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IN THE SHRINE OF THE MONKEY KING
by Daniel Braum
Today's story continues from the Boon of the Monkey God
The Chinese government told me the shrines simply did not exist. But here, thousands of miles away from Costa Rica I stare into the passionate eyes of the Monkey King himself, a solemn figure carved from obsidian stone. This avatar is so different than the bright, brazen, childlike images illustrating the ancient tales. So different than the earthly, visceral persona associated with the mysterious mythological figure I had come here seeking. The statue embodied the “King” aspect of the Monkey King. Old and solemn with wisdom and introspection brimming behind his mischievous but tired countenance. I hoped I could reach this side of him. The fate of two souls and an entire country depended upon it.
#
I pay the monk and share four bottles of wine with him and begin to think I would get no more than his kind entertaining presence, sketches of Chinese characters, and proclamations in broken English.
“Life Okay !”
“Life no drive you ! You drive life !”
Then he stands. His limbs contort, ape-like and he dances across the floor like a simian in the trees. The Monkey King was in him!
“Last year you granted a boon,” I say. “The wish of two souls desiring to be alone with the monkeys.”
Thanks to the Monkey King, Costa Rica was now empty of humans and higher thought, except for the two wish makers. Any person venturing there instantly devolved to their base instincts and lower selves.
“They only wished to leave the heavens behind. In a world free of sutras. Free of the shackles of reason,” says the Monkey King.
“I beseech you to end it.”
“What makes you think I can?”
“The stories say you are a creature of both earth and the heavens..”
“It was they who made it happen, so it must be they who must end. it. I can allow you to keep your mind if you go. But you must convince them.”
The monk sits, a bedraggled monarch on a throne. The smokey air swirls and an oval forms before the statue. A portal.
Through the haze I see the lush tropical Costa Rica on the other side. The Monkey King has given me a path.
Smelling the jungle I want to leave reason behind. Was I here to rescue the children and to save the country or to give in to the boon myself?
The monk promised safe passage, but I sense I might really absolve myself of the reason of the heavens like all those who came before me if I walk through.
I lift my foot. Is it wisdom or mischief I see in the old monk's eyes? I can’t tell.
- END-
THE ROC GRAVEYARD
by Daniel Braum
This entry is third in a series. Feel free to revisit Basilisk Tracks and Bats on Fire before or after reading.
#
Michaela wondered how they knew to come here to die. Was it something like how sea turtles always found the same beach they were born to lay their eggs?
No one had ever photographed one of the great birds actually coming here to die. It happened so infrequently. Still, gatherings like this, with great numbers of the aggressive, territorial birds were rare. Her group was in luck.
François would have loved it.
She fingered the Phoenix feather he had bought her. He had given it to her before their first kiss. He had been that sure. Even now, she still carried it with her.
#
The island mountaintop was littered with giant bones. One by one the giant birds dropped from the sky and perched on the macabre roost of bleached rib cages, beaks and skulls. The group’s transport lifted from the waves, hovering high into the air for a better vantage. This was as close as they dare come.
Something bumped the transport. A young Roc. Defenses fired. Flares. Water. Directed blasts of sound. The bird held on.
Michaela composed a frantic message to François on her PDA. “Dearest One. I am sorry. I do not know how to untie this knot we got in, but there is still so much love...”
The boat lurched. A big flare exploded and the Roc let go. The rest of the group scrambled for their cameras as if this were routine.
#
The Rocs sang. Their mourning vibrating with the flickers of the endless stars above. What worlds, what sights had the departed bird seen? Scientists said they flew between worlds. In the quantum spaces between realities. They saw possibility. They lived in worlds that could be and that never would be.
Michaela held the phoenix feather up. Rich orange shimmered through the stringy fiery red veins. It was perfect. And for a while there she and Francois had been so perfect. She brought the message up on her PDA. She stared at the little glowing screen, counting each bell she wished they hadn’t rung, then hit delete.
The transport hovered above the waves. The stars lit the deck. The Roc song was the most beautiful thing she had ever heard and she couldn’t hold her tears back much longer. Oh, Francois, she thought. She released the feather and let the night wind take it.
Bats on Fire
by Daniel Braum
Dusk’s last light was almost gone and the evening sky’s rich blues were on the verge of black. Michaela sat on the cliff top listening to the waves crash against the rocks below- her eyes on the sky, peeled for a sign of the bats that didn’t come.
“I knew I’d find you here,” Francois said.
He was right. After everything, he still knew her better than anyone.
“Did you see them tonight?” he asked.
Bats are true creatures of love, Michaela thought. They live in vast colonies and go by feel, navigating not by sight or reason but by what feels right to the senses. Nothing more. Nothing less. The same had brought her to this town. That and her job for the rockstar. The need for a stable life for her son was why she stayed, that and the warrants waiting for her in New York along with all the drama and empty people.
When the job dried up and the rockstar moved on, it was the bats that kept her here. They felt right. Despite the daily struggles to keep Bennett in school and healthy and fed they were always there. Then along came Francois.
“No, didn’t see them,” Michaela said.
“Maybe they’re full or feel the coming storm.”
She’s met Francois at a show one of the rockstar’s protégés was putting on. They talked all night. He didn’t judge her about all the New York drama she was running from. In the days and weeks and months that followed they talked every night. He brought her groceries and helped with what bills he could. He was kind to Bennett even took him to the aquarium for his birthday to see all the fishes he was so fascinated with. Bennett was thrilled to see his first real shark.
The night they first kissed Michaela dreamed the bats from the cliffs were on fire- beautiful golden flames that did not consume them. Every night since then she had dreamed of them spiraling out of their seaside caves into the night, their wild flaming patterns streaking across the sky.
Their love was real. Genuine emotion in every word, every touch. She could not imagine a life without him and he said neither could he. Then the rockstar called. Wanted to hire her. Just like the old days, but back in New York. So why wouldn’t Francois help her. He always wanted to live in New York. Catch was she had to get there and set up on her own. Francois could hire a lawyer, pay all the bills, protect her from the drama and make her troubles go away. Why wouldn’t he? If he loved me unconditionally, he would, she thought.
What you don’t own, owns you, he had said. These things are for you to face. If I make these things disappear, something else will rear its head at you even stronger to get you to listen to get you to face what you aren’t.
Ever since then she hadn’t dreamt of the bats. Not on fire. Not at all.
He didn’t understand what love was and she didn’t think that would change tonight. She looked into the night sky hoping for a sign the bats might come after all.
-END-
Basilisk Tracks
by Daniel Braum
At first I thought they were tire tracks, evidence of a child’s bike criss crossing the beach in all directions. But when Michaela said, no they must be basilisk tracks look at the way they stop right at the holes by the boardwalk, I knew she was right.
I didn’t think there were basilisks here, not on this island, certainly not on the beach. Must be young ones I guessed. If it wasn’t such a misty, damp morning and if we hadn’t gone down right when we had to claim a spot for our chairs we would have missed them. Like wind passing through trees maybe this was as close as we could hope to come without turning to stone. It was too dangerous to try and see adult ones at the acropolis. It had been a blissful few weeks on the islands with Michaela and we’d seen Roc’s nests and winged horses and even the tail end of a hydra fleeing into the marsh.
“They should put signs up to be careful at night,” I said.
“Oh, Francois, that would ruin the charm, might as well put in a Starbucks then.”
“Just want to be careful,” I said.
“I want to see them,” Michaela said. “Sleep with me, here on the beach. Tonight. Without protective lenses. It will be so beautiful.”
Poor beautiful Michaela. Never careful. How could she be when everything was about the moment, about the beauty, nothing coming second to it feeling right. I could see us locked in a sweaty tangle, surrounded by young basilisks creeping in the dark as we made love. I bet to her the risk of having our moment of bliss frozen in time, locked in stone forever sounded romantic. It did, but would I turn to stone for her?
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“I don’t believe you,” she said.
If she ever left me, I’d miss her sweet gentle voice the most, I think. Everything I see in her is in that sound- her kindness, her visionary eye, and her passion for beauty. I can hear her now telling me she wants to plant Barcelonan moonflowers in my garden. And to be there with me decades later when they bloomed.
I thought of us hand in hand watching the bats at the seaside caves at dusk, taking her son to see the tame hippogriffs at the zoo, our days hunting for phoenix nests on the wild shores. Beautiful days. Pure and true and full of love. I hoped they would be enough.
