through the Past, darkly

*

Cat and mouse

"I don't suppose an appeal to your humanity would change anything" said Mouse, in a quavering falsetto.

"Why should it" said Puss "I'm no human, and neither are you".

And with that, his claws swept across the soft white fur of the mouse belly. They watched both fascinated as mouse pink intestines spilled, drawn in red mammal blood on the floor by the door at the back of the shed.

*

Being born

Warm and wet, floating in time, his heart beat to the rhythm that he'd known forever when a strange turbulence rocked his world. It grew stronger and he was drawn into a convergence that closed in on him, tighter and tighter, no matter how hard he struggled against it.

Faster than it began, it ended and his world got cold, cold, cold. As the warm fluid in his ears drained, the soundtrack of his life turned up to 11,
a shrill cavernous cacophony that made his head throb.

His eyes opened for the first time on a world in conflict with the vertigo at the centre of his universe. Even the dim lights in the operating
room burned into his retinas, so he closed them again and tried to cry.

It wasn't until a hand in a latex glove slapped his ass that he even knew he had one, and it hurt. Somewhere inside him a sound rose up to his lips and when they parted, he screamed for his life.

*

the Objects in mirrors

Sometimes space is not as glamorous as it looks from a small town on Earth. After an hour or so of routine valve maintenance, his suit was soaked in with his perspiration and exhalations and felt like a size too small. All he wanted from the universe now was a hot shower and few hours of sleep.

He waved to Jared and signaled his return to the portal, then he saw it again. He'd noticed the other ship maybe ten minutes ago, flashing chrome against the blackness of the stars. In galactic terms, it was on a collision course but by his human reckoning, it was more than fifty miles away - enough to make you curious, but nothing
to worry about...

He was nearly at the hatch when he saw it accelerating at an incredible rate. He blinked his eyes and suddenly realized it wasn't another ship... it was an M102 Remote area denial device, headed straight for his future.

*

Learning to Fly

"It's Science, Bertie" said Andrew, casting his
young tenor a little crossly into the gusting dim.

"I'm frightened" said his young companion, shivering from more than the blistering wind
off the Channel, and for a moment, that sound was the world.

Andrew stared back across the meadow and said "The kite flies, Bertie, yes?" and after a moment's hesitation, Andrew replied "Yes".

"So if the kite flies, and you're holding on to that lite very tightly, then you will fly too, yes?".  After
a longer hesitation and with much less certainty, Bertie's little voice answered "I suppose so... ".

"Do you want to fly, Bertie? Do you want to soar above us all and see what none of us have ever seen? Is that what you want Bertie?" said Andrew. There followed an even longer hesitation until Bertie responded without any certainty
whatsoever "Yes....?".

"Then fly, Bertie, fly! Fly now, fly today, fly into history and show us the way!" said Andrew and tugged on the string as hard as he dared. Bertie stumbled into a jog that became a run. The golden rays of the sun broke through the clouds and illuminated his face. Flushing pink, he ran as
fast as he could and then even faster.

Holding on to the kite for dear life, he lept
into the sky and the first true moment of exhilaration in his life. As the ground dropped
and disappeared beneath his feet, he was flying, high above the white cliffs, the green grass and the wet blue of the Channel. Straining his eyes, squinting the misty distance, he saw France!

*

when the Stars come out...

Say what you want about Ypsi, if you're making Cadillac tracks down Michigan Avenue, leaving
the Motor City for Chic-town and points west you're driving by.

Most people tap the gas and pull out to pass but
if you're in show business, and the Star is low on reds and greens, you might flip the blinker and turn off, looking for the Brick Dick, and the second left and the bar where a friend of a friend might have something like what you need.

The Star is looking for Dwayne, and the bar
is where he does his business, as he calls it. Mostly, he hangs around hustling free pours off other people's jugs and shooting his mouth, but once
in a while he sells a handful of pills.

Some called him white trash, but nobody out at
the Coachville trailer park thought he and his were all that special. His old man was a dumbass first class and his mother was a soiled dove, semi-pro. In Dwayne's file at the sherriff's, there was a short report from his first probation officer that said it all: "Dwayne might not have been born a dickhead, but he took to it like a hog to a bucket of fresh shit". 

The Star et al find the bar, park the car and walk inside. They suck up all the air in the room for minute, then a pool ball thumps a cushion and people drift back to their whatever. It's nobody's first dance - Dwayne and the Star pick each other out at the get-go and head for Dwayne's office.

