This crawled its way up and out my brain the other day. Been thinking a lot about the tropes of children's literature and how they can apply to more adult fiction...
"The King of Veils and the Queen of Silent Screaming fear the Slumbering Duke."
They were the only words she had spoken in a decade. Dr. Vershenk was sure they provided the key to her ailment. He had nothing else.
She was hunched in her usual spot beside the bed: back pressed against padded frame and crumpled mattress, knees drawn up to her nose, huge dark haunting eyes peering out of sleepless hollows, fever pale features. Her untouched dinner tray rested beside her. In six years of observation he had never seen her eat, never even seen her move. Not even to blink. One would assume she were comatose if it weren't for those eyes.
Loathing. Malice. Distrust. A hurt so poignant, so deep, it demanded a response. Dr. Vershenk had stopped looking at those eyes years ago. The guilt still had not left him.
In the corner, Julia the Clock-work Girl softly ticked. Dr. Vershenk ignored her so completely it was like she wasn't there.
He scribbled a few meaningless notes - coherence lost in constant repetition till they had become nothing more than a jumble of absurd symbols - and closed his notebook with a practiced sigh. It fell to the floor like a weight, laden with unspoken fears and frustration. Fat breath scarabs scrambled ponderously to claim the routine prize that had made them sluggish and corpulent. Vershenk pushed at the bridge of his glasses, shook his head to complete the ritual, and carefully, unconsciously, stepped over the frenzying scarabs.
The lights and the cobweb canopy fell fluttery with his passing.
Long after the dark had settled, the broad black leaves continued to flutter and shake. The Page of Veils made its slow way from the Court into the cell.
"His Majesty requests your presence." he coughed glacially slow through the complicated motions of his mouth parts.
The whine of a flywheel unleashed filled the corner. From behind the painted demure smile, a child's voice, scratchy and crackling, emerged, "He can wait. She is otherwise occupied."
An adventurous scarab moved sloth deliberate beneath the glossy cascade of her hair, legs carefully picking over the curve of neck, up the cliff hang of jaw. Feelers tenderly caressed flesh, searching, tasting, for soft currents of body warmed and spiced air. It was sprawled over her cheekbone, one whip lash antennae prodding at the gelid surface of an eye, when its other feeler went taut. The barest waver of breath had tickled its tensely vibrating end. It scurried awkwardly, gorged girth making motion cumbersome on the vertical plane of cheek, towards the dark inlet of her nostrils. Its antennae were probing the moist recesses, one deep within each cilia lined passage, when she finally exhaled with the slow measured breath of the sedated. The scarab recoiled as if it had been burnt. Feelers and limbs jerked spastically confused and uncoordinated. It virtually leapt from the poison exhalation's presence, disappearing into the crisp white folds and creases of her institutional pyjamas.
No response. Just that emotion laden glare at nothing.
"His Majesty will not be kept waiting." barked the Page. He lowered four of his arms into view, multiple joints jerking and flexing, busily weaving strands of shadow, torn bed sheets and secrets into a barbed cord. Two smaller limbs emerged, deftly began to loop and twist the tarnished length of line into a noose. The air shimmered heat haze dreamily within the circular opening of the knot.
Unseen latches clicked out of place, tension springs unwound and coiled, locked gears spun into life. Julia dropped with sudden mechanical abruptness into a crouch, clock-work innards reoriented for action swift and brutal. Her painted porcelain features took on a harsh cast with the sudden shift of angles and reflected firefly star light.
"There is no need for that." voice distorted by echo and vasty distances.
From behind the cracked altar against which she crouched, the lichen stained mausoleum door grated slowly, slowly open. Muted, not truly heard cries - more like the recollection of memories long buried - flowed like fog from the growing aperture of the tomb. Breath scarabs scrabbled and fled, limbs of unseen trees trembled and shook, even the Page of Veils pulled in its limbs, looked timid and uncomfortable.
The Queen of Silent Screaming slipped into the cell.
Her feet did not touch the floor, bare toes, perfect tiny nails the colour of false hope, drifted just above the riven obsidian slabs set about the broken altar. A garment of smoke in the colours of trapped screams and suppressed outcries slid over and around her lithe figure, shifting through periods and styles as it flowed over curve and limb. Hair dark and glossy as the surface over which she floated hung in spiraled corkscrews, framed a face fever pale in which a pair of bright copper pennies winked and flashed where eyes should have been.
Julia curtsied low, black victorian frock spread wide, joints grinding harshly as they fought to maintain balance. The Page of Veils hastily hid his noose, a domino row of arms folding against its thorax as it bent upward in an upside down bow.
"What seems to be his Majesty's concern now?" asked in a voice slight as a dying man's sigh.
"It is not my place to question, m'Lady, merely to serve." answered the Page of Veils, multifaceted gaze still averted.
"Of course." sighed the Queen of Silent Screaming, "Julia, we shall return shortly." Julia curtsied low once again, came upright with a sharp click of locking gears.
A leathery rustle of leaves, the suggestion of a terrified scream, and she and Julia were alone in the cell once more.
"The King of Veils and the Queen of Silent Screaming fear the Slumbering Duke."
They were the only words she had spoken in a decade. Dr. Vershenk was sure they provided the key to her ailment. He had nothing else.
She was hunched in her usual spot beside the bed: back pressed against padded frame and crumpled mattress, knees drawn up to her nose, huge dark haunting eyes peering out of sleepless hollows, fever pale features. Her untouched dinner tray rested beside her. In six years of observation he had never seen her eat, never even seen her move. Not even to blink. One would assume she were comatose if it weren't for those eyes.
Loathing. Malice. Distrust. A hurt so poignant, so deep, it demanded a response. Dr. Vershenk had stopped looking at those eyes years ago. The guilt still had not left him.
In the corner, Julia the Clock-work Girl softly ticked. Dr. Vershenk ignored her so completely it was like she wasn't there.
He scribbled a few meaningless notes - coherence lost in constant repetition till they had become nothing more than a jumble of absurd symbols - and closed his notebook with a practiced sigh. It fell to the floor like a weight, laden with unspoken fears and frustration. Fat breath scarabs scrambled ponderously to claim the routine prize that had made them sluggish and corpulent. Vershenk pushed at the bridge of his glasses, shook his head to complete the ritual, and carefully, unconsciously, stepped over the frenzying scarabs.
The lights and the cobweb canopy fell fluttery with his passing.
Long after the dark had settled, the broad black leaves continued to flutter and shake. The Page of Veils made its slow way from the Court into the cell.
"His Majesty requests your presence." he coughed glacially slow through the complicated motions of his mouth parts.
The whine of a flywheel unleashed filled the corner. From behind the painted demure smile, a child's voice, scratchy and crackling, emerged, "He can wait. She is otherwise occupied."
An adventurous scarab moved sloth deliberate beneath the glossy cascade of her hair, legs carefully picking over the curve of neck, up the cliff hang of jaw. Feelers tenderly caressed flesh, searching, tasting, for soft currents of body warmed and spiced air. It was sprawled over her cheekbone, one whip lash antennae prodding at the gelid surface of an eye, when its other feeler went taut. The barest waver of breath had tickled its tensely vibrating end. It scurried awkwardly, gorged girth making motion cumbersome on the vertical plane of cheek, towards the dark inlet of her nostrils. Its antennae were probing the moist recesses, one deep within each cilia lined passage, when she finally exhaled with the slow measured breath of the sedated. The scarab recoiled as if it had been burnt. Feelers and limbs jerked spastically confused and uncoordinated. It virtually leapt from the poison exhalation's presence, disappearing into the crisp white folds and creases of her institutional pyjamas.
No response. Just that emotion laden glare at nothing.
"His Majesty will not be kept waiting." barked the Page. He lowered four of his arms into view, multiple joints jerking and flexing, busily weaving strands of shadow, torn bed sheets and secrets into a barbed cord. Two smaller limbs emerged, deftly began to loop and twist the tarnished length of line into a noose. The air shimmered heat haze dreamily within the circular opening of the knot.
Unseen latches clicked out of place, tension springs unwound and coiled, locked gears spun into life. Julia dropped with sudden mechanical abruptness into a crouch, clock-work innards reoriented for action swift and brutal. Her painted porcelain features took on a harsh cast with the sudden shift of angles and reflected firefly star light.
"There is no need for that." voice distorted by echo and vasty distances.
From behind the cracked altar against which she crouched, the lichen stained mausoleum door grated slowly, slowly open. Muted, not truly heard cries - more like the recollection of memories long buried - flowed like fog from the growing aperture of the tomb. Breath scarabs scrabbled and fled, limbs of unseen trees trembled and shook, even the Page of Veils pulled in its limbs, looked timid and uncomfortable.
The Queen of Silent Screaming slipped into the cell.
Her feet did not touch the floor, bare toes, perfect tiny nails the colour of false hope, drifted just above the riven obsidian slabs set about the broken altar. A garment of smoke in the colours of trapped screams and suppressed outcries slid over and around her lithe figure, shifting through periods and styles as it flowed over curve and limb. Hair dark and glossy as the surface over which she floated hung in spiraled corkscrews, framed a face fever pale in which a pair of bright copper pennies winked and flashed where eyes should have been.
Julia curtsied low, black victorian frock spread wide, joints grinding harshly as they fought to maintain balance. The Page of Veils hastily hid his noose, a domino row of arms folding against its thorax as it bent upward in an upside down bow.
"What seems to be his Majesty's concern now?" asked in a voice slight as a dying man's sigh.
