Frank let the bottle slip from his hand

down onto the floor. He stared glumluy at the tv, and the final score of the game

showing. His team had lost.” Should never had replaced Dobson, ” he muttered, than leaped

from his chair.” Goddamn it!” he swore, an anger building slowly in his hot wired brain.

There was no general reason for his anger, for his hate. It had simply been slowly

building in his mind as the years piled up, crashing into each other like cars on the

freeway in a CHiPs episode. Life seemed to be moving too fast recently. Frank felt like

he was no longer able to control his life.The knowledge that his bosses saw him as a mere

device for the making of money made him feel impotent, the vastness of the corporation to

big to fight. He knew he was shit, but couldn’t admit it. At some deep level, Frank knew

the hollowness of their smiles. Like the one time he’d gone to the city for work. He’d

been on his feet all day and was tired. He went to this one restaurantbut when they heard

he just wanted a drink, they politely and firmly told him that one must order 7.50

dollars worth of food if one sat at a table. He had just wanted to shout at them ”

Goddamn it let me rest , just a minute!” But he knew they wouldn’t. He left and ended up

drinking alone in his motel six room alongside the freeway. He just wanted a rest, he

worked hard, supporting his wife, and raising that kid of theirs. It was like he was

under constant bombardment, from work, family, everything. The burden only vanished as

the alchohol drained out of the bottle. Blurrily he grabbed another beer off the table

and opened it, taking a swig. Hearing his wife Linda in the kitchen he went stumbling to

find her. She was making a meal for tommorrow, and she was talking to herself. “Now what,

talkin’ to hers’self, another looney in the family.” he mumbled, the words escaping

through his clenched teeth. But he paused, leaning against a wall, listening to her talk

as she kneaded some dough, sprinkling water from a bowl on it every once in a while, like

a priest blessing bowed heads with holy water.” That’s right, Trevor, help your mom with

dinner. No, don’t put those greasy hands into your lovely golden curls. Come on, let mom

take that spoon, here.” Frank took another gulp of beer, wiping his mouth with a meaty

hand, wiping it on his stand white tee shirt. “Talking about that goddamn Trevor.” he

mumbled to himself, “Lazy freak.” He listened some more.”See, Trevor, I make this now so

I don’t have to make this tomorrow. Tomorrow I have to go meet with Nancy and Peggy to

see who was awarded the thousand points of life certificate at the community center.

It’s a certificate, signed by the president and everything. Maybe they will choose me, I

have done a lot for the D.A.R.E. program, maybe you’ll see it with your sparkling blue

eyes. Oh, you are a point of light!”" She’s as happy as coco puffs, ” Frank mumbled, her

and her community service. Seems like every night he wanted to fuck her she was at some

community anti drug fund raiser. Right, couldn’t she see her own kid was a damn druggie

right here in our own house! Is she blind!, Fuck. If I ever catch him at it… He left

the rest unthought, and raised the bottle again, but stopped. Wait a minute, Trevor had

brown eyes, not blue, and black hair, not blonde. What the fuck was she talking about.

Probably the goddamn stillborn. A rage grew in him hot and bright., She had always moped

about their first, brief child,, and it made him feel guilty, like it had been his

fault, his chromosome or some fuckin thing like that. But it wasn’t! And when they had

been told by the doctor that it would be dangerous for her to get pregnant, she had gone

and adopted that kid, and now look at him, couldnt care less for his old man! For anyone!

He’ll show her a point of light! Turning rapidly the corner into the kitchen he smashed

the bottle against the wall, sending glass flying in amber lights, roaring at her as she

jumped back in suprise.”Goddamn it woman! Let it be let it be!!” He yelled into her face,

spittle flying, pointing at her with the broken beer bottle, its sharp edges wanting to

cut out that silent accusation he could feel in her eyes. There was a still moment as he

stood facing her with the threataning bottle, and she leaned herself back and away from

him against the counter, blinking shocked. A buble seemed to burst in Franks head, a pain

behind his eyes. A clarity opened and vanished. Frank lowered his bottle, what was he

doing.” Oh God, Linda, I’m drunk, I didn’t mean to… this bottle, nothing, nothing..”

He felt ashamed, but he tried to look into her eyes. She blinked slowly, than said

comfortingly, ” oh Frank, you just shocked me, and the breaking of the…!”" Im sorry,

I’m sorry, ” He rushed up to her and put his armaround her waist. she reached out and

handed him another beer. Leaning forward he kissed her on the lips. She could smell the

beer on his breath. He kissed her again, ” Darlin, you knows I luvs ya..” He whispered

into her ear, slipping his hand under her shirt. She smelled like butter.” Frank,” she

laughed, “you know I have to get this..” ” Yes, yes,” he said, unbuttoning her jeans and

sliding them down her hips, as her hands went under his shirt and stroked his gut. ” A

thousand points of light, a thous..”"Ohh, !” Linda gasped in sudden pain, stumbling back

agaisnt the counter.”Ohh god! it hurts” she grasped her stomach and leaned over.”Honey,

what!, where, are you ok?” Frank asked, grabbing her, supporting her.”Is it your stomach?

Do you need some rolaids, pepto?” he asked concerned as waves of pain crisscrossed her

features. Nothing like this had ever happened before. He lead her her to the chair, ”

Here, sit here, relax and I’ll get ypou something. ” She gave him a brief, scared look,

and then the convulsions started. Her whole body began to jerk, tremble, and spasm. Her

head tilted back and short gasps came from her mouth, her neck muscles strained. Spit

began to spill out of her mouth as her grunts got loud. Frank backed away in shock.” What

the fuck!! Jezus christ!!” As he watched her stomach began to puff out. Her hands reached

down and took off her shirt, took off her underwear, dropped them around her feet.

Unhooked her bra as if she was confined. Her stomach began to grow. She backed herself

onto the table, sending bowls and dough flying to the ground with a crash. Then she

twitched violently, breathing hard, her legs up and spread apart, opening wide, wide so

that something could be pushed out, something that had suddenly grown inside her and

wanted out. She doubled up and screamed.” My god, the pain, make it stop frank!” Frank

watched in disbeleiving horror. his gaze traveled to the beer in his hand and back to the

table as his wife gave birth. Blood and fluids poured out, making a slip and slide for

this unimaginable happening. A feotous, a minature human shape began to slowly appear

head first out of Linda as she screamed. It plopped to the ground with a sound like

rotten fruit, followed by afterbirth and attached by an umbilical cord. Frank watched

stunned as this small thing feebly crawled around on the linoleum. He glanced amazed from

it to his naked wife spread eagle on the table. She looked at him out of unknowing,

completely scared eyes. She had no idea as to what was happening. ” What… ” Frank

began, but Linda tilted her head back again and began to scream. As nore blood spurted

out, Frank could make out another head appearing from between her legs. She was giving

birth again. frank stumbled back, leaning against the stove. The bottle dropped from his

hand, unnoticed, and smashed against the floor. frank dropped to his knees, his head in

his hands, the glass cutting into his flesh. if he could only close his eyes to it…

then he heard a sound. a tiny sound, the sound of the baby he had always wanted. crying

out, wanting his love. he opened his fingers, peering through the distorted sliver of

light and image. another baby lay on the table. he looked at his wife and cringed.

another one was coming. and another. babies, falling out, crying in unison, a morbid

choir of need. frank slumped, plugging his ears. he would just have to get used to it. it

was what he had always wanted.

…To Be Continued!!!

Chapter 4

Trevor sat on his bed, listening to his parents fight downstairs.
Those goddamn

drunks, he thought to himself, they were so full of
shit all the time. Sure, he was

just some punk kid, but at least he
had integrity. He reached over and switched on the

CD player, sliding
on his headphones. Reaching into the drawer where he kept his

little
stash he rolled a nice, tight joint, torching it up. He always felt
good

when he was high, all his memories faded away, caught up in the
movement of the music.

He’d never been able to figure out why Frank
and Linda had decided long ago to adopt

him anyway. It was his guess
that they had been a lot happier then, more desirous to

give love to
someone. But that ‘love’, it seemed to Trevor, had stopped ages

ago.
Now it was only a list of ‘do this’ or ‘don’t do that’ which they
handed

down to him, forced on him with the law of parental authority.
Trevor picked at his

fingernails, feeling his eyelids sink into their
cottony heaviness..

“Trevor!”
a harsh voice penetrated his smooth mood. He ignored it. “Tre

VOR!
get your little butt down here NOW!” Removing his headphones, he
listened to

his mother’s tiny, pleading voice trying to calm Frank
down. Good luck, he thought to

himself. At the warning sound of
footsteps on the stairs he quickly shoved his phones

back on,
pretending to be oblivious. The door swung open, and in strode

Frank,
wearing a stained tee shirt and boxer shorts, reeking

of
alcohol.

“Goddamn it, what do I have to do to get some cooperation

around
here? Trevor! Take those goddamn earphones off! Trevor!” Trevor
looked up

and took his phones off.

“Oh,
hi dad,” he said, smiling sarcastically. The

look was completely
lost on Frank, who stood swaying in the doorway. sniffing with

his
pockmarked nose.

“What’s
that smell,” he said looking at Trevor,

his eyes focusing and
unfocusing. “Is that… what.. is that..” he said, trying
to

complete his sentence.

“That’s
incense, dad,” Trevor said, pointing to

his incense burner on
top of the radio, nestled in a group of candles. Frank looked at

him
quietly for a minute, and then turned away.

“Goddamn
kids, ” he

swore to himself, then turned back.

Frank
looked at his kid,

sitting on his bed wearing his black leather
jacket and short dark hair… This

wasn’t his kid. His kid had died
long ago, and now this… this freak had replaced

him.

“Look
at these fuckin’ skulls all around your room, boy..”

He
grumbled, his gaze taking in the manner in which Trevor had styled
his room. A

poster of Slayhead taped to the ceiling, dark images of
Zombies taped to walls, the

scientific skeleton in the corner. ”
You some kind of… some kind of satanist?” Frank

spit out the
word, trying to focus.

He
can’t even remember what he

came up here for, Trevor realized.

“Yeah
dad, that’s it.”

“Don’t
get smart with me, boy… you’re friends stopped by.. Mcarmick

,
Cormick… Connick. I told you, stay away from them. If I catch you
fucking

around behind my back again…”

Trevor
snorted. Once, he’d been arrested for

graffiti. Sheriff Tolland had
pulled him in late at night, and sat up talking with his

dad. Frank
always dredged up this one memory, and kept repeating it over and
over.

“Right,
dad, I don’t graffiti anymore. Now I’m into killing

people.”
Trevor spoke sarcastically. Frank looked at him with disgust

and
impotency. He had given up, his bottle was all he really needed to
drown out

his troubled memories.

I
know I’m paranoid, Trevor thought to himself,

but I prefer it to the
bottle any day. Frank pointed at him, grasping the faded

doorjamb for
support.

“I’m
watchin’ you boy, you better watch

yourself…”

Trevor
felt a small chill run down his spine. It was just his

drunk dad, but
still… he felt like it meant something. When Frank

eventually
turned and stumbled down the stairs, Trevor pulled out his

little
notebook and began writing furiously.

Whenever
he had time,

or whenever he remembered, Trevor wrote down his
thoughts. For him, these little

observations were important. They
kept his daily world filled and active. There was

always something to
notice, something to take care against, to look out for.

Especially
as he had little or nothing to do during the day, when he

skipped
school. His friends Cormic and Mcguire were off working, and Frank
had

revoked tv and Sega rights after an incident involving the
neighbors’ greenhouse and

Trevor’s air rifle. It wasn’t like tight
ass neighbor Jess grew anything in the

ruin, unless you counted the
wrecks of old rusted roto-tillers he was cultivating. So

days had
been spent stoned and wandering, listening to his walkman and holing
up in

the abandoned trainstation, writing what he called Trev’s Rules
in his journal. The

first entry had been carved into the layers of
pages with a heavy handed pen,

revealing somewhat the depth of his
drug paranoia, the phrase, “The Mind Is

Everywhere.”
Whenever he was caught talking too far ahead of himself at the

keg
parties in the woods or at someone’s colonial mansion, he would
darkly mumble

in a serious tone his mantra, The mind is everywhere,
and the crowd which had gathered

about him of drunk listeners and
dope giddy girls, previously having been entranced by

his animated
gestures and story telling, would disperse, their interest

having
waned in the face of this, his inevitable truth. Or so his socially
injured

and sexually frustrated mind and body would conjure up as
real.

The

journal was filled with other worthies, mainly a list of that
which he should at all

times be aware of, different precautions.
Constant notices to himself he always

attempted to keep utmost in his
mind. Basic ones included never sit with your back to

a door. Always
carry a string or wire. Only buy from a known and as trusted a

source
as possible. Be leery of any organizations like the church, or other
cult

like groups, even if they do offer free food and salvation.
Always, always keep your

eyes peeled for the man, because the man
will always try and bust you because you are

a rebel, you are
fighting them and their controlling police-state system. Wear

leather
jackets and leather pants in case you ride a motorcycle and crash,
the

leather will protect as you slide along the road. Close windows
during a rainstorm.

When peeing in a public bathroom, choose the
urinal closest to the door for when They

come busting in, They will
expect you to be at a more middle one because no one ever

takes the
real close urinal, plus you being that close will make them nervous
and

allow you time to react. Lock your door but never the window. It
was these and other

rules which Trevor carved into his journal as his
17 year old existence had decreed,

had taught him to be, truths to
live by. It was what he was doing, or trying to do

before Frank once
again slammed open his bedroom door and forcibly turned the

stereo
off, painfully yanking the headphones out of Trevor’s ears as he
yelled at

him.

“Here,
make your self useful, bum, pay for your keep!” The drunk

man
tossed a video cassette onto Trevors lap,

“Run
this down to

Larangetty’s for me. Here’s the two bucks for the late
fee. I want this done now!

The goddamn stores closes soon! Move your
butt!!” The door banged shut, and Trevor

heard his father stomp
back down to the den where the sound of a football game drowned

out
the sound of Linda running the dishwasher in the kitchen. Trevor
slowly got up

and tucked his journal into his back pocket, grabbed
the videocassette and his leather

jacket and went outside. What was
it he could really do, anyway.

