Momma's Rain - Chapter 1 - Birds 'n Bones
6-29-2019
If you mean shit say it
Dig holes, plant ‘em deep
It is unamerikan to fail
to apply for a permit to speak
to dream to die, too broke to buy
Tomorrow’s graveyard markers
will not mention the indigent
not so much as a Hitlerian list
You lived in the body of an elephant
fed on its carcass for years
trapping crows to chase lions
For life is a fiction
birth a sad truth
death a just reward
Still, children smile
Dig holes, plant ‘em deep
It is unamerikan to fail
to apply for a permit to speak
to dream to die, too broke to buy
Tomorrow’s graveyard markers
will not mention the indigent
not so much as a Hitlerian list
You lived in the body of an elephant
fed on its carcass for years
trapping crows to chase lions
For life is a fiction
birth a sad truth
death a just reward
Still, children smile
6-29-2019
Chapter one
Children in Passing
Birds 'n Bones
I don’t like country western music
Billings Montana
Winter, 1957
Momma and Daddy rolled their boy child’s lifeless body into a blanket. Daddy reared back and kicked the package a couple of times. It didn’t offer much resistance. Six-year-old Jackie weighed less than forty pounds and was just over three feet tall. Daddy’s foot almost went through him.
“Stop kicking it!” Momma pled. “We have to find a bridge to throw it off.”
“I’m whippin’ the l’il bastard’s ass one more time!” Daddy insisted, “L’il sumbitch thinks he can steal my lunch bread and get away with it. I’ll show ‘im!”
Jackie scrunched his eyes shut. His nose and cheeks were numb with cold, his face wedged in the corner, icy walls indifferent to his plight. Daddy had stuck him there hours ago, daring him to move, daring him to breathe. Daddy dared Jackie to even think. Jackie, lying little bastard he was, promised after each punch and slap from Daddy’s hand that he would never steal the family’s bread again. He would not move, he would not breathe, he would not think.
Jackie wiggled his nose, cringed inside, hoped no one noticed; he moved. His ribs hurt where Daddy kicked him when he fell down when Daddy hit him. They hurt so he breathed in shallow halting gasps of breath, cringed inside, hoped no one noticed; he breathed. Yes, he was a lying little bastard. He stood in the corners of this house, naked half the time and cold, imagined a plethora of scenarios of death, his own death at Daddy and Momma’s hands. The bridge was long and tall. Through a hole in the blanket, Jackie saw its steel girders high above, stabbing through clouds, wrapped in sunlight. They tossed him over the rail, Momma and Daddy, and walked arm-in-arm away. Lying little bastard that he was, he wasn’t dead. His broken body tumbled through the air, stones, muddy water rushing, weeds awaiting it. He scrunched his eyes shut, cringed inside, hoped no one noticed; he thought.
We lived in a cold little house, full of shadow and dark windows. Daddy was drunk there and Momma was crying. I always loved my father and hated him for making Momma’s life miserable. Momma always loved him too. I bit my lip and held my breath then went where I was forbidden to go. The door, usually stuck tight, opened easily. I took this as a good sign, darkness would accept me today. I slipped inside and eased the door closed, knowing my eyes would never adjust to the total pitch black but waiting anyway, standing on that top rickety step as soft things with sharp teeth scurried below.
A creature with many feathery legs lit on my forearm, skittered across the fine blonde hairs on the face of my skin, its movement lighter than breath. A terrified voice screamed inside me but no sound issued forth. I rubbed my arm on that spot, felt the tiny arc of weight the traveler of darkness made as it swung from the pendulum web it had launched from my skin.
“God’s creatures, never smite them walking, only if on your flesh or if they bite, then smite them and smite them well,” I muttered under my breath, repeating one of Grandma Webster’s lessons.
The odor in that place was darker than ink. I breathed in deep and took the first step down. What damp embrace the womb of that room promised. It was warm in its earthen reek of soil, timelessness and rotted root, kind to those that crawled and climbed, huddled in its midst. My boy hands grasped the wobbling plank at the side of the staircase. Its nails creaked in their steel-worm wooden homes when I leaned in and tested it with my full weight.
Feet hanging loose and free, I searched with a naked toe through the broken top of my shoe for the first of the climbing holes we’d made, me and my brother, Jackie. There... and there... solid earth; I let loose the plank, felt my legs falling first then dropped to the earthen face of the floor. With my back to the wall, I finally let the tears come, hot and salty, forging watery paths down the dusty planes of my cheeks.
I was ashamed of my tears, knew I would be before they began but was unable to hold them back. This wasn’t my first experience with shame, I’d had many; it felt the same, much like times before and since forever. Seven years old, with two younger brothers and a baby sister of two, I was aware I needed to be brave. Crying would only make things worse; there was never a reward for tears. I hugged my legs up close to my chest then sobbed and sucked it in, a choking sound.
I held my breath when my ears picked up some sound outside myself. Squeak... squeak, squeak. I exhaled, a gasp, an audible sigh. I could hear the voice of Jackie in my head, my best brother and only friend, a year younger than myself, taunting me. I was older but Jackie knew things, uncomfortable things I would like to argue away, but couldn’t. I felt a smile tug at my lips as Jackie’s voice spoke in my head. “They’re doin’ it, Tommy. Long as they’re doin’ it, they won’t be botherin’ us. We’re safe now.”
I covered my ears with my hands, rocked back and forth in the dirt as the cadence of the squeaking increased. Dust drifted down from the floorboards above my head, a blessing of sorts from mother to son. I stood and brushed myself off, knowing she would seek me out after the squeaking. The climb holes were easy enough to find in the now not-so-dark. I poked my toes into them up until I could grab hold of the old plank with my hands.
I winced as a sliver of wood went in under the nail of my right index finger and broke off, embedding itself there. I took a deep breath, found the top climb holes with my toes and swung a foot up to the step. Thin shafts of light splashed their way from the kitchen through the top and bottom edges of the door. I found the knob with my throbbing hand, twisted and gave the door a slight nudge with my shoulder. It refused to budge. Now it was stuck.
I gritted my teeth and fought back the urge to cry out. Just as I was ready to give it another try, the door opened slowly and I almost fell into the kitchen. Momma stood there, a stern look on her face. She took a step back, hands on her hips.
“Tommy, you come out of there. How many times have I told you...” She paused then lifted her thin arms, summoned me to her. “You’ve been crying.”
Relief flooded over me and I fell into her embrace. The top of my head just reached her chin and I nestled in, wishing for time to stop, no words. Just hold me on the mercy of your sweet breast. Those were Grandma Webster’s words about Jesus but I only thought of Momma when they came to mind.
She pushed me gently away. “What were you doing down there? If your dad ever catches you...”
I held up my throbbing finger. “It hurts.”
She took it between her hands and raised it toward her face. I giggled as her eyes crossed.
“What?” she demanded with mock sternness.
“Your eyes,” I replied. “They got all crossed up.”
She held my finger tightly with one hand and plucked deftly at the splinter with the other. Before I knew it, she’d kissed my injured fingertip and was pumping water, washing it off in the kitchen basin. “Now, what were those tears about?”
I held up my wounded hand. “It hurt real bad,” I explained.
“Don’t lie to me, Tommy,” she scolded. “You know you’re no good at it.”
I turned red and peeked down at my toes wiggling through the top of my shoe. “Why’d he have to whip Jackie so hard?”
Momma stood up straight, arms akimbo. “Your brother got just what he deserved. He was caught sneaking into the bread. He ate the last two slices. What am I going to put in your Daddy’s lunch tomorrow? It’s cold on the roof and he needs food to keep himself going. We’re broke and he doesn’t get paid until the roof’s finished.”
“That’s why I was crying,” I said stubbornly, remembering the crack of the belt on Jackie’s bare skin while he bent over and held his ankles, trying not to fall over or cry, Daddy’s boots when he did.
Momma shook her head, frustrated. “I’m your mother; I don’t intend to stand around arguing with you about your brother. I’m going to lay down and have a nap. I have to go to work in a couple of hours. You keep an eye on your brothers and little Lily. Wake me up at six.” She went back into the bedroom with Daddy.
I left the tiny kitchen and went to the cramped living room, which served as day room and bedroom for Jackie, Phillip, Lily, and myself. We three boys slept on a convertible couch. Lily had a makeshift bed in an old dresser drawer. She was asleep and Phillip was sprawled out on the sofa. Jackie stood slumped in the corner where he’d been placed for further punishment. I decided to take a short nap myself. I laid down on the floor so as not to disturb Phillip. I bit down on my finger to alleviate the throbbing then put my arm under my head and sang myself to sleep. “I was born one mornin’ when the sun didn’t shine.” Sixteen Tons was my favorite song. It was playing on the country western radio.
At five-thirty I awoke and put a fire on low under the old tin metal coffee pot. I went back and sat on the end of the sofa, laid my hand on top of Jackie’s head. His carrot-red hair stuck out between my splayed fingers.
“Sorry he spanked you so hard,” I whispered. Jackie groaned and pressed his small thin face into the hard scratchy corner of the wall. His hands bunched up into fists and he pressed them into the corner, causing his shoulder blades to stick out. He looked like a broken bird to me, a plucked chicken, too skinny for anyone to consider eating.
A few minutes before six o’clock I went to my parents’ bedroom and entered quietly. I liked to watch them sleep, faces moving, eyes twitching. Asleep, they were faces I didn’t know. They were safe faces and I liked them better that way. I reached and touched Momma lightly on the shoulder. “No,” she mumbled, “No.”
Daddy’s eyes popped open. “Tommy, what the hell are you doing?”
The radio in the bedroom was playing country western. Daddy had two radios, one on the kitchen table and one next to his and Momma’s bed. There were three if you counted the one in his old truck. The radios in the house were on twenty-four hours a day, always tuned to a country western station. The one in the truck was only on when the truck was running. That gave me something to think about, whether the radio was off when the truck was off. The ones in the house were on whether my parents were home or not. Kids weren’t allowed to touch radios. “Wakin’ Momma,” I replied. “It’s just about six.”
Daddy rubbed a strong weather-beaten hand across his bleary eyes. “Shit! You go on, Tommy. I’ll get ‘er up.”
I left the room as Daddy began to shake Momma’s arm. I had always gotten on well with Momma but waking her or simply being around her when she woke up were experiences I wouldn’t wish on anyone. She was not nice then. She needed to be left alone. One hour up, maybe a bit more then she became her almost agreeable self.
So, I left them to it and went to play with my little sister, Lily, who had just turned two. She was a cutie, the first girl after three boys. Daddy called her Punkin. I tickled her and she giggled. I laughed with her until I felt Jackie glaring at us. Jackie treated me poorly whenever he got punished. It seemed to me that he felt as if it was somehow my fault or like Jackie was receiving whippings on my behalf. I couldn’t figure it out. Jackie took the bread and ate it; I didn’t. Maybe he just needed to be angry at somebody who wasn’t likely to hurt him.
All Jackie could do is look at me mean and stare at me accusingly since I was bigger and a lot stronger than he was. Momma told me a story about when I he was a year and a half old (I’m fourteen months older than Jackie). She caught me sneaking into the room when Jackie was being fed. I took the top off his bottle and guzzled down all of his milk. I screwed the lid back on so no one would know I’d done it. Catching me copping Jackie’s food explained part of the problem with his thinness but Momma resented him anyway. No matter what she did, Jackie had always been unhappy and undernourished.
I heard the volume of the radio go up and the familiar clink of glass as Momma filled her and Daddy’s coffee cups. Smoke drifted through the wide arch between the living room and kitchen when they lit their Pall Malls. Daddy came into the room and plinked Jackie in the head with his finger. “Get your ass standing up straight. You don’t need to slouch around all day like a ninny.”
I felt bad for Jackie as he cringed and shook with fear. The more fear he exhibited, the madder Daddy got.
“Turn around and come here,” Daddy ordered.
Phillip was still sleeping, one leg hanging off the couch. As Jackie rounded the corner, his eyes riveted fearfully on Daddy’s hands, he bumped into Phillip’s leg. Phillip moaned, rolled over, fell off the couch, and began to cry. Daddy beckoned to Jackie with his finger. “Come here, asshole. Maybe I’ll knock you down on the floor; we’ll see how you like it.”
Jackie stood by the side of the sofa trembling. “No Daddy, please no.” I saw a dark stain running down the front of his trousers, hoped Daddy wouldn’t notice. Many times, when Jackie was in trouble, he messed himself which would only exacerbate his circumstances. Other times, when he wasn’t in trouble, he messed himself which started trouble anew.
“Tom,” Momma called from the kitchen, “Come on now. We have to get going or I’ll be late for work.”
Daddy pointed a stiff finger at me. “You put that little asshole in the corner and don’t let him out until I come home, understand?”
I nodded my head. “Yes, Daddy.” I glanced at Jackie, who stepped obediently toward the corner. Daddy gave me an approving wink and left the room.
Momma came in, picked Lily up and kissed her chubby cheek. She glanced at us boys. “You guys behave yourselves and no going outside. Keep the door locked. Daddy will be right back to fix you something to eat. Lily’s other diaper is soaking in the toilet. Rinse it out and hang it by the stove, Tommy. If she needs changed before it’s dry, go ahead and use a dishtowel instead of a diaper. There’s one hanging from the oven handle on the stove.” She set Lily on the couch, gave me a reassuring smile, and hurried away.
The front door slammed shut. We heard the sound of Daddy’s old truck starting up and pulling away from the curb. Jackie turned around, stared imploringly at me. “Let me out of the corner.”
Tears brimmed up in my eyes. I bit down on my sore finger to stop them. “I can’t, Jackie. He’ll find out then we’ll all be in trouble.”
“How’s he gonna find out?” Jackie challenged. “Who’s gonna tell?”
Phillip sat on the edge of the couch. “I will,” he said, a cruel grin on his little-boy face. “I’ll tell ‘cause you took the bread an’ got me in trouble. It’s all your fault. You knocked me off the couch when I was sleepin’.”
Jackie took a step from the corner, threatened Phillip with a raised fist. “I’ll pound your face, you little brat! You ate half!”
I set myself between them, pulled Jackie’s arms behind his back and forced him to return to the corner. I gave his head a good bump against the wall for good measure. “Stay there! Don’t be picking on smaller kids!”
“Yeah!” Phillip agreed smugly. “You’re a stealer, Jackie. You’re bad!”
Lily began to wail. She was hungry and upset by all the commotion. I picked her up and she stuffed a thumb in her mouth. She snuggled against my chest and closed her eyes, sucking contentedly.
Daddy didn’t come home after taking Momma to work. We were hungry and there was nothing in the house to eat. I pumped some water at the sink and we sipped at it but water is a poor substitute for food. Lily and Phillip cried and Jackie moaned and groaned then finally slid down the wall and rested in a bony pile.
I roamed around the confines of the shack, despairing for a crumb but, as on many a previous occasion, there were none. The night was long and the radio was singing. My siblings asleep, I went into the kitchen and sat at the table. I rested my head on my arms, ignored the growling motor in my stomach and drifted into a troubled slumber. A few hours later I heard a rattling at the door. I stepped quietly across the room and peeked out the window. It was Momma come home from work. Just as I unlocked and opened the door, a car pulled away. It was soon lost in its’ own steamy exhaust in the freezing winter night.
“Where’s Daddy?” Momma asked upon entering the house.
“He never came back,” I replied, “I been worried.”
Momma kissed me on the forehead and handed me a heavy paper bag. It was greasy wet, close to falling apart. “Never mind your Daddy for now,” she said, “Thank God for the Big Boy.”
Big Boy was the restaurant where Momma worked as a waitress. She wasn’t allowed to take food home but she cleaned up the tables she waited on and dumped leftovers from the plates into a bag she kept hidden in the kitchen. On nights when Alvin, the cook, brought her home she could sneak the bag out past the owner. The next trick was getting it past Daddy; he didn’t approve of his family eating garbage.
Momma touched my face with her cold hands and kissed me again. She glanced at the clock radio wailing country western, Marty Robbins all dressed up for the dance. “Twelve thirty,” she murmured, “He’s probably at the bar. That gives us ‘til two to eat. You start sorting and fixing. I’ll get the kids.”
I set the bag on the table and opened it. Though it was full of rotting salad, coffee grounds, and cigarette butts, all I noticed was the smell of food and best of all, meat! I grabbed a piece of chicken fried steak and wolfed it down, coffee grounds, cigarette ashes and all. I had never tasted better food. Momma came back into the kitchen and smiled at me when I wiped my face on my shirt- sleeve.
“They look so peaceful, I decided to let them sleep while we get everything ready,” she whispered. “Tonight we’ll have a feast. I see you found some of the steak. It was the Big Boy special today. There’s lots of it in there.”
We worked together to scrape cigarette ashes, egg yolk, coffee grounds, and soggy napkin off the meat and began to warm it in a pan on the old stove. Experts at this, we even managed to salvage some mashed potatoes and corn on the cob from the bottom of the bag. The cigarette butts went in Momma's apron pocket to be worked on later. We didn’t have to wake the younger children as it turned out. Phillip and Lily came stumbling into the kitchen, their noses following the aroma of food cooking even before their eyes were ready to open. Momma smiled. “Go get Jackie,” she said.
Jackie was standing up straight and stiff, nose stuffed into the corner. He flinched when I touched his arm. “Come on, Jackie,” I whispered excitedly, “Momma brought some really good stuff home from work for us to eat.”
Jackie turned his head from the corner; eyes big and round, he stared at me. His mouth formed one word. “Daddy?”
I tugged at his shirt-sleeve. “Come on, Daddy’s not home yet. You better hurry up!”
“Wait!” Jackie pleaded. “Is she... Is she in a good mood?”
“The best,” I replied impatiently, “Now come on.”
Children in Passing
Birds 'n Bones
I don’t like country western music
Billings Montana
Winter, 1957
Momma and Daddy rolled their boy child’s lifeless body into a blanket. Daddy reared back and kicked the package a couple of times. It didn’t offer much resistance. Six-year-old Jackie weighed less than forty pounds and was just over three feet tall. Daddy’s foot almost went through him.
“Stop kicking it!” Momma pled. “We have to find a bridge to throw it off.”
“I’m whippin’ the l’il bastard’s ass one more time!” Daddy insisted, “L’il sumbitch thinks he can steal my lunch bread and get away with it. I’ll show ‘im!”
Jackie scrunched his eyes shut. His nose and cheeks were numb with cold, his face wedged in the corner, icy walls indifferent to his plight. Daddy had stuck him there hours ago, daring him to move, daring him to breathe. Daddy dared Jackie to even think. Jackie, lying little bastard he was, promised after each punch and slap from Daddy’s hand that he would never steal the family’s bread again. He would not move, he would not breathe, he would not think.
Jackie wiggled his nose, cringed inside, hoped no one noticed; he moved. His ribs hurt where Daddy kicked him when he fell down when Daddy hit him. They hurt so he breathed in shallow halting gasps of breath, cringed inside, hoped no one noticed; he breathed. Yes, he was a lying little bastard. He stood in the corners of this house, naked half the time and cold, imagined a plethora of scenarios of death, his own death at Daddy and Momma’s hands. The bridge was long and tall. Through a hole in the blanket, Jackie saw its steel girders high above, stabbing through clouds, wrapped in sunlight. They tossed him over the rail, Momma and Daddy, and walked arm-in-arm away. Lying little bastard that he was, he wasn’t dead. His broken body tumbled through the air, stones, muddy water rushing, weeds awaiting it. He scrunched his eyes shut, cringed inside, hoped no one noticed; he thought.
We lived in a cold little house, full of shadow and dark windows. Daddy was drunk there and Momma was crying. I always loved my father and hated him for making Momma’s life miserable. Momma always loved him too. I bit my lip and held my breath then went where I was forbidden to go. The door, usually stuck tight, opened easily. I took this as a good sign, darkness would accept me today. I slipped inside and eased the door closed, knowing my eyes would never adjust to the total pitch black but waiting anyway, standing on that top rickety step as soft things with sharp teeth scurried below.
A creature with many feathery legs lit on my forearm, skittered across the fine blonde hairs on the face of my skin, its movement lighter than breath. A terrified voice screamed inside me but no sound issued forth. I rubbed my arm on that spot, felt the tiny arc of weight the traveler of darkness made as it swung from the pendulum web it had launched from my skin.
“God’s creatures, never smite them walking, only if on your flesh or if they bite, then smite them and smite them well,” I muttered under my breath, repeating one of Grandma Webster’s lessons.
The odor in that place was darker than ink. I breathed in deep and took the first step down. What damp embrace the womb of that room promised. It was warm in its earthen reek of soil, timelessness and rotted root, kind to those that crawled and climbed, huddled in its midst. My boy hands grasped the wobbling plank at the side of the staircase. Its nails creaked in their steel-worm wooden homes when I leaned in and tested it with my full weight.
Feet hanging loose and free, I searched with a naked toe through the broken top of my shoe for the first of the climbing holes we’d made, me and my brother, Jackie. There... and there... solid earth; I let loose the plank, felt my legs falling first then dropped to the earthen face of the floor. With my back to the wall, I finally let the tears come, hot and salty, forging watery paths down the dusty planes of my cheeks.
I was ashamed of my tears, knew I would be before they began but was unable to hold them back. This wasn’t my first experience with shame, I’d had many; it felt the same, much like times before and since forever. Seven years old, with two younger brothers and a baby sister of two, I was aware I needed to be brave. Crying would only make things worse; there was never a reward for tears. I hugged my legs up close to my chest then sobbed and sucked it in, a choking sound.
I held my breath when my ears picked up some sound outside myself. Squeak... squeak, squeak. I exhaled, a gasp, an audible sigh. I could hear the voice of Jackie in my head, my best brother and only friend, a year younger than myself, taunting me. I was older but Jackie knew things, uncomfortable things I would like to argue away, but couldn’t. I felt a smile tug at my lips as Jackie’s voice spoke in my head. “They’re doin’ it, Tommy. Long as they’re doin’ it, they won’t be botherin’ us. We’re safe now.”
I covered my ears with my hands, rocked back and forth in the dirt as the cadence of the squeaking increased. Dust drifted down from the floorboards above my head, a blessing of sorts from mother to son. I stood and brushed myself off, knowing she would seek me out after the squeaking. The climb holes were easy enough to find in the now not-so-dark. I poked my toes into them up until I could grab hold of the old plank with my hands.
I winced as a sliver of wood went in under the nail of my right index finger and broke off, embedding itself there. I took a deep breath, found the top climb holes with my toes and swung a foot up to the step. Thin shafts of light splashed their way from the kitchen through the top and bottom edges of the door. I found the knob with my throbbing hand, twisted and gave the door a slight nudge with my shoulder. It refused to budge. Now it was stuck.
I gritted my teeth and fought back the urge to cry out. Just as I was ready to give it another try, the door opened slowly and I almost fell into the kitchen. Momma stood there, a stern look on her face. She took a step back, hands on her hips.
“Tommy, you come out of there. How many times have I told you...” She paused then lifted her thin arms, summoned me to her. “You’ve been crying.”
Relief flooded over me and I fell into her embrace. The top of my head just reached her chin and I nestled in, wishing for time to stop, no words. Just hold me on the mercy of your sweet breast. Those were Grandma Webster’s words about Jesus but I only thought of Momma when they came to mind.
She pushed me gently away. “What were you doing down there? If your dad ever catches you...”
I held up my throbbing finger. “It hurts.”
She took it between her hands and raised it toward her face. I giggled as her eyes crossed.
“What?” she demanded with mock sternness.
“Your eyes,” I replied. “They got all crossed up.”
She held my finger tightly with one hand and plucked deftly at the splinter with the other. Before I knew it, she’d kissed my injured fingertip and was pumping water, washing it off in the kitchen basin. “Now, what were those tears about?”
I held up my wounded hand. “It hurt real bad,” I explained.
“Don’t lie to me, Tommy,” she scolded. “You know you’re no good at it.”
I turned red and peeked down at my toes wiggling through the top of my shoe. “Why’d he have to whip Jackie so hard?”
Momma stood up straight, arms akimbo. “Your brother got just what he deserved. He was caught sneaking into the bread. He ate the last two slices. What am I going to put in your Daddy’s lunch tomorrow? It’s cold on the roof and he needs food to keep himself going. We’re broke and he doesn’t get paid until the roof’s finished.”
“That’s why I was crying,” I said stubbornly, remembering the crack of the belt on Jackie’s bare skin while he bent over and held his ankles, trying not to fall over or cry, Daddy’s boots when he did.
Momma shook her head, frustrated. “I’m your mother; I don’t intend to stand around arguing with you about your brother. I’m going to lay down and have a nap. I have to go to work in a couple of hours. You keep an eye on your brothers and little Lily. Wake me up at six.” She went back into the bedroom with Daddy.
I left the tiny kitchen and went to the cramped living room, which served as day room and bedroom for Jackie, Phillip, Lily, and myself. We three boys slept on a convertible couch. Lily had a makeshift bed in an old dresser drawer. She was asleep and Phillip was sprawled out on the sofa. Jackie stood slumped in the corner where he’d been placed for further punishment. I decided to take a short nap myself. I laid down on the floor so as not to disturb Phillip. I bit down on my finger to alleviate the throbbing then put my arm under my head and sang myself to sleep. “I was born one mornin’ when the sun didn’t shine.” Sixteen Tons was my favorite song. It was playing on the country western radio.
At five-thirty I awoke and put a fire on low under the old tin metal coffee pot. I went back and sat on the end of the sofa, laid my hand on top of Jackie’s head. His carrot-red hair stuck out between my splayed fingers.
“Sorry he spanked you so hard,” I whispered. Jackie groaned and pressed his small thin face into the hard scratchy corner of the wall. His hands bunched up into fists and he pressed them into the corner, causing his shoulder blades to stick out. He looked like a broken bird to me, a plucked chicken, too skinny for anyone to consider eating.
A few minutes before six o’clock I went to my parents’ bedroom and entered quietly. I liked to watch them sleep, faces moving, eyes twitching. Asleep, they were faces I didn’t know. They were safe faces and I liked them better that way. I reached and touched Momma lightly on the shoulder. “No,” she mumbled, “No.”
Daddy’s eyes popped open. “Tommy, what the hell are you doing?”
The radio in the bedroom was playing country western. Daddy had two radios, one on the kitchen table and one next to his and Momma’s bed. There were three if you counted the one in his old truck. The radios in the house were on twenty-four hours a day, always tuned to a country western station. The one in the truck was only on when the truck was running. That gave me something to think about, whether the radio was off when the truck was off. The ones in the house were on whether my parents were home or not. Kids weren’t allowed to touch radios. “Wakin’ Momma,” I replied. “It’s just about six.”
Daddy rubbed a strong weather-beaten hand across his bleary eyes. “Shit! You go on, Tommy. I’ll get ‘er up.”
I left the room as Daddy began to shake Momma’s arm. I had always gotten on well with Momma but waking her or simply being around her when she woke up were experiences I wouldn’t wish on anyone. She was not nice then. She needed to be left alone. One hour up, maybe a bit more then she became her almost agreeable self.
So, I left them to it and went to play with my little sister, Lily, who had just turned two. She was a cutie, the first girl after three boys. Daddy called her Punkin. I tickled her and she giggled. I laughed with her until I felt Jackie glaring at us. Jackie treated me poorly whenever he got punished. It seemed to me that he felt as if it was somehow my fault or like Jackie was receiving whippings on my behalf. I couldn’t figure it out. Jackie took the bread and ate it; I didn’t. Maybe he just needed to be angry at somebody who wasn’t likely to hurt him.
All Jackie could do is look at me mean and stare at me accusingly since I was bigger and a lot stronger than he was. Momma told me a story about when I he was a year and a half old (I’m fourteen months older than Jackie). She caught me sneaking into the room when Jackie was being fed. I took the top off his bottle and guzzled down all of his milk. I screwed the lid back on so no one would know I’d done it. Catching me copping Jackie’s food explained part of the problem with his thinness but Momma resented him anyway. No matter what she did, Jackie had always been unhappy and undernourished.
I heard the volume of the radio go up and the familiar clink of glass as Momma filled her and Daddy’s coffee cups. Smoke drifted through the wide arch between the living room and kitchen when they lit their Pall Malls. Daddy came into the room and plinked Jackie in the head with his finger. “Get your ass standing up straight. You don’t need to slouch around all day like a ninny.”
I felt bad for Jackie as he cringed and shook with fear. The more fear he exhibited, the madder Daddy got.
“Turn around and come here,” Daddy ordered.
Phillip was still sleeping, one leg hanging off the couch. As Jackie rounded the corner, his eyes riveted fearfully on Daddy’s hands, he bumped into Phillip’s leg. Phillip moaned, rolled over, fell off the couch, and began to cry. Daddy beckoned to Jackie with his finger. “Come here, asshole. Maybe I’ll knock you down on the floor; we’ll see how you like it.”