"It is not my place to question, m'Lady, merely to serve." answered the Page of Veils, multifaceted gaze still averted.
"Of course." sighed the Queen of Silent Screaming, "Julia, we shall return shortly." Julia curtsied low once again, came upright with a sharp click of locking gears.
A leathery rustle of leaves, the suggestion of a terrified scream, and she and Julia were alone in the cell once more.
Another excerpt from the novel in progress, tentavely titled "The Jack".
"...so what you're trying to tell me is that they're not really stories for children?"
She is sprawled across the bed, head hanging loosely, lollingly over its edge like the discarded handiwork of a satisfied hangman. Fronds of hair dangle and entangle in streaks and stripes of red and white and black. Briefly, something in his over bright eyes flashes as if in recognition, or perhaps precognition. There than gone. His slickly sly grin spreads over his face like ink diffusing in water.
"Not initially, no. They started out as entertainment and education. Something to kill time during long, dark winter nights, and maybe even impart a lesson or two." His hands pale and waxy move endlessly, turning over and over the dirty cloth bound volume caught between them. Nervous motion stemming from nervous energy. If she did not know better she would be forced to assume he was using. His hands are never still, fingers testing and tapping, probing against the unchanging solidity of the book, seeming almost to be trying to physically pry the knowledge caught trapped by ink and page between cloth wrapped boards.
"Don't get the wrong idea. Children would have been present at those early tellings, but the stories would not have been especially aimed at them. Probably not at all. Like when you were little and your parents let you stay up late, even though all you got to see was some ridiculous sitcom filled with ideas and situations well outside of your experience, but still letting the occasional joke slip through to you."
She smiles privately, mind wandering back to moments in her own past where such things were true. Episodes of M*A*S*H and Cheers that seemed so dull, so pointless, so unchanging. The same few sets in dark earthy colours that were endlessly returned to. The same tiny group of people caught up in their tiny little lives. No bright, flickery colours. No madcap action. No single sound bite lines or juvenilely clever jokes. No, she knew, as her parents seemed not to, that cartoons were far better, far funnier, far more entertaining.
She smiles more widely, openly, eyes gaining focus as they cease peering into times past and glance once more into the present. He smiles back, a quick smirk that she knows to be more true, more full of real emotion, than any of his sardonic and ever present grins. His real smiles always seem tinged by rueful awareness and a hint of embarrassment, like a child caught in a lie, knowing it is too late to take it back.
"So, either you're trying to tell me that our ancestors were as easily entertained as children, or that complex social narratives were well beyond their abilities. In either case, they tend to look pretty dumb."
"Ahh, but you forget," the book is tossed from right to left, left to right and back again, flipping, slipping, firmly slapping against a cupped palm or sliding against fingertips with a whispery velcro tear, "like all things the faerie tale has changed considerably over the years. The violence and the sexuality have been stripped out of them, replaced with a bland and inoffensive pap that even the most sheltered child grows bored of before long."
"'Pap'? 'Pap'! Who the fuck uses a word like 'pap'?" The incredulity in her voice is only moderately feigned. Sometimes even she can't believe the crap that comes out of his mouth.
"I do," he states simply, a look of cultivated innocence widening his eyes and jutting his lower lip, "and you love me madly for it."
She laughs out loud, swinging the over sized stuffed frog up off her chest to sag limply from extended arms. It hangs suspended above her, long gangling limbs swaying loosely, unpleasantly unnatural, like a squid or octopus held aloft in the open air; like a thing out of its element and unable to adjust. She crushes it to her breasts, limbs ricocheting off her body to flail away from her with that same innate unnaturalness, an affront to the eye that demands the presence of bone or chitin to justify movement. The strange motion of its limbs is another part of the reason why this is her favorite stuffed animal. There is a disturbing awkwardness to its oddly stuffed limbs, something indescribably creepy, like the hurky-jerky way that things moved in stop motion films that made them, no matter how cute or seasonal the context, vaguely unsettling. An innate and immediate recognition that nothing in nature should move this way.
She loves it dearly for this, and a part of her recognizes that it is this same perceived awkwardness that so attracts her to him. Alone in her room, she half clothed and sprawled seductively, sensuously, sexually across the rumpled range of her bed sheets, implying through body language obvious and common to all mammals that she is waiting for him, anticipating him. And yet he stands, nervous and distracted, not by the act which she wishes to engage with him in - she knows first hand that he is not nervous about that - but by an idea both abstract and unattainable. A concern that his beloved obsession will not be understood, cannot be understood, by those outside the confines of his own skull. He desperately needs for someone to share his world, and that awkward desperation makes him all the more attractive to her.
Call it a weakness, she giggles inwardly. Another strange piece of the puzzle that is the relationship they have built; one which no one, not even themselves, seems capable of understanding.
"Give it up. Innocence is neither becoming nor believable when coming from you."
"Innocence isn't very becoming or believable in and of itself. I mean, really, innocence is just an inability to process consequence. It's living without thought to the effect your actions might have. Little kids are innocent because they can kill their favorite pet and not quite understand why it doesn't get up and play a moment later. A need to protect the idea of innocence is what destroyed the original beauty of the faerie tale."
She laughs again, rolling onto her stomach, trapping her toy beneath her, its gangly, lengthy limbs splayed out from under her. She notices, if but briefly, unconsciously, that the odd flailing of her frog's appendages almost mirrors the clipped, nervous action of his constantly moving hands.
"Oh, neatly done," she says as she leans out over her elbows on the edge of the bed, "only you could bring that conversation so smoothly back to your original rant."
His smile is pure malice, "Your sarcasm is duly noted. Obviously, you realize there will come a reckoning."
She balances herself precariously, grabbing at his shirt with both hands, pulling him close to her as her own unevenly distributed weight tries to force her off the side of the bed. They kiss. It is slow, soft, exploring. A caress that only the young and freshly in love are ever allowed. A kiss that never lasts long enough, or gets repeated exactly right.
He steps back, straightening. She slides further onto her haunches, bare thighs pressed seductively into the heels of her black and orange socks. His hands have stopped. The book is held tight between fingers going pale and bloodless from pressure.
"Fortunate for you that I'm just a sweet innocent girl, isn't it?"
The frog falls to the floor, shiny black plastic eyes witness and reflection to an act neither innocent or corrupt.
(C) Divers Hands 2006
"...so what you're trying to tell me is that they're not really stories for children?"
She is sprawled across the bed, head hanging loosely, lollingly over its edge like the discarded handiwork of a satisfied hangman. Fronds of hair dangle and entangle in streaks and stripes of red and white and black. Briefly, something in his over bright eyes flashes as if in recognition, or perhaps precognition. There than gone. His slickly sly grin spreads over his face like ink diffusing in water.
"Not initially, no. They started out as entertainment and education. Something to kill time during long, dark winter nights, and maybe even impart a lesson or two." His hands pale and waxy move endlessly, turning over and over the dirty cloth bound volume caught between them. Nervous motion stemming from nervous energy. If she did not know better she would be forced to assume he was using. His hands are never still, fingers testing and tapping, probing against the unchanging solidity of the book, seeming almost to be trying to physically pry the knowledge caught trapped by ink and page between cloth wrapped boards.
"Don't get the wrong idea. Children would have been present at those early tellings, but the stories would not have been especially aimed at them. Probably not at all. Like when you were little and your parents let you stay up late, even though all you got to see was some ridiculous sitcom filled with ideas and situations well outside of your experience, but still letting the occasional joke slip through to you."
She smiles privately, mind wandering back to moments in her own past where such things were true. Episodes of M*A*S*H and Cheers that seemed so dull, so pointless, so unchanging. The same few sets in dark earthy colours that were endlessly returned to. The same tiny group of people caught up in their tiny little lives. No bright, flickery colours. No madcap action. No single sound bite lines or juvenilely clever jokes. No, she knew, as her parents seemed not to, that cartoons were far better, far funnier, far more entertaining.
She smiles more widely, openly, eyes gaining focus as they cease peering into times past and glance once more into the present. He smiles back, a quick smirk that she knows to be more true, more full of real emotion, than any of his sardonic and ever present grins. His real smiles always seem tinged by rueful awareness and a hint of embarrassment, like a child caught in a lie, knowing it is too late to take it back.
"So, either you're trying to tell me that our ancestors were as easily entertained as children, or that complex social narratives were well beyond their abilities. In either case, they tend to look pretty dumb."
"Ahh, but you forget," the book is tossed from right to left, left to right and back again, flipping, slipping, firmly slapping against a cupped palm or sliding against fingertips with a whispery velcro tear, "like all things the faerie tale has changed considerably over the years. The violence and the sexuality have been stripped out of them, replaced with a bland and inoffensive pap that even the most sheltered child grows bored of before long."
"'Pap'? 'Pap'! Who the fuck uses a word like 'pap'?" The incredulity in her voice is only moderately feigned. Sometimes even she can't believe the crap that comes out of his mouth.
"I do," he states simply, a look of cultivated innocence widening his eyes and jutting his lower lip, "and you love me madly for it."
She laughs out loud, swinging the over sized stuffed frog up off her chest to sag limply from extended arms. It hangs suspended above her, long gangling limbs swaying loosely, unpleasantly unnatural, like a squid or octopus held aloft in the open air; like a thing out of its element and unable to adjust. She crushes it to her breasts, limbs ricocheting off her body to flail away from her with that same innate unnaturalness, an affront to the eye that demands the presence of bone or chitin to justify movement. The strange motion of its limbs is another part of the reason why this is her favorite stuffed animal. There is a disturbing awkwardness to its oddly stuffed limbs, something indescribably creepy, like the hurky-jerky way that things moved in stop motion films that made them, no matter how cute or seasonal the context, vaguely unsettling. An innate and immediate recognition that nothing in nature should move this way.