- END-
In Search of Elephant Corners
by Daniel Braum
The thief’s shade was trying to follow Slyvie back to Elephant Corners. Again. She heard the phantom whine of her motorbike’s engine though it was nowhere to be seen on the street crowded with the bustle of day sellers closing shop and patrons gathering for the night market.
She’d been studying under the elder fortunetellers for weeks. The half-day search on her motorbike to find the four elephant shaped buildings she called home seemed so far away.
“Why did it take me so long to find my way here?” Slyvie had asked, before her daily walk to the market to fetch fresh chicken bones for the divination cups. “We are almost in the center of the city, right in plain sight. For anyone to see or follow.”
“Ganesha is the remover of obstacles,” the fortune woman called Katerina had answered then affectionately patted an elephant figurine that looked much like the sculpted face of the building.
Had it been Ganesha who removed the obstacles preventing her from finding the Fortune Tellers? Ganesha who guided the thief who stole her motorbike? It wasn’t Ganesha following her now. She could feel the thief’s yearning. Not just for her. To find Elephant Corners.
The accident that had claimed him had been meant for her. It involved a blown tire. A refugee from the city of Phiros, an old hero of the Origami circuit. Chickens. A lot of them. And a contraband shipment of vampire vine.
The shade followed her most evenings. And was always thwarted by one fortuitous distraction or another. One time by a raucous trio of escaped chickens. Another by a pretty lady muttering charms under her lacy veil. Yet another by a tiny rainstorm moving almost purposefully through the stairway alleys.
But today was the day of dragon-kites and tombstones, (at least according to the calendar of Sylvie’s ancestral home), the day spirits will rise and walk in flesh of the unwary if given a chance.
The shade slowly but steadily pursued her through the market streets and winding alleys. To Sylvie’s dismay no distractions appeared to hinder it.
Sylvie ducked into a side street hoping to lose it with speed but the egress was blocked by an ostrich caravan. She gulped trying to gather the courage to run back out and past the invisible, menacing presence. The sputter-pop of her lost motorbike was almost upon her.
“Just go away !” she cried, afraid the shade would touch her and ride her body back to Elephant Corners.
The motorbike sounds retreated. The shade had moved to a piece of glow-taffy on the cobblestones. Sylvie spied another piece at the entrance to the next alley. A trail? She was in luck the shade followed and Sylvie ran home.
“Why,” Slyvie asked Katerina once she was safely behind the door-leg of the blue elephant. “How did I escape? Why can no one find Elephant Corners when it is in plain sight?”
“Ganesha protects this place,” she answered. “Today you learned he is also the placer of proper obstacles.”
Sylvie thought about it. The shade had wanted something. From her. From Elephant Corners. The fortune tellers must have had a reason to prevent her death in the bike crash.
Maybe if she continued her studies she’d be able to find the answer in patterns of the past or divine its shape from the ripples it sent into the ever-changing future.
-END-
Of Dances and Doors
by Daniel Braum
He doesn’t remember being born and knows the woman on the other side of the door is not his mother; yet still she created him. He loves her and hates her for that.
#
He senses the hollow place in her gut. The place longing to be filled. The place that wants to let him in.
Every action born of this hunger feeds him. Misguided fuel and black energy streaming, streaming, streaming from her heart- shadowing her silver cord. It winds into the ether, flows through the door into the void where he sits. Waiting for grace to be forgotten. Waiting to be let in.
He feels her most when she is contemplating the hollow and thinks she might fill her heart with love.
And he wants her to. He knows every act from her higher self will cause him to wither.
But she will not rise in this way. Not tonight. She will invite him in. Invite him to dance. She opens the door…
He fills the hollow in her gut. The dance begins. He leads. She lets him. Bells are rung. Promises are undone. Voices are raised. Words fly- stinging little barbs with heart ripping accuracy. She feels full. But only for the most fleeting of instants.
Then the hollow returns. There is not enough room in there, even for him. The woman staggers- her words hanging in the air with a palpable weight.
Even though no one can see him, he hides. A place behind the open bedroom door that doesn’t swing fully. The space between it and the wall.
Something has happened. Other doors are opening. The air feels heavy as if with rain.
“Brother?” A voice calls out.
He always knew he’d had brothers and sisters, though he’d never seen them.
He can’t see the source of the voice. He imagines an androgynous white form. Moving closer to him.
“Yes?” he answers.
The form and heavy air rushes to him. It feels like a cloudburst. Front on front. Then the nether void blows in and reclaims him.
#
He doesn’t remember being born and knows the woman on the other side of the door is not his mother yet still, she created him. He loves her and hates her for that.
-END-
* This is a companion story to The Dancer, the Door, and the Ordinary Stain. Which can be found in the archives under my name, from March 27, 2009. http://www.dailycabal.com/daniel_braum *
The Dancer, the Door, and the Ordinary Stain
by Daniel Braum
The door strains to open with a groan worse than the metal fatigue of countless fathoms pressing on the hull of a submarine down too far, its man-made shell barely restraining the force of the deep.
A silver, ethereal tang mingles with perfumed soap from the bathroom and crisp clean linens. Mara sits on the huge bed, the room service next to her untouched.
She thinks of Christoph from Prague who stayed only as long as the money flowed. His touch, everything about him- his chiseled form, gentlemanly demeanor and beautiful boyish face- was titillating. But the thrill faded minutes after he departed, as she knew it would, leaving her unsatisfied and hollow as ever.
She considers calling another young plaything. Maybe the rock and rollers in Bonn. Or the captian of industry in London. She knows they desire her not just for her physical presence and charm, but for her razor mind that answers thier questions and unties the complex knots of thier lives, like no other.
She considers returning to her family and to her many friends. She hears her sister telling her the life she despises and berates as a life so oridinary is really a life fit for a Queen; and that the love she has is a rare thing to be cherished and nourished. And she knows her sister is right.
Mara wonders why she yearns for this chaos. But she has no answer, only the knowing, the gnawing in that hollow that wants to two-step into oblivion, and rub her ordinary life out like a stain.
Beyond the etchings on the floor, past the blood and ritual items of summoning, water slowly drips into the tub. Something about the sound, and the smell of clean reminds her of home and how the embrace of luxary feels. She thinks she will pick up the telephone to call her sister.
Yet she wants the deep water. She wants to feel the pressure on her hull as she is crushed.
The air rumbles and fills with that awful groan. Mara knows when the door opens fully and the thing on the other side says, “shall we dance?”, she will say yes and take his hand as he steps through.
- END-
Breathstealer
by Daniel Braum
I don’t sleep well. Breathstealer comes at night when the line between what is and what was is weakest.
At first she came to me as a shadowy black cat, waking me in the night, her jaguar weight on my belly, paws on my shoulders immobilizing me. I thought she was an ancient curse I picked up in the deep of the rainforest; a manifestation of a vengeful spirit brought home from a jungle-covered pyramid on one of my long journeys of “self-discovery”. Surely she was vengeance incarnate, here because of the sins of my youth, my arrogance and ignorance rivaling that of the conquistadors, a trail of emotional destruction left in the lives I touched. I often woke with breathstealer pinning me and I was filled of thoughts of my past transgressions, lovers’ quarrels risen to screaming matches, low-blow words gone devastatingly too far, the seething yet resigned look on my true love’s, my last love’s face as she left me on the side of road in middle of the night. I felt my air, my life, leaving along with all these things.
Later on I thought breathstealer was a blessing, some angelic incarnation here to reward me for all the pain I’ve felt. I often woke to find an ethereal woman, in diaphanous white, hovering near me, misty, gentle hands caressing me with a lover’s grace. Thoughts things long gone, the secret things the little moments I shared with ex-lovers and ex-friends filled me. In the last note my true-love, my last love wrote me she asked, where do all the good things go now, where do I put them? I ask breathstealer this now. She only kisses me and I feel my air, my life, leaving along with all these things.
My doctor told me I will die if I don’t do something. Not enough oxygen when I sleep. A condition called hyper-this and toxic-that. I only know sleep is troubled. Breathstealer comes to me now in a form I know well. I wake in the night to find something that looks just like me sitting next to me on the bed. It touches my forehead with the back of its hand and all the details, go till all that is left are congealed notions of moments, of all the days of all the years; a life boiled down to talking points and topic sentences. I know now breathstealer is not curse nor a blessing, and I was born dying, as was each moment that passes.