On the street in front of Larangetty’s video store, Trevor gave a
nervous glance up

and down the sidewalk. At this time, almost dinner,
there was no one out and about,

the stores all pretty well closed up.
Trevor glanced in at the videostore. There was

only Alvin Larangetty
typing the days returned videos into his computer. That was

good. He
didn’t want to be seen dropping off Franks video. That was because it
was

one of Franks porno’s, a film titled Bush Pilot, and it never
failed to make Trevor

nervous when he had to drop off a porno. First
of all, if someone saw him, they would

think Trevor more disreputable
than he actually was, not that he cared of course but

still, in a
town this small, it rankled. Also, Trevor thought, as he

glanced
through the haze of the marijuana still strong in his sight and

mind,
affecting his perceptions and paranoia, if Sheriff Tolland ever
caught him

with pornography, it would be bad. Especially as Trevor
was underage, and then

Larangetty would probably get in trouble, not
that it was necessarily his fault, but

still that would make
Larangetty mad at Trevor. Larangetty might maybe not rent Trevor

any
more video games, let alone the Slayhead concert films. So, he always
took a

little care, and taking a little care prevented catastrophe,
according to one of his

maxims, as recorded in his journal. Measure
twice and cut once.

The

door chimes jingled as the door closed behind Trevor. Large
Alvin Larangetty looked up

and leaned over his counter, looking for
all appearances like a fat carnival barker

calling out the freaks,
calling out -Lobsterboy, Two necked Nancy, the Human twister,

and
Scrawny kid Trevor!!! see them now! step right up!-

“Well,
Well,

returning another one of pops poppers!” The brawny older
man guffawed. Trevor simply

slid the video across to him. “Sneak
a peek?”

”
I don’t have to do

that!” Trevor retorted hotly, yet glanced
nervously around. The video store owners

face softened a bit.

“No,
I’m quite sure you don’t Trevor, quite sure

you don’t. Keep the late
fee yourself.”

”
What do you mean by that?”

Trevor replied sharply. Great,
another unaware adult playing mindgames with him,

trying to fuck him
over. Larangetty settled back, arching his hands in

protest.

”
I mean keep the money yourself, no, wait. Don’t get me wrong

Trevor,
I know you’re a smart kid. It’s true, most adults forget what it is
to be

young, but not me. History teaches, and I’ve traveled a bit to
know. Events in those

days had a long lasting effect on me, I try to
remember. You should travel if you ever

get the chance, it’ll open
your eyes. Other cultures remember their long histories.

Here in
America,” and the man swept in a gesture of his hand all the
hundreds of

titles of films in his video store, “This is where
we have our history. Don’t let it

become yours.” The words were
heavy to Trevor in his dope strained brain, and he

agreed with them
fully, as he agreed with most words about life when

stoned.
Larangetty had always treated him pretty well, and he was suddenly
paranoid

he had been too harsh, too out of sync with the man.

“Deal,
then.” he

muttered. But then he thought about what he’d just
been told.

“Say
then, Mr. Larangetty, if what you say about films and movies

being,
like, some sort of lame history for America, than why do you own a
video

store?” Larangetty grinned, just like the Who song he
always listened to, ‘the kids

are all right.’ He always enjoyed
enlightening youth if he could.

“Because,
it’s all part of America’s history. Why, reflected in these

movies is
America. Our history ensconced and warped through film, through

the
media’s scanner darkly.”

“Scanner
Darkly?” asked Trevor, thinking, man,

Larrangetty is whacked,
completely out there. He’s like, some sort of Doctor guiding

me to
some planet. We’re both on a spaceship and he knows what other worlds
are

like.

”
Ahh, it’s a book by Philip K. Dick, somewhat science fiction.

A
scanner darkly is a mirror that is fogged, somewhat warped. It can

be
complicated. You should read it. Bet you’ll like it, its all about
drugs. And

of course, a little bit more.” It sounded good to
Trevor, and he pulled out his

notebook to write it down. He liked
books, at least good books, about drugs. He’d

already read Fear and
Loathing in Las Vegas and Brave new World. He finished writing

and
thought, hey, yeah, the library, he’d go there, and walked out the
door.

Larangetty watched Trevor go, too stoned to tell he was leaving
without saying

goodbye. Poor kid, he thought. Then smiled as he
recalled fragments of his own, long

ago search through drugs, and
than later, through other things, many other things.

Still grinning
Alvin Larangetty ran the video’s code bar through his

computer.
Another one returned safely to the fold.

Trevor walked on his

new found mission to the library. On the way he
rolled another joint and smoked it as

the night darkened. THe sun had
pretty much sunk out over the sound, in the distance

behind the
scattered trees. He thought about Larangetty’s grooving that

American
movies are our history. Very deep, Trevor said to himself. Hollywood
is

behind it all. They’ve got the most money. How much did that last
movie cost? Tundra

World? Cost like two billion dollars, most of it
for the main actors makeup, probably!

Trevor snorted as he walked
past the cemetery. What he wouldn’t do with two billion!

He’d buy his
own house and move out from fuckin Franky and Li’l Linda’s.

Yeah,
he’d move to the Caribbean where dope was legal, and he’d sit out on
the

white beach high, swimming in blue water with a girl, and reading
a good book like the

ones Larangetty suggested, while listening to
SLAYHEAD. An idiotic grin came over his

face as he walked, thinking
these thoughts.

An
old, strangely

dressed woman suddenly walked out of the cemetery’s
gate at the corner of his eye.

She had a sadly worn expression upon
her face, pointed at the ground. She was

confused, moving about as
she was in a fumbling way. Oh man, Trevor thought increasing

his
walking speed, hope that old lady doesn’t talk to me, I can’t stand
old

people, especially when I’m like this, can’t deal. If she talks
to me I’m gonna

just keep mute, eyes ahead, Trevor, eyes ahead. The
old woman did see Trevor, and a

hopeful light came to the ancient,
time ravaged eyes. “Excuse me, ” the decrepit form

called
weakly after him, ” What ti..” But Trevor was already too
far away. At the

first look in the womans eyes that she would speak,
he broke into a jog. His numbed

mind imagined the lady with the
thick, dirt stained dress would crumble if breath

escaped her, and he
had fled, lest he too breathe out the life giving air, lose his

shape
like the Hindenberg. Then he would crumble, and Trevor knew he was
still too

young to crumble. The lights of the library jogged with his
breath as Trevor ran up to

the big double doors, to automatic opening
arms of safety. He stopped to get his wind

back and compose himself,
running a hand through his black hair. Ok, Trevor get a

grip, that
wasn’t age coming to sap your bones, just an old dame seeing

her
friends in the ol’ marble orchard. You’re stoned, you’re on drugs.
Its

nothing new, so look, just chill, just stay calm.

Inside, he gazed at

the book name written somewhere on this piece of
paper. No, that was an old hall pass.

Ahh, he found it, but had
trouble discovering the writing on the paper amongst other

notes he
had made. PK Dick, fiction under ‘D’, what else did he write
growing,

exploding! what the hell did he write that for? Cool
at the time, but Trevor would

just throw it on his pile called ‘dope
wanderings’. In that file, stuck in a box

under his bed, were many
other equally drugged out, trip induced sayings. Trevor kept

them
because one day, he told himself, he might need them. Anyway, here he
was in

the library with a book to find, but the huge rack of
magazines caught his eye first.

Huh, they didn’t have ‘High Times’,
he thought, looking all over for it. Hey,

what’s up with that, he
wondered, projecting in his mind a little fantasy number…

what
would Miss Phelps, the bitch librarian say if he went up to her with
his fake

cartoon accent, and said “Hey, Missuz P’elps, why
dontcha got dat one mag’ High

Times’, huh, whyncha ya got it den,
huh! It’z a magazine! You’se a’ liberary

ain’tch ya? Huh?! HUH?!”
Oh man, she would wig! Just wig! The image made Trevor snort

with a
stifled laugh, loudly. He caught himself quickly, but it was too
late. Oh,

oh Trevor groaned, you attracted her attention. What would
it be this time, telling

him to read only the books in the young
adult section! Like he wasn’t old enough,

he’d already read books
from the Adult Section. Jesuzz, tight bitch.

As
some sort of controlling, hold-back Trevor entity, the librarian was
always cold

with him, seeing his hatred against her restrictive,
information controlling world.

She now called him to her desk.
“Trevor, Trevor Lerhnem, come over here please. I wish

to have a
talk with you.” Each word came out clipped and short.
Commanding, her

tight lips pursed, Trevor knew he had no choice, they
still saw him as a kid and

sometimes the weight of that threw him
into it, such that he became one again.

”
Hey hey Ms. Phelps, what did I do this time?”

“Trevor, ” she

replied, looking at her computer screen,
“You have a book overdue one

week.”

“No,
I turned them all in, I know, I don’t have any at home. ”

He
leaned forward to see the computer screen. Ms. Phelps smoothly turned
it away

from him.

“We
know you have one overdue Trevor, Mnemonic Resurrection, by

Chakra
Dali, phd.”

“No
I don’t, Ms. Phelps, I don’t even know what

Mnemonic is, The computer
made a mistake I, I don’t got it!” He shrugged his

shoulders
like the smooth street talkers in those old forties movies. Trevor
was in

acting mode now.

I
mean, I could have the book, he thought to himself,

maybe I just
checked it out, never read it and returned it with the others.

Don’t
recall it though. But I did return all the others, I remember cause
when I

came home from the library, mom said that Jess the tight-ass
neighbor had wanted his

lawn mowed, so, yeah, he did turn in all
those books. He was sure of it. Ms.’s Phelps

sharp yelp brought him
out of his smokey circling thoughts.

“Our
records are exact, Trevor. The book was about memory. Maybe..”
and

she turned away from him to some other paper pushing subject upon
her desk and spoke

to him out the corner of her mouth as if with
sharp lips, which he imagined forming

larger jaws in a cartoon way
and reaching out with razor like word teeth to chomp his

ear, “…
you just forgot to look. I suggest you look again, and look

harder.”
Trevor threw up his hands. So much for that mission, so much for that
new

book. He stuck his hands into his pockets and stomped out. He
headed to the

convenience store to spend those two dollars. Maybe
he’d buy himself a porno mag.

Outside
on the streets Trevor noticed a seemingly confused man

wandering
about in a dark suit, clutching an old battered briefcase. Is there
some

kind of old-folk convention he wondered, sticking to shadows,
never wanting to be

noticed. It seemed to Trevor, that the man was on
his way somewhere, but not knowing

where to go exactly, or how to get
there. Or perhaps, where he had come from. He

climbed up on the old
cemetery fence post and sat for a few minutes, intermingled

in
patterns and hidden by low slung branches, breathing the cool night
air into his

abused lungs, staring at the sky and trying to forget.

Part 3

“Is

this the man?” Sheriff Tolland asked as Jerry came
around the front of the

truck.

“That’s
him,” Jerry Fowler said, hitching up his pants, and

stomping
over to stand beside Tolland, removing his Deklab logo cap with the
flying

ear of corn on it from his large head and adjusting his
thinning hair. The two gazed

at the character whom Jerry had brought
from Jody Silvermores house, looking in at the

slouched man who
peered out through the dusty windshield. His hair was rumpled,

his
clothes unkempt, his face worn and beaten, confused. He gazed about
himself,

unsure, out the window, listlessly, blankly.

“You
said over the phone that he

gave Miss Silvermore a scare,”
Tolland asked. First the tragedy of Glenn Standoff, and

now this
fellow.

“Sure
enough.” Jerry informed him, recalling the hurried

whispered
phone conversation with his young

neighbor.

“How
so?”

“Ah,
mumbling to himself, talking of things

weren’t there, head pains,
sweating a lot, that kind of stuff.”

“What
did

he say?”

“He
talked of how he had something to sell. That’s why she let him in

the
first place. Said he’d been travelling for a long time, wanted to
know if

there was a river nearby. Lots of nonsense.” Jerry
related.

“How
was he

on the way over?”

“Fine,
just fine, like he is now. Tired like, mumbled

something about
selling electric lanterns.”

“Why’d
she let him

in?”

Jerry
exchanged a glance with Tolland, giving time and weight to his

reply.

“Ms.
Silvermore, she’s one of those people who are willing to listen

to
others…”

”
Always can use more folks like that. Well let’s see him

then,”
Tolland opened the door and Jon stared out at him, a human

blank.

“Mr.
ah, Fontaine, I’m Sheriff Tolland, would you mind stepping out of

the
cab for me?”

The
man shrank at Tollands’ authoritative voice, then

straightened
himself up with a quick nervous glance, his eyes never once resting
on

the Sheriff who addressed him.

“That’s
right, Fontaine’s my name,” he spoke,

watching something
invisible creep along the ground. “Selling’s my game, I can

sell
you a fine pair of… of…” he rubbed his forehead, heavy with
worry

lines.

“No
Jon,” the Sheriff explained patiently. “Would you please
just get

out of the cab.”

“Oh
yes, no trouble, no trouble. Just let me get my suitcase

and show you
a few things, I’m sure you’ll be interested…” Jon exited

the
truck, dragging his dilapidated briefcase with him. He swung it up
onto the

hood of the truck and began to open it, scrambling at the
locks. Tolland stopped him

with a hand on his shoulder.

“Thank
you, but that won’t be necessary. I would

simply like to ask you a
few questions if I may.”

Jon
stopped. He looked

puzzled. He wondered if this man did, or did not
want to buy anything. He began think

that Tolland might be a hard
sell, like those folks from Stull, that town in Kansas.

Or that group
in California, in the desert.

“Would
you mind coming this way

with me,” Tolland said, indicating the
police station with a wave of his hand. “I can

offer you some
coffee, if you’d like.”

Never
say no to a potential buyer,

Jon thought, and accepted, moving up the
steps into the low, squat brick building.

Tolland followed him,
giving a nod to Jerry as he passed by.

“Thanks
Jerr,

maybe you can let Miss Silvermore know not to worry. I don’t
think she was in any

danger.”

Jerry
nodded in reply, watching the hunched, furtive man with the

strange
suitcase enter the building. As the Sheriff held the door open for
him, Jon

looked back, holding Jerry’s eyes for a moment. Jon’s face
was out of focus,

wobbling a bit like hot asphalt on a sunny day.
Jerry rubbed his eyes, disbelieving,

thinking he should get those
damn cataracts checked out.

Tolland
led Fontaine, who gazed about at the public service messages taped to
the

walls and bulletin boards, inside the small brick police station.
Jons head bobbed

about like a figure whose head was attached to a
spring.

The
sheriff

escorted the stranger past the small jail cell, merely an
adequate holding room for

the drunks and small-time thieves who often
passed through, or if they were a local,

passed out. Jon paused as he
went by the bars, than on into a small room where he sat

in a chair
which Tolland indicated.

“You
ever get that boy,

Dillinger?”, setting his suitcase on the
table.

“Dillenger?
John Dillinger?”

Tolland stopped, momentarily confused.
Dillenger was ages ago.

”
Yeah,

Dillenger, bank robber fellow, you know, public enemy number
one!” Fontaine made a

rat-tat–tat sound and made like he was
shooting a tommy-gun. Tolland stared, than

caught himself.

”
Well Jon,a G-Man got him, Marvin Purvis I think, shot him in

the
back, in Chicago.”

