I Am An Archipelago

I Am An Archipelago

By Joel Allyn

10/29/2011 4,700 words

A man finds himself on an island with a shifting landscape, perfect weather, and the physical embodiment of all his favorite memories just as he recalls them.

No man is an island

I am an archipelago. I would say I am an island but popular opinion states this cannot be so.

Upon further study of the environment I found that though my far-seeing place is removed from everything there are a few other islands, though their connection to my island was not at first apparent to me, or they may not have even been there at all. I am aware that island chains aren’t formed overnight, but time is funny there. One night I shaved my head and when I woke the next day my hair was at least three feet long.

Exactly how long I was there I can’t say – days, or years – but I know it was not forever. I remember knowing that there had been a time before the island – nee archipelago – and while I struggled to remember inane details like the year, age or my occupation, I had not forgotten the face of my father. I walked the place’s coastline countless times, always discovering new things upon each expedition. You see, my island shifts its landscape when my back is turned.

One day I woke to find a pier connected to the beach, on it was an entire carnival. Its manifestation came at a time early on when I had not yet become accustomed to the places fluctuations. I fought the curiosity pulling at me and resisted the urge to explore, until night fell. Once the lights of the giant Ferris wheel lit up and began oscillating they hypnotized me, and I was helpless to resist its allure. The pier groaned under my weight as I walked between the rows of empty booths. The place smelled of popcorn and cigarette smoke. I heard the faint whispers of people all around me, the occasional barker’s yell rising above the murmurs – though besides my creaking footfalls and the great wheel, the place remained motionless.

As I reached the wheel’s peak I realized, looking down on such a wondrous view, that though I heard whispers far away, there were no other people coming. I had not forgotten I was alone there, but I still had absurd expectations folks would’ve come out for the carnival. I found it sad that there was no one else, because they were missing out on this precious viewpoint of paradise, but I was exuberant in the knowledge that it was all for me. On that night at least, alone at the top of that Ferris wheel, I truly was an island.

 

One of the things I love about the place is all the banyan trees and bamboo which are never the same one day to the next, and not just because they grow so damn fast. The ever-shifting landscape lends elasticity to typically fixed vegetation. I walked north through the bamboo and banyan jungle one time for three days straight without stopping. When I exited the jungle on the other side of the island I turned around to find there were no more trees there, they had been replaced by a hundred foot waterfall running from a huge rock wall into an inviting crystal pool. I jumped in without hesitation and the water was perfect, of course it was. I swam for hours, or what felt like hours. I floated on my back with my ears underwater, hearing nothing but my breath. I stayed that way long enough to watch the sun set and the stars come out one by one.

I slept beside the waterfall and woke lying near a pool of lava which had recently hardened. I learned to be careful about where that volcano may move to, sometimes it disappeared entirely. But as long as I was careful I never worried that anything there would hurt me, nothing yet gave me reason to believe otherwise.

 

I wasn’t always alone there, on a few occasions I had visitors. This didn’t surprise me, if I could get there why then couldn’t others? The first one to show up was my sister – we sat on a hill overlooking a stretch of grassy beach and had a picnic. There was an oak tree big enough to give us shade, and we sat there barefoot in the grass eating and getting a little drunk. I couldn’t really understand her, her voice sounded like she was speaking through a pillow, so we mostly sat in silence. We understood each other well enough without words. When I blinked and found myself alone I thought then that her visit may have just been a dream. We’ve always helped each other out and so I feared it was probably just wishful thinking, a comforting mirage of sorts.

The next one I can recall was a girl I’d gone out with in high school, Jasmine or Jackie or something like that. She came out of the surf like something made fresh and new, and though she looked different she still smelled the same. I’ve never forgotten that smell, a strange mix of vanilla and citrus, and smells always take you right back, don’t they. We shared a joint she’d brought–and miraculously kept dry – just as we had when we were kids and would sneak out to meet up. Then we stuck to tradition and made love; first on the beach as the sun set, then later under the moon, and then under the sun again. We talked after and laughed together until nightfall, reminiscing over inside jokes and other forgettable nonsense important to no one else.

It’s funny the way memory works there, I still couldn’t remember the names of my brothers or even  my own middle name, but I could remember that simply biting my lower lip set this girl off and brought out that wonderful laugh I have since forgotten. We each enjoyed a cigarette in silence, and then she went off to ‘water the plants’, kissing me on the forehead as she went. While laying there in the warm sand I drifted off, and when I rose later I was on a grassy hill and it was raining, she was gone.

Both my mother and father showed up as well on separate occasions trying to get me to go with them. I found it strange when I saw my mother swimming to shore, and not just because she couldn’t swim but because she had died years before I ever reached the island. She looked as thin as she had when the cancer had finally taken her, so I scavenged around and fixed her something to eat. I joined her out of politeness but I didn’t eat much. I didn’t have much of an appetite there and ate only when I had a taste for something. When she asked me to play her some of her favorite songs I said I didn’t have a guitar with me, adding that I was sorry. She looked at me with her brows furrowed, the way she had done when I was a boy, telling her the bathrooms were clean when we both knew different. She asked what that was behind me then. I turned to find my first real guitar resting there in the sand as if I’d just laid her down not a moment before.  A beautiful solid top steel string acoustic, furnished by hand from a warm dark cherry wood, still smelling slightly of glue and sawdust as it had the day my mother and I split the damage at Chicago Music. When I picked it up and played ‘Moonlight Sonata’ for her the strings rang out strong, but delicate.  Besides requests for ‘Blackbird’, ‘Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay’, ‘Hotel California’ (which I had to refuse, I wouldn’t play the Eagles if it was her dying wish) and ‘anything by Dylan’ she didn’t say much. What little  she did say was confusing.

I didn’t bother to ask where she came from or how she’d found me, I only wanted to make her comfortable. She said I should go with her, but I told her I didn’t feel like leaving yet, and I especially didn’t want to go swimming into the ocean. Besides death, I had only a vague idea of what waited out there in the endless blue abyss. She said she understood, and that it took her a while to get up the nerve to swim to me in the first place, but it ended up not being so bad. She gave me a big hug and we kissed goodbye. She dived back into the clear water and faded slowly into the waves. I watched her go and as her form disappeared into the dark blue horizon I felt a sadness I had not gone with her into the unknown, but wherever she had come from, I knew I didn’t yet want to go there. I felt terrible, but still felt bad for not feeling worse. Like so many other times in my life I was not crying at a moment when I felt like I should be – like it was expected.

The night she left the stars sped up their movements for the first time, and I watched them grow curved tails above my head. Aurora borealis danced through the sky in a real life time lapse and the moon skittered its way across the heavens in only a couple of hours. In what should have been one night I witnessed two sunsets and three sunrises. I wonder now how I never guessed then what was going on. In retrospect, it seems so obvious.

 

When I woke one day to see father had shown up, I was a bit more concerned. I figured mom had spoken with him somehow and had sent a reinforcement to try to talk some sense into their foolish boy. The firmness I had come to expect was absent however, and when he spoke he was near tears. It was rather shocking to see him this way. I couldn’t really make out the words he was saying, it was as though he were speaking from far, far away. Though I would recognize that voice even as a faint whisper from beyond eternity. I’d like to say something sweet like ‘you never forget the voices that taught you to speak’ but in truth he’d always treated me like a dog, and a dog never forgets its master’s voice.

I got the gist of what he wanted. Like so many times before we didn’t want the same thing for me, and I couldn’t abide to lose this place just to make him happy. I was used to the disappointment that showed on his face when I declined his invitation. He turned from me without speaking. As he walked away down the beach he looked older to me, more fragile now, as if he had suffered some trauma which had aged him at least five, maybe ten years. Then again maybe it was just that place that made it seem that way, time is funny there.

Both of my brothers popped in as well, and we explored the jungle the way we had journeyed through the woods as boys. I heard their voices as whispers from time to time, but when they showed up they only shared stories with me from our youth and never asked a thing of me. I loved them for that. I knew they wanted me to come with them too, but they knew better than to ask.

 

I found a radio buried in the sand on one of my walks. When I tuned it I heard a cacophony of sounds that slowly became more focused, until eventually they formed notes, then melodies until the thing started playing one after another of my favorite songs – and commercial free! This truly is paradise, I thought. Yet I would be a liar if I said I didn’t wonder from time to time if I could leave. That is of course if I wanted to.

Not everything was perfect, exactly. Things were strange and not strange at all, familiar and unfamiliar and I loved that. Yet when I found a movie screen one night and watched a couple of my favorite films they were…off, somehow. Like something was missing. The same thing happened when I found the tablet. I saw a massive tortoise on the beach, and when I moved in to see it up close there was a black tablet sticking six inches straight out of the ground like a miniature 2001 monolith. I picked it up and it reminded me of The Book from that old Douglas Adams Galaxy series. As it lit up in my hands I half expected it to start telling me about a restaurant at the end of the universe, instead it had a list of all the books I love and had dearly missed since being there. Though as I read through Gatsby and Poe’s tales, King’s short stories and and even some childhood cornerstones they all seemed… a bit off. It’s hard to explain, they were all exactly how I remembered them, but that was what was wrong.

I realize now what it was. Whenever you revisit a movie or book you love and cherish, one of the best parts of the experience is not just the rediscovery but always finding that you remembered something wrong, that you missed or forgot some detail which then further enriches your appreciation for it. That was not the case on my island – they were all exactly as I remembered them. I started to worry if I could keep it all straight. I started to fear that if I remembered Moby Dick being blown up by an air tank in his mouth after he swallowed Jonah and Gepetto, then perhaps when I opened The Book it would show me just that. I was already having enough difficulty recalling specifics about my life, how the hell was I supposed to keep the whole of literature, film, and music straight? Luckily, soon after I found The Book, the dog I’d worshipped as a boy showed up. He served as a welcome distraction from my building stress and paranoia.  We had a great time playing together and for a while I was happy again, once again enjoying my private paradise without worry. When night fell he ran into the brush and left me alone there on the beach.

I waited for the next visitor to show up, but none ever came. Once again, for a while, I was an island.

 

Fell asleep one night watching a storm off in the distance, it was the first big one I’d seen there and it was massive. I awoke in the morning to a piercing scream. When I shot up and looked around I was alone but heard my sister’s voice, still part of the whispering chorus but much louder than normal. I struggled to make out what I could, but only got bits and pieces. Over the waves I managed to catch No…he’s…there…wait…time…please…Cyrus… I tuned it out and busied myself chopping up a tree for firewood.

I played the radio while I did this busy work, but the songs started to sound tinny to me and they were repeating far too often now. The original vast catalogue of my favorites had dwindled down to only a few songs I got stuck in my head from time to time. The ‘Lion Sleeps Tonight’ or ‘Bird is the Word’ variety or some other awful pop song that despite your best efforts you could never forget.  When The Eagles ‘Take it Easy’ came on I clicked off the damned thing and pitched it into the ocean. I had my guitar around here somewhere if I needed to hear music.

I saw that the volcano was higher than usual and decided to take the chance to hike up to its summit and see what I could see. Once up there I could observe all the smaller islands dotted around mine that make up the archipelago. From that height I saw that my island was shaped in a rough triangular form, the smaller islands formed a half circle surrounding one tip. The vision reminded me of a sun setting behind a pyramid, the skyward point cutting a pie slice into the massive star. On the opposite side of the island – what would be the base of the pyramid – I saw on what that day was a rocky shore, that there were several large stones jutting out of the water just beyond the beach. The stones, like the smaller islands seemed to form a shape, but instead of a circle they formed what appeared to be a figure eight or the symbol for infinity.  I heard a grinding noise like a jammed car transmission and underneath it a strange beeping noise that was getting louder and louder. I turned and saw the smaller islands started shifting their positions and I felt the still giant beneath my feet start to rumble. It felt like I was suddenly standing atop a massive subwoofer and just as I thought  I should hurry down from here, the shadows all over the island started sweeping from one side to the other.

Looking up I saw the sun had started speeding up its trek across the sky. An absurd image bloomed in my mind of it wearing a number and running a marathon, quickening its stride from a slow walk to a steady jog. As I followed its progress, it sped up faster and faster and it was only then I noticed the great star was moving from west to east. It vanished with blinding quickness, and in the blink of an eye it was gone and the full moon was already a third of its journey across the sky. The speed of the orbiting spheres increased exponentially. I began to feel queasy and looked away. Behind the plethora of noises I heard the sound of my sister’s voice again, somehow both louder and more distant than before, a whisper both far away and right inside my head. Then her voice loud and clear boomed like a shotgun blast in my ear. Please Cyrus! Please.

