The Attack

“The Attack”

a short story

Gary Baker, January 2014

(my first-written story of the new year)

“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…

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.

“There was no escaping this,” Mason declared, “he knew that much from the start.”

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.

Again Barson moved out of the way, but was again hindered by his pack.

“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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

This was it. This was how he would die.

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.

“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.”

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.

The cat bellowed out in pain and it’s eyes lost color for a split second…

“...but then the lion reciprocated despite the shrapnel protruding from it’s side…”

...and then it turned back toward the backpacker with sudden animistic, feral fire burning deep within the confines of it’s will.

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.

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.

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.

He’d said that was the only plausible possibility for the attack.

“What I don’t understand,” Mason mumbled, “is why the boy did what came next…”

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.

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.

Before he knew it, the ground met his face with a thunderous echo…

…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.

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.

“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.”

“Thank you?!” Mason interjected, catching the reporter off-guard. “Private Fennison, really? You think he thanked the beast?”

“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.”

“And you just assume that means he was thankful for such an attack?”

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.”

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 ‘take that, asshole’ than some cheesy thank you.”

Alethi

"Alethi"

a working of character

Gary Baker, (date unknown, sometime within the last few years)

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.

Then something changed.

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.

...and the green blur appeared again.

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.

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.

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.

But what was this 'grass', really? And how was this known? Surely knowing such would be impossible to something nonexistent, yet sensation overrode doubt and existence, too, was known... though not how.

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 known.

In shock and curiosity both, the thoughts felt onward, driven by a greed to have as much of this knowing 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 known, 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 known as hands, and that these hands had four fingers each with an opposing thumb off to the side.

The hands returned to the point of origin to find the same feeling as before, only now more intensely felt through comprehendable fingertips 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.

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.

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.

It was then that the smallest of the fingers, a twin of the smallest on the other hand, 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.

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.

But why? Why enable chaos on a perfect existence? Curioser still, what would the spindles of fiber be intended for? And by whom?

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.

The thoughts became ecstatic again, decidedly knowing 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 older 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 know that these figures were the very fingers that they controlled. Of this, there was no doubt.

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.

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.

What is this? 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.

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.

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.

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 hair, 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.

Suddenly the voice declared itself a figure 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: she.

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 hair, whereas the other was covered entirely. Somehow this meant the other wasn't a figure at all, but a... thing? Yes. But no, it was something else... a... creature? Yes! That was it.

'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.”

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 laughter.

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 creature? 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.

“Creature!” She yelled, “it! She! Grass!”

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.

When she was only a step away from the grass, she turned to see how far she'd come by this new sensation of walking 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.

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.

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.

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.

(Searching for) Prophet

“(Searching for) Prophet”

a short story

Gary Baker, June 2013

(intended for use as comic idea)

Frankie dropped his hands to his knees and heaved, rustling leaves of the park shrubs scratching at his face in the midday heat. It was as though his entire day had become nothing but sheer terror laced with an eerie ecstatic sense of woe.

Nothing made sense anymore. His whole life had been turned upside down in a matter of hours starting with that fateful wave revealing a woman floating face down more than a land-based mile out to sea.

“You really should learn to cope with such things,” the woman, no longer dead and cold as a gutted fish but actively telling him what to do like an undead mother with a staff wielded like Excalibur, dusted his back absently. Her hands were rough and forceful, he noticed, with the heir of a Templar knight lost in the twenty-first century.

But coping was something he definitely could not do.

Not moments ago he’d been just an average joe living his well-to-do lifestyle like any other decently-endowed professional surfer. The other day, even, he’d won his second gold medal this

First Contact, the conclusion

"First Contact"

a short story

Gary Baker, June 2013

(the conclusive end to a 2 part sci-fi)

Acier arrived on the floor of the Tear bridge with a soft shush. His feet first hit the smooth metal alloy meant to feel more like the ground cover foliage back home. The sensation was as pleasing as reaching his home world once again with the intent to stay.

It would never happen, he knew, especially since his kind had long since expired in this desolate universe. Only the ability to preserve their remnants had saved the entirety of Acier’s race as such individuals had been slingshotted themselves into deep space using the large gravitational pull of the nearing sun. Acier had been awoken years ago, by the queen herself, sole survivor of the Elders, a lone soul in the universe dedicating the rest of her existence to seeking out others like her; others with the physical inability to expire without some severe exorbitant force that could push them from this realm.

The Death of a God

"The Death of a God"

a short excerpt

Gary Baker, April 2011

(final piece to a larger project)

Jolarie pressed her eyes shut fearful for her life, as the blade-arm of 'Artemis the Wise' lifted her chin ever so slightly to force her gaze upon her one-time god. The tip pierced the flesh of her lower chin, dangerously close to her jugular vein, dripping a solitary trail of deep maroon blood down her neck where it began to pool in the indents of her collar bone.

Meters away lay her newest invention, the single-handed armaments weapon, beyond any reach that she could possibly achieve. And Artemis smiled deeply.

In the distance Raspora's body should have lain, but with Artemis's power instead was gone. Evaporated into dust, most likely. She should have been able to save her; Raspora had always looked up to her, and when the youth had needed her idol most Jolarie had failed. She was weak, and Artemis had proved as much. Why hadn't she seen that everything would end this way? That the one who she once proclaimed as great, subsequently denouncing, would really be all-powerful and take his revenge upon her for her stupidity.

First Contact, part 1

"First Contact"

a short story

Gary Baker, March/April 2013

(part 1 of 2)

Acier watched as the alien craft drew near like a god landing from the heavens to visit what it was that had been created long ago. The ship was almost virtually a polygonal tear: half-octagonal in the rear where the engines, though currently off, glimmered with a resplendent turquoise glow, with the front section slowly tapering to a spear-like point.

