tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-64548660461457868562024-02-08T09:24:12.970-08:00Stories by BakerShort stories, WIPs and free-writes by Gary Baker!Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger88125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454866046145786856.post-75791079750748986812017-01-16T13:18:00.000-08:002017-01-16T13:19:23.786-08:00Glimpses of Flickering Madness<div style="text-align: center;">
"Glimpses of Flickering Madness"</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
A short story</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Gary Baker, August 2016</div>
<br />
<br />
We sat in the room on the side of thought, the cushions of the sofa like clouds as we listened to the pair in the other room. They were arguing again; as always.<br />
<br />
“...and so you fucking dare to…”<br />
<br />
I pulled a pillow to my face and pretended to suffocate myself with it. If I wasn’t so god damned high, it would have been like witnessing a murder in slow motion. Thankfully by then the pints had already begun to work with the smoke and… well things just got interestingly numb.<br />
<br />
“...like I give a shit about your…”<br />
<br />
The statue beside me, the girl made of stone and crisp linens, grated her cheeks to grace my eyes with her own. <i>Should we leave</i>? She mouthed. Colors swirled as I watched the television that had cut to static, where I swore I could see the pair in the other room glaring back through the fuzzy black and white ants. <br />
<br />
“...oh, yeah, like that makes anything better…”<br />
<br />
“...if you’d stop being such a bitch about…”<br />
<br />
I shook my head and took another swig of the hard stuff, the burn no longer searing as much as it once had, the nausea no longer as fluid at my tonsils. By then I had simply become a pool of atoms and electrons vibrating along to the beat of distant stars. As I watched his eyes contort into a scowl on the static I felt my face begin to burn.<br />
<br />
I heard a nasty slap and my eyes went wide. The statue beside me and I suddenly watched the atoms of air between ourselves and the far wall, facing perpendicular to the arguing going on just meters away. I cringed as tears reached out from my eyelids and traversed across the hilly expanses of my cheeks. I shook. My atoms shook. The sofa wilted beneath me and the flat plane of cushion beneath my hand curled into stone fingers overlapping my own as the statue surged with emotion that I could taste.<br />
<br />
<i> Now can we leave</i>? She thought into my mind.<br />
<br />
I could have wept again, the darkness in the other room tainting my own miasma until I could hardly decipher between the angry reds and the blooming pinks. Yet it was when the ceruleans and azures darkened to charcoals and oblivion that I shuddered and took her stony hand in my own. I nodded. Yes. We would leave soon.<br />
<br />
“...how about I do it again, then? How about I give you something to…”<br />
<br />
Thunder came again and a squeal came like a kitten whose claw had gotten stuck in the carpet as panic cut deep. A bustle came like the clatter of winds knocking furniture around in a man-size twister and the statue led the way through the door. I barely kept up, stumbling as I went to catch the key on the wall. I missed it and the crackle of steel hitting hardwood floor echoed out to me as though through a turbine engine fan.<br />
<br />
“...you fucking like that?! You want some fucking more?!...”<br />
<br />
We raced through tall grass with wispy tendrils of Earth’s awe becoming mist-like in our vibrations. Trees reached to hold us, to console us, to hide us from the anger that tore out after us as we ran into the oblivious darkness. I could feel the motherly love of the planet reaching out to help us, her roots shifting to trip the bastard as it’s radiating heat came for us.<br />
<br />
Cool air clung to my skin and I swore I felt droplets of rain… <br />
<br />
...until I realized that they were coming from the statue’s face ahead as she pulled me deeper into the brush, as we fled deeper and deeper into the hilly expanse of trees and saving wildlife. Brine soaked with incredible washes of sadness and anger and vibrations of hopelessness all imbued within tiny sparkling droplets of saline and water.<br />
<br />
But still a torrent of rage came after us.<br />
<br />
We rushed headlong into the abyss, just aware enough to keep from being pulled too closely by the friends of bark and sap, just aware enough to avoid being buried by soil that would have loved to embrace us six feet under with loving caresses to our lungs and veins and atomic resonations.<br />
<br />
<i> Why us</i>? The wonderful figure of stone and life echoed into my thoughts. <i>Why did they have to live with us</i>?<br />
<br />
I slowed and put a hand to my lips so I could think. It made a circuit which then allowed my thoughts to run as they should, as my heaving, thrumming muscles tried to focus on staying alive, as they tried to focus on anything but not simply dying. It was bad enough that I was on the verge of accepting the reality I had never known and letting the vibrations of distant stars wash me into ripples of universal energy again. All it would have taken was a simple accepting thought toward it.<br />
<br />
<i> What’s wrong</i>? She asked. <i>Is he still following us</i>?<br />
<br />
I blinked. He was following us? I swore it had only been the anger, I swore it had merely been the rage, the abuse, that had sought us out. I swore it had been echoes of reverberating fear which had wanted to sink it’s visceral teeth into our vibrations. I never would have guessed the human form of it all had been the beastial echo that kept our tails.<br />
<br />
My throat seemed to shrink back, releasing itself from my control, and pressed my air out with vibrations I seemed to be creating. “I,” there was a moment where I lost myself in the woods overhead, where the dark branches seemed to create the very same appearance as neurons in the brain, and I was drawn to set myself in the soft, moist soil. “I forgot why we were running.”<br />
<br />
She looked back the way we had come and seemed to think on things I could only wish to comprehend. Her eyes could have hidden the light of entire galaxies, and I couldn’t so much as pretend to feel her thoughts. <i>So do you think we’re safe</i>?<br />
<br />
I rolled my face toward her and let an ant crawl along my forehead. “For now I think we are…” I blinked and tried to focus, my train of thought derailing as fast as it could get going again, “...going to be okay.”<br />
<br />
With a nod, she set herself onto her knees beside me, her dress soaking up some of the mud beneath us as we fought to break reality and make things better again.<br />
<br />
“...going to be okay…”<br />
<br />
Tears welled up in her eyes and I winced. Where was the wonderful work of art that I had gotten to know over the last several years? Here sat the saddest statue of sandstone and stardust that had ever been formed from the clay of cosmic awe, and all I could do was lay on my back in the mud and watch as nausea returned.<br />
<br />
<i>God, you're high. Your eyes are bloodshot</i>, she shook her head and sighed, <i>so so bloodshot right now</i>. Her lips moved, but I barely heard them as my head began to throb with renewed vigor. She watched me as I rolled away to finally let out the pent up alcohol, then reached forward to wipe my face with the sleeve of her sweater as I pulled forward onto my knees. <br />
<br />
“What… what happened back there? For real?” I choked at last. The girl closed her eyes most of the way and watched me in curiously indecipherable expressions.<br />
<br />
“You,” her voice struck my ears with the soft suddenness of a cello in the dark. Sadness threatened to overtake me by the tremors alone. “You mean you…?”<br />
<br />
I sighed as the high finally seemed on the verge of ending. “Sort of. I was lucid enough to get the gist… but what caused it?”<br />
<br />
Tears welled up in her eyes once more and she leaned forward to hold me as dearly as anyone had ever been held. Her arms were like extensions of the universe itself, as comforting as a mother and as wonderful as life itself usually was. “I wish I knew…” she moaned with new echoes of the chaos lain within, and her face pressed deeper into my shoulder, “they came home while we were already stoned off our asses and…” she shook violently, her stony figure becoming more and more human with every passing second.<br />
<br />
I nodded and rest my cheek on the top of her head, “and he hit her...I remember that much.”<br />
<br />
Suddenly her eyes sought my own and she held me in the most magnanimous glare that I could imagine possible. Cerulean disks seemed to hold the universe within their center, and somewhere within those lay our future together. “Can we go?” I knew what she meant, but I stammered too long for her to understand, “I want to move. Now. Let’s just take what we can and run. We don’t need much, I promise.”<br />
<br />
With a grim sigh I reached out and took her hand in my own. She once was a statue as stoic as the cosmos, and yet just then I felt her form begin to crumble at the edges, her base shattered by what we had just escaped, by the chaos of what she wouldn’t soon forget. All I could say to her was “yes” as the moonlight traced our outlines in the woodland mud and soil. “Of course, dear.”Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454866046145786856.post-42197886960791210842016-08-10T23:57:00.000-07:002016-08-10T23:57:02.748-07:00Tendrils of Chaos<div style="text-align: center;">
“Tendrils of Chaos”</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
a short story</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Gary Baker, early 2016</div>
<br />
Smoke wafted like tendrils of some deific tentacle from the microscopic sea of a lit cigarette set aside in an abandoned ashtray on the brass countertop. “Shit, man,” choked Gril as he set down a thick nine-millimeter with metallic clunk. His eyes started watering, and his cheeks warmed into a deep red even as he reached out and retook the burning tobacco. “Now that is some potent shit, if you ask me.”<br />
<br />
Oria scowled, offended, and swiped the cig from the other man. He took a long draw and held it for a count of seven before exhaling, eyes closed, through the nose like a bipedal ape-like dragon. “Trust me, Gril, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”<br />
<br />
Finally Gril was able to unclench his teeth and pryed open his eyes again, to look his greater with increased respect. “We gonna go for another round?”<br />
<br />
“Hell yes, my friend. Hellz yes.”<br />
<br />
Oria reached forward and grabbed the thin man by the wrists, fingers lacing around his leather sleeves, painfully pushing the steel zippers into his skin. On cue to his humming, the room seemed to glow, the air thickened, and the incessant ticking of the chess-timer slowed. Red lights tocking back and forth on the “we’re open” sign hesitatingly became one-sided, the tufts of smoke ceased to rise, and a barmaid wearing black fishnets purposefully making her way toward them stopped in her tracks, slowly making that last step. Her booted foot came down like falling rain, then slowed to a feather’s fall, and finally simply ceased to move less than a centimeter from the wood-panelled flooring.<br />
<br />
Gril wanted to look about, but felt the pressure of the air around him as though he were encased in solid glass. He couldn’t breathe. His lungs scrapped within him, trying to break out and suck in whatever happened to be there, be it oxygen, formaldehyde or even liquid water. All he knew was that his lungs wanted air like the moon wants water. It felt like he was creating a solid block of cold, hard ice deep inside of himself and he could do nothing about it.<br />
<br />
Eyes wide, he looked to Oria, smiling like the devil he was and blinked. Once. Twice. Three times.<br />
<br />
Cue given, the man clenched harder, digging his nails into Gril’s wrists as though he were trying to kill him, blood began to seep out and around the man’s dull nails, and, finally, the smoke began to descend just as quickly as the barmaid’s boot began to rise and move back to where she’d previously been. <br />
<br />
Gril wanted to moan, his testicles felt like someone was massaging him where it truly counted, and the air began to move within him like a living being, forcing open his lungs to flow out like cool liquids going in the wrong direction. He could feel the different coils that the air had made on the way in begin to form again and shift back toward his teeth and away from the sponginess of his lungs. He felt the tingling sensation of the electric zap that he’d been given when the cigarette had been initially picked up, but in the opposite direction. The gust of air that had been loosed when Oria had opened the window hit him like a fist from the wrong side, moving toward the window as though out into space, and the scent of chimichanga’s from the kitchen wafted back to his nose once again.<br />
<br />
It was tantalizing to say the least. His muscles contracted instinctually at the point when he’d picked up the martini glass on his table, and he watched as the glass moved as though by his hand again. Suddenly warm liquids shifted up and out, flowing through his throat and across his tongue like before. Again his gums burned as the alcohol coated his teeth and he watched it all pour into the salted glass as if watching a POV video of a man drinking a manhattan in reverse.<br />
<br />
The glass then moved out and down to the counter between the two men and settled beside the ashtray where the now just-lit length of tobacco rest with a full arm of white and only partial burn marks. Oria grinned and the coin he’d flipped into the air only moments ago, despite the ages since he’d released it, tumbled high again from far behind himself and slowly, ever so slowly, revolved until it held in the place he’d had it before picking it up to flip it in the first place.<br />
<br />
The cigarette then lifted from the tray, as with a lighter tucked into Oria’s breast pocket, and met each other in the middle where the embers seemed to spark a flame that then simply ceased to exist, causing the smoke to end in a flash leaving the paper and cut leaves as burnless as water.<br />
<br />
Oria grinned at Gril and let go at long last. Instantly the world started up again, the man drinking rum alone while failingly hitting on the barmaid brought his hand back down to her bottom only to receive the same slap that Gril had seen, now, many times over. The girl in high heels and a mini skirt who’d come here with her boyfriend again found herself slipping on the unseen, fallen ‘wet floor’ sign, and despite the expectation of it, Gril found himself once again stunned at the kid’s ability to catch her mid-fall. Again she turned to the young man and planted a wet kiss in gratitude, not noticing as the drunk at the bar leaned back to check out her thighs.<br />
<br />
The headache Gril had gotten was gone, as was the intense high that he got from the trip each time. He felt the urge for a smoke rise, and Oria whipped out both in perfect response, as though they’d been thinking the same thing.<br />
<br />
“Want some blow?”<br />
<br />
That was different.<br />
<br />
Gril hesitated, eying the white length warily. “Um,” he breathed, “sure, why not?”<br />
<br />
He reached out, grabbed the white roll, already lit, and brought it to his lips to take in a long draw. It was worse than he’d expected, the sensation nearly killing him in the process of going in. He felt his heart race for several moments and his ears pop when he thought the world had become a hallucination. Worried, he reached out and grabbed Oria’s wrists and fought to speak. Blow was not his thing. Not in a smokable form, at least.<br />
<br />
“End. This.” He choked.<br />
<br />
Complying immediately, Oria wrapped his long fingers around Gril’s wrists again and the chemicals came out and back into the blunt, recombined into one log of paper and powder, then unlit itself and made it’s way back into Oria’s pocket. Like a cat, Oria watched Gril from across the counter as he felt the high increase despite the loss of the chemicals.<br />
<br />
Gril slapped himself loudly, feeling the strike of icy fingers hit his soft, warm cheeks, and again felt the need to stare as the drunk groped the unsuspecting barmaid, or the man catch his date before she could crack her head open on the hardwood floor panels.<br />
<br />
The high increased still, as though, despite the absense of chemicals, his mind wanted nothing more than to obey to what it had initially been prepared to see and feel. His fingers went slightly numb, his throat tightened, his pupils dialated, and his nostrils went cool as his breath chilled somehow.<br />
<br />
“Here,” Oria chuckled, “let me get that for you.” He reached forward with the cigarette again, lit and ready as it had been before, and again Gril felt himself complying without objection.<br />
<br />
He brought it to his lips, drew, and exhaled softly to feel the tingling numbness overtake him and add in to the otherwise increasing high. Suddenly he could feel the burn of the alcohol overtake his tongue and gums again and stared with wild wonder as though the Manhattan was about to lift into the air and pour itself into his open mouth.<br />
<br />
It didn’t, but that wasn’t the point, either.<br />
<br />
“What,” he stammered, “what is this?”<br />
<br />
Oria shook his head laughingly, and stroked his sideburns with a stray fingertip. “Just you wait, my friend. It gets better.”<br />
<br />
Gril looked up with incredulous eyes. “How?”<br />
<br />
The man motioned toward the drink, still full and still very much untouched. “Take a sip and you’ll find out.”<br />
<br />
So he did. He brought the bourbon and cherry to taste-moistened lips and felt the familiar loving burn begin to take him anew. His tongue warmed as it coursed across to his tonsils until at last Gril swallowed and felt that same searing intelligible electric heat as it made it’s way down.<br />
<br />
Oria grinned like the cheshire, and once again grabbed Gril’s wrists.<br />
<br />
The feeling was as nauseating as it had been the first time, but when it had ended he felt both the high of the blow, with the numbness of both singular drinks that were actually the same one, as well as the mental clarity brought on by the number of cigarettes that he’d had, without lighting more than one.<br />
<br />
A tear made it’s way down his cheek and onto the countertop with a near-inaudible splish and again the drunk snuck his dirty fingers out and onto the plump flesh of the barmaid’s shorts. Again Gril watched with horrendous awe as the young man caught his date. Again he felt the need for a smoke increase within and could predict the precise moment when Oria would whip both items out and around, when the smoke would begin and just how the tuft would rise and shift about when Oria opened the window to avoid detection.<br />
<br />
“God, man,” he breathed aloud, “this is intense.” He looked to the curator of all this with a smirk-turned-sour, “have you ever done this before?” He looked around, at the folks moving passed on the street outside, at the barmaid making her way toward them with heavy footsteps, to tell them to stop smoking inside, at the way the drunk heaved down another pint. It was all so surreal. Colors seemed to shift and warp, smells seemed to combine and alter each other, tastes ceased to be while overpowering his mouth in the same thought, and his pulse quickened.<br />
<br />
Oria smirked in response but said nothing. He merely tucked his hands away where Gril could not reach, and kept the burning cigarette perked in his pursed lips, letting the smoke fray and splay out in the incoming breeze. He exhaled off to the side without taking away the tobacco, and shrugged.<br />
<br />
Gril blinked and suddenly maroon flecks lay silent off to the side, the bar completely gone, and his gaze now looked where a limp arm wilted like an overheated rose trimming, adding more crimson coalescing into one greater pool with the continued ticking of the clock. The longer Gril looked, the more he started to realize that the bloodied arm he was staring at, the one extending from beneath his prone form, lain awkwardly on a glorious wooden floor, was his own.<br />
<br />
He turned his head in shock, the pain coming in tides of greater and greater agony, his senses blaring, his nerves undone by the burn he couldn’t comprehend. What happened? What was all this? What had happened to the bar? How had he gotten here? He winced as the pain roared within what few portions of himself had yet to go numb, and he shook for a moment with the electric insanity writhing under his skin.<br />
<br />
Then he glimpsed Oria smoking a cigarette while leaning against the balustrade of a balcony just outside. “See, the thing about time,” Oria took a drag almost ending the drug, then the cigarette nauseatingly burned in reverse to become a full piece again, “is that it moves whether you are there for it or not, you dig?”<br />
<br />
Gril tried to sit up, but found his torso unwilling to comply. He rolled in his mind about the thrum of the hot, endless horror that had become his limbs. It took all his concentration to simply focus on Oria’s words.<br />
<br />
The dark shadowed man paced over, his hands hidden behind his back. “I feel kinda bad, actually,” he mused as though talking to a failing student, “here you are with absolutely no clue as to what you did,” Oria paused looming directly over Gril and pulled his hands out from behind his back. In his hands were a pair of bloodied steak knives. “And yet, what would I be if not consistent? You’re not exactly the first to do this, I should mention.”<br />
<br />
Gril panicked. He raged within and fought to move, fought to be free of this torment, fought to get out and away and to live. His whimpers must have done something to the man who almost seemed to dissolve with the shadows at the peripherals, for he stooped low and cocked his head to the side.<br />
<br />
“What did you do?” Oria asked. “Is that what you’re trying to say?” He paused a moment as Gril nodded violently. “Well I guess cutting out your tongue might have been a bit much...huh.” He shrugged. “Fine. You were too curious. You found out my secret and threatened to expose me. You found out how…” the impossibly-calm man looked to his fingertips and the cigarette rebloomed and unlit itself, then moved to his ear of it’s own accord to rest there quietly, “...how I do this.” He turned back to Gril and winced. “It’s not magic, that’s for sure, but for me to remain a god no one must ever survive to tell anyone else. That means you, too, Gril. You discovered my secret and now you must pay for it.”<br />
<br />
The bastard had the nerve to caress Gril’s cheek absently as one might with a loved one. “You were so close, Gril. We could have been lovers. We could have ruled the universe together. But… as they say: curiosity killed the cat.” With that, the blade in Oria’s right fist struck to the hilt and Gril’s world went dark.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454866046145786856.post-468369992634101632016-07-08T00:59:00.000-07:002016-07-08T00:59:30.184-07:00Interminable Discord<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
"Interminable Discord"</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
a short story</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Gary Baker, July 2016</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The news was too much. Nick thought he could handle it,
but he couldn’t. Not this. Not now. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He ran out of the room, backside bare to the world and the
tails of the ties moving as though in a rough breeze. Outside was a shock. The
late night had turned sour, the sweltering heat still emanating from the
pavement while the desert grasses and dunes seemed on the verge of a serious
chill. Melissa Strauss came running out behind him with an intense worry plastered over
her that he could see even without looking.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This wasn't happening. It couldn't be.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The moment was going on for far too long as she gave chase,
having gone passed the end of the lot and into the island of desert brush that
kept the sign company within mere heartbeats it seemed like. He took the only
route he knew and bolted west along the highway, still wearing nothing but the
plastic garment the doctors had given him.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
"Mr. Valiant!" The woman screamed, swearing with each
leap in her stride as she fought to catch up with the escaping patient.
"Nick stop!"<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But he couldn't. Not yet. He needed to get there... to that
place he had in mind but could never seem to find. He still needed to find her.
Glancing ahead told him that no cars were coming for miles, negating any means
for taking this into the next town, so with the woman hot on his heels he took
a sudden turn into across the highway and out into the unending desert night.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He leapt over fallen logs that once stood as telephone poles
back before they'd been replaced by their aluminum successors, and slipped
around thick arms of cacti that had grown in a forest-like density in this
area. He felt the needles scraping him, tearing his skin raw and gaping wide
for blood to emanate from. The pain was intense, but he kept going anyway. He
had to get away. His feet had started throbbing only moments before but it was
only as he vaulted over a low thicket of grass only to land right onto an
unseen ball of wicked angry needles and torment that he came to recognize the
implications of his flight. The lack of thinking ahead had been what had gotten
him in this mess in the first place, and now here he was losing his ability to
walk, losing his ability to keep on his quest. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He was losing his fight to seek her out while he still had
time. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He fell hard, his foot torn wide and the blood suddenly
washing over his leg when he screams of agony seemed to summon Melissa out of
nowhere. She was kneeling at his side, pinning him with one hand while checking
the damage with the other. He tried to roll away, tried to crawl back to his
mangled feet, but her strength was greater than his by far. When he caught a
glance of her face, she barely even looked winded even after all that running.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It took only a short moment for her to get him to lay still
as she wrapped her white coat around his foot and cinched it tight with her
belt. Once done, she glared hard under the vast starlit sky. "What the
hell is wrong with you?" She began, her tirade bursting forth with the
clarity of a broken damn. "I know the situation falls rightly in your
favor, but what the fuck did you plan to do? Go running into some coyote den
and end it on your own terms instead?"<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He only wept in response. It was all he could do. The years
came crashing down on him suddenly, so very suddenly, and he started to regret
more than he ever thought he might have. How many near-misses had he come to in
the decades, in the few short fragments of a century he'd been allotted? How many
of those whom he'd had connections with might have remained with him had he
only asked? How many could have become the companion he needed, the essence of
life which he so dearly sought?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
How many might have been the one?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He caught himself mumbling about love and never finding
something, and shut himself up the instant that he realized. His eyes then
drifted away, out into the surroundings where even in the most hellish of
places life managed to survive and almost flourish. How dearly he needed that
which he couldn't even put a name to just then, as the world moved on without
him, as the world kept turning on it’s axis even while his own fell to
shambles.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
"Jesus, Mr. Valiant, this... this isn't just about the
diagnosis, is it?" Her eyes glimmered in the corner of his vision, while
the tears in his own reflected light from the hospital. Her voice softened too
much, her touch suddenly too cautious. In a split second she had gone from
enraged nurse to concerned companion without even thinking twice. "Nick...
what's gotten into you all of a sudden?"<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But how could he explain it? How could he describe his
anguish? It wasn't exactly something he could just come out and say with the
nonchalance of a man talking about the weather.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He let out a long sigh and watched the celestial mists of
the Milky Way passing slowly overhead. "I..." he hesitated, looking
for the words. Finally he settled on speaking the notions as he thought of
them, perhaps maybe that way she might make sense of that which he could not.