“I
met Purvis once, We ate breakfast together. Fella

wasn’t too happy I
thought.”

“Purvis
killed himself, almost sixty years

ago.”

The
sheriff sighed, facing the individual across from him. Breakfast

with
dead people was it. Looked like he’d have to call around, over

to
Danmeyrburg, the big hospital center up there. He might just have to
drive him

up there himself. Dammit all… another thing to make the
pastoral small town life

disappear in the haze of a busy schedule.
They didn’t get many crazies wandering

through here, had that
homeless guy staying up in the woods by the rail station last

year…
he’d moved on though. Hadn’t seen him since. No, this guy was
different,

couldn’t take care of himself. Amnesia? he thought. It was
a possibility, but the guy

seemed pretty sure of his name, just real
confused.

”
Can you tell me Jon,

where you are from?”

Jon fiddled with his hands, as if trying to say

something, but
stopped.

“I…
I’ve got some things to sell, vacuum

cleaners…”

”
Do you know anyone, a friend of yours maybe… can you remember

how
you got here?”

Jon
fidgeted. The sheriff was a hard person to

please.

”
How old are you?” the sheriff slowly began writing down notes

in
an official ledger.

“Oh,
45.” was the reply. Jon opened his briefcase and

began to root
about in it, searching for something. Tolland stared at him,

taking
in his features, a hint of sadness seeming to wash over his face. He
is a

crazy, Tolland thought. There is something wrong with his

hard
wiring.

“Hey,
you might like this sheriff, what do you say?” Jon pulled

out a
breakfast cereal box, faded yellow, large action writing letters
spelling out

‘Wheaties’ streamed across the front. Below the words
was a picture of a clean cut

30′s style gentleman, a wide grin on his
face, and smiling 30′s clean cut kids

gazing up at him with
worshipping eyes. More words were inscribed on the box.

“Marvin
Purvis eats Wheaties, and Junior G-Men should too!”

“Where’d
you

get that Jon,” Tolland asked, upset by the box. It didn’t
seem… right, somehow,

like it was some kind of printed joke.

“I,
sell it, I sell these. why, I got a

whole series of them. Buy the
lot, I can get you a good discount!”

“I
can

buy them myself in the store. And these look rather old. Why
should I buy your old

ones when I can get fresh Wheaties with Micheal
Jordan on the cover, not some old,

whoever.”

“But
these are sealed fresh, in this, this plastic thing, keeps them

fresh
forever..fresh forever!.” Jon thrust the box at Tolland, gazing
earnestly

into the sheriffs’ face.

“See,
I sell these! I sell

these!”

Fontaine
was obviously becoming agitated, Tolland thought, leaning back

slow
and easy into his chair. Just get the vital information, then call up
the

Danmeryburg hospital and see when they can come and collect him.
Meanwhile, keep him

calm.

“Where
are you from, Jon?” He tried asking again.

“I
move

around a lot. I’m a travelling salesman. My home is the road,
hotels. My job is to

bring the product to you, the consumer.” he
sounded like a

textbook.

“Where
were you born?”

Jon
took a moment at that

question, thinking, than lifted his head.

“Can’t
seem to recall, now…

somewhere in the sticks, at least, that’s what
mother always

said…”

“Out
in the boondocks?” Tolland rephrased jovially, thinking back

to
a certain 1950′s song he had heard on the am oldies channel.

“No,
the

sticks.”

“Okay,
the sticks. What exactly are you doing here in Shrewsbury? Are

you
staying, passing through, have relatives here?”

“Well,
I mean, the

bosses, you know, always want me to sell, that’s my job
you know, the bosses… they,

but I been travelling a long time and,
but Shrewsbury… I think, maybe I’ll settle

down… just have to ask
the bosses, get their permission and

all.”

Yes,
Tolland realized, ok. Definitely signs of some kind of paranoia,

and
his syntax is breaking up. Could that be the schizophrenia?

“What
bosses

are those?” he asked, putting aside his notes. Now he
really just wanted to examine

this personality in front of him, see
just how far Mr. Fontaine was gone into

delusion.

“Who
are they?”

Fontaines
face froze at the question, small

tics working their way across his
cheeks as he tried to speak, gagging on the first

few words. They
rolled out of his mouth with the texture of a dripping

slurpee.

“The,
them, it, I, well, Mr. Sheriff, you, you’re the

boss…”

“No,
I’m not your boss, Jon, I thought I was your client. You were

trying
to sell me a box of old corn flakes.”

“They
were Wheaties, and a good

deal too! But no,” realization dawned
upon Jons’ face, his tangled brain drawing from

some intact portion
an awareness, a brief light.

“You
are all my bosses, you

want me to sell this too you, because you want
to buy it from

ME!”

“Buy
what?” Tolland sensed the rise in the man’s anger and
frustration

that anxiously worked its way in waves across his face,
rippling the tightness of the

muscles.

“This!”
Jon screamed, leaping from his chair, thrusting the

apparently
unsealed box of cereal at Tolland, its’ top bursting open,

scattering
moldy, broken brown wheatie flakes all over Tollands desk and

his
pressed grey uniform. The crazed individuals hand began to

shake
uncontrollably, spewing nervous explosions of more and more wheaties
across

the desk, spilling onto the sheriffs lap. A plastic wrapped
toy bounced out, hitting

him in the face.

“That’s
enough, Mr. Fontaine, sit down now! Calm down NOW!”

Standing,
the flakes cascading off him in streams, Tolland swiped the box

from
Jon’s hand, pushing the man forcefully back into his seat.

Fontaine
sank dejectedly into his chair as suddenly as he had exploded from
it,

muttering incoherently, plucking at his briefcase, arranging and
rearranging scraps

and objects distractedly, his eyes vacant. Tolland
relaxed and sat back down, pulling

the tiny wrapped toy out from
where it made an impression on the seat of his pants.

Examining the
object for a second, he saw it was a junior G-Man’s badge,

imprinted
shiny plastic with the words G-Man on it, followed by the word
Detroit.

He slipped it into his pocket and looked back at the slumped
figure of Fontaine, an

unearthly exhaustion consuming his face. It
was time to call the hospital.

Jack
hurried towards the bar, looking at his watch and

swearing. Damn, he
was almost half an hour late for that beer with Peter. He glanced

at
the Sheriff in front of the police station, talking to some weirdo,
as he

scooted up the steps to the bar.

“Jack!
Glad you could make it,” Peter

slapped him on the back
sarcastically as he came in. He’d known Jack for a few months

now,
had met him on an early morning workout run. A friendly enough
outward guy,

popular with all the girls in town, but he wasn’t really
much more than a drinking

buddy. He didn’t have the kind of
conception of a future that Peter really liked in a

good friend.

Wiping
the sweat off his forehead, Jack sat with a

sheepish grin, ordering a
tall dark.

“Sorry
man, I was just helping

Cindy, and..”

“Yeah,
heard it all before,” Peter said, stifling an

exaggerated yawn.
“You’re in love again, right? Come on, what’s up with

Janine?”
Jack frowned, saying nothing. It wasn’t that he was being rude,

Peter
knew, he could actually see the tiny, slow cogs in Jack’s brain
trying to

deal with his infidelity.

“Don’t
worry about it, man, drink

up.”

“Didja
have to wait long?” Jack asked in a surly tone, sipping

his
beer.

“Yeah,
but I had a drink with Gresham. Well, he had

coffee…”

“That
old crazy guy?”

“He’s
not crazy,” Peter retorted,

feeling his face grow red. His peers
sense of judgement was at times offensive. “He’s

just an old
guy, gone through some hard times.”

”
Whatever.” Peter sensed

Jacks entire lack of concern or interest
in the older character. And when your parents

get old? he wondered.
Will you just slip them into some old retirement home, lock them

away
from the world? Probably not, at least not with what they cost today.
Sliding

in a swivel from his stool, Peter walked to the big front
window of the bar. The last

sliver of sun was descending, bathing the
main street in diffused red. He downed more

beer, gaining strength
from the pastoral, small-town calm of the

streets.

“What
was that?” he said, turning, catching the sound of a

question.

“I
said, your too damn sensitive, Petey. Loosen up a bit! Sitting

around
with all your damn books…” Jack said.

“Books
are the only thing

worth having a relationship with,” Peter
muttered under his breath, half to convince

himself, half feeling
ashamed that he agreed, at least in part, with Jacks criticism.

He
looked down at his untied shoe, biting his lip.

“What
you need is a

girlfriend,” Jack nodded, looking, Peter suddenly
realized, just like the typical jock

he was.

“Sure,
I’ll just get a pair of gym shorts and an exercycle, and my

problems
are over. No thanks. I run, I like to run, I like to be

alone.”

“Fine,
” Jack said, standing up, his spandex stretching over

his
well-toned biceps. “I know you care about your studies, I just
think you should

get out a little more. Josie’s having a party
thursday. You should show up. At the

very least, there’ll be plenty
of free drinks.”

“This
town runs on free

drinks,” Peter said, wishing he could just
finish up his project here and move back to

Pittsburgh. Why the
vikings had to land here in Shrewsbury, the smallest fucked up

town
east of the Mississippi, was a constant source of regret for

him.

Jack
stood up, throwing some change on the bar.

“Anyway,
I

gotta go. Thursday at seven?” he pointed at Peter, who
continued to scowl. “Fine. I

know a grinch when I see one.”
he said, letting himself out the dilapidated bar door.

Peter waved,
watching him disappear into darkening dusk. He sighed and stood

up,
walking to the window. What Jack had said was right, in a way. He
hated that

sense of passiveness that always overcame him when he was
away from his books. Though

it was abind, because when he was
studying, he often wished he was out socializing.

Catch-22, he
thought. It seemed like his life was a network of failures,

linking
together in his memory, becoming stronger and more impenetrable as
time

passed. He turned and gulped his drink, thinking of the stacks
of books, computer

files, and old pictograms that awaited him at
home. Someday, Jack would come running

to him with a problem, Peter
thought; he was predictable in that way. It was going to

be a
scenario about sleeping with the wife of some rowdy backwoods
redneck, who was

going to find out and come a’ hunting. Peter laughed
at himself, recognizing the tiny

desire in him to be more like Jack.
It would be nice to have a girl, at least, someone

to love…. his
last relationship had been a disaster.

He
recalled

that young woman he had seen around town, how he’d helped
her with her groceries

once, passed her in the bar. Sheriff Tolland
had told him she was a writer, wrote kids

books, lived up on
Northfolk road. If he saw her this week, maybe he’d get up the

nerve
to actually ask her out to the party. Even though he generally shied
away

from socially lubricating events, it was an excuse, and as they
said, Peter grinned

coolly to himself, any excuse in a storm.
Besides, she just might be the only one

compatible in this po-dunk
place. Returning to the barstool, he sipped at his beer,

watching the
minutes blur into hours. Eventually, drunk, he stumbled, out into

the
refreshing night air. Relaxing onto the bench outside he watched the
town

slowly close up, only a light from Larrangetty’s video rental
store next to the

sometimes operational movie theatre the Realto,
remained lit. It was a cool night, and

already the stars were more
clear than they had been in the moisture filled skies of

summer.
Sitting in his shadow, he numbly watched the big dipper. Peter
breathed in

the calm, cool air, enjoying the feeling of being drunk,
the loneliness, and the utter

lack of any pressure to move.

This is Skoda. While the news reaches me in the hinterlands of Eastern Europe that presidents are being impeached and bombs are falling, here I am finding that the dark peasants of Jerzy Kozinski’s STEPS are alive and kicking. Somehow, I am staying the winter in the small POlish town of Hajnufka, near the border of Belarussia, and next to the last preserved grouping of old growth Forest left in Europe, the now National Park of Bialowieza. Long a hunting preserve of the Czars, it now is home to the last European Bison.

I have been bit by a dog. If anyone has ever been bit by a dog, the realizaztion and old buried fear of PREY breaches our thoughts on human mastery. The beasts owners offered no apology, the drunken louts. The man could barley stand and the wife sloppily kissed my cheeks calling me a good “Polish Ham” I still haven’t figured out what that meant.

My research on the crazed polish artist Witkiewicz continues. I have rented a small chatja, or cottage, which has the name ‘The Old Mans cabin’, named after an old man who used to live in it. There is a rag on the wall hanging from a nail, and it trembles at odd times, when there is no wind and no trucks passing by on the road. The nail is rusted and old, and brings to mind a story I was told by a pyschologist I was talking to in a bar in Kracov. This fella told me about a boy whose foot was nailed to a board in the woods by his fellow school mates. Maybe the trembling of the rag is the reverberations of foot pain. Who knows?!

For the sake of it, I’ve spent the last few weeks trying to verify the possibility of a Witkiewiczian Creation. In his novel, Insatiablity, Witkiewicz tells of a mysterious pill, the Murti-Bing pill, apparently a diabolical pharmecutical which manges to dispell doubts and questions from the minds of artists and intellectuals to make the transtition to Conquered as the country is invaded. While Witkiewicz was deep into Narcotics and hallucigens ranging from Cocaine to Peyote(his paintings bear an intricate labling system, ssetting down whether he painted straight, or on coffee, or cigarettes, or cocaine or vodka..) after looking up journals from his time(1920-1930′s) and examining various alchemical texts at St. Charles University in Praha and at the University of Kracov, nothing comes close to what Witkiewicz was describing with his Murti-Bing pills. So, face it, yes, he made the thing up. Any fool could tell that on first reading, but frankly, I was too intrigued by the possibility of its possibilty. Too much time on slow moving trains and vodak, I reckon. So no dice fellows, find yourself a new drug. Lucky for me, they still sell absinth over here, and it doesn’t cost a……

Harry Snickler walked home. Everyday,
he took the same route; it was important to him. His officemates
made fun of him for it, sure. It was part of his personality. He
didn’t mind. The tiny fragments of spite seemed to make it all worth
it. It only served to enforce his worldly ego and feelings of
omnipotence.

Accounting wasn’t really his life, it
was his hobby. Eight hours a day, the young, pale man dressed in his
conservative grey suit (he had eight, all exactly the same; one for
each day of the week, and one he wore while the others were being
drycleaned) sat at his desk and fudged the numbers, creeping up
Halberstom and Halberstom’s percentages of profit.

At home, firmly ensconced in his
protective nest, he read voraciously, doing battle with the extensive
escapist literature which had become America’s publishing heritage.
His opinions ruled this world; a snort of disgust at an amateurish
attempt towards plot reconciliation in the latest KEVIN STING: HERO
OF MISSION IMPROBABLE, a kingly decree that MAJOR HAVOC was in fact
one of the best new books in at least two months, these were words of
life and death for his fribbling subjects.