Just below the tip of the nose rest the ring of thick metallic glass to the main command center, appearing quite like a band of oil with innumerous colors shimmering in the rays of the Earthen sun. By design, this very ring indicated a clear sense of interstellar physics that humanity still had yet to understand.

Acier, a nonhuman living on what the Eartheans called “the Ring”, knew all there was to know of this very science and technology. He knew that the craft was built more like a skyscraper than any ship the humans had devised, that the force of generated gravity caused by such tremendous acceleration needed to propel such a mammoth creation would necessitate floors perpendicular to the course trajectory. He knew that at high velocity the heads of the beings running the craft would be closest to the nose, and that this not only made things easier overall for energy saving uses but also of more quickly-gained “space legs”.

But the Earthean Ring was enormously more peculiar than the creations of Acier's own kind.

Made up of a similarly mammoth number of “crate”-like modules, the Ring encompassed the

Whispers in the Darkness, part 3

"Whispers in the Darkness"

a short story

Gary Baker, March 2013

(part 3 of 3)

The screen flicked on. A dark, scratchy scene glazed in apple green.

A lone bed along the back wall hung by steel chains and ceiling bolts, hoisting a decaying mother and fetus for all to see.

A smashed lamp beside the bed lay like a fallen pillar with it's tungsten wire dangling in just the right position to create constant sparks. Each spray of light gave truth to the insanity that was the floor coloration.

Bloodstains coated the floor like an intricate abstract painting.

Even Jackson Pollack would have been envious of this existential display.

The Rise of the Dragon King

"The Rise of the Dragon King"

an excerpt

Gary Baker, March 2013

(part of a much lager project in progress)

Lithomir's arm streaked across the sky, then ducked in and came to a sudden stop near his chest before arcing out again in what seemed an endless ribbon of movement.

Then his other hand fell forward to grasp the darkness, and the two limbs became a torrent of fluid, precise motion. He looked over one shoulder, turned his body that way, and felt his arms wisp into orbit until their speed outraced his body. At once his arms pulled him into a deeper spin and he felt the forces pull his hair out in centrifugal motion.

He let the force carry him around and around, lifted one arm high to bless the heavens, then struck it down like a felled god of the forest. It brought his whole form toward the ground and into a low crouch, where he pushed off with his feet and

The Train

"The Train"

a short story

Gary Baker, October 2012

Rae inhaled deeply, taking in the musky scent of coal smoke and steam, of weary metal and warm rails. His heart raced with the pace of the surrounding crowd's murmuring. Each time the train left the screams got louder, he could hear them echoing in from outside the sky-lit hall of departures. Each time, the train entered the dark tunnel ahead of it and the impending deaths of the many on board began, never leaving, never ceasing.

He stepped forward as more mindless bodies stepped on to the next opened platform, orphaned of any previous passengers, then stopped when a silver bar fell in front of him, greased with the hesitancy of the masses before him that had reached into such looming deaths of the man-made death trap, of the human slaughter machine. But the machine cleaned up good--almost no one noticed the darkness on the seats where surely someone must have sat less than mere moments ago, most assuredly having died in that exact spot with machinations to clean up the blood and lessen the panic for the next to die.

And he was next. Sure, there was a current train being loaded, but as soon as this one left the next, which was surely being cleaned as he stood there, would glide up with heavy screeches of metal on metal, with a clenching smell of brake fluid, and would beckon him on just as this one had the current dead-ees.

Then the whistle blew.

Song of the Julara

“Song of the Julara”

by Gary Baker, March 2012

(continual pieces to a larger project)

PART1: the surface
Hugh Donegan lifted his left hand, scrubbed it through his long, silky, blonde hair and pulled a few strands out from the tail hanging low on his neck. A warm breeze picked up, bringing the scents of mulch, rot, and the thick musty stagnancy of floor-level decay. Shaking his head lightly he pulled a small once-white cloth, soaked with sweat and dirt, and wiped it across the deep woody-bronze of his face mask and goggles.

He hated having to wear these contraptions, hated having to tromp through sticky mud and debris to get to the surface laboratory every day, and hated the fact that after seven long years they still had no clue as to how the humans might ever move back and repopulate the surface world.

It had been centuries upon centuries since the last human had ever stepped foot on these grounds, back then calling the terrain tropical--but the idea that humans had ever lived down here, Hugh assumed was no less than a fairy tale propagated by the various religions across the cloud cities. According to their myths: a great Cataclysm, aptly named just that by religious leaders, struck the planet like a vicious blow in the boxing ring, and sent humans high into the sky when a deadly toxin began to blanket the world. This toxin dramatically changed things in various ways, never quite killing right off the bat but

Libra

“Libra”

Gary Baker, March 2012

(character working for a larger project)

Libra danced to the side, avoiding the rushing torrent of arrows in their hailstorm drop that decimated his unsuspecting squad. A large up-held mass of moss-choked branches and mulch crested from low-hanging branches just above his scaled snout, with the musty smell of decay making him want to cringe. The continued chicks, clicks, and clacks tattered the makeshift roof as the stone-nosed arrows hit home in the surrounding forest floor, seeming to go on longer than should have been right.

Libra stepped forward in the dark, moist grotto, with as little noise as he could manage in the mud and moss, slowly creeping toward an opening over-looking the battle ahead. He reached a silhouetted arm forward to draw back the thick-foliage of a hanging fern, letting the filtered white light reveal to him the deep navy scales of his thin-yet-muscular clawed right hand. Beyond the shadows, the battle came to an end amidst the towering jungle landscape with tribal beasts, their scales of pasty yellows and faint moss-greens, hefting spears and bows like torches to usher on their comrades.