I Was Just A Boy. A Young Mind Brimming With Questions In A Small Town Tucked Away From The World By

I was just a boy. A young mind brimming with questions in a small town tucked away from the world by lonely willow-choked roads and thick swamps. Seems so long ago.

I remember the reverend, all red-faced and swollen above me, like an ugly moon. Angrier words that lashed out at the room beyond him, turned the crowd to a thrall with answers that even as a kid I knew were unsatisfactory. My mind knew only a future where it seemed that Man had triumphed over God. Man had walked on the Moon, and Man had split the atom for its Promethean gifts. Where was God, I had asked, completely serious, inside a Saturn V, or an H-bomb?

The lashings my father gave me for this heresy were not at all delivered in the form of sermon.

I still remember the day. Claustrophobic heat that drains your muscles. Turns every breath shallow lest you drown in humidity and sorrows. I skipped church now regularly, slipping away into all consuming greenery. My worn bag stuffed with the essentials for any young would-be apostate: warm bottles of Coke, smuggled turkey sandwiches, books about men trudging on red Martian sands, and a fishing pole. Perfect.

Somewhere far away cracked thunder as I caught glimpses of nasty thunderhead clouds between bayou canopy. Deep within me stirred superstitious fear of righteous lightning to drop me dead— but I pushed it away and continued the track, eager to pluck anything from the river. Each step through the muck lessened my worry, whistling.

The sky darkened. Deepened into bruised, ominous darkness. I felt the thunder in my belly. I grew frantic as any boy would, bravado and cheer as banished as the sun had been. Crashing through brush, trying to retrace my steps— something exploded. I was thrown. I could feel the heat of flame, sense fire in some primeval heart within my being as it sprang, ferocious and eager. Through half lidded eyes I glimpsed inferno. Struggled. Fought to stand.

I ran.

I hit something. Hard. Landed in the muck right on my rear just as rain began to pelt the good earth in droves. Lightning split the sky’s imitation of night, I scrambled, and looked up.

It was a woman. Tall as any man I’d ever met. Skin pale like moonlight, and hair pristinely golden and long, rippled with crimson wildfires and blue moss. Crowning her head were perfect, black antlers, elegant and regal. She was bare. My heart thudded in tandem to the storms song, and I was stuck fast, enraptured. Silvered eyes watched me— looked beyond me. To something I can’t possibly understand.

We started at one another. She tilted her head, just slightly. All around us the world creaked and groan as hungry wildfire snatched up everything in sight, turned all things living to choking ash. She was unfazed. Serene. I wept silent tears. Unblinking.

And then, without a sound, without so much as a breath— a single upheld pale hand closed, and the fire was gone. Thin, blackened trees whispered in the faintest breeze. Impossible. A miracle.

The woman— the goddess?— looked down at me in the mud. The silver eyes, a faint smile, and with quiet footsteps, disappeared into the tangle.

I’ve told no one else of this in my sixty years of life. Who would believe an old man about his forest savior? The fire was unwitnessed by anyone when I scrambled back into town, and my only greeting was a cuff on the head for missing another service.

My property, my home— it’s there. Built at the place I first witnessed something beyond explanation. And every night, under the rain or unblinking stars, I sit out on the deck, amidst a chorus of singing creatures shrouded in shadow. Waiting.

Hoping.

*”Please keep all hands and in feet inside the ride at all times! Please do not—“*

Conrad and Lucy didn’t pay any attention. The Time Cadillac ride always started the same way. And they were too busy all over each other, submerged as deep in youthful needs as the Cadillac was submerged in deep time. Conrad was already kissing Lucy again, breathless and with too much saliva as the slick, black car slowly rolled over a desolate landscape that would’ve fit Hell or the airless Moon than Earth. Lucy ran her hands through her boyfriends short, combed brown hair, feeling the car lurch a little. Far away came lightning flashing beneath cataclysmic looking clouds all purple, bruised, and furious looking. She caught glimpses jagged landscape burbling, saw the eerie monoliths of volcanic happenstance which poured streamers of superheated gases into impossibly thin air. For a full threat minutes they rode over different variations: fire, ice, black blistering sands— even a sea bottom, flat and dark, with a single earthwide ocean far above.

*Boring.*

Conrad pressed a hand to Lucy’s thigh and she shivered just as they emerged onto land, felt humid air over her skin as kisses pattered themselves on an exposed throat like so much intimate rainfall. This place was disgusting: impenetrable swamps dominated by huge armored vegetable spires, encrusted with moss and lichen, and haunted by sprawling insects so massive that no matter what Father Martin would say it seemed downright ungodly that any Creator worthy of worship could’ve made them. Fingers brushed an innermost thigh, probing, just as their slow passage brought an automobile sized centipede to eye level. Arthropleura rose in undulating waves as cascades of armored legs cracked themselves against its plated sides, a dozen angry red chitinous sides. It was Conrad who yelped in fear, wide eyed and stupid, one hand thrown up against the monster of yesterday. Human hearts beating fast, beating hard.

Apocalypse thrown across supreme desert like a deathly blanket. Lucy just saw bones— miles and miles of bones, discarded skeletons that went on across eerie dark colored dunes. Sharp, ozone tinged air took an effort to breathe. God only knew what lived here. Was whatever had survived even lucky? Could it be considered *luck* to live here, in this silent world, a sun scorched wasteland dominated by the silenced dead? It chilled any motion between them. They huddled close. Quiet. Would this fate befall Man, would the fatal blessing of the atom undo everything.. usher us back into a final, silent world?