One day, a change occurred in his life
which was to broaden his horizons for that eternity which humans call
their span of life. Normally, that class of situations and
happenstance encountered in the daily ebb and flow of a
vocationally#organized life, described as ‘strange’, or ‘disturbing’,
are unable to permeate the hard shell of such a schedule of habits.
However, Harry Snickler had recently been having what is called in
the business a “bad day for the books”. In fact, it had
been a bad week for Harry. It was only Thursday, and his weekend
already seemed cursed.

On Monday, walking home from work, he
had been startled by a wounded pigeon, one of its wings broken, as it
fluttered violently into his path. It wasn’t a smallish bird,
although it seemed an exceptionally grimy one. Its swollen, tumorous
leg extended from beneath the broken wing, its eyes were both crusted
shut with a slimy noxious substance.

Harry halted. The filthy creatures
filled him with disgust everytime he saw them, wishing he could kick
them out of his path. The nausea of imagined contact with their
infested bodies held his foot back everytime. Rats of the sky, he’d
heard them called, and he agreed. Dirty vermin pests.

Unable to bring himself to step over
the weakly struggling form, he merely stood and gazed at it, unsure
as how to proceed. If he wasn’t such a prude about touching filth and
disease, even with the toe of his shoe, he’d have kicked it into the
gutter, or under the tire of a passing car.

Deciding to leave it to its own
suffering fate, he was about to step over it and move on when a
whoosh of color and activity swept him aside. A middle-aged blonde
woman, wearing a business skirt and tennis-shoes, carrying an
umbrella and briefcase to which were attached a pair of high-heeled
pumps, plopped her heavy loads onto the sidewalk and came right at
him. Flinging up his arms protectively, he braced himself for the
blow, but it never came.

Peering out from his between his
fingers, he saw the woman leaning over the bird, picking it up. He
took a step back, watching as she grabbed the birds neck forcefully
in both hands, twisting it hard and quick with a loud sickening
crack. Flinging the dead birds body into a nearby trashcan, she
lifted her belongings and, almost as quick as shed arrived, was gone.

Harry, recovering, walked over to the
trashcan, tugged by a nebulous fascination. Staring in at the birds
distorted form, lying atop a crumpled section of the Sunday times, he
watched as blood slowly pooled and congealed on a newsprint photo of
yesterdays presidential speech. Dribbling into a halo above the
presidents head, the liquid tension suddenly broke and blood trailed
out and over the tiny black and white crowd of dignitaries, washing
them in red.

“Noooo!” a loud wail cried
out from the street. Harry, startled, looked up just as a disheveled
looking man rushed at him through the maze of annoyed traffic.
Pushing Harry roughly aside, the bad-smelling man peered aghast at
the bird.

Turning, he gazed into Harry’s eyes.
The man was mad, crazy, Harry thought. His face was unfocused,
consumed by twitches. Grabbing Harry’s lapels, he shook him
thoroughly, pressing his face up close until Harry turned away,
repulsed by his breath. “It was me! That bird was meant for me!”
he cried. Harry attempted to free himself from the maniacal grip, to
no avail. “Please, sir, let go of me,” he pleaded with the
man.

Eventually, after what seemed an
eternity, the fingers loosened and detached. Harry quickly stepped
back out of reach. “It was for me,” the man quietly
sobbed, burying his face in his hands. Harry glanced around. people
were watching him. His face began to burn, he became angry at himself
for having become involved.

The man collapsed inwardly, tears
streaming down his face. He lifted the bird gingerly up from its
final perch. Harry started to turn away, moving on. Behind him, he
heard the man yell in fright, then car tires screeched and the sound
of breaking glass echoed through the city’s cement canyons. He sped
up, quickly walking as fast as he could, never looking back.

The secure order of his simple
apartment calmed him. The pleasantries of ritual washed the
unsettling incident from the past, calming the seething confusion of
feelings inside.

He picked up the mail Raymond, the
doorman, always held for him and settled down in his armchair.
Flicking on the evening news, he let its soothing noise flow out and
fill his mind with distraction. The memory of the dirty mans touch
lingered around him like a stale, odiferous cloud.

The golden letter opener, a gift from
his father before his death, sat in its correct place next to the
boxes for good mail and junk mail. Grabbing its smooth black ivory
handle, he slit the first envelope with the long gold blade, end to
end. Inserting his fingers into its innards he extracted the latest
booklists from Prime Publishers. JIMMY SWIGGERT, PIRATE OF THE WEST

no. 23 had just come out and there was
a sale which covered all the back-issues of THE BOYS IN VIETNAM. A
tiny modicum of pleasure began to creep back into Harry’s life.

Setting it aside, he picked up a
simple hand-addressed envelope. It had no postmark, no postage. What
was this, he thought, another message from his landlord about the
water-pipes? He scowled, hating the images that filled his mind with
the memories of previous hot water disruptions. Repeating the
slitting motion, he pulled out a folded sheet of nearly blank paper.
Written across the top in a messy scrawl was his name, Harry
Snickler. He furrowed his brow, scanning down the page. In the
middle, in the same hand, two small boxes were sketched. To the right
of the one which had a red check mark inside it the word
‘unsatisfactory’ stood out boldly. ‘Unsatisfactory’? What was this?
Some kind of practical joke? The only other words in the
communication were beside the unmarked box, which stated
‘satisfactory’, and a completely illegible scrawl at the bottom which
resembled a signature. Harrumphing in disgust at the offensive,
confusing bulletin, he crumpled it angrily in his fist and threw it
into the wastebasket, along with the envelope. Not even in his own
home could he escape the abusive taunting harassment of his peers.

Tuesday was uneventful, aside from the
annoying presence of Tim Maruder, a young energetic accountant the
firm had recently taken on. Popular with the ladies, he loved to
taunt Harry and make his life unbearable. Swallowing the bilious
hatred that rose in his throat everytime Tim walked by, he made it
through the relatively normal day at work and had a very relaxing
evening at home, re-reading one of the Japanese serial books,
SHIBATSU WARRIOR. Monday slipped from his memory, forgotten.

On Wednesday lunch break, his favorite
booth at the diner had been taken. A busload of foreign tourists had
descended from their netherworld, intent on singling out his life to
disrupt. Waiting in line for an available seat wasn’t that bad: it
would have been tolerable, he could have gotten through that, if it
hadn’t been for the short man with the camera.

“Hauscku ko tomariskut?” the
squat, foreign man said, shoving an ancient american export camera
into Harrys face. Stepping back, trying to keep the chunky piece of
equipment from damaging his nose, Harry found himself cornered
against a coatrack. Once again, the man shoved the camera at him,
grabbing his hand and placing it firmly in his resistent grasp.
Hounding him, pressing up against his body, the mans sweaty,
pug#nosed face leered through the greasy restaurant air. “Ona
karatousik, ona karatousik!” he insisted, gesturing out through
the diners window at the street outside. Harry tried to force the
camera back upon its owner, shaking his head in the international
sign for “no”.

“No, no. Sorry. No help.”
What was he to say to someone with whom communication was impossible?
But the man ignored him, grabbing Harrys elbow and pointing out the
window.

Harry turned and looked; outside on
the pavement, a young man lay sprawled, his head a thick crimson
stain which was leaking down into the gutter. Harrys stomach flip
flopped, his appetite suddenly departing. A crowd of people had
gathered, pressing in like a platoon around the wounded. The boy had
been hit by a car, knocking him off his bicycle. His discarded helmet
lay nearly under the cars front wheel, the bicycle’s twisted form
scattered a few yards down the road.

The man forced Harrys hand with the
camera up to his face: take a few pictures, Harry realized… that
was all the man wanted of him. Wishing to get out of this obligation
as soon as possible, feeling his queasy stomach, Harry raised the
viewfinder to his eye. The lens was cloudy, dusty, unwashed. The
magnified image of the young man slowly became evident through the
grime. He depressed the button once, twice; click click. Two
pictures. About to hand the camera back, he hesitated.

Peering in close on the mans head,
he felt something stir within him. Was it the slow trickling of blood
which dripped slowly out of a matted clump of hair, migrating like a
slow lava sludge in thin rivulets across the gum#strewn sidewalk
which affected him? Perhaps, but he couldn’t be sure. He felt his
vision drawn into the rectangular world of the lens. The mans head
seemed to fit perfectly within its dimensions. The eyes suddenly
opened, his mouth gaping like a fish. A bubble of blood lifted slowly
and burst from within, flowing out and over the mans lips. His face
began to tremble with minute vibrations.

Suddenly, the skull cracked almost
cleanly down the middle, bisecting his nose and jaw, the two halfs
rolling apart like a ripe cantaloupe. Harry gagged, unable to lower
the camera, watching as brains and fluid spilled out onto the
sidewalk in an explosive release of pressure. His finger wavered on
the verge of tension and disgust, finally clicking another picture
almost against his will. He dropped the camera from his eyes,
breathing heavily, feeling the sweat on his forehead. Looking around
frantically at the fleshy hoard that surrounded him, he thrust the
camera into the eager mans waiting hands and pushed his way out the
door.

The rest of the workday was a
nightmare of tension. The numbers didn’t make any sense, he couldn’t
concentrate. Eventually, the clock slowly ticked over into
five-o-clock, and he was free. Rushing outside, he exhaled
forcefully, as if he had been holding his breath for hours.

That night, he recalled the incident
with a strange mixture of loathing and attraction. His imagination,
filled with the countless pages of literary blood-battles, found
something alluring in the raw experience, a sense of detachment that
took him outside of the normalcy of his life. Distracted by his
thoughts all the next day at work, time flew by. Floating in the
memories and mysteries of yesterdays incident, he sat unaware of his
body. Even the taunts that Tim heaped upon him in front of the
secretaries, who all laughed behind their hands, disappeared like
water off his back. Even the floor supervisor, Tom Stanton, calling
him into his office with an extra load of forms to process that
evening didn’t faze him. No sign of stress or anger bubbled to the
surface, increasing his pulse rate.

Finally, again, five o clock came
around as it had every other day of the last four years. Falling
asleep in his warm bed to the background of the late-late news, he
was just starting to dream that Connie Chung had gone to join the
British secret service when the telephone rang.

“He.. hello?” he fumbled
into the handset, catching it from falling off the nightstand.

“That was very good the other
day.” a dark, monotonous voice responded.

“Excuse me?” Harry said,
struggling to awake.

“Your performance was excellent.
I and the others just wanted to congratulate you. You’re coming along
much better.”

“Who is this?” Harry
demanded, sitting upright. Just then, the phone rang again. Confused,
he looked at the receiver in his hand. The loud ring continued. It
was the doorbell.

“Hold on, you,” he spoke
hurriedly into the phone, setting it down on the table. he hurriedly
donned one of his numerous grey bathrobes and hastened to the door.

Peering through the eye-hole, he saw a
tan, clean-cut face staring back at him. He undid the chain and
cracked the door open.

“What is it?” he demanded.
The man spoke loudly into his face, startling him into opening the
door a little more.

“Jed Chesterfield, with the
Organization. May I come in?”

Before Harry had time to protest, the
man had shoved his way past Harry and into the kitchen, where he
turned on the light and sat down heavily at the table. Lifting a big
brown suitcase onto his lap, he flipped the clasps open. Harry
watched in amazement, dumbfounded, too startled to feel afraid.

“Excuse me, but its two in the
morning.”

“This wont take a minute,”
Jed said, smiling. Glancing at the sheaf of papers he’d extracted
from the suitcase, he read out loud from the top sheet.

“Harry Snickler?”

Harry’s mouth moved open and closed in
baffled silence.

“I assume that means yes,”
Jed spoke wryly, crinkling his lips into a beurocratic disdain,
continuing.

“Well, Harry, i’m afraid you
didn’t do too well on the last one. Is everything ok? No financial
problems? Well good,” Jed rattled on, brushing over Harrys
impotent attempts at speech.

“I’m just here to let you know
that we want you to do well.” he said, ruffling the papers into
order.

Before Harry could even think to
threaten him with a phone call to the police, Jed had snapped shut
his suitcase and was shaking his hand.

“Well, i’m glad we’ve had this
little chat. Nice meeting you, and keep on the good work. It pays
off, in the end, you know. Hope you aren’t thinking about dropping
out now. Keep the chin up,” he chattered, already moving out the
door.

Harry stood watching in amazement as
the door slammed shut, leaving him alone. He rushed to the door and
chained it, leaning back against its cool hard surface and sliding
down to the floor in exhaustion, trying to calm his speeding heart.
The phone. He remembered the phone. Hurrying back to the bedroom, he
lifted the receiver again.

“Hello?” he said. It sounded
empty, no one was on the other end.

“Who was that?” the voice
spoke after an eternity.

“Who is this?” Harry
demanded, getting angry. “Is this a crank call? I wont stand for
this, you know, ill call…”

“What did they tell you? Damn
them” the voice swore with restrained fury. “Do not believe
them. The last test was satisfactory. Well done, continue on.”
it said, and suddenly only the dial tone remained.

Harry stood sweating in his nightgown.
Slowly replacing the receiver, he sank dejectedly onto the bed.
Fumbling in the bed-stand drawer, he got out two sleeping pills. His
hands shaking, he gulped them down dry and lay back on the bed.
Eventually, the darkness took him away.

PART II

It must have been nearly a month later
when Harry was called into work on a Saturday. April 15th was
approaching, tax deadline, and the boss wanted everyone to put in
some overtime to get the heavy workload done. The past had slipped
his memory into a mere foggy annoyance so calloused by time and
repetition that it slid over his mind like silk over a smooth stone.

From the very first minute when he had
to share the elevator with Tim and Wendy, silently taking their
abuse, to the extra large pile heaped upon his desk, he knew a bad
day lay before him. Fidgeting with the pencils on his desk, fantasies
of Tim’s head getting crushed under a bulldozer floated by,
satisfying in their clarity. When his desk stapler ran out of
staples, he had to run the gauntlet of harassment, walking past rows
and rows of murmuring co-workers, stifling their giggles behind
closed hands. On top of it all, there were no staple supplies left on
the entire floor.

Sitting waiting for the supply
assistant to run down and pick some up, Harry gazed over at the
‘loquacious romeo’. Tim was always busy, always happy, though Harry
knew he never got any of his work done. He knew because somehow, at
the end of the day, Tim’s accounts seemed mysteriously to worm their
way onto Harry’s desk, unfinished.

“Staples?” the assistant
said, interrupting the SHIBATSU #4 ninjas from crashing through the
window and slicing Tim’s head off. Harry shoved the gleaming metal
rows roughly into the stapler. If tim wanted to be an annoyance, let
him. The clock read three. Only two more hours, and…

“Ahhh!” a shriek rent the
air, splitting his skull. “Help! Help! Ohmigod!” Leaping
out of his seat, glancing wildly around, Harry saw a crowd rushing
over to Tims desk.