She loves it dearly for this, and a part of her recognizes that it is this same perceived awkwardness that so attracts her to him. Alone in her room, she half clothed and sprawled seductively, sensuously, sexually across the rumpled range of her bed sheets, implying through body language obvious and common to all mammals that she is waiting for him, anticipating him. And yet he stands, nervous and distracted, not by the act which she wishes to engage with him in - she knows first hand that he is not nervous about that - but by an idea both abstract and unattainable. A concern that his beloved obsession will not be understood, cannot be understood, by those outside the confines of his own skull. He desperately needs for someone to share his world, and that awkward desperation makes him all the more attractive to her.
Call it a weakness, she giggles inwardly. Another strange piece of the puzzle that is the relationship they have built; one which no one, not even themselves, seems capable of understanding.
"Give it up. Innocence is neither becoming nor believable when coming from you."
"Innocence isn't very becoming or believable in and of itself. I mean, really, innocence is just an inability to process consequence. It's living without thought to the effect your actions might have. Little kids are innocent because they can kill their favorite pet and not quite understand why it doesn't get up and play a moment later. A need to protect the idea of innocence is what destroyed the original beauty of the faerie tale."
She laughs again, rolling onto her stomach, trapping her toy beneath her, its gangly, lengthy limbs splayed out from under her. She notices, if but briefly, unconsciously, that the odd flailing of her frog's appendages almost mirrors the clipped, nervous action of his constantly moving hands.
"Oh, neatly done," she says as she leans out over her elbows on the edge of the bed, "only you could bring that conversation so smoothly back to your original rant."
His smile is pure malice, "Your sarcasm is duly noted. Obviously, you realize there will come a reckoning."
She balances herself precariously, grabbing at his shirt with both hands, pulling him close to her as her own unevenly distributed weight tries to force her off the side of the bed. They kiss. It is slow, soft, exploring. A caress that only the young and freshly in love are ever allowed. A kiss that never lasts long enough, or gets repeated exactly right.
He steps back, straightening. She slides further onto her haunches, bare thighs pressed seductively into the heels of her black and orange socks. His hands have stopped. The book is held tight between fingers going pale and bloodless from pressure.
"Fortunate for you that I'm just a sweet innocent girl, isn't it?"
The frog falls to the floor, shiny black plastic eyes witness and reflection to an act neither innocent or corrupt.
(C) Divers Hands 2006
Written a couple of months back after dropping off a relative at the airport and binging on drugs and alcohol (and why isn't that statement redundant? The fun tricks of New Speak at work again kiddies!). Been thinking a lot about social and ontological terrorism as art. I am totally going to jail soon, aren't I?
The crowds lurch around me like actors in a bad zombie flick. Vacant stares, inane meaningless noise issuing from slackly open mouths, a herd like placidity as they calmly and unquestioningly move in shuffling lock step along the lines and passages clearly layed out for them.
None of them recognize this, however. No, they actually believe that what they are doing is not only right, but how it is meant to be, the only way it can be. Blindly obedient to ideas and patterns they've never even thought to question in the whole of their existances.
How do you beat an enemy so all pervasive it has become accepted as The Way Things Are?
A voice cuts across the PA system. I suspect it is supposed to be pleasant and female, something without real inflection or accent that can be easily digested by those who hear it without causing them to think about the speakers skin tone, religious background, political beliefs. A voice so meticulously bland, with just the right touch of human warmth to add that little extra bit of subliminal comfort, that the listener immediately accepts and forgets it, like a child listening and blindly accepting his mother's proclamations.
The effect seems to be only moderately ruined by the electronic interference inherent in the shitty speakers they're using.
"Attention passengers. We would like to remind you all once again that new regulations refuse the admittance of any liquids or gels onto your flights. Receptacles have been set out for you to empty any and all liquids you may still have on your person before preparing for security screening. We apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your help in making your flight a safer one."
There is barely a response from the shuffling mumbling crowd. A few muttered imprecations, a few shaken heads in mock annoyance, a few brave souls who even raise a voice in protest, but even those latter fail to raise any kind of real complaint. They accepted the announcement long before it was made, even if they're still lazy or forgetful enough to have brought one of these new contraband items along with them.
Their fucking complacency makes me sick.
I watch as some of the zombies shuffle their way over to one of these designated receptacles. They pull out their bottles and containers and unceremoniously dump them down the hole in the top of the bin, then dispose of the now empty vessels in another one located conveniently next to it.
They have banned these liquids and gels for fear of terrorist attack. The terrorists were supposedly going to use two part liquid explosives smuggled in ordinary, everyday containers onto the planes. Once airborne, they would have combined these two liquids or gels and used ordinary, everyday electronics as a detonator to build their very own do it yourself bomb.
Ingenious, no?
No.
None of the zombies has taken any time at all to think about the ridiculousness of this idea, or the even more ridiculous response made to it. For example, any of the two part liquid explosives any bunch of home brewed, shoe string budgeted terrorists could get their hands on would not only be fairly low grade, but highly unstable. The kind of thing that would have the impact of a cheap firework and would in nine times out of ten either not detonate or blow up in their fucking faces.
No, these retards haven't thought of any of that. Chemistry is hard. Ask half of the idiots I went to high school with. Chemistry is hard and not really useful in a future career as a factory lobotomized button pusher or mid level office lemming. Who really needs to know about the basic structure of the universe and the world we live in? What useful purpose could anyone possibly have in possessing knowledge of how everything around them functions? Nope, clearly chemistry is something only useful for scientists and those faceless paragons of security who work for Authority.
Of course, you would think some of them, having seen and heard (but not read. Reading is for the same kind of people who actually need chemistry.) the news reports would make that tiniest of cognitive leaps and question the logic of dumping all of these contraband liquids into one receptacle. The one which happens to sit in the middle of the crowded airport they happen to be shuffling their unquestioning zombie asses through.
Nah, clearly if Authority has decided that this is the way these things should be disposed of, than it is the right way. Authority is there to protect us. Authority would never do anything that wasn't in our best interest. Authority knows best. Why? Stupid question. They're Authority.
I can't even let myself think about the political or social ramifications of this new security measure. I would have a fucking seizure trying to grasp how easily the zombies have accepted things. That or I would start screaming at them again. Trying to pierce their cow like complacency with threats verbal and physical. Fuck. I think I owe cows an apology. Even centuries of inbreeding couldn't make something this stupid.
Where do you hide anything? In plain sight. Especially if you know that the herd is conditioned to never question what is right in front of them. The slaughterhouse is always right in the midst of the stockyard.
I unclench my fists. Fingernails are starting to cut into the flesh of my palms. Blood in an airport is just asking for trouble these days. Time to go anyway. Much more of this and I will completely lose my shit.
I lift my jacket from the package I've left on the seat beside me and walk away. The asshole on the cellphone on the other side of it never even notices. I've been sitting next to him for twenty minutes. The entire time he has been having an overly loud conversation with someone on the other end concerning a business deal that he has already openly admitted, in a public place mind you, is not only illegal, but is garunteed to result in a law suit. Despite this, he is hugely proud of it. He has yelled into the receiver how the benefits will well outweigh any legal or moral improprieties.
From what I can gather, he seems to be involved in some kind of real estate venture. The game he is playing is going to result in a large parcel of former industrial property to be converted into cheap housing. The EPA and the company he works for both know that property is so full of contaminants even the roaches can't survive. This doesn't matter. By the time anything official can be done about the land, his company will have made a killing (the pessimistic side of me laughs at the double entendre the asshole next to me doesn't even realize he's made) and will be out of there before they can be held accountable in any way. He's even got a convenient set up to provide the firm plausible deniability.
And he openly speaks all of this, in a voice anyone within five yards of him can hear, in a crowded airport.
No one else notices. They are all too caught up in their own cell phone conversations or the deeply important drama of their own lives. A man openly plotting a crime that will harm the lives of hundreds, while everyone around him scurries to comply with laws intended to stop a hypothetical threat that those same laws were only passed to discourage after an attempt was alreay made to do it.
The law is about as preventative to crime as a seismograph is preventative of an earthquake.
The crowds lurch around me like actors in a bad zombie flick. Vacant stares, inane meaningless noise issuing from slackly open mouths, a herd like placidity as they calmly and unquestioningly move in shuffling lock step along the lines and passages clearly layed out for them.
None of them recognize this, however. No, they actually believe that what they are doing is not only right, but how it is meant to be, the only way it can be. Blindly obedient to ideas and patterns they've never even thought to question in the whole of their existances.
How do you beat an enemy so all pervasive it has become accepted as The Way Things Are?
A voice cuts across the PA system. I suspect it is supposed to be pleasant and female, something without real inflection or accent that can be easily digested by those who hear it without causing them to think about the speakers skin tone, religious background, political beliefs. A voice so meticulously bland, with just the right touch of human warmth to add that little extra bit of subliminal comfort, that the listener immediately accepts and forgets it, like a child listening and blindly accepting his mother's proclamations.
The effect seems to be only moderately ruined by the electronic interference inherent in the shitty speakers they're using.
"Attention passengers. We would like to remind you all once again that new regulations refuse the admittance of any liquids or gels onto your flights. Receptacles have been set out for you to empty any and all liquids you may still have on your person before preparing for security screening. We apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your help in making your flight a safer one."