"There's no time, anymore. I-"<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
"No time? You've got over six months-"<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
"-just can't get passed that." Nick reached out
with an absent hand and let a handful of fine sand and desert soil slowly
crumble through to the ground again. "All I know is that all this time
I've been searching-"<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
"Searching for what?"<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
"-for... I dont know, I guess."<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
An eyebrow raised in bewildered frustration. "You don't
know what you're searching for and yet you continue to look for it? Is this
some sort of philosophical crisis you're trying to explain to me?" She
shook her head slowly. "Nick I want to help you, but I'm no good with
psychology. It's why I became a nurse in the first place. Give me needle and a
vial and I'll get your blood drawn like that... but ask me to help you through a
breakdown...?" She held up her hands in defeat. "I'm sorry."<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But he'd heard none of what she'd said. His momentum had
been found and there was no turning back now. For all he knew he wasn't even
talking to anyone but himself. "All I can think of is that I have been
longing for something real all this time, for a life worth living, for a love
worth devoting my whole life to." He pushed his hands back and rest his
head on the sand as he lay down to look at the stars again. "She's out
there still, you know... the woman I have always needed, the woman I have
always known deep down that I would find and suddenly be free of all this chaos
of depression and anxiety and all because I would have then found someone to
take my attention off the small things and always keep me focused on her."<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He sighed, suddenly self-conscious. "It's stupid, I
know, but all this time I have felt so severely lonely and the only way that I
could imagine my life being anything worthwhile would be to do so with the love
of my life at my side...." He trailed off and let himself focus on the
torment that was his bleeding leg, letting the pain bring him back to reality
just enough. "But the worst part is that I don't think I've even met her
yet, and now I know for sure that I don't even have enough time to actually
find her anymore." Finally Nick looked Melissa right in the eye, the
sorrow and humbling reality coming to a crescendo at last in that one look he
gave her. "I no longer have anything to live for, coincidentally on the
precipice of learning that I am bound to die lonely and alone... within this
very year."<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There were no words that she could bring herself to speak
aloud, his anguish more resonatingly painful than anything she'd ever felt
before. This was the main reason she'd never gone into psychology, she told
herself, for she was far too much an empath to actually succeed in anything
involving other people's emotions. Chemicals and elements, numbers and physics,
all of that kept her solidly grounded, but emotions were where she too fell
apart.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When she wiped the tears from her eyes she found that Nick
had gone silent again, his vacant eyes traversing the galaxies far away from his
terminal diagnosis. She only wished that there was something she could say to
soothe his ache. She longed for something to ease his chaos. When no words
came, she instead found herself reaching out to tenderly hold his hand. Maybe
that would be enough. Maybe that would suffice for now.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
But Nick's eyes never left the ripples of the stars. Had it not
been for his fingers closing around hers with the tenderness of a man whose
hopes had all gone, Melissa would have sworn he hadn’t even noticed her attempt to
soothe him. Maybe that would suffice for now.<o:p></o:p></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454866046145786856.post-33732678885935283232016-06-01T22:35:00.000-07:002016-06-01T22:35:42.436-07:00Apologies<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
"Apologies"</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
a short story</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
Gary Baker, June 2016</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
(based on the true events of the death of Harambe and the Cinci Zoo)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I remember
the day it happened. I remember the horrors, the screams, the chaos. You see,
my usual job is nothing. I’m basically a janitor of the grounds, roaming like a
battle-dressed cyborg among the patrons as they gawk and wonder with eyes like
saucers, while I politely pick up their trash without a word. There are those
who stare at me, sure, but I know it’s not me they are afraid of… it’s the old-fashioned
hunting rifle hanging on my shoulder. Patrons stare at me as if wondering when
I will strike and start felling any in my way. They wonder when I will snap.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I think the
only thing going for me in most cases is the fact that I am one of the best
shots in my field. As a former Navy Seal, I can hit a button from one hundred
yards without a problem, no questions asked. That easy.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So when the
screaming began, my training kicked into gear and my partner and I bolted. We
had just been about to hand over change for a couple cokes with extra ice, but
were forced to leave both behind. I don’t even know what happened to my ten
dollars. All I know is that the cages were just around the bend and the crowds
were major.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I could hear
a womans voice over all the other screams. Even in war, I had never heard
anyone who wasn’t a mother make that sort of wail. We tried to get there
faster, but the crowds took time to move. That was when Doctor Jeffreys pulled
up in the emergency jeep and let the horn rip with gusto. Patrons suddenly got
the hint and scattered just barely far enough.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Jeffreys
moved into the space given and kept moving as more patrons shuffled aside. “<i>L.T!</i>” My partner, Halden, called down
with an arm held out for me. “Hop on!”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I didn’t
need to be told twice, and grabbed the tire-bar at the back of the jeep and
swung high, landing firmly with my combat boots crushing someone’s lunchbag. By
now the rifle was at my side, held at mid-mast like Excalibur in my right hand.
The tarnished brown wood suddenly felt natural in my hand again. It felt like I
was finally coming home. It felt like I was doing what I was meant to do again,
after so long without. The shouting, the screaming, the horrific tremors of
fear then all fell into place and my heart slowed. I had the rifle set on the
main beam of the roll-cage and had the stock held at the pit of my shoulder,
when the Zookeeper showed up and hopped onto the jeep behind me. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Halden
nodded. “What’s the story, sir?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The immaculately-dressed
old man breathed deep and grunted. He crossed his arms and I could feel him
watching the beasts ahead, through the trees, as if his eyes were a set of
binoculars. “Some <i>twat</i> fell into the
exhibit. With the gorillas. Not even a child, yet.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I glanced
over as the jeep finally hit a large gap and we surged forward. “How close are
the apes?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The man
scowled. “Not apes, <i>gorillas</i>. There’s
a difference.” Then he shook his head regretfully. “The Alpha was closest to
the boy, just moments ago. Maybe seventeen yards”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Well if I’ve
learned anything about Alpha’s by working here, it’s that he won’t take too
kindly to a visitor,” Halden cursed. “Darts, then?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Keeper
cursed under his breath and handed me my round.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Eyes wide,
I scowled back at him. “<i>Live munition</i>?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Just make
it quick, son.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The jeep
jolted to a stop and that was when I got my first sight of the fray. Up ahead,
down in the pit, sat a young boy of about five in the moat near the base of the
enclosure wall. He appeared scared shitless as any child would, but what caught
my breath was the beast coming for him. It was magnificent. The gorilla was a
behemoth of muscle, all lean and covered in scars from battles with the lesser
males. He was intimidating, but in a gorgeous way. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Dammit, just
<i>fire</i>!” Ordered the Keeper.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So I
pressed forward and brought the sight along the scene. The gorilla had grabbed
the boy by his ankle and was dragging him. At first glance I thought the beast
was about to smash the child on the cement, but looking closer it seemed on the
verge of saving him from the moat. I hesitated because I couldn’t imagine
killing such a feat of natural selection. It was clearly intelligent, and just
wanted to save the boy, right?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Then out of
nowhere the Zookeeper snatched up the rifle from my hands and didn’t even brace
the barrel on the jeep. The rush of noise was maddening, so many voices in
hellish torment at the sight of a lifetime. He let the barrel drift for hardly
a second when he exhaled and his finger began to close on the trigger.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Had he not
been right beside me I never would have heard the old man breathe “I’m sorry”
just before the crack tore the chaos in two and gave people a new reason to
scream. I’m still not even sure who the apology was for: me, for taking the
rifle from my hands in such a way? The child for the trauma this would
ultimately cause him for ages into his life? Or was it for the gorilla, itself?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When the
deed was done, the old man scowled into the distance as though to be sure of
his shot, the one that had rendered the gorilla’s skull into crimson markings
of oblivion on the enclosure wall, and brought a cigarette to his lips with the
liquid ease of a man in desperate need. He took a long drag as he handed the rifle
back to me, then released the pent up tension with eyes rolled back and his
teeth grit. When he finally opened his eyes again, the Keeper then shook
himself slightly, almost unnoticeably, and shot a look to Doctor Jeffreys at
the wheel. “Get a crew down there to get the boy and start a clean-up. No more
mess-ups, we clear?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He turned
away from the enclosure and we happened to make eye-contact as he did. “I’m
sorry, sir.” I mumbled meekly.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The look he
gave me was almost too stoic, the look of a man just hinting at the sensation
of any emotion at all. “Don’t be. Back in my early days post ‘Nam, I would have
done the same.” He pat my shoulder lightly and began to climb to the ground
again. “Killing another man is <i>nothing</i>
compared to killing one of those beauties. Takes a different kind of man, and
you just weren’t it right then.” Halden then gave me a sympathetic look, no
longer entranced in the aftermath down below, and shrugged.<o:p></o:p></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454866046145786856.post-8034044158003146472016-04-13T14:43:00.001-07:002016-04-13T14:43:14.100-07:00Bliss of the Numb<div style="text-align: center;">
"Bliss of the Numb"</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
a short story</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Gary Baker, January and April 2016</div>
<br />
"Look, kid, its like this," the man in white crossed his arms and leaned back, "whats in here" he hit his chest suddenly with a closed fist "aint nothin but sissy bullshit, and nothin more." The younger of the two perked his lips to one side and looked away quietly as the older man went on.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"See, some will tell you its natural to let go of this sissy shit where the world can see, you follow?" He took a drag of his coffee, black and thick as molasses, before leaning back once more to watch his companion from across the wire table. "I met writers who did that and you know what it got them besides weaknesses the world could see?" </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There was a long silence between them as the older man waited. Eventually the younger glanced back over and shrugged. "Does it even matter?"</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"Ha!" The elder exclaimed. "Now you're getting it!" He followed the younger man's gaze out across the void and let his eyes also linger there. "Anyway, all I'm sayin is that what you're feelin right now? Don't even try to talk about it. Hold that shit in, kid. Ain't anyone want to hear about it, and thats for damn sure."</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The younger man looked to his companion with a sudden scowl, "this is why there are alcoholics in the world. Because of people like you who think it helps to hide what we feel."</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
"You've got a point, kid," the old man grunted. "But I'd much rather be an alcoholic for life than a sissy bitch any day of the week."</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The scowl turned to a glare, then to a look of a man unsure. He turned again to look away from his elder, his back to the other people who'd come out and about once more. He shrugged "it's your move."</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Without looking, the man in white reached over and shifted a pawn to take the younger man's rook. From there he sat back and grunted. "Now whats on your mind, Echo?"<br />
<br />
Echo, the younger of the two, shot the old man a wicked glance. "Nothing that concerns you, old man. I thought you made that clear already."<br />
<br />
The old man smiled. "Now thats what I'm talking about. You jus' keep whats up here-" he pointed to his temple with one hand while drawing up his coffee with the other "-up here and nowhere else." He took a long drink from his steaming mug, then shrugged as he finally pulled it away, "any time you start to be a wuss-ass just tell yourself 'out of your head', now, hear?"<br />
<br />
The old man had a point, or so Echo was starting to believe. For far too long he, himself, had been opening up his every daydream, fantasy, and all else to the only person in his life who would truly listen... even when she clearly shut her ears to it by her own annoyances personified. Echo knew what he had been telling her was wrong to say out loud, that every time he told her of some fanatical daydream involving just another pretty pair of eyes she had been thinking he wanted to leave her for something better, but that wasn't his intent at all.<br />
<br />
"I just wanted her to know what was going on in my head," Echo sighed.<br />
<br />
"Hey!" The old man shot, "Pansy!" Again he leaned over the chessboard and snapped his fingers, "Lookit me, you bitch-ass!" Finally Echo pulled out of his depressed space-out and looked to his angered companion. "What. Did I. Just say? Eh?"<br />
<br />
Echo opened his mouth to respond and was shut down midway through his first syllable.<br />
<br />
"No! I'm talkin', Wuss-Ass, don't interrupt. I said 'any time you start to be a-' what?" He paused for a moment, as though prompting the young man. "Start to be a what, kid?"<br />
<br />
"A bitch," Echo answered.<br />
<br />
"Very funny, but thats not what I said. I said 'any time you start to be a wuss-ass, you jus' tell yourself...?" Again he prompted his chess partner. "What?"<br />
<br />
"Get out of my head!" Echo yelled.<br />
<br />
Suddenly, blinking his eyes, Echo became all-too aware that he was sitting at a park bench alone, with people all around him. They watched him sit in the shade of the public park's namesake sycamore tree as though he were tricked out on drugs, as though he were more of a junkie than an emotional-wreck. Quickly he shot his hand to his bag sitting beside him, then threw himself into a brisk walk along the cobbled pathway leading back to the road.<br />
<br />
Even as he practically tore out of earshot, Echo knew the moms who'd been staring at him while their kids played Pirates on the jungle-gym were already talking among themselves about how bad this side of town was getting these days. He knew they would point to the various political rifts in society and claim it was all to blame on this person or that policy. Who cared what they talked about, though? Why would Echo feel the need to seek understanding by them?<br />
<br />
With his bag firmly thrown over his shoulder, the young man strode out to the edge of the parkway. It was high time he focused. It was high time he re-purposed this farce of a life he was living. Maybe the old man was right. Maybe Echo just needed to let the anger wash over him, to let the wuss-ass sadness be overcome by enraged alcoholism and stoicism. Life was nothing but suffering these days, but that didn't mean he had to bow down and accept the pain without agents to numb it.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454866046145786856.post-14689425643908353102016-01-28T23:28:00.001-08:002016-01-28T23:28:24.644-08:00The Drive<div style="text-align: center;">
"The Drive"</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
a short story</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Gary Baker, January 2016</div>
<br />
Brendan pushed the pedal and set them surging forward as Peal Jam came on under the dim roar of wind tearing through the open windows. "It's like this, kid," he gestured with his shift-hand while keeping the other loosely on twelve o'clock on the wheel, "how long's it been? What? A decade?"<br />
<br />
The silence led on long enough that the passenger, sitting awkwardly in his would-be coffin, eventually mumbled "Nine years, three months, se-" with the speed of a viper Brendan backhanded the man.<br />
<br />
"Right. There." Brendan pointed. "Right fucking there." He reached down onto Carl's side of the car and pulled a can of lager from the paper grocery bag there. He shook it vigorously and then held it out for the passenger.<br />
<br />
Carl look askance, and took it with gingerly trepidation. "You want to drink? While driving?"<br />
<br />
The driver shot a glance at his companion. "No," he said, "I want <i>you </i>to drink, while <i>I</i> drive."<br />
<br />
"Whatever, man." Carl looked sideways out over the passing dunes to his right. The sky was breaking into a bright clear azure the longer they sped on.<br />
<br />
"Again!" Brendan exclaimed. He slapped his palms onto the wheel as though tapping out a heavy-rhythmic drum solo from the stone ages. "What are you doing? Right now. What the <i>fuck </i>are you doing, bro?"<br />
<br />
Carl shrugged. "Im... waiting for the beer to settle?"<br />
<br />
"Fucking <i>exactly</i>." The driver shifted into a higher gear and the roar of the wind grew as they broke eighty. "Fucking. Wonderful. You just proved my point, bro. Right fucking there, you just did."<br />
<br />
The highway began to veer slightly to the left, but Brendan just pressed on with the needle rising as slowly as the clouds passed by overhead. Dunes meshed with patches of grass and stones, occasionally broken by a thin ripple in the terrain where a dry creek bed once existed.<br />
<br />
Carl finally shrugged. "Man if I open this now, the whole thing will spray me in the face. Do you want that to happen? Do you want your car all messed up with beer?"<br />
<br />
Brendan smiled, his point having been made without the effort he had expected. "Bro that is your problem. You forgot how to take a risk. You forgot what it was like to just dive in and see what happens."<br />
<br />
"And the beer?"<br />
<br />
The driver shrugged. "It's a metaphor, bro. Fuckin wait if you want to, that's entirely up to you, but you'll never experience life by waiting. You won't get to taste the sweet relief that comes from expecting the worst," he took the beer from Carl's hand and popped it open without holding the wheel for the time it took. Amazingly nothing happened. Brendan gave his companion a knowing look as he handed it back. "...and getting the best."<br />
<br />
Carl took a swig and leaned an arm out the window. "Well you timed that perfectly, you smug bastard. You knew it had been long enough not to worry."<br />
<br />
"Did I?"<br />
<br />
"Why would you do it, otherwise? If that had shot you in the face... while we are <i>speeding</i>, I might add...."<br />
<br />
Brendan nodded. "Proving a point, bro."<br />
<br />
"And this," Carl tossed back another swallow, "all of this. It was all because I'm not <i>dating </i>yet?"<br />
<br />
Brendan kept his eyes forward, set his jaw, and kicked the car into the next gear up. In a blink they had broken into the triple digits, and the driver gripped the wheel with a new sense of security. They whipped passed dunes as if they were blades of grass, the whole desert turning fast into a blur in every direction but the general areas ahead of them<br />
<br />
"It's been <i>ten fucking years</i>, man. You hear that?" The passenger took a swig that ended the can, threw it out the window where it disappeared as though it'd disintegrated into oblivion, then reached down and took out another. It was open before Carl's hand even had it out the bag. He took a long swallow, and wiped the drippings of his chin onto his sleeve. "Tabetha and I..." he looked long out the right hand window as if to try and understand the blurs he was seeing. "We were perfect together, man. We had it all."<br />
<br />
He looked over to Brendan fiercely. "And you know what happened? It ended. It <i>fucking </i>ended. Just like that. Just like <i>everything else</i>. My life was ruined." He took another long drink and ended the can, sending it to the same fate as it's predecessor. Carl grew quiet and seemed to shrink in on himself. "And it was all because love doesn't exist, man. It never did."<br />
<br />
Brendan went to speak but Carl cut him off before the driver could get a word out. "No. It. <i>Didn't</i>. It doesn't. It's all just molecules and hormones and bullshit energies at the atomic level that make <i>this </i>fucked-up contraption," he swung his finger about his ear, seeming to point to his head in general, "think that the concept of love exists." He spat out the window angrily. "But it doesn't. How could it, man? Tabby and I... <i>goddamn</i>, man, we.... If love really does exist, then why did she and I fail? How can something last for so goddamn long and not have some element of truth to it?"<br />
<br />
Brendan waited. When he was positive Carl wanted an answer, he shifted down and brought them back down to one-ten. "What if it did?"<br />
<br />
"What? Have some element of truth?"<br />
<br />
Brendan nodded. Incubus began to play from the speakers, the song titled 'Agoraphobia', and the driver reached over to turn it up.<br />
<br />
Carl seemed not to notice the music. "<i>Fuck </i>man, what if you're right?" He shook his head slowly, staring out at nothing in particular. "Man, that would mean that love can <i>die</i>. Man how fucked up is that? I mean, you always hear of it acting like a virus or something, but... but what if it actually <i>is</i> a virus or something, and we just haven't discovered it yet? What if being in love is just being mutually affected by the same strain of a malevolent nonliving organism that plagues most of humanity?"<br />
<br />
He looked up suddenly. "What if love isn't actually that common, and we only <i>think </i>it is, because we are unaware of it's viral nature?" The passenger reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of brown cigarettes and a lighter, then offered one to Brendan. "Want a light?" Brendan took the stick and let Carl light it, then took a drag as the passenger did the same.<br />
<br />
Carl shook the lighter to cool it, then thrust it back into his breast pocket and let his arm dangle out the window. "No, but seriously, man: this whole love thing is as fucked up as the world in which we live. Think about it. If it really is a not-so-common virus strain, then think about how many relationships are built on the lie that our species constructed entirely by itself? Think about how that would change things, man, were we to discover how to see it? To learn how to discern one strain from another." He took a long drag and tapped the ashes to the wind. "I mean, then loneliness: that shit would be nothing more than our brains crying about being addicted to the affects of a virus that we barely understand! Think of the drugs you could concoct to counteract that!"<br />
<br />
Brendan shifted again and took them back down to the double-digits. "It'd be one hell of a realization, bro."<br />
<br />
"Yeah it would. That's what I'm saying, too, man."<br />
<br />
"So what are you going to do about it?" Brendan leaned back in his seat and relaxed as the road turned perfectly straight for as far as they could see.<br />
<br />
Carl cursed, hitting the doorframe with his right fist. "<i>Goddamn you</i>, man. All I want to do is mourn over the loss of Tabetha, but here you got me convinced that I just happened to eliminate the virus within me right when I learned she had cheated, man. All I want is to fucking let myself go and to turn to dust and shit, and let this life be over with, but now I can't help but wonder if maybe, just maybe, my strain mutated to fit the needs of another strain, instead."<br />
<br />
Brendan smiled, and inhaled deeply through the cigarette. He breathed out like a beast from hell, letting the smoke slowly filter out of his lips to be drawn out into the desert by the raging torrents of winds that fought the car with every mile. "Wanna try that beer trick again?"<br />
<br />
Carl's fist struck Brendan's right arm loosely. "How 'bout you just find us a bar in the next town, up, eh?"<br />
<br />
"Are you going to do some flirting this time?" Brendan asked.<br />
<br />
The passenger glared. "What's that supposed to mean?"<br />
<br />
The driver shrugged, "I dunno, bro, just that last time you started bawling about-"<br />
<br />
"Fuck you." Carl drew on his cigarette again and crossed his arms, "but yeah, I'll fucking flirt my bloody heart out. I'll flirt so hard, that girl's strain won't know heads from tails."<br />
<br />
Brendan looked cross at his companion. "Bro, don't force things, alright? You know the rules. We go in, buy some beer, check out the babes, and hope like hell that we both go home to get laid tonight." He lifted a hand, pointer finger held out scoldingly, "and under<i> no circumstance</i> are we to-"<br />
<br />
"Yeah, yeah, man. I get it." Carl mocked. "Under no circumstance am I to talk about Tabetha or what she did to me by fucking my-"<br />
<br />
Brendan slapped the passenger again, right across the jaw. "I fucking said <i>no</i>, bro. Henceforth there will be <i>no mention</i> of exes; by either of us. Ever. Again. Capiche?"<br />
<br />
Carl dashed away the last of his ashes and reached through the window to put the stub out on the mirror-housing. "Yeah, yeah, just get us to a bar where we can find some babes who aren't looking to get married and shit."<br />
<br />
Brendan smiled, taking the car into a higher gear once more, sending them back into the triple-digits. "Fucking <i>told you</i> I could get you over her, bro."Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454866046145786856.post-21334588376004555622015-11-24T01:09:00.000-08:002015-11-24T01:09:39.258-08:00Esteban, part 2<div style="text-align: center;">
"Esteban"</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
part 2</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
(toying with tones and things)</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Gary Baker, November 2015</div>
<br />
By the time my feet struck snow, I was bundled up in two dark sweaters under a beige p-coat, a pale wool-like cotton scarf cinched around much of my chin and neck, and a thick black beanie to upset the fedora-lovers who littered the streets even at this god-awful hour. I pushed my chin deeper into the scarf and exhaled to push some warmth where my skin could actually feel it, and trudged my way south down the main drag.<br />
<br />
It was slow going because of all the Wangster men and Wapper women, wannabes the lot of them, meshed with all the decent folk who just didn't care for this resurgence into retro bygone-era fashions. They clogged the dark streets as bad as taxi's to the point that after walking one measly block I gave up and hailed a yellowcab.<br />
<br />
"Where to, brother?" The driver asked. The cab was not-quite toasty, but it blew the hell out of the icebox I was expecting it to be.<br />
<br />
"Library, please."<br />
<br />
"Comin right up." He thrummed the wheel to the tune of Avicci on the radio and flicked on the blinker. I relaxed a bit, seeing someone use one of those for once. Too often did I see them go all but out of fashion, to the point that driving in the big Apple was like taking a test to see if you were like Mama Santeria and could read the future. After he'd sufficiently gotten back into the flow of traffic, the cabbie glanced back through the mirror. "So the library, huh? Brother, tell me about that one: I thought they'd all gone extinct." We surged forward at the light. "Somethin' about them bein' obsolete and all, what with ebooks and shit."<br />
<br />
As one who made my living trying to keep print alive and kicking, I wanted to take offense, but he was right. These days the establishments were kept around more for the aesthetic than anything of true use. The shelves had become less-than great, and books of any true reason to read by the masses were kept in a much smaller section of the building, where the most popular titles were arranged on the main floor for ease of access. Only true bibliophiles and tourists managed to venture beyond the first few steps toward the second floor, and even the tourists only made it up to the fifth floor simply to look down over the balustrade to take selfies with the feat of aged architecture looming behind them.<br />
<br />
"Something I need to take care of," I responded. "Doing a bit of research for a client."<br />
<br />
"Nice. So you a lawyer, then?"<br />
<br />
I gave him a bit a smile. "Not quite."<br />
<br />
"Alright, then: don't tell me, I wanna guess this one." Again he strummed the wheel to the tune on the radio, and turned to quickly look me over once we hit a red light. Facing forward again, he shook his head. "Well you aint much of a fashion man, so you aint a designer. And you dress nice, too, so you aint a detective. Not like the ones I seen, let me tell you, brother." He kept glancing at my reflection periodically for what I could only surmise as further intel. "TBH you remind me of some of them professors I used to know back in Vancouver."<br />
<br />
This time I smiled for real. "Close enough."<br />