The ground beneath me shook violently. I observed everywhere below me the trees, bamboo and rocks all fading to nothing, receding like a shrinking tide. Due to the sun’s speed their diminishing shadows whipped back and forth on the ground, resembling windshield wipers blurring side to side, side to side, side to side. It had been so foolish of me to go so high when I knew the impermanent state of my island. I repeated all the useless questions that came to mind. I had all I needed down below, why did I have to take this foolish chance, why did I follow such a careless compulsion?

The sun and shadows sped up their progress and now instead of dialing a dimmer switch somebody was just flicking the lights on and off, on and off, on and off, faster and faster and faster. I closed my eyes, I couldn’t stand it anymore.

I felt the sensation of being pulled in circles, as if I was standing in the middle of a merry-go-round while somebody whipped it around quicker and quicker, my balance being pulled in different directions every moment and my equilibrium starting to fail. My nausea increased and I began to feel a deep pain in my ribs along my left side. It felt like something was trying to rip me off my island, flick me off like some pesky insect. I bent to my knees and gripped the dark rock under my feet, squeezing hard, pleading with it not to leave me, not to vanish while I was so high up. It couldn’t hear me, couldn’t control itself, or was just indifferent. I felt myself being ripped from my island.

Right before the solid rock turned to air I looked out again, not above or below at the sickening shifts but out, and I remember thinking, the storm is back on the horizon again.

As I fell I grabbed at the air, hoping something would appear for me to latch on to, but all I felt was a tightening in my stomach and the pull of gravity’s cruel embrace. When I looked down to see how it would end for me I couldn’t believe my eyes. Since coming to my island I became accustomed to seeing all sorts of peculiar things, impossible things, but after a short adjustment period they never seemed odd to me. I understood you see. What I understood I didn’t exactly know nor did I try to articulate it – words would have cheapened it – but it was always there in the back of my mind reassuring me, and I understood. What made it easier to deal with is that most of the impossibilities occurred gradually, and if not they occurred behind my back, so it was simply like turning the wheel on a huge viewfinder. One image, pull the lever, a new image, a transition but a slow one and that was fine. This rapid pace of shifting scenes was just a sickening blur. I was falling towards a vat of bubbling lava, then a crystal clear pool, the next instant it was a bamboo forest, the next a mountain of sharp rocks, then grass, a tree, sand dunes, water, rocks, lava, a dark pit, a hot spring, a field of flowers, a batch of banyans…my island was fading away. I was losing it. I closed my eyes and waited.

It wouldn’t be like a dream, I knew that somehow. Whatever it was, it was not a dream. I wouldn’t be lucky enough to wake before I smacked into whatever the roulette island landscape landed on at the moment of my impact. I held my eyes closed tight and refused to give in to curiosity. As I descended, the pain in my ribs became unbearable and I felt more and more nauseous. On top of that, my legs now hurt and my left arm felt like it had been shattered. It took forever to finally hit, but of course time is funny there.

Right before I crashed into what ended up being a hard horizontal wall of water I remember two things. First, I had the most inappropriate – or perhaps most appropriate given my predicament – thought that the atoms which made me up were ancient, that I had possibly been a part of some long dead dinosaur, an exploding star, or even a drop of water. We are made of sand and it’s like a sand castle being washed away, the same granules are used the next day to build a new castle. I realized that no matter what, my atoms would go on without me and reform, and be a part of something else. It’s not reincarnation exactly, but I think it’s as close to eternal life as we can hope for. The other thing was hearing my sister’s voice boom again like she was right next to me, yelling in my ear. Wake Up!

I hit the water with a loud smack. I felt it mostly in my cheek.

 

Much later and right away, I opened my eyes again. That annoying beeping I’d heard was clear as a bell now, too clear. The island was gone. My sister was there, so were my brothers, even my father. I couldn’t help thinking and you were there, and you, and you. I tried to smile and a bolt of pain sliced through my head. They all looked at me, shocked. My sister was crying and hugged me so hard I let out a ragged, choked cry. My ribs were throbbing and my cheek was on fire. She pulled back and apologized, then said she was sorry for shaking me, and for smacking me.

The doctor was there and he asked what I remembered. I remembered the island of course, but for how long I wondered. I waved off their questions and asked for a pen and some paper. I had to hurry, I was afraid it would fade away forever like some dream – that perhaps it was already fading – and soon it would be less than a memory. It never did fade though; I can still remember all of it.

When I’d jotted enough of the details down to feel I could finish later I set the pad aside, turned my attention back to my patient audience, and asked how long. More had come back to me. I barely remembered the car hitting me, I just remember leaving the grocery store on my bike and pulling out into the bike lane and then…and then… well, then the island. Drunk driver of course, isn’t it always. They said the coma had only lasted a couple weeks, though they all look as though they’ve aged ten years in that short span. Time must be funny here.

I found out that, per my wishes – the same ones I still have – since I did not want to be left on life support beyond a three week period if it appeared I would not be returning, or not returning mentally intact, that they were on the verge of pulling the plug. My sister, – Marie, now that I can remember her name again – knew better than most what I wanted, but since there had been no severe brain damage in the accident she refused to accept that I was gone. She told me later that she knew I was in there somewhere. She hadn’t seen me in a dream or anything like that, she just knew.

“Had you been a vegetable, I would have been the first one in line to suggest yanking the power and tossing you to the nearest necrophiliac.” She said. “But they showed mental activity, a hell of lot of it. Apparently it was way more than normal. They just tossed around the word anomaly, and they wouldn’t even bother trying to understand or explain it. They all talked about options but nobody would do anything!”

I loved her at that moment more than ever, and she’s the only one I ever told about the island. She is the only one, I think, who would ever believe such a thing. When I jokingly said, “I am an island” it was she who said, “Well from what you’ve d described, technically you’re an archipelago.”

 

It’s taken me a year of physical therapy to get up and walking on my own again, and even now I walk with a cane and a limp, but I can walk and that’s enough. I do miss the island sometimes and wonder if I’ll ever see it again. I think I might but I can’t be sure, I do hope so. Maybe next time I won’t be so scared of the ocean, and I’ll go for a swim.

While I’m around I’ve been enjoying all my favorite things, and they’re sweeter than ever. I am after all a cast away returned to the mainland, and such an event in one’s life allows you to indulge in life’s simple pleasures, and experience the nuances of every small joy. I’ve been listening to music nonstop and in addition to tearing through my ‘to read’ list I am rereading all my favorite books, zooming through The Dark Tower series right now and it’s better than I remember. Recently I checked Moby Dick, and was reassured to find Ishmael still kicking things off and Moby Dick not being taken out like a certain famous great white. Marie and I were lucky enough to catch a matinee showing of one of my favorite old Scorsese films last night and it was better than ever. It really is amazing how much you overlook or just plain forget about.

No matter how many times you’ve seen a thing, there’s always something you missed.

TEEF (The Mangler)

Teef

The Mangler

By Joel Allyn

10/11/2011 7,000 words

The odd tooth-stealing rampage of Dale ‘The Mangler’ King is told by the writer who followed the case during its entirety; his goal besides selling a story is trying to explore what made such a madman tick. The more he learns, the more sympathetic he becomes and soon wonders if anything is just black and white, just good and evil.

Addiction is a funny thing; some people can be addicted to drugs and alcohol, caffeine or other conventional vices, while others can’t go a day without sex, and there’s a rare few with an insatiable blood lust. To the outsider the solution to addiction seems so simple; just stop doing it, whatever it may be, especially if it’s destroying your life. Yet to the serious addict, quitting their drug of choice is akin to torture or suicide. It is a notion that is consistently on their mind yet in no way seems to them a tangible goal. The monster described in papers as ‘The Mangler’ was just a man whose real name was Dale King, and at the root of it all he was just another addict.

The many Mangler profiles I’ve read have all reported conflicting accounts of King’s history, movements and motives. I’ve collected the most accurate info from each of these sources, in addition to my own personal research, and now his journal has been added. Dale King was, based on all available evidence nothing special. Just a disgruntled misanthrope with bad teeth and no insurance. I’ve gotten a more complete picture thanks to the recent, long-awaited release of the journal that was recovered from King’s residence. I’ll put down a couple highlights from the tome which contains a few diamonds buried in the collective rough of irrelevant lists, random ravings, and odd doodles throughout the entire two-hundred-plus page manuscript (or manifesto as the press labeled it). Put simply, the journal was the Holy Grail for me. I’ve been following the case since that first grizzly carving at the bus stop – at first hoping for nothing more than material for a half-decent article I could get published. I now allow myself to dream it may make great material for an entire book. Thanks to everything in the journal I now know Dale King’s odd behavior and crimes started long before the run of grizzly attacks and murders began.

My intent here is to put down the clearest and most accurate account of his early actions, and explore how a thirty-one years old dishwasher named Dale King became The Mangler.

 

Due to not being insured and being ignorant to other options Dale simply ignored the escalating pain in his teeth for years, using numbing gels and good old fashioned alcohol when he absolutely had to. One day the pain woke him up around four in the morning and had zero interest in letting him go back to bed. Despite a few shots of whiskey he swished around like Listerine followed by a liquid benzocaine chaser the pain refused to rest. If the pain wouldn’t sleep then neither could Dale, and so for three days he grew weaker as the pain grew ever stronger. When his cheek had swollen enough to look comical and puss started oozing from his gums he finally caved and called for an emergency visit to the closest dentist.

 

When he showed up for his appointment they took one quick look and were appalled at the state of Dale’s mouth. Before they would even lay hands on him again or shine the spotlight in his eye they explained the cost, and demanded a few dozen signatures.  None of the folks in scrubs had seemed too surprised to find that King was uninsured. They added up a total for the visit’s planned work, and then once he was cashed out they became a bit warmer. I spoke with some of the women working in the office at the time, who said at first they thought Dale looked as though he might rob the place, but that the second he had paid his bill for the visit he’d relaxed. Once he started talking to them they all took quite a liking to him, and couldn’t see why they’d ever thought otherwise. They even drew up a free estimate for all the work they’d recommend, for all the extractions, fillings, caps, root canals, whistles and bells Dale need only raise a measly thirty-five thousand dollars. The first visit however only set him back $230 for the extraction. He’d get dental credit later so the extractions would only be twenty-five bucks, making a visit and a prescription much cheaper and not as risky as a dealer. He left the dentist’s office drooling from the left side of his mouth, neither feeling nor noticing it at all, and looking as though he were doing a poor Quasimodo imitation.             He hobbled straight from his first appointment to the pharmacy. They’d written Dale three prescriptions: 750mg oxycodone for pain, amoxicillin for general antibiotic, and 800mg Ibuprofen to act as both a pain reliever and an anti-inflammatory. I only mention this superfluous detail because it is quite interesting to note that these high dosage pain pills were the first real drugs Dale King had ever consumed. Unless we’re counting aspirin, caffeine, or the rare drink, King was reportedly drug free, despite certain outrageous claims to the contrary. Dale’s mother never allowed her baby boy to be around any types of poison, and as an adult there is evidence that supports King sticking to his mom’s rules.

The pharmacist on duty that day was a kind old woman named Clara Anders. Dale reminded her of her youngest son, who’d himself come on hard times. When Clara started talking with Dale she discovered what he was being charged for appointments and drugs because he had no insurance. Following a short rant about how poor people always get charged more while the rich get it all for free, she took the time to help him fill out the applications for government insurance and Care Credit dental (both basic coverage for the poor)   so he’d be able to afford appointments and buy his meds at a tenth of the price.

The final figure is disputed by all but even the most modest amateur figures put his final operation total to be just over four hundred extractions. However the official count released to the public was a mere thirty-eight, clearly the truth lies somewhere between the two lies. Though whether it was less than four dozen or more than four-hundred I still feel a shiver when I imagine even once taking a tooth out of another’s gums, pushing it into my own, breaking skin, then pushing harder to make sure it’s in just well enough to be ripped out again by a man with a prescription pad. To do that once would do irrevocable damage, but to repeat such a vile act – no matter how few/many times – would destroy a mind, and yet…

 

Dale King had arranged for his evening dish shift to be covered for a few days, and during that time he recovered from the tremendous amount of pain with plenty of rest and a steady diet of the pain pills. According to his journal entries, King felt it was an instant love affair. The drugs made him feel as though he were ‘floating, everything finally makes sense, it’s like it all slowed down while I sped up, I can see it all clearly now’. He also recorded that he was no longer just sleeping, he was actually resting and would wake feeling invigorated and recharged in the morning.

The following is one of the earliest entries – though slightly edited – in the publicly available journal of Dale ‘The Mangler’ King.

