Beneath

Beneath

I never thought about what Aunt Lily did in her basement, or why she went down their so often. You’d be surprised what you don’t notice when you’re young and there’s a big sprawling tv screen clear as any window and you’re up in the countryside with ponds to splash in, woods to play in. You don’t notice when the adult your with—especially someone as lovely and kind and fun as Aunt Lily—disappears for several hours at time. You just don’t notice.

Then I got a little older. While now I had a phone, and a game system I could carry in my backpack, I started to get a little.. bored. The pond seemed dinky and tiny. The woods were hot, filled with too many bugs too eager to nip and bite.

And I started to notice Aunt Lily disappearing. I noticed how bare her lovely country home seemed. Few pictures or artworks, just a bit furniture.. It was like Aunt Lily didn’t really do much other than spend time in her basement. And by the time she finished it was only an hour of tv or so with me before she was snoring away.

It’d be always been a kind of unspoken rule between us to not go into the basement. I wasn’t a fussy kid, and didn’t break rules: so why would I just barge down there? Aunt Lily was obviously busy on something, so by right could I go on and barge in, disrupt her? As a kid, the thought seemed impossibly rude, nearly sacrilegious.

Now, things seemed different. I noticed how Aunt Lily had numerous solar panels on the roof and even three churning turbines like odd, white trees on the hillside. I noticed how sometimes the power seemed to fluctuate, oddly. I noticed how far away Lily lived from everything, even in the country; easily a four hour drive, two of which seemed only dirt roads deep in redwood country..

By the time I was eighteen and spending a last summer there before college; I couldn’t contain my curiosity.

What the fuck was Aunt Lily doing down there?

One night she went to bed. Tired as always after our of tv and some supper, she kissed my cheek and ruffled my hair before climbing the steps. As soon as I heard her door close my heart began to race. My skin tingled. Thoughts raced. I waited fifteen, twenty minutes. Just to be sure.

The basement door was colossal, and heavy. Metal like something out of a laboratory or security room, not a dainty little wood entrance. The stairs went down into a hallway, and onward.

To where?

I descended. Heart thrumming with intensity. The hallway seemed to go on for moments, smoothly carved black rock with soft but discernible lights carved at equal distance. I noticed how strangely tall the ceiling was, how wide the walls were from another. Almost like a hospital..?

I waked for five, ten minutes. It seemed longer.

The room was large. Larger than the entire house above it, easily twice or double that, maybe more. Dark electric blue-black light played over the slick, sterile surfaces. Bulbous machines seemed to line the walls in rows, like twisted glassy-synthetic plants from some otherworldly oasis. Scientifc instruments and mechanisms sprawled along the tables and islands, files in open piles.

What the fuck was she doing down here?

I noticed the hatchery.

A singular, bowl-shaped placement the width and breadth of a dinner table covered by a glass top. Within was a bedding of grass or moss, and a thin fog seemed to trail within.

There were eggs. Easily twenty, thirty eggs. Maybe more. The smallest were seemingly normal chicken-sized eggs, ovular and grey. Then.. there were the others. Eggs thin and lengthy, with leathery coatings, which seemed to softly breathe. Round, ball-shaped eggs with dark splotched coverings in bizarre patterns. Skinny almost tubular eggs tinted a rich, almost creepy bluish purple.

A singular camera or watching device dangled from the glass dome, gently swiveling, ever observant.

Was Aunt Lily some kind of farmer..? A really weird, underground chicken breeder?

When my hand touched the cool glass, a digital printout sprang to life under my fingertips, outlining the egg in a soft virtual outline. Temperature readings, internal diagnostics, likelihood of hatching within a certain timeframe..

But what caught my attention were the species names.

Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Triceratops Horridus.

Allosaurus Fragilis.

They were dinosaurs. And in that moment, I understood.

Thunder in the distance

Rain falls down from leaded skies between colossal trees, thick entangled branches. Wet moss and dripping, vibrantly green clover sways in slight breezes that whisper here, here, here. Slick muddy earth richly black against red-brown bark and vivid greenery. My three-toed talons sink into the softly sucking, cool mud with infinite balance. My steps are swift and elegant, naturally quick in organic movement.