<br />
The cabbie beamed with pleasure. "Harvey's still got it, brother."<br />
<br />
He didn't, but I wasn't one to cut the moods of the man keeping me alive in the midst of Manhattan's play called 'Traffic on Ice'. We still had a good number of blocks to go, though, so I sat back and enjoyed the warm air of the heater while making small talk. While we talked I even brought out my phone and took notes on our conversation, for later use. It's not often you get a cabbie this talkative anymore. Most of them tend to keep to themselves or talk solely about the city as if they all figure anyone might be in need of a tour-guide for extra pay.<br />
<br />
Eventually we arrived, though in more time than I would have preferred, and I gave him my card with the fare. "You ever feel like writing any of that down, you let me know."<br />
<br />
He swung his arm over the seat and seemed a bit bummed despite my offer. "So you aint a professor, then?"<br />
<br />
I laughed. "Almost. I could teach lessons if I wanted, but these days I'd rather help new voices reach the masses with their stories. You've got some good tales to regale for us all. If you ever feel like putting words to a page, hit me up first and I'll get you out there."<br />
<br />
"For sure, brother." He shook my hand through the window, then made his way back onto the streets.<br />
<br />
The wind had picked up since I'd gotten in the cab, that or the storm was just worse this far south on the island, and so I hurried my way up the steps with as careful footing as I could manage. Inside, I strode passed the reference desk with a wave at Helga, the librarian there who knew me by first name basis, and began the climb up to the fourth floor where the cultural studies existed. I kept thinking of Esteban and all this secrecy. I still couldn't fathom why nor how he'd used Lana to get me here, either. She made it seem all cloak and dagger, for what? A trip down memory lane?<br />
<br />
Two flights up and I was getting winded. Suddenly my coats were too much and I peeled off a layer at a time until I was left with just my sweater-vest and beanie beyond my usual clothes. Carrying them all was the biggest burden, I found out right away, so I stopped again on the third floor to make my way to the coat-check in the back. I dropped a five into the tip jar for assurance that nothing would be messed with, and made sure to take the e-cig Lana had given me. With all this secrecy, she'd appreciate that extra security, I was sure.<br />
<br />
"Here you go, Blank," Jason, the clerk who worked the coat check, handed me a green plastic square with the number 48 printed on it. "That will work fine for everything you gave me."<br />
<br />
"But it's a tag per item, isn't it?"<br />
<br />
He moved aside and motioned to the racks, all clear except for my things. "Trust me: at this point even the tag is just a formality."<br />
<br />
Finally I made it to the fourth floor and began toward the Latin cultures wing. Esteban being what I presumed to be of Spanish origin, rather than how Olga would take me to northern Europe and the Swedish wing, or how Sakura would take me to the Asian cultures wing. It still amazed me that I knew all this after so many years. Part of me wondered if I was being led to this wing under the simple coincidence of Esteban being the only name he remembered from the whole list.<br />
<br />
I passed aisle after aisle until at last I crossed in front of the map of the Spanish peninsula. At first glance there was no one to be seen, and it seemed I was the only soul up this way. Then a book shifted on a rack to my right on the side furthest from the windows. I glanced over just in time to see Mauricio Freitas start walking away from me on the other side of the shelf.<br />
<br />
"You didn't take as long as I thought you would," he said with all the hushed volume of a regular library-patron.<br />
<br />
"That a good thing?" I shoved my hands into my pockets and paced along with him, the black metal shelf of books between us. "And what's with all the cloak and dagger? What the hell, man?"<br />
<br />
He shushed me twice, then stopped walking and made it appear as though he were looking at a book he pulled at random. "Look, Blank, I need you to work for me. We'll claim it's a play that I'm commissioning, if the right people ask."<br />
<br />
"Work for you how? What could I possibly do that you would need all this secrecy for?"<br />
<br />
He seemed to think it over for a long moment, then set the book back on the shelf and resumed walking. "You own a publishing house. You print a regular periodical. I need that access to send out some intel to people I know are listening out for it."<br />
<br />
Wait. What? "You want me to print stories in code? So you can get some private shit -- probably illegal, by the sounds of it -- out to clients of yours?!"<br />
<br />
Mauricio slapped a book in place and glared at me through the open spaces between shelves. "Damnit, Blank, keep it down!" He took a deep breath and calmed himself. "What you said? It's not entirely true."<br />
<br />
"Oh yeah? What part?"<br />
<br />
He shrugged. "The fact that it'd be stories, mostly." We hit the end of the aisle and he motioned for me to wait while he switched to the next one away from me, so I could then go to where he'd just been. "I work in a firm, these days. My theater background got me nada, alright? I had to make way with some dark folks just to make ends meet. They took my acting skills as a gift, though. Started to use me as their fake leader and shit."<br />
<br />
I slowed my pace, seeing where this was going. "Sonofa-"<br />
<br />
"Exactly." He pulled another tome from the shelf. "Now I'm in too deep, but my skills are wearing thin. They've got me posing as a CEO for a company that don't exist, and the FBI is closing in."<br />
<br />
"No," I stated firmly. "I'm not doing this for you. I don't care what you got yourself into I-"<br />
<br />
"Fucking shit man!" He exhaled through grit teeth. "Don't make me do this, not to you, man." For a brief moment I was confused. When I followed the direction his eyes were motioning to, however, I caught the gleam of a pistol nose hidden under a face-down book on Italian architecture. "Don't test me, Blank."<br />
<br />
Shit.<br />
<br />
I almost threw up my hands in exasperation, but thought otherwise seeing the mood Mauricio was in. He could snap at any sudden movement, thinking I was about to bolt. "Fuck me," I breathed aloud instead.<br />
<br />
A smile lit upon his cheeks just then, and he carefully tucked the weapon away again. "Right. So the details will come in snippets from here on. Lana will-"<br />
<br />
"Why did you bring her in on this?" I asked suddenly. "You know she and I have history. You know I'd give my damned left nut to keep her out of this. So why? Answer that and we might just have a deal."<br />
<br />
The grin he flashed was just like the old days: all-knowing with a brotherly mocking tone to it. "You just said it, man: you've got history, and you'd still do anything to save her." He started walking again. "Know this, though: Lana? She's off limits."<br />
<br />
"Like hell she is." I recomposed myself and shoved my hands into my pockets defiantly. "I'll do whatever the hell I want with her." I looked away to hide my sheepish grimace, "provided she gives me the chance to ask her."<br />
<br />
"Do you want to die, Blank? Cuz messing with her is a sure way of getting that to happen." He sighed and set his back against the shelf, his face away from me. "She's in deeper than I am, man. Like: 'fucking the big guy' deep. You get caught so much as smiling at her too often and I'll have to find another way to get these guys their data."<br />
<br />
Defeated, though not willing to show it, not to him, I set my face with determined anger. Let him see my temper hadn't faded in all these years. "What's the data for, anyways?"<br />
<br />
"Simply stated: nunya."<br />
<br />
"I won't publish coded information that I don't understand the meaning for. Doesn't matter how many rounds you got in there, I won't budge on that one."<br />
<br />
He heaved a sigh of frustration. "Fine. You goddamned temperamental shit." The grin seemed to make it a compliment. "Since the FBI is closing in, we need a way to feed out the financials and the codes for them that I am covering for. Only those in the upper reaches are in the know on this, and even then only a select undisclosed few know the planned cypher." With finality, he turned to face me. "You publish the next issue in a week. I know this and more as you can guess. Well the first stream of it gets published with this coming issue. Just the basics for now. That play, BTW? That's where we will hide the code. Use formatting to hide it, I guess: I know how much you liked to mess the lines of that shit."<br />
<br />
For the first time, he came around the aisle and met me with a firm handshake. He looked older than I expected, somehow. Like he'd been so stressed that it took years off his life for him. Or maybe it added to the years his body felt. We hugged like age-old buddies, that one armed hug with a slap to the shoulder. "Expect to see Lana in two days with the first run of code, then work it into a play somehow and get it published as some sort of exclusive expose of your work or something. Doesn't matter how, just make it your own shit, and make it obvious to those who know to look for it."<br />
<br />
We parted and he backed away a pace. "Don't make me remind you about what happens if you do anything rash. And do not fraternize with Lana, let me make that clear as hundred, man."<br />
<br />
With that, he stepped aside and briskly made his way to the stairs and began his climb to the main floor. I watched him go, then leaned over the balustrades to watch him leave. Once alone, I turned my back against the nearest pillar and let my legs collapse beneath me.<br />
<br />
What the literal fuck had I just gotten myself into?Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454866046145786856.post-4342872094921858862015-11-23T23:03:00.002-08:002015-11-24T12:22:02.379-08:00Esteban<div style="text-align: center;">
"Esteban"</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
part 1</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
(toying with ideas and tones and such)</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Gary Baker, November 2015</div>
<br />
It started with "Blank, this is the wrong format." It was a script I had written for a play we were to produce in the high school theater later that year. Mrs Waters was waving the pad in the air, the longest thing I had ever put my mind to, and here she was telling me it was done wrong.<br />
<br />
Not for direction of content, by the way. Not even for the flow. It wasn't about bad characters, nor about bad timing, nor sequencing, nor thematics. If there was one thing Mrs Waters wanted more from me, a sickly tenth-grade prodigy (or so I told myself, then), it was to reformat the six-hundred page play. And why? Let me use her own words to express this wonder of my young writing career:<br />
<br />
Her dyed tar-black hair was falling out of the bungee tie at the nape of her neck, her lips poised with graceful not-quite crimson, her old-school fifties era dress wisping slightly in the classroom's air-conditioning as she held the script in front of me. I was laying on the floor at the time, doodling or some shit in my seventh notebook that year. I always scribbling thoughts, dreams, dialogue. Shit like that. Most kids back then thought I was a bit eccentric, but who could blame them? I kinda was, if you blurred the meaning a bit.<br />
<br />
Anyways there she was, standing over me with my greatest achievement in hand, speaking in a tone that made the whole class shush without making it obvious they had shushed. They kept up just enough clamor so Waters wouldn't notice the change. I did. I always did. I guess that's how I got most of my work done, by noticing these changes in flow around me and then jotting them down. "Blank," Waters repeated, "we just got through the unit on script-writing, and yet you turn this in to me with," she looked away for a second, finding the words I guess, "with nonstandard formatting."<br />
<br />
Back then if there was one thing that drove me batty, it was being told I was wrong. My friend laying beside me on the classroom carpet with Chomsky open on one side and Shakespeare on the other, shifted and shyed away a foot or two. He knew me. He knew I hated being condemned in front of a crowd. What's more is that he knew damn well that I didn't take kindly to being wrong when it came to my writing, especially over things as small as formatting.<br />
<br />
I was stunned, trying to regain my composure. "Excuse me?"<br />
<br />
"This script? Reformat it or I will find someone else to write the play."<br />
<br />
"What's wrong with the format?" I asked, knowing quite well how I had worked my piece such that the character names were tabbed to the far left with all lines starting on the next line down.<br />
<br />
She dropped the pile of bound papers onto the floor in front of me, almost on my hand. "You need to put the character names in the center, not the left. It makes it impossible to read when you have to constantly search for the name of the person speaking the lines."<br />
<br />
"Says who?" I challenged. Again, my friend moved, but this time he stood from the floor and moved back onto a seat. It was on. "You?"<br />
<br />
I should not have said that last part, I know, but like I said: I was a tenth-grader with medical problems. Of course I would build up an attitude.<br />
<br />
"Yes," Mrs Waters ended. "Because scripts are not formatted to the left, and you cannot just change things like that. Is this going to be an issue? Because I can get someone else to write the play."<br />
<br />
Here's the part about being sickly in high school that no one really tells you about: beyond the medical exams and the tests and the machines and the hospital boarding and all that jazz, you start to get accumulated to tight, small environments. It's like the opposite of claustrophobia, but not as bad. I mean, I wasn't afraid of open spaces per se, but more that I preferred places like the library and the nooks I built in my room for the purposes of reading at any waking hour that I wasn't using to write something. Point is that I read, a lot. I read practically all the time. I had finished the major works of Shakespeare even before we had exams on Romeo and Juliet back in freshman year, let alone all the other names I followed in the writing world.<br />
<br />
So being told my way of formatting wasn't done simply wouldn't fly.<br />
<br />
I threw myself into a cross-leg seated position and drug over the theater textbook my friend had been perusing. I flipped to a random page: Henrick Ibsen's 'Peer Gynt' and held it up for Waters to see that Ibsen used the same format I preferred. "Ibsen," I stated, "used left-hand margins for names." I flipped to another random page and landed on Tennessee Williams, found "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and held it up again. "Williams used left margins." I flipped back to the Shakespeare chapters my friend had been reading and paged my way to 'Julius Caesar' and once more stated my point.<br />
<br />
"I see what you are trying to say," Mrs Waters sighed, still visibly irked, "but that just isn't how it is done anymore: these days we use centered margins for character names and cues."<br />
<br />
I scowled. "So you wont even read it? Just because you aren't used to the formatting?"<br />
<br />
"No, I will not." That was that, it seemed, and so she passed along the honor to a classmate of mine, who took the role of writer for the spring play eagerly, though with a bit of apologetic sorrow in my direction.<br />
<br />
It was at that point that I drew inward with myself and gave up on writing plays. For the next ten years, even after having finished high school and moved on to college where I majored in philosophy and creative writing, I never pushed back into scriptwork. I published works of essays for various journals and periodicals, curated stories for a network editor, and by the time I graduated I was given a position for a publishing company in the big city. It never occurred to me I would go back to plays. Not even under such extravagant circumstances.<br />
<br />
It was a jazz club in north Manhattan, snow was falling like volcanic ash just outside, the windows fogged and frosty with tones of satin gray. I sat at a round table just paces from the brick fireplace built in a by-gone era, cigar roasting away, lipless and depressed, on the ashtray beside a glistening pint of ale. I had a pen in hand and a pad lain like a carcass on the table beneath my nose.<br />
<br />
I was fighting for the words, striving to hit that fresh chord of blues on my version of a cello while the musicians hummed and snapped away their demons on the stage across the lounge behind me. My pen clicked incessantly to their tune, nervous habits, I guess. And that was when she walked in: Lana Lucy, herself, in the skintight flesh.<br />
<br />
She strode in out of the cold with a waist-long p-coat over a slim black dress that reached mid-calf, breaking away to reveal nude stockings and heels that could kill a man. Her hair was done up in the style of the twenties, all woven with lace and beads with a broad-rimmed sunhat of silk-like material. In with the latest fashion, she wore elbow-length black gloves, and had two points where it was obvious she wore her rings under them. It struck me that she might be married. Struck me in such a way that I almost felt my heart problems return, despite the pace-maker wires residing in very valves of the muscle itself.<br />
<br />
I must have dropped my pen, because she suddenly looked my way and smiled that devilish grin that entranced me so much in my youth. "By god, Blank," she almost groaned. She didn't sound pleased to see me, but her Cheshire gesture said otherwise. She made her way over to my table and pulled the seat closest to the fire. Even the way she set herself down made my skin crawl. I thought I had gotten over her ages ago, but I was suddenly finding out I was wrong. "What the devil have you been doing all these years?" She asked while pulling out an e-cig with a long stick-like stalk that fit the twenties theme.<br />
<br />
I always loved reading about the roaring twenties, but one-hundred years later the styles had returned to mainstream and it was a love-hate relationship I had with it. Most people ruined the theme by trying too hard: you wouldn't see flappers in the numbers of millions back then, let alone see them everywhere you looked. Men had it easier, as long as you wore a nice suit or tux you were fine, but it was the fedoras that made me want the world to burn. And then there was the sudden proliferation of jazz lounges and speakeasies and the like, where I often holed away to droll out more words and end the lives of more pints and witch-hunt all the cigars I could get my hands on.<br />
<br />
It was when people like Lana Lucy came into my life that my fetish really struck a nerve. Just sitting across from her was enough to boil the alcohol right off and make me want to take her somewhere.<br />
<br />
"I, uh," I scratched my cheek awkwardly and glanced away. "I've been good. Publishing other people's work," I shrugged and looked at her again, to see she was checking her makeup in a pocket mirror, half-listening, "you know how it is: everyone wants a piece of them out where we all can see."<br />
<br />
Lana ho-hummed and set her hands back on the table between us. "That's not what I asked, not really at least."<br />
<br />
"Oh you meant 'literally what have I been up to'?" I glanced at the electronic pad with a few lines jotted by the touchscreen pen laying halfway over it. With a quick swipe I cut to the home screen and slapped the 'screen off' key. "Well after graduating from State, I hired myself out as an editor, started publishing bits here and there, got my name out there, and eventually started my own magazine for struggling writers."<br />
<br />
She motioned to the pad with a sharp chin. "That what you were just doing? Editing?"<br />
<br />
I sighed. "No, I was, ah, trying to get back into my own flow again. I may have hit a roadblock up here," I tapped my right temple with my pen hand.<br />
<br />
Lana finally seemed to take the rest of my clutter in, and stared at the still-burning, though still unused cigar. "You still burn. Interesting." She gave me a thoughtful glance from the corner of her mascara'd eyes. "Didn't that trend fade out when e's hit the market?"<br />
<br />
Even after all these years I didn't like to admit when I was wrong. My temper was just more controlled and the stuff in my head more sophisticated for backing up my thesis statements. "No, not at all." I argued. "There are still swarms of us Burner's scattered all over the place."<br />
<br />
The snap-response I expected didn't come. Instead she shrugged and began peeling off her gloves after she'd hung her coat over the back of her chair. The band continued to play behind me, breaking into further Sinatra-esque tunes, sometimes even hitting modern songs redone with the early era twist. At one point a young woman in uniform walked by and handed Lana a menu, then went on her way again.<br />
<br />
Finally I leaned forward and took the cigar to my lips for real, taking in the last few puffs before it could die. "So, Lana," I asked as I dashed the ashes between drags, "what brings you here?"<br />
<br />
It had been several minutes of silence before I'd spoken up, and so she looked up from her phone with a curious yet otherwise-indecipherable look on her face. "What the devil do you mean, Blank?"<br />
<br />
I scowled. Not this again. I bit my lip and counted to five, then exhaled. "What do you want, Lana?" Even holding back my temper, I still felt I said that too rough.<br />
<br />
A grin almost creeped it's way onto her cheeks. A glimmer of possibility then gone. "Me? Want something?"<br />
<br />
I pointed with my glowing cigar stub and took the last drag and stabbed it out. "Don't play with me, babe, I know your type. You waltzed in here knowing damn well you'd find me, you didn't even ask me if you could sit." I steepled my fingers to rest against my nose. "Now cut the smooth-talk and explain."<br />
<br />
"You're too smart, you know." The way she said it, I swore it was an mocking insult. Not meant to hurt, but to deceive me. With a bit of flair for making the gesture as unnoticed as possible, she rolled her e-cig across the table where it silently clinked against my pad. "There's a note for you on the feed. Read it and overwrite it." She huffed an annoyed sigh and stood up to pull on her coat. "And here I thought I would get to enjoy a bit of R&R."<br />
<br />
I was still watching her with a bewildered confusion on my brow, when she finished donning her gloves and turned toward the door. She nodded to the cig from over her shoulder. "You've been warned and you're welcome." At that she made her way to the door and slipped out during the height of applause for the band.<br />
<br />
I'm not proud of how long it took for me to regain myself, but when I did look to the machine in my hand, I rolled it over until the thin screen faced me. There were two buttons to either side of it and a tiny hole where a charging port or memory cable could be inserted. I pressed the first one, on the right side and the screen lit up with a flashing cursor line.<br />
<br />
Lana's secrecy had me intrigued, so I followed her lead and made sure to turn on my pad to obscure what exactly I was reading from. Something had me on edge suddenly. My heart was weak, even after all the surgeries and shit, but this was something different. Hitting the right key again brought up the message four characters at a time longways down the cig. It was like reading on an old calculator.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "courier new" , "courier" , monospace;">....job for you. play to write. stay local. keep low profile. -Est.</span><br />
<br />
I knew who Est. was right away: Esteban was an old tag name I used back in the day, back when I used to practically haunt the librarians for a living. It had been our way of secretly indicating where to find each other in the multi-story building. My best friend and I would sign in for the day on the sheet at the sign in counter that was used for tourists who wanted to lay claim to proof they were there. You could go back decades in that hand-written log, if you asked the librarians to pull out the logs. But it was the names we chose that told were we would be.<br />
<br />
I don't even remember who came up with the idea, him or me, but it worked perfectly. Boromir meant we were among the fantasy shelves, Jeremiah indicated the religion shelves, C. Sagan was science, and the list went like that for every section. The use of Esteban was obvious: this was something I needed to do alone, and without making waves in any way.<br />
<br />
What had me on edge most was the secrecy of it all. What could possibly summon the need to bring up old haunts and methods that hadn't been used since high school? And why a damn play? I hadn't written one of those in over ten years.<br />
<br />
I leaned back and tucked away the cig into my breast pocket with a long sigh. "Shit."Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454866046145786856.post-13204190470473723752014-12-23T00:19:00.000-08:002014-12-23T00:19:06.914-08:00Flight of the Viper<div style="text-align: center;">
"Flight of the Viper"</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
a brief excerpt</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Gary Baker, December 2014</div>
<br />
Lithomir was riding hard with the guardsmen at his heels when the newly banished kings heir caught the sight of a viper in the distance. At first it was just a smoothness in the rugged bog where none should have been, possibly a hill made of wind-swept soil and debris, yet it turned to something much more deadly as he looked closer.<br />
<br />
The beast was as much a dweller of land as it was sky, with a long serpentine body fitted with a pair of broad sinewy wings that could fold up as neatly as though they were never there. Undoubtedly it was caught unawares as the beast was completely visible even as Lithomir watched it tuck in its wings and bunch up its neck like a bolt waiting to be released.<br />
<br />
The young heir grit his teeth and aimed Vaughn's steed toward the predator letting the mount carry him further south than was necessary just to align the course properly. He swung his head down and glanced beneath his right arm to the riders coming closer behind him with pikes already drawn and swung out for the heir's reaping.<br />
<br />
They hadn't seen it.<br />
<br />
Lithomir inhaled deeply and kicked the mount into a greater stride, lowering himself to the animals neck while lifting his lower torso off its back. Centurion training had taught him about how a rider might hinder his mounts movements by interrupting the wave-like motion of the spine and how knowing how to undo such hindrances could keep even a plainsdrake from making the wrong kill. As soon as his hips were in the air above the saddle, the mount kicked into a higher pace as though steeling itself against a hail of arrows.<br />
<br />
They grew closer yet the young dragon slayer couldn't help but watch as the viper almost completely vanished into the shape of a handful of low laying mounds. Its eyes glazed over and the snout flattened, the only indicative mark being that of its bunched up neck as an oddly-shaped patch of grass sticking from the deep black muck.<br />
<br />
"Almost," Lithomir told himself, having only heard stories of such an attack from about a pyre. He remembered old Tsuyir from the northlands drunkenly giving the tale as if he'd seen it himself. The bard had gotten quiet just then, leaning toward his eager listeners to whisper, then suddenly snapping back to shout "AVAST" just when the beast had supposedly shot out toward the valiant hero. Lithomir had only been a babe then, barely seven, yet he remembered just how Tsuyir had claimed this hero evaded the impossibly quick strike.<br />
<br />
Then the viper ahead, too, struck out with ungodly speed from an entire bowshot out. The flat snout turned instantly into a pointed spear trailing a long neck like a banner while the wings snapped out to carry the beast through the air soundlessly. More instinctively than he expected to, Lithomir yanked hard on the reigns to shift the mount just aside and swung his empty right arm over and across just in time to slap the viper with his forearm along its lower jaw as it swelled out from the tip.<br />
<br />
In awe Lithomir barely caught sight of the barbed talons of the viper's inner cheek which would ensnare a victim before the jaws could set to work. Had even one of those flesh toned hooks taken hold, the heir knew he would have been done for. Instead his forceful blow had prevented the mouth from opening completely and gave him an opening through which to ride passed. The heir yanked hard to the east again and kept on even as the wings sailed overhead, even as the sounds of chaos broke behind him.<br />
<br />
He almost laughed at the insanity. In the last day he'd not only slain a plainsdrake single-handedly, but had survived the strike of a fully grown viper while on an overburdened stallion. The only problem was that he no longer had a single soul with whom he could celebrate.<br />
<br />
The mount attempted to slow but he kept it running at a breakneck sprint, sure that the viper hadn't completely taken care of his handful of assailants. The mountains ahead were getting closer and he'd been riding for hours; he wanted to reach the foothills more than anything. Once there he would slow down, maybe even make camp, but not until then. The mount was bred for this sort of riding and he was not about to let it relax until the beast had fully proven its worth.<br />
<br />
A loud war horn broke the wind with a deep bellow followed by the scream that only a slain horse could make, clashes of folded Centurion steel rang out and then the echo of flapping wings as the viper took to the air. Lithomir bit his lip and kicked the mount hoping it could go one bit faster as he craned his neck over to see the massive thing spiral high trailing blood as arrows were loosed.<br />
<br />
Eyes wide he looked to the ground below and discovered that these so-named guardsmen were ranked out like skilled drakeslayers with pikes ready and bows drawn. Only one had been downed, it seemed until the king's heir glimpsed a horseless guardsman kneeling on the ground awaiting the beasts ultimate landfall with a battlepike and shield held at the ready.<br />
<br />
The kingsheir snapped back forward and kept on. These men following him were no guardsmen, that much was now obvious. With battle skills and steadiness like he'd just seen of them, there was no way they were anything less than Rangers: fabled mercenaries from beyond the Northern Pass.<br />
<br />