I sleep better now, still I know breathstealer comes at night, when the line between what is and what will be is shifting.
Breathstealer
by Daniel Braum
I don’t sleep well. Breathstealer comes at night when the line between what is and what was is weakest.
At first she came to me as a shadowy black cat, waking me in the night, her jaguar weight on my belly, paws on my shoulders immobilizing me. I thought she was an ancient curse I picked up in the deep of the rainforest; a manifestation of a vengeful spirit brought home from a jungle-covered pyramid on one of my long journeys of “self-discovery”. Surely she was vengeance incarnate, here because of the sins of my youth, my arrogance and ignorance rivaling that of the conquistadors, a trail of emotional destruction left in the lives I touched. I often woke with breathstealer pinning me and I was filled of thoughts of my past transgressions, lovers’ quarrels risen to screaming matches, low-blow words gone devastatingly too far, the seething yet resigned look on my true love’s, my last love’s face as she left me on the side of road in middle of the night. I felt my air, my life, leaving along with all these things.
Later on I thought breathstealer was a blessing, some angelic incarnation here to reward me for all the pain I’ve felt. I often woke to find an ethereal woman, in diaphanous white, hovering near me, misty, gentle hands caressing me with a lover’s grace. Thoughts things long gone, the secret things the little moments I shared with ex-lovers and ex-friends filled me. In the last note my true-love, my last love wrote me she asked, where do all the good things go now, where do I put them? I ask breathstealer this now. She only kisses me and I feel my air, my life, leaving along with all these things.
My doctor told me I will die if I don’t do something. Not enough oxygen when I sleep. A condition called hyper-this and toxic-that. I only know sleep is troubled. Breathstealer comes to me now in a form I know well. I wake in the night to find something that looks just like me sitting next to me on the bed. It touches my forehead with the back of its hand and all the details, go till all that is left are congealed notions of moments, of all the days of all the years; a life boiled down to talking points and topic sentences. I know now breathstealer is not curse nor a blessing, and I was born dying, as was each moment that passes.
I sleep better now, still I know breathstealer comes at night, when the line between what is and what will be is shifting.
Silver Angel
by Daniel Braum
Twelve days before Christmas it wakes. It claws its way into the Johnson’s basement to the where the Christmas ornaments, boxed from last year, are ready to be unpacked. Beak and horn and scaly-skin, hooves and forked tail all change to the form of a silver angel, hands clasped in prayer, like always.
The Johnsons are pleased to find it though they didn’t remember it from last year. Still, they place it atop their newly decorated tree.
When the Johnsons are asleep the silver angel creeps down from atop the tree and into the room where the elder Johnson boy is sleeping. With one claw it reaches into the boy’s mind and grasps images of Saint Nicholas. The boy’s belief is strong, so there is a lot of work, lots to eat. By morning the boy does not believe in Saint Nicholas any longer.
Last year the children of this neighborhood saw the specter of the real Saint Nicholas. That is why it has come. To eat. Saint Nicholas, the reindeer, the manifestation of Father Winter all are real.
On Christmas Eve it is about to creep down the tree when it senses something is wrong. The fire in the hearth goes out. Hooves patter on the roof. The specter of Saint Nicholas appears by the milk and cookies. Saint Nicholas eats, but the cookies remain whole. It knows the specter takes nourishment from only the belief with which they were made and placed.
The specter is ugly. An old child of Adam- round face, white beard. This year he is frail and thin- it and its kin have been eating well.
The specter does not see it. He leaves his gifts for the children, blessings- imbued in the toys beneath the tree. It sees the boxes begin to shimmer- this one with long life, that one with happiness, another with laughter and fun.
Hooves stomp the roof. The reindeer sense it and are trying to warn the Saint.
I won’t be taken alive, it thinks. I have walked the earth for ages and have eaten the faith of many children. I will never be forced to serve the Saint.
Faint footsteps pad down the stairs. The younger Johnson boy peers through the arm-rail and sees the specter of Saint Nicholas by the gifts. The specter promptly disappears.
When it is confident its enemies have moved on to another roof the silver angel crawls down from the tree. The Johnson boy has seen. One more meal before this year’s sleep.
-END-
TURN ME ON, DEAD MAN
by Daniel Braum
“Can he play the bass guitar?” John asked.
“No, but look at him,” George said.
William Shears Campbell looked at the two rock stars. He never thought winning the look-alike contest would have led to this.
“What happened?” Billy Shears asked. “Why is everyone talking as if I’m not here?”
“We can teach him bass guitar,” George said. “He even does sound a lot like Paul, thats a good start.”
“Just a little bit of the ol’ under the knife to make it perfect and he’ll look just like him.”
“No one must ever know,” George said. “Ever. No clues. No backwards secret messages.”
“Don’t worry,” John said with a mischevious smile.
“Give it go then,” John said. “Sing a line with me-”
“Why?” Billy asked. “I only won a look-alike contest. They said there would be a prize.”
“He really doesn’t know,” said George.
The two rock stars turned to face the young man.
“There was an accident,” John said. “He hadn’t noticed that the lights had changed. Wednesday morning at five a.m. as the day began, I buried Paul.”
“That’s crazy,” Billy said.
“Is it?” John said. “I say the world is crazy, but all the more reason why the show must go on. Welcome to the band, Billy. Paul is dead, miss him, miss him.”
END
* Comemorating the recent 40th anniversary of The White Album.
Austin Lights
by Daniel Braum
On January 8, 2008 unidentified lights raced across the Texas sky.
#
Arnie knew that everyone saw the lights over Austin. Police officers, military men, and hundreds of ordinary Joe’s. The footage played on CNN. On Larry King a noted UFO expert explained how the sightings of three witnesses and home footage corresponded with national weather service radar.
This was good. Whatever it was, it was still unidentified, but would go a long way towards people taking them seriously.
He set off to Gordon’s basement for the weekly meeting of their UFO and sky watcher group.
#
Gordon’s basement was stuffed full of all sorts of equipment and computers they had “borrowed” from their various jobs. Tonight it was set up and configured like a Rube Goldberg schematic come to life.
And an old man was there. The two men looked alike. Gordon's grandpa or uncle maybe? So much for the no outsiders policy. Especially tonight with so much going on.
“Who’s this?” Arnie asked.
“I’ve figured it out,” Gordon said.
“What? The lights?”
The old man laughed, and said, “no.”
“I thought we agreed, no outsiders, Gordon,” Arine said. “You want to get us busted?”
“Doesn’t matter, we’re going to be famous. I’ve discovered slip holes through time.”
Gordon was a genius. But still, Arnie had never heard of slip holes.
“You mean worm holes?”he asked.
“No,” answered the old man. “I like to think of them as slip holes.”
“I was asking him,” Arnie said. “Who the fuck are you?”
“I’m Gordon,” the old man said. “I figured out how to slip back in time. It took me forty years to make it back, to this day.”
“What? That’s crazy. Impossible.”
“No it isn’t,” the young Gordon said. “Look, here we are.”
“You’ve probably messed things up real good then,” Arnie said.
“No. The flow of time rights itself. Repairs itself.”
“But if what you said is true, isn’t it incredibly dangerous? Maybe you two shouldn’t stand so close.”
“No its perfectly safe, see,”
The young Gordon patted his elder self on the back.
Giant streaks of orange light raced across the Austin sky above them. The two men erupted into burning white light which consumed them, the room and within seconds, everything.
#
The lights over that particular Austin and in that particular everywhere, went out, forever.
- END -
The Box
by Daniel Braum
It was first spotted in the no man’s land of Nevada; vast desert with nothing but space and sky and military bases, both official and secret.
A floating metal box. Three feet square. Painted drab army-green.
It had turned a swath of desert into manicured suburban landscape, not quite unlike the development I grew up in. How? No one knew. Then it disappeared.
Thousands of miles away in my Miami office the military spooks saw fit to question me.
#
Over the next few months, stories popped up in the media, both mainstream and underground, ranging from urban lore to wrath of god stuff. The more colorful items were that it housed the ghost of a mad general, and the various flavors of alien conspiracies.
It showed up in three other places since that day in Nevada. The little development for military families where I lived as a teen, the farm where my ex Terrence was raised, and the Eiffel Tower.
