(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

big sweaters, ghibli, acrylic paint, cafes, knit blankets and unplanned afternoon naps on the couch, gardens, bananas, vanilla almond milk, soft yarn to crochet into ****** scarves, candles after midnight, the big trees with bulky roots, patio furniture, pianos in random buildings, the internet, manatees, the boundless colours of nail polish, peanut butter & honey, rubber boots, pens that write well, fresh new notebooks, skylights, american netflix, mothers that understand, tête à têtes, one glass of sweet white wine, awkward eye contact that turns into comfortable kissing, airplanes, fresh air, baseball caps, the female collective, the really good dark chocolate, flowers, pumpkin spice lattes and ***** chai lattes, candid laughter, yoga, oceans, high waisted shorts, striped t-shirts, docile cats, playful pups, french presses, integrity, sunscreen, meerkats, penguins, chameleons, autumn leaves, fall fashion, ruby woo mac lipstick, osho, dynamic meditation, compassion, siblings, scrambled eggs, smart phones, garageband, metronomes, hot glue guns, quinoa, ferry boats, soft hands, bicycles, real people, fat snowflakes in ample, graceful *******, backpacks that don't hurt your shoulders, hair conditioner, multi-vitamins, soft sand under bare feet, people that own up to lies, clarity, samsara, satori, samasati, visions, echinacea, lavender oil and frankincense, ambrosia apples and ripe avocados, authenticity, Morgan Freeman's voice, good kissers, *******, iced tea on a hot day, curtains, the smell of beeswax, art galleries, hand massages and foot massages, reiki, plums, mild thunderstorms, soccer *****, good surprises, when birds don't **** on your head.

I see you, monster...
In your sockets bore dead, dark eyes
They hold the blackest of stares
Nebulous swirling pits of demise

Thin lips would spout the most sibilant of hisses
Every so often would curl into a snarl
Dry and chapped, almost unworthy of kisses

Large, rough snout, jutting out like a crag
You sniff around tirelessly for easy targets
Preying on the unsuspecting minds of those under your flag

Tapering chin, sprouting strands of coarse hair
Unkempt and gritty from your last meal
Decaying teeth, crooked due to little to no care

Your face is cratered; tales of trying adolescent years
Wearing a face only a mother could love
Expressionless but it screams out your fears

Ugly jointed limbs that grew out of sync
Disproportionate, misshapen, grotesque
Little noggin with sparse hair, packed within, a brain that thinks


I hear you, monster...
As you stalk your sleepless nights
Nocturnal ambience be your playground
Lurking in the dark; places with no light

Bulky, heavy feet but deft and silent
Can barely notice when you're up and about
As if cloaked yourself stealthy, with steps ever transient

Respire you do, exhaling breaths so gnarly
Ingesting good air, converting into fervid, loathsome notions
With which you paint a portrait so ghastly


I feel you monster...
Deep within the recesses of my heart
Destroying and distorting all that was pure
Testing my will till I should fall apart

You're but the twisted manifestation of conscience
Feeding on my trials and nurturing them into vile abominations
I despise that of you but I seem to have developed dependence


I see you, monster...**
You're horrid and beastly, an embodiment of absolute horror
I await the day that you would finally dissolve
For I am weary of seeing you staring back in the mirror

A Child’s Story

Hamelin Town’s in Brunswick,
By famous Hanover city;
The river Weser, deep and wide,
Washes its wall on the southern side;
A pleasanter spot you never spied;
But, when begins my ditty,
Almost five hundred years ago,
To see the townsfolk suffer so
From vermin, was a pity.

Rats!
They fought the dogs, and killed the cats,
And bit the babies in the cradles,
And ate the cheeses out of the vats,
And licked the soup from the cook’s own ladles,
Split open the kegs of salted sprats,
Made nests inside men’s Sunday hats,
And even spoiled the women’s chats,
By drowning their speaking
With shrieking and squeaking
In fifty different sharps and flats.

At last the people in a body
To the Town Hall came flocking:
“’Tis clear,” cried they, “our Mayor’s a noddy;
And as for our Corporation—shocking
To think we buy gowns lined with ermine
For dolts that can’t or won’t determine
What’s best to rid us of our vermin!
You hope, because you’re old and obese,
To find in the furry civic robe ease?
Rouse up, Sirs! Give your brains a racking
To find the remedy we’re lacking,
Or, sure as fate, we’ll send you packing!”
At this the Mayor and Corporation
Quaked with a mighty consternation.

An hour they sate in council,
At length the Mayor broke silence:
“For a guilder I’d my ermine gown sell;
I wish I were a mile hence!
It’s easy to bid one rack one’s brain—
I’m sure my poor head aches again
I’ve scratched it so, and all in vain.
Oh for a trap, a trap, a trap!”
Just as he said this, what should hap
At the chamber door but a gentle tap?
“Bless us,” cried the Mayor, “what’s that?”
(With the Corporation as he sat,
Looking little though wondrous fat;
Nor brighter was his eye, nor moister
Than a too-long-opened oyster,
Save when at noon his paunch grew mutinous
For a plate of turtle green and glutinous)
“Only a scraping of shoes on the mat?
Anything like the sound of a rat
Makes my heart go pit-a-pat!”

“Come in!”—the Mayor cried, looking bigger:
And in did come the strangest figure!
His queer long coat from heel to head
Was half of yellow and half of red;
And he himself was tall and thin,
With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin,
And light loose hair, yet swarthy skin,
No tuft on cheek nor beard on chin,
But lips where smiles went out and in—
There was no guessing his kith and kin!
And nobody could enough admire
The tall man and his quaint attire:
Quoth one: “It’s as my great-grandsire,
Starting up at the Trump of Doom’s tone,
Had walked this way from his painted tombstone!”

He advanced to the council-table:
And, “Please your honours,” said he, “I’m able,
By means of a secret charm, to draw
All creatures living beneath the sun,
That creep or swim or fly or run,
After me so as you never saw!
And I chiefly use my charm
On creatures that do people harm,
The mole and toad and newt and viper;
And people call me the Pied Piper.”
(And here they noticed round his neck
A scarf of red and yellow stripe,
To match with his coat of the selfsame cheque;
And at the scarf’s end hung a pipe;
And his fingers, they noticed, were ever straying
As if impatient to be playing
Upon this pipe, as low it dangled
Over his vesture so old-fangled.)
“Yet,” said he, “poor piper as I am,
In Tartary I freed the Cham,
Last June, from his huge swarms of gnats;
I eased in Asia the Nizam
Of a monstrous brood of vampire-bats;
And, as for what your brain bewilders,
If I can rid your town of rats
Will you give me a thousand guilders?”
“One? fifty thousand!”—was the exclamation
Of the astonished Mayor and Corporation.

Into the street the Piper stepped,
Smiling first a little smile,
As if he knew what magic slept
In his quiet pipe the while;
Then, like a musical adept,
To blow the pipe his lips he wrinkled,
And green and blue his sharp eyes twinkled
Like a candle flame where salt is sprinkled;
And ere three shrill notes the pipe uttered,
You heard as if an army muttered;
And the muttering grew to a grumbling;
And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling;
And out of the houses the rats came tumbling.
Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats,
Brown rats, black rats, grey rats, tawny rats,
Grave old plodders, gay young friskers,
Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins,
Cocking tails and pricking whiskers,
Families by tens and dozens,
Brothers, sisters, husbands, wives—
Followed the Piper for their lives.
From street to street he piped advancing,
And step for step they followed dancing,
Until they came to the river Weser,
Wherein all plunged and perished!
- Save one who, stout a Julius Caesar,
Swam across and lived to carry
(As he, the manuscript he cherished)
To Rat-land home his commentary:
Which was, “At the first shrill notes of the pipe
I heard a sound as of scraping tripe,
And putting apples, wondrous ripe,
Into a cider-press’s gripe:
And a moving away of pickle-tub-boards,
And a leaving ajar of conserve-cupboards,
And a drawing the corks of train-oil-flasks,
And a breaking the hoops of butter-casks;
And it seemed as if a voice
(Sweeter far than by harp or by psaltery
Is breathed) called out ‘Oh, rats, rejoice!
The world is grown to one vast drysaltery!
So munch on, crunch on, take your nuncheon,
Breakfast, supper, dinner, luncheon!’
And just as a bulky sugar-puncheon,
All ready staved, like a great sun shone
Glorious scarce and inch before me,
Just as methought it said ‘Come, bore me!’
- I found the Weser rolling o’er me.”

You should have heard the Hamelin people
Ringing the bells till they rocked the steeple.
“Go,” cried the Mayor, “and get long poles!
Poke out the nests and block up the holes!
Consult with carpenters and builders,
And leave in our town not even a trace
Of the rats!”—when suddenly, up the face
Of the Piper perked in the market-place,
With a, “First, if you please, my thousand guilders!”

A thousand guilders! The Mayor looked blue;
So did the Corporation too.
For council dinners made rare havoc
With Claret, Moselle, Vin-de-Grave, Hock;
And half the money would replenish
Their cellar’s biggest **** with Rhenish.
To pay this sum to a wandering fellow
With a gypsy coat of red and yellow!
“Beside,” quoth the Mayor with a knowing wink,
“Our business was done at the river’s brink;
We saw with our eyes the vermin sink,
And what’s dead can’t come to life, I think.
So, friend, we’re not the folks to shrink
From the duty of giving you something for drink,
And a matter of money to put in your poke;
But, as for the guilders, what we spoke
Of them, as you very well know, was in joke.
Beside, our losses have made us thrifty.
A thousand guilders! Come, take fifty!”

The Piper’s face fell, and he cried
“No trifling! I can’t wait, beside!
I’ve promised to visit by dinner-time
Bagdat, and accept the prime
Of the Head Cook’s pottage, all he’s rich in,
For having left, in the Calip’s kitchen,
Of a nest of scorpions no survivor—
With him I proved no bargain-driver,
With you, don’t think I’ll bate a stiver!
And folks who put me in a passion
May find me pipe to another fashion.”

“How?” cried the Mayor, “d’ye think I’ll brook
Being worse treated than a Cook?
Insulted by a lazy ribald
With idle pipe and vesture piebald?
You threaten us, fellow? Do your worst,
Blow your pipe there till you burst!”

Once more he stepped into the street;
And to his lips again
Laid his long pipe of smooth straight cane;
And ere he blew three notes (such sweet
Soft notes as yet musician’s cunning
Never gave the enraptured air)
There was a rustling, that seemed like a bustling
Of merry crowds justling at pitching and hustling,
Small feet were pattering, wooden shoes clattering,
Little hands clapping and little tongues chattering,
And, like fowls in a farmyard when barley is scattering,
Out came the children running.
All the little boys and girls,
With rosy cheeks and flaxen curls,
And sparkling eyes and teeth like pearls,
Tripping and skipping, ran merrily after
The wonderful music with shouting and laughter.

The Mayor was dumb, and the Council stood
As if they were changed into blocks of wood,
Unable to move a step, or cry
To the children merrily skipping by—
And could only follow with the eye
That joyous crowd at the Piper’s back.
But how the Mayor was on the rack,
And the wretched Council’s bosoms beat,
As the Piper turned from the High Street
To where the Weser rolled its waters
Right in the way of their sons and daughters!
However he turned from South to West,
And to Koppelberg Hill his steps addressed,
And after him the children pressed;
Great was the joy in every breast.
“He never can cross that mighty top!
He’s forced to let the piping drop,
And we shall see our children stop!”
When, lo, as they reached the mountain’s side,
A wondrous portal opened wide,
As if a cavern was suddenly hollowed;
And the Piper advanced and the children followed,
And when all were in to the very last,
The door in the mountain-side shut fast.
Did I say, all? No! One was lame,
And could not dance the whole of the way;
And in after years, if you would blame
His sadness, he was used to say,—
“It’s dull in our town since my playmates left!
I can’t forget that I’m bereft
Of all the pleasant sights they see,
Which the Piper also promised me:
For he led us, he said, to a joyous land,
Joining the town and just at hand,
Where waters gushed and fruit-trees grew,
And flowers put forth a fairer hue,
And everything was strange and new;
The sparrows were brighter than peacocks here,
And their dogs outran our fallow deer,
And honey-bees had lost their stings,
And horses were born with eagles’ wings:
And just as I became assured
My lame foot would be speedily cured,
The music stopped and I stood still,
And found myself outside the Hill,
Left alone against my will,
To go now limping as before,
And never hear of that country more!”

Alas, alas for Hamelin!
There came into many a burgher’s pate
A text which says, that Heaven’s Gate
Opes to the Rich at as easy rate
As the needle’s eye takes a camel in!
The Mayor sent East, West, North, and South,
To offer the Piper, by word of mouth,
Wherever it was men’s lot to find him,
Silver and gold to his heart’s content,
If he’d only return the way he went,
And bring the children behind him.
But when they saw ’twas a lost endeavour,
And Piper and dancers were gone for ever,
They made a decree that lawyers never
Should think their records dated duly
If, after the day of the month and year,
These words did not as well appear,
“And so long after what happened here
On the Twenty-second of July,
Thirteen hundred and seventy-six”:
And the better in memory to fix
The place of the children’s last retreat,
They called it, the Pied Piper’s Street—
Where any one playing on pipe or tabor
Was sure for the future to lose his labour.
Nor suffered they hostelry or tavern
To shock with mirth a street so solemn;
But opposite the place of the cavern
They wrote the story on a column,
And on the great Church-Window painted
The same, to make the world acquainted
How their children were stolen away;
And there it stands to this very day.
And I must not omit to say
That in Transylvania there’s a tribe
Of alien people that ascribe
The outlandish ways and dress
On which their neighbours lay such stress,
To their fathers and mothers having risen
Out of some subterraneous prison
Into which they were trepanned
Long time ago in a mighty band
Out of Hamelin town in Brunswick land,
But how or why, they don’t understand.

So, *****, let you and me be wipers
Of scores out with all men—especially pipers:
And, whether they pipe us free, from rats or from mice,
If we’ve promised them aught, let us keep our promise.

It’s New York Fashion Week, and there is a frenzy backstage as models are worked into their dresses and mob the assembled engineers for instructions of how to operate the technology that magically transforms a subtle gesture into a glowing garment suggestive of the bioluminescence of jellyfish. I know there’s not enough time for them to do their work. Almost instinctively, I find the designer and bargain for 20 more minutes.

While I wonder to myself how I got here, backstage at a runway show, I also know I am witnessing what may be the harbinger of how a fourth industrial revolution is set to change fashion, resulting in a new materiality of computation that will transform a certain slice of fashion designers into the “developers” of a whole new category of clothing. By driving new partnerships in tools, materials and technologies, this revolution has the potential to dramatically reshape how we produce fashion at a scale not seen since the invention of the jacquard loom.