[Beginning and end of all excerpt passage will be marked by an asterisk*]

*Had to finally go to the dentist today, face looked like a damn cartoon, and after I paid up front for the tooth pulling they numbed me up and popped it out real quick. All the girls at that place are gorgeous, I think that’s smart. I coulda usually done that myself though. Only reason I even went was cause it’s a back one and I can’t never grip the back guys well enough with the pliers. I’ve tried but it’s like trying to lick your own elbow. Only reason I mention a word of this is cause the doc, who’s actually alright, numbed me up extra when I flinched at first. Hurt like hell still but I didn’t have to say nothing, he’s good. But yeah, he gave me three, count em brother, THREE pill papers. So they pack my mouth with bandage wrap and off my numb ass went to get the magic pills.

      Cool lady named Sarah or Clara helped me out and got me a deal on everything, was real cool, but then suddenly started warning me how much drugs my body can handle. But anyways these things are great! I took one a while before I started writing and I only wonder one thing, where have these things been all my life?! Fuck man, I needed this over there. So worth losing a tooth, can’t wait til I can afford next one, thanks to Clara should be soon.

                                                                                                      -Dale*

As I look over most of the entries in this part of the journal I can’t help but feel that Dale was really just a lonely and easily excitable guy who was having fun experimenting with drugs later than most. Soon though, the dentist caught on that Dale was in at every opportunity to get another extraction, and King was a little too happy to feel the pinch of the needle full of Novocain and strangely overjoyed when handed his prescriptions. It didn’t take having a doctorate to see the clear signs of an escalating drug addiction. He liked Dale but had no choice, so he became the first of many dentists to refuse to take any future visits from Mr. King. Of course by the time of the first dentist’s moral awakening King had already gone through twelve tooth extraction surgeries in just under six months, and had stocked up a cache of pain pills.

 

From then on Dale’s writings became more and more erratic. He was working as much overtime as was allowed, just to be able to support this new expense. He was also aware, of course, that his own teeth (which did all need yanking anyway) would not last forever, and that eventually he would have to either A) stop enjoying his cheap newfound ambrosia, B) try again to find somebody else to buy it from, or C) find more teeth somehow, which is insane. He mulled the options over for a time, then tried them in succession; failing at the first two and succeeding at the last.

By the time Dale first attempted to go cold turkey he was no longer even able to say ‘teeth’ properly, when he spoke the word it came out ‘teef’. Though that would be one of the lesser concerns of one with nearly no teeth left. He was reported by those that lived to have grunted the word over and over during the attacks, most times not making any other sounds at all.  At five a.m., after his first fifty-five miserable, sleepless, drug free hours in over a year, our Mr. King grabbed one of the six ‘emergency’ pills and popped one.

After thirty minutes he took another, and then fell into a restless sleep.

While there was still a few remaining teeth, King started planning for the future and tried for the last time to find a dealer. He knew the city had them everywhere and had taken a chance and actually succeeded in buying a few times. But he had also been arrested once for buying from a cop, and then was nearly arrested a second time for the same offense. He only avoided the second arrest thanks to his quick thinking and quicker feet. The officer flashed his badge and started to say something, but Dale just took off with the drugs. The stunned cop chased of course, but didn’t stand much of a chance. The man’s tremendous weight had in fact been the deciding factor that led Dale to chance buying off the guy, against his better judgment. Once in jail seemed to be more than enough for him, so he made sure no matter what that he never ended up there again. So due to the risk a dealer became out of the question.

Having exhausted options A and B, and failing to devise an alternative option, he was left with figuring out how anybody but the tooth fairy could go about collecting teeth. He cried on the bathroom floor with his last tooth still in his mouth swearing to every god he could think of that if they just gave him the strength to get through a week and keep just one tooth that he would do the rest on his own and never even dream of doing drugs again, and would stop wasting his life. He tried to go cold turkey before and after having that last tooth pulled, but found that despite what some may teach you about rock bottom, you can’t ever truly hope to quit until you want to.

Dale King didn’t want to.

 

He broke into an elderly man’s home and took his dentures. That first home procedure was the worst of any of them. He’d actually attempted to glue the dentures in and went to the dentist, they fooled exactly no one. He then learned all their was to know about tooth placement and all the different kinds of teeth we have, he learned the difference between the mandible (bottom) and the maxillary (top) for one, which was good since he’d gone in to the dentist’s office with them switched. He foolishly even tried after the rebuff of the fake teeth to insert a single fake tooth and pass it off. Dentures do not have the four prongs that real teeth use to cling inside the gums, so he pushed a flat piece of acrylic into his gums, and the whole ordeal was a total waste of time anyway. The dentist who’d removed his last natural tooth – and who had dealt with the ridiculous show of the dentures – liked Dale and had agreed to see him again only because Dale said it was an emergency. The man not only didn’t believe he had somehow missed the existence of a tooth, but once he saw instantly that the ‘new’ tooth was a fake he finally banned King.

 

I don’t know that King ever recognized his luck. Besides being able to evade capture for twenty-six months while in one metropolis, not a one of the dentists he’d so clearly used had called the police on him. Hell, one of them even wrote him a pity script as he dismissed him, making Dale first promise he would get some help and get cleaned up. Everybody I spoke with who got to see King firsthand or speak with him – those who weren’t attacked – seemed to like the guy.

There were still several paths available to King at that point. Toothless and pilled-up as he was he still had choices, and the choice he made was to become what folks know as The Mangler. I cannot say whether King got into an argument as he waited for a bus that night, or if he crept up like a predator before he struck, I just don’t know. My initial thoughts were that he simply snapped and carved up the first stranger unfortunate enough to be in his path. Knowing what I do now, I tend to think it must have either been a disagreement or attempted robbery that turned ugly fast. After things went bad I think Dale figured, why waste a good opportunity? Dale always carried a pocket knife that had a blade the length of his palm, with a U.S. ARMY tank stamp in the steel. After he’d gutted the man, he wiped the innards off the blade, turning it from crimson to chrome, and then he removed the man’s two front teeth. As I believe I’ve stated already, I believe that to do that to another human would make it quite difficult to go on functioning as one had before. Yet it must not have been too hard for King. He was back in a dentist’s chair upstate not a month later, with another stranger’s tooth needing to be extracted.

Less than two weeks later he was back again.

Had someone suggested to me that an addiction to oxycodone could lead a person to go on a killing spree in desperation to support their habit, I would recommend a lengthy stay in a padded room or at the least an MRI. Though I should say ‘mutilation spree’, being more accurate, as only a third of those who were confirmed as victims of The Mangler were actually killed. The rest were only a little…well, mangled. Horribly disfigured in some cases, short a few teeth in all cases, but alive. I surmise King was either always a monster or never one at all. I was always more interested in how Dale saw himself. Luckily, I got the chance to find out. When they finally apprehended him, King was taken to a location less than three miles from the hotel where I sit writing this now.

The man is simply fascinating. In King’s own words, all he ever wanted was a few ‘teef’, and he claimed he would never have hurt any of them had they let him take what he needed and just stayed still and quiet. It seemed the best chance of surviving an attack by The Mangler was the same as being attacked by a bear, just play possum. Would the unfortunate third of the victims still be alive had they heeded this advice? I suppose we’ll never know.

Dale truly wrote as he spoke, and around the time of his first kill he started writing ‘teef’ instead of ‘teeth’ in the pages of his journal. More than just reflecting his pronunciation, the word seemed to obtain talismanic status. He carried it with him as a protector on his descent into madness. The following excerpt is thought to be around the time his first few victims were discovered.

*I try and try and try and try man, but they gotta make it SO hard. I NEVER would have hurt nobody, I did enough of that over there. What else was I sposed to do huh? I was gonna stop too boy once last one was gone cause I’ll tell you something man ALL DEALERS ARE COPS All of them! I figure some must just be allowed to keep dealing so the others can keep luring in the junkies, meet their arrest goals and shit. They think I don’t know and we don’t know but if you just stop and think, then you realize man that’s all really just about power and they know we have it but they want to make sure that you think they have it so you don’t use it ya know. So like I said though I was out of teef and so I knew I was fucked. Just chillin to myself when that faggot at the bus stop came at me HE CAME AT ME! Can you believe that shit? So I stuck him! I mean what else was I sposed to do ya know? So then I was freaking real bad but I saw the faggot’s teef were just poking out and it was like they was looking at me, and I got it then! He didn’t need em no more and I did so I took Old Silver wiped off the guts and started carving those two big front ones out just hoping the whole time whatever new doc I found next couldn’t tell they weren’t mine. I mean who knows if they could tell the difference between the false and the real maybe they could tell the difference between a live tooth and a dead one, I think I’ve even heard folks say that they have a dead tooth. Right when I started on his gums the dead man shot up so I had to crack his head against the sidewalk and finished up quick. Last time I ever grabbed the front ones too boy first timer mistake. The damn gums up front way too thin but they worked. I just gargled some whiskey then slapped some of that nummin jell on and shoved em in with my palm. They still only went so far though so I hammered the fuckers the rest of the way up WHOOEE! Now that shit hurt. Back teef I grabbed time after didn’t hurt half so bad going in. and that hammer was fine for the front ones but even though the back ones hurt less going in and you just gotta carve out  a little hole and the tooth does the rest you cant hammer em so easy way in the back so what you gotta do was put the hammer in sideways and pull down on the handle so the son of a bitch shoots up and knocks it in but you gotta be careful not do it too hard cause I got a tooth in and hit it too hard and it broke apart that’s why I always grab at least 2 and 3 if I got time but no more. And I do feel bad but way I figure is that these people everywhere got so much they don’t need when theres needy folks everywhere around them and thirty or whatever teef is way more than they need to get by so I’ll take some cause I got none thank you very much time for fun. But I wont lie now its gotten pretty fun, like being on patrol again almost on the good days. And I wont brag but ive learned man yes I have. Got my own little special method now boy. That little knife is good and always has been good to me but Old Silver made a real fucking mess first time so I got this machete I tried few times too but she was the one that killed em most times not me, been 4 gone and 3 from her. Then I found this big hunting knife and shes a real beaut boy, solid like Silver but damn near the size of the machete. Thing slides right into the gum like hot knife threw butter and just pops dem teef right out so easy sounding like a damn cork coming loose or something, music to my ears. Now I just walk in to the new doc’s with some new teef and some sore gums then walk out with really sore gums and a few new pill papers. Thought maybe Clara would sneak me some or sell on side at least but she has been funny about me, she stares at my gums all the time now and seems weird or something, I dropped my keys last time and she fucking screamed. Man I been up all night need to get at least 2 hours before work, these things sposed to make you tired it says but just makes things slow down for and I see it all. Time to pop and drop. Night

                                                                              – Dale*

 

None of his entries are dated but they’re all written as if they were letters to a friend going so far as signing all of them with his first name. It clearly served as King’s only friend, confidant, and portable confessional. There was enough in the book to have King charged with several assaults and  a few murders. When he bothered to write about these things at all he wrote in extreme detail, leaving no doubt to which bodies were being referenced. Jack Collins was the man found behind the grocery store. Red Sampognaro was found frozen solid under a bridge. And Phillip Austen’s gums were annihilated and his face was so disfigured – what skin remained hanging off in strips and ribbons gingerly placed back to make an impressionistic version of the man’s face – that his wife Kate refused to identify the body and claims Phil is missing to this day. Better than the alternative I suppose.

What King’s journal has done for me personally is supplied most of the missing puzzle pieces. I was able to double-check my meticulously detailed timeline against the journal and was quite pleased that the two lined up near flawlessly, including a multitude of attacks the police had previously denied were related.

I wasn’t sure why he’d never take more than a few teeth from each of his victims. I thought that perhaps he felt pity, knowing what having no teeth was like. How people stared, or looked away. Or maybe it just took too much time and he didn’t want to risk being caught or killing the victim. What I never suspected was the plain answer King provided in a journal entry.

*I WISH sometimes I could just pop em all out at once from one old timer and just lay low for a bit with a pile of pills but I ain’t pushing my luck. I aint got caught yet so my rule must be workin well so far so I aint gonna break it. Just like the old soldier rule, they said never more than three smokes on a match.*

So a misinterpretation of the old superstitious military belief that more than two smokes on a single match was bad luck (it was originally to keep any observing snipers from getting a fix on and picking off the smoking soldiers) led to many people being mauled, instead of perhaps only an unfortunate few losing all their teeth.

We must keep in mind that as crazy as he may sound, King managed to remain at large for over two years, and was smart enough not to shit where he ate, so to speak. His habit became to collect here and there, and then afterward take a nice long drive for a quickie extraction outside city limits. The main thing any of his many living victims could recall, when pressed, was ‘a dark haired man with a big knife, and no teeth, who kept grunting ‘teef’’ as he savaged them. After that description hit the papers he took to wearing that first pair of dentures he’d lifted from the old man. He started to feel people noticing his naked gums quite a bit more. They, coupled with his dark hair, felt like ‘traitors screaming my sins for all to hear’, according to King himself in his manic memoir. He just wanted to keep himself, to himself. Once he had what he needed, that is.