It takes a minute for occupants to zip up and disappear. The Star asks him "What've you got?", and Dwayne throws a blindside sucker punch upside his head and runs out of the men's room and the back door of the bar.

He gets as far as the dark edge of the parking lot where he stops, gasping for breath, not sure whether to laugh or to cry.


*

the truth about Hell

Mxyzptlk and Pyewackett were the kind of imps who really didn't care about much of anything anymore. In a place where what's 'bad' is 'good', you might think this was a good thing, but that would just be one more thing about Hell where you lacked clue one.

For instance, it turns out that no matter which off-ramp you took on your highway to Hell, be it Mictlan, Tartarus, Peklo or Kalichi, you ended up in exactly the same place and when you got there, nobody really gave a damn about what you called it.

This simple metaphysical fact was a kind of cruel, useless foreshadowing dating back to when El Darko still gave a rat's ass. There were stories about hIMSELF  kicking ass and taking names, but nobody had seen hIM that motivated in centuries.

These days, Hell was like a crummy theme park well past its best befores, and therein lay a cosmic irony... though it lacked the diabolical tortures administered by energetic demons so relished by Earthly imagineers, Hell is, was and ever will be way, way worse than any preachers' technicolour fantasy.

Why? Because Hell is incredibly, amazingly boring. Hell is lame. It sucks the Big One, because nothing ever happens. Hell is the worst party of your life with a wicked (sic) hangover and hemorrhoids the size of golf balls.

Everyone at the party is as stupid/nasty/batshit crazy as they were on Earth. They never learn one new thing and they never shut up. The party never stops. It goes on forever and you ain't goin' nowhere, because in a place where everything's burning, fire exits would be silly.

This is why imps, demons and even His Supreme Nastyness are such geeks for human imaginings of Hell in print, movies and other arts. In the Infernal Eternal, these lurid hallucinations are porn cut with Star Wars and Citizen Kane, at least at first. But then, like anything else over the course of Eternity, it gets boring and there you are - back at the party where even Satan is bored,  and God's laughter echoes down the canyon.

*

the wisdom of Elders

Bradley had been raised to respect his elders and in a way, he thought he probably did. More commonly, they inspired cold sweats, fear and nausea. The two uncles who hadn't be slaughtered in Great War came home home badly damaged: one given to drooling and nightmares; the other to longer and longer silences that put everyone on edge.

His father was in the City most of the time, which everyone preferred and that left his mother's father. Sixty-three years
and 7 months after his investiture, "Sir" was still Lord of Santorum, it's lands and licences, some of which predated the Magna Carta.

His youthful travels in the tropics caught up with him a little more every year, though and the former poster boy of a great empire was now a pale, frail skin bag of bones dripping and oozing from septum to rectum. He took his mush and his grog through a glass tube in his neck and smelt like a lard ranch most of the time.

But before his decline, Sir had told Bradley some of the things a Lord of an ancient Manor needs to know, and Bradley was reminded of one of them now.

Sir had leaned over and whispered "If life fills your hat with soup...". When Bradley leaned closer to hear the rest Sir had shouted, "eat the soup" and given him a noogie.

At the time, Bradley felt like he hadn't really understood Sir's meaning but here he was - eating the soup and it was delicious.
Lifting another spoonful to his lips, he tried to remember what else the old man had said...

that was its Name

Warm rays of sun dappled down between the leaves of the old maples, in the occasional puff of a breeze, and it pleased her. She had never thought of herself as the sharpest knife in the drawer, but she knew if one was moving slower and slower down the road, one sure as hell better learn to enjoy the ride.

She'd buried a husband and a son, so she treasured all the more a woman who'd once been her own little girl - the good wife and mom, who still found time to her daughter once in a while. Patsy had been coming to camp this lake since she was in diapers.

"Now I'm the one in diapers" Barbara thought to herself, coughing a laugh as she turned onto the path leading back their site. She heard the murmur of a little girl's voice and stopped instinctively. Hearing it again, she turned stepping slowly for the source.

A little girl in ribbon braids and dungarees was murmuring to the fawn while it looked up at her and down to the dripping spoon of milk. One tentative lick and then two. Birds twittered in the branches and Barbara lingered, leaning forward on her cane to watch as the trembling creature drank its fill and then slowly tip-toed away.

"You have a lovely little friend" she called out and the girl turned her head. Squinting into the shade, she replied "Hunters took its Mama, I think... seemed pretty hungry".

"Good for you!" Barbara replied with conviction and turned to leave, calling back "What do you call her?" With a hunching of shoulders and a sigh of weltschmerz, the girl called back "venison".

the persistence of Memory

Oh. My. God.