The jacquard loom, as it happens, inspired the earliest computers. Ever since, textile development and technology have been on an interwoven path — sometimes more loosely knit, but becoming increasingly tighter in the last five years. Around that time, my colleagues and I embarked on a project in our labs to look at “fashion tech,” which at the time was a fringe term. These were pioneers daring to — sometimes literally — weave together technology and clothing to drive new ways of thinking about the “shape” of computation. But as we looked around the fashion industry, it became clear that designers lacked the tools to harness the potential of new technologies.

For a start, all facets of technology needed to be more malleable. Batteries, processors and sensors, in particular, had to evolve from being bulky and rigid to being softer, flexible and stretchable. Thus, I began to champion “Puck [rigid], Patch [flexible], Apparel [integrated],” an internal mantra to describe what I felt would be the material transformations of sensing and computation.

As our technologies have steadily become smaller, faster and more energy efficient — a progression known in the tech industry as Moore’s Law — we’ve gone on to launch a computer the size of a postage stamp and worked with a fashion tech designer to demonstrate its capabilities. In this case we were able to show dresses that were generated not just from sketches and traditional materials, but forward-looking tools (body scans and Computer Assisted Design renderings) and materials (in this case, 3-D printed nylon). At the same time, we integrated a variety of sensors (proximity, brain-wave activity, heart-rate, etc.) that allowed the garments themselves to sense and communicate in ways that showed how fashion — inspired in part by biology — might become the interface between people and the world around them.

Eventually, a meeting between Intel and the CFDA lent support to the idea that if technology could fit more seamlessly into designs, then it would be more valuable to fashion designers. The realisation helped birth the Intel Curie module, which has since made its way down the catwalk, embedded into a slew of designs that could help wearers adapt, interpret and respond to the world around them, for example, by “sensing” adrenaline or allowing subtle gestures to illuminate a garment.

As the relationship between fashion and technology continues to evolve, we will need to reimagine research and development, supply chains, business models and more. But perhaps more than anything, as fashion and technology merge, we must embrace a new strand of collaborative transdisciplinary design expertise and integrate software, sensors, processors and synthetic and biological materials into a designer’s tool kit.

Technology will inform the warp and weft of the fabric of fashion’s future. This will trigger discussions not just about fashion as an increasingly literal interface between people, our biology and the world around us, but also about the implications that data will generate for access, health, privacy and self-expression as we look ahead. We are indeed on the precipice of a fourth industrial revolution.Read more at:www.marieaustralia.com/red-carpet-celebrity-dresses | www.marieaustralia.com/black-formal-dresses

Interview with the Tortoise and the Hare after the race
Commentator: Hare, you had the race may I ask what happened back there.
Hare: no comment
Commentator: but Hare? You had the tortoise by a mile   and as the day progressed, the distance grew shorter. Why, Care to comment?  
Hare: no comment.
Commentator: Ok   let’s talk to the tortoise maybe he can fill in the blanks about the race.
Commentator to the tortoise:  Tortoise would you mind telling us about the fine race you just won?
Tortoise:  Sure my pleasure,  but  forgive me I am slow and it hurts my neck to  look way up at you can you sit where I can see you  a little easier.
(Commentator adjusts   to where the tortoise can see him easier)
Tortoise: Thank you much easier, it really hurts my neck to strain,  any way you asked me to tell about the race.
Well I sure thought that hare had me beat he took off in a flash, me and my short legs  I couldn’t keep up, all I had on my mind is cross the finish line. I knew he had beaten me just by the way he took off from the starting line. But during the race there were times I saw him sitting on the side line talking to people or rummaging through stores along the race route.
I thought ok maybe he needs a break he is running very fast, then by the time I pass where he is at the time I passed him he was running ahead of me once again. Again I thought just get to the finish line at least I  can say I finished the race I can’t turn back now , see I am not a quitter: the tortoise states I was asked to race  against him, knowing he is  seven  times faster than I will ever be.
But something was driving me to continue the race, not to give up take pride in each small step my little legs gave me. Soon again I saw the hare sitting on the side line this time he was asleep.
Funny I thought this is no time to sleep this is a race he is surely faster than I am , he should have already been at the finish line by now I could see the  small red flag way off in the distance, why did he stop here when he is  only a little ways away from winning the race,  I do say I did have to stop  for a minute myself there as well. Poor legs are very tired at that point. But the hare never moved much less saw me sitting right next to him while I also took a break.  So I got up and continued to walk towards the finish line. And here I am the winner of the race.
Commentator:  so at any point did the hare say anything to you during the race as he passed you?
Tortoise : yes , well more he laughed at me as he ran past me and at times would say  : he won the race he won the race.
Commentator:  ok tortoise do you have anything to say to the people watching the race?
Tortoise: well, I guess:  never underestimate what you can do when you put your mind to it. And maybe
Focus on yourself and the task at hand, and everything else will fall into place.
Commentator: Thank you tortoise and very well said, and Congratulations on winning today’s race.
(Commentator to the crowd: ok I will try one more time to interview the hare to hear his story)
Commentator: Hare, one more question if I may ?  Would you mind please tell me your side of the race activities today. And how do you feel about the outcome of  the day’s events.
Hare: Ok , I will answer these two questions  that seems burning in your ears to find out  why the event as it be. I lost the race can’t you see to the tortoise so low to the ground .
How can that be I am faster than he? I passed him at the starting gate and took a break and talked to my fans along the way, then when I saw him coming I took off running passed him by   as if he was standing still     and as I turned around a bend in the road, I took a break and grabbed something to eat and looked around the stores, and bought a few things but I have to go back and pick them up. You cannot run a race with hands so full of bulky objects you know.
So when I saw the tortoise  coming near to where I was I started running once again  this time  I was sure I had won I saw the finish line not far ahead and I  had left a lot of space between him and I so I could rest  , so I closed my eyes  I did not know he had passed me and won the race so when I woke I looked around I did not see him so I was certain  he was still a ways behind me , I did not realize the time was so late so I ran   to the finish line expecting to win the prize . Only to see the tortoise was standing by the trophy.
Commentator: I am sorry to hear that Hare. Is there anything you would like to tell the people watching the race today?
Hare: Yes,  I am bigger and faster than the tortoise is yet he won the race fair and  with honor.as for myself I looked at my size as a definite way to win a trophy that would sit on my mantle only thing I wanted really the race wasn’t  anything.
And along the way I  spent more time  thinking and doing other things instead of focusing on the race ahead. I was so sure I had won and had time to play and chat along the way. I was wrong to think a tortoise could ever win a race against a hare
I guess pay more attention to the thing in front of you at the time, all the other pressing things can be dealt with after a race if it is important enough and you remember to go back to it. Slow down and stay focused I guess  that is what I am trying to say.

                                                           ­                                                   Written by Alan Spivey 6/11/2012

I was painting a portrait the other night,
    when I figured this out; so let me paint you a picture now.
See I’m a writer, and not a very good artist, and I’m overly clumsy
    and far too bulky for my own good.
I have a boxers’ hands to go with a boxers’ grip which is the worst
    way to grab a paint brush unless you want to tip over your paints.
And that’s exactly what I did.
I tipped over that tray thing with the little slots for all the different
   colors of paint to keep them separated.
They went tumbling to the floor and they all mixed together and
   became one, and there was no more white, no more purple, no
       more yellow or red.
There were no lines to color in or outside of cause the paint was
     everywhere and I left it to dry instead of calling it a
                      “mess that needs to be cleaned up.”
I gave it a chance to become its own thing.
And it didn’t.
It just remained sprawling on the floor.
But at LEAST it was given a chance.
And then I turned on the TV to see that cowboy has-been from Gran
     Torino talking about how this is a “***** generation” and how  
             everyone is too Politically Correct.
He said we used to not be afraid of words like '******' and '****'
    and we walked around proudly in our own neighborhoods,
         and I immediately turned that ******* off.
Not to ignore it, but because I couldn’t respond to it.
I’ve been screaming at the TV for 32 years now and have determined
     that either they can’t hear me or they just don’t give a ****.  
It may be both.
But I want to scream.
I want to tell him that people still aren’t afraid to use those Words; they just choose not to.
I want to tell him that they still walk around proudly in their own neighborhoods, and they are even more proud that he doesn't live here.
But all that’ll lead to,
is an Us vs. Them mentality,
which eventually leads to wars.
We can’t have a war.
Not based on this.
And there are people out there who want that, and there are a
   lot of them.
And they are using those words and they are walking those
      neighborhoods, and they are posting on Alt-Right Message Boards
           and talking about how the White Man is going extinct and how
                   they are the minority.
They white-wash phrases like “White Supremacist” to become
   “Racial Purists” and I realized that they just gave us the answer.
We need to spill the paint.
We need to fall in love with people of color.
Any color.
Every color.
We need to spill the paint and mix it together and make new colors.
And it’ll take a long time, but anything worth doing is worth doing
     right.
And there will be no more primary colors and secondary colors,
    there will only be people.
But its not enough to mix the colors, we have to clean up the act too.
We have to raise our children of all colors right.
We have to tell them that no color is better than another, and that you  
    can draw a painting with just one color, Because that IS a choice!
You can surround yourself with just one color, and only use just one
       color your entire life, but what kind of a life is that?
You walk down the street and the Roses are grey. And the trees are
     grey. And the grey men at the bar are hitting on grey women
          outside and the bartender is pouring grey goose for everyone
               trying to wash down the fact that something is definitely
                      wrong.
We need Red roses and green trees and black men with white women,
      and Asian women with white men, and everyone needs to just start
           mixing and loving, and loving to mix until there is nothing left to
                 stereotype.
Nothing left to minimize, undermine, or scrutinize.
And if we don’t do this soon,
I fear there may be nothing left to scrutinize at all.

Often times people say go to the gym, “It’ll make you happy, and you’ll feel energized!”

These are some of the things I’ve experienced or thoughts I’ve manifested over my teenage years. Ahh yes great ol’ puberty! Onto adulthood, yikes!

Go to the gym and lose that extra weight that your family and so called “friends” have been passively judging you for.

Go to the gym, but don’t lift weights because you’ll get bulky, and no one will ever love you if you look like a female Hulk.

Go to the gym. Go to the gym. I hear this left and right. But I fear that I’ll embarrass myself and that everyone is watching me.

Anxiety and panic attacks hold me back. And what happens when that clinically depressed person is told time and time again to “just work out” and “get out of bed; it’ll make you feel great?” What if they just came down from a manic episode and crashed? What will people say then?

Well I know what I want to say:
This isn’t as simple as the morning blues or that feeling you have after listening to a sad song that reminds you of your past. (Not to disqualify those emotions whatsoever.)

Depression is the ruminating thoughts that no one loves you or ever will. It is feeling so empty that your appetite is nonexistent and your motivation to do what you once loved is gone.

Anxiety is holding your breath and forgetting to breathe, so you just sit there in pain until finally someone or something reminds you to release.

Release all that you’ve built up. Stop the isolation, and share what’s on your mind. It’s not easy. Trust me I know.

Two days ago I went to the gym, and yesterday I went to the gym. Can you guess what I did today? I went to the gym despite every fiber in my being telling me I couldn’t.

I had the support of my mom and sister. Find a gym buddy. Start small because all the machines and strong people can look intimidating. But they all started somewhere and now you can too.

Make a goal. Something that is not too small or too large. For me, I’m training for a 5K that’s in the beginning of May. It will be challenging yet doable.

Sometimes none of us knows what we’re doing, and that’s the beauty and challenges of life. Don’t quit after one try. Your journey is now starting its new chapter. Stay in the present moment, and keep going. I believe in you.

i could tell you how certain stations on the London underground
smell, but i can't capture you this smell...
a bit like in that film Perfume: scents are lost over time,
with regards to places -
                            unlike the eternal pine forest...
or the zest of lemon...
                                         those are universal scents...
one could and humanity has: created a synthetic answer
and copied these scents... made synthetic tastes
a whole chemistry of a posteriori scents and tastes...
Kant and chemistry are a perfect combination...
given the classical schematic:

analytical                         analytical
a priori                             a posteriori
apples grow on               tomatoes:
trees and                          categorised as fruits          
carrots grow                    yet used as vegetables
in the earth                      the analysis being
since apples                     even though they grow
are a fruit                         on something: trees,
while carrots                    bushes, vines...
are a root vegetable,       analysis has found that
ergo?                                 they are better treated
all vegetables                   as vegetables rather than
grow in the earth            fruits, since one rarely cooks
while all fruits                 savoury meals with fruit
grow on trees                  yet the tomato is used
or shrubs                         plentifully in savoury cooking


synthetic                          synthetic
a priori                           a posteriori
■, ▲                                   in light of the given examples
(geometry)                        in the realm of the analytical
and the propositions       a priori: that fruits grow on
that come with                 trees or bushes
them:                                  there's the pineapple
e.g. c² = a² + b²                   anomaly:
or physics:                         pineapples grow on the ground
e = mc²                                (in the ground) like cabbage-heads
                                            grow in much the same fashion...

i always struggle with the a posteriori conceptualization...
in the original i wrote as can be seen above...
are tomatoes the byproduct of
analytical a posteriori knowledge?
i.e. they are fruits that are used as vegetables (used,
hell, even treated as such)... because you will not find
a tomato desert as such...
the classification of a tomato as a fruit:
given how it grows... would also invoke the cucumber
to be treated as a vegetable:
vegetables are not as juicy as fruits...
the flesh of the fruit is usually softer and certainly
more juicy... while the flesh of the vegetable
is more bulky and requires cooking and salt
to extract the juices oh a higher carbohydrate
concentrate of the fibrous nature...

pineapples... a fruit that grows like a vegetable
in the earth...
i like this "confusion" in my head...
i'm not going to clarify it...
            i leave this curiosity in my writing on purpose...
analytical a posteriori facts:
well... first having categorised the tomato as a fruit:
upon analysis... true: the tomato behaves like
a fruit... but upon analysis: after the fact:
it is better used as a vegetable...

         and the synthetic a posteriori truth about
the pineapple? then again: i know where i might be going wrong...
isn't synthetic a posteriori knowledge possible?
it's not as simple as the pineapple example
based on: fruits grow on trees while vegetables grow in
the earth... i can only find questions
on the possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge...
ergo? of course synthetic a posteriori knowledge
is possible...
    it's ingrained in chemistry...
what does synthetic a posteriori knowledge look like?

a chemist tastes a lemon... and he tries to replicate
the taste of lemon using chemicals...
he breaks down the chemistry of the lemon...
and? with due course... replicates the taste of lemon
without actually using a lemon!
he breaks the lemon to the basic components
of citric acids and whatever else is needed to replicate
the taste of lemon and grind it into a powder:
chemistry is synthetic a posteriori knowledge...
isn't it?