The box turned the development into desert. Metal street signs became cacti. Houses became sand dunes. It wasn’t much but I had loved that place. The farm was where Terrence retreated to after our first break up. It simply vanished. The Eiffel tower was transformed into solid turquoise. I hate blue. Pairs was the place I always dreamed of going. I’d only told one person that. Terrence of course. The night before he left for officer school. He’d asked me to marry him. He was a man who never listened, a man I could never control. I said no.
#
Gazing out my office window, I saw the metal box wink into existence. Cars skidded and swerved. Slowly it floated up the street ignoring the traffic light and chaos beneath it. Then it descended and turned into my building.
The elevator door dinged and there it was. So close I could see four little gyroscopes at its base spinning as it titled minutely to adjust itself.
Everyone in the office scattered in panic but Jim from the next cubicle stood in front of me. He froze. He turned cactus green, then spines burst from his thick skin. Two yellow flowers bloomed out of his eyes. The box just floated there for a second. I looked around. Could I make it to a window and jump? I noticed the crappy artwork on the walls was changing. Images of Terrence and me as the stupid kids we were appeared, rendered in the style of bad oil paint and motivational photography.
With his career as a military scientist and all his power as general, Terrence could still never control me. But what had happened to him?
I had suspected. I had guessed. I had denied and wished it wasn’t true. But having it here, before me, I knew.
“Terrence,” I said, gathering all of my presence and courage. “You change that man back, right now. And change everything back. Make it right.”
The little gyroscopes titled and I thought it moved just a little closer to me.
I wondered if this time, he would listen.
- END -
Wooden Ships
by Daniel Braum
David’s Geiger counter went click, click, click. The melted copper dome had once been part of a fancy church brought over brick by brick from Europe. Once upon a time it had stood next door to what was once David’s favorite Deli, an odd but welcome sight among the suburban sprawl.
It had been six months since it all happened, and supplies in the bomb shelter were running low. David had donned one of the suits and went scavenging. If he ran into soldiers from the other side he was done for, if he stayed put, they were all done for anyway.
The counter clicked away at every ruined building. David pointed the counter at the mass of vines snaking over the rubble where the pet store once stood. And the clicking stopped. David walked over and found a man reclining in reclining in the sun, having a smoke and a snack. He could tell from his coat he was from the other side.
David expected an attack and thought maybe he should attack first. The man noticed David and smiled. Why didn’t he have suit on, David thought.
Everything was gone and nothing mattered anymore. Still David was curious and hadn’t heard any news since it all happened.
“Is there something you could tell me please,” he asked. “Who won?”
The man shrugged. He motioned for David to take off his suit. David didn’t comply.
“Don’t trust me, check your counter,” the man said.
David did. It was all clear. He reluctantly took off his helmet.
“I’m out of supplies. I need to find some food,” David said.
The man pointed to the vines spread around the rubble. Ripe dark purple berries hung from under their green triangular leaves.
“They keep us all alive,” the man said. His tongue was stained purple.
“Us all?” David asked.
“Come,” the man said.
They followed the vines away from the rubble- a line of green snaking through cindered remains of trees and burnt out strip malls. They led into a settlement, bustling with people.
Dozens upon dozens of vines converged into one giant vine, thick as a hundred trees, reaching up into the sky, like from Jack in the beanstalk. The massive vine reached as high as David remembered the highest planes used to fly.
Where the vines thickened and combined at the base of the main stalk were organic pods that looked like the hulls of wooden sailing ships without masts or sails. People walked into them. The vines rustled and moved the wooden-ship-pods up the stalk, slowly, then faster as they climbed higher in the sky.
“Where do they go? Up into space?” David asked.
“I don’t know,” the man said. “Somewhere far away, I bet. Where we might laugh again.”
David radioed the shelter to reported his find.
“Come in alpha-bravo. Uh, I’ve found a settlement of sort. Um, there are vines. With berries. You can eat them. The vines seem to take away the radiation like a houseplant sucking cee-oh-two.”
“You’re crazy, gamma-delta,” the shelter radioed back. “You’ve got radiation sickness. Come back at once.”
“No. This is real. You should all come.”
The radio went dead.
“Come, if you’d like,” the man said. “You’ve told your friends. Its all you can do. Or stay. We are leaving, you don’t need us.”
“Guess I’ll set a course and go,” David said.
He tried the shelter again, then took off his suit and climbed in the nearest ship.
-END-
* inspired by the song, with the same name, by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young *
MARS NEEDS WOMEN
by Daniel Braum
When the first saucer landed the little green men didn’t say “take us to your leaders,” but “which way is Hollywood?” I suspected an ulterior motive, but couldn’t figure out what. I couldn’t believe they had come to make it big time on the silver screen but then again I was one of those people who thought the movie Titanic would be a flop. Now my youngest daughter has posters of greenie heartthrobs all over her room. And I can’t turn on the T.V. or open a paper without seeing a smiling green mug.
Hollywood’s leading men were out of work and outspoken against the “green invasion”. Tom Cruise was short, like them, and had that same insincere smile, an act, a friendly veneer that I always thought hid something, some secret. So I thought if his complaints weren’t so sad they’d be funny. Throngs of young men were coloring their skin green and wearing their hair done up in a kind of cone to mimic the Martians’ domed heads. Tall guys had it rough for once.
Apparently the Martian’s hadn’t heard of monogamy. The tabloids were full of their exploits but even that couldn’t quell the frenzy.
The awards circuit that year was full of little green men in shades and Yves Saint Lauren suits with tall starlets on their arms. My eldest girl brought home a boy done up in that stupid green body powder. Even my wife tried to get me to admit the green men were so cute and stylish. We fought over why I wouldn’t consider changing my hairstyle.
Some greenie band held a concert at the new Shea Stadium. It was like Beatlemania all over again, times a thousand. But still I wondered, why?
Until the next day when an Armada of saucers arrived. One over each of our cities. The invasion I had always feared had come. But not how I thought.
“Daughters of Earth,” the Martian ambassador announced on every channel on every station, “the sons of Mars have arrived and they all need brides.”
- END-
Horse Ride
by Daniel Braum
“I don’t like the sound of it, dear,” Tommy’s Mother messaged to Tommy’s Dad.
“You said the same thing about the Mariana Trench diving bell and the Mare Crisium observation point.”
“Tommy did get motion sick from the re-entry.”
“And…”
Tommy played with a metallic toy horse as the three of them walked; hand in encounter-suited hand, down Central Park West. A new Spiderman sticker and I love New York decal adorned Tommy’s freshly charged scrubber casing built into his five-star suit.
The sunny afternoon brought the tourists out, strolling in their white “spacesuits” as the locals called them. The thrum of the photovoltaic skin on the skyscrapers adjusting position filled the air with an excited buzz.
“Can’t wait for the horses,” Tommy thought. His settings were on “link” so the thought instantly transmitted to his Dad
His Dad was pleased and transmitted an image of a smiling Spiderman face to his son, a custom image he had purchased just for these sentiments.
Up ahead a car tried to park and bumped into the last of the bulky metallic hulks lined up at the curb.
“Can’t you read,” a horse attendant yelled, out loud, his voice tinny through his old strapped on scrubber. “These spots are for horses only.”
He pointed to the street sign, a stylized horse head inside the outline of a human skull, then made a rude gesture at the vehicle as it sped away. He bent down to inspect the rear leg of the motionless steel hulk.
“Horses, Daddy. I see them,” Tommy messaged.
Tommy’s Dad sent the smiling custom image again.
The attendant ratcheted open the horse’s leg casing. Bone, skin and fluid tubes were briefly exposed to the afternoon before he sealed it up again.
“The poor horses,” Tommy’s Mom messaged.
“Don’t worry. They have it good,” replied Tommy’s Dad. “Coming this time, dear?”
“No.”
Tommy’s Dad had taken his son squid cage diving to the bottom of the Tasman Sea, to three of the four civilian Lunar observation stations, and even on a riverboat deep into the Heart of the Amazon oxygen retention area. Tommy’s Dad wanted him to taste the world. To experience it all for real and not at home through uploads like most everyone else.
The attendants lifted Tommy and placed him atop the horse. They placed his hand in the connection cradle, an opening on the horse’s neck and strapped the cortex interface onto his suit.
“Hold on tight,” the attendant said. Out loud. Then fired the controlled burst of electricity that stopped Tommy’s heart.