There is barely a response from the shuffling mumbling crowd. A few muttered imprecations, a few shaken heads in mock annoyance, a few brave souls who even raise a voice in protest, but even those latter fail to raise any kind of real complaint. They accepted the announcement long before it was made, even if they're still lazy or forgetful enough to have brought one of these new contraband items along with them.
Their fucking complacency makes me sick.
I watch as some of the zombies shuffle their way over to one of these designated receptacles. They pull out their bottles and containers and unceremoniously dump them down the hole in the top of the bin, then dispose of the now empty vessels in another one located conveniently next to it.
They have banned these liquids and gels for fear of terrorist attack. The terrorists were supposedly going to use two part liquid explosives smuggled in ordinary, everyday containers onto the planes. Once airborne, they would have combined these two liquids or gels and used ordinary, everyday electronics as a detonator to build their very own do it yourself bomb.
Ingenious, no?
No.
None of the zombies has taken any time at all to think about the ridiculousness of this idea, or the even more ridiculous response made to it. For example, any of the two part liquid explosives any bunch of home brewed, shoe string budgeted terrorists could get their hands on would not only be fairly low grade, but highly unstable. The kind of thing that would have the impact of a cheap firework and would in nine times out of ten either not detonate or blow up in their fucking faces.
No, these retards haven't thought of any of that. Chemistry is hard. Ask half of the idiots I went to high school with. Chemistry is hard and not really useful in a future career as a factory lobotomized button pusher or mid level office lemming. Who really needs to know about the basic structure of the universe and the world we live in? What useful purpose could anyone possibly have in possessing knowledge of how everything around them functions? Nope, clearly chemistry is something only useful for scientists and those faceless paragons of security who work for Authority.
Of course, you would think some of them, having seen and heard (but not read. Reading is for the same kind of people who actually need chemistry.) the news reports would make that tiniest of cognitive leaps and question the logic of dumping all of these contraband liquids into one receptacle. The one which happens to sit in the middle of the crowded airport they happen to be shuffling their unquestioning zombie asses through.
Nah, clearly if Authority has decided that this is the way these things should be disposed of, than it is the right way. Authority is there to protect us. Authority would never do anything that wasn't in our best interest. Authority knows best. Why? Stupid question. They're Authority.
I can't even let myself think about the political or social ramifications of this new security measure. I would have a fucking seizure trying to grasp how easily the zombies have accepted things. That or I would start screaming at them again. Trying to pierce their cow like complacency with threats verbal and physical. Fuck. I think I owe cows an apology. Even centuries of inbreeding couldn't make something this stupid.
Where do you hide anything? In plain sight. Especially if you know that the herd is conditioned to never question what is right in front of them. The slaughterhouse is always right in the midst of the stockyard.
I unclench my fists. Fingernails are starting to cut into the flesh of my palms. Blood in an airport is just asking for trouble these days. Time to go anyway. Much more of this and I will completely lose my shit.
I lift my jacket from the package I've left on the seat beside me and walk away. The asshole on the cellphone on the other side of it never even notices. I've been sitting next to him for twenty minutes. The entire time he has been having an overly loud conversation with someone on the other end concerning a business deal that he has already openly admitted, in a public place mind you, is not only illegal, but is garunteed to result in a law suit. Despite this, he is hugely proud of it. He has yelled into the receiver how the benefits will well outweigh any legal or moral improprieties.
From what I can gather, he seems to be involved in some kind of real estate venture. The game he is playing is going to result in a large parcel of former industrial property to be converted into cheap housing. The EPA and the company he works for both know that property is so full of contaminants even the roaches can't survive. This doesn't matter. By the time anything official can be done about the land, his company will have made a killing (the pessimistic side of me laughs at the double entendre the asshole next to me doesn't even realize he's made) and will be out of there before they can be held accountable in any way. He's even got a convenient set up to provide the firm plausible deniability.
And he openly speaks all of this, in a voice anyone within five yards of him can hear, in a crowded airport.
No one else notices. They are all too caught up in their own cell phone conversations or the deeply important drama of their own lives. A man openly plotting a crime that will harm the lives of hundreds, while everyone around him scurries to comply with laws intended to stop a hypothetical threat that those same laws were only passed to discourage after an attempt was alreay made to do it.
The law is about as preventative to crime as a seismograph is preventative of an earthquake.
An excerpt from the lastest chapter of the novel in progess:
Silence again, though different. The silence of incredulity, of disbelief, of the faintest glimmer of hope at riches unimaginable. Ledgers of souls, libraries of secrets, knowledge and possessions worth more than all the Mad King's realms.
An advantage on the competition.
"You can't be serious." humbled tones lacking accent and affectation.
"I just spent nine days and nights as a sacrifice of myself, to myself hanging from one of the last standing data lines of the information age. I cut out my own eyes and cast them into a Heimdell's Well mixed with the accumulated run off of the industrial revolution. I surgically implanted the third eye of the Dalai Lama's tulpa into my own head. I have replaced my nerves with silver thread and fiber optics to interface with the server's of every hell. Of course I'm fucking serious."
"You're offering to pay us with something you can't possibly deliver." a grudging pause, "Yet. How do you plan to relieve the greatest trickster in all of story of his accumulated life's work?"
"Simple. I know his Name."
The three figures glance amongst themselves, look back at Quis. He has steadied considerably, concealing beneath tattered cloth that was once white the considerable tension that keeps him up right. If his flesh were still capable of colouring, his knuckles would be red and swollen where they grip Muzai's shoulder. While the flesh is weak, the spirit is not. Quis' chakras burn white hot with the ultimate prize of his self mutilations: a secret only he knows.
"It's a deal. Nine days. Delivery and payment on the seventh day of the seventh month." The largest figure holds out his hand. The smallest one places a blade of cold iron, tarnished silver and milky jade in his hand; a Waylon Smith original. With a pained sound he slices the flesh of his right paw/palm and extends it towards Quis. It is taken by a hand already ragged and ravaged. Hot blood that smells of deep snow and fresh kills mingles with cool blood that reeks of chemcial waste and stolen moments.
Without a rustle of corrupt vegetation or discarded offal, the three figures melt into the shadows, not leaving even the barest sign of track or trace.
"What now?" comes a childish lisp to cut the changing monotony of electric throb.
Quis lifts his hand from her shoulder, rests it instead against the gritty side of tarnished steel. He feels the low vibration course through the decaying vertebrae, along the failing nerves of a passing age. Fossils of the past, just as the broken tracks of the iron beasts that once crossed the land. A useless relic in the Age of Arcadia returned.
"Change. Always change."
(C)2006 Divers Hands
Silence again, though different. The silence of incredulity, of disbelief, of the faintest glimmer of hope at riches unimaginable. Ledgers of souls, libraries of secrets, knowledge and possessions worth more than all the Mad King's realms.
An advantage on the competition.
"You can't be serious." humbled tones lacking accent and affectation.
"I just spent nine days and nights as a sacrifice of myself, to myself hanging from one of the last standing data lines of the information age. I cut out my own eyes and cast them into a Heimdell's Well mixed with the accumulated run off of the industrial revolution. I surgically implanted the third eye of the Dalai Lama's tulpa into my own head. I have replaced my nerves with silver thread and fiber optics to interface with the server's of every hell. Of course I'm fucking serious."
"You're offering to pay us with something you can't possibly deliver." a grudging pause, "Yet. How do you plan to relieve the greatest trickster in all of story of his accumulated life's work?"
"Simple. I know his Name."
The three figures glance amongst themselves, look back at Quis. He has steadied considerably, concealing beneath tattered cloth that was once white the considerable tension that keeps him up right. If his flesh were still capable of colouring, his knuckles would be red and swollen where they grip Muzai's shoulder. While the flesh is weak, the spirit is not. Quis' chakras burn white hot with the ultimate prize of his self mutilations: a secret only he knows.
"It's a deal. Nine days. Delivery and payment on the seventh day of the seventh month." The largest figure holds out his hand. The smallest one places a blade of cold iron, tarnished silver and milky jade in his hand; a Waylon Smith original. With a pained sound he slices the flesh of his right paw/palm and extends it towards Quis. It is taken by a hand already ragged and ravaged. Hot blood that smells of deep snow and fresh kills mingles with cool blood that reeks of chemcial waste and stolen moments.
Without a rustle of corrupt vegetation or discarded offal, the three figures melt into the shadows, not leaving even the barest sign of track or trace.
"What now?" comes a childish lisp to cut the changing monotony of electric throb.
Quis lifts his hand from her shoulder, rests it instead against the gritty side of tarnished steel. He feels the low vibration course through the decaying vertebrae, along the failing nerves of a passing age. Fossils of the past, just as the broken tracks of the iron beasts that once crossed the land. A useless relic in the Age of Arcadia returned.
"Change. Always change."
(C)2006 Divers Hands
A napkin falls, drifting quickly down with fluttering tumbles.
The Napkin in Close-Up: uneven surface of humped dunes, pasty white in uneven light. Ridges and runnels, sharp cliffs and crumpled ranges providing depths and heights to an otherwise two-dimensional landscape. Dark swathes of brown, sloping veins of blue, smudged regions of nameless washed out colours break the monotony of shadow and alabaster.
The napkin settles suddenly upon an open notebook. Crinkled ranges and splotchy colourations now bordered by unblemished white lanes and irrigation lines of pale blue.
Symbol of Man's Conformity: the unused sheet of lined paper. Forcing the most creative displays of words into regiments and parade lines. Providing structure and discipline to even the most unruly usage of language.