Disembodied symphonies fill my sensitive hearing. Footsteps miles away from a Leviathan, ten thousand years old and nearly a thousand feet long, moving like a living mountain. I can hear the breeze moving through the rooted trees upon its ancient back. I can hear migratory herds hooting and calling, singing with millennia aged durges about the sky, about important rivers, about familiar nesting sites.

I am quiet. My vocalizations resound like thunder. Felt in the chest and in the bones of friend or foe alike. But for now, I am quiet. My jaws open and close, sampling the air, obsidian railroad-spike-teeth glistening with condensation wetness.

Somewhere far away, thunder rumbles.

Arthur Morgan, and the Rings of Paradise

Arthur was confused.

His mind reeled and his stomach ached like he’d been drowning his insides in putrid liquor. Doubled over, coughing, half laughing at his predicament he remembered lengthy drinking binges with Lenny or John or Javier. He wiped spittle from his chin as the daze began to be replaced by a painfully everpresent dull ache. The outlaw scratched unkempt hair from under his hat, looking this way and that, looking for his horse. Arthur was alone, too, on a familiar lookin grassy plane surrounded by sparse woodland islands. Birds’ egg blue skies embraced him. A gentle breeze whispered here and there.

He whistled in vain, sputtering out into a coughing fit. “Rachael! Oh, goddamn creature, run off again... What the hell did we drink last night..?” Arthur wiped his eyes and very suddenly, something caught his uncertain gaze.

Foggy disorientation vanished from his thoughts in an instant.

The sky above him arched upward into an elegant, impossible Ring growing increasingly thin and tiny against a dreamlike blue-black sky. Before and behind him stretched landscape and horizon as it reached into the air. He saw gorgeous oceans, crimson deserts, steaming jungles, glacially entombed mountains, hissing badlands: all in endless glory above him.

Arthur Morgan fell to his knees in silence, staring upward in disbelief. Thoughts of fireside roars by Dutch about paradise echoed in his mind, stories of rich eternity in an untamed and uninhabited frontier. Arthur Morgan felt tears prickle at his eyes. The weight of his rifle and repeating shotgun and revolvers, his aged knapsack, the weight of running from the law, the weight of fear that had grown in him as dreams of paradise slipped away into unreality: all seemed to evaporate into nothingness. Another life.

Then: a scream in the skies above him. Arthur threw himself to the ground and drew his ornate revolvers, turning upward just in time to watch bulbous, unnatural shapes wrought in organic purplish-black racing overhead. The flying machines were larger than any carriage or steamboat he’d ever seen, and they flew like horrendous angels!

More strange craft like howling demons passed overhead and away from him, thrumming with predatory energy. Suddenly the Outlaw felt very, very small.

When Arthur noticed he was not alone, and when Arthur saw the hulking giant metal man carrying a rifle unlike any he’d ever seen, a singular thought grew in his thoughts.

What the in the goddamn hell did I get myself into?

Notice Operations

Until further notice, IDS-47 through IDS-219 are closed for ontological maintenance. All staff should avoid these areas until further notice, and should continue to be diligent about any unpredictable or unprecedented activity within range of the containment sites. Non-compliance will result in immediate termination via patrolling IDS-security systems.

Thank you for your cooperation.

I see you, and we’re not alone.

When people like the things I write, I get very happy and excited, and sometimes I’ll ask them things on their page, almost always anonymously, as my way of showing them that I see them. I feel them. That little moment of connection is brilliant and beautiful as any summer blossom. It says to me “I see you”. And I want someone to know that I see them too, and that in this moment, we’re all not so alone in this world.

Night of the Metal Trees

I am lost.

I stand, unsure, afraid. Unfamiliar light and painful sounds and rushing motion blare at me with an unnatural malice.

I turn and turn and turn, slashing with claws and snapping jaws, quills raised, iron feathers shivering.

Where am I?

My vastness dwarfs such tiny glassy-metal trees, but I am fearful, and step uncomfortably, slipping, careening into painful metallic thorns. My calls do not bring familiarity, my connection to the Earth severed and dull.

Is this Uhan, the Bleak Underworld? Or something else..?

I scramble, limping, howling.

Running.