Then Tommy was above the city on the back of a white winged horse. Along with other riders he circled the buildings. They were not aged and crumbling but new and shiny and pristine. Tommy remembered his Dad had said when you got close you could see people inside. Ghosts. The permanent kind.
Instead of banking toward the skyscraper wall, Tommy’s horse went up and up and up. Tommy wanted it to come back. But there was nothing he could do. It just rose into the black and did not stop.
#
Ambulance sirens blared.
“Where is he?” Tommy’s father asked an attendant. Out loud.
“We’re doing all we can,” he said.
“Find my son,” Tommy’s mother cried.
The attendant gently lifted Tommy’s body off the horse and placed him, interface and all, into the rear of the ambulance. Fluid leaked from the rear leg of the horse’s metal shell.
- END -
THE MAN WHO WALKED TO MARS
by Daniel Braum
It happened such a long time ago. My Grandpop actually knew him. Can you believe it?
I didn’t. And all the men on the TV, men of science, my Grandpop one of them, didn’t either. Grandpop was a robotics engineer for NASA back around the turn of the century. Part of the team that landed that first rover-thing.
I remember watching the footage on the news. Grainy images of a man walking, one foot after another, against the blackness of space. From the family snapshots they showed he looked like just an ordinary man. Red-haired. A bushy beard and a kind, freckled face. His eyes were the enthusiastic kind, that reminded me of a substitute teacher first day on the job.
Grandpop said the whole shebang was just a trick. The TV shows paraded experts saying how it was impossible. One show said the man was able to do it because he believed he could. And that belief was stronger than the need for oxygen or warmth or our laws of physics. Aided by those who also believed he walked on “steps of faith”, only millions of them. The experts dismissed this. And besides being cited by the new-agers and a notable business man who wrote a success book, the story went away, eclipsed by long strings of daily crisis’s both real and imagined. The man who walked to Mars became a story lumped in with the faking of the lunar landing and the giant face in the Martian landscape that sometimes popped up on late night documentary TV.
#
Someone rapped at Grandpop’s door. Great-Grandpop thanks to my little Julie and Horatio. All the kids were out back looking for the Easter eggs. The girls were with Grandpop in the kitchen getting our big supper ready, so we weren’t expecting anyone.
I answered the door to find the man who walked to Mars standing there holding a paper shopping bag. He was older and just looked, worn for lack of a better word. But those eyes still brimmed with the energy I had noticed in his photos all those years ago.
“Your Grandpop here?” he said. He was all shifty, like he was in a big rush.
Grandpop must have heard and he ambled to the door.
“Marge said this day would come, but I didn’t believe her, rest her soul,” Grandpop said.
They didn’t say much else. But from their silence and half smiles, half scowls, I got the sense they were old friends, reunited, with years and a bad argument between them.
“I don’t have long,” the man who walked to Mars said. He handed Grandpop the paper bag then he was gone, like a fugitive.
Grandpop peered into the bag. He scowled. Smiled for real, then brought it to the kitchen and set it down on the table.
“Who was that Grandpop?” I asked.
“The man who walked to Mars,” he said.
“Really?” I asked.
He lifted a hunk of metal from the bag. It looked like part of a little metallic wagon with wheels and a stump of a robotic arm.
“Though I’d never see her again,” Grandpop said with that look on his face when the Astros come back to win it in the bottom of the ninth.
“What now?” I asked.
I meant about our Easter day. But he must have been thinking something else.
“Want to go for a walk?” he asked.
- END -
Houdini's Grave
by Daniel Braum
I’m standing outside Starbucks on 2nd Avenue, and a woman with long dark hair called my name from across the street as if she knew me. She dashed over when the traffic passed and said, “sorry I’m late. I hope I haven’t kept you waiting too long. It’s so nice to meet you.”
She had my name right, but she was obviously there for a blind date with another man. My fortune cookie at lunch had said, “opportunity knocks” so I figured this was it so we went inside. Then we walked, hot cocoa in hand, laughing at the storefronts already decorated for Halloween. We ended up in a cozy Irish pub.
I’ve been on more than my share of bad dates but things were going amazingly right. So right that I forgot it was all just a mistake. She was a painter. Did charity exhibitions of her work for projects in South America. It wasn’t just that she was tall and stylish with that long dark hair, though that wasn’t hurting; the way she spoke made me want to listen and gave me a sense of future. I found myself feeling oddly mournful that we hadn’t met years ago. I wanted our story to
start now, like I felt it was, so I had to come clean.
“I’m not the guy you were supposed to meet,” I said.
“Of course you are,” she said.
She didn’t get it. Then she asked me if I was doing anything on Halloween. I had a ticket to the Police concert. She said a friend of hers was a famous magician and a few of them were gathering at Houdini’s grave.
“The ultimate escape artist,” she said and then she talked as if she knew me for ages. About an abusive husband. A controlling ex-boyfriend. A small part of me said this is too much too fast and that her fascination with Houdini was an ominous metaphor. A trapped woman looking for the first lock pick that comes along. But I didn’t listen. It had started to rain and she insisted on driving me to my car.
“I’d love to go to Houdini’s grave with you on Halloween,” I said.
“Sure?” she asked. “Its at midnight.”
“Absolutely.”
She wrote her number on a Starbuck’s napkin and gave me a peck goodnight.
Our conversation continued on the phone the next evening. We stayed up late into the night ending the conversation after she gave me directions to the grave. Then next night I wasn’t able to reach her. Nor the night after. And the night after.
Two weeks passed without word. I agonized about going to the graveyard or not and now, standing here, alone in the wet cold waiting for midnight to come, I wonder if she was a figment of my imagination. Or if she got in touch with the man she was supposed to meet that night.
I think of going to find her, I have her card, but then decide its dangerously close to stalking.
Turning my back to the wind, I realize that I like thinking she’s out there; an instance of the potential of the situation being much safer than reality. I don’t want her to turn out to be an invented ghost.
But I have to know. So I steel myself against the October night, hoping this isn’t where the story ends but where it gets good.
- End -
A Picture of Zurich
by Daniel Braum
I am seventeen. The store in our town that sells prints and lithographs is going out of business. On the eve of my departing for university, I find myself shopping there and a print of a city on a lake, framed by mountains captures me.
The image is comprised of tiny squares. Bright oranges. Cobalt blues and silvers for the lake. Forty dollars is the final price, after many reductions and cross outs marked on a sticker tag on the back. I paid what was then a tidy sum and took the picture with me to university.
#
The picture stays with me wherever I live. For a decade it adorns my walls in a simple, silver frame, then spends the next ten years rolled up in a storage tube.
#
I am thirty seven. Stepping foot on Zurich’s paving-stone streets for the first time, memories of my almost-forgotten print flood back to me. My business in Zurich is done and with a day on my hands before having to return to the States, I change out of my suit and tie into sneakers and comfortable jeans.
The air is clean and it is something about the pace, the rhythm of all the people, and not just the river and ring of mountains that makes me feel like the painting.
I wind past clock towers and churches. Cafés are setting up tables for lunch with care and grace. The shops sell exquisite paper, artists tools, beautiful furniture, absinthe, coffee and of course chocolate. I am lost but I don’t care. I am wandering.
I enter a shop. A dozen paintings hang on its walls. Each is in the style of my Zurich print but each is of the cities I have lived in. A man is at an artist’s work desk cutting squares of paper, tools neatly laid out in front of him. He turns and his face is mine- bearded and gray, but mine none-the-less.
Everything disappears. The shop is empty. I go back outside and notice an elegant for sale sign in the window. I wander a while and find my way back to my hotel but I know I won’t be returning to the States anytime soon. I realize why I have come.
- END -
On Darkened Lawns
by Daniel Braum
It was a dark summer night during the big brown out of ‘05. The trains weren’t running and my girlfriend, Kerri, was stuck in the city. Even so, with no power to the traffic lights I was staying off the roads so I wouldn’t be going to see her tonight. Putting off the inevitable. On my way to Calahan’s to drown my sorrows, I noticed my neighbor’s lawn jockey was missing from its place among the parade of lawn deer, lawn ducks, and ceramic mushrooms that blighted an otherwise pleasant green-grassed, well-manicured-shrubbed, suburban front yard.
My relationship with Kerri was on borrowed time. Something about the old men at Calahan’s and the bartender who looked like she could have been something once, comforted me as I struggled with the question what does one do with the good times once a relationship is gone.