She brought the little glowing screen closer to her face, and touched each of the figures in the photo with her finger tip. She didn't even remember taking this picture... probably just playing with her new cel last September, on the first day of school.

Seven months later, there were Daniel and Andrew crunching through the dry leaves and laughing about something with no clue that this was the last minute of their lives. There was bus rolling slowly towards them. She remembers her surprise, that something so big could move so quietly. 

When the bus knocked them down, one of them had screamed until the double tires on the rear axle rolled over him. Then there was only a strange silence, and she'd barely noticed the bus rolling past her down the hill.

Her eyes were riveted on the dark red blood oozing into the rusty grate by the curb, but her thoughts were miles away, remembering that night on the beach.

She pressed "delete" and when it asked if she was sure, she pressed "Yes".

*

to death or Glory!

The King of France was assembling a great army near Dieppe, but he needed a new weapon of mass destruction to strike fear into his English foes. His salvation appeared in the person of the Dauphin Alphonse "Frankie" Rue deMerde, who promised a weapon that would make the English archers cry like little girls and bring the King golden showers of glory.

Voila Le Beau Bow! It was born of a chance meeting between the Dauphin and a Macedonian exile named Victor Yaznemski, in one of Marseille's more bestial brothels. Over the dregs of a cheap brandy, the Dauphin mumbled something about the King's army, and Victor told him of his idea for a terrible new weapon that could spill rivers of blood.

The Dauphin commissioned Victor to build at once, and a month later le Beau Bow debuted at court. Everyone wanted to see it in action, which accounts for the relatively high death toll when - just as the bow reached full extension - it broke, sending both arms of the bow and the
string spinning away.

The Bow's crew and a dozen of the King's favourite courtiers were sliced to ribbons. The Dauphin fled to the colonies and Yaznemski was taken to the Bastille, where the giant arrow was inserted in
his rectum. Sadly, no one noticed that le Bow clearly was a great weapon, if pointed the other way.

*

the cowboy Way

The horses knickered quietly in the lush grass, and a breeze whispered by, soft as poplar leaves  as the sun slipped slowly behind the bute. Jim stirred the twigs and dried grass as the flame caught and added a couple of small logs to the fire.

"I wanted to say again how sorry I am about last night, Jim" said Bill, all in a rush, looking down at the fire. In the silence between them, there was only the crackle and popping of the dried wood catching and the tent canvas rippling in the breeze.

"I suppose I should have mentioned I was lactose-intolerant..." The rest of what he wanted to say got caught in his throat, like he'd swallowed a bee.

*

if wishes were Horses

It wasn't the first time Mary-Margaret had forsaken choir practice to meet a lover, but she had tarried longer in her pleasure than usual and now needed to make haste for home. Taking an old poacher's path through the woods, she stepped out of the woods to the meadow just as a wee man in a little green suit was stepping in, so she grabbed him by the collar and lifted him up.

"They always do" the leprechaun thought to himself as she held him aloft, and turned him this way and that "and it makes me feel like a fish". When she had looked her fill, and given him a sniff, Mary-Margaret said "You'd be a leprechaun, then".

The leprechaun's only response was a rolling of his eyes until Mary-Margaret gave him a good shake and said louder, again "You'd be a leprechaun, then".

"Of course I'm a bleedin' leprechaun, you cow!" he sputtered. Mary-Margaret held him even higher and then dropped him, saying "Wheeeeee! before catching him and holding him up like a child to her face.

"Then I've got a wish coming, don't I?" she asked and he sighed as he nodded his little head. "Then I wish this wee man I'm holding would be my little bitch for a hundred years!" she replied, with the strangest of smiles "starting right now!"

And some say, if you're walking that path at the right time, you can hear the scream of that leprechaun still, echoing off into the dark woods.

*

nature versus Nurture

*

It was just one of those things. He was almost
five now, and while that might seem young to some, he had learned a few things about the workings of the world.

Fundamental things, like 'sticking a fork in an electrical outlet isn't cool, it's dumb' and 'even
if you drape your mother's very best towel around your neck, it did not mean you could jump off the roof of the garage and fly '...

He also knew when both your parents told you something really, really special would happen soon, it would suck - the only variables were "how much would it suck?" and "for how long?".

When he turned the corner with his dad, there
was the flag flying and the impeccable geometry
of Richard Nixon Elementary School. Everyone
his size was taking their place in line, under the watchful gaze of pale and nervous adults.

