the bankside.

The Misfit Lord. The price.

“Waking up is not always as victorious a march as it should be…rather than a celebration of our return from wherever sights and sounds have little or nothing to do with reason, logic, sense and intelligence…rather than being hailed for our exploits into the very heart of the unknown and our safe journey back home…wherever that may be…we find a sticky sadness stuck to the more ‘well rounded’ curves of our soul…you did not rescue yourself from an invisible threat of decapitation, avoid discomfort in all general forms or the very worst…the onslaught of extraordinary proportions upon the very interwoven threads that culminate in the cloth that covers your vaguest fears and desires. In other words…that dinosaur you just escaped…was not real. Of the sort of unsung adventures that even the commonest soul/mind (whichever tailors your need to satisfy ambiguity in the grander sense) weaves in its lifetime…little can be said…for nothing would be sufficient. Nothing would reproduce the same satisfaction, which we get, when we get it in the more corporeal world of time and space. Your drawing stuck to the refrigerator door…it looks like shit…it looked like shit and will always look like shit…yet its presence or absence may very well determine where you stand and how you use your five senses to aid you as you go on about your penultimate adventure…good riddance to life and hello to whatever it was that you ignored…whatever it was that was not celebrated…whatever you didn’t pay attention to…all and everything you forgot every time you opened your eyes to an existence which deteriorated a bit more everyday for the rest of your days…that which made no sense then…that which will determine your eternity…that which will make you despise the hands that stuck that picture on the fridge…those goddamn magnets…that sucked out your perception and replaced it with an unimportant feeling of security…you were robbed of your loneliness to protect you from the only cheat sheet you might need and legally require to pass that disloyal exam. Loved?? I think not. Screwed?? Without a shadow of doubt…condemned to look at yourself in a mirror that has and should have no basis in reality…looking at muscles that have been engorged by nothing…nothing that matters anyway. What a sucky pile of shit stones…” said George, his eyes closed and yet not entirely blind…roller coaster rides that can’t be touched…

“You can practice trying to remember them…but once you look around you…you’ll only have the vaguest sense of having traveled a lot without ever moving…physically anyway…that’s the worst shat box in my own opinion…there’s more to these visualizations than the old think tank figures…” said the old man.

“I’ll never understand why it has to let go so easily…what’s so wrong about keeping a solid documented account of this rather than some lame ass temporary Internet files type shit…”

“Well…if you’re horny enough…you can go find them files and have fun…limited perhaps…but fun all the same…” he replied…stroking his wooden staff…

“Are you equating my dilemma with the act of masturbation?”

“Are you making a futile attempt at deceiving us…by claiming…that not everything is about humping with…of course…perhaps a side dish…just a sprinkled need to prove the fact that your existence was worth a comment…good or bad…filthy, needy, decadent and in denial about it. Act you say? Indeed. Act…it’s a nice ‘role’…lord knows you play it often hahahaha.” The old man bent over laughing at what he thought was a pretty ok joke.

“Balls…very funny but it is quite clear that my will is good. And anyway who wants a bad comment?”

“Well…some shameless son of a bitch did admit that there was no such thing as negative publicity…whatever gets you in the public eye…will result in a mass viral conjunctivitis…so nice and pink it stops you to think and feel and all is revealed or seemingly so…but then it’s nothing…a passing pleasure that makes you actually reflect on whether your balls were made of wrought iron…I mean there’s a reason why famous people wear sunglasses…it’s called selfishness…you don’t just go around spreading that sort of virus…no…just pretend to inspire us…unless the price is right. Your will is good?? Does that really make a difference…are you that naïve??”

“What a waste this all was…I don’t have or feel the need to understand. Comprehension is not my goal. I am only browsing…thanks but I must move on.” said George in an effort to escape from his escape.

“Yeah…for how long…? Sooner or later…window shopping is over.”

“Is that so? When, o seer of visions, o book friend and learned bullshitter…when does that happen…what would make me stop…? What would convince me to leave? Why would I stop suffering needlessly and join the ranks of those who embrace their own short comings?”

“The price. Obviously.” Answered the old man and vanished.



George lynch stepped into the restaurant to escape the cold, clammy air that hung around his goddamn existence…the bank was for feeling insecure, happy, insane, jubilant and ecstatic beyond anything ever felt by him…the bank was where wondrous things could happen…but the restaurant was where he would vent his spleen.

“Do you feel guilty?” asked the waitress as she handed him the menu, which he threw away at a customer at the adjacent table. It struck him on the head but had no effect…as always.

“Your existence is unimportant but I took full advantage of it,” answered George “however…I have confusion and helplessness today…I would break your neck and feel no remorse.” George shook a magic eight ball and looked at the prediction. “I don’t think so, you scrawny assed punk!”

“What do you want?” she snapped at George…there was a bruise on her soul shaped like a spot George has seen somewhere before…an ink smudge on a bank file…it had been on the counter.

“You can’t ask all the questions…my answers are not politically correct.” answered George sticking a pin into a rag doll he carried in his coat pocket. It had made an effort to interrupt, which it did during times of great mental instability…however this time George had been too quick for her and stabbed her.

“Are you trying to be noble?? I have had many suitors,” she said eyeing the doll with curiosity mingled with fear and intense disappointment.

“Hahaha I almost pity you…look…I’m hungry…it’s why I came here…but I don’t want food…do you follow me?”

“Sadly...” said the waitress and gazed pointedly at the crusty bits of congealed blood smeared on the handle of the butter knife that George used to remove his misery.

“It’s not mine damnit…I swear…it’s just…a souvenir…screw you, what do you care?” protested George…the sun was nearly at its zenith…but the time was unpredictable. Some might argue that it was noon…but she was nowhere to be seen.

“How long have you been doing this?” she asked shifting her weight from one foot to the other.

“You are a waitress…and I wonder what you’re waiting for?”



The bank was just as sunny and beautiful as always, trees swayed in a light breeze…a scent in the air seemed to infect gaiety and leisure among the hardened souls of the damned…like a plague…some people smiled in spite of the fact that they were being messed-up and cruelly disfigured beyond recognition and human endurance…there were windows of opportunity but they were all booby trapped.

“Speaking of booby traps…how are you? You know you smell like chicken,” commented George as he passed over the stream of broken stuff that seemed entirely wholesome and complete at first glance (as do most things…) to the counter where the athletic redhead worked. He kept touching his head…moving his hand in and out of his hair…a nervous action…it calmed him down…but not really…it only just served to embarrass…like travelers and morning woods.

“I don’t need you at all…you have a quality about you…indefinite…but it seems like a total waste. You are immaterial.” She said without much consideration. George was unfazed and continued.

“You make frantic movements when you talk…never quite as still as I…it gives the impression of time passing by faster than it does for you…it’s endearing…but it has lost it’s charm…I’ve seen others do it. Like a rabbit…like a raving lunatic with so many ambitions that there’s just no time to lose…to occupy all…to ride on the crests of wind and rule…but I have seen others do it…it has lost it’s charm…I’m begging you…start a conversation which never ends…I don’t wish to leave. You will ignore the last sentence and notice only the insult.”

“And you are unique??” she asked with an air of disbelief and slight nausea.

“Hah not only do I enjoy wading through your aura but apart from that, I have jam in my coat pockets…jam apple…do you remember that?? I know you don’t…” said George with a convoluted expression that seemed to convey both intense suffering and indifference…convinced of his double-move victory/proof of defeat.

“The manager wants to have a word with you…” said the redhead as her head began to inflate. “he doesn’t look like himself…I think it’s an improvement…naturally…you with your heavy metal biased nonsense about contemporary ‘sell-out’ protagonists might think otherwise. He’s the nutter in the broom closet…but not anymore…he has the big office up on third.”

“I know full well who the sell-outs are and what they smell like too…odd to note how I never breathe right around you either.” said George then ran away before he could get walloped with a tuna fish or something.


Chuck lobsterman still sat typing away laughing madly, tears streaming down his face…he resembled anything you want him to…he resembled…me…you…the ones you hate…love…he had poison in his veins…he had lungs of coal and fire…he had eyes of yellow sadness…he had poison in his veins…he is a book friend and he brushes away invisible insects off of himself pretty much all the time that he spends alone…surrounded by people or not.

“Maybe you should decide whether you’re a caveman or a writer,” said George…he didn’t usually criticize people he was afraid of losing…he rarely contradicted people he thought could kick his ass…but sometimes his heart needed solace of the sort that only comes from telling the truth, that may not entirely be…the truth. Not to another…but perhaps to himself.

“You just described yourself and not me…I am you but a different aspect...probably better…are you jealous because I can feel something altogether different?”

“Am I a savage or just lost?” asked George trying to look at what chuck was typing and feeling politically incorrect and then noble for having felt the former.

“I seriously don’t care George…what makes you think I care?” muttered chuck as he resumed typing…a cigarette hanging loosely from his mouth.

“Because I don’t remember what I’m doing here anymore.” Shouted George, frustration getting the better of him.

“Wasn’t that the whole point?? You came here for no reason and now you’re an addict…you will never get your fix…because yours is not for sale…mine has a price…and I am glad to pay it…so don’t advise me to choose when you have so much trouble sticking with your “decisions”. I have already chosen though you see it as a mistake…nevertheless…it is my preference…I don’t force you to accept it…just…I don’t have the time to feel pathetic.” said chuck over the clicking…gingerly removing the sheet, crumpling it up and tossing it at George’s face with as much force as he could bother to muster.

“But you don’t even have a central nervous system…you have no heart and no soul and you’re insane…and you don’t love anybody.”

“Promise me that you won’t tell my mother that we are all just figments of your imagination…hahahah…and don’t tell my father that she’s dead only because you started thinking about other things.”

“Not funny…something happened and I assumed it would be the defining moment of my life…turns out that I was mistaken…why should I be punished??”

“It was not??” chuck mocked him, “Are you sure?? How can you tell?? Have you seen how everything ends??? Because if you do then the king will probably have your head…and I don’t mean he wants you to suck him off. Soothsayers are very much in demand…what with the appearance of the jewel bugs and the overall crap rain that we’ve got going on around here. These are ominous times…we lust for information…everything is fast…everything is softer, sleeker and guaranteed to fade away in about fifteen seconds to be replaced by another.” said chuck, getting to his feet and stepping into a row boat.

“Why is it so hard to go boating alone? Why isn’t it just…right and enough…why is there no satisfaction?” asked George thoroughly depressed by how the day was progressing.

“If I ask you to join me…you would refuse…if I don’t…you would feel left out…I know only one thing…and I have a sheet of it in my pocket…let’s drop out.” said chuck…clapped his hands and motioned George to cut the line and hop in so they could set sail.
As their voyage began…George sat down and felt beneath the seat with what remained of childish curiosity…his hand touched something, he pulled it out and saw that it was a book entitled “Tim smoke.”

“Tim smoke?” he asked looking quizzically at chuck.

“There was once this man long ago or maybe not…we can’t really tell under the current situation…people grow old in seven days now…but back then time was slower and people fared better in games of a more…cardiovascular nature…hah…fared better because the requirements were not so much fiscal as of a…well…cardiovascular nature…nowadays hearts are for sale. So this man fell quite happily for a seemingly reluctant but equally happy individual whom I remember having oranges…really nice ones.”

“Is that a dirty euphemism?” asked George starting a finger painting project…spilling paint everywhere.

“Sooner than was expected, the man sort of spaced out and met a boy dressed like a girl, sitting next to a boy dressed like a boy…it was a play of sorts with a kind of vulgarity which follows the illiterate and those who lack subtlety…this was the second time he had met them except this time none of them was really a girl…and rather than on the stage performing…they were seated higher up in the elevated section of the auditorium. So he gave the boy some invaluable advice…of a cardiovascular nature…therefore, around the time of the war…when the king was dark and mutant midgets were at large…some of the nicer dwarfs helped the man save the boy’s life and somehow this book was found…Tim smoke…they say he never actually wrote it or if he did then he never meant it to be read…and if he did then he did not want it to be read either yet or by us.” said chuck as he dipped a mug into the water to fill it up and brought it up to his lips to sip.

“This isn’t water we are sailing on you know…” said a muffled voice from within George’s coat pocket…it was probably the rag doll trying to get cheeky but when George looked closely at what he had thought to be water, it turned out to be billions of jewel bugs…many shades of blue…like a large family of the same colour…swirling, bumping, mixing, flying, flowing, all over and under everything like waves in a sea. Crashing into the sides of the boat to make it rock and then receding, carrying the boat along.

“Am I paranoid or are we sailing on a large mass of insects?” asked George

“Hmmm…this is not altogether unbelievable,” answered chuck as he upturned his mug and hundreds of blue jewel bugs spilled inside the boat.

“Maybe we should file a formal complaint…these aren’t tolerable working conditions…bugs, bugs, everywhere…not a drop to drink” muttered George flicking the bugs back into the sea as they tried to climb up his sleeve whilst chuck caught one between his thumb and forefinger, lifted it up to his mouth and let it drop onto his tongue.

“Is that hygienic?”