The napkin slides a bit on the gently angled surface of the notebook, comes to rest. Chaos falling into order, the antithesis of entropy.
She blinks once, slowly, deliberately. Eyes the overcast grey/blue of a sky about to storm, first occluded, than sliding upward to peer over black plastic frames. Thin sculpted eyebrows raise with them, both question and annoyance announced in one elegant motion.
Portrait of the Madman, In Reverse: twin figures, gently elongated over the barest of convex curves, matched dress, matched demeanors. Uneven grey stubble over pale flesh, unhealthily pale, maggoty pale. High foreheads unmarked by line or crease end at reddish-brown hair arched crookedly over sunken eyes. Eyes! Two left of clear winter sky blue, two right of forest at dusk green, all too bright, too clear, gleaming with an inner passion, crackling with an inner spark generally found only amongst children or the crazed. Eyes that that are bisected by small, twice broken, softly crooked aquiline noses. Noses shadowing thin twitching lips. Lips fighting a battle between solemnity and hilarity, tugging up at their corners, smoothing into pressed lines, darting into full grins before restraint can force them level again. Lips that yank and pull at four fever bright cheeks, pallid flesh splotching, spotting, burning in the midst of sharp cheekbones and vulpine jaws. Barest, sparest growth of reddish-white pushing through pallor and blush alike.
She blinks again, light diluting membranes of thinnest flesh shuttering over now puzzled, now worried showing retinas. A slightly nervous soul hiding behind the flittery quick blinds of its windows.
"Can I... help you?" Hesitation, uncertainty giving pause to an inherently unanswerable question.
One pasty short finger taps the resting napkin once, twice. Each touch changing its landscape, shifting ranges and gullies, altering the shape and flow of colours. Unlike the eyes. The eyes never move. Unsettling, over-bright mismatched eyes.
She looks down at the napkin.
Meandering creeks and curved streams resolve themselves into uneven ink-bled letters. Words. Sentences.
I have kidnapped your goldfish. If you do not let me buy you a drink, you will never see your beloved companion again.
A pause. She reads again. Another pause. Another reading. Soul's windows change their display from nervous puzzlement to astonishment to incredulity with each reading.
She looks up from crinkled and crinkling blue lines, disbelieving dirty blue eyes meeting expectant irises of pale blue and dusky green.
"Are you insane?" Shock and disbelief shading her words.
"I prefer to think of myself as being enlightened." Level, even, pleasant tones belying glittery flickery eyes.
"And this is how enlightenment manifests? Threats on napkins?"
A quick shrug, a long smirk, "Better this than giving away a kingdom or dying for the uncaring, don't you think?"
A moment, an eon, a single beat. She can only stare at him. And then she smiles, dimples forming in her cheeks, glasses shifting slightly up her wrinkling nose.
"I don't have a goldfish." Laughter dancing behind the words, unreleased, but unhidden.
A grin flashes over his face like the sun coming suddenly swift from behind a cloud. "Well than, if you say no you're going to ruin some poor kids day when they discover their fish is missing."
Shutter: astonishment.
Shutter: mirth.
She laughs out loud. A quick cough of merriment bursting from between her lips before she can stop it.
"Would that be a yes?"
Shoulders silently shaking, eyes smile at him over her glasses, "Sure, why not."
"Excellent. I wouldn't have known what to do with this if you had said no." Left arm emerges from behind his back and places a paper coffee cup in browns and tans amidst the clutter of her work. Wispy phantoms dance to a patternless waltz known only by the eddying currents of invisible particles. Each short-lived wraith gyres for a few beautiful seconds before vanishing in a smell of spicy cinnamon and vanilla, rich cream and tea.
"How did you know...?"
He jerks the now empty hand in a quick gesture over his shoulder. At the counter behind him, a grinning visage is supported by one coffee stained hand, the grin growing wider when she realizes she is now the focus of attention. She raises the unsupporting hand and wiggles her fingers in a langorous child-like gesture, haunted by undertones of innocent mischeif and devious sexuality.
"You have an awful lot of confidence in yourself."
"No, just a lot of confidence in the world."
"An attempt at modesty from a man who just compared himself to the Buddha and Jesus?"
"Wasn't that the point? Weren't they just trying to tell us we can all be like them?"
She shakes her head, smile spreading across her face even as she chides him with her movements. "I don't recall any parable of the threatening napkin."
He shrugs again, a spastic grin that never quite leaves his features moving from one side of his mouth to the other and skipping about between. "An emperor once asked the Buddha how he could acheive enlightenment. The Buddha answered 'I have no idea.' Outraged the emperor asked of the Buddha 'Have you not acheived enlightenment?' The Buddha replied 'What does that have to do with how you will acheive enlightment?' Personally, I think both of them would have been a lot more successful if they had resorted to threats a little more often."
She laughs again, an unrestrained burst of sound that comes out much louder than she expected. A flurry of capillaries swell and she blushes in embarrasement at her own outburst. Panic causes eyes to dart, a quick pan of her surroundings: bored baristas and uncaring self-absorbed patrons each trapped within the confines of their own tiny worlds and thoughts. Small mismatched tables, chairs, couches scattered haphazardly and piled with random assortments of books, laptops, cell phones, coffee cups, half eaten pastries. Large picture windows dominate two of the walls, forming a pair of perpindicular vistas of a cityscape at dusk. Cars and pedestrians move toward each other vanishing at the windows edge, or occasionally reappearing, as if by magic, now moving in a new direction.
Tickle of Memory: a magic lantern show projected in her bedroom as a little girl, overbright bulb casting shadow occluded light on cream coloured walls. Motion, fanciful figures (composed of not wave, not particle, most elusive and incomprehensible of physical observable phenomena) caper and play as punctured tin slowly revolves. As light flows, slippery sliding like luminescent fish trapped within aquarium glass, a quirk occurs, repeated four times within the manufactured box of her room. At each corner there is a moment, a blip in the perceptive field, when the various shapes and figures fold? fail? collapse? into themselves like tiny dying stars. The frail, eternal, mutable energy/matter/both slides into the angle seeming to disappear into the edges of reality only to slide back out of whatever sub-dimension exists where Euclidean geometry ends.
"Not sure that's a very good metaphor, honestly."
Faded blue eyes dart back from reverie to peer into fever bright green and blue. "What?"
"The lantern thing. S'a pretty image, but I really don't think it works so well in trying to describe those people moving about out there," arms wave in a jerky, dismissive gesture at the windows behind him, "I mean, how many people these days even know what one of those magic lantern things is anymore?"
"How can you possibly know about that?" puzzlement and the faintest stirring of earlier anxiety creeping into her words.
"I can read, of course."
"Read?" fear slides slow and thick into her words, "Like... minds?"
"Like text. Words strung into sentences. The story." matter-of-fact-tone, deadpan expression. Or at least as close as a twitching madman can get to one.
She gapes at him for a moment, glossed lips reflecting light wetly, perfect pearl teeth gleaming whitely with their polish of saliva, lithe red tongue moving spastically, silently in incomprehension. Words fight to form on her curling, twisting tongue, buffetted and roiled by the shock, confusion instilled by this strange figure before her. Seconds pass before she masters her traitor muscles, allowing her control enough to finally allow a sentence to cohere from her thoughts and congeal on her tongue.
"Twitch!" a feminine, throaty growl. Not hers.
Blue and particoloured eyes pivot in opposite directions, come to rest on the same scene.
Snapshot for a Rock Poster: they stand side by side, back lit and framed by the last red rays coming through the open doorway behind. She stands the taller, and a little in front, thick-soled, knee high boots wrapped and wound with straps and buckles perhaps aiding this height. Pale knees, flash of creamy thighs, marred by purplish-yellow bruises, half-healed cuts and marks, all cut off and shadowed by a dark plaid skirt, short and pleated. Thick chain belt, half obscured by a ribbed white sleeveless undershirt. One arm, one bare shoulder, hangs casually, listlessly at her side, well toned muscle moving beneath flesh scrimshawed with crimson lines and symbols. The left hand holds a guitar by its neck, a left handed '57 Stratocaster, slung over her shoulder so that the cherry red and matte black body sways slowly and rythmically in the space beside her head. Black polished lips and kohl darkened eyes offset her pale features, small nose with two rings piercing the left nostril, pale right cheek punctured by a single silver stud above the dimple of her smile. All of these features are secondary to the hair. Candy apple red shot through with blood bright crimson falls in dreadlocks and braids in a riot of cords and tangles, falls away from her face, excepting a few errant locks, cascading down her back in banded coils to quiver and jounce just a few inches from the floor. Beside her, almost lost in the punk spectacle of attitude and hair, stands her partner. Wide black sneakers, the tongues and laces lost beneath the faded blue denim of tight jeans, whose own waist vanishes beneath the untucked hem of a white t-shirt. Only a thin strip of the shirt is visible, the rest being covered by a short black racing jacket, a single white band running across the upper arms and chest. Light stubble of an indeterminate dark colour covers a boyishly round jaw, a mawkish aquiline nose supports a pair of large, mirror lensed aviator shades. Dark hair is cropped short on his head, ending in an uneven jagging line across his forehead, running into tightly groomed sideburns that end just below his ears. In his right hand is a battered Les Paul style hard bodied guitar case. Her face is a study in suppressed rage and kittenish sexuality. His of cultivated boredom and urbanity.
"'lo Fender. Gibson." a quick smirk, a sharp nod to each in turn. He is a creature of sharp jerking motions, like a sparrow scavenging an outdoor cafe. She continually expects him to hop from foot to foot, to launch himself into short flutters of regression and approach.