the examples i cited with the pineapples:
it doesn't matter that the pineapple behaves like
a vegetable when it grows...
apart from that sick idea of a Hawaiian pizza toppings...
pineapple? ham?! you what?!
that's not synthetic a posteriori knowledge:
that's just a ******* whim of bad-taste...
there's no actual synthesis of the pineapple growing
as a vegetable and the "ingenuity" of treating
it like a bad idea for a pizza topping...
the tomato: however... is a pristine example
of analytical a posteriori knowledge:
sure... it's categorised as a vegetable...
because of the way it grows... compared to actual vegetables:
but? you wouldn't allow the tomato
to be bitten into like an apple... you wouldn't bake
a tomato cake as you might bake a banana cake...
the analysis concludes: our knowledge of fruits is this...
and we have this vegetable: the tomato
that's a fruit... but it would be better suited
in being used like a vegetable...

synthetic a posteriori does exist... it just doesn't apply
to pineapples for the simply reason that they
grow like vegetables... they're still going to be fruits...
synthetic a posteriori knowledge is chemistry...
it has to exist because a pineapple is
not a synthetic a priori "idea" of TASTE let alone
virtue or however Kant framed it...

ugh... my first day back at Craven Cottage...
little ****** steward: i hate these hierarchies...
it's a petty army of high-viz. jackets...
   i wasn't the supervisor but i had some colts under
my "supervision"... i tried to smooth things over:
i did... in the end i wanted to see Fulham play
Liverpool... i spread the word around:
this is *******... they should have put us inside
the stadium...
   but... the weather was the loveliest and the Thames
was tide-out... two seagulls arguing...
in the shade: this part of London is truly mesmerising...
i love the smell of the Thames with the tide out...
in the shade under these mammoth-esque splendours
of foliage...
hell... i even managed to spot my first KONIK
(little horse)... that's slang for... those ******* that buy
tickets at the regular price... then hang around the stadium
and try to push the tickets at a hyper-inflated price...
the ****** was selling the tickets for £250 for two!
and this was after the first half finished!
i told one of the guys with a radio:
call this in...
                          i had to repeat myself about 3 times
before the management agreed to my concern...
they sent two spare police officers to the person in question...
he almost sold those ******* tickets...
one minute i see him pretend to tie his shoelaces
(he wasn't pretending) - his black cap
disappearing under the bushes... next minute:
wh'ah where?! ****** did a runner...
so he wasn't tying his shoelaces "on a whim":
he was about to do a runner...

                  that's ******* exploitation...
that's like: stealing... capitalism at its worst...
the ingenuity of crime: oh... but it's innocent crime...
it's i buy something for £30 but...
i'll sell it for you for £250...
                             now... it's not antiques! it's not a *******
van Gogh painting that has been lying around
for quite some time... gaining a repertoire and a reputation
as something good, worthwhile:
it's a ******* football match ticket!
hyper-inflation like under the Weimar Republic...
money good as "gold": "gold" as in winter fuel,
timber the new platinum!

after all: there was no real synthetic a priori knowledge:
chemistry is hardly a question of appearance,
water is clear, but so is hydrochloric acid...
what else is clear? sodium hydroxide...
                 chemistry was born from synthetic a posteriori
knowledge...
how many chemical experiments came as a surprise
a sort of anti-Eureka of synthetic a priori knowledge?
champagne springs to mind... lysergic acid comes
to mind: no one was actually trying to find these things...
e.g. they did not come about through analytical
a posteriori knowledge: they arose from
a dimension of the synthetic a posteriori knowledge:
by chance: by accident...

sure... i might be doing a ******-low-skill job right
now: and it is... i'll admit...
it's super **** sometimes:
most of the time my coworkers are either
over-bearing ego-maniacs fixated on hierarchy,
or they're lazy Somali youths...
or just plain-sighted Nimrods...
i sometimes leave my mind to wander...
that when i get the jerks in the feet like
i'm about to fall over... like for bearskin hatted
soldiers on parade...
but i leave my mind to wander:
it's not an insult if it's true...
                  no: when i was a roofer and fiddling
with inanimate things there was more focus
on the work to be done... dealing with people
is a crass differentiation from perfecting how an inanimate
ought to behave under your hands...
to turn a roll of felt into a water-insulated roof
with a roll of fleece and enough tar...
people are different: i'm sort of studying people...
gearing myself to hover in on children in schools...

if Leibniz preferred the profession of librarian
and a private intellectual life of par excellence...
i wouldn't think twice about becoming a primary school
teacher than being a secondary school
teacher of chemistry...
**** me: if drag queen hour is about to be imported
from America: i best (better) step in...
i just imagine: well... unlike a barren woman...
who has no children...
who goes into a profession akin to primary school
teaching... but then i'd arrive...
i know the obvious stereotype to battle:
PEDOHPILE! ha ha...
           Ava Lauren: just my type... plump...
full-bodied... probably the age of my mum by now...
that's my type...
i need something rounded of:
a 5.9 = a 6... just an example...
                
             but i let my mind wander... when roofing
you couldn't leave your mind to wonder...
i could... tell you of the specific scents in certain
underground stations... Baker Street? is that the one
with the Victorian arches, a station under the bridge?
i don't remember...
Putney Bridge is a beautiful station...
but today i took the route:
Romford via train... got off at Stratford... waited for a minute
for the central line...
(i love meditating on the topic of tubes maps...
there are only two important lines
in London... why? based on how many times
they intersect... the Central Line and the Piccadilly
Line... they only intersect at Holborn)...
travelled to Holborn... not sitting...
at each carriage there are these half-seats...
you're leaning back... standing-sitting...
i felt so relaxed... i gave way to the momentum
of the tube...
i was moving backwards and forwards...
head nodding... shoulders doing the mr. plastic-fantastic...
i almost tried to remember the remaining
tension in my body... the grip i had on a bottle
of water and a packet of tortilla wraps...
the rest of me was: freed...

when it comes to scents... that's one thing:
everyone knows it's a stupid idea to change tube
lines at Bank... why? well... Bank it connected
to Monument...
it's a city within a city: a London 2.0... oh oh:
yes it ******* is... never change at Bank...
anyway... as i was relaxing having closed my eyes...
i can tell you where the best sounds of
machinery exist in London?
between Liverpool St. - Bank - and Chancery Lane...
mind you... i cycle the route from time to time...
what's above? is not, what's above...
compared to cycling... this route is like:
watching the original Dune movie...
i'm strapped to a ******* earthworm...
or: being digested by one while listening to
the clag glug and clamour iron biting iron...
i sometimes do the "twirl" of the tube above
ground... just after Aldgate...
i head towards Brick Lane... toward Liverpool St.
prior to reaching Bank St.:

all the Piccadilly Stations between Holborn and
Earl's Court have this sickly sweet stench
about them... it's sickly sweet... it's: sickly sweet...

i remember back in St. Augustine's we had one
female primary school teacher...
some ****** proverb speaks the words:
woe unto you for having to care for the children
of others...
while i'm thinking: that would be a worthwhile challenge...
i don't want any of my own:
the fear of ******* them up more than
i was ****** up wears me down...
at least with the genes of strangers
i can send in an auxiliary covert party of my psyche...
who would i send in? the usual suspects...
Kant, Heidegger, Newton, Ezra Pound...
oh... the list is pretty long...

most probably Rumi hanging around with
Zhuangzi... Ovid and Horace...
ooh... terrible idea to start drinking whiskey
after binge-eating a watermelon...
the burps i'm getting back:
******* postcards from Uan Muhuggiag (Libya)...
i'm seeing camels double the number of their humps!
not good... absolutely no good

burp... ooh... this watermelon will not go down
so good... while i worry about *******
myself come tomorrow morning...
unlike the Red Hot Chilly Peppers singing
the fames of California:
what do i have? i have the countryside of Essex
and the incursions in the concrete staccato
of London... i can mediate this...

              burp: well... at least it's whiskey mingling
with the juices of a watermelon...
i much prefer that to the half-digested acidic
meat of any sort...
                 that's healthy burping and healthy farting
for your...
hmm... investing in children... that's an idea...
i once remarked to a boy in a supermarket:
you know... how a while i thought animals
were incapable of seeing 3D objects
in a 2D canvas: i.e. why wouldn't animals
watch television with men?
today i had a "Fred" pester me for a bite
of my tortilla roll...
i would have given it to him freely:
i wasn't that hungry...
   so i asked his owner: so... what's his diet like?
oh... Fred has had pretty stomach upsets...
he spent the past three days eating mulberries
from a tree...
ooh! i love mulberries: who couldn't be more upset?
the dog or the mulberries?
ugh: these kind of people:
that have their dogs on a ******* vegan diet...
hey! Fred! bite into this tortilla wrap!
i have learned that the food man eats
if also eaten by a dog tastes better:
after it was eaten by man!

o.k., fair enough Fred... you have an owner that
deserves having you: but no children...
i'd put you in the same category as a child...
children, dogs, cats...
things that might stir in man the unusual:
certainly not Darwinistic / genetic investment
that might reduce a man's hormonal balance...
mate... you look at me that dumb-***** eyed way
one more time... let me pat you on the head
like i have... you're coming with me to the land
of eternal tortillas wrapping around chicken
and bacon: there's no "yes" as there's no "no"...

but that's London for you...
            and that's also Essex for you...
i spent an entire day in London?
where did i find those cheap-*** beauties of womanhood?
i didn't find them in London:
i had to travel back to Romford to find...
i sat down to eat a snack bucket in a chicken shop:
three spicy wings, some chips...
mayonnaise and some chilly sauce...
a 7up... £3.50... i enjoyed the meal
and thought about: nothing...
nothing is usually hard to "think" about...
you get into geometry: to prolong your time at pretending
to look "cool"... when eating alone...

i hopped on the bus... watched two hunchbacks
of an elderly couple "manage" their way own:
what cruel fate... the extension of mortality
via science... may i never see myself
that old... reduced to being the child of Atlas...
no... i don't care for the sensibility of secularism
and science...
old age transcends both of these:
it's the reality of old age...
prolonged old age is best renowned
and celebrated by lizards: turtles most in fact...
mammals look weird...
mammals look weird when their life is prolonged:
unnaturally: via the basis of science!

start giving out re-prescriptions to people
with a a faith in science but no hope in hope...
start selling them hopes of eternity...
this materialistic "eternal life": is drawing us closer
to no closure...
there comes a life: there coms a death of said life...
it's not fair to pretend that the inevitiable
is "not" going to happen: it will...
the tyranny of old age...
                  by the standards of the Benelux:
i'm more than willing to bow out...

who knows! i am not willing to simply live
for the awkward presence of strangers
on a basis of anomalies and non-intrusions
of some freaked-up formalities...
to hell with that: i have no evolutionary-existential
plight of  "conscience" that might make me suppose:
on racial grounds: that the human "effort"
will disappear: outright: completely:
sure... chances are... humanity will be governed
by more people willing to ***** cities of death via
the pyramid... people engage in the magic carpet
flights of Islam and pseudo-Islam from regions
akin to Somalia and Bangladesh:
my problem? i can't live forever! can i?

et scriptum est...
i like being toyed around as being the idiot...
it helps me grow...
and it was so written...
                ergo? ut necesse sit!
(and so it must be)
  ha ha! ah ha ha h ha ha!
vulnus ferrum:
                  sanguis respiratio
scratch of iron:
breathing blood!
            
mortuus est mori: the dead must die!
vivos debet mori /
vivos non sunt exceptio!

i work among people that make my intellect:
CLOWN!
   i entertain them... i must...
but their intellect is about as much:
grappling as... i don't know what!
i'm out of metaphors and aphorisms...

                        intelligence is discouraged when it comes
to a working environment...
           i'm like Leibniz... i'm unlike Newton...
my ambitions a "cowering" in a personal enterprise...
i like the individualism of m own enterprise:
i don't hope to solve or save the problems of
a common man... nope!
                
last time i heard? the train has arrived:
i also heard: the train is leaving...
well... i'm i geared up:
what do i care for the famines in Ethiopia?!
i don't care for claiming responsibilities for
people who don't take responsibilities for
themselves!
starve?! **** it... why not?"
oh right... one of the Somali types?!
pretend it's work by hiding behind the bushes?!
ergo? behind the bushes i pretend to shower you
with free bread and pork? don't like pork?
eat dirt instead!

i'm done: free-loaders: i'm done with them...
i'm so ******* with these Somalis that you can't even begin to comprehend!

The vines have turned the color of the season —
as red as the wine their grapes will spill.
I peer back up the hillside into the circling sun,
an infinite swath of yellow. Below it surges
Homer’s wine-dark sea, repeatedly, endlessly, effortlessly
spreading. Except the sea is never red in Greece or Italy,
or even in France, where I stand amid a sea of wine-red leaves,
in silence, under the sun, holding back the flood of invaders below.

From the crumbling wall of the vineyard,
I survey the village of Riquewihr in all its medieval splendor,
gorged with tourists like an unfortunate goose
gagging on grain forced down its gullet:
foie gras for the shopkeepers, who crowd the cobbled courtyard
in all its chaos and cacophony.
“Sample a macaroon for free under the ramparts.”
“Buy a reproduction of a one-of-a-kind watercolor of the bell tower,
built in 1291. (Only 400 Euros for the original),” the artist says.
“Reserve it now for Christmas.”

His stocking cap needs cleaning, I think.
I eye the village fountain, the half-timbered shops, the claustrophobic
stone houses, brightly painted, squeezed into walls like tiny fortresses.
The artist tells me how hard it is to make a living —
the global economy his impenetrable wall, which holds back a flood
of buyers from Germany, China, New York.

I decline his offer to buy and climb the steep hill out of town,
the wine-dark hill of the vineyard.
This is what it means to inherit the world:
to stand apart, high, distant, above the sea
of other tourists, just like yourself, who yearn to stand apart,
just like yourself, laden with bulky guidebooks,
just like yourself, looking for the perfect souvenir, just like yourself,
the one that will sit perfectly on their mantle. Just like yourself,
they seek a memento that will remember for them — remember
all they could have had if only they had had the village to themselves.
If only you had had the village to yourself, to make it your own.

On this sunny afternoon, the village is my own — for a moment,
from a distance, awash in gray-blue shadow. Only the vineyard beams:
isolated, fecund, teeming with dreams; ever gaining on the harvest;
angling closer to the giant wine press that will spew the scarlet juice
at my feet, the earth turned the color of blood.

I resist the urge to pluck a baby cluster of grapes, nestled safely
beneath a leafy wave of this wine-dark sea, these purple berries
springing from the ground: so many earthy bubbles, born to burst.
Le terroir in French: The dirt makes all the difference.

A handful of soil would prove the perfect souvenir, n’est-ce pas?
sitting pretty on my mantle. The dust and debris would blow away
day by day, like ashes spilled from a funerary urn,
the sacred remains of my travels.