Jackie stood by the side of the sofa trembling. “No Daddy, please no.” I saw a dark stain running down the front of his trousers, hoped Daddy wouldn’t notice. Many times, when Jackie was in trouble, he messed himself which would only exacerbate his circumstances. Other times, when he wasn’t in trouble, he messed himself which started trouble anew.
“Tom,” Momma called from the kitchen, “Come on now. We have to get going or I’ll be late for work.”
Daddy pointed a stiff finger at me. “You put that little asshole in the corner and don’t let him out until I come home, understand?”
I nodded my head. “Yes, Daddy.” I glanced at Jackie, who stepped obediently toward the corner. Daddy gave me an approving wink and left the room.
Momma came in, picked Lily up and kissed her chubby cheek. She glanced at us boys. “You guys behave yourselves and no going outside. Keep the door locked. Daddy will be right back to fix you something to eat. Lily’s other diaper is soaking in the toilet. Rinse it out and hang it by the stove, Tommy. If she needs changed before it’s dry, go ahead and use a dishtowel instead of a diaper. There’s one hanging from the oven handle on the stove.” She set Lily on the couch, gave me a reassuring smile, and hurried away.
The front door slammed shut. We heard the sound of Daddy’s old truck starting up and pulling away from the curb. Jackie turned around, stared imploringly at me. “Let me out of the corner.”
Tears brimmed up in my eyes. I bit down on my sore finger to stop them. “I can’t, Jackie. He’ll find out then we’ll all be in trouble.”
“How’s he gonna find out?” Jackie challenged. “Who’s gonna tell?”
Phillip sat on the edge of the couch. “I will,” he said, a cruel grin on his little-boy face. “I’ll tell ‘cause you took the bread an’ got me in trouble. It’s all your fault. You knocked me off the couch when I was sleepin’.”
Jackie took a step from the corner, threatened Phillip with a raised fist. “I’ll pound your face, you little brat! You ate half!”
I set myself between them, pulled Jackie’s arms behind his back and forced him to return to the corner. I gave his head a good bump against the wall for good measure. “Stay there! Don’t be picking on smaller kids!”
“Yeah!” Phillip agreed smugly. “You’re a stealer, Jackie. You’re bad!”
Lily began to wail. She was hungry and upset by all the commotion. I picked her up and she stuffed a thumb in her mouth. She snuggled against my chest and closed her eyes, sucking contentedly.
Daddy didn’t come home after taking Momma to work. We were hungry and there was nothing in the house to eat. I pumped some water at the sink and we sipped at it but water is a poor substitute for food. Lily and Phillip cried and Jackie moaned and groaned then finally slid down the wall and rested in a bony pile.
I roamed around the confines of the shack, despairing for a crumb but, as on many a previous occasion, there were none. The night was long and the radio was singing. My siblings asleep, I went into the kitchen and sat at the table. I rested my head on my arms, ignored the growling motor in my stomach and drifted into a troubled slumber. A few hours later I heard a rattling at the door. I stepped quietly across the room and peeked out the window. It was Momma come home from work. Just as I unlocked and opened the door, a car pulled away. It was soon lost in its’ own steamy exhaust in the freezing winter night.
“Where’s Daddy?” Momma asked upon entering the house.
“He never came back,” I replied, “I been worried.”
Momma kissed me on the forehead and handed me a heavy paper bag. It was greasy wet, close to falling apart. “Never mind your Daddy for now,” she said, “Thank God for the Big Boy.”
Big Boy was the restaurant where Momma worked as a waitress. She wasn’t allowed to take food home but she cleaned up the tables she waited on and dumped leftovers from the plates into a bag she kept hidden in the kitchen. On nights when Alvin, the cook, brought her home she could sneak the bag out past the owner. The next trick was getting it past Daddy; he didn’t approve of his family eating garbage.
Momma touched my face with her cold hands and kissed me again. She glanced at the clock radio wailing country western, Marty Robbins all dressed up for the dance. “Twelve thirty,” she murmured, “He’s probably at the bar. That gives us ‘til two to eat. You start sorting and fixing. I’ll get the kids.”
I set the bag on the table and opened it. Though it was full of rotting salad, coffee grounds, and cigarette butts, all I noticed was the smell of food and best of all, meat! I grabbed a piece of chicken fried steak and wolfed it down, coffee grounds, cigarette ashes and all. I had never tasted better food. Momma came back into the kitchen and smiled at me when I wiped my face on my shirt- sleeve.
“They look so peaceful, I decided to let them sleep while we get everything ready,” she whispered. “Tonight we’ll have a feast. I see you found some of the steak. It was the Big Boy special today. There’s lots of it in there.”
We worked together to scrape cigarette ashes, egg yolk, coffee grounds, and soggy napkin off the meat and began to warm it in a pan on the old stove. Experts at this, we even managed to salvage some mashed potatoes and corn on the cob from the bottom of the bag. The cigarette butts went in Momma's apron pocket to be worked on later. We didn’t have to wake the younger children as it turned out. Phillip and Lily came stumbling into the kitchen, their noses following the aroma of food cooking even before their eyes were ready to open. Momma smiled. “Go get Jackie,” she said.
Jackie was standing up straight and stiff, nose stuffed into the corner. He flinched when I touched his arm. “Come on, Jackie,” I whispered excitedly, “Momma brought some really good stuff home from work for us to eat.”
Jackie turned his head from the corner; eyes big and round, he stared at me. His mouth formed one word. “Daddy?”
I tugged at his shirt-sleeve. “Come on, Daddy’s not home yet. You better hurry up!”
“Wait!” Jackie pleaded. “Is she... Is she in a good mood?”
“The best,” I replied impatiently, “Now come on.”
Madman Chronicles: The Warrior
book III: After Earth
http://www.wordwulf.com/store/c1/WordWulf $10.95
After Earth is the third chronicle in the saga, Madman Chronicles: The Warrior.
Enemies attacked their farms, kidnapped and enslaved their women and children, killed many warriors. The People salvaged what they could from the remains of the attack and began a trek toward the Great Stone Mountains. Halfway there, tired, beaten and starving, they stopped to camp. A hundred years later, enemies attacked their farms, kidnapped and enslaved their women and children, killed many warriors.
The People rested their eyes on the Great Stone Mountains. They vowed to the last person to go forward and not stop until they reached them. Many died, the very old and very young but the People reached the mountains, made comfortable homes in the caves beneath the Great Stone Mountain cliffs and mesas. They were not a war-like people and were better able to defend themselves from the side of the mountain.
Enemies of the People joined forces, allied themselves with other scavenger tribes in the belief that the People possessed great riches since they lived in such a mighty fortress. The riches the People possessed were their families, their very young and very old, cherished, valued, and protected as the most precious jewels.
The butchers gathered at the base of the People’s city. They celebrated the coming raid with great fires, the howling of war songs, hungry to sacrifice the innocent ones, pillage, ruin and rape with impunity those on the mountain. The old ones and holy ones of the People knew of a thousand year prophecy and were aware its anniversary and time were at hand. They gathered the People, to the last person, and led them away to safety, the promise of the prophecy.
When the conquerors came upon the mountain, they met no resistance. The People were no longer there. Their enemies found afternoon meals warming in pots, all processes of industry, needles hanging loose in the looms of weavers, vats of molten metals of the smiths boiling away, all activities obviously in progress and in pause only because those initiating and maintaining them had ostensibly left for a moment. It was as if all the People had vanished into thin air.
Other than the People, such was the truth to others. The conquerors burned what would burn, consumed what could be consumed, and destroyed what they could destroy. Wherever the People had gone, so had the riches.
The clouds drift lazily over the Great Stone Mountains. Winds play amongst them and raindrops excite the earth with their offerings. Sun and moon play tag and create what lesser beings consider day and night. The People know and where they have gone.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew Corn transitioned from a career in professional football to soldier in a time in his life when he believed in choices, that they existed and he was empowered to make them. He laughs at the memory, sitting deep in the earth, literally laying low. It has fallen to him to bring After Earth online, to create a place of refuge & lure his lifelong friend, Wulf and his Lords of the Dragon into the earth.
Andrew, “the Hood”, Corn, taps the chromium plate amplifier in the hollow of his throat. He types out the initiating sequence on the keyboard with his other hand. “Wulf still believes in choices,” he says aloud. A golden sphere rises from the floor of the labyrinth, glowing and warming its tunnel earth surround. Sure would like to get laid in there, Hood muses.
“Andrew Corn,” welcome to After Earth,” a female computer voice speaks from the sphere. “I am programmed to receive you.” Hood stands up and enters the sphere.
After Earth is the third chronicle in the saga, Madman Chronicles: The Warrior.
Enemies attacked their farms, kidnapped and enslaved their women and children, killed many warriors. The People salvaged what they could from the remains of the attack and began a trek toward the Great Stone Mountains. Halfway there, tired, beaten and starving, they stopped to camp. A hundred years later, enemies attacked their farms, kidnapped and enslaved their women and children, killed many warriors.
The People rested their eyes on the Great Stone Mountains. They vowed to the last person to go forward and not stop until they reached them. Many died, the very old and very young but the People reached the mountains, made comfortable homes in the caves beneath the Great Stone Mountain cliffs and mesas. They were not a war-like people and were better able to defend themselves from the side of the mountain.
Enemies of the People joined forces, allied themselves with other scavenger tribes in the belief that the People possessed great riches since they lived in such a mighty fortress. The riches the People possessed were their families, their very young and very old, cherished, valued, and protected as the most precious jewels.
The butchers gathered at the base of the People’s city. They celebrated the coming raid with great fires, the howling of war songs, hungry to sacrifice the innocent ones, pillage, ruin and rape with impunity those on the mountain. The old ones and holy ones of the People knew of a thousand year prophecy and were aware its anniversary and time were at hand. They gathered the People, to the last person, and led them away to safety, the promise of the prophecy.
When the conquerors came upon the mountain, they met no resistance. The People were no longer there. Their enemies found afternoon meals warming in pots, all processes of industry, needles hanging loose in the looms of weavers, vats of molten metals of the smiths boiling away, all activities obviously in progress and in pause only because those initiating and maintaining them had ostensibly left for a moment. It was as if all the People had vanished into thin air.
Other than the People, such was the truth to others. The conquerors burned what would burn, consumed what could be consumed, and destroyed what they could destroy. Wherever the People had gone, so had the riches.
The clouds drift lazily over the Great Stone Mountains. Winds play amongst them and raindrops excite the earth with their offerings. Sun and moon play tag and create what lesser beings consider day and night. The People know and where they have gone.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andrew Corn transitioned from a career in professional football to soldier in a time in his life when he believed in choices, that they existed and he was empowered to make them. He laughs at the memory, sitting deep in the earth, literally laying low. It has fallen to him to bring After Earth online, to create a place of refuge & lure his lifelong friend, Wulf and his Lords of the Dragon into the earth.
Andrew, “the Hood”, Corn, taps the chromium plate amplifier in the hollow of his throat. He types out the initiating sequence on the keyboard with his other hand. “Wulf still believes in choices,” he says aloud. A golden sphere rises from the floor of the labyrinth, glowing and warming its tunnel earth surround. Sure would like to get laid in there, Hood muses.
“Andrew Corn,” welcome to After Earth,” a female computer voice speaks from the sphere. “I am programmed to receive you.” Hood stands up and enters the sphere.
http://www.wordwulf.com/store/c1/WordWulf $10.95
Madman Chronicles: The Warrior/book III~ chapter 2 excerpt
After Earth
give me five times the kisses
heat of your caress
make for me a pillow
on the wound of your breast
chapter two
Higher Sex
The console chair spun around and Hood was propelled in the direction of the golden spinning orb. Entranced, he walked through its shield. No heat, no hocus-pocus. Vera was in charge. “Take the red seat, Andrew,” she whispered in a metal hiss of her own.
Hood took a seat on the red circle and drifted into weightlessness. “I am unfastening the clothing of your spirit,” Vera crooned. “You will soon be empty. I am filling you with true and pure, unconditional love.”
Hood could only moan while the computer peeled away layer after layer of his living and breathing guilt and shame. He was adrift for an endless moment in the wraps of a gorgeous electronic woman. “Look with me,” she said. “You can travel safely with me. I will bring you safely home. Trust me, there are no sins here.”
Hood opened his mind’s eye and dropped into the embrace of Colleen, the only place he ever wanted to be. He cried out when she touched him. His nerve ends tingled with rapture. “Let me,” Vera said. She stroked the outer edges of his consciousness. “I can give you more love in one minute than you will experience in ten human lifetimes.”
She lifted him up and through twisting bands of tantalizing light, wrapped him in a lust of rainbows. The tiny universe of Andrew Corn shuddered and disintegrated in a sparkling mist of golden. Then he was in her. He reveled in the perfect smoothness of her soft steaming skin. “Do me!” she cried lustily, “Andrew, do me!”
And Hood let go of it all, the physical, his spirit, his mind. She taught him to free himself to be drawn into the stunning light of her. Finally they were one. She was him riding her and he was receiving her himself. They screamed in a perfect blend of ecstasy, exploded in a lightning bolt, ripping through the silken fabric of the electric rainbow sky they had created.
http://wordwulf.com
Inquiries: [email protected]
©2016 artwork, music & words
conceived by & property of
tom (WordWulf) sterner 2016©
Madman Chronicles: The Warrior/book III~ chapter 2 excerpt
After Earth
give me five times the kisses
heat of your caress
make for me a pillow
on the wound of your breast
chapter two
Higher Sex
The console chair spun around and Hood was propelled in the direction of the golden spinning orb. Entranced, he walked through its shield. No heat, no hocus-pocus. Vera was in charge. “Take the red seat, Andrew,” she whispered in a metal hiss of her own.
Hood took a seat on the red circle and drifted into weightlessness. “I am unfastening the clothing of your spirit,” Vera crooned. “You will soon be empty. I am filling you with true and pure, unconditional love.”
Hood could only moan while the computer peeled away layer after layer of his living and breathing guilt and shame. He was adrift for an endless moment in the wraps of a gorgeous electronic woman. “Look with me,” she said. “You can travel safely with me. I will bring you safely home. Trust me, there are no sins here.”
Hood opened his mind’s eye and dropped into the embrace of Colleen, the only place he ever wanted to be. He cried out when she touched him. His nerve ends tingled with rapture. “Let me,” Vera said. She stroked the outer edges of his consciousness. “I can give you more love in one minute than you will experience in ten human lifetimes.”
She lifted him up and through twisting bands of tantalizing light, wrapped him in a lust of rainbows. The tiny universe of Andrew Corn shuddered and disintegrated in a sparkling mist of golden. Then he was in her. He reveled in the perfect smoothness of her soft steaming skin. “Do me!” she cried lustily, “Andrew, do me!”
And Hood let go of it all, the physical, his spirit, his mind. She taught him to free himself to be drawn into the stunning light of her. Finally they were one. She was him riding her and he was receiving her himself. They screamed in a perfect blend of ecstasy, exploded in a lightning bolt, ripping through the silken fabric of the electric rainbow sky they had created.
http://wordwulf.com
Inquiries: [email protected]
©2016 artwork, music & words
conceived by & property of
tom (WordWulf) sterner 2016©
7-22-2019
Spiders ‘n Snakes (Chapter Thirteen)
they took him down then
into the land of smoke
to be nourished
on the blood of his inhibitions
chapter thirteen
The Killing Web
There was no air to breathe, nothing to pull into his tortured lungs. His internal organs screamed, his chest bound, ragged breaths coming in short wheezing gasps. Wulf was awake, fallen into a nightmare world beyond compare, where? A stinking odor of musk owned the rancid air. His body was bound by tens of thousands of sticky rope things. Tensing his muscles, he could break ten of them, a hundred, but there were hundreds of hundreds and they held his body fast. It was impossible for him to move. Each time he attempted to escape, Wulf became further entangled, his movement restricted more and more. Each shortened and struggling breath made a tightening of the rope threads that held him bound. Once more he was forced to push away his mounting panic in an attempt to get his bearings. As he gathered his wits about him, his mind barely able to assimilate the information received from his eyes and body, he entered a realm of fear and disbelief beyond anything previously experienced.
The sticky strings bounced this way and that. A silent shadow inched its way toward him. Out of nowhere the horrendous mother of all wolf spiders was hovering over him. Her spider feet picked their way nearer, touching him here and there, probing the outside edges of the form his body made. She was aware of his waking, examining the bonds of the prison she had created for him. She had him solidly wrapped in the corner of the web she had constructed around him, pulling him up from the floor in her spider way. As she moved he saw a fine silk sac hanging a few feet from his head. It swayed back and forth, a silken womb in a darkened room. He shuddered at the thought of what was in there, thousands of tiny round spider eggs in the sac. His body jerked violently and tears ran from his eyes as he became acutely aware of his rightful place in the scheme of things. A shrieking in his head wailed, “Food chain, spider brain!”
Wulf’s mind careened out of control. He babbled incoherently as he felt it let go. He was gone and that was so fine, until the nightmare was over. His body ached so terribly in forever places. He wondered if he was screaming. He needed to be screaming. His body telegraphed movement, a tugging on the strands of silk holding him in its mortal embrace. Ignoring the pain, he twisted his head around. His eyes came to rest on the dripping fangs of his captor. There was a wildly squirming bat hanging from them. It was still very much alive. Through the fuzz of his vision Wulf could see she hadn’t yet begun the process of draining the life fluids from its flying rat body. Its small beady eyes were shock-glazed over. Its filthy little fuzzy chest was rising and falling rapidly, the trip hammer of its heart beating double time with the effort of its futile struggle.
Wulf giggled and burbled, “Die Mister Bat.” His body shook with his unwarranted and completely senseless fear of the tiny winged animal. The inside of his half-crazed mind exploded with the absurd command, “Just eat the fucking thing you spider bitch!” He attempted to close his eyes but they were fastened on the doomed creature, mesmerized by its death throes. He felt hate in his soul for the merciless glistening fangs that held the poor damned thing. He would soon bear witness his own impending death. His other mind spoke, “We are one little flying bat.” The voice whispered in his head, “Our twin fates are sealed and so be it. You will haunt me no more. We will hold our eyes open in the face of eternity, at the feast on our mortality. You are fortunate to be first, then done and through with her spider madness!”
As if she could read his thoughts, the spider inched forward, legs lifting high in her exaggerated spider-stepping. She was smooth and then stopped in a strobe-light danse of evil. Wulf heard all the things she did in a halting slow motion, the monster sound of her demented movements, smooth and whispers, whispers, bitch!
The bat gave a terrified squeal as she hooked it with the mating claw of her front leg and sprang at Wulf. She was much quicker than his horrified mind could assimilate. He was slipping away, freefalling into a lunatic void. She wrapped herself around his head, the stiffness of his filthy matted hair, the stinking scent of her spider musk assailing him. He howled at her and into her as she shoved the struggling and bleeding bat into his mouth. She held him open with her claws, entering him, shoving the pathetic creature down his constricting throat. His choking and gagging were of no consequence to her. Against every bit of will he had left, he felt his throat accept what she offered, his body swallowing. She pulled herself from inside him, slammed his mouth shut, wrapped her body tightly around his face. She held him thus until his retching and heaving subsided. Wulf was a bit of prey in her embrace, a necessary link in the chain of her evolution, mutation. He was an unwilling patient, a prisoner in her bleeding hospital. He would eat when she decided to feed him. And feed him she did. He spent the remainder of the most terrifying night of his life being fattened up on bats and spider milk, whatever else she found trapped and squirming in her killing web. The fight had gone out of him but she took no chances, held him fast. He drank of her with his lips, his tongue probing the sac of her juice, sucking her dry. She held his head in a warm embrace, tending to him constantly, taking no nourishment herself. She was preparing for the long sleep. Her purpose for living was nearly over, eternity close at hand.
Wulf’s hairy hostess finally decided he had been fed enough. Perhaps she had simply run out of squirming, struggling, scratching and bleeding things to shove down his whore of a throat. She busied herself with repairs to her web, strengthening it where it attached to the floor and the wall. Wulf stared wide-eyed, with a morbid sense of fascination and impending doom as she worked. He watched as her abdominal spinnerets spewed forth fine silk, wrapping unidentifiable things, patching rents in the web and tending to the cocoon-like sac of her young. Her eight legs never stopped moving. They were a thousand fold, scratching and brutally raping the mouth and throat of him. Now that she had left him alone he teetered on the very fringe of madness. He was nauseated by the writhing, biting and body fluids leaking, filthy crawling things of the earth he had been force fed. That is very well and good, his mind told itself. You don’t have to accept her offerings like the whore of your body. He watched her sac of eggs hanging, a bag of death swinging back and forth, slow/fast in reaction to her movements and his mind crashed, took a wild turn into and upon itself.
She was busier than ever all at once, the womb sac swaying madly, touching the web at each end of its arc. Pendulum, Wulf thought, pendulum. In his fresh terror he imagined the tens of thousands of baby wolf spiders clawing their way out of their eggs. They would use their tiny egg tooth, sharp and already starving desperate mean. Their spider legs would crawl up and out of the sac, through its thin wall of Mother’s silk. They would be hungry, no, starving, voraciously starving, injecting their tiny needle fangs into him, twenty thousand of their needles, fastening themselves to every available surface area on his body, eyes, face, genitals. And inside, drinking the essence of his mortal life from the inside and out, outside and in, eating him alive in slow painful little pieces.
In addition to being bound so securely he could barely breathe, his body was overcome with a debilitating numbness. Through the impenetrable veil of his senses Wulf attempted to peer inside to figure a way out of the fix he was in. His body was heavy, like a dead weight dropped into the bottom of a very dry well. His mind process was dull and thick, syrup being pushed up the outside of a pitcher, running down and over itself, coagulating, blood black and refusing to flow, pushed back and nowhere to go. He was a slug but no, if he knew he was a slug then a slug he could not be could he. Does a slug know it is a slug? “Stop it!” his mind screamed into itself, “I am a slug, a blithering, crawling and mindless slug!” Wulf’s mind was screeching and convulsing, a manic mammal thing attempting to breathe under water. Wulf attempted to speak through his dumb lips. A stream of thick and stringy mucus dribbled down his chin. There was a terrible shrieking and howling down the interior walls of his brain but no voice sound issued forth, only a slow gurgling moan from the purple black depths, the bleeding wounds on his spirit, screaming and wailing, the thunderous din of silence, impossible death in the womb. Twin yellow and green, red streaked rivers, flowed down and over, scabbing on his cracked and bleeding lips. He pushed against the door of his coffin, the tons of earth on top of it crushing him. Then he dragged a breath from the very depths of himself to create the tiniest of bubbles, then another and another. He rejoiced as slobber puke slid past his lips, rolled across his chin and then it was gone, plop, plop, plop.
He was suffering low, shivering and shaking, throbbing sensations wringing him washrag out. Just there was his right forearm. He could barely see it from the awkward position of his head, twisted and suspended in the wicked lady’s web. That arm is me, he thought, reveling in the connecting pain and sight of it, confirmations of his physical existence and mental connectedness. He squinted his eyes, forcing them into a quivering, slipping focus. Through the near opaque screen of his sight Wulf saw two punctures there, twin volcanoes, purple mounds oozing, erupting. Her fangs had entered him there, raping through the surface of his skin, the placenta of his spirit, having her way with him, going in and in, taking him where, where.
into the land of smoke
to be nourished
on the blood of his inhibitions
chapter thirteen
The Killing Web
There was no air to breathe, nothing to pull into his tortured lungs. His internal organs screamed, his chest bound, ragged breaths coming in short wheezing gasps. Wulf was awake, fallen into a nightmare world beyond compare, where? A stinking odor of musk owned the rancid air. His body was bound by tens of thousands of sticky rope things. Tensing his muscles, he could break ten of them, a hundred, but there were hundreds of hundreds and they held his body fast. It was impossible for him to move. Each time he attempted to escape, Wulf became further entangled, his movement restricted more and more. Each shortened and struggling breath made a tightening of the rope threads that held him bound. Once more he was forced to push away his mounting panic in an attempt to get his bearings. As he gathered his wits about him, his mind barely able to assimilate the information received from his eyes and body, he entered a realm of fear and disbelief beyond anything previously experienced.
The sticky strings bounced this way and that. A silent shadow inched its way toward him. Out of nowhere the horrendous mother of all wolf spiders was hovering over him. Her spider feet picked their way nearer, touching him here and there, probing the outside edges of the form his body made. She was aware of his waking, examining the bonds of the prison she had created for him. She had him solidly wrapped in the corner of the web she had constructed around him, pulling him up from the floor in her spider way. As she moved he saw a fine silk sac hanging a few feet from his head. It swayed back and forth, a silken womb in a darkened room. He shuddered at the thought of what was in there, thousands of tiny round spider eggs in the sac. His body jerked violently and tears ran from his eyes as he became acutely aware of his rightful place in the scheme of things. A shrieking in his head wailed, “Food chain, spider brain!”
Wulf’s mind careened out of control. He babbled incoherently as he felt it let go. He was gone and that was so fine, until the nightmare was over. His body ached so terribly in forever places. He wondered if he was screaming. He needed to be screaming. His body telegraphed movement, a tugging on the strands of silk holding him in its mortal embrace. Ignoring the pain, he twisted his head around. His eyes came to rest on the dripping fangs of his captor. There was a wildly squirming bat hanging from them. It was still very much alive. Through the fuzz of his vision Wulf could see she hadn’t yet begun the process of draining the life fluids from its flying rat body. Its small beady eyes were shock-glazed over. Its filthy little fuzzy chest was rising and falling rapidly, the trip hammer of its heart beating double time with the effort of its futile struggle.
Wulf giggled and burbled, “Die Mister Bat.” His body shook with his unwarranted and completely senseless fear of the tiny winged animal. The inside of his half-crazed mind exploded with the absurd command, “Just eat the fucking thing you spider bitch!” He attempted to close his eyes but they were fastened on the doomed creature, mesmerized by its death throes. He felt hate in his soul for the merciless glistening fangs that held the poor damned thing. He would soon bear witness his own impending death. His other mind spoke, “We are one little flying bat.” The voice whispered in his head, “Our twin fates are sealed and so be it. You will haunt me no more. We will hold our eyes open in the face of eternity, at the feast on our mortality. You are fortunate to be first, then done and through with her spider madness!”
As if she could read his thoughts, the spider inched forward, legs lifting high in her exaggerated spider-stepping. She was smooth and then stopped in a strobe-light danse of evil. Wulf heard all the things she did in a halting slow motion, the monster sound of her demented movements, smooth and whispers, whispers, bitch!
The bat gave a terrified squeal as she hooked it with the mating claw of her front leg and sprang at Wulf. She was much quicker than his horrified mind could assimilate. He was slipping away, freefalling into a lunatic void. She wrapped herself around his head, the stiffness of his filthy matted hair, the stinking scent of her spider musk assailing him. He howled at her and into her as she shoved the struggling and bleeding bat into his mouth. She held him open with her claws, entering him, shoving the pathetic creature down his constricting throat. His choking and gagging were of no consequence to her. Against every bit of will he had left, he felt his throat accept what she offered, his body swallowing. She pulled herself from inside him, slammed his mouth shut, wrapped her body tightly around his face. She held him thus until his retching and heaving subsided. Wulf was a bit of prey in her embrace, a necessary link in the chain of her evolution, mutation. He was an unwilling patient, a prisoner in her bleeding hospital. He would eat when she decided to feed him. And feed him she did. He spent the remainder of the most terrifying night of his life being fattened up on bats and spider milk, whatever else she found trapped and squirming in her killing web. The fight had gone out of him but she took no chances, held him fast. He drank of her with his lips, his tongue probing the sac of her juice, sucking her dry. She held his head in a warm embrace, tending to him constantly, taking no nourishment herself. She was preparing for the long sleep. Her purpose for living was nearly over, eternity close at hand.
Wulf’s hairy hostess finally decided he had been fed enough. Perhaps she had simply run out of squirming, struggling, scratching and bleeding things to shove down his whore of a throat. She busied herself with repairs to her web, strengthening it where it attached to the floor and the wall. Wulf stared wide-eyed, with a morbid sense of fascination and impending doom as she worked. He watched as her abdominal spinnerets spewed forth fine silk, wrapping unidentifiable things, patching rents in the web and tending to the cocoon-like sac of her young. Her eight legs never stopped moving. They were a thousand fold, scratching and brutally raping the mouth and throat of him. Now that she had left him alone he teetered on the very fringe of madness. He was nauseated by the writhing, biting and body fluids leaking, filthy crawling things of the earth he had been force fed. That is very well and good, his mind told itself. You don’t have to accept her offerings like the whore of your body. He watched her sac of eggs hanging, a bag of death swinging back and forth, slow/fast in reaction to her movements and his mind crashed, took a wild turn into and upon itself.