The duo move into the room. She stalks directly toward them with purpose and conviction, each step a statement of intent and ability. He slides through the coffee house like the spector of style, unnoticed and unnoticing, seeming not so much to approach as to sidle sideways from the edge of vision.
"You're wanted in The City." No premable, no pleasantries. A voice sultry and low, roughened by screamed vocals, unfiltered cigarettes, cheap whiskey. Her partner slides into place beside her, shoulders slumped, but the guitar case's angle never wavers, proving the hidden tension of the muscles. Even with his face obscured by the room's reflection, there is a sense of alertness. Watching him, she just knows he is looking everywhere, eyes quick and alert to every action and inaction in the room.
(C) Divers Hands
The Napkin in Close-Up: uneven surface of humped dunes, pasty white in uneven light. Ridges and runnels, sharp cliffs and crumpled ranges providing depths and heights to an otherwise two-dimensional landscape. Dark swathes of brown, sloping veins of blue, smudged regions of nameless washed out colours break the monotony of shadow and alabaster.
The napkin settles suddenly upon an open notebook. Crinkled ranges and splotchy colourations now bordered by unblemished white lanes and irrigation lines of pale blue.
Symbol of Man's Conformity: the unused sheet of lined paper. Forcing the most creative displays of words into regiments and parade lines. Providing structure and discipline to even the most unruly usage of language.
The napkin slides a bit on the gently angled surface of the notebook, comes to rest. Chaos falling into order, the antithesis of entropy.
She blinks once, slowly, deliberately. Eyes the overcast grey/blue of a sky about to storm, first occluded, than sliding upward to peer over black plastic frames. Thin sculpted eyebrows raise with them, both question and annoyance announced in one elegant motion.
Portrait of the Madman, In Reverse: twin figures, gently elongated over the barest of convex curves, matched dress, matched demeanors. Uneven grey stubble over pale flesh, unhealthily pale, maggoty pale. High foreheads unmarked by line or crease end at reddish-brown hair arched crookedly over sunken eyes. Eyes! Two left of clear winter sky blue, two right of forest at dusk green, all too bright, too clear, gleaming with an inner passion, crackling with an inner spark generally found only amongst children or the crazed. Eyes that that are bisected by small, twice broken, softly crooked aquiline noses. Noses shadowing thin twitching lips. Lips fighting a battle between solemnity and hilarity, tugging up at their corners, smoothing into pressed lines, darting into full grins before restraint can force them level again. Lips that yank and pull at four fever bright cheeks, pallid flesh splotching, spotting, burning in the midst of sharp cheekbones and vulpine jaws. Barest, sparest growth of reddish-white pushing through pallor and blush alike.
She blinks again, light diluting membranes of thinnest flesh shuttering over now puzzled, now worried showing retinas. A slightly nervous soul hiding behind the flittery quick blinds of its windows.
"Can I... help you?" Hesitation, uncertainty giving pause to an inherently unanswerable question.
One pasty short finger taps the resting napkin once, twice. Each touch changing its landscape, shifting ranges and gullies, altering the shape and flow of colours. Unlike the eyes. The eyes never move. Unsettling, over-bright mismatched eyes.
She looks down at the napkin.
Meandering creeks and curved streams resolve themselves into uneven ink-bled letters. Words. Sentences.
I have kidnapped your goldfish. If you do not let me buy you a drink, you will never see your beloved companion again.
A pause. She reads again. Another pause. Another reading. Soul's windows change their display from nervous puzzlement to astonishment to incredulity with each reading.
She looks up from crinkled and crinkling blue lines, disbelieving dirty blue eyes meeting expectant irises of pale blue and dusky green.
"Are you insane?" Shock and disbelief shading her words.
"I prefer to think of myself as being enlightened." Level, even, pleasant tones belying glittery flickery eyes.
"And this is how enlightenment manifests? Threats on napkins?"
A quick shrug, a long smirk, "Better this than giving away a kingdom or dying for the uncaring, don't you think?"
A moment, an eon, a single beat. She can only stare at him. And then she smiles, dimples forming in her cheeks, glasses shifting slightly up her wrinkling nose.
"I don't have a goldfish." Laughter dancing behind the words, unreleased, but unhidden.
A grin flashes over his face like the sun coming suddenly swift from behind a cloud. "Well than, if you say no you're going to ruin some poor kids day when they discover their fish is missing."
Shutter: astonishment.
Shutter: mirth.
She laughs out loud. A quick cough of merriment bursting from between her lips before she can stop it.
"Would that be a yes?"
Shoulders silently shaking, eyes smile at him over her glasses, "Sure, why not."
"Excellent. I wouldn't have known what to do with this if you had said no." Left arm emerges from behind his back and places a paper coffee cup in browns and tans amidst the clutter of her work. Wispy phantoms dance to a patternless waltz known only by the eddying currents of invisible particles. Each short-lived wraith gyres for a few beautiful seconds before vanishing in a smell of spicy cinnamon and vanilla, rich cream and tea.
"How did you know...?"
He jerks the now empty hand in a quick gesture over his shoulder. At the counter behind him, a grinning visage is supported by one coffee stained hand, the grin growing wider when she realizes she is now the focus of attention. She raises the unsupporting hand and wiggles her fingers in a langorous child-like gesture, haunted by undertones of innocent mischeif and devious sexuality.
"You have an awful lot of confidence in yourself."
"No, just a lot of confidence in the world."
"An attempt at modesty from a man who just compared himself to the Buddha and Jesus?"
"Wasn't that the point? Weren't they just trying to tell us we can all be like them?"
She shakes her head, smile spreading across her face even as she chides him with her movements. "I don't recall any parable of the threatening napkin."
He shrugs again, a spastic grin that never quite leaves his features moving from one side of his mouth to the other and skipping about between. "An emperor once asked the Buddha how he could acheive enlightenment. The Buddha answered 'I have no idea.' Outraged the emperor asked of the Buddha 'Have you not acheived enlightenment?' The Buddha replied 'What does that have to do with how you will acheive enlightment?' Personally, I think both of them would have been a lot more successful if they had resorted to threats a little more often."
She laughs again, an unrestrained burst of sound that comes out much louder than she expected. A flurry of capillaries swell and she blushes in embarrasement at her own outburst. Panic causes eyes to dart, a quick pan of her surroundings: bored baristas and uncaring self-absorbed patrons each trapped within the confines of their own tiny worlds and thoughts. Small mismatched tables, chairs, couches scattered haphazardly and piled with random assortments of books, laptops, cell phones, coffee cups, half eaten pastries. Large picture windows dominate two of the walls, forming a pair of perpindicular vistas of a cityscape at dusk. Cars and pedestrians move toward each other vanishing at the windows edge, or occasionally reappearing, as if by magic, now moving in a new direction.
Tickle of Memory: a magic lantern show projected in her bedroom as a little girl, overbright bulb casting shadow occluded light on cream coloured walls. Motion, fanciful figures (composed of not wave, not particle, most elusive and incomprehensible of physical observable phenomena) caper and play as punctured tin slowly revolves. As light flows, slippery sliding like luminescent fish trapped within aquarium glass, a quirk occurs, repeated four times within the manufactured box of her room. At each corner there is a moment, a blip in the perceptive field, when the various shapes and figures fold? fail? collapse? into themselves like tiny dying stars. The frail, eternal, mutable energy/matter/both slides into the angle seeming to disappear into the edges of reality only to slide back out of whatever sub-dimension exists where Euclidean geometry ends.
"Not sure that's a very good metaphor, honestly."
Faded blue eyes dart back from reverie to peer into fever bright green and blue. "What?"
"The lantern thing. S'a pretty image, but I really don't think it works so well in trying to describe those people moving about out there," arms wave in a jerky, dismissive gesture at the windows behind him, "I mean, how many people these days even know what one of those magic lantern things is anymore?"
"How can you possibly know about that?" puzzlement and the faintest stirring of earlier anxiety creeping into her words.
"I can read, of course."
"Read?" fear slides slow and thick into her words, "Like... minds?"
"Like text. Words strung into sentences. The story." matter-of-fact-tone, deadpan expression. Or at least as close as a twitching madman can get to one.
She gapes at him for a moment, glossed lips reflecting light wetly, perfect pearl teeth gleaming whitely with their polish of saliva, lithe red tongue moving spastically, silently in incomprehension. Words fight to form on her curling, twisting tongue, buffetted and roiled by the shock, confusion instilled by this strange figure before her. Seconds pass before she masters her traitor muscles, allowing her control enough to finally allow a sentence to cohere from her thoughts and congeal on her tongue.
"Twitch!" a feminine, throaty growl. Not hers.
Blue and particoloured eyes pivot in opposite directions, come to rest on the same scene.