Let me be buried, then, in memory of the fertile furrows of Alsace.
Let me push up this hillside, along its ample paths of abundance;
its ripening rows of fruit; its wine-red passageways through leaves
and vines, steep and luminous; the sea of blood yet to be pressed
from the soon-to-be-crimson grapes.

“Does this vast vineyard hold any secret worth journeying halfway
around the world to find?” That is the question I scribble in the dirt.
“Does this village? Does this vision? Does this ancient, failing wall?”
Even if the answer is “No, no, no,” I shall reply, “Yes, yes, yes.”

Yes, let me be buried in Alsatian soil as a lasting souvenir.
Yes, let me lie here, as I stand: free and upright,
lighted by the autumn sun, unchanging, set apart
to revel in the marvel of red blood seeping into the soil.
Yes, let me make this stained patch of dirt my own.

The vines have turned the color of the season —
wine-red, wine-dark, blood-red.
And I have turned the color of the vines,
in silence, under the sun, holding back the flood.

Atop an Orange van driving through the jungle
Journeying toward Ugandan Safari
Heads skimming branches and hanging leaves
And above us super sized spiders held between the trees

Up-tailed Pumbas dash into the unknown
where branches are tangled within themselves
and cacti are dressed with vines like a curtain
giving lives some security from the hunters hidden within

Nearing the fall the redness of soil shines shards of diamond
like the confetti of angels
Whilst the deathly currents are gushing a fierce calming
the spray saturates us in a welcome cooling
as we view the hanging rainbow of bliss

The journey continues with our legs dusted in glitter of the earth
and wind blowing the wet from our skin
A knock delivers generous giving’s of green
And we listen to an orchestra of nature
welcome us to the scene of Africa as it should be

Within the park we’re stunned by stretching scenery
Raw Africa as far as eye can see
Afront us a distance of still Savannah
Yet life roams within in abundancy

Of which life we’re left wondering
As we reach the camp of the red chilli
our favourite taste of beer greets us
So sitting back we see the sun sinking
Whilst man builds for us shelter to sleep in

Next morn rises early setting out for sightings
And we watch the red-hot sunrise upon the Nile
The light catching glistening ripples of water
and the painted sky reflecting onto the hippos habitat

Our first taste of the wildlife we wish to see
Their faces skim the wet shallows
and occasionally rise to gather gasps of air
Father and child fight for hierarchy
And we’re excited to witness the creatures’ honesty

Across the water atop Betty life feels complete
Without doubt there’s no better place to be
Chapati and egg breakfast with wind in our hair
whilst we look for movement of life amongst the trees
Our faces stretched with permanent grins of glee

It’s so quiet we can hear the grasses rustling
The tempo set by the crickets chirruping
Interrupted only by spontaneous sound of birds singing
And whistles of romance as the winged ones are wooing
Peace is so perfectly performed it’s mesmerising

Of animals and birds we encounter many
The signatory Kob prance elegantly upon the heath
and dodge road collision at the last minute
Reminding us that this land is theirs
Pace needn’t pander to our presence

We catch glimpses of mongoose scarpering into bushes
And guinea fowl following the leader as they dot along the roadside
Kingfishers fluttering flirts in the skies above us
then make a sudden swift dive for feed in the ground beneath

The giraffe stand still like statues
all pointed toward the sun like proving a point of endurance
Determined not to let us see them run
While the birdlife exceeds expectations
as we score sight of spoonbill feeding breakfast in the lily littered lake

We meet herds of buffalo grazing
whilst birds peck the pests from their backs
proving every part of nature has its’ purpose
And making their bulky weight appear as no threat

The queens of the food chain are found chilling modestly in the shade
ignorant of our privilege for close proximity
Unfazed by vehicles gathering in view of her public rarity
she relaxes comfortably at roadside so calm she’s almost cuddly

Upon the Nile we witness wildlife washing
Flumps are cooling in the muddy waters
Ears flapping whilst feeding on the grasses of the riverbank
oblivious to the still and sinister crocs waiting within for prey to pass
their jaws held open ready to strike a snack

The blazing heat and gentle motion leaves passengers falling into sleep
But they willingly wake to view the gushing falls of Murchison
cascade down the rock front separating the hills of pure luscious green
and creating current for driver to fight so to journey back safely
Not become another story of tragedy

Then as we wait to board the boat back
Baboons come hither to hunt our rucksacks
To spite their unwanted paparazzi
They help themselves to our belongings greedily
Mother carrying child throughout the robbery

In two days atop Betty and water we’ve been enriched with excitement
and opportunity to see so many new beings
Route home passes Ziwa meeting the endangered rhino species
And we share time with Obama and his protected family

Our last portion of pleasure is hopeful
as we watch the bulky beasts live life naturally
in a sanctuary maintained by committed rangers
who help us follow their motion so closely
we see them soak and scratch their skin

Then back in Betty we have one last long journey
that takes us back to our dreaded reality
of a working week back in capital city
We’re sad but glad to hold a memory
of what was a fantastic fateful opportunity

sail boats
and oceans

and really anything that floats and carries a person

far away
in a big body of water

I don’t think I have to say why

it’s obvious

I’m sure everyone has a thing for sail boats
and oceans

I like busses too
I seem to get really impatient on them, and I like that a lot
because I know I can’t do anything about it

it’s a game of
Will I Go Crazy Or Will I Have A Snooze?

I like being stuck between being stuck and being unstuck

one day I want to sit on a bus for 24 hours and see what happens
(I will be doing a lot of that in the month of October)

I’ll bring books, my iPod and movies to watch on my laptop
but I’ll probably just stare out the window hours on end
tall buildings will turn into blurry trees and blurry trees
will turn into pixilated neon canola crops
and there’ll be cows and ponies and one long road

to Montreal
then Toronto

then who the **** knows where because I am already dreading
going home after the trip
even though I haven’t left for the trip yet

it’s months to come

I have a thing for finding a new home
everywhere I go

but I never find one

I like the process of looking for a really long time
then giving up from discouragement and sad feelings of
abandonment stemmed from my childhood daddy issues

I’m pretty sure everyone has daddy-abandonment issues

I have a thing for assuming every one has the same problems
that I do

but it turns out that there are loads of girls that like to eat
lots
and don’t feel ashamed of the extra scoop of
double fudge ice cream

and there are teenagers that get along with their fathers
and look up to them
they go out for lunches and joke about dates and fix cars
and tell their little girls they’ll always be their little girls
and go on awkward shopping sprees and barbecue

but everyone has a thing for sail boats and water
we all want to escape

our eating disorder and drinking problem
a skinny body or a bulky body
bad grades and perfectionism
the people pleasing pushovers
fathers and mothers and old european traditions
family dinners that go perfectly and are so boring because of it

the fragility of feeling unique
the arrogance of feeling unique
the lack of faith in ourselves

being alone

Watching him write on the blackboard
More green than black
I was struck by the deep blue of his shirt
And how crisp the lines were
Folded and ironed
More effort than I care to put into a shirt

And even though I was shivering
In the dark, hopeless blue of
My bulky winter jacket
Sitting in that empty chair
I slid out of the room in my mind
Recalling summer

The windows, now with canvas
Blinds half lowered
Would, instead of frost and condensation
Allow thick, all-encompassing heat
To slither into the room
Our shirts sticking to us

Sweat stains would mark up our
Clothes, like chalk on the blackboard
And our legs would
Stick to our plastic chairs as we
Stood at the end of class, reinvigorated
Voices raised in shared triumph of the overcome

Backpacks would be thrown over our
Shoulders wet and tan and flush with
Heat of the summer season, synonymous with
Hope. Our shorts and bright shirts made the
Room a deafening testament to our
Readiness

For the day.

You were always skinny.

always turning away
always hiding your face
always twisting your frame

You were always more than skinny,
not quite thin,
not frail
not flimsy
but more than just skinny.

Turning to the side,
I saw you;
as the light caught my eye,
I lost you
in between the rays of sun
you hid,
as invisible as a smile
when one’s back is turned.

You disappeared,
you folded in on yourself,
you were more than skinny;
you were a magic act.

Now we see you-
now we don’t-

and that’s the story I’m sticking to.

And years passed,
and time ran by,
and seasons turned
and so you grew,
bulky
and strong
and proud in the torso,
capable in the arms,
different to the eyes
of those who paid no attention.

But to me you never changed.

Shoulders, still bowed,
like broken wings folding inwards;

Neck, still twisting,
escaping,

Face still shadowed,
still turned down to the ground

always turning away
always hiding your face
always twisting your frame

Never straight.
You were always skinny,
so easily bent,
so easily silenced,
so easily spent;
so strong yet so tired,
wired for work
but never for play.

Any day now
I expect you to turn
and disappear
between the cracks of the sunlight,
like a sheet of paper evades
real existence,
you will evade my persistence,
my insistence
that you could be more.

More than just skinny,
more than frail,
more than flimsy,
more than strong,
more than broken,
more than fixed;
more than lying.

You were always skinny,
always two steps behind;
but you were more than just skinny
in my mind.

Bordering the ear of Dyonisius, in the latomia stone cuts of paradise, they stopped at Syracuse. A certain flash of limestone reflected Wonthelimar's court; Marielle Quentinnais, wandering before him on calypso calcareous stones. Her superior powers made her eclipse her from an underground world, to mount towards carbonated stones that made egregious tilts to revive her in her arms. The end of a century became part of her heart with the premiere of the female species that led her to the Shemesh of Syracuse. The excessive temper strengthened it in everything, making it a revived stone from the Miocene with the Avignon characters, colluding through the Rhone until hitting this neat gold stone brought from the arms of Ezpaktul, transplanted with precision and gold typologies, with great Malleable morphologies that carried him across the surface where Wonthelimar was looking at her, his heart almost pounding when he saw her! the waters spoke of hydric morphologies that conferred of her on waters and springs that were inferiorized in disheartened lower levels when he lost her in the forests of Valdaine. Her brackish tears did not stop imputing a micro space with distinguished Psilocybin mushrooms, for an Ambrosia Mercurial compote that Wonthelimar chewed and that had been immolated from the remnants of Eleusis, helping to revive it from the lost space die of the Mausoleum of the Quentinnais. The mantles froze the cold and warm air masses in Syracuse, carried several meters above sea level, with eager extra surpasses by coexisting in the cave blocks, where she would rest with Vernarth in her arms. For the subjugation of the journey that would make him perhaps mortal, retreating towards a three-dimensionality that would raise him above the Pleiades, as Aurion would do behind with his club, but rather leaving behind the cavities that would put his quantum at the mercy of the tiny rosaries that she did, while he was getting ready to approach on the surfaces of the hypogeal speleothemes, like the Profitis of the Mediterranean who spoke to him of music, and of flood episodes with his spectrum in front of her, losing her in a melancholic fervor, being plunged into the hypogeum of Chauvet. The level of her vicious intrigues led him to follow her like an unattainable cousin, but with backwaters that compelled him to think of her master Vernarth, linked to micro images that warned him when he tried to get too close. The floating instants weighed more than a slight depth through accumulations of his retro memory, making him flee from her, and now she was fleeing from him, with large sprays of dew that filtered into her arid aquifer memory, superior to the kart that is established by correspondence when someone supposedly disappears, because their free will is entombed with their stone specter. Due to regimes suffered, there was only one monarch that rose in icy and polar vadose conditions, towards an earthly level where the feet melt the calcaneus as if it were a weak relative ascent towards a couple of beings who loved each other imprecise, and contexts when vivifying their hiding place. in the caverns of Chauvet. He can hardly recall it a shallow light, almost falling without mass towards the front of the stalactites, creating concretions of solid love under the deepest prodigality.

Wonthelimar, had had a vision on the vadose threshold when he came out to the surface with Vlad and Vernarth, being able to realize that the cloying environment made him subordinate himself in the altimetry of his maniacal impossible love, putting at risk the mission of overcoming the fluctuations of his visions, placing precepts in the sighting courses in Syracuse that had him dazzled, and very close to the entrance pit of the Ear of Dionisius. The puffs of caliginous air mass climbed before the beastly decibel of Vlad's chiropterans, falling through the marshes that were found from freshwater by several estuaries, and with decimeters when they tried to adjust their addiction. Solvents in the glaciers looked immutable when they were taken by underwater stimuli and models, still remaining after an extraordinary performance of vague probity, reviewing the details of actualism on the interfaces that led them, causing the water to flee from their bodies and inclinations. Only a few deposits favored the band mechanism to protect Vernarth's burning, which crystallized in excesses of the Sun, precisely when the fluctuations seemed bulky, by coordinating the foreign fattening in its arms, with which it would open the floodgates before entering the Grotto of Dyonisius, with greater rigors of concretion and emotion that flourished towards a maximum extension, which progressively gave rise to the devotional areas that received them at adjoining angles of forty-five degrees from its main arch, where frequencies stood out and the light with the mass of the Sun, distributed in small stars, which leaving campaniles that adhere to the normal area of distribution of the frequencies of the cave, on bands that reflected moved bodies on the mirror of rain that was shown on themselves, such as once striated towards a more tempting rib of the Coralloidal Speleothems. In Catania, they settled in the polis of Artemis's prosapia, on sieges where he led Marielle to past vigils with the Archons of Athens, not being able to subject her to arbitrary vexation.

Marielle was screened behind the Erithrina Coralloides of the Speleothemes, when this deciduous tree changed the color of its foliage in emerald colors, its spines served to deposit the Vernarth clone on its leaflets. After the libation of the alkaloid by Wothelimar, helping him to materialize the elusive effigy of her Marielle, making insertions in her disintegrated seeds allowing him to remove from her back some elytra, like those of Daedalus when she fled to Sicily escaping from King Minos. A snowy thread emanated from the similar ether that was picking through the noses of Wonthelmar and Vlad Strigoi, making it necessary to put wings on both of them to go to the cave of Dyonisius, toning the resins and aldehyde they carried to keep the Vernarth clone alive. Both rose over Marielle who was left with the custody of the clone, as well as their backs released red resins as consumed fuel, which was circularly reconsumed to rise up and enter the cave, resisting the arid aridities of the toxic fuel that was expelled on the Edens of Sicily.

The other day
When I said that your face reminds me of a rhinoceros
I wasn't saying that you look like a bulky box
Or that your skin looks grey
I was really trying to say that
You make me feel like there are a hundred
5 ton mammals stampeding across my heart
And sometimes when I look at you
I can't even breathe
Because all the weight of wanting this
Crushes my lungs til my chest burns like an African desert
Consequently most rhinos are found in Africa
And I researched all of this in the hopes that
Maybe you would understand

You see the thing is I am not good with emotions
And I know as much about love as I know about quantum physics
And I don't even know what quantum physics is about
Or what it means for that matter

I've been trying to read all the romance novels that I could find
I've been trying to watch all the rom-coms I can torrent
Hell I even watched Valentine's Day thrice
But I still don't know what to do when I'm with you

I am unsure and clumsy and petrified
So much so that I can't even work up the courage
To hold your hand
I'm trying, I really am
It's just so **** difficult
When falling in love feels more like
Jumping out of a helicopter
A hundred thousand feet up
Without a parachute on

One day I will be able
To directly say what I really mean
Without metaphors involving animals
That only I understand
But for now let me just say
Your face reminds me of a rhinoceros

Striving for the fortuity that can never be achieved
and wishing for aristocracy,
they called for open fire upon me
and I see the bullets in every mirror reflecting me.