For the time being, the newly banished heir chose to set such thoughts aside and survive to see another day. The time to understand what was truly going on here would come later.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454866046145786856.post-48366055899038768412014-10-11T00:16:00.004-07:002014-10-11T00:16:54.513-07:00Quintet<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">"Quintet"</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">an epilogue</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Gary Baker, October 2013</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">(the ultimate end to my largest project?)</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />Roi gasped as air was choked from his lungs, the upright beast leader of the invading army holding ringed fingers firmly circumferential to the dangling human’s ever-closing airways. The creature clearly led by powerplay, it’s muscles strangled into bunched masses, tied here and there with metal chain-like cords that had been woven into the thick muscles themselves with weights hanging haphazardly as though at the end of fishing lines caught in the beasts arms. The armor was intense enough as is, without the gold and jade debris cinched deep into the tissues of exposed flesh.<br /><br /> Roi could see where chains had been torn free, whether from being caught by stray palms in fistfights or by being deliberately torn free by the beast who bore them, leaving gruesome scars behind that often came close to bisecting an entire limb. The invasion force, Roi thought, was far more primal than anything humanity had ever been. They had bred themselves this way, in as parallel a path in evolution as cognition was to humans.<br /><br /> Then the pain really hit home, knocking the wind remaining in Roi’s lungs into the back of his throat, only to be blocked by the pressure of the tense grip, which only caused an even worse need to expel that air and reciprocated until the man was sure he was going insane right then and there. The burning of his eyes grew hotter and worse yet, the evidence of his eyes bulging began to show even in his already hazy sightlines as the world picked up a fisheye lens effect, and his hearing all but turned to heavy lub-dubs as the blood in his ears threatened to break free at his eardrums.<br /><br /> The pain intensified, growing stronger while somehow -- astonishingly -- further away. It was as though he and the pain of his own undoing were standing on separate trains once side-by-side and now veering away from each other. The throb began to pulse in his eyes and lessened as much as his vision began to lighten into cloud white. The stammer in his chest beat a constant bulbous beat, but his skin was tingling enough that even deep inside he could feel almost nothing. The grip on his throat pushed closer to being just finger muscles touching messy finger muscles, but Roi was almost certain it wasn’t even his body part anymore.<br /><br /> The scream he heard through bleating eardrums should have been his, but the wind had long since turned to hot ash and therefore couldn’t possibly be coming from him. It must have been someone else, someone nearby.<br /><br /> In a flash of white, Roi and his other train-self were severed completely, on railside vehicle suddenly disappearing behind the stark white walls of endless light and undisturbed abyss. He felt his eyes flicker, then, and his fingers twitch. He heard the dull ache of a familiar voice nearby and turned what felt like well-oiled gears to find himself staring at none other than a smiling Agent Bond, in the artificial flesh.<br /><br /><i> Welcome back</i>, Bond seemed to say, though no movement of the man’s lips were seen, <i>I trust you come across well</i>?<br /><br /> Roi stared, confused. What was this? Where was he? Had the others saved him and brought him to the hospital?<br /><br /><i> No, nothing like that</i>, Bond replied, and still Roi gaped at how the man could communicate without moving his lips nor using any sort of speaker system. It was as though Bond were displaying his words directly into Roi’s brain. At that, the agent smiled wanly. <i>Close enough</i>.<br /><br /><i> Where am I</i>? Roi tried to ask with vocal cords that seemed not to work.<br /><br /> Bond nodded and turned away and into the abyss, trailing his voice as he spoke, again without moving his lips. <i>You are in a state of download, just now, Roi. Be patient. I know it’s a long time, but in merely point zero zero seven five microseconds everything will be as can be expected.</i><br /><br /><i> Download</i>? The man stopped, unaware that he had even been moving in the first place. <i>What do you mean, ‘download’</i>?<br /><br /> The agent’s laugh was impenetrably awkward in the void of light, each echo made into endless miniature echoes until the whole of existence seemed to be made of them, the tiny echoes of a laugh made by a man who wasn’t even real. <i>Let us be straight right now, Roi. You died</i>. <br /><br /><i> I… I died</i>?<br /><br /><i> Yes, and you don’t very well expect me to have lost such a mind, do you</i>? Bond looked cross, blue eyes fixed on Roi in a hallucinatory, dark gaze. Just then the white started to fade ever darker, until Roi saw where he was, standing in the middle of the chamber Bond had asked him never to venture, a chamber that, until now it seemed, Roi had kept his word about. <i>You see</i>, Bond lifted eyebrows high in a world that seemed both static and slow in the same instant,<i> I, alone, cannot traverse the galaxies with just one mind. I need others to take my place. In this case, I am called Omega, something you humans have gotten wrong for much too long, and you are now called Quintet, with just one other having been made between our creations</i>.<br /><br /><i> I don’t get it</i>.<br /><br /> Bond laughed, again making that tinny reverberant noise, like a mosquito caught at the point of a massive tin funnel. <i>We never do in the first few microseconds. Let me say this much, though: you are the seventeenth player, and we have only a handful more before the game can begin anew. </i><br /><br /> Roi fanned out his thoughts, trying to comprehend, only finding empty space and endless facts and tidbits that he never knew could exist at so close a range to his thoughts. The further he reached, the wider Bond -- Omega’s smile went. And then he got it, understanding the whole of the universe faster than Neo had learned kung-fu. <br /><br />This really was a game -- but it wasn’t between civilizations, per-se, but between the artificial minds <i>behind </i>those civilizations. Each time another race was added to the mix, another mind was captured and put to the test in an all-out game of intergalactic command, expand and conquer until all necessary players had been gathered. <br /><br />Only afterward, however, could the real game begin; the game to be the last intelligence alive, surviving the downfall of other races and only capable of dying when one’s entire race had been eliminated.<br /><br /><i>Now do you understand</i>?<br /><br /><i>All except for one thing</i>, Roi tilted his head to the side in wonder.<br /><br /><i>Yes</i>?<br /><br /><i>Why did you bring me into this? If playing the game means you die in the end if you don’t win, why add in other players that might become your downfall</i>?<br /><br />Omega lifted an eyebrow high as though mocking Quintet’s thought process and all the systematic hardware that enabled such mechanisms possible. <i>Because playing with the same minds all the time tends to get very, incredibly boring more often than not. In fact I look forward to the day that another player may become my downfall, for that day, alone, would be something far newer than anything I could possibly imagine.</i></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454866046145786856.post-27378460062452620302014-10-08T21:53:00.000-07:002014-10-08T21:53:19.956-07:00Intelligence<div style="text-align: center;">
"Intelligence"</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
a brief excerpt</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Gary Baker, October 2014</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
(part of the continuing Roi Anxo project)</div>
<br />Public Security Minister, Xu Shengkun, strode quickly under high-vaulted ceilings adorned with red party tapestries. Ahead loomed the desk of Party Secretary Jin Keqiang, current leader of the Chinese Republic, where the man sat poised in thought over a series of papers.<br /><br />Xu had sent those papers in preparation for this meeting as a way of breaking the ice before another war could break out. They included documents written and signed by the Chinese ambassador to the U.S. Consulate, along with similar documents by much more discreet members of the Republic acting abroad. All in all the file ended up far thicker than Xu had intended, but it more than suited the task. When he’d discovered this Anxo footman at the heart of the whole controversy, Xu had gathered what he could as quick as possible and held those additional papers in hand. He stopped just a pace away from the great Keqiang’s desk and waited silently.<br /><br />After mulling over another page of scriptwork coded with a cypher that only seven individuals in the Republic knew, Keqiang looked up and removed his glasses to place them lightly on the file. “Interesting crafters, our dear American friends are, wouldn’t you say, Shengkun?”<br /><br />Xu gave a solemn bow, then proffered the new pages. <br /><br />“Oh?” The Secretary appeared eager, as a child would before venturing into the dark forests at night. Xu could only hope that his president was strong enough to not come out running before first light. “Shengkun you outdo yourself, I assure you.” He took the papers and laid them out neatly, replaced his glasses and began reading once more. In the middle of the third page, he looked up without moving his head, peering over the tops of his spectacles. “Tell me, Shengkun, am I correct to assume that you are one of the few who know this code?” The minister bowed his head silently. “And I am to suspect that there are others, surely, who would know this information as well?”<br /><br />Finally Xu felt that a submissive bow would not suffice what his superior was asking of him, and let loose a near-whisper in reply. “No, your grace.”<br /><br />Secretary Keqiang leaned back with a smile, “good. Let us keep it that way, shall we? In fact,” with a short sweeping arc above his desk his arm ended with poised fingertips mere inches above a bowl of individually wrapped candies, “have a White Rabbit for your secrecy.”<br /><br />Suddenly Xu took a step back without conscious control, eyes widening as though he’d been given a death sentence. “Your,” he stammered, hands no longer held at his sides but aloft of their own accord, “grace?”<br /><br />A moment passed in silence, neither man able nor willing to move. It was as sure of a standoff as the Collective Communist Regimes had been with the powers of the western world. Xu’s mind wandered here and there like a qingting over lotus leaves in spring. He retraced the files in his mind, wondering what he could have put in that would bring about such abominable dishonor and subsequent death sentence. Perhaps it had even been that he simply knew too much and was now being quelled from the already thin crowd.<br /><br />Then the Secretary started laughing his light, airy, almost-breathy laugh and laid his arms down upon the desk haphazardly. “So you even know of those, do you?” He leaned forward with another broad grin, “may I ask how many know of this, then, Master Shengkun?”<br /><br />“I,” he fought for the words, coming up blank with every heartbeat, “I,” finally he sighed and lost some of his controlled confidence. “Not many, your grace.”<br /><br />Another eerie smile. “And again we shall keep it that way, will we not?” Secretary Keqiang returned his gaze to the papers, this time barely scanning them as his eyes darted about, “I know this code is seldom known, yet I shall burn these momentarily now that I know what they contained. For now I simply wish you to graciously accept one of these treats and keep it on you for,” he glanced to the side as though looking for the right word, “shall we say: ‘a rainy day’?”<br /><br />The man then stood and held out a hand for Xu to take. Shaking, the Party Secretary and figurehead for the whole of the Chinese Republic bowed just enough to show honorable intentions. “Master Shengkun should you so choose to accept, I have a proposal to offer you,” they released each other and the great man stepped slowly around his desk until he and Xu were both moving toward the main door practically matching strides. “I will not be coy with you, Shengkun, this series of events leads me to believe that China is at a serious disadvantage, and disadvantages for China no matter how miniscule must be stamped out.” He stopped and held Xu’s gaze, “no matter the cost, Master Shengkun.” Continuing their short, slow walk with their footfalls echoing in the chamber around them, Keqiang seemed to lose some energy in his demeanor. “I do not like the idea of placing one so keen to my trust as you so far away, but I need you to take over for Dashi Meng Yuanchao. While my need of you here is great, Shengkun,” he stopped at the door and placed one hand on Xu’s shoulder while the other patted his chest pocket, “there are things which must be done about this footman who claims he can speak for the whole world.”<br /><br />At that the Secretary gave Xu just enough of a nudge that he moved through the open door and felt it close behind him. For a moment he just stood there wondering what just happened. Surely he didn’t intend for Xu to assassinate the man within the heart of a military base behind enemy lines, not only was he not trained for that sort of act he also would have no means of escape thereafter. <br /><br />Xu looked down at the candy he’d been given when they’d parted from the desk. It certainly didn’t look like it could kill a man, wrapped in white and blue packaging with a soft harmless rabbit acting as a clear window to the creamy custard paste inside, but he knew better than to see things directly as they appeared after serving his government for as long as he had. <br /><br />At the soft caress of increasing pressure he sighed and dropped the candy into his breast pocket, only to hear it crinkle on something within. Curious, Xu reached back up and removed not one, but two milk candies from his pocket. While he knew instantly where it had come from, he could only guess as to it’s meaning. One thing was certain, however, and that was that he had much to get ready in the short number of days before he would officially take over for Ambassador Meng Yuanchao.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454866046145786856.post-8600125851679263482014-09-17T19:06:00.000-07:002014-09-17T19:06:56.421-07:00Chaser<div style="text-align: center;">
"Chaser"</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
a short story</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Gary Baker, September 2014</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
(a practice piece in cross-chronological plotting)</div>
<br />
A friend once told me there was nothing to lose, providing proper effort was given where it was due. This person also claimed nothing could get in the way of our dreams were they only strong enough to withstand the close of ages.<br />
<br />
What she didn't tell me, however, was that consequences were completely indefatigable.<br />
<br />
My breath came in ragged gasps, my back slapped wetly against a shadowed redwood or other deep in the northern woods. I didn't even know where I was anymore. With my head lain back against the bark I released another exhale high above myself into the misty night. The subsequent inhale brought in the crisp reality alongside tangy pine, rustic petrichor and the oddly salt-free taste of woodland fog.<br />
<br />
Sweat dribbled across my brow and down my cheek. Moonlight flickered across my loosely closed eyelids with the pace of a breeze pushing branches up high.<br />
<br />
I remember how she had summoned me over one day, calling me from the foyer. Poised behind her desk, brows drawn in consternation, she set to lay waste to my dreams. It was a practical battlefield that day in her office, all torn reality and woeful hopes burned at the stake as one regretful sibling to a rising lord seeking kingship. She said my words meant nothing, that no matter what I wrote it could never please her. That I could never please her.<br />
<br />
After what felt like ages of resisting, I broke. I had worked my ass off for nothing. I had bore my heart and soul into my most recent article, working prose through fields of ghost-written sciences, never to see the light of day 'neath my own name. I remember the glitter of my tears as they fell.<br />
<br />
I also remember how her scowl then morphed so wondrously into a gleam of coy awe. She then told me that any dreams I still had, anything at all that survived such abuse, were the only ones worth fighting for. She told me that any dream that could be broken by unknowing anger, instead of being strengthened, could never place the bread upon the table.<br />
<br />
An echo of rushed movement clattered across my lap and I tore away from the tree with my heart in my hands. Feet raw from running, I knew I would be caught sooner than later. I was barely keeping ahead as is, did I really expect to survive this?<br />
<br />
In seconds time I reached the pebble-strewn shore of an annual riverbed. The waterline had dropped mere feet, yet it left an island three times as wide as the river currently was. Moonlight on my shoulders, I raced. I aimed myself for the far shore where I could only wish for a place to climb out and into saving grace of darkness once more.<br />
<br />
The water came like yet another smack to the face. Ice seemed to form around my very lungs themselves and I gasped for the solace of staying alive, were it only so easy.<br />
<br />
She had come around. Leaning on her desk with an arm held out to hand me tissues, her eyes told me everything I needed to hear. She was my mentor. She was my friend. More than that, she was the one who paid me for my articles. She would connect me with scientists needing their experiments recorded and understood by their lesser-minded peers, the ones with the money, the ones who could either shut them down or add another dose of much-needed funding.<br />
<br />
She told me the writer within me would benefit from what she had just done, that I should be grateful. I didn't believe her then, but later I discovered she had saved me while sending me off to my executioner all in one.<br />
<br />
I thrust my arm above the water to take hold of roots extended into the riverside and came back empty. I fought to reach the surface and came up just enough to find that in a fraction of a moment's time I had drifted deep downstream. Already I had gone further than I originally planned and missed my chance at finding safety on the far shore.<br />
<br />
Thinking back, even as the frigid sloshing tussled me in every which way, I chose to make the most of the moment. At least I couldn't be followed by the dogs from this point. Perhaps I could survive this after all.<br />
<br />
So I turned into the current and used cupped palms to pull myself further. I swam like a frog, like a dog, I even kicked like a dolphin for a while, doing everything I could to keep warmth flowing through my limbs. When the current tore me around a bend I hit the first of several rocks and debris. Shortly thereafter I was losing consciousness and knew I was losing blood in much the same way.<br />
<br />
When I had taken that last job I knew things were different. She had changed me. My will to write was stronger than ever and somehow it had broken barriers of writers block with all the excess energy that coursed within. The original job was to oversee a chemical experiment based on reactions deduced by the particle accelerator in Munich. I was to observe and record while science types tried and failed to reproduce chemicals known to have been used in abroad. For some reason the men and women at the lab I was sent to believed the chemical to have been falsified and, for all that I could tell, they were right on the money.<br />
<br />
When things got boring for me, though, I chose to indulge myself. I escaped via a supposed bathroom run and instead began my exploration of the facilities.<br />
<br />
I hit another rock as rapids began to form. I dropped several feet into a pool, peace lasting only hints of time until I was once again dragged along into white foam and jagged yanks to and fro. Those bastards, I figured then, might have missed their chance to kill me, but nature was sure as hell trying to do their work for them.<br />
<br />
I remember jotting down a rough assimilation of a map, writing my story as I went in my head of how the chemical wasn't properly reproducible and thus disproved any subsequent experiments done with it. I remember altering words from experimental Latin-fused English to much more layman terminology when I found an open door. The door led to some shadowed, as yet unfinished portion of the facility, and from there to a massive basement.<br />
<br />
It was like a horror movie turned real and still I pushed on. Suddenly nothing could sate my curiosity, not now that my desire to write, my desire to know, was so strong. What I walked into was the last thing I expected so deep within a chemical laboratory: there in front of me were the stooped forms of human experiments gone wrong.<br />
<br />
Beakers upon beakers as large as tables, all stacked with sealed contents of everything from embryos and fetuses to full-grown men with bubbles and blisters formed along every imaginable inch of surface area each in varying degrees. My reporter instinct kicked in and my cell was out and set to record both video and audio in separate files. I cautiously walked the aisles looking over tabs of information and degrees of chemical composure.<br />
<br />
Bonnie Jones, here, dosed with what I read as heroin and cyanide in a convoluted molecular solution, then injected into the bone marrow. In big red letters were stamped: Exp-Failed. Cringing, I moved on to the next, finding an illegible name with etches of acid formulas described as having been slowly increased in dosage since birth, grown in a test tube until the body of cells simply went haywire and somehow morphed into a human-sized mass of muscle and tissue. This one was marked as: Exp-InProgress.<br />
<br />
It was still alive.<br />
<br />
The experiments went on for whole sections of the gymnasium-sized room, when finally I freaked and bolted for the entrance. Immediately I ran headlong into someone on their way in. We fell to the floor with boxes of supplies dropped in the collision, and as I scrambled to rise I found there were others with this scientist. Guards loomed over us, guns in hand; massive guns. They shot their own man first, for what I can only pretend to know, and then began at me. From there I barely made it out alive. Shortly after I had dogs on my tail and leaves slapping my face.<br />
<br />
I don't even remember getting out of the water, only that I was suddenly racing with sodden icy clothes into oncoming traffic when a cop hit me. Gun drawn he came at me as I lay roiling in pain on the ground before his beaming headlights. I remember looking him in the eye, how he then grimaced and shrunk back, and how he was then shot more times than I can commit to. His once white shirt was riddled with color, his eyes glossed over quickly and soon there were figures in black surrounding me.<br />
<br />
This time I couldn't get away. My leg broken, there was no way I could run, walk, hell I couldn't even crawl my way out of this.<br />
<br />
One of the figures then moved over me and placed a thick, heavy black boot on my wrongly-twisted knee. The pain was deafening. When he stepped down it was blinding. I came to again and my throat was hoarse, the cop still bleeding beside me, eyes completely glazed over, and my leg seemed nonexistent.<br />
<br />
"I won't tell," I plead, hands raised as I tried to back away by pushing with my good leg. "Let me live and I'll forget this ever happened."<br />
<br />
I felt cold metal place itself against the back of my head. From there I couldn't honestly say for sure what happened. It's like time just skipped over the following few years.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454866046145786856.post-42572410019022652032014-09-14T20:37:00.000-07:002014-09-14T20:37:10.570-07:00Sniper<div style="text-align: center;">
"Sniper"</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
an excerpt</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Gary Baker, September 2014</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
(part of my Corporal Roi project)</div>
<br />
First there was a reaction of particulates followed by a burst of photon energy sent forth from heavenly heat and sent careening out into the deep unending abyss. Then, after moments of hasty nothingness, came the reflection which subsequently hit receptors and a message was transcribed. From there energy was sent out once more coursing along minute pathways of similar individuals until it came to a stop within a tangled mess of a much greater number of somehow different individuals, was changed into another message entirely, and was once again sent out in another direction altogether. Again the message of energy coursed along until it struck a mass which then contracted as one, pulling the metal trigger and setting another series of events into play.<br />
<br />
The sliver of smooth metal drew down a jagged rod that held back a sharp slab which then, with the haste of a tightly-wound coil snapping back to its proper shape, brought the spike tip careening into a metal wall. The wall then broke just so slightly enough to cause a burst of energy, igniting packed molecules of sulfur, charcoal and potassium nitrate into an explosive burst of an even greater form of energy. This new form then slammed heavily into a particularly-shaped piece of metal with such force as to send it flying.<br />
<br />
The projectile form hit molecules of air hard, forcing itself through and through without regard whilst reaching a velocity of seven-hundred and seventy meters per second, followed by a concussive burst of resounding waves, soaring passed legs stomping through in this way or the other, leaving a wake of empty air through crimson mist and splashed mud, cauterizing newly-made holes in still-living leaves until finally it reached the end of its journey. The first layer burned on contact, baring plates of leather inlaid with thick mail-like wire which are subsequently split by the force of contact alone to allow the projectile deeper access. Then came the thick layer of metal sheets formed in a lab for better displacement and, while the momentum is lessened immensely, they too are breached until after a few more layers of fabric, the projectile hits skin and puckers as it passes into the soft cushion of fat and muscle.<br />
<br />
With a hideous cry of alarm, Corporal Roi Anxo went down, barely able to reach safe cover behind a mass of shattered cement braced with steel and iron. In an instant he rolled onto his uninjured hip to peer over and survey the damage. His gloved hand came away matted with fresh blood, as though the throbbing fire in his ass wasn't enough to be sure. Adrenaline coursed through him as he tried to guesstimate how deep the bullet had gone, and was almost certain it had came millimeters from hitting bone. There was no way to tell how bad it was, yet he knew instantly that there was no way he could just get up and get to safety.<br />
<br />
So he grabbed a morphine needle from his vest and quickly jabbed it under his armor into his side and released the chemicals. Right now he needed to focus on not dying, for that was the obvious detail. Despite that, he had a mission to complete and so he rolled back against the ledge while the numbness made its way through.<br />
<br />
Roi hefted the rifle he'd thrown down just before falling and loaded an armor-piercing round into the bay. Nodding twice to himself for a count, he thrust himself up and over the ledge to drop the scope right in line with the invasion commander, a mass of bulbous purple flesh and teeth all over. The beast had already proven its resilience to bullets, and as far as Roi could tell had armor-like bones. The first round he'd sent earlier, just before being shot, had merely left a fractured crack along the creatures head, now lamenting a beautiful blue fountain of blood that only made the beast that much more intimidating.<br />
<br />
This time Roi knew for sure that he could do it. One more bullet and the beast would go down, allowing temporary confusion among the invading forces.<br />
<br />
He aligned the crossbars of his scope with the commanders head and clicked to zoom in. With some trepidation, the bars then aligned with the beasts missing eye and the crack in it's skull beneath all that blood. The corporal exhaled slowly as the world ebbed into slow motion. He pulled the trigger just before his inhale began and barely kept himself upright when the force of his shot struck.<br />
<br />
For a heartbeat there was nothing after the crack of thunder, only emptiness. Then the bullet hit and the commander went from striding callously through the wreckage of bodies to kneeling with both hands upon its face. Even then the beast didn't fall. Suddenly it looked right at Roi with half it's head hanging by threads of muscle, navy blue blood fountaining everywhere as it rose one arm at the corporal and let loose an ugly bellow.<br />
<br />