Snapshot for a Rock Poster: they stand side by side, back lit and framed by the last red rays coming through the open doorway behind. She stands the taller, and a little in front, thick-soled, knee high boots wrapped and wound with straps and buckles perhaps aiding this height. Pale knees, flash of creamy thighs, marred by purplish-yellow bruises, half-healed cuts and marks, all cut off and shadowed by a dark plaid skirt, short and pleated. Thick chain belt, half obscured by a ribbed white sleeveless undershirt. One arm, one bare shoulder, hangs casually, listlessly at her side, well toned muscle moving beneath flesh scrimshawed with crimson lines and symbols. The left hand holds a guitar by its neck, a left handed '57 Stratocaster, slung over her shoulder so that the cherry red and matte black body sways slowly and rythmically in the space beside her head. Black polished lips and kohl darkened eyes offset her pale features, small nose with two rings piercing the left nostril, pale right cheek punctured by a single silver stud above the dimple of her smile. All of these features are secondary to the hair. Candy apple red shot through with blood bright crimson falls in dreadlocks and braids in a riot of cords and tangles, falls away from her face, excepting a few errant locks, cascading down her back in banded coils to quiver and jounce just a few inches from the floor. Beside her, almost lost in the punk spectacle of attitude and hair, stands her partner. Wide black sneakers, the tongues and laces lost beneath the faded blue denim of tight jeans, whose own waist vanishes beneath the untucked hem of a white t-shirt. Only a thin strip of the shirt is visible, the rest being covered by a short black racing jacket, a single white band running across the upper arms and chest. Light stubble of an indeterminate dark colour covers a boyishly round jaw, a mawkish aquiline nose supports a pair of large, mirror lensed aviator shades. Dark hair is cropped short on his head, ending in an uneven jagging line across his forehead, running into tightly groomed sideburns that end just below his ears. In his right hand is a battered Les Paul style hard bodied guitar case. Her face is a study in suppressed rage and kittenish sexuality. His of cultivated boredom and urbanity.
"'lo Fender. Gibson." a quick smirk, a sharp nod to each in turn. He is a creature of sharp jerking motions, like a sparrow scavenging an outdoor cafe. She continually expects him to hop from foot to foot, to launch himself into short flutters of regression and approach.
The duo move into the room. She stalks directly toward them with purpose and conviction, each step a statement of intent and ability. He slides through the coffee house like the spector of style, unnoticed and unnoticing, seeming not so much to approach as to sidle sideways from the edge of vision.
"You're wanted in The City." No premable, no pleasantries. A voice sultry and low, roughened by screamed vocals, unfiltered cigarettes, cheap whiskey. Her partner slides into place beside her, shoulders slumped, but the guitar case's angle never wavers, proving the hidden tension of the muscles. Even with his face obscured by the room's reflection, there is a sense of alertness. Watching him, she just knows he is looking everywhere, eyes quick and alert to every action and inaction in the room.
(C) Divers Hands
The ballroom floor was a whirl of black and white. A twisting, writhing miasma of opposing color, merging and fracturing in a manner that makes the room take on dimensions and angles my eye can not follow. And through the rippling monochromatic array, visible in brief flashes amidst the optical torturings: crimson. A crimson so bright and vibrant against its swirling insulation as to leave phantom images impressed indelibly upon my retinas.
These are the Twins.
They stand at the center of the ballroom, seeming almost to be some binary star system, around which this universe of black and white clad dancers is inexorably spun and held by the gravity of their presence. Or perhaps they are a single star, for they stand so close to each other as to be nearly indistinguishable as two separate entities. For a weird moment, this thought takes hold of me, and leaves me certain of their existence as a single unique creature with too many appendages.
Beside me, Hunter checks the guns holstered beneath his tuxedo jacket, flashes one of his mad smiles, and heads out into the churning black and white throng. He is immediately lost from my sight, blending into the optical churnings that flow before me without even the faintest ripple of disturbance. For being the most recognizable man in Arkham, Hunter has an uncanny ability to go unnoticed when he wants to.
I feel a slight tug on my jackets right arm.
Are you going to stand there gawking all night, or are you going to ask me to dance? Stacia asks with what I am coming to recognize as her wide eyed innocent look. The effect is spoiled only slightly by the knowing smile that plays upon her soft pink lips.
I... I dont really dance. I manage when my breath returns.
Everyone says that. she laughs, as she grabs my arm and pulls me along into the complex perturbations of the dancers.
These are the Twins.
They stand at the center of the ballroom, seeming almost to be some binary star system, around which this universe of black and white clad dancers is inexorably spun and held by the gravity of their presence. Or perhaps they are a single star, for they stand so close to each other as to be nearly indistinguishable as two separate entities. For a weird moment, this thought takes hold of me, and leaves me certain of their existence as a single unique creature with too many appendages.
Beside me, Hunter checks the guns holstered beneath his tuxedo jacket, flashes one of his mad smiles, and heads out into the churning black and white throng. He is immediately lost from my sight, blending into the optical churnings that flow before me without even the faintest ripple of disturbance. For being the most recognizable man in Arkham, Hunter has an uncanny ability to go unnoticed when he wants to.
I feel a slight tug on my jackets right arm.
Are you going to stand there gawking all night, or are you going to ask me to dance? Stacia asks with what I am coming to recognize as her wide eyed innocent look. The effect is spoiled only slightly by the knowing smile that plays upon her soft pink lips.
I... I dont really dance. I manage when my breath returns.
Everyone says that. she laughs, as she grabs my arm and pulls me along into the complex perturbations of the dancers.
So, when I began running a journal on this site, it was in the hopes of propagating a weird little piece of fiction I was writing that slowly escalated into a serial experiment in an homage to pulp writing of the thirties and forties. Several years later, I am still obsessed with that periods literature and still hoping to someday bring the adventures of Hunter, Stacia, Warren and Victor to the world...
Recently, Mr. Warren Ellis, of "Transmetropolitan" fame, did an experiment in comics that he called Apparat, and was supposed to serve as an idea of what pulp comics would look like today if the superhero comic had never come about. Outside of the beauty of this project, lies an idea that I have been harboring for years, but without any type of industry support, have found myself completely unable to explore...
Either way, they are brilliant little snippets of a future that could have been, and I suggest you go investigate them. In the meanwhile, I offer you the first installment of my own sad, jaded little work (and shall hopefully each week continue to provide you with an installment till I run out of words or die of some horrible and malignant illness... preferably the latter first) The Adventures of Hunter Cartwright.
Enjoy.
Part the First: September 17, 19--
One
The bright flare of cherry red light, the sound of an indrawn breath, the thick, rich taste of tobacco, the slow burn of heated air in my lungs. A pause: the world waits suspended in time.
And then I exhale.
The light fades to a smoldering orange, the breath comes out of me in a muffled rush, the air about me fills with rich, blue smoke. For a moment, there is a sense of euphoria, the heady rush of nicotine, and something perhaps just a tad bit harder, floods my blood stream and attacks my system. This feeling is gone quickly, overtaken by the jarring, rattling crash of my nerves.
I draw deeply on my cigarette again, and turn back towards the door.
The evening is damp as only evenings in New England can be. The sun has almost set; its swollen, oblate form a deep crimson that stains the sky and the clouds about it. Stains them the violet of twilight shadows. That deep pervasive color you can only find at dusk or dawn.
The street is starting to vanish in slow, roiling billows of water vapor, pallid and clammy. The trees and grasses are vaguely luminescent, the clinging droplets of water catching the last light of the sun and the bright, electric light of the street lamps; bending it and throwing it back to the eye.
The door is still there.
I sigh, take a final drag off my nearly spent cigarette, and toss it to the cobbled walk. It strikes the stones with a brief eruption, tiny sparks thrown out into the shadows around the stair. I observe the quick white tendril of a tiny shuggoth as it snatches at it. There are the soft, wet sounds of it feeding, and then silence. It has been hiding in the shadows of the stair for the last hour, eagerly consuming all the cigarettes I have dropped. Theyre deeply disturbing creatures, these amoeba-like sacs of corpse flesh, but they keep the city sparklingly clean.
I stand for a moment on the empty street, save for my companion shuggoth, gathering my courage and quelling my nerves for yet another attempt. I take the marble stairs quickly, and approach the heavy wooden door for the fifth time this evening.
I pause. The door is a deep walnut color, chased in silver, with a small, silver placard set to the left of it. There is nothing terribly fancy or impressive about the door. It is quite similar to many doors in this city. The door of a well to do, though modest, professional. The door you would expect to find leading to any dentist or surgeons office. A perfectly ordinary door.
This just makes it more unsettling.
A cab clatters down the street, slowing as it nears me. The clop of hooves, the rattle of wheels, the jingle of harness and trace, all echo off cobbled streets and stone facades, drawing me back to the world without. It is rare to see a horse drawn cab in this city anymore. Most of the horses cannot abide the scent of the shuggoths or the strange hum of the new repulsor carriages.
There are some people who feel the same as the horse.
It is an old dray horse, its coat shiny and gray with age. It has probably pulled a hansom, or wagon, or cab through these streets for the last fifteen years. In spite of its obvious long experience in the city, the bit in its mouth is still flecked with foam, its brown eyes, showing white all around, still roll wildly in their sockets. The driver seems oblivious to the panicked state of his animal. Instead, he is focused on the same door I stand before. He stares at it with the intensity of an artist studying his latest subject, or a worshipper at the alter of his creator. He tips his hat, an action that is laced with the deepest of respect, as he passes the door, and then he is whipping his nigh mad horse back into a trot and off into the fog.
I sigh, knowing exactly how the cab driver feels, while desperately trying to tell myself there is no difference between calling on this residence as upon any other.
Across from me, in the darkened, dripping, luminescent park, a whippoorwill begins to call. It is soon joined by others of its kind in a hellish, trilling cacophony. Without warning, a whole flock of them bursts from the trees and begin to circle and spin wildly above the street before me.
I turn away from the screeching creatures and raise my hand to finally knock on this door that has daunted me all evening; my actions galvanized more by the abhorrent chittering of the birds then by any new found courage on my part. The sooner I am through the door the sooner I am away from their bean sidhe wails.
Before my fist can ever hit the door though, they stop.