And with some, I share the care of a creator
who spends all the time they have balancing on a cable
unable to understand how anyone can be frugal as me;
and I ask myself, "Do I need to appreciate all of this?"

They won't let me drown while I'm new and shiny.
They won't let me be a statue in a brochure.
They won't let me sleep in the fog.
They won't let me reclaim my beauty.

I only think about today, not the future.
I only think about the key to the door leading to within my cartilage
that is unable to clench us together.
And so I surrender myself to the promenade.

Everything is a contest.
Everything is a ballad for the Z's.
Everything is a fire bolt.
telling me not to absorb the covers.

I'm not agile anymore
because I just deliver them what they yearn for,
without yearning for anything myself anymore.
But I don't want them to rest absently.

The better bodies walk alone.
The better bodies are lying dead in each other's company.
The better bodies are deteriorating
and heading for the better days.

I used to have faith in something,
but now I live in blasphemy,
repeating "hey," and "yeah" and "sure,"
while never acting honorable.

He only cries for me while he's soaring above me,
shedding tears and calling for bloodshed.
But this isn't war because he's not shedding his own blood,
because he knows how to brand me and string me along.

I signal my phantom friends to join my army,
but they're only a clan of desperate nomads like me.
They're my ghost friends that convulse with me,
giving them strength to drain the vital fluid from my enemies.

I am audacious, I know,
because I am arousing every transmission.
These are the my days extinguished.
Let me show you the couple of claws I have left.

And it's no secret that I have a busted soul.
And it's no secret that I want an acceptable acquaintance.
And it's no secret that I would complete the proper process to be a monarch
if I knew how to drain my body of juice and replace it with a wealthier blood type.  

So move a little closer to me
so I can show you all the days that are deceased.
And I know you think buzzers are bulky and awkward
but time is up and I'm leaving soon.

I wish you could see that we are familiar cats
rather than beardless lumps of charcoal,
and that if we ran this 5, 280 feet it will be a phenomenon.
So drink from this molded mug and forget about it all.

And I'm gripping to growth by the throat, but damaging nothing
because it's made of caramel candy and doesn't know what saltiness is.
Let me take you to the courtyard where the action takes place
and if action takes place, then we'll let the growth be sweet.

I'm seeing framework from my lonely bench made for two,
and I'm throwing timber into a mountain, ready to light a match.
So come to my party and we'll set the place ablaze
and be a beautiful cremation, burning all the better bodies.

I never wanted it all to burn, I just wanted to drive onward with company in the passenger seat,
but this state of the art exhibit will be killer, I promise, even if everyone is dead.
It'll be the first and last stride.
It'll be better than codeine.

But this city is booming and I can't watch the architecture shrivel.
I'm her hostage and though she cares for me through methods of torture,
I can't help but anticipate her friendship in the afterlife
when we're both lonely without another half, because her twin is leaving her soon.

I miss what this country used to be, with it's jewelry on display in Tiffany windows.
I'm not saying I miss the bloodshed, but I miss the sparkle.
I miss the clubs and the parties and the company.
The bustle is gone, and all there is is the hustle of a crowded desolate boulevard.

All that's left behind is the shame
of hanging around someone else.
I wish I was somewhere else…
I wish I was in Stockholm walking uptown on a crowded desolate boulevard.

I wish I didn't live in a cyclone
with arduous people attempting some sort of hawkish raw coolness
asking me about my mood that they don't care about.
I can tell you my mood is not graceful or charming, but I won't.

And if I described my mood in colors it would be a combination of purple, yellow, red, and blue.
A murky brown seeking rehabilitation.
It won't be long until it rehabilitates, just extract all the light from it little by little until it's blind.
Ain't the way it should be?

This is a darling's rebellion.
This is the siren sounding the start of battle.

Biro poetry doesn’t work
It does not flow or fill the page with easy thoughts
The pen is a bulky lover, rather than the finer bodied pencil
It gives no quarter in correction, and scribbling out is just a messy affair
So it is unsatisfactory, clumsy and clogging
Oh for my pencil, where have you gone, my love?
Your fine point skating the velum,
An extension of my mind
Allowing expression beyond such coarse biro
******!

Haifa, Israel, a Saturday before the Second Gulf War
The Iraq War, the Shock and Awe War, the war with embedded journalists traveling in
tanks across dusty deserts the smart way with no bulky supply lines following them
And they arrived and it quickly became apparent the supply line was a good invention

The beach is filled with people, enjoying their last few days of peace
People color the beach a kind of brown, moving brown, like ants wandering around a hill the entire beach is their hill right now in that moment a respite of the stress to come
Funny how War could be on some kind of timeline, with everyone waiting for it
like a Super Bowl game, or the second coming or a tornado or flood or nuclear bomb
Breathe this fresh air now, for tomorrow will find you smothered in a bomb shelter
crammed into small spaces with strangers even, or people you don't like, and screaming children

Your plane was due to leave for Florida the next day, but there was no seat for me.
At first that bothered you, that we had no money for me to go anywhere, only you
but now you took any chance you got to leave this place that was our new home
"We're making cookies," a couple said who we ran into down there.  
If there's an air raid, you can stay with us they said to me.  
And I imagined the pleasant aroma of butter
and sweet and nuts filling a windowless room with a Hebrew TV station crackling quickly in a language I still couldn't keep up with while we munched until we were like full balloons
in a land with the bus driver turning up the news updates on the radio every hour really loud so everyone could hear them, day in and day out, because this was part of life here. And most of what I could follow after so many hours of study was that most words at the end of a sentence on the news ended with -eeem.  Usually in threes, -eem, -eeem, -eem, which is maculine plural and sometimes there was MemShalah, which is Prime Minister.

It was your most noble hour, coming shortly after you rampaging up and down the hallways
of our cement apartment building, just a box but a nice one with a view of Haifa Bay saying Saddam does too have a bomb, and you just wait when the scuds start falling. You just wait.
But you weren't waiting.  You were going home.
And no I didn't believe Saddam had a bomb although I've never met anyone who agreed with me since then and that is getting to be a long time ago.  
Even though there were Freedom Fries now and a ban on French wine and I don't particularly like the French in many ways, still I believed them and Mahomood El Baradei
because he was a very smart man except American don't believe there can be smart, effective individuals and people working very hard in places filled with dust and ignorance and lacking
so many comforts and conveniences
And how could you check a whole country anyway?  
With connections, by being an insider and by being very clever and that's what I thought sitting in the living room watching CNN International being piped for free into our living room.
And you were terrified and you left in a sweat and a day or so later the War began

and I watched the War on CNN International in our living room after you were gone, and it was just mass destruction from great heights like someone's ridiculous plan of Urban Renewal from way too high up and I felt sorry for all the
people who would soon be called "collateral damage" and I felt ill at our Generals bragging about this mayhem, this obscene, idiotic pounding of a city without intelligence or sensitivity or perceptions and I felt no shock and awe, but only horror and sadness
and I, by myself, an American living in Israel, who now had dual citizenship of course,
you see, but Americans are never dual, we always leave.  We are only American.

I saw my country as something angry, and violent and dumb and ugly
And you waited in Florida for the WMD, and I watched the story unfold
and there were still no WMD by the time you got back and the Patriot missiles were lowered from their mountain top heights.  And there were still no WMD when paper plans for a bomb were unearthed underneath rose bushes in a scientist's back yard and I felt sorry for the rose bushes
and hoped they were re-planted.
And like my country, you slipped down a notch in my eyes,
Running away from nothing telling me there was danger and leaving me
when it was only you who believed I might die.  Only You.

Went  down  to  the  lake  today.
The  vast  expanse  of  water
shimmering  under  the  baking  sun.
Had  some  food  and  drink
sat  on  a  bench.
The  swans  came  up  from  the
water  begging  for  food.
Truly  amazing  how  they
cope  on  dry  land.
. Slender  legs  supporting
a  bulky  body  mass.
They  certainly  belong  
in  the  water.
Crowds  of  people  about
mainly  Chinese  tourists.
Really  warm  day.

Keith  Wilson.  Windermere.  UK.  2016.

Gray and faded
Cold crisp edges
The crunchy of fallen leaves under our feet
The only warmth found here is a
Chic charcoal coast fastened with bulky brown buttons
My milky vanilla bean coffee
And your hand holding my own
A shy smile given to me as you glance over
And brush the hair out of my face
That had been misplaced by the cold winds
In that moment
The clouded skies and birds heading south
The foreboding winds and icy water filled with fallen gray hues,
Even the scent of my favored drink
Escaped me as time froze
In the dark world around me the only color i found,
Was deep within those espresso bean eyes.
Captivated in that moment, I couldn't move
As his soft lips embraced my own
Oh sweet satisfaction.
Just as i went to kiss his back
I shuddered awake.

She came into my life
a karmic explosion
over a pristine
midnight blue
upstate New York
lake,
its breath
damp and warm
and sweet.

Gasping,
labored efforts
expelled a preganant breath,
a prelude to
life.

Blackflies engaged in rutualistic seance.
Lethagic mosquitos emerged
from the evening's sweet mist.
But then raged into frantic spirals,
squealing out futile messages.

Timid pines,
guardians of the ancient site,
loosed their rigid stance,
Prickly spines shivered to the ground.
Anxiously, they awaited rumors
that would quell the fetal dread
that flowed through veins,
invading their bliss.

A bulky mass stirred from somnolent state
in that mud-lined basin,
releasing brown ribbons of agitation,
and inciting a ravenous hunger.

Friendly galaxies,
former guides in his dream state,
abandoned his cause,
flickering a vague adieu.

Having cradled him for so long,
the slick muddy floor now sent him flailing to and fro,
an ungainly dance,
embarassing to watch.

Where once he thrived,
he now gasped for air.

Urban Community Living:

Some days I actually noticed how grey it was
All of this space, here around us
As our half-beaten stone trodden 52 bus
Rolls into its unfortunate terminus.
Terminal more like.

The shops have boarded windows,
Bakeries have bullet-proof counters
Staffed by bulky bakers-***-bouncers
A praised underground centre for perilous shopping
Dodge rival factions on various floors
Fighting for stair supremacy
And burly painted girls with latent spent applause

Some colour on the underpass is some relief
Only it warns of impending doom
for someone soon

Doc, I've been trying to deal with these issues for quite sometime to no avail;
A good friend of mine (you may know him, Elmer Fudd) recommended you.

I fear I will never be able to eat, let alone catch this turbo inspired example of flightless foul;
Stuck in this celluloid world vividly inspired by an Emmy award winning colorist.

I am a proud animal from generations of fine breeding, born in the pristine coyote valley;
I am not stupid, not a fool or buffoon, and so I thought contractually, not one to be laughed at.

And I, always the bad guy, constantly daunted in pursuit by haphazard ACME products;
Expensive, bulky, time consuming, they characteristically fail right before they almost work.

Rocket powered skates, unfortunately, only allow me to kiss the cliff-side really really hard;
Very heavy anvils serve no other purpose than to be dropped on my head repeatedly.

The incredulous manipulations of the impossible by the so clever writers of this farce;
From trains appearing out of nowhere to run me over, to fierce lightning storms in an instant.

Laying there in the release of my own bowels as the uncontrollable result of
500 Megajoules of energy traveling through my body yet again.

I am the twice electrified mass of dribbling spastic protoplasm
Personified proverbially in that lightning does indeed strike twice in the same place!

As the smoke arises from my chard hairy frame and I sweep up my ashes to reassemble later;
I realize Doc, I'm losing my grasp on the reality of ever succeeding, I need your help!

I'm still hungry;

And still I have not caught that **** Road Runner,

******* Warner Brothers!

-----ChawzzyScript

“I’m not sure if night is ending or day is beginning.  What time is it?” She asked as she opened the door.

“Its about 2:30” I answered.

She was pacing about slightly bobbing her head as she spoke.

“We're sorry to disturb you beloved.  We're conducting a homeless census. May we ask you some questions?”

“I don’t want to be put away”  she said.  “I have to be outside.”

“We’re not here to hurt you.  We’re here to help.”

"Where do you come from?" Ally asked.

She didn't remember where she was from and was uncertain why it mattered.

She knew she wanted to leave Paterson but was unsure about where she wanted to go.

She kept her eye on the McDonald’s across Market Street.  

"As long as the light is on, I know its still nighttime and I'll have a place to go if the cops kick me out of here."

Here, was this evenings lodging in an ATM vestibule.  

"I can also get something to eat when I'm hungry."

"What time is it?"

"Its about 2:30."    

She earnestly wants to know what time it is.  

"I don't want the people going to work in the morning seeing me sleeping here." she said, "It's embarrassing."

Her papers were scattered on the floor.

She had one shoe on and one shoe off.  A white sock gloved an indeterminate number of other sock layers warming her shoe-less left foot, sufficient protection from the balmy mist of this late January evening.   The orphaned shoe lay on its side in the corner of the Wells Fargo foyer.

White, black and yellow plastic grocery bags filled with the content of her worldly possessions lay atop the shelf housing bank deposit slips neatly stacked in cubbyholes.

A woolen hat circled her head.  Her tiny face shone through the gray skull cap tightly tied under her soft chin.

She looked to be in her 50’s.  She spoke in a pale uneven tempo with a quiet anxious voice.  Her eyes were clear.  Her pursed mouth bracketed by a trinity of long chocolate crescent winkles. The sounds floating from her mouth were gently angelic and the kindness of a tender smile was filled with demure submissiveness.

She swaddled herself in multiple layers of coats and trousers bulking up a waif like frame.  Her outermost cloak, a gray trench coat was secured with a tightly wrapped knotted cloth belt.  The coat was thoroughly soiled by a life of sleeping rough in the urban outback.  The fabric boasted a consistency worthy of an Abercrombie and Fitch oil finished coat.  The bulky layers rounded the frame of her shoulders.  She resembled a small granite headstone.

"Whats your name?" I asked.  She was reluctant to tell us.  “I don’t like my name”.

We gently coaxed her.

“Carmen” she whispered.

“That's a beautiful name.  Its the name of the most beautiful operas ever written.”

“I know.  I’m gonna change my name someday.” she answered.  “I never liked it.”

Ally finished taking the survey, leaving more questions unresolved than answered.  