Giants sprouted up from ruin. Fast, fleet-footed things that in ample opportunity became behemoths, titans. An age of Olympian reptiles with no bounds. They grew, fought, lived, died. Mountains that walked, shield-faces that battered and slammed, clubbed tails that concussed. Lucy watched the very first flowers bloom: elegant purple splashed over white petals.

Conrad reached.

Something buckled, something bent. No trespassing. A cosmic reprimand that even here in this imaginary space would not and could not be allowed. It all happened in a moment. The Time Cadillac protested just barely, hissing faintly. Then nothing.

They stared. Mesozoic countryside stretched out into warm, evening sunshine. Skyscrapers redwoods loomed above ginkgos, cycads, ferns in majestic immensity, and threw thick shadows on grassless ground. Conrad felt his mouth go dry. Ancient mammalian fear rose from primordial memory.

Something roared in the gloom.

A U T U M N: R E Q U I E M

Heart of forest leaves down in the color of murder and fire, mind in fog and chilly downpours, bones made by clawing leafless timber that wants to gouge bleak skies. Autumn endless.

W I N T E R: T Y R A N N I C A L

Heart of marble, mind of icy lightning, bones of inky black water. Winter eternium.

It’s such a beautiful town. You’ve been driving for so long. Endless, parched desert stretching in every direction. A cratered, monotone landscape changed only by distant table mountains that seem impossible, purple smudged mirages. They’re not real, you tell yourself, driving on a thin asphalt ribbon to nowhere. Not real.

It’s such a beautiful town. You’ve been driving for days. It comes up out of the desert floor like manna from Heaven, like a miracle. Quaint little homes and businesses, all draped in familiar Americana, red and white and blue everywhere. Signs smile with the words “Open For Business!”— it’s wonderful.

It’s a beautiful town.

You’ve been driving for.. how long has it b—-

You pass carefully cultivated parks so green they seem like dreams. Like a fantasy oasis. Homely baseball diamond, football field. Neighborhoods that should be filled. Alive.

Where is everyone?

What’s happening?

It’s a beautiful town.

You’ve been driving for so long.

Road after road after road.

Avenue after avenue.

Empty homes. Empty parks. Nothing but silence.

It’s a beautiful town.

The Thing That Came in Summer

The world changed. Boundaries shivered. Something that had been *right* became *wrong*, just for a moment, just long enough for the slightest passage. No fanfare, no drama, no lights and catastrophe. Just the motion. Just the transition. Easy. Simple. Welcoming.

The world slid around the visitor like so much smooth water becomes glassy and transparent moving quickly across river stones. Sharp-edged shards appeared suddenly— some breakage would always occur— but then it was over. Unnoticed.

This place was like the last one. A warm, comfortable night. Moonlight thrown down from a crescent slash across verdant growth, murmuring water not far away. Voices, maybe, but hidden as small living things sang their final climactic choruses in the omnipresent dusk. The *hum-hiss-chirps* came everywhere. In a multitude of directions.

*Opportunities*. All of them.

The thing lay still. Unmoving from its arrival. An impossible chill radiated off of the strange, glossy shell in shimmering waves. Steaming faintly like so much unnatural foggy streamers. Anyone nearby would’ve noticed their breath despite June heat. But already, icy tendrils and summoned flakes were dissipating, leaving only wet traces here and there, exposing the thing.

It tasted the air. Unseen cracks and pores flexed. Inhaled. Exhaled. Scented growth, sensed heat, tasted motion. Unnatural senses unfurled in an eerie kaleidoscope. Somewhere at the core of thing came excitement. Eagerness.

Something dark and wet shivered. Shook, slightly.

There were voices now— close. Everything else had fled away into the incoming darkness, birds flittered and squirrels dodging, insects silenced and stilled. So the voices came. Close. The thing had no need to detect their joy, no desire to catch the flirtatious tones. Words meant nothing but signifiers of life, mind, and potential.

The bodies neared. They shone warm, bright as stars, vivid with pheromones and heat. The thing spied deeper, elated at glimmering brain waves and lightning neuron-linkages, all awash in so many dancing colors. Memories. Thoughts. Feelings. Innate, ancient drives that were beautiful, striking. But they paled compared to the thing, felt tiny and childish to it’s own singular drive, the final purpose that even now came in increasing waves.

*So close*.

But the thing had to wait. Kept itself tidy, tight. Moonlight and sunset vestiges glinting in cool, cold rivulets across its chitinous exterior.

The voices were close.

Closer.

Closer.

Just *there*, just at the edge. They mingled and tangled, brought so much rising into the air. The thing knew it could not fight it’s instincts any longer.

It shivered. Shook.

And grew.

The towers wait, the tombs hum. The fortresses crumble, the dams rot. This decay is beautiful, this decay is endless and stalwart. It cracks and cleaves and splits, it’s tendrils push up, out, sling across, surge through. Sunlight and the drip-drip-drip of tenacious waters. Did Rome at its height dream that one day so little would remain, did the great statues abandoned in eternal sands know that their truest accomplishment is to warn of grandiose nature made frivolous, pathetic, from marching time? Our fate remains the same, irrelevant and brief— and beautiful.

I sit on the ledge, surrounded by concrete and glass— irrelevant monoliths and irreverent designs, all inhospitable, all hostile. Featureless as the faces of the dead. Snow comes down like pale, cold stars weaving through chilly air. Flex my fingers, see my breath spiral against cold air, my heart beating steadily.

Cold metal against my skin. Heavy.