Moving closer, he caught sight of Tim
stretched out on his desk, jerking violently. Pushing in between two
buxom secretaries paralyzed with shock he saw Tim grasp his stomach,
curling into a fetal position. His nicely tanned face was becoming
blotchy, turning a dark bruised purple. Blood spewed from his mouth,
spattering paperwork.

“Get an ambulance! Somebody!
Quick!” one of the other workers called, running back to the
bosses office. Tim flailed his arms, trying to scream, but all that
escaped was a choking bubbling sound, filled with liquid. Two men
held him down on the desk, trying to stop him from hurting himself.
Harry felt a cold sweat break out down his back. Guilt… certainly,
even though he knew whatever was happening had nothing to do with
him. It was his thoughts, only his thoughts which were culpable, not
his actions. This had nothing to do with reality.

Tim let out a screech, long and
exhaustive. In one final, convulsive shudder, he spit up volumes of
blood, his hands ripping frenzily at his stomach, tearing his
red-soaked shirt, scraping long bloody gashes into his skin. And
then, he went limp.

“Out of the way! Out of the way!
Come on, move it,” a man thrust Harry aside, pushing him into a
wall. Men with medical equipment, tubes, tanks, and machines piled
in, surrounding the table. Harry walked back to his desk. A hand on
his shoulder stopped him from sitting. He turned.

“Harry. Looks like you’ve got a
little more work tonight. Don’t worry,” Tom said, patting him on
the back, “Well make it worth you’re while. Oh, and the top boss
wants to see you in his office.”

As the floor supervisor walked away,
one of the medical team walked by, shaking his head. He caught Harrys
eyes.

“What is it? Whats wrong?”
Harry stuttered.

“Hemorrhage. The guy mustve been
bleeding all day, real bad case.”

“Is he…” the medic saw the
word in his eyes.

“Yep, fraid so. He’s dead.”

Harry sat down heavily. He felt an
empathic fear, certainly, remorse, perhaps… although gore had
ceased to shock him recently. On a much different level, he had
begun to suspect that allowing a certain fanciful freedom to ones
daydreams, while enervating and cathartic, created a mental climate
of pure hell. He didn’t know what to think. Was he responsible for
Tim’s death merely because he had wished him dead? Impossible, he
laughed at himself uneasily. Remembering the summons, he calmed
himself with a deep breath and strolled reservedly towards the
elevator.

Graphic images of Tims contorted face
accompanied him into the silent pneumatic cube. He’d been up to Jerry
Halberts big executive office twice before. Once last easter as a
result of his pestering for a raise, and then that fiasco with the
union, both experiences of extreme nervous tension. He punched the
top floor button, watching the lights ascend to thirteen.

The elevator halted, bumping his feet
against the hard floor. The door swooshed open on its air driven
tracks. Stepping out into the office, a gigantic room serviced only
by the elevator confronted him, forcing his self image into a tiny
little space.

Jerry sat at his desk, his chair
turned away, the top of his head peeking out above the padded leather
backrest. The phone cord disappeared into the nodding head.

“Come in, come in, have a seat.”
the chair seemed to command. Harry moved to a small hard seat that
sat in front of the desk. A hand appeared from behind the chair,
waving at him. “Ill just be a minute.”

Harry sat and fidgeted while half
listening in on the one sided phone talk. What was this about? He
rubbed his sweaty palms against each other, feeling his face begin to
blush as visions of his own nightmarish imagination played themselves
out. Could it be…

The hand emerged from the chair,
replacing the phone.

“Harry Snickler…” Jerry
said, abruptly wheeling the chair around. Harry balked. It wasn’t
Jerry at all! An older, grey haired man supplanted him, stirring up
Harry’s thoughts. Was there some kind of shakeup in the ranks? Was he
to be fired? His nervousness increased, hazing his vision and setting
his teeth clenching against themselves.

“Wheres Jerry?” he finally
spoke haltingly.

“Jerry’s had to step out for a
couple minutes. He’s asked me to take care of things with you,”
he smiled with a strange grimace.

“Harry, its come to our attention
recently… twizzler?”

“Excuse me?” Harry said.
Perhaps he hadn’t heard right.

“I said, twizzler?” the man
held out a stick of candy from a box.

“Oh thank you,” Harry said,
relieved. He must stop working himself up. Stress was alien to him
outside of his routines, he must convince himself that enemies didn’t
always lurk behind every door. Accepting the twirled peppermint, he
began slowly to suck on it.

“As I was saying, we’ve put a lot
of faith in your work. There were some inconsistencies early on, but
you’ve improved greatly.” he halted, thumping his fingers upon
the desk. Harry soaked up the small praise like a sponge.

“However,” he continued, his
words dropping like stones into Harry’s stomach, “graduation is
near, as you know, and we feel you have much greater potential than
you’ve exhibited. Perhaps a little more enthusiasm, a bit more time
spent in pursuing your studies. It would make all the difference.”
Leaning back, the man lifted a cigar from the desk and relit it,
puffing exorbitant smoke into a dense cloud floating in the still
air.

Harry let the words soak in,
struggling to compensate for the inconsistencies. Graduation? Was he
talking about promotion?

“I’m sorry, sir, but i’m afraid I
don’t really understand…”

“Understand? Why, Harry, i’m
surprised. You’re so close to achieving honors in the field! Come on,
show a little more self confidence! Take things into you’re own
hands. Look at all this..” the man turned, taking in the huge
picture window, the monstrous bookshelves and video screens, the
expensive liqueur cabinet and Chippendale furniture. “Why, this
could all be yours someday!” Leaning close across the desk,
locking eyes with Harry, he spoke in low tones.

“Don’t blow it, boy… you’re
this close” he gestured with his fingers, sitting back heavily
into the chair and inhaling long and hard on the cigar. Confused,
Harry sat in silence, wondering if he should say anything at all or
just shut up. The twizzler disappeared entirely into his mouth, gone.

“Go on now, get out there and do
the best you’ve ever done in your whole life. Go for the gold son!”
the elder man pushed a button on his desk and the elevator doors slid
open. Harry rose uncomfortably, shaking the mans extended hand.
Walking zombie-like into the elevator, he watched the room disappear
between the closing doors.

Back downstairs, he watched the
janitor perform his morbid duty cleaning up Tims desk. It really had
happened. Everyone else had gone home. Lost and alone in the
fluorescent-clad room crammed with empty desks, he asked the janitor
if Tom had left also. Receiving a terse affirmative, he slowly lifted
piles from his desk, shuffling them half-heartedly into order. It
was only ten after four. The non-communicative janitor worked away,
continuing to ignore his presence as if he was just another stain on
the carpet. Harry frowned to himself, shoveling papers into his
drawer and briefcase. The disorienting pep-talk started to fade from
his mind, doubt and frustration replacing it. The whole job-career
thing was starting to accumulate bad memories. Even though he really
didn’t want to consider finding another job elsewhere, his
personality being almost entirely anathema to change, even one more
week here was beginning to seem like a condemnation to hell for all
eternity.

Gazing around the room, his hand on
the elevator door, a rebellious resolve welled up from deep inside, a
resolve with the force of religious conviction. If this
promotion-sounding possibility didn’t work out in the next week, he
was gone. Smiling to himself, he pressed the close button and sank
with the elevator into a devout fantasy of self-importance.

That night, he suffered through a
horrible dream. Was it a dream? Was it his? From some dark recess of
his brain, the powers of sleep conjured up desires foreign to him. To
kill, to destroy, to somehow strike back at the unjust plague which
hemmed in his life. The small thrill that would have gone unnoticed
during the waking hours amplified in its sleepy manifestation.

He felt alive, the tremors of feeling
so absent in his daily life rose and surrounded him, urging him
onward. It was night, and he was awake. Looking at his hands, he saw
they were rough, tanned, not his. Throwing aside the bedcovers, he
stood and walked wearily to the dresser, where a pack of cigarettes
lay. He pulled one out and lit it, the match’s flame making shadows
dance on the walls.

A face in the mirror caught his
attention. Was someone standing behind him? He turned, quickly; no
one was there. The match went out, casing the room in darkness. He
fumbled for another in the dim city light that filtered through the
curtains.

He watched as the mirror again gave
birth to the same face… his own, but not. Feeling along the wall
for the lightswitch, he flipped it, finding himself in a small bare
room illuminated by a single naked bulb. The bed was small,
disheveled. A tiny stove sat next to the sink, cluttered with dirty
pots and pans.

He felt an incredible urge to leave,
to go outside. Someone was waiting for him, that much he knew. He
threw on the rough jeans and shirt that lay on the bed. Something
heavy fell out upon the floor when he lifted the jacket. Bending
down, he lifted up a large shiny knife, turning it, staring at the
beautiful glean of light reflecting off the blade. He shoved it into
a loop inside the jacket pocket feeling it close over his heart,
enjoying its solid comfort. In the dream, it was a familiar, his
closest freind.

Outside, a broken streetlight buzzed
on and off like a nocturnal chainsaw. He moved quickly through piles
of broken glass, past vacant run down buildings and pools of distant
street-lamps. He saw no-one. He walked alone through the deserted
urban landscape.

Eventually, the streets got nicer,
well-lit and clean. He moved swiftly around a corner. This was it.
There was something familiar about the place, but he couldn’t place
it. Driven onward by an inner urgency, the thrill of adrenaline, he
found the front door unlocked.

In the stairwell, his feet tread
softly like kitten paws. Up, and up… it was the third floor.
Pulling the door carefully, silently, open, he entered into a short
carpeted hallway. An odious feeling of wrong crept over him, an
electricity that tingled, setting every nerve on edge. It was wrong
where he was going, what he was going to do, but he hungered for it,
taking pleasure in the raw fear and excitement. The fourth door on
the left… he stopped. It was locked. Innocuous looking in the dim
hall light, painted a bare red, it frustrated him, prolonging the
tension.

Feeling in his pockets, he retrieved a
small worn hairpin. Harry watched the hands move with skill and
dexterity, willing them on, caught up in the exhilaration and the
speed. Shortly, a tiny rod moved over, a tiny click. He silently
pushed the door open.

A chain blocked the way. Reaching
around with his fingers, barely able to push it far enough, he
managed to unhook it from inside. The door swung open.

The room was black as night, the
hallway light spilling in created a thin corridor of sight. He closed
the door behind him, not shutting it all the way. He pushed open the
first door on the left. Darkness, no sound.

He moved onward, past the bathroom
with its nightlight, to the end of the entrance hall. The plain white
door was slightly ajar, issuing from within the sounds of sleep, the
heavy muffled breathing of the dead to the world. Harry’s breath
quickened, willing the hand onward, watching as it slowly forced the
door open.

A huddled figure lay with its arms
over its head, obscuring its face. His hands slid down, into his
jacket, removing the blade with a sensual feel Harry had never
experienced before. Caressing it, seeing its silver glow in the dim
light from the curtained window, his heart beat faster with a
forbidden baccanalian thrill. His feet tread softly on the soft rug,
bringing him close, standing over the inert body, sharing its breath.
His knuckles, white, charged with a nervous overpowering tension,
slowly pulled the covers back, raised the blade above the pajamaed
chest, lingering, choosing its point, prolonging the pure sensations
that flooded him.

The knife fell, plunging deep into the
chest, ripping down, pulling the blade in a long arc, splitting the
stomach and spilling out intestines and blood. The body leapt up,
grabbing his arm, screaming with its airless lungs. Harry turned, a
shaft of light from between the curtains falling directly on its
face; fear and nausea split him from inside, tearing thought apart
into white emotion, destroying all knowledge, exploding into the dust
of a million minds. The face was his, staring back at himself,
locking their gazes across a millennium of distance, an infinity of
time.

That week, he didn’t go to work at
all. The phone rang and rang, until finally he answered it on
Thursday. Tom was yelling at him, screaming: he had been fired.

After the call, he sat in his
armchair, staring blankly at the wall, at the blurry faces on T.V. A
man rang his doorbell, but Harry didn’t move. Walking into the
kitchen, he saw an express envelope on the floor. He put it on his
mail shelf.

He must have dozed off, for when he
awoke, it was the dead of night. The t.v. continued to blare, filling
his head with emptiness. The dream, the dream… it had filled him
with psychic shock, torn apart his strength to maintain the routines
of daily life. It had destroyed his life.

Half-heartedly, he lifted the express
package, turning the letter sharpener in his hands, examining it,
remembering. Catching himself drifting, he lifted the package and
slit it open. His hand was inserted inside, withdrawing a thin sheet
of parchment, when a haze descended over his sight.

Reaching down inside him, the blur
grew focused, and Harry felt a tiny stirring of fear break thorough
his deadness. Light exploded inside his head, shattering into a
million shards, being sucked and pulled by some whirlwind force into
the center of the television set.

His head cleared, the room came
swimming back. Gasping for air, the television newscaster on the
screen seemed suddenly to change, mutate its form. Long tendrils full
of videotic membrane spiked out from his body, tearing his suit. A
mass of green quivering flesh faded in and out of being human and
not. Its gelatinous eyeballs squeezed to the surface, its mouth gaped
wide into a fang encrusted orifice.

“Congratulations,” the thing
spoke, spewing saliva and ooze down its face. Its head slowly
deformed into a four-cornered cap, a brightly colored tassel dangling
from its top.

“Harry, you’ve done very well.
Unfortunately, it was not good enough for honors. May you have a long
and profitable life, out in the real world.”

The thing rotated its head on its
stalk, bursting veins and brackish liquid, yelling “next!”
off to one side of the screen. Turning back, Harry could have sworn
that it smiled at him and then… it was gone. The t.v. blanked out
to black, and then slowly static refuzzed the screen.

Shivering, feeling the coldness inside
himself, Harry pulled out the parchment from the envelope and stared
at the ornate, aged diploma, signed over to him.

EPILOGUE

He sits, now, alone in a small resting
home upstate. The nurses all move around him, lifting him like
furniture to clean under his chair. Another casualty of an unknown
disease, he hasn’t spoken in over thirty years. Under his paperwork,
stashed away in the dark recess of an anonymous case workers file
cabinet, there is still a tiny document, a scrap of paper barely held
together by its aging, brittle fibers. What does it say? What does
its faded ink scrawl read, this tiny chain back in time to a man who
used to be alive?

Waiting, it says.

Waiting.

Hugin
and Munin Fly

each day
over
the spacious earth.
I
fear for Hugin
that
he may not

come back.
Yet
more anxious am I for Munin.

-Old Norse runic

verse

“Since
those days, I have steadily lost
control

over my memories; of late,

however, I became convinced that with
the aid of

a certain artifice I can recall far more…”
Sigmund Freud, Psychopathology of

Everyday Life.

“It
seems I can remember far

more than I would have
perhaps
wished…”
-Prince Frederick, the Winter

King, battle of Bila Hora, the hundred

years
war.