We gave Carmen a blanket, gloves, a hat.  Some hot cocoa, two sandwiches and a chocolate bar. We implored her to visit our pantry when it opened in the morning for cloths, referrals and food.  She was very grateful; but I don’t think she’ll ever make her way there.

I gave her my phone number; but I don’t think she’ll call.

“You are not forgotten beloved.  You are deeply loved.  Please remember that.” I said cupping her calloused hands within my palms.

“I know” the dainty caged bird cooed with a submissive smile.  

“What time is it?”

As we left Carmen, I wondered how to count a person wishing to remain invisible.

Music Selection: Bizet’s Carmen, Habanera

Maya Angelou: I Know Why a Caged Bird Sings

Paterson
1/30/13
jbm

Brian Molko was already doing the current wannabe-trend of trans-sexuality long before trans-sexuality was a common "thing"... tracing back some ulterior taboo settings... today on my way to work i spotted my first trans-******: wow! obviously he had manly hands... large... he was tall... he had large feet... but slender legs... and a face, with all that necessary make-up of eyeliner... hair? not very long... shoulder length... yes... a deep voice... but then again my godmother has a husky voice from all the smoking and drinking... but i fancied him... the dynamic on the tube was magnifying... three women sat beside him while he was talking to his geeky (maybe, probably) boyfriend, a plump chap with eyeglasses... i couldn't stop thinking: ah... the solidarity of men... when in shortage of supply of women, men will find alternative avenues to compensate for women, men will find women in men... the idea that i might be a transphobe never occurred to me: but it did occur to me that women: for all their supposed glorification of acceptance would never allow men to be attracted to men who are: beyond merely the thespian gay-lord, *******... ally... this... "freak"... i fancied this man... i could omit all the stressed "imperfections"... but such a feminine-feline face... it really suited him... i wanted to kiss him... i was thinking... i'll tend to the "oysters" and all the tender bits and bites of being with him... andd do the butcher's work with a *******... problem solved... this skin-head middle-aged (i'm coming to middle age, or life expectancy, not the lottery of mortality, mind you) sat next to me and was sort of nudging me with a shadow missing in the full-glare of the lights of the tube... you fancy him? insinuations via body-language: yeah... i do... is it wrong? nope! check the women sitting next to him... do you fancy them? nope... me too... of the three or four women sitting next to this trans-****** specimen... none had a lovelier face... mutations just... "happen"... the eureka-oops moments... i could seriously forget about the shared dimensions of large hands twice as big as that of a geisha, same with the feet... i could forget the baritone voice... i really fancied this boy... in a way that gay-lords just make it difficult having mingled with actors too much and not retaining an aura of: suspense and: something in me is frigid, alien... i shouldn't but... hell... i really should! i will! benevolent London that is... he was prettier than all the women i saw that day... like my grandfather once said: there are no ugly women... there are only abandoned... if not abandoned then neglected women... to think that women could ever be neglected: says as much about neglected men... men will find alternative avenues to women when the women self-exfoliate in their "privilege" of: first-come-first-served-and-thus-the-only-served menu... **** that! but what was special about this trans-****** specimen? it reminded me of the time i fancied Brian Molko, still do... in a non-gay sort of way... in a Plato the Plumber there's a blocked toilet of reincarnation afloat... it was actually, sort-of, actually-sort-of-funny watching the women on the same carriage trying to read my reaction... for once a man was more attractive than a woman to me! wow! being accused of trans-phobia... in London? well... only if you can't pull it off! it's like saying: coulrophobia! fear of clowns! with the clowns being without make-up? conflating the Apex Twin gargoyle from Window-Licker?! yeah... scary ****! the grin that's the length of the equator... i couldn't be attracted to a standard homosexual... Thespian leeching or intellectually pleasing akin to a Douglas Murray... or body-building blah blah... but this trans-****** specimen? that's an affront to a woman... all women... a man can have a prettier face to a woman's if... a man deems the exampled woman to be nothing more than akin to a lineage of... never arrived at cosmopolitanism... beetroot countryside proud... all red and irritated... i fancied this one... i was one step away from askig him: can i have your number? again, to reiterate: i didn't mind the deep voice... i didn't mind the size of hands that could match mine or the size of feet that could match mine... i was... infatuated with the magic dust of PIXIES! maybe that's what i learned from going to the brothel... but if you're going to play the trans-****** game... can you please avoid the mishandling of the Hippocratic oath... so little is actually necessary to accomplish a ****-heterosexual confusion-attraction that leaves women feeling inadequate: you, wouldn't even want to begin to believe! i'm now currently thinking of that film: the Odd Couple... Walter Matthau as Oscar Madison and Jack Lemmon as Felix Unger... Felix being the male-feminine counterpart of the feminine-man slob child pampered to: or however this quadratic works... i wouldn't be doing the cleaning and the cooking out of a feminine dignity to avoid doing the hard work of society's demands... no... i'd be perfecting my cooking to match up to the sort of food available upon heading out to a restaurant, i.e. not eating out... i've seen some car-crashes of trans-****** attempts... but this one stuck out for me because i started to think along the lines of: who needs women if men can appear prettier than women?! i'll just close my eyes when hand meets hand... it's a sickly sweet sensation but i could stomach it: if the conversation was kept to a satisfying lubrication: and it wouldn't be even remotely associated to the feminist-gay "commonwealth"... alliance... i don't need homosexuals to tell me XY&Z... i'm actually grooving this trans-****** trend: if spotting the exacting specimen to curtail all the wannabes... if there's an authentic Brian Molko specimen walking around... wow! reimagining being *** starved on the Western Front... a few guys with more artistic inclinations... rather than the rough sea-faring roughage of **** on the spot job done become involved... prettier faces than those of women... i could: no! i would succumb! it's just the terror in the eyes and on the faces of women... hey presto! a stick has two ends! freeze eggs... follow a career... demand a car a mortgage blah blah... my my... what a curiosity this trans-****** worked up to a perfection specimen of disphoria awoke in me... good enough cushioning blanket of sleeping with enough prostitutes... now i really want to sleep with a man... which is not gay... i'm bored of prostitutes... they're like any other woman: you pay them... yet they still complain as if you haven't paid them when not getting a hard-on because of (x) tiredness, (**) distraction, (***) life... per se... whatever... but those female faces... i pretended to be snoozing... they knew i knew... i kept an itch of a blink at this specimen... woman: ANGRY... no... actually... not angry... woman... what the **** is going on? of the times i went to a gay club and didn't pick up a Francis Bacon i wondered: did i drink enough? homosexual lust and all that same-for-same feminine-pro erotica of the jealous stone-rub-stone-offensive... the trans-****** "confusion" is a bright light... if done properly... done... naturally... i'm mesmerised... without... obviously... without... people succumbing to the breaking of the Hippocratic-oath... obviously... i despise the gay-pride movement... at least the authentic trans-sexuality movement is subtle... it's philosophically laden with a curiosity of more lips and less **** stressing fist-*******... this morphing of the pareidolia toward: seeing a female in a man's face... or seeing a man in a woman's face... hardly gender dysphoria... *****-utopia and... just as children look alike, regardless of ***... so do old people... also regardless of ***... but to achieve a heterosexual attraction in the realm of trans-genderism? it can't be forced... it has to happen ha-ha-naturally! i'm laughing at myself... only briefly... i'm more inclined to see the female in a man without seeing the homosexual... because homosexuality is like that quote from... no... not Human Traffic... about being gay and eating *****... how... eating ***** is not for real men... while ******* **** is all All Spice Alles Mensch... whatever... the gays are too proud might as well look out for the shy, proper, proper shy... trans-sexuals without any anti-Hippocratic-Oath mishandling(s)... the women become jittery thus...

i should have come home and reflected on spending
the past several hours on a shift
in Bishop's Park, overlooking Putney Bridge
watching the tide of Thames' recede back into the great
mouth before mingling with the salty waters
of the North Sea...
     all loved-up with the cold the dark and the wind
putting on some Woljiech Kilar soundtrack music
from Dracula - love remembered...
well... i was in the mood for something like that:
i put the track on... nope... can't feel it...
i'm tired, i'm cold i need to put on something to groove
to... we ain't going out like that - Cypress Hill...
tiredness swells the imitation pigeon-strut
in my head... bouncy-Billy will also ask for a chance
to express himself...
    the joke ran with Martin's team (Chelsea)
losing for the first time since 2006 to Fulham...
         the police officers were in a good number...
they even brought their horses...
two stood across from us when the final whistle was
blown... one of them started "laughing": if that's
what horses do, i.e. laugh...
no onomatopoeia here: hey Martin! even the horses
are laughing that Fulham beat Chelsea in the most
local derby of London...
    Craven Cottage is what? a mile at max two from
Stamford Bridge...
          one can only love the ever infuriated Martin...
but still the Thames receding...
   at first glace i might have stretched across
the balustrade and probably touched the surface of
the water... by the end of the shift when the river-bed
started to be exposed i started to wonder:
all that volume and now apparent air where once
there was water...
  no river in the world akin to the Thames...
tide in and tide out... at Westminster it's a river
that rid itself of the kettle and is nonetheless standstill
and boiling - during the day...
while eating a chicken wrap of torsos and tortillas
talking to a Norwegian who came over to watch
the football for the week...
last time he was here in the 1980s... have things changed?
the oyster one-touch travel card...
sure... it has just become a little bit more expensive:
but nothing has changed that much...
but during the night, and if its windy... well: clearly
there's a flow... a tide in or a tide out...
by the time i got to Goodmayes i walked past the brothel:
thank god i have nothing more to prove
thank god i have satiated my base needs and that's that...
what am i looking for? a compliment to a pharma-knock-out
of generic painkillers in the form of a bottle
of whiskey...
    too tired to **** not tired enough to think:
maybe i could fall in love again...
   fall in love... fall in love: but... ugh...
               fall in love and not pamper a woman's needs
with all those basic "tattoos" of courtship...
i might as well ask any future father-in-law:
so... where's my cow, my wedding dowry?
                     where's the pick-me-up to work with?
well if manna from heaven will not drop into my lap...
i hardly think... who the hell needs a car in London?
given the oncoming ULEZ restrictions?
bicycle, underground and the trains, plenty of buses...

today i was sent the most odd message from a coworker
who i am supposed to do a shift at the ice rink
on Sunday...
i was rather surprised - a "box" i never thought i would
unbox (as it were)...
i'll be honest... she's damaged - seriously damaged:
i'm on the "top" of the pile of damaged goods...
a mythological schizoid - ageing - each year turns
out easier as the madness spreads around me:
madness or the crushing mundaneness -
mundaneness or mediocrity -
    in a democracy it's all and the same: in the grey yolk
of bureaucracy -
         pushing letters through keyholes that leave
no door open: unless playing the "system" like
a criminal or a mummy with five different shades
of children from five different fathers...

                       the trouble with Russian girls is that...
they don't like a boy who appreciates music by Placebo...
huge disagreement... her take on Nancy Boy was
rigid and could never be biding: no appreciation of the music
for you... well... that be that...

this girl is hurt... i am hurt: everyone's hurt...
but i still find reasons to find silly happiness in cooking
cleaning, general groundwork labour of changing
the garden - some carpentry: cycling...
keeping up appearances of a well-kept diet
and perfumery of all sorts... at least dressing like
my idol Karl Lagerfeld... like an animal wears its fur...

she even changed her name to Frankie -
Frankie... i.e. is that Franklin, Frank?
no... it's actually Francesca...
the running joke with another girl i work with
runs along the line:
wouldn't that be something, to put on your CV
if you managed to convert her?
convert? or reconvert?
after all she has managed to produce offspring...
god knows why she's not in contact with her daughter...
but it's not like she was always a lesbian...
forced lesbian... it's not something a priori:
it's a posteriori...
after the facts that include: her biological father
beating her biological mum...
her biological mum abandoning her and her siblings
to escape with her dear life...
    how her step-father is like her biological father
but then the problem arises: the mother is unhinged
and now her step-father is facing splitting up with her
mother... of all the siblings she's the only one
keeping contact with her mother...
the other siblings, at least one... is ******* up to
her biological father who was: the greatest intersexual
boxer of the domestic environment to have ever lived
(in her eyes at least, i bet Tina Turner could compensate
such allowances of vanity)...

she used to be a man's woman once...
but now she switched... ******* without all
the Hippocratic misdeeds of the modern, current, narrative,
cutting off ******* and other genitals,
hormonal treatments... it's almost as if Joseph Mengele
died in body but his spirit lived on...
it's like a never-ending Auschwitz or at least
encryptions of mad-scientists for thirst of knowledge
have continued on a side-note of eugenics...
but at least with the closure of the 20th century
there was safe ******* experiments undertaken
by individuals without any authority of government:
the boys would grow their hair long and put
on eyeliner...
    perhaps even use girly perfumes or wear
dresses, nail-polish... hell... even sniff ******* or wear
them... but not with medical authority creating
irreversible ****** changes...
the girls would put on more weight or work out
and pretend to be East Germany's Olympians...
cut their hair short... who came the Pixie girls...
get tattoos wear signets: those bulky rings worth not
a gram of gold but their own worth of bulk...
    and like Francesca get an undercut with a Mohawk...
change their tone of voice... defence defence defence...
and become suddenly less and less agreeable...
still retaining a feminine smile and the odd feminine giggle
that could be unearthed...
or like with her text...
'hey... i want to go ice-skating after our shift...
do you think you'd be up for it?'
sure... although i only ice-skated twice in my life...
a long time ago, 13? i fell every single time...
i looked like someone who escaped from having
suffered from Polio...
i'll still look like someone who suffered from childhood
Polio akin to Israel Vibration's
Wiss", "Apple Gabriel", "Skelly"
      or Ian "Lane" Drury...
                                    instead i sent her a text replying:
sure... but i'll look like a spider equipped with
roller blades... i'll need to bring a casual set of trousers
just in case i fall and rip my work trousers...
'ha ha ha ha(insert crying with laughter emoticons)...'

oh sure... it's not a date... i'm not just going on a date...
we're not going for dinner...
i'm going ice-skating with a lesbian...
a butch-lesbian a hiding woman...
tattoos six-pack and muscle...
no wonder: only hours prior i was admiring
a would-be Brian Molko on the tube...
        