But it didn't falter. The killing shot gave the beast a slower stride, stumbling now and then, but the way that it picked up a fallen assault rifle and emptied the magazine at Roi with what could only be anger sent shivers down the mans spine. Two bullets to the head, one leaving half the skull hanging out to dry, and still the beast walked on deeper into the fray.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454866046145786856.post-22038202007731884972014-08-25T20:49:00.000-07:002014-08-31T02:36:26.083-07:00My Lurid Escape<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“My Lurid Escape”</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a short story</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gary Baker, August 2014</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-d1b9a758-105c-5d69-7b00-6fd57195003d" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I remember the sun as it drew across the room, and how I wanted it to stop for one goddamn moment and how I needed the light. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">I remember the sweetly wafting tendrils of the whiskey beneath my nose, and the way it stung while it enticed. Then came the taste as I lifted the glass and brought some in for further inspection, and the way it was so wonderfully opposite to the scent. In this case, I needed the numbness.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Holding my arm tight, I brought the knife from the jar of rubbing alcohol and set down the tip on an incongruous point of my arm. I put it where I would have no fear of arteries or the like, no fear of tendons that could be sawn in half, just muscle and a bit of fat with skin in the way. I had to hold a small tasting bottle of scotch with my arm just so it wouldn't twitch on me like a mad soldier under the knife back in the twenties, doing so also kept me focused on my task. I wasn't leaving this be until I'd seen blood.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One drop, I told myself. One drop and I'm done. No more.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So it began. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I pushed in and felt the electric sting, which prevented me from pushing further when it became strong enough to bring stars to my eyes. So I swashed the knife in the clear liquid again and brought it to the pinprick once more. This time I would do it. This time for sure.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Again I felt the sting, the jolt of helpless denial that my body seemed intent on screaming, as though it thought I were some killer from the movies all but unstoppably drawn by the busty blonde with the dagger in hand as he came for her. It seemed to think I could be stopped, though, just like how in those movies the killer can always be talked out of it, perhaps even delayed until some force of nature or police or something could intervene. But not me. Not this time.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was only here for a drop, after all. No more.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What was the worst that could happen, I asked myself.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I pushed harder and was immobilized by pain, so instead chose to draw rather than push. I laid the blade down lengthwise along the point I'd made, and pulled ever so slightly. While this didn't bring the pain, it also didn't bring the desired gleam of crimson. So I did it again, pushing harder, drawing more forcefully, watching as hairs atop the skin were sliced and the skin broke free layer after layer.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For a moment there I became frustrated enough to saw at my arm. The drawing wasn't doing anything, and this was the sharpest blade I had in the house, sharper than any of the steak knives or such like that, and although they weren't exactly sharpened by a professional they could more than handle the tasks they were made for. Unlike me. Unlike this knife at that moment.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I cleaned the knife again in the alcohol and took a serious swig of the eighty-proof off to the side, downing it like floor cleaner. Delicious cinnamon burned from all angles, evaporating even as I swallowed, or so it felt like. What liquid made it down my throat was dry and searingly wonderful, and my soonest exhale brought gasps of intake as though I'd just swallowed a real fireball. My lips stung with the sweet burn and I allowed my arm the moment to relax as I enjoyed the taste once more, licking it off like a psychotic cannibal tasting flesh after years without.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then, determined as the numbness moved across my cheeks and into my scalp, I retook the knife and shook the alcohol from it. I brought it to my arm again where that last drop splished on the skin. It was like a magnifying glass. Suddenly I could see into the wound I had made. And I could see quite easily how I still had yet to break the skin. My arm wasn't numb enough yet, I learned then. Haltingly, I retried the piercing method. This time it went in further, but felt no more like cutting a steak than it did like cutting sailcloth. I saw the tip pushed down into my arm, but there was no blood.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This angered me more than I can say. I became overwhelmed by this urge to push it in all the way, all three inches of steel, just to find out if I were even human. Already I had pushed it it more than a millimeter and I could see just where the skin ended, or so I thought, but still nothing so pink as the pastel blossom of a 'naked lady' could be seen. Instead all I was given was an ugly white-ish tone and the jawbreaker-like layers of my skin. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another swig of whiskey, then.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This next time I knew I had already broken skin, so I chose not to redo the annoyingly tedious task, and instead began sawing at the end of the fissure already made. It worked for a moment, and then I hit something, something threadlike and tight which wouldn't let me cut further no matter how much I sawed at it. So, decidedly believing it to be a small capillary of sorts, I turned the knife around and pulled at the string from the other end. It took a moment to get down that far again, but when I did I knew I had something. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So I slid the blade along behind the thread from the more shallow of wounds and pushed away from myself with hardly enough force to cut into a fly. I wanted the blade to do the work for me, not the other way around. If I had to use brute tactics for this I may as well have tried doing so with a pencil or a pen, perhaps. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For some time the two objects just wouldn't part ways. I had the thread peeking close to the skin layer, stretched from it's depths in my fattier layers one millimeter deeper, with the alarmingly not-as-sharp-as-Id-thought blade tip. Then, as I pondered taking another swig big enough to fill my mouth, I felt a release, and my knife flew free with only enough momentum to jolt my hand. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At first nothing else happened. I grew angry for a moment, knowing I had snapped some thread within me, yet seeing not a hint of blood. After all the minor pain I had endured, I still hadn't gone deep enough. So I retook the blade after swashing it about again and settled myself to no more drinking until I'd seen a drop. This time it only took a second or two of dragging the tip through the opened crevice before I got something. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Deep, dark and nearly brown, I watched particles stream down from the alcohol filled wound opening. Odd, I thought, and cleared the fissure to allow more. When I did so, I pulled from it a mat of congealed brownness that looked more like mud residue than a scab. So I redipped the blade in the alcohol and once again slid along the bottom of the opening until I got what I was looking for.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Barely a single drop came bubbling out, then nothing, then one more and nothing shortly after. I just stared as it did this little routine until finally it clocked in me that this was from the pulsation of some vein inside my arm, near the surface, that was releasing blood with every beat of my heart.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">By then the sun had moved across the table and no longer had me in its sights. I moved things on the table and shifted places then, so I could see, and watched as half-congealed blood was pushed through the cut into the real world little by little despite how deep it was I had dug. The fascination grew. I placed my arm atop a paper towel and rest it there while the blood barely dripped down. Every second or so I had to re-clear the wound so it could drip once more, but each time I did the numbness came and allowed me the act before coming again with the pulsation. By this time my arm had an ugly line moving to the towel, pocked with particulates and dried blood in the path of more coming down little by little.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I cleared the line again and felt the rocky roughness of the bottom, so I dug deeper, seeking more to this flow, and yet each time I pulled the knife away it seemed the wound had pressed itself into closure again and that the only way I could see more blood was by pulling one side from the other. So I did. I placed two fingers upon my arm, one to either side of the line, and pushed the lips of the wound away from the other. Blood would come for a moment, and then I had to clear the drying debris once more.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Finally I sat back, relieved somehow, feeling lighter, more real. Somehow the druggy sluggishness of my life had seeped just slightly further away, enough that I could see what the sluggishness was. I looked upon my act and smiled. This was all for that smile, I knew, for that sense of satisfaction for once and, knowing that it was small enough not to be questioned, I sighed with contentment. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">No one would notice. No one would know.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Not even my girlfriend would ask me where I got it from, nor the more problematic questions of why I had done it. For once I had a dark secret to hide, and for some reason this made me giddy. I felt the queer throes of withheld laughter inside, threatening to come forth, and knew that this secret, while dangerous in the eyes of those in my life, may have just given me the escape that I needed. I knew then that this would be a return act, an addiction of my very own, could I only get over the nervous pain. </span></div>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<div style="line-height: 1.15;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Perhaps, I thought musingly, next time I might try harder alcohol before digging in.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 1.15;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 17.25px; white-space: pre-wrap;">* * *</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 17.25px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<div style="line-height: 1.15;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[NOTE FROM THE WRITER]</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 1.15;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">[August 31, 2014; 2:30 AM]</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 1.15;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 17.25px; white-space: pre-wrap;">--> So I wanted to put this out there in the realm of the real, that this work is a piece of nonfiction, and that it was written in what I had thought my lowest point in mind.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 17.25px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 17.25px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Turns out that was anything but true.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 17.25px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 17.25px; white-space: pre-wrap;">I'd sworn it was a one-off deal, that that lone drop (or in all truth, that lone dripping run of quickly-dried crimson) would be the last. Yet such isn't so. I have drawn again. </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 17.25px; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have drawn my skin open again, to the point of several drops, each more red than the last.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 17.25px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 17.25px; white-space: pre-wrap;">They started out as a brownish hue, like dirt had been globbed in my veins and this was somehow releasing mud from within me. While it felt as if this were absolute truth, I know it was all psychological, and altogether with such knowledge I still cannot figure out what this is all for. I cannot say why I do this, nor what has brought me to it.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 17.25px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 17.25px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sure I can point to the increasing mental stress lately, about the point at work where I simply broke and resigned despite numerous bills to pay and loans to make installments on. I can also point to those very bills for this. I can show many moments of doubt as deep as the neurons carrying these words to the fingers as they type away here for you all. I can convey so many moral wrongdoings in my world done unto others as well as myself, all focused upon this one lone life and how many it meets along the way to the final end. I can tell anyone who asks of the struggles I face each and every day and how anxiety meets stress so thick it drowns, and how when I actually open my fearful eyes I can see nothing to truly be afraid of, and how this then makes me feel so insignificant and small-minded that I just want to die to be over it all. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 17.25px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 17.25px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yes, I am a horrible human being. Yes, I take things out on myself that should never have blame set upon anyone and, yes, I know these things to be fallacies in all truth, but that notion doesn't make them any less strong, any less wondrously vivid when push comes to shove. When I see these minuscule things emerge from behind the magnifying glass, like a cartoon bug walking on a scientists desk, instead of acting out against them to rid them of my life I take it out on myself in turn for ever having thought them large in the first place.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 17.25px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 17.25px; white-space: pre-wrap;">So for any out there who understand this... this piece is for you.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 17.25px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 17.25px; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have begun in earnest lately. I started with what turns out to have been a dull knife, that or just way too broad for the task. Now I yearn to distance myself from the razor removed from a box-cutter, cleaned and sanitized with high-grade rubbing alcohol. I found myself doing this even in plain view of Meaghan as she watched a show online earlier. When asked about it, I blame a cat, after having added so many others around the larger ones so as to appear so. Each burns, yes, but each also relieves some tension as I remember how the razor bypassed my sensory objection to pain and alleviated some in its place.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 17.25px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 17.25px; white-space: pre-wrap;">I still am not quite sure why I do this, however, even as I wonder where I should place the next one so its not obvious come daylight. I should admit now, though, that none of these go very deep other than that first time. With the razor in poised delicate-gripped fingertips I fear of going too far and not realizing it until its much too late. Thus I only go, so to speak, skin-deep. I go until I see a neat, crisp line of red, and then stop cutting deeper and focus on letting no scab appear. I scrape it away with the flat of the blade to allow the line to stay longer, to allow it that final course down my forearm and onto the paper towel lain beneath.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 17.25px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 17.25px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Now what was once a dream of mine, a worry without cause but a worry nonetheless, has now become much more tangible and real. I can now truly fear going too deep and doing something I can never do. It really isn't my intention, mind you, to end my life. Instead my intent is to focus on pain in place of mental worries, in place of things I can never truly change. Instead of absolute panic over not having an income just now, I am able to focus on my arm and how much I can take before adding the cleaning liquids and neaten it all up. Instead of fretting over a lack of fuel for a car I currently cannot make payments on, I can focus on how hard I press the blade and when I should begin drawing it along and how long to do this one and which direction and where to make the next one when the time comes and how to make them all look like cat scratches or the like to the untrained eye.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 17.25px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 17.25px; white-space: pre-wrap;">I know it's wrong, but then again this same pain would come from tattoos and a tattoo would last me my entire life... not just a week or so. I guess what I mean to say is that this is real. It doesn't get any more real than this. Yet truth be told too many people dismiss those in my state as small-minded and depressed and mentally unstable and fraught with a disease of the brain and so on, while not many tend to stand aside for a moment and ponder the implications. By cutting I am therefore an outcast among many, and yet by keeping it in and never doing anything physical to release it I slowly become a mass murderer or a depraved psychopath or a true suicidal being. No matter what malcontent it keeps from reaching me, if this act seems horrifying whilst keeping me alive, then I say let the blood come. I say keep this drawing act going...</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 17.25px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 17.25px; white-space: pre-wrap;">and let the alcohol clean what ails me one drop at a time, from the internal in the form of drunken charades and from the external in the form of sanitation and fast-healing.</span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454866046145786856.post-39467055684908233452014-08-08T01:27:00.003-07:002014-08-08T01:28:37.726-07:00Derelicticus<div style="text-align: center;">
<b style="font-weight: normal;">"Derelicticus"</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b style="font-weight: normal;">a prologue</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b style="font-weight: normal;">Gary Baker, August 2014</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b style="font-weight: normal;">(part of a lingering rage-based satire inspired by works of junkie-fiction)</b></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-1590927d-b4a1-4402-ce01-79fd1d9d4d44" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Enter once, twice, three times, hit 'ctrl' and the letter 'A' as one, font select: scroll to Rosarivo, then hit twelve point size, justify margins, and finally one point five spacing. Done. Now the good stuff.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I see the needle coming and my muscles steel themselves from the stimulus. They know what’s coming; I know what’s coming. Hell, you’d think I’d have just gotten over it by now. But no. I won’t. I can’t. Each time is new and, as they say, improved. The bolt is rearing, the liquid viciously awaiting. Like the fluids in a viper’s maw, gunning for that bite, pining to draw blood, needing that orgasmic release of finality as fluids are shot deep into the flesh of another being.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But this isn't at all what my own body thinks of. As the impending prey all my molecules seem unable to justify it all. They think this the end. They think that death comes next. Does it? I ask myself, with none but an echo of thoughtlessness in response. I’m too fear-stricken to believe what lurks, to believe what comes, to understand in a comprehensive manner that which would soon pierce skin raw and delve into the sacredness of unbroken veins.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Alright thare, Mista Gunna,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> a voice from beyond my cerebral focus echoes in like the shimmering light seen through meters of ocean water. I feel like I’m drowning, like a songbird captured by an all-too-tall wave that should never have been, my feathers soaked and my scrawny pin-prick toes doing nothing to propel me to the surface. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thas ain’t goanna work, you bein so overwrought an all. Wae need to calm you daown.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Suddenly the dark humid room is gone, all the green walls vaporized by a quick burst of light from my peripherals and I feel weightless in a new sensory darkness. All I can think of is how they must have expelled me from my body somehow. Perhaps they yanked my cords a bit too fast, or maybe they just said ‘to hell with it’ in that godawful accent and slit my throat. But that wouldn't be right; they need me alive for the injection to work, for </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">me </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">to work.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then a light snaps on ahead and I feel myself moved somehow until my eyes are able to focus through the haze of smoke and steam. What I see, then, stops my heart.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In the light, standing in such a way that it seems I view from a ceiling support beam, is this woman of unseemly features. Her hair is both light straw yellow and yet deep murky black, shifting from one to the other with unrealistic fluidity. Her skin transcending in both sandy pale ales and burnt ocher mahogany. I find myself lost for a moment in just that, in the way her tones ebb and flow and how this hair of hers curls about like waves locked in time as it all cascades upon her shoulders, where the collar of a long coat hides everything beneath her chin, all angled at a three-quarter tilt from above and behind.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thas goode, naw, aint’t?</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The voice echoes again, suddenly reprimanded by another just at the cusp of audible range. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Naw don’ yoo worry, Mista Gunna, yoo jus’ watch an fo’get about us. Jes relax them bones and we’ll </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">all </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">be best’a buds.</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I hear the bass of the other again and feel the first move away, though from where I cannot say. Then a muffled echo of a disk being dropped, and the first comes back again with a tap of what would be my own ankle if I had one anymore. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Enjoy the show, naw, hear? ‘Specially cause yur in fer’a treat.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Suddenly there is movement ahead and my attention resets, brought back to the girl as she slowly lifts away the coat as though home for the evening. She lets it drop into the darkness by her unseen feet, instantly standing alone in the darkness in nothing but glossy obsidian small clothes over creamy light-latte skin. Her shoulders, now unheeded by the jacket, show a bit of sun damage from some foray outside, her freckles almost invisible through the healing tan, and her covered breasts seem curious as they peek just into visibility with the angle I view from. I try not to, but my eyes then move down, across the pocks in her back where her shoulder blades make shadows and across the indent where her spine recedes inward with it’s curve, and roam across her hips. It’s impossible not to admire whomever brought her into being, in that proportions had been painstakingly thought out, whether by genetics or DNA grafters putting her basest structures together molecule by electron-sized molecule. Her cheeks shift this way and that as she moves her upper body, doing something beyond my attention, and slowly the slight amount of clothing stretched out upon them shimmies into the verge between each side. It isn’t much fabric, to be honest, that moves into that line, that highway roaming deep across places that can only be dreamed of, but the elastic that runs the trail renounces complete coverage and leaves her cheeks all-too-nicely unveiled. In that moment her features stop shifting, her latte skin sinfully silky-smooth and her hair a glimmer of strawberry within a light caramel. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A sudden gut-wrenching sensation hits my left arm and I try to move, try to shift my awareness, the woman fuzzing like static as I finally grasp my own arm from within and attempt to move it. More numbed slicing ensues into searing pain and I feel tendons snapping like cataclysmic rubber bands.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Well sun’offa gun,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> he mocks again</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, am I to baelieve yoo felt that?</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> He chuckles an eerily cheerful laugh and I feel movement from my side again followed by what could only be a hand patting my lower thigh. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘Is time I thaink we turn up the heat, eh, Mista Gunna? Give yoo summa that good ol’ fashion haspitalitay. On tha house, naw.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In an instant the pain was righteously gone, and my attention came to again with the woman turning my way with an unhooked bra held over her poised breasts by crossed wrists. Her verdant emerald eyes shone with something intangible to me until she dropped her hands to her hips and the bra slipped into the depths with her ankles. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Like before, I try not to look, but it’s just uncanny the way her breasts hang just enough with a youthful pugnacity, how they draw in the eye like the physical embodiment of a black hole in space instead placed mystically on the female form. Freckles span these, too, originating near the collar to dip down near the upper contours of her ribcage through a low valley of temptatious flesh. They seem to hang toward me, her form suddenly gravitating in my direction, and I find myself upon a sofa of sorts, this lioness stalking toward me with all but her vulva left visible. The tantalizing draw, the suppressed desire within then loosens and I feel her stepping closer, the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">by golly, I thaink’e likes this’n</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> almost drowned out entirely as her lips part and reach to my own.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For a long moment I am lost again. I float in space, drifting, falling. The ground is gone entirely, replaced instead by the weightless awe of the woman’s mysterious purr. She then draws away with my upper lip caught between softly poised teeth leaving an urge I’d not felt for a long time in this society of repressed desires. In that moment I need her. Something within tells me not to, but I reach out and bring her close, cupping a shoulder blade with one hand and a handful of buttocks in the other.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She gasps and an accented chuckle reaches me from somewhere else. The wind of the open window playing tricks with the echoes. I feel her pulse quicken, then, and she pulls away just enough to stare longingly into my eyes, the need in her just as clear as my own. Passion moves into play and replaces the fear I can no longer understand as she traces my chest with faint trails of her fingers, ebbing slowly, tauntingly downward. Straddled, I can do nothing about the smallclothes of hers that remain between us, but that doesn’t stop me from trying. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She bites her lower lip on one side and again I see that need. I see her desire reflecting my own, driving me crazy, acting out the energies bottled up for far too long, now. Then her fingers reach my belt and before I can attempt to help it’s gone, tossed to the side. Lost forever.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Out in space something slices and I feel a release of pressure. A weight shifts in an impossible location. My eyes begin to wander, trailing away as though in extreme exhaustion.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At that moment she chooses to pull me out and press her palm, caressing fingers and all, into a sensation that brings me back.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Don’t you go leaving me dry, boy,” she mocks while drawing the highway of obsidian elastic to the side. Eyes wide, I wonder what I was thinking. Why would I fall asleep now?</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But then the slicing returns, like the vibration of a badly strung bow upon a tightly-wound violin.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Abruptly a hot anger burns in her eyes, those emeralds turn fierce with rage and she slams down over me. For a slight moment she holds there, eyes locked with mine as though demanding my complete arousal for the amount of time she requires.</span><span style="font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Again I wonder what could possibly distract me from this.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then slowly, tantalizingly, she lifts away and sends shivers coursing up my spine. My heart kick-starts, gears within switch into drive, and I clench my fingers across her hips to pull her back down. The quivering then moves from me to her and I know it has begun in earnest this time.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The sofa shushes beneath us, drowned out by her pace-less, ragged breathing. Hair paints my nose when she drops her forehead down, her arms like pillars to either side of my neck as I drive onward with repetitive increased pounding. The ribbed sensation in my arm keeps on, but I ignore it now, too drawn into her rippling muscles to care about the curious phantom. When it increases in intensity I know she spots the distraction coming even as I do, and without loosing me from her hips she spins to lay with her back against my chest on the plush cushion. Her cheeks press emphatically over me, and she pulls me close once more to restart our routine.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><i>There</i></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">,” she whispers after a few thrusts, and her eyes fight to stay open. When the slicing ensues again I pantingly open my eyes to find her laying over the tingling arm, shifting to the rhythm of my assault. It’s just the sofa. Why would I think it anything else? Then she turns her head to watch me from over her sunburned shoulder with an energetic gleam in her eyes and I wonder if the burn still hurts her or if perhaps the endorphins have numbed it. Again she bites her lip and releases a ragged breath.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This goes on for some time, though I would be lying if I said it went on forever. Ultimately, after some changes in position and pacing, I find myself being hugged between her skyward thighs as I push forth one last time, her hands grasped dangerously upon the contours of my hip bones. She releases a lasting shudder of withheld breath before collapsing into the cushion beneath me.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With my heart still racing I lay down half atop her, still poised between her knees, and bring my eyes to hers. The grin she dons, then, brings an ache to my heart, like warm steel suddenly coursing through my veins. She doesn’t even need to speak it, as I already understand, but she winces and seems saddened as she does so anyway. “You know we can never do this again.” Those emeralds turn bleak by comparison and she looks away, toward the sky. Opposite the direction of my now missing phantom slicing. “Try not to lose this, ‘kay?”</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She sounds like a young girl trying to plea to her first love never to leave her, but why would I ever? Even had we not just consummated our passion together, I see no reason why I would ever forget her. Then her eyes turn upon me again and seem to scold, as though having just heard my thoughts.