courteous mask. Max’s blue eyes, though the same shape as Aunt Palmer’s and the same color as Uncle Palmer’s, expressed a good heart and sincerity.
Her first subject of the day was an art lesson. All she had to do was sit comfortably, a palette with swirls of colors, paintbrushes, charcoals and pencils, a *** of water, and a fresh-smelling page. Usually she drew herself as a monster, or Linda as the devil- disturbing pictures that made people believe she was “talented”. But today, it came to her all of a sudden she’d never done a good, worthwhile painting of Hoopsie. Sure, her tables and notebooks were filled with carvings she’d doodled in class but never something she would want to keep.
She started to sketch Hoopsie on her bed post, eyeing the nuts Woodren had stolen from Aunt Palmer’s snack cupboard. She drew Hoopsie in the big tree and painted a metal cage around her. Somehow, the silver cage ruined the picture completely, making Woodren grimace. When the paint dried, she erased Hoopsie from inside the cage and drew her beside it, her small black feet gripping a twig.
Woodren remembered how elegant birds looked when she looked up into the sky, and saw them with their wings spread out and imagined feeling the wind rush through her feathers and ripple down her head and spine, with a heaven of azure blue surrounding her, shooting through clouds cold and refreshing like a sprinkler in the garden. Maybe that’s what freedom tasted like. She tried drawing Hoopsie soaring in the sky before she realized she’d never seen Hoopsie soar like other birds do, because Hoopsie had never done so.
Broodingly, she packed up when class was dismissed, slowly and thoughtfully. Somehow, that small beginning of a painting had darkened her frame of mind completely. Still ruminating, she headed down the hall way to eat lunch.
“Woody!” Hearing the sound of that voice, she momentarily forget her unease and Woodren’s thin, pale lips spread in a smile even before she turned around to him. Ed was the only one who ever called her that. His oval head was covered in small black bristles and one of his black eyebrows rose as he smirked with his pink lips curving down. The diamond earring in his ear glinted like his teeth did. He caught her eyes with his hazel ones; his eyes were warm and lively.  His mouth formed words that were witty and charming and could always make Woodren laugh.
Woodren put a look of amazement on her face. “You came to school today.”
“What are you talking about? I’ve been coming to school nearly all month.”
“That’s why I’m surprised.”
He hit her arm lightly. A few girls nearby turned around and giggled when they caught Ed’s eyes. Woodren remembered when Ed had first come to school. All the prettiest girls at school kept sidling over to him and batting their eyelashes. Ed had taken one look at the curves on their bodies; his eyes flickered over their face, a little bored, and continued his conversation with Woodren as if there had been no interruption.
It was a mark of their friendship three weeks later when she told him about her family. His hazel eyes had burnt hotly. When he was angry, his voice was quieter, but strained as if the passionate anger behind the words were being controlled with the greatest effort, “People who ruin other people’s happiness on purpose and with joy are just plain evil.” He told her that he hated the monsters that kidnapped children, crippled them, not only in body but mind too, and forced them to beg, far away from those that loved them. Here followed a stream of facts, all said in the same tone that both scared and impressed Woodren.
“How do you know so much about it?” she had once asked him.
He looked at her with an odd gleam in his eyes, “Because I care.”
Now he was looking at her without breaking his gaze, the same odd gleam in his eyes, searching her face. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” She had still been brooding over Hoopsie in a cage, and why the picture upset her so much.
“Woody, tell me what’s wrong.”
Every time Woodren mentioned Hoopsie, Ed would go silent or make an offending remark about the way that Woodren took care of Hoopsie. Over a very short time, Woodren had learned never to mention Hoopsie’s name and though it drove her crazy with frustration, she knew Ed would never tell her reason the why if she tried to pry it out of him. Knowing not to answer truthfully, “I told you, nothing”
“I can tell when you’re lying. Your eyes grow whopping and your mouth pouts to the right.”
“Shut up.”
He looked at her searchingly before giving up with an irritated sigh.
“Come with me.” The chair scraped as he pulled out and pushed the table away from him. His tall frame dwarfed her.
He brought her to the back of the school where teachers and students never went, leaned against the wall and lit a cigarette. “You want to try one?”
“I don’t smoke, Ed”
“Why won’t you even try it?” The tone he used when he was about to state something that began an argument leaked into his voice smoothly, like oil. Woodren opened her mouth to list the damaging things it did to your lungs and heart but his voice had begun in its rapid, silky tone:
“Because society has brain washed you so that if you smoke when you’re a child, you’re a horrible ungrateful creature that will never go far in life. But when an adult smokes, it’s okay. You don’t smoke because people and teachers tell you not to try it. Well I say, **** them. These are the best years of your life. Do what you want, try everything so you can make the choices of your life later with a rounded experience and knowledge. I’m not saying get addicted. You have to be strong if you’re gonna be a risk-taker…” he inhaled deeply and exhaled in a husky voice, “I just thought you always went on about how you were such a strong risk taker.” He blew a cloud of heavy smoke above her head. “Oh, and of course you won’t try it because Aunt and Uncle Palmer said it’d be sin, isn’t that right?” he asked with a tantalizing grin in a mocking tone. He watched her face contort with anger, his hazel eyes dancing with glee. He knew he had hit at the bull’s eyes. No one ever jeered at Woodren’s inner power and then put her on the same note as her Aunt and Uncle.
A sudden snarling sound flared from her. She didn’t have to listen to anything Aunt and Uncle Palmer said… they never did anything worthy intentionally. She knew that. He was just stupid. She swore at him and knocked the cigarette out of his hand with a smart slap before storming away. An amused laugh from behind her made her ears tingle pink.
As soon as school was over, she pushed pass Ed who was waiting for her and ran back home. Opening the front door of the house, she scurried up the stairs to the third-floor and knocked on Max’s door. When she opened it, Max was already holding Hoopsie in his big hands. Hoopsie sang with joy when she saw Woodren.
“Hoopsie-girl” Woodren whistled with a tilting note that Hoopsie identified instantly. Hoopsie flapped over and landed on her shoulder.
“By the way,” said Max, “she must have knocked over her water because it was wet on the bottom of the cage. She kept trying to drink it. She’s thirsty.”
“Oh you silly Hoopsie! Why did you knock over the water? You know I’m supposed to have 8 cups a day?” she pampered the lovebird with caresses and endearing words before hiding Hoopsie in her shirt and running back to her room.
Woodren placed Hoopsie gently down on the bed post