I was allowed to view and make copies of The Mangler’s diary, and I have been over King’s writings again and again. I wanted to get more of a feel for the man and, as I’ve stated, just hoped to catch so much as a glance at what drives a man mad. Or, as so many have claimed, how a madman is able to hide in plain sight.

The conclusion I have come to is an unsettling one, and is sure to be unpopular: If King is truly a monster then on some level we all are. Perhaps the only significant difference is that most of us do a better job at hiding our inner beast, and some not that much better. I don’t mean to suggest that we are all killers, but I suspect the monster King unleashed – first in the pages of his journal, then later on the streets – is similar enough to the one the rest of us keep locked up in the basements of our minds. Most of us just do a better job at hiding it.

 

Dale ‘The Mangler’ King’s series of attacks ceased on a cool October evening when one of his potential victims named Hugo Lawson shot him during the assault. While cutting through an alley on his normal route home from the night shift tending bar, Hugo heard something behind him and turned to find ‘the Mangler’ less than three feet behind him, clutching a massive knife. It had become Dale’s habit to try whenever possible to use the heavy handle on the blade to incapacitate his victims with a swift hard blow to the head, it didn’t always work but it worked enough of the time. Unfortunately he couldn’t always sneak up undetected, so sometimes he was forced to use the pointy end. What else was he supposed to do?

He went at Lawson with the blade and the man pulled a pop gun and squeezed off a quick shot that went into King’s abdomen. The wound was far from fatal but served as a distraction for Lawson – he got to his feet and took flight. At the moment Lawson exited the alley a squad car happened by. He stepped in front of the cruiser, then started pounding on the hood , shouting and pointing at the shape now fleeing down the alley. The two cops in the car took off after the shape, one on foot and the other still in the vehicle.

Had someone been taking bets on the outcome of the race I would have laid all I had on ‘The Mangler’ being apprehended within the hour, and I would have lost every penny. Despite the efforts of a full search team and time sealing off a perimeter of eight city blocks, King managed to avoid capture, for a time. He showed up at St. Joseph’s medical center fifteen miles east of where he’d been shot. They must have pumped him full of a lovely combination of drugs because in no time at all he started going on and on, spitting out little anecdotes as if he were performing a standup routine. They all loved the joke about the old man and the little boy hunting ducks with duct tape, and they busted a gut over the one about the grasshopper named Gary. Once he got going, everybody was laughing right along with the severely impaired and bleeding Dale King, right up until he got into the good old story about what a mess he’d made once trying to pry out some teef with a machete. How he’d had to cut out the tongue, and he asked them what else was he sposed to do?

Dale went on but the three women in scrubs who had been laughing a moment before had all fallen silent. One was standing with her hands clasped over her mouth, just below her wide, watering eyes. The second was just staring at him, and the third girl was no longer in the room at all, she’d gone to call the police. Dale passed out laughing.

When he woke later he found he was handcuffed to his bed.

 

After he was taken into custody I had the privilege of making my subject’s acquaintance. Since our meeting I have found that I now feel quite different about the whole bloody mess, and I’ve started questioning my initial opinion of the man himself. Now I do not mean to say I defend any of the heinous actions perpetrated by Mr. King, but I can admit that I sympathize with him more than I would have  thought possible. I feel almost sorry for him. We have  always found solace by pointing the finger at ‘the other’, and picking out all the ways these terrible monsters are so different from the good people we consider ourselves to be, but it is never so simple. I cannot help but wonder if Dale King had been given the help he so sorely needed, if he could have received therapy covered under government healthcare, how many people would have been spared traumatic assaults or would still be alive today? Although that, I fear, is a whole other conversation, and in this specific case is no longer applicable, as we are now beyond that point of no return.

I had to pull more strings than a harp possesses in order to get the two of us alone in a room, and even then wouldn’t have stood a chance had it not been for my brother in law who works as head of security. I was patted down four times and was made to sign a pile of papers rivaling a phone book before I was finally seated across from King. The infamous Mangler was not what I had expected, and I immediately had great difficulty reconciling the man I spoke with that day with the savage who cut out folks’ molars while grunting ‘teef’ like some holy chant. Dale was surprisingly candid and completely lucid, despite the cocktail of drugs they had told me he was on. He broke the ice before I could by telling a few jokes which I couldn’t help but laugh at, and with that simple act he succeeded in putting me at ease despite my insistence to try and keep my guard up. I could see he was wild with excitement, his eyes were flashing like lightning in a bottle. He had been told about me and said he understood I was his biggest fan. I wanted to protest but thought better of it and just nodded and smiled in response. I can admit now that in a weird sort of way he was right, there is at least certainly nobody who knows more about Dale King than yours truly, which was a part of the reason they let me in to speak with him.

Again I know what he did was wrong, but his sheer unflinching determination is astounding. I for one can admit that, if not deserving of emulation, he is at least worthy of begrudging admiration. I do not believe I could have ever forced myself to do the things he did, could you? I never felt this way until after our meeting. I went there hating the man and left wanting to hate him, but unable to help myself from actually liking him, perhaps even understanding him. I remember exactly when my change of heart occurred as well. It happened just after I explained that I was doing a piece not just on ‘The Mangler’ but the man behind the acts that had captivated a state’s attention. He smiled at me, and in that instant I was no longer frightened. As I looked into his eyes ‘The Mangler’ just melted away and I saw only amicable Dale King before me. It was truly odd but in that moment I had no concerns over my story, I just wanted to help the guy.

He said he liked me, that I got him, and he promised to share ‘all the dirty deets’. Although we only had thirty minutes, he told me more in that time than I ever wanted to know. It’s been over a month now since that meeting and I still can’t hear the sound of a popping cork without picturing a large knife extracting teef. This unfortunately happens most when I am out at a bar, or worse a restaurant, which does not usually help matters, with everyone slurping down food and carving – nee mangling – their dead flesh to suck down more.

I truly felt that Dale and I had developed a rapport and so felt no qualms about giving him my address. I thought that way he would at least have someone to correspond with while in prison.  I was also motivated by the thought of the jackpot it would be to have ‘The Mangler’ as a direct source. I never saw any prospect of danger in the act, as he would undoubtedly be behind bars until his death. I am sure it sounds like simple naiveté, but I swear to you I looked into his eyes that afternoon and I saw no monster lurking there. All I saw was an eccentric man consumed with sadness and fear, sustained by an undercurrent of excitement, and below all that even a simple kindness.

Aside for those wild eyes he remained stoic. He explained how he didn’t want to hurt any of them and only wanted their teef, and if they’d just held still and stayed quiet everything would have been fine. He talked of how he was considerate enough to clean his blade each time ‘so nobody caught nothin’. He seemed deeply upset over those who had killed and  seemed to blame a lack of compassion stating, “If I had had a doctor friend who could have just prescribed me some good stuff I wouldn’t had hurt nobody.” He also suggested that he would have been fine had he been born with a hundred teeth.

I have written to him several times but haven’t seen or heard from him directly since our first rendezvous, I get regular reports through the grapevine but can only hope he is all right.

 

As I was gearing up to tackle Dale King’s adolescence and military life I received a phone call from my main pipeline where they were holding King. He sounded frantic and was off the line before I had the chance to ask any questions, but I heard enough to gather that they’d gone to check on King this morning and found his cell open and empty as Jesus Christ’s tomb, save for two guards both with their eyes gouged out.

“And that was this morning man. We’ve been looking for him all fucking day since and nothing! It’s as if he just up and vanished like a god damn fart in the wind,” he said. “He’s been dead silent in his cell all month, and besides some grumblings about ‘teef and journal’ I mean not one fucking peep. Then out of nowhere this shit, POW! Anyway I got to go, we’ll be sending a few guys by and just wanted to give you a heads up, just in case. See ya man.”

He clicked off and I stood there for a second, not exactly sure how I felt about Dale getting away. I wasn’t worried, that was for sure, I doubt they even let him keep my address or the man would written by now. It was strange and I feel awful admitting it, but I was actually a little glad. Not for the guards’ deaths, but because now just as the tale was to finish, the story goes on and gets better. The tale grew in the telling. ‘The Mangler’ saga has after all been a huge part of my life and I was a disappointed with such a mediocre finale, the capture of a sick man in a hospital. That was not the way these stories were supposed to finish out.

I had planned to get into the man’s childhood as well the history of the head wound that got him discharged, but now I’m sure that I will be busy tomorrow. So I will get some rest and return as the tale unfolds. I expect the headlines in the morning will all read ‘Mangler Escaped!’ and they’ll need the ‘Mangler’ expert on the news, and when my phone rings I’ll be glad to fill that role again. The only thing I am rather sad about is that I will never get to see Dale again, but-

Somebody is already at the door, must be the cops to warn me.

 

      Man they took my damn notebook, guards didn’t even know where they put it, and I asked hard boy. So I’m taking the writers its real nice and so is this pen. He was the easiest ever too man, felt real good. Tried talking all nice to me at first and even let me in and even when I first cut him he just stood there all still and quiet. I just needed wheels and cash too I was hoping he wouldn’t have been here but he was and I got nowhere else to go , he said he’d help me but that was bullshit I know so what else was I sposed to do huh? Had to use a fucking letter opener on him, sloppy work man. Decided starting now Im taking em all from now on too cause that no more than 3 rule didn’t do shit for me, that’s just bullshit like almost everything else they said over there. After the fuckin letter opener snapped in his top jaw I couldn’t find a good blade and had to use a damn butter knife, man I miss Old Silver. Writer man never moved much at all just cried a little when I took the first handful or so. I took two more then he screamed so I stuck him in the throat but he still never moved man, fucking crazy and three teef later I noticed he wasn’t even breathin no more. Hes got a nice place here and after I hammer in a couple big back ones Im gonna shower, fucking blood everywhere really sloppy work. Feelin good and actually found a bunch of my pills in writer man’s bathroom and some damn good whiskey to wash em down. Feeling good man, feeling real REAL good. I got a pocketful of pills and teeth and now a new car! Feeling GREAT! Talk soon

                                                                                                                  -Dale

 

 

 

Nostalgia

Nostalgia

By Joel Allyn

8/3/2011 3,700 words

In a world of only remakes two writers from different generations discuss their craft over games of chess.

                                                        

“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”

- Ernest Hemingway

“So essentially it’s King Lear with a cast of talking dogs, British dogs,” said Rob. Just give them what they want.

He felt sick as the words left his mouth and then shame as the man at the head of the table nodded approvingly and spoke aloud to the rest of the writers gathered around the table.

“See that’s how we do it. We’ll just film some dogs, edit it and throw some well known voices over it speaking the Barb’s words.” Bard, thought Rob, a headache had bloomed behind his eyes. “We’ll make back ten times what it’ll cost to produce.” Mr. Bay said. He smiled at Rob. “Great job as always Rob, the rest of you could certainly learn from Townsend here. Alright I’ve heard enough from you guys today. Let’s get back to work, come up with something to take to the backers.”

Rob slunk back to his desk, doing his best to avoid both the supportive comments and the scornful looks. Half his co-workers wanted to write like him and were always asking what his secret was, where his ideas came from. He often wanted to say they weren’t even worthy of the term ‘ideas’, that they were bottom of the barrel mindless jokes. Instead, he just nodded with an obligatory empty smile. The rest of the office wanted him gone, minimal if any effort was made on their part to conceal this fact. They were sick of looking bad, and if it wasn’t enough that they despised him for that they also blamed him for contributing to the degradation of storytelling in general. As far as most of the older – and in their own opinions wiser – scribes were concerned Rob Townsend was not a real writer at all. If they only knew…

There was only one real writer left though, and Rob had managed to find him. Their meetings were his secret and his salvation, and the thing that kept him writing. Hell, by this point it was the thing keeping him alive. Over games of chess in the park they’d talk for hours, and the old scribe known as Lovey Rigg would beg Rob to share the ‘ideas’ that had been pitched recently. Eventually Rob would give in and once he’d heard the proposals Lovey would just laugh and laugh, but behind the laughter in his eyes the younger writer would catch a glimpse of sadness, and perhaps fear. As Lovey’s hands had started to shake worse and worse and he had grown gaunter Rob had become worried but knew better than to intrude into his personal affairs, he had learned that lesson early and easily. Mostly Rob would just listen, absorbing everything – he could always sift through it all later.