She was busier than ever all at once, the womb sac swaying madly, touching the web at each end of its arc. Pendulum, Wulf thought, pendulum. In his fresh terror he imagined the tens of thousands of baby wolf spiders clawing their way out of their eggs. They would use their tiny egg tooth, sharp and already starving desperate mean. Their spider legs would crawl up and out of the sac, through its thin wall of Mother’s silk. They would be hungry, no, starving, voraciously starving, injecting their tiny needle fangs into him, twenty thousand of their needles, fastening themselves to every available surface area on his body, eyes, face, genitals. And inside, drinking the essence of his mortal life from the inside and out, outside and in, eating him alive in slow painful little pieces.
In addition to being bound so securely he could barely breathe, his body was overcome with a debilitating numbness. Through the impenetrable veil of his senses Wulf attempted to peer inside to figure a way out of the fix he was in. His body was heavy, like a dead weight dropped into the bottom of a very dry well. His mind process was dull and thick, syrup being pushed up the outside of a pitcher, running down and over itself, coagulating, blood black and refusing to flow, pushed back and nowhere to go. He was a slug but no, if he knew he was a slug then a slug he could not be could he. Does a slug know it is a slug? “Stop it!” his mind screamed into itself, “I am a slug, a blithering, crawling and mindless slug!” Wulf’s mind was screeching and convulsing, a manic mammal thing attempting to breathe under water. Wulf attempted to speak through his dumb lips. A stream of thick and stringy mucus dribbled down his chin. There was a terrible shrieking and howling down the interior walls of his brain but no voice sound issued forth, only a slow gurgling moan from the purple black depths, the bleeding wounds on his spirit, screaming and wailing, the thunderous din of silence, impossible death in the womb. Twin yellow and green, red streaked rivers, flowed down and over, scabbing on his cracked and bleeding lips. He pushed against the door of his coffin, the tons of earth on top of it crushing him. Then he dragged a breath from the very depths of himself to create the tiniest of bubbles, then another and another. He rejoiced as slobber puke slid past his lips, rolled across his chin and then it was gone, plop, plop, plop.
He was suffering low, shivering and shaking, throbbing sensations wringing him washrag out. Just there was his right forearm. He could barely see it from the awkward position of his head, twisted and suspended in the wicked lady’s web. That arm is me, he thought, reveling in the connecting pain and sight of it, confirmations of his physical existence and mental connectedness. He squinted his eyes, forcing them into a quivering, slipping focus. Through the near opaque screen of his sight Wulf saw two punctures there, twin volcanoes, purple mounds oozing, erupting. Her fangs had entered him there, raping through the surface of his skin, the placenta of his spirit, having her way with him, going in and in, taking him where, where.
Cranial Loop
~don’t turn out the lights~
~she cried~
~I’m lost, I’m lost~
~& gone inside~
~chapter one~
~friends, forever friends~
“If you can see across it, it’s not a river; it’s a crick.”
Emily giggled. “What made you say that, Basil?”
“I overheard a couple of guys arguing in class,” Basil replied. “One was from Mississippi and the other from Texas. The Mississippi guy, from Biloxi if I heard right, made the statement as a means to setting the Texas guy straight as to the relative size difference between the Mississippi and the Rio Grande.”
“That’s a funny statement,” Emily said, “But rivers are rivers and creeks are creeks.”
Basil stared rapt into Emily’s dark exotic eyes. He lay on a blanket at the river’s edge. She sat next to him there and, through its reflection on her eyes, he watched her watch it flow. “There!” she said suddenly. “Look, Basil! Hedgeny’s nearly halfway across already!” She nudged him playfully in the ribs with a bare foot. “Turn around and look, you silly!”
Basil, though tired of Hedgeny’s showing off, could deny Emily nothing. He turned, elbows to the ground, chin resting on his hands, and stared across the river. “He’s a good swimmer,” Basil acknowledged in a flat monotone voice.
“He’s a good swimmer,” Emily parroted. “Hedgeny is a magnificent athlete, Basil, world class and you know it.” She glanced pensively at her friend. “You aren’t jealous of Hedgeny, are you, Basil? It would be so unlike you.”
“What, jealous? Me?” Basil laughed. He flopped over on his back, posed his arms and legs at odd angles. “I can’t even swim.”
“But you are funny,” Emily giggled, “And the smartest man I know.”
Basil stood up and performed an exaggerated march in place, bony knees pumping up and down. “I gots de brains and he gots de brawn. Let de lady decide whose side she’s on.”
“Basil, you shouldn’t make fun of yourself,” Emily said sternly. “We’re a trio, you, Hedgeny and me. I could never make a choice between the two of you. You know that, don’t you?”
So they were, since arriving at the University a year ago. All three were enrolled in classes in the Department of Psychiatry. Basil and Emily had earned full academic scholarships and chosen to pursue careers in psychiatry and/or psychology. Hedgeny was an athlete, plain and simple. Psychiatry made as much sense to him as anything else as far as academics went. Someone had told him it would be easier and more open than other fields of study. Basil had fallen in love with Emily the moment he laid eyes on her. Shy by nature, he was hard put to so much as say hello.
Hedgeny had literally made a dramatic splash within a few days of arriving at the school by throwing himself into the swift flowing river at the edge of its campus and swimming across. He had talked it up a bit, so there were students watching from the moment he took his dive. Swimming across the river was a feat unparalleled in the centuries old history of the school. Though it was explicitly against the rules, each year a handful of students risked body and limb and a stern rebuke from school authorities to try their hand at reaching the other side. Over the years, there were a few who perished in the attempt. This fact only seemed to fuel the desire of fresh young-bloods bent on doing the impossible.
Administrators at the school had heard the rumors about a possible new swimmer and weren’t especially surprised. They were at water’s edge as soon as word reached them the deed was under way. Each year they had boatmen posted to pluck the young men from the water (a girl had never been foolish enough to try the trick, according to local lore). The men at the oars would deliver the scamp to the custody of administrators who would see that justice was done. Their jaws dropped as Hedgeny accomplished the undoable. He reached the other side and waded up the bank. Their jaws dropped a notch further when he waved victoriously and dove back in the water. Hedgeny swam bravely, heroically even, courageous throughout the arduous trip back. He defied the white water, challenged it even. He dodged the boatmen, made sport of them and their feeble attempts to haul him out. To the utter amazement of everyone involved, except Hedgeny, he swam successfully to shore.
Quite a crowd had gathered by this time and the administrators were forced to pluck Hedgeny from a sea of his fawning peers. He was duly cited and assessed a stiff fine, which was eventually waived since he was, after all, attending University on a full athletic scholarship. He was also temporarily denied access to certain school clubs and scholastic organizations he had no interest in to begin with. He was, in fact, unaware of their existence until being notified he was temporarily exempt from partaking in their activities. He enjoyed many a laugh about this in local beer parlors where he spent a good part of his free time. An immediate hero and favorite, the irascible rebel, Hedgeny rarely had to put up the funds for his ale.
Gifted athlete and all around good guy, Hedgeny had his problems in the classroom. He frequently cut classes and was prone to cutting up and napping when he did appear. Various mentors and academic assistants were appointed him from the school’s athletic squads. The results were always the same. Hedgeny became mentor and involved his associates, who had few problems prior to associating with him, in his goodtime brawling antics. This became a cause of embarrassment in the academic community and threatened to besmirch the good name of the school. There were also certain legal arrangements (no one said bribes) and compromises made that were sure to raise eyebrows if they ever came to light.
The Head Man appointed a committee to deal with the problem of Hedgeny. They pondered the problem, hardly a new one but certainly challenging given Hedgeny’s appetites and proclivities. After some time, they came up with a new idea, a fresh approach to the problem. They proposed to query the leading academic male and female freshmen as to their willingness to coach and mentor the school’s prize athlete. Basil and Emily were at the very top of that list.
Basil was a bit confused and doubtful when first confronted with the prospect of conforming the notorious Hedgeny. He had no previous experience tutoring others and thought it highly unlikely the school’s most famous infamous would give a good whit for any advice or assistance he had to offer. When Emily was brought into the picture, Basil’s doubts washed away, so many worms in the gutter on a rainy day. Here was his chance to speak with her, to know her, to spend time with her. Basil spoke none of this, of course. He adjusted his round, wire-rimmed, glasses and said, “I’m willing to try to help him if she is. Together we might stand a chance.”
Thus did The Mighty Three come to exist. Who’s to say concerning the dynamics of human relationships. The bronzed Adonis, Hedgeny; diminutive princess, Emily; wise and scholarly, Basil, the three of them together became campus fixtures, the very in of the in crowd. Hedgeny bought the two of them their first beers and quickly discouraged anyone who slighted them in any way. Loving and protective, he would brook no opposition where they were concerned. Emily had Hedgeny reading and reciting poetry. Basil introduced him to the basics of physics, nothing too complicated and deep, the very basics but Hedgeny showed interest and that is all that mattered. His grades improved and he wasn’t nearly so inclined to wild troublemaking behavior while in the company of his two new friends. The administrators of the University breathed a collective sigh of relief.
The rewards to The Mighty Three were manifold. Emily and Basil, both extremely private people, found they enjoyed bits of the spotlight Hedgeny attracted wherever he went. Most times they could savor it a bit, then return to their rooms and private lives apart from Hedgeny. For his part, Hedgeny found that studies and attending class weren’t half bad with his two friends to help him along. At some level, fresh from childhood, the three of them realized their relationship was special. They might never again in their lives enjoy the closeness the three of them shared.
As for the University, prospects had never been brighter. Hedley’s past transgressions, swept under the carpet and behind them, his exploits on the field of athletics afforded the school world renown. They received unprecedented grants and endowments, found themselves wooed by media. World leaders petitioned the school to enroll their children. Most recently they broke ground and were in the process of having a domed stadium erected and… uh, a library. Hedgeny was an industry in his youth and glory, a cash cow they had paid highly for and intended to squeeze for every possible penny and prize. Ambitious and eager, they were fast becoming a machine; nothing and nobody could hinder their progress.
Yes, Basil watched Emily as she watched Hedgeny. Never spoken between the two of them, Basil knew what a man knows. He and Hedgeny were both and each, ass over tin cup, in love with Emily and had been from the start. A slight aggravation at first, his feelings for Emily had become an insurmountable problem over the past year. She didn’t seem to be aware of it or, if she was on to the fact, she was very good at hiding it. She made it known that she held them equal in her eyes, arm-in-arm at her sides.
Standing on the verge of the river, Basil made a gut-wrenching decision. They were beautiful, the two of them, Emily and Hedgeny, a paradigm as a couple. Basil was, had always known he was, odd man out. He needed to speak to Emily about his feelings but could not find the words. Hedgeny emerged on the far side and Emily clapped her hands gaily. He plunged into the water, began the journey back across. Basil touched Emily’s smooth and silky hair, light and loving, and simply walked away. There was nothing else for him to do.
Her voice, “Basil. Basil, where are you going? Basil! Come back to me, Basil!” pursued him. He would forever regret not returning to her side that fateful day.
But that was yesterday. His whole world was yesterday, or so it seemed as he sat in Emily’s room. His eyes scanned the banks of lights, red and green, monitors and tonal devices. Professor Grimes appeared. He gave Basil’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “She’s asleep, son. For all we know, she’s just asleep. She might wake up any moment now. You need some rest. Why don’t you turn in, call it a night? Tomorrow, if she’s up to it, we’ll bundle Emily up and you can take her out for some fresh air.” Basil tried to speak but, unable to make the words, got up and left the room. Having never questioned God, he did so now. How could a bright promise, a vital source of life like Emily, go to sleep and simply not wake up in the morning? Why not him? Why not Hedgeny?
Hedgeny. Basil grabbed a jacket and headed for the bar rooms, certain he would find his friend there. Hedgeny was never hard to find. He was at the second booze house Basil checked. The music pounded through the place and there, in the center of its mob of patrons, was Hedgeny. He was uproariously drunk and howling like a wolf. Basil edged his way through the crowd and approached his friend. Hedgeny squinted his eyes. “Basil! Buddy! Hey, whaddya wanna drink? Hey, bartender, gi’ my friend, Basil, a drink, anything ‘e wants!”
Basil turned to walk away and Hedgeny grabbed his arm. “Let me go, please,” Basil said softly. “I need to talk to you but it’s obvious that now is not the time. I’ll find you tomorrow. I can see you’re busy right now.”
Hedgeny threw an arm around Basil’s waist and propelled him toward the bar. “It’s about our l’il girl, ain’t it? She’s gonna be all right, Buddy; our Emmy’s gonna be all right, you’ll see. Have a drink. It’ll make ya feel better.”
Basil sat down on a stool and waited for a pause in the music. He looked Hedgeny in the eye. “What did Emily say after I left her at the river? Was she angry with me? Do you have any idea what time she got home or what happened to her?”
Hedgeny slammed a fist into the bar. “Get us some drinks over here!” He glanced at Basil, then stared balefully across the room. “She didn’t say nothin’, man, just that she was tired and was goin’ home to get some rest. I had to do the same thing so I’d be ready for the big game today. I was readier ‘n ever too, ran all over their sorry asses!”
Basil stood up and shook his head sadly. “I have to go.”
“Whatever,” Hedgeny pouted. “Tell Emmy I’ll be up to visit. Hey Basil, it ain’t like she’s dead or somethin’. She’ll come out of it, you’ll see.”
But Emily didn’t come out of it. Basil got himself appointed Professors’ Assistant and managed to spend time with her every day. Her family had decided to commit her to the psychiatric ward at the University. What better place was there for her to be? This was her chosen place, where she went to sleep. It was their deepest hope that one day she’d wake up from her perpetual night of sleep.
Hedgeny never visited and, other than hearing exalted reports of his athletic prowess, Basil lost all contact with him. He entertained a plethora of melancholy thoughts concerning his old friend, memories of the happy days he and Emily had spent with him. He had studied the grief process and was aware there were as many ways of dealing with it as there were people grieving. His way was deep and thoughtful, a resounding weep. Hedgeny’s was forgetting himself in drunken brawls and pounding opponents into the field of play.
Emily had been comatose for a couple of months when Professor Grimes approached Basil. There was an experimental procedure, the Cranial Loop, that he and his colleagues had been practicing in the lab for a couple of years. It involved the simultaneous electromagnetic stimulation of the paired sets of cranial nerves where they pass through the openings in the skull. Emily’s family had read about the procedure, researched it, and petitioned the University to implement it in her case.
“But Professor Grimes,” Basil protested, “This procedure has only been used on monkeys and rats. From what you have told me, it has a very limited success rate.”
Professor Grimes nodded his head in agreement. “Frankly, I don’t have much confidence in the procedure in this case. On the other hand, I don’t believe it would cause further harm to Emily. That is exactly the point the family makes in favor of implementing it. If it has no effect, we’re back where we started. As they see it, they have nothing to lose and Emily’s life to gain.”
“But what if…” Basil began.
“What if,” Professor Grimes repeated. “That’s the nature of our business, my boy. I have mixed feelings on this issue, especially where Emily is concerned. If the Medical Association and the University agree to proceed, I’ll take on the task because I’m the man for the job. Fact is, the longer Emily remains comatose, the further she is from us. It’s a difficult call to make and I’m glad I’m not the one has to do it. I just wanted you to know what’s going on so it doesn’t come as a complete shock to you if it should come to pass. I know how dedicated you are to Emily.” He laid a hand on Basil’s shoulder. “I know how much you love her.”
“How does one go to sleep,” Basil wept, “And not die but simply never wake up.”
“Toss that one in with the what-ifs,” Professor Grimes replied. “Ours is a legend of shadows.”
Basil visited Emily and placed her in a wheelchair to take for walks whenever he got the chance. With Professor Grimes’ permission, he did so this day. He struggled with the wheelchair across the rough turf to the river’s edge, knelt before her and took her hands in his own. He kissed the backs of them lightly. “I have loved you from the first moment I saw you,” he spoke into her face. He went on to explain to Emily all he knew about the Cranial Loop, her family’s hopes and his fears.
Having concluded his medical explanation and avowal of love, Basil released Emily’s limp and unresponsive hands. He stood up and stared wistfully down the river. “I swear Emily, when I heard about your condition I began to deny a God I felt I’d known all my life. Yet you are here and, so long as you are, I will hope. That hope has renewed my faith and I pray every day that God will return you to our world.” He turned to face her. A breeze blew a wisp of hair across her forehead. “Emily, this is hard for me to say but I must. If you are afraid of the Cranial Loop or grow weary of lying in that bed all day; if you are in pain or distress and wish for it to be over, give me a sign. I will tie myself to your chair and roll us into the river. I cannot and will not go on without you.”
Basil’s heart broke as a single word, a name, blew through his mind, “Hedgeny.” There was no denying the sound of Emily’s sweet voice. How it reached him was a mystery because she sat stone still between the wheels of her chair. His eyes having never left her face, he was sure the sound didn’t issue from her mouth. Basil turned the chair around and pushed Emily back to the psychiatric ward. He helped the nurse put her into her bed, then returned to the dorm and his studies. Emily’s voice haunted him through the long night. He lay there half dazed and questioning his own sanity and tenuous hold on life.
A week later the Cranial Loop Procedures commenced. Professor Grimes insisted that they only be initiated twice weekly and the initial electrical impulses be as minute as possible. He refused to take any chances or to endanger his patient in any foreseeable way. In his words, “Time is on our side here.” Emily was stable and relatively healthy. No one used the phrase ‘brain dead’ but each and every one involved had felt it crawl through their consciousness.
Basil argued long and hard to be allowed to assist in the treatments but to no avail. Grimes was adamant in his refusal. He relented a bit in the end and agreed to allow Basil to observe upon his solemn promise not to interfere in any way. The Professor also agreed to allow Basil to accompany him to the Operating Theater to assist in setting up the equipment for the procedure. Basil, curious by nature, wanted to know every minute detail of the Cranial Loop. Having Emily as the patient for the experiment only intensified his innate need to know.
The apparatus for the experiment was located in an operating theater three levels below the psychiatric building in a sub-basement. It was decided to perform the procedure there since moving and reassembling the Cranial Loop was bound to affect its performance and would take too much time in any case. Psyche students, Basil and Emily included, who had never visited the sub-basements, referred to them as ‘the dungeon’ or ‘the crypt’. He got a chill as he climbed into the tiny antiquated elevator with Professor Grimes. Grimes pulled the steel, floor-to-ceiling, scissors gate closed. He pressed a button for ‘down’ and another for ‘sub-level-three’ and the car started its descent with an abrupt jerking motion. “What’s in there?” Basil asked as they passed sub-levels one and two.
“Supplies,” Grimes replied, “Old furniture and the like, centuries of castoff medical equipment. You could probably fill a museum with all that old stuff.”
Basil wrinkled up his nose. “Smells like livestock.”
“That’s the lab animals,” Grimes explained. “Rats and monkeys, a couple of pigs. They’re kept on sub-level two.”
The elevator stopped with a jerk and the lights blinked off and on. “Not sure they’re supposed to do that,” Grimes commented. “They always do when you hit the bottom floor though.” Grimes pulled a large steel lever at one end of the elevator and held it down with his foot while he slid an iron keeper over it to hold it in place. “Mechanical brake,” he said to Basil. “If you forget to set that, the gates won’t open.” He chuckled a bit. “If you’re on one of the upper floors and don’t set the brake, the damned elevator won’t stay in place. There’s a massive coiled spring anchored into a pit underneath this thing, the latest in safety equipment a hundred years or so ago. I have the uneasy feeling it would likely go right through the floor of this thing should one ever be forced to depend on it.” He pulled back the scissors gate and Basil followed him into a dimly lit hallway.
“It’s dark down here,” Basil complained. “It’s cold and smells wet and fetid.”
Grimes clapped him on the back. “Welcome to my laboratory,” he said in his best Bela Lugosi voice. “C’mon Kid, lighten up. It’s much safer to bring Emily down here than it would be to move all the equipment upstairs and attempt to readjust it. The machine is very finicky. Emily’s wellbeing is my primary concern. The surgical arena cleaned up real well. It’s all stainless steel construction. You’ll feel better once we’re there.”
Basil followed Grimes through a labyrinth of hallways, curious at every turn but determined to be quiet and stop asking so many questions. The surgical area was just as the professor had described it. Its spotless stainless steel walls and ceiling shined like glass. Walking into the room, Basil felt like he was entering a house of mirrors. “Here she is!” Grimes stood proudly next to an iron chair. It was as spotlessly clean as the room but dark and sinister in appearance as far as Basil was concerned. “Don’t worry, Basil,” Grimes responded to the concern evident on his favorite student’s face. “We’ll line it with pillows, nice and soft, for Emily.”
Basil watched attentively as Grimes went through his pre-procedural checklist. Grimes gave a professional instructor’s play-by-play while he flipped switches, adjusted valves, and consulted monitors. His clinical presence and professional detached demeanor impressed Basil. Professor Grimes was a man in his element. The phone rang and Grimes picked up. “Very good, we’re ready,” he said into the receiver. There was a chair positioned a couple of yards before and facing the Cranial Loop apparatus. Grimes hung up the phone and gestured for Basil to take a seat. “The attendants are on their way with Emily,” he said. “Sit down and relax, my boy. It’ll be over before you know it.”
~she cried~
~I’m lost, I’m lost~
~& gone inside~
~chapter one~
~friends, forever friends~
“If you can see across it, it’s not a river; it’s a crick.”
Emily giggled. “What made you say that, Basil?”
“I overheard a couple of guys arguing in class,” Basil replied. “One was from Mississippi and the other from Texas. The Mississippi guy, from Biloxi if I heard right, made the statement as a means to setting the Texas guy straight as to the relative size difference between the Mississippi and the Rio Grande.”
“That’s a funny statement,” Emily said, “But rivers are rivers and creeks are creeks.”
Basil stared rapt into Emily’s dark exotic eyes. He lay on a blanket at the river’s edge. She sat next to him there and, through its reflection on her eyes, he watched her watch it flow. “There!” she said suddenly. “Look, Basil! Hedgeny’s nearly halfway across already!” She nudged him playfully in the ribs with a bare foot. “Turn around and look, you silly!”
Basil, though tired of Hedgeny’s showing off, could deny Emily nothing. He turned, elbows to the ground, chin resting on his hands, and stared across the river. “He’s a good swimmer,” Basil acknowledged in a flat monotone voice.
“He’s a good swimmer,” Emily parroted. “Hedgeny is a magnificent athlete, Basil, world class and you know it.” She glanced pensively at her friend. “You aren’t jealous of Hedgeny, are you, Basil? It would be so unlike you.”
“What, jealous? Me?” Basil laughed. He flopped over on his back, posed his arms and legs at odd angles. “I can’t even swim.”
“But you are funny,” Emily giggled, “And the smartest man I know.”
Basil stood up and performed an exaggerated march in place, bony knees pumping up and down. “I gots de brains and he gots de brawn. Let de lady decide whose side she’s on.”
“Basil, you shouldn’t make fun of yourself,” Emily said sternly. “We’re a trio, you, Hedgeny and me. I could never make a choice between the two of you. You know that, don’t you?”
So they were, since arriving at the University a year ago. All three were enrolled in classes in the Department of Psychiatry. Basil and Emily had earned full academic scholarships and chosen to pursue careers in psychiatry and/or psychology. Hedgeny was an athlete, plain and simple. Psychiatry made as much sense to him as anything else as far as academics went. Someone had told him it would be easier and more open than other fields of study. Basil had fallen in love with Emily the moment he laid eyes on her. Shy by nature, he was hard put to so much as say hello.
Hedgeny had literally made a dramatic splash within a few days of arriving at the school by throwing himself into the swift flowing river at the edge of its campus and swimming across. He had talked it up a bit, so there were students watching from the moment he took his dive. Swimming across the river was a feat unparalleled in the centuries old history of the school. Though it was explicitly against the rules, each year a handful of students risked body and limb and a stern rebuke from school authorities to try their hand at reaching the other side. Over the years, there were a few who perished in the attempt. This fact only seemed to fuel the desire of fresh young-bloods bent on doing the impossible.
Administrators at the school had heard the rumors about a possible new swimmer and weren’t especially surprised. They were at water’s edge as soon as word reached them the deed was under way. Each year they had boatmen posted to pluck the young men from the water (a girl had never been foolish enough to try the trick, according to local lore). The men at the oars would deliver the scamp to the custody of administrators who would see that justice was done. Their jaws dropped as Hedgeny accomplished the undoable. He reached the other side and waded up the bank. Their jaws dropped a notch further when he waved victoriously and dove back in the water. Hedgeny swam bravely, heroically even, courageous throughout the arduous trip back. He defied the white water, challenged it even. He dodged the boatmen, made sport of them and their feeble attempts to haul him out. To the utter amazement of everyone involved, except Hedgeny, he swam successfully to shore.
Quite a crowd had gathered by this time and the administrators were forced to pluck Hedgeny from a sea of his fawning peers. He was duly cited and assessed a stiff fine, which was eventually waived since he was, after all, attending University on a full athletic scholarship. He was also temporarily denied access to certain school clubs and scholastic organizations he had no interest in to begin with. He was, in fact, unaware of their existence until being notified he was temporarily exempt from partaking in their activities. He enjoyed many a laugh about this in local beer parlors where he spent a good part of his free time. An immediate hero and favorite, the irascible rebel, Hedgeny rarely had to put up the funds for his ale.
Gifted athlete and all around good guy, Hedgeny had his problems in the classroom. He frequently cut classes and was prone to cutting up and napping when he did appear. Various mentors and academic assistants were appointed him from the school’s athletic squads. The results were always the same. Hedgeny became mentor and involved his associates, who had few problems prior to associating with him, in his goodtime brawling antics. This became a cause of embarrassment in the academic community and threatened to besmirch the good name of the school. There were also certain legal arrangements (no one said bribes) and compromises made that were sure to raise eyebrows if they ever came to light.
The Head Man appointed a committee to deal with the problem of Hedgeny. They pondered the problem, hardly a new one but certainly challenging given Hedgeny’s appetites and proclivities. After some time, they came up with a new idea, a fresh approach to the problem. They proposed to query the leading academic male and female freshmen as to their willingness to coach and mentor the school’s prize athlete. Basil and Emily were at the very top of that list.
Basil was a bit confused and doubtful when first confronted with the prospect of conforming the notorious Hedgeny. He had no previous experience tutoring others and thought it highly unlikely the school’s most famous infamous would give a good whit for any advice or assistance he had to offer. When Emily was brought into the picture, Basil’s doubts washed away, so many worms in the gutter on a rainy day. Here was his chance to speak with her, to know her, to spend time with her. Basil spoke none of this, of course. He adjusted his round, wire-rimmed, glasses and said, “I’m willing to try to help him if she is. Together we might stand a chance.”
Thus did The Mighty Three come to exist. Who’s to say concerning the dynamics of human relationships. The bronzed Adonis, Hedgeny; diminutive princess, Emily; wise and scholarly, Basil, the three of them together became campus fixtures, the very in of the in crowd. Hedgeny bought the two of them their first beers and quickly discouraged anyone who slighted them in any way. Loving and protective, he would brook no opposition where they were concerned. Emily had Hedgeny reading and reciting poetry. Basil introduced him to the basics of physics, nothing too complicated and deep, the very basics but Hedgeny showed interest and that is all that mattered. His grades improved and he wasn’t nearly so inclined to wild troublemaking behavior while in the company of his two new friends. The administrators of the University breathed a collective sigh of relief.
The rewards to The Mighty Three were manifold. Emily and Basil, both extremely private people, found they enjoyed bits of the spotlight Hedgeny attracted wherever he went. Most times they could savor it a bit, then return to their rooms and private lives apart from Hedgeny. For his part, Hedgeny found that studies and attending class weren’t half bad with his two friends to help him along. At some level, fresh from childhood, the three of them realized their relationship was special. They might never again in their lives enjoy the closeness the three of them shared.
As for the University, prospects had never been brighter. Hedley’s past transgressions, swept under the carpet and behind them, his exploits on the field of athletics afforded the school world renown. They received unprecedented grants and endowments, found themselves wooed by media. World leaders petitioned the school to enroll their children. Most recently they broke ground and were in the process of having a domed stadium erected and… uh, a library. Hedgeny was an industry in his youth and glory, a cash cow they had paid highly for and intended to squeeze for every possible penny and prize. Ambitious and eager, they were fast becoming a machine; nothing and nobody could hinder their progress.
Yes, Basil watched Emily as she watched Hedgeny. Never spoken between the two of them, Basil knew what a man knows. He and Hedgeny were both and each, ass over tin cup, in love with Emily and had been from the start. A slight aggravation at first, his feelings for Emily had become an insurmountable problem over the past year. She didn’t seem to be aware of it or, if she was on to the fact, she was very good at hiding it. She made it known that she held them equal in her eyes, arm-in-arm at her sides.
Standing on the verge of the river, Basil made a gut-wrenching decision. They were beautiful, the two of them, Emily and Hedgeny, a paradigm as a couple. Basil was, had always known he was, odd man out. He needed to speak to Emily about his feelings but could not find the words. Hedgeny emerged on the far side and Emily clapped her hands gaily. He plunged into the water, began the journey back across. Basil touched Emily’s smooth and silky hair, light and loving, and simply walked away. There was nothing else for him to do.