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“They will destroy you, Gunner,” she lectured. For some reason I feel fear building up again and my groin responds by shrinking away in cowardice. The intensity in her voice increases and she rolls her glorious body onto me and bores holes into me with that glare. “Do not let them do this, Gunner. You’re better than that.” She shakes her head angrily and shudders as the living room shifts with sudden static. “What we are, in this moment, should not exist. They think they have you, Gunner, that you have been completely taken over, but they’re wrong.”</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She places a palm onto my chest and heaves herself into a seated position, and again the room buzzes with static snapping. Her eyes dart in every direction at once, fear building in her as well. Without warning her glare is back upon me and I am caught entranced by her severity. “What we are doing is against everything they plan. Yes, they uploaded me into your brain, but Gunner you have to understand that </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">you</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> subconsciously took control.”</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The room cracks wildly, then, and she disappears for a brief moment into darkness. The room stutters like a corrupted data file and sounds about the same. Her voice lowers dramatically, awkwardly. Her eyes burst with light and her skin seems abuzz with hues of motion despite my feeling nothing of the sort. “I-” she attempts, “-built a-” again the room shutters viciously, threatening to break down into bleak oblivion, “-pocket-”</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then my world is void of everything.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All I can sense is the quickly-fading echo claiming “-to save you….”</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The year back then was Twenty-seven thousand plus change. I haven’t aged a day since. Not really.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454866046145786856.post-32336112008314388822014-06-01T12:47:00.000-07:002014-06-01T12:55:09.399-07:00Einfach Leben<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Einfach Leben”</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a short story</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gary Baker, June 2014</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-3ae068ba-58f7-1dbc-4c03-aa391363ca91" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Eleven o’clock and I pop the cap on my first bottle as Charlie plays on the flat screen, cigar still smoldering in the livingroom ashtray. He’s up to no good again, always off on some caper or other doing god knows what or why. I watch as the ginger rebel dons a dress and masquerades as a vegas dancer for the Prime Minister.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I wonder why they call him that; was there some other series of ministers before him? Suddenly it dawns on me that </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Optimus </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">must have been the same way, otherwise he would just be Optimus, which doesn’t nearly sound as all-powerful. I mean, who in their right mind would allow some mega robot intelligence seven stories tall to roam the earth with the name of “Optimus One” or “Optimus Prototype”? No one, that’s who. The prime must mean by any indication that he is the best, by default. So the Prime Minister must be some sort of dictator for the Europeans. A man who came after a bunch of phonies who couldn’t handle cold, hard leadership.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I smile and start to refer to him as “Optimus Minister” while Charlie pretends to give him a lap dance. But it isn’t a real lap dance; no, Charlie is too good for that. He actually pockets the phone of Mr Optimus and passes it off to a rebel crony of his acting as a bouncer, then scampers off to rejoin the stage. I actually enjoy his little routine, grinning as the hairy dancer fools everyone else. Stupid sexy rebel man.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A knock at the door, frantic and bothersome. My head pounds just as hard, indicative of the hangover in full force. I free up another soot-black sea of greatness and drop it back. Another knock and I grumble without moving. The couch and I have become best friends, there’s no way I’m going to give that up, not now that the cushions have started to form around me. I feel like a rope tied to a tree for decades, the trunk slowly overtaking me until I am simply a piece of the whole.</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Trumer?” A female voice, somewhat sexy, but incredibly irritating once it dawns on me who it is. Rachel knocks again. “Trumer I know you’re in there. Open up.” In hasty annoyance to end her spiel I connect my headphones to the wireless VidBase on my coffee table, ending the audibility of the show. “Are you </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">serious</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">?” She berates. “I just heard you…” she sighs with an angry overtone and I knock another back trying to pry into my own mind for details. </span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Again with the knocking! Insatiable grumbling as I flip open the laptop and hit the power key. It comes out of sleep and straight to ComeOnMe, my latest tab. I forgo the memory-prying of the night before, now entirely sure that it was a bust after all. So much for the glory of delayed adventures remembered in glimpses over the next few days….</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Dammit, Trumer, that’s it!” I hear a jingling of keys and panic. I almost smash the computer screen when I close it so hard, just in time too as the front door opens with wicked speed and slams against the wall just inside. My first thought is that the neighbors must be vying to kill me right now, or at least those who aren’t at work. My second thought is how the hell she got a key to my apartment. Who did she play to get a key to my place without me knowing?!</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rachel glares at me with wet cheeks, eyes red and makeup dribbling down across her chin. Her hands are on her hips and her painted fingernails dig into her jeans like rounded cactus spines. Then it seems to finally hit her and her eyes go wide in shock. “</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Seriously</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">?!” She rebukes -- or maybe she refutes, the throbbing pain is too much for me to think clearly and the light of day that enters in behind her from the courtyard attacks me like a million illuminated wasps, seeking the sweet spots of my retinas. She gives me a thrice-over, “where the </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">hell </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">are your clothes?!”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I look down over my furry flab that hoists a plate of dried-out lunchmeat like a butler, and discover that I am half-laying with nothing but boxers on. “In the wash,” I lie. “I’m waiting for them to finish so I can shower and put them on.” I purposely ignore the fact that they are still lying haphazardly across the white carpet throughout the room, and similarly I avoid all eye-contact with them as though doing so makes them not even exist.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Her cheeks soften and she perks her lips to one side, relaxing with sympathy. “Look, Trumer, I came by…” she shoots a glance at the window and tosses me a blanket from the cubby system beneath it, then sits down on an ottoman. “I came by to apologize. For last night.” Eyes wide I move the plate to the table and lean forward, covering my sorry self with a thin layer of dyed wool. “Let me guess,” she winces, noting the bottles with an overall eye wander, “you don’t remember?”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Sorry,” I mumble.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ha</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">!” Rachel throws herself back against the cushioned chair next to her, “</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">you’re</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> sorry! Dammit, Trumer, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the one who’s sorry!” Her eyes bead up and she feigns a smile. “I shouldn’t have rejected you like that. I was scared. I was pissed. I was-....” She brings her keys into her hands and watches them with what looks like reverence. “When you gave me a key to your place I thought you were asking me to marry you, and there’s no way I was ready for that!” She sighs loudly and wipes away tears with the back of her hand. “And -- wait, is that a stripper with a </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hitler mustache</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">?!” </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It catches me completely three-sixty and for several moments I just stare in bewilderment. “What?” Then I see where she’s looking and realize she’s referring to Charlie. “Oh. No it’s a Charlie Chaplin mustache.”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She scowls disbelievingly. “On a stripper?”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“No,” I correct, “on an Irish rebel spy </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">acting </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">like a vegas feather-dancer to take down the Optimus Minister.”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“What kind of show </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">is </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">this?”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With a finger held high in lecture, I set down my latest bottle. “It’s the perfect mix of Charlie Chaplin, James Bond and the I - R - A. Though if you think about it, there’s quite a bit of the Stooges laced in as well.”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She shakes her head. “Whatever. Anyways I’ve been thinking about your offer and wanted to tell you that I accept...” her eyes once again take in the whole room, “although only on the condition that this never happens again.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I sit straighter suddenly. “Are you serious?” Is she serious? What if this turns out to be a joke? A prank set up by my neighbors, or colleagues? I mean, it’s not as if I didn’t want her to say this, but I don’t even remember asking her in the first place.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Rachel’s smile is soft, caring, and totally obviously intentionally ignoring the mess nested around me. “Yes, Trumer, I am one-hundred percent serious.” She shrugs, “truth is I kinda, sorta wanted it all along anyways. I just wasn’t prepared to be asked like that, in front of all of our friends, at the exact same sitting as when Karl proposed to Jenna.” Another nervous shrug. “It sorta felt like you were only doing it because you felt the need to, that you were only asking because we’d been dating for so long.”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Maybe it’s the booze, but I scowl, “we’ve only been dating for six months….”</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Exactly</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">!” Rachel runs her hands through her hair wildly. “And to think I almost told Jenna I </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">hated </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">you for asking me like that!” Then I notice the green and blue smears across her elbows. She’s been painting again. Standing, she pockets her keys and makes her way to the fridge where she concocts some sort of mixture with the rice milk, coconut water, and... was that a lime? Then she turns to me with her solution in hand, a milk mustache set upon her upper lip. “You told me something last night, while pleading your case. You said I needed to…” she glances off to the side, trying to remember, “I needed to ‘</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">einfach leben</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">’. I think I said that right.” She connects with my gaze again with a look of hope as I muse on how she pronounced it wrong. “Was that German?”</span></div>
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<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“It means to live simply, more or less,” I sit back and rest my hands on my lap. “That or to simply live, whichever, though to be honest I’m not entirely sure I have the grammar correct.”</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Well either way, I choose to ‘leben’ in the moment.” She comes to the couch and sweeps aside the empty bottles and detritus, then hoists her insane white, sweet-smelling mixture. “Starting with a cure for the hangover you gave yourself due to me rejecting you.” As I reach for it she lifts it to her own lips and chugs the damned glass. Grinning, she sets the empty thing down and laughs devilishly while unplugging the headphones from the jack and hits play. Instantly the sound of the rebel ginger slams into my ears as he sneakily chicken-walks off stage to the not-so-mellow jazz music.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.5; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Rosarivo; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I suddenly hate the show, but Rachel sits back and turns up the volume grinning like the Cheshire the whole damned time. Maybe it was a bad idea to give her a key after all.</span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454866046145786856.post-30581753236170649522014-03-29T13:05:00.000-07:002014-03-29T13:05:10.059-07:00Impasse<div style="text-align: center;">
“Impasse”</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
a short story</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Gary Baker, March 2014</div>
<br />Two years back I was ready to jump ship. I was standing on the corner of Haight and Ashbury, looking at my feet, ready to take the plunge, and then I found God. I’d never bothered to call myself an atheist until that precise moment and, ever since then, I’ve never seen any reason to change that.<br /><br />I remember the wind, the incessant tugging of air at my jacket like an unseen monstrous entity trying to throw me around. It was enough to boil the blood in my veins before I even looked down to see the bustling streets so very, incredibly far below. I inhaled deeply through my nose and held it for a second, awaiting the calming effect that it often gave, then slowly, so very slowly released it through pursed lips. <br /><br />My breath quivered as it went, anxiety meshing with raw fear and a wish that it didn’t have to be this way. I opened my eyes, unaware that I had ever closed them in the first place, and looked once more upon the setting sun falling between skyscrapers. The world was coming to an end. Everything was crumbling and there was nothing I nor anyone else could do about it.<br /><br />They say the ring of fire was on the verge of breaking itself, that the icecaps were gone completely and that the most recent hurricane in the Caribbean wasted it’s way all the way through to Moscow before finally petering itself out. Claims had been made that the moon was shifting in it’s orbit and that one more nudge in either direction and there would be two possible outcomes: A- it would fall toward us and be the last thing anyone ever saw, or B- it would drift away into space and would kill the cycle of weather and tides and so on. From there it was only a matter of time before the whole of human existence simply shut out like a dimming LED.<br /><br />I wasn’t ready to face those consequences. My life had been perfect up until then. I had a wife, three loving children, and a career as a high market supervisor for a publishing firm at the dawn of an age when books -- <i>real books</i> -- had come back into style. These days everyone carried some literary document made of pulped wood and ink with them at all times. Some chose the age-old classics from the early twenty-one hundreds, with topics that bordered on the heretical dislike of technology, while others chose more modern titles spanning anything from the sciences to the dead religions that technology had slowly pushed out of society.<br /><br />Yet it would all be gone in a mere echo of the dials upon a clock. Entropy had reached it’s end, and I wasn’t one to face things like that head on. What if the world burst into flames? How could my pale complexion face such a feat without hordes of pain lasting all-too long? Besides that, I hated pain. I still do.<br /><br />So there I was, facing the sun for the last time with my buttoned jacket beating a quick rhythm against my throat as though drums beating out my lonesome dirge. A tear dripped down my cheek and fell from my chin. I watched it fall, eyeing the glint of refracted light as it pre-enacted what I was just about to do.<br /><br />And, in the uncaring crowds below, I made eye-contact with God.<br /><br />My heart skipped a beat. Maybe more than that. I just know it felt like forever that I was transfixed in those eyes. They seemed to hold everything, like miniature doorways to the whole universe with infinite stars and everything just a few cellular molecules apart. I couldn’t tell the gender from that height, but there was no mistaking who it was: all the dead religions boiled down to that one moment when what appeared to be a pitiful homeless vagrant caught the sight of a man about to end it with a half step into empty air.<br /><br />Suddenly I slammed against the stone wall, my heels arching as I tried to get back to something stable. I was inside my office before I knew it and was racing lopsided to the elevator terminal even as I suddenly realized I’d lost a shoe. It didn’t matter, though, as I just <i>had </i>to get there. I <i>had</i> to meet him -- her -- it -- or whatever God claimed to be.<br /><br />“Got a hot date?” Jennison Valdery mocked me as she calmly sipped her protein-infused mocha beside me. Her suit had been pressed and refitted just that morning, smoothing the edges of her elegant hips with swatches of silk-like carbon micromesh and an underlying leather-tan fabric. She eyed me with an arched painted eyebrow and eyelashes that extended all the way to her forehead as the latest fashions dictated.<br /><br />“No,” I mumbled, loosening my tie awkwardly as we descended floor by floor.<br /><br />She laughed that fake laugh of hers, a chuckle that was supposed to catch men off-guard. It didn’t work on me, not these days, not now that I had a purpose. We’d had an affair once or twice before, I will admit, having hit the red panel on the way down to indicate a corporate need to stop the elevator as would be done in a private meeting. It happened more than either of us wanted to admit, but I never had the heart to tell my wife.<br /><br />“So then what’s the hurry?” She crossed her arms curiously and leaned against the polished steel panelling. “It’s not like the world is going to end any time soon is it?” She smirked with a wide grin of pearly teeth and deep green lips that also followed the latest styles. “Oh, wait -- I forgot: it <i>is</i>!” The doors opened and I began toward them. “Well, whatever,” she cooed as I passed, “the way I see it? Doesn’t mean a thing. It’ll all be dust in a few days anyways, eh?” She kept talking, but the doors had already started closing and I was well on my way through the foyer to the corner door that led outside to the unfabricated breezes and scents.<br /><br />It took a second of looking anew from this alternate angle, but I found him again with another stroke of lightning in my chest. He was still there on the sidewalk, smoking the last cigarette from a now-empty pack, watching the skies and occasionally shaking his mug with a few macro M-chips inside.<br /><br />Again I had a hard time telling if God was a man or woman, or even one of those who’d been born into the middle sex given by a feat of nature and technology. For a split second I wondered what he would prefer I call him. Should I address this person as ‘Sir’? ‘Ma’am’? Perhaps even ‘thei’ as had been the overall middle term for the last century?<br /><br />Instead, I lost my chance -- God looked my way, dirty pudgy face and all, broken teeth jutting to the side here and there, and grime colonies seeming to decay the very flesh upon which growth was enabled. This was a person on the verge of death as well and I wondered for a split second if that was ironic. “Well don’t just stand there,” thei called, “come closer, share a smoke with me, eh?”<br /><br />I wanted to move, but found myself frozen in place. What did one say to the living patron saint of the longest-lived, though still dead, religion of Earth?<br /><br />We stared through billows of smoke for ages before God shook the cup again and received a few chips from a passing soul while, in the distance, someone succeeded where I had faltered. I heard the horrendous smack and winced, though no one else seemed to even notice. These days it was far too common a sight in the cities.<br /><br />“Sad, that one,” God mumbled, taking another draw of the tobacco. Those eyes still held me, keeping me staring, no matter how hard I tried to get away. “Single theilen, obviously no offspring, with a fanatic tendency to paint like no other.” God pursed it’s lips to the side, “I always wondered when those chemicals would start to affect thei and convince thei to end it.”<br /><br />God lifted a grubby finger with more oily dirt on it than I had ever seen this deep in the city. “Almost like you, I might add.” A welcoming, warm smile appeared and I found myself sitting cross-legged on the ionic-edge street side with someone so low comparatively that most must have thought I’d lost it. “See? No harm done, my little lamb. None at all.”<br /><br />Dumbfounded I just leaned on my knees and shrugged. “Where’ve you been?” I finally breathed.<br /><br />“Here,” she handed me the tobacco and I took it gingerly, since I didn’t really think I had the choice of saying ‘no’ to a smoke from God. “Now what’s this about my whereabouts?”<br /><br />I drew the first breath of smoke that I’d ever done in my life and coughed instantly, much to God’s cackling humor. When I finally caught myself again, I shot him a look of annoyed wonder. “Where have you been all my life?”<br /><br />God raised thei’s bushy, unshaven eyebrows as though over the wires of a pair of spectacles. “You mean to say <i>you</i>, or <i>anyone </i>living in your religiousless times for that matter, need the likes of <i>me</i>?”<br /><br />“Well, yeah.”<br /><br />“As in <i>I</i>, the famed-” she scowled, “well, at one time I was -- creator of all things in this universe?”<br /><br />I glanced to people casually passing by as the world counted down it’s last moments. They all seemed so calm, so eerily unaware. I wanted to grab one of them by the shoulders and shake them, asking frantically “don’t you <i>care</i>? Are you not <i>afraid</i>? Am I the only one who <i>sees </i>this?!” Instead I returned my gaze to God’s eyes, those magnificent eyes that held eons of everything imaginable. It was ironic that suddenly I had the inspiration to write books upon books on anything that came to mind, and all when I had perhaps a day or so to live. “Well I sort of had a bad week last week.”<br /><br />“Meaning?”<br /><br />“I stubbed my toe when getting out of my sleeping capsule, then forgot to put on my autodetection ring and was locked out of the vehicle pod for hours while I searched through messes of everything in my home for it, and things just kept getting worse for me.” <br /><br />“And you just assumed I had nothing better to do.”<br /><br />I shrugged, “if there was ever a time where I wished a god existed to control my fate then that was it!”<br /><br />She nodded with lips pursed around the cigarette, “hmm, you wanted someone to blame it all on.” Her face became a flurry of wrinkles as she drew again and frowned at me, then handed the tobacco back for me to do the same. “Alright, lamb,” God mumbled while streaming thick smoke from her nostrils, “look at me. What do you see?”<br /><br />I finally inhaled smoke without choking and let it sit in my lungs for a bit, as I’d seen God do, before releasing it into the wild air again. But I did look him over as commanded, noting the scraps of sullied trash bags used as a makeshift belt, the stains of God-knew-what, and gave myself a moment to chuckle at that thought, coating his every last garment. He wore sneakers three sizes too small, his toes peeking out of mouth-like holes in the forefronts, and laces so frayed it looked like God had assembled them from body hair over the years. He was overweight, yet anorexically thin in the same glance, where the rags neglected to cover his pasty diseased skin, and each breath both expanded his visible ribcage as well as tightened the cellulite beneath that.<br /><br />“Are you looking?” Thei asked. “I mean really, <i>truly</i> looking at me?”<br /><br />“Yeah, and?”<br /><br />“<i>Krishna</i>, lamb!” She cursed. “Why do you think I look like this? <i>Why </i>would an all-powerful being choose to be poorer than dirt, or eat scraps of food leftover after the rats are done, eh?”<br /><br />I was silent, trying to figure out a good response.<br /><br />“Or how about this one,” he shot again, “if I were so benevolent and all-powerful, why would I allow the universe to be about to collapse for your kind?”<br /><br />I frowned at my one remaining glossy neosuede shoe, letting the tobacco ease my anxiety. “Because… you’re just an asshole?” As soon as I’d said it, I hated myself.<br /><br />God smirked joyously and I watched as thei made the cigarette grow back to full length and reignite itself, then took a dramatically long pull. As thei released the smoke with a sigh, God rolled thei’s eyes toward me awkwardly. “Exactly.”<br /><br />Suddenly I felt wronged. The world was about to end and all because the last living god had simply decided he was annoyed with humanity? What gave him -- her -- thei the <i>right</i>? “Are you <i>serious</i>?” I jabbed and snatched the tobacco away from the bastard.<br /><br />“Completely,” she sniffed angrily. She crossed her arms and fell backwards onto her pile of things that looked more like trash blown in on the wind. “Think of it this way, lamb: I am the last god out there. All the others faded away as science inevitably snipped us out of the human mind. We once reigned over <i>everything</i>, you know, our power limited only by the vast numbers of those who worshipped us, and now only I exist due to scholars unwillingly acknowledging me because of a book I, more or less, wrote eons before their time.” She rolled onto her side to face me as she took the tobacco back for another pull. “Obviously I was pissed. Science had, in fact, won out on us all and there wasn’t even a god at it’s center for us to complain to. So I made an ultimatum: starting on this coming Tuesday I will only allow your universe to exist for one day for each soul that believes in me. Just one, each.”<br /><br />I gaped and smoke dribbled from my lips. “No <i>shit</i>,” I breathed exasperatedly.<br /><br />“Trust me, there’s shit,” he huffed angrily, “and it’s all <i>your </i>lousy asses that walk this earth, too. Nothin’ shittier than a bunch of worshipers ignoring you and your miracles for the plain-old screen of the latest phone.”<br /><br />Then it struck me: there was a loophole. “So, wait, you mean to say that if, say, <i>three </i>people were to start worshipping you <i>right now</i> you would let the earth live for another <i>three </i>days beyond Tuesday?”<br /><br />Thei grinned. “That’s exactly what I mean, little lamb.”<br /><br />“So,” I hesitated; how to word this in a way that God would tell me completely? “How do I get <i>atheists </i>to start believing in a <i>disproven </i>god?” Then I startled with a shock of realization. “Wait -- how do I prove you to <i>me</i>? I can’t go out there spreading the word of <i>your </i>sorry ass if <i>I</i> don’t even believe in you.”<br /><br />Crossing his nasty-smelling arms under his head as a pillow, God laughed lightly. “Well you can always wait until December twenty-fifth to find out for yourself if I’m legitimate or not.”<br /><br />“But that’s this Tuesday!”<br /><br />“As I said: I’m giving you humans until my son’s birthday to start worshipping me, and from then on I will only give you shits one day per believer to continue existing.” The grin on her lips was frighteningly dark.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454866046145786856.post-64230634541761188912014-02-25T00:41:00.000-08:002014-02-25T00:41:28.598-08:00The Day I Played with Fire<div style="text-align: center;">
"The Day I Played with Fire"</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
a short story</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Gary Baker, February 2014</div>
<br />
The rain was soft, much softer than I expected it to be as I lay there, blood dribbling down across my gaping eyelids, wondering if this was success that I was finally feeling.<br />
<br />
It started days ago. Too many, if you ask me, but for relevancy I'll keep it to a minimum. I want to say it began all suddenly and out of the blue, but in all reality it didn't. I had seen this coming for weeks, months -- hell, I'd seen this coming <i>years </i>ago, not that I had ever admitted it right out. I did cry out for help, though, don't get me wrong. I didn't let fate take me lightly. My shoulders had been increasingly white over the last few weeks, and neither the hype nor the meds did anything to alleviate as much.<br />
<br />
Three days back I was at work, sitting in on a meeting with my boss as I geared up for a promotion of sorts.<br />
<br />
"Craig," she said, with that all-too-familiar scowl of approval set upon her cheeks, "don't forget that you represent <i>us</i>, this store, when you go there." She sat back in her black leather office chair, waving her gilded pen like a baton between her dexterous right-hand fingers, and crossed her leg like a stereotypical cubicle boss. She was the kind of boss people would search for years to work under, not sexy and thus not someone people rumored about as having slept around to get to where she was. She was competent, and that showed through her every demeanor, whether it was her loose-fitting pin-stripe slacks, or her semi-mustache that appeared every time she'd been up late trying to reconfigure something that would increase sales.<br />
<br />
She was talking about my transfer. It was purported to be something to help me ease into the higher-ups, almost like a stepping stone that no one else was willing to bat an eye at me with. I was lucky to have her as my superior, much more so to have her be willing to take this big of a risk on my development. If I failed, she would forever be marred by her mistake in vouching for me, and she made that clear from the get-go. Almost a 'no pressure, but if you don't succeed you won't be ruining just your own life' kind of moment.<br />
<br />
But really: no pressure.<br />
<br />