He loved hearing Lovey speak of the days before NOSTALGIA even existed, when writers would come up with original story ideas instead of just altering remake after remake. It sounded like some fairy tale land to Rob. For as long as he could remember it was just a steady stream of the same safe films disguised behind the mask of scarcely altered characters or approaches, but Lovey Rigg remembered a world before the one devoid of originality that Rob knew.

History books can be altered, but to hear Lovey tell it these original great movies –classics, he fondly referred to them – held some sacred truth, some sort of magic. The way he put it was that it was about finding the truth within the lies. Then over time parts of remakes started showing up in the newer films, cloaked under the guise of an ‘homage’. Lovey said he himself was guilty of this but hadn’t been too concerned at first. Eventually however he’d had enough and founded and led a campaign against the rising tide of mediocrity, and was daring to call these ‘homages’ plagiarism.

His groups platform was based around the feeling expressed best in the Times editorial Lovey Rigg authored where he wrote, ‘If one does a near shot for shot remake of an already existing film, or even a portion of it, how is that any different than rewriting a classic book line for line, changing the characters to dogs and calling it your own work? And furthermore, why is one any more acceptable than the other?’ Due to the man’s renown the article was widely read and many people felt Rigg had indeed made an excellent point: If people could get away copying films why not slightly altered books as well? He had handed his enemy their best idea to date.

Three months later a classic work of fiction was reprinted and released with one noteworthy change – they’d added zombies. Lovey said he’d laughed that butchery off, as he had the awful vampire stories involving day-walking vamps that sparkled like glitter; until both books skyrocketed up the bestsellers list in the very same publication his editorial had been run. Several adaptations, sequels and knockoffs followed, and people couldn’t get enough.

“That,” he said, “was the beginning of the end. Within a few years more and more remakes popped up and kept selling well so the studio heads and publishers took fewer unnecessary chances and focused their backing solely on apparently failsafe, well-worn favorites. They began to refuse paying talent what it deserved and opted instead to hire amateurs who would do the job happily for little more than a pat on the head. Television shows from decades prior were suddenly exhumed and put on the air with new casts, some were even turned into films, yet people still just kept eating it up. It’s not any one person or group’s fault though; things were getting rougher for everybody and as the entire global economy was melting down people were just looking for an easy laugh or a quick simple murder mystery, and I get that. What few clever writers remained were so scared of not working that they simply towed the line in silence. A few years more and it was so bad that they resorted to actually turning board games into films, and people paid for the privilege.” Rob had laughed at that, but the sour look upon Lovey’s face made him cease at once.

“You cannot imagine what it was like to see so many great writers’ ideas go unrecognized and fade into obscurity while the three thousandth redo of Romeo and Juliet (this time with gnomes) made a fortune. Every time somebody watched one of these atrocities, I swear a book killed itself.”

Somewhere out of that rising cesspool of mediocrity came one pioneering company – NOSTALGIA – which arrived seemingly fully formed and with the dominance of Cthulu. The company’s founders were at the helm of all of it, recognizing the lasting worth of rehash after rehash long before the rest of the industry fully caught on.

“They’ve poisoned that word.” Lovey had said more than once, and Rob couldn’t argue. After all, the company’s job was to trick people into buying the same product over and over based on nothing more than the feeling itself, so the name was quite apropos but no less poisonous. When asked what had ever become of his league of like-minded scribes – The Scribblers, they’d called themselves – Lovey would say simply, “All dead now.” Adding, “We managed to hang in there for a bit though, still writing original stories as they came to us, if only to read for each other around a fire. But I’m the last Scribbler now, and any day I’ll be reading my own epilogue.”

He let out a slight chuckle at that, Rob did not.

“So why bother to write at all then if nobody-”

“Reads it?” Lovey cut in.

“Well, yeah. I mean, I’ve had a few ‘great’ ideas but never bothered putting any of them to paper because I know they’d never go farther than that.”

“Then I suppose NOSTALGIA has won, boy. Your ideas, at least the ones you’ve shared with me, are great but if you need somebody to tell you that then you’ll always have a place at NOSTALGIA, where they’ll praise you for those stories you’re ashamed to speak of.”

“Well Lovey, we can’t all be Scribblers.”

Lovey peered across the chessboard into his eyes. “Maybe not son, but you could be.”

That had flattered Rob to no end and he’d done his best to hide the red flush that he felt creeping up his neck and spreading warmth into his cheeks and ears.

He walked his normal route after work, looking forward to seeing Lovey, and holding out hope of maybe even winning a game this time. His whole life he’d written, and since he picked up a pen he’d heard the name Lovey Rigg whispered everywhere with words like legend attached, though all his books and films had been wiped out with the rest before Rob’s time. Whenever he inquired to the whisperers he’d always be told that the great writer had become an introvert and passed away years ago, but when he couldn’t find a burial site he started looking among the living, and was shocked at how easily he’d found the man.

“Most folks don’t bug dead men,” he said once, “not like you.”

To Rob’s surprise it hadn’t taken much convincing to get Lovey to talk with him. In an odd sort of way it seemed he’d been sitting there waiting for someone, not Rob surely, but somebody. Rob had brought a chessboard to help break the ice and Lovey’s eyes lit up when he spied the board clutched under the boy’s arm. Rob had managed to come across a quote from one of Lovey’s old fellow Scribblers that stated, ‘If Rigg didn’t have a smoke or a drink, a pen or a woman in his hand he had a chess piece to be sure.’ So Rob had dug out his board at once. The set they’d played with since was hand carved by Lovey himself and put Rob’s flimsy set to shame, as did the legend’s uncanny ability to end a game in under a half dozen moves.

Each time he got to the table in the park Lovey would be sitting there, waiting and smiling with the board set up. Once, Rob showed up over thirty minutes early only to find his friend waiting with folded hands, a smile upon his face. He turned the corner and there was their table, chessboard setup and Lovey smiling at him.

“One of these days I am going to beat you, at least to the damn park.”

“Good luck grasshopper. Not likely however with all that, ahem, work you do.” Lovey’s smile widened.

“Hey, somebody has to ensure the remakes aren’t completely terrible. I do my best just in hopes of making them tolerable.”

“Part of the solution-”

“Or part of the problem. I know, I know.” He cut in. “Too bad being part of the problem pays so much better.”

“Then I suppose I’d be better off giving this to someone who would make better use of it.” He tapped a lengthy black finger on a small wooden box resting beside the board. “Who am I kidding you’re all terrible nowadays, ha.”

“What’s in it Lovey?”

“Later. You ready for a lashing boy?”

“Maybe, but Maybe I got some new tricks I’ve learned.” Rob had grown weary  of the embarrassment of having his ass handed to him every time they played, and had since read through several strategy books as well as losing sleep practicing against the computer. So heading into this match he felt cautiously optimistic.

The first game Lovey took in six moves, the second on the other hand was an improvement, it took him only four. Rob’s frustration was poorly concealed.

“You think and think and think,” He smacked his palm hard against the stone table and Rob jumped, “but you never do. You’re always reacting, always on the defensive. It is past time you went on the attack, boy.”

Rob was on the losing end of a half dozen more games before they took a break to eat. The well known favorite sandwich of Lovey Rigg was a simple BLT with mustard instead of mayo, so Rob had made a habit of packing a couple every time they met. The last couple times however he’d barely touched his food, and when Rob mentioned it Lovey’s answer was an ominous one. “Eh, a lot of things I used to love I don’t even like anymore.” Confused Rob had asked if the sandwich was bad but had only gotten, “It’s fine, thank you boy.”

They resumed their game but Lovey seemed distracted, and after a few matches that took Lovey over a dozen moves to win, Rob actually managed to land Lovey in check, which was a first. When it happened Rob looked up expecting either praise or admonishment but Lovey didn’t even notice, he was too caught up staring down Condor Avenue, home of downtown’s cinema district.

He was looking in the direction of the marquee over the Crossroads Theatre, which displayed the films ‘Trading Places…Again’, ‘Good Cop, Rad Cop’, ‘Parody Movie’, ‘Jack and Phil’, ‘Princess and the Pizza’, ‘Super Monkey Space Adventure 9000’ and one Rob was shamefully responsible for, ‘Piglet’ which was naturally ‘Hamlet’ on a farm. There were more but they all followed what had become the same basic formula for success:  Find something familiar. Tweak it slightly. Reheat and serve.

“What next?” Lovey murmured

K-9 Lear Rob almost said to try and make him smile, but didn’t. He instead asked if Lovey wanted to play one more match.

“No… No, I think I’m done Rob.”

He never calls me Rob.

He helped Lovey pack up the pieces the elder writer had shaped from birch and maple. Wordlessly Lovey placed the small wooden box in front of Rob.

“What’s in the mystery box?”

“A writer never tells son, he shows.” Rob clicked the box open and stared wordlessly at its contents as Lovey continued. “Just something I want you to have. You’ve got a gift boy; you just need to have the balls to use it.”

“Lovey it’s beautiful, but…I…I can’t…I mean” He still just stared at it, then miraculously broke the spell and looked up to meet the frail man’s gaze.

Lovey Rigg had tears streaming down his dark face.

“Lovey…?”

“I knew you’d appreciate it boy, you see its worth, I knew you would, but it’s worthless without a hand to wield it…” he trailed off. His voice was a weak croak when he went on. “I can’t write anymore, Rob.”

That admittance, what Rob had suspected since the beginning – since he’d seen the blank page in the typewriter with dust on it – broke him, and he felt a lump rise in his throat as his vision blurred. Lovey picked up his bag and Rob got on his feet to thank the man properly. Lovey hated hugs, Rob knew, so he tried to hand the box back as they went to shake hands but Lovey shook his head, said, “I’m out of ink, Rob.” He said, and that was that.

They parted with small talk and a big handshake, but Rob felt something off in the ritual. Then Lovey flashed that infectious smile and Rob couldn’t help but reciprocate. Every time they parted Rob dreaded it might be the last time he’d ever see him and searched to find the words to convey all he’d learned from the man, how he’d been inspired to be first a better writer, then a real writer, all due to Lovey. Yet each time he came up short, and there’s no worse torment for a writer than being at a loss for the perfect words. So the younger scribe said all he could seem to muster up at that moment.

“Thank you, Lovey.”

“Thank you, Rob.”

He watched Lovey Rigg make his way down Condor Avenue, until he vanished around the corner, and Rob had not failed to note the shake of the head as he passed by the marquee sign. Grumpy old bastard. One of Lovey’s tales had been how at twenty-one he’d gone to that very theater to see his first book’s theatrical adaptation. He’d said that he was anxious to see it and how at first it was magic seeing his tale breathing off the page, but that after that initial awe wore off he was simply bored because he said he knew what was coming. Now they’re playing the abominations I help create, but no more. Done. Time to get started. When Rob got home he placed the wooden box over the hearth, and then sat on the couch staring at it until sleep overtook him.

“I…I don’t get it Townsend,” Mr. Bay said. “What story is this based on again?” His words had been the first to break the silence that followed Rob’s pitch.

Careful now. “It’s um; it’s based partly on ancient Greek mythology. You know how well fairy tales and myths sell sir; it’s like that, just modernized.

“I mean it’s a great idea Rob really, as always, but it just doesn’t feel familiar enough, you know? I mean if I didn’t see the source material clearly in it, the backers certainly won’t.  We just need it to be more recognizable, and more than just an old man and young man playing chess. Where’s the familiarity, the classic catch phrase, or the romantic interest? Where’s the nostalgia?”

Think Rob, come on. “Yes sir, but it’s actually inspired by the very famous scene in The Seventh Seal, where death is the chess opponent. It’s been used several times before to great success, and was actually one of the original homages.”

“Oh okay I get it. Yeah, I can see that…” He clearly couldn’t. “But even then, in your story you said death keeps winning?”

Death usually wins, last time I checked. “Yes sir, but only until the twist ending.”

This was always Rob’s de facto weapon when he was cornered trying to sneak in anything even remotely unique. The backers at NOSTALGIA were always excited to market a twist on the ending of a classic, even if it was cheap or nonsensical.

“Well, we’ll have to see what the backers say. I mean I get it Rob, but you know how the money can be sometimes. Probably best to get going on something else in the meantime.”

After the meeting the looks and compliments came from the opposite groups as before but he was still equally indifferent. He knew this story would go nowhere, and it was the first of his since being hired that wouldn’t, but he wasn’t upset. Perhaps the next story would do better, or the next, or the one after that. He just needed more practice; he found creating ideas from scratch was so much harder than simply altering someone else’s. It was no wonder storytelling was in such a dire state. What had been in the box Lovey gave him had helped his writing tremendously. He couldn’t wait to tell Lovey, ever since he’d left him the week before he had been bursting with ideas and wanted to pour them out not only on a page, but to Lovey as well. He felt as though he’d finally tapped into some eternal well of tales all worth telling.