“Hey…it’s better than needles. Try it…and pass me that oar…I think I spot land over there…that floating chest of drawers next to the palm trees…that’s our best chance of continuing this monstrous struggle.” Chuck used the oar to steer them closer to the palm trees as George dropped a turquoise jewel bug and made a face on his finger painting paper thing…

“Very nice…it’s a good likeness…grab that filing cabinet over there and we’ll stick it in just for the heck of It.” said chuck.

George looked around very slowly…it was suddenly harder to move…sound was heavier and light was shinier…there was a filing cabinet a hundred yards to his left…he thought for a bit about this strange mess…chuck was steering the boat in the opposite direction…but he did not know what to do.

“It would just be bad manners to point…” the muffled voice of the rag doll began. “Just plain bad manners.”

“Shut it…how many times must I tell you not to speak when I’m thinking…it’s very distracting…I swear I’ll stick another needle in.” said George…his breathing erratic…and the slowness of everything getting to his nerves…he felt as if his body might explode and let out a last scream.

“No please…sorry...conjecture is not often my priority but in times of suffering my inner voice and the one you hear are hard to tell apart…it’s supposed to be one of the gifts of slavery…that it can’t last forever.” squeaked the rag doll very much afraid of George’s desire to use the needle…so often nowadays…so often.

“Songs and sentences don’t bring freedom…bloodshed and misery do.”

“What about the blues?”

“That’s it…be quiet. You are talking nonsense at a time, which is both tense and slightly messed up…” ordered George. He placed one hand over his right eye and concentrated at the filing cabinet floating at his left…he extended his left arm, reached out and grabbed the cabinet which had been greatly diminished in mass and size by this neat little trick…he picked it up quite easily and placed it in the middle of the boat.

“Just stick the picture in…don’t look which drawer you’re putting it in…like a card trick…” chuck suggested…his excitement and dilated pupils not only visible but also enchanting. George closed his eyes…opened a drawer…stuck the picture in and closed it…upon opening his eyes he witnessed chuck kicking the filing cabinet back into the sea laughing once again like a mad man…it was weird how he kept alternating between maniacal laughter and grave conversation. It was almost as if he was on…etc etc.

“Hey…I think I saw something moving…in the water…I mean the bugs…thing…I saw something huge…it moved…” said George his heart racing…it had been something unusually large…large enough to make him fear for his life or the condition of the boat…of how he might’ve left the faucet turned on in the toilet…of dwarfs and rag doll liberation movements…the moon…the trunk of a car he never wished to be in again.

“Take it easy…it’s…just…unreasonable…you’re being unreasonable…there is no such thing as a rag doll liberation movement.”

“Did I say that out loud?? Are you sure?? Convince me woman!!! Convince me that I am still well thought-out and indispensable…exercise… have power over…oxymoron…slavery.”

“Are you talking to me?? I swear I can’t hear a word…the wind is too strong…don’t talk…it’s pointless!!!”

“RESISTANCE IS FUTILE…WE ARE DOOMED…”

“You don’t normally freak out…did you have breakfast??”

“I WISH…BUT IT’S NOT IMPORTANT…I FOUND ANOTHER, A NICER COLLECTION OF ODD WORDS AND SENTENCES…BUT ALL IS LOST!!! I HAVE FAILED!!!”

“It’s not too late…what is with your obsession anyway…? It’s just disgusting and frankly…very…unproductive and lame…get on with it…stop going to those infernal meetings…they are eating you alive…don’t you have any self respect??” said chuck with a note of disgust in his voice at which George became quiet…stared at chuck as though seeing him in a new light…as though finally understanding…getting the measure of the man…as though he had seen his dick and felt unimpressed and jubilant…(hahahaha)…he felt angry…insulted…vengeful and bitter. So he did what vengeful, bitter people do…he laughed.

“Hahahahahahaha…I didn’t want to say this…but you have driven me to it…so I will…talking about self respect and all…I skimmed through that book…Tim smoke…it’s perfectly legible…it is you who can’t read it…you put too much faith in self preservation, ego and winning…” “If you are too shallow…if you can’t understand the pain I feel…then it is not my problem…” “At moments like these I pity you…I pity you chuck…your unseeing eyes have deceived you your entire life…you have spent far too much time exploring your own goddamned self, fascinated by your narcissistic, shriveled view of life and stuff…my misery is a thousand times better than your happiness and insane laughter… ”

“Normally I wouldn’t interrupt or indeed contradict a speech of this sort…so…cunningly articulated…hahha…so heart felt and full of depth…but tell me what you remember of the book you just managed to ‘skim’ through…tell me where it is…repeat a single word you read therein…or think of it in your mind if you can, visualize…if you accomplish that…I will bow to you…if not…then you will stop boring the crap out of me with your verbal communication…or nonsensical babbling, as I like to call it…the book you just read that convinced you of your superiority…of how your way of spending time is better than mine…wallowing in whatsit…let’s see…”

At this George rose to his feet at once…as though he had been waiting for an invitation of just the sort to prove once and for all that he was right…to set chuck straight with a crushing blow that he could never ever hope to revive from…with a great victorious “HAH”…he looked down upon chuck, standing quite with poise, where a few moments ago the filing cabinet had been…steadying himself against the rocking boat he raised a hand like a leader who requests silence so as to convey his message to the vast, eager populous…he took a deep breath to facilitate him as he set out to melt chuck’s ears with a speech that would shame him into oblivion…
So…naturally, he turned green rather swiftly once he realized he could not remember a single thing…just an indistinct consciousness of having thought…or perhaps…to be…well he was at a loss…entirely. He blushed…then tried to focus…then felt like an asshole…then wondered where he was and what he was up to.

“Right…so sit down…I’m not saying I won…because I found that book once too and I thought I knew it off by heart…all I’m saying is stop being so…so cocky and anal…you’ll understand soon enough that you don’t and possibly if not probably, can’t know everything…why I sit on this end of the boat and you on the other…” said chuck…his eyebrows raised…as they did when he felt glorious…he checked his nails imperiously and let out a little pompous sigh. George…had only half heard what chuck had said…he had tried his best to pay attention because it seemed likely that drivel had a bit of sense shoved in there somewhere…but there was something on his mind he couldn’t ignore altogether. He hesitated…and then spoke in a soft voice.

“Should I apologize? Or will that large monster behind you, about to smack us out of existence, do?” asked George…not entirely sure if he should be pleased or worried…or both simultaneously. It was definitely huge…sort of sea green in colour with a vast granular surface…as if it had lived beneath the waves for eons uncounted and survived all ages whether cold, wet, warm or the eighties, everything that nature could throw against it…it’s massive body was not properly divided into sections that would seem logical but it was sort of obvious that the large hole was its mouth and the things on the sides were either fins or arms…if they were arms…then they ended in a hand-like oddity with only one finger…George understood that it was safe to bet that it was the middle finger…if they were fins…then they weren’t very finny…with a weird dick-like projection at the end. It had emerged from under the bugs and was about to make a mess out of things by doing what comes naturally to all things larger than should be allowed…smash around and cause trouble.

“Yes…yes I see…it is…it is definitely alarming…I see why you would freak out George…it…it looks like a…a Lob.” Chuck had turned around to view the great creature. “I think we have a bit of time before it smashes the shits out of us…shall we discuss it now or think of an escape plan?”

“It’s almost mesmerizing…do you think it’s a whale or something?? Is it significant??”

“Right…discussion it is…well…like I said…it looks like a Lob…that’s a lot of jewel bug turds squeezed together to make an enormous monstrous monstrosity thing which likes to wreak havoc…unless of course…we guess its name first.” answered chuck looking intently at his wristwatch, wondering if it was worth the bother to know the exact time of your demise.

“So it’s a pile of shit then? Wow…it looks prehistoric…like some strange breed of ancient blahooey that has survived an eternity of boredom and emerged triumphant from the depths of whatsit to celebrate its existence by taking away ours…I could’ve sworn it was old.”

“Well…it’s not…it’s just a Lob…a large mass of jewel bug shit…is there anything more you would like to add before it lands its fatal blow?”

“I don’t think it has eyes…what if it misses us?”

“You know a lot of people would miss us…if he doesn’t.”

“Why are you suddenly so cautious? You’re the one who decided it was reasonable to swallow a jewel bug…”

“Hey…don’t throw that in my face…it was only a blue one…those are worth it…as you can see…just the paranoia and the freaking out and the side effects are a bit prolonged…in fact I completely forgot that they have protection…I suppose the Lob wants vengeance…I say you should guess his name because we’re not reaching the palm tree island with him in the way…he’s about ready to crack us up anyway…”

“How the hell would I guess his name?? It could be any phonetic combination possible…what do I know about bug language anyway…what if it’s composed of a sound that I can’t produce with my human vocal chords?? We’re very much screwed in that scenario as in any…why not just wait…see what happens…”

“Fine…on your own head be it…though I’m sure my head is bound to get in the way…I’m lighting up…a last smoke to say farewell to all the cigarettes I was unable to attend to and satisfy…give my regards to Fred if you survive and find him…he’s probably responsible for most of this bilge.”

As the great beastly shit-creature emerged…the bug-level fell drastically and the boat was sucked towards the creature…it seemed at least half as tall as a twelve story building…or twice as large as a three story one…unless they had different sized stories since some stories are longer than others. Both men sat awaiting their doom…George staring at the monster, with a glazed look in his mesmerized eyes while chuck sat whittling an oar with his pocketknife and whistling an old tune.

“I rarely get to see something this big…I mean it’s just bloody immense…wow.”

“Size isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be you know…”

“People with small dicks tend to have that view…”

“Oh please…it’s like as if a python humped an anaconda which later gave birth to what is now my penis. I assure you…if I were to sodomize you right now…you would gladly get bopped on the head by Lob to escape the sheer dread of having to face your own puny bird…ever…again…thing. Mine is huge.”

“Not that I believe a word of that crock but I’d still rather have Lob than you humping me…I’ve never cared for you that way chuck…”

“Never?? No?? Are you sure?? I’m a relatively good looking person…in fact…sometimes…if the weather is just right and I’ve had a good nap…I look quite fetching.” said chuck as though trying to make George see reason.

“I’m sure…but it’s just…I’m not inclined that way…in any case what’s the big deal…you’re not…I mean I’ve seen your porn magazines…they all seem to have women…they weren’t she-males were they?? Good lord!!” pleaded George, losing his wits temporarily…but not nearly half as worried about dying in a boat surrounded by a billion bugs than about having to spend the last few seconds of his life in a boat with a raging homo.

“I’m not asking you to suck me off, you idiot…I’m just wondering…you can’t be all straight…everyone has tendencies…suppose we were in jail…wouldn’t you prefer me over…say…the midget from next to where your redhead works?”

“Well…I mean…it’s not really…I can’t say…I mean the midget IS rather disgusting…and abnormal looking…but honestly do I have to choose between two men?? If he indeed even…qualifies as a man in the first place…Look we’ll settle this another time…Lobby is about to let fall his scrotum-less self upon us.”

With a crash louder than thunder, Lob fell upon the mass of bugs atop which the boat were floating about…probably a lot of bugs got squished but surprisingly…the boat was missed entirely…in fact it didn’t even capsize…it just sped away at full speed in the opposite direction to the palm trees and stuff…for a few moments it was actually not even on the bugs, but flying. The sheer force with which Lob had struck had sent the boat soaring through mid-air…to wherever…the boat then landed on top of the bugs and after a bit of tossing around…everything was calm again.

“Wow…that was intense…chuck…seriously…that was surreal…bizarre…it was like being a psychologist, “treating” a beautiful nymphomaniac…”

“Please…it was good and all, but lets not compare it to sex with nymphets…”

“You’re just pissed off because of the whole queer issue you raised back there…I tell you…even if you were the most gorgeous man I ever saw…I wouldn’t want you…it’s not my thing.”

“The most gorgeous man you ever saw?? Really??” asked chuck, looking hopeful.

“You are not…I have never seen the most gorgeous man I ever saw…which is the whole point…could you let this go, it’s freaking me out…horse nuts!”

“In any case…we’re back,” said chuck getting out of the boat and sitting back in front of the typewriter on his desk. George got out of the boat as well, looking around himself, trying to remember which direction was more like the one they had opted to turn their backs on.

“Apparently…not that it matters…but then it might…one can never be sure…nevertheless…I’m supposed to see the manager.” announced George and waited to see how chuck reacted.

“What??” exclaimed chuck, looking up so fast, his neck might’ve fallen off. “Why are you supposed to see him? These are not the best of times…we’ve only just returned from a voyage of self discovery and near fatal disaster…surely you understand that nowadays even the simplest of activities require the will of a demigod…which by the way…you are not.”

“Yes well…frankly…neither do I understand your business nor do I understand much else…she told me that he wishes to see me…therefore I must go.”

“Must?? Must?? Really?? There is nothing you MUST do…however…if you feel like it…he has changed I should tell you…but what else would you expect from a hippy?? I mean someone whose sole purpose in life is to pretend…must oft change spots…like it or not…but they sell tie dye now…and it’s printed…not actually dyed…hence…it is easily concluded that he too works for the king…and for all I know…SHE…does too.”

“How informative…I’m off…I think you should come too…for guidance…just in case…I asked him for gold the other day…and it’s possible that he’s interested in my proposition.”