He listened to the countdown in his head, as
this morning's waffles prepared to blast-off.
When they reached escape velocity, he leaned forward to optimize the spread and placement on the sidewalk and his father's good shoes.

*

the Silence of men

In the valley behind them, a column of nasty grey smoke rose from what had once upon a time been
a fine homestead. The leather in their saddles creaked in time to the soft clips and clops of the
horses hooves, plodding down a trail they knew
too well.

The longer the silence between them continued, the harder it seemed to break. His father was a quiet man at the wildest times, and he expected
the same courtesy from others- no one more than his own son.

Connor knew this, and kept his own counsel as
best he could, but there were so many questions in his mind this morning, and he had so few answers. But finally...

"Dad?" Clip. clop.

"Yeah?...".  Clip. clop.  Clip. clop.

"I gotta pee".

His father's horse stopped with a twitch, and Connor reined in the mare. When he glanced
over at  his father, the silence hung between
them like a shroud.

*

a kiss is just a Kiss

Ludwig II's younger brother Otto was the kind
of host only a prince can be, and there was a time
in Bavaria when an invitation to one of his soirees was "the shit" among the cool kids. Nothing was
too elaborate, fanciful or risqué for Otto's entertainments and many were the debutantes and young cavalry officers who decorated his ballrooms and shared a dawn with him.

His cachet began to dwindle, though, when he began to insist that immediately before dining,
his guests join him in a ritual called  "embrassez
la belle vache morte*".  One by one and two by two, his invitations were regrettably refused until
he dined alone.

It was only later they would learn that Otto
was taking advice from the spirits who lived in
his dresser drawers. These spirits also said that
to maintain his health, he should shoot a peasant every morning which he did until their numbers were much reduced. It was only then one servant suggested he load the prince's gun with blanks and another servant should pretend to drop down dead when he fired.

Gradually, the "half-witted Prince" became
afflicted with "melancholia". He was declared insane in 1875, and never truly ruled as King. Some said he was not even aware that he had become King. By 1876, the condition was so acute he was "placed in restraint" and two years later was "committed to a more rigorous confinement"
at Berchtesgaden. Years later, he would be declared the last true King of Bavaria.




* kiss the beautiful dead cow

*

the power of Faith

"Again".

With a silent nod, the hooded figure dipped the ladle into the bubbling oil and with consummate care, emptied it over the blistered feet above the brazier. It was an essential part of the process, as it allowed the flesh to roast slowly, instead of burning and deadening the pain.

He fanned the coals in the brazier and added a little fuel as the woman's whispered prayers became a moan and then an empty, hopeless scream.

"Answer the question, please".

Despite his best professional intentions, a weary impatience crept into his voice. He looked over at the others to see if they'd noticed, but all their eyes and ears were on the woman, writhing against the ropes.

Under other circumstances, her movements might have been suggestive, but here it was simply a sign that she was still resisting. They did sometimes, but in the end he would get what he wanted - not simply because he was a master of his craft, but because he was on a mission from God.

*

down in the Hole

"Zooba, zooba, zooba, zi... zooba, zooba, za!"

While the other children softly chanted the magic words and stared down into the well, Webster did his best to keep the crank turning at what he
hoped was a reverential tempo.

Somewhere between the droning of the chant
and the dry squeaking of the crank, he could
hear a desperate whimpering, echoing up
out of the dark hole.

"Sucks to be you, Vernon" thought Webster,
as he let the crank turn again, "sucks to be you".

*

on a Rainy afternoon

It was one of those dark grey rainy afternoons in March that seem to last forever. The adults were in the drawing room, chatting about whatever, playing bridge or reading while nipping neatly at the gin to keep off the chill.

As the only children in the manor, Eldon and cousin Felicity understood they were to be seen and not heard, and preferably not even that, and no one noticed when they slipped away.

"Oh Eldon" said Felicity, "I perish from boredom". Though only a year older, she was given to aping her elders and when he suggested they play a game, she
gave him pitying look.

"What sort of a game?" she yawned, but when he replied, somewhat timorously, "Doctor?", a curious smile came to her lips. "Wait here, Eldon" she said, disappearing for a moment and returning with a small valise. She held out her hand and they climbed the stairs to their "secret place" in the attic.

Eldon had naturally assumed he would be Doctor, but when Felicity began asking about his symptoms and laid her slim,cool fingers on his brow, it was almost a relief.


When she said he was very ill, he half-believed her and when she poured the laudanum into a spoon and held it to his lips, he welcomed it like a benediction.

*