she followed up with a text of yet more defence:
but i'm skint - it will cost £10.50 for an hour
and a bit...
      we'll see i reply... as if she was implying:
if we can't get in for free... would you be willing
to pay?
i didn't reply with agreement to paying for...
then again: i'm not thinking about ***,
or homosexual conversion therapy...
i just don't remember when a girl last asked me to
go on a date with her... after all:
isn't a girl asking a boy to go ice skating with her
sort of asking a boy to go on a date?
she said she was quiet adapted to ice skating:
she owns a pair (of ice skates)... and i'll be the hilarious
polio walker / spider strapped with roller blades
trying to swim in quicksand...
mind you... i'm trying to rid myself of the past two
interactions in the brothel... terrible ***...
that one with the madam where i was limp...
the fate of the Sabine men gripped me...
i won't deny it...
second time... she calls herself my favourite:
she isn't... she's deluded... to the amazement of the other
girls i like to **** in the brothel...
i only extended my per usual 30min stay
by clocking up an extra 30min because i was so close
to climaxing from a *******: knock knock on the door...
time's up... no... not this time...
i'm going to finish... ergo...
but even she has paved her way onto a path of too much
physical augmentation...
if the **** don't come first... then the duck quack lips
reveal themselves first... she's an aging *******
and she has never done anything in terms of work
prior... no laundry no till service...
pregnant aged 14 and in the profession aged 16...
this is the murk and the sully of the gallows
of everyone: once, former, youthful idealism of love...
trotting a horse with broken legs like
waking up into birth by a man sitting in akimbo
for too long... standing up with numbed legs...
moving awkwardly...

obviously i was going to be robbed of Khadra and Mona...
Mona became stupid for getting pregnant
with a customer... hmm... i wonder who...
last time i saw her i teased her without a ******
and this massive fright gripped her face
because i was only teasing and she thought i was
a premature ejaculator... clearly a ****** was subsequently
used and the deposit in it: **** knows...
she should know... i haven't seen her since...

i think i'll text Francesca (Frankie) and tell her...
bring your skates girl... if we can't get in for free i'll
pay for the two of us...
only two shifts prior she was insinuating about
going for a pint: i just replied: i would...
but i had to help my father write the fortnightly
invoice and send it in...
like tomorrow... tomorrow i'll have to help my mother
with the taxes and VAT...
they're getting a new accountant and she lied
about doing her taxes on a spreadsheet...
**** me... i probably used Microsoft Excel twice...
twice, properly... but since i only used it twice...
i'm a bit rusty... so much worth of secondary school
education or the university...
   they taught us the bare minimum of real-world
life-long tools of the onslaught of technology -
   hammer and scythe i can use to count heads...
oh well: there's bound to be some crash-course for dummies
on the internet...

i waited until 9pm for the three of us to sit down to
eat some fajitas...
i overdid it using Kashmiri chilly powder
and three fresh chillies in making the pineapple salsa...
but the hotness neutralised itself with the addition
of the tomato salsa i made... and the guacamole...
the sour cream and obviously cheese, esp. cheddar
neutralises all possible excess spices...
we ate, chatted... one big ******* family,
me, father and mother and my "brother" and "sister"...
well... at least the cats meow and don't bark...
oddly enough: i'm happy... mediocre sort of:
that scene from Hellraiser: Inferno...
were the protagonist - a corrupt police officer -
is forced into a nightmare of having to relive his
eternity in his childhood's bedroom...
living with his parents...
shouldn't the horror be... your parents getting divorced?
i don't know why mine are still together...
they must be freaks... i must be a mutant:
well... born only two weeks after Chernobyl:
no riddles, only clues...
     i keep the conversation going...
i help around the house...
  
                        Frankie dealt me two nuggets of hashish
in the past 4 months... once i was desperate
when the hashish ran out so she gave me the number
of a marijuana dealer: great green all the way from
America... i only used the service once...
maybe that's me being bulletproof...
i'm cutting down on drinking and i will never return
to smoking marijuana to achieve a Buddha-esque glow
meditating while high and hungry...
weighing in at 78kg... it's a bit of a yoyo with me these
days... from 99kg through to 103kg...
but then... i pinch myself: i summon the ***** to pinch
back... hmm! no man-****... so i could try out for
some amateur rugby matches...

a butch lesbian asking a boy for a date to go
ice skating... i feel... truly terrible for all the conventional women...
i would have offered a cinema date...
she beat me to the better sort of entertainment...
she said: let's go ice skating...
i would have retorted: i do own two bicycles...
how about we go cycling in the night...
round and round Raphael's Park...
round and round... and if we're lucky...
and if the winter air aligns itself with some idiot
setting off fireworks... we can get snippets of whiffs
of imitation autumn... as if the leaves of the trees
have fallen in the dry crisp air and someone
set them alight and there's no rot and knee-deep
digging of plush-decay exfoliating a sickness
in the air... how's that?

i'll send her the text... hell... i'll pay for her...
i'm not interested in ***...
she might be a butch-lesbian trying to hide her
femininity... but she still smiles like a woman...

oh sure... i remember the last conventional:
heterosexual date i was on...
we met in a sweaty night-club... if we kissed we kissed:
i don't remember... she gave me her phone-number
i gave her mine... i was in the company of
about 3 girls who i met elsewhere, otherwise:
also randomly...
at least one made something of her life...
she ****** off to Norway - totally off-the-grid...
by now probably breeding huskies for sleighs...

the next time we met... i bought two bottles of wine...
the "date"? a job interview... we talked...
subsequently we went to a pub while i had a pint...
she was feeling claustrophobic...
i was the alcoholic and she became the **** of boredom...
she excused herself: some prior engagement
with her girlfriends... i guess she thought she got away...
i way happy to get away by same mechanisation
of oppositional psychology...
all this talk within the confines of carpe diem that
centred upon: what do you / what's you living
should i think about life insurance - will we live to be 70
years old?
well... that's the cherry on top with Francesca...
you want to go ice-skating? sure...
you want to go cycling with me in the night?
sure... life insurance / what do you for a living?
how much do you earn?
             can we live a little outside a prison within a prison?!

so much for Dawid Bovie's idea of the androgynous man:
if i'm to be surrounded by "butch" lesbian
and prostitutes: that's my lot then...
i'm not going to succumb to the CV-project-veritas
in-vitro infanticide females with CHOICE
like... my spunking into a bucket and calling it:
falling asleep with the sound of rain
trickling trickling on a metallic roof...
in the night when the horrors come and horrors
claim all the little details of frailty
of mortality...

                  for every tear-jerking sympathy for
a Romeo there's the mantis of
   a Judith kissing the decapitated head of
                                                             Holofernes:
**** it... the prostitutes i truly loved ******* are either:
pregnant or on "holiday"...
i passed the brothel only two nights ago...
i spotted a man walking out from the door...
he froze like a doe in the headlights and didn't move
until i turned my head and kept walking...
i was about to blast out with wind and voice:
no shame in having to share women
we will never impregnate!
start thinking like a woman, dear man...
think on ground of evolutionary bias...
for every women there's this boast of:
50% of men reproduced successfully...
while all the whole lot of them the 100% of train-wrecks
and Piccadilly butcher's antics with the flab
have... their greatest success story to ever live...
i could be worse off... than right now...
i could have married an ugly woman:
by definition: if a most feminine man
grows his hair long and applies some slapstick
makeover creases of eyeliner...
i can forgive him his match-for-match size
of hands... height... size of shoe...
but never an ugly woman... UGLY...
that goes beyond mere the physical-glass...
i'm talking: character... there's no prime-ego
LEGO building block... no architect's corner stone...
there's nothing to work with...
just everything to work around...
to avoid...
                    
    if: for ****'s sake... i'm not planning: i'm providing
the revenue... i want to go ice-skating!
she doesn't have any money? i have "too much"...
i don't: but for the worth of life in life that's only
to supposed to span a month's worth of living it...
hell: i have no better idea to pass the time...

at one point i found out that Francesca has some Irish
roots... you're Aye-Reesh?!
              really? never would have conjured up
a sharing of ******* on a leprechaun...
**** it for good luck... like circumcision:
that's apparently Hebrew for: good luck...
with the addition of: ensuring your bride to be
be donning a niqab and all those "other"...
culturally sensitive, exclusive terms of
cultural-dis-appropriation: or whatever the **** is
coming out of H'America...
             once upon a time when that cultural export
was relevant: these days: nothing new to be
found... except the abandoned moon...

well... i sent the text... sure... i'll pay for the ice-skating...
but you have to promise me to go cycling
with me during the warmer months
with me... don't worry about having a bicycle...
you can have my mountain-bicycle
i use for the winter months
while i'll get on my summer month
road-bicycle...
we'll head toward Thurrock...
and elsewhere that's Essex friendly
and far away from London outer-suburbia...
fresh... fresh...
Jean Claude van Dame...
                       Fresh: that's her idea of working out
before the shift... and then going ice-skating...
FooR x Majestic x Dread MC...

                oh well... life in Loon-downs...
or is that: no apples... i'm sure there are no apples...
if she takes the bait...
i.e. i pay for both of us going ice-skating tomorrow...
she better go cycling with me during the
summer months...
she says no to ice-skating tomorrow
i'll become Trojan in my own defense...
if she wants to be all ******* lesbian defensive...
i can be defensive too...
i'll arm myself with enough brothel visits to erase:
first... comes... oh my grandmother disappointed
me... i could have been there for my
grandfather stabbing himself in the leg
while entering the state of AGONIA...

                    i could have been there: she? trying to protect
me against the advent of mortality?
or her... biting my grandfather's alcoholism she
induced by being a terrible woman?
his last pleasures?
crossword puzzles... cycling, fishing,
rekindling with the day-tripper postcard sender
vouch! you're the simulation tourist with
his... grand... chill... no... not -dren...
his... sole and only grand-child... i.e. me...
him buying me the books i read over the summer holidays...

women are so ape so cruel...
i stopped believing in what's idealistic and rare before
me: which i can't replicate...
i'm happy being freed from:
i don't earn the sort of money that the state
demands taxing me... weird? no!
i don't earn enough to be taxed!
weird... i'm sort of pretending to be a jellyfish
afloat... simulating gravity:
gravity is always a simulation in the medium
of water...
                by air contra vacuum:
the mountain breathes in winter a cascade of
frigid snow slides down...
a Michael Schumacher goes skiing...
****** races cars at 200kmh... one loose turn and twist:
cranium like an opening of a watermelon...
jellyfish fighting for life dead-locked style
in a sick-bed while people nearest to him
think about magic-spells: how best to live without
him: how best to milk the cow with *****
instead of milk... hmm hmm hmm...

if she wants to go on a date with me to go ice-skating...
and i'm supposed to be paying for it...
she better be readied to go cycling with me
during the summer months...
if that's not going to happen:
she shouldn't have suggested
going ice-skating in the first place, for ****'s sake...
like: anything by Bricktop in ****** is
Shakespeare to me... perhaps even more...
living with the times...

                                oh well some well: Samuel!
Samuel: you're not Samantha... learn to become
a transvestite first... before we employ the ****
Hippocrates to mutilate you, o.k. darling?
    learn to grow your hair long...
learn to put on make-up... learn to wear dresses...
learn to sniff female underwear...
Samuel! Samuel! you're not Samantha (yet)!
we will not give you up to the Joseph "Hip-replacing-******"
Mengele: shy away from everything American
in the realm of: worth being culturally exported
and influencing foreign cultures: esp.
in the basin of the origins of the English ZZZUNGE...
that's England...
                  
HIPS FOR KNEES!
                    America: beacon, former: beacon of the world
to come... came one Cain for every second cannibal
no Satan was spawned: at least that's Iranian paranoia
covered: converted, shut the doors on Tehran...
bigger whoops happened when...
Garry Glitter became pop once more
with the release of the Joker movie
and that mad dance scene...
on the 132 steps where Shakespeare Avenue
meets Anderson Avenue...

    i will never, ever... visit... anything... remotely...
resembling... or being curated as being:
North America... i've had too much north american
cultural anemia...
             prior to words not being so much politcal
as agent orange doing all the "talking"...
                                  
  tam tam tam dam dam dam... ditto... do no more than
the necessary "evil": just, bass: on the base
on insinuation;
hell... if the afro-cosmopolitan is the new "cool",
the new "groove"...
let's just keep it... marred: in murk: in murky.

Truth is,
I suppose I really would like to be one of those girls
who frollicks in the sun in white dresses
and ballet slipper pink cardigans.

But I can't.
Something inside me fears it,
I don't feel... safe in those colors.
They don't fit me.
I'd like to look like Kalel from Wonderland Wardrobe,
but she's like every other girl,
tiny and naturally cute.
I'm too big to wear those clothes.
I have a big head and big arms
and a long torso
and strong horse legs.

I'd like to be a lady,
cute and sweet,
but I was born unfeminite.
I was born ugly.
A goblin amongst humans.

I'd like to wear my hair like that
and flaunt just like all of them,
but I could never do that,
for I was not made like that.
I wasn't made
for lace and ribbons
I was made for leather and chains
even better, a box,
a cardboard box suits me best
as it'd hide all my features
and keep my hidden from the world.

Phantom of the opera,
I do love the opera,
covering my pig face in a mask
and stumpy body in a black shroud.
I'm doomed to be like this.

I wanted to be like the other girls so bad
but I couldn't
and I started to hate it,
hate those colors
and stupid flowers
and ribbons
and makeup-
because they didn't look good on me,
made me look like a fool.

And now I'm trapped in
black, black,
black,
black
and more black
only ever black
black and bulky
because my body isn't like theirs
and my head is big
and like that of a pig,
so I'm stuck hiding
knowing I'll never be able to wear
white dresses
or those Ballet Slipper Pink cardigans.

Let me tell you a story
From a time gone by
The tale of a greedy butcher
And a pig that could fly

In the little village of Piddle Brook
There lived a butcher named Mr.Ham
He was bearded, bulky, and a belcher
And was rumored to eat his own toe jam

A lover of all meat
Pork,beef,duck,chicken, and mutton
All this gorger did was eat
He was a professional glutton

But Mr.Ham’s appetite was not satisfied
He longed for some thick greasy bacon
Just a few strips, nicely fried
Served with pickled daikon

He peeked through his window
And with one beady eye
Spotted his neighbors hog
And pictured a flaky pork pie

His mouth watered
"What a delicious midnight snack!"
"I will barbecue,braise and fry her"
"But first I will launch my attack"

"Oh but I shan’t become a thief!"
"T’was only a whim!"
But Mr.Ham’s thin scruples vanished
His growling belly got the better of him

He grabbed a pitchfork
And the hefty hooligan set out
He advanced on the sleeping hog
And grabbed her by the snout

Her piggy eyes shot open
And in a flash
She darted past the butcher
And ran past the fence in a dash

Mr.Ham bellowed in rage
And waddled after the beast
But the pig was too quick
Yet Mr.Ham never ceased

And so the chase continued
A wild game of cat and mouse
They ran through the streets
Row upon row,house after house

Finally the swine was cornered
The escaped pig let out a squeal
And great feathery wings sprouted from her back
Said the pig “Thou shalt not steal”

And with one final snort
Two leaps and a hop
The winged sow flew away
And Mr. Ham collapsed with a plop

"I suppose it was a sign from above"
Mr.Ham sighed with defeat
From then on the rotund carnivore
Gave up on eating meat

I don't like cold technology,
I'd prefer bulky computers,

I don't like kindles,
I prefer books,

I prefer blue eye shadow,
To contouring.