“You keep staring at the situation…the jewel bugs…and yet you have the audacity to expect gold from a man who nearly got us killed?”

“Again…I must express my ineptitude at being able to comprehend a single word that you have uttered…no wait…that’s not completely true because, individually, each word is coherent but the way you stick them all together in what you must consider to be sentences…is totally beyond my level of understanding…stop talking gibberish and say what you want to…for once…just tell me what the hell is going on…if indeed anything is going on…or if we are completely madcap…so on and so forth.”

“Nah…I haven’t got the time…ok then…let’s go meet the damn dirty monkey who thinks he can control us all with an iron fist just because he wears brighter colours than normally acceptable…”

“I’ve never got that tyrannical vibe from him…he seems…harmless…maybe even a bungler…a nice guy type.”

“Appearances can be deceiving…for instance under this mortal exterior of chuck lobsterman…I am a Greek tragedy waiting to happen!” muttered chuck as he wore his overcoat and started rummaging in the desk drawers for guns and ammunition of the cheap yet effective nature.

“Very funny…let’s just go…in the words of the great white rabbit…even though he didn’t know squat…“I’m late.”



The managers office had been shifted to the third floor…which did not really matter since all floors were always hard to give attention to once savage, malformed, carnivorous vines started shackling ankles and biting at shoe laces in an effort to trip, strangle, digest (using corrosive chemicals secreted from within tiny nodules covering their surface) and finally consuming the semi-digested victims. It was like animal planet had unprotected mating rituals with triangles from another galaxy with hidden agendas that included world domination and control over all oil producing lands.

“It’s annoying to say the least…but as the wise men whisper in huddled corners before making out by way of violent passion, “verities grotesques menorahs labium.” said George trying to squish the “head” of a particularly grouchy vine. It crunched and released a juice that smelt remarkably of rhinoceros semen and blood.

“I agree with that…whole heartedly…here…I want you to keep this,” whispered chuck, offering George a primordial six-shooter with lead ball bullet things. Kind of like those guns that pirates used…well, actually everybody in those days used that sort of gun…not just the pirates…heck even my mother had one. “Hide it in your underpants…it’ll impress the ladies…it’s not absolutely necessary but I always try to make a fuss whenever I can…besides…sometimes it’s hard to communicate with these damn dirty hippy nazis.” muttered chuck with a nasty scowl playing hockey across his face.

“Hippy Nazis? I have this toothache that’s seriously killing me…I think jewel bugs absorb calcium…although I suppose that’s not ALL they absorb…try not to spit on anyone…you might poke an eye out if you’ve got loose teeth.” said George, rubbing his sore jaw, “I feel like I gave a dinosaur, oral pleasure.”

“GOAL!!” shouted the scowl and forced George to slap chuck across the face as they arrived outside the manager’s office. It had a large door with a gold plate that had the word “manure” written on it…the essence of intimidation was entirely lost but the wood seemed to be of good quality. The sort that many teenage boys get at night when lying on their stomachs. Nobody really opened the door…there was no need.

“Listen George…I’ve been reviewing your bollocks from afar…” said the manager, by now clean-shaven with a fancy haircut, dressed in a crispy gray suit with a horrendous necktie that gave the impression of him being a dickhead. He stopped for a second to notice how both George and chuck were gazing dumbstruck at stuff hanging on his walls…it’s hard to say whether or not he could even see chuck…but it would ruin half the twists and turns within this ball whacking narrative to be plain and comprehensible. “I see you noticed my flashy-pink, glam-rock electric guitar rather uncaringly and these KISS posters I have put up on my walls…affront you profoundly…yes…I understand how you must feel now…betrayed perhaps…possibly even hurt…nauseous? “But the fact remains that the present situation is nearly catastrophic and we must all try our level best to do what we can, for the greater good…e.g.… worship the king and hope that he keeps supplying us with enough gold to keep things running…you have nothing whatsoever to do with all this…except that you sort of have something that his highness desires.”

“You smell of gasoline and tramp panties…you cock-sucking, nihilistic, word-molester…your mother will die weeping, ashamed of letting such a decadent sperm cross the threshold of her womb and fertilize her ill-fated egg…furthermore…your father was a necrophilic gang-banger!! We know what’s going on…we know exactly what’s going on…KISS SUCKS SWEDISH CORN-HOLES!!!!!” shouted chuck in an upsurge of misdirected passion, leapt to his feet and tore his shirt, like superman does, except that he didn’t entirely remove it…so it just hung there beneath his overcoat with all the buttons broken…his scrawny, emaciated chest visible to the perverted woman who always had a telescope trained in the direction of this particular window from another building across the street. He pulled out a gun from within his overcoat and flung it at the manager’s head…it struck him squarely between the eyes and broke his nose…as the manager instinctively raised his hands, chuck dived over the desk that separated them and tackled the manager to the floor, lying on top of him, lightly slapping him across his cheeks as he squealed like a piggy…somewhat stuck in his cushy armchair. “Say uncle, you unclean, androgynous mutant…SAY UNCLE!!!”

“UNCLE…UNCLE…I SWEAR…UNCLE…” screamed the manager as a mixture of blood and spit stained the front of his shirt and made a relatively alarming puddle on the floor.

“Right…well…ok…I think we’re done here George…can we go now?” asked chuck, getting off of the manager and brushing bits of him from his coat.

“To be honest…I really don’t know what’s going on…I think the shit has really hit the fan this time though.” said George pointing at the ceiling fan that was dripping brown sludge, which flew all around the room, splattering various objects of little concern or self-awareness.

“It doesn’t matter…I think we all know how this leopard has changed his spots…to think we trusted him with our children and pets…honestly…there’s a limit to the level of bullshit a man can tolerate.” said chuck putting his sunglasses on and trying to look at his reflection in a spoon…which started to bend and curve in unusual angles. He felt distracted by all the rabbits flying outside the window, their ears flapping and hefty genitalia hanging floppily underneath…some of the scrotum actually being too heavy to remain suspended actually just tore apart and fell down. “Hmmm…on second thoughts…maybe I should sit down…and you have a chat with him…I think I have to deal with some paranormal…er…thingy.”

“Quite right…I was about to make that same observation about myself when I saw a large eye staring at us from beyond…but I think at this time…your need is greater than mine…” spoke George gently to chuck and patted him on the back before addressing the moaning manager, “come now you disgraceful, ex-hippy toad…forget about this ruckus and speak more openly…not that I have patience…nor am I on the edge of my seat, biting my nails over your capitalistic concerns…but what exactly do you mean by something I have that the king wants?”

They waited for the manager to regain composure…he made quite a show of it, moaning, weeping, slobbering, wiping his face with a tiny bit of tissue paper, which just stuck to his bloody face in bits of congealed grossness…

“Allow me,” said chuck in a gentlemanly manner and offered the manager a relatively soiled bra of what used to be a whitish hue…it was nevertheless frilly and served well as a facial wiping device. The bloody mess that had been his face was now more or less clean except for bits of white goo that had now appeared over various regions of his face.

“Inspiring.” said George to chuck with a look of deep admiration. Chuck returned the compliment with a slight bow and a modest expression portraying humility, nobility of soul and character. The manager just stared at them both for an instant before addressing George for the second time.

“Yeah…so ok…I mean it’s all cool and stuff to not be materialistic and blah…but the thing is…it’s fun…having money is fun…I swear upon the leaves of holly and juniper bushes that once grew even in Siberia that money can buy happiness.”

“Said the man with my children on his face.” whispered chuck to George who doubled over laughing.

“No I swear to you…I’ve spent most of my time with that busted up acoustic singing songs and not caring about anything…but it has to be done…what separated us from the animals if we don’t waste away our lives trying to impress other people? It’s the only way to get bitches that shave their legs and have fake but aesthetically pleasing boobies. Large cars and fat wallets is what gets the pretty girls running marathons for your willies…I’ve seen the light and it was green…so quit being you…quit all this living freely with nothing to worry about except how you’re going to get what you want and just go buy it.”

“Point of information madam…only animals try to impress the ladies by head butting and showing off flashy feathers and crap…which is what you replace with big cars and other stuff…you’re the animal…and from what I remember of your mother…you’re only barely qualified to be in that family.”

“I can’t deny that your argument, although utterly inane is somewhat effective against the ill informed tripe I just fed you guys…but the thing is…well there really is no…thing…I’ve just changed sides…and to be frank…there really aren’t any sides…you’re just messed up, paranoid freaks…for the love of Harry’s nuts…you work in a bloody bank…this is a bank…you have to work…work is what we do in banks…numbers, money, gold, treasure, timers that operate vaults full of precious items…secrets…jealousies…monstrous lack of vision and uptight anal masquerades…inflation…deflation…we control…everything…” said the bank manager with a wild gleam in his eyes…the lights in the room had dimmed in response to the effect of evil we wished to induce in whatever mindless drivel he was conveying…a flicker of insanity…logic and disgrace…the smell of cologne used in excess…with both his hands planted firmly on the desk…the manager bent low to enjoy the effect. His teeth glistening and breath smelling of the rat poison that competition stimulates among all of us. Suddenly…we had an agenda.

“I have all the inflation, deflation, treasure, jealousy, secrets, and lack of vision I’ll ever need hanging between my legs…” answered George in a voice of exemplary calm and ease. Suddenly…we had lost our children and all future generations of ill advised sexual activity to sheer nonsense and ambiguity.

Chuck stood up, teary eyed and looking remarkably proud of the man seated to his right… “Well said…” he choked in attempt to not start bawling and lose his manly stature in the eyes of the perverted woman in the building across the street and started clapping in an overly melodramatic fashion.

“But…but…for heaven’s sake…be reasonable…gentleman…what is wrong with you people…you are merely servants…you are paid for your service…what is this nonsense…” spluttered the manager in an effort to inject some reason into this lot.

“I think he’s been stuck here far too long,” said George to chuck “I think we should take him for a bit of a spin.”

“Spoken like a true tragedy my young friend…a justly accurate and depressing, star crossed, HIV infected tragedy…let’s drop out.” replied chuck.



Beneath the shade of a large white tree, with their backs to the trunk, sat George Lynch, Chuck Lobsterman and the bank manager…now dressed in a Hawaiian shirt and Bermuda shorts (no underwear). They were passing around a lesser known and not readily accepted wooden instrument that looked and worked just like a Native American peace pipe. The red leaves kept falling at brief and what some people assumed to be entirely ungoverned intervals of time. The fine soft grassy ground beneath them and an opalescent sky above bore an uncanny resemblance to the mudguards on the bikes of angels. Songbirds twittered and raped one another with guiltless frequency upon the branches of the majestic unknown. Lesser mortals wondered what was going on in the homes of their equals…those not so tainted with the desire for this brand of mundane information were occupied with what might be going on in Galileo’s head right now…was he sad? Satisfied? Jubilant or just plain worried about what was going on in the homes of his equals. A musical river flowed by to the left of the trio…carrying baskets of something hard to make out but obviously squirming (later determined to be babies without eyelids with swarms of mosquitoes hovering overhead, feasting upon their unprotected eyeballs). The bank rarely had weather this beautiful. Outside, in George’s opinion, people must be suffering from a mass breakout of skin cancer and gout. This had no basis in fact or prior knowledge but was a conclusion made using neither the inductive or the deductive method of reasoning…rather it was just a casual thought that stepped inside his mind and enjoyed the view therein.

“Slide inside…my…mind.
And if you find, anything inside
Worth my time…
Let it rain.”
Sang George, feeling particularly sanguine, blowing rings of smoke through the canopy of red that occupied all and everything sometimes…but every now and then he would imagine a light, shining white…break through the gloom and wash over his face…and he missed someone beyond all others…beyond reason and existence…beyond the need to move, breathe, feel or worship. “I feel oddly romantic.” he said, as a tear was born but was denied freedom.

“Me too…” sighed the manager.

“I don’t…I AM horny though…but only slightly…” said chuck as indifferently as ever…shifting his weight on one butt cheek to scratch the other.

“So what drove you to a haircut and a clean shave?” asked George, passing the pipe over to the manager, who took a long drag, puffed out a sizeable cloud of smoke…coughed…and fell into a silence that suggested thoughtful consideration about what to say.
“Hmmm…I suppose…I lost my muse and let the overbearing sadness consume me in a way that stole away my only bliss…”

“No more songs?” asked George.

“No more songs.” confirmed the manager. “I just…I feel embarrassed…slightly…disgusted…wasted…not in the sense which is applicable now and under most other circumstances but in the sense of being…you-know-what…I felt utterly lonely and pathetic…like I had committed genocide…there was no escaping that…you know…I don’t know what to do anymore.” he said passing the pipe on to chuck and pressing his hands over his eyes whilst turning his neck up towards the sky.

“I’ve always wondered whether mosquitoes can spread Aids or not…I mean…what if they suck on a patient and then suck on a non-patient…isn’t that like using infected needles???” Chuck thought aloud brushing away an invisible pest.

“I’ve often speculated that we are all just the same…you know…one person…all of us…or just the mad, disorientated gibberish of a singular lunatic mind. Self projections of a retarded force.” said George.