There
was a weight

that was a buildup in the space behind his eyes. His
feet were worn and tired, but the

will of the bosses would permit no
rest. The walking had been going on now for an

immeasurable time. His
memory was only of the pressure in his head, pushing him

onward.

Taking
off his rumpled stetson which had seen the sun in 48

states, and
untold more of the mind, he tried to wipe away the heaviness, but
only

perspiration came away on the back of his hand. Crystalline
droplets of sweat,

reflecting in their tear shape his eyes, and in
his eyes reflected the drops,

reflecting the eyes reflecting the
drops. They fell away and down, vanishing into the

black asphalt
tarmac of the road.

He
stared, fascinated by this

spot, by the welling blackness. In this
liquid moved a silent river. There were people

on both banks, a
constant stream passing from one shore to the other. Out of those

in
transit arose a nebulous mass, inky as the sweat on tarmac. A fast
moving object

sped by him, blaring a horn at him as it passed by,
whirling him into the ditch as if

he were paper. He lay there,
muddied.

“Now
that, that’s a

model I haven’t seen. Always changing so fast.”
he said out loud to the heavy, damp

forest air. A large shiny raven
flew from a fencepost down upon him, trying to peck

out his eyes with
its ebony beak. He waved it away with his hands as he struggled

up,
swinging at it with the old battered briefcase he carried. Odd bits
of paper

flew out from cracks in its bulging sides.

A
doorway opened in

his head. Liquid slowness, a trickling settled and
filled him, pain unbearable

breaking his neck.

“Yes
sir, can do sir, moving right ahead. Yes, I know its

my job” He
got jerkily back on the road from the ditch and began walking again.
He

passed a sign declaring the town limits of Shrewsberry. The raven
swung about his

head, herding him onward. The man shuffled forward,
his legs moved jerkily as if they

were wooden marionette pegs. His
hat on his head again, he glanced up into the crisp

autumn sky,
through a clearing in the fog, and then cast it towards the

direction
of Shrewsberry.

“Yes
sir, yes ma’am, got some things

to sell, that’s right, sir, ma’am, if
you’ve got an interest, I’ve got the time.”

Sweat continued to
pour from his head. He continued his shuffle forward. He had

always
been moving. He could never stop. But as the town and its environs
hove into

view, a single thought formed in the back of his head, in
the region of the pain.

This, he thought, seemed to be a good place
to settle. Yes, at last, a good place to

rest the pain.

CHAPTER 1

Jody pedaled

slowly, looking down at her feet as they moved up
and down, propelling her and her

favorite tricycle forward, up the
slight incline and back towards her house. This

tricycle was her
favorite because it was the best shade of red. The red reminded

her
of the color of the maple leaves when they turned bright in october
and burned

in the reflection of the low setting sun, cold in the
autumn months. She enjoyed these

leaves, had spent all day riding her
tricycle down the neighborhood roads collecting

the biggest,
brightest, least crinkled leaves which she would add to her
collection

back home. She now held four leaves that she could show
mommy. Mommy and daddy had

bought big old encyclopedias at garage
sales for her to press the leaves in. During

winter she would take
them out and look at their brightness, kept preserved sandwiched

in
between Never and Nirvana. She always gave one to mom, who always put
it on the

fridge with a magnet to make the kitchen brighter, and one
to daddy who took it with

him to work to put on his desk. The red
made her home brighter when the sky filled

with grey, unpleasant
clouds in the winter.

Stopping to rest her

legs before the final push up the little hill,
she looked up noticing a rising cloud

she knew to be smoke coming
from ahead of her. She knew smoke meant fire, because the

Ronald
Mcdonald’s fire safety house had passed thru the neighborhoods a week
ago,

and she had learned all about crawling on the ground to escape
smoke. Afterwards they

had gotten paper hats, which were very
colorful, and also a vanilla shake and a bag of

fries. Maybe, she
thought, peddling her trike again over the hill, the fire

safety
house was back. She glancedup. The house where she lived was licked
in

orange. The wood sides burned a red as red as the sky, as red as
the leaves in autumn,

as red as the lights and the shine of the
approaching fire trucks. The flames were as

red as her tricycle, and
as red as the leaves in her hand. When she looked at them

they were
fire.

Pumping
her little legs faster, the fire

trucks zoomed by her with a loud
noise. In the upstairs window two shapes moved.

Amorphous, wrapped in
something, they crashed thru the second story window in

flames.
Rolling off the roof they hit the cement with a soft thud, and did
not

rise. She dropped her leaves, her hands burning. A man in a heavy
rough coat and metal

hat swept her off her trike and covered her eyes
with his hands. There was much

shouting. Between the mans fingers
danced dead shadows. Her eyes filled with water,

than with darkness.
“Mommy!” she screamed, and a dark presence loomed

large,
spreading out over her. The horror closed in, with its fog and its
fear, and

filled her struggling head. She screamed again, trying to
escape the sound, the

constricting noose of the dark which strangled
her tighter and tighter…

Jody
awoke with a start, her heart pounding, sweaty and tangled in the
down

comforter, the scream dying raw in her throat. Shit, she thought
to herself, putting a

hand to her forehead and feeling the damp sweat
that clung there like a jungle miasma.

She rarely had bad dreams, at
least ones she could remember, but when she did, it was

hard to
recover. The autumn morning sun hazed in through the window, and over
the

brown grassed features of the yard and surrounding fields
shrouded in fog. Her mind

was momentarily blank as her eyes blinked,
struggling to recall the dream already

being replaced by the new day
dawning, already forgetting the images of the night.

Suddenly,
a thud at the window again, the sound from her dream sent

her heart
into her throat. Leaping up, she peered apprehensively out the
window.

Twitching, lying between two long stemmed rose plants, a
small bird lay, it’s neck

snapped, a mucous substance spilling from
behind its staring eye; once alive, now

dead, feeding the red of the
roses with the rubies of its body. Jody felt herself

trapped between
her desire to help, and the knowledge that she could not.

Were
you an Oscar Wilde bird? she wonderd, sacrificing your life for

some
noble, ignored deed? Why couldn’t you see the window? Her fists
clenched and

unclenched as she suddenly felt the full impact of the
dream, of the memory of her

parents wash over her. Even our most
simple constructions cause death. Like moths to a

flame she realized,
the danger seemed invisible.

An
even darker

melancholy struck her. A memory of her mother, sitting
in the kitchen at 6 am as she

always did, crying over the death of
moths in candles after learning that they

imagined the flame to be
guiding them to their mates. Mother had shed tears, knowing

that
moths died before they found love, thinking they were going to find
love.

Shaking her long brown spun hair loose, sending the memories of
her mother cascading

down the strands, Jody arose from bed. It was
time to get her day started, to let go

of old cobwebs with empty
promises of entanglement.

On
the way to

the kitchen, dreaming of coffee, she passed the white work
table in the sun room, her

glance lingering as it had every day for
months now upon her forgotten typewriter.

Pages of her unfinished
childrens book thrust haphazardly into an old box leaked their

guilt
into the back of her brain.

sliding
into the chair with a

tired sigh, she let her fingers play lightly
over the keys. Weak sunlight streamed in

through the yellow curtains.
Whispers rode in on breezes, whispers of old memories.

The typewriter
lay under her hands, dusty, unused. Lost in the past, she

walked
through her impressions. The pages she had written unfolded about
her, hazy

on the horizons. A story of a child, herself as a young
girl. A bicycle which travels

on moonbeams. A cat with many toes, an
unformed beast creature which chases them.

There should be more, but
she hadn’t written anymore. Now there were only the

scattered pages,
half finished ideas and preliminary sketches, like so many

beach
stranded logs after a storm, kittens caught in rain.

I
don’t know where to take them, I can’t figure out the next step, she
said,

silently to herself. Gazing up to the shelf above, the bright
color of her first

children’s book stood out. It looked faded now,
not as bright as she

remembered.

I’ve
done it once, I can do it again. Jody tried to solicit a

strength
from that knowledge, trying to work her creative juices, to get

them
flowing.

Her first book which had been published two years ago

had thrust
her life into a state of blissful consumption, but now, the funds
dried

up, her motivation was gone. The scattered trail of fine wines,
Pigeon?Forge pottery

and wicker chairs from Indonesia, along
with her prized collection of tin toys were no

longer enough to keep
her going. She sighed, looking out the window at the trees and

hills,
bathed in the strengthening sunlight. Memories were her inspiration,
and the

recent months had inspired nothing but bankrupt trinkets
purchased on the empty whims

of a momentary impulse, as bankrupt too
as her personal life, her lack of social

relationships on any deep
level. Already she could feel an invisible push, a

shortening of
time, a closing in of walls. She would have to finish another

book,
or else she wouldn’t have money, but more importantly, she wouldn’t
have a

purpose. If only it wasn’t so hard, so intangible. She stifled
a yawn which overtook

her, enveloping her life; the alarm buzzed it’s
annoying call, announcing to the

empty house that it was 7:30, time
to wake up.

STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 150%">

STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 150%">

Peter’s eyes

jerked open, his body twitched hard against the chair.
The photostat of the Torvelson

Rock carving slipped from his hand,
scattering down onto a pile of other photos.

“Asleep
again?” out loud, frustrated at himself. Punishment for

staying
up all night working, he thought. His eyesight was blurry, his head
pounded

with the rhythm of aching drums, his mouth felt woolen and
dry. The computer stared

woodenly out at him, it’s screensaver images
of a penguin shooting down flying

toasters, sending muted colors
rippling over the cluttered desk.

Papers
loomed up at him, their features coagulating with the exhaustion in
his

eyes. Old nordic rock carvings, archeological tracts and reports
on Viking migration

from Scandinavia to the New World, the strange
mishmash of information which he had

accumulated over long years of
graduate study rose around the walls of his study like

tall ivy
creepers, threatening to condense into an impenetrable jungle. Facts
and

histories stuck to him like a sticky glue. At times it drove him
to distraction, but

he knew he would have no other. This was his
interest, this was his world.

The
weight of the knowledge was oppressive, and lately it had

grown,
trapping him under it, rendering him unable to move, to make a
decision as

to what exactly he should choose out of the flood of
facts to be his dissertation.

Stacks of digitalized photographs of
the rock carvings from Ausevik, near Sogn in

Norway, horses, men with
spears, and depictions of a one-eyed man with a stick,

hovered over
by two ravens; old all-father Odin and his constant

companions,
thought and memory, all so much headache. Or that was the lack

of
sleep?

Just
need the right insight, he told himself as the

birds outside begin to
call in the lightening day. I need Odin’s eye he gave to Mimir

for
the power of runes, of history. With that eye I could make up my
mind, I would

truly know.

”
It’s freedom of choice I got, but it’s freedom from choice

I want!”
Peter groaned, pushed himself away from his desk, swiveling hard in
his

chair. Maybe he should just be a lawyer, make more money like his
old college buddies.

A frown distorted his face. Who cares to know
what the vikings did when they landed in

America 200 years before
Columbus and his 500 years of resistance ever set foot here?

He
counted, remembering; five? No, four. Four people out of thousands.
Probably out

of millions.

He
knew his bent for history was not exactly an exciting

profession. In
conversations at parties, the stories he would most often relate,

in
between long hard sips of a whiskey sour, were tales of the past. If
some drunk

party girl talked of the latest in clothes fashion,
Peter, eyeing her leather skirted

body, would tell them all the
reason the native Indians of the Andes wore those pork

pot styled
hats was that, at one time, the King of Spain had decreed it as law.
the

look she had given him, one of a bottomless boredom, instantly
dissipated the crowd

around her, as she had stomped off huskily,
annoyed by this nerd from outer space.

Sure,
it had hurt him, but he was used to it. He didn’t care. History

in
its many forms, quixotal happenings, and as a very phenomena of
nature, was his

ideology. If one worked their way back, through the
labyrinthine networks, piecing

together moments and movements, one
could, theoretically, chance upon the very event

which set history
itself in motion.

Cracking
open a pack of new

cigarettes, Peter went out onto his back porch and
began to smoke, the addictive

nicotine clarifying his sleep deprived
brain, momentarily focusing his vision. As the

morning fog lay damp
dew upon his shoulders, Peter realized with a sigh that he

cared,
perhaps too much, about history. Someone had to in this country, and
for all

its current headaches, history is what Peter tried to live
and breath, to keep

current. History, and especially history with a
viking slant, was his bread and water,

and it was his duty to
integrate the past with the present.

The
lone cigarette was not enough to hold the weariness at bay. Peter
felt his

limbs grow heavy. Another night of studying, and no more
closer to Mr. Dissertation,

he thought to himself. If he didn’t
accomplish something worthwhile soon, such as his

doctorate, or even
something a bit more substantial like a girlfriend, then he

felt
doomed to a useless life, filled with emptiness and stuck in some
corporate

sector job. And that, for Peter, would be Ragnarok, the
final doomed battle of the

gods.

The
gods are doomed, and the end is death, he muttered darkly,

recalling
a nordic poem. Already, he could feel it coming.

On
the

old crabapple tree near the fence, a black raven settled onto a
twisted limb. Peter

paused, not wanting to return inside where the
mess stood waiting, like Fenhir, the

monster wolf, the god-eater,
waiting to pounce.

“Morning,
bird…” he

whispered softly to himself. “Are you Hugin,
Old Odins eyes on the little world of our

thoughts? Come here on a
little recon?”

The
bird did a small

hop, peering around quizzically at the sound of his
voice travelling damply in the

thick fog.

“Maybe
you’re Munin instead, picking at our memory” Peter

mumbled,
imagining the bird pecking away at human brains like it would pick at
a

worm. I hope you are Munin, and that you don’t go. You’d take my
future livelihood

with you, he thought, trying to visualize a world
without history… and historians.

No, Peter needed his memory; as
Goethe said, if you can’t draw on 3000 years of

history, what was it?
Something something something up the creek without a

paddle.

See,
he chided himself, already your memory fails. Time to

rest the old
noggin. He shook his head in a fashion similar to the raven’s

crooked
inquisitiveness. The bird took to the air, perhaps to fly back to
Asgard

and the shoulder of Odin, the all-father of the aesir gods, to
report on the young

mortal who entered a house, shaking his head
wearily. But Peter was already back in

bed, setting the alarm for
1:00 pm, the red digital lights of 7:32 burning themselves

into his
eyes as he fell fast asleep.

Life is long. That’s what he said to
me. Standing on the rain, the water blurred his

features, melting
them together into a blank nothingness composed of all the

millions
of fractured looks a human being is capable of attaining.

CHAPTER 2

Glenn
Standoff pulled the utility truck over onto the easement, slamming
the

emergency brake hard against the floor. This is where the report
had specified, and

he’d spotted it right off. A huge tree-branch hung
precariously suspended,

endangering the telephone lines directly
below. Luckily, he had got here first, before

catastrophe could
happen.