Her voice, “Basil. Basil, where are you going? Basil! Come back to me, Basil!” pursued him. He would forever regret not returning to her side that fateful day.
But that was yesterday. His whole world was yesterday, or so it seemed as he sat in Emily’s room. His eyes scanned the banks of lights, red and green, monitors and tonal devices. Professor Grimes appeared. He gave Basil’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “She’s asleep, son. For all we know, she’s just asleep. She might wake up any moment now. You need some rest. Why don’t you turn in, call it a night? Tomorrow, if she’s up to it, we’ll bundle Emily up and you can take her out for some fresh air.” Basil tried to speak but, unable to make the words, got up and left the room. Having never questioned God, he did so now. How could a bright promise, a vital source of life like Emily, go to sleep and simply not wake up in the morning? Why not him? Why not Hedgeny?
Hedgeny. Basil grabbed a jacket and headed for the bar rooms, certain he would find his friend there. Hedgeny was never hard to find. He was at the second booze house Basil checked. The music pounded through the place and there, in the center of its mob of patrons, was Hedgeny. He was uproariously drunk and howling like a wolf. Basil edged his way through the crowd and approached his friend. Hedgeny squinted his eyes. “Basil! Buddy! Hey, whaddya wanna drink? Hey, bartender, gi’ my friend, Basil, a drink, anything ‘e wants!”
Basil turned to walk away and Hedgeny grabbed his arm. “Let me go, please,” Basil said softly. “I need to talk to you but it’s obvious that now is not the time. I’ll find you tomorrow. I can see you’re busy right now.”
Hedgeny threw an arm around Basil’s waist and propelled him toward the bar. “It’s about our l’il girl, ain’t it? She’s gonna be all right, Buddy; our Emmy’s gonna be all right, you’ll see. Have a drink. It’ll make ya feel better.”
Basil sat down on a stool and waited for a pause in the music. He looked Hedgeny in the eye. “What did Emily say after I left her at the river? Was she angry with me? Do you have any idea what time she got home or what happened to her?”
Hedgeny slammed a fist into the bar. “Get us some drinks over here!” He glanced at Basil, then stared balefully across the room. “She didn’t say nothin’, man, just that she was tired and was goin’ home to get some rest. I had to do the same thing so I’d be ready for the big game today. I was readier ‘n ever too, ran all over their sorry asses!”
Basil stood up and shook his head sadly. “I have to go.”
“Whatever,” Hedgeny pouted. “Tell Emmy I’ll be up to visit. Hey Basil, it ain’t like she’s dead or somethin’. She’ll come out of it, you’ll see.”
But Emily didn’t come out of it. Basil got himself appointed Professors’ Assistant and managed to spend time with her every day. Her family had decided to commit her to the psychiatric ward at the University. What better place was there for her to be? This was her chosen place, where she went to sleep. It was their deepest hope that one day she’d wake up from her perpetual night of sleep.
Hedgeny never visited and, other than hearing exalted reports of his athletic prowess, Basil lost all contact with him. He entertained a plethora of melancholy thoughts concerning his old friend, memories of the happy days he and Emily had spent with him. He had studied the grief process and was aware there were as many ways of dealing with it as there were people grieving. His way was deep and thoughtful, a resounding weep. Hedgeny’s was forgetting himself in drunken brawls and pounding opponents into the field of play.
Emily had been comatose for a couple of months when Professor Grimes approached Basil. There was an experimental procedure, the Cranial Loop, that he and his colleagues had been practicing in the lab for a couple of years. It involved the simultaneous electromagnetic stimulation of the paired sets of cranial nerves where they pass through the openings in the skull. Emily’s family had read about the procedure, researched it, and petitioned the University to implement it in her case.
“But Professor Grimes,” Basil protested, “This procedure has only been used on monkeys and rats. From what you have told me, it has a very limited success rate.”
Professor Grimes nodded his head in agreement. “Frankly, I don’t have much confidence in the procedure in this case. On the other hand, I don’t believe it would cause further harm to Emily. That is exactly the point the family makes in favor of implementing it. If it has no effect, we’re back where we started. As they see it, they have nothing to lose and Emily’s life to gain.”
“But what if…” Basil began.
“What if,” Professor Grimes repeated. “That’s the nature of our business, my boy. I have mixed feelings on this issue, especially where Emily is concerned. If the Medical Association and the University agree to proceed, I’ll take on the task because I’m the man for the job. Fact is, the longer Emily remains comatose, the further she is from us. It’s a difficult call to make and I’m glad I’m not the one has to do it. I just wanted you to know what’s going on so it doesn’t come as a complete shock to you if it should come to pass. I know how dedicated you are to Emily.” He laid a hand on Basil’s shoulder. “I know how much you love her.”
“How does one go to sleep,” Basil wept, “And not die but simply never wake up.”
“Toss that one in with the what-ifs,” Professor Grimes replied. “Ours is a legend of shadows.”
Basil visited Emily and placed her in a wheelchair to take for walks whenever he got the chance. With Professor Grimes’ permission, he did so this day. He struggled with the wheelchair across the rough turf to the river’s edge, knelt before her and took her hands in his own. He kissed the backs of them lightly. “I have loved you from the first moment I saw you,” he spoke into her face. He went on to explain to Emily all he knew about the Cranial Loop, her family’s hopes and his fears.
Having concluded his medical explanation and avowal of love, Basil released Emily’s limp and unresponsive hands. He stood up and stared wistfully down the river. “I swear Emily, when I heard about your condition I began to deny a God I felt I’d known all my life. Yet you are here and, so long as you are, I will hope. That hope has renewed my faith and I pray every day that God will return you to our world.” He turned to face her. A breeze blew a wisp of hair across her forehead. “Emily, this is hard for me to say but I must. If you are afraid of the Cranial Loop or grow weary of lying in that bed all day; if you are in pain or distress and wish for it to be over, give me a sign. I will tie myself to your chair and roll us into the river. I cannot and will not go on without you.”
Basil’s heart broke as a single word, a name, blew through his mind, “Hedgeny.” There was no denying the sound of Emily’s sweet voice. How it reached him was a mystery because she sat stone still between the wheels of her chair. His eyes having never left her face, he was sure the sound didn’t issue from her mouth. Basil turned the chair around and pushed Emily back to the psychiatric ward. He helped the nurse put her into her bed, then returned to the dorm and his studies. Emily’s voice haunted him through the long night. He lay there half dazed and questioning his own sanity and tenuous hold on life.
A week later the Cranial Loop Procedures commenced. Professor Grimes insisted that they only be initiated twice weekly and the initial electrical impulses be as minute as possible. He refused to take any chances or to endanger his patient in any foreseeable way. In his words, “Time is on our side here.” Emily was stable and relatively healthy. No one used the phrase ‘brain dead’ but each and every one involved had felt it crawl through their consciousness.
Basil argued long and hard to be allowed to assist in the treatments but to no avail. Grimes was adamant in his refusal. He relented a bit in the end and agreed to allow Basil to observe upon his solemn promise not to interfere in any way. The Professor also agreed to allow Basil to accompany him to the Operating Theater to assist in setting up the equipment for the procedure. Basil, curious by nature, wanted to know every minute detail of the Cranial Loop. Having Emily as the patient for the experiment only intensified his innate need to know.
The apparatus for the experiment was located in an operating theater three levels below the psychiatric building in a sub-basement. It was decided to perform the procedure there since moving and reassembling the Cranial Loop was bound to affect its performance and would take too much time in any case. Psyche students, Basil and Emily included, who had never visited the sub-basements, referred to them as ‘the dungeon’ or ‘the crypt’. He got a chill as he climbed into the tiny antiquated elevator with Professor Grimes. Grimes pulled the steel, floor-to-ceiling, scissors gate closed. He pressed a button for ‘down’ and another for ‘sub-level-three’ and the car started its descent with an abrupt jerking motion. “What’s in there?” Basil asked as they passed sub-levels one and two.
“Supplies,” Grimes replied, “Old furniture and the like, centuries of castoff medical equipment. You could probably fill a museum with all that old stuff.”
Basil wrinkled up his nose. “Smells like livestock.”
“That’s the lab animals,” Grimes explained. “Rats and monkeys, a couple of pigs. They’re kept on sub-level two.”
The elevator stopped with a jerk and the lights blinked off and on. “Not sure they’re supposed to do that,” Grimes commented. “They always do when you hit the bottom floor though.” Grimes pulled a large steel lever at one end of the elevator and held it down with his foot while he slid an iron keeper over it to hold it in place. “Mechanical brake,” he said to Basil. “If you forget to set that, the gates won’t open.” He chuckled a bit. “If you’re on one of the upper floors and don’t set the brake, the damned elevator won’t stay in place. There’s a massive coiled spring anchored into a pit underneath this thing, the latest in safety equipment a hundred years or so ago. I have the uneasy feeling it would likely go right through the floor of this thing should one ever be forced to depend on it.” He pulled back the scissors gate and Basil followed him into a dimly lit hallway.
“It’s dark down here,” Basil complained. “It’s cold and smells wet and fetid.”
Grimes clapped him on the back. “Welcome to my laboratory,” he said in his best Bela Lugosi voice. “C’mon Kid, lighten up. It’s much safer to bring Emily down here than it would be to move all the equipment upstairs and attempt to readjust it. The machine is very finicky. Emily’s wellbeing is my primary concern. The surgical arena cleaned up real well. It’s all stainless steel construction. You’ll feel better once we’re there.”
Basil followed Grimes through a labyrinth of hallways, curious at every turn but determined to be quiet and stop asking so many questions. The surgical area was just as the professor had described it. Its spotless stainless steel walls and ceiling shined like glass. Walking into the room, Basil felt like he was entering a house of mirrors. “Here she is!” Grimes stood proudly next to an iron chair. It was as spotlessly clean as the room but dark and sinister in appearance as far as Basil was concerned. “Don’t worry, Basil,” Grimes responded to the concern evident on his favorite student’s face. “We’ll line it with pillows, nice and soft, for Emily.”
Basil watched attentively as Grimes went through his pre-procedural checklist. Grimes gave a professional instructor’s play-by-play while he flipped switches, adjusted valves, and consulted monitors. His clinical presence and professional detached demeanor impressed Basil. Professor Grimes was a man in his element. The phone rang and Grimes picked up. “Very good, we’re ready,” he said into the receiver. There was a chair positioned a couple of yards before and facing the Cranial Loop apparatus. Grimes hung up the phone and gestured for Basil to take a seat. “The attendants are on their way with Emily,” he said. “Sit down and relax, my boy. It’ll be over before you know it.”
Chapter 1 - 6-28-2019
5-17-2019
Madman Chronicles: The Warrior
book II: Gordian Objective
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Gordian Objective is the second chronicle in the saga, Madman Chronicles: The Warrior. Wulf is taken to the labyrinth against his will to have a one on one conversation with Hood, a friend and fellow soldier who had gone MIA and was presumed killed in action. And the dead are many. They fill vehicles and buildings in every stage of decomposition. They’re steam-shoveled into piles, dumped into manmade canals then set on fire.
There is no escaping the prison of war. The house is on fire and children inside. Elders and warriors, fathers and mothers, caretakers are burdened with difficult life decisions at every turn of the wheel. Helpless in the face of a war machine that devours their young, soldiering; imprisoning and criminalizing those who refuse to serve when the only way out is money and they have none, the choice is to surrender them to the machine or strip them bare and drive them into the guns of those who set the house aflame to bring them to ground. They’re waiting just outside, brothers and sisters, others’ children, trained, locked, cocked and ready to drop the hammer on established targets, dissenters, children of rebels, heretics, those who refuse to take part in the braggadocio and glory of “We’re number one!”. The elders dig a hole, climb in and take the children, mothers, and the infirm with them. Warriors arm themselves as best they can, paint their skin, mount their dragons. Rats in a corner, a corner of their time and choosing, these warriors circle the hole, the digging of the hole, prepare to fight and die to protect those inside, one way in and no way out.
We hid in brown shirts until infiltrated.
A society that condones the death of children to convenience and war is lost.
There is no escaping the prison of war. The house is on fire and children inside. Elders and warriors, fathers and mothers, caretakers are burdened with difficult life decisions at every turn of the wheel. Helpless in the face of a war machine that devours their young, soldiering; imprisoning and criminalizing those who refuse to serve when the only way out is money and they have none, the choice is to surrender them to the machine or strip them bare and drive them into the guns of those who set the house aflame to bring them to ground. They’re waiting just outside, brothers and sisters, others’ children, trained, locked, cocked and ready to drop the hammer on established targets, dissenters, children of rebels, heretics, those who refuse to take part in the braggadocio and glory of “We’re number one!”. The elders dig a hole, climb in and take the children, mothers, and the infirm with them. Warriors arm themselves as best they can, paint their skin, mount their dragons. Rats in a corner, a corner of their time and choosing, these warriors circle the hole, the digging of the hole, prepare to fight and die to protect those inside, one way in and no way out.
We hid in brown shirts until infiltrated.
A society that condones the death of children to convenience and war is lost.
excerpt from Madman Chronicles: The Warrior Gordian Objective chapter thirty-five The Trouble with Luis
The patron’s handsome Native American face was a study of agony, eyes slammed tightly shut, voices of the centuries howling through his mind. To have found his Yllai after all these decades in the hands of her raper was very nearly more than he could stand. A quick and painful act of vengeance was required. Wild in his fury, he sentenced the rapist to be dealt with by the capable and practiced hands of Luis Vasquez, a master with no equal in the art of torture.
the extent
of one’s evil
is but a water mark
the flood of another
chapter thirty-five
The Trouble with Luis
‘There’s blood in my head,’ he thought, ‘An’ it’s three feet thick. An’ blood in my hands... too.. too much blood. Upside..upside. Upside down. My arm, oh God, my arm. Gotta get outa here. The walls, they’re closin’ in. I’m too fuckin’ scared to scream. That bitch... that bitch is gonna pay. Oh yeah, she’s gonna pay big time. Don’t see how he could hurt me anymore. My arm’s broke an’ I’m tied down like Jesus. What’s he doin’ with that camera, some kinda fuckin’ movie? Oh God, I hurt. This spik bastard has to have a weakness. I’ll wait, jus’ wait... Oh shit! Oh fuck! Here he comes!’
Luis set the tripod and adjusted the focus on the video camera. These caverns with their ingenious hoists and pulleys were fine for the business of torture but they just weren’t designed for movie making. There were no movies, no electricity, none of that when all of this had been built. ‘It would have been a good time to be alive,’ thought Luis, ‘a time fit for a man like me. Ah well, I will learn the buttons and the switches, just like I have learned everything else in my life, by using them’. He could have had someone else run the movie machine but it was his experience that most men didn’t have the stomach to even watch what was about to take place in this hidden cavern in the vault. Or else they enjoyed it too much, took pleasure from it. Luis chose not to be around such men. There was a piece of work to do here and he would do it. It was as simple as that. This man had hurt the Patron. For that sin he would pay dearly. Making him pay was the job at hand and Luis was just the man for the job. Oh yes, he always preferred to work alone.
This was Luis’ first experience with film making. In the past, the Patron would come watch for a while if he decided to take a personal interest in the proceedings. He was not a cruel man and most times chose not to watch. He knew the value of punishment, that a man in his position must mete it out. Luis had never witnessed the Patron partaking of any personal joy or fulfillment when punishment was administered. With this man it was different. Yes, he would be the exception to the general rule. The Patron would be very busy tonight, he had told Luis. This was an event he preferred to be able to savor over and over and it had to be taken care of immediately. So... the camera and the tripod. ‘Ah well,’ Luis thought, ‘It will prolong the man’s agony. Each time I change positions I will have to readjust the camera. He will be forced to wait, left dangling in my web. He must be a very bad man, something to do with the new girl. Ah well, torture is a fine art and I am a Picasso. My knife is my brush.’
Lance was suspended in a trestle-work, a rack of sorts. Luis liked to think of it as his web. Lance’s body hung spread-eagle, upside down. His feet and hands were fixed by tethers to the four corners of the works. There were a series of gears and checks to adjust the tightness of each tether singularly and a master gear to adjust them all at once. Lance began to moan loudly, a pitiful whining sound, almost liquid, slobbering from his mouth. Luis reached out and tightened the master gear a single click. This brought a blood-curdling scream from Lance.
Luis shook his head sadly. This one would not last. There was no bottom to the man. The Patron would surely be cheated of the satisfaction of a full treatment. De’ Angelo, now there was a good one. Most men from the South, that Luis had seen, could endure pain and come up spitting. They had bottom. And maybe this Wulf they spoke of, he sounded like a good one, the one the Patron referred to as Brother. Then there was the large one, the dark man. Luis allowed himself the luxury of a small smile as he thought of the giant. One day the large one would cross the Patron. On that day he would be handed over to Luis’ device. He would be careful with that one, guard against him in every way. He was a very dangerous hombre. Luis was a patient man and all he had to do was wait.
Ah, but the work at hand. Luis had hoped to save the iron masque for the taking of the tongue but the weak one kept crying out and sobbing. The masque would contain and quiet him, of that Luis was sure. Luis understood the masque as well as a man could hope to understand any tool of his trade. He had personally experienced its application a full score of years before and he would never forget the experience. The upper part of the masque screwed to the top of the head like a crown, while a hinged apparatus fell down to engage the chin. When the head and face were fixed in the iron masque, a small tubular guillotine affair would be forced into the mouth. The tongue would have nowhere to go except into the jaws of the guillotine. Once the tube was fastened to the masque, a simple lever would set the guillotine in motion. It would grip the tongue, stretch it out slowly and painfully until the guillotine severed it at its base. This routine was accomplished with much choking and gagging, the breaking of teeth. Once the masque and guillotine were in place, the subject was unable to cry out without choking himself. This was a benefit Luis especially appreciated, since he abhorred loud noises of any kind. Torture, in Luis’ opinion, should be endured in silence.
Luis zoomed the camera focus in on Lance’s head, then moved away from the tripod. He approached the man from behind and passed his knife before his eyes. “No, no, no!” Lance screamed. “Don’ use my knife! It ain’, it ain’, oh God, don’ use my knife!” Luis cocked his head and looked into the eyes of the man. He stroked Lance’s long brown hair to calm him, then jerked his head back and scalped him in one deft movement. His eyes never left the eyes of the man, even when they rolled back in his head as he passed out.
Luis held the bleeding scalp up in full view of the camera lens before laying it on a side table. Luis had never met a man he couldn’t look in the eye. He had stared silently into the eyes of the men who had taken his tongue. Many years later he had stared into those same eyes as he took their lives. The eye of the camera though, it bothered him. It was as if it were sucking at his soul, stealing the dark secrets there and in some unfathomable way compromising his art.
He took the iron masque from the table and screwed the crown in place. The man didn’t move but Luis knew he was alive because small pools of blood formed as he tightened the screws into his skull. The face lock squeaked as he lifted it up and clamped it firmly to the man’s jaw. Luis went to the table and returned with a can of oil, which he used to lubricate the moving parts of the masque and guillotine. He tightened the screws into the man’s jaw and adjusted the framework to accept a face with a wide-open mouth. Luis set the oilcan back on the table. He gave a slight shrug for the benefit of the camera and returned to the man with the tiny guillotine in one hand, the knife in the other.
He tapped Lance’s nose with the guillotine a few times and got no response. He shrugged his shoulders again and buried the blade of the knife in the man’s hand. As the man screamed, Luis slammed the guillotine into his mouth. It was a good scream, perhaps the perfect scream. It positioned the tongue just so, right where it needed to be. Luis checked and tightened all the thumbscrews on the iron masque as the man trembled in horror. He pulled the knife from the flesh of the man’s hand and watched as he choked and gagged, his body writhing and jumping, pulling against the tethers, shaking the trestle works.
The man held his eyes tightly shut as Luis dangled the knife above his head, allowing the blood to drip off the blade and form twin pools in the hollows of the man’s eye sockets. He blinked the blood away and closed his eyes tightly again. ‘This will not do,’ Luis thought as he listened to the sounds of the man’s eyes clicking and choking. He took a folding chair and set it up beneath the man’s head. He sat down and clamped the head between his knees as he pulled the eyelids up by their lashes. The knife came to his hand and, with a few deft cuts, the lids no longer belonged to the face of the man. Luis held the two spidery looking pieces of flesh up before the eye of the camera. He stood up and pushed the chair back with his foot before setting the man’s eyelids on the table next to his scalp.
The weak ones gave Luis a pain in the ass. They wreaked whatever havoc they chose, then howled like jackals in the jaws of the wolf when the tables were turned. Luis checked off the list in his mind. The tongue must be taken while the man is alive, since the integrity of the skull and face must be preserved. The taking of the skin was the fine art. This was where Luis excelled. This one was a unique challenge, since the lines of the cuts would be dictated by the lines of the man’s tattoo work. The coils of the snakes began at the navel and the crack of the man’s ass. They flowed into flames which licked at the base of his chin and the mounts of his ears.
‘If he were only strong,’ Luis thought, ‘It would be so simple, scalp, take the skin, castrate and remove tongue. But this man, he is weak. He will not be around for the best of it. This one won’t last. .Nah...’ Luis casually flipped a lever on the masque and the man’s tongue was gripped and pulled taut. It hung dripping from the masque. There was a small tinging sound as the guillotine severed it and released it to drop on the floor. Luis picked it up and held it in front of the camera. He twisted the man’s head around to face the lens and dangled his bloody tongue before his tortured lidless eyes.
Luis carried the tongue to the nearby table and dropped it into a large jar of formaldehyde. It left a series of tiny blood trails as it sank to the bottom. He picked up the eyelids and dropped them in as well, wondering if they would float. They did, like palm fronds on the face of the ocean. Luis saw this as a good omen. He felt the man’s eyes watching him. Good. That was as it should be. Maybe the man was stronger than he thought. Luis hardly ever wished he could speak, words having brought him the humiliation of his life, the taking of his tongue. And, in Luis’ opinion, actions spoke much louder than words in most cases. But now, just now, he would like to tell the man, ‘The best is yet to come. You have not begun to suffer yet.’
There was a fair amount of bleeding from the hand and scalp but that should cease when the man was turned over. Luis turned a large hand crank and the trestle works wound slowly around until the man was upright. Luis never thought of his victims by name. In most cases he didn’t even know their names. They were inanimate things to him, a blank canvas for the working of his art. He took a bucket of soapy liquid from under the table, the same liquid, in fact, that Misty had used to clean Angelo’s wound. The irony was not lost on Luis as he dipped a paintbrush into the bucket and used it to bathe the edges of the tattoo where the cuts would be made. The Artist required a clean canvas. The water was cold and goose flesh covered the man’s skin. Luis stopped abruptly and dropped the paintbrush into the bucket. ‘The camera,’ he thought, ‘The bleeding camera.’ He closed his eyes for a moment to compose himself, then went to make the necessary adjustments.
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Inquiries: [email protected]
©graphic artwork, music & words conceived by & property of
~tom (WordWulf) sterner~ 2016©
The patron’s handsome Native American face was a study of agony, eyes slammed tightly shut, voices of the centuries howling through his mind. To have found his Yllai after all these decades in the hands of her raper was very nearly more than he could stand. A quick and painful act of vengeance was required. Wild in his fury, he sentenced the rapist to be dealt with by the capable and practiced hands of Luis Vasquez, a master with no equal in the art of torture.
the extent
of one’s evil
is but a water mark
the flood of another
chapter thirty-five
The Trouble with Luis
‘There’s blood in my head,’ he thought, ‘An’ it’s three feet thick. An’ blood in my hands... too.. too much blood. Upside..upside. Upside down. My arm, oh God, my arm. Gotta get outa here. The walls, they’re closin’ in. I’m too fuckin’ scared to scream. That bitch... that bitch is gonna pay. Oh yeah, she’s gonna pay big time. Don’t see how he could hurt me anymore. My arm’s broke an’ I’m tied down like Jesus. What’s he doin’ with that camera, some kinda fuckin’ movie? Oh God, I hurt. This spik bastard has to have a weakness. I’ll wait, jus’ wait... Oh shit! Oh fuck! Here he comes!’
Luis set the tripod and adjusted the focus on the video camera. These caverns with their ingenious hoists and pulleys were fine for the business of torture but they just weren’t designed for movie making. There were no movies, no electricity, none of that when all of this had been built. ‘It would have been a good time to be alive,’ thought Luis, ‘a time fit for a man like me. Ah well, I will learn the buttons and the switches, just like I have learned everything else in my life, by using them’. He could have had someone else run the movie machine but it was his experience that most men didn’t have the stomach to even watch what was about to take place in this hidden cavern in the vault. Or else they enjoyed it too much, took pleasure from it. Luis chose not to be around such men. There was a piece of work to do here and he would do it. It was as simple as that. This man had hurt the Patron. For that sin he would pay dearly. Making him pay was the job at hand and Luis was just the man for the job. Oh yes, he always preferred to work alone.
This was Luis’ first experience with film making. In the past, the Patron would come watch for a while if he decided to take a personal interest in the proceedings. He was not a cruel man and most times chose not to watch. He knew the value of punishment, that a man in his position must mete it out. Luis had never witnessed the Patron partaking of any personal joy or fulfillment when punishment was administered. With this man it was different. Yes, he would be the exception to the general rule. The Patron would be very busy tonight, he had told Luis. This was an event he preferred to be able to savor over and over and it had to be taken care of immediately. So... the camera and the tripod. ‘Ah well,’ Luis thought, ‘It will prolong the man’s agony. Each time I change positions I will have to readjust the camera. He will be forced to wait, left dangling in my web. He must be a very bad man, something to do with the new girl. Ah well, torture is a fine art and I am a Picasso. My knife is my brush.’
Lance was suspended in a trestle-work, a rack of sorts. Luis liked to think of it as his web. Lance’s body hung spread-eagle, upside down. His feet and hands were fixed by tethers to the four corners of the works. There were a series of gears and checks to adjust the tightness of each tether singularly and a master gear to adjust them all at once. Lance began to moan loudly, a pitiful whining sound, almost liquid, slobbering from his mouth. Luis reached out and tightened the master gear a single click. This brought a blood-curdling scream from Lance.
Luis shook his head sadly. This one would not last. There was no bottom to the man. The Patron would surely be cheated of the satisfaction of a full treatment. De’ Angelo, now there was a good one. Most men from the South, that Luis had seen, could endure pain and come up spitting. They had bottom. And maybe this Wulf they spoke of, he sounded like a good one, the one the Patron referred to as Brother. Then there was the large one, the dark man. Luis allowed himself the luxury of a small smile as he thought of the giant. One day the large one would cross the Patron. On that day he would be handed over to Luis’ device. He would be careful with that one, guard against him in every way. He was a very dangerous hombre. Luis was a patient man and all he had to do was wait.
Ah, but the work at hand. Luis had hoped to save the iron masque for the taking of the tongue but the weak one kept crying out and sobbing. The masque would contain and quiet him, of that Luis was sure. Luis understood the masque as well as a man could hope to understand any tool of his trade. He had personally experienced its application a full score of years before and he would never forget the experience. The upper part of the masque screwed to the top of the head like a crown, while a hinged apparatus fell down to engage the chin. When the head and face were fixed in the iron masque, a small tubular guillotine affair would be forced into the mouth. The tongue would have nowhere to go except into the jaws of the guillotine. Once the tube was fastened to the masque, a simple lever would set the guillotine in motion. It would grip the tongue, stretch it out slowly and painfully until the guillotine severed it at its base. This routine was accomplished with much choking and gagging, the breaking of teeth. Once the masque and guillotine were in place, the subject was unable to cry out without choking himself. This was a benefit Luis especially appreciated, since he abhorred loud noises of any kind. Torture, in Luis’ opinion, should be endured in silence.
Luis zoomed the camera focus in on Lance’s head, then moved away from the tripod. He approached the man from behind and passed his knife before his eyes. “No, no, no!” Lance screamed. “Don’ use my knife! It ain’, it ain’, oh God, don’ use my knife!” Luis cocked his head and looked into the eyes of the man. He stroked Lance’s long brown hair to calm him, then jerked his head back and scalped him in one deft movement. His eyes never left the eyes of the man, even when they rolled back in his head as he passed out.
Luis held the bleeding scalp up in full view of the camera lens before laying it on a side table. Luis had never met a man he couldn’t look in the eye. He had stared silently into the eyes of the men who had taken his tongue. Many years later he had stared into those same eyes as he took their lives. The eye of the camera though, it bothered him. It was as if it were sucking at his soul, stealing the dark secrets there and in some unfathomable way compromising his art.
He took the iron masque from the table and screwed the crown in place. The man didn’t move but Luis knew he was alive because small pools of blood formed as he tightened the screws into his skull. The face lock squeaked as he lifted it up and clamped it firmly to the man’s jaw. Luis went to the table and returned with a can of oil, which he used to lubricate the moving parts of the masque and guillotine. He tightened the screws into the man’s jaw and adjusted the framework to accept a face with a wide-open mouth. Luis set the oilcan back on the table. He gave a slight shrug for the benefit of the camera and returned to the man with the tiny guillotine in one hand, the knife in the other.