“Please…give that unoriginal hypothesis a rest…you’re not unfolding the plot of eons with a lame proposition of that sort.” said chuck, sounding insulted. “…We are as different as the sun and the moon and all the balls in between…or at least I am as unlike you two as is possible…I am logical, reasonable and a self respecting individual with all human goodness without your masochistic need to make myself suffer needlessly over things that have no permanence. I know and accept my mortality without shame.”

“You are a writer…when you’re not a beast…a writer wouldn’t write if he did not wish for immortality.” George pointed out.

“That just goes to show how little you know of writers…first of all…I’m only just a book friend…secondly…what have I written?”

“Good point…this…is going well…the peace pipe…where have we got to so far…any progress?” asked George as chuck handed him the pipe.

“This creepy guy was just telling us his sordid tale about how some wench made an incision on his balls and left him with his nuts hanging out…exposed to the bitter cold of reality.” muttered George

“A crude summary…but accurate nonetheless…” said George appreciatively.

“Guys…I’m really sorry about the whole mess…it was a mistake…I just let it get out of hand…but…it’s hard to explain…it’s this…well…sometimes people say things that make you want to escape yourself…entirely…” said the manager.

“No you misunderstand you poor little mango…we stopped caring about your account halfway through…and now…it is your turn.” said chuck, reaching over and dipping his hand into the river. When he brought it out, he had three blue jewel bugs clutched tightly in his fist.

“What about Lob?” asked George, taking a sapphire jewel bug from chuck. The manager got a navy one and chuck kept an indigo jewel bug for himself.

“None of that…there’ll be none of that mad talk around here…” stammered Chuck, his body convulsing involuntarily, but with unmistakable passion he spoke more or less coherently, “this is important goddamnit…this is akin to any great accomplishment of the ancients…comparable to any goodly Greek tale about Trojan horses…sirens…and a house full of horny bastards with only one woman and their collective mentality equaling that of a teaspoon. This man needs us…” he gestured violently towards the bank manager, “more so than anyone ever has…is it not something you would risk life and limb for?? When it can be argued that we’re all just somewhere else entirely?? It’s a risk we have to take…to serve…to liberate this unhappy soul, who has gone so far astray that he feels life is nothing without a…muse.”

“How musing…hahah,” said George, feeling fine…a tickling sensation in his throat…but otherwise…feeling fine, “we were discussing…how…”

“Nowhere to be seen…” interrupted the manager, “nowhere…I envy your cold callous heart chuck…I wish I had your deliberation…however, I’m sure this personage of ill repute wishes to make our acquaintance.” stuttered the manager only barely managing to point towards an old man dressed in rags, leaning on a staff nearly as tall as him. He was fairly wild looking and had an aura of deceit, fraud, flatulence and an intensive need for aromatherapy about him. His teeth were nearly black, his shoes of a well known and relatively comfortable brand, his hair as long as you wish…his hands bony and seemingly able to grip anything like a vice…a fact he was showing off by crunching walnuts in his fist.

“Salutations gentlemen…I come in peace…” spoke the stranger with his right hand raised. This action parted the rags covering his body in such a way that a heavily scarred body was visible underneath, composed of a dark poisonous gas and primordial hoarfrost.

“Technically speaking…I did that on his face once,” said chuck thumping the manager on his back, “but only indirectly…we don’t trust you old man…you could be a mirage or an unconscious desire to punish ourselves…we have done nothing…try to have a seat and I swear upon your mother’s grave…if indeed scum like you could have such a thing as a mother…that I will pull your limbs out one by one and force you to feed them to orphaned children. Who will then shit you out and then we will burn the excrement.”

“I have brought with me…a goat.” continued the man as though he had not heard anything chuck had said.

“Does anybody else in here…feel the way I do?” sang the manager.

“Ugly children get in trouble because their parents could care less…they let them go off with strangers hoping never to see them again.” whispered chuck.

“My toothache is killing me…it’s agonizing…but I know nobody would help…it’s nobody’s problem except mine…but I want it to be.” George thought aloud.

The large white tree was now bent and gray, the strange old man surrounded them all in a whirlwind of broken aspirations, failed dreams and strikingly cold testimonials from a not so distant past. Every word…each syllable ringing loud and clear…the venom therein overflowing and devouring all possible avenues of escape…the red canopy had been replaced…there was no rhyme to set this right…there was no interlude of light…no season could ever metamorphose this sad design and result in the same old familiarity that they now sorely missed. All was lost…all was left out of order and miserable.

“I was easily forgotten.” said the manager in a hollow voice.

“I was just a joke.” said George and dropped down into an abyss from whence it is hard to imagine flight and safety.

“I lost…” said chuck and fell asleep.

The sound of waves crashing on the shore and the incessant squawking of sea gulls brought them all to their senses…neither one knew how long they had slept if indeed they had slept. The old man sat carving little animals on his staff, the goat was gone but the bones remained…he seemed oddly faint…as though he had faded much during the passage of time. George got up with much difficulty, his jaw as sore as ever and went off to collect all the articles of clothing that they had all somehow lost…George’s shoes were lying over next to the bank of the river. Chuck’s pants were hanging from the branches of three while he sat in his underwear unable to recall how that had happened. The manager was wearing nothing but a daring frock of red leaves.

“‘Tis a pity that you all wasted so much of our time bellowing and screeching like banshees, struggling on the ground screaming otherworldly names and trying to escape some unseen and unknown fate. You missed a good feast…well whatever…the bones are left and that was the whole point…get you all up and go fetch me a bone from that pile over there where I roasted the goat…look for a triangular bone…a bit bigger than half the size of your fist…with a nub thing at the bottom…I will tell you your troubles for half a piece of silver…or answer you queries for a crawling bit of jade.” said the old man without turning his head up to look at them.
George looked at Chuck, who shrugged as if to say, “whatever.” The three of them went up to the pile of bones and selected one each, bringing them back to the old man. Chuck seemed double minded as to whether he should set the bone at the old man’s feet or just smash it on his head and kill him. It was a hard choice and nearly ended in disaster…but George and the manager were able to subdue him just in time. The old man studied the bones with care…touching them in what would be considered a professional and almost nauseatingly perverted manner. His ‘excitement’ was visible…I mean that. Once done with the bones…which took a while…he walked up to them all in turn and gazed into their eyes more or less lovingly…which nearly made chuck bite his nose…though he satisfied himself by just growling obscenely. Satisfied, the old man then decided to give an answer.

“Right so here’s the thing…the answers are “no” for you two…but “yes” to this psycho.” said the old man. Chuck, being the ‘psycho.’ George and the manager looked crestfallen…but chuck just stood there staring at the old man with a look highly uncharacteristic of him…it represented disbelief and relief of the sort you feel when you avoid disaster the likes of war, plague or being influenced by the eighties…hairstyles, clothes, music, thinking, everything.

“Ok…now if you will just pay me…I’ll be off.” said the old man.

“We’ve only got blue jewel bugs.” Said George looking apprehensive but trying to put on his most charming smile…or what he thought was his most charming smile.

“I will only except jade…but…since I am reasonable…double the price if you wish to pay in cerulean.”

“I seriously don’t think any of us knows which one that is.”

“Listen you son of a bitch. You WILL pay me…it’s not a question of morals or justice…so listen carefully…there is a marsh somewhere…either here or there…or maybe upwards…no…it’s unquestionably there…” said the old man without pointing in any direction whatsoever, “go there and bring me three jade jewel bugs…or die trying…I have answered your questions and kept my part of the deal…now so must you…so go…or suffer my displeasure…I will find you once you have accomplished this obligation…but for now…I have an urgent meeting with the director of loans and services…” “But you…” he spoke to George, “I give you this advice free of price…for the cost will be great regardless of your choice…” “Mark my words for when you wage war with yourself…she is beautiful…as equally cruel…you will feel lost if you win…and like a winner if you lose…the decision is yours alone …but perhaps the scales can be tipped…if you keep in mind the price.” the old man turned his back to the trio and disappeared leaving behind a sense of dread and cold despair, like a notice of overdue bills and a last warning before unavoidable condemnation and eviction.

“Who the hell is that guy anyway?” asked George shivering.

“Probably just another reason why we loathe capitalism, communism, imperialism, feudalism, corpus gluteus…and nearly every other type of ‘-ism’ and ‘-ship’ that lazy generations of assholes, willing to follow the inane gibberish of a lonely wanker, come up with.” muttered chuck, making his way back to the charred spot where the white tree had been standing for so long. “There are always repercussions…sometimes you’re lucky and get to face Lob and his simple ways…other times…not so much…so you roll with the punches…and hope for the best. I prefer when nature strikes back rather than bureaucracy.”

“This is relatively absurd…you are aware of that aren’t you…? I’m not the only one who feels this way am I?”

“Is there anybody else in here…who feels the way I do.” sang the manager.

“Why are you so rigid with that sort of thing? We’re inside a bank…the possibilities are limitless.”

“And to think…that I once thought!” murmured George, “What did you get a “yes” on…? What question did you have in mind?” he asked.

“Don’t you have something to do?? You’ve been spending far too much time inside…go back to the counter up front, where you used to hang around so much…and stop bothering us honest hardworking people.” spat chuck.

“Gentleman…I’m still on the bug…there are things here…indescribable…horrors beyond your wildest dreams…politicians who actually believe that they are telling the truth…it’s insane…we must escape.” The manager was swaying around moving in circles with his eyes unfocused and wide. “I see…I see the downfall of man…but man does not know it yet. Oh my God!!” he screamed.

“Is it Courtney love?? Yoko Ono?? Mothers in general??? Penis envy??? Snap out of it man!! We know about it all.” shouted chuck, grabbing the manager by the collar of his shirt and trying to shake some sense into him. “This is the sort of blabbering you were annoying me with on the boat, George.”

“Where shall we go? From where I stand…anywhere but ‘here’ is ‘there’, if you follow my logic.” said George, licking the front of his thumb and then raising his hand in the air, as if to sense the direction of the wind, which was pretty obvious what with the blowing leaves and a large weather vane five yards to his right, designed like a humungous red cock which bore the legend, “give it up…you can’t compete…your precious tool is obsolete.”

“Ohh I believe…in yesterday…” sang the manager.

“Well why don’t you go back to yesterday then?? Why are you hanging around here bothering the rest of us with your constant whining? If your past was such a marvelous bit of smut then why don’t you go back and rub up against it forever?”

“You just don’t like my singing voice…I promise next time I’ll bring my friends and then we’ll see who has more.” drooled the manager, completely out of it and nearly stepping on his own chin.

“Do you realize that the whole concept of this is just as saddening as it is maddening and cruelly funny?” remarked George, as the trio made its way towards their current goal. “If our exploits were to be documented…surely someone would see what happened?? Perhaps a birds eye view would convince them of…” George cut his sentence short and dropped his head in silence.

“Does it really matter George?? It is too late…it was too late the moment we stepped in…”

“But people do quit…don’t they? They quit…I have seen bandwagons being abandoned even in around these parts…I promise you chuck…they quit.”

“For heaven’s sake George…why can’t you see that we HAVE…we already have.”

“I can’t go on like this…”

“Yes well…it’s not your choice anymore…you heard what the old man said…the answer to your question is no.”

“How do you know what my question was?”

“Given all that we have seen, understood, misunderstood, destroyed and found hope in…given all the special circumstances under which everyone travels their own insufferable road…if you consider with rationality…there is only just one question that any entity, aware of itself and its surrounding would ever ask if it didn’t already know the answer.” “Will I be happy?”

“I thought it was a rather silly question to be honest…but putting it that way makes me feel a bit better about myself…but then again…the answer did put me off for a second.”

“Did you believe what he said then?”

“Hah…the answer to your ‘query’…is “no”, and if everyone alive or dead shared the old man’s view of things…I would just say “no” to their “no”, if that makes any sense to you.” “Relatively pessimistic I may be…but I am also quite insane.”

“Of course…and there you have it…there are no answers to that sort of thing…not for those who don’t actually need them…I had lost hope…I needed a “yes”…all you needed was a reminder. You are a forgetful yet stubborn little slut…your only requirement is a good thrashing to get you on your feet again…I call for gentler persuasion…although outwardly I am more a caveman than a writer, more so than you shall ever be…but keeping this gay shit aside…I can still kick your ass. In a moment, however…neither of us will remember ever having had this lame conversation…nor recall any sense that we might have made. Instead we will focus on a more troubling and tangible dilemma…”

“We’ll see about that…you said you had a sheet in your pocket, back when we were in the boat…so…to quote you, on innumerable instances…let’s drop out!”