Sliding
out of the cab and setting his

hard hat to his head, he sucked in at
his cigarette. A swift glance at his watch told

him it was nearly
seven thirty. There was no sign of his assistants.

“Goddamn
Cormic and Mcguire, fuckin’ slacker punks!” he swore to the
empty

tree-lined road. They were obviously going to be very late.
They were always late. He

might have been late, too, if he’d actually
hit that freak standing in the middle of

the road in the fog. He took
those optional state saftey driving courses seriously.

After all, he
was a careful, responsible guy, not like those other two

assholes.
Careerless social blights, good for nothing but filling in potholes.
He

shook his head. As their supervisor, he often wondered how they
had managed to pass

the drug test the county required. Hell, if only
he had been there to stop them from

getting the job. They reminded
him of the chimpanzees he’d seen at the zoo once. Damn

monkeys!

He took another look at the time, his scowl softening. Nancy

had
woken him up early and told him her dream. He and her had been, well,
making

out in his dads garage back in Framingham. That had gotten him
all aroused and they

had made sleepy love, their naked bodies moving
together in a natural rhythm. Which,

in turn, had lead him to be a
little late, but he had made up for it by driving fast,

one of the
benefits of a county job. Still, he was never as late as his

two
chimpanzees. He decided to get a start anyway. It was on the clock,
the

taxpayers were paying him.

From
the side locker of the truck he

got out the Husquavarna chainsaw and
checked the oil and gas levels. Giving a pull on

the cord he started
it up, a cloud of blue smoke rising and merging with the

fog.
Depressing the toggle spun the blade, its tiny claws thrashing at the
air,

waiting for a real job. He set it on the ground, grabbed a pair
of ear protectors and

clamping them over his ears. Climbing carefully
up the slanted tree trunk he began to

cut slowly away at the large
limb.

Locked
into silence by the ear

muffs, his mind drifted, to thoughts of his
dads old garage, where pops had had his

shop. A tablesaw and a vice,
a big workspace lined with tools and bottles of nails.

There were a
lot of counters for all sorts of projects, plus enough room to work
on

the car. He remembered when he was younger, going into the shop as
dad was working,

seeing him in his heavy coveralls, smelling of oil
and wood chips.

He
missed his dad. The stroke had been quick, but the lingering death
had been

hard. Letting the chainsaw idle for a second, he glanced out
over the foggy landscape,

struck by the sudden vividness of his
recollections. It was the guilt, most likely,

but it hadn’t really
been his fault, he hadn’t gotten the high-paying county job

yet.
There had been no way he could have afforded that operation, and the
insurance

company had played like it was a god, bandying life about
without a care.

Bloodsuckers.

But
they had had plenty of good times, when he was

young. Glen attacked
the resilient limb again, as if the violence could bring

those
moments back. Once, his dad had fixed his mothers big flashlight, had
given

it to him, showing him how it worked. He could almost hear his
fathers heavy voice,

trapped inside his heavy earmuffs.

“See,
Glen, you press this

button like this and it comes on. The
electricity makes the light work.” It was magic

to him. By the
mere application of a little bit of force he could cause this

bright
beam to appear, like a long sword. He saw his fathers face, smiling
at him,

giving him this wonderful discovery, this welcome to the time
of machines. The smile

was large. By the simple pressing of a button,
of the toggle switch, he could make a

light come on. Glenn made the
chainsaw spin, then stop, then spin again, a slow smile

creeping
across his face.

Cormic
and Mcguire

spun to a stop in their road rally rabbit sport, flinging
gravel left and right.

They’d risen early to do laps on the old
logging roads, but had arrived late to work.

Stepping out and taking
off their crash helmets, They threw on rough work jackets.

“Sounds
like Glenn’s already started.” Mcguire

commented.

“Workaholic,” muttered Comic, “Ahh, hell,

let’s
suffer thru the reprimand.” Almost six years of high school
detention had

forged a heroic resilience to the acidic effects of any
kind of guilt trip.

“Hey
Glenn!” Mcguire shouted as they approached, watching their

boss
stand on the curving tree branch. Cormic noticed that Glenn was
running the

chainsaw on and then off, a childish grin plastered on
his face.

“Hey
Glenn, whatcha want us to do?” Mcguire shouted again. Glenn,
lost in the

cottony prison of his earmuffs, thought he heard his name
being called, and looked up.

An inkiness descended over his eyes, his
heart beat magnified, a crushing oppresive

weight behind his ears. A
confinement that brought forth an instinctive fear. A

tremble ticked
in his leg, uncontrollable. But then he remembered.

There
was a pop. His vision cleared, crystalline clear. He saw his mother
calling,

he would show her what he could do. He pressed the
flashlight on, and ran towards her

as she stood out the back porch,
smiling at him, so proud. He turned the flashlight

towards him as he
ran, looking into its jiggling beam of pure whiteness.

“Mother!”
he said, tripping over something in the grass, falling. “Look
what I can

do!!” Glenn slipped off the tree, the chainsaw blade
spinning under his hand, hitting

the ground. It kicked into him,
tearing through Carhart canvas to cut deep into soft

flesh, sending
tissue flying into the earth, turning it damp with his blood.

His
hand remained pain-locked, pressing the chainsaw trigger, keeping it
churning.

His face distorted into a grimace, but would not give up
its smile. “I make light,

I..”

Cormic
and Mcguire stood in shock, unbelieving as they watched Glenns

body
heave and convulse, the blade ravaging his chest cavity, splitting
his heart,

hollowing out his body.

“I
make light, I make light..” Glenn barely

managed to gasp one
last time as his spinal cord was severed, a blood bubble bursting

out
his mouth. His grip at last loosened, the chainsaw idling, sputtering
to a

halt. Cormic finally moved, yelling at McGuire.

“Fuck,
get on the

fucking C.B. and get some help out here!!” The two
sprang into action, doing the best

they could. The light that had
shone in Glenns eyes slowly faded to a staring black,

and the tense
facial muscles relaxed, the smile, too, eventually dying

out.

Jody paced in the kitchen preparing a late breakfast of ice

cream
and banannas when she heard the commotion outside, and the loud knock
a

second later. Who could it be? she wondered. Usually jerry called
if he was going to

drop by… she peered out through the curtain. An
insistent stranger pushed his way up

to the door as she swung it
partially open.

“Excuse
me, ma’am,

but our companies looking for new customers in this area.
I wonder if you’d mind

taking a minute out of your busy schedule to
look over a few of our products?” A man

she had never seen
before stood before her, smiling at her as he regained his

breath.
Jody leaned against the doorjamb, looking him over. He appeared to be
a

typical salesman, of the type now gone, the kind her grandmother
used to invite in for

tea while she pored over sample books of
carpeting or wallpaper. Jody had never really

liked them, their pushy
fake conversations and handshaking. There was something

about
inviting business into ones personal home that just wasn’t right.

“Jon
Fontaine’s my name,” he said, regaining his breath and handing
her his

business card. “I’m in the selling game,” he smiled
at his little rhyme. Jody could

see him gearing up for another
long-winded run on sentence. There was something

different about this
man, though… she couldn’t quite place it. Maybe it was a tinge

of
nostalgia, a feeling of sorriness for this man whose job seemed so
out of time

and place, a thing of the past. In fact, the impression
he gave her was of a man of

the days gone by. He really wasn’t as
threatening as she remembered those others, the

cologne-selling,
leering men who put their hands on her knees when grandma was out

of
the room. No, this was a tall, thin, tan, handsome looking man with
soft brown

eyes, almost apologetic.

“Well,
what do you sell,” she asked,

shifting on her feet. It wasn’t
like she was against shopping, it just had something

to do with her
personality. She liked stores, and everything they offered. If

only,
she decided, she could convince herself this was nothing more than a
store

coming to you, it might even be enjoyable.

“I
have plenty of

catalogues here”, Jon said, fumbling with his
briefcase. It popped open, and he pulled

out some confused pamphlets,
struggling to control them as they threatened to escape.

“Er,
ah…” he stuttered, as one slid out of his grasp. She deftly
swooped it up

before it hit the doorstep, handing it back to him.
“Why don’t you come in,” she

smiled, holding open the
screen for him. He was such a pitiable sight, an awkward

puppydog
offering up faux trinkets with a heart of true gold. It wasn’t that
she

didn’t recognize her own naive vulnerability in certain
situations that others would

tell her were risky… it was more that
she felt compelled to it, driven by some

motivation deeper than she
could control. She remembered her grandmother, brushing her

hair as
she lay in bed as a little girl. “Compassion and understanding
will always

lead you to the light,” she had said. But now she
was gone, and all Jody had were her

words to hold onto, to grip with
the fingers of a child who wouldn’t let go.

“I
haven’t been through this area before,” Jon said,

holding
tightly his slipping, prized papers as he followed her down the hall
to the

living room.

“Well,”
Jody said, over her shoulder, “It’s not like

we get many
salesmen around here anymore. It’s not very populated, you know.”
She

moved some of her papers and an old photo album off the couch.

“Please,

sit down. would you like some coffee, tea?” she
asked, moving towards the kitchen.

“Ah,
actually, no thanks. I’ve got to get moving, you know, no

drinking on
the job,” he said with a nervous laugh. “Besides, the
bosses, you

know…” Jody sat down in the easy chair opposite
the couch. Poor thing, she half

smiled.

“The
bosses…” he whispered, leaning in close to her.

“They
like to keep an eye on us.” He winked at her, and suddenly, she
felt a cold

hard knot grow in her stomach. She felt she had been
taken in, once again, tricked by

compassion. Her intuitive warning
devices had failed her. Jon shuffled the papers on

the floor and
handed her the disarrayed stack. It only took a quick glance down

to
verify her fear. She was holding a crazy collection of memorabilia,
an old

defaced ’50′s comic book, some old recipe cards cut from
magazines, a crumpled

maple-leaf, a news article, faded and yellowed,
stained by the passage of time. She

looked up at him again. His hands
now look stained and grimy, not as tan as she had

thought. His face
was pockmarked and had a small scar under his chin.

“Um,
Mr. Fontaine, would you excuse me,” she said, keeping a tight
lipped smile,

half rising out of her seat, but he suddenly lurched
forward, his hand moving like

lightening, grabbing her wrists. Her
heart pounded rapidly, she thought about

screaming, but she knew
Jerry, her nearest neighbor, lived half a mile away, no one

would
hear. Jon looked straight into her eyes. She felt her throat
constrict. All

her nightmares flooded into consciousness, enveloping
her in all their fear. A mad

man, a killer who would rape her. She
found she could not avert her gaze from his

forehead, from the sweat
that lay in little beads on the tensile plastic surface of

the
furrowed brow. This man was… human, she thought, and it was

so
horrible.

“Ma’am,
I’ve just got to tell you,” he said, looking

intently, his eyes
searching every inch of her face in their linked proximity. His

grip
loosened a little. He let go of her wrists and buried his face in the
palm of

his hand.

“I…
I’m so confused…” he looked up again,

grasping her wrists
before she could react, moving to the edge of his seat, where

she
could see into his briefcase, sitting open beside him on the sofa. It
too had a

strange collection of bric-a-brac. an old rocking horse toy
sat sideways, atop a stack

of old postcards from South America, some
with old faded ink writing and cancelled

postmarks. An old victorian
photograph of a baby, held by a victorian mother in sepia

tones lay
perched atop a stack of old stained newspapers and comic book pages.
An

advertisement for a vacuum cleaner that looked like it was from
the stone ages lay

ripped in half. There was a snowglobe, and a
flashlight. She returned his gaze,

steady, trying not to show her
fear. He sat up, a smile on his face, noticing her

glance at his
collection. He looked so out of place that it threw her once

again
into a state of utter fear; never had a smile communicated such a
sense of

chaos and foreboding to her.

“Actually
ma’am, if you are

interested, you could just call this number and the
company would be more than glad to

help you out. but,” he
dropped his voice, leaning in close again, though she tried to

back
away, his breath smelled old and foul.

“Really,
I would just

write it down on this paper,” he whispered, pushing
a scrap of childrens notebook

paper at her. He sat back and smiled,
releasing her, rubbing his hands together.

“Well
ma’am,” he said, more loudly, looking over to his

briefcase,
gathering up his papers. ” I really should get back on the road
now.

I…” he looked confused, turning his head, staring around
the room. He focused on a

red lampshade for a minute, then looked
down at his hands. “I..I…” his jaw suddenly

went slack,
his gaze seemed blank, as if all the life had suddenly departed

from
his slumped body, leaving this husk which would start to drool at any
minute.

Jody slowly slid off the edge of her chair, moving to the
phone by the kitchen. Jon

made no movement towards her, staring at
his hands, mumbling to himself.

“Is..
is this Kansas?” he asked, making a puppy dog face of

confusion
and doubt.

“It’s
ok… Mr. Fontaine, I..I just have to

call for some.. water. would
you like some water? ” she said from the kitchen, lifting

the
phone, grasping the long breadknife that lay on the counter, holding
it out of

his sight. Jon cooed, and she felt strange, talking in that
tone of voice that one

usually reserved for little kids. Her
compassion was coming back now, giving her

strength, not doubt. This
man was an adult, of that she was afraid, but he seemed so

confused,
so lost, so hurt… she felt a small part of her that still wanted

to
take him in her arms and comfort him. Dialing Jerry’s number. She
stood

nervously in the kitchen doorway, listening to the phone ring,
watching her strange

guest sit, disoriented, on her couch.

“Hello?”
Jerry answered after

a click. In as quiet a tone as she could, Jody
whispered what was going on, and Jerry

said he’d be right over. Then
she hung up, and stood in the kitchen doorway, one hand

on the knife,
caught in the flypaper of silence, dancing a muted dance with

her
murmuring passive partner, entranced by the bright colors of his
scattered

confetti.

Back at the police station, or the polite square brick

building
which passed for one, Sheriff Bradford Tolland pushed a warm
styrofoam cup

between Cormics shaking hands.

“Here
you go, something warm to calm

you down.” The young man looked
haggard, stunned. And who wouldn’t be? Sheriff

Tolland mused, after
watching someone eaten by their own chainsaw, with no reason why.

It
was the nature of accidents, the sheriff knew, from having had to
deal with them

all his life. It was his job, especially in this small
town where crime was just a

bunch of young stoned vandals. They were,
plain and simple, accidents. A brief slip,

and a life was over. One
slight misstep, or a cigarette left burning, all these random

events
could lead to death. What could one really do? Taking care always
helped,

sure, but then accidents still occurred, well, when they
occurred. To have to watch

them, though, was something else.
Traumatic, he thought, watching these two boys

struggle in front of
him.