He tapped Lance’s nose with the guillotine a few times and got no response. He shrugged his shoulders again and buried the blade of the knife in the man’s hand. As the man screamed, Luis slammed the guillotine into his mouth. It was a good scream, perhaps the perfect scream. It positioned the tongue just so, right where it needed to be. Luis checked and tightened all the thumbscrews on the iron masque as the man trembled in horror. He pulled the knife from the flesh of the man’s hand and watched as he choked and gagged, his body writhing and jumping, pulling against the tethers, shaking the trestle works.
The man held his eyes tightly shut as Luis dangled the knife above his head, allowing the blood to drip off the blade and form twin pools in the hollows of the man’s eye sockets. He blinked the blood away and closed his eyes tightly again. ‘This will not do,’ Luis thought as he listened to the sounds of the man’s eyes clicking and choking. He took a folding chair and set it up beneath the man’s head. He sat down and clamped the head between his knees as he pulled the eyelids up by their lashes. The knife came to his hand and, with a few deft cuts, the lids no longer belonged to the face of the man. Luis held the two spidery looking pieces of flesh up before the eye of the camera. He stood up and pushed the chair back with his foot before setting the man’s eyelids on the table next to his scalp.
The weak ones gave Luis a pain in the ass. They wreaked whatever havoc they chose, then howled like jackals in the jaws of the wolf when the tables were turned. Luis checked off the list in his mind. The tongue must be taken while the man is alive, since the integrity of the skull and face must be preserved. The taking of the skin was the fine art. This was where Luis excelled. This one was a unique challenge, since the lines of the cuts would be dictated by the lines of the man’s tattoo work. The coils of the snakes began at the navel and the crack of the man’s ass. They flowed into flames which licked at the base of his chin and the mounts of his ears.
‘If he were only strong,’ Luis thought, ‘It would be so simple, scalp, take the skin, castrate and remove tongue. But this man, he is weak. He will not be around for the best of it. This one won’t last. .Nah...’ Luis casually flipped a lever on the masque and the man’s tongue was gripped and pulled taut. It hung dripping from the masque. There was a small tinging sound as the guillotine severed it and released it to drop on the floor. Luis picked it up and held it in front of the camera. He twisted the man’s head around to face the lens and dangled his bloody tongue before his tortured lidless eyes.
Luis carried the tongue to the nearby table and dropped it into a large jar of formaldehyde. It left a series of tiny blood trails as it sank to the bottom. He picked up the eyelids and dropped them in as well, wondering if they would float. They did, like palm fronds on the face of the ocean. Luis saw this as a good omen. He felt the man’s eyes watching him. Good. That was as it should be. Maybe the man was stronger than he thought. Luis hardly ever wished he could speak, words having brought him the humiliation of his life, the taking of his tongue. And, in Luis’ opinion, actions spoke much louder than words in most cases. But now, just now, he would like to tell the man, ‘The best is yet to come. You have not begun to suffer yet.’
There was a fair amount of bleeding from the hand and scalp but that should cease when the man was turned over. Luis turned a large hand crank and the trestle works wound slowly around until the man was upright. Luis never thought of his victims by name. In most cases he didn’t even know their names. They were inanimate things to him, a blank canvas for the working of his art. He took a bucket of soapy liquid from under the table, the same liquid, in fact, that Misty had used to clean Angelo’s wound. The irony was not lost on Luis as he dipped a paintbrush into the bucket and used it to bathe the edges of the tattoo where the cuts would be made. The Artist required a clean canvas. The water was cold and goose flesh covered the man’s skin. Luis stopped abruptly and dropped the paintbrush into the bucket. ‘The camera,’ he thought, ‘The bleeding camera.’ He closed his eyes for a moment to compose himself, then went to make the necessary adjustments.
http://wordwulf.com
WordWulf
Inquiries: [email protected]
©graphic artwork, music & words conceived by & property of
~tom (WordWulf) sterner~ 2016©
Momma's Rain - Chapter One
Momma’s Rain (review)
by Martha A. Cheves, Author of Stir, Laugh, Repeat
“I was four-years-old in 1935. My mother took my twin brother and me to a mountain park in Colorado Springs for our birthday. It was July 31st, a hot and sultry summer day in Colorado. We rode ponies round and round the pony pole, my brother and me. I’ll never forget the flies, deer flies I think. They were huge and aggressive. They bit. After lunch Mother told me to go into the outhouse to go potty. I didn’t really have to go but would not consider speaking back to Mother ever, not in any way. She closed the door and I waited. When I tried to leave the shack with the dark stinky hole and light shooting through cracks in the wall, I discovered I was locked in. I began to cry. I never saw Mother again. I’ll never forget the flies, deer flies I think. They were huge and aggressive. They bit.” ‘This is the first story my uncle told me when I found him. That was in 1982 when I was nineteen-years-old. I was abandoned at Denver General Hospital in 1963 when I was born. My Mother put me up for adoption. She felt her eighth child should have a better chance in life then the seven before. Odd, but fitting, that I would find my uncle first when I came of age and went searching for my real family. He and I are the cull, those cut from the herd and left to forage on their own.’
It’s the winter of 1957 in Billings Montana. At seven years old, Tommy is the oldest child in the Sterner family. At this time, he has two younger brothers and a two year-old sister. But more will come, bringing the number of children in his family to seven, all before he reaches the age of twelve. Tommy’s dad is a roofer, a job that is dictated by the weather. He’s also an alcoholic and a mean one at that. Tommy’s brother Jackie as well as his mother can vouch for that. Almost daily Jackie will do something that his dad doesn’t like, leading to a beating with the belt and standing in the corner. And heaven forbid if he comes home drunk, looking for a fight. That's when Tommy's mother gets the bad end of his fist and boot.
Tommy’s mother, Carroll, is the glue that keeps the family together. She does everything she can to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. His dad, on the other hand, will blow every penny he can get his hands on to keep him in alcohol. The kids can go hungry and the landlord can evict them, as long as he has his drinking money. And that’s exactly what happened more often than not. They are constantly without food and being removed from their "living space" by the sheriff at the request of the owner.
Reading Momma’s Rain filled me with many feelings, most from my own childhood. When I was in elementary school there were kids that I feel sure fit in with the life led by Tommy and his family. And just as it happened, when Tommy went to school, we kept our distance from these kids. We never gave thought to the possibility that these kids were possibly being beaten at home, that they might be hungry, and not just hungry for food but also for a kind word and a little friendship. We never gave much thought that they might be smart, even smarter than we were. After all they had to be to survive what they went through daily.
Author Tom Sterner has written a book that will break the hearts of every reader. It will also wake the reader up to the injustice most of us seem to perform not only as children but also as adults. It’s made me see the man or woman on the street with a different eye. One with even more compassion for them and their challenge to survive. I recommend that you not only read Momma’s Rain but that you also teach the lessons learned to the kids and grandkids in your life.
Now I wait impatiently to read the continuation – Momma’s Fire. It can only get better for these kids, I hope.
349 Pages
http://www.wordwulf.com/store/c1/WordWulf $11.41
~paperback @ amazon~ $12.68~ ~Buy Kindle version here~ $2.99
by Martha A. Cheves, Author of Stir, Laugh, Repeat
“I was four-years-old in 1935. My mother took my twin brother and me to a mountain park in Colorado Springs for our birthday. It was July 31st, a hot and sultry summer day in Colorado. We rode ponies round and round the pony pole, my brother and me. I’ll never forget the flies, deer flies I think. They were huge and aggressive. They bit. After lunch Mother told me to go into the outhouse to go potty. I didn’t really have to go but would not consider speaking back to Mother ever, not in any way. She closed the door and I waited. When I tried to leave the shack with the dark stinky hole and light shooting through cracks in the wall, I discovered I was locked in. I began to cry. I never saw Mother again. I’ll never forget the flies, deer flies I think. They were huge and aggressive. They bit.” ‘This is the first story my uncle told me when I found him. That was in 1982 when I was nineteen-years-old. I was abandoned at Denver General Hospital in 1963 when I was born. My Mother put me up for adoption. She felt her eighth child should have a better chance in life then the seven before. Odd, but fitting, that I would find my uncle first when I came of age and went searching for my real family. He and I are the cull, those cut from the herd and left to forage on their own.’
It’s the winter of 1957 in Billings Montana. At seven years old, Tommy is the oldest child in the Sterner family. At this time, he has two younger brothers and a two year-old sister. But more will come, bringing the number of children in his family to seven, all before he reaches the age of twelve. Tommy’s dad is a roofer, a job that is dictated by the weather. He’s also an alcoholic and a mean one at that. Tommy’s brother Jackie as well as his mother can vouch for that. Almost daily Jackie will do something that his dad doesn’t like, leading to a beating with the belt and standing in the corner. And heaven forbid if he comes home drunk, looking for a fight. That's when Tommy's mother gets the bad end of his fist and boot.
Tommy’s mother, Carroll, is the glue that keeps the family together. She does everything she can to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. His dad, on the other hand, will blow every penny he can get his hands on to keep him in alcohol. The kids can go hungry and the landlord can evict them, as long as he has his drinking money. And that’s exactly what happened more often than not. They are constantly without food and being removed from their "living space" by the sheriff at the request of the owner.
Reading Momma’s Rain filled me with many feelings, most from my own childhood. When I was in elementary school there were kids that I feel sure fit in with the life led by Tommy and his family. And just as it happened, when Tommy went to school, we kept our distance from these kids. We never gave thought to the possibility that these kids were possibly being beaten at home, that they might be hungry, and not just hungry for food but also for a kind word and a little friendship. We never gave much thought that they might be smart, even smarter than we were. After all they had to be to survive what they went through daily.
Author Tom Sterner has written a book that will break the hearts of every reader. It will also wake the reader up to the injustice most of us seem to perform not only as children but also as adults. It’s made me see the man or woman on the street with a different eye. One with even more compassion for them and their challenge to survive. I recommend that you not only read Momma’s Rain but that you also teach the lessons learned to the kids and grandkids in your life.
Now I wait impatiently to read the continuation – Momma’s Fire. It can only get better for these kids, I hope.
349 Pages
http://www.wordwulf.com/store/c1/WordWulf $11.41
~paperback @ amazon~ $12.68~ ~Buy Kindle version here~ $2.99
Chapter One
Children in Passing
I don’t like country western music
Billings Montana
Winter, 1957
Momma and Daddy rolled their boy child’s lifeless body into a blanket. Daddy reared back and kicked the package a couple of times. It didn’t offer much resistance. Six-year-old Jackie weighed less than forty pounds and was just over three feet tall. Daddy’s foot almost went through him.
“Stop kicking it!” Momma pled. “We have to find a bridge to throw it off.”
“I’m whippin’ the l’il bastard’s ass one more time!” Daddy insisted, “L’il sumbitch thinks he can steal my lunch bread and get away with it. I’ll show ‘im!”
Jackie scrunched his eyes shut. His nose and cheeks were numb with cold, his face wedged in the corner, icy walls indifferent to his plight. Daddy had stuck him there hours ago, daring him to move, daring him to breathe. Daddy dared Jackie to even think. Jackie, lying little bastard he was, promised after each punch and slap from Daddy’s hand that he would never steal the family’s bread again. He would not move, he would not breathe, he would not think.
Jackie wiggled his nose, cringed inside, hoped no one noticed; he moved. His ribs hurt where Daddy kicked him when he fell down when Daddy hit him. They hurt so he breathed in shallow halting gasps of breath, cringed inside, hoped no one noticed; he breathed. Yes, he was a lying little bastard. He stood in the corners of this house, naked half the time and cold, imagined a plethora of scenarios of death, his own death at Daddy and Momma’s hands. The bridge was long and tall. Through a hole in the blanket, Jackie saw its steel girders high above, stabbing through clouds, wrapped in sunlight. They tossed him over the rail, Momma and Daddy, and walked arm-in-arm away. Lying little bastard that he was, he wasn’t dead. His broken body tumbled through the air, stones, muddy water rushing, weeds awaiting it. He scrunched his eyes shut, cringed inside, hoped no one noticed; he thought.
We lived in a cold little house, full of shadow and dark windows. Daddy was drunk there and Momma was crying. I loved my father and hated him for making Momma’s life miserable. Momma loved him too. I bit my lip and held my breath then went where I was forbidden to go. The door, usually stuck tight, opened easily. I took this as a good sign, darkness would accept me today. I slipped inside and eased the door closed, knowing my eyes would never adjust to the total pitch black but waiting anyway, standing on that top rickety step as soft things with sharp teeth scurried below.
A creature with many feathery legs lit on my forearm, skittered across the fine blonde hairs on the face of my skin, its movement lighter than breath. A terrified voice screamed inside me but no sound issued forth. I rubbed my arm on that spot, felt the tiny arc of weight the traveler of darkness made as it swung from a pendulum web it had launched from my skin.
“God’s creatures, never smite them walking, only if on your flesh or if they bite, then smite them and smite them well,” I muttered under my breath, repeating one of Grandma Webster’s lessons.
The odor in that place was darker than ink. I breathed in deep and took the first step down. What damp embrace the womb of that room promised. It was warm in its earthen reek of soil, timelessness and rotted root, kind to those that crawled and climbed, huddled in its midst. My boy hands grasped the wobbling plank at the side of the staircase. Its nails creaked in their steel-worm wooden homes when I leaned in and tested it with my full weight.
Feet hanging loose and free, I searched with a naked toe through the broken top of my shoe for the first of the climbing holes we’d made, me and my brother, Jackie. There and there, solid earth; I let loose the plank, felt my legs falling first then dropped to the earthen face of the floor. With my back to the wall, I finally let the tears come, hot and salty, forging watery paths down the dusty planes of my cheeks.
I was ashamed of my tears, knew I would be before they began but was unable to hold them back. This wasn’t my first experience with shame, I’d had many. It felt the same, humiliation and guilt. Seven years old, with two younger brothers and a baby sister of two, I was aware I needed to be brave. Crying would only make things worse; there was seldom a reward for tears. I hugged my legs up close to my chest then sobbed and sucked it in, a choking sound.
I held my breath when my ears picked up some sound outside myself. Squeak-squeak, squeak. I exhaled, a gasp, an audible sigh. I could hear the voice of Jackie in my head, my best brother and only friend, a year younger than myself, taunting me. I was older but Jackie knew things, uncomfortable things I would like to argue away, but couldn’t. I felt a smile tug at my lips as Jackie’s voice spoke in my head. “They’re doin’ it, Tommy. Long as they’re doin’ it, they won’t be botherin’ us. We’re safe now.”
I covered my ears with my hands, rocked back and forth in the dirt as the cadence of the squeaking increased. Dust drifted down from the floorboards above my head, a blessing of sorts from mother to son. I stood and brushed myself off, knowing she would seek me out after the squeaking. The climb holes were easy enough to find in the now not-so-dark. I poked my toes into them up until I could grab hold of the old plank with my hands.
I winced as a sliver of wood went in under the nail of my right index finger and broke off, embedding itself there. I took a deep breath, found the top climb holes with my toes and swung a foot up to the step. Thin shafts of light splashed their way from the kitchen through the top and bottom edges of the door. I found the knob with my throbbing hand, twisted and gave the door a slight nudge with my shoulder. It refused to budge. Now it was stuck.
I gritted my teeth and fought back the urge to cry out. Just as I was ready to give it another try, the door opened slowly and I almost fell into the kitchen. Momma stood there, a stern look on her face. She took a step back, hands on her hips.
“Tommy, you come out of there. How many times have I told you?” She paused then lifted her thin arms, summoned me to her. “You’ve been crying.”
Relief flooded over me and I fell into her embrace. The top of my head just reached her chin and I nestled in, wishing for time to stop, no words. Just hold me on the mercy of your sweet breast. Those were Grandma Webster’s words about Jesus but I thought of Momma when they came to mind.
She pushed me gently away. “What were you doing down there? If your dad ever catches you...”
I held up my throbbing finger. “It hurts.”
She took it between her hands and raised it toward her face. I giggled when her eyes crossed.
“What?” she demanded with mock sternness.
“Your eyes,” I replied. “They got all crossed up.”
She held my finger tightly with one hand and plucked deftly at the splinter with the other. Before I knew it, she’d kissed my injured fingertip and was pumping water, washing it off in the kitchen basin. “Now, what were those tears about?”
I held up my wounded hand. “It hurt real bad,” I explained.
“Don’t lie to me, Tommy,” she scolded. “You know you’re no good at it.”
I turned red and peeked down at my toes wiggling through the top of my shoe. “Why’d he have to whip Jackie so hard?”
Momma stood up straight, arms akimbo. “Your brother got what he deserved. He was caught sneaking into the bread. He ate the last two slices. What am I going to put in your Daddy’s lunch tomorrow? It’s cold on the roof and he needs food to keep himself going. We’re broke and he doesn’t get paid until the roof’s finished.”
“That’s why I was crying,” I said stubbornly, remembering the crack of the belt on Jackie’s bare skin while he bent over and held his ankles, trying not to fall over or cry, Daddy’s boots if and when he did.
Momma shook her head, frustrated. “I’m your mother; I don’t intend to stand around arguing with you about your brother. I’m going to lay down and have a nap. I have to go to work in a couple of hours. You keep an eye on your brothers and little Lily. Wake me up at six.” She went back into the bedroom with Daddy.
I left the tiny kitchen and went to the cramped living room, which served as day room and bedroom for Jackie, Phillip, Lily, and myself. We three boys slept on a convertible couch. Lily had a makeshift bed in an old dresser drawer. She was asleep and Phillip was sprawled out on the sofa. Jackie stood slumped in the corner where he’d been placed for further punishment. I decided to take a short nap myself. I laid down on the floor so as not to disturb Phillip. I bit down on my finger to alleviate the throbbing then put my arm under my head and sang myself to sleep. “I was born one mornin’ when the sun didn’t shine.” Sixteen Tons was my favorite song. It was playing on the country western radio.
At five-thirty I awoke and put a fire on low under the old tin metal coffee pot. I went back and sat on the end of the sofa, laid my hand on top of Jackie’s head. His carrot-red hair stuck out between my splayed fingers.
“Sorry he spanked you so hard,” I whispered. Jackie groaned and pressed his small thin face into the hard scratchy corner of the wall. His hands bunched up into fists and he pressed them into the corner, causing his shoulder blades to stick out. He looked like a broken bird to me, a plucked chicken, too skinny for anyone to consider eating.
A few minutes before six o’clock I went to my parents’ bedroom and entered quietly. I liked to watch them sleep, faces moving, eyes twitching. Asleep, they were faces I didn’t know. They were safe faces. I liked them better that way. I reached and touched Momma lightly on the shoulder. “No,” she mumbled, “No.”
Daddy’s eyes popped open. “Tommy, what the hell are you doing?”
The radio in the bedroom was playing country western. Daddy had two radios, one on the kitchen table and one next to his and Momma’s bed. There were three if you counted the one in his old truck. The radios in the house were on twenty-four hours a day, always tuned to a country western station. The one in the truck was only on when the truck was running. That gave me something to think about, whether the radio was off when the truck was off. The ones in the house were on whether my parents were home or not. Kids weren’t allowed to touch radios. “Wakin’ Momma,” I replied. “It’s just about six.”
Daddy rubbed a strong weather-beaten hand across his bleary eyes. “Shit! You go on, Tommy. I’ll get ‘er up.”
I left the room as Daddy began to shake Momma’s arm. I had always gotten on well with Momma but waking her or simply being around her when she woke up were experiences I wouldn’t wish on anyone. She was not nice then. She needed to be left alone. One hour up, maybe a bit more then she became her almost agreeable self.
So, I left them to it and went to play with my little sister, Lily, who had just turned two. She was a cutie, the first girl after three boys. Daddy called her Punkin. I tickled her and she giggled. I laughed with her until I felt Jackie glaring at us. Jackie treated me poorly whenever he got punished. It seemed to me that he felt as if it was somehow my fault or like Jackie was receiving whippings on my behalf. I couldn’t figure it out. Jackie took the bread and ate it; I didn’t. Maybe he just needed to be angry at somebody who wasn’t likely to hurt him.
All Jackie could do is look at me mean and stare at me accusingly since I was bigger and a lot stronger than he was. Momma told me a story about when I was a year and a half old (I’m fourteen months older than Jackie). She caught me sneaking into the room when Jackie was drinking his bottle. I took the top off the bottle and guzzled down all of his milk. I screwed the lid back on so no one would know I’d done it. Catching me copping Jackie’s food explained part of the problem with his thinness but Momma resented him anyway. No matter what she did, Jackie had always been unhappy and undernourished.
I heard the volume of the radio go up and the familiar clink of glass as Momma filled her and Daddy’s coffee cups. Smoke drifted through the wide arch between the living room and kitchen when they lit their Pall Malls. Daddy came into the room and plinked Jackie in the head with his finger. “Get your ass standing up straight. You don’t need to slouch around all day like a ninny.”
I felt bad for Jackie as he cringed and shook with fear. The more fear he exhibited, the madder Daddy got.
“Turn around and come here,” Daddy ordered.
Phillip was still sleeping, one leg hanging off the couch. As Jackie rounded the corner, his eyes riveted fearfully on Daddy’s hands, he bumped into Phillip’s leg. Phillip moaned, rolled over, fell off the couch, and began to cry. Daddy beckoned to Jackie with his finger. “Come here, asshole. Maybe I’ll knock you down on the floor; we’ll see how you like it.”
Jackie stood by the side of the sofa trembling. “No Daddy, please no.” I saw a dark stain running down the front of his trousers, hoped Daddy wouldn’t notice. Many times, when Jackie was in trouble, he messed himself which would only exacerbate his circumstances. Other times, when he wasn’t in trouble, he messed himself which started trouble anew.
“Tom,” Momma called from the kitchen, “Come on now. We have to get going or I’ll be late for work.”
Daddy pointed a stiff finger at me. “You put that little asshole in the corner and don’t let him out until I come home, understand?”
I nodded my head. “Yes, Daddy.” I glanced at Jackie, who stepped obediently toward the corner. Daddy gave me an approving wink and left the room.
Momma came in, picked Lily up and kissed her chubby cheek. She glanced at us boys. “You guys behave yourselves and no going outside. Keep the door locked. Daddy will be right back to fix you something to eat. Lily’s other diaper is soaking in the toilet. Rinse it out and hang it by the stove, Tommy. If she needs changed before it’s dry, go ahead and use a dishtowel instead of a diaper. There’s one hanging from the oven handle on the stove.” She set Lily on the couch, gave me a reassuring smile, and hurried away.
The front door slammed shut. We heard the sound of Daddy’s old truck starting up and pulling away from the curb. Jackie turned around, stared imploringly at me. “Let me out of the corner.”
Tears brimmed up in my eyes. I bit down on my sore finger to stop them. “I can’t, Jackie. He’ll find out then we’ll all be in trouble.”
“How’s he gonna find out?” Jackie challenged. “Who’s gonna tell?”
Phillip sat on the edge of the couch. “I will,” he said, a cruel grin on his little-boy face. “I’ll tell ‘cause you took the bread an’ got me in trouble. It’s all your fault. You knocked me off the couch when I was sleepin’.”
Jackie took a step from the corner, threatened Phillip with a raised fist. “I’ll pound your face, you little brat! You ate half!”
I set myself between them, pulled Jackie’s arms behind his back and forced him to return to the corner. I gave his head a good bump against the wall for good measure. “Stay there! Don’t be picking on smaller kids!”
“Yeah!” Phillip agreed smugly. “You’re a stealer, Jackie. You’re bad!”
Lily began to wail. She was hungry and upset by all the commotion. I picked her up and she stuffed a thumb in her mouth. She snuggled against my chest and closed her eyes, sucking contentedly.
Daddy didn’t come home after taking Momma to work. We were hungry and there was nothing in the house to eat. I pumped some water at the sink and we sipped at it but water is a poor substitute for food. Lily and Phillip cried and Jackie moaned and groaned then finally slid down the wall and rested in a bony pile.
I roamed around the confines of the shack, despairing for a crumb but, as on many previous occasions, there were none. The night was long and the radio was singing. My siblings asleep, I went into the kitchen and sat at the table. I rested my head on my arms, ignored the growling motor in my stomach and drifted into a troubled slumber. A few hours later I heard a rattling at the door. I stepped quietly across the room and peeked out the window. It was Momma come home from work. Just as I unlocked and opened the door, a car pulled away. It was soon lost in its’ own steamy exhaust in the freezing winter night.
“Where’s Daddy?” Momma asked upon entering the house.
“He never came back,” I replied, “I been worried.”
Momma kissed me on the forehead and handed me a heavy paper bag. It was greasy wet, close to falling apart. “Never mind your Daddy for now,” she said, “Thank God for the Big Boy.”
Big Boy was the restaurant where Momma worked as a waitress. She wasn’t allowed to take food home but she cleaned up the tables she waited on and dumped leftovers from the plates into a bag she kept hidden in the kitchen. On nights when Alvin, the cook, brought her home she could sneak the bag out past the owner. The next trick was getting it past Daddy; he didn’t approve of his family eating garbage.
Momma touched my face with her cold hands and kissed me again. She glanced at the clock radio wailing country western, Marty Robbins all dressed up for the dance. “Twelve thirty,” she murmured, “He’s probably at the bar. That gives us ‘til two to eat. You start sorting and fixing. I’ll get the kids.”
I set the bag on the table and opened it. Though it was full of rotting salad, coffee grounds, and cigarette butts, all I noticed was the smell of food and best of all, meat! I grabbed a piece of chicken fried steak and wolfed it down, coffee grounds, cigarette ashes and all. I had never tasted better food. Momma came back into the kitchen and smiled at me when I wiped my face on my shirt- sleeve.
“They look so peaceful, I decided to let them sleep while we get everything ready,” she whispered. “Tonight we’ll have a feast. I see you found some of the steak. It was the Big Boy special today. There’s lots of it in there.”
We worked together to scrape cigarette ashes, egg yolk, coffee grounds, and soggy napkin off the meat and began to warm it in a pan on the old stove. Experts at this, we even managed to salvage some mashed potatoes and corn on the cob from the bottom of the bag. The cigarette butts went in Momma's apron pocket to be worked on later. We didn’t have to wake the younger children as it turned out. Phillip and Lily came stumbling into the kitchen, their noses following the aroma of food cooking even before their eyes were ready to open. Momma smiled. “Go get Jackie,” she said.
Jackie was standing up straight and stiff, nose stuffed into the corner. He flinched when I touched his arm. “Come on, Jackie,” I whispered excitedly, “Momma brought some really good stuff home from work for us to eat.”
Jackie turned his head from the corner; eyes big and round, he stared at me. His mouth formed one word. “Daddy?”
I tugged at his shirt-sleeve. “Come on, Daddy’s not home yet. You better hurry up!”
“Wait!” Jackie pleaded. “Is she... Is she in a good mood?”
“The best,” I replied impatiently, “Now come on."
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Inquiries: [email protected]
© 2018 graphic artwork music & words
conceived by & property of
tom (WordWulf) sterner 2018 ©
Children in Passing
I don’t like country western music
Billings Montana
Winter, 1957
Momma and Daddy rolled their boy child’s lifeless body into a blanket. Daddy reared back and kicked the package a couple of times. It didn’t offer much resistance. Six-year-old Jackie weighed less than forty pounds and was just over three feet tall. Daddy’s foot almost went through him.
“Stop kicking it!” Momma pled. “We have to find a bridge to throw it off.”
“I’m whippin’ the l’il bastard’s ass one more time!” Daddy insisted, “L’il sumbitch thinks he can steal my lunch bread and get away with it. I’ll show ‘im!”
Jackie scrunched his eyes shut. His nose and cheeks were numb with cold, his face wedged in the corner, icy walls indifferent to his plight. Daddy had stuck him there hours ago, daring him to move, daring him to breathe. Daddy dared Jackie to even think. Jackie, lying little bastard he was, promised after each punch and slap from Daddy’s hand that he would never steal the family’s bread again. He would not move, he would not breathe, he would not think.
Jackie wiggled his nose, cringed inside, hoped no one noticed; he moved. His ribs hurt where Daddy kicked him when he fell down when Daddy hit him. They hurt so he breathed in shallow halting gasps of breath, cringed inside, hoped no one noticed; he breathed. Yes, he was a lying little bastard. He stood in the corners of this house, naked half the time and cold, imagined a plethora of scenarios of death, his own death at Daddy and Momma’s hands. The bridge was long and tall. Through a hole in the blanket, Jackie saw its steel girders high above, stabbing through clouds, wrapped in sunlight. They tossed him over the rail, Momma and Daddy, and walked arm-in-arm away. Lying little bastard that he was, he wasn’t dead. His broken body tumbled through the air, stones, muddy water rushing, weeds awaiting it. He scrunched his eyes shut, cringed inside, hoped no one noticed; he thought.