I drank myself into quite a stupor and sometime after midnight I figured it was time to shamble home before I risked not waking up tomorrow.
I walked home, no closer to any answers. Still lost in thought, I wondered why my keys didn’t work in my door. I looked at the lawn and realized I must have turned down the wrong block.
It was full of lawn jockeys, their lanterns shining with the glow of thousands of fireflies.
I stood there thinking, damn some kids really did a good one. And then I saw the jockeys were moving; escorting kids to and from the corner where the bus stops; trailing men in suits with brief cases to their cars. Everywhere scenes of suburban life were being played out like ghostly-recorded images and the lawn jockeys followed, illuminating them with their yellow-green, too-bright lantern light.
And for it a second it all made sense, I understood the place of these purposeless lawn ornaments in the universe. Then I reminded myself of the hour and the impossibility of it all and told myself that it couldn’t be.
“No, you had it right the first time,” said a blue and white jockey standing next to me. “This makes perfect sense. You’ve traveled far to see us my friend.”
As he spoke I had a vague recollection of passing out. Was that my body face down on the steps there behind the little cast iron man?
“So where do you want to go?” he said.
“To see Kerri, I guess,” I said without thinking. It came out naturally.
The clunk of horseshoes on asphalt filled the night. The jockey smiled and now that I heard the echoing sound I realized the rest of the commotion was strangely noiseless.
“Your question,” the jockey said. “Good times. They are a noble pursuit in and of themselves. They are never destroyed, even when you and she are no more.”
A pair of tall strong horses, the same yellow-green as the lantern light galloped down the block and stopped in front of the house.
I remembered tripping. Stumbling. Falling on the brick stairs. My head smashing on the concrete.
“So, I’m not going to make it work tomorrow after all, am I?” I asked.
The jockey’s fixed expression seemed somber as he stiffly shook his head from side to side. Then he climbed on one of the horses.
“Come on,” he said. “Kerri awaits. I shall race you there.”
-END-
THE WALKING MAN
by Daniel Braum
THE WALKING MAN
At first I thought I’d start this by describing him as a sort of mad Colonel Kurtz, in reverse, a poet warrior, walking out of the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the four corners of Japan, into his own personal heart of light.
But that wouldn’t do. Nor would any cryptic reference or word puzzle made up of his Haiku. As much as this would please him.
And then I thought, maybe I’d begin with an image, of the man behind the glass window, screaming, screaming, for people to hear, yet they are walking on by, oblivious to the workings of his mind, the strings of words stitched together from his heart.
I am one of them. A fool who mistook the etchings on the glass, the panes fogging with midnight breath, for the workings of a genius, bored with the conventions of conventional prose.
“Love ignition overdrive,” he reads to the crowd.
The words come alive in my mind. And I am enlightened to the mysteries of his zodiac.
We study and teach and plot in his garden hideaway. We drink wine and feast with friends in the shadow of the golden Buddha, knowing that this is but a moment. One of those moments, a wild convergence of so many lifelines that will never cross again. I see that mournful glint, ever present in his clear eyes. I deduce meanings and stories from the fragments of word filled papers he carries, relics of moments, stretching into the past. I marvel at the giant pirate chest full of words he has amassed.
And I think of him, walking. Into this future, a line stretching away from our intersected moments, strung from his treasury of words.
I thought I’d write about a man who walked and walked and transformed all he saw into immortal art in the pattern of the ancients. In this story he doesn’t stop. He keeps on walking. Through all of Japan. All of Asia. All the world. And up into space, rising in a swell of mystic rhythms and notes, free from the ipod full of acid jazz and punk rock tethering him to the ground.
He walks from planet to planet. Footsteps dissolving into sprays of cosmic dust. Every expression cosmically significant, yet meaning nothing at all.
His treasure chest, no longer needed, left earthbound.
- END-
PILE UP ON HIGHWAY FIVE
by Daniel Braum
Beneath Highway 5 and the thousands of cars speeding by, the insubstantial hatchling cracked out of its insubstantial egg and floated up. It rose through the cars and the oblivious humans driving them. And if they could see the hatchling they would think it looked like some sort of giant jellyfish.
The hatchling rose higher and at the cloud line rendezvoused with an elder.
“Welcome,” the elder said. “It is time to feed.”
The elder wrapped one of its tentacles around the hatchling and dipped it down into the steam of traffic. When it found a weak human, it grabbed its life force, ripping its energy out of the body which slumped over in the back seat.
The hatchling reveled in its first meal.
“All of this. All for us.”
“You must only take the weak. The dying,” the elder said.
“Why?” said the hatchling. “It is so easy. So potent.”
It dipped its tentacles into the flow of traffic.
“When you die the spirits of those you’ve taken will be waiting for you. Thus we only take the weak.”
“What a foolish notion,” the hatchling said and ripped the lives from a dozen drivers and gorged on them.
Cars screeched and crashed causing a chain reaction and pile up.
The hatchling rose into the air and the elder followed. It wrapped its tentacles around the young one, this time not in instruction.
“My time is almost over. But yours is finished. Soon we shall both know who was right.”
The elder squelched the life from the hatchling and followed it into death.
- END -
THE GHOST OF ZOLI HAUSENHIEM, JAY LAKE, AND HOW THE CABAL UNCOVERED THE SECRET TO EVERYTHING
by Daniel Braum
To celebrate our first anniversary, each of us here at the Cabal has come up with a story beginning with a line provided to us by the illustrious Jay Lake. Click the link at the bottom of the page to see how Alex Dally MacFarlane started us off yesterday, and tune in tomorrow to see what David Kopaska-Merkel comes up with...
Zoli liked to hang around psychiatrists’ waiting rooms to hit on the low self-esteem chicks. That’s what the case file said. Who the hell still said “chicks” and thought psychiatric help meant low self-esteem? Someone was gonna get smacked.
Patients reported feeling cold spots and someone pull their hair, when no one was there. So we knew we’d find Zoli there. We brought the EMP detector and FLIR heat sensor and the rest of our gear. I had a good idea we’d be able to contain him once we found him, but I couldn’t be sure. It hadn’t been written yet…
#
Jay Lake made me write this.
Three years ago I was stopped for a lay over at O’Hare waiting for a flight into Wisconsin when I saw his distinctive long hair and bright shirt, at the gate across from me.
I approached thinking of how to introduce myself and found him muttering.
“Luc, Sara, Kat,” he said.
“Huh,” I said.
“You know,” he said. “Cabalistas. Zoli. Zoli, Zoli…”
I stared blankly not wanting to offend.
“Oh,” he said. “You’re not going to meet Kat for another twelve hours and thirty six minutes.”
“Right, uh congratulations on Lake-Wu,” I said, and walked away looking at my boarding pass.
I didn’t know it then but I know it now. It was all part of Jay’s plan. Everything is.
#
The pattern is quite elegant, at least the parts I can get my mind around. It’s a matter of syncing up the 3rd letter of every word in the lettered edition of Lake-Wu, with the prime numbered pages of the Jacob’s Ladder screenplay, and then using that cipher to read Gibson’s rejected screenplay for Alien 3.
Its all here. I can show you. All roads lead to Jay Lake. The spaces in between the words, The implications they hint at. I’ll show you. I’m typing the cipher but its not showing up on my screen. Why are these words coming out on the screen? I’m not writing this…
#
Zoli liked to hang around Psychiatrists’ waiting rooms to hit on the low self-esteem chicks,” Zoli thought. Simultaneously, Jay Lake’s hands typed the words into an e mail.
Why did I write that, Jay thought. He hit send anyway, thinking those crazy Cabalistas would get a kick out of it.
Zoli tried to materialize the waiting room. A woman waiting there felt an odd tug on her hair. In the lobby, Dan Braum, with a back pack full of high-end electronics, was about to push through the door.
- END -
POSTCARDS FROM PANDEMONIUM
by Daniel Braum
INCIDENT AT VALENTINO’S
Through solid information I had heard that Minaesphoptuian Hirentheah, a minor demon, a particularly slippery class six, had been at Valentino’s Bar and Grill. Valentino’s was a real spiffy pool joint; two floors, over a hundred tables, a sexy wait staff; place got real crowded on Sat nights. It fit Minaes’s modus operandi; debauchery and desire. Money and sex and egos flying around along with drunken pool games made for bad bargains and easy dealings.