The marsh was a dark, off-putting sort of place. A swamp consisting of more dark green than is commonly seen. Through a bunch of daunting, scary-assed trees spread as far as either of them could care to ponder over…they came upon it quite suddenly. Talking, muttering and in some cases singing, through the misty gloom, there was complete silence when the outsized pool of dark water came into view. The job was to be done quickly, swiftly, efficiently and then forgotten just as well. The impression, however, might not be erased…not entirely anyway…for it was quite a troubling and tangible dilemma.
In the middle of the pond…upon a bit of land, there was a very great beech tree with vines hanging down from it like long lazy snakes…looking just as ominous as the occasion called for…the darkness of the whole mess was complimented by an outlandish scent that infested any nostrils and forced them into submission after a heart rending struggle…the end result being total annihilation of sanity…as always in the course of this sorry narration. But it was a subtle change, no matter how difficult a concept that may be to grasp; it was not a crude transformation…the levels of whatsit in the brain that constantly remind you of ‘where’, ‘when’, ‘why’, ‘who’ and ‘don’t touch yourself in public’, are not easily fooled by nature’s engaging melodies…but this one was the sweetest of them all…this one was the oldest…the most profound vision of perfection any man…and only ever just a man…could possibly conceive of. And though greatness calls for our attention relentlessly…we just have to take a moment or a series of moments, which may last a lifetime and notice how we don’t really care…how this, the present, is just right and we can cry about everything else later on…spend years and years regretting our reckless decision…but at the moment…it is fine, it’s all good. A marshy wasteland is hardly a place to find that sort of visual delights but then again…it’s hard to say where or when, what might happen when you’re as pumped up on…

So, this really gorgeous bird sat beneath the tree, pursuing a career in art…i.e. painting a picture. Her hair was long and of a hue that would drive a man to lunacy if he were senseless enough to try and categorize it…nevertheless her hair was like the vines of the beech tree and just as scary…not in the deflating sense…but in the highly intimidating sense…but then again, more or less everything about her…from her hair…her features…her hands and fingers…the colour of her eyes as well as their size and the striking effect they had on mortal sight, her smell…the way she moved when she was not moving, the way she stood still and made to seem anything that defied her decision, uncouth and vulgar…including the rotation/revolution of the planet, sun and stars…her absolutely mind numbingly, electrifying…dazzling set of teeth…her lips (wow)…the song she sang and the words she articulated…and the scanty little number she was wearing, (a hitherto unknown variety of sea green) if indeed it qualified as being worn rather than just…sort of covering the essentials…just barely…either way it was classily done…and no law on earth or heaven (for that glorious unseen world would indeed be her usual place of residence), could ever accuse her of any crime…she was daunting…entirely unapproachable…but what infidel son of a sea-mule would gaze at a creature of this enigmatic immensity and not work up the balls to say something? What imbecile would not fluff up his plumage to show off whatever, the powers that be, had hastily slapped on upon his being for just such an occasion…if it ever took place? What blessed beings of light would not later on live to wish that providence had been kind enough to let their miserable lives by-pass this confrontation and just get on with it? This is where the faith of men is tested…even the most principal unbeliever would stamp out his ego beneath his shoe until it stopped twitching and go on to compose such memorable lines as,

“Baby, whatchoo up to this fine evenin’ all alone in the middle of nowhere with a fine ass like that?”

She was perfect, flawless…completely…insanely…to look at her was to be caught in a spell so strong that no earthly desire could contaminate it except of course, the desire to hump the living daylights out of her…or at least make-out with her till her jaw dropped. She was immaculate…sitting there beneath that fortunate, privileged beech tree, surrounded by a load of water…more green than the colour originally decided to be called green by men of learning…before our time. Water that was perhaps blessed, every now and then by her actual, physical, presence…Perhaps a bit of bathing…early in the morning…without that wonderful scanty little dress thing…in the cold…if you understand the significance of that fact…I’m creaming my pants here…she was just so goddamn delicate at first glance…and so powerful the next instant…the subtlety of her being…good God…she was implausible, improbable, incredible and yet so very, very real. Words fail and rhymes weaken, crumble, and fall to dust…she was rather tall too…but not too tall…tall enough…tall enough indeed…and very well proportioned…not that we judge…but yes we do…we shallow beasts and birds of prey, pray for a day and more with her. Of breathing the same merry air…that touched upon her treacherous hair. Her eyes were beacons of hope for all…next to her…no man was tall…ball…fall…wow. Apart from all that nonsense, she was wearing golden slippers…but anyone that hot can be excused a simple error of judgment so inconsequential in nature…perhaps her shoe-size only had slippers in gold…maybe they had been a gift…it is not unlikely that someone like her didn’t get a lot gifts…and she…being the sweet soul that she was…decided to put them on so that the dude who presented them to her wouldn’t feel entirely gay…not that she would slip him her cherry…she was all classy I tell you…in any case…the gold didn’t go too badly with the sort of green that surrounded her…so it’s all good. Plus there’s always the possibility that they were cursed slippers…planted by a venomous toad of a witch…or an evil king who envied her beauty and had therefore chained her to this bit of marshy lameness by holding her captive with these magical slippers…so on and so forth…the possibilities are limitless…the desire to describe her in more detail is growing stronger…but this story was never much of a porno…close…but not really in that field of literature. Like the passion of rain clouds and the essence of thunder…like the flash of lightening which could tear hearts asunder…Her eyes were steely gray.

It was her gentle song that lured them towards her…like a siren’s bewitching anthem…only less derivative of gospel music…and more, sort of, beyond words. Like drugged sleepwalkers they traipsed along the path that led to her. It seemed familiar…George felt as if he had come here before…this odd fluorescent path…these woods…the smell…he had been here before but had had more of a chance…had been better prepared…an anchor was missing…that single something that kept his head in place…it was absent…his heart was empty and willingly following a tune which sang for what he yearned the most…but these lingering thoughts were soon enveloped by the eruption of a scene so wonderful that his mind nearly exploded. The lady of the marsh sat singing beneath a beech tree in the middle of the pond, painting a picture. She paid no attention to their sudden intrusion upon her private glade and continued with her art as usual. They never paid any attention to anything ever…so this sudden jerk and stretch applied to their usually wavering attentions was a relatively new experience…as though a meat hook attached to a lengthy bit of rope had swiftly jammed itself in place within their brains and the rope then tautened in such a way, so as to pull their collective minds in her direction and her direction alone. The inability to think anything else, other than what this lady was doing here and what their chances were with her was not altogether a fresh skill…this sort of thing had happened on and off since grade school…but the intensity…and clarity of vision and purpose…was definitely a new low as far as smut levels in the mind of the human male are expected to reach. “My will is good,” has always been and always will be the credo of perverts in denial. That…and, “I swear I didn’t know it would kill her!!!”
Only when chuck performed the unthinkable and composed the aforementioned sentence, did she turn her back to the painting and consider her uninvited guests.

“Excuse me…?” she asked, her eyebrows raised in the most charming way imaginable…”unless your name starts with a K and means “ball.” You have no business being here.” A smile flickered across her face as she took in their astounded drooling expressions…her gaze passing swiftly over each but lingering a bit longer on George…who nearly had a stroke. “I see your heart is empty this time...” she spoke to George…who quickly turned his head to see if there was someone standing behind him…then pointing at himself, asked,

“Me…?” George was aware of a peculiar sensation. “I have been here before…I have felt this…but I do not remember…” he thought…the voice inside his had…loud and clear…yet not entirely…his senses were completely askew…time and space were playing football with zebus and sunshine…chocolate hangovers were tormenting the soul of a vagabond juvenile. He felt like a cross dresser…stuck in a quagmire of nazi hooligans…power lifting some very heavy objects. They were round. “dear…lady…I…” he stammered…clearly at a loss. His mind a jamboree of weird peaks and troughs…what the hell was going on? He fell silent…taking advantage of which, chuck…looking lost and hopeful…made another gallant attempt at polite conversation.

“Girl…I wanna romp around in your soft things.”

“He is ugly…dear lady…talk to me instead…I swear…I have candy!” said the manager nearly in hysterics and yet very stationary.

“I will kick your punk ass till you die bitch.” Chuck said to the manager…in a threatening whisper, but never taking his eyes off the girl…woman…thing.

“Gentleman please…this is key…we must come together to…” but she was interrupted by a sudden outburst of song and music.

“The lady marsh sits painting hope
How I wish, to secretly grope
Here eyes are gray like cold hard steel
Does anybody else know how I feel?” The manager sang…plunking on a nylon stringed traveling guitar.

“Shut up you bastard…the lady speakethses about coming…together…it is key,” said chuck, curtly but with no result, “SHUT UP OR I SHALL END YOU WITH MY BARE HANDS!!!” bellowed chuck swinging a handful of mud at the manager…it hit him in the face and he spluttered into silence.
George however seemed entirely unconcerned…an unusual war waged inside his head…he could not understand which he wanted more…but what other option did he have…what was he doing? What was he thinking about?

“Listen to me George,” she spoke softly…it seemed as though her voice could only be heard by him…the other two were arguing verbally but a ‘no holds barred’ ass kicking was imminent. “You have come here before…as have countless before you…but none have ever managed to walk away…it is a gift and a curse…for none have ever regretted reaching this place even though it is their doom. For I live here…and I bring them joy beyond any other…and they die here wanting that which I can only hint at but never promise or give…it is a gift and a curse…I have been here…for millennia uncounted.” She was no longer standing still but moved…gliding…making her way towards him. Stepping into the pond…the surface of the water broke aside and made a dry path for her… “You have undone my entrapment…these millennia of isolation…they are over…I am free.”

“I don’t remember…and I don’t understand…there is a pain that I cannot…forget...something is not quite right…something…I can’t remember…yet I cannot forget it.”

“Forget it…” she said in a slightly harder tone…only slightly, “these fools will kill each other soon enough and we will be left to ourselves…that is what you want…” she spoke softly again, “to be with me…to be happy forever…that is what you deserve…this is what you have earned George...” she was very close now…the water had fallen back, rejoined behind her…and not a wave or a ripple was visible…she walked and he watched her…dazed and confused…she was…perfect.

“I…I…like it when you say my name…” he slurred lamely…swallowing spit as his mouth went dry…and yet conscious of a sensation similar to drowning. Her hair moved as she did…mesmerizing him…slowly enchanting the crap out of him…something still kept nudging him…at the back of his mind…somewhere.

“And I will say it forever…you must stay with me…it is over…your strife…it was destined to be so…destined…I see it now…and for once it is clear, for I have read the skies in vain…the stars here are mockeries…the trees here are silent…except mine…and I know that we have lost now…I see it in your eyes…that there was weaved a blanket of darkness heavier than the one I tried to cast of light…we have lost…but we have won all the same…I will give you something before I part forever” she was so close…he could smell her intoxicating smell…he could see plainly into her eyes, a vision, as they looked back into his…her perfect lips, red…any sound that was allowed passage through them was precious…but something.

“But…I don’t understand…how? What is this all about?”

“shhh…all in good time, I’m sorry George…this may hurt a little but it’s something you’ll get used to.” her voice a whisper that assailed his finer wits and left a sludgy mess behind of broken nerves and plastic calm. She touched his arm with her hand…gently…moving up to his shoulder...the softness of her touch equivalent to rebirth and the cleansing of all sins. George was going insane…he had seen and been through a lot in his life…and yet it was this…this…wonderful…fantasy…that was freaking him out. He looked to his right…the effort taken to break away his gaze from hers made his knees buckle but he managed to keep from falling…he saw chuck and the manager lying on the ground…seemingly asleep…but he had an inkling that they might not be. She placed her hand on his cheek…and forced his head to turn back, so once again he found himself looking deep within her eyes…and he saw marvelous sights…and then blinded by the brilliance of her eyes and the visions they held…he let go and felt softness upon his lips…visions raced across his mind’s eye…amazing monuments to pornographic history…pleasure beyond his comprehension…thoughts of ‘jobs’…’positions’… understanding…knowledge…false prophets…immaculate happiness…and in a rush of wild excellence and satisfaction…he was gone.
Everything was gone. Nothing mattered anymore. Nothing was worth the struggle…the nudging had ceased…his last futile defense had fallen…her gray orbs of unforeseen wonders had sucked every ounce of past, present, future, guilt, shame, hatred, opportunity, colour, ideology, race, religion, soreness of jaw, potential, projection, image and thought…everything…it was all gone…all he knew were her eyes…and what secrets they were willing to share with him…and how he wanted nothing other than that…she was everything he lacked in his life of promises broken.
It was at this point that somehow…miraculously…something red crossed his mind…a glimmer of sorts…there was someone else…and he saw somewhere a wooden desk of mahogany, complete with office stationery and lamps…the anchor…a gift of the memory of an athletic redhead…the smell of tree juice and passion…an equal, a bond, an imperfection, a flaw, a history, a meaningful memory that none could sift through save him…and the misty muddle that had clouded his mind, shifted to make way for what was going on.
The lady marsh was about to sink her two-inch long, pearly white fangs into his neck. Alarmed, he pushed her back…and tried to move away…or grab something…he knew that she was only a girl and all…but she had fangs!!
Astonishingly pretty females with fangs…look good in movies…hell they are hotter than hell fire…fantasies of the sort you should not discuss with anyone…but smile and keep to yourself…something about their fangs makes them even more…attractive than they should be…an element of romantic danger…of immortality…even tom cruise looks hot with fangs…but…in reality…when someone of the sort is about to chew your neck and then probably the rest of you out of existence…your penis declines to have a say in the matter and what few brain cells that may have survived your lifestyle…decide to go on ahead with clause number twenty three, article forty one of ‘the guide to live, for moderately intelligent mammals’, “get your shit together and save yourself asshole!!!”
She lunged back at him…an inhumanly lengthy jump to land on his chest and send him crashing down on his back…snarling like mad she tried to plant her choppers on anything that held, within its components, his genetic material…
He screamed like a girl and tried to get her off of him…grabbing her wrists and struggling to keep her at arm’s length…she was strong…whereas George was more or less pathetic…

“Can’t we just do it??” he pleaded, trying to reason with her. “Do it with me and eat the others…look they’re asleep…and that guy in the Bermuda shorts…he’s easy to chew…please woman…compose yourself…I’m a peace loving pacifist!!” but she only laughed a cackling high pitched laugh and said, “they’ll make for good deserts…but you my precious…you are the main course…after thousands and thousands of wayward morsels and wandering appetizers…finally. ”

“Your table manners are disgusting you hag…what’s the big deal anyway…what makes me so special??”