They stop with a suddenness that is startling, and without thinking, arm still raised, I turn to look for the cause of the sharp silence. All around me, on the trees and rails, on the porches and gutters, on the lamp posts and roof spires sit hundreds of beady eyed birds. Each one staring at me with the intensity of a predator stalking its prey.
I panic, a blind gripping fear squeezing my heart and chest with bands of steel. I turn to pound on the door, to claw my way in to this most prestigious of residences before these horrible little devils can fall upon me and pick the flesh from bones that are now made of lead.
And it is right then that the door explodes outward from its hinges as a heavy, rushing figure crashes into me and sends us both sprawling down the slick, marble steps.
Recently, Mr. Warren Ellis, of "Transmetropolitan" fame, did an experiment in comics that he called Apparat, and was supposed to serve as an idea of what pulp comics would look like today if the superhero comic had never come about. Outside of the beauty of this project, lies an idea that I have been harboring for years, but without any type of industry support, have found myself completely unable to explore...
Either way, they are brilliant little snippets of a future that could have been, and I suggest you go investigate them. In the meanwhile, I offer you the first installment of my own sad, jaded little work (and shall hopefully each week continue to provide you with an installment till I run out of words or die of some horrible and malignant illness... preferably the latter first) The Adventures of Hunter Cartwright.
Enjoy.
Part the First: September 17, 19--
One
The bright flare of cherry red light, the sound of an indrawn breath, the thick, rich taste of tobacco, the slow burn of heated air in my lungs. A pause: the world waits suspended in time.
And then I exhale.
The light fades to a smoldering orange, the breath comes out of me in a muffled rush, the air about me fills with rich, blue smoke. For a moment, there is a sense of euphoria, the heady rush of nicotine, and something perhaps just a tad bit harder, floods my blood stream and attacks my system. This feeling is gone quickly, overtaken by the jarring, rattling crash of my nerves.
I draw deeply on my cigarette again, and turn back towards the door.
The evening is damp as only evenings in New England can be. The sun has almost set; its swollen, oblate form a deep crimson that stains the sky and the clouds about it. Stains them the violet of twilight shadows. That deep pervasive color you can only find at dusk or dawn.
The street is starting to vanish in slow, roiling billows of water vapor, pallid and clammy. The trees and grasses are vaguely luminescent, the clinging droplets of water catching the last light of the sun and the bright, electric light of the street lamps; bending it and throwing it back to the eye.
The door is still there.
I sigh, take a final drag off my nearly spent cigarette, and toss it to the cobbled walk. It strikes the stones with a brief eruption, tiny sparks thrown out into the shadows around the stair. I observe the quick white tendril of a tiny shuggoth as it snatches at it. There are the soft, wet sounds of it feeding, and then silence. It has been hiding in the shadows of the stair for the last hour, eagerly consuming all the cigarettes I have dropped. Theyre deeply disturbing creatures, these amoeba-like sacs of corpse flesh, but they keep the city sparklingly clean.
I stand for a moment on the empty street, save for my companion shuggoth, gathering my courage and quelling my nerves for yet another attempt. I take the marble stairs quickly, and approach the heavy wooden door for the fifth time this evening.
I pause. The door is a deep walnut color, chased in silver, with a small, silver placard set to the left of it. There is nothing terribly fancy or impressive about the door. It is quite similar to many doors in this city. The door of a well to do, though modest, professional. The door you would expect to find leading to any dentist or surgeons office. A perfectly ordinary door.
This just makes it more unsettling.
A cab clatters down the street, slowing as it nears me. The clop of hooves, the rattle of wheels, the jingle of harness and trace, all echo off cobbled streets and stone facades, drawing me back to the world without. It is rare to see a horse drawn cab in this city anymore. Most of the horses cannot abide the scent of the shuggoths or the strange hum of the new repulsor carriages.
There are some people who feel the same as the horse.
It is an old dray horse, its coat shiny and gray with age. It has probably pulled a hansom, or wagon, or cab through these streets for the last fifteen years. In spite of its obvious long experience in the city, the bit in its mouth is still flecked with foam, its brown eyes, showing white all around, still roll wildly in their sockets. The driver seems oblivious to the panicked state of his animal. Instead, he is focused on the same door I stand before. He stares at it with the intensity of an artist studying his latest subject, or a worshipper at the alter of his creator. He tips his hat, an action that is laced with the deepest of respect, as he passes the door, and then he is whipping his nigh mad horse back into a trot and off into the fog.
I sigh, knowing exactly how the cab driver feels, while desperately trying to tell myself there is no difference between calling on this residence as upon any other.
Across from me, in the darkened, dripping, luminescent park, a whippoorwill begins to call. It is soon joined by others of its kind in a hellish, trilling cacophony. Without warning, a whole flock of them bursts from the trees and begin to circle and spin wildly above the street before me.
I turn away from the screeching creatures and raise my hand to finally knock on this door that has daunted me all evening; my actions galvanized more by the abhorrent chittering of the birds then by any new found courage on my part. The sooner I am through the door the sooner I am away from their bean sidhe wails.
Before my fist can ever hit the door though, they stop.
They stop with a suddenness that is startling, and without thinking, arm still raised, I turn to look for the cause of the sharp silence. All around me, on the trees and rails, on the porches and gutters, on the lamp posts and roof spires sit hundreds of beady eyed birds. Each one staring at me with the intensity of a predator stalking its prey.
I panic, a blind gripping fear squeezing my heart and chest with bands of steel. I turn to pound on the door, to claw my way in to this most prestigious of residences before these horrible little devils can fall upon me and pick the flesh from bones that are now made of lead.
And it is right then that the door explodes outward from its hinges as a heavy, rushing figure crashes into me and sends us both sprawling down the slick, marble steps.
The whales went flying by today.
The sun was just starting to set when we first heard the air reverberating with their songs. The sky shimmered and danced with color and the soft white fuzz of pollen. Streamers of cloud reflected light and sound back to the earth.
And then the first of the whales broke across the horizon.
They swam and cavorted in fading golden light and low sonorous sounds. Their lined blue hides rippled with shadow and flash, now reflecting the last of the sun's rays, now eclipsed by the clouds they wound through.
The pod was massive, its members filling the sky and stirring more soft white dander from the fields spread out below. The grass and weeds flowed in eldritch patterns, swept by the displaced particles of the whale's wakes.
We sat on our blanket, feeling the fading warmth of the day through its soft cotton weave, and watched the whales go by till the sun set, and we were left with nothing but the infinite stars and the last echoes of the whales haunting songs.
The sun was just starting to set when we first heard the air reverberating with their songs. The sky shimmered and danced with color and the soft white fuzz of pollen. Streamers of cloud reflected light and sound back to the earth.
And then the first of the whales broke across the horizon.
They swam and cavorted in fading golden light and low sonorous sounds. Their lined blue hides rippled with shadow and flash, now reflecting the last of the sun's rays, now eclipsed by the clouds they wound through.
The pod was massive, its members filling the sky and stirring more soft white dander from the fields spread out below. The grass and weeds flowed in eldritch patterns, swept by the displaced particles of the whale's wakes.
We sat on our blanket, feeling the fading warmth of the day through its soft cotton weave, and watched the whales go by till the sun set, and we were left with nothing but the infinite stars and the last echoes of the whales haunting songs.
The world turns and turns unless its stopped, and it stops more than you would imagine.
A Dark Tower rises in my dreams, Auberon gazing from its heights as the flying saucers of the Fae folk skip across realities to settle in their master's realm.
Back to school, back to class, back to learn, but not to pass...
and every day I fall in love here. Every time I turn I catch a face that makes me fall in love, if just for a little bit. Oh, how bittersweet a love. Oh how I would not trade one of them.
Jack is calling, and Jack is falling, and Jack comes offering me treats and pain. Too bad for him I know his real game.
I'm in love with the city, and it loves me, but I would trade it all for the girl I lost and the one I have yet to meet.
And the world has stopped for a little while, but soon it will turn again.
A Dark Tower rises in my dreams, Auberon gazing from its heights as the flying saucers of the Fae folk skip across realities to settle in their master's realm.
Back to school, back to class, back to learn, but not to pass...
and every day I fall in love here. Every time I turn I catch a face that makes me fall in love, if just for a little bit. Oh, how bittersweet a love. Oh how I would not trade one of them.
Jack is calling, and Jack is falling, and Jack comes offering me treats and pain. Too bad for him I know his real game.
I'm in love with the city, and it loves me, but I would trade it all for the girl I lost and the one I have yet to meet.
And the world has stopped for a little while, but soon it will turn again.
I stopped and talked to a little black kid sitting on a porch stoop for about five minutes the other day. We talked about the moods of the city, and how you could always stand to learn something from Buffalo if you just listened to it long enough.
Someone came up behind me in the street and asked me who I was talking to. When I pointed to the little boy on the porch, all that was there was a stunted tree in a pot.
Reality keeps breaking down faster and faster for me these days. The little things that I used to catch from the corner of my eye for one fraction of a moment now wait till I can look them head on.
And now they are talking to me.
It can only get better from here.
Someone came up behind me in the street and asked me who I was talking to. When I pointed to the little boy on the porch, all that was there was a stunted tree in a pot.
Reality keeps breaking down faster and faster for me these days. The little things that I used to catch from the corner of my eye for one fraction of a moment now wait till I can look them head on.
And now they are talking to me.
It can only get better from here.
MAY 2007
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
APRIL 2007
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
MARCH 2007
FEBRUARY 2007
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28