We lived in a cold little house, full of shadow and dark windows. Daddy was drunk there and Momma was crying. I loved my father and hated him for making Momma’s life miserable. Momma loved him too. I bit my lip and held my breath then went where I was forbidden to go. The door, usually stuck tight, opened easily. I took this as a good sign, darkness would accept me today. I slipped inside and eased the door closed, knowing my eyes would never adjust to the total pitch black but waiting anyway, standing on that top rickety step as soft things with sharp teeth scurried below.
A creature with many feathery legs lit on my forearm, skittered across the fine blonde hairs on the face of my skin, its movement lighter than breath. A terrified voice screamed inside me but no sound issued forth. I rubbed my arm on that spot, felt the tiny arc of weight the traveler of darkness made as it swung from a pendulum web it had launched from my skin.
“God’s creatures, never smite them walking, only if on your flesh or if they bite, then smite them and smite them well,” I muttered under my breath, repeating one of Grandma Webster’s lessons.
The odor in that place was darker than ink. I breathed in deep and took the first step down. What damp embrace the womb of that room promised. It was warm in its earthen reek of soil, timelessness and rotted root, kind to those that crawled and climbed, huddled in its midst. My boy hands grasped the wobbling plank at the side of the staircase. Its nails creaked in their steel-worm wooden homes when I leaned in and tested it with my full weight.
Feet hanging loose and free, I searched with a naked toe through the broken top of my shoe for the first of the climbing holes we’d made, me and my brother, Jackie. There and there, solid earth; I let loose the plank, felt my legs falling first then dropped to the earthen face of the floor. With my back to the wall, I finally let the tears come, hot and salty, forging watery paths down the dusty planes of my cheeks.
I was ashamed of my tears, knew I would be before they began but was unable to hold them back. This wasn’t my first experience with shame, I’d had many. It felt the same, humiliation and guilt. Seven years old, with two younger brothers and a baby sister of two, I was aware I needed to be brave. Crying would only make things worse; there was seldom a reward for tears. I hugged my legs up close to my chest then sobbed and sucked it in, a choking sound.
I held my breath when my ears picked up some sound outside myself. Squeak-squeak, squeak. I exhaled, a gasp, an audible sigh. I could hear the voice of Jackie in my head, my best brother and only friend, a year younger than myself, taunting me. I was older but Jackie knew things, uncomfortable things I would like to argue away, but couldn’t. I felt a smile tug at my lips as Jackie’s voice spoke in my head. “They’re doin’ it, Tommy. Long as they’re doin’ it, they won’t be botherin’ us. We’re safe now.”
I covered my ears with my hands, rocked back and forth in the dirt as the cadence of the squeaking increased. Dust drifted down from the floorboards above my head, a blessing of sorts from mother to son. I stood and brushed myself off, knowing she would seek me out after the squeaking. The climb holes were easy enough to find in the now not-so-dark. I poked my toes into them up until I could grab hold of the old plank with my hands.
I winced as a sliver of wood went in under the nail of my right index finger and broke off, embedding itself there. I took a deep breath, found the top climb holes with my toes and swung a foot up to the step. Thin shafts of light splashed their way from the kitchen through the top and bottom edges of the door. I found the knob with my throbbing hand, twisted and gave the door a slight nudge with my shoulder. It refused to budge. Now it was stuck.
I gritted my teeth and fought back the urge to cry out. Just as I was ready to give it another try, the door opened slowly and I almost fell into the kitchen. Momma stood there, a stern look on her face. She took a step back, hands on her hips.
“Tommy, you come out of there. How many times have I told you?” She paused then lifted her thin arms, summoned me to her. “You’ve been crying.”
Relief flooded over me and I fell into her embrace. The top of my head just reached her chin and I nestled in, wishing for time to stop, no words. Just hold me on the mercy of your sweet breast. Those were Grandma Webster’s words about Jesus but I thought of Momma when they came to mind.
She pushed me gently away. “What were you doing down there? If your dad ever catches you...”
I held up my throbbing finger. “It hurts.”
She took it between her hands and raised it toward her face. I giggled when her eyes crossed.
“What?” she demanded with mock sternness.
“Your eyes,” I replied. “They got all crossed up.”
She held my finger tightly with one hand and plucked deftly at the splinter with the other. Before I knew it, she’d kissed my injured fingertip and was pumping water, washing it off in the kitchen basin. “Now, what were those tears about?”
I held up my wounded hand. “It hurt real bad,” I explained.
“Don’t lie to me, Tommy,” she scolded. “You know you’re no good at it.”
I turned red and peeked down at my toes wiggling through the top of my shoe. “Why’d he have to whip Jackie so hard?”
Momma stood up straight, arms akimbo. “Your brother got what he deserved. He was caught sneaking into the bread. He ate the last two slices. What am I going to put in your Daddy’s lunch tomorrow? It’s cold on the roof and he needs food to keep himself going. We’re broke and he doesn’t get paid until the roof’s finished.”
“That’s why I was crying,” I said stubbornly, remembering the crack of the belt on Jackie’s bare skin while he bent over and held his ankles, trying not to fall over or cry, Daddy’s boots if and when he did.
Momma shook her head, frustrated. “I’m your mother; I don’t intend to stand around arguing with you about your brother. I’m going to lay down and have a nap. I have to go to work in a couple of hours. You keep an eye on your brothers and little Lily. Wake me up at six.” She went back into the bedroom with Daddy.
I left the tiny kitchen and went to the cramped living room, which served as day room and bedroom for Jackie, Phillip, Lily, and myself. We three boys slept on a convertible couch. Lily had a makeshift bed in an old dresser drawer. She was asleep and Phillip was sprawled out on the sofa. Jackie stood slumped in the corner where he’d been placed for further punishment. I decided to take a short nap myself. I laid down on the floor so as not to disturb Phillip. I bit down on my finger to alleviate the throbbing then put my arm under my head and sang myself to sleep. “I was born one mornin’ when the sun didn’t shine.” Sixteen Tons was my favorite song. It was playing on the country western radio.
At five-thirty I awoke and put a fire on low under the old tin metal coffee pot. I went back and sat on the end of the sofa, laid my hand on top of Jackie’s head. His carrot-red hair stuck out between my splayed fingers.
“Sorry he spanked you so hard,” I whispered. Jackie groaned and pressed his small thin face into the hard scratchy corner of the wall. His hands bunched up into fists and he pressed them into the corner, causing his shoulder blades to stick out. He looked like a broken bird to me, a plucked chicken, too skinny for anyone to consider eating.
A few minutes before six o’clock I went to my parents’ bedroom and entered quietly. I liked to watch them sleep, faces moving, eyes twitching. Asleep, they were faces I didn’t know. They were safe faces. I liked them better that way. I reached and touched Momma lightly on the shoulder. “No,” she mumbled, “No.”
Daddy’s eyes popped open. “Tommy, what the hell are you doing?”
The radio in the bedroom was playing country western. Daddy had two radios, one on the kitchen table and one next to his and Momma’s bed. There were three if you counted the one in his old truck. The radios in the house were on twenty-four hours a day, always tuned to a country western station. The one in the truck was only on when the truck was running. That gave me something to think about, whether the radio was off when the truck was off. The ones in the house were on whether my parents were home or not. Kids weren’t allowed to touch radios. “Wakin’ Momma,” I replied. “It’s just about six.”
Daddy rubbed a strong weather-beaten hand across his bleary eyes. “Shit! You go on, Tommy. I’ll get ‘er up.”
I left the room as Daddy began to shake Momma’s arm. I had always gotten on well with Momma but waking her or simply being around her when she woke up were experiences I wouldn’t wish on anyone. She was not nice then. She needed to be left alone. One hour up, maybe a bit more then she became her almost agreeable self.
So, I left them to it and went to play with my little sister, Lily, who had just turned two. She was a cutie, the first girl after three boys. Daddy called her Punkin. I tickled her and she giggled. I laughed with her until I felt Jackie glaring at us. Jackie treated me poorly whenever he got punished. It seemed to me that he felt as if it was somehow my fault or like Jackie was receiving whippings on my behalf. I couldn’t figure it out. Jackie took the bread and ate it; I didn’t. Maybe he just needed to be angry at somebody who wasn’t likely to hurt him.
All Jackie could do is look at me mean and stare at me accusingly since I was bigger and a lot stronger than he was. Momma told me a story about when I was a year and a half old (I’m fourteen months older than Jackie). She caught me sneaking into the room when Jackie was drinking his bottle. I took the top off the bottle and guzzled down all of his milk. I screwed the lid back on so no one would know I’d done it. Catching me copping Jackie’s food explained part of the problem with his thinness but Momma resented him anyway. No matter what she did, Jackie had always been unhappy and undernourished.
I heard the volume of the radio go up and the familiar clink of glass as Momma filled her and Daddy’s coffee cups. Smoke drifted through the wide arch between the living room and kitchen when they lit their Pall Malls. Daddy came into the room and plinked Jackie in the head with his finger. “Get your ass standing up straight. You don’t need to slouch around all day like a ninny.”
I felt bad for Jackie as he cringed and shook with fear. The more fear he exhibited, the madder Daddy got.
“Turn around and come here,” Daddy ordered.
Phillip was still sleeping, one leg hanging off the couch. As Jackie rounded the corner, his eyes riveted fearfully on Daddy’s hands, he bumped into Phillip’s leg. Phillip moaned, rolled over, fell off the couch, and began to cry. Daddy beckoned to Jackie with his finger. “Come here, asshole. Maybe I’ll knock you down on the floor; we’ll see how you like it.”
Jackie stood by the side of the sofa trembling. “No Daddy, please no.” I saw a dark stain running down the front of his trousers, hoped Daddy wouldn’t notice. Many times, when Jackie was in trouble, he messed himself which would only exacerbate his circumstances. Other times, when he wasn’t in trouble, he messed himself which started trouble anew.
“Tom,” Momma called from the kitchen, “Come on now. We have to get going or I’ll be late for work.”
Daddy pointed a stiff finger at me. “You put that little asshole in the corner and don’t let him out until I come home, understand?”
I nodded my head. “Yes, Daddy.” I glanced at Jackie, who stepped obediently toward the corner. Daddy gave me an approving wink and left the room.
Momma came in, picked Lily up and kissed her chubby cheek. She glanced at us boys. “You guys behave yourselves and no going outside. Keep the door locked. Daddy will be right back to fix you something to eat. Lily’s other diaper is soaking in the toilet. Rinse it out and hang it by the stove, Tommy. If she needs changed before it’s dry, go ahead and use a dishtowel instead of a diaper. There’s one hanging from the oven handle on the stove.” She set Lily on the couch, gave me a reassuring smile, and hurried away.
The front door slammed shut. We heard the sound of Daddy’s old truck starting up and pulling away from the curb. Jackie turned around, stared imploringly at me. “Let me out of the corner.”
Tears brimmed up in my eyes. I bit down on my sore finger to stop them. “I can’t, Jackie. He’ll find out then we’ll all be in trouble.”
“How’s he gonna find out?” Jackie challenged. “Who’s gonna tell?”
Phillip sat on the edge of the couch. “I will,” he said, a cruel grin on his little-boy face. “I’ll tell ‘cause you took the bread an’ got me in trouble. It’s all your fault. You knocked me off the couch when I was sleepin’.”
Jackie took a step from the corner, threatened Phillip with a raised fist. “I’ll pound your face, you little brat! You ate half!”
I set myself between them, pulled Jackie’s arms behind his back and forced him to return to the corner. I gave his head a good bump against the wall for good measure. “Stay there! Don’t be picking on smaller kids!”
“Yeah!” Phillip agreed smugly. “You’re a stealer, Jackie. You’re bad!”
Lily began to wail. She was hungry and upset by all the commotion. I picked her up and she stuffed a thumb in her mouth. She snuggled against my chest and closed her eyes, sucking contentedly.
Daddy didn’t come home after taking Momma to work. We were hungry and there was nothing in the house to eat. I pumped some water at the sink and we sipped at it but water is a poor substitute for food. Lily and Phillip cried and Jackie moaned and groaned then finally slid down the wall and rested in a bony pile.
I roamed around the confines of the shack, despairing for a crumb but, as on many previous occasions, there were none. The night was long and the radio was singing. My siblings asleep, I went into the kitchen and sat at the table. I rested my head on my arms, ignored the growling motor in my stomach and drifted into a troubled slumber. A few hours later I heard a rattling at the door. I stepped quietly across the room and peeked out the window. It was Momma come home from work. Just as I unlocked and opened the door, a car pulled away. It was soon lost in its’ own steamy exhaust in the freezing winter night.
“Where’s Daddy?” Momma asked upon entering the house.
“He never came back,” I replied, “I been worried.”
Momma kissed me on the forehead and handed me a heavy paper bag. It was greasy wet, close to falling apart. “Never mind your Daddy for now,” she said, “Thank God for the Big Boy.”
Big Boy was the restaurant where Momma worked as a waitress. She wasn’t allowed to take food home but she cleaned up the tables she waited on and dumped leftovers from the plates into a bag she kept hidden in the kitchen. On nights when Alvin, the cook, brought her home she could sneak the bag out past the owner. The next trick was getting it past Daddy; he didn’t approve of his family eating garbage.
Momma touched my face with her cold hands and kissed me again. She glanced at the clock radio wailing country western, Marty Robbins all dressed up for the dance. “Twelve thirty,” she murmured, “He’s probably at the bar. That gives us ‘til two to eat. You start sorting and fixing. I’ll get the kids.”
I set the bag on the table and opened it. Though it was full of rotting salad, coffee grounds, and cigarette butts, all I noticed was the smell of food and best of all, meat! I grabbed a piece of chicken fried steak and wolfed it down, coffee grounds, cigarette ashes and all. I had never tasted better food. Momma came back into the kitchen and smiled at me when I wiped my face on my shirt- sleeve.
“They look so peaceful, I decided to let them sleep while we get everything ready,” she whispered. “Tonight we’ll have a feast. I see you found some of the steak. It was the Big Boy special today. There’s lots of it in there.”
We worked together to scrape cigarette ashes, egg yolk, coffee grounds, and soggy napkin off the meat and began to warm it in a pan on the old stove. Experts at this, we even managed to salvage some mashed potatoes and corn on the cob from the bottom of the bag. The cigarette butts went in Momma's apron pocket to be worked on later. We didn’t have to wake the younger children as it turned out. Phillip and Lily came stumbling into the kitchen, their noses following the aroma of food cooking even before their eyes were ready to open. Momma smiled. “Go get Jackie,” she said.
Jackie was standing up straight and stiff, nose stuffed into the corner. He flinched when I touched his arm. “Come on, Jackie,” I whispered excitedly, “Momma brought some really good stuff home from work for us to eat.”
Jackie turned his head from the corner; eyes big and round, he stared at me. His mouth formed one word. “Daddy?”
I tugged at his shirt-sleeve. “Come on, Daddy’s not home yet. You better hurry up!”
“Wait!” Jackie pleaded. “Is she... Is she in a good mood?”
“The best,” I replied impatiently, “Now come on."
http://wordwulf.com
Inquiries: [email protected]
© 2018 graphic artwork music & words
conceived by & property of
tom (WordWulf) sterner 2018 ©
Momma’s Rain (book review)
By Tom Sterner
[email protected]
“Cars drove slow; neighbors looked out windows at six children sitting on a couch in the gutter, behind them, a small mountain of garbage, their world belongings.”
This is the life the author did not live but his seven siblings fought each day to survive. As many adopted children do, Sterner at nineteen, felt the urge to understand his family – to understand his abandonment. This remarkable explanation is told through his brother’s eyes.
Momma’s Rain is a fascinating account of a life full of dead eyes, poverty, abuse, addiction, and yet; survival, hope and love. Every day Momma tries to avoid an invisible trap wire that could send her flying into too many pieces and if that happened what would happen to the children. The trap, an abusive drunk, her husband. No one knew when he would go off and the beatings (mental and physical) would begin.
As the story progresses, Momma and her son Timmy must consider the mysteries of their life in a world filled with impulses of curiosity along with the complexity of surviving nature, life and death. The experiences range from Momma battling for ways to feed her children to Timmy meeting a unique human angel. This peaceful wise lady gives him, among things, the gift of knowing that all life is not like his.
Momma’s Rain is hard to put down. It is profound in feeling. Sterner takes you deep inside the abyss of alcoholism and poverty to the trusting tender relationship between mother and son with each occurrence launching a valued life lesson.
Sterner meticulously collected the straws of his lost family life and spun them into an explicit account of a family whose focus stayed faithful to their bond, “We stand our ground, fight our fights, lick our wounds and keep our mouths shut.” Now that Momma is gone, her story is being shared. Momma lived side by side with her grief. Like the tears that ran down her face, grief was a thunderous driving rainstorm. It can open up to the emergence of the sun and with a rainbow of promise for the future. Hopefully, by telling this story, the family and the people who read this book will see the rainbow.
An emotionally stirring book embracing the boundless promise that no matter what – there is hope. Momma’s Rain - highly recommended.
Sherry Russell MS BCETS BCBT
Conquering the Mysteries and Lies of Grief
www.catchafallinglife.com
[email protected]
By Tom Sterner
[email protected]
“Cars drove slow; neighbors looked out windows at six children sitting on a couch in the gutter, behind them, a small mountain of garbage, their world belongings.”
This is the life the author did not live but his seven siblings fought each day to survive. As many adopted children do, Sterner at nineteen, felt the urge to understand his family – to understand his abandonment. This remarkable explanation is told through his brother’s eyes.
Momma’s Rain is a fascinating account of a life full of dead eyes, poverty, abuse, addiction, and yet; survival, hope and love. Every day Momma tries to avoid an invisible trap wire that could send her flying into too many pieces and if that happened what would happen to the children. The trap, an abusive drunk, her husband. No one knew when he would go off and the beatings (mental and physical) would begin.
As the story progresses, Momma and her son Timmy must consider the mysteries of their life in a world filled with impulses of curiosity along with the complexity of surviving nature, life and death. The experiences range from Momma battling for ways to feed her children to Timmy meeting a unique human angel. This peaceful wise lady gives him, among things, the gift of knowing that all life is not like his.
Momma’s Rain is hard to put down. It is profound in feeling. Sterner takes you deep inside the abyss of alcoholism and poverty to the trusting tender relationship between mother and son with each occurrence launching a valued life lesson.
Sterner meticulously collected the straws of his lost family life and spun them into an explicit account of a family whose focus stayed faithful to their bond, “We stand our ground, fight our fights, lick our wounds and keep our mouths shut.” Now that Momma is gone, her story is being shared. Momma lived side by side with her grief. Like the tears that ran down her face, grief was a thunderous driving rainstorm. It can open up to the emergence of the sun and with a rainbow of promise for the future. Hopefully, by telling this story, the family and the people who read this book will see the rainbow.
An emotionally stirring book embracing the boundless promise that no matter what – there is hope. Momma’s Rain - highly recommended.
Sherry Russell MS BCETS BCBT
Conquering the Mysteries and Lies of Grief
www.catchafallinglife.com
[email protected]
http://www.wordwulf.com/store/c1/WordWulf $11.41
~paperback @ amazon~ $12.68~ ~Buy Kindle version here~ $2.99
~paperback @ amazon~ $12.68~ ~Buy Kindle version here~ $2.99
|
9-10-2016
|
from the novel: Momma's Rain - Colorado Bound
~chapter three intro:
from Momma's Rain: Itsy - Chapter 33 (August 26, 2016)
Piscean Dream
three legged bunny in your pocket
drier than death
an underwater experience
considering pleasure
bend over in the bedroom closet
wondering your shoes
who is that behind you
flip-flops or tennies
feels good your feet burn
barefoot & forgetful
downtown a hundred degrees
there you are naked
blank-eyed & stiff
window shopping
pretending to be beautiful
bubbles of betrayal
the newsman gulps his sins
down & sucks eyeballs
from fellow fish faces
slips garnish in his pocket
to lure hungry guppies
you turn around & he’s gone
chapter thirty-three
Itsy
three legged bunny in your pocket
drier than death
an underwater experience
considering pleasure
bend over in the bedroom closet
wondering your shoes
who is that behind you
flip-flops or tennies
feels good your feet burn
barefoot & forgetful
downtown a hundred degrees
there you are naked
blank-eyed & stiff
window shopping
pretending to be beautiful
bubbles of betrayal
the newsman gulps his sins
down & sucks eyeballs
from fellow fish faces
slips garnish in his pocket
to lure hungry guppies
you turn around & he’s gone
chapter thirty-three
Itsy
When I opened the cupboards in the kitchen, what looked like millions of cockroaches scurried every which way. I stepped on one that spilled out on the floor and was repulsed by the cracking sound of its breaking and dying.
“We’ll get spray,” Daddy said as I stood back watching them run over the top of each other in layers three or four deep. “Just open all the doors, the ones under the sink too. The light will make them go away.”
Daddy knew his cockroaches. It took a few minutes but the light made them go away. I could imagine them thick in the walls and ceiling, crawling under my feet in the floor above the people downstairs. I looked out the big kitchen window at the cars speeding to and fro on the Valley Highway and the fancy Travel Lodge Motel right next door. The cold winter air made everything look old and dirty. I still didn’t know if the new baby was a brother or sister. I felt bad when I thought of Momma having to climb those filthy stairs with her brand new baby. As much as I dreaded her coming to this place, I missed her terribly and was sure this or any other place would not be a home without her.
Daddy took Jackie and me on a tour of the fourth floor. There was a single toilet the family would share with eight other tenants. It stood by itself, soiled and stinking of urine in a tiny room down the hall from number seven. We would have to do our bathing somewhere else or get another galvanized tub as there was no shower or bathtub. “Don’t you worry,” Daddy waxed positive on the point, “I might see if I can find us a big tub like that one we had in Montana; that would work just fine. We wouldn’t even have to heat the water here. There’s hot water in the kitchen.”
I couldn’t imagine myself being bathed in a tub like when I was a little kid. Daddy told me Thurmon’s mom was a friend of his and, if we had any problems when he and Momma weren’t home, we were to go to her for help. Daddy also instructed each of us to carry our own toilet paper to the bathroom and warned us not to leave it there. Someone would steal it. The door to the apartment didn’t latch or lock so I was told to keep a chair under the knob. Daddy winked at the bunch of us, just this side of being orphans. “The good news is, you guys won’t have to change schools. Freeland is only seven blocks from here.”
I was terribly glad to hear that.
Daddy left to visit Momma and I snooped around our new home with my brothers and sisters. We wondered where we were to sleep since there was just the old broken down bed and the kitchen. There wasn’t even a dresser drawer for the new baby. Where would Momma keep it? Cheryl was almost eleven months old and crawling all over the place. Momma had been trying to potty train her for over a month and with little luck. She didn’t want two babies in diapers at the same time. It was too much work and there were only four diapers. Our curious apartment snooping did teach us where cockroaches were sure to be found. The creepy answer to that question was: everywhere.
I opened a drawer in the kitchen with the intent to put away the silverware. Movement caught my eye and I was sure I had found yet more cockroaches. When I bent to look closer, I found myself staring, eye to eye, into the face of a little gray mouse. Its nose twitched but it didn’t seem afraid. I put my hand in the drawer and let it follow the mouse to the deepest corner. It washed its little hands nervously, then rested them on my finger and climbed into my palm when I wiggled and slid my fingers underneath it. I found an old shoe box and put some rags in it so the little creature could make itself a mouse bed. A jar lid filled with water and a tiny bit of commodity cheese and he was all set.
Finding the mouse had the effect of diminishing the threat the cockroaches represented. As small as it was, it erased much of the intimidation of the move from my consciousness. I needed reassurance and the mouse provided it in its way. I scratched it behind its tiny round ears and named it Itsy because it was so small. My brothers and sisters oohed and aahed when I showed Itsy to them, all except Jackie.
“Daddy’ll never let you keep that li’l mouse,” he said. “He don’ like critters aroun’ the house. You know better ‘n thinkin’ you can keep that mouse.”
I grinned at Jackie and told him he sounded like a poet. He threw a pout, went and stood at the kitchen window, looking out. “I wanna go out there,” he said.
“No way,” I told him. “No telling when Daddy will be back. We’re supposed to be puttin’ everything away. If you’re gone when he gets back, we’ll both be in trouble. You gotta remember, Momma ain’t here to help us if we get in trouble with Daddy.”
Jackie spread his skinny arms. “Ev’rything Tommy? We ain’ got no ev’rything. Jus’ lemme go out. I’ll bring ya back somethin’ good.”
I hated himself for it but the prospect of something good to eat was just too good to pass on. “You come right back, Jackie,” I admonished, “I don’t want Daddy mad at us when Momma’s not here.”
“I’m gone,” Jackie said and out the door he went. I imagined the tall black boy down stairs beating him up. I was always creating crazy scenarios in my mind but Jackie did pretty well for himself out amongst the people.
A few hours later, Jackie returned in the grips of an angry man from the motel next door. He banged on the door and, just as I moved the chair, he pushed Jackie ahead of himself into the room. “Where are your parents?” he demanded.
“They’re out for a while,” I replied.
“I’ll wait!” he said angrily. “This little asshole was stealing pop bottles from our machine next door.” He sat in the door chair for a few minutes and let his eyes roam through the room. “My God,” he said. “How can you people live like this?”
I didn’t answer but grinned disarmingly at him as a friendly cockroach climbed up and sat on top of his shiny tan shoe with tassels on it. The man noticed the cockroach and jumped up like his pants were on fire. He turned in circles and stomped all over the place. “I can’t stay here in this filth!” he said more to himself than to anyone else. “You promise me to keep this little thief locked up in here and tell your parents when they get home, okay?”
“I will,” I promised.
“I want him punished,” the man added.
“Don’t worry, mister, he will be,” I promised.
The man left, shaking his head and cursing under his breath. I got down on my hands and knees and searched for the cockroach. For some reason, it was important to me that it got away. I had a deep need to believe it did. There was no evidence of it to be found where the angry man had stepped. Maybe it climbed onto his trousers and went home with him. I smiled to himself at the thought. Wherever it went that dreary morning, our angel was a cockroach.
My next act is a sin I was immediately sorry for and ashamed of and will be for the rest of my life. Jackie stood in front of me, arms akimbo, a cocky look on his face. I drew the belt through the loops of my jeans, cloth on leather, leather on cloth, one loop at a time. “You know the drill,” I said to Jackie, my voice that of a father’s son.
Jackie’s face fell as his little boy cockiness abandoned him. I watched a ghost of fear and disbelief crawl across his eyes. “No Tommy, no,” he whispered.
I doubled the belt up and snapped it in his face as I had seen Daddy do, as Uncle Jack had done to me.
“You coulda got us both in trouble,” I accused. “And still might if that creep comes back and talks to Daddy. You’re supposed to be finding pop bottles, not stealing them. What if Daddy woulda come home and found that jerk sitting by the door? What, huh? Now assume the position or I’ll put you there myself!”
Time seemed to move slower where we brothers lived then but this was no nightmare dream. It was the breath we took and the beasts we had become. I lay leather to those freckle butt cheeks. My voice screamed for Jackie to rise when he fell to the floor.
“I didn’t tell you to lay down. Get up! Get up so I can whip you some more”! Jackie gave to me of an instant what he had never given up to our father. There were tears in his eyes before the first lash bit into his flesh. They were separate rivers, twice flowing, before I was through.
Daddy brought Momma home with a babe in her arms. There was a new brother, Nicholas, named after Daddy’s roofing boss in Montana. Nicholas wasn’t given a middle name. Momma and Daddy were running out of gas. There was a dark purple scar, what Momma called a birth mark that covered half his tiny face. It seemed appropriate that those come later should be marked some way, born into a family where nothing was or ever would be right. His face bore reminder our curse of days.
How the misery of those cold winter days flowed together. No food. Daddy drunk and passed out on the crooked bed, his arm hanging to the floor, hand around a bottle of death. No food. The new baby crying out its fresh complaint. No food. Momma grabbing Cheryl when she had ‘an accident’ and holding her naked and squirming body out the kitchen window. “If you don’t start saying ‘potty’ when you have to go, I’m going to drop you out the window!” Cheryl had a permanent round ring on the outside of her chubby butt cheeks from spending so much time sitting on the pee pot. No food. She was a gentle child and never made much noise. She and Lily were my favorite sisters.
Thurmon came to drink coffee and visit one day. He and Daddy were talking about him becoming Daddy’s apprentice roofer once the weather warmed up. I was sitting on the floor across the room playing with Itsy. I had taught the mouse to walk up my fingers and give me a kiss just like Great-grandma Webster’s parakeet, Sweety. Thurmon left the table and his coffee. He stood, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, watching me. “Wow,” he said in his dumb way, “I ain’t never seed a mouse can do tricks like that. Can I try ‘im?”