“Would
you boys like anything to eat, or how

about a cigarette?”

“Yeah,
yeah,” Mcguire said, and took the proffered

Camel. Cormic drank
his coffee, letting the hot steam rise into his eyes, bathing them

in
warmth and making them drift from the horrific image of the morning.

“If
only we hadn’t been so late.” moaned Mcguire, shivering. The
sheriff stared

him in the eye.

“You
can’t change the past, what happened is over.

Accidents in life
occur. Sure you could have been there earlier. Maybe if you

hadn’t
worn a hat today, maybe if I hadn’t put contacts in my eyes this
morning

or if the goddam sky wasn’t so goddamn red at sunrise, then
maybe none of this would

have happened. But what can you do! You want
to spend all your life living in the

realm of could have beens? Is
that what you want?”

“No,
no. It’s

just that, it’s, I just wish…” Cormic went silent and
simply looked back into the

shiny black of his coffee. Mcguire puffed
away at his cigarette. He glanced at Cormic.

“If
you hadn’t wanted to test the new suspension.” he said

coldly.
Cormic started up from his seat, spilling the coffee.

“Hell,
you’re the one that wanted new suspension in the first place,

you
little…”

Tolland
jumped between them, calming them with his

steady, deep voice, and
the strong pressure of his hands to their shoulders.

“Listen,
listen to you. Don’t you fall into this trap. Don’t live

the could
have beens. Ok? Sit down, take a deep breath, you guys know

better.
You’re not at fault. Calm, ok, calm…” The two young men
shuffled about,

returning heavily to their seats. Tolland knew they
hadn’t meant it. Why, they’d

been friends since as long as anyone
could recall. After finishing high school, the

two of them had gone
to work for the county. They were the type who never leave

their
small home town, they have no reason to. They were born and bred of
their

land, and would live their entire lives here, drinking on
thursdays at the bar,

driving their road rally cars and motorbikes on
all the trails, picking up on all the

new girls that would come to
town, or finding them in the neighboring towns in those

towns’ bars.
Eventually marrying, having kids, most likely getting

divorced.
Tolland hoped there werent any domestic violence calls, waiting for
him

under the masks of the boys faces. He sighed and got Cormic
another warm cup of

coffee, sponging off the desk.

“Thanks,
sheriff.”

“Yeah,”
Mcguire said, “sorry about all that.”

“That’s
all

right, you boys have had quite a shock. Try being a cop sometime,
you get this every

day.”

“No
thanks, ” said Cormic, thinking he probably wouldn’t be

able to
smoke dope if he was a cop.

Mcguire
stared out the window

at the small town of Shrewsbury, Massachusetts.
On the main street people slowly went

about their day. Depositing
money in the bank, buying groceries or having the

breakfast special
at Lucy’s One and Only Cafe. Everyone, Mcguire realized, but

Glenn.
He stubbed out his cigarette. Sheriff Tolland once more addressed

the
two.

“Now,
I know its hard, but I need to get an official account,

for the
records. Can you tell me what exactly happened, when you got there?”
He

pushed play on the small cheap tape recorder which had taken the
place of his

front-desk sergeant after the first wave of budget cuts
had hit the state.

“Well,”
Cormic began, “We showed up late,a bit after 7:30, and he was
cutting away

at a tree with the chainsaw, you know, clearing it away
from phone lines.”

“And
I came up to him, and yelled his name.” Mcguire said. “That’s
when he fell,

and.. and..”

“Glenn
had done this work before?” Tolland asked.

“Yeah,
we do it all the time, very routine.” Cormic replied.

“Tell
me exactly, if you can , the procedure for clearing trees.”

“Well,
I mean its all pretty normal, nothing to it really. You know,
chainsaw work.

Wear protective gloves, heavy boots, ear plugs..”
Tolland interrupted.

“He
was wearing ear plugs and running a chainsaw, did he hear you?”
Mcguire thought

for a moment.

”
He looked up at me, but I didn’t think he could

hear me, then he just
sort of…”

“Ran
off the tree.” Cormic

finished.

“Ran?”
Tolland asked, looking skeptically at

Cormic.

“Ran,
slipped, fell. Yeah.” said Cormic.

“You
said ran, though, first impressions are important. Why did he fall?”
The two

young men exchanged glances.

“Well,
he kind of did run to us, or our

direction.”

“I
thought he wanted to, you know, kind of show us

something.”
Mcguire said, casting another glance out the window.

“What?
Show you what?” Tolland inquired.

“I
don’t know. Nothing, I

guess, he just fell and..” The image of
the flying guts and skin came back suddenly to

McGuire, he could
smell the oil of the chainsaw mixed with the steaming flesh.

He
shivered, feeling the bile rise in his throat.

“Now,
think clearly,

did he say anything?” Mcguire turned his gaze
from the window back to the sheriff,

thinking hard.

“I
think, think he said, ‘Mother’…” Tolland etched

the word into
his scratch pad. This accident report was going nowhere.

“Isn’t
that what they’re all supposed to say when they go..”

muttered
Cormic.

“Only
in war, Cormic, only in war. ” The sheriff said,

smiling sadly
at the two shaken men.

“But
maybe in an accident too,

maybe in an accident too..” he added,
pondering. There was a silence as each was

caught up in their own
thoughts. The sheriff flicked his eyes from face to face. There

was
nothing more to learn. What can one learn from an accident but to
take more

care? He sighed, remembering poor Glenn. He’d last seen
him, when… two months ago?

When that big rig had hit a tree,
blocked the road. A very nice guy, married to that

slender Nancy. He
felt himself age years knowing he’d have to tell her the news, if

she
hadn’t found out already. Small towns had their own back avenues

of
communication. Turning back to Cormic and Mcguire, he cleared his
throat and

stopped the tape-recorder.

“Now
go on home, take a few days off, rest and

relax, deal with this as
best as you can. Thanks a lot for your help. If you ever

need
anything, just stop on by. Now go on, get out of here.”

Cormic and Mcguire shuffled slowly out, leaving the sheriff to fill
out his

reports. The two of them stood looking at each other across
the roof of their

rallycar, depressed and upset. The whole morning
had been a drain.

“Hey
man,” said Mcguire, ” You got any good weed on you?”

“Sure
I do,

sure I do Mcguire. Looks like we’ll both need it, huh?”
They got into their car and

drove off.

The
sheriff watched the road rally sports rabbit turn

a corner and
disappear. Accidents take their toll, he said to himself, they do
take

their toll.

“Mother,”
he whispered, reading his note on the

scratchpad, turning back to the
report.

STYLE="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 150%">

Shrewsbury
was

a normal town, in some ways, spread out in front of him, basking
in the early

afternoon sun. Get it while you can, he thought, before
Mr. Winter comes. Peter walked

down the main street, a couple hundred
feet of bank, local grocery store, rural feed

and hay, the lone
diner and out of business antique stores. It was a little

after
three, the hour he was supposed to meet Jack at the bar. Not that he
had

necessarily wanted to awake, but the alarm would not be silent.
He had kept swatting

at the grating machine as if it were an annoying
sheep constantly wanting more grain.

Anyway, he hadn’t seen Jack as
of recent. One can only hole up in books for so long.

This
place is in a constant state of disrepair, he noticed, looking at

the
town’s potholed mainstreet and dilapidated store signs. Hardly anyone
ever

came through here, since it was mostly an off the road town,
with its population of

small town eccentrics, the odd novelist or two
who had retreated here after publishing

a couple of novels, and of
course, its one struggling graduate student. The only two

real points
of interest were the bare bones of the viking settlement, a

little
north of town, and the big old railway depot.

Once, in the

1860′s, during the civil war, it had been a major
northern troop transfer point, and

the large railroad station at one
end of the town had been built up as quickly as it

had left. Now it
sat alone, a large empty monument to silence. Every couple of

years
the town council tried to drum up support to turn it into

a
mini?shopping complex, and every year a entrepreneurial,
youthful

go?getter moved on in, only to age quickly in the next
couple months, abandoning

their dreams and moving on, or lingering,
stuck in the morass that was the towns

sluggish economy. But it was
the reminates of the old viking settlement a few miles

west of the
town on the coast which attracted Peter, had brought him here

to
Shrewsberry in the first place. It was his hope that by being close
to this near

nonexistent sight of a depression where a cabin may have
stood, of a scrap of metal

that was perhaps a nail, and other, even
less exhilarating evidence of Viking

colonization, that this
proximity would lend to an atmosphere which was congenial, if

not
downright helpful, to his thesis. There was a theory he held which
put

geography as an important factor to history. Still, Peter
sighed, why couldn’t the

vikings have chosen to land in Pittsburg or
someplace more lively. The town was

already, after four months,
sucking him into its backward tow, eating itself up and

him with it.
If only he wasn’t so dependent on his work to give his life

its
meaning, he would have split long ago.

He
trudged heavily up

to Hanks Bar, feeling like he really needed that
beer. Mr.Gresham, whom he sometimes

noticed at Lucy’s One and Only
Diner, was sitting on the bench in front of the door,

next to Harrys’
feed and garden supply store. He looked like he was waiting

for
someone, like he had been waiting a long, long time.

“Hi,
Mr. Gresham,” Peter said, walking up the decaying wooden stairs.
“Waiting for

someone?” Gresham looked at him, frowning. He
still wore his green marines jacket from

the war. Peter had no idea
what any of the myriad medals and decorations were for, but

they
always attracted him. Gresham didn’t say anything, looking down at
his

scuffed old combat boots.

“Hey,
can I buy you a drink,” Peter

said, suddenly feeling responsible
for the old man’s lack of loquaciousness. He knew

he was a putz in
that way, but he just couldn’t bear to be confronted with

someone
that exuded such an air of dead hopelessness. It just made him think
of

himself. Gresham looked up and cleared his throat.

“I
don’t

drink,” he said, his small, deepset eyes peering out from
his weathered face.

“Well,
how about a coffee then,” Peter said, trying to gather up

a
shred of self respect. That’s right, he told himself, if it doesn’t
work, force

it on through. Gresham looked up, actually, Peter
imagined, cracking a small smile of

feeling.

“Well…I
suppose a cup wouldn’t hurt me, ” he said.

“Come
on in, then,” Peter said. “Drinks are on me!”

He
pushed open the door into the dark bar, smelling of

beer?soaked
wood. Hank was tending as usual. Peter and Gresham sat down at

the
counter, the same counter that Peter had been visiting almost daily
now for the

last month or so.

“A
beer, Hank, and a coffee for Mr. Gresham. ”

“Black?”

“Black
as the night,” Gresham replied,

looking around the dimly lit
room. He gave a curt nod to Sheriff Tolland, who was

using the
payphone in the back.

“Seasons
up again, Paul,” the sheriff

said, covering the phone with his
hand momentarily before turning back to his ghostly

conversation,
staring at the beeper in his hand.

Hank
placed the drinks

on the bar and moved back to his cash register
where he resumed reading his paperback.

Gresham grunted and picked up
his coffee. Peter watched the man drink, wondering if

maybe he
shouldn’t have sat down with him today. He certainly didn’t seem to
want

to talk to anyone. Peter pointed to Greshams’ medals.

“You
fought in

the war?”, he said, feeling embarrassed at being such
an unskilled conversationalist

that he had to rely on tactless,
forward blurtings. The two of them had had

conversations before,
though always avoiding the subject of the man’s past. Peter

wasn’t
sure why he had babbled out that question. It’s a sign, he realized,
I’ve

spent to many days without leaving the house lately. Gresham was
obviously taken aback

at the bluntness of the question. People
usually talked their way around such things.

Still, Peter could see
he appreciated some of the honesty. Gresham harrumphed,

turning
silently away for a moment, then looked straight up into Peters

face.

“My
eyes have seen things out there in the jungle you don’t

even know
about” the vet said, drinking from his steaming cup of coffee,
steam

vapors blurring his features.

“I
wouldn’t want to see what you

refer to anyway, Mr. Gresham, I
wouldn’t want to know either.”

“I
hope you never have to, not at all, seen enough youth go down as it
is, back

then. Even now, todays cities, they’re as bad as the
jungles. Just no mines that’s

all, no hidden mines.” He leaned
closer to Peter, looking at him from under heavy,

worn eyebrows, “I
just don’t want to be invalidated, you know, forgotten. Used to

be
all these movies I’d go see, all these movies attempting somehow to
bring that

whole mess to some sort of resolution, and they were
getting close. Sure they’re

movies an all, but some of them were
working, hell I knew some guys were helping with

the scripts, we were
trying to work our own way out of it. We were in there, and now

we
want out, we want out, but we just don’t want to be plain forgotten,
that’s

all, don’t want our deeds gone to waste.” The older man
leaned back, sipping again at

his coffee, his eyes glancing out the
window and around the bar. Peter followed his

gaze and then brought
it back to Greshams face. It was worn, tired, ready to give up

the
fight. There were tics and movements of the muscles, as if old faces
were

trying to push their way up to the surface. Peter sipped his
beer slowly. He knew

about the power of history. The old viking ruins
kept him in a constant state of

unknowing, and all he had were a few
rusty nails and rotted wooden beams to tie him to

the past. He had
worked for almost four years on one runic inscription, carved

a
thousand years ago, created in ten minutes by an ancient, unknown
human being…

it was enough to drive him crazy. Reconstructing one
word per year, a hopeless battle

against the power of the past. It
was different than war, though, especially in

Vietnam… or had
Gresham been in Korea? Peter couldn’t remember. That was when

ones
own past was becoming lost… Gresham slid his cup away from him and
stood up,

nodding to the sheriff, throwing some change on the counter
top, stopping Peters

objections with a glance.

“Well,
gotta get back to the shack.”

Peter
swiveled on his stool. Gresham looked down at the floor for a

minute,
as if indecisive, and then looked up, clearing his throat.

“I’m,
uh, going hunting this weekend if you’d like. Deer seasons up again.”
He

lifted his eyebrows at Peter.

“I’ve
never been hunting,” Peter

replied. Gresham snorted.

“Well,
I’ve got more than a couple guns lying

around. Come up afternoonish,
if you want. Saturday.” He stood around for a second

more, then
abruptly turned with a backward wave and shuffled out the door.

The
bells hanging from the jamb continued to ring behind him, and Peter
turned back

into his beer, wondering where in the hell Jack was,
thinking about

guns.

“Given any usual day, Terror strikes. Where? In the Heart and Mind, specifically at you. Something out there is gunning for your grisly demise, only you are not aware of it, for a veil of Illusion, of Maya, has been placed over your eyes. You have been pumped full of Opium and your legs are being sawed off. Deep in your mind you are aware, but the fog is too great and has been there too long. I’m Sorry.”
-Staislaus Skoda, from “Time of the Modifier”, (c) Expletive Press, 1996