I,
Was born in the wrong time.
I wish life was like the 80s,
When children still played outside.
I like old 'scary' movies that aren't scary at all,
But today's 'horror'
Is,
Not even laughable.

I wish I could've watched Star Trek the original series on tv,
When I came home from school,

Or at least seen the original Star Wars, in the theaters.

This generation just doesn't do it for me at all.

Across the street,
Live the community of the old.
a network of inbreeding
left the branches of the family tree
entwined like a pipeline of too many years
that swim through the convoluted paths
forever,
sealing in the contents,
preserving the past.

Long bedraggled tresses
brush close to the latticework ground
Not a comb has come close
To break the wild knots that weave.
Nets buoy their authenticity
Forever wild,
Even though,
the world survives
on bowls brimmed with metal screws  
The phantoms of depletion rise,
They are weightless, until
Pulverized
and they tumble,
Like hostages
They get caught between
The wisps of eternity.

Backlit sunset,
Illuminates the evergreen leaves,
The bulky necklace of frozen memories
Decorate my stiff neck
I am a victim of too many days spent
Watching screen protected versions of nature
that I forgot how thin skinned leaves really are
How the nervous system of enigmatic veins
hold DNA of their ancestors
Now, bathed in evening light
When heat from the stars erode from the sky
They are nothing but silhouettes of the past
Faceless, like torn out pages of a history book
shunned for its omniscient wisdom
so that the ashes can be planted
burying the past in the ground
standing still in the present
but reminding me,
the future is always as high as the sky.

A young girl with shoulder-length brown hair and new white shoes galloped across a newly stained bridge with black polished railing
With no cracks, no moss, no holes, no graffiti and led her to her new old school for the very first day.
The creek beneath her, filled with ducks, algae, the occasional nutria, clear, murky water, and branches, weeds, and grass hanging out over the creek, flirting with it,
And the creek flowed while the girl playfully followed.

The wide grassy hill, abandoned by trees and bushes alike, hid a narrow trough, which entertained the young ******* her journey to the school and came up to her knees and
Sharpened her balance while trying not to fall over.

And her friend, with faded blond hair, with blue, blue eyes, with a soft nose, with faint eye brows, and about 4’9’’, trailed behind her, trying to match her every step.
And he was her close neighbor
And at school—her classmate
And then they came home and he was her playmate and best friend.
And once they were home, her mother made them peanut butter and jelly sandwiches,
no crust.

Her mother, at home, then school, then teaching
and her motherly tone reassuring the girl that she could do anything she sets her mind to while reminding the girl to do her homework.
Her father, working with cars, then not with cars, then with cars again, who was good with his hands, but maybe not his memory,
Who the girl is alike more than she may think.

The white shoes grew into a white Jeep Cherokee and took the girl to the new new school;
And the long, dark haired, one-eyed boy,
And the preppy, sparkly, life-size Barbie,
And the bulky young man with a fully-grown beard.

Within the vast hallways, the girl spotted her distant neighbor, her classmate, her playmate, her friend With dark blond hair, with blue, blue eyes, with a hard nose, with whiskers on his chin and a stature of 6’8’’.
But only sometimes.

Driving down the long, grey pavement road, with no lines to part the road, the girl passes the bridge,
The bridge which had taken her to the old old school,
The bridge with faded black rails and both moss and graffiti growing on it,
The bridge she had once followed.

Who am I to question,
When hardships befall over me?
Let it be a vast circle of bulky mountains,
Ensnaring me from all sides.
If I fall into a threatening void,
A void that gnaws at my soul,
And is ravenous for my worn-out soul,
That helps me encounter more turbulences.

But who am I to question my tolerance of enduring a void that ravens for troubles for me?
When my Master, the Beloved of the Almighty,
Stated that Muslims are prepared to confront
Whatever situation they may face with their faith.

With my faith,
I can pull myself out of the void,
Shove off bulky mountains,
because
they ain't heavier than my
Iman.

The comfort of my home is perhaps the one thing I miss the most. The protection of a grand, two-story house stocked with food of all sorts was replaced by an old, abandoned shack that held the same warmth our house once had. This house only had a fireplace as a source of light and heat.
     One day, my boyfriend, Jeremy, ran into our room in the midst of one of my naps. His dark hair was a mess, his white t-shirt torn and his blue jeans soaking wet. He shook me awake, and before allowing me to sit up and respond, he whispered instructions in my ear.
     “We have to be out of here within three minutes. Food, soap, anything, go, I’ll explain soon, we need to leave, let’s go,” He said, speaking faster than I could understand.      
     I grabbed the comforter that was folded at the foot of the bed, some pants and sweaters for each of us, then booked it down the hall to the bathroom to get soap and toothbrushes, and shuffled downstairs to the kitchen.
    What is happening? He is never this serious... Maybe it’s the drugs speaking; I could **** his stupid brother for doing this to him. What do I use every day, what can’t we live without, how long will this last, what is going on?
     “Jeremy, what is this about?” I screamed to him, wherever he had disappeared off to in the house. My hands were shaking as I tried to collect a series of food, panic driving through my body.
     “Shhh,” he whispered in my ear behind me. I spun and screamed. I dropped the collection of food I had gathered in my arms. He dropped two hiker backpacks at my feet, one landing with a loud thud noise, a heavy object inside. “Don’t ask about that,” he kicked the bag with his boot, then picked up the empty one and held it open to me, “fit everything you can into this bag.”    
     Tears sprung to my eyes as I quietly dropped the necessities from upstairs into the bottom of the empty bag. I collected the food off the floor and threw it in the bag with the mysterious object inside.
     He kissed my forehead gently and he held my face in his hands. A strong smell wafted off his hands. I winced at the sour odour. “What did you—” My voice cracked, tears spilling down my cheeks.
     Jeremy hung his head down, and I saw a tear drop run down his face. “We have to go. I’ll tell you on the way. Just, promise you’ll stay by my side. I need to protect you, I love you, Becky.” He whispered.
     This is the man who has seen me and promised me he would stick with me through everything. I can’t possibly deny him this one thing. But I’m so scared, what has he done…
     The heavily wooded area was a maze that was easy to get lost in. We ran in silence for three kilometres to the tree line. The leaves were almost completely detached from the trees, making it easier to see far deeper, though the same brown-black bark was confusing to separate from each tree. Unfamiliar territory was much harder for me to feel comfortable in, and my stomach was already flipping and turning from the news that my boyfriend would soon tell me.
     Once we had a clear idea of where we were going—a dirt path that looked to be a driveway had met the middle of a thick tree line—our nerves seemed to settle. I was ready to hear whatever he had to tell me, and I knew we could work together. What scared me the most was the seriousness he had instructed me with; that we had to leave the comfort of our home and run away.
     “Okay. You know the Mortimer’s always had something against me, right?” I nodded at the thought. The man who lived four houses away from ours, Josh Mortimer, had a strong dislike for Jeremy. “I was coming out of work today, and Josh and his bulky brother, Dennis, were waiting by my car in the parking lot. They looked pretty ******* about something, so I asked them what was going on, and Dennis grabbed me and pinned me against the car.” Jeremy sat down on a log, trying to catch his breath. His head rested in his hands, avoiding the concern written on my face. “I, uh… A fight broke out…” He rubbed his eyes with his ***** hands, and he looked up at me with a mixture of emotions, from fear, to regret and remorse, and such a deep, looming sadness. “…I killed them…”
     My heart started to skip. His eyes never looked away from mine as we held the stare that lasted for eternity. My knees wobbled and buckled beneath me. The back of my head hit the ground with a loud crack and darkness washed over me.

     I awoke to a wooden, white washed ceiling that was lined with two by fours, and the walls were built of thick tree trunks, stacked horizontally. The floor was similar to the ceiling; various types of trees were cut down into two by fours and laid together.
     I was lying on a *****, scrapped mattress, my hiker backpack sat at my side. Wrapped in the comforter from home and laying in front of a fireplace with the crackling sound brought me some sort of familiarity in this unknown place. The fire produced enough light to illuminate the large room with a lack of furniture. Across from the fireplace was a large window that had no view really; it just faced dozens of trees.
     Gathering some energy, I raised my head, which pounded with pain. Discomfort washed over me, as well as confusion. How did I get here? Where the hell am I? What is this place? It’s eerily frightening. Are we trespassing? It looks as though no one has lived here for years, though. Ugh, what is that smell!
    An unpleasant stench had found its way to me. It smelled like iron—that hard, unique smell that… Wait. I felt the back of my head, where I had hit the ground. My fingers twisted through my matted hair to an oozing cut that stung to touch. I pulled my hand away immediately and looked at it. My stomach flipped again. My fingers were almost dripping with thick crimson. The stench overtook me, causing me to fall back on my injury and immediately cry out in pain.
     Suddenly, an echoing series of tapping noises came from behind me. It was a hollow tapping sound, with a steady beat, like a pencil tapping a desk. The sound travelled through the wall, near the ceiling of the wall, all the way to the doorway.
     “Jeremy?” I whispered. My head spun as I climbed to my feet. The mattress was wedged in a corner, against the wall where the noises were contained, inside the two rooms. The tapping subdued, and summoning up the courage, I walked along the wall for support towards the door. I grasped the wooden stump used as a doorknob, counted to three slowly and turned it open, expecting the worst.
     The light of the fireplace danced against the door and reflected into the room. It was empty, except for the navy blue curtain that framed the window. The curtain was billowing in the wind, as the window was open wide. I crossed the poorly lit room to the window, my footsteps almost silent on the floor, and shut it.
     In the next room over, I heard a slam against the outside wall. I jumped, terrified of what could be in that room. Calm down, I need to calm down. It’s a windy night. Maybe it’s Jeremy trying to scare me. It was awfully unsettling to tell me he killed someone, and disappear without a word…
     I shuffled back to the fire, where I felt the most comfort. My eyes were fixated on the doorknob, as I was just waiting for it to turn itself and the door to creak open, inviting me in. Jeremy would wait on the other side of it; emerge from the darkness with the gun he hid in the bag, the one he told me not to worry about earlier, that gun he shot the Mortimer brothers with.
     I drew my legs towards my chest and started to cry quietly. I’m in a strange place, no idea where I am, or how to get home. My boyfriend is a murderer. He’s on the run. He wants to **** me because he couldn’t not tell me what he did. He would just tell me and **** me to get it over with, and he could live alone forever with the secret in his mind, and no one else will know.
     My mind cleared as my eyes got lost in the pattern of the flames. I checked my watch for the time, but there were about seven more hours until daylight. I was unaware as to how long I had been awake, but my nerves had calmed completely. I needed to go the bathroom.
     There was bound to be an outhouse around the outside of the cabin. I was reluctant at first, but I had to venture out into the darkness. I fished a sweater out of my backpack, and cautiously walked outside.
     The full moon was right above me, breaking through the tree cover to offer some light. Curious of its location, I tiptoed around the corner of the cabin, trying to find a path to the outhouse. Owls perched high above me hooted, and a weird screech echoed throughout the trees far away. I felt my way along the outside of the house, around the other corner, and stopped suddenly where I stood.
     A dark figure swayed through the moonlight, hovering just above the ground. My heart jumped into my throat as I heard the sound of the rope rubbing on the tree branch. Squealing, swaying, dancing in the darkness. I fled, unable to run from whatever was going on. I couldn’t trek out into the forest—I was trapped.
     Tears blinded me as I ran, completely defenceless. I’m going to die. The pounding of my heart was deafening. I need shelter, I need light. I ran inside, the last place I really wanted to go. There is something wrong with this place. An owl’s dark shadow fluttered and silhouetted outside of the cracked window. Need to keep the fire alive..
     I tripped and fell onto the mattress, sliding up against the gate that protected the fire. The gust of wind blanketed the fire momentarily. No! It can’t go out! I held my breath until the fire continued to flicker and pop.
     From behind me there were voices—whispers coming from the broken window. The forest was coming alive and was going to **** me like it killed Jeremy and no one would ever find us.
     A rustling noise occurred from the other side of the wall in the unexplored room, and soon it climbed around the outside walls. I need to hide myself where there are no windows. The doors seemed to lock from the inside. I need to lock myself in a room, somewhere safe, quiet, away from whatever is outside. The screeching continued to gain pitch until it buzzed inside of my head and the pain was excruciating.
     I grabbed the backpack of food and ran to the door that I hadn’t tried to open before. The doorknob didn’t open the first time. The noises got louder. My palms were slippery with sweat as I attempted to turn the **** clockwise and counter-clockwise in quick motions.
     “Open, ******!” I shoved my weight against the door as I turned it. The door gave about an inch and stopped, as if there was something on the other side of it that disabled the door from swinging open any further.
     Suddenly, for the first time since I left home, there was silence. There was no wind blowing through the cracked windows, nothing rustling through the trees, the buzzing noise had stopped. My heartbeat skipped once, as I stared through the crack in the door.
     A soft cry escaped from the other side. Wait, is there someone else here? How did she get in past me? Maybe I am trespassing after all, and this girl is scared because she heard someone screaming in her house.
     The little girl’s cry caught in her throat, and then she coughed. I couldn’t see her at all through the space in the door. “Hello? Can I come in, please?” I pushed the door again, this time it shifted, allowing me full view of the room.
     The only furniture was a dark wooden bed, draped with a black sheet. A young girl, dressed in a white nightgown, with choppy black hair kneeled facing away from me. Her breathing was heavy, and when she heard my voice, she perked up from the slouch on her knees.
     “Who are you?” Her small voice twisted, and she cocked her head to the side and swung it around to look at me. The whites of her wide eyes were yellow, and her face was covered in gashes and black bruises. The front of her dress was soaking with fresh dark, red blood.
     Slowly, I closed the door, and leaned back against it, letting out a few deep breaths. The fire was almost completely burned out, leaving the room extremely dark. The desire for comfort washed over me, so I trudged through the plants that covered the forest floor, towards the hanging body.
     I reached for the rope that was slung tight around Jeremy’s neck, standing on the ***** of my feet. Color was drained from his face, except for the precious blue of his eyes. Using all my strength, the knot came undone on the second pull, and the body dropped to the ground into a collection of bushes. Gently, I unravelled him from the tangled bushes unscathed. Preparing to pull, I wrapped my arms around his forearms and dragged him around the corner of the house. His weight had felt as though it had doubled; I had to stop a few times to catch my breath.
     The sun had just broken the horizon, an orange glow seeping through the trees. Songbirds had started to sing. “Do you hear that? Isn’t it beautiful?” I whispered in Jeremy’s ear, holding his hand in mine. The comforter had kept us both warm while we slept, as the fire was completely burned out when Jeremy and I had come inside in the night. “I like it here; I want to stay forever.” I smiled.