He took the usual route to the park, and was running ten minutes late. Who knows how long he’s been waiting there. But when he turned the corner – fully expecting to see that infectious smile pulling tight the deep lines carved there – their table was empty. He felt no joy at finally arriving first and waited another hour before leaving, heading to the house nearby where he’d found the old writer the first time.

He rang the bell several times with no answer, so he opened the screen to knock. As he pulled the creaky door open an envelope dropped at his feet. When he looked down he saw the chessboard there as well, and his heart sank. He bent down and retrieved the letter; he saw his full name printed across the front. After a moment’s hesitation he took a deep breath and tore the envelope open quickly, then pulled the dusty piece of paper out slowly, not wanting to read its contents; he knew how it was going to end. He unfolded the paper, saw the message had been composed on an old typewriter, and read.

Dear Rob,

You were a friend to this old misanthrope when I needed one most, the precise moment I’d concluded I no longer needed one. I am more grateful than I can say, and a simple thank you falls far short of what I’d like to convey. You’ll have to forgive me though, this is after all the first thing I’ve written in a great while.

No need to come inside son, just call the clean-up crew when you get home. I hope you know you restored what little faith I had in any future for writers. Take care of yourself. I’ll leave you with wiser words than my own.

“If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing.

-Benjamin Franklin

Your friend,

Lovey Rigg

P.S. Find yourself a young writer to play chess with, you could use the practice.

He got home, somehow. His eyes were still sore and red and he had trouble getting the door unlocked. Once inside he went to straight to the hearth, took down the small wooden box and set it down on his desk. He sat down and pulled out a white blank page, then opened the box, took out Lovey Rigg’s fountain pen, and wrote at the top of the page: The Scribblers.

Maybe nobody would ever read the story, but that’s not why he wrote. Not anymore

Stranger Than Fiction

Stranger Than Fiction

Precursor to Tragedy

By Joel Allyn

9/22/2011 1,600 words

 

On the eve of his death, a man reflects on being rescued by a stranger when he fell from a train platform sixty years ago and debates whether or not others died because he lived. The surreal discovery involved with the identity of his rescuer and that of his father’s killer leaves him wondering if all these odd coincidences hold some hidden meaning.

 

 

None of my brothers made it past their teenage years, and just a short while before my father’s life was taken I nearly lost my own. I have thought at times what a blessing it was that a stranger took the trouble to pull me from the cold embrace of the abyss that day in 1865, for thanks solely to him I was able to marry, see the birth of my two daughters and that of my son, whom I named for my father. And yet, certain occurrences which have taken place since what should have been my death have led me to question whether it was in fact a good thing I lived at all. You must excuse me, but I feel quite ill this evening so I shall move my pen with the greatest of haste, for I have already put off the telling of the start of these odd events for over sixty years already and refuse to procrastinate one day more. So though my body tells me to jump ship now, I shall put down all as I remember it, and then I shall retire.

 

I do not recall if I had already left Harvard or if I was just on a break, but it was near enough to the end of my academic career that it matters not. I do remember clearly that I found myself in a train terminal in New Jersey. It was extremely busy that evening and on the platform with me was a great many people all crowding and pushing towards the waiting train car. The whole lot of the passengers were attempting at once to purchase their sleeping cars from the conductor, who stood on the station platform at the entrance to the car. The platform itself was about the height of the car floor, and there was of course a narrow space between the platform and the car body. I had managed to make my way to the front of the unthinking horde when I felt the group crowding in against me. I looked down and found I had reached the edge of the platform, and was rather frightened to find the toes of my shoes jutting just over the lip.

I attempted to push back against the great body to my rear and as if I had attempted to fight a strong river current I was forced forward again, this time I was pressed directly against the car body. As I waited, balanced awkwardly over the small gap for my turn and some relief the car gave a sudden forward jerk.

My heart sank, and I followed down after it.

The motion of the train caused me to lose my balance; I was twisted off my feet and began to drop into the space between, where I knew I would become an unrecognizable corpse beneath the great iron horse. I descended, personally helpless, when my coat collar was vigorously seized and I was quickly pulled up and out to a secure footing on the platform. I turned around to thank my rescuer and upon doing so looked directly into a face that was well known to me, a great actor I knew by name; it was that of Edwin Booth. I conveyed my gratitude best that I was able in such a shaken state, and then we parted ways never to cross paths again.

 

A short time after my own deus ex machina had appeared my father was shot and killed. I had already lost my brothers Edward and William before this tragedy struck and Tad would follow suit six years later, leaving only mother and I. Losing two children so young had done irrevocable damage to her mental health, but I believe now it was losing father in such a violent manner that finally pushed her beyond the precipice, and nobody could simply yank her back to sanity by the collar.

The name of the shooter was familiar to me but so common a name it was I didn’t dwell on it for a moment. It was not until I read the man’s biography in the paper later that I fully comprehended the tremendous weight of the coincidence. The man who shot my father dead was named John Wilkes Booth, brother of the actor who had saved my life such a short time before the assassination.

I collapsed more than sat, and then read the words over again out loud to make sure I was not mistaken. I read them again after. And again. And again. It was staggering and I kept searching for some great meaning in the precursor to the tragedy, then after some long while came to accept that there was none to be found. Though as more time passes and I dwell on the situation further, I wonder…

 

As I have stated I am far from sure that it was in fact good that I did not perish that day. Perhaps my death could have served to keep my father alive by keeping him home in mourning, far away from the Ford’s Theater. I was not nearly so close to the man as my brothers, and my most vivid image of him is still how he looked as he packed his saddlebags to prepare for his travels through Illinois, but the distance between us is much greater now.

Before I go further let me make clear I don’t believe in curses, bad luck, or any other ridiculous notions of the sort, but I must admit my being alive has proved lethal to more presidents than just my father. Call it coincidence, but at President Garfield’s invitation I joined him at a train station in Washington D.C. in 1877, where he was assassinated in front of me. It had been over ten years since Edwin Booth’s brother John had shot my father, and then ten years after Garfield’s death there was another incident. This time the year was 1901 and the presidential invitation came courtesy of William McKinley. I was at the Pan-Am Expo in New York and – thank you for small mercies – was not actually a witness to the shooting, though I was present and later could not help but dwell on this fact, much to the distress of my wife. I shouldn’t have been there you see, just a like a year prior to McKinley’s shooting I should not have had to bury my little boy Abraham as I had buried his namesake. I should not have had a son at all for I would have been long dead were it not for the heroic actions of the actor who then shed his own mortal coil in 1893. I heard later that poor Edwin Booth was deeply distraught over his brother’s actions, I had always meant to send him a correspondence, but time and again I failed to do so. I only hope he knew somehow who he had saved that day on the train platform and that the knowing provided him some peace before the end.

 

Feeling I had the blood of three presidents on my hands I henceforth politely declined all future presidential invitations. I even responded once after repeated requests were sent, stating that ‘No, I’m not going, and they’d better not even ask me, because there is a certain fatality about presidential functions when I am present.’ So I said no, no and no again, at least until 1922. I received news that Warren G. Harding would be dedicating the recently completed Lincoln Memorial along with former president Taft, and they wished dearly for the last living Lincoln to be in attendance. So against my better judgment I accepted, and though nobody was shot Harding ended up dying in office, barely half-way through his only term, he passed fifteen months and one day after the dedication ceremony. Taft had been fortunate enough to no longer be president when he made my acquaintance and therefore has survived to this day.

That dedication was four years ago, and I have kept away from presidents in the interim, just to be on the safe side. The only president I visit now rests in Springfield, Illinois and I can do him no further harm. I am relieved to have finally put down this odd tale and have set down with it a large weight, yet I notice I feel more ill than when I first began. Before I take my rest however I must state my feelings as I look back over this confession of sorts. Had I or some other writer put all this down under the label fiction, many would dismiss it out of hand as far too fantastical and unlikely to be believable at all, as it stands they may simply insist it to be an apocryphal tale. No matter what any other thinks however, it happened, all of it, and I have no doubt if there is any meaning hidden in such a strange series of events it shall elude me to my death.

 

Robert Lincoln

July 26, 1926

Vermont

Between Kindling and Ashes

Between Kindling and Ashes

By Joel Allyn

9/7/2011  3,300 words

My answer to the question all storytellers try not to ask themselves. Where do the ideas come from?

 

 

The old man had forgotten where he was again. He studied his surroundings as he came out of his daze. The man remembered he had been staring into a roaring fire, which was now no more than a few glowing embers beneath a mound of red-lit ash. Overhead the pale moonlight was illuminating the clouds which lay over it, like a child’s flashlight through a sheet. Surveying the horizon he could only make out darker silhouettes that blotted out the stars, rolling along the pinpoints of twinkling light like solid waves rising above the flat packed earth. I’m back. A breeze cut through him and he felt a chill wrap around his heart and tighten its grip. He pulled his dingy blanket tighter around him but it did nothing against the wind’s insistence. Struggling to rise, pistons went off in his kneecaps and he felt a terrible strain on already sore muscles. It was like bending metal but he managed to get to his feet with a great effort.

Before searching for more kindling the old man wanted a drink, wanted more to feel the water wash through him, a great monsoon flooding the desert in the peak of a dry summer. Looking around in the darkness and remembered that he had no water. He‘d in fact forgotten the last time he’d even enjoyed the blessing of a drink, or a bite of anything for that matter, though hunger was not anywhere near the foreground of his desires. A river came into memory and held out hope he might stumble upon another when he moved on at first light. He would have to be content with that hope and ignore the grainy, pasty feeling that filled his cracked palate.

The barren plain stretched in all directions to the mountains on the distant horizon. As he began his search he regained his bearings some, at least enough to recall he had scavenged this desolate landscape before and had found little and less then, and none of it would burn.  Then where did the fire come from? I had a fire, I did. I remember the warmth of the flames on my face and…wasn’t there somebody else here with me? Hadn’t they been the one who helped build the fire? He couldn’t be sure, but it sounded right. More importantly it felt right; there had been someone else, somebody who’d been drawn to the flames. So where had they gone and where were they now? Yet that seemed not to matter, the only thing he could do now was try to keep walking, keep combing the earth with his boots for anything that could burn, anything that would feed the ravenous flames he yearned for. The memory of the yellow beast’s bathing warmth kept him going but not for long, and eventually – though he knew it meant he would most likely freeze – he returned at a crawling pace to the soft glowing embers before they blinked out completely. He barely made it, and then collapsed beside the dying glow at its heart in a shivering pile of fitful coughs.

Sitting there for a great while with his head hung, he felt like weeping. But he knew there was not enough water left in him to waste on even a single salty drop, and so he instead let out a long low moan. To his own ear he sounded like a dying animal going into that eternal darkness with an exquisite slowness that bordered on torture.  No help was requested from The Great Above, he knew the stars were indifferent and the cold distant moon would not be moved by his suffering. He rocked back and forth and pulled the blanket taught around his aching body, and kept making that low moan. The sound droning on and on and on into infinity until he could catch up with it there.

He couldn’t remember much that had come before and didn’t bother to waste what little precious energy remained on that task. Instead he searched his mind for a single tale, one that would last him until he gave out. It wouldn’t need to be a very long one. Memories returned of listening to stories, telling stories, writing stories. Tales that would come to him whole and breathing out of the abyss, and he just had to keep pace with his pen. Stories had power and real magic in them, they made him feel alive and they had never left his side no matter how wretched or honorable he had been, and he’d been his fair share of both.  The old man wanted so desperately to have just one more now, one more to take his mind off the pain coursing through his brittle rotting form. They could warm him and comfort him even as the embers grew cold and blinked away entirely. One more. That was when he heard approaching footsteps crunching through the silence right in front of him.

*          *          *

The cloud over the moon had been shoved aside by that bitter wind, and the moonlight had returned to bathe this stranger in a soft white glow. The silhouette of a man now crouched down on the opposite side of the circle of stones. In one of the stranger’s hands were small dry branches, and in the other he held one of those silver lighters where the top popped open. Those particular lighters had always reminded the old man of an execution he’d witnessed, a botched decapitation left a criminal’s neck held on by just a sliver of flesh and muscle; it hung there bouncing against the torso for a moment before they snapped it back on and finished the job. He couldn’t even make out the man’s size clearly, but that silver rectangle shined in the lunar light. Until the man dropped the kindling branches over the red ashes, the old man feared he’d only imagined them.

“You don’t mind if I join you, do you, old timer?” A toneless voice said.

The man tried to say yes and thank you, to offer his name and get one in return, but when he opened his mouth he found nothing came out but that awful moan again, now more like a dry croak, but managed to nod. At least he’d die a little warmer thanks to this stranger. What a wonderful mercy.