Why work harder than you need to, the last demon I had collared said to me. And I agree. But I don’t take bribes, I collect bounty. Big difference.
As I enter Valentino’s I think of her sitting in the secured cell in my basement. Sooner or later a bounty to go out on her, and the rest of them.
Minaes stands out in the crowd to me, clear as day. I see right through her guise of zoot-suited pool shark. Then she sees me when shouldn’t. I’m masked to the gills way above what a class six can detect. But her glances betray her and she shows me the positions of the five major demons at the bar and tables. To the crowd they look like grizzled under cover cops.
Minaes dissipates into the ether, not bothering to cover her tracks but I can’t follow. A storm of demonic magic flies at me. Curses. Words of binding. I buckle in pain as the demons encircle me.
“Bounty on you, Ilyanna,” one of them says. “Illegal detention of Infernal-kind.”
I try to escape but I have no strength.
“There are bounties on all of you,” I say. “Hunters that have been on your tails for centuries. Release me and I shall hunt them…”
“A deal?” Another of the demons says. They are quiet. Conversing in each other’s minds. The crowd is running out of the joint in panic, thinking it’s a raid.
“Seal the deal in blood?” the first one asks.
It’s a dangerous game, opening my veins voluntarily around their kind. Voluntary is the key for them to have a hold on me. A guarantee I’ll keep my part. I don’t know if its gonna make things worse, but I’m not going back to Pandemonium, not tonight, so I might as well try.
I allow them to open my vein and I ready to receive the blood.
- END -
THE OLD WOMAN, THE SILVER ORREY, AND THE BAZAAR ON MERCURY
by Daniel Braum
Dimitri had the forge almost ready to melt the silver when they found him, his mother’s list held out in front of them like a warrant.
The fact no one warned him there were visitors did not bode well. From the cavernous main work area steel clanked and molten metal hissed as it poured into great ceramic molds.
Behind the heavy door beside him was the space Dimitri had covertly co-opted for his mother. Her arcane texts, full of astrology, Da-Vinci’s drawings, and roman mythology still littered the floor, surrounding the silver orrery she had built, in erratic orbits. But the flying machine, along with Mother, was gone, and had been for almost a day.
Dimitri thought his mother was brilliant yet mad enough to leave a list with the steps of everything she had done.
The visitors were a man and a woman clad in modern black suits. Dimitri wondered if they were agents of the Czar or the Bolsheviks and hoped nothing worse.
“The bazaar of Mercury?” the woman asked, and upon hearing what he took for gibberish, Dimitri thought everything might turn out okay after all.
Then she passed a strange device over Mother’s list. He had never seen anything like the sleek, metallic thing before. It fit snugly in her hand and cast a purple light that revealed glyphs and characters overlapping each other with its glow. Orbits of the Earth and planet mercury criss-crossed the page.
Something worse, Dimitri thought and remembered Mother just after she had built the orrery and had asked him for help with the cabin for the flying machine.
There’s not a lot of air in there, he said.
Doesn’t have to be. Trip will only take a minute, Mother said.
How are we getting this thing out of the foundry? Dimitri asked.
We’re not. I’m launching from here.
Launching, Dimitri had thought. And where was she going? Nowhere unless she had a secret tunnel in mind. Mother was capable of mad feats big and small, she cured colds, delivered babies and saved their mother’s lives. She had predicted the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, and the fortunes of the Czars who came to her clandestinely. Dimitri was a man of science and steel yet he did not doubt his mother.
The male visitor pointed to Mother’s list.
“Mercury circles the sun every 88 days. For three minutes on the 87th night it disappears from sight,” he said.
“Where does it go?” Dimitri asked.
The pair laughed and Dimitri saw what he took for fanaticism in their eyes. It didn’t bode well. He looked for a steel bar he could use as a weapon.
“It goes nowhere,” the woman said. “All come to Mercury, for the great bazaar.”
He could sense her need, palpable as run-off steam.
Mother had wanted the orrery made of silver.
In case things went wrong, they couldn’t touch it, she had said.
Was this demon, this non-person, this thing from another world what she had in mind?
“The door is open?” the woman asked.
“Yes,” Dimitri said.
She shot him in the head, killing him.
She pushed open the heavy door, eager to find the orrery and divine direction to the bazaar and maybe finally a way back home.
Last Stop
by Daniel Braum
Buzzing black flies careen into the dusty plate-glass window. Through it, I see him park his Harley by the ancient pipe-cactus at the side of the road. He opens the door. It jingles and a blast of hot, dry air circulates the aroma of coffee, frying burgers, and burnt bacon. Before the door closes I feel, more than hear, the thrum and warble of the thing over the bend, though there is a sound that carries above the tinny classic rock coming from the little speakers in the booths.
Marla, that’s what her nametag says, extends her lower lip and blows a lock of her curly raven hair out of her eyes. Green eyes. Green eyes clearly frustrated with the customers. She notices him in a second, sure as a kangaroo rat knows a plump cactus blossom has fallen to the desert floor. She leaves her station, coffee pot in hand, and greets him.
He clanks his dinged metal thermos on the counter. This guy isn’t here for science, or profit, not on that bike. Curiosity or art, maybe. But I don’t think so.
“Damn if I know where my next cup is coming from,” he says. “Better fill ‘er up.”
Her body language screams disappointment. Those green eyes search for something more. I think of all the last stop diners I’ve been to. All the signs that said “last gas for 200 miles” and I laugh, then stop myself.
I came for the thing that opened up round the bend. But I was heading away, out of town, when I stopped in and saw her.
I understand why she wants to go. She’s seen the interviews of prospectors and storytellers and their tales of beauty and wonder on the other side. Those that come back. The lucky few that do, show up in random places. Tuscaloosa. Perth. Johannesburg are the hot spots, lately. Those that aren’t mad, have been “touched”. I guess you can call it that. Touched with a bliss that is apparent and infectious even from a TV screen.
What is it about this guy? Is he a Prospector? A treasure seeker? A thrill chaser? Just another pilot of purple twilight doing it just because? I want to ask him, maybe convince him to take me along, but it will ruin their moment.
She walks with him outside. That whine and warble is louder now. The government men will be here soon and I don’t want to be around when they do. Being detained is not pleasant.
I watch them kiss goodbye. Why he doesn’t stay with her or take her with him, I don’t know. Guess I never will. Some people just have to drive.
He speeds off, trailing a cloud of dust. When the sound of his engine fades, I will go to her, or think of something witty to say if she comes to refill my coffee. There is nothing here for her now; soon there will be nothing for me.
-END-
FROM THE BOOK OF MONSTERS ( FN 1 )
by Daniel Braum
Pg. 270.
Excerpt from the account of Raul Sanchez given to Father M. Sorenson. ( FN 2)
Translated from Spanish by D. Francis Leslie. PHD ( FN 3)
Ash Wednesday. 1983.
I had just come from church. Some of the old farmers asked for help with something that had been tearing up their fields. ( FN 4) Something had dug a huge pit right where they said; a tunnel about four feet around at the bottom. So I climbed down, and immediately realized something was there.
At first I thought I was looking at the hindquarters of a fat, giant mole. Then it turned and looked at me. Its face was a human face but was shriveled and purple. When I saw its teeth, which were jagged and triangular, like an old shark’s, I realized I was face to face with a demon from the first world. ( FN 5 ) I thought I was going to die. But I was wearing the Ash and the two brothers were protecting me. It tunneled into the earth and I never saw it again. ( FN 6)
#
Footnotes:
(1) The name commonly associated with the untitled volumes of D. Francis Leslie’s accounts, transcriptions, and translations of unexplained biological and paranormal occurrences from around the globe. -DB
(2) Original footnote from D. Francis Leslie: These skeptical notes predate Sorenson’s account of The Green Man and related episodes in the now infamous town.
(3) PHD appears after D. Francis Leslie’s but confirmation of where this doctorate was obtained and of what discipline remains unconfirmed at the time of this printing. I located a degree in Veterinary medicine for one Franklyn Brahma, one of his suspected alias, from a school in Thailand. I’ve heard accounts of F Brahma traveling with some of the more reclusive crypto-botanists in China but was unable to find any documentation. -DB
(4) A Handwritten Note from Father Sorenson’s transcription read as follows: It is more likely Sanchez was investigating an animal of some sort that was tunneling under his fields of illicit crops. I am of the opinion this story was concocted to keep prying eyes and thieving competition out of the area.