I was reluctant to say no to an adult but Thurmon wasn’t exactly an adult that is if brains have anything to do with it. “You better not,” I replied as kindly and carefully as possible. “I’m the only one he lets hold him.”
“Aw c’mon, Tommy,” he begged. “I’ll be careful, I promise. I ain’t never holded a teensy l’il mouse afore.”
“Let ‘im hold the damn thing,” Daddy said from the table. “It’s just a mouse for Christ’s sake.”
I stood up and placed Itsy in Thurmon’s outstretched palm. “There ya go. Please be careful with him. You can pet him if you want.”
Thurmon ran a finger over Itsy’s back. “Oh, Itsy’s soft but his bones are in there.”
“Uh... yeah,” I said. “He likes you, Thurmon. Can I have him back now?”
“Jus’ a minute,” Thurmon said. He turned toward the table where Daddy was sitting and spoke to him. “I’m gonna do that finger trick stuff like Tommy was doin’ and the l’il mouse’ll kiss me jus’ like it did Tommy.”
As I came around behind him, Thurmon put out a finger and Itsy reached with his paws and took hold of it. Thurmon grinned in his stupid way and moved his palm from under Itsy’s body. Itsy struggled for a split second in an attempt to gain purchase on Thurmon’s finger with his back feet, then fell to the floor. I knelt down to pick him up, to save him, but Itsy was already dead.
“Did I killeded him?” Thurmon asked. “I’m sorry if I killeded him, Tommy.”
“I’m sorry,” Daddy said. “It’s only a mouse, Kiddo. You can catch another one. Thurmon, come on over here and have another cup of coffee. Don’t try to talk to Tommy right now.”
I swore to myself that, if I were a man, I would throw both of them out the window. Charlie was only a lizard, Sweety was only a bird. The cat was only a cat. They were only men and less than that.
Jackie and I went outside, conducted a boy funeral, and buried Itsy under a bush. His coffin was a match box.
“That’s why I kill stuff ‘stead ‘o catchin’ ‘em,” Jackie said, “Grownups jus’ suffer ev’rything, then kill ‘t slow.”
I created a rhyming litany, a dirge, and named it ‘Itsy’s Song’, then recited it over Itsy’s grave:
I was a mouse
living in my mouse house
and I was afraid
of games big people played
“We’ll get spray,” Daddy said as I stood back watching them run over the top of each other in layers three or four deep. “Just open all the doors, the ones under the sink too. The light will make them go away.”
Daddy knew his cockroaches. It took a few minutes but the light made them go away. I could imagine them thick in the walls and ceiling, crawling under my feet in the floor above the people downstairs. I looked out the big kitchen window at the cars speeding to and fro on the Valley Highway and the fancy Travel Lodge Motel right next door. The cold winter air made everything look old and dirty. I still didn’t know if the new baby was a brother or sister. I felt bad when I thought of Momma having to climb those filthy stairs with her brand new baby. As much as I dreaded her coming to this place, I missed her terribly and was sure this or any other place would not be a home without her.
Daddy took Jackie and me on a tour of the fourth floor. There was a single toilet the family would share with eight other tenants. It stood by itself, soiled and stinking of urine in a tiny room down the hall from number seven. We would have to do our bathing somewhere else or get another galvanized tub as there was no shower or bathtub. “Don’t you worry,” Daddy waxed positive on the point, “I might see if I can find us a big tub like that one we had in Montana; that would work just fine. We wouldn’t even have to heat the water here. There’s hot water in the kitchen.”
I couldn’t imagine myself being bathed in a tub like when I was a little kid. Daddy told me Thurmon’s mom was a friend of his and, if we had any problems when he and Momma weren’t home, we were to go to her for help. Daddy also instructed each of us to carry our own toilet paper to the bathroom and warned us not to leave it there. Someone would steal it. The door to the apartment didn’t latch or lock so I was told to keep a chair under the knob. Daddy winked at the bunch of us, just this side of being orphans. “The good news is, you guys won’t have to change schools. Freeland is only seven blocks from here.”
I was terribly glad to hear that.
Daddy left to visit Momma and I snooped around our new home with my brothers and sisters. We wondered where we were to sleep since there was just the old broken down bed and the kitchen. There wasn’t even a dresser drawer for the new baby. Where would Momma keep it? Cheryl was almost eleven months old and crawling all over the place. Momma had been trying to potty train her for over a month and with little luck. She didn’t want two babies in diapers at the same time. It was too much work and there were only four diapers. Our curious apartment snooping did teach us where cockroaches were sure to be found. The creepy answer to that question was: everywhere.
I opened a drawer in the kitchen with the intent to put away the silverware. Movement caught my eye and I was sure I had found yet more cockroaches. When I bent to look closer, I found myself staring, eye to eye, into the face of a little gray mouse. Its nose twitched but it didn’t seem afraid. I put my hand in the drawer and let it follow the mouse to the deepest corner. It washed its little hands nervously, then rested them on my finger and climbed into my palm when I wiggled and slid my fingers underneath it. I found an old shoe box and put some rags in it so the little creature could make itself a mouse bed. A jar lid filled with water and a tiny bit of commodity cheese and he was all set.
Finding the mouse had the effect of diminishing the threat the cockroaches represented. As small as it was, it erased much of the intimidation of the move from my consciousness. I needed reassurance and the mouse provided it in its way. I scratched it behind its tiny round ears and named it Itsy because it was so small. My brothers and sisters oohed and aahed when I showed Itsy to them, all except Jackie.
“Daddy’ll never let you keep that li’l mouse,” he said. “He don’ like critters aroun’ the house. You know better ‘n thinkin’ you can keep that mouse.”
I grinned at Jackie and told him he sounded like a poet. He threw a pout, went and stood at the kitchen window, looking out. “I wanna go out there,” he said.
“No way,” I told him. “No telling when Daddy will be back. We’re supposed to be puttin’ everything away. If you’re gone when he gets back, we’ll both be in trouble. You gotta remember, Momma ain’t here to help us if we get in trouble with Daddy.”
Jackie spread his skinny arms. “Ev’rything Tommy? We ain’ got no ev’rything. Jus’ lemme go out. I’ll bring ya back somethin’ good.”
I hated himself for it but the prospect of something good to eat was just too good to pass on. “You come right back, Jackie,” I admonished, “I don’t want Daddy mad at us when Momma’s not here.”
“I’m gone,” Jackie said and out the door he went. I imagined the tall black boy down stairs beating him up. I was always creating crazy scenarios in my mind but Jackie did pretty well for himself out amongst the people.
A few hours later, Jackie returned in the grips of an angry man from the motel next door. He banged on the door and, just as I moved the chair, he pushed Jackie ahead of himself into the room. “Where are your parents?” he demanded.
“They’re out for a while,” I replied.
“I’ll wait!” he said angrily. “This little asshole was stealing pop bottles from our machine next door.” He sat in the door chair for a few minutes and let his eyes roam through the room. “My God,” he said. “How can you people live like this?”
I didn’t answer but grinned disarmingly at him as a friendly cockroach climbed up and sat on top of his shiny tan shoe with tassels on it. The man noticed the cockroach and jumped up like his pants were on fire. He turned in circles and stomped all over the place. “I can’t stay here in this filth!” he said more to himself than to anyone else. “You promise me to keep this little thief locked up in here and tell your parents when they get home, okay?”
“I will,” I promised.
“I want him punished,” the man added.
“Don’t worry, mister, he will be,” I promised.
The man left, shaking his head and cursing under his breath. I got down on my hands and knees and searched for the cockroach. For some reason, it was important to me that it got away. I had a deep need to believe it did. There was no evidence of it to be found where the angry man had stepped. Maybe it climbed onto his trousers and went home with him. I smiled to himself at the thought. Wherever it went that dreary morning, our angel was a cockroach.
My next act is a sin I was immediately sorry for and ashamed of and will be for the rest of my life. Jackie stood in front of me, arms akimbo, a cocky look on his face. I drew the belt through the loops of my jeans, cloth on leather, leather on cloth, one loop at a time. “You know the drill,” I said to Jackie, my voice that of a father’s son.
Jackie’s face fell as his little boy cockiness abandoned him. I watched a ghost of fear and disbelief crawl across his eyes. “No Tommy, no,” he whispered.
I doubled the belt up and snapped it in his face as I had seen Daddy do, as Uncle Jack had done to me.
“You coulda got us both in trouble,” I accused. “And still might if that creep comes back and talks to Daddy. You’re supposed to be finding pop bottles, not stealing them. What if Daddy woulda come home and found that jerk sitting by the door? What, huh? Now assume the position or I’ll put you there myself!”
Time seemed to move slower where we brothers lived then but this was no nightmare dream. It was the breath we took and the beasts we had become. I lay leather to those freckle butt cheeks. My voice screamed for Jackie to rise when he fell to the floor.
“I didn’t tell you to lay down. Get up! Get up so I can whip you some more”! Jackie gave to me of an instant what he had never given up to our father. There were tears in his eyes before the first lash bit into his flesh. They were separate rivers, twice flowing, before I was through.
Daddy brought Momma home with a babe in her arms. There was a new brother, Nicholas, named after Daddy’s roofing boss in Montana. Nicholas wasn’t given a middle name. Momma and Daddy were running out of gas. There was a dark purple scar, what Momma called a birth mark that covered half his tiny face. It seemed appropriate that those come later should be marked some way, born into a family where nothing was or ever would be right. His face bore reminder our curse of days.
How the misery of those cold winter days flowed together. No food. Daddy drunk and passed out on the crooked bed, his arm hanging to the floor, hand around a bottle of death. No food. The new baby crying out its fresh complaint. No food. Momma grabbing Cheryl when she had ‘an accident’ and holding her naked and squirming body out the kitchen window. “If you don’t start saying ‘potty’ when you have to go, I’m going to drop you out the window!” Cheryl had a permanent round ring on the outside of her chubby butt cheeks from spending so much time sitting on the pee pot. No food. She was a gentle child and never made much noise. She and Lily were my favorite sisters.
Thurmon came to drink coffee and visit one day. He and Daddy were talking about him becoming Daddy’s apprentice roofer once the weather warmed up. I was sitting on the floor across the room playing with Itsy. I had taught the mouse to walk up my fingers and give me a kiss just like Great-grandma Webster’s parakeet, Sweety. Thurmon left the table and his coffee. He stood, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, watching me. “Wow,” he said in his dumb way, “I ain’t never seed a mouse can do tricks like that. Can I try ‘im?”
I was reluctant to say no to an adult but Thurmon wasn’t exactly an adult that is if brains have anything to do with it. “You better not,” I replied as kindly and carefully as possible. “I’m the only one he lets hold him.”
“Aw c’mon, Tommy,” he begged. “I’ll be careful, I promise. I ain’t never holded a teensy l’il mouse afore.”
“Let ‘im hold the damn thing,” Daddy said from the table. “It’s just a mouse for Christ’s sake.”
I stood up and placed Itsy in Thurmon’s outstretched palm. “There ya go. Please be careful with him. You can pet him if you want.”
Thurmon ran a finger over Itsy’s back. “Oh, Itsy’s soft but his bones are in there.”
“Uh... yeah,” I said. “He likes you, Thurmon. Can I have him back now?”
“Jus’ a minute,” Thurmon said. He turned toward the table where Daddy was sitting and spoke to him. “I’m gonna do that finger trick stuff like Tommy was doin’ and the l’il mouse’ll kiss me jus’ like it did Tommy.”
As I came around behind him, Thurmon put out a finger and Itsy reached with his paws and took hold of it. Thurmon grinned in his stupid way and moved his palm from under Itsy’s body. Itsy struggled for a split second in an attempt to gain purchase on Thurmon’s finger with his back feet, then fell to the floor. I knelt down to pick him up, to save him, but Itsy was already dead.
“Did I killeded him?” Thurmon asked. “I’m sorry if I killeded him, Tommy.”
“I’m sorry,” Daddy said. “It’s only a mouse, Kiddo. You can catch another one. Thurmon, come on over here and have another cup of coffee. Don’t try to talk to Tommy right now.”
I swore to myself that, if I were a man, I would throw both of them out the window. Charlie was only a lizard, Sweety was only a bird. The cat was only a cat. They were only men and less than that.
Jackie and I went outside, conducted a boy funeral, and buried Itsy under a bush. His coffin was a match box.
“That’s why I kill stuff ‘stead ‘o catchin’ ‘em,” Jackie said, “Grownups jus’ suffer ev’rything, then kill ‘t slow.”
I created a rhyming litany, a dirge, and named it ‘Itsy’s Song’, then recited it over Itsy’s grave:
I was a mouse
living in my mouse house
and I was afraid
of games big people played
Spiders ‘n Snakes
the opening chronicle in the saga, Madman Chronicles: The Warrior
Cranial Loop
8-9-2016
they went down then~
‘neath the black water bed
dark wing, fang & eye
communing with the dead
chapter six
Undone/sub-level one
The light in the car flickered and Basil sat down next to the brake. He had been out of his mind to try to pull this off. He knew that now and it was too late to do anything about it. What in the hell made him think he could handle a three hundred pound freight train? What was he going to do now? Hedgeny had just plunged into no-man’s land and Basil had to figure out a way to bring him back. He had half a notion to just close the door and go back up to his room. Let the big bad athlete find his own way out of the centuries-old labyrinth he had thrown himself into. He stood up and grabbed the handle of the scissors gate. A sound came to him from the darkness. It fell in upon itself, then came again, stronger than before. Basil recognized it as a resounding echo. He rested his forehead against the iron of the gate. Somewhere out there, alone in the darkness of sub-level one, Hedgeny had begun to weep.
Basil took the flashlight from his pocket. He switched it on and pointed it straight into the opening with no effect. It seemed there was no discernible end to the darkness. Angling the beam to the left, he captured a flat surface in the light. He played the light up and around and discovered that, much like the office on sub-level three, the elevator shaft was situated at the end of a hallway on sub-level one. Massive spider webs stretched from ceiling to wall and wall to floor. Most of their inhabitants skittered to the edge of the light, then hunkered down as if playing dead or waiting to see what was going to happen next. Others crouched center-point in their webs, fangs prominent and forelegs poised, waiting for prey and apparently oblivious to the light.
Using the juncture of the wall where it met the floor as a line of sight, Basil found a break in the web-work where Hedgeny must have landed when he dove from the elevator. A few yards further down the hall, the light caught a pile of old furniture and yellowed papers. They were strewn about, wall to wall in the hallway. Basil imagined they were probably the source of the loud crash and struggle he had heard. It was impossible to penetrate the darkness past the jumble of debris with the flashlight. “Hedgeny!” he yelled loudly.
“Hedgeny! Hedgeny! Hedgeny!” his own voice howled in response.
“I am not going out there,” Basil said to himself, fully aware before the words were out of his mouth that that was exactly what he was about to do. “Stay in the center of the hallway,” he repeated to himself over and over, a litany, “away from the spiders and their killing webs.” He pocketed the flashlight, took a deep breath, placed both hands flat on the concrete floor of sub-level one, and hoisted himself up and through. Standing erect in the hallway, a low menacing growl off to his right caused Basil to go fumbling for his flashlight. He caught the tail end of an animal in the light’s beam. It took refuge under one of the old desks and stared back at him with its yellow/green eyes.
“Basil! Basil! Basil! Help, help, help, help, me, me, me, me-ee-e,” echoed from somewhere further down the hall. Professor Grimes was closer to the truth referring to these as a labyrinth of tunnels, rather than hallways, Basil thought as he took the first difficult step in the direction of Hedgeny’s voice. He pointed the light in front of himself, toward the pile of furniture, up, down, around and through the tangle of wood and paper. There was no evidence of the feral eyes.
When he reached the dust-laden obstacles, he had to shove some of them aside to make his way through. His flesh crawled as decades of fine dust sifted into his skin. Cobwebs stuck to the palms of his hands. Why hadn’t thought to use gloves as part of his impish costume, he wondered. Basil couldn’t shake the feeling that something or someone, no… something was watching him. It was difficult to move things with the flashlight in his hands. He was forced to locate the odd desk or chair, then ascertain where to place it. Since it required the use of both hands to do the work, he deposited the flashlight in his pocket while he did the moving. The tunnel was alive with crawling things and thousands of watching eyes; it was unnerving to work in the dark.
Once he cleared the debris away and made his way past it, Basil discovered what was at the end of the reach of his beam of light. The tunnel veered sharply to the left and took a decided downward turn. He was now descending ramp-like at what felt like a four/twelve pitch. He had assumed the spider-legs of the tunnels would be on a level with one another but was quickly learning not to assume anything when it came to the sub-levels of the Psyche Building. There was no basis of logic in the successive man-minds of generations past. Basil was well aware of that fact in theory. Having to deal with it in real time and under these challenging and proving conditions was very nearly more than he could bear.
Basil felt a chill insinuate itself into his flesh. He stopped for a moment to get his bearings. Alarms went off in his mind as he splashed light in a slow arc against the walls and ceiling. There were no more spider webs. All outer surfaces of the tunnel were covered in an endless dripping mosaic of moss and slime. Shining the light wall to wall on the floor, Basil discovered he was walking on a trail of sorts. He was on a dry path, kept that way from encroaching swamp breath by constant usage. A shiver ran up his spine as he thought of the yellow-eyed, growling beast he had seen earlier. It was painfully obvious to him that spiders were the least of his worries. It was very likely that he was following an underground hunting trail.
“Help, help, help, me, me, me.” Basil listened intently to Hedgeny’s renewed cries. It was oddly reassuring to him that another human being had gone further down the path than he had and obviously survived. There was something else, subdued and powerful, the whisper of a distant roar. Basil touched his fingers to his temples and almost dropped the flashlight. “Oh no, oh no,” he said softly, then switched the flashlight off and put it in his pocket. He returned his palms to the sides of his head. ‘It’s my blood,’ he thought. ‘I can feel and hear my blood coursing through my brain. It feels like my head is going to explode.’
Basil was reminded of something Hedgeny had said earlier. “It’s like breathing. The ball is my breath. All I have to do is smell it and it’s mine.”
Awestruck, Basil whispered, “The river; I’m close to the river. I can sense it like the flow of my blood.” He felt a pain in his skull as he attempted to run the logistics of his location through his mind. He had walked the path many times from the Psyche Building to the river but found it impossible to apply the pathways and direction above ground to the maze of tunnels under the Psyche Building. “That’s it!” The sound of his excited voice startled him. He calmed down and said softly to himself, “I am a creature of comfort. I always thought of myself as in the basement of the Psyche Building when I was in the Operating Theater conducting the Cranial Loop treatments. I’m not under the building at all, I’m simply under the earth.”
“Basil, I can hear you, you, you.” Hedgeny’s voice sounded weaker, yet strident and accusing in its desperation. “Help me, me me.”
The flashlight came like a sword to Basil’s hand. It was his weapon against darkness, his spear of light. “Stay where you are, Hedgeny,” he called out. “I’m coming to get you.”
“Hurry, please!” Hedgeny pleaded.
Basil turned and shined the light down the tunnel behind him. There, at its nether reach, were the yellow eyes. Had he passed them in the tunnel, his man legs a mere swish away on the dry path? Basil turned back around, tried not to think of what was behind him. He stepped toward the sound of Hedgeny’s voice.
A dozen yards further down the path, an acrid odor assailed Basil’s nostrils. He put his free hand over his lower face and proceeded cautiously, scanning the floor, wall to wall, as he made his way. The tunnel was widening, the roar of black water louder, pressing itself against his mind and flesh. Something splashed off to his right and Basil stopped. He felt a moment of vertigo when he pointed the light toward the sound. The wall of the tunnel no longer existed. Neither did the one on the other side.
Basil felt like he was balancing on a tight wire. Fear crawled through his mind and assaulted his nerve endings when Hedgeny yelled, “Over here, Basil, over here!”
Panning the light left to right and overhead, Basil found himself in what appeared to be a cavernous grotto. Hanging from gnarled crags above his head were thousands of bats, heads tucked under their wings to avoid the light of the intruder. He had read about the smell of bats but no written description could do justice to the feral odor of their vampire spoor. A single denizen of the grotto roof defied Basil’s beam of light. Tongue protruding through its rat teeth, it yawned and closed its eyes. “Basil, damn it!” Hedgeny sounded very close.
And indeed he was. The first thing that caught Basil’s attention when he aimed his flashlight toward the sound of Hedgeny’s voice was the warrior’s masque from his dragon costume. It glared at him from a pool of stagnant water, a devil of the damned about to rise from its mossy grave. “I’m down here!” Hedgeny called out.
Just past the pool, at the bottom of a steep grade of crumbling rock, Basil found Hedgeny’s white and very scared face. He was lying amongst a pile of human bones. Basil’s light displayed a triangular stack of gaping skulls off to one side and Hedgeny gasped. “Stay calm,” Basil said, though he felt anything but calm himself. “Just do as I say and we’ll get you out of there in one piece.”
Basil scanned the area where Hedgeny had fallen with his flashlight. There were ledges rising behind him in a vertical wall. The tattered remnants of mummified human remains were evident on each ledge. Hedgeny had stumbled into what was either a crypt or an antiquated storage place for the school’s lab specimens and classroom exhibits. A stack of shelves, broken and decayed, held jars crisscrossed with intricate weavings of spider web. Basil focused the light beam on a specific jar and there, through glass and cobweb, a single lunatic eyeball stared nakedly back at him. “Stop it, Basil! Get me out!” Hedgeny screamed. “You’ve sent me straight into hell, Basil.” His voice trailed off, became a miserable and keening wail.
“All the people I’ve seen so far down here are dead except for the two of us,” Basil assured him. “Remember that quote of the Professor’s, ‘You have nothing to fear but fear itself.’ “Bones and body parts are no threat to us.” Hedgeny’s discomfort had a strange, calming effect on Basil. It was the first time in their relationship he had ever held the upper hand. Even when tutoring Hedgeny, he’d had to wheedle and entice him through his studies.
“Damn him for saying that!” Hedgeny cursed. “I’m scared shitless and that’s all there is to it. You got me into this mess and I expect you to get me out of it.” When Basil failed to reply, Hedgeny lamented, “I’m sorry, man. I hurt myself when I fell and need you to help me get out of here. Come on, Basil. It’s like you said before, we’re old buddies and ought to trust each other.”
Basil reached into his pocket and fingered one of the syringes containing morphine. “Hedgeny, I’m going to work my way down to you if I can. Please be calm and quiet so I’m not distracted by your hysterics.”
“I’ll be good,” Hedgeny promised, “You just come on down and get me out.”
Using the flashlight to pick his way through the fall of stones, Basil reached Hedgeny fairly quickly. Hedgeny grabbed Basil’s leg and pressed his face into his trousers. “Ah damn, I’m glad you made it. I’ve never been so happy to see anyone in my life.”
Basil gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “We’ll get you out of here; don’t worry. Have you tried to stand up?”
“I twisted my leg when I fell,” Hedgeny replied. “You damn right I tried to get up.” He gestured fearfully at the pile of bones he had fallen into. “I think maybe I broke my ankle. It hurts like hell.”
“Let go of my leg,” Basil said calmly, “I’ll take a look at your ankle.”
“It better not be broken,” Hedgeny said hopefully. “It just better not. I gotta be up for the Bowl game.” He let go of Basil’s leg. “It’s the left one.”
Basil bent to look at the leg. He silently wished for gloves once more as he pushed aside dry bits of human bone from the debris Hedgeny had fallen into. He carefully rolled up Hedgeny’s costume and the leg of his trousers, then pushed his sock down. The ankle was bruised and swollen but resting at a normal angle. “Here, you hold the flashlight,” he said to Hedgeny. Hedgeny took the light and aimed it at his injured leg. “Hold on tight to that,” Basil warned, “It’s our only way out of here.”
“I hear that,” Hedgeny replied, “You go ahead. Don’t worry, I’m used to pain.”
Basil took the ankle firmly in both hands. “Tell me if this hurts,” he said as he applied steady lateral pressure.
“Oh yeah, oh yeah, that hurts. It hurts a lot,” Hedgeny said.
Basil cleared a spot next to Hedgeny and sat down. He took a syringe from his pocket. “Your leg doesn’t appear to be broken, sprained badly, but not broken. I have some of Emily’s medicine here, morphine. I’ll give you an injection to help you bear the pain. You can lean on me for support. Once we get back to the level part of the tunnel, about halfway out, the going will be easier. Climbing will be the hardest part.”
“I don’t know,” Hedgeny said, “What if I hurt it worse by walking on it? I could screw myself up for good.”
“I’m sure it’s not broken,” Basil assured him. “Dealing with the pain will be the toughest part for you.” He reached for the flashlight and Hedgeny pulled it back out and held it protectively.
“I’ll hold on to the light,” he said fearfully. He shined the beam on the ledges behind him. “These dead people may not bother you but they give me the willies. I just wanna get out o’ here.”
“Give me the light and I’ll go back,” Basil said resignedly. “I’ll get some help and we’ll carry you out on a stretcher. I can’t help you if you keep freaking out. It might be better if you were carried out on a gurney.”
Hedgeny grabbed his wrist and a bolt of pain shot up Basil’s arm. He had forgotten about his injury. “Let go of my wrist, Hedgeny. I accidentally cut it yesterday. If it starts to bleed, neither of us will get out of here.”
Hedgeny let go of Basil’s arm as if it were on fire. “Okay, you give me the shot. There’s no way you’re leavin’ me here alone, especially without a light.”
Basil massaged his wrist with his free hand. He reached into his shirt pocket, fingered open the plastic bag there, and dry swallowed three aspirins and a couple of antibiotic capsules. “We’re a hell of a pair,” he said to Hedgeny, “Push up your sleeve and I’ll start the morphine.”
Hedgeny fumbled with his sleeve and dropped the flashlight. “Give me that!” Basil said impatiently as he caught it. “You know, Hedgeny, I may never get you out of here if you don’t start showing me a little trust. You have to cooperate with me. It’s going to take both us, teamwork if you will, to get through this thing.” He shined the beam on Hedgeny’s arm.
“Okay, you’re right,” Hedgeny acquiesced. “Hey Basil, I drank a bathtub full o’ beer tonight. Is the morphine okay with that?” He began to roll up his sleeve.
“This is a small dose, just enough to help Emily sleep peacefully,” Basil lied. “You’re three times as big as she is. I just hope this is enough to see you through your pain. If not, I have a backup dose. Hopefully we won’t have to use it.”
Hedgeny grimaced. “God, I hate shots. I mean I really hate shots! Is it gonna hurt?”
“Look away,” Basil ordered. He pinched the skin on Hedgeny’s beefy upper arm and administered the injection as he turned his head.
“Is it gonna hurt?” Hedgeny asked again.
“You’re a big baby,” Basil said. “It’s all over. Roll your sleeve down.”
Hedgeny attempted to lift his leg. “Ouch! It’s not workin’, man. It hurts worse than ever. Now what’re we gonna do?”
Basil switched off the flashlight. “Give it a few minutes, Hedgeny. It has to get into your bloodstream to do its work. It’s not an instant fix.”
“Turn the light back on,” Hedgeny pleaded. “If we gotta wait, we gotta wait. What the hell was that sound. Did you hear that? Talk to me, Basil.”
“Bat’s wings,” Basil replied, “If we’re quiet enough, we can probably listen to them suckle their young.”
“Who wants to hear that? Turn the light back on,” Hedgeny begged. “I don’t like the dark. There’s nasty things down here, I just know it.”
“We have to conserve the batteries,” Basil said simply. “I could probably walk out of here in the dark but we definitely need the flashlight to climb up out of this hole.” He switched on the flashlight and pointed it toward the entrance to the grotto. Two sets of yellow eyes stared out from the tunnel. Basil turned off the light.
“Damn!” Hedgeny said as he tried to shift his leg. “What the hell was that? Looked like wild cats or somethin’!”
“There’s nothing down here nastier than the two of us,” Basil said. “They’re watching us, those who live down here, wondering what evil we’re up to.” Once more, Hedgeny’s discomfiture was acting as a balm to Basil, calming him and reminding him that the creatures in this place under the earth were the least of his worries.
A low sob of despair escaped from Hedgeny and Basil began to sing. “This one’s for the whiskey man, set ‘em up and knock ‘em down.”
“Sing it, buddy,” Hedgeny encouraged. “Sing the rest o’ that part, Basil. I love that damn song, I really do.”
“This one’s for the whiskey man,” Basil sang, “Ready for another round we go again and again, round we go again.”
“Sometimes when I’m runnin’ or swimmin’,” Hedgeny said wistfully, “I think about the whiskey man. The beat o’ that song just pushes me through, gives me my wind. That’s what I do with my feet, set ‘em up and knock ‘em down. It’s like the devil’s after me and all I gotta do is keep on movin’ to get away.”
“Emily loves that song too,” basil said wistfully. “The two of you got me to singing it. It’s the first rock song I ever had any appreciation for.”
“We found our way together, didn’t we?” Hedgeny said. “Remember when you called The Whiskey Man mad poetry and you and Emmy and I all laughed and sang it together over and over?”