“You have…verve.” she replied…and unleashed a thus far untapped source of physical strength…breaking George’s grip and punching him on the nose.

“GET OFF OWWW…NOOOOOOOOOOOO…” shouted George…his legs in the air trying to push her back, when there was a fairly loud bang and George’s pants exploded. Lady marsh flew backwards into the air and fell into the pond…the tree beneath which she had sat let out a loud blood curdling sort of wail and then seemingly doubled over…as though struck halfway down by lazy axe men or attacked violently by lunatic beavers.

For a few…very long seconds…George just panted…utterly bewildered…stumped by what had just happened…strange thoughts like,
“Oh shit!!! My dick exploded!” raced around in his head and then all was dark.



When he came to, George found himself lying with head resting on a rock and his neck sore and stiff. His vision cleared and he saw chuck and the manager looking at something in the pond…he stumbled onto his feet and made his way towards them…there was a large hole in his pants…as well as his underwear…however it was apparent that his genitalia was safe and whole.

“Hey,” greeted chuck and beckoned him to join them, the manager was just staring fixedly at one spot, “come look at this before it’s all gone.”

George peered into the pond and saw the dead body of the marsh lady…she had a large…what seemed to be a bullet wound…down there where her privates should have been. Her eyes were wide and frozen in a last expression of shock and considerable pain. George let out a little whistle.

“Wow…what the hell?? How did this happen??”

“Well…” said chuck, “if you recall…I asked you to keep a gun hidden in your underpants…in case we needed to bump off this chap,” he pointed towards the manager who was still staring at the bloody mess. “I assume that some sort of struggle ensued whilst we were conked out and somehow…your thingy perhaps got twisted into the gun’s…that thing…and the whole muck up sort of…well somehow you shot her down with your cock! Amazing isn’t it?”

“Wow…shit…she was…so beautiful…what a waste.” Said George.

“Yeah…” said the manager…speaking for the first time and the sadness he felt was very well conveyed through that single word.

“Yes well…tough luck boys…but all is not lost…there is a silver lining to all this.” said chuck merrily, rather unaffected by the loss of something so enchantingly incomparable. “As you can see…this green water…is not actually water…but jewel bugs…jade jewel bugs to be specific…so our work is done…and about time too…because we’d almost run out of…well…things…hah.”

“I’m in much grief…the sorrow of her sad demise nettles my soul…I can’t believe I am responsible for her death…I’m in shock…but I swear once the fact sinks in…I’m going to kill myself…” he raised his hand to his lips and felt really gay.

“None of that now…none of that…what say we utilize a bug each, there are plenty here…enough to satisfy a starving nation…then we shall sit here together beside this awful little pond and mourn in unison, the loss of a treacherous bitch who just tried to kill us all but the evil of her actions is lost entirely upon us…shallow lads…for her beauty was and probably is and always will be…matchless.” said chuck handing out bugs and taking one himself. “Let the grief wash away boys…let it wash away and run it’s course…as the river flows to the sea…so must your grief go on to add to the great ocean of misery that each one of us bears with us…and will one day…hopefully leave behind…siphon it off…so that one day…the whole load will just simply end our lives when we are unable to deal with it anymore.”

“You are depressing me chuck…I mean I understand that this is sort of an impromptu funeral and all…but…could you…that thing?” asked George.

“Of course…my bad…by the way…you really need some shorts or something…it’s…obscene.” He said pointing at the large hole in his clothing. The world seemed to spin a bit off…for no reason…colours and shapes interweaving…strange…fragmented and incoherent…the trees seemed to sway…and chuck felt as though a large choir of ravens was singing the word “hello” over and over again…he felt hungry…sick…there were people sitting on the branches clapping their hands…all dressed in black.

“Good…the cavalry has arrived…and dressed for the occasion too…very fitting,” he mumbled, whilst George and the manager looked around finding objects they had missed before. “George…give us a recital…a poem…appropriate for the current circumstance…or maybe a few words for the deceased…” his eyes closed and a tear making its way down his cheek. “You, who knew her best…should speak…a requiem…an elegy.” streams of drool were dripping down his chin.


“Goldberry sits in her pool of gold,
Clad in green
The fairest queen,
The river daughter...
I should have caught her...
To make my wife and end my strife
Succumb to her knife or take her life.

Goldberry slips away into the night
The taste she leaves; will candles light.
Soft grass beneath; she runs to flee
Confident that none could see...
For old man willow is just a tree.

Nobody can catch me for my songs are strong
Except Goldberry for whose heart I long.” recited George…in a grave voice…

“Thank you…that was very childish.” said chuck appreciatively, “too bad for the nameless lady of the marsh…she had no heart to give…”





The Other. Things. The Girl. The King. The Misfit Lord.


I
n the midst of a cluster of mangroves and marble pillars where advertisements for savings and loans were plastered and innocent souls wept for the loss of autonomy and total control, George lynch sat with his friend, chuck lobsterman, the book friend, talking about a master plan. Fred Quimby had been missing now for what must surely be a significant amount of time…but there was no indication from any of the staff that his absence had been noticed. A decision was reached that it was a ‘cover-up’. Fred had been kidnapped…or possibly even hijacked…by a band of scum sucking tubers. The sun was, obscured by clouds and it was impossible to tell the time even though a bell would sound every now and then but the divisions had already been made…capitalism at its best. Some people were lying on benches…looking upwards, counting crows…others were looking down, counting faces of long dead presidents. There was a large, fancy looking bird perched on a tree wearing world war two fighter pilot goggles and a white silk scarf. Chuck had tried shooing it away…throwing rocks at it…and marching around the tree, holding banners of protest and shouting absurd fallacies, horrifying obscenities and everything else short of full-fledged turf war…but the bird wouldn’t fly away.

“It’s a goddamned camera…they’re looking at us,” he whispered, sweating profusely after an hour of pointless rhetoric aimed at dethroning and permanently removing the bird. “Take your damn goggles off if you’re a man…show us if you can do this to us without your fancy army goggles…we’re not afraid of you, you ass licking tyrant piece of smut!!” but the bird did not move an inch…and showed no sign of compliance. This only increased chuck’s frustration…George was annoyed…this whole mess was too far away…it was all too…inconsequential…he had a secret…and no one to tell it to…no way to tell it either…secrets aren’t secrets if nobody knows that they exist…unless it’s one of those…heavy ones.

“Forget about the damn bird and its goggles…we have problems…what about Fred?” he asked…looking at his watch. Both the hands were curling away, stretching, and not really helping.

“I think he’s dead…I think I saw them take his body out for dancing lessons…it’s not like anybody cares…not that many people cared for his rhymes.” he answered distractedly, monitoring the bird from the corner of his eye. “I don’t trust it…it’s not a good sign…you are too young to understand espionage and its implications…perhaps if I just cut the tree down and tie it to an object that is in motion…preferably moving towards a direction which I’m not going to be headed towards…I might just manage to get rid of it.” A sudden pain in his chest, near and around the region of his heart made him fall down to the floor, where he lay twitching like a fish out of water…everything turned white for a few seconds…he couldn’t hear a thing…and then just as suddenly, the strange spasm of throbbing agony passed and he opened his eyes to a much nicer scene...it was just the same and that was exactly what made it so nice…the grass was greener…but not for long.

“It’s still there, I can sense its presence…I will not be treated like an animal…THIS IS NOT A ZOO!!!” shouted chuck as a herd of gazelles came out of the elevator and headed towards the information section, carrying loafs of bread. “George…hand me a shovel…that one with the red handle…that one on the desk…take a guess…do you have any idea where I’m going with this?” he asked from his resting place on the floor.

“Chuck…underneath it all…I’m a bad person.” sighed George grabbing the red handle but forgetting the shovel.

“For heaven’s sake…what now?” asked chuck, sounded exasperated, tired and dehydrated…he had his troubles…this permanent therapy session was unreasonable.

“My arms feel like jelly and my hand won’t stop trembling…to top it all off this aching jaw is going to kill me. I’m tired and I feel guilty for having killed her.”

“Savor it…enjoy the realization…how many people do you imagine have that sort of shit on their resume? You are a hero.” reasoned chuck, lighting up a cigg...

“I’ve got the trots…can’t stop taking dumps…I think I have ulcers.” George tried to steer his golf cart around the sand trap surrounded by paper cones.

“I have tarot cards…and I know how to read them…so we’re even.” muttered chuck coughing up blood and phlegm…the back of his head bleeding like mad…he had fallen off the cart on top of a paper cone with a spike hidden inside it.

“It’s not about getting even…it’s about knowing which cone is hiding the large spike that’ll puncture my hand if I slam it on top.”

“Can’t avoid what you can’t avoid. Like I just said…I’ve got tarot cards and I know how to read them…and I knew this would happen…” said chuck, wincing with pain as he cut the back of his overcoat with a knife, to free himself from a fate (in his opinion) worse than death…crippled life.

“I should’ve gone somewhere else…not this reservoir of mindless pagan rituals and savage customs…not on a Sunday…I could’ve done so much immaterial stuff. I could have made something of my time…at least my watch wouldn’t have bailed on me…”

“What materials are you interested in here?”

“You know full well…I slaughtered a fantasy for it…but I’m not getting it…like you said…my fix is not for sale.”

“Then enjoy the luxury of mine…for you…today…it is free…tomorrow…it will cost more than you could ever afford to pay…so relax…use your brain…don’t let it use you…suck the marrow out of life…take pleasure in this suffering…stroll around in your tiny little world of dismay, imagine a fraudulent society crumbling at the sound of your mortality…and use a protractor to draw circles…otherwise it’s annoying…it looks morbid.” he said pointing at the distorted circles that George was drawing with a pencil…the entire back wall was covered…moss grew everywhere…mostly just on pictures of relatives and old accomplishments that everyone had already forgot.

“The manager is right…your callous heart is worth more than our feeble excuses.” sighed George, eyeing a certificate on a wall that had meant more before.

“Right you are…but there are other things…and you don’t know everything now do you?”

“I never claimed to have that knowledge…I only want what should be mine…” said George, frustrated.

“So do old men with gas…as do gamblers who spend time playing cards all night…destitute travelers begging money off strangers…and strippers removing clothes for the amusement of same…I swear…this stuff is strong…” coughed chuck, “have you noticed the fantastic aurora that encumbers thoughts and makes it easier to float??”

“It is…it radiates out of the walls…like sunshine…feels ruthless…I don’t trust anyone…never have…never will…paranoid.”

“It is ruthless…it reminds me of a past I relive every single second of my existence…though I have a good defense mechanism…it’s called logic.”

“That is a cowardly exaggeration as well as a lie…you don’t possess the finesse for eternal anguish.”

“Burn…I found out the name of the Lob…I got a post card from it actually…it’s real…no email crap.” said chuck waving a postcard in front of George’s nose.

“Was it addressed to me?” asked George absently.

“Yes but I opened it…it was not a mistake…I genuinely wanted to read your mail…it’s how I get my kicks…reading letters people send you…in fact I sleep in your mailbox at night and touch myself when the postman comes.” said chuck sarcastically, “ now if you’ve stopped acting like a shit head…here…check it out…it’s come all the way from Hawaii.” Chuck handed George the postcard. It had a picture of palm trees and a blue beach…whether water or jewel bugs, was hard to say…it read,

“Hey guys…wish you were here…I missed you back there…but next time I’ll make sure you die.
Much love and decentralization,
Wagner (the Lob)”

“Wagner?? Its name was Wagner??”

“No it’s Warner…he misspelled it…don’t be obnoxious…accept things as they are and stop asking derogatory questions.”

“It wasn’t a derogatory question.”

“Though you may not have realized this George, fact is…It embarrassed your brain…she hasn’t been working and has become a lazy, fat pig on a couch eating crap…and pushing it out…your question revealed that unto me with a nice visual…so cease…please.”

“I’ve been thinking about how the desk cuts into my wrist…I thought maybe I could get a sponge or something…nothing revolutionary…just honest.”

“Beg for mercy…maybe it’ll work.”

“I did…but I messed up again…I always do” he said more to himself than to chuck and then recalled a bit of information that had been lurking at the back of his mind for a while now, “we have been invited to the king’s ball…we are candidates for ‘employee of the month’ you know…they must think you helped me fight off that bitch…do tell them how you snored her into submission.” “But honestly chuck…you should know that it’s dwelling on me…I know she was a crazy, vampire, mutant, whore…but there you have it…she was really hot…plus I’m no murderer…I feel half…small, and there’s something else that...”