My cage has neither bars,
nor locks
my cage is without metal.
My cage is unlike all the others,
in which humanity meddle.

My cage has feet and
hands and
skins.
It's layer stretched
tense taught.
And when this caged bird
tries to sing, it's cries
will come to naught.

I walk within it every day
it runs,
it aches,
it pains.
And when it's sweet release is found;
it's crying,
masked by rain.

Cords of hair coil from my head,
chaining me like rope.
***'s,
eyes and
teeth...
I beg the sea to bring me hope:

Hope for life,
hope for death,
hope for a future
and past.
hope for me and
whoever 'you' are...
hope for it to last.

I hide within my cage of skin,
yet wish for unknown freedom.
I long to reach out, skin to
sin
and stroke and probe and be wrong.

To be brave enough to make
mistakes,
To shake off all my fear whilst
laughing!
So **** the spiders, death and pain,
I plan to go out dancing.

Dancing with the joy of
life,
the joy of dancing without
nothing.
So what if I don't make a
wife?
At least I'll still have dancing.

And when the ivy climbs this cage,
when rust will halt my movement...
I will not make a shield
from age,
death...I cannot soothe him.

So I shall dance,
love,
be free,
whilst freedom is my choice.
I shall laugh,
sin,
be good,
and dare...I shall dare to be
moist.

My cage has neither bars,
nor locks,
my cage is without metal.
This cage so unique and alike
to all...
My cage that is my body.

it’s like being trapped in a locked cage that’s slowly filling up with water. i’m getting anxious, heart is pounding but i don’t have the time to be anxious but i can’t be happy so i’m trying to cancel out the anxiousness, i’m incapable of being excited, i can’t be mad this is just my imagination, if i wouldn’t have been so messed up i wouldn’t be in that cage. cancelling out every single emotion, the others are too far away, i’m left with nothing. i feel nothing but trapped, i wish there was something here to make me laugh and unlock the door to this cage but there isn’t. i wish there was something sad that would show up to make me cry and sad so i can let out an emotion in me but there’s not. i can’t move, nothing makes sense, words fly past my head, everything is spinning, i feel trapped but not scared, not mad, not sad, not happy, i feel trapped. that’s the only way to describe it. i feel trapped in a pool of nothing, i’m slowly drowning, it hurts but i can’t feel but i know it hurts. it hurts but i can’t yell, they don’t know me. it hurts so bad but in the worst way where i can’t feel it but i can feel it. i look at my math work in front of me, ratios are jumping off the page, percentages are turning into words, eights are turning into sixes are turning into nines. like half of them just left me and the rest are screaming fail in my face. i would feel mad but i can’t. i want to slam my hand on my desk, break the lock, and say i am done with this but i can’t. it is the most annoying feeling of always being trapped, my brain doesn’t know what else to do except wait for the cage to be unlocked. it’s never going to be unlocked but my brain is a different being, it thinks for itself and i can’t change it. even it knows that it won’t be unlocked and we’ll drown alone in that cage it wants to wait. wait and see if we have to drown ourselves. waiting to drown is so boring, can’t we just do it ourselves? waiting, restricted, my brain is its own asylum. shocking itself, pulling ice picks through my eyes, cutting itself open, punching holes in my skull. i’m filling out my form. my brain is homicidal, it wants to **** me. it is killing me. i perform horribly in math, third period. the period right after study hall. forty minutes to myself, in my own thoughts. no school work, no friends, no texting, no talking, except for to myself. clocks scattered across the room, ticking as they go in the bottom right-hand corner. a tear of joy runs down my face, another minute until i’m unlocked. i’m scared of dying, i don’t want to die, i don’t want to leave but i can’t wait until this cage door unlocks and if that means dying, i’m in. i would do anything to burn the cage and its lock so that no one else has to go through it. i don’t want another harmless person being trapped in a cage where only pain sits but you can’t feel it, you just know it’s there. i refuse to let anyone else sit, soaking in water with a big, red button in front of them that says end suffering. push it and you’re free, push it and you’re dead. i wouldn’t wish this dreaded cage among my worst enemies. i wouldn’t wish feeling like you’re dead but not, feeling like sleep can cure it but it can’t, feeling like the last thing to do is push the red button, feel like they can’t move, feel like they can’t focus, feel like nothing makes sense. there’s no cage, why does it feel like it? i’m not trapped, why can’t i move. i’m not deaf, why can’t i hear? i’m not blind, why can’t i see? i’m a functioning human, why doesn’t it feel like it?