Things changed from there. As I worked the next day at the store I was transferring to, I met the new bosses that I would be under for the next segment of my career, and found out I wasn't as perfect as I had been talked about.<br />
<br />
"Look, kid," the new superior pointedly stood when there where seats to be sat in, "we don't just need someone to fill the shoes of someone for a while, we need a good. Hard. Worker." He turned to the door, then and led the way to my new abode, a place where the hardware and the good old nuts and bolts of the store could be found. With a wave of his hands, he indicated the spread of my new domain, "this isn't just some department of yours," he wavered on obedience training as though I were some mutt out of the pound. "This isn't even your new home. It's our <i>backbone</i>, and if <i>it </i>doesn't move right, neither does the rest of our little contraption. You got me?" Suddenly he smiled, all eager-to-please and beaming with delight, "but I trust you'll do the right thing, don't you worry."<br />
<br />
It took me an hour to learn the new way of things, even though I was doing anything <i>but</i> the job I was transferred to do, and by the time my lunch hit I was ready to call it a day. I eagerly pushed into the oddly-circular room where I had placed my bag and tore into my lunch: a mere toasted bagel with Skippy and strawberry Weston jam, as I ate the words of my latest book as well. It was then that my phone buzzed. At first I ignored it, thinking it anything but important, and dove back into the other world just pages beneath my nose.<br />
<br />
The hero was valiantly staggering through a dark, murky hallway, where the bestial juggernaut golemn had laid it's final trap. My heart was racing as I followed him, seeking answers in the authors tone, knowing something bad was about to happen and yet not able to tell Lord Graedel what I thought it might be. The hallway was obliviously dark, the sewer water fogging the scene as he tread deeper and deeper. He gripped the hilt of his sword when he heard a noise -- and my phone buzzed again, shattering the illusion.<br />
<br />
It buzzed a second time, and then a third, and finally a fourth, before settling into peaceful calmness again as I reached for my second bite of an awkward bagel PB&J. Something was up, and it set me on edge, though I hadn't the slightest as to why. So I flipped open my phone, saw the six missed messages, and felt that electric jolt of anxiety that normally accompanied the fear that someone had died, or was dying and needed to talk to me of all people to say their last words via text or some shit like that.<br />
<br />
What I got, instead, was something way out of left field: "Craig, the bank called", "wtf is wrong with you? can't you pay one godam bill?!", "this is ruining our credit you dumbfk!!!!"<br />
<br />
I didn't even have the capacity to read the rest, nor to acknowledge the bad spelling like the English major that I was deep inside. It felt like I was having a heart attack. My veins had turned to ice, my heart into a rave-like beat sped up via Garage Band or Music Pro or some software like that, and my breathing reflected that of a dead mouse. Finally I un-clenched my throat and inhaled as if I'd been under water for ten minutes, and clatteringly dropped my escape to the table. My world was over. I was going to die.<br />
<br />
It took deep breaths, controlled as if I'd had an asthma attack like when I was a kid, and took serious forces to bring myself back to reality. I told myself that everything was going to be okay, that my life wasn't over, and that I was surely the butt of some douche-bag joke played by... no, wait, they wouldn't joke with me, they never had and probably never would.<br />
<br />
The panic then returned and took another series of moments to bring back under control. No amount of alcohol could solve this for me, and besides that I was midway through the toughest day I had had at work in ages. I wasn't just there to work, I was there to make an impression. But fuck whomever expected me to be calm in a time like this: my life was ending and I <i>had </i>to get away.<br />
<br />
I tried the book again, but couldn't concentrate. I tried force-feeding the remainder of my breakfast, lunch and dinner, all one meal of a bagel with peanut butter and etc, but found my appetite gone and my diseased stomach a turbulent organ of chaos at that point. So I threw the rest away and clocked back in.<br />
<br />
The next few hours went by as though slowed down by the hand of some sick deity trying to mess with my head more than had already been messed with. Minutes felt like hours and hours like days, until, finally, I found the seat of my hatchback and sighed so loud I may as well have moaned with ecstasy. In seconds I had thumbed the radio onto full and had the engine turning over, when I overheard the news of impending rain.<br />
<br />
Normally this would have been a bad thing for me, not being one to enjoy it full-on like the rest of those I worked with, but this time I relished the idea for some sick reason that I had yet to decipher. So I drove home with the odd music of a lonesome oldies station playing as my backdrop to a dreary, dark night, which only further brought my mood into the shitstorm of what was to come. I felt the sorrow of a blues singer who'd lost his lover to a doctor in Manhattan, I felt the regret of a country singer who'd left home to see the world only to find out he left his best girl behind, and actually <i>felt </i>the pain of a man playing the harmonica to the beat of jazz flutes and percussion as he sang melodious tunes of a girl who'd died on her way to meet up with him where he'd planned on proposing.<br />
<br />
By the time I got home to my apartment I was practically bawling but, choosing to '<i>be a man</i>', instead held it in and grit my teeth against what should have been otherwise expressed right then and there.<br />
<br />
I made my way to the door, just then, and entered into a dark living room where I quickly found a note from my best friend, roommate and lover of over ten years, claiming: "hun, please stop avoiding my parents, they are just trying to help you. They didn't mean to type it the way that they did, and are sorry for that. Please talk to me tomorrow when you get home." She had then penned in with another color of ink at what seemed last minute due to her handwriting "PS: please be quiet coming in, I work at four a.m. and I know how you stumble around at night when you aren't thinking. Love ya!"<br />
<br />
Yeah, right. So I bedded down on the couch, heart racing once again, and eased into sleep as fluidly as green branches might catch on fire.<br />
<br />
The next day came like the last in that I learned more about where it was I would be staying for the next segment and also more ridicule by those with whom I would be working. Lunch came without the everlasting throes of fear induced by malicious texts, which were so sarcastically missed, and I found refuge in knowing that my hero somehow survived his plight by expecting the beast to be in the shadows instead of the murky, glowy sewage, and had thrown himself into harms way to avoid the worst of it all. He was wounded to hell and back, though, and walked away dripping neon waste with more than just a few scrapes as he limped back into the light of day again, valiant and heroic as ever before, knowing he had vanquished the worst of his problems while down in the deep.<br />
<br />
The rain then started at just about the same time that a customer was telling me how bad I was at my job, all because I refused to take a clearly fraudulent return. She didn't rest there, either: no, she claimed I was a 'hell-hole of a human being' and that I have been should be ashamed of even existing.<br />
<br />
So I smiled and told her with a straight face that I <i>was</i>; and I meant it. She was right. I had <i>no </i>reason to argue with her about returning a brand our company had never carried, nor about how our company would not allow returns into cash without the receipt nor tag being present. I was a pitiful human being. I failed on bills, I avoided stressing situations, I was heavily taxed when thinking about any sort of finance, and fuck it all I was a man, treating a woman with anything other than complete reverie.<br />
<br />
"<i>You're right: I should be hanged</i>," I told her in my own mind, and walked off without saying a single real word edgewise, much to my dismay. The day then passed by as quickly as ever, until the closing supervisor came in and relieved me of duty so I could thankfully head home in pouring down rain.<br />
<br />
I bit my lip as I phased into my car, not even aware of the water that had already drenched me in the fifty feet I had walked to get there, and felt the metallic blood well up onto my tongue. Then my phone buzzed again.<br />
<br />
I didn't even have to read it, as the next two came in one after the other from the same "You Know Who" name. Apparently I had changed both her parents names to the same nuance as each other, though I knew not when. What then threw me was when the phone began to ring that incessant "carry on my way-yward so-ooon, there'll be peace whe-n you are go-oone" and I was not in the mood for Styx at all just then.<br />
<br />
"Yeah?" I answered.<br />
<br />
"<i>Craig</i>," came the voice of her father, the husband of my co-signer, "just the man I was wanting to talk to." I wanted to say 'no shit, that's why you called me' and thus felt like a complete ass for even thinking that. The rain on my rooftop drowned out the sounds of birds that would have lightened my mood just then, and so I felt myself dropping even further as the man went on. "Look," he said, suddenly all serious, "we need to figure out what's going on with that loan of yours." Of course it was <i>my</i> loan when it came down to me needing to start paying it off, despite my financial inability right then, whereas it was always <i>our</i> loan when they told others about how they had helped me go abroad all those years ago.<br />
<br />
"Yeah, I know, I've been trying to contact the bank," I lied, "but unfortunately I keep working hours where I start before the bank opens and I get out after they close." I gave a pause to let that sink in. Realistically I <i>had </i>worked those hours, but only for the last couple of days. In all reality I had no excuse for leaving it unpaid, despite the heart-race that it gave me whenever I so much as thought of it. "I can call their regional hotline, if you'd like?"<br />
<br />
He sighed audibly, making it obvious that I was the male organ out of the two of us. It wasn't as if I didn't already feel that way, but hearing the aura of someone who absolutely despises you kind of puts an extrasensory damper on things that becomes hellishly hard to describe. "No -- just," he sighed again, angry with me as had become the usual, "go in when you have a chance. You remember how long it took to sort this all out when you had to call them after the college lost your records. We don't want that again." He grumbled to someone in the background, and came back with the sound of his fingers coming off the microphone. "I trust you'll get this sorted out, Craig. Talk to you later," and abruptly hung up.<br />
<br />
I wanted to die right then, and it felt like I was -- with how heavy my heartbeat had become, still sitting in the parking lot of my new workplace, with more water heaving onto my car than a typical car wash could have done for twice the usual pay. I hated everything. I was avoiding bills that affected more than just myself, I was too wet-behind-the-ears for the job I hadn't even fully transferred into, I had been called out on being the worst of human beings in all of existence, was avoiding the dentist where I could get my two root canals taken care of all because I had a fear of the sounds their tools make, and had found myself locked in a steel box on wheels...<br />
<br />
...while rain slicked the roads.<br />
<br />
In an instant, I knew what had to be done.<br />
<br />
It was a good fifteen mile ride before I chose the place I would do it at, all with the ruse of making it appear like a normal accident. So I hit eighty, my usual 'I'm in a hurry' speed, as I came upon my exit, and gripped the steering wheel with white-knuckled hands, my breath coming in nonexistent inhales and my heart making one long hum in my chest.<br />
<br />
Then the guardrail hit the front bumper.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454866046145786856.post-12187007243602421482014-01-14T11:57:00.001-08:002014-01-14T11:57:24.453-08:00Temporary HiatusLadies and gentlemen of the internet, I am in no way pleased to announce that <i>Stories by Baker</i> is going on a temporary hiatus due to a lack of internet access at my place of living.<br />
<br />
This does not mean that I will stop writing, at all, but that I will be posting when and if I can for the time being and will continue on my regular schedule from the point at which I am able to receive consistent wifi again. I am very much displeased with this end to such a display of chaos, but I assure you all that I will come back with a vengeance. This is not the end of <i>Stories</i>, nor will it ever be.<br />
<br />
I merely ask that you be patient and accept the untimely posting for the time being.<br />
<br />
Wishing you the best of regards,<br />
Gary Baker<br />
Founder, <i>Stories by Baker</i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454866046145786856.post-47925976536605622192014-01-05T06:00:00.000-08:002014-01-05T06:00:00.286-08:00The Attack<div style="text-align: center;">
“The Attack”</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
a short story</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Gary Baker, January 2014</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
(my first-written story of the new year)</div>
<br />
“So,” lead inspector, Chiff Mason mumbled through lips pursed around a basic ballpoint pen, “judging by the spray,” he traced the gore with imaginary lines that led either way along the mountain trail, “we can safely say this was no ordinary attack…<br />
<br />
<i> The growl came from behind him with the snap of a twig and Barson spun around to find himself face to face with a massive wild cat. It’s eyes gleamed in the moonlight, it’s hide wet with the recent rainfall that had collected upon the shrubs, and it’s bared fangs shone like silver daggers in the night.</i><br />
<br />
“There was no escaping this,” Mason declared, “he knew that much from the start.”<br />
<br />
<i>Suddenly the beast shot forward with intense speed, leaving Barson just enough time to stumble to the side and escape instant death with a long tear across his left shoulder, his backpack torn open in the same blow. He rolled through the trailside grass and came to his feet even as the beast came at him again, this time with a vengeance. <br /><br />Again Barson moved out of the way, but was again hindered by his pack.</i><br />
<br />
“So he dropped the remaining strap from his right shoulder,” the inspector continued, following the boot prints and the now-dry, blood-soaked mud. The suited man stopped beside the shredded external frame laying on it’s side in the trail as though left by a careless child at play. “But it was here,” he nodded at a sudden change in the direction of the bootprints, “that Mr. Barson chose to fight back.”<br />
<br />
<i>The pack crackled as the porcelain of his camping bowl shattered within and yet Barson couldn’t think anything of it. He had no time. Nevertheless the hunting knife was in his hand in the blink of an eye, the sheath discarded into the dark, and the golden glow of the mountain lion’s eyes was reflecting off the blade like firelight.<br /><br />When the cat leapt again, Barson was ready. Claws met his biceps as the young man clenched his fist and swung hard. Up and across in an arc that bisected the leap. Warmth seeped into his cheeks from fresh blood and he watched as the beast landed with a howl.<br /><br />The man stumbled when the pain hit him, finding his walking stick as he toppled forward, and quickly struggled to use it to stand. He stood there with the darkness enveloping him like a blanket for the longest time, the wounds of his arms dripping down his outheld elbows and into the mud while he searched frantically for the assailing cat. In his left hand, Barson held himself up with the staff of worn, de-barked oak, and in his right, he held the blade like a lifeline, like a compass trying to find the lion out of impossible magnetism.</i><br />
<br />
Inspector Mason scowled as he knelt beside the fallen knife, feline blood congealed across much of the glossy-yet-muddied chrome blade. “It was here, I am led to believe,” he looked to the police reporter taking notes in a handheld notebook, “that the cat came upon him again.”<br />
<br />
<i>Barson was slammed into the mud as the lion landed on his back from behind and pushed him deep into the rocky post-rain slush; but the beast’s momentum carried it further still and gave the young man that blessed second to regain himself.<br /><br />Instantly he pushed himself from the ground as though having gained super strength when least expected and thus overshot it and landed on his feet with too much backwards inertia. He tripped over his own heels and almost fell again, had he not still been holding the staff. When he realized the knife had been lost he went white with fear.<br /><br />This was it. This was how he would die.<br /><br />Again the lion came at him, charging like a mad rhinoceros from out of the dark. He only noticed at the last second due to the splashing sound of mud, and absently swung the staff around and forward. The jaws gleamed and his reflexes kicked in. His body became a vehicle for the many years of limitless knightly dreams, of wishing he were some heroic armor-bearing knight for the king, and the walking stick became a weapon to be reckoned with. In a flash of hallucination enabled by blood loss and fear, the oak turned to Excalibur and the mountain lion a bloodthirsty dragon.</i><br />
<br />
“Right here,” he indicated with a pointed gesture toward a place where pawprints had meshed with pools of gore, “is where the cat received a major blow, ultimately turning the tide.”<br />
<br />
<i>He set his jaw and felt the thin end of the staff pierce the forward crest of the lion’s chest, and subsequently slip upon the cat’s upper ribs. He fell as the beast sailed passed, regained his determination, and swung with all his might as a warrior to carry the extension of the legendary blade into the dragon’s side. He felt something within crumple, and the blade shattered back into a heft of arm-length oak with a wicked crackle.<br /><br />The cat bellowed out in pain and it’s eyes lost color for a split second…</i><br />
<br />
“...but then the lion reciprocated despite the shrapnel protruding from it’s side…”<br />
<br />
<i>...and then it turned back toward the backpacker with sudden animistic, feral fire burning deep within the confines of it’s will.<br /><br />Barson watched in growing fear as the cat came again, slower now but still much too ferocious to be avoided. He barely brought the heft of oak up in time to land it square into the lion’s underarm as a stray paw swiped at his neck. <br /><br />The cat landed hard, the staff piece still lodged deep in the soft spot where it’s front right paw connected with it’s chest, turned viciously sideways by the landing, and stumbled a few paces before it turned back toward Barson again. Their eyes held for a brief moment as the man felt his shirt grow warmer and his arms grow numb, when the beast huffed one last breath into the cold night and fell to the trailside grass.</i><br />
<br />
Inspector Chiff Mason bit the end of his pen again and frowned at the corpse of the mountain lion laying halfway out of the trail. The beast was massive. Bigger than most other cats around these parts in the national park lands. The forest ranger, who had first arrived at the scene after he’d received the distressed call of a local hiker going for a morning run, had said the cat was affected by some tumor lodged in the lobes of it’s brain that controlled hunger.<br />
<br />
He’d said that was the only plausible possibility for the attack.<br />
<br />
“What I don’t understand,” Mason mumbled, “is why the boy did what came next…”<br />
<br />
<i>Barson leaned on his knees and panted hard air and fought to stay standing. He’d been sliced too deeply just above the collar, that much was obvious by now, and there was no way he was going to make it back alive. Even worse: there was no cell service to call for help… or to hear the voice of his fiance one last time.<br /><br />He huffed through a blood-filled mouth and lost his dinner onto his feet. God it hurt so much. The whiteness of the numbing sensation was fleeting through his body like a phantom mist, thicker in some areas and thinner in others, but these places never stayed constant. He would lose full feeling of his left shoulder one second and the next he could feel every nerve crying out in a searing explosion of throbbing hellfire.<br /><br />Before he knew it, the ground met his face with a thunderous echo…<br /><br /> …and there in front of him, inches from his nose and looking into his own, were the bloodshot eyes of the dying mountain lion as it fought to breathe it’s very last breath. <br /><br />Barson felt the tears begin to flow, the sadness of it all summing up in that one glance as the beast and he recognized each other as equals, and that neither would survive to remember the sacrifice of the other as nature took it’s toll. He lifted a heavy, brick-laden right hand and placed it upon the cheek of the lion, meshing his fingers with the fur and a soft grin appeared across his cheeks.</i><br />
<br />
<i>“We’ve had a good run,” Barson whispered reassuringly as though to himself, “I’m just glad to have made it this far. Thank you.”</i><br />
<br />
“<i>Thank you</i>?!” Mason interjected, catching the reporter off-guard. “Private Fennison, <i>really</i>? You think he <i>thanked </i>the beast?”<br />
<br />
“Well, yeah,” the small man winced under the inspector’s glare, “the guy was a romanticist. It’s clear in the way he wrote all those books of poems that he thought himself a reincarnation of an age-old hero.”<br />
<br />
“And you just assume that means he was thankful for such an attack?”<br />
<br />
Fennison found himself looking at the way the young man had lain in death, with one arm held over the lion that had killed him, resting his palm on the soft spot of it’s cheek where one might cup the face of a pet or a lover. He gazed upon the way the two had bled out together from their numerous wounds, and how content the man was despite the circumstances. “Judging by the way Barson commonly ends his books of poetry, how the bad commonly becomes subjugated by the wonderful, I cannot help but think he died with a sense of loss at the creature’s life that was just as strong as that for his own.”<br />
<br />
Mason pushed his lips forward in denial, “well don’t think that’s going into the report, Private: there is nothing to say why he chose to lay like that.” He stood taller and beamed, “in fact, I might rather believe the man was saying something more akin to ‘<i>take that, asshole</i>’ than some cheesy thank you.”Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454866046145786856.post-62725165210210330812013-12-29T06:00:00.000-08:002013-12-29T06:00:03.550-08:00Dragon Rider<div style="text-align: center;">
“Dragon Rider”</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
a short excerpt</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Gary Baker, December 2013</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
(possibly the prologue to <i>Kingdom's Rise</i>)</div>
<br />“<i>Ride high! We've almost got him</i>!”<br /><br /> Vaughn kicked his stallion into gear and charged faster to clear the dust of the prince's gilded mount. The warm saddle shifted as he swung his hunting pike, a long double-hilted shaft of the finest hardened oak that ended in a lightning-like double spike, and pulled closer to his king's heir. <br /><br /> Ahead the drake sped like a hare being chased by a hawk, though with none of the ragged misdirection. It was young, that much was obvious. It's opalescent gray armor shone in the light of high noon, almost reflecting the vast green of the broken plains around them. Vaughn found it inspiring to watch the beast sprint like never before, as it's muscles grew taut as it leapt forward and how they bunched into massive hunks of glistening smoke-gray mounds as the beast landed.<br /><br /> The beast began to veer off to the left, trailing toward a series of jagged cliffs that arose from the grassy hills as though broken by the hammer of god. This was where they would do it, he knew. This was where the beast would die.<br /><br /> “<i>Lithomir</i>!” He shouted over the ever-present thunder of the group's stallions pounding the earth beneath their feet. The prince looked over, excitement showing in his deep green eyes, his golden hair held back in a long tail over his chrome-armored back, and grinned. It was his tell-tale sign that he was up to something again. Vaughn, captain of the boy's personal guard, knew this look all too well. The blasted heir <i>knew</i>. <br /><br /> He must have planned this from the start.<br /><br /> Vaughn dug his heels into his mount's hips and pushed closer to the silvery white horse armored with plated gold and steel over intricately woven crimson wool, noting the series of weaponry that the heir seemed so attached to. Though everyone knew he wasn't one, the heir carried them like a Centurion: always ready for anything, prepared to fight until the last breath with whatever he had on him. In Lithomir's case, however, the boy seemed to think this meant he should carry more should he drop anything, instead of the usual mantra that followed along “a man's blade is his life, lose it and death will be there waiting.”<br /><br /> The guard captain looked back over his shoulder to gauge the depth of the playing field as they closed in on a corner in the cliffs. The others had fanned out to give the heir more room, and took unspoken orders from the boy to block off the passage should the beast turn and flee. Their own mount's shuddered with the growing energy: Huira's murky dappled mare cantered as he slowed near the far wall, his pike drawn and ready, Kilnar's jet-black mount pushed ever harder against the reins as he flanked off to the right, crossing with Jilai as they rode onto the rises that overlooked the coming arena. Vaughn had to admit that the arena was well-planned, too. At the far end it rose with a sheer wall of granite over three stories high, and tapered out on either side with not much room to spare other than the not-quite-circular clearing where they were headed. The flooring was well-packed with plenty of grass to soften falls without losing too much traction, and the bottleneck would give the drake just enough of a view into the arena to expect an outcropping where it might leap with it's ungodly strong hind legs and escape.<br /><br /> There wasn't any such ledge, in truth, but the young beast didn't see that until the group was following it into the corner.<br /><br /> Instantly Vaughn spotted the continuing crevice where the two sides had collided into each other, and would have been traversable for a while longer for a man on foot. The drake made for this only to crash against solid stone against either shoulder before it spun to get out and found itself flanked on all sides. Kilnar and Jilai then dropped bolts of weighted arrows here and there to keep the drake in the furthest point in the corner until the prince and heir could become the gatekeeper of the bottleneck and prevent it from escape.<br /><br /> Vaughn and Grishe then slowed to a trot and watched from the opening as the would-be king swung his pike side to side to loosen his arms. “You think he's ready for this?” Grishe grumbled under the ear-piercing cry of the trapped drake, timed so the heir wouldn't hear. His brown stallion heaved it's head side to side as it fought to run again, but stayed put as the rider quickly yanked the reins twice consecutively.<br /><br /> The captain held his breath for a moment and felt his pulse quicken as he watched the arrogant young man move from wall to wall while flashing the blade in an attempt to intimidate the beast that must have been scared half to death by now. “It's possible,” he admitted uneasily, “he <i>is </i>the King's boy, after all.”<br /><br /> Grishe nodded at that, snapping a fist to his heart in salute to the great leader's mention, and turned back to watch the display. There were a couple of wayward attacks from either side as the game moved into showoff mode and the heir grew visibly cocky, throwing obvious swings to merely antagonize the beast into another pointless charge. “I hear he's been training with Master Ghera's centurion's,” he glanced across to Vaughn from under his scarred right eyebrow, his dirtied helmet barely hiding his deep black curls that fell along the sides of his face, “what might yon Captain Vaughn <i>Heirsguard </i>think of that, eh?”<br /><br /> Vaughn pressed his lips tight as he fought to intervene in the boy's display of bravery and show. “The men of the empire will never follow a man who is weaker than they, Grishe, you know that.” He gripped his pike tighter and brought the shaft into his lap atop the saddle, distractedly fingering the dark, carved oak while expecting the beast to land a fatal strike at any moment. It made him twitchy, watching this. Each time the wingless, gecko-shaped dragon launched forward, it's horned spines gnashing the air, Vaughn kept thinking his future king was about to be gored before ever reaching the age of two-hundred and twenty new moons. “The boy has to fight harder than <i>any </i>of us, Grishe, and I'd be hard pressed to say his training hasn't done him some good in the last fifty or so, other than this increased bravado.”<br /><br /> Just then the drake leapt off the ground, using those toad-like hind legs to send it full force into Prince Lithomir's face. They all witnessed as the boy brought up a hand just in time to deviate the beast's maw before the two tumbled in the grass. The heir's stallion then did what all Celestial mounts were trained to do in such a situation and shot quickly out of reach where it could not be harmed in the ensuing fray, taking with it the boy's only means of escape.<br /><br /> Vaughn inhaled suddenly, his lungs becoming solid as his grip tightened on the lower hilt of the pike, as his eyes searched through the cloud of dust to find his charge.<br /><br /> Finally the air cleared just enough that they could see the prince now standing in the corner with the drake between himself and his guards. Vaughn moved to kick his horse into action when the prince held a hand and stopped him mid-way. “<i>Stay</i>!” The boy shouted, “he's <i>mine</i>!”<br /><br /> Jilai barked a laugh that echoed down from the plains above and mocked the horseless heir. “Would you look at <i>that</i>! The wittle bwayby pwince feww off his howse!”<br /><br /> Kilnar joined in, then, with a “you know the rules!”<br /><br /> “<i>No remount</i>!” Grishe joined in with a static grin towards his captain. <br /><br /> “Take him on foot!”<br /><br /> “Show him who's the <i>true </i>heir to the empire!”<br /><br /> “<i>Fight like a man</i>!”