“You’re mad…I would’ve shot her just to tell people I slew an eternal freak of nature with my crotch. A vampire…yes…she was fairly good looking…but so what?? If you killed her than it is obvious…you were higher up in the charisma chain…”

“You’re the one who’s mad…I was in a building once…it seemed familiar…but it was not…everything in it had a story that I must’ve read before, everything I touched was something somebody had touched before…and I could feel it…the walls could remember what it had been like and could pass the information back to me…the stone would resonate with memories…everything was alive…”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m not sure…did I say that out loud? I’m telling you…it’s eating me alive…she was not human…I saw something in her eyes…I saw…things I know I will never see again…the sort you know you wish you’d never known existed…ignorance is bliss and what not…but it’s too late…I can’t explain any better than this…it’s like having stared at the sun all your life until somebody comes in and turns the switch off and you realize it was just a light bulb…imagine looking out a window after that…or not having a window to look out of…the sheer magnitude of what she revealed to me…will kill me…and I wish I had not seen it.”

“What the hell is wrong with you damn it…what did you ‘glimpse’…did you see your parents having sex?? Is that what you saw?? Well??” asked chuck, “Are you a bloody child??? Get over it!! Lot’s of people walk in on that sort of thing…I know it’s hard and it sort of damages the fabric of reality a bit…childhood trauma…inability to perform for the rest of your life…but still…there are those among us who snap out of it…accept it for what it is…an act of…whatever…how the hell do you think you came into this world??? You don’t believe the bloody stork story do you??”

“You are a disgusting little shit…I did not see that…I would have slit my wrists if I had seen that.”

“See!! It’s a good thing then…now you know that there is something worse…something that would have driven you to kill yourself…wonderful…so whatever you saw was crap…now calm down…have some juice or something.” said chuck, ignoring the woman who was now trying to attract his attention by waving her tax returns form in front of his face.

“You don’t get it…it’s the fact that even if I killed myself, I wont be able to run away from this…there is no escape.” said George, kicking the woman in the shin.

“What did you see?” asked chuck looking a bit concerned. His mouse was dying.

“I don’t know.” answered George “And anyway all she did was suck on people and kill them whilst they enjoyed it…enjoyed…it…she made them enjoy pain and suffering…what’s so wrong with that…what’s so wrong about dying happy???”

“It’s true…they say it’s hard to be proper once you’ve been hit by a spell cast by someone who’d rather not have cast It.” said chuck, feeling like a fox with a chicken for a date.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked George.

“I think it’s obvious…you were more than dinner…there was something very fishy about the whole episode…I recall feeling…odd flip flops in my stomach.”

“Are you kidding me?? You were asleep…though now that you mention it, I felt odd flip flops too…but that’s only natural because…well…we are but men…and she had cast a spell…and…”

“This conversation is headed in a direction that may cause severe diabetes to me…but I’m going to risk it…” chuck sighed…then continued, “why did you kill her?”

“You know that I did not…it was an accident…it was your damn gun, in my crotch, and I was being mauled by her, she was doing a good job…I expected to die…I struggled but I was ready…well…just…you know…”

“Not really…but considering how damaged you are as a person and owing to the shame you bring upon humanity, I am willing to pretend that I understand…so a collapsing building shot the lady?”

“You might say that.”

“George…what made you struggle?? Why does it happen that every time your life is about to be ended…for your own betterment…you take it upon yourself to make yourself live and consequently, suffer???”

“I struggled because I thought that in spite of it all…I had…a…well…you know who works on the counter up front.”

“No…that train has sailed…it sailed a long time ago…actually it wasn’t even at the station when you arrived…you just thought it was…or maybe you just saw…a distant train smoke on the horizon…you are nuts…obsessive…there is no chance in hell that you could ever…ever expect to beat the king of Cornholeshire…he is rich…he has land…he has had better scenes…so forget it…and you know…to be fair…he’s prettier than you.”

“You are wrong…and do you know why??? Because trains don’t sail…and because…I will kill the king.” said George with an unexpected amount of venom in his voice…surprising even himself…he repeated, “I, will kill the king.” Chuck stared at him…as though seeing him in a new light for the umpteenth time. He seemed…excited…awestruck…he seemed at the edge of saying something…then carefully he said,

“The king is dead…long live the king.” and watched the goggled bird take off.




There was a foot of mud everywhere in the bank when George lynch walked in. he was angry…the weather was bad but his memory was worse…for once he could remember everything clearly and there was only one thing on his mind. He was not entirely sure what that was…the impossibility of his situation perhaps…the unlikely dreams, the end of everything…waking up was not as victorious a march as it should be…not for him. The bank was not where he felt happy anymore…it was just another vile landmark filled with the sort of muck that lights up the eyes of those who know they would enjoy watching you want what you can’t have. He had killed a vampire and felt pretty awful about it…and what for? Blood spilt for what? All she did was suck on people and kill them whilst they enjoyed it.

“There are three women pilfering my stuff…why?” demanded George, slamming his fist on the counter up front. The redhead behind the counter stared at him, she had flinched when he had banged his hand…and that had pleased him…but she was not moving now.

“Freedom of information says the king…especially when some are plotting mutiny. What did you do to the manager?” she asked in a thoroughly accusatory tone. Slamming a file titled, “things to do when nobody’s watching…although in my opinion…someone is always watching.”

“We…went to attend the funeral of a mutual friend.” Eyeing the file with some curiosity…

“Who?” she asked, trying to hide the file underneath another one entitled, “act…natural.”

“A woman…you don’t know her…she…had shiny eyes…and very…well…just forget it…nothing…I wish I could.” said George…feeling tired of this nonsense…

“Have you been invited to the royal ball?” she asked indifferently…a file entitled, “hold me up and hide behind me, then when you’re done, somebody else will find me.” in her hands.

“Yes…it seems like an overly gay event…“royal ball”…I hear the king is queer…cries a lot…and hits women.” He said, trying to put the king down…apparently he was sticky.

“I hear you whine a lot…and kill women…” she replied with a smile, stickier than hell fire.

“Hahahahaha…I…honestly haven’t laughed in a while…I wish I could kill you…and enjoy it.”

“Yes…isn’t that a shame…” she said, from behind a large stack of files…entitled, “please them all…everyone has the strength of one.” “The king has been out hunting…for boredom…said he would bring me back the head of a lion or die trying.”

“Isn’t that nice…he sounds like a stand up guy…you know you have bad taste.”

“How odd…he said the exact same thing…so I told him that if he could just bring his own head back…that would be enough…” she said.

“You mean his sizeable wallet…but anyway…if his head should be enough…then I’ll bring you that…the king’s head…on a platter.

“Hah…you and what army…just because he is a bit…presumptuous…he always asks me who you are and why I talk to you…and I know he’s met you…before you knew what he wanted…you think he would grant you an audience??”

“How come you never told me that the king had a thing for you…and…vice versa. Everything was…so good.”

“Because I can choose what to say…unlike you…who are entirely governed by my existence…”

“That’s not something you would normally say…is it? Isn’t that like telling the truth?”

“So pretend I didn’t say it…isn’t that what you do…everyone knows about your little ‘problem’…how your mind works…if you can call it work…and how it makes you see what you feel like seeing…you are deluded…and…not really doing anything.”

“You are cruel…though you have no right to be…you still owe me something.”

“Our deal does not come into effect until after our demise…so…wait a while…a very long while.” She said. “Stalling for time and eating souls until it’s too late…isn’t that just the best way to make way for perfection?”

“I loathe waiting…and I hate being Rumplestiltskin…” he muttered.

“Too bad…I’ll see to it that you never guess my name.”

“I am not alone you know…or one…I am many…and my little “problem” is really not…I enjoy it…it has its perks. Once you figure out how it works…”

“You wish to ask me questions…and converse forever…too bad I have a life…so I will leave…by the way…that vampire, what did she do?”

“She…sort of smiled, turned and moved away…like you used to…I would’ve been lost but I was stupid enough to realize how much I preferred living in misery to dying in relative pleasure…it was a…. complete overdose…don’t know how I got out…of course I do…you…you…are a waste of life…of time…of…my mind…get out of it…I would pay to have you exit my brain forever…and the next time I meet her…I’ll let her sink those fangs in. you know it often hits me…you are not worth it…but when I’m away…I forget…you are a shabby little construction that should probably be condemned…I’ll never understand what keeps you going…you should’ve killed yourself by now…an apology every now and then…you have no shame…I am evil but you don’t even know what the difference is…at least I know I’m doing something wrong when I do it…you just…carry on…but you’re delicious looking…so I suppose that’s all I care for…though you are not innocent…you’re just wrong.”

“You are pathetic…I take back what I said about you being governed by my existence…I forget that you are male and governed by none save your penis.”

“Yes…but very few people have escaped death the way I have…and I swear…my will is good…and in spite of it all…I stand here expecting lord knows what…there must be something…I tell you I have faith…or I don’t know…I suppose I’m just…addicted.”

“It’s your fault…we didn’t use to fight all the time before…you’d say nice things and I’d pretend I cared…it was all a nice ego boost and then you lost it.”

“No…you’re the one who lost it…it’s not like I wanted anything…did I ever ask for anything?? We could’ve continued our little game forever…I’m very patient when satisfied and I am easily satisfied. What did you have to go to the king for…he’s old for one thing and probably boring…and frankly…he’s doesn’t really care for anything other than his throne. Me…I am always lonely but never alone.”

“Not really…he’s less likely to embarrass me socially…and is prettier.”

“Aah…right…and you ask me why I’m bitter…what else would you expect when my being me is unacceptable.”

“I’d expect you to change.”

“And would that accomplish anything? Would I get what I want?”

“No.”

“Pick a card…any card…they’re all the same…” said George, smiled, turned and moved away.




George was in a small dark place…

“You know chuck…I was sitting in a chair on the porch of this house next to a man who had an infant on his lap. His daughter. We were watching the rain…because we had nothing better to do…so there I was…sitting…the man with his daughter…this large monkey…with a beard was walking around making faces for the amusement of the baby…he had strange gums that can probably be seen from space…which reminds me…I’m in a small dark place…help me…I’m reaching out chuck…save me…right…yeah so there we were…sitting, watching the rain. The man had wrapped his daughter in this blanket like cocoon…it was funny…but not really…to be frank the child wasn’t ugly…just enough months old to not look like a floppy mango and not old enough to be entirely obnoxious…so we sat…and the man seemed like a good father…and then suddenly he leant low to be closer to the girl’s ear and said, “what are you?”

“And…what did the girl say?” asked chuck over his newspaper.

“Nothing…she was seven months old…couldn’t talk.”

“Yes but infants have a proper sign language…they can communicate with hand gestures and stuff.”

“You know…you say I can’t get my fix…fact is I do…one meeting can keep me going for weeks at a time.”

“You and your goddamn meetings…I’m telling you…they’re the reason why you’re such a pitiful mess…stop going…stop admitting that you’re a…whatever it is that you lot call yourselves.”

“Misfits…”

“Yes that…what infantile nonsense…and don’t tell me you’ve never nearly broken your neck going through windows that can’t be opened and thrown up violently whilst sitting listening to the mindless rambling of a god damned dwarf.”

“We are all equal in that room.”

“She is not your equal…are you insane??? She is not a misfit…and if she is…then you aren’t…so stop it…it’s impossible…you need to snap out of it…there are other things and means by which you can…just…damn it! You are getting on my nerves George…I suggest we quit this and go in the pursuit of productive leisure…I have recreational facilities available for us. Meanwhile, keep in mind what you said…the king must fall…you won’t get anything…that’s true…but…well…then again…they are treacherous and shallow…and eternally different…so you don’t know what might just…hahaha…” chuck gave a short laugh, offered something to George…then sat still for a while. They were laughing but then stopped…George was looking odd…his eyes were blood red and his unfocused eyes seemed to be searching for something invisible. George could feel the presence of another…whether around him or within him…he couldn’t really figure out…there was another, that much he was sure off…”am I here or there?” thought George…but there were no answers. “I need to…I need to…I need to…” and then he spoke.

“It’s too late chuck…I’m in a small, dark place…it’s…dwelling on me…I’ve been…thinking. Did I tell you how the day is longer…something is wrong. I don’t wish to understand…have you noticed how we’re all…just…what’s that word???” George felt that in his incoherence was an answer…he got up quietly…and moved across the room without taking a single step…and then came back and then went around, he was everywhere, no organization to take command of his motion…no laws dominating his being. “I am insane chuck…I can hear myself talking inside your head…I hear myself all the time…I am…almost…all powerful…and I am very, very sorry. But this can’t go on much longer…how long have I been alone?”

“What are you talking about George…?”