“All right then, friend,” the stranger said.

He used his thumb and in one fluid motion partially decapitated the lighter and spun the wheel, it struck against the flint stone and birthed a beautiful golden dancer which floated atop the cold chrome. The stranger lowered it to the dried branches and dead grass, as he moved the flame slowly around at the base they took almost at once. After catching initially they burned much slower than the old man expected, as if waiting for something. Though the light was brighter now, the strangers face remained shadowed, concealed behind a thin veil of night. He began to speak and the old man noticed his voice change gradually from toneless to that of a younger man, a man no older than maybe thirty at the outside. The old man listened, soaking up the words and the small fire’s warmth.

“Strange bumping into somebody else in the middle of nothing. Yet that seems to be how it happens time and again for me. Was crossin over the plain by night to avoid that bitch of a sun, I ran outta water a day ago and couldn’t take no more travelin under it. Saw you, well saw a shadow actually, just bumblin around teeterin this way and that. Figured I’d take a rest and burn what little I’d gathered from beyond the southern hills there.” He threw his thumb over his right shoulder in the direction he’d come. He poked at the burning brush with a branch he hadn’t yet sacrificed and the old man saw the flame burning steadier now, and damned if he didn’t feel just a bit better. The stranger continued on with telling first where he’d been and that led to where he was going, what he’d seen and what he wanted to lay his eyes upon.

The old man noticed something odd, as the stranger recounted his story, his face had come into sharper focus. Odder still, as his features became more defined, so too did his voice. It was a big voice now, and the man now noticed the slightest inflection of a southern drawl as the stranger started dropping all his g’s. It was only then that he realized the kindling, which alone should have burned up in minutes, had only then really got going – disappearing into a growing flame. Must’ve been fighting the wind, that’s all. What else? Pushing the thought aside he tried to focus on the man’s tale, which he could tell was nearing its end, and it had been an interesting little tale too. Odd though it was the old man now felt as if he knew and understood the man before him as well as any friend he’d ever had, despite the fact he didn’t yet know his name. He was also surprised to find he felt a little better, a little stronger. As the small flames reached higher into the sky he felt less and less pain and fatigue. He only wished he had a drink to offer his new friend to repay him. Just one drink. That was when he heard from the east an encore of the sound of an approaching stranger.

*          *          *

The two men around the fire turned, as out of the eastern shadows a dark figure appeared on a pale horse. Squinting, the old man made out that the figure had already dismounted and was now fidgeting with some bag on the side of his horse.

“Hey guys, you mind if I joined you?”

And as if running into yet another person out in this vast nothing was the most natural thing in the world to him the first man replied, “Fine with me, but you gotta ask old timer here, it’s his fire.”  My fire? It’s your kindling. His mouth was too dry to speak but he wouldn’t have said anything had he been able. Somehow he knew what the first man said was true – it was his fire, but they were feeding it – just as he’d known there had been someone here with him before, was sure of that now. A prisoner?  He still couldn’t remember anything else and accepted he probably wouldn’t.

“Well, mister?” the figure inquired with a more defined voice – a younger and more timid voice- than he had first spoken with. The frail bundle in the dirty blanket simply nodded again and that was enough for the new arrival. “Okay then, here,” he said. “I got something for you, hold on a sec.” He turned and walked back over to his horse. A few moments later he approached the circle again, now with a double armful of small logs cut to size for firewood. Both of the new men saw the old man’s eyes fill with excitement and they shared a laugh.

“Well then, look at that old timer,” the first man said. “I bet you’re glad you invited him now, huh?”

The old man knew he was just kidding, but couldn’t help thinking briefly that he hadn’t invited either of them, despite how grateful he may be. The young man who came on horseback had seemed almost to hear this thought and just stood momentarily beside the dying flames.

“Whelp toss em’ on then, friend. Meager fuel supply was just finishing up here. Timing’s not half bad kid, name’s Mike Hansel by the way, what’s your handle son?”

He extended his thick hand, and for a second the kid –who had his arms fool of firewood-, looked flustered. Then after quickly placing the new logs into a standing pyramid shape over the wilting fire-flower, the newcomer dusted off his hands on his jeans, took the strong hand in his own and they shook.

“I’m Billy…well William, Bill Richardson. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Hansel. And what’s your name mister?”

Bill looked to the old man, his eyebrows arched for an answer. The old storyteller saw this detail, even though he still couldn’t quite make out the new strangers face in the low light. He tried hard to provide an answer to the newcomers query, only managing to wheeze out something that sounded like wind whistling through an ancient keyhole before going into a fit of painful coughs. Bill looked to Mike with furrowed brow.

Mike waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “It’s fine, you got more outta him than me. Take a seat, kid. He just needs some water, best I can figure. Wish I had something for him.”

“Well I can help out there,” the kid said. A little less toneless with each sentence that passed from him, “Filled up my skins on the east bank just this morning.” The old man couldn’t believe his luck.

As Bill went to his pale horse and untied a skin the older man noticed that the wood was not catching as fast as it should. Again the flame crawled over it with the speed of molasses as if waiting for its cue. When Bill handed the old man the water skin it was so heavy that he almost dropped it. After an embarrassing and fumbling performance he failed to even bring it to his mouth. Looking almost shamed to do so, Bill took the skin and tipped it to the man’s mouth for him, and let the water slowly flow. The man sucked at the skin greedily and kept swallowing until his belly ached, but he didn’t care, the wondrous elixir ran through him and filled every crack and every pore with waking life again. When Bill took the skin away, pulled it away, the elder man let out a huge belch. The two men who’d joined him looked at one another again for the briefest of moments before both started laughing.

“Nice one, old timer” Mike said. Wiping tears from his eyes, “So you got a name for us now, friend?”

The elder man cleared his throat then swallowed. It felt spectacular to feel saliva in his mouth again. He took a breath in and spoke hoarsely, not able to recall the last time he had spoken anything aloud. For a moment he had to search his mind, but quickly found what he was looking for.

“Oswald” he said. Then after another quick scan of the attic, “Thornton. I’m Oswald Thornton,” he repeated again, as if reassuring himself it was correct.

“Okay then, Ozzy,” Mike said. “Nice to finally make yer acquaintance properly friend, that’s on me for not spillin my handle earlier. To be honest though, wasn’t sure you’d even make it long enough into the night to remember it tomorrow. You lookin loads better now though. Little fire an water work wonders apparently, huh.” It wasn’t a question.

And the story, your story, “Feeling better, thanks.”

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Thornton,” Bill Richardson said. He handed his skin to Mike and took a seat.

Bill told them both of his journey from the east and similar to before, as Bill’s tale unfolded the flames engulfed the wood he’d brought. His face came into sharper focus as the pyre –and Oswald- grew stronger. Oswald saw now that Bill really was just a kid pushing fourteen, maybe. When the kid was done the three of them sat in silence, watching the flames as they ate through the timber unmercifully.

Oswald’s belly started to cramp. Now that he had water in him again his bellyache seemed much more substantial and the hunger he had been able to ignore out of hopelessness came back with a fury.

As if reading his mind, Mike said, “Don’t imagine you got any food kid, huh?”

“No sir, sorry.” Bill said.

He actually sounded sorry, as if he felt he had failed his dear old friends of all of twenty minutes by only bringing them firewood and the first water either had drank in days.

“I came across the water by chance,” he said. “But no fish and I ran out of food myself what, three days back I think.”

As if on cue the boy’s stomach grumbled loud enough for the other two to hear, and then Oswald’s answered even louder in kind. The three of them broke up over this, it hurt Oswald tremendously to laugh but it felt great as well. The three men only stopped because they heard a noise just to west of them.

*          *          *

The woman from the west –Beverly Marsh, they later found out her name was – came out of the dark without apprehension and with food enough for all of them, “ But no water.” she said, so they shared what they had and she did the same. As she started to relay her journey to them her blonde locks came into focus, then her piercing blue eyes, her lips, one thing after the other glowing  clearer and more defined in the growing firelight. Halfway through her story, Oswald felt the best he had in recent memory. Beverly was of an age somewhere between Mike and Bill’s it seemed, and her face had a hard kindness in it. Mike took out a flask and passed it around, handing it to Beverly first. Then he grabbed a few smokes he had apparently been saving for later and passed one around to each of them, taking the lighter’s head off once more to spark them. The three men smoked on full bellies, and listened to the girl’s tale.

When the tale was told a silence, not at all uncomfortable, rested between them. Oswald looked from one former stranger to the other and back again. He saw all of them clearly now in the roaring firelight, and it was only then that Oswald was able to truly see and appreciate Beverly’s rough beauty, Mikes stubbled, scarred but ever-smiling face, and innocent young Bill’s flawless features in all their glory. As the flames rose higher and higher, glowing brighter and brighter, it was then he finally put it together.

It’s the stories… feeding the fire, lighting the darkness… their stories.  He cracked a huge smile and lay back against the ground with his hands folded behind his head, and before he knew it he had drifted off in that quiet.

 

He awoke again in a sort of daze as the stars came into focus, remembering at once the three new friends who’d joined him, and fueled the flames with their tales. In his excitement he sat up eagerly to share his epiphany with them, and his smile vanished. The mighty blaze had died down to wilting embers below ash, and his new friends were gone, but his renewed strength remained. Another cloud had rolled over the Moon which was now far removed from its former place in the sky – there was no sign of the sun. He leaned back upon his elbows and the smile slowly returned, growing even bigger than before.

Between kindling and ashes, the stories are born.

Oswald Thornton has come to this far seeing place before and he will come again, as long as he can remember how to get back. He sits eagerly awaiting the next group of characters to come to him whole and breathing from the abyss, to tell their tales, to come, and feed the fire.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Sound of Torment

The Sound of Torment

By Joel Allyn

8/26/2011 3,700 words

 

A famished prisoner descending into madness in a lightless cell comes face to face with his new cellmate, his worst fear, and his slow impending death.

 

 

All he heard in the darkness besides his own breath was the steady sound of dripping water somewhere in the cell. He had difficulty remembering what the warmth of sunlight felt like upon his skin, though he could still recall what daylight looked like he could not figure out quite how long it had been since he last gazed upon it. Time loses all meaning with the absence of light. He closes his eyes often and thinks of the times he ran laughing with his brother, the sun embracing him and the wind stealing kisses as it passed. He used to at least be treated to firelight when the guards carried torches in with the weekly meal, but since hearing the flurry of muffled noises some time ago he’d been alone in the scattered silence. Well, not completely alone, not if you counted the spider, and he did.

The dark had bothered him at first, but he had quickly adjusted and decided he could use this opportunity to rest, recover, and clear his mind, and for a while that worked. He always did his best to try and see the upside of things, a talent he’d had many occasions to hone. This was in the beginning of his stay, long before he bit off a guard’s ear during a failed escape attempt, a desperate last ditch effort not to avoid being left alone with his new cellmate. He hadn’t yet been put in chains then and was free to explore the modest boundaries of his cell. No person would describe this stone cage as spacious but it’s still far from the smallest Fortunato had been squeezed into – that honor belongs to ‘The Box’ down in Death Valley’s prison labor camp. It was barely large enough to allow you to sit in the fetal position, your sides pressed against the iron sides which heated up like an oven in the desert sun; he’d once been confined there for just shy of a week. This ceiling is low, to the point he has to tilt his head forward when standing upright. When he walked the perimeter of the cell he counted four paces running the distance along each of the four walls, his fingers tracing their cold stones as he paced.

He got restless pretty quickly and discovered that his mind was not one to be quieted so easily. He started singing to pass the time, then when he’d run out of songs he searched his memory and began reciting stories aloud. For some time he had been fortunate enough to be truly alone, and his primary concern was keeping his mind busy. Then one day when a guard brought in some food (if you could call it that), as the door rested ajar on its rusty hinges he spied his new cellmate enter through the top of the door frame on eight legs and skitter off into the corner where the water had started to drip. The guard who brought food and drink seemed much more upset than normal and when the prisoner before him started raving about spiders coming for him he struck the prisoner, only once, but hard enough to knock Fortunato reeling against the wall behind. In his desperation to flee fear itself Fortunato attacked the guard, though in his weakened state he was subdued easily enough. That was when he was chained and as the guard attached the second wrist shackle the prisoner lunged outward and took a huge chunk of the guard’s ear in his clenched teeth and tugged back hard as he could. The guard screamed and belted him in the gut hard, leaving the Fortunato doubled over, chained to a wall, and gasping for air, yet still his thoughts stayed on the spider. The guard then left them alone so they could get better acquainted, setting the mood by taking the light with him.