“Try your leg now,” Basil suggested. “Speaking of Emily, we still have to go meet her. She’s probably wondering what happened to us. I shouldn’t have left her alone this long.”
“I don’t know,” Hedgeny whined. “After all of this, can’t we go see Emmy tomorrow? I don’t feel very good, Basil, I really don’t.”
Basil moved down to Hedgeny’s feet. He switched the light on and held it with one hand while he massaged Hedgeny’s ankle with the other. “That feels good,” Hedgeny moaned, “That feels really good.”
“Here,” Basil said. He handed the flashlight to Hedgeny. “You hold the light and try to get up. Don’t drop it, whatever you do. I’ll support your ankle with my hands and we’ll see if we can get you upright.”
“Okay,” Hedgeny agreed. “It doesn’t hurt as much now. That stuff must be workin’.” He was slurring his words which worried Basil, who wasn’t all that sure about the effects of mixing alcohol and morphine. “Up we go,” he said and Hedgeny managed to stand.
“Ah man, I don’t feel so good,” he groaned. He bent over retching and bits of vomit splashed onto Basil’s hands and trousers.
Basil felt sick himself, took a deep swallow, and wiped his hands on his sweatshirt. He stood up and took the flashlight from Hedgeny’s grasp. “Hold on to me for support. Puke all of that beer out you can. You’ll feel better in the long run.”
“I don’t know,” Hedgeny groaned. He laid a big paw on Basil’s shoulder, stood on his good leg, and retched some more. Basil heard a loud splashing sound again and wondered if it was some creature from the black water or the flood of Hedgeny’s bile. “I’m done,” Hedgeny sighed at last.
“Put your arm around my shoulder,” Basil said. He wrapped his arm around Hedgeny’s waist. “I’ll hold the light and pick our ground. You follow my movements, step where I step. Remember this, I can’t support all your weight. Just use me for balance. If you feel weak or like you’re going to fall, tell me and we’ll stop for a rest. Understand?”
“Yeah,” Hedgeny said weakly, “I’ll follow you.”
Inquiries: [email protected]
© 2016 artwork, music & words
conceived by & property of
tom (WordWulf) sterner 2016 ©
‘neath the black water bed
dark wing, fang & eye
communing with the dead
chapter six
Undone/sub-level one
The light in the car flickered and Basil sat down next to the brake. He had been out of his mind to try to pull this off. He knew that now and it was too late to do anything about it. What in the hell made him think he could handle a three hundred pound freight train? What was he going to do now? Hedgeny had just plunged into no-man’s land and Basil had to figure out a way to bring him back. He had half a notion to just close the door and go back up to his room. Let the big bad athlete find his own way out of the centuries-old labyrinth he had thrown himself into. He stood up and grabbed the handle of the scissors gate. A sound came to him from the darkness. It fell in upon itself, then came again, stronger than before. Basil recognized it as a resounding echo. He rested his forehead against the iron of the gate. Somewhere out there, alone in the darkness of sub-level one, Hedgeny had begun to weep.
Basil took the flashlight from his pocket. He switched it on and pointed it straight into the opening with no effect. It seemed there was no discernible end to the darkness. Angling the beam to the left, he captured a flat surface in the light. He played the light up and around and discovered that, much like the office on sub-level three, the elevator shaft was situated at the end of a hallway on sub-level one. Massive spider webs stretched from ceiling to wall and wall to floor. Most of their inhabitants skittered to the edge of the light, then hunkered down as if playing dead or waiting to see what was going to happen next. Others crouched center-point in their webs, fangs prominent and forelegs poised, waiting for prey and apparently oblivious to the light.
Using the juncture of the wall where it met the floor as a line of sight, Basil found a break in the web-work where Hedgeny must have landed when he dove from the elevator. A few yards further down the hall, the light caught a pile of old furniture and yellowed papers. They were strewn about, wall to wall in the hallway. Basil imagined they were probably the source of the loud crash and struggle he had heard. It was impossible to penetrate the darkness past the jumble of debris with the flashlight. “Hedgeny!” he yelled loudly.
“Hedgeny! Hedgeny! Hedgeny!” his own voice howled in response.
“I am not going out there,” Basil said to himself, fully aware before the words were out of his mouth that that was exactly what he was about to do. “Stay in the center of the hallway,” he repeated to himself over and over, a litany, “away from the spiders and their killing webs.” He pocketed the flashlight, took a deep breath, placed both hands flat on the concrete floor of sub-level one, and hoisted himself up and through. Standing erect in the hallway, a low menacing growl off to his right caused Basil to go fumbling for his flashlight. He caught the tail end of an animal in the light’s beam. It took refuge under one of the old desks and stared back at him with its yellow/green eyes.
“Basil! Basil! Basil! Help, help, help, help, me, me, me, me-ee-e,” echoed from somewhere further down the hall. Professor Grimes was closer to the truth referring to these as a labyrinth of tunnels, rather than hallways, Basil thought as he took the first difficult step in the direction of Hedgeny’s voice. He pointed the light in front of himself, toward the pile of furniture, up, down, around and through the tangle of wood and paper. There was no evidence of the feral eyes.
When he reached the dust-laden obstacles, he had to shove some of them aside to make his way through. His flesh crawled as decades of fine dust sifted into his skin. Cobwebs stuck to the palms of his hands. Why hadn’t thought to use gloves as part of his impish costume, he wondered. Basil couldn’t shake the feeling that something or someone, no… something was watching him. It was difficult to move things with the flashlight in his hands. He was forced to locate the odd desk or chair, then ascertain where to place it. Since it required the use of both hands to do the work, he deposited the flashlight in his pocket while he did the moving. The tunnel was alive with crawling things and thousands of watching eyes; it was unnerving to work in the dark.
Once he cleared the debris away and made his way past it, Basil discovered what was at the end of the reach of his beam of light. The tunnel veered sharply to the left and took a decided downward turn. He was now descending ramp-like at what felt like a four/twelve pitch. He had assumed the spider-legs of the tunnels would be on a level with one another but was quickly learning not to assume anything when it came to the sub-levels of the Psyche Building. There was no basis of logic in the successive man-minds of generations past. Basil was well aware of that fact in theory. Having to deal with it in real time and under these challenging and proving conditions was very nearly more than he could bear.
Basil felt a chill insinuate itself into his flesh. He stopped for a moment to get his bearings. Alarms went off in his mind as he splashed light in a slow arc against the walls and ceiling. There were no more spider webs. All outer surfaces of the tunnel were covered in an endless dripping mosaic of moss and slime. Shining the light wall to wall on the floor, Basil discovered he was walking on a trail of sorts. He was on a dry path, kept that way from encroaching swamp breath by constant usage. A shiver ran up his spine as he thought of the yellow-eyed, growling beast he had seen earlier. It was painfully obvious to him that spiders were the least of his worries. It was very likely that he was following an underground hunting trail.
“Help, help, help, me, me, me.” Basil listened intently to Hedgeny’s renewed cries. It was oddly reassuring to him that another human being had gone further down the path than he had and obviously survived. There was something else, subdued and powerful, the whisper of a distant roar. Basil touched his fingers to his temples and almost dropped the flashlight. “Oh no, oh no,” he said softly, then switched the flashlight off and put it in his pocket. He returned his palms to the sides of his head. ‘It’s my blood,’ he thought. ‘I can feel and hear my blood coursing through my brain. It feels like my head is going to explode.’
Basil was reminded of something Hedgeny had said earlier. “It’s like breathing. The ball is my breath. All I have to do is smell it and it’s mine.”
Awestruck, Basil whispered, “The river; I’m close to the river. I can sense it like the flow of my blood.” He felt a pain in his skull as he attempted to run the logistics of his location through his mind. He had walked the path many times from the Psyche Building to the river but found it impossible to apply the pathways and direction above ground to the maze of tunnels under the Psyche Building. “That’s it!” The sound of his excited voice startled him. He calmed down and said softly to himself, “I am a creature of comfort. I always thought of myself as in the basement of the Psyche Building when I was in the Operating Theater conducting the Cranial Loop treatments. I’m not under the building at all, I’m simply under the earth.”
“Basil, I can hear you, you, you.” Hedgeny’s voice sounded weaker, yet strident and accusing in its desperation. “Help me, me me.”
The flashlight came like a sword to Basil’s hand. It was his weapon against darkness, his spear of light. “Stay where you are, Hedgeny,” he called out. “I’m coming to get you.”
“Hurry, please!” Hedgeny pleaded.
Basil turned and shined the light down the tunnel behind him. There, at its nether reach, were the yellow eyes. Had he passed them in the tunnel, his man legs a mere swish away on the dry path? Basil turned back around, tried not to think of what was behind him. He stepped toward the sound of Hedgeny’s voice.
A dozen yards further down the path, an acrid odor assailed Basil’s nostrils. He put his free hand over his lower face and proceeded cautiously, scanning the floor, wall to wall, as he made his way. The tunnel was widening, the roar of black water louder, pressing itself against his mind and flesh. Something splashed off to his right and Basil stopped. He felt a moment of vertigo when he pointed the light toward the sound. The wall of the tunnel no longer existed. Neither did the one on the other side.
Basil felt like he was balancing on a tight wire. Fear crawled through his mind and assaulted his nerve endings when Hedgeny yelled, “Over here, Basil, over here!”
Panning the light left to right and overhead, Basil found himself in what appeared to be a cavernous grotto. Hanging from gnarled crags above his head were thousands of bats, heads tucked under their wings to avoid the light of the intruder. He had read about the smell of bats but no written description could do justice to the feral odor of their vampire spoor. A single denizen of the grotto roof defied Basil’s beam of light. Tongue protruding through its rat teeth, it yawned and closed its eyes. “Basil, damn it!” Hedgeny sounded very close.
And indeed he was. The first thing that caught Basil’s attention when he aimed his flashlight toward the sound of Hedgeny’s voice was the warrior’s masque from his dragon costume. It glared at him from a pool of stagnant water, a devil of the damned about to rise from its mossy grave. “I’m down here!” Hedgeny called out.
Just past the pool, at the bottom of a steep grade of crumbling rock, Basil found Hedgeny’s white and very scared face. He was lying amongst a pile of human bones. Basil’s light displayed a triangular stack of gaping skulls off to one side and Hedgeny gasped. “Stay calm,” Basil said, though he felt anything but calm himself. “Just do as I say and we’ll get you out of there in one piece.”
Basil scanned the area where Hedgeny had fallen with his flashlight. There were ledges rising behind him in a vertical wall. The tattered remnants of mummified human remains were evident on each ledge. Hedgeny had stumbled into what was either a crypt or an antiquated storage place for the school’s lab specimens and classroom exhibits. A stack of shelves, broken and decayed, held jars crisscrossed with intricate weavings of spider web. Basil focused the light beam on a specific jar and there, through glass and cobweb, a single lunatic eyeball stared nakedly back at him. “Stop it, Basil! Get me out!” Hedgeny screamed. “You’ve sent me straight into hell, Basil.” His voice trailed off, became a miserable and keening wail.
“All the people I’ve seen so far down here are dead except for the two of us,” Basil assured him. “Remember that quote of the Professor’s, ‘You have nothing to fear but fear itself.’ “Bones and body parts are no threat to us.” Hedgeny’s discomfort had a strange, calming effect on Basil. It was the first time in their relationship he had ever held the upper hand. Even when tutoring Hedgeny, he’d had to wheedle and entice him through his studies.
“Damn him for saying that!” Hedgeny cursed. “I’m scared shitless and that’s all there is to it. You got me into this mess and I expect you to get me out of it.” When Basil failed to reply, Hedgeny lamented, “I’m sorry, man. I hurt myself when I fell and need you to help me get out of here. Come on, Basil. It’s like you said before, we’re old buddies and ought to trust each other.”
Basil reached into his pocket and fingered one of the syringes containing morphine. “Hedgeny, I’m going to work my way down to you if I can. Please be calm and quiet so I’m not distracted by your hysterics.”
“I’ll be good,” Hedgeny promised, “You just come on down and get me out.”
Using the flashlight to pick his way through the fall of stones, Basil reached Hedgeny fairly quickly. Hedgeny grabbed Basil’s leg and pressed his face into his trousers. “Ah damn, I’m glad you made it. I’ve never been so happy to see anyone in my life.”
Basil gave his shoulder a reassuring squeeze. “We’ll get you out of here; don’t worry. Have you tried to stand up?”
“I twisted my leg when I fell,” Hedgeny replied. “You damn right I tried to get up.” He gestured fearfully at the pile of bones he had fallen into. “I think maybe I broke my ankle. It hurts like hell.”
“Let go of my leg,” Basil said calmly, “I’ll take a look at your ankle.”
“It better not be broken,” Hedgeny said hopefully. “It just better not. I gotta be up for the Bowl game.” He let go of Basil’s leg. “It’s the left one.”
Basil bent to look at the leg. He silently wished for gloves once more as he pushed aside dry bits of human bone from the debris Hedgeny had fallen into. He carefully rolled up Hedgeny’s costume and the leg of his trousers, then pushed his sock down. The ankle was bruised and swollen but resting at a normal angle. “Here, you hold the flashlight,” he said to Hedgeny. Hedgeny took the light and aimed it at his injured leg. “Hold on tight to that,” Basil warned, “It’s our only way out of here.”
“I hear that,” Hedgeny replied, “You go ahead. Don’t worry, I’m used to pain.”
Basil took the ankle firmly in both hands. “Tell me if this hurts,” he said as he applied steady lateral pressure.
“Oh yeah, oh yeah, that hurts. It hurts a lot,” Hedgeny said.
Basil cleared a spot next to Hedgeny and sat down. He took a syringe from his pocket. “Your leg doesn’t appear to be broken, sprained badly, but not broken. I have some of Emily’s medicine here, morphine. I’ll give you an injection to help you bear the pain. You can lean on me for support. Once we get back to the level part of the tunnel, about halfway out, the going will be easier. Climbing will be the hardest part.”
“I don’t know,” Hedgeny said, “What if I hurt it worse by walking on it? I could screw myself up for good.”
“I’m sure it’s not broken,” Basil assured him. “Dealing with the pain will be the toughest part for you.” He reached for the flashlight and Hedgeny pulled it back out and held it protectively.
“I’ll hold on to the light,” he said fearfully. He shined the beam on the ledges behind him. “These dead people may not bother you but they give me the willies. I just wanna get out o’ here.”
“Give me the light and I’ll go back,” Basil said resignedly. “I’ll get some help and we’ll carry you out on a stretcher. I can’t help you if you keep freaking out. It might be better if you were carried out on a gurney.”
Hedgeny grabbed his wrist and a bolt of pain shot up Basil’s arm. He had forgotten about his injury. “Let go of my wrist, Hedgeny. I accidentally cut it yesterday. If it starts to bleed, neither of us will get out of here.”
Hedgeny let go of Basil’s arm as if it were on fire. “Okay, you give me the shot. There’s no way you’re leavin’ me here alone, especially without a light.”
Basil massaged his wrist with his free hand. He reached into his shirt pocket, fingered open the plastic bag there, and dry swallowed three aspirins and a couple of antibiotic capsules. “We’re a hell of a pair,” he said to Hedgeny, “Push up your sleeve and I’ll start the morphine.”
Hedgeny fumbled with his sleeve and dropped the flashlight. “Give me that!” Basil said impatiently as he caught it. “You know, Hedgeny, I may never get you out of here if you don’t start showing me a little trust. You have to cooperate with me. It’s going to take both us, teamwork if you will, to get through this thing.” He shined the beam on Hedgeny’s arm.
“Okay, you’re right,” Hedgeny acquiesced. “Hey Basil, I drank a bathtub full o’ beer tonight. Is the morphine okay with that?” He began to roll up his sleeve.
“This is a small dose, just enough to help Emily sleep peacefully,” Basil lied. “You’re three times as big as she is. I just hope this is enough to see you through your pain. If not, I have a backup dose. Hopefully we won’t have to use it.”
Hedgeny grimaced. “God, I hate shots. I mean I really hate shots! Is it gonna hurt?”
“Look away,” Basil ordered. He pinched the skin on Hedgeny’s beefy upper arm and administered the injection as he turned his head.
“Is it gonna hurt?” Hedgeny asked again.
“You’re a big baby,” Basil said. “It’s all over. Roll your sleeve down.”
Hedgeny attempted to lift his leg. “Ouch! It’s not workin’, man. It hurts worse than ever. Now what’re we gonna do?”
Basil switched off the flashlight. “Give it a few minutes, Hedgeny. It has to get into your bloodstream to do its work. It’s not an instant fix.”
“Turn the light back on,” Hedgeny pleaded. “If we gotta wait, we gotta wait. What the hell was that sound. Did you hear that? Talk to me, Basil.”
“Bat’s wings,” Basil replied, “If we’re quiet enough, we can probably listen to them suckle their young.”
“Who wants to hear that? Turn the light back on,” Hedgeny begged. “I don’t like the dark. There’s nasty things down here, I just know it.”
“We have to conserve the batteries,” Basil said simply. “I could probably walk out of here in the dark but we definitely need the flashlight to climb up out of this hole.” He switched on the flashlight and pointed it toward the entrance to the grotto. Two sets of yellow eyes stared out from the tunnel. Basil turned off the light.
“Damn!” Hedgeny said as he tried to shift his leg. “What the hell was that? Looked like wild cats or somethin’!”
“There’s nothing down here nastier than the two of us,” Basil said. “They’re watching us, those who live down here, wondering what evil we’re up to.” Once more, Hedgeny’s discomfiture was acting as a balm to Basil, calming him and reminding him that the creatures in this place under the earth were the least of his worries.
A low sob of despair escaped from Hedgeny and Basil began to sing. “This one’s for the whiskey man, set ‘em up and knock ‘em down.”
“Sing it, buddy,” Hedgeny encouraged. “Sing the rest o’ that part, Basil. I love that damn song, I really do.”
“This one’s for the whiskey man,” Basil sang, “Ready for another round we go again and again, round we go again.”
“Sometimes when I’m runnin’ or swimmin’,” Hedgeny said wistfully, “I think about the whiskey man. The beat o’ that song just pushes me through, gives me my wind. That’s what I do with my feet, set ‘em up and knock ‘em down. It’s like the devil’s after me and all I gotta do is keep on movin’ to get away.”
“Emily loves that song too,” basil said wistfully. “The two of you got me to singing it. It’s the first rock song I ever had any appreciation for.”
“We found our way together, didn’t we?” Hedgeny said. “Remember when you called The Whiskey Man mad poetry and you and Emmy and I all laughed and sang it together over and over?”
“Try your leg now,” Basil suggested. “Speaking of Emily, we still have to go meet her. She’s probably wondering what happened to us. I shouldn’t have left her alone this long.”
“I don’t know,” Hedgeny whined. “After all of this, can’t we go see Emmy tomorrow? I don’t feel very good, Basil, I really don’t.”
Basil moved down to Hedgeny’s feet. He switched the light on and held it with one hand while he massaged Hedgeny’s ankle with the other. “That feels good,” Hedgeny moaned, “That feels really good.”
“Here,” Basil said. He handed the flashlight to Hedgeny. “You hold the light and try to get up. Don’t drop it, whatever you do. I’ll support your ankle with my hands and we’ll see if we can get you upright.”
“Okay,” Hedgeny agreed. “It doesn’t hurt as much now. That stuff must be workin’.” He was slurring his words which worried Basil, who wasn’t all that sure about the effects of mixing alcohol and morphine. “Up we go,” he said and Hedgeny managed to stand.
“Ah man, I don’t feel so good,” he groaned. He bent over retching and bits of vomit splashed onto Basil’s hands and trousers.
Basil felt sick himself, took a deep swallow, and wiped his hands on his sweatshirt. He stood up and took the flashlight from Hedgeny’s grasp. “Hold on to me for support. Puke all of that beer out you can. You’ll feel better in the long run.”
“I don’t know,” Hedgeny groaned. He laid a big paw on Basil’s shoulder, stood on his good leg, and retched some more. Basil heard a loud splashing sound again and wondered if it was some creature from the black water or the flood of Hedgeny’s bile. “I’m done,” Hedgeny sighed at last.
“Put your arm around my shoulder,” Basil said. He wrapped his arm around Hedgeny’s waist. “I’ll hold the light and pick our ground. You follow my movements, step where I step. Remember this, I can’t support all your weight. Just use me for balance. If you feel weak or like you’re going to fall, tell me and we’ll stop for a rest. Understand?”
“Yeah,” Hedgeny said weakly, “I’ll follow you.”
Inquiries: [email protected]
© 2016 artwork, music & words
conceived by & property of
tom (WordWulf) sterner 2016 ©
Madman Chronicles: The Warrior
Madman Chronicles: The Warrior
What readers are saying about Madman Chronicles
Received the MadMan Chronicles Friday, have gotten ½ way thru and I can’t put it down. Not sure if I’m scared, enthralled or just fascinated. Please thank Tom for me.
This is not a book you can skim. The author vibrantly interweaves creativity, intensity and exquisite detail. Mr. Sterner also provides music that may be downloaded from his site that correlates to the chapters in the book. A unique concept that should not be missed by the reader.
What a ride! I couldn't put it down! The characters are so real that you feel what they feel as if you're one of them (you definitely want to be). This novel keeps you on your toes anxiously waiting for what will happen next! You'll ride a rollercoaster of emotions from cheering to crying! Thanks to this thrill ride I've been to the Great Stone Mountains, the family Wulf spiritual ground, and felt the hope of After Earth. Read this novel and you'll have been there too! I can't wait for the next one! To the author...Word! Wulf!
An epic and compelling adventure. An artful blending of motorcycles and the unique souls who ride them, clashing cultures, family love, the loyalty and honor of friends, stunning betrayals, and inconceivable evil all swirling in a land teetering between apocalypses.
Author/Poet Sterner's novel is a futuristic shocker containing something for everyone. This excellent work of fiction will keep you on the edge of your seat and glued to it's pages from start to finish. Join Sterner in this wild ride through the bat and giant spider infested caves of THE LABYRINTH or the beauty of AFTER EARTH. Walk walls with Wulf and Andrew or leap into a soul or two with The Patron. Enjoy the cajun humor of Angelo or the eroticism of Lila and beauty of Jennifer. Cry, laugh, love and sing with the entire cast of characters or just fly through Vera's world of Cyberspace. Whatever your preference you are truly in for the treat of a lifetime. This novel is definitely an outstanding read.
You will absolutely marvel as you join Wulf in his action packed journey in the not so distant future. Witness the heroics as him and his comrade the Cajun, Angelo perform heroic feats and obstacles. This book is sure to keep you at the edge of your seat just waiting to turn the page. The details make you feel as if you are right there living this adventure with our new found friend Wulf. Thomas Sterner shows great talent and skill in his writings. This is most definitely a book you will want to read again and again!!
This is not a book you can skim. The author vibrantly interweaves creativity, intensity and exquisite detail. Mr. Sterner also provides music that may be downloaded from his site that correlates to the chapters in the book. A unique concept that should not be missed by the reader.
What a ride! I couldn't put it down! The characters are so real that you feel what they feel as if you're one of them (you definitely want to be). This novel keeps you on your toes anxiously waiting for what will happen next! You'll ride a rollercoaster of emotions from cheering to crying! Thanks to this thrill ride I've been to the Great Stone Mountains, the family Wulf spiritual ground, and felt the hope of After Earth. Read this novel and you'll have been there too! I can't wait for the next one! To the author...Word! Wulf!
An epic and compelling adventure. An artful blending of motorcycles and the unique souls who ride them, clashing cultures, family love, the loyalty and honor of friends, stunning betrayals, and inconceivable evil all swirling in a land teetering between apocalypses.
Author/Poet Sterner's novel is a futuristic shocker containing something for everyone. This excellent work of fiction will keep you on the edge of your seat and glued to it's pages from start to finish. Join Sterner in this wild ride through the bat and giant spider infested caves of THE LABYRINTH or the beauty of AFTER EARTH. Walk walls with Wulf and Andrew or leap into a soul or two with The Patron. Enjoy the cajun humor of Angelo or the eroticism of Lila and beauty of Jennifer. Cry, laugh, love and sing with the entire cast of characters or just fly through Vera's world of Cyberspace. Whatever your preference you are truly in for the treat of a lifetime. This novel is definitely an outstanding read.
You will absolutely marvel as you join Wulf in his action packed journey in the not so distant future. Witness the heroics as him and his comrade the Cajun, Angelo perform heroic feats and obstacles. This book is sure to keep you at the edge of your seat just waiting to turn the page. The details make you feel as if you are right there living this adventure with our new found friend Wulf. Thomas Sterner shows great talent and skill in his writings. This is most definitely a book you will want to read again and again!!
Basil is in love with Emily before they meet in person. He accepts the doubtful task of tutoring Hedgeny, the university’s star athlete, when he learns Emily will be co-tutor. The three are young, naïve, and full of life. They click and are soon known on campus as The Mighty Three. Hedgeny is finally meeting academic grade requirements, much to the relief of school administrators. Just as important, his behavior improves. Though still active in local bars and campus parties, he has ceased to run riot. Basil and Emily enjoy his notoriety, bask in the penumbra of his star-status glow.
One afternoon, hopelessly in love with Emily, Basil decides to quit The Mighty Three. Emily loves them both, he and Hedgeny, has told him so herself. Competing with the superstar, the Adonis, is out of the question. Considering himself the lesser man, Basil steps away. He leaves Emily on a blanket next to the river where they have been watching Hedgeny do the heretofore impossible, swim across it and back.
The next day Emily is found in her dorm room in a coma and no one knows why. Frustrated in their attempts to reach her, having exhausted tried and true procedures, doctors consult with her parents. There is a controversial procedure, a stimulus under experimentation, the Cranial Loop. They make the decision to go forward and give it a try. A top psyche student, Basil applies for and is granted a position as assistant to the procedures. A student on an academic scholarship, he is allowed to move into a room in the psyche building. He is paid a small stipend to act as caretaker of the building and, most important to him, he is close to Emily.
Basil is frustrated in all attempts to speak to his old friend, Hedgeny, about the circumstances leading to Emily’s condition. He is welcomed as a friend in the barrooms and turned rudely away whenever he broaches the subject. Haunting the hallways and subterranean levels of the psyche building, Basil discovers secrets, learns of cover-ups perpetrated by the University in the past.
He witnesses Emily suffering through the Cranial Loop procedures, learns the mechanizations of the process. As a matter of course, he has access to and knowledge of psychological and pain management drugs, morphine and Triazolam specifically. Basil decides to take the investigation into the cause of Emily’s condition into his own hands. The first point of order is to question Hedgeny, find out if he is covering for someone and if the University is involved in some way.
On Christmas Eve Hedgeny attains national acclaim as he single-handedly rips a win for the University’s football team from the jaws of defeat. A Mardi Gras atmosphere prevails on the quad at the campus as riotous students, drunk and very nearly disorderly, await the return of their hero, the man, Hedgeny. Basil waits as well. He intends to lure Hedgeny away from his fans and pressure him to come to the psyche building for a meeting with Emily.
One afternoon, hopelessly in love with Emily, Basil decides to quit The Mighty Three. Emily loves them both, he and Hedgeny, has told him so herself. Competing with the superstar, the Adonis, is out of the question. Considering himself the lesser man, Basil steps away. He leaves Emily on a blanket next to the river where they have been watching Hedgeny do the heretofore impossible, swim across it and back.
The next day Emily is found in her dorm room in a coma and no one knows why. Frustrated in their attempts to reach her, having exhausted tried and true procedures, doctors consult with her parents. There is a controversial procedure, a stimulus under experimentation, the Cranial Loop. They make the decision to go forward and give it a try. A top psyche student, Basil applies for and is granted a position as assistant to the procedures. A student on an academic scholarship, he is allowed to move into a room in the psyche building. He is paid a small stipend to act as caretaker of the building and, most important to him, he is close to Emily.
Basil is frustrated in all attempts to speak to his old friend, Hedgeny, about the circumstances leading to Emily’s condition. He is welcomed as a friend in the barrooms and turned rudely away whenever he broaches the subject. Haunting the hallways and subterranean levels of the psyche building, Basil discovers secrets, learns of cover-ups perpetrated by the University in the past.
He witnesses Emily suffering through the Cranial Loop procedures, learns the mechanizations of the process. As a matter of course, he has access to and knowledge of psychological and pain management drugs, morphine and Triazolam specifically. Basil decides to take the investigation into the cause of Emily’s condition into his own hands. The first point of order is to question Hedgeny, find out if he is covering for someone and if the University is involved in some way.
On Christmas Eve Hedgeny attains national acclaim as he single-handedly rips a win for the University’s football team from the jaws of defeat. A Mardi Gras atmosphere prevails on the quad at the campus as riotous students, drunk and very nearly disorderly, await the return of their hero, the man, Hedgeny. Basil waits as well. He intends to lure Hedgeny away from his fans and pressure him to come to the psyche building for a meeting with Emily.
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