“It’s too late chuck…the darkness has spread…I’ve tried to contain it…it…” George stopped…and closed his eyes…he could smell the forest air…the glade…the trees…he could smell the past and revel in nostalgia…relive the precedent forever. He opened his eyes.
George Lynch stood alone in a forest, with his hands on the trunk of a car. People sat on the branches of trees…he could only see the whites of their eyes…blinking…staring…questioning his every move, motive…

“What drives you George…what makes this nonsense spew out of your mouth?” asked George…they were back. The forest had melted away. “He’s trying to fight me off.” thought George. “Or maybe…” people were whispering now…he could nearly make out what they were saying…over and over again…mad man…he felt strange. A stroll in the park…you are easily forgotten…a stroll… “I sure would like to lie down now.”
“Did…did you see…the forest…I…something is not quite right chuck…I’ve seen things I can’t explain.” HELLO?
George blinked and found himself in the forest with his hands on the trunk of a car again…he wanted to open it…he must…flashes streaming across his mind…the dwarf…the king…the girl…the scribe…the mad man…the misfit lord…

“WHICH ONE IS WHICH CHUCK??!!!” he screamed into the forest and was back in the bank. “What makes sense?? Are you kidding me…are you the scribe? Are you the mad man??” there was rain somewhere…there was a tree…there were gates he had climbed and walls he had scaled for absolutely no reason other than to see if he could…is that why they were punishing him? The smell of home had lost its charm and all was left was expensive perfume…dress shirts and plastic…but none of it belonged to him…everyone else preferred the progress.

“All??” screamed George…the word echoed over and over again and the trees shook till the noise faded away…birds took flight, flapping their wings in alarm…their wristwatches crashing down like hail. George was back in the forest…the faceless people were climbing off the trees…slowly…like a lazy poison…they were everywhere…George stared at them and then lowered his gaze back to his hands…still on the trunk of a car…sweat dripped from his forehead…the air was stifling…the winter had died…the poison had reached its target organ and was working its charm…sleep would come…forget her.

“Save me chuck…how long have I been alone?? Tell me?? Sing me a song…”
George wondered for a second whether chuck might explode. The forest…he had been there…the trunk…he had been in it…what had happened that he could not remember? Why did he care when there were entire months of his life that he had no recollection of…but this was important…this was something he had meant to remember…something had gone wrong…what did she say…?
“Bless me chuck…bless me with shame.” said George and felt the trembling earth steady out beneath his feet, and closed his eyes.

“Welcome back stud muffin.” muttered chuck, peering over his newspaper…he wasn’t reading it but kept it for the effect. “What’s the last sane thing you remember?”

“You, suggesting we go off in search of ‘productive leisure,’ my head is about to explode and my jaw is burning…what the hell did we do.”

“Well…the usual…but something went off in your pretty little head and you decided to start screaming your balls off and keeping it up till you dropped and went out like a light.”

“It’s the stress…a bad…well…did you try to talk me out of it…? I think I heard you…loads of other people…we should take a break or something…I have a broken heart you know…”

“Yes, yes well, it’s annoying…get a grip…we have loads to do…”

“Have you ever done any good in your life chuck?” asked George…surveying the damage…his clothes seemed clean enough.

“Hmm…there was…I think I did one good thing…an old man came and said he was hungry…so I gave him food.”

“Nothing apart from that??”

“I could have you arrested…that would make my second.”

“You’d get arrested too you know. Being an accomplice and what not.”

“That would be my third.” said chuck and went back to reading.



George lynch was wandering around in the bank when he noticed a crowd near a section of the bank he usually avoided. They were hooting and whistling…this normally wasn’t a good sign…but then again it happened during dwarf wrestling matches…and the occasional cockfight. He walked up to the mass of people expecting to see two roosters wearing sixteenth century knight armor, standing in the middle, holding swords and swearing profusely…but instead found that the center of all attention was a boy in a glass room.

“What’s up here? What’s with the kid?” George asked the man standing next to him.

“This is the kid…the king growed special…from birth onwards and even from before when he was inside his mother…they made him listen to music…all sorts of it…or maybe just one sort…I can’t say for sure…but he’s been listening to music since ever…maybe I think it’s just the same bit of music he’s been listening to for so many years…but I can’t say for sure…not for sure…but anyways…they say he’s never heard silence before in all his life…so now they put him in this glass box…it’s sound proof…they played him music in it constant…but every now and then they turn it off…and we get to see him freak out…it’s fun.”

“Interesting…so what does he do when they turn the music off?”

“He starts dancing.”

George walked up to the glass cage and put his hands on it. He could feel the surface vibrating. The boy inside was sitting; unaware of the attention he was drawing.

“Doesn’t he feel odd about him being put on display?” asked George.

“He doesn’t know anything about any display…the glass is one of those…mirror things from the inside…he thinks he’s in a room with mirrors for walls…he’s lived in it forever…and doesn’t seem to mind it much…I think they use the same glass in the toilets…but anyways…the boy’s unaware of this party…sometimes when he’s asleep…they changes the mode of the mirrors…so he can see outside as well…and then they turn the music off…so he wakes up and screams like hell…when he sees us watching…he don’t know about day and night…so sometimes he sleeps when we’re around…then when he screams and craps his pants we get a couple of laughs for free…I wonder what he thinks when he discovers this lot gaping at him…probably thinks he had a nightmare…they turns the mirrors to normal quick so the boy never gets much of a scare…anyway it’s good fun…keeps the employees happy…something to keep the morale up and what not…it’s like having a mascot…or a reminder…how we’re better off than some people.”

“This is fascinating…the king really knows what he’s doing when it comes to messing people up.”

“There are many kings…which one did this…we don’t know…there are so many people in one person that it’s hard to say what he did…heck half the stuff people say I did…I don’t remember…it’s like…having other lives…plus it’s bloody convenient when you don’t want to feel responsible for absolutely anything…the best excuse since temporary insanity…permanent insanity.”

“Yes it’s amazing…it’s like a disease you don’t have but are getting shots for.”

“Yeah…very normal…like wanting to have the biggest car all the time…being afraid of the future and what it might bring…only asking questions that have no consequence whatsoever…and only doing that sort of thing in a toilet which should be done in a toilet and nothing else…” said the man, rather pointedly in the end.

“As long as it’s normal it’s good…that’s what all the calendars on the walls say…now I have to get out of here…you decadent shits make me retch.” George moved on in search of other activities as the little boy started dancing for no apparent reason…it seemed more like convulsions but could be interpreted as dance.

Chuck lobsterman and George lynch were sitting on the rooftop of a building neither of them had ever known. The night was stiflingly dark, the thickness of which made it seem as though it might be harder to breathe and the still air made the paranoia worse but every now and then the clouds would shift and moonlight would make its way through. The talk was down to a bare minimum…there were other people around but only in the corners of eyes, like blackbirds taking off into the night. Stonehenge was visible, the construction process halfway between close to nothing and nothing…but the cranes were present. Tall trees breathed heavily trying to make use of as much of the stagnant air as they could…thick, mucous-like…it was difficult to draw a breath but then here were two…drawing…two, four, eight…it didn’t really matter. It should’ve rained long ago but nature seemed to be waiting for a sign…something…relevant.

“I was talking to this chap…” said George, finally regaining enough sense of self to break the silence, “and he was talking about how people are overly scared of little things…like what will their friends think, what college to choose…should they stay out of the sun…is it safe to eat food from the street…the environment…and mostly…what clothes to wear. Clothes are an obsession…it’s like what they wear must reflect their current state of mind…which they are deluded enough to presume to have…”

“I think you’re wrong there…not everyone uses clothing that way…some people actually hide behind the clothes they wear…they’ll have socially acceptable covers on socially unacceptable selves…”

“Yes well anyway…they actually give thought to dressing…I mean it’s not like I wear my socks around my neck…but they give too much thought…like…what would it mean if I left my sleeves unbuttoned…or my tie hanging loose.”

“So you leave your sleeves unbuttoned? Then they’d have something to point out and feel good about??”

“Not really…I’m just lazy…though it might be an unconscious thing…people often feel comfortable when they feel superior…or at least…less at risk of being chopped up…and egos are big the smaller you are.”

“Actually the bigger you get the more you like to show off how down to earth you are…so you shake hands with poor people and make like you love them…”

“That too…I’ve seen it happen…the houses we build are bigger than what we need…only because we want to show off how much we have…why we do that is beyond me…it’s a proven fact that a man can live in a one room apartment…or a castle…if he has to.”

“Yes but why not show off your wealth…if you have it…flaunt it…like boobs.”

“True…there is that school of thought…but it’s like a disease…there’s no end to it…all consuming…better things can be done with all the money you waste building a house that is too big for an army just to let your neighbors know that you can have their mothers stolen if you wished.”

“I think you’re missing the point entirely…fact is…our dinner tables are filled with excellent food but not because we’re hungry…but so we can tell the man who can’t afford food that we can.”

“Close…but maybe if you phrase it differently…I’m all for modest living as long as everybody else does it too.”

“I think you’ve come closer than you realize…”

“I suppose…but here’s where I get off…like I said…people are afraid of little things…what will their friends think and so on…”

“Is death a little thing? Would you say a person was silly to be afraid of dying?”

“To be honest…it’s not death that should be feared…it’s the feeling you’ll get when on the day you die you realize that you wasted life being afraid of the little things…like what will your friends think…etc etc…that… is what will freeze their crap eventually…that is when they’ll figure…the best schools with the proper looking people and the best jobs with the proper sort of fraud and the best pension plan with the best insurance of life and limb weren’t the best policy…”

“So what you do is going to help you when you die? You will be satisfied with your decisions or lack thereof?”

“Not really…I’ve never been that good a person…people are self obsessed because they’re afraid…and I am self obsessed because I think I’m better than them…I think I am superior…though I must make it plain that I never refuse to admit it when I meet someone who is better than I…generally.”

“Wait…so you only like people whom you think are better than you?”

“No…not true…I like people who either amuse me…or move me enough to make me think of something other than myself…people who have enough personality…charisma…whatever you want to call it…a quality if you will…that can command my attention…”

“Are you narcissistic…?”

“Not exactly…no…but somewhere in the middle…I certainly do not think I’m worth a mirror…but I think I have a good combination of mediocrity and balls. By the way, have you noticed how still it is? The night is very quiet…it’s unnerving…nothing is moving…no sounds…no light except for a few brief moments…my underwear is unusually itchy…seems peculiarly like the calm before a storm…type scenario…very…morbid.”

“I don’t see it…maybe a bit morose I suppose…but not all that unsettling…nights are rare and only just the absence of sun.”

“I don’t agree…nights have…something…awesome…there’s more to night than just the absence of light…they are more alive…somehow…everything reverberates with this nearly uncontrollable power or emotion…every single second seems to lead up to something…as the night progresses, this feeling of impending doom or something…increases…as though at any moment an unseen dam would burst and everything will drown, crash…it’s hard to explain…but basically it’s just that it’s all going somewhere…nights are not as casual and purposeless as days…I’ll never get used to nights…though I have experienced an equal amount of both.”

“Interesting…and what do they lead up to? This buildup you speak of…has it never culminated in anything…tangible?”

“Never…it’s like a chorus that keeps on building and building, rising to an insane crescendo…an upsurge of hidden power that threatens to over throw all sense and reason but then just when it seems about to explode…nothing happens…and day takes over…or day takes over and nothing happens. Maybe if night were just a bit longer…something might actually happen.”

“I don’t see how night could…

Here chuck was interrupted by a swishing sound. A silent sort of swish that defies all normal definitions of silence…it was not a whisper, but a noise that was so loud and yet spoke of silence that it was impossible to understand or categorize it…and accompanying it, was a movement of air that made George’s hair stand on end. A gust of wind out of nowhere…swept their thoughts away and left no trace behind. The clouds had shifted and moonlight illuminated the night…another swish followed the first and a colossal shape appeared and filled the night sky. A mammoth winged beast, the likes of which George had never seen before…a reptile so large, a wingspan so vast…that it was almost impossible to contain the image inside ones head without feeling the burden. The wings seemed to stretch on for miles…and with one swish could carry this enormous creature over land and sea. It’s huge jaw seemed capable of chewing a sky scraper into scrap metal within seconds and it’s fiery green eyes held secrets so ancient that no man could process them in one lifetime…it did not seem wary of the two men watching it…it did not seem in great haste or disturbed in anyway…but flew away with complete indemnity…it seemed to know the purpose of its outlined course more so than any other living creature…the fact that this large colossus seemed capable of thought and understanding, scared the living crap out of George…what insane summons must it be answering…what ungodly inspiration had urged it to leave its rest and fly with such determination to whatever destination it had chosen. It seemed too careful…too confident…too large and too indestructible to be allowed.
Like a winged snake it made its way across the sky, the lowest part of it passing less than twenty feet above George’s head…the slipstream nearly carrying him off as well. From the east it had risen and towards the west it made its way…George and chuck turned their heads in stunned silence and watched it fly away. Trees swayed as it passed above them…and the ground seemed to feel less stable. In a minute or so, it had vanished from sight.

“Maybe you’re right…maybe nights do lead up to something…”said chuck quietly as the silence of the night resumed and the air became heavy again…but an element of relief was mixed therein…as though nature now knew that the worst was over…and though it was still in shock…a sigh of relief had been taken. Within a few minutes, the clouds covered the moon back up and it started