Though he was fairly certain the arachnid was only roughly the size of his little toe, and certainly no larger than his big one -more than big enough though, to him an ant sized one was too large-, but in that darkness, and in his mind, it became massive. And was that an egg sac or maybe babies he’d glanced attached to the thing’s bulbous rear section? He hoped with all his will it was not. Not again. As his eyes flicked about wildly, drinking in the darkness he imagined, nee’ saw, the only thing he’d ever truly feared first double then triple in size. He felt he could sense it perched up in a corner waiting, peering down at him through a multitude of dark vacant pools which served as its eyes. Even though he was fairly sure it was nowhere near him, he constantly felt those thin searching legs caressing his neck with a little none-too-pleasant tickle. He tried not to give in to it but more often than not he’d swat only to come away with a running bead of sweat which had been the culprit, though more and more often he’d simply be empty handed. Of course, I can only be sure of that when the light returns. The problem was the light never did, nor did the guard, but at least he wasn’t alone.

As time dragged on and the food he’d been brought – he couldn’t even remember now what it had been- started to rot and filled the dark cave with a thick pungent sour odor. Despite his efforts, Fortunato hadn’t been able to bring himself to eat. Every potential bite that touched his mouth in the dark was accompanied by the repulsive sensation of the spider crawling across his lips. As usual they had also left him with a small cask of water which, thanks to the cork, he had still been able to enjoy. He had managed to do well with rationing it since hearing the noises that night which had brought on the endless tormenting silence. For fear of the spider, his other foe had become sleep and he was convinced by now that the two were colluding to get his defenses down and take him out. Not without a fight. And he did put up one hell of a fight, but even if you somehow managed to break all previous records and manage to survive one hundred rounds, The Land of Nod will always win by knockout in the end. It was a light and restless sleep which came to embrace him, and despite all the violent thrashing it was sleep, and he needed it.

The nightmare was the same as it had always been. In his memory there had been more or less only a dozen of them, in his dreams the spiders were legion. The vision that replayed again and again was an embellished version of the real thing but not outlandishly so.

He had been sharing a pile of straw as a bed with his older brother who lay fast asleep behind him, beating him at this race like he did most others, when he heard a strange noise from somewhere above him he could not identify. The fire had long since burned down to embers so he had to make do with the faint pale moonlight, which offered little in the way of help. When he felt something brush lightly against his cheek, soft as a feather, he wiped it away assuming it was a fly or something equally harmless. At the second, third, and fourth touch against his face he became more alarmed and shook his brother awake. He used an old trick that had always guaranteed quick results.

“Lawmen! Get up, it’s the law!”

His brother shot up beside him, realizing almost at once –as he usually did- that no law was apparent he found his younger brother’s shoulder with his left hand, and then swung hard with his right.

“Enough with that, it’s getting old.”

“I’m sorry. Light…please.” The last was usually enough for his older brother to abide, but not this time.

“Go back to sleep baby, you-”

“Please!”

             In the time this quick brotherly exchange took place two more somethings had landed on his head and arm, and panic took a firm hold. He could still manage to talk but was stunned to find he was actually frozen with fear; something he’d only heard of in his brother’s stories and had always found unbelievable. With an angry grunt his brother rose, sparked up a flame and brought the flickering light back over to their bed space for that evening. As the glow from the firelight danced over the frightened boy and the wood rafters above his mild panic escalated and morphed into full fledged terror.  On his arm was a small black ball making its way up towards his shoulder and as he shook it off something touched his head. He turned his attention skyward again and his mouth dropped open in horror. A mother spider had apparently chosen this very spot to leave her egg sac full of offspring and had been wise to do so. The spiderlings had developed undisturbed until they had grown strong enough to break out of the sac and start descending like paratroopers. As he watched with horror the gang of newly spawned arachnids dropped on thin lines of spun silk. He looked to his brother for help but found none, the most helpful advice he could muster up at the moment was, ”Jesus Christ!” The boy Fortunato turned back just in time to see one of the descending horde just above him, that spider was the one that dropped into his gaping mouth. He screamed so loud it cut through the thin veil of memory, overflowed his nightmares and filled his ear. He shot back awake in the sightless cell, alone with his new friend, his old friend.

Here in the silent blackness there was no brother to provide a helpful light, here he simply felt helpless, and hungry. He remembered when he’d told his brother later how he’d taunted him and told him you couldn’t hear spiders. Yet our Mr. Fortunato knew he had heard them, he certainly hadn’t seen them, not at first. Here in the black void filled with fear he heard it again somewhere below the sound of dripping water, that quiet menacing skittering noise. The sound was a mixture of a high squeak and a small clicking noise, one he’d tried unsuccessfully to forget, then tried in vain to emulate to his brother by pressing the tongue against the back of clenched teeth and sucking in. That had given his brother quite the laugh of course but the sound haunted Fortunato all the same. He found to his own ire he couldn’t help poorly mimicking it from time to time despite its clear annoyance to those around him, it had become a sort of nervous tick. After that first incident Fortunato killed every spider he encountered. The way he saw it they had struck the first blow and he had waged war in return. He took no prisoners and took a special satisfaction when during one of his one-nighters in a cave he’d find a plump one with eggs -or better still actual spiderlings- and feel that pleasing small crunch underfoot, putting an end to that infernal squeaky clicking noise, at least for a time. Many years later his brother had died of a poisonous bite, naturally Fortunato saw what all those calling it ‘a tragic accident’ could not; it was simple retribution from a loyal soldier in the army of arthropods.

Perhaps word had spread he had a vendetta or perhaps they had jointly declared a ceasefire as a ploy to get him to relax, or more likely it was simple luck but it had been nearly a year since he’d last spied the bane of his existence. Then that sneaky beast crept in here, he thought, as a sly smile crept across his face. And just like the rest she’ll die, like my brother did.

More and more his concerns turned from his external foe to his internal enemy. Hunger had been fought back over and over but proved in the end as powerful a fighter as sleep and thirst, and it seemed to finally be gaining the upper hand in their conflict. After what surely must have been more than a week -perhaps even two, he no longer had any idea- he was utterly famished. He still had some water in the cask but drank it only when he had to, for water on top of an empty belly made him ill and caused tremendously painful cramps. On days they couldn’t seem to nab any bread, Fortunato and his brother would drink from a nearby stream but soon after each instance developed the pain they dubbed ‘water belly’, and at the moment he had quite an awful case of it. In short he drank because he knew he must, but it brought him no pleasure, only a mild and brief quenching sensation as the liquid filled the barren crevices of his mouth and throat, shortly thereafter the pain came.

He became so desperate for sustenance that he even braced himself against his fears finally and forced himself to take a bite of the stinking gruel-like meat he’d been brought. By then of course, it was far too late and bravery and fear were non-issues, for the food itself was so badly rotted that even after managing a large moldy bite and somehow swallowing the putrid mush his stomach contracted almost instantly and he lost most of the water he’d forced down along with the gruel. He thought he heard the spider laughing somewhere, or was that his brother? Both maybe?

It was at this moment of weakness and desperation, as he hung limp with bile dripping from his lips that he finally felt the spider’s surprising weight touchdown for landing on the nape of his neck.  He absently grabbed at what he actually expected by now to be no more than another rogue bead of perspiration, but his hand instead fell upon a firm round object the size of a large egg.  Instead of brushing it he recoiled in fear, revulsion, and horror. As the spider felt the man’s touch it darted up behind his right ear, its many limbs seeding goose bumps as it moved. Then as if taunting Fortunato, it began whispering its squeaky clicks which seemed to explode and echo in the prisoner’s ear. This torment was sufficient to break the spell which had frozen him, filled his limbs and extremities with stone and replaced his heart with a hummingbird. He reached up again and after he had hold he felt the legs twitching wildly in his grip, so before it could bite him he flung the nasty little thing as far and as hard as he could. He spat curses at it and rubbed his hands all over his body, for when he touched the hairy little egg sized monster he felt a flurry of smaller movements on its large segmented body, and now felt them all over his flesh now like goose bumps. He could not be sure whether they were even there or not.  I should have crushed the son of a bitch! Of course it was too late for that now, and after several hours of hearing the spider off and on his mind naturally returned to the more practical concern, the hunger. He would not have guessed then that the elimination of the spider and his aching hunger could have a common solution.

Only roughly a day or so later the cell was void of human tenants and Fortunato never again had issues with his nemesis. During the brief interim, which to him stretched out forever, he tracked the sound of the soft scuttle of the eight legs movements until he could be certain they were close enough to be within his grasp. He would have just walked around the cell if not for the chains, as it was he had to wait in silence with his head pressed against the ceiling, waiting for the wretched thing to come to him. Once it had he steadied himself, held his breath until he heard the squeaky clicking noise again directly behind him. It had used the dark to its advantage to sneak past and was climbing the wall behind him. She’s trying to get the drop on me again, finish what they started. “Not this time you little shit.” He whispered as he swung around and grabbed at the wall where he’d heard it, but his hands gripped only cold stones. He barely registered the haunting sound of torment getting louder and moving closer to him through the air. It jumped?! He couldn’t believe it, but certainly did away with his disbelief in a hurry when he felt the all too familiar feather-light legs moving up his sternum towards his neck. He grasped the large spider firmly and felt something gently tickling his palm; it was her babies moving around on her back.

In the perpetual silence he’d had plenty of time to think of how to end the spider’s life, in truth he thought of little else. To simply crush it underfoot had been his initial plan, he then debated squeezing it in his fist and feeling that crunch as the guts oozed out and the life left it, but during all that time he had been distracted by his rising hunger. Even now on the verge of his victory he was so damn hungry. Then in a flash of inspiration the solution came to him, he shoved the twitching monster into his mouth and chewed. He was not mad, in fact the way he saw it he was simply a famished man who was being realistic about his options. Waste not, want not. After his teeth closed down the first time around the abdomen something burst inside his mouth like a rotten grape with a puss filling. It filled his mouth but he ignored that the best he could, and despite the overpowering urge to violently throw it all up he did not relent, and chewed a second time. Yet as his jaw opened around the legs he felt its legs beating violently against his tongue and cheeks, and then felt a sudden sharp pinch in his cheek and the squeaky clicks raised in volume with the fury of a battle cry. He knew instantly what had happened; it was oddly enough the one thing which had never happened to him before. The venom coursed quickly through him, but he kept on chewing the body that was really not much more than mouthful of hair, eyes, and surprisingly thick legs. And baby spiders too, of course.

He had expected to flail around as the venom took hold but there was so much and it took hold so quickly that all he felt was his jaw grow heavy and clumsy, yet still he went on gnashing spider bits between his teeth. He barely even felt it when his legs gave out and he collapsed face first against the ground, cracking his skull and splitting his forehead against the hard stone floor with a sickening thud.  Still he had kept chewing, because something was still moving in there. His last conscious physical act was to try to swallow what had been his only meal for some time. He tried swallowing before and after collapsing and failed both times, but he had succeeded in taking one more of his tormentors down with him, and though his body was now fully numb that filled him with satisfaction. He lay there unfeeling in the pitch black silence and waited to die.

He heard the long forgotten hope sometime shortly after, it the sound of approaching footfalls. Had he been able to move he would have laughed. Great timing, assholes. Torchlight was visible in the crack under the cell’s door and the sound of the lock being unlatched filled him with a cruel hopefulness. As the door swung open the orange yellow glow filled his cell and for an insane second he expected to see his brother again, he expected he would be a boy again and find his rotten life had been a child’s nightmare he was now free of. As he was unable to even squint away from the blinding glow he saw through blurred vision a shadow move across his eye, then he spied some movement on his cheek and nose. Oh god, the little ones!

“Oh god,” The light-bringer echoed aloud.

“Is he dead?” A second voice inquired without concern.

“I hope so; does that look alive to you? Look there, at the rotted food. He obviously hasn’t eaten in weeks.” He then picked up and shook the cask and when he heard the water Fortunato’s belly ached and loud enough for both men at the door to hear it.

“What the hell was-?”

“Just death noises, won’t be the last you here if we don’t hurry. Check for a heartbeat if you like, I’m going to check the other black cells for live ones. The Owl only wants live ones and we can’t be wasting time.”

Yes, check! Please for the love of Gan HELP ME! He screamed inside his head, and then tried without hope to scream the message aloud, to whisper it or even to cry, but even his eyes were now motionless. The other man looked over the naked emaciated figure considering. With a blanket of spiders exiting his mouth in droves and covering his face Fortunato knew what the verdict would be before the man spoke, death, and it would not be too far off.

“You’re right, let’s go.” The soldier said.

Before the torchlight faded away altogether the dying man’s vision was blocked out entirely by a shifting sea of darkness, and the legion of spiders from his nightmares filled his ears with the sound of torment.