(5) Original footnote from D. Francis Leslie: Despite the references to Mayan mythology and cosmology I doubt Father Sorensen believed Raul was a religious man.
(6) Original footnote from D. Francis Leslie: There are tales of strange creatures attacking livestock and even children. Finding out if these accounts are connected to Mr. Sanchez’s tale will require additional investigation.
"Go."
by Daniel Braum
“Be careful,” Natalia says. “The shark doesn’t bite, but it’s jagged down there.” Her boyfriend gathers her up like a possession. I shrug this off and grab my mask.
It’s an eight-foot nurse shark just sitting there under the broken hurricane wall just like she said. To see it you have to dive about nine feet or so and hold onto the bottom of the concrete, pull yourself down and hold your breath long enough for your eyes to adjust to the darkness.
The guy next to me is trying to get my attention. Pointing at me. A trail of blood trickles up to the surface. It takes me a few long seconds to realize it’s coming from my hand. I must have cut it on the barnacled, rusty piece of rebar I’d been holding on to. Before I let myself go up, I sense the shark is not alone. Something is with it in the darkness.
#
That night, I’m in my room, listening to the night sounds of my happy neighbors as I drift asleep. Soon as I turn the lights out, I sense that presence.
My eyes adjust and I see a shark in the corner, standing upright, like a man. It’s saying something. All garbled. Lost in translation. But I get the sense it’s a command. I turn on the lights but it doesn’t disappear. I can see its jagged teeth and jaw moving as it repeats its command.
My cut hand is throbbing. I look at the bandage, then I’m alone in the room. Except for dozens of ants chaotically fleeing the corner instead of marching to my waste basket in neat lines as usual.
I go outside for air. Natalia is alone on her steps having a smoke.
“You too.” she says. It isn’t a question.
“Yeah,” I say.
They’re leaving tomorrow. I have another few weeks on the island planned. But what about everyone else?
In my head I hear the sound the shark was making. Was it saying, “go”?
My throbbing hand tells me it’s a warning.
Ibis Rises
by Daniel Braum
After a lunch of chicken tikka masala and palek paneer washed down with the most fragrant rose lassies from that little red place on Bank Street, Maia and Jocelyn were walking to the bus stop heading back to their dorm. Jocelyn, having grown up in Brissy, paid the sticky heat and everything else no mind. Maia was quite happy not to be in the London winter and was taking in the Jacarandas and cute houses on stilts when she spotted an elegant white bird. It rummaged through the trash with its long, hooked, black beak, dwarfing the pigeons poking around alongside it.
“Wow, what’s that?” Maia asked.
“You mean the Ibis, love?” Jocelyn said.
The word Ibis conjured images of ancient Egypt into Maia’s head.
“I’ve never seen one before,” she said.
“We have birds from all over.”
“Ha. This is the closest I’ve been to Egypt.”
Powered by Maia’s focus and belief the Ibis’s attention shifted from picking apart the rubbish bags.
Where am I? Where are the pharaohs, it thought. These buildings are not the glorious works of Thoth. This river is not the Nile.
Filled with god-consciousness, the Ibis lifted its head, sensing how the energy of world had changed since it last manifested and letting knowledge flow into it.
So many new mysteries to learn. Such great wonders to uncover. To protect.
The Ibis noticed Maia and Jocelyn watching. It gave a little squawk and thought,
All this time and their kind is still just stuck in the muck.
Then it craned its head higher.
I sense so many seekers, so many yearning to worshippers, just waiting for me to rise and lead them. I shall start by-
Maia looked away, her attention caught by a big Jacaranda near the bridge over the Brisbane River.
“Can I take your picture, Joce? Its so lovely,” Maia said.
“Yeah, they’re in full bloom this time of year, doll.”
With the power of her focus and belief gone, the god-aspect faded from the Ibis. The bird went back to picking garbage as if nothing had happened, while Maia snapped a picture of Jocelyn under the purple Jacaranda.
-END-
Boon of the Monkey God
by Daniel Braum
The road to the shore winds down the mountainside, a narrow snake covered by lush green canopy, alive with birds and butterflies. A troop of monkeys swings above paying us no mind. Our little hotel room offers nothing but a ceiling fan as respite from the midday Costa Rican heat. So we trek to the beach, a bag with left over fruit for the monkeys that live there.
A resonant howler cry joins the song of the lazy afternoon.
“Make a wish,” Connie says. “They don’t do that during the day!”
“Ok.”
“So?” she asks.
“I’m saving it.”
She smacks me, playfully.
We’re just about at the bottom when a four hundred horsepower roar decimates the tranquil buzz of animal sounds and gently breaking waves.
A candy-apple red sports car speeds down the hill, convertible top up. The tinted passenger side window rolls down revealing the innocent face of a pretty Costa Rican teen. She’s done up in god-awful make up and wearing a whore’s dress. A man in a dress shirt and tie leans over.
“How the hell do I get to the beach?”
“You can’t,” Connie says.
“Come on. She wants to see the beach.”
This ass makes me ashamed to be an American.
“No vehicle access,” I say. “Cars aren’t allowed.”
We leave him to spin his wheels, literally, and go for our swim. We move farther and farther up the beach but we can’t escape his shouting and revving engine.
“That arrogance must serve him well in his life, but its not going to do him any good here,” Connie says.
Not yet. I think, afraid of what the future might bring.
We take another dip then trudge to our room. A breeze from the waves below blows the thin drapes. I turn the ceiling fan on. Its lazy spin accelerates and then it is rocking in its loose anchoring. We lay on the bed. Kiss. Take off our clothes. Soon we are matching the fan’s rhythm.
As sleep takes us, I hear the sports car on the road. A monkey howls. This time I make my wish.
Connie is still asleep when I wake. I go outside to the communal kitchen to find ice crackling in glasses on the patio bar, but no patrons. Our host is gone from her eternal post, lip-sticked cigarette still burning. I glance down the mountain to the shore, not a human in the waves or the beach. A boat, unguided, crashes into the rocks.
A howler jumps from the canopy to the table and joyfully smashes an empty glass. His eyes full of acknowledgement of my selfish wish.
I walk back to the room, with a mischievous smile.
“Hun, want to go for a swim?” I call.
Kookaburra
by Daniel Braum
I had just returned from three months Down Under. And being back I yearned for all those musical Aussie accents and watching the fruits bats high in the evening Queensland sky. Was it my friends I missed most or the sense of living in a city that had not completely steamrolled nature in order to exist?
These were my thoughts this Saturday afternoon. Autumn had just changed the leaves of my cherry tree to orange but I had the pleasure of taking my god-daughter to the annual Pet expo.
“Be a good girl and hold my hand.” I said to Marti. “They have giant mountain gorillas there, so don’t get lost,”
“Nuh-uh,” Marti said, dismissing the notion as one of my frequent teases.
“B’sides. Grillas are il-leeegal,” she said, one-upping me, as was our way.
We strolled through aisles lined with booths peddling kittens in cages, greyhounds on leashes, and every pet supply I could image. One booth, for a local sanctuary for injured and abandoned birds, was teeming with rather well behaved parrots.
In a cage quietly sat a squat bird, with a large black kingfisher’s bill, its white feathers dusted with gray and black.
“See Marti, that’s a Kookuburra.”
She liked the name, but the bird did not capture her attention.
“She’s from Australia,” said an old woman. The way she had so smoothly emerged from the bustling crowd of strollers and families it seemed she had come from nowhere.
I couldn’t get Marti’s attention away from the parrots. The crowd’s almost angry buzz was wearing on me. More than anything, I wanted to be on the bridge overlooking the Brisbane river.
“So go back,” the woman said, as if my thoughts were being broadcast. “Maybe you could find a way to bring me.”
“I should. And I’d love to,” I said, this time certain I had spoken aloud.
“Who are you talking to, Uncle Dovyd?” Marti asked.
“The nice old woman,” I said.
Marti gave me a look that said, not another silly tease.
I turned to point, but the woman was gone.
The Kookaburra laughed. The gurgling bellow, wholly alien, seemed to stop time.
“Wow, what was that?” Marti asked.
Pungent eucalyptus and tropical humidity filled the expo center and for the most ephemeral instant, all was silent before the din of the crowd returned.