<br /><br /> Vaughn scowled as the scene deepened into greater feats of callous manliness and show. Personally, he felt that a man should prove his strength in battle against his fellow men, not in a self-made arena against a young, just-off-the-teat drake. Yet the odds seemed even more against the young heir now, as the beast was easily as tall in the shoulders while on all fours as the heir was standing as tall as he could. <br /><br /> The problem now was that the drake was in it's natural element whilst the heir was weighed down by several blades, his armor, and the heavy cavalry pike in his hands.<br /><br /> Yet Lithomir grinned at his cliff-top comrades and dropped the majority of the weapons into the soil before he began to spin his pike in circuitous motions until it became but a blur of silver and two gold-framed hilts churning the dust once again. He moved to the side, the beast watching him and doing the same, and lashed out twice before the drake reared back and slapped the pike high into the arena walls. Suddenly the boy was on his own with nothing but an ornate dagger at his hips and a short-sword on his back.<br /><br /> “How could you not <i>block </i>that?!” Kilnar mocked.<br /><br /> “Lithomir!” Vaughn scoffed, “<i>pay attention</i>!”<br /><br /> “Hey, <i>Kingsheir</i>!” Jilai sang. “You dropped your <i>pi-ike</i>!”<br /><br /> Grishe brought himself a few paces closer. “Now what would your <i>father </i>say, if he heard about this, eh?”<br /><br /> Kilnar bellowed with laughter from his perch, “he'd be <i>shamed</i>, he would!”<br /><br /> Vaughn found his eyebrows cinching toward each other, burrowing as he watched the fangs appear and the spines flare out from the beast's body to make itself even more fearsome. “Lithomir <i>do not</i> let this break you!” He pushed his mount as far in as Grishe's and brought the pike back out and to the side, ready to swing should the need arise. “<i>Focus</i>, man!”<br /><br /> It was obvious to the captain as the boy began blindly boasting and laughing off about the drake's inferior speed and mobility, that the heir, too, was scared out of his wits. “Look at him!” The heir shouted, “if he were <i>human </i>he'd be <i>crying</i>!”<br /><br /> “What a <i>bwayby</i>!” Jilai taunted.<br /><br /> Kilnar added in, then “does the wittle thing want his <i>mommy</i>?”<br /><br /> Seeing the heir's lowering sense of bravery and thus his narrowing ability to survive this event, Vaughn, too, played along to keep morale high. “Hell if <i>I</i> was it's mother I'd tell it to lay down and die already! <i>So weak</i>!”<br /><br /> “Well let's just be glad you're <i>not</i>!” Jilai retorted. “This is the most fun I've had in <i>weeks</i>!”<br /><br /> Lithomir lashed out, then, using standard Centurion slash and dodge techniques. He swung the sword low to clang against the solid armor of the drake's outer elbow, and side-stepped the beast's whip-like tail as it spun to slam it into the grass. Vaughn felt the earth shudder as the tail hit home, knowing that had it hit the boy there would have been no going back. Every bone would have been crushed by that blow.<br /><br /> He was lucky this time.<br /><br /> This went on for a handful of further attacks by both the heir and his target when finally the boy made contact with penetrable points in the underside of the drake's shoulder, as well as another gash into it's chin. Neither were of any significance, but the beast had started bleeding and that was the point. Now the grass was becoming redder and redder as the minutes wore on, with the traction loosing quality as blood was churned into the soil to become a brutal, gory mud. Vaughn raised his chin at the sight, seeing all too many memories of battles waged against the various surrounding territories as the centurions had vanquished all opposition in the age of expansion. Nowadays the broken plains that surrounded the empire's capital was as bloody in history as the arena in which the heir was finding his manhood, though the plains had long ago overgrown the thick rivers of gore while this corner was just getting a taste for it.<br /><br /> When the drake had been gashed enough to cause it to lose balance a few times and stumble on it's own feet, it charged full-force, much to the captain's dismay. Unexpectedly, and just like a battle-seasoned centurion, the heir shifted on his feet and grabbed one of the four arm-length head-adornments to swing himself up and over the beasts neck and onto its back. Instantly the boy was riding the wild drake as though he'd gotten atop of a wild stallion, fighting to stay on as it bucked and rolled to get him off.<br /><br /> “<i>Haha</i>!” Howled Jilai. “Look at him! <i>Our </i>prince – a bonafide <i>dragon rider</i>!”<br /><br /> Grishe rubbed his chin with his free hand, watching the show with overly excited bouts of laughter and howling. “Why, I'll be that one day they'll call him 'Lithomir, Lord of the Drakes'!”<br /><br /> The captain rolled his eyes angrily. Each second that this went on for was another second in which the beast could impale the boy on a stray horn, or worse: on his own weapons that still lay end-first in the grass at the far end of the arena. “Lithomir, <i>get it over with</i>!” He hollered through cupped hands, “I'm hungry for good meat and you're doing <i>nothing </i>but serving to make it <i>bitter</i>!”<br /><br /> The heir made eye-contact with his guard captain, then, and grinned as wide as Vaughn had ever seen the boy grin. Cockily, he reached down with his dagger as the drake charged toward Grishe and Vaughn to break their lines at last, sending the whole group charging after him, and slid the blade up along the young dragon's throat. It stopped in mid-stride as he did so, seeming to know what was about to happen, and reared back onto it's hind legs one last time. It was an ungodly sight for Vaughn to watch as the heir rode the drake's flaring form even as he brought the blade through the beasts spraying neck and against the armor scales along it's spine. The whole sight then ended with the beast falling, headless, atop the king's heir in a heap of gore just beyond the entrance to the broken cliffs.<br /><br /> Vaughn leapt from his horse just as the mount brought him close and sprinted to the headless dragon's side where he'd last seen the king's son. Neither the head nor the boy were anywhere to be seen for the longest time, until finally the boy stumbled out from behind the mound with a gory dagger in one hand and the drake's head dragging along the ground in the other. He was painted in blood as though he'd just been swimming in wine, though he limped on one side where Vaughn instantly spotted the bone spike jutting from the heir's left side.<br /><br /> No one spoke for the longest time.<br /><br /> Grishe seemed cowed for once, and the two jokers in their gleaming chrome armor stared with slack jaws from atop their horses. The heir looked from one man to the next with his opalescent teeth the only contrast to the steaming gore. Even his now-crimson hair was so drenched that it had fallen from the ties. The heir appeared more like a child soaked in the innards of a sweet cherry pie than he did a man with a drake's horn rammed through his kidney.<br /><br /> At such a sight Vaughn felt a beaming smile of his own creep over his cheeks as he cupped the boy's chin in a dark-gloved hand. “You're an <i>arrogant </i>bastard, you know that?” he guffawed, “<i>just </i>like your father!” Together they all fell into a fit of raucous laughter.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454866046145786856.post-28048459432181436672013-12-22T06:00:00.000-08:002013-12-22T13:33:25.548-08:00Alethi<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">
"Alethi"</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">
a working of character</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">
Gary Baker, (date unknown, sometime within the last few years)</div>
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<br /></div>
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Bright light; blinding,
searing. An intense ripple of electric pain, so great that it seemed to
drive toward insanity, until that blessed moment of sure-to-be
emptiness.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Then something changed.</div>
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<br /></div>
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A slim, faded blur of
green wisped across and then gone. Curiosity peaked and then came the tantalizing rub and tug of flesh on bone, of liquid within the flesh
morphing it's shape just slightly enough to turn the skeletal
fragments housed within. Then the glidingly easy, lubricated
sensation of that bone turning on cushioned cartilage.</div>
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<br /></div>
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...and the green blur
appeared again.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Focusing on the green
enabled more, and the painful white existence became numb. The green
began to grow, sharpening and gaining contrast with itself, forming
new shades and slashes of darker tones interspersed like stones in
the sand.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Continuing still, the
blur dissapated into shards with shadows generating the darker hues
while spots of glimmering light generated brighter tones. As if in
response, the green region grew, reaching the sides of the visible
white expanse where it then sharpened until it became visibly soft.</div>
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<br /></div>
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At first the green
appeared fur-like, but with second thoughts coming from an unseen
zone of being, came the notion of grass. The green shards were grass.</div>
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<br /></div>
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But what was this
'grass', really? And how was this <i>known</i>?
Surely knowing such would be impossible to something nonexistent, yet
sensation overrode doubt and existence, too, was known... though not
how.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The
thoughts crept out more, touching the place where the bone and flesh
sensations had emanated, in that far-off point in space, and found a
sturdy, unseen force in the way. The force had a cushioned quality,
with the idea of connectivity to something larger, though displaced
by invisible fog, and hinted at a more in-depth force of being than
was currently <i>known</i>.</div>
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<br /></div>
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In
shock and curiosity both, the thoughts felt onward, driven by a greed
to have as much of this <i>knowing</i>
as possible before it slipped away again. They imagined five-pronged
appendages with more of this amazingly addicting bone and flesh feel,
though why five was not yet <i>known</i>,
where each struck out from two larger lengths and everything within
cognition was contained within a slightly oily, slightly dry, not
very sticky but not gripless surface. The thoughts imagined eight of
these as small projections containing an overwhelmingly greater
number of points where they could relish in the sensation of flesh
and bone turning and pivoting with the help of oily cartilage.
Somehow, from those same thoughts came another realization that these
chaotic instruments were <i>known</i>
as <i>hands</i>, and that
these hands had four <i>fingers</i>
each with an opposing <i>thumb</i>
off to the side.
</div>
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<br /></div>
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The
hands returned to the point of origin to find the same feeling as
before, only now more intensely felt through comprehendable
<i>fingertips</i> and fleshy
muscular pressure. The fingers pressed and prodded, all at the
thoughts command, creating the image of moving liquid within the
fleshy origin, so near to the wonderous lumescent green and yet so
very far away.
</div>
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<br /></div>
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The
thought came to find the end to this new idea, and through unspoke
commands the fingers once again slid away, deep into space beyond the
origin, finding more bony structures beneath more flesh and padding.
An Array of bumps caused by long, horizontal-but-curved bones beneath
more flesh, then quickly faded beneath separate mounds of piled flesh
ever-so-slightly more padded to the touch than the other fleshy
regions thus far explored.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Continuing
still, the fingers relayed signals of more beyond as the flesh
dropped away in a deeper curve than that which had started these
mounds, until once again bony flesh came to pass. A series of
ripple-like bones beneath a thinner layer of flesh slid beneath the
exploration and ultimately gave way to an unexpected flaw. The
fingers paused, hesitating as they found themselves without command
whilst the thoughts tried to comprehend why it was the bone had
suddenly gone away, replaced by a full region of space where only
flesh could be found. Worried, the thoughts sent the fingers out
again, frantically seeking a return of these lovely structures of
bone.</div>
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<br /></div>
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It
was then that the smallest of the fingers, a twin of the smallest on
the other <i>hand</i>, dipped
into a sudden divot. The thoughts reeled, both ecstatic at such a
find and terrified that this was the beginning of the end, that from
here on there would be no further space to traverse into. So they
made up for it by sending all fingers at once to push and shove their
way over and into this tiny point, discovering a short drop ended
with more crevaces than there were fingers, all smaller than the
thoughts could imagine as being possible, yet there they all were,
held together by a tiny mound at the cratorial center.</div>
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<br /></div>
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After
much deliberation, the thoughts became coherent enough to send the
fingers out further, to seek out more of these elusive nuances.
Continuing, the fingers reached an unknown substance further below
the lone divot, where tiny spindles of corrosive fibers splayed out
with no intended direction, as though this form of chaos was normal.
</div>
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<br /></div>
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But
why? Why enable chaos on a perfect existence? Curioser still, what
would the spindles of fiber be intended for? And by whom?</div>
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<br /></div>
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The
thoughts grew ravagingly more greedy to find out the answers, and
pushed the fingers further, pressing into what could only be imagined
as wiry grass that grew from the flesh beneath, where they finally
reached a sharp decline. On the sides of the fiberous expanse the
flesh moved onward without delay, yet within the area of the fibers
the flesh fell away dramatically. Pressing onward to sate a curiosity
of their own, the fingers delved into a point where both the flesh
and the innermost fibers felt warm and wonderfully moist. Further on
this warm flesh then became folded and rippled, and more moisture
seemed to appear the longer the fingers pressed onward.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The
thoughts became ecstatic again, decidedly <i>knowing </i>that
this point in space was where the flesh originated from. There was no
other explanation for it. They revisited the divot above and came to
a similar conclusion, though chose instead that this was an <i>older</i>
point in existence, one that had been used for it's course and had
simply became outdated in time. Further review brought the thoughts
back to the mounds, where flesh seemed to be stored, kept within
reach until the need for growth became tangible and in one swift move
the thoughts declared this space to be known with truth.</div>
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<br /></div>
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There
was an unmistakable doubt lingering within the thoughts, like an echo
hailed against a cavernous wall, but the more important matter of
discovering where it all ended still remained. Returning to the
origin point above, the fingers responded to this matter by moving in
the opposite direction with renewed vigor.</div>
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<br /></div>
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First
came the sharp incline of incredibly bony flesh followed by an
ever-so-slight decline with more flesh deposits beyond. Pressing with
all ten appendages, the fingers found several openings to more
moisture, the largest and closest to the sharp incline resembling a
horizontal version of the opening beyond the fibers below. Above this
existed two smaller twin openings on another sharp incline, and two
more beyond that.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Moving
further, the fingers reached over the two latest openings and the
thoughts could only watch as the glowingly trance-like grass became
obscured by deep shadowy blurs of darkness.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Instinctively
the fingers drew away quickly to keep the grass within view, but
curiostiy peaked again and the thoughts turned the structure of bone
and flesh to move the fingers back into view below the image of the
grass. Once again the shadows hovered there, moving when the thoughts
commanded the fingers to, and faded into clarity with the prolonged
exposure. The light dimmed slightly as the shadowy fingers came into
reality, declaratively seen through the oval holes above the point of
origin, and the thoughts chose to <i>know</i>
that these figures were the very fingers that they controlled. Of
this, there was no doubt.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Then
came the details, so many wonderful details. The fingers were pale,
but not too pale, the thoughts somehow knew, but more pale than they
lighter grass tones. Over the places of cartilage, creases were
visible in the outermost layerof pale flesh, as if merely there to
remind of the magic-like structures within. They all seemed to hint
of more and, sure enough, as the fingers flexed toward the ovals that
enabled vision, a new texture could be seen hiding on the back of the
fingertips, seemingly made of a glossy flesh that drove into the
first joint of each appendage.</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The
grass flickered slightly and the thoughts pulled their new-found gaze
toward it once more, to see a tiny figure resting where one had not
been previously. The figure wasn't anything like that which the
fingers had explored. Instead of a patch of fibers, the new figure
was covered completely in white and muddy brown red splotches. The
figure stood on all four limbs with it's head tilted to the side,
curiously.</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i>What
is this</i>? The thoughts wondered,
coelescing into one lone voice with all the vigor of much-needed
comprehension, while pushing into lower limbs of it's own extending
below the fiber-covered opening and swung them aside like larger
fingers. Something touched the limbs where the vision could see them
end with five more digits per limb and when the voice within tried to
understand what it had been, something exploded in the space between
the two figures. A painfully loud bellow of a high-pitched yelp
seemed to emanate from the four-legged figure in the grass and
instantly the hands reached for the sides of the voice's own head, as
if this could block out the sound.
</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Unfortunately,
however, upon clapping to the head the hands created loud 'pop'
sounds of flesh hitting bony flesh again, followed by a painful ache
within the voice's head, swimming around the source of the thoughts
with pulsing irritation and a 'ping' that eventually gave way to an
endless high-pitched ringing.</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
As
cognition returned, the fingers suddenly became aware of more fibers,
less coarse than those down below, but more greater in number and
apparent length. Following the ends of these fibers, the fingers
reached across and over the ovals of vision once more, pulling the
long strands of pale whitened-tan fibers into view. These fibers
seemed to draw in the perfection of the existence beyond them to
display it all with glittering realism.</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Entranced,
the fingers reached up and meshed into the sheer immensity of how
truly thick these fibers clustered around the origin of thought.
Again the fingers brought these forward so it could gaze at what the
unheard voice kept hinting at as being <i>hair,</i>
and pure joy rushed in, starting within the inner thoughts until it
reached out and drew into the flesh of the head. Muscles tugged at
the sides of the horizontal opening and ecstatic joy overflowed the
thoughts into a twitch that reached through all points, explored and
unexplored alike, ending in a sudden exhalation of air through the
horizontal opening that sounded like a toned-down version of that
which had come from the figure in the grass.</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Suddenly
the voice declared itself a <i>figure</i>
and witnessed in awe as the mind-generated thoughts began to connect
pieces together with a knowledge of unknown origin; recalling folds
of flesh between it's lower limbs, the mounds of flesh above the
divot and the intensely long hair, to bring the notion of womanhood
into being. With this in mind, the figure reached out to an
intangible sound somehow already known: <i>she.</i></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
She
reached out again, concentrating on what to call the figure in the
grass, coming up with only 'it'. Frustrated, she pushed harder,
delving into the expanse of knowledge contained within her thoughts,
focusing on the figure to bring clarity. Finally she hit her first
clue: she was nearly bare of the fibers known as <i>hair</i>,
whereas the other was covered entirely. Somehow this meant the other
wasn't a <i>figure</i> at
all, but a... <i>thing</i>?
Yes. But no, it was something else... a... <i>creature</i>?
Yes! That was it.</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
'She,'
she mouthed, 'it.' Her face contorted the muscles to somehow give her
more clarity in thought and then brighened suddenly. 'Cre – ture'
she mouthed, then pushed harder with an exhalation of breath like
something hinted at from the back of her mind, while instictually
contourting the muscles within her neck. “Cr – ea – t – sur.”
No, that wasn't quite right. “Cr – ea – jur.” Still not
right. “Cr – ee – ch – ur.”</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Another
wave of ecstacy pulsed through her body and she knew she'd gotten it
right. “Cr – ee – ch – ur,” she exclaimed, “cree –
chur.” With excitement as her fuel, she finally pushed to speak it
faster “cree – chur, creechur! Creature!” The low-toned yelping
sound came back again with more joy that she couldn't help but
release and she began to scream with this sound that her mind told
her was known as <i>laughter</i>.</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
As
she let the convulsions of amusement roll through her, her mind began
to wander, stuck on the idea of all this knowledge coming so very
fast. What was this knowledge? How did it know these things? And why
was a four-legged being known as a <i>creature</i>?
For now it didn't matter as all existence of her body, the grass and
the fluffy creature before her exhaled in an outrageous fit of pure
wonder and joyous laughter.</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“Creature!”
She yelled, “it! She! Grass!”</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The
fit continued even as she stood from her seated position in the
still-white expanse and took her first step toward the grass. The
step pushed the feeling of tiny, sharp, loose stones and dirt into
her mind, where the feeling seemed painful as there hadn't been any
just moments ago. Still laughing, she took another step with slightly
wobbly balance and then another and another and another, each time
she came ever-closer to the furry creature in the grass.</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
When
she was only a step away from the grass, she turned to see how far
she'd come by this new sensation of <i>walking</i>
and saw that where she'd stepped was no longer white, but a deep
brown and black with dark grey stones scattered within each
footprint. Amazed, she knelt and put her palm to the ground and felt
the stinging sharp roughness of the stones and the smooth, silky feel
of the soil.</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Then
the sound of the creature panting brought her attention over and as
she turned to it, she grabbed a handful of the soil. Moving toward
the creature again, she slowly set her foot down into the grass, sure
that the sharpness of it all would cut her wide open – but as she pushed her toes down first, they seemed to slide into the soft,
hair-like tufts of greenery. In awe, she nearly let go of the soil,
until she concentrated hard enough to keep it in her fist as she
knelt to touch the blades of grass with her free hand. Her fingers
pushed into the grass much like they had in her hair – now hanging
around her neck to barely touch the back of her grass-covered hand.</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The
excitement returned, and she convulsed with laughter again, causing
her to fall over and let go of the soil. Her right shoulder hit
first, landing easily into the lush fur-like foliage with a soft
'shush' sound, followed closely by her back as she rolled to laugh
hysterically at the sensation. Feeling the energy of the moment, the
creature ran with small leaps until it landed beside her and shoved
it's soft head into her hands.</div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Smiling
broader, she grabbed the small figure and hugged it closely, gently
stroking it's fur. With tears in her eyes, she repeated “creature”
over and over while it wriggled within her arms.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454866046145786856.post-36628624688200919722013-12-15T12:22:00.000-08:002013-12-22T12:59:51.959-08:00The Truth of Rialto<div style="text-align: center;">
“The Truth of Rialto”</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
a short excerpt</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Gary Baker, December 2013</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br></div>
Amir vaulted over a fallen cactus arm and felt his ankle slide open where the hand-length needles had grazed him. His heart hammering the tattoo of a Beethoven battalion, he barely noticed until he had gotten another seven steps further.<br>
<br>
When he did stop it was beneath an acacia something-or-other that he only remembered from Mexican travel guides, as though he'd seen it when high as a kite, feeling none of the awe that he would have felt at another time, had things been different. Instead he felt the rough bark beneath his right palm and the airless breeze wreak havoc on his wind pipes as he fought to stay in control, as he fought to regain his composure, and knew this was it.<br>
<br>
Hawkins -- <i>Rialto</i>, Amir had to remind himself -- was out there, in the desolate darkness, searching for him. He couldn't afford to stop.<br>
<a href="http://storiesbybaker.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-truth-of-rialto.html#more">Read more »</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454866046145786856.post-6973489752591915882013-12-08T06:00:00.000-08:002013-12-22T12:59:33.232-08:00Banners, Men and Manners<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">
"Banners, Men and Manners"</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">
a short story</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">
Gary Baker, December 2013</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<i>Gah</i>!” Rudolpho Mizrahi shoved his
chin deep into his high-collar scarf and exhaled a bit of his body
heat to warm himself up from the outside. Even with the layers of
soft wool beneath the outer layers of his thick shark leather coat,
mist formed where his breath escaped. “Is it just me or does it get
colder the older we get?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
His companion set his jaw around a
long shaft of whittled ivory, a thin gray plume barely visible at
the end amidst his own exhaled fog. “Well, 's a certain thing
that,” the man grumbled through grit teeth, “plus that you can't
very well get <i>colder</i> without gettin' <i>older</i> now can ye?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Mizrahi scowled. “Well by that logic
you may as well say that you can't very well <i>smoulder</i> without getting
older, too, eh?”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
The gruff man snapped his mittened
hands from the safety of his thick pockets and laboriously scrubbed
them together beneath his unruly white beard. “Well I suppose ye
might also say ye can't carry a <i>shoulder</i> without gettin' <i>older</i>, too.”
Suddenly the pipe pitched to the side as the man brought his lips to
one side, “no, wait, tha's not right, now, is it?”<br>
</div><a href="http://storiesbybaker.blogspot.com/2013/12/banners-men-and-manners.html#more">Read more »</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6454866046145786856.post-78298511130817206462013-12-01T21:51:00.000-08:002013-12-09T00:06:04.036-08:00A Curious Species<div style="text-align: center;">
"A Curious Species"</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
a short story</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
Gary Baker, August 2012</div>
<br>
The aquatic being surfaces, exhaling water into the air.<br>
<br>
A large ship sits in the distance, just off the shores of a small jungle island.<br>
<br>
He had been watching this human vessel for a long while, now, curious as it had ventured along the coasts.<br>
<br>
He watches as a female human is loaded into a <span class="GRcorrect" grcontextid="small boat:0" grmarkguid="8a3717ed-3092-405e-9fdc-f3ebb076bee3" gruiphraseguid="f830505f-e051-4595-a39c-009aaccd075d">small boat</span> by ropes from the main deck. Gulls cry while thunderous waves crash against the ship, and water <span class="GRcorrect" grcontextid="clips:0" grmarkguid="4a946a71-25bc-453f-8ba9-99442346526f" gruiphraseguid="04fb5abe-6a35-450a-8d54-3170364cb8dc">clips</span> against merman's membranous ears as he lowers himself to take in more water.<br>
<br>
Looking closer, he sees that the woman's body is tied, and her hands bound. Her eyes are shielded by cloth and her mouth is gagged by thick ropes.<br>
<br>
Soft sounds echo across the water as the men begin to talk, their language guttural and warty--filled with sudden exhalations and tonal drops. Nothing like the harmonious songs of whales or the chittery tweets of dolphins.<br>
<a href="http://storiesbybaker.blogspot.com/2013/12/a-curious-species